‘A survivor?’ he asked and Edward wiped his moustaches with the back of one hand.
‘Sole,’ he answered gruffly. ‘The Frenchman Guillaume, whose piety saved him – he was holding vigil for St John in the chapel. The other five are slaughtered … Christ, Sir William Airth is killed. God’s Wounds, Rob, young Strathbogie deserves the worst punishment. Bad enough that he runs off on the eve of battle, but this act is the foulest treason.’
‘The Earl of Atholl is young,’ Bruce murmured, ‘and afraid. And I am your king, brother. Not Rob.’
‘Not so young that he cannot tell right from wrong, my lord king,’ Randolph answered as Edward scowled. ‘Forfeiture is the least he can expect.’
Aye, Bruce thought wryly. Dispossess him of his lands to the Crown, so I can hand them out like sweetmeats to the favoured. With Randolph, Earl of Moray, at the head of the line.
‘No great loss,’ Edward added. ‘If he thought to harm our cause by burning stores, he has missed the mark.’
‘Sir William Airth,’ Bruce pointed out. ‘And four other good men.’
Edward had the grace to flush, a darkening of his skin under the yellow candle glow, while Bruce thought of what he would say to old Sir John, William’s father. Your son is slaughtered, not by the English, but by the Earl of Atholl – God’s hook swung exceeding slow, but it snagged bitterly, for all that.
‘There is other news,’ Randolph said into the chill which followed. ‘A balance of the pan, as it were.’
Bruce waited and saw Randolph stride from the panoply, while the broad grin of his brother gave nothing away. It was the same grin, Bruce recalled with a sharp pang, when he was toddling on fat little legs, bringing some strange insect or animal to present for inspection.
None had been stranger than the one Randolph brought into the candlelight. Tall, so that he had to stoop underneath the canvas lintel, dark-haired, sallow-skinned, his black eyes alive with a fevered light … Bruce knew him well.
‘Seton,’ he said weakly, for it was the last man he had thought to see. Then he recovered himself as the man flung to one knee, reached out and raised him up gently by the elbow. ‘Alexander,’ he said. ‘Nephew. Welcome.’
The noise of clatter and weans woke him, starting him out of sleep with a jerk; he saw little Bet half crouch with the sudden movement, cautious and wary. Beyond, studying him with dark solemnity, was Hob.
Hob. She would call him that, since that was the name of the King of Summer. He was of age and Bet’s Meggy had claimed the boy as his, seeded on that very midsummer night. It was possible … he had known it even as he said, accusingly: ‘Ye might have let me know.’
‘For why?’ she had replied, tart as young apples. ‘For you to stop skirrievaigin’ with Jamie Douglas at the herschip and come to Roslin to provide for me? You have no skill for anythin’ but hounds and Roslin did not need that.’
She had looked at the crumbled ruin of maslin and smiled.
‘I mak’ bread, even from poor leavings like this, so I can provide. I did not need another useless mouth.’
He had gawped at her and she had smiled the bitter out of it in an eyeblink.
‘No matter how loving a man you are,’ she had added softly, and then tapped his arm lightly. ‘Besides, John the Lamb took me, Hob and all, and provided for us until he died. Now you have rose up in the world and mayhap the Lady brought you back to better provide for your imp of a son.’
He had glanced at the sleeping boy and managed a wan smile of his own while his head birled with it all.
‘Less imp now that he sleeps,’ he said and she laughed.
‘Aye – maybe he is not yours at all,’ she offered and laughed when he’d rounded on her with a scowl.
‘Men,’ she scoffed. ‘You never knew of him until now and scarce thought of me at all, yet the idea of someone else having laid a cuckoo’s egg in your nest crests you up like a dunghill cock.’
Abashed, confused, Dog Boy had no answer, so she had provided one.
‘It might have been the Faerie,’ she said. ‘On that night of nights.’
Midsummer, he remembered. As now, filled with the silent moving folk. Her smile only broadened at his look.
‘As any will tell you who knew you as a bairn,’ she had offered, ‘he is the same as you looked at that age.’