‘Come up, ye gowk,’ Hal growled, already into tunic and hose and casting a warning glance at Isabel, who pouted at him and drew the sheet up just as Sim’s great tousled black head rose above floor level.
‘Ready, Lord Hal? Ye wanted an early start, ye told me,’ he said, then nodded and grinned companiably to Isabel.
‘Coontess,’ he added with a nod. ‘I see why he is laggardly.’
‘Cannot send my man off to war half-cocked, like a badly latched bow,’ she replied as lightly as she could manage and had the gratification of a Sim laugh, a bell of sound from his flung-back throat.
‘Weel said, Coontess,’ Sim declared and dropped out of sight again.
She watched Hal drape all the panoply round him, from maille to jupon – freshly sewn by the two main women of the place, Alehouse Maggie and Bet the Bread – and finally turn to her, awkward and tongue-tied.
‘Ye need to break your fast,’ she chided and he nodded like a child.
‘If trouble comes,’ he began and she placed a finger on his bearded lip.
‘I am safe here,’ she said, ‘whether it be the English or the Scots of my husband. Ye have left me Will Elliott, who is a fine man – not to mention the Dog Boy.’
They both paused at the name. The Dog Boy looked the same, yet both Hal and Isabel knew he was not, that the killing of the man in the lazar had snapped something of the boy away and the man replacing it was not yet comfortable with the slaying. They had heard him yelping in his sleep like a troubled pup; it had been the main reason Hal had decided to leave him behind.
To his surprise, he found he had not thought of John for a long time, nor his wife for longer than that; the knowledge flushed him with shame. Yet he had more on his mind these days, he said to himself by way of excuse. He was Lord of Herdmanston now, summoned to war by Bruce to serve in the host commanded by Wallace.
Longshanks was here, rolling north like a storm, and Hal had delayed, selfish as any callow youth, because of Isabel. He had missed joining the Roslin men under Sir Henry, released back into the love of wife and weans only to go off yet again, as a rebel.
Now Henry was with Bruce in Annandale, cut off from the main host under Wallace – and the Sientclers of Herdmanston would ride north to find the host, near Falkirk, before the English arrived in a tide that would cut Hal off from everyone.
The first lappings of that tide were already here – English under Bishop Bek, sent like the first blast of Longshanks’ wrath, were rampaging through Lothian, set on taking the rebel-held castles of Dirleton and Tantallon. Roslin was too strong for them and Herdmanston too little a bother so far; Will, Dog Boy and old Wull the Yett were enough to keep the tower safe.
But it was not Bek and herschip raiders Hal feared. Buchan was leashed by the fact that Herdmanston was on the same side as himself, but that was a thin cord – if he snapped it and came for his vengeance, there would be no half-hearted exchange of bolts and arrows and taunts. Buchan would bring the deep hate of the robbed and cuckolded, the unrelenting vengeance that had made him send Malise after Isabel in the first place.
Hal heard the Auld Sire’s voice, as if he was at his elbow – he will come at you sideways, like a cock fighting on a dungheap. Even from the dark . . .
And he might not be here to defend her. The thought embered up into his eyes and she saw it and balmed it with smiles and calm.
‘Besides,’ she added lightly, ‘who would dare take on Maggie and Bet and hope for life?’
Hal smiled, remembering how she had taken them on herself. Alehouse Maggie ran the brewhouse, with arms muscled as hams from stirring her vats, an arse like the quarters of a destrier and breasts, as Sim had mentioned, that you could see Traprain Law from if you reached the top. Once she blew the froth off her moustache, he added, she was a rare rattle on a cold night.
Bet the Bread ran the bakehouse and did the cooking for all in the Keep. Chap-cheeked, breasted like a pouter-pigeon, she had hair so long covered by a tight headsquare than no-one could swear to the colour of it – not even Sim since, as he had once confessed, it was the only thing she never took off.
They had sniffed a little, like bitches round a strange animal, when Isabel had first arrived, then given it a day or two before testing the steel of her. Alehouse Maggie had begun it, when Hal and Isabel had gone to the stone cross, ostensibly for him to pay his respects to the Auld Sire and, she knew, in some weird way, present her to the other occupants that lay beneath.
Isabel had stood beside him in the shadow of the great stone column with its coffin bell and chains – disconnected, she knew, after a violent storm had set the heavy bell ringing in the night and brought everyone to trembling wakefulness – and hoped to feel something from the mound.