She looked at him, this stocky, fiery wee man; his boots had high heels and that little vanity robbed him of some of his menace. God’s Wounds, he had enough of it just by looking like a smaller version of Buchan.
It was undignified, she thought, sitting here within sight of this small, blurred image of her husband, so like him in colour and temper and discussing her intimacies. She had known her husband’s rage was enough for him to injure her but lately had hoped that it was enough for him just to detach from her.
Now, eyes blank and fogged, she saw the stupidity of that. He had been cuckolded, made a fool over the business of ransom – when he need not have ransomed her at all – and now needed to stamp the imprint of the Buchan lordship firmly on the lands of Fife. With a wife who was the last noble MacDuff in Fife and the backing of his kinsman, an appointed Guardian, he would be able to gain control.
Shame and anger flushed her, sank into her belly and twisted all the weary organs. Like beads on a rosary, all the slights she had given her husband, small and large, winked in her memory. Worse, with a chill that flushed goosing on her skin, she thought of the grim little Comyn of Badenoch’s words regarding force. If necessary.
There was no way out of it. It was no longer a wayward wife Buchan wanted, but the key to unlock the rents of a powerful earldom and he would not let Isabel or Hal alone. If she remained, Herdmanston would feel the wrath of Buchan and she knew, as she knew her own palms, that Bruce would not prevent it – even if he felt like it – for he would be persuaded that Hal of Herdmanston was not cause enough to break the uneasy pact with the Comyn.
‘A bladder may be dipped,’ she said flatly, ‘but not drowned. I will have your word on that.’
The Red Comyn shrugged; he did not care one way or the other and said so.
‘Betimes,’ he added with a wry twist, ‘I would not put yer faith in the wee lord of Herdmanston. I hear he’s eating grass and living like a slinking dog in the wild. The Plantagenet has punished him for his rebellion and appointed these lands to one of his deserving others – a certain Malenfaunt, who was lately your . . . host. He has a way with the vicious that you cannot help but admire, has Longshanks – have you heard how they are calling him Hammer of the Scots now?’
‘Malenfaunt’s is a parchment gift,’ she replied stonily and he acknowledged that much; Longshanks had parcelled out a deal of lands belonging to rebellious Scots, but with no way to enforce their titles, the new owners were left clutching a roll with seals and were no better off than before.
He saw the thin hemline of her lips and allowed his temper a slip of the leash.
‘Regardless of the fate of this fortalice, lady, my task is to impress on you the necessity of the inevitable – Christ’s Wounds, woman, ye sit in this mean hall as if you were married on to its owner. Have ye no shame?’
She had not.
‘I will have your word on matters. You are Guardian. You can persuade my husband not to exercise the full of his anger on Sir Hal of Herdmanston and, if the Bruce agrees nothing else with you, he can be persuaded to add his weight to this. Have I your word on it?’
He was struck, then, by what it revealed of her feelings. It does not matter, he thought to himself, if Buchan has her body back, for someone else has her heart. Usually, that would not matter to a powerful lord only interested in lands but Badenoch knew that it mattered to the Earl of Buchan. There would be more trouble over it, he knew – but he was sick of the business and had more important matters than arguing with a well-bred hoor. It was a deal of persuasion – but he was flattered that she thought him able to fulfil it, so he spoke the formal words she wanted and saw her jaw knot.
‘Have you a spare mount?’ she managed, the words ash in her mouth.
‘Ach, no – coontess . . .’
Bangtail was silenced by the bright-eyed stricken look she turned on him. The Red Comyn, wise enough to stay silent, merely inclined his head.
‘I shall make arrangements,’ she said and he nodded silently again, turned and clacked his high-heeled way back to the yett.
‘Mistress,’ Bangtail began desperately, but stopped again, for the upright lady had slumped and buried her dissolving face in the sieve of her loose-ringed fingers.
Roslin
Feast of St Andrew Protoclet, November 1298
They watched the long-haired star throwing off beams to the east and, for a long time, no-one spoke. Then Bruce hunched himself into his fur collar, his breath a white stream.
‘The Blessed St Andrew sends a sign,’ he declared portentously. Kirkpatrick nodded and agreed with a smile, though he had to bite his tongue to stop himself, viperishly, from suggesting that it was probably more of a sign from St Malachy.