‘Tironensians. I know that order,’ Buchan said, recognising that word in the welter of thick-accented braid Scots. ‘They are strict Benedictines, finding glory in manual labour. They are skilled – did they not do the work at the abbeys in Selkirk, Arbroath and Kelso? You think this mason is a Benedictine from that place?’
‘Mayhap, though he is not clothed like any monk I ken,’ Sim declared. ‘But my da was lifted from the cartin’ to work with them at the quarrystanes and then came to Herdmanston to dig a well. Until I was of age to go off with young Hal here, I worked at the digging and the drystane. I ken a plumb line – the knots are measured in Roman feet.’
He closed his eyes, the better to remember.
‘Saint Augustine says six is the perfect number because the sum and product of its factors – one, two, and three – are the same. Thus a thirty-six-foot square is the divine perfection, much favoured by masons who build for the church. Christ be praised.’
He opened his eyes into the astounded stares of Hal and the Earl of Buchan and then blinked with embarrassment as they stumbled over the rote response, almost dumbed by the revelation of a Sim with numbers.
‘Aye, weel – tallyin’ is not my strength, though I ken the cost of a night’s drink. But my da dinned plumb lines into me, for ye can dig neither well nor build as much as a cruck hoose without it.’
‘You think it was a mason from St Machutus?’ the earl demanded, narrow eyed and cock-headed with trying to understand. Sim shook his head.
‘It’s a mason, certes. And a master, if his fine cloots are any guide.’
‘Aye,’ Hal said wryly. ‘Since English Edward knocked about some fine fortresses last year, I daresay there are a wheen of master masons at work in Scotland.’
‘Not our problem,’ Buchan said suddenly, eager to be gone from the place. He plucked weight, string, medallion and coins from Sim’s palm and tossed them carelessly back into the mess on the table.
‘Evidence,’ he declared. ‘We will wrap this up and deliver it to the English Justiciar at Scone. Let Ormsby deal with it. I have a rebellion to put down.’
Irvine
Feast of St Venantius of Camerino, May, 1297
The sconces made the shadows lurch and leer, transported a bishop to a beast. Not that Wishart looked much like the foremost prelate in Scotland, sitting like a great bear in his undershift, the grey hair curling up under the stained neck of it above which was a face like a mastiff hit with a spade.
‘More of a hunt than you had bargained, eh, Rob?’ he growled and Bruce managed a wan smile. ‘Then to find a corpse . . . Do we ken who it is, then?’
The last was accompanied by a sharp look, but Bruce refused to meet it and shook his head dismissively.
‘Buchan carted the remains off to Ormsby at Scone. I said to go to Sheriff Heselrig at Lanark, but he insisted on going to the Justiciar.’
He broke off and shot looks at the men crowded into the main hall of the Bourtreehill manor.
‘Did he know? Did Buchan know that Heselrig was already dead and Lanark torched?’ he hissed and Wishart flapped an impatient hand, as if waving away an annoying fly.
‘Tish, tosh,’ he said in his meaty voice. ‘He did not. No-one knew until it was done.’
‘Now all the realm knows,’ growled a voice, and The Hardy stuck his slab of a face into the light, scowling at Bruce; Hal saw that he was a coarser, meatier version of Jamie. ‘While you were taking over my home, Wallace here was ridding the country of an evil.’
‘You and he were, if the truth be told, torching our lands around Turnberry,’ Bruce countered in French, swift and vicious as a stooping hawk. ‘That’s why my father was charged to bring you to heel by sending me to Douglas – as well, my lord, that I had less belly for the work than you, else your wife and bairns would not be tucked up safe a short walk away.’
‘You were seen as English,’ The Hardy muttered, though he shifted uncomfortably as he spoke; they both knew that The Douglas had simply been taking the opportunity to plunder the Bruce lands.
‘That was not the reason Buchan tried to have me killed,’ Bruce spat back, and The Hardy shrugged.
‘More to do with his wife, I should think,’ he said meaningfully, and Bruce flushed at that. Hal had seen the Countess early the next day, mounted on a sensible sidesaddled palfrey and led by Malise out of Douglas, with four big men and the Earl of Buchan’s warhorse in tow. Headed back to Balmullo, he had heard from Agnes, who had been her tirewoman while she stayed in Douglas. Illused to the point of bruises, she had added.
‘He tried to have me killed,’ Bruce persisted and Hal bit his lip on why Kirkpatrick had been loose in the woods with a crossbow, but the sick meaning of it all rose in him, cloyed with despair; the most powerful lords in Scotland savaged each other with plot and counterplot, while the Kingdom slid into chaos.