Sourly, he watched the lone figure come up on foot, the torch he held bobbing as he strode in a curious, long-limbed way. He knew the walk, though the face of the Welshman, Addaf, was made no easier on the eye in the dancing shadows from the torch. Christ’s Bones, he thought, now even the contract captains are behaving like chivalry.
‘Your Grace,’ the man said, offering as little a head nod as he thought he could get away with and de Valence smiled wryly to himself. The Welshman was still of use, him and his mountain dwarves, even if he used the ‘Your Grace’ like a spit in the eye, so de Valence gave the man his due.
‘Mydr ap Mydvydd,’ he said, the title given by admiring Welsh archers to someone they trusted to lead them.
‘Found this, Your Grace,’ Addaf said in his sing-song English and handed the object up. De Valence examined the bascinet and Robert Tuke leaned over, squinting for a better look, then gave a short bark of laughter at the sight of the battered helmet with its twisted circlet of gold, only half of it still remaining.
‘We have his usurper’s crown,’ he crowed over his shoulder to the others. ‘Soon we’ll have his head to match it.’
The laughter rolled out into the night, over the scatter of darkened corpses and the wounded, desperate for relief, yet trying not to groan because it would bring the throat-cutting scavengers.
De Valence looked at the ruin of the helmet and did not need to wonder where the missing half of the crown was, though he would not pursue Addaf on the matter. More to the point was the damage done to it, a hard sword blow.
A man who had worn that had taken a harsh face cut, he thought. It will be a ruined head when we eventually find it.
Bruce woke from a nightmare where his loving daughter’s kisses had turned to sucking wolf bites, ripping his skin, grinding into the bones. He woke to pain and mad, flickering torchlight, a sickening tugging and pulling on the left side of his face, which he tried to dash away with one hand.
‘Hold him,’ growled a voice.
‘Howk the torch higher, yer honour,’ said a woman. ‘Else I will sew up his bloody neb.’
Get off me, Bruce said. Get away – I am the King …
He was appalled at his own weakness and heard only gug-gug sounds coming from his mouth; a face swam into view, big and sheened with sweat with a grin like a sickle moon. The light danced mad, lurid shadows of blood on it, but he knew it all the same. Edward, he thought. Brother Edward. He said it, feeling his mouth strange on one side, almost sick with the relief of hearing something approaching sense from himself.
‘Swef, Rob,’ said Edward. ‘Ye ken me – that’s good. At least yer wits are still in yer head, though it’s a miracle – God’s Holy Arse, wummin, do not pull his face to bits.’
‘A wee bit bone – it fell oot,’ Bruce heard the woman answer, indignantly shrill. Dear God, he thought, what has been done to me? What is being done to me?
There was sharp pain, one fierce sliver after another and he tried to cry out but could only make incoherent sounds, tried to thrash the pain away then found he was gripped by strong hands. Eventually, his face seamed with fire, the hands relaxed.
‘Done, yer honour,’ the woman’s voice said and he saw her briefly in the torchlight, sallow skinned, a tangle of hair which she brushed back from her face with bloodied hands; there was a needle held in the thin clench of her lips. Edward loomed into view again, peering.
‘Not bad, Creishie Marthe. Neat as a hem.’
‘A wish my ma were here to see,’ the woman answered with a shrill cackle. ‘She swore at my stitchin’ betimes – now it is part o’ a king’s face forever.’
‘Aye, weel – now there are two things ye are good at,’ someone said and the woman huffed indignantly at this affront to her honour.
Edward grinned cheerfully at Bruce and nodded.
‘Rest. We must be away from here, brother, and swiftly.’
‘What happened to me?’ Bruce managed to ask, coherent at least. Edward dismissed it with a casual wave.
‘Lost a wee tourney fight with the English,’ he answered, ‘and took a dunt. Your eye is fine, mark you – the cut is above and below it. It will leave a fine scar – you have a naming face now, brother.’
A naming face. Bruce heard the others laugh, daringly suggest names their king would be remembered by – Robert the Scarred, Dinged Rob, King Hob the Screed … the voices faded and Edward, frowning, patted his shoulder.
‘We left your fancy war hat behind, mark you,’ he said. ‘The crown is lost.’
The crown is lost. Bruce struggled and Edward looked alarmed as his brother sat up.
‘I have not lost the crown,’ he shouted, before pain wrenched his face and sank his swimming head down on the pallet again.
I have not lost, he thought through the swirling agony. By God, I have not.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lanercost Priory
Ferial day following the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September, 1306