Now Thweng was alarmed; no earl had been executed in England for two hundred years and more and he said as much. The King regarded him sourly, the drooping eye flickering with a tic, gravy sliding down his fingers.
‘The Bruce brother – Niall, is it? Yes, him. I will axe him, certes and send his head to Berwick for spiking. Atholl must also suffer, earl or no. He can hang instead. If he is higher in rank than any of the others, then we can add thirty feet to his gallows drop, for benefit of his station.’
He smiled greasily. ‘As for the Bruce women – well, I have an Italies punishment for them.’
He saw Thweng’s bewilderment.
‘After Fossalta – you recall the battle? The Bolognese imprisoned Henry of Sardinia in an iron cage. It took him twenty-two years to die.’
‘In the name of Christ’s Mercy,’ Thweng blurted before he could stop himself and saw the storm gather on the royal brow, reined round and came up on another attack.
‘You can scarcely do that to his wife, Your Grace. A De Burgh of Ulster? And the Bruce daughter, Marjorie, is a slip of a girl yet.’
Edward frowned, then shrugged.
‘True. I shall send them to a convent. But the others – his sister and that harlot of Buchan’s who crowned him – them I shall have in cages, by God.’
He sucked his fingers again, then winced and shifted as his stomach flickered with pain – anger flooded him at his own betraying body.
‘If any of those bastards dare return from their French tourney,’ he added, ‘I shall find more cages for them …’
He broke off as a tendril of chill circled his feet like an anklet and he rounded on the hapless servant.
‘God’s Holy Arse, you sludge – will you get that fire going or I will burn YOU in it.’
Baleful as a wet cat, he turned savagely to Thweng.
‘I want Bruce. Go back to my son and make him hunt the usurper out.’
Thweng smiled wanly, looked at the finger-ruined pie, then pushed it away.
Near Dunaverty Castle, Kintyre
Feast of St Malachy, November, 1306
The fires were small, but a welcome warmth to the men huddled in heavy wool cloaks in the bowl-shaped depression. The snow had been driven back by the flames, but it still fell in soft, slow drifts, so that the men were warm at the front and felt the cold bite their backs, even through the layers they wore. The surrounding trees sighed and creaked under a rising wind.
There were ponies, too, stamping nearby as they kicked hopefully at the ground to try to dig up a little to eat and Dog Boy wanted to leave the men and go to his with a handful of oats he still had in his pack. He dared not, for it would mean admitting he had a peck of oats in the first place and he was sure these wild men of the north would have something to say on it.
He and Sim Craw, Hal and Chirnside were all that was left of the Herdmanston men, who had been running and fighting since Methven, driven north and dependent now on the good graces of these Campbells and MacDonalds and even wilder tribal trolls from beyond The Mounth. He did not want to seem to be getting above himself.
Hal caught Dog Boy out of the corner of one eye, watched him fret and saw his eyes move to where his horse was, saw him shift, but not dare move. He did not like to think of the boy … God save us, hardly that these days … fretted by the presence of these Kintyre growlers. They were fighters, these men of Neil and Donald Campbell, Angus Og of the Isles and others, loyal still to King Robert, where the earls of Ross and Sutherland had turned.
Ross especially, who had broken into the sanctuary shrine at Tain and dragged out the Queen and all her women. Isabel … Hal felt the rising heat of it, was almost driven to his feet by it and fought to sit still, though it trembled him to do it.
All anyone else saw, if they looked, was a lean, grim man, all planes and shadows, made darker by the greasy black wolf cap he had taken from a dead man and the thick cloak he had filched at knife-point. His maille and hardened leather were hung about him, wrecked and rusted by weather and hard use; with his gaunt, unsmiling face he looked like a cadaver, newly surfaced from the forest mulch.
Neil Campbell appeared and men stirred. He wore simple clothes and a furred cloak, affected a fox hat – ears and all – while his own hair was as red as the hat and he wore gold in a thick braid round his neck, like one of the Old Norse.
Hal and his men – a dozen when they had set out weeks ago – had been making for Dunaverty in Kintyre, where it was said King Robert had taken refuge, but the English were already sieging it when they arrived.