Isabel, who knew some fine Lothians cottars, thought of Sim Craw and Dog Boy and what they would do if imprisoned in the undercroft of Closeburn among the remains of old stores. Would think themselves well off, Isabel was sure, being warm and dry and finding old cheese rind and mildewed barley with which to make a meal.
Marjorie subsided to hiccups, for which Isabel was glad at least. Mark you, you could scarcely fault the girl, a child on the edge of womanhood, from being a gibber of fear after what had happened at Tain.
It had been a bad idea, as far as Isabel was concerned, to head north of Inverness and the chance of a boat to Orkney, where Norway held sway – and another Bruce sister was queen. That sanctuary led through Buchan and Ross lands, both those earls on the hunt for rebels; it came as no surprise to Isabel when wild-bearded men snarled out of the wet, foggy bracken of the hills and stampeded the column into flight.
They had reached St Duthac’s shrine, with its four weathered pillars marking the sanctuary of the garth and, by that time, four men had already been lost. The Duthac garth had been an illusion, for the Earl of Ross himself had curled a lip and strode into it, his men overwhelming the last resistance in a welter of blood; it was then Marjorie had started into screaming and sobbing and was only now subsiding.
Mary Bruce had drawn herself up to her full height, which was taller than the cateran who approached her, licking lascivious lips; she had stared down her nose at him, then dared him, in good Gaelic, to lay a finger on the sister of Scotland’s king.
Whether the cateran was impressed or not would remain a mystery, since the Earl of Ross had beaten his liegeman to a bloody pulp with a flute-headed mace and hanged the remains from a pillar at St Duthac’s shrine to remind the rest of his prowling wolves that he meant what he said when he told them to leave off the women.
The setting for this slaughter only emphasized that the Earl of Ross did not even consider God held power greater than himself.
‘Take a good look,’ Mary Bruce had said to Ross when the bloody remains were hauled up. ‘That is your fate for having violated this shrine and laid hands on a queen.’
The Earl of Ross had merely shrugged and smiled; his deference was all kept for the Queen herself, strangely aloof from all this and Isabel knew then that she would go one way and all the other women another – that the Queen would not be harmed because she was the daughter of Ulster.
Which was exactly what happened; without a backward glance, Elizabeth de Burgh had gone off, bundled up warmly and ridden away, while Mary, Marjorie, Isabel and the tirewomen had been huckled into carts to be transported south.
Isabel had seen Niall Bruce and Atholl, with chains at wrist and ankles, being dragged along in the wake of the carts, but only once, and when they arrived at a nunnery in the dark, the pair of them were gone. With grim irony, the nunnery was Elcho, though the prioress and all the nuns she had known had been replaced.
Now they were here in Closeburn and Isabel was no wiser as to their fate. South, probably – Carlisle or further still, away from any possible rescue.
She heard the familiar jingle, then the grate of a huge key in a fat lock: Dixon, their shuffling old gaoler, his great blued lips pursed.
‘Ye have a veesitor,’ he said, and nodded his fleshy head towards Isabel. ‘The Maister entertains him with wine and sends me to allow time to be presentable.’
Isabel snorted.
‘And how, pray, am I to achieve that?’ she demanded. ‘Empty this barley sack and wear it? Certainly that is more presentable than the dress I have on.’
‘Aye, aye, betimes,’ muttered Dixon, mournfully.
‘Suitable for this guest room, mark you,’ Isabel scathed.
‘Aye, aye,’ Dixon replied and turned one glaucous eye on her, the other shut as if considering.
‘The reason ye have this room is not because we cleared it out,’ he mourned, ‘but because it has been ate oot, rind an all, by the chiels we have crowding in. It will be a hard winter for us, ladies, when ye have passed on from here, since you and all those with ye have ruined us from hoose and hame.’
‘Then it seems clear I should hang on to the sack with the barley in it,’ Isabel replied tartly. ‘Bring on my “veesitor”, gaoler.’
‘Who could it be?’ Marjorie asked when the man was gone, and Isabel heard the hope of rescue or ransom in her voice; she looked at Mary Bruce and they shared the unspoken knowledge that it was unlikely to be either.
It was, as Isabel suspected, her husband.
He came in fur-wrapped against a chill that the women had grown used to but clearly bothered him and followed by the loathsome shadow of Malise Bellejambe. Her husband stood straight, Isabel saw, with a squared hint of the powerful shoulders left, his dirty grey grizzle of beard cocked haughtily.