Yet he was yellowed and gaunt, the hair on his head lank and the fur wrapping made him look like he had been caught in the embrace of a mangy, winter-woken bear and was struggling to break free.
She felt a leap of pity then, and an echo of feeling at his eyes, pouched and rheumed and unutterably weary – but it was an old statue, that feeling, the marble glory of it worn and weathered, clogged and smothered with the moss of neglect and anger.
Yet the death of Badenoch must have hit him hard, she thought, not to mention the forced alliance with the English he had always struggled against, because the Bruce stood on the other side.
Their endless feud was killing them both, she thought.
‘Ma Dame,’ he said icily. ‘You are fair caught. I am vindicated at last.’
She heard the cold in him and felt only sadness at it.
‘A great nation of vindicated corpses, that’s us,’ Mary Bruce answered and he turned his wet fish eyes to her, raking over the trembling Marjorie on the way.
‘Quiet you,’ he said with a stunning calm and a chilling dismissal of any deference to her rank. ‘You are bound for Roxburgh, lady, while the child is bound for a nunnery somewhere south. Count yourself fortunate to be alive – though you will not think it when you find the plan Longshanks has for you.’
Marjorie started to wail at the thought of being parted and Buchan grimaced with distaste, then turned his gaze back on Isabel.
‘You are bound for Berwick, where you will share the same fate, but on my own terms,’ he said, which was sinister but left Isabel none the wiser. He jerked his head and, obedient as a belly-fawning mastiff, Malise moved to her, his grin feral in the dark ruin of his face.
‘Malise will see to it. I commend you to his care, ma Dame. I commend you to God, for this is the last time you will see me. Never ask to do so, for it will be refused.’
He saw her, still lush and ripe – yet her face was haggard and there was snow in the autumn russet of her hair. She was, Buchan thought, a woman in the same way that a lion could be called a cat.
The memory hit him of the power he had had over her, the punishments he had inflicted for her transgressions, when he had gloried in her being stripped to ‘twa beads, yin o them sweat’. Her transgressions …
‘The last gift I shall give you will be the head of your lover when we find him, which you may care to look on before it is put on a spike.’
Which at least let her know that Hal was alive and free – and that she would live herself, though the triumphant sickle on Malise’s face made her wonder if that was preferable. When she turned to her husband again, there was only a hole in the air where he had been.
‘Come, lady.’
It was not a request and the hand Malise held out was not an invitation. With a chilling stone sinking in her belly, she looked into his too-bright eyes and realized she had been handed to her worst nightmare.
Closeburn Vill, Annandale
Vigil of St Athernaise of Fife, December, 1306
They came down to the English-dominated lands of the Bruce in a mourn of snow and sleet, stumbling from abbey to priory through brutal, metalled days of silvered frost and skies of iron and pewter. They were deferential and pious or garrulously merry when circumstances demanded it and no-one spared a single suspicious glance for two packmen, sweating south like snails with their lives on their backs.
Kirkpatrick had purchased the cheapjack wares from two delighted mongers paid more than they could earn in a year; one of them announced that he was quitting the travelling life for good and now Hal knew why, even as he applauded the disguise in it.
‘It is perfect,’ Kirkpatrick enthused, watching Hal eye up the hide packs, black with old grease against the weather. ‘We are travelling at the right time, coming up to the Christ’s Mass.’
He had that right, too, for they were in great demand for ribbons and silk thread and needles from folk who could ill afford the cost. It had become the fashion for burghers, cottars and serfs to give gifts to the manor ‘for the glory of Christ’s Mass’ and, though an acorn tied with bright ribbon, or a sacking purse sewed up with silk thread seemed nothing, it was a sacrifice to folk who had little to begin with. And was done, Hal saw, out of only the hope of future favour.
So they tramped, horseless, down the days towards Closeburn, where Kirkpatrick had said Isabel lay.
‘Three women,’ he had told Hal. ‘Taken to my kinsman’s holding, together with Niall Bruce and the Earl of Atholl.’
‘The women might be gone,’ Hal had answered morose and hopeful at the same time. The ‘or worse’ was left unsaid, for he could not be sure, in his sinking cold belly, that a vengeful King Edward could kill Niall and an earl of the realm and yet spare the women.