Slowly, like a winter bear emerging from its cave, the Scots crawled out into the Kingdom and started to make their mark against the surprised English.
Kirkpatrick had been busy, too, with coin and promises, most of which came to ripeness – the last fruits had arrived only the night before, clutched in the brown mouth of a man who looked like a packman and had been taught as a priest.
There were a score or more of them, men and women both. Anonymous as dust and dark, they went where Kirkpatrick sent them and did as they were bid for revenge, the promise of advancement or – and Kirkpatrick’s cynical nature was amazed by it – increasingly for belief in the King and the Kingdom.
This one brought news.
‘He’s dead,’ the man said and, for a moment, Kirkpatrick felt the coursing shock of it plunge him to limpness – then the next words rushed him with relief.
‘At Burgh on the Sands, a week or less. They have not told the army yet.’
Longshanks. The news should have raised Kirkpatrick up, but he was too relieved that it was not the other man he had set agents to watching. Not Hal, then – Kirkpatrick blew out his cheeks. He had found where Hal was held and did not understand why the man was still alive. But he was, though no closer to rescue than before.
Now Kirkpatrick waited impatiently while the abbot of the charred Crossraguel, grim and resigned, accepted the commiserations of his king – after all, the Bruces of Carrick had founded the place and it was donations from there that kept it going. So the abbot tried to ignore the ruin and war that had been brought to him, smiled and bowed and fervently agreed to keep perpetual Mass for the souls of the King’s brothers, Thomas and Alexander, who had been slain at the start of the year.
The chapel was a miracle of beauty, left untouched even by de Valence’s rabble. It was a beautiful kingfisher of stone, small and perfect as a jewel, whose glowing painted walls were barely smoked by time, tallow and incense.
Bruce genuflected and then knelt, placing his hands on the eternal, untarnished altar as if to force it to prevail over the memory of those he mourned. He remained kneeling while all those half-in and half-out of the dimmed cool vault of it dared not come any closer, even though some were kin. Even the King’s chaplain remained outside, hands clasped inside his sleeves and head bowed.
They looked at the disordered, bowed head, the long, scarred face and the hands laid flat on the cold stone and thought he looked the very image of a warrior king, bowing before his Maker to ask for mercy and peace for those lost and for help in returning to claim the Kingdom from the Plantagenet father and son. They lowered their own heads, for they were back in the Kingdom – and would need all of God’s help to stay.
Bruce felt them like the rustle of moths in darkness, his mind full of the sins he had committed – and the ones yet to come – while the harsh taint of burning seemed to heighten the loss of two more of his brothers; Alexander, especially, was a crushing ache, for Bruce would miss the inciteful young mind.
Then there were the others, the defectors and waverers – Randolph, his own nephew, taken at Methven and pardoned into King Edward’s good grace on condition that he fought for the English; that he had so readily agreed to it was what rankled. And young David Strathbogie, new Earl of Atholl, who had been panicked enough to run off and clamour for English mercy from the very king who had hanged his father.
He heard the sudden burst of wild laughter, angrily shushed, that marked where Jamie Douglas had arrived from yet another herschip raid; even he had wavered and sent a letter that seemed to beg King Edward’s mercy. The success at Loudon Hill had forestalled him and both he and Bruce pretended no such letter had happened at all, yet it was an ache to Bruce that even Black Sir James, who so hated the English, had been brought low enough to offer a hand to them.
But young Alexander Bruce was the worst loss, the more so because all he had wanted was to be a scholar. Now only Kirkpatrick knew the secret he and Alexander had shared and Bruce was aware of the irony of events; I am returned and my forces swell daily, but even as my kingdom grows the circle of those I can trust shrinks.
As if in response, Kirkpatrick hirpled up, pushing through the throng, even shouldering past the scowl of the last brother, Edward.
Kirkpatrick felt as he knew he must look – grey-faced and sick. Nichol’s knife had missed vitals by a fingerwidth and the recovery from it had been seven long, feverish and painful months; even now he was not fit for much – yet he was still invaluable to his king, more so now than ever.
In the dim of the chapel he waited until Bruce had raised himself up, crossed himself and turned back into the world. Then he said it, having thought of ways to present it all the limping way here and discarding them at the last.