‘Wallace is never ended,’ Hal replied tersely, then forced a smile.
‘Wallace came to Roslin?’ he asked and shook his head. ‘So even Sir Henry keeps secrets from me – is there any good news in this dish of grue?’
He paused apologetically, then waved a hand which encompassed Herdmanston and everything done to it.
‘Apart from all this, which is sweetening indeed – more power to you for it, Sim Craw.’
Sim, muttering pleased, waved a dismissive hand, then laid his leather mug down, slow and careful, a gesture Hal did not miss.
‘There is a last matter,’ Sim said, ‘but I leave it to yourself as to the good or bad news in it.’
Hal paused, then forced a smile.
‘Weel, I am sittin’, so the shock will no’ throw me on my back. Speak on.’
‘Sir Henry kept the news of it until now, when he thought you better suited to the receipt of it. Wallace brought the Coontess to Roslin and, if ye send word, she is almost certes headed here.’
Herdmanston Tower, Lothian
Midsummer Eve, June, 1305
He sent word, would have dragged Hermes from Olympus to deliver it faster if he could. Then he waited, limping up and down and fretting, leashed only by the certainty that, if he stormed over to Roslin, he would shatter something delicate as a glass web.
The days slid away, thunder-brassy and hot and still she did not come. Tansy’s Dan and Mouse lugged four of Herdmanston’s fat porkers to the barmkin green and cut their throats.
Then they, Ill-Made Jock, Dirleton Will, Sore Davey and others skinned and jointed them, cramming them into cauldrons for boiling while the grass grew greasy and red; Dog Boy whipped up a pig’s head and danced with it, rushing at the young bairns and roaring while they ran away with squeals of delight.
Tansy’s Dan strung entrails round him like ribbons and joined in, dancing barefoot with the Dog Boy on the blood-soaked grass, the pair of them shrieking with laughter, gore splashing them to the knees. For a time, the lust of it leaped from head to head like unseen lightning so that the knowledge of the feast to come and the peace to enjoy it and the dizzying freedom from work sent everyone giggling mad; they grabbed pig heads from one another, pretended to be charging boars, swung them by the ears and sprayed crimson everywhere.
Toddlers, sliding and slipping on unsteady legs, were blood-drenched head to toe. Young babes sucked on kidneys, their mums red-lipped as baobhan sith from eating liver.
And still she did not come.
Donachie, the Earl Patrick’s man, rode over with a black-eyebrowed scowl and a demand for owed tolts and scutage, but that was simply the Earl’s latest stirring of the byke he saw in Herdmanston; Hal sent him off home empty-handed and reminded him of the legality of matters.
The children promptly added scowling black eyebrows to their straw effigy and Father Thomas, though no Herdmanston man born and bred, preached a sermon in his rough-walled church about how Adam and Eve did not have to plough, sow or weed for any lord, then had to add enough embellishment to show how Sir Hal of Herdmanston was practically kin to Jesus and should be so served.
And still she did not come.
Then, in the dark of Midsummer Eve, the fire was lit, the straw man burned, the boiled and roasted pigs eaten and the ale drunk. Bet’s Meggy, in a green dress festooned with madder ribbons, pranced barefoot with the straw stallion mummer head in the Horse Dance, elegant and feral.
She led the procession of flaming brands into the fields, Father Thomas stumping determinedly after with his fiery crucifix, so that God was not forgotten in it; everyone was festooned with garlands of mugwort, vervain and yarrow, cheering and reeling and beaming, greasy-cheeked and red-faced.
Later still folk leaped the bonfire flames, or daringly rubbed fern seed on their eyelids in the hope of seeing the sidhean on this night when the veils between worlds were thinnest – with rue clenched in their fists to prevent them being pixie-led and never seen again.
And, finally, she came.
Slowly, up the steps from the hall, where a visiting Kirkpatrick greeted Sim Craw and others with a twisted smile and accepted strong drink, she climbed to the folly of the topmost room in the tower, her feet leaden and her heart fluttering like a trapped bird. She felt breathless and had to stop once for fear of fainting and wished she could loosen the barbette and goffered fillet on her head.
It was dim. There was a crusie flickering, but the light in the room was mainly the full, bright moon and the flare of the bonfire through the tall unshuttered folly of window, so that he was a stark shadow there and no more. She stopped then, one hand to her throat.
He saw her head come above the floor level, caught the flame glint in the russet of it so that his breathing stopped entirely for a moment and his heart, which had been thundering so loudly he was sure they could hear it outside, seemed to catch and cease.