Cambuskenneth Abbey, Stirling
Feast of St Ternan, confessor of the Picts, June, 1304.
‘You missed your chance there, my lord earl.’
Bruce did not turn his head, merely flicked his eyes at the broad grinning face of Bishop Wishart, the shadows and planes of it made grotesque by the flickering tallow lights.
‘There is one bishop too many in this game,’ he growled, which made Wishart chuckle fruitily and Hal, frowning with concentration, realize his inadequacy with chess. He was sure he had blundered, surer still that Bruce had missed an en passant; had he done it by accident – the rule was new and not much used – or was it some cunning ploy to lure him into even worse trouble?
‘Aye, well,’ came the blade-rasp voice of Kirkpatrick, looming from the shadows. ‘Here is yet another.’
A figure in simple brown robes and tonsure swept past him into the light, swift enough to cause the flames to flicker and set shadows dancing madly. He was, Hal saw, astoundingly young to be a senior prelate, his round face smooth and bland, yet his eyes black and shrewd, while the beginnings of a paunch were belied by slim, white, long-fingered hands, one of which he extended.
‘Christ be praised,’ the prelate said portentously.
‘For ever and ever.’
Bruce rose, kissed the fingers with dutiful deference, then scowled.
‘At last,’ he said sullenly. ‘We have been waiting, my lord bishop and my time is limited away from the King’s side.’
‘How is the good king of England?’ Lamberton demanded cheerfully.
‘Sickeningly well,’ Bruce replied with a wry twist of grin. ‘He sits at Stirling and plays with his great toys, while his wife and her women look on through an oriole he has made in their quarters. It is a great sport, it seems, for the ladies to watch huge stones being hurled at the walls while they stitch. His two new babes gurgle with delight.’
‘I hear he has several great engines,’ Lamberton declared, accepting wine from Wishart’s hand and settling himself with a satisfied sigh. ‘One called Segrave, I believe, which fires great heavy balls – now there is apt for you. I know this because of all the complaints I have had from wee abbots about the lead stripped from their roofs to make them.’
‘You had better pray for fine weather, else we will all be dripping,’ ‘Bruce replied sourly. ‘Cambuskenneth has also lost all the roofing, save from over the altar, so that God at least will not be offended. And Edward Plantagenet now has twelve war engines. One of them is my own, sent from Lochmaben – minus the throwing arm, mark you, which mysteriously took a wrong turn and will arrive too late to be of use.’
‘He has Greek Fire, too, I hear,’ Wishart added, with a disapproving shake of his head, ‘and weapons that burst with the Hellish taint of brimstone.’
There was silence for a moment and Hal did not know what the others were thinking, but his mind was on the stunning sight and sound of those very weapons, great gouts of flame and blasts that hurled earth and stones into the air, fire that ran like water and could not be quenched. Yet the walls of Stirling, pocked and scorched, still held.
‘Aye, well,’ Lamberton declared suddenly, rubbing his hands as if presenting them to a fire. ‘Be of cheer – Stirling holds out yet, when all else has given in. Young Oliphant has done well there.’
‘Young Oliphant holds out because Longshanks refused to accept his capitulation,’ Bruce replied flatly. ‘He offered it a week since. The King wants to see his newest engine in action, the great Warwolf. Fifty folk it takes to handle it and Edward is determined to have it fling stones at Oliphant’s head before that man is allowed to come out.’
There was silence, broken only by the soft, slippering sound of hesitant feet. Then Lamberton sighed.
‘Then all are finally given in,’ he said. ‘Save Wallace.’
Bruce shot the bishop a hard look; Lamberton owed his appointment to Wallace when he was Guardian and needing all the gentilhomme allies he could garner; Bruce wondered how deep the bishop’s obligement went.
Other diehards, finally persuaded to give in, had also been initially excluded from Edward’s conditions for submission. Yet even they had been forgiven in the end, by a Longshanks who had learned a little from all the previous attempts and was trying the kidskin glove as well as the maille mitten.
All forgiven – all but Wallace.