The hand was grimy even in the dark, the face half-shadowed, half-gore in the sconce light, so that the twist of nobbed nose gave Lang Jack the look of a weathered gargle, spewing high under the eaves of some church.
It was an apt look for him, who had vomited all the venomous bile he had stored up about Wallace and his failures and perceived betrayal - bokked it up for a purse of gold until all he had left to spit out was a time and a place. Kirkpatrick dropped the purse in the hand, which closed like a trap, weighed it, then made it vanish. Lang Jack nodded and wraithed into the dark, while the rain gurgled through the gutters and merlons of the fortalice, turning the old wood black.
Kirkpatrick turned his face briefly to the lisping cool lick of the rain, then shook himself like a dog and walked back under the gateway and into the maw of the place.
In a room smoky and sick with tallow light, he came on Sir John Menteith slopping wine into a pewter mug.
‘I wish ye had not brought this to me,’ the knight declared and Kirkpatrick sighed, since it was not the first time Sir John had said it. That had been when Kirkpatrick had brought the where and when and how of it all, laying it in front of the man appointed Governor of Dumbarton Castle by Longshanks and so responsible for the area. Responsible for the arrest of a betrayed Wallace, lying in a house not more than a handful of miles away.
Four hours later, the soldiers – all English of the garrison, for Menteith could not trust the Scots in it to carry it out –bundled a giant in chains back through the door, with only minor bruises and one slashed arm to show for it.
‘You are the man of the hour and place,’ Kirkpatrick said to him – again.
‘They will revile me for it,’ Menteith answered bitterly and Kirkpatrick frowned. Sir John Menteith – and his brother, Alexander – were already reviled, for throwing off the Stewart name and adopting that of Menteith. False Menteith was the least of the epithets hissed at the back of Sir John and the arrest of Sir William Wallace was neither here nor there in it.
‘You will be raised by it,’ he replied. ‘King Edward will see to that, advised by his good men in the Kingdom – the Earl of Annandale being one of the more powerful.’
Menteith had long since worked out that, no matter who ruled in Scotland, his rise was assured, because of a handful of soldiers and a secret night descent on a lonely house.
Yet Kirkpatrick sensed the wavering in Menteith, saw him swill the wine as if something foul would not be washed away from his mouth. The knight did not care for it – but Kirkpatrick had planned for this, too, so that the news of the betraying Apostle, the Pope’s letter, the bag of coin – though not where it had come from – was already known to Longshanks.
Wallace, snatched timely from an escape, to be paid for by the proceeds of robbery from the King’s Treasury? With a safe conduct from the Pope so vague it could easily be ignored? It was a tale that could not fail – all Menteith had to do was deliver the man safely to those who would take him south to London and he could not avoid doing that without ending in irons himself.
Menteith knew it, too, for all his desperate wine-swilling.
‘Will you see him?’ he demanded and Kirkpatrick tried not to react violently at the suggestion.
‘Best he does not know of my part in it,’ he said, as if the entire affair did not hang on Wallace knowing nothing of Kirkpatrick’s involvement, which would lead him to the Bruce part in it.
‘Best to let him believe Lang Jack did him in. That way, word will get out to those Wallace men left and there will be further division among them – and no further rebellion in this part of the realm.’
Menteith nodded sullenly and Kirkpatrick eased a little. If Wallace discovered that Kirkpatrick had betrayed him nothing would convince him that Bruce had not ordered it and there was no telling what secrets he might spill.
This way, the Wallace was sent off, growling and tight-lipped, for a date with the executioner, while Lang Jack would last as long as it took for Kirkpatrick to track him to a dark alley, reeling drunk with his new riches. No-one would mourn the traitor who had led Wallace to the English, or help find the vengeful killer.
And Bruce had his road to the throne unblocked.
A big risk, of course – but Bruce had sat, quiet and still when Kirkpatrick had voiced this, the pair of them alone.
‘He will not betray anyone he believes holds the freedom of the Kingdom in regard,’ he had replied and so clearly, breathtakingly, considered that to be himself that Kirkpatrick had no answer to it. He had left Bruce kneeling, head bowed in prayer, or penitence, for what he was about to do.
Or mayhap he tries to appease the Curse of Malachy, Kirkpatrick thought to himself with a bitter twist of humour, for forcing him to weigh his soul with so great a sin. I doubt he will, but it would be good of him to offer a prayer for the sins he has heaped on my soul.