He was also aware of the men Bruce had brought into the church with him – three, as was permitted on either side, armed as befitted their rank, but unarmoured. Behind him, Red John had his uncle Robert, big and bluff with what appeared to be a squirrel settled in a dangled curve under his nose. Then there was Patrick Cheyne of Straloch, the best tourney fighter the Comyn had – and, for the provocation in it, the battered scowl that was Malise Bellejambe.
Red John had planned this last because he had expected Bruce to bring his shadow, Kirkpatrick – but his eyes narrowed when he saw Bruce’s chosen men precede him into Greyfriars, stiff-legged as wary dogs. Seton was to be expected, a dark eagerness of a Lothian man married to Bruce’s sister – but then came the Herdmanston lord, cuckolder of Buchan, which brought a surge of rage lancing through Red John. Followed by a youth of no account at all, one Red John knew to be no more than a kennel lad for Herdmanston and that was an additional slap of insult.
But his face was stone as Bruce came up, opening his arms wide to receive the kiss of peace.
Bruce saw the wee papingo that was the Lord of Badenoch, reaching on to the tippy-toes of his high-heeled, blood-red half boots to match Bruce’s height for the purse-lipped lie of the cheek kiss, which only bussed air on both parts.
Red John wore a brimmed hat and a bag-sleeved wool cotte in dark green, with his badge on the heart side – the three gold wheatsheaves on red. Since the Buchan badge was blue, this red blazon gave the Badenoch Comyn lord his nickname.
‘I understood we had a truce,’ Bruce said when they had stepped back from one another and the launch into it took Red John by surprise, for he had been expecting more in the way of effusive pleasantries.
‘Nothing was agreed,’ he answered warily, then shrugged, ‘but nothing has been done to you and yours.’
‘Sir Henry of Herdmanston was set on by four men,’ Bruce said, whacking the words out like blades whetting on stone. ‘He was fortunate to escape with his life.’
Now he knew why the Herdmanston lord was here; Badenoch’s eyebrows went up and he had half-turned towards Bellejambe before he could stop himself. Bruce realized that Red John had known nothing of the attack, which meant it had been arranged by Buchan on his own; the Lord of Badenoch would not like that, Bruce thought. He was the power in his family by virtue of his royal claims – but it must be hard to keep an earl leashed.
‘Losing grip on your own hounds, Badenoch?’
Red John swallowed his temper and managed a shaking smile.
‘Are the Comyn to be responsible for every brigand and trailbaston in the Kingdom?’ he countered.
‘No brigands these,’ Bruce answered sharply, ‘with the same amount of coin in each of their purses – payment for a deed. The price for them was high, mark you, since all are killed.’
‘No doing of mine,’ Badenoch replied, stung as much by the failure of the ill-planned event as by the event itself – and the fact that Buchan had embarrassed him with it. ‘Besides – the Herdmanston lord has a private quarrel, as well you know.’
‘Such quarrels risk much and gain little,’ Bruce replied. ‘A strong king in the realm would put an end to them, if he valued his crown.’
Red John sighed. Here was the meat of it, the same old litany.
‘We have a king, my lord. He is called Edward. And if there is not him, then there is another, a Balliol one called King John, lest you had forgotten.’
Bruce leaned forward a little, his voice hoarse, his face, framed by the cowl of the hood, strained and seemingly anxious.
‘The truth of that is clear,’ he answered. ‘King John is a broken reed, unlikely ever to return to sit on a throne in this kingdom.’
Which was, Red John had to agree, a palpable truth but one to which he would never admit, least of all to a Bruce.
‘The clergy of this kingdom require a king,’ Bruce went on, galloping along on an argument which, Red John realized, he had long rehearsed. ‘They demand one, for a kingdom with no king is not a kingdom at all – Longshanks has reduced Scotland to a land, my lord, subject to the laws of England and the bishops here will not have an English-appointed archbishop. They will not have a king interfering with the right of the Pope alone to sail in the Sees of this realm.’
‘Sail in the Sees,’ repeated Badenoch with a wry smile. ‘Very good, my lord. Very good.’
‘Not my own,’ Bruce answered at once, which rocked Badenoch’s boat once again; he was not enjoying the pitch of this conversation and fought to bring the helm of it back to a course he was more comfortable with.
‘Bernard of Kilwinning,’ Bruce went on, ‘pronounced the words of that, together with the doctrine that a king of this realm has a contract with the community of it – and, if he does not fulfil it, the community is entitled to remove him.’
‘I have heard all the wee priests of Kilwinning and Wishart and Lamberton cant this from every pulpit and market square they can reach,’ Red John replied laconically. ‘It makes little difference to the reality of matters.’
Now it was Bruce who was brought to a halt, blinking.