Red John felt the blow, could scarcely believe that Bruce had dared to strike him and then, with a sudden, savage twist of fear, felt the tug and heard the suck of the dagger coming out. There was a burning sensation and his legs trembled.
Bruce stared at what he had done. The thunder of it was loud as a cataract in his head and he saw Badenoch teeter backwards on his high heels and start to bend and sag, so he dropped the dagger and reached out to support him, an instinctive gesture.
The blade clattered on to the stones, bounced and twisted, little drops of blood flying up like rubies, the sound ringing like a bell; every head came up.
Seton got to the centre of it first, with a bull roar to alert Hal and the Dog Boy, dragging his sword out with a grating hiss.
He was a step ahead of Red John’s uncle Robert, whose bellow of outrage drowned Seton and rang round the Greyfriars stones. He sprang towards Bruce, his own blade clearing the scabbard and whirling above his head.
Seton grabbed Bruce by one arm, spilling the Earl backwards even as he cut viciously down on the springing Robert Comyn. Hal saw the blow slice into the flesh of the man’s neck, heard the sinister hissing of it and the surprised little yelp Robert Comyn made as his head parted company with the rest of him, all save for a raggle of flesh.
‘Get him away,’ Hal yelled to the Dog Boy, who bundled the flap-handed, stumbling Bruce away while Hal and Seton, panting like mad dogs, closed shoulder to shoulder, backing away from the fallen, bleeding figures; Robert Comyn’s body writhed, his feet kicking furious splashes from the lake of his own blood.
Malise wanted no part of this. Cheyne of Straloch, equally paralysed, was starting to haul his blade out and Malise had no doubt that the thick-headed, barrel-bodied lout would plunge forward like a ravening wolf …
‘Murder,’ he yelled and sprinted for the back door of the chapel. ‘Murder. A Comyn! Murder.’
Hal and Seton looked at each other and backed off towards the kirk’s front door while Cheyne plunged towards them, stopped uncertainly, then knelt by the fallen Badenoch, unable to do much than flap a free hand while watching Hal and Dog Boy slither backwards out of the chapel.
Whatever happened now, Hal thought wildly, red war has returned to the Kingdom.
An hour later
The smoke was pall-black, thick as egret feathers and the English justiciars sat under it, miserable with surrender; Sir Richard Giraud wisely flung open the doors of the castle and Bruce men spilled into it, led by Edward, his great slab of a face grim as black rock. The English hovered uncertainly, fearful of what might be done to them and not even sure what had happened.
They were not alone in their confusion. In the hall of the fortress, the brothers Bruce and a few chosen straightened up overturned benches and sat, the Bruce himself a silent, floor-staring effigy.
‘Has he spoke?’ Edward demanded suddenly, rounding on Kirkpatrick, who pointed to the head-hung Bruce and didn’t have to say anything more. Edward tore off his maille coif and scrubbed his head with frustration; he had learned that there had been a ‘tulzie’, that Badenoch and his uncle were down, probably dead and the perpetrator of it sat shivering and muttering about the ‘curse of Malachy’.
Edward fought his own rising panic about that Bruce plague. He had sent riders to inform their supporters to gather their forces and had managed to take Dumfries from the quailing English by bluster and threat of burning. The Comyn, though, were still around and no doubt sending out for their own forces – the whole affair was as messy as dog vomit and his brother, the head of the family, was a gibbering uselessness.
‘Innocent blood.’
The voice turned him round, into the anxious, raised face. Edward looked at his brother and thought he looked as he had when he was six and in trouble; it was not a look he cared to find on the Earl of Carrick and Annandale, the man who would be king.
‘What happened, brother?’ he demanded, for the umpteenth time. He had heard from Hal and Seton and the dark youth they called Dog Boy, but had not learned much about what his brother had actually done to Red John Comyn. Stabbed him, he had heard – but there was a pinking poke and there was a paunch-ripping thrust and Edward did not know which his brother had done.
Bruce’s grip was sudden on Edward’s wrist, a talon that pulled him close, into the anguish.
‘God forgive me, Edward, for I have sinned. In a house of God, no less – the curse of Malachy …’
‘In the name of Christ,’ Edward thundered, snatching his hand back so vehemently that his brother was almost jerked from the bench, ‘what did ye do to him?’
‘No doubt I have killed him.’
The answer was low and hoarse and filled with pain and fear. Hal almost went to the man to lay the comfort of a hand on his shoulder, but that was a step too far and he hovered on the brink of it.
‘Ye doubt ye have killed him?’