The question was sharp and harsh, bringing all heads round to where Kirkpatrick, eyes feral and narrowed as a hunting cat, looked from the stricken Bruce to the brothers, one by one.
‘By God, no,’ Alexander said suddenly, seeing the way of it, while Niall and Thomas blinked and shuffled uncertainly. Without Robert, Hal realized suddenly, they are lost.
‘You have a good heart, brother,’ Edward said to Alexander, his French thick and hoarse, ‘but one unacquainted with such work as this. Use your vaunted head, all the same – you are clever enough to see how this must be played out.’
There was silence for a heartbeat while this sank in; the timing was rotten as wormed oak, but the sense of it was clear – there was no going back from an attack on the Lord of Badenoch. The Bruce faction was now at war with both Comyn and English and, if they were to have a chance of winning, the head of it must be declared king of Scots. The eyes turned to the figure on the bench, still shaking and now gnawing his nails.
‘No point to any of it,’ Kirkpatrick growled, ‘if Red John still lives.’
The truth of it hung over them, heavy as the smoke pall outside.
‘Red John was the impediment to matters,’ Kirkpatrick went on and would have said more, but Edward interrupted him.
‘See to it,’ he ordered. ‘Then we must be away from here …’
‘God in Heaven,’ whispered Bruce. ‘The curse of Malachy …’
Edward rounded savagely on him, almost unmanned himself by the summoning of that old Bruce plague.
‘Enough, brother – get yer wit back. What’s done is done and the path we ride now needs clear heads.’
‘Will ye come?’
Hal stared at the grim-eyed Kirkpatrick, knowing with sickening surety what was intended and that Kirkpatrick could not carry it out on his own.
‘Mak’ siccar,’ Kirkpatrick added. Hal nodded.
They came out into the twilight streets, where the stone houses of the rich were the colour of old blood and the shutters barred. No-one walked abroad save themselves, prowling like a pack of wolves, all ruffed and snarling; Ill-Made and Mouse and Sore Davey followed Dog Boy and Kirkpatrick and Hal, turning this way and that, flexing anxious knuckles on drawn weapons, for there was little need of propriety now.
Somewhere lurked the Comyn and their supporters, who had been surprised and scattered, though it would not be long before they recovered themselves – at which point, it would be best to be elsewhere, Hal thought.
James Lyndsay of Donrod agreed, wiping his dry mouth with the back of one hand and shifting nervously from one foot to the other. He had been set to watch the front of Greyfriars with a parcel of his own men, equally hackled.
‘Aye, he is in there yet,’ he answered when Kirkpatrick asked about Red John. ‘They have brought nobody out, though many have gone in – monks and the like, with clean linen and scurrying like squirrels. I have set men at the back and have had no word back o’ any leaving by there.’
‘So some of them live yet,’ Sore Davey muttered, picking a scab.
‘Not Sir Robert,’ Hal replied, remembering the half-severed head of Red John’s uncle, lolling in a spreading pool of thick blood.
‘So,’ Kirkpatrick said grimly. ‘Red John it is who is alive yet.’
‘Are ye for going after him, then, Kirkpatrick?’ Lyndsay demanded and then eyed the chapel uncertainly. ‘There are a wheen of men inside.’
‘Then bring yerself an’ yer mesnie,’ Kirkpatrick declared, then looked round them all, his eyes lingering longest on Hal.
‘Be set on it,’ he warned hoarsely. ‘There is one matter only here and that is the death of Red John. Everything else is thrall to it.’
He raked them all with one last glance, while the shadows dipped; somewhere a lonely dog barked, then howled.
‘Are ye set?’
Not nearly, Hal thought to himself. Not nearly at all for dire murder in a chapel. But he nodded into the chorus of grim grunts of assent.
They hit the chapel door at a rush and stumbled in, falling over each other in a fury of desperate fear, fired to roaring anger at what they were having to do. A priest squealed and dropped a ewer of bloody water; a man with sword up and shield ready was swamped and bundled backwards by Ill-Made and Mouse, while Sore Davey cut the legs from underneath him.
There was a confused whirl of echoing screams and bell-clanging metal, which Hal plunged into blindly, Kirkpatrick at his heels. A figure loomed up, all leather jerkin and unfocused eyes – but the blade in his fist was sharper than his sight, so that Hal ducked, half-turned and scythed; there was a piercing shriek, almost high enough for only hounds to hear.