He was suddenly there, towering over his son, who had shrunk on to a chair. Then, with utter terror, the prince felt his father’s hands batter him, like the wings of some maddened bird.
‘You would give home lands away to a turd in silk? You? Who never gained as much as a clod in your entire life?’
He gave up trying to beat with a strength he did not possess; the prince had lost his cap and his senses, could no more resist this terrible old man than he could fight the wind, so he sat, bowed and let the thunder roll on him.
Edward saw the prinked and rolled perfection of his son’s hair, saw the attempts at gilding it in a vain parody of Gaveston’s and, finally, found a way to hurt. He grabbed handfuls of it while the prince, stung by pain and fear at last, shrieked and tried to free himself. Raw knots came away; blood flew.
In another eyeblink, the prince felt the storm rush away, stared up at the panting, furious figure who looked at the bloody tufts in his fists and blinked owlishly.
‘I only wished ever to please you,’ the prince managed, a whimper that he heard in his own ears and felt shame at; Edward let the bloody horror feather from his fists and bent to pick his son up. Twenty and three, he thought, taking him close, close enough to feel the stickiness of blood on his own cheek. He patted him absently and murmured, as if in some distant dream where the boy was still only three, with all hope bright.
‘I know, boy. I know.’
Then, suddenly, the prince had the weight in his arms and could not hold it, let his father slip to the rushed floor of the chamber and called for help.
Near Cupar Castle, Fife
Feast of St Baithen, Blessed Successor to Columba, June, 1306
Kirkpatrick knew he was done, that God had finally abandoned him. He had, in truth, known in the minute he had clacked his way across the flags of Scone’s private chapel, summoned by the King and running the gauntlet of scowling envy from the accumulated court as he did so.
He had heard them in his head, whispering about the Auld Dug, the De’il’s ain imp. The young mesnie, with their curled hair and matching lips, he thought sourly and then with satisfaction of how the Bruce, new kinged, still needed him.
At least that was some balm on his mood, which was all wolfsbane; he knew why and did not like to admit it, either – that the quarrel with the Herdmanston lord had left him feeling estranged and somehow lessened, which was a feeling he did not care for.
The new court officials watched him huffily; there was now an etiquette for being presented to King Robert, involving so many steps, so many bows, waiting until summoned, leaving backwards … but none of it involved Kirkpatrick and the chamberlains and doorwards resented this.
Not that the King was enthroned for receiving – exactly the opposite. The new king of Scots lay on the tiles, arms outstretched and his scarred cheek pressed to the embossed pattern of the one in front of the chapel altar. The tiles were all different, each one a coat of arms of Les Neufs Preux, the Nine Worthies, and Kirkpatrick was not certain whether the King thought the pattern on that particular tile would have some holy benefit. Hector, he saw, the hero of Troy.
The King, a cruciform of repentance and thanksgiving, was naked save for the play of red and blue light streaming down from the stained windows to pool exactly where he lay. He stirred, looked sideways up at Kirkpatrick and smiled wanly.
‘I am breathing in the smell of holiness,’ he declared, half muffled by the press of his cheek. Holiness seemed a little like scented smoke to Kirkpatrick, though that might have been the remains of incense clinging to him from the Mass the King had recently attended with Abbot Thomas. Like wasps, priests droned somewhere in the distance.
Kirkpatrick watched Bruce raise himself and sit naked and crosslegged, his still-flat belly stained red and blue with light. He knew, more than anyone, what had sucked the juice from Bruce, all the same, after a flurry of activity that had seen the new king trail his weary mesnie north as far as Aberdeen to put the fear in those supporters of the Comyn.
Bruce had extorted money from east coast ports and flung merchants into prison as hostage for it, demanded military service from Perth and elsewhere, threatened the Earl of Strathearn with hanging if he did not swear to the new king. His supporters had captured Brechin, Cupar and Dundee.
Now, though, it was beginning to unravel. Percy and Clifford were methodically scouring the southwest. Dumfries had fallen to them, as well as Ayr – and Tibbers, where the luckless John Seton had been dangled by the neck like bad fruit.