The Guardian (20 page)

“You have work for me, then, my lord,” I said quietly, not even attempting to conceal my smile. “Some lesser gathering I’m to attend.”

“Don’t be impertinent, Father. You’re attending it already.”

“And how tight is the time frame?”

“Tight enough. Why do you ask?”

“Because Lord Bruce invited me to hunt with him tomorrow morning.”

“To hunt with him?
You
, Father James?”

“To talk with him, my lord. He thought there might be more time for talking between kills than at any other time. Should I inform him I cannot go?”

“No, don’t do that. This might be the best chance you get to observe him. Besides, we are not all gathered yet. I’m still awaiting two more men. If they arrive tomorrow—they should have been here by now—then we’ll all meet tomorrow night and set things afoot the following day. So go and speak with the earl, but be sure to be back here in time for supper. I shall look forward to hearing your impressions.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BRUCE — FIRST BLOOD

I
was up hours before dawn and celebrated Mass by myself, or so I thought until I heard a stifled cough behind me and turned to see a bareheaded figure kneeling just inside the tiny chapel I was using. I was conducting the rites with the ease of long practice, in darkness relieved by the flame of but a single candle, so I could not see who it was who shared the Mass with me. But when it came time to eat the host and drink the sacrificial wine of Communion and I turned and offered to share the Sacrament with my companion, I discovered, to my surprise, that it was the Earl of Carrick himself.

He waited for me afterwards as I packed my vessels and removed my robes, leaving aside my priestly cassock for the day since I was going hunting, and replacing it with the tunic and leggings I had bought when I was recuperating at the Lanark priory. I took my walking staff, too, surmising I might need it in the event I was called upon as a beater, and when I was ready, the earl and I made our way together to the castle kitchens.

It was still night, the quiet, moonless blackness showing no sign yet of an approaching day, and a startled cook, wide-eyed at seeing the Earl of Carrick in his kitchen, offered to feed us on the same fresh bread and duck eggs, whipped and fried in cream and butter, that he had been preparing, probably illicitly, for his own morning meal. He set out a plenitude of cold meats, both flesh and fowl, from the previous night, but both Bruce and I were intrigued by the sight and smell of the eggs the cook had been making when we arrived, and as we ate them we were happy to have arrived when we did.

By the time we finished eating, each of us had grown
comfortable with the other, a condition facilitated, I had no doubt, by the intimacy of the private Mass we had shared earlier, and we were perfectly at ease, talking comfortably of trivial things. So when we stood up to leave the kitchen and the earl whistled to catch the cook’s attention before tossing him a silver mark in thanks for the meal, I followed my companion out into the darkness, talking away to him as he made his way towards the stables, along the route indicated by a succession of guttering fire baskets.

The eastern sky was still black, but the stables were abuzz and bright with lanterns, with grooms and ostlers bustling everywhere, preparing animals and carts for that morning’s hunting party. Some of the more eager hunters were conscientiously preparing themselves and their mounts for the day ahead.

Bruce turned to me. “How good a horseman are you, Father James?”

“Adequate,” I told him. “I don’t need a spavined, sway-backed nag, if that’s what you mean. I can ride and I have no fear either of horses or of falling.”

He smiled and beckoned to one of the senior grooms, then told the man to take me out and let me pick my own mount. “Come back when you’re ready,” he told me. “I’ll be here until we leave.”

By the time I had picked my mount for the day and had adjusted all the necessary saddlery to my size and riding style, close to an hour must have elapsed, and when I returned I found the earl surrounded by the other nine members of the hunting group, five of whom were the knights we had dined with the night before. They were all in high spirits, even the two from Douglasdale, and no one showed any sign of curiosity when I rode up to join them. I was accepted as one of the party from the outset, and if anyone wondered about the shabbiness of my clothing, he kept his curiosity to himself.

We left soon after that, more than two score of us all told, counting the huntsmen, butchers, cooks, wagoners, and beaters who accompanied us, and from the moment we passed beyond Turnberry’s main gates all levity vanished, replaced by the gravitas of the hunt.

We made our first kill in the early light of dawn, having waited on foot in an open dell while a ring of beaters drove a small herd of deer towards us. Bruce held a surprisingly large, laminated bow as his favoured weapon, and while it was by no means as powerful as a yew longbow, it was a solid weapon nonetheless, and he used it well when a proud buck and three does bounded into the clearing where we waited with two of the other knights, both of them armed with crossbows.

The deer came quickly, in almost total silence, materializing almost on top of us, and Bruce raised and drew in a single, graceful movement, loosing his shaft effortlessly and catching the soaring buck at the apex of his spring, the missile striking it behind the shoulder in a perfect, lethal heart shot, so that the beast landed and died at the same instant. It was a magnificent shot—would have been so even for my cousin Will—and I acknowledged it as such, drawing an appreciative grin from the earl before he strode forward to kneel beside his prize. One of his two companions, Sir Alexander Lindsay, had killed his doe, but the other, Sir John Stewart, had missed his animal completely, and I could hear him cursing under his breath.

An hour or so later, we had another opportunity under similar circumstances, and again the earl was successful in his kill, though not with the spectacular brilliance he had shown the first time. This buck drove straight towards him, head on, leaving Bruce less than a moment to aim and fire, but his shaft sank to the feathers in the hollow beneath the beast’s neck, cleanly loosed and cleanly delivered. The animal swept on, driven by its own momentum as though oblivious to its injury, knocking the earl aside and driving every vestige of air from his lungs while it continued for four bounding leaps before it fell dead.

It was almost mid-morning by the time we left that clearing, leaving the carcasses to the butcher’s crew. The earl had recovered his breath and his composure, and the time for early hunting was long past, but the butchers who had accompanied the main party had been doing their work for long enough by then to ensure that the
camp cooks had several choice cuts and delicacies to grill for the hungry hunters. And so we collected our horses—we had, of course, been hunting on foot—and prepared to make our way back to the central encampment where the fires had been set up, about a mile and a half back along the riverbank.

When Bruce tried to mount his horse, though, it whinnied and reared away from him, almost pulling him over, and we quickly discovered that it had somehow been lamed: its right rear hoof was split and the poor beast was unable to place any weight on it at all. Yet none of us could remember any incident that might have caused such an injury on the way out from Turnberry. All three of us remaining with the earl—myself and the two knights, Stewart and Lindsay—offered him our horses, but he would have none of it. He was extremely gracious about the situation, and even jocular in his acceptance of it. He had invited me to join him that day, he explained to the others, in the hopes that we might be able to find sufficient time for me to catechize him about some information Bishop Wishart needed for episcopal reasons, concerning matters in England and details of his previous life there as a liegeman to King Edward. Therefore, he pointed out, since we were in fact about the business of God’s Holy Church, it was plain that God Himself had intervened to see to it that we should have as much time as we required for it. He waved away the two knights’ protests and sent them on ahead with our horses, leaving the two of us to walk together back to the campsite. I freed my heavy walking staff from where I had secured it to my saddle and handed my beast’s reins to Sir John Stewart while Sir Alexander Lindsay took the reins of Lord Bruce’s injured animal.

I clearly remember the stillness once the sounds of the four horses had died away ahead of us. We were walking through a grove of majestic beech trees, on a thick carpet of dead leaves from previous years, and the smooth, grey skin of the trees’ massive trunks reminded me of the soaring, vaulted heights of the cathedral nave in Glasgow. Somewhere off to the east a thrush was singing, and ahead of us, a pair of linnets were competing with each other in
a struggle for melodic supremacy. It was a profoundly peaceful moment, and even as I became aware of it, it was shattered.

Out of nowhere, I saw four men—or rather a blurred impression of four large, armed men—running towards us, and I saw a long, bare, pointing blade. At the same moment I was aware of Lord Bruce dropping into a crouch as his hand swept down for the sword at his waist. But of course no sword was there. We were on a hunting expedition within the earl’s own lands, and it had not occurred to any of us that we might need to defend ourselves. I saw Bruce flinch, then start away, his hand now at his other side clawing for the dirk that hung there. But the first attacker was already between us, thrusting at me stiff-armed to knock me aside as he swung up his sword, left handed, against Bruce. He had clearly judged the earl more dangerous than I because he was bigger, broader, and more brightly clad.

The attacker’s stiffly outstretched arm came close to hitting me, but I knocked it aside with my elbow, deflecting his charge easily as I grasped my staff two-handed and drove its heavier end into his exposed armpit as hard as I could, knocking him heavily sideways and off balance. As he fell sprawling, his sword spun from his grip, and Bruce pivoted, bending as he went, to snatch up the fallen sword, gripping it awkwardly by the cross-guard as he drew the dirk at his waist with his other hand. Someone crashed into me then from my side and sent me flying.

Armed but yet helpless, the earl spun away from the new attacker in a full circle, changing his weapons from hand to hand as he went. His legs flexed and he straightened, dirk in his left hand and the long English sword in his right, and parried the wild swing launched at him by the fellow who had knocked me down. The sword flashed, metal clanged, the attacker’s arm flew up, and the dirk in the earl’s hand flickered forward and stabbed deep into another exposed armpit. I heard a choking grunt of pain, but already Bruce was spinning away to confront yet another charging assailant. The long blade in his hand swung up and around and down, hissing with speed and power until its arc ended suddenly in a jarring, meaty sound.

Behind me, I heard fleeing footsteps and knew, without having to look, that a last assailant was running for his life.

Bruce and I stood staring wild eyed at each other, both of us panting for breath, although his exertions had been far greater than my own.

“You saved my life,” he said eventually. “That whoreson would have killed me if you hadn’t hit him.”

I looked down at the man who lay at the earl’s feet. He was English—they all were, no doubt of that—a foot soldier by the light leather armour he wore. He was easily as tall as Bruce himself, with long, greasy hair and surprise-filled eyes that stared down disbelievingly at the swaying hilt of the sword that Bruce had just released. The dying man’s eyes travelled down the length of the blade for as far as they could, towards the spot he could not see, where the edged steel, driven by all Bruce’s strength and anger, had sunk deep into the join of his neck and shoulder.

I turned away from the bloodied forms on the ground at my feet to look at the first man who had fallen; the one I had hit. Relief hit me like a splash of cold water as I saw he was alive and whole, with no trace of blood on him anywhere. But he was writhing on the ground and grimacing, one hand clamped tightly beneath his armpit where I had struck him. Bruce crossed the distance to him in one step and hauled the Englishman to his feet, gripping him by the armholes in his leather armour. The fellow took heed of the fact that his dead weight was being lifted as though it was nothing, and blinked up at the man holding him.

“Who are you?” he slurred, in Scots.

“Carrick.” Bruce’s response was a feral snarl. He hitched the sagging man higher, so they were face to face. “This is my land. Who are
you
? And who sent you?”

The Englishman was blinking rapidly, beginning to regain his senses, and he suddenly thrust himself upright and made to shrug off the earl’s grip. Bruce let go one hand and smashed him hard across the face with a clenched fist, knocking his head sideways and drawing a gush of blood from his nose. He then spun him with both
hands, grasped him anew by the nape of the neck, and swept his feet away with a swift kick, dropping him heavily to his knees next to the sprawled corpse of his erstwhile companion before thrusting him forward to look directly down at the ruined body.

“Look at him, fool. You can be as dead as he is before you draw another breath, if you so wish. It’s your decision to make, so make it now if you ever hope to stand on your feet again. Live or die, here and now, where no one might ever find you until your bones are picked clean by the crows.”

At that moment, the other downed man, the one Bruce had dirked in the armpit, began to cough, and we could tell, from the gurgling, painfully laboured sounds of it, that he was close to death.

Bruce wrenched the kneeling man’s head around to face the sound. “Your friend there’s dying, too,” he said. “Deservedly. Four of you, and two of us, and us unarmed while you held the surprise. And now two of you are down, dead and dying, you’re next to go, and your fourth man is running for his life into the bogs to the south. He’ll die, too, in there.” He tightened his fingers on the prisoner’s neck. “Now tell us. Who sent you?”