‘The Good Sir James,’ Sim said, nudging his mount easily alongside Hal so that he could speak soft. ‘Darling of the host, is the Black Lord of Douglas. A derfly, ramstampit man o’ main.’
Hal met Sim’s eye, saw the mock in it and managed a smile. He saw, too, the white of Sim Craw – he had got used to it now, though it had come as a shock, all that snow on his lintel. It had come to him, when the Dog Boy suggested he brighten himself for the arrival of the Earl of Carrick, that he himself was old – each pewter curl that fell from his clipped head, courtesy of the spared girl, Aggie, told of that. And Sim was older by only a handful and a half of years.
Since no one had had much care for the style of a prisoner, wee poor noble or not, Hal had not realized how he’d looked until sat in front of the water-waver of a bad mirror and witnessed this apparition with a greasy tangle of grey hair matting its way into a madness of bushed beard.
Only the eyes, grey-blue and blank, could be seen and when Hal looked in them he was dizzied, for it felt as if there was someone else looking back at him, as if his body had been rented like an abandoned house. When his beard vanished, the gaunt lantern-jawed man who appeared was no more familiar.
Aggie, rocking her bairn in a shawl looped across her back while she clipped, tongue between her teeth, eventually announced that she could do no more. The result, Dog Boy announced critically, was suitable and Hal, seven years removed from the gawky youth who had cared only for dogs, was astonished by this new Dog Boy, a muscled, skilled warrior and the shadow of the Black himself. He was even called Aleysandir now, a fine set-up man with a name and the style and wit to know how a wee lord from Lothian should be seen by an earl. Yet he was still Dog Boy to those who knew him well.
Hal had heard some matters of the outside world in his prison, enough to know that he had missed even more, but the arrival of the Earl of Carrick had confused him. He had been expecting the Bruce, but it was the brother who came and Hal cursed himself for a fool.
Had he not been there when the Earl of Carrick became king? Now brother Edward was Earl of Carrick – and the last of the brothers, too. The memory of the others, dead and gone in the furtherance of Robert Bruce to the throne, had soured the fête of Edward Bruce’s arrival at Roxburgh, a day after Hal’s release.
He and Hal had met once the mummery had been done with: the greetings and fine speeches, the official surrender and promises made. Sir William Fiennes, barely clinging to life, left in a litter with Frixco, uncaring little bachle, trailing after and hugging close to the bier as if the dying brother was a sealed surety for his own safety. Dog Boy saw Aggie hawk and spit pointedly and scornfully as he went; she was clearly bright with the wonderful possibility of being allowed to go where she would and with a sum of money to keep her and the bairn for a time.
Edward had been all delight and grins, his face flushed, fleshy and even broader than it had been, though there were harsh lines at the corner of eye and mouth which spoke of the hardships of the seven years since Hal had last seen him.
‘Aye, times have changed and for the better,’ he had growled, handing the fresh-shorn Hal a horn cup of wine. ‘The King wants Edinburgh, Stirling and Roxburgh in his grip by summer. It is an ambitious swoop – but, by God, the Black has opened the account well.’
‘As well he chose this yin first,’ Hal had answered, ‘else I would be in prison still.’
‘Isn’t it, though?’
Edward had walked to the tent entrance and stood for a moment, shaking a sad head.
‘A pity,’ he had said in French. ‘It is a pretty place, Roxburgh, and shame on us for having to tear it down.’
Hal knew why: they could not garrison it sufficiently to keep the English out if they came back and Roxburgh, like Edinburgh and Stirling, was a bastion for the English in the Kingdom, a fount of supply and centre of domination. Still, there were others.
‘Even if they all fall, the English will still have Berwick and Bothwell,’ he’d said and Edward nodded.
‘Aye, and Dunbar, but none are as brawlie as the great fortalices of Stirling, Edinburgh and here. Besides, taking them throws most of the last garrisons of English out of the Kingdom and sends a sign to English Edward’s enemies that, once again, he is the weak son. Not a Longshanks, for all his length of leg.’
He’d paused, swilled wine in the goblet, frowning at it as if some clegg had flown in.
‘I know why you speak of Berwick,’ he’d said suddenly and Hal jerked with the gaff of his words. They stared at each other for a moment.
‘She is there still?’
The question hunched itself like a crookback beggar with a hand out and was not answered for a long time. Then, however, Edward had shifted slightly.