‘That is one problem we are here to discuss,’ Bruce began, then broke off as a new figure shuffled painfully into the light. Bent, with a face like a ravaged hawk and iron-grey hair straggling round his ears from under a conical felted hat, the man nodded and muttered thanks to Kirkpatrick as he was helped into a chair, then refused wine with a wave of one weary hand.
‘John Duns,’ Bishop Wishart announced and the man managed a smile out of a yellow face. Bruce knew the priest by reputation – a man with a mind like a steel trap – but was shocked by his appearance. The cleric was scarce forty.
‘The new lord of Annandale,’ said Duns, his voice wisped as silk, but his eyes steady on Bruce’s own. ‘Which title also brings you the claim to the throne of Scotland. Which brings you here.’
‘I am here because the realm needs it,’ Bruce replied. ‘It needs a king.’
‘Just so,’ Wishart said smoothly, before anyone else could speak. ‘Let us first offer prayers to God that each man here preserves the tone of this meeting, as it were, from the ears of those who do us harm. On pain of endless tortures in Hell – not to mention on earth.’
‘And an agreed fine,’ Lamberton added, just as smoothly, ‘that would cripple a nation never mind a wee prelate in it. Was that necessary?’
‘It was – but let us pray to Saint Giles,’ Wishart responded with some steel, ‘patron saint of cripples everywhere, that such a thing will never come to pass.’
The soft murmur of the bishops, moth-wings of holiness, brought the face of his father flickering across Bruce’s mind. Prayers would still be being murmured for him, Bruce thought, circling round Holm Abbey like trapped birds. He tried to remember the old man in a better light than the one which usually lit his memory.
Saint-hagged, heavy-witted old man was what he recalled. Burned books and a splintered lute was what he recalled. Beatings, was what he recalled, for paying ‘too much mind to that auld reprobate’s teachings’.
The auld reprobate had been his grandfather, who had dinned into him the Bruce claims to kingship and pointedly scorned, as he did so, his own son’s inadequacy in that regard. With some justice, Bruce thought to himself – grandda worked tirelessly to the end to further the kingship cause of the Bruces – God blind me, was he not called The Competitor for it – and my father, apart from one timid plea to Longshanks, did little.
Yet when he heard there was a last breathed message from his father, brought by Kirkpatrick, for a moment Bruce’s heart leaped at the promise of a final affection, for all the marring of their relationship by mutual stubbornness and temper. Then hope faltered, stumbled and fell for the last time.
Not before Longshanks is dead.
Simple and stark, his final advice, with all the love in it the elder Bruce was capable of bestowing. That was the legacy of the Bruces; that and the Curse of Malachy, Bruce added silently, as his fingertips brushed against the hairless cheek.
Hal saw the unconscious gesture and knew at once what Bruce was thinking.
So did Kirkpatrick and he and Hal exchanged a brief glance while the candles flickered, each man knowing just enough of the tale – something about a previous Annandale Bruce thwarting Malachy the holy man by promising to release a condemned felon and then hanging him in secret. The said priest was angered and cursed the Bruces, a curse made more powerful still when Malachy eventually became a saint.
It had hagged Bruce’s father, who had dedicated a deal of Annandale rents to endowing the saint’s last resting place at Clairveaux with perpetual candles and masses in an attempt to ease the burden of it.
Bruce fought against the fear of it more often than he would allow – Kirkpatrick knew it well enough never to admit that the man who had breathed his last fetid breath on to this Bruce’s cheek years before had been named Malachy.
Kirkpatrick. Bland as gruel, with a face that could settle to any shape save pretty and was more than servant, less than friend to the Bruce. A dagger of a man and a ferret for Bruce, sent down the darkest holes to rout out the truths hidden there – especially about the stone-carver. Everyone else here thought he had been called Manon, a dying man Bruce was sure knew a secret and was taking it to the grave, so that he had bent close to him in the hope of hearing his last words. The carver had vomited out blood – and the last administered Host, a white wafer floating like a boat in a flood into the Bruce face.
Afterwards, Bruce’s right cheek had flared with red pustules, but soon they had faded to dots of white – and now no beard would grow on it; Bruce already thought this little flaw a part of the curse – to know the full of it, Kirkpatrick thought, might cause no end of turmoil in the man’s mind.
As if he had heard, Bruce’s eyes flickered and he dropped his hand, dragged back to the dark room and the eldritch dancing shadows.