The Lion Rampant by Robert Low Read Free Book Online

sure what use he could be and said as much, adding – again forgetting he addressed a king – that he was equally unsure if he had the belly for the work now.
    Bruce nodded, as if he had considered the matter, which was true. He also knew that he had already captured the man, yet the triumph of bending Hal to the royal will was not as savage a joy as with others he had snared; it seemed like calming a fine stallion you must geld.
    ‘If it will provide belly, let me tell you that the reward will be our utmost effort to free Isabel and her safe delivery into your care,’ he answered. ‘If events work out as planned, Berwick will fall to us. At worst, we will negotiate the freedom of all captives.’
    He saw the gaff of that go in.
    ‘As for your abilities,’ he went on, ‘they are well remembered.’ He paused and smiled, lopsided so as not to strain the cheek. ‘Betimes, someone vouches for you.’
    He raised one hand into the red and gold stain of light from the nave window. There was a pause, and then a figure stepped forward from the shadows, limping a little, moving slow and silent across the flagged floor.
    An auld chiel, Hal thought. Another wee monk?
    Then the light poured through the nave on to the iron-grey head, turning it to blood and honey and a shock of the familiar.
    ‘Ah, Hal,’ said Kirkpatrick, almost sadly. ‘You were ever a man for good sense, save ower that wummin.’

 
     
     
    ISABEL
    He came to me in the night. He does not do it often these days – so little that, may God forgive me, I was almost glad to see him in my loneliness, for he has long since ceased to pain me with his foulness, which is harder for him to achieve each time. He blames me and beats me for it, but even that strength is going from him. You gave me Malise Bellejambe, Lord, an image of Man in my world, for there is no other here save those I can remember. Is it my own sins that make You even more cruel than he is? I do not understand, O God, for what he does to me is surely cruelty to Yourself. May it be that this is a mirror to make me understand that nothing can protect me, O God, unless it is the shield on which there is no device, but all the heavens and the sun displayed. The only pure thing I have to offer You is my mind. Take it, Lord, and offer me that shield.

CHAPTER THREE
    Palais du Roi, Paris
    Feast of St Joseph of Arimathea, March 1314
    The stink of it swamped from the Île des Juifs, pervasive and acrid, wrapping round them like snake coils so that the Queen of England had to raise a scented hand to her nose. It was an irony that the fire which had burned Isabella’s hands and arms so badly the year before should now be of a help; the wounds had festered and she wore scented gloves to hide the glassy weals.
    Out on the Seine, the daring were collecting the ashes of her godfather, Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Temple, burned the day before alongside Geoffroi de Charney, Master of Normandy. They had recanted their confessions publicly and her father had ordered the pyre built and the two Templars roasted slowly on it. Too slowly, as it turned out, for de Molay had uttered a long and pungent curse prophesying that his tormentors would be in Hell within the year.
    Isabella thought her godfather’s name would live a long time in memory, as a martyr to the Order and not least because of the Curse he had brought down on the Pope and her father. She said it aloud, which made Beaumont, Badlesmere and the young Earl of Gloucester shift a little at the daring in it. They were well used to this slip of a queen having the cunning of a fox and more backbone than her husband, but they kept those thoughts to themselves.
    As they did their views on the Templars – but publicly at least, the Order had been condemned at Vienne two years since and England’s king had followed the Pope’s instructions on it. Now the Knights of St John were taking over the Templar holdings and, for all he might gnaw his nails,