Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
A lexander's gaze met his as Ruari came out of the shadows, but surprise came first from Marshal, then Blackwood as one of his men called out a warning.
Blackwood turned, his eyes narrowing with disbelief.
"Fraser?!"
"Back from the dead," Ruari commented. "You were telling the king that he must accept your terms... "
The air in the great hall was suddenly charged with an energy usually found only on a battlefield, and perhaps it was just that, Blackwood's soldiers surrounded by Fraser kinsmen.
Blackwood's gaze took in the metal that now encased his arm like that of a suit of armor, and the metal hand that held the claymore before him. A slow smile spread across Blackwood's face.
"Perhaps not dead enough... yet."
In a move, practiced over and over again in the yard at Lechlede, Ruari swung the claymore and buried the blade in the long table not more than a hand span from where Blackwood stood.
When the general of the English king's army would have raised his own sword, Ruari pulled the long blade from the sheath at his belt and drove the tip through the edge of the leather gauntlet Blackwood wore, pinning his draw hand to the table at the same time Ruari pulled a second blade and pressed it against Blackwood's throat.
"Cease!" the king ordered as they stood toe-to-toe, one pinned unable to defend himself, the other with the look of blood in his eyes.
Both appeared not to hear, while about them Fraser kinsmen and English soldiers had all drawn weapons.
Anger, was a two-edged sword, Ruari knew. It drove men on a battlefield to accomplish the impossible, but it could also be a fool's worst enemy. James had taught him that long ago, when just the two of them had gone after another who had threatened Clan Fraser.
Since then, he'd gained a reputation on the battlefield for being ruthless, perhaps even foolhardy, but it had served him well. That was the man Blackwood had encountered. But now the best move on the chess board was one the English knight and Marshal would not expect.
He needed to let go of the anger and the blood thirst for revenge... for now, and keep sight of the larger purpose--the freedom of Scotland and its people from being under the English sword.
There would come a time, perhaps very soon, when he would have his revenge against Blackwood.
"You are outnumbered," he pointed out, leaving his blade against Blackwood's throat a few moments longer.
"You have perhaps not seen the king's army on the hillside below. A thousand men... !" Blackwood hissed.
"An afternoon's play for Fraser kinsmen and the other clans," Ruari replied flashing a deadly smile.
Blackwood's gaze narrowed. "You have not the men to survive such a game.
The smile deepened. "A thousand and more of my kinsmen and clans ride on Stirling as we speak." A slight exaggeration, but more than equal to any English.
What did he see in that gaze as black as the man's name? Surprise? Or something else, glimpsed on that bloody beachhead at Calais?
"Hold!" Marshal ordered his war general.
It was several seconds more before Blackwood slowly nodded, then reached up with his other hand to push away the blade at his throat.
Ruari refused to yield, his gaze never leaving Blackwood's, even as the English soldiers slowly lowered their blades. His kinsmen waited for his next move.
"Lower your sword, Fraser!" Alexander commanded.
The pieces of the chessboard held their places, and tension was drawn as taut as an English bow.
"For an outlaw, you dare much."
Ruari flicked a glance at the king. It had been more than ten years since their last encounter.
"I have nothing to lose," Ruari pointed out.
"Your head?" Alexander suggested.
Ruari's smile deepened as he turned a cold gaze on Blackwood.
"Others have tried."
The guards stirred, and attention was drawn to the arched entrance of the great hall. Juliana de Beaumont swept into the hall, accompanied by her ladies in waiting and a tall, imposing guard who followed. Campbell was nowhere to be seen.
"We need more wine," she announced in a sweet, pleasant voice that disguised the sweeping glance she made of the hall, taking in everything.
More than familiar with the intricacies and games from her months at the French court and at her husband's side as King of Scotland, she motioned to the servants who hovered at the edge of the hall.
"More wine," she told them. "The Bordeaux, perhaps... from France," she ordered, then approached the embattled long table where the young king attempted to rein in both Marshal's man and Ruari Fraser.
"It is a subtle vintage," she explained, her gaze meeting Ruari's. "It reminds me of my time in France... "
Her words were not lost on those present, who also remembered those months when she had wielded strength and subtle power in the family connections she had used to persuade the English to release her husband, King William, from an English prison where he was being held. The English could ill afford a war with France, then or now.
The message was subtle but well taken, that even now, the young king, possessed a political weapon through Juliana's connections in France.
Ruari knew her game. She was as skilled a player as any he had known. But where he preferred not to hide his words or intentions, meeting his enemies out in the open she reminded him that the fox , as she had called him, did not always run his prey to the ground, but also slowly stalked him and used cunning as well as brute force to kill its quarry.
"Fraser... " DeBrus added his voice of caution, the message unspoken but equally clear.
Now was not the time for blood, Ruari knew. That would come later.
His smile deepened, but that deadly expression never left his gaze.
"By all means," he replied. "Wine and pleasant conversation."
He flicked the blade away in such a way that none present doubted that conversation, begun earlier, would be anything but pleasant.
Blackwood wiped the trickle of blood from his throat where the edge of Ruari's blade had cut the skin.
"This is not finished," Blackwood vowed.
"No, it is not," Ruari replied.
Alexander gave the signal to the servants to pour the wine and bring a refreshment for the hours that lay ahead as those present took their chairs, the air still dangerously charged.
"Return to the encampment," Marshall told Blackwood in a lowered voice. "Await me there."
"Return?" Blackwood replied just loud enough for all the hear the refusal in his tone.
"And leave you at the mercy of these... Scots?" The way he said it he might have been describing beggars and thieves.
DeBrus stayed Ruari with a hand at his good arm, and a warning look.
"My men will remain," Marshall emphasized that they were under his authority in his role as counselor to the King Henry, just as Blackwood was under his authority.
"I will be safe enough." But both knew that Blackwood cared little for his safety.
His interests lie elsewhere, a distance from Stirling in Fraser land. But his interests were second to those of King Henry. Marshal was under instructions to gain what concession might be gained and subjugation of the young Scottish king if possible, but to avoid a war at all costs with these barbaric northern tribes as the king had described them in a scathing tone.
"I want you at the encampment," Marshal knew the best way to keep Blackwood reined in was to give him a task that would go to no other.
"If there should be a need," he said in a quiet aside.
Blackwood retrieved his sword, then motioned to two of the English soldiers.
"With me!" he ordered them, and without a backwards glance, stalked from the hall.
Alexander motioned to two of his guards to follow. "So that they do not lose their way," he suggested.
"What of Campbell?" Ruari asked as Juliana crossed the hall.
She smiled that secretive smile they had once shared as lovers.
"He suddenly felt the need to leave," she replied.
"To Argyle?" Ruari guessed the obvious. "Now that his purpose has been exposed?"
"Whatever do you mean?" Juliana said, ever the diplomat. But her smile said far more, that she fully understood his meaning. She made a dismissive gesture with a wave of her hand.
"I believe he had some discomfort of the bowel from the evening meal."
She lied so convincingly. Ruari smiled and took her hand, escorting her to her chair beside the young king.
"Something he ate?" he suggested, bowing over her hand.
That smile again. "Perhaps. I suggested that he might be better tended in familiar surroundings. I wouldn't want him to suffer further... discomfort. " She leaned in closer, so that her lips brushed his ear.
"It is always wise to keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Do you not agree? Campbell serves his own appetites. It merely caught up with him this night. You would do well to remember that as well."
She said the last with laughter in her voice as if they shared some jest, and then called for more wine as he took the chair across from Marshal at the long table.
It was long into the night when Alexander finally rose from his chair and those at the long table also rose, including the queen mother, Juliana.
The past hours the conversations had been at times animated to the point of argument, concessions demanded then refused, thinly veiled threats that had been left on the table, then gradually changed, even conciliatory on both sides.
Juliana de Beaumont had not spoken to any point. It was not necessary, her mere presence was a reminder of other things that were at stake should Marshal rush into open confrontation. And take the knee to King Henry? She had merely smiled at the suggestion, tempering the young king's cold response.
"Or find myself imprisoned?" Alexander suggested, showing remarkable restraint.
"That is not the king's intent," Marshal replied.
"I thought it was not. Surely the Scot have suffered enough?" His meaning was not lost on Marshal.
As often played out in such things, cooler heads eventually prevailed--DeBrus and Marshal often speaking directly to one another--DeBrus with reminders of past English transgressions, blood spilled, the clans pushed to the point of starvation by English tariffs and bold raids across the borderlands.
The argument he presented to both Alexander and Marshal was that men who watch their families starve and die will do whatever is necessary to end the suffering.
In the end with Fraser kinsmen and the other clans near--a fact Marshal was not prepared for or willing to dispute after receiving a message from his own encampment--at least a verbal agreement was made with Marshal's own seal on the words set down on parchment by a scribe.
"I will deliver these words to our king," Marshal said in parting.
He had been forced to yield, in the king's name, on several key points. But he had not yielded all. He had the Scottish king's promise that his Scots would remain north of the borderlands, as well as his mark on it with DeBrus' pledge to see it done.
It was perhaps the best either could have hoped for with the English army at the doorstep of Stirling castle, and the rumor of several well armed clans on their way to Stirling.
Marshal had been ordered to avoid a war. The show of the English army had been an effort to force the Scottish king into submission. But that was gone in spite of Campbell's best efforts to persuade the king into capitulation. Fraser was responsible for that.
Now, Alexander summoned his personal guard.
"My guards will see you to the gate," he told Marshal, effectively dismissing him, the meeting at an end.
When they had gone, Juliana turned to Ruari, as the king bid them all good-eventide.
"You will stay?"
He exchanged a look with DeBrus. Both were eager to reach their kinsmen. Campbell was no doubt hard on the road to Argyle, but he didn't trust the man and wanted to take word to James himself so that there would be no confusion about the terms that had been reached.
"We must also leave."
She nodded. "To take word to your chieftain." She looped her arm through his as her guard fell into step behind them with DeBrus following with their Scots warriors.
"I understand. These are dangerous time," she warned.
"You don't trust Marshal to honor the agreement?"
"Marshal and King Henry will honor it. Henry is no fool, and he is no warrior. He has no taste for blood if he can have peace... " There was more she left unsaid.
"But Blackwood will not honor it," Ruari had seen that elusive chess piece at the edge of the board--a move that might be taken. Or not.
She waved the others back, including her guard, a hulk of a man Ruari would not want to meet on a dark road, or in the shadows of Stirling castle.
"He has ambitions of his own. "
"Scotland?" As Campbell had been made wealthy in English lands?
She angled her head in the direction of her personal guard. "People often make the mistake of thinking him slow-witted or mute. He is neither, and has proven himself most resourceful in blending in with serfs, herders, huntsmen, or the English, slipping into places where others dare not go... "she made an off-hand gesture.
"And English encampments?" Ruari ventured a guess.
Juliana smiled in answer. "He overheard a conversation between Blackwood and Marshal.
"King Henry has promised him lands in Scotland. Marshal attempted to dissuade him. This new agreement thwarts those ambitions."
Ruari smothered back the anger that had lain just beneath the surface these past hours.
"What lands?"
"Blackwood is determined to have Lechlede and all Fraser lands... " she paused, watching his expression.
"The dower lands of his wife that he intends to claim."
"Wife?"
"Lady Blackwood--Linnea Fraser."
Linnea. A name and a face for which there was only vague memory of a child with gold hair, slightly older than himself.
He had been young when his father had her sent to their mother's family in England after their mother's death. There was only the vague remembrance of Connor Fraser's stern countenance, the wagon that had carried her off with a nurse and Fraser escort, a small face peering through the heavy curtain at the window opening before disappearing inside.
She was never spoken of afterward, and then he too was gone. Upon his earlier return and the months past after Calais, there had been no mention of her, nor had James ever spoken her name-- now Lady Blackwood.
"You must be careful," Juliana smiled from the shadows.
He nodded. "Outlawed by the king?"
"It is not a matter that he will pursue," she assured him as she reached out and slipped a hand behind his neck, pulling him down.
The kiss was as he remembered it from all those years before, that promise of passion along with the element of risk, and danger that had been fascinating and tempting. He took a step back, aware that DeBrus chose to remain a discreet distance apart in the passageway.
Juliana's expression was circumspect and a little sad.
"Someone has tamed the fox," she commented with a faint smile. " Elle doit etre speciale."
Special.
For the first time, he allowed himself to think of Alix, the night they had shared, and their parting that last morning at Lechlede. Just the thought of her now made him ache for the things they had shared--her spirit, her strength, her softness as they lay together.
" Qui, " he replied. "She is... "
My soul--it was there without thinking--his soul, if there was such a thing, from that wounded place deep inside him that she had somehow salvaged and healed.
Juliana took a step back then and they continued down the passage, through the chapel, past the priest's chambers and then down into the darkness below the castle.
"I envy her," she said.
"The king promised... !" Enraged, Blackwood stalked the tent, his expression as fierce as the curses that followed.
"The king's first concern is peace," Marshal reminded him.
It had been a long night. He had gained some concessions and was then forced to yield others. In the end Alexander of Scotland had refused to yield the Scottish throne.
With those present, those he was assured were within a half day's ride of Stirling, and Campbell's defection, not to mention the unexpected presence of Juliana de Beaumont, he was in no position to take a hard-line stance. Even with the soldiers Henry had sent with him.
The king would need to be mollified with what they had achieved. He would manage it, as his father had managed to wisely counsel and carefully navigate perilous politics and monarchs who more often than not were too eager to rush headlong into costly campaigns.
But Henry was cut from a different piece of cloth. He had inherited substantial debt and could ill afford a northern campaign. This, he was privy too, while the man who stalked the tent like a caged animal was not. He had not the knowledge nor the care of the costly Calais campaign--two ships lost along with countless warriors, not to mention the humiliating loss on French soil.
Fraser. The name only fueled Blackwood's anger, along with the promise of the wealth in Fraser lands, prized stables that had supported more than one Scottish king, and the wealth of cattle, sheep, and farmlands!
"I will have what has been promised!" he vowed.
"You will support our king and the agreement made this day in his name!" Marshal fired back at him.
"Anything else will only force the clans into retaliation and a potential war that England cannot abide! Do you understand me?"
"I can take Stirling and force Alexander to bend the knee, or lose his head!"
The conversation was veering dangerously off course. For all that Blackwood was an experienced warrior, feared and respected both on and off the battlefield, he was unskilled in the finer points that Henry had made clear must be achieved.
"You will not. You do not command this army!" Marshal said in a low, warning voice. "This is the king's army and I am his counsel with full authority over it by word of the king. You are but the instrument used to see his wishes met! We have an agreement and we will honor it, no matter the promises that were made before. Do you understand?"
It was several long moments before Blackwood replied, and then in a tone that was less than convincing.
"I understand perfectly."
It was almost dawn. Several days march lay before them on the return to England with the agreement that had been made.
"We will take one day's rest, then we depart by first light on the morrow," Marshal told him. "To remain longer would draw suspicion, and we must show good faith by withdrawing as soon as possible." He paused before leaving the tent.
"It would be best to remember that we both serve King Henry," he said in parting.
"I remember too well," Blackwood replied when he had gone.
Damn! but the water was cold, Marshal thought the following morn. It would be good to leave before the weather caught them far north.
His man had been forced to break the ice at the surface of the basin with a baton. He grabbed a linen cloth, the encampment stirring as first light slipped through the narrow opening at the entrance of the tent.
He was eager to be on the road, and well on their return to England. With luck and if the weather held, they would reach the borderlands within four days, and London within a fortnight.
He had already sent riders ahead with word of the agreement that had been made. Astride, unburdened by the slower pace of carts and foot soldiers, they would reach London in half the time. He looked up as one of his men suddenly entered the tent, his squire following close behind.
"I told him you had not yet risen, sir," the young lad explained.
Marshal waved him off. He turned to the one called Ambrose, a knight of some years whose family he knew well.
"I need you to carry a message to Sir John. Have him meet me at the stone crossing. We must be afield by midday." He looked up when the man hesitated.
"Sir William... " the knight began hesitantly.
"What is it?"
The knight looked uneasy.
"He is gone."
"Gone? What is your meaning?" Marshal demanded, exhaustion from the past two days dragging at him.
"Sir Blackwood is gone, with a score of his men."
"When?" Marshall snapped.
"Well before first light."
Eager to return to London? Not bloody likely! He knew the man far too well to assume that or to waste time searching for him.
"What direction?"
But he already knew the answer. It had been there in their argument hours earlier. And it was not to London. He swept the bowl from the small table in burst of anger.
Curse the man! Now, he must stop him, or they might well find themselves in a war after all...