Adair waited for Conal to tell her what she wanted to know. Where was Ian Armstrong, and why was Duncan looking so sad? And then she could bear it no longer.
“Where is the laird of Duffdour?” she asked.
“Seated on your left,” Conal Bruce said.
Adair turned to Duncan questioningly.
“My brother was killed at Sauchieburn,” Duncan said. “As he was unwed Duffdour is now mine, and I am its laird. I will be leaving Cleit tomorrow.”
“I am sorry that you have lost your brother,” Adair replied, “and yet that loss has made you a man of property and authority, Duncan.”
“Cleit is my home,” Duncan answered. “I was just a little boy when I came here. I barely remember Duffdour. I did not visit Ian a great deal. He did not like having me about, as he felt it sapped his power to have both our father’s sons in his house. He loved Duffdour, and he will not even be buried there. Like most who fell at Sauchieburn, he was buried on the battlefield where he died.”
“My uncle died on the battlefield at Bosworth,”
Adair said softly. “And my last husband, Andrew Lynbridge, and Dark Walter, my captain, and so many goodStanton men too. I am sorry, Duncan, but I do understand.”
“Thank you, Adair. I will miss you,” he told her.
“You will have to cease your wicked ways now,mylord,” she addressed him formally. “You are now the laird of Duffdour, and must take a wife to continue your Armstrong family line.”
“But where will I find a woman of such eminent good sense as you, Adair?” he teased her. She had lifted the burden of his sorrow from him with her gentleness and practical nature. And she was right: He was going to have to take a wife.
“She is out there just waiting for you, Duncan, but you’ll not find her at Agnes Carr’s cottage,” Adair teased him back.
The men at the high board, privy to their conversation, laughed. Then Conal Bruce repeated what had been said to the men seated at the trestles below the high board. The hall erupted with good-natured laughter, for most of the Bruce clansmen, and not just a few of the Armstrongs, knew Agnes Carr well. A good meal at Cleit and talk of the village over the hill’s friendly whore took the darkness of the past weeks from the men. Life was going to get back to normal again.
Adair and the brothers adjourned to their places by the hall’s hearth, where a fire took the damp chill off the June evening. Outside the twilight would linger most of the night. The clansmen were now gathered in groups, talking or dicing. Beiste put his large head into Adair’s lap and gazed soulfully at her as she scratched his ears for him.
“Tell me about the coronation,” she said to Conal.
“Was it very grand?”
“More shabby, I would say,” Duncan remarked.
“Aye,” Murdoc nodded.
“Conal?” Adair looked questioningly at her husband.
“What do you know?” the laird asked.
“Only that the old king was slain by an assassin, or so Hercules Hepburn said when he came to tell me you were alive,” Adair answered him.
“Aye, he was slain. Word was brought to Linlithgow, where the prince, now the king, waited. He was devastated, they say, for he thought it could be different. No one knows who did it. Someone undoubtedly in the hire of one of the great lords. It might not have even been ordered by anyone, but just done by someone hoping to curry favor with his master who took the task upon himself,” the laird said.
Adair nodded, remembering the young page from Middlesham who had come to Stanton for her protection, and told her of her half brothers’ deaths after Bosworth. No man claiming a kingship for himself wanted a rival faction rising up to challenge him.
“The old king’s body was borne back to Stirling and placed in the Chapel Royal, where it lay beneath the royal standard until a coffin could be made. The new king rode from Linlithgow with Home, Angus, and Patrick Hepburn. He went into the chapel alone, I was told, and when he came out he gave his hand to each of the three to kiss. When they had the young king left them.
“They brought his brothers, the Duke of Ross and Prince John, to him for it was feared that malcontents on the losing side might take one of the lads, and attempt to form a rebellion around him. The old king was interred at Cambuskenneth beside the queen he had loved. And then we all returned to the palace at Scone for the king’s coronation. He ordered that we all be dressed in black, as he would be. His priest, however, prevailed upon him to wear a short cape in a color. He chose scarlet, and the Duke of Ross chose blue. There was a to-do because the king’s cousin wanted to wear a green cape. The king would not allow it. While he and Ross showed a bit of color for the people, the rest of us could wear naught but black. The king would see his father properly mourned, for he loved him even if his lords did not.
“Little had been prepared for the crowning. The Highland lords who had survived, and many of those in the far west, did not come. There were several bishops among the missing, including Elphinstone. No order of . . . what do you call it, the order in which the lords may enter?”
“Precedence,” Adair told him.
“Aye, precedence! None had been decided, for the parliament had not yet met to appoint office holders for the new king. Angus had been acting as regent for the king, and he decided that Home’s manner was offensive. It was, if the truth be known. The king had to soothe them both so that they would behave. Home was in rare form. He quarreled with his brother, the prior of Coldingham. Argyll and Lord Grey were not speaking, and some damned bishop from some unimportant see lectured us all on the sins of our actions coming to pass.
The greatest aids to the king were his brother, the Duke of Ross, who is yet a lad; and Robert Blacader, the good bishop of Glasgow who had supported him from the beginning. The rest of the lords squabbled and fought like children.”
