Swiftly, chillingly, the shadows seemed to close around the sanctuary as Bartholeme thrust the brooch brie?y toward the boar's head in offering, as a priest lifts the paten at the moment of consecration, then licked the blood away with a sweep of his tongue. As he did so, his senses kindled to the scent of his prey: the heady perfume of blood, bone, and spirit.

He bent his gaze to the crystal, peering into its murky depths. His breath quickened, and he caught his balance on the edge of the desecrated altar, no longer seeing with mere vision. Like a panting hound, he turned unseeing eyes this way and that, straining to pick up his quarry's elusive trail. The ghostly scent drew him out of himself as, leaving his body behind, he hurled his spirit into the hunt.

Whole landscapes opened before him. The lure drew him racing through the mountains of Atholl, weaving in and out of moon-silvered glens where rushing cataracts tumbled through the rocks and red deer trembled at the howling of wolves. The trail he followed led him south-east-north- west. Then abruptly it vanished.

Snarling frustration, Bartholeme cast round him, trying to recover the scent, but all in vain. The trail of Bruce had suddenly vanished into thin air, with no slightest trace of his essence lingering to suggest where the rebel king might have gone to ground.

Only reluctantly did he abandon the chase and allow his perceptions to return to normal, slowly straightening from his bent stance before the desecrated altar. He opened his eyes to ?nd Lorn and Mercurius gazing at him expectantly.

"Did you ?nd him?" Lorn dared to ask.

Curtly, Bartholeme shook his head.

"What does this mean?" Lorn demanded, looking to Mercurius for enlightenment. But the answer came from Bartholeme.

"It means," he said, "that someone has contrived to place Bruce in sanctuary. My suspicion would be the Templars who are said to ride in his company. I cannot even guess where that sanctuary might be, but as long as he remains there, he is beyond my reach.

"But this sword cuts both ways," he continued, handing the brooch back to Lorn, eyes agleam in the dying torchlight. "While Bruce remains in hiding, he is as lost to his followers and his cause as he is to us.

Sooner or later, however, he will have to emerge-or abandon forever his claim to the Scottish throne. It may well be that fears for his wife will lure him out, if nothing else does.

"And when that happens, we will have him."

Chapter Thirteen.

Early February, 1307.

"I GIVE UP," AUBREY SAID ON A NOTE OF EXASPERATION. HE drew up the hood of his mantle and braced against the wintry wind as he mounted the top of a knoll. "How can a sheep just vanish?"

"Well, she can't have strayed far," Torquil said from farther downhill. "This island isn't that big."

"Aye, and there aren't any wolves," Bruce added, with attempted good humor. "It's probably just as well that none of us plan to be herdsmen the rest of our lives."

His tone was lighthearted, but Torquil knew that the easy banter covered an inner restlessness that had cost the king many wakeful nights since their arrival on Iona four months before. Not for the ?rst time, he found himself wishing that Bruce could ?nd some relief from the growing burden of grief and frustration he carried in his heart.

News had reached them early in the winter of the betrayal of Kildrummy Castle-and crueler still had been the reported death of Bruce's brother Neil, subjected to all the horrors of a traitor's death: hanged, drawn, and quartered like William Wallace.

Since then, they had heard nothing more, and the absence of information weighed as heavily on the king as any chain.

"In the days of our Celtic forebears," old Abbot Fingon had reminded them, as no further news came, "this time following Epiphany was called Imbolc. It was and is a time of waiting, the season when the sap returns to the roots, when seeds lie dormant under the ground. The whole earth sleeps, gathering strength to bear fruit in the coming year. So must it be with you."

But as the long nights stretched on, taking that counsel to heart was becoming more and more dif?cult for all of them-here, sequestered away from family and friends. And Bruce was ?nding it harder still to reconcile the royal necessity to preserve his own life with his ?erce desire to confront the enemy who had so destroyed Scotland's sovereign peace. The very isolation upon which his safety depended chafed him like a hair shirt. For hours each day, he prowled the narrow con?nes of the island like a prisoner in a cell, as though seeking by an act of will to enlarge its boundaries.

More than a month had pa.s.sed since the king and his two Templar companions had observed the gentle solemnities of Christmas with the little Columban community. It now was nearing Candlemas, the Christian name for the ancient time of Imbolc, when the new candles were blessed for the service of light in the coming year.

With the gradual lengthening of days, Torquil believed and hoped in his heart that their fortunes would likewise lighten; but so far, the prospects for their future and that of Scotland seemed as bleak as the dark clouds ma.s.sing over the neighboring Isle of Mull, heavy with the promise of snow. It was the prospect of yet another storm that had prompted Abbot Fingon to send them out looking for the sheep that had strayed.

"Ho! h.e.l.lo, up there!"

A voice faintly hailed them from farther down the slope: the fourth member of their party, in the white robes and mantle of a Columban monk, pointing excitedly to another patch of white at his feet.

"There's Ninian waving to us," Bruce said, peering in that direction. "Looks like he's found that ewe."

As the three of them made their way quickly back down the hillside, Ninian brie?y bent out of sight and reappeared with something white cradled in his arms.

"Look what Cushla has given us!" he exclaimed, displaying a tiny lamb. "It's very early for lambing-and a good thing we found her, with a storm coming on." He glanced at the mother, who was somewhat anxiously nuzzling at his knees. "Can the three of you bring her along?"

"Of course," Torquil said.

Somewhat inexpertly, the three of them began chivvying the ewe back in the direction of the abbey, though the animal was happy enough to dog Ninian's heels without prompting, since he carried her newborn lamb. Reckoned now as one of the more venerable members of the Columban community, Brother Ninian had lost nothing of the serene humility that Torquil remembered from the earlier days of their acquaintance, more than a decade before, embodying all the gentleness and grace he had learned to a.s.sociate with the followers of Saint Columba.

"I do believe we've found them not a moment too soon," Ninian said, as a bank of darker-looking clouds pa.s.sed in front of the wan patch of brightness where the sun would have been, further dimming the pallid daylight. "The storm will soon be upon us."

Aubrey glanced at the clouds and ducked deeper into the cowl of his white mantle-Columban habit, here among the brethren, very like Templar robes, though he and Torquil would resume the leathers and tweeds of the Highlands when they eventually left the island. Bruce alone wore secular attire.

"Brother Torquil says that you and your brothers can affect the weather," he observed. "If that's so, why don't you ask the winds to hold the snow at bay? Or better still, send the clouds away to heap it on the heads of the English?"

Smiling, Ninian paused and bent down to let the anxious ewe sniff her lamb. "It is as well not to beg a favor from a friend unless you truly need it," he said. "If we were forever pet.i.tioning the saints to change the weather, they would soon lose patience and turn a deaf ear when we pray for truly important things."

Aubrey looked nonplussed, clearly uncertain whether he was meant to take these remarks seriously, and Bruce looked faintly dubious. Torquil might have shared their skepticism if, on a previous visit to Iona, he had not seen Brother Ninian call upon Saint Columba to shift a contrary wind in their favor. (That time, it had been an important thing.) The relationship between the Columbans and their spiritual patrons was uniquely intimate-with results that would astonish the uninformed. In time, both Aubrey and Bruce might witness a measure of the Columbans' spiritual alignment for themselves, and would look back on this time among the brothers with new vision.

The temperature was de?nitely falling; the warmth of the ?re in the abbey refectory would be most welcome after several hours in the cold. They were still a furlong away from the abbey gate when they heard the pealing of the community bell.

"It can't be time for the evening of?ce," Torquil said, with a glance at Ninian, though it was growing very dark. "Does that mean there's trouble?"

"Possibly," Ninian allowed.

They crested the last hill and started down, with the steel-gray chop of the sound of Iona stretched out before them under a shroud of lowering cloud and the beginning ?urries of snow. As they did so, a ship materialized out of the mist, making for the beach: not the ?at-bottomed raft that served the community as a ferry, nor a local ?shing coracle, either, but a graceful, high-prowed galley of twenty oars. Standing apart from the men who manned the oars were four pa.s.sengers, muf?ed for warmth in mantles and sheepskins. Before Torquil could caution Bruce to draw back out of sight, the king gave a joyous cry of recognition.

"It's my brothers!" he exclaimed, pointing. "Look! It's Thomas and Alexander!"

Straining to pierce the gloom, Torquil con?rmed it.

"So it is."

"Is that Robert Boyd with them?" Aubrey said.

"G.o.d be praised, it is!" Bruce replied.

"And Alexander Lindsay," Torquil supplied, his own excitement kindling. The revelation brought immediate relief for all of them, for the younger Bruce brothers had been unaccounted for since Methven.

And neither Boyd nor Lindsay had been heard from since Dail Righ, when Bruce had charged them with escorting the royal women to safety.

"Now we'll have news at last!" Bruce cried, his gray eyes alight with long-suppressed relief.

Careening recklessly down the slope, he set off impetuously toward the knot of Columban brothers gathering on the shingled beach. Torquil left Ninian and Aubrey to shepherd the ewe into the shieling and hurried after the king, occasionally slipping on loose shale. Ominously, he found his own emotions vacillating between curiosity, hope, and foreboding; he prayed the latter was mere anxiety. Hungrily intent as a hawk on its prey, Bruce had not taken his eyes from the incoming vessel.

Most of the community now had gathered on the sh.o.r.e. With a ?nal sweep of the oars, the galley's crew sent it coasting into the shallows toward the beach. Kilting up their habits, several of the younger brethren braved the icy water to wade out and help tow the vessel up onto the shingle. Bruce rushed to greet his brothers and his friends as they disembarked, ?inging his arms around them in wol?sh affection.

"Alexander! Thomas-all of you! To see you alive and well is worth more than all the gold in England!" he cried. "Now, as you love me, tell me what brings you here, and how our cause is faring."

Before any of the newcomers could answer, Abbot Fingon pushed through the gathering knot from the sh.o.r.e behind them, arms outstretched in a shepherding motion to draw them away from the sh.o.r.e.

"Come in ?rst!" he said, with a glance at the lowering sky. "The snow is nearly upon us. Time enough for news, once everyone is safely indoors. Come, come."

Fat, wet snow?akes were starting to fall, sporadically set awhirl by gusts of wind. Leaving the galley crew to secure their vessel, the newcomers followed Bruce and the aging abbot up the stony slope toward the monastery. Brother Fionn, the community's acting guest master, was waiting to hurry them into the cloister court. By then, visibility had fallen dramatically, along with the temperature.

"The chapter room is at your disposal, Sire," Abbot Fingon said, leading them across the yard. "There's a ?re lit, and hot broth to warm you. You'll not be disturbed. I know you will have much to discuss."

Inside, the king and his companions crowded close around the blazing hearth while a young brother dispensed steaming cups of broth and then departed. Aubrey soon joined them. By then, Bruce's initial elation had subsided to guarded sobriety, for none of the newcomers had volunteered any news.

"I feared you slain at Methven," he told his brothers, sitting as he cupped cold hands around a warm cup.

"What took you so long to seek me out?"

Thomas Bruce gave a snort. "We were in hiding ourselves, for much of the time."

"Thomas was wounded in the ?ghting," Alexander offered. "Not badly, but too much for serious hill-stalking. Crofters helped us tend his wound and hid us until he was well enough to move on. By then, Dail Righ had happened, and you were nowhere to be found. The only reason we didn't give you up for dead was that the English are still out looking for you."

"Then-how did you know to come here?" Bruce asked.

"We paid a call at Balantrodoch," Thomas replied. "Which took some doing, since the English are all around that area, but we managed a word with Brother Luc. We ?gured that if you were still alive, you'd be with Brother Torquil and Brother Aubrey-and the Templars would know where they were. Brother Luc didn't know for certain where you'd ended up, but suggested that they might have brought you here for refuge-or at least that the good brethren of Iona might know your whereabouts. So here we are."

Smiling, Bruce shifted his attention to Boyd and Lindsay, who as yet had spoken not a word. His expression sobered as he searched their faces.

"I am glad of it," he said, "but I had hoped for fair tidings. Your expressions speak otherwise. Tell me the grimmer news. Whatever our losses, I must know what they are."

Boyd nodded reluctant acceptance, glancing uncomfortably at Lindsay.

"You will have known to expect some of the deaths- Seton, Scrymgeour-probably most who were taken at Methven. We saw men wade into the water in their armor to drown, rather than face capture and execution by the English."

Torquil recoiled, glancing at the king to gauge his reaction. A coldness had stolen over Bruce's countenance, leaving his features hard as granite as he set aside his now-forgotten cup.

"Continue," he said quietly.

"Simon Fraser was captured at Caerlaverock," Lindsay said. "His head now adorns a pike on London Bridge, side by side with that of William Wallace."

Bruce stiffened. Fraser had been one of his closest friends. All of the dead had been men of courage and conviction. That they had been willing to die for Scotland's cause did not make it any easier to contemplate the manner of their deaths.

"He abides in good company," the king said softly, haunted eyes focused on something only he could see.

"There is more, I think. ?"

"Aye, fourteen others have been hanged at Newcastle," Boyd admitted. "More, I fear, will soon follow."

"What of my wife and the other women?" Bruce asked, after a beat. "Do you know if they reached Orkney safely?"

Mutely Lindsay shook his head.

"They were captured at Tain-taken from sanctuary at the church of Saint Duthac," Boyd said. "The Earl of Ross seized them before the very altar, despite old Atholl's efforts to protect them. They are now in English custody. Atholl. has since been hanged, and his body beheaded and burned."

Bruce looked like a man just kicked in the stomach.

"Dear G.o.d, no!" he whispered. "What about Neil?"

"No one knows," Lindsay said quietly, "but we must a.s.sume the English have him as well. Kildrummy was betrayed from within. Pembroke holds it now."

Bruce had clasped his hands together in front of him in a parody of prayer, ?ngers white at the knuckles, as though he clutched an enemy by the throat, but he forced himself to ?ex the ?ngers and relax them, breathing out with a heavy sigh.

"At least the women are still alive," he muttered after a moment. "Where are they being held?"

"Your wife is under house arrest at a manor house down in Holderness," Boyd said. "We believe that your sister Christian and your daughter Marjorie have both been sent to nunneries."

Bruce brie?y closed his eyes, breathing a faint sigh. "They might have fared worse. And Mary and Isabel?"

No one spoke.

"Tell me."

"Edward-has ordered them put into cages."

"What?"

"They say that Mary has been taken to Roxburgh Castle, and Lady Isabel to Berwick," Thomas said miserably. "The cages are suspended outside the walls-in this weather! On display like so many wild beasts in a menagerie!"

Torquil's shock was mirrored in the king's stunned expression. For a moment no one said anything. Then Bruce got blindly to his feet.

"Scripture says that all the kingdoms of the earth are the Devil's, to dispose of as he wills," he said dazedly, his gaze vaguely turned toward the ?re. "Have we been guilty of the basest folly, in seeking to claim this kingdom for our own? Has G.o.d, in truth, abandoned us? If so, what hope have we of withstanding the powers of Darkness, if we are left to stand alone?"

"Robert-" his brother Alexander began.

"No, make me no excuses!" Bruce said hotly. "For four months I have played the monk to no good purpose, while Edward visits on my family and friends the vengeance he would like to vent on me.

Perhaps the only attribute bestowed on me by the Stone of Destiny was the pride of self-delusion.

Perhaps the power to shape our country's future rests in hands other than mine. I owe it to those who have died, no less than to those yet unborn, to confront the truth."

With these bitter words, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his cloak and made for the door.

"Robert, wait!" Thomas called after him. "Where are you going?"

"To wrestle, like Jacob, with the angel of the Lord!" Bruce shouted back ?ercely. "Now leave me to it!"