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‘I don’t always like being right,’ Nicholas said. ‘You will go?’

‘If I go,’ Sandy said, ‘it won’t be to stay as his guest. You say he can’t spare an army. I say he can spare enough men and enough guns to hold this place for France, until he can send more later. I’ll go. And I’ll bring them back.’ He paused. ‘You don’t agree. You never agree.’

‘I think of alternatives,’ Nicholas said. ‘If you go, you leave behind all these men who have supported you.’

‘They will wait,’ Albany said.

‘And if you don’t come back with your army? Or if they can’t hold out until you do? There are some big guns out there,’ Nicholas said.

‘The trouble with you,’ Albany said, ‘is that you don’t understand the men in this castle. You think that they would prefer to surrender quietly as soon as I’ve gone, and sell their ultimate freedom for a possible promise of indemnity. They won’t. And by God, before I go, I’ll make sure that Drew Avandale knows he has a long, weary summer before him, for I have guns, too.’

That day, Nicholas remembered what the doctors had said about this family, for after so long together, it should have been possible to talk Albany away from his plan; even allowing for his frustration, his hurt vanity, his passion of indignation against England. But Albany was now beyond controlling. He ranged the castle, making his dispositions; appointed the captain who would lead the garrison when he had left, and prepared to depart in a blaze of glory.

The enemy must not know he was leaving, or stop him. Therefore they must believe he was still there.

He led a foray out of the castle, noticed by Avandale’s scouts, who brought a troop of horse down upon him; but not before he had fallen upon the barns and beasts of a loud-mouthed cousin of Eck’s and killed him in the hand-to-hand fighting that resulted. He got back to the castle, but with a toll of wounded that made the raid farcical. Then, his temper further roused, he sent for his gunners and planned to take his revenge for his company’s wounds.

By then, Nicholas had forged some sort of relationship with the men of the garrison, and with Ellem of Butterdene the captain, who would carry the burden of all that Sandy did now. They were loyal, but they were not foolish. Butterdene said, ‘I know. If we fire, they will fire back. But what else can I do? Refuse him? And there are others who feel as he does. They can’t join us now, but one day they will. This stand will further the fight against England.’

Nicholas said, ‘They don’t want to fire against you. Those guns are there simply to invite his highness to stop. In my view, they would not even prevent him leaving for France. They know that France can do nothing.’

It was reported to Sandy, as he expected, but did no good. The guns began firing one dawn. He heard them from his room. Later, Albany sent for him up on the battlements, where he was made to look across and see what damage had been done. Avandale’s banner still flew, but the field of tents on the rising ground opposite showed a haze of smoke in one corner, and scurrying men. It reminded Nicholas of other places, other battles, other sieges that he would rather forget. Of his own tent in flames, because of Henry. He said, ‘What did you hit?’

Sandy said, ‘We were aiming at the gun-carriage. There.’

‘I see the gun-carriage. What did you hit?’

Then it came out. ‘They shared a pavilion next to the guns. They knew the risk.’

‘They didn’t know you were going to start firing for the first time at dawn. Who, Sandy? Who was in the pavilion?’

Wallace of Craigie, the answer was. Ironically, the man who had told Blind Harry all he knew about Albany’s great hero, Wallace.

‘And?’

‘I wouldn’t have wanted it,’ Sandy said. ‘But he had a finger in a good many pies, and those ships of his weren’t above a spot of piracy. His wife was a cousin of Cortachy’s mistress, wasn’t she?’

‘Who?’ said Nicholas repetitively. But he guessed. Sir John Colquhoun of Luss, Gelis’s recent host: