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what this meant and what would now happen as down in the courtyard the guards pulled the gates shut behind the six riders. Somewhere in the castle a bell clanged. The last of the light was fading in the west, where lightning danced silently over the hills of Arran.
    As the men entered the castle’s hall, servants slipped in among them, pouring ruby-red wine into rows of pewter goblets. Outside, the sea’s muffled boom was ever present, the salty tang mingling with the smells of food and wood-smoke. Three extra trestles and boards had been put out to seat everyone and the hall was crowded, the air stuffy with the heat from the fire in the cavernous hearth. On the wall behind the head table hung the earl’s banner, emblazoned with the arms of Carrick: a red chevron on white. On another was strung a grand tapestry capturing, in twists of vivid silk, the moment Malcolm Canmore killed his hated rival, Macbeth, in battle and took the throne, beginning the illustrious dynasty of which the Bruce family were distant descendants. Robert had always thought the figure of the victorious king looked remarkably like his father.
    He shifted impatiently outside the hall’s doors as the guests filed through, the magnates settling into their places at the head table, their knights and retainers filling the benches around the other trestles. With Robert were his younger brothers, Alexander, Thomas and Niall, and his older sister, Isabel. When the last of the men, a youth with startlingly blue eyes, one of which winked at the waiting children, entered, Robert went to step through, determined to find a seat as close to his grandfather as possible. He was brought up short by his mother’s voice.
    ‘You’ll be eating in your room this evening.’
    Robert turned, thunderstruck by the announcement. The formidably tall figure of his mother, the Countess of Carrick, through whom his father had become earl of the wild county on their marriage, moved out of the shadows of the passage. Her abundant black hair was coiled on her head in a complex arrangement of braids, held in place by silver wire. Her white linen gown stretched smoothly over her stomach, swollen with her tenth child.
    Her gaze fixed on Robert as she came towards him, holding the hand of a toddling girl. ‘Do you hear me?’
    ‘Mother . . .’ began Isabel.
    ‘Bid your father and grandfather good night, then upstairs with you.’ This she said in Gaelic, which the children knew meant the conversation was over. She only spoke Gaelic when she was angry or addressing the servants. ‘Go on now,’ she said, switching back into French, her husband’s preferred tongue.
    Entering the hall, which was full of the low murmur of conversation, Robert approached his father, seated at the head table. He tried to catch his gaze, searching for signs of the anger he knew must come had his father been told he had shunned his day’s training. The earl was deep in conversation with a bear of a man, draped in black furs. Robert recognised him as one of the men who had arrived late in the day. ‘Good night, Father,’ he murmured.
    The earl glanced at him, but continued his intent conversation. Wondering, with a burgeoning sense of relief, if the day’s extraordinary events meant Yothre hadn’t told his father after all, Robert moved swiftly towards his grandfather, seated at the table’s other end. The Lord of Annandale had picked up his little sister Christian, who had toddled in with their mother.
    ‘What have you been feeding her, Lady Marjorie?’ the old Bruce was saying as he set the child down with a grunt.
    The countess smiled warmly at the old man. ‘Come on now,’ she chided, ushering her dallying children towards the door, where their nurse was waiting to lead them upstairs.
    As Robert loitered hopefully, his father’s harsh tones struck out.
    ‘You heard your mother. Out!’
    The Lord of Annandale glanced over at Robert, then focused on the earl. ‘After you, son, the boy is