The Renegade(222)
“Is that clear to you now, Master Benstead? You will address me as befits my station and with keen regard to your own. You are a clerk—an ignoble functionary raised above your proper station solely because you are a younger brother to a better man, who holds a post and title given him by King Edward.” He gazed at the loathsome man with a stare that made his eyes glitter like ice. “Hear me clearly. I will decide if and when I wish you to speak to me in future, and I find no temptation to have you do so any time soon.” He lowered his voice to an intimate, conversational level. “You have seen fit his day to usurp my authority as commander of this expedition by summoning this meeting. More than that, you had the gall to summon me like a lackey to attend it. I could have you hanged for that, you fool. Or do you doubt that?”
Benstead appeared to shudder and then raised his head in a gesture of defiance. “I am here on the order of my superiors, and what I have done I have done at their command.”
“Your superiors? This is Carrick, you blockhead, and I command here in my own earldom!” He stopped, willing himself to say no more, and when he spoke again he sounded weary and disgusted. “You are not a pleasing man, Master Benstead, and I am not alone in finding you offensive. And offensive does not even begin to describe my feelings towards you. You are a toady and a lickspittle, grovelling to everyone you think superior to you, while to those unfortunate enough to have you think of them as inferiors, you are a ruthless, abusive, and unrelenting bully. Look about you as you move throughout this encampment today and from now on. You will see few friendly faces, and fewer yet with any sympathy for you in your new estate. And make you no mistake, Master Benstead, your estate is new now. Your days of lording it around here are over. You will perform your allotted task in recording the conduct of this excursion we are on, but you will take no further part in anything having to do with its conduct and you will never again think to cross me and expect to live afterwards. Do I make myself clear?”
“But … but you can’t do that! I am here at King Edward’s direct command.”
“And so am I, you stupid man. Which of us, think you, will have the louder voice in the King’s ear?”
He allowed the silence to lengthen beyond comfort before he added, “I am waiting for your acknowledgment of what I have said, Benstead. Did you understand what I said to you?”
Benstead opened his mouth and made as if to speak, but nothing emerged.
“Well, did you? And have a care to that angry look in your eye before you answer.”
Bruce’s face remained cold and flinty as Benstead squirmed. Finally, though, the cleric nodded, his voice emerging as a strangled squeak.
“I … I heard you, Lord Carrick—hear you.”
“Excellent. Then let us be rid of you for a while.” He looked to where Benstead’s deputy, Burlington, sat head down, his eyes fixed on the table in front of him. “We have nothing to discuss here, since we settled everything this morning while you were absent. But Father Burlington will record what we do say and present you with his documents when we are done. From them you may compile your own report and then you will bring it to me to read before you send it off. Now get out of my sight.”
When the man had gone and the flaps of the tent closed again, Bruce reattached his sword belt, meanwhile looking from face to face among the others, though taking care to keep his eyes away from the priest Burlington. They all stared back at him, two of them approvingly, four blankly, and the remaining half dozen with quiet hostility that might, Bruce mused, have stemmed from resentment of his youth, or from what they thought of as his high-handed arrogance, or merely from the fact that he was a Scots earl asserting seniority over a group of Englishmen. He was slightly surprised to discover that he did not care. They all loathed Benstead, he knew, but he wondered whether any of them might take the cleric’s side against him later, for political reasons. And he discovered that he did not care about that, either.
“Does any of you wish to question what I did?”
The only answer came from Sir Roger Appleton, the man whom Bruce had come to like best of all the English knights attached to the expedition. Appleton spread his hands. “I thought it was excellently done,” he said, then grinned. “The only thing I failed to see was why you didn’t come out and simply tell the fellow what you really thought of him.”
If he had expected the others to laugh at his sally he must have been disappointed, for there was no lessening in the general air of disapproval.
Bruce nodded, firmly. “Well then, shall we get on with this, even though it be a waste of time? We’re all here now, so let me verify that we are still in agreement on what tomorrow holds.” He looked at Sir Christopher Guiscard, who commanded the English forces sent to join Bruce from Berwick. “Sir Christopher. If you would be good enough to outline the plan we agreed upon earlier, we can make short work of this. I must presume that Master Benstead intended to alter what we had decided, but I cannot begin to guess at how he might have done so, though I doubt it could have been for the better. The man is a priest with not an ounce of military training or knowledge. I doubt he could erect a tent, let alone direct an action.”