Slowly, someone in the assembly began to applaud and moments later he was joined by a second man and then another, until all of them were clapping their hands together in approval. Angus Mohr MacDonald bowed his head, then raised his arm high and brandished his fist. And then he turned to Alexander of Argyll and placed an arm about his shoulders.
Rob Bruce lay awake in the darkest hours of the night. He could not remember ever being awake at that time. The previous day, though, had been unlike any other, and it had been close to the middle of the night before he and Angus Og had arrived back in the castle to find the housekeeper waiting for them in Rob’s small room. She was in her nightclothes, pacing the floor angrily when they walked in. But Rob, who had known Allie since he was a baby in her arms, knew how to read her moods and sensed that she had not been too worried. She was wise enough to know that the presence of so many grand and unusual guests and armed encampments would have been irresistible to curious boys forced to retire early when so much was going on around them.
Despite his exhaustion, though, sleep had eluded Rob, and he’d lain on his back for hours, staring wide-eyed up into the darkness long after his candle had guttered out. He saw again and again the sudden, brutal violence and the blood spilt from appalling wounds. He heard the explosive, hate-filled sounds and watched again and again as the raised sword fell from the dying man’s fingers. And he saw Angus Mohr again and again: those long, tense fingers flexing behind his back as he poured scorn on his guards; heard again the milder voice he had used when he spoke to his men in the light of the new-lit torches. And suddenly a door swung open in his mind, showing him what it was that had been tugging at him as he had watched and listened beneath the hawthorn tree: it was a word, once obscure but now more clearly understood, that had been thrust upon him several months earlier by his tutor.
It had been the first warm day of spring. Rob, who would be leaving home within days to spend the springtime with his uncle, was chafing at having to sit inside and study when he might have been outside in the sunshine. In desperation he had asked the old priest—it would be decades yet before he realized how young Father Ninian actually was, though the man had tutored Rob’s own father— why they could not conduct their lessons outside, on the grass. Ninian had straightened up and peered at him before muttering, more to himself than to Rob, “I have enough trouble keeping your mind upon your work in here. Why would I add to it by taking you outside into the distractions of the world? And why would you even ask me to? Do you believe me so easily manipulable?”
Seeing the blankness on the boy’s face he added, in his customary didactic way, “Manipulable. From the Latin manus, a hand. Surely you know it?”
Rob had shaken his head. “No, Father.”
“That is ridiculous, Robert, and unacceptable. This is a word you should surely know, coming from a family adept in its applications.” He paused, blinked, and continued. “Manipulation means moving something, or controlling it, by hand. That stylus you are clutching— when you write with it you are manipulating it. And since you can manipulate it, it is therefore manipulable—able to be manipulated. Do you understand?”
Robert nodded, his yearning to be outside ousted by a strange word. Ninian had taught him to love words, so that he was constantly learning new ones and searching for others newer yet. But then he frowned. “If you please, Father? You said my family is … ” he hesitated over the word, knowing it but unaccustomed to pronouncing it, “adept at it. Why should that be?”
His tutor sucked in a great sigh and released it with a grunt. “Because your grandfather is Bruce of Annandale.”
“Are you saying, sir, that other people’s families can’t manipulate things?”
The priest’s face broke into a fleeting smile. “No, Robert,” he said more quietly. “That is not what I meant at all. Everyone who has hands can manipulate. But the word is a rich one, complex with layers of meaning. Every family has its manipulators, of differing abilities, but your family has Lord Robert, who has more aptitude in such things than any other I could name.” He stopped again, seeing the utter bafflement on his student’s face, and then he sighed a second time and closed the massive Bible from which he had been reading to the boy.
“Very well then,” he said, the half smile flickering again. “I will accept that you are not attempting to manipulate me at this moment, so let us leave the Blessed Paul—a great manipulator in his own right—and proceed elsewhere.” He raised a hand towards Rob, spread his fingers wide and then clenched them, repeating the gesture several times with variations, moving the hand around. “Manipulation. In its most basic sense it means moving and controlling things with your hands, often moulding them as a potter moulds his clay. Have you watched our potter, Fergus, at his wheel?” Rob nodded. “Then you understand what I am saying, no?” Again Rob nodded. “Excellent. So, the most basic level understood, we move forward. Come here now and sit at the table with me.”