He did, and this time found it almost pleasant. “May I ask a question, sir?”
“That’s what you’re here for, boy. Ask away.”
Rob frowned down at his cup. “This drink. If it’s medicinal when it’s served hot like this, what is it when it’s served cold?”
That brought a bark of a laugh that Rob could scarce believe he had heard. “It’s dangerous,” the old man said. “And many’s the thousand men who have learned that to their cost, to say nothing of the tens of thousands who went to their deaths having learned it too late. It is called the water of life, but it can drown a man more quickly than any other water. It breeds drunkenness far quicker than ale or mead. But you won’t be drinking it cold in this household. Stand up. Take off that covering and let me look at you.”
Rob rose and shrugged out of the heavy woollen robe, then stood as the old man scanned him up and down.
“Put it back on,” the old man said when he had finished. “You’re big. Near as big as your father, even now. How old are you, seventeen?”
“Sixteen, your lordship.”
“I’m not your lordship, I’m your grandsire. Call me Grandfather.”
“Grandfather.”
Another abrupt laugh. “You sound as though you’re tasting it on your tongue for the first time, like another new drink. You’ve never liked me, have you?”
Cautiously, his slow movements belying his racing thoughts, Rob sat up straighter and pulled his shoulders back. He looked directly into the fierce old eyes.
“You have never given me reason to, sir.”
“Explain. What do you mean?”
There was no passion in the question, no anger. And that gave Rob the courage to continue. He set his cup down with great care on a small table by his chair.
“In all my life you have never spoken to me directly, other than to order me out from under your feet when I was a child … Except for once, in the stables when I was seven. I was passing through on my way to the tower, and you came in the far door, in haste. I stepped aside to give you room and came close to some fresh hay, and you shouted at me to stand away from it and not make a mess of it. And then you saw it was already scattered and you cursed at me for having done it … I felt unjustly condemned, since I had touched nothing, and I cried as you rode away, still muttering to yourself. That is my single clearest memory of you.”
Lord Robert stared at him, his face expressionless. “I did that? I don’t remember it. But you most obviously do, and I don’t doubt you … I cursed you? What did I say?”
Rob shrugged. “I don’t remember that, sir. I knew only that you were angry at me without cause, and I was hurt … by your readiness to think ill of me.”
“Hmm … ” The patriarch looked down at his cup for long moments, then raised it and sipped deeply before looking back at his grandson’s pale face. “That memory has festered in you these what, nine years?” he growled. “I jalouse it’s too deeply rooted now to be pulled out easily. But hear what I am going to tell you now, for I speak not only as your grandsire but as the Lord of Annandale and chief of the House of Bruce. I am Bruce, and I never lie. Many resent me for that. It makes them uncomfortable. But it is a part of me that none can question or deny. My word is my worth and I do not deal in falsehoods. Do you hear me, boy?”
Rob nodded.
“Then hear me further. I was not angry at you that day, all those years ago, no matter what you thought. Had I been, I would not have forgotten it.” He held up a hand, as though to cut short a protest. “I am not saying I was not angry. In all probability I was, for I anger easily, even now, and I was worse when I was younger, unwilling to accept the behaviour of fools or the uselessness of idiots. Someone else must have angered me that day and you but caught the brunt of it, I fear. But you were certainly not the cause of my foul temper, though you fell victim to it. So I would make amends, if that is possible. Is there something that would serve, this late, to counterbalance the hurt you took that day?”
Rob sat numb, overwhelmed by the differences so quickly shown between the man who had spoken those words and the man he had believed him to be. He shook his head. “No, sir,” he said quietly. “You have already healed it. I see now that the fault was more mine than yours. It was the child who saw what was not there, too young to see or understand the reality of things.”
“Partly so,” the old man said. “But that does not excuse the heedless hurt of it. You would not have been the first innocent I treated so … nor the last. Your father believes I think too much, brooding and ever mulling, scheming and anticipating things that never come to pass, forbye trying to live other people’s lives for them. And he may be right. But in my own mind, within the conscience that the churchmen tell us we all have, I sometimes rue my lack of thought, the thoughtlessness that leads to needless hurt such as we are talking about.” He broke off suddenly, peering keenly at the boy. “What is it? You look troubled.”