Lion at Bay (10 page)

‘The daftie boy,’ Dog Boy said. ‘He wanted the shell from yon pardoner’s hat but it was only later that I realized he had asked for it before and also been refused.’

He stopped and stared at the slowly comprehending faces.

‘Lamprecht came here before and the daftie boy saw him. I am betting sure the pardoner went to see Jop – and then went to find us and the Earl Robert. I dinna ken why, but I was sure no good was in it.’

A plaintive bawling snapped the silence and Sim cursed.

‘Stirk Davey’s coos are scattered,’ he moaned. ‘The Riccarton English will be sooking the juice off steaks afore the morn’s done – and we are out by a pretty penny.’

Hal thought that a harsh judgement on a timely use of charging cattle, but his head hurt so much that he felt sick and could not speak for a long time. When he did, it was not cows that he spoke of.

Instead, his question fell on them like a crow on a dead eye, made them realize who was missing.

‘Where’s Lamprecht?’

Lincoln

Nativity of Christ (Christ’s Mass Day), 1304

Steam from horses and riders blended with the fine gruel of churned up mud and snow in a sluggish mist that was filled with shouts and grunts and clashes of steel so that the men behind Bruce shifted on their horses.

‘Wait,’ he commanded and he felt them settle – all but brother Edward, of course, who muttered and fretted on his right.

Bruce looked at the wild, swirling
mêlée
, men hammering one another with blunted weapons, howling with glee, breaking off to bring their blowing horses round in a tight circle and hurl themselves back into the mad knotted tangle of fighting.

‘Now,’ Edward growled impatiently. ‘There he is …’

‘Wait.’

Beyond the mud-frothed field loomed the great, dark snow-patched bulk of the castle, where the ladies of the court watched from the comfort of a high tower, surrounded by charcoal braziers, swaddled in comforting furs and gloved, so that their applause would sound like the pat of mouse feet.

‘Now,’ Edward repeated, his voice rising slightly.

‘Wait.’

‘Aaah.’

Bruce heard the long, frustrated growl, saw the surge of the powerful
destrier
and cursed his brother even as he signalled the others to follow the spray of kicked-up mud. With a great howl of release, Bruce’s
mesnie
burst from the cover of the copse of trees and fell on the struggling mass.

Too soon, Bruce realized. Far too soon – the target saw Edward descend, the trail of riders behind him, and broke from the fight to face them, howling from underneath the bucket helm for his own men to help him. De Valence, he bellowed. De Valence.

Edward’s light, unarmoured horse balked and swerved as de Valence’s powerful warhorse reared and flailed with lethal hooves, the blue and white, mud-stained caparison flapping. Coming in on the other side, Bruce leaned and grabbed a handful of de Valence’s surcoat, took a smashing blow on his mailed arm which numbed it, causing him to lose his grip.

De Valence, off balance on the plunging
destrier
, gave a sharp, muffled cry and fell sideways, raking one spur along the caparisoned back of the warhorse. It screamed and bolted; de Valence, his other foot caught, bounced off behind it, yelling once as he carved a rut through the mud and into the dangerous, prancing pack.

‘Him,’ yelled Edward and his brother screwed round in the saddle as a figure – the one who had hit him, he realized – tried to get away from the Bruce men. ‘Rab – get him.’

Bruce reacted like a stoat on a rabbit, without thinking, seizing the man round the waist and hauling him bodily out of the saddle ignoring the curses and kicks and flails. He carried the man out of the maelstrom
mêlée
and dumped him like a sack of metal pots.

Malenfaunt, dazed and bruised, felt rough hands on him; someone tried to tear off the bucket helm, but it was laced to his shoulders. Then a voice, rough as a badger’s rear-end, bellowed into the breathing holes for him to yield. He waved one hand, sore and sick with the knowledge of what this might cost him – and at the hands of the Bruces, whom he already hated. Even the satisfaction of having saved de Valence from capture did not balm it much.

Bruce saw the man’s device, knew the man for Malenfaunt and rounded on his grinning brother.

‘We struck for an eagle,’ he said bitterly, ‘but ended with a chick.’

Edward scowled; the friendly scramble of tourney continued to whirl like the mad scrapping of dogs, to celebrate the birthday of Christ.

Abbey of Evesham, Worcester

The same night

Kirkpatrick slid to Hal’s side.

‘Gone to London,’ he grunted softly out of the side of his mouth, rubbing his hands at the flames of the great fire and not looking at Hal. He hawked, then spat in the fire so that the sizzle made those nearest growl at his bad manners. Kirkpatrick’s grin back at them – travellers and pilgrims all – was feral, as befitted his pose as a hireling soldier, rough as a forge-file and not to be trifled with.

‘Had that from three of his kind, bone-hunting wee shites like himself. Heading for Compostella, says one o’ them.’

‘They ken it is him?’ Hal demanded and Kirkpatrick nodded.

‘Aye,’ he said in a whisper. ‘An ugly dung-drop who speaks strangely and is named Lamprecht? Not hard to find even if he keeps his name hidden. Besides, he was a known face to the wee priests here.’

Hal stared moodily at the fire, while the wind howled and battered. There was snow in that wind and the travel next day would be hard and slow – they would probably have to lead their horses for most of it, so there was another curse to lay at the door of the wee pardoner, whose cunning had robbed an earl and almost led Hal and Kirkpatrick and others to their death. Hal shifted and winced; the cut under his ribs was still scabbed and leaking.

‘Should have watched him closer in the first place,’ Kirkpatrick said, as if in answer. ‘Should have dealt with him and Jop both in that night.’

Hal turned brooding eyes on him.

‘Easy as that, is it? Killed then or killed soon,’ he replied bitterly. ‘Scarce makes a difference – murder is murder.’

‘Weesht,’ hissed Kirkpatrick, looking right and left. ‘Keep that sort o’ speech laced.’

He leaned forward, so that his lips were closer, his breath tickling the hair in Hal’s ear.

‘That bell did not ring itself and it was clear that was what wee by-blow Lamprecht came for, not any Rood or rubies. He rang it out and set us in the path o’ the English garrison for revenge and now he has the power to do the Bruce a bad turn, for the Earl has revealed himself in his desire for the Rood, as plain as if he had nailed his claim to the crown to the door of St Giles. And if the Bruce suffers, we suffer.’

‘Jop is beyond us. Lamprecht is a creishy wee fox,’ Hal replied, ‘who has contrived to get us killed and failed. He is running and will want to take his ill-gotten goods away. We should let him.’

Kirkpatrick made a head gesture to say perhaps, perhaps not. There was merit in the Herdmanston lord’s appreciation of matters – the wee pardoner was certainly headed south, from monastery to abbey, priory to chapel, all places where he was sure of a free meal and a safe bed for the night. But the wee bastard had the Rood and Bruce, for all that pursuing it was a danger to him – and so all those round him – could not see it pass him by and do nothing.

Returning to London was certainly not safe for Lamprecht, Kirkpatrick thought, so it may be that Hal has it right and Lamprecht was planning to carry on to the coast and a ship to France. Back to the eastern Middle Sea, where his riches could be sold with no questions asked and where his way of speaking would not mark him.

‘He was daft to try what he did,’ Hal muttered. ‘He must hold a hard hate for what we did to him that night in the leper house of Berwick.’

Kirkpatrick flapped a hand, keeping his voice low as he hissed a reply.

‘We did nothing much – showed him a blade and slapped him once or twice. He was fortunate – for his partnering of that moudiwart bastard Malise Bellejambe he should have been throat-cut there and then.’

‘Your answer to all,’ Hal replied tersely and Kirkpatrick looked back at him from under lowered brows.

‘That way we would not now be dealing with a nursed flame that will not be put out as easily as spit on a spark,’ he said. ‘Our saving grace is that the wee pardoner is stupid enough to try and play intrigue with the
nobiles
, whose lives entire are spent in makin’ and breakin’ plots and plans more cunning than any Lamprecht may devise.’

‘Like Buchan?’

Kirkpatrick nodded grimly.

‘Throw a Comyn in the air and ye discover a wee man thumbin’ his neb at a Bruce when he lands. Buchan has sent yon Malise in pursuit of Lamprecht, to find out what he has that the Bruce chases.’

‘Death for the wee pardoner, then,’ Hal growled sullenly, ‘no matter who reaches him first.’

Kirkpatrick, swaddling himself in cloak, surged with irritation.

‘Christ, man, ye are a pot o’ cold gruel,’ he spat in a sibilant hiss. ‘Make your mind to it – the wee pardoner is a killed man and ye had better buckle to the bit if it is yourself has to do it. Else it will be us killed. As well that Jop is cold – as yon wee Riccarton priest should be betimes.’

‘Yon priest kens nothin’,’ Hal muttered bitterly, ‘though Jop might have explained what Lamprecht intended, had he been allowed to live a wee while longer.’

‘Aye weel,’ Kirkpatrick growled, aware that he had been hasty with the knife – but Christ’s Bones, the man was coming at him. The wee priest, on the other hand, was neither here nor there. For certes, Kirkpatrick said to himself with grim humour, he will, by now, wish he is no longer here – and explained to Hal, patient as a mother, why it would have been better if he had died.

‘The wee priest kens folk were spyin’ Jop out. He kens the name Lamprecht, which was spoke out for all to hear,’ he whispered, flat and cold. ‘That name has already reached Comyn ears, which is why Malise is sent out. It will, for certes, be whispered in Longshanks’ own by now.’

Hal said nothing, for the truth of it was a cold burn, like the wound along his ribs. Jop was better dead, if only for his own sake; the King’s questioners would not have stinted on their store of agony – for all Edward Longshanks proudly pontificated about there being no torture in his realm – and the priest would be telling all he knew to anyone who would listen.

The more Hal thought on it, the more he wondered about what might have been inadvertently revealed that night. His dreams were cold-sweated with what the priest might be saying, but Hal knew he would have been hard put to kill the man for it. Nor was he sure he could kill Lamprecht as coldly.

Yet the nagging why of it was a skelf in the finger. Why had Lamprecht come back to the north in the first place, after all that had happened to him? Just to risk himself for the chance of revenge on those who had wronged him, as he saw it? It was possible, as Kirkpatrick put it, that he nursed a flame of hate. And Buchan would be interested because a Bruce was involved in it.

‘Aye, weel,’ Kirkpatrick said in answer to the last, a short chuckle saucing his bitter growl, ‘as to that last, you underestimate the sour charm you exert on that earl – he might be spying the chance of vengeance on you himself. The bright shine on this is that Buchan, who can never resist the charms of seeing Bruce or yourself discomfited has sent Malise Bellejambe after Lamprecht and so he is let loose from being the chain-dog o’ your light of love.’

‘A perfect chance for me to rescue her,’ Hal replied laconically, ‘save that I am here.’

And five years lie between us like a moat, he added to himself; she may not even welcome a gallant knight’s rescue, never mind a worn lover with blood on his hands.

‘Besides,’ he added, bitter with the memory, ‘Buchan has already had vengeance on me. Why would he suddenly want more?’

Kirkpatrick, shuffling himself comfortable in the middle of a snoring, growling pack of other pilgrims, did not say what he thought – that perhaps, even now, the Earl’s bold countess had mentioned Hal’s hated name aloud. Worse yet, cried it out when her husband broke into her, as Kirkpatrick heard he was wont to do, like a drover earmarking a prize heifer.

It would be enough, he thought, to drive the Earl to visit some final judgement on the man who so cuckolded him. Christ’s Bones, if it were mine I would be so driven.

Yet it was not only the lord of Herdmanston that Buchan pursued, but Bruce. The wee Lothian knight was simply a hurdle in the way of that, for the Comyn would do all they could to bring down a Bruce. And the same reversed.

Somewhere, the monks began a chanting singsong litany and a bell rang.

‘No rest for any this night,’ he muttered in French.

‘It is the Christ Mass,’ Hal answered him, with a chide in the tone of it.

‘Aye, weel,’ Kirkpatrick growled back, ‘like most weans, He benefited from the peace o’ silence in the cradle. A good observance for these times, I am thinking.’

‘Yer a black sinner,’ Hal replied, with a twist of smile robbing the poison of it.

‘Ye are a dogged besom o’ righteousness, Hal o’ Herdmanston,’ Kirkpatrick answered, ‘but ye are mainly for sense, save ower that wummin.’

‘Christ,’ Hal growled back at him, ‘enough hagging me with that. If you had a wummin you cared an ounce for yourself, man, you would know the sense in what I feel for Isabel of Mar.’

Kirkpatrick laughed, though there was little warmth in it.

‘You once asked me as to what I wanted from serving the Bruce,’ he said suddenly. ‘So I ask you in return, Hal of Herdmanston – what is it keeps you here, if you carp at the work Bruce has for us? Siller? Your fortalice restored? Yon wee coontess?’

I miss Herdmanston, thought Hal. And Bangtail and Dog Boy, sent out to chase after Wallace and neither of them up to the task of it. And Sim, who oversees Herdmanston’s rebuilding. And women to talk to rather than swive in a sweaty, meaningless rattle. And bairns laughing, with sticky faces. And men building rather than tearing apart. And an end of folk the likes of Malise – aye, and Kirkpatrick himself.