The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (117 page)

It was unkind and Bruce knew it as he spoke, but fear made him careless of the Roslin lord's feelings.

‘And if your Herdmanston kinsman and namesake falters, my lord,' he declared to the stricken lord of Roslin, ‘we will, in truth, be defending this realm with nothing better than long sticks.'

Crunia, Kingdom of Castile

That night …

They made a plan, of sorts; Sim levered himself up and flung himself into the turmoil of the streets like a man plunging into surf, while Hal stayed with a flask of watered wine in the maelstrom of cockfighters, waiting to see if Piculph returned.

The day slid to a groaning end, the sun a raw, bloodied egg trembling on the horizon. The cockfights filtered to an exhausted finish and the victors fed and watered their weary, wounded champions, before cosseting them carefully in the dark comfort of linen bags, which they hung high on posts to thwart the vermin. The losers made more pragmatic arrangements and chicken stew was cheap on the tavern bill of fare.

Sim ate his with considerable gusto, but Hal neither liked the taste nor the idea that the white and red might be mixed in with the green and gold – though the truth was that the dying light brought out hordes of fluttering insects, mad for the sconces and, in the dim, Hal could not tell what had started out in his stew and what had landed since, drunk with light.

Sim, presented with this, paused, shrugged and spooned on, observing only that the folk of Compostella could take perfectly good food and make it ‘as heated as the Earl of Hell's hearth'. Yet he ate Hal's bowl as well and, at the end, slid it away from him, belched and sighed.

‘They ken how to bliss saints, mark me well,' he observed, swallowing watered wine and grimacing at the water. ‘The seven holy men have been duly worshipped, I can tell you. The wee saints they name Segundo and Tesifonte had a good stushie at the entrance to a street, though I think it had more to do wi' the fact that tanners carried one and cobblers the other. And Cecilio cowped off his bier and crushed a wee nun, so she and God are not on speaking terms.'

‘God be praised,' Hal said, to protect Sim from his own blasphemy.

‘For ever and ever – did yon Piculph come back?'

‘He did not,' Hal answered. ‘Did ye spy out the ship?'

‘I did,' Sim said, slurping; he paused and belched again. ‘Yon fightin' chooks is fightin' back … It is a good swim out in the bay,' he went on, ‘unless we can find a wee boatie.'

They mulled this in silence, for neither of them swam well; none of the crew of the
Bon Accord
did, apart from Niall, who was called Silkie – half-man, half-seal – because he could dog paddle a bit.

‘There is not a sign of any of yon fancy Order Knights with the green crosses, either on board the
Bon Accord
, or anywhere in the town,' Sim offered as a ribbon of hope. ‘Nor at yon Doña's house on the hill.'

‘You went there? That was reckless.'

‘Not close,' Sim soothed. ‘But we need to ken where it lies.'

Which was true enough, though Hal's feathers were not smoothed by the lack of presence of the Alcántara men; it could be that they had slithered out of maille and marking surcotes, the better to spy out the pair they sought. Sim, frowning, considered this and reluctantly admitted, between belches, that it might be true, though he had thought any in the Holy Orders considered it a sin to be out of their garb as well as their cloistered commanderie.

The Order of Alcántara, Hal pointed out, was not like the Poor Knights and Sim had also to admit the truth of that.

‘Still,' he added. ‘We can hardly bide here like a millstone. The crew are in that house, according to Piculph, and needs be freed.'

‘I would prefer to know more of what is also in that house. Piculph would answer it – if we knew where he was,' Hal said.

‘Fled,' Sim declared. ‘You said he was doing so when we stumbled on him.'

Their mood matching the gloom, they sat until darkness fell and slid away from the tavern into the drunken streets, moving carefully until the crowds thinned and straggled to an end and the streets grew steep and broad. Then Sim's hand halted Hal.

‘That's the place.'

It was a walled edifice, menacingly dark, which could mean that it was empty or a trap. Hal heaved in a deep breath and brought the hidden sword out from under his ragged robes. Sim, frowning at the gurgle in his belly, shouldered the bulk of the wrapped arbalest and brought out his knife, which was much better for close work.

They looked at each other, sweat-gleamed faces tense and ghostly in the dark.

‘Aye til the fore,' Sim muttered with a grim tightening of lips and Hal shouldered into the shadows under the gate.

They moved into the hot closet of a walled garden, thick with scent and singing with night insects, both strange to Hal's senses. Stranger still was the low gurgle, like a rain-washed drain in an Edinburgh wynd – and a groan which whirled him round in alarm, squinting into the silvered moonlight shadows.

‘Sim?'

There was another low groan and the rustle of cloth.

‘Are ye hurt, man?'

He pitched his second question more urgently than the first whispered hiss, and moved towards the groans, in time to hear an ugly wet sound; the rushing gush of stink made him reel.

‘Christ and His saints,' Sim moaned. ‘The flux …'

Greed and two bowls of spiced chicken stew, Hal thought, and had to grit his teeth to keep from bellowing it. There were more sounds and Hal moved upwind a little.

‘Ah, bigod …'

‘Whisht,' Hal hissed, but Sim, a squatting shadow in the dim with a face pale as moonlight, waved a hand.

‘If this has not brought a dozen guards then the place is empty,' he grunted, which made enough sense for Hal to relax a little.

‘Go on,' Sim added. ‘I'll follow in a breath or two.'

Hal hestitated, but only briefly, for he needed a breath or two that did not have Sim's innards in it. He moved through the neat undergrowth; no useful plants here, only decorative ones, which was a waste of growing land as far as Hal was concerned. The whirr and flap of wings made him pause, half-crouched in the bulked shadow of a building dominated by a tall, circular tower.

The double doors of the place were open, the inside dark as the Earl of Hell's yett hall; Hal, sweating and icy, crept in, rolling his feet and wincing at every careless clack of booted sole on tiled floor.

The only light came from the moon and the faintest of pale glows ahead, but Hal's eyes were dark-adapted now and made out the shape of arch and doorway. Cellar, he thought. That was where Piculph had said the crew of the
Bon Accord
were kept, so he looked for a way that led downward.

He scouted the edge of the room, slow and cat-wary, avoiding candlestand and statue, chair and bench, until he came to stairs leading down. Four steps and he was at a door, which yielded a fingerlength before the key-lock rattled it to a halt; a voice froze the blood in Hal.

‘Fit's that thaur?'

Pegy's northern Braid, faint and muffled through the thick timber of the door, permitted Hal to breathe again. He told Pegy who he was and heard the excited rush of murmurs from the others, but found that the door was thick, stout and locked. According to Pegy, Doña Beatriz had the key. Fretting and sweating, he promised them he would return and slid back into the shadows.

No guards; no sign of life. Perhaps, Hal thought, Piculph has done his work after all – there was a whirring sound and he ducked instinctively, throwing himself flat on the tiles. After a moment, when nothing else happened, he climbed back to a low crouch, heard a soft fluting call and perched, bewildered.

Light flared like a blast of icy breath and bobbed through the open door, a torch held in Sim's big hand, so that Hal, blinking blindly into it, knew he was caught in a half-crouch, sword ready.

‘Whit why are ye hunkered there?' Sim boomed and Hal sprang up.

‘Whisht, you – I heard something.'

Sim peered round, raising the sconce torch higher.

‘There is nobody …' he began, then the whirr and the soft call came again, making Hal cry out.

‘Cooshie doos,' Sim exclaimed with a bark of laughter. ‘Ye are hiding from the attentions o' some cooshie doos.'

Hal realized Sim was right and that the high-roofed place had doves in it, though the next thought that struck him was where had they come from? He was too embarrassed to mention that as he straightened up and gave Sim a vicious glance.

‘Yer arse back in order?' he demanded and Sim scowled, angry and ashamed.

‘For the minute,' he admitted, ‘though I am black-affronted.'

‘Black-behinded as well, I am sure.'

Sim's reply was interrupted by a dove which fluttered down, tame as a lap dog, and strutted into the torchlight in a hopeful search for food.

‘Cooshie doo,' he declared with a triumphant grin. Hal scowled back. Doves did not fly in the dark normally, which he mentioned. Nor did they spontaneously bleed, which brought Sim's head round to study the bird more carefully; it hopped and flapped up but there was time enough to see the pink staining on one wingtip.

Then, in the lip of light expanded by Sim holding up the torch at arm's length, they both saw the limp white hand beyond.

Doña Beatriz had died quickly, struck from behind by a single blow from a blade that had sliced upwards off her shoulderblades and cracked open her skull; her hair lay like dead wet snakes in the spreading darkness of blood.

‘Backhand stroke wi' a broadsword,' Sim growled, waving away the flies greedy for gleet. ‘She was running, which spoiled the aim – planned to swipe her head off her neck but missed.'

‘Piculph?' Hal suggested, bemused, but Sim had run out of knowledge and merely shrugged, winced and massaged his belly, trying not to look as Hal, swallowing his own spit hard, fumbled in the stiff, bloody ruin of the woman's body.

‘No key,' he declared finally, smearing the back of his clean hand across his sweat-moist lips.

They moved towards the faint pale glow, unnerved enough now for Sim to stub out the torch on the tiles, pressing his boots on the embers, swift and silent, as a prudent man would who had known only rush floors and wood surrounds; the acrid stink of the smoke trailed them towards the light.

There was a door, open just enough to let out the faintest of glows, an alarmed dove which flew off in a rattle of wings – and a faint, regular heartbeat of sound which paused them both and brought their heads together.

‘A wee fountain,' Sim hissed, his breath foul in Hal's face.

‘A horologe,' Hal replied, having seen the ticking wonder of gears and cogs that had been mounted in Canterbury. Sim, who had only heard of such a thing, looked sceptical as they slid, fast and quiet, into the room.

The light came from the moon, which was almost straight above and shining through a roof tight-slatted with wooden beams, but otherwise open – Hal realized they were inside the tower he had seen from the outside and that this view of it was as strange.

The floor was earth and blue-tiled meandering paths, spattered with white splashes where it was not thick with exotic plants. A pool dominated the centre and the walls, all around, top to bottom, were pocked with regular square niches, as tall and wide as two fists one on top of the other; even as he stood and gaped, Hal heard the flute-note call that was now familiar.

It was the sprung stones, girdling the entire thing at waist height like a belt, that finally clicked it into place for the pair of them.

‘A doocot,' Sim marvelled. It was exactly that: the sprung stones to keep the rats from climbing up to the eggs and squabs; the slatted roof to keep the hawks from the same, while allowing the doves in and out. Yet something had killed a couple of birds, their bodies splayed like orchids veined with blood. The ticking was louder.

‘Water,' Sim declared, pushing through the veil of blossoms to the pool.

It was almost all blood, the pool, drained from the gently swinging nakedness of Piculph, hanging from the sorrowful bend of a willow-tree bough.

He had been hard used so that death had come as a mercy to him, but not before he had suffered the shrieking terror of being whipped to a flayed ruin. Nor had he been dead long enough for all the life to have drained away; it fell, viscous and soft as cat's paws, drop by ticking drop from the dangle of his arms and head.

The slamming door whirled them round and Sim gave a sharp cry as something whirred like a dove wing through the air, curved round his neck and jerked him off his feet; he flew forward and was dragged, choking.

Hal, with reflexes even he did not know he possessed, slashed out with the sword and the black, thin snake that seemed to have leaped out and grabbed Sim round the neck whipped away; there was a curse and Hal sprang to Sim's side as the man rolled over, coughing and choking.

He had time to see that it was no snake but the remains of a leather thong – a whip, he realized, remembering Piculph's ruined body – and then a voice cut the air.

‘Quick, for an old man. You have spoiled my surprise – and I had spent a deal of time perfecting that lash; I did not know how many would come and needed an advantage.'

De Grafton stepped into the moonlight like a verse in black and silver, the limp dangle of the whip in one hand, the flash of steel in the other. He wore black Templar robes and it seemed as if the dark had eaten him.

‘Two only? Then Piculph told it true.'

He shrugged ruefully.

‘Pity. I did not believe him. I thought this Ruy Vaz would send his host at least – two old men is not a little insulting.'

‘Enough for you,' Sim managed, but his voice was hoarse and the throat burn in it palpable.