The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (122 page)

‘Who is that there then?'

Hal, his head roaring with the pain of doing it, shouted back.

‘Sir Henry of Herdmanston, a friend to Neil Campbell and in need of hospitality.'

There was a pause, then a calmer, deeper voice, growing stronger as it moved closer, fought the wind to be heard.

‘Indeed? You claim the friendship of Niall mac Cailein, which is no little thing and a double-edged blade if you are proved false to it.'

The speaker was better dressed, surrounded by a clutch of bare-legged snarlers, crouching like dogs round him. He squinted, and then grinned.

‘I recall you now: Hal of Herdmanston. I was with you when Neil, son of Great Colin, brought you to the meeting in the heather we had when King Robert fled to the Isles.'

Hal remembered it, though not this man. It had been a low point.

The shadow-man paused and then bowed his neck slightly towards Kirkpatrick.

‘And yourself, who brought the news of our king's escape and survival. The King's wee man, though I have forgot your name entire.'

‘Kirkpatrick.'

‘That was it, right enough.'

He made a brief move and the caterans shifted back, lowering their weapons. The man stepped forward and bowed a little more.

‘Dougald Campbell of Craignish,' he said. ‘You have the hospitality of my house.'

‘That's a bloody relief,' Kirkpatrick said as the man turned away to shout a liquid stream of Gaelic to his unseen men.

To Somhairl he said: ‘Gather up those we have found. When it is light, we will return and search for more.'

‘The cargo …' Hal said and Kirkpatrick patted his arm.

‘Away you and get your face seen to. The cargo will be brought, safe and untouched. You heard the man; we have the hospitality of the Campbell of Craignish.'

‘Aye,' Hal said. The pain seemed to ebb and flow with the tide now; a sudden thought lanced through it, sharp with the fire of guilt, and jerked his head up into Kirkpatrick's concerned face.

‘Sim … where is Sim?'

Kirkpatrick's bloodless lips never moved, his greased face never quavered. Yet Hal felt the leaden blow of it, hard as the rope's end which had smacked his face, and he reeled, felt the great burning light explode in his head and bent over to vomit.

Then the light went out.

 

 

 

ISABEL

He came to gawp, the de Valence who is called Earl of Pembroke, hearing that I was a witch or worse. Even earls are not immune to scratching the scabs of their itching minds, to look on the strange wonders of the caged. Malise, fawning and bobbing his head like a mad chook, brought him to the Hog's Tower, but even this rebounded on him, for Aymer de Valence's distaste for what had been done to me was clear. Dark and scowling he was, so that I was reminded of the name everyone called him behind his back, the one Gaveston gave him: Jacob the Jew. I will resolve this, he said to Malise, after midsummer, when the current tribulations are settled. Malise did not like that and I should have been pleased for an earl's help, like a thirsty wee lapdog for water. Of course I was not. Immediately after the tribulations of those days, I answered like a prophecy and before Malise could speak, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from Heaven and the power of the Heavens shall be shaken. Gospel of Matthew, I added as the Earl crossed himself. Chapter twenty-four, verse twenty-nine, I called after him as he fled; I saw the punishments flaming in Malise's eyes.

It is almost midsummer.

The Black Bitch Tavern, Edinburgh

Feast of St Columba, June 1314

The Dog Boy pushed through the throng and wished he was not here at all, nor headed where he was going; the one was altogether too crowded, the other such a trial that the setting for it was aptly named.

Edinburgh stank of old burning and feverish, frantic desperation. The castle bulked up like a hunchback's shoulder, blackened and reeking from where it had been slighted; carts still ground their iron-shod wheels down the King's Way, full of stones filched from the torn-down gate towers and bound for other houses or drystane walls.

Without a garrison, the town itself filled up with wickedness, with men from both sides of the divide and every nook in between, with those fleeing from the south and those filtering in from the north seeking loved ones or an opportunity. It packed itself with whores and hucksters, cutpurses, coney-catchers, cunning-men and counterfeiters, while the beadles and bailiffs struggled to keep order with few men and less enthusiasm.

What Dog Boy and the others had brought, of course, did not help, even though it was a handful of parchment, no more. Delivered to the monks of St Giles with instructions from their king, it was a spark to tinder, as far as Dog Boy was concerned.

Twelve parchments he had delivered, each hastily copied and sent here. Six were being further copied here, shaven-headed scribblers fluttering their ink-stained mittened fingers, while six were taken out by large-voiced prelates and thundered from altar and wynd corner.

The shriving pews would fill, soon. Those seeking absolution would creep from the shadows, heaped high with pride, avarice, lust and murder, to dump it at the rood screen in the hope of God's forgiveness. The sensible sinners would flee.

Dog Boy could not read, but he knew the content of those parchments, the copies flying out to Stirling, Perth and every other ‘guid toon' in the Kingdom. He had not known the jewel he had plucked from Berwick, bouncing around in the saddlebags of the courier's stolen horse.

A letter, from the Plantagenet to de Valence:

… to spare Leith for the port, but burn Edinburgh town and so to raze and deface it as a perpetual memory of the Law of Deuteronomy lighted upon it, for their falsity and disloyalty. Also sack as many villages around and burn and subvert them, putting every man, woman and child to fire and sword, without exception, for they are creatures who have defied God and king both.

There was more, all in the same harshness, a great long slather of venom which had been read to Dog Boy when he had been taken in to see the King – as if that had not been shock and horror enough.

Bruce was laid up, propped on pillows in St Ninian's with a face grey and blotched, peeling and unhealthy with sheen. He smiled as Dog Boy was brought to him, the ruin of his cheek gaping like a second mouth and his hand barely able to wave the fingers.

‘It looks worse than it is,' he said into the wide-eyed concern of Dog Boy's face, while the caring monks fussed, moving awkwardly round the great pillar of his brother Edward, who grunted like an annoyed boarpig.

‘Poison,' he said flatly and the King fluttered weary fingers.

‘They would have been better at it,' he wheezed. ‘Besides, this is not new, even if no one knows the cause.'

There was a silence where no one looked at anyone else, for the cause was already on everyone's lips: lepry. No one dared admit it, all the same, just as they did not dare admit that this might be the end of the King. True, this had happened before and as bad – yet Edward had been made heir this time, just in case …

‘The Coontess would ken,' Dog Boy blurted and the King managed another ruined smile.

‘She is no longer a countess, but Isabel MacDuff's treatments were an ease, even though she fed me the worst of potions,' he admitted, and then glared at the monks. ‘At least she sweetened them.'

He turned to the Dog Boy again.

‘You were daring and sprung a prize from Berwick,' he said and indicated that Edward should read it. Even in the hot, fetid sickroom the words were rotted with hate.

‘Your reward is twofold,' Bruce went on. ‘Take a dozen copies to the monks of St Giles and have them make copies and spread the word of this in Edinburgh. Other copies will be sent to all the good towns of the realm.'

‘It will cause panic,' Edward argued, frowning. ‘Folk will flee Edinburgh like ants from a boiled nest.'

‘And so avoid a death that otherwise would have come on them unawares,' Bruce replied stolidly. ‘I would rather have panic and mayhem, brother, than the deaths of those I am elevated to serve. Besides, if folk hear what the Plantagenet has marked down for them, they will grow as angry as they do fearful.'

‘The best of the realm's men are already here,' Edward insisted. ‘The ones who brought their own arms – men of substance, with a holding in this kingdom and a reason for needing its future.'

‘Not enough,' Bruce said wearily. ‘I had three earls of the realm at my side – one is run off and two I made myself. The Plantagenet, even without half of his, brings thousands – twenty or more, it is said.'

‘God be praised,' muttered Dog Boy and everyone fluttered a swift cross on their breast.

‘For ever and ever.'

‘On your return,' Bruce went on, turning his head to Dog Boy, ‘comes the better part of the reward. I am advised, by Sir James Douglas, that you are a master with hounds, which accounts for your name.'

He smiled, lopsided this time for the cheek-drag was irritating him. Dog Boy saw that the portion of pillow under his neck, exposed by his turning head, was yellowed with old sweat.

‘You and I are auld friends,' Bruce added. ‘Nivver violet a lady.'

Dog Boy jerked as if stung and then flushed; he had not known the King had recalled that campfire moment all those long years ago.

‘So you are now made houndsman to the King,' Bruce declared. ‘Before witnesses. When I am well, we will hunt together, you and I, and you will breed the best dogs a king can have.'

Dog Boy had quit the place, stunned by it all. Afterwards, all during the swift ride to Edinburgh, he had been silent and numbed – raised, bigod, to be Royal Houndsman. Dog Boy crowned.

The word went out, of course, so that the others knew – Patrick and Parcy Dodd and the others all chaffed him about it and, finally, declared that they would wet the fortunate head of the Royal Houndsman in Edinburgh.

They chose the Black Bitch, as much for the aptness of name as for it being the worst stew in the town, and now Dog Boy shoved his way towards it, forcing through the frenzy of people; he could scarcely tell the difference between those frantic to leave and those frantic to squeeze the last measure of brittle pleasure from the place – but the fear was the same.

Yet there was a strange unreality. Silversmith apprentices paraded a wooden bier with a fat, ornate
nef
, a gorgeously worked fretwork ship of silver blazoned with Mary and Child and an enticement to customers to visit their shop. Butchers, slipping in their offal, bellowed the prices of pork and capon – originally high, they were falling rapidly because doom galloped at them and everything had to be gobbled. A pair of beadles led a whoremonger to the stocks, shuffling him through the dung close to a horse trough which would provide the dirty water he was to be soaked in.

Normal, as if the sky was not falling; Dog Boy ducked into the sweltering roar of the Bitch and his appearance swelled the bellow of it with a joy of noise from the six men who had ridden into Edinburgh with him and now dominated the tavern. The others in it, even the scarred and hard, kept to the sidelines of them.

Shining with sweat and drink, his men thrust a horn beaker of ale into one hand and hailed him loudly; he was their darling now, was the elevated Dog Boy.

‘The Royal Dog Boy he is now,' bellowed Patrick and the others roared their approval once again, while Troubadour Tam Napier struck up his battered old viel in a tune that set everyone jigging.

Buggerback Geordie shoved forward a woman, dark-eyed and dark-haired, half-moon sweat under the arms of her dress and her smile only partly ruined by some missing teeth. She had the finest pair of breasts Dog Boy had seen in a time and, coyly batting her eyes, she pulled them out for him to see.

‘This is Dame Trapseed,' said Archie Gower, known to everyone as Sweetmilk, for no reason anyone could fathom. ‘We brings her as Yer Honour's gift on this night and hopes she elevates ye higher still.'

‘
Ma Dame
,' Dog Boy said with a mocking, courtly bow and the laughter rang into the rafters. He went to a bench in the deeper shadows of the flickering tavern and took her on his knee, felt the heat of her through the dress as she wriggled on his lap and giggled at what she was creating underneath her; her breasts were slick.

‘If you do not sit still,' Parcy Dodd yelled at her across the fug and noise, ‘you will stop our captain thinking entire, as God ordained.'

‘God? Whit has God to do wi' this?' demanded the woman, who had fumbled loose the ties on Dog Boy's braies by feel alone. She adjusted herself, hiked her dress a little and Dog Boy could not believe the skill of her when he felt the heat and wet and knew what she had done.

‘God it was who created Man,' Parcy went on, ‘and gave him both a pyntle and a keen and cunning mind. In His wisdom though, he ordained that Man could only use one of them at a time.'

The crowd roared and demanded more. Parcy obliged. Dame Trapseed wriggled and bounced a little, so that Dog Boy grunted in the half-dark.

‘Once,' Parcy began, while folk shushed their neighbours, ‘there was a great rain, a gushing scoosh that some folk thought was the second Flood sent by the Lord.'

Dog Boy, anticpitating a gushing scoosh of his own, tried to concentrate on Parcy.

‘They ran to their priest, a good wee man, who went out into the pour of it all, even down to the banks of the burn, which rose in spate as he begged and pleaded with the Lord. The watter rose up roon his ankles and the reeve came up to ask if he would no' be better climbin' oot – the reeve would help. The priest refused, saying that the Lord would save him, and the reeve went on his way.'