The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (132 page)

There were fires under the shivering cross and a dull regular clang that spoke of a smith somewhere. Folk moved like drifting shadows and one, sudden as a hunting owl, was facing him and smiling.

‘Bigod, Dog Boy, you're as braw as shiny watter still, so you are.'

Dog Boy blinked at the woman, her hair a raggle, wearing only a shift dress in the heat and a shawl with a memory of blue in it shrugged across her shoulders. She carried a knife and a basket, while a bairn stood looking up at him with solemn eyes, thumb in her budded mouth.

The face was blurred with years, but the beauty in it was there yet. Bet's Meggy. The sight of her crashed him back to Herdmanston in the heat of another summer, when he and others had played at the kirn, throwing scythes to cut the last stook of corn. He had won and presented it to Bet's Meggy amid the cheers and jeers, for her to make into the kirn-baby, a sure sign that she was next for a wedding.

‘Meg,' he said awkwardly and she cocked her head to one side and then shook it with mocking disbelief.

‘Come high in the world, Dog Boy. How do I call you these days?'

He found himself and grinned back at her.

‘Now we are reacquainted,' he said, ‘ye dinna have to call at all – just reach out a hand.'

He beamed at her obvious delight and burst of laughter. She had lost the bloom of youth he remembered, the perfect heart of her face had roughened and coarsened a little, the body was thicker – a wean will do that, he thought. Yet he was older himself and the feral-thin girl he'd known then was no longer such a rampant attraction, while the woman who swayed back to her fire was.

She spooned gruel into a bowl, just as a boy came up, staring at Dog Boy with a watchful, defiant eye; Bet's Meggy looked at him and then at Dog Boy as she lifted bread from the basket.

‘Fetch a bowl and spoon,' she said. She indicated the thumb-sucking girl: ‘This is Bet,' and Dog Boy smiled; of course it would be, he thought.

‘And this is Hob,' she said to the boy. He was dark, Dog Boy thought, and rangy, though there was the promise that good food and care would slide some real muscle on him. He thought the lad was about nine, but his skill in judging age was nearly all to do with dogs, so he could have been mistaken.

‘Where have ye been?' Bet's Meggy demanded and Hob blinked away from Dog Boy's face and thrust out his hand, which had a coin in it.

‘I took the Sire to the forgeman, as he asked,' he replied. ‘He gave me a whole siller penny.'

The wonder in his voice was dreamy as Bet's Meggy took the coin and dropped it into her cleavage; it would not find a way out of the bottom of them, Dog Boy thought admiringly and remembered that Midsummer's Night when she had danced the Horse Dance, naked under a green shift dress fixed with madder ribbons and wearing the straw mummer's horsehead.

Clear across the stubbled fields she had pranced, to no more than a whistle and drum, the chants of others dancing and singing behind her and the faint, sonorous prayers of the priest, determined not to let folk lose sight of God in this whiff of heathenism.

She had danced until her feet bled on the stubble, which was the point of it, blessing the fields with her virgin blood. Then, when the field had been acknowledged as watered, Dog Boy had gathered her up and carried her into the night while folk called good-natured filthy advice after them. He had washed her feet gently in the burn on that Midsummer's Night, the pair of them wearing rue against the threat of Faerie pixie-leading them off to spend a hundred years or longer in their hidden
sidhean
mounds.

Despite the rue, something had touched them that night; perhaps they had truly been transformed into virgin Queen and handsome King of Summer, for they had coupled like writhing snakes and, in between, rubbed fern seed on their eyelids and sat crosslegged and naked with the rue tight in their fists, in the hope of seeing the Faerie but escaping being taken by them.

Towards dawn – too short a night, Dog Boy recalled, same as this one – she had sighed and laughed about how she would never dance the Horse Dance again now, for he had broken her yett gate for ever.

Now here she was, as if sprung from a faerie hill.

‘I heard ye married,' he blurted and she paused, frowning at what her attempt at cutting the bread had brought; it had broken to crumbs of shrivelled beans and peas, mixed with rye and a little wheat. Dog Boy, remembering the good bread he had eaten earlier, felt ashamed.

‘I did,' she answered, scooping the crumbs into the bowls and handing them out. Dog Boy refused the one she handed to him and she looked relieved, fed more crumbs to it and stirred them in.

‘John the Lamb,' she answered and Dog Boy nodded. He had been a score of years older than her.

‘A good man,' she answered defiantly, as if he had spoken aloud. Then she smiled softly. ‘Perfect, in fact – away for days at a time tending the sheep and always bringing back a peck of wool or a tait of mutton.'

Her eyes clouded.

‘Died two – no, I lie, three – years since. Cold and a hard winter and age took him.'

She scowled at Hob, who was eyeing the gruel with distaste.

‘Eat that. Learn to like it or go hungry – there is little else.'

She sighed and turned apologetically to Dog Boy.

‘He disnae care for the meat in it, which is horse.'

Dog Boy nodded; horse was the one meat they were not short of now and he wondered if the fine English who had donated it knew of the fate of their proud mounts.

‘You are chewing on the most expensive meat there is,' Dog Boy said to Hob and explained why. The boy's dark eyes flickered with interest, but the scowl remained.

‘The priest says it is a sin to eat the flesh of the horse,' he persisted and Dog Boy shrugged as if it did not matter at all.

‘If it is still Father Thomas who is priesting you, then he has knowledge of it, for sure,' he answered, staring idly at the fire. ‘He was happy to eat it when Herdmanston was sieged.'

‘Away …'

The blurt was out and Hob took the scowling censure of his mother and fell silent.

‘Besides,' Dog Boy went on, ‘Jamie says the French eat it – he was in that land for the learning in it. He says it was the Northmen who so upset the priests, for they used to fight prize stots and sacrifice the winner in their heathen rites, eating the meat. Since wee priests hate the raiding Norsemen, horses got called all kinds of bad cess.'

‘I likes it.'

Dog Boy grinned back at the smiling little Bet and then looked at Hob, who was half scathing, half impressed.

‘Jamie,' Dog Boy added, ‘is Sir James Douglas. Good Sir James. He eats horse when he can get it.'

‘The Black,' Hob blurted out admiringly and Dog Boy laughed. Somewhere music struck up and people cheered as flames leaped; they were lighting the balefires for Midsummer's Night and Dog Boy glanced at Bet's Meggy with a look of remembrance that made her flush and shift a little. Then he turned back to the boy.

‘Sir James is known as that as well.'

Bet's Meggy, smiling, nudged her son.

‘Give thanks for being put right on matters,' she said and Hob, gingerly spooning gruel to his mouth, found the scowl again, though it was uncertain this time.

‘I dinna ken who he is, Ma,' he offered and she beamed, looking from him to Dog Boy.

‘He's your da, boy.'

Bannockburn, the English Camp

Midsummer's Night, June 1314

Like Mongols, Giles d'Argentan bawled into the retelling of the Clifford charge. Round and round and round – a pity they had no bows.

The other laughed and Ebles de Mountz, daringly drunk, shouted out that d'Argentan had never seen a Mongol; for a moment the sweating night was chilled – but Sir Giles threw back his head and roared out a laugh.

‘I have too – the Emperor in Constantinople has some. They look like this.'

He put thumbs to the side of his face, pulling back his eyes and squinting, while another finger shoved his nose up to a pig snout. Folk cheered and beat their thighs.

‘Begone,' shouted one of the Berkeleys. ‘Nothing looks that ugly.'

‘It does if it is sired by Satan,' d'Argentan replied and folk crossed themselves, then went back to wassailing one another with loud shouts and laughter.

‘Like Mongols,' d'Argentan persisted, louder than ever so that it would carry through the leprous night to where Clifford's
mesnie
huddled, morose and silent, round their own cookfires. ‘Round and round …'

The laughter shrilled out and then died as d'Argentan held up a stilling hand.

‘Of course,' he declared, owlishly drunk but not reckless, ‘I offer a salute to the brave fallen, who knew their duty. To the Deyncourt brothers and Sir Thomas – I am glad to know that Sir Thomas Gray is held for ransom and not dead. God preserve him.'

Solemnly, the knights gathered at the food-littered trestle raised their cups. Somewhere beyond, the rest of the knights cursed the dark and the steep-sided streams as they coaxed or forced horses across the hasty bridges made from doors and planks culled out of Bannock vill.

It would take them all night, Thweng thought, and the foot are still straggling up and will have precious little rest – the bulk of the baggage will be lucky to have made it before dawn.

‘Mongols,' d'Argentan bawled, which was enough to set the roisterers off on another cackle; Thweng moved off into the dark, seeking his own fire. His baggage was a long way off in the dark, so he had no tent and comforts and had only eaten because he had shared the King's table. He had
only done that because Edward was anxious, needing reassurance and all the advice he could get.

‘Will they stand?' he asked everyone and it was the very question, the caged corpse swinging in the tree of the affair. Would the Scots stand and fight, or melt away? Everyone at the meal had knowledge of the Scots, had fought them before this – Beaumont, Segrave, de Valence, himself. Even the King was no beginner at the work, having been in the campaign of '04 under his father and ones in '07 and '10 in his own right.

‘The Scotch will not stand,' Segrave growled, shaking his head while the black-clad wraith that was his son, Stephen, echoed him like a shadow. ‘They have run each time we have sent a host at them.'

Which was not quite true: they had stood at Methven, which de Valence was quick to point out with a pompous flourish, since that had been his battle and he had beaten Bruce soundly. Thweng tried and failed to prevent himself pointing out that Bruce had also stood against de Valence at Loudon Hill only a year later – and repaid that lord in full. He wisely did not then add to the black scowl of the Earl of Pembroke by mentioning that he had only won at Methven because he had unchivalrously broken an arranged truce and attacked by surprise.

But it was true enough that the Scots had avoided battle on the two occasions since then that English armies had rolled north. Not once in seven years had they stood to fight, Thweng thought.

The talk rolled on, with Edward's head swinging from side to side to take in all the good advice he was getting, though the best of it was lost on him, it appeared to Sir Marmaduke. When your veterans of the Scottish wars advise waiting another day so that the army can recover strength and morale, you ought to listen.

Eventually, Thweng lost interest in the King's refusal to see that sense, managed to move off unnoticed, a little way into the dark – then found d'Umfraville and Badenoch at either elbow and became aware of their grim looks.

Mark me, he thought, they have been grim for an age now; they probably only managed to smile when the King announced this campaign – they had forfeited vast estates in Scotland to Bruce's insurrection and were never done carping about the loss to anyone who would listen.

Yet this was a darker brother of what they usually exuded, a chilled sea-haar which made Thweng look from one to the other, raising the white lintel of his eyebrows.

‘We are missing one for our feast,' d'Umfraville growled out eventually and, for a moment, Thweng thought this was a strangely couched invitation to join all the lords who called themselves the Dispossessed and wore the title like a tourney favour. The English termed them ‘the Scotch lords' but most of them were as English as anyone else here, save that they had huge lands in Scotland that they wanted back.

Badenoch, his sandy lashes blinking furiously as if to hold back tears, put him right on the matter of it.

‘Seton is missing.'

‘Neither with us nor anywhere else. His
mesnie
has also gone,' d'Umfraville added morosely.

Thweng's insides gave a lurch, even though the news was not such a surprise to him; Alexander Seton had had a father gralloched by the old King Edward. His mother was imprisoned in a convent far to the south because she was sister to the Bruce who sat opposite them with an army. Which made Seton the nephew to King Robert Bruce.

‘He swore to serve King Edward,' Badenoch rasped with disgust. ‘Now we must tell the King that he is foresworn. It reflects badly on all of us Dispossessed.'

A blind man could have seen this coming, Thweng thought, but the Scotch Lords consider the restoration of their lands take precedent over any ties of blood. It was interesting – and disturbing – that at least one of them thought differently, that he considered he had a better chance of having his lands returned from the hands of a Scotch king than an English one.

‘I would not take on so,' Thweng offered laconically. ‘Seton has served King Edward for six years – yet he once swore an oath to protect the Bruce. Until his dying day, if I recall it.'

‘Aye,' sneered d'Umfraville. ‘We will see about his oaths when this matter is done. They say every man ends up like his father.'