The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (134 page)

None had been stranger than the one Randolph brought into the candlelight. Tall, so that he had to stoop underneath the canvas lintel, dark-haired, sallow-skinned, his black eyes alive with a fevered light … Bruce knew him well.

‘Seton,' he said weakly, for it was the last man he had thought to see. Then he recovered himself as the man flung to one knee, reached out and raised him up gently by the elbow. ‘Alexander,' he said. ‘Nephew. Welcome.'

The noise of clatter and weans woke him, starting him out of sleep with a jerk; he saw little Bet half crouch with the sudden movement, cautious and wary. Beyond, studying him with dark solemnity, was Hob.

Hob. She would call him that, since that was the name of the King of Summer. He was of age and Bet's Meggy had claimed the boy as his, seeded on that very midsummer night. It was possible … he had known it even as he said, accusingly: ‘Ye might have let me know.'

‘For why?' she had replied, tart as young apples. ‘For you to stop skirrievaigin' with Jamie Douglas at the herschip and come to Roslin to provide for me? You have no skill for anythin' but hounds and Roslin did not need that.'

She had looked at the crumbled ruin of maslin and smiled.

‘I mak' bread, even from poor leavings like this, so I can provide. I did not need another useless mouth.'

He had gawped at her and she had smiled the bitter out of it in an eyeblink.

‘No matter how loving a man you are,' she had added softly, and then tapped his arm lightly. ‘Besides, John the Lamb took me, Hob and all, and provided for us until he died. Now you have rose up in the world and mayhap the Lady brought you back to better provide for your imp of a son.'

He had glanced at the sleeping boy and managed a wan smile of his own while his head birled with it all.

‘Less imp now that he sleeps,' he said and she laughed.

‘Aye – maybe he is not yours at all,' she offered and laughed when he'd rounded on her with a scowl.

‘Men,' she scoffed. ‘You never knew of him until now and scarce thought of me at all, yet the idea of someone else having laid a cuckoo's egg in your nest crests you up like a dunghill cock.'

Abashed, confused, Dog Boy had no answer, so she had provided one.

‘It might have been the Faerie,' she said. ‘On that night of nights.'

Midsummer, he remembered. As now, filled with the silent moving folk. Her smile only broadened at his look.

‘As any will tell you who knew you as a bairn,' she had offered, ‘he is the same as you looked at that age.'

Dog Boy thought of it and the blood washed up into his head. There was no one who remembered him at that age left alive, for Jamie and he and all the others had seen to that when they had struck at Douglas Castle. Palm Sunday, seven years ago. Old Tam, former serjeant-at-arms, had hirpled up to their hiding place with news of the garrison attending the kirk in town and they'd fallen on the English like a dog pack, dragging them back and capturing the castle.

After that had come a sin-slather of revenge led by the grim stone of Jamie. Dog Boy recalled Gutterbluid the falconer, pleading for his life as Jamie ordered him strangled with a bowstring. Dog Boy had stared into the hopeless, silent-screaming eyes of Berner Philippe and then nodded so that big, grinning Red Corbie could start turning the stick that slowly broke the houndsman's neck. Put me in the drawbridge undercroft, he'd thought, exultant with the triumph of it. Near killed me there …

They had pitched those two down the well, everyone else in the underground store, pissed on the lot and fired it. The Douglas Larder folk called it and Dog Boy thought he had forgotten it – all but the glory of discovering, in the hound record books, that he had a name.

Aleysandir.

And a place, not far from Douglas Castle itself.

He went back to it, remembering his da and his prized brace of oxen, an amazement of riches that even the reeve or priest could not match. I was sold for that, he thought bitterly, recalling all the half-dredged clues of it. When I was old enough to run fast as the dugs, my ma walked me up to Douglas as the Sire had told her to do.

He could not remember his mother's face, but it must have been pretty for Sir William the Hardy to have been captivated enough to pump a child into her belly. And his da, who had always seemed a distant giant, must have loved her to have put up with it.

And loved me in his way, Dog Boy thought, remembering the sad wistfulness on the big slab face the day he had shown how he could run. He must have loved me a bittie, even though I was not his and a constant reminder of his wife's faithlessness. Yet he had oxen out of it, he added bitterly to himself, so perhaps that was the love in it.

There were no signs of them when he had gone to the small vill, for time and change had brought new tenants to the half-remembered fields and they had no memory of a couple who owned a brace of oxen. Fire and famine and red war had scoured the area more than once – God save me, Dog Boy thought with a sharp sudden pang, I may have ridden it myself. He offered thanks to God then, on his knees, that he had memory of no old couple slain by him or anyone he knew. The thought that he might well have killed his own parents left him trembling every time he thought of it.

Yet they had vanished, as if they had never been, and were almost certainly dead. The clogged drain of it had shifted over the years under the weight of all he had seen and done, so that such memories came back to him at the oddest and most unlooked-for times, clenching the insides of him until he felt he must scream, or weep, or fist something to ruin.

The shift and yawn and scratch alongside him wrenched him back to the present and he turned his head to her, remembered the warm and sticky of last night. Possibly, there now would be another Hob …

He fetched his clothes and dressed as she got up and patted Hob like a dog for his cleverness in blowing life back into the fire. She clattered pots and mixed water and oats; little Bet played quietly with a straw doll and, beyond the confines of the mean withy and cloak shelter, the whole camp stirred like fleas on a dog.

Dog Boy went out into the poor night, which was racing towards lighter hues of blue; it was cool now, but would be a hot day for it, he thought, unlacing himself and making sure where he had picked would offend no one. He grunted with the pleasure of it, becoming aware, slowly, of the boy's eyes.

‘Are you my da, truly?'

That cut him off mid-flow and it took a long moment before he managed to renew it; longer moments still, of shaking and lacing, before he turned and looked at the boy. Dark and wary, thin, with a deerlike crouch that spoke of an alertness to run.

It was himself at the same age, he thought with a sudden leap of certainty. I would have looked like this when I was turned into the kennels at Douglas and all that went with it.

‘What does your ma say?' he demanded and the boy frowned at that.

‘She says you are.'

‘Is she to be obeyed and always in the right?'

Hob considered it a while, before nodding uncertainly. Dog Boy grinned.

‘Aye, well, there is your answer. I am your da, God help you.'

There was a silence, and then Dog Boy moved back to the fire and the bent figure of Bet's Meggy, stirring the oats and water in her cauldron; mean fare, he thought. I will bring better when I can.

‘I must go,' he said and she stood and faced him, hipshot and with her head tilted. The smile was slight, but her eyes were serious.

‘Will you die?'

Bet's Meggy wheeshed Hob and threatened him with the spurtle for his cheek, but he never moved, kept staring at Dog Boy.

‘I'll come back,' he said awkwardly, turning to Bet's Meggy. ‘When I can. I'll bring vittles and …'

‘I make no claim on you, Dog Boy,' she said softly. ‘Neither for him, nor last night.'

Dog Boy knew that Hob did, though he would not voice it, but he nodded, and then grew more firm.

‘I will be back, God willing, when this is done with.'

She dragged him close then, held him hard for a moment or two, and released him so quickly that the pair of them staggered. He blinked, frantic not to unman himself with tears, and bent to little Bet, who put a thumb in her mouth and stared.

‘Have you a buss for me, wee yin?' he asked and she looked uncertainly at her mother, who nodded. She took out the thumb, grinned and kissed his cheek, a sparrow peck that left snotters on his beard.

Hob stood, eyes large and bright, so that Dog Boy was lost, had no words. Then, suddenly, he dipped in his boot top and came out with his long dagger, thrust the hilt at the boy and watched his eyes widen further.

‘Take it. Defend your ma until I come back.'

Hob looked at the hilt, up at Dog Boy, then across to his ma, who smiled. He reached out a hand and took the dagger, dragging it close to his chest and cradling it like a new pup.

‘Dinna cut yerself,' Dog Boy said with a grin, ‘or we will both of us suffer an even sharper edge – your ma's tongue.'

There was a shared moment, the pair of them against the women, before Dog Boy nodded to Bet's Meggy and turned away, aware of all their eyes on his back and anxious to put distance between them, yet feeling every step drag.

He was still bleared with it when he came to the forge, red-glowed and shifting with silhouettes, eldritch against the rising sun behind him. He stood, peering and shifting to try and see better, until a voice growled out of the last shadows of the night.

‘Dog Boy, stop jigging there and come closer.'

He knew it, even before he saw the shock of the battered face, the filthy wrappings round one arm and a body gone past lean and saluting scrawny. Yet the eyes were bright enough and laughing at him.

‘Sir Hal,' he said. ‘God's Wounds, it is good to set an eye on you.'

‘Set the pair – I do not charge.'

Dog Boy was still grinning when the loss of Sim Craw fell on him; Hal saw the eyes cloud with misery and knew at once what it was.

‘Sore,' said Dog Boy, bowing his head. ‘He will be much missed.'

Hal had no words to say to Dog Boy, for all of them had been taken out by him in the past days, examined and thrown away as not adequate. Sim was gone and the hole he left in the world was filled only with black sadness.

Instead, he gripped Dog Boy by the arms – Gods, there was iron in them – and drew him close. For a moment Dog Boy stood limp, then his own arms came up and wrapped Hal and they stood for a moment, sucking the comfort of it into one another, before breaking apart.

‘You have grown a tait,' Hal said, noting the height and width of him. He flicked the badge on the mostly unstained jupon. ‘Come up a station or two, betimes.'

Dog Boy nodded, and then blurted out the wonder of the last night before he could stop himself.

‘I have a son,' he ended.

Hal listened to the tale of it, spilled out in fits and starts as if Dog Boy could scarce believe it himself. If my Johnnie had not died, Hal thought, he would be of ages with Dog Boy. Maybe sired his own son. The realization hit him hard and he blinked. I could be a grandda. I am now the Auld Sire of Herdmanston, as my father was.

‘They are here,' Dog Boy went on, as if he had read Hal's mind. ‘All the Herdmanston folk who could come to support the Kingdom and our king.'

There was marvel in his voice, but Hal already knew, had been told by his kin from Roslin about how the Herdmanston fields were being tended. Chirnside Rowan, grizzled and grinning, had come up with Sore Davey, pox-marks unfaded. One by one, old familiar faces had come up to him out of the midsummer night, bending a knee and anxious to give him news, to offer balm and solace for the loss of Sim Craw.

Fingerless Will, Dirleton Will, Mouse – they were all here, older and leaner and with wives and bairns and even grandweans. Full of news and hope.

Alehouse Maggie had died the previous month, they told him, so it was a blessing that Sim had not lived to learn of that, for it would have broken his heart. Cruck houses had been rebuilt around Herdmanston's broken tower, the garth wall had been drystaned anew, but neither brewhouse nor forge nor bakery had been rebuilt – the first because they had no brewer with the death of Maggie, the second because they had no smith since Leckie the Faber had run off to spend a year and a day in a town and so escape his bondage. And the third because Bet's Meggy had no one in the keep to bake for.

It was probably burned out anew, he thought, by the English foragers, or the deserters and outlaws from both sides – but the hopeful eyes lashed him to silence on this.

He had thought only of Isabel, yet he was still the lord of Herdmanston – the Auld Sire, no less. He told them he would be back once matters were settled here. He told them Herdmanston would be rebuilt – which got him a look from Sir Henry of Roslin, worried that he would be asked to help foot the bill. Hal put Henry at ease by telling him he would not call on his liege-lord aid and, because of what he had done to help the King, Henry relaxed, thinking Hal had been promised royal largesse.

The truth Hal kept to himself; underneath the stone cross, nestling with the remains of his son and his wife, were six Apostles, buried long ago by himself and Isabel; those wren's-egg rubies which had once graced the reliquary of the Black Rood would more than pay for Herdmanston.

Given by Wallace to Isabel as a gift, he recalled.

Isabel. He stared at the dawn until the light started to blind him; somewhere beyond the glare of it, she waited for him. Or so he hoped.

A horn blared and Dog Boy shifted.

‘Muster,' he said simply and Hal nodded. Dog Boy waited expectantly, but Hal made no move and, when he spoke, the bitterness tainted it.

‘On your way, Dog Boy,' he said. ‘I remain here, by order of the King. I have, it seems, done enough service.'

He managed a wry twist of smile up into Dog Boy's obvious confusion.