The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (135 page)

‘What he means is that I am auld and wounded and long removed from the practice of arms. He means it well, but I am left with the women and bairns.'

Dog Boy felt a rush of anger at that treatment of this man, but let it slide away – even from just looking, it was clear that Hal of Herdmanston would be a danger to himself if he put on harness and stood in a wall of men in such an affair as this.

Unlike Kirkpatrick, who stumped up, cowled and braied in maille and wreathed in smiles. He thrust a shield at Hal.

‘Fresh done by the limner here. I took your advice.'

Hal stared at the upraised iron fist, clutching a dagger which dripped blood. It was exactly as he had described it to Kirkpatrick in a fit of venomous pique.

‘Aye,' he said, seeing the glint of laughter in Kirkpatrick's eyes. ‘You will put the fear in them with this, certes.'

‘They will ken me, which is to the point,' Kirkpatrick declared vehemently. ‘They know me as the royal wolfhound, a wee sleekit backstabber. Now they will see that I am a knight of this realm as well.'

Hal did not know whether Kirkpatrick meant the English or all the Scots lords who fought them. Both, he decided as Kirkpatrick frowned down at him.

‘I am sorry you have to remain here, but Sir John will be happy to have some expert help. See what came out of those tun barrels …'

He turned away to follow Dog Boy, laughing as he did so, then paused.

‘The smith says your sword is ready.'

Hal went into the forge lean-to, wondering what Kirkpatrick meant about the tun barrels. The smith was a dark, unsmiling man, his leather apron pitted with old spark-burns, and he handed Hal the sword wordlessly; it had been cleaned and sharpened and polished lovingly.

Behind the smith was a clatter and rattle, a curse and then the limner came into view, spotted with paints from where he had been touching up lordly shields all night. Red-eyed and weary, he was a small, mouse-haired ferret of a man, indignant and angry at what he had been given to do.

Hal craned to see: iron hats, rimmed and tumbled like scree, every one of them black, with a white crown and a red cross. Templar war hats. Of course, Hal thought, this is the stuff out of the tun barrels, the stuff that had not been issued because of the old ghosts that haunted it.

‘Blue,' the limner raged. ‘With St Andrew's white cross on it. By the time I have pented them all anew and they are dry enough to wear, the battle will be ower – and a dozen more like it. What is so wrang with clappin' them on needful skulls and being done with it?'

‘There is no Order of Poor Knights,' the smith answered sonorously, ‘and our king will not wish it back to life.'

Hal heard the pain in it, knew at once that the man had been a Templar. He and the smith looked briefly at each other; the other nodded.

‘At Liston, until the St John Knights took it,' he said. ‘I was only a lay brother, skilled at smithing, so I broke no oath to man or God to leave that which was cast down by the Pope himself.'

Hal nodded, then thought.

‘It is the Feast of St John,' he said, smiling lopsidedly because his face still hurt. ‘A quarter day – a hiring day. Are you serviced?'

‘I'm Davey of Crauford, your honour,' the smith replied. ‘Serviced to none but the King by my own desire and God by my birth into this world.'

‘I need a smith at Herdmanston.'

Hal saw the hesitation, and then the smith jerked his chin at the naked blade in Hal's hand.

‘If you tell me where you had the sword and the answer suits me I will service to you.'

It was proud, but he was a smith and knew his worth – as did Hal, so he took no offence, simply studied the sword more closely.

‘You know this blade?' he countered, lifting it slightly and the smith nodded. Somewhere, a horn blew, stirring Hal to a half-movement, until he realized with an avalanche of loss that it was not for him. No longer for him, for he was done … he felt like that white and red fighting cock, hauling itself on to the corpse of its opponent, crowing bloody victory and half-dead because of it.

That brought a reminder of Sim, a sharp pang that sucked breath from him for a moment.

‘I may do,' the smith replied. ‘There are many like it, but they are crockards – the inscription is hammered into a made blade and hilt, whereas this was forged with the letters in it. Only one is like that and it belonged to the de Bissot, who was one of the founders of the Order of Poor Knights long ago.'

‘I had it from a de Bissot,' Hal answered. ‘Rossal de Bissot, who is dead in Castile and did not want this blade in the hands of his enemies.'

‘Blessed be,' the smith said. ‘I am sorrowed to hear it, for he was the last o' his line if he handed it to you for keeping. So that is the true sword – I never thought to see it in life.'

‘Has it a name, then?' Hal said wonderingly, handling it as if it had suddenly warmed. The smith smiled and shook his head.

‘No name, your honour. Only fame. It was made, they say, from the heathen crescent ripped off the roof of the Temple when Crusaders took the Holy City. Gold, they thought it was and were mightily disappointed to find gilded iron. Yet they put the iron to good use – the letters were put in it during the forging.'

‘What do they mean?' Hal asked and the smith reached out one cracked thumb, running it in a caress across the fat round pommel inset with the Templar cross, then traced the letters of the hilt: N+D+S+M+L.

‘It is in the Latin,' Davey of Crauford said. ‘I have no great skill with it, but I know this – every decent smith does. “
Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux
”, which means “let not the dragon be my guide” if I have been told true.'

Hal nodded confirmation and touched the blade's letters: C+S+S+M+L.

‘Then that says “
Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux
”,' the smith went on.

‘“The Holy Cross be my light”,' Hal translated and the smith smiled.

‘So it is said. A good, blessed weapon, fit for St Michael himself. Or a Sientcler of the shivered cross.'

He went down on one knee so suddenly that Hal took a pace back, alarmed, as he felt hands round his foot. But the smith, head bowed, simply swore fealty to the lord of Herdmanston and, as the words rolled out of the man, Hal felt something shift and fill him.

He was a knight and a landed lord. He was the Sire of Herdmanston, auld or not, and folk depended on him. Neither he nor the Kingdom was done yet …

The horn blasts racked him, flared his nostrils, brought his head up like a warhorse.

They crowded into the sweating tent while the horns farted and blared. They stank of staleness and leather and oiled maille, clanked when they moved and were stiff-ruffed like strange hounds, trying to sniff another's arse to take the measure of the meeting.

The Scots lords gathered, the high and wee and as many as could be brought together, fretting to be away and attending to their
mesnie
as the men gathered for muster. Hot and anxious, hungry some of them and weighted with fear, Bruce thought – but not as bad as the ones opposite, if Seton was to be believed.

His brother Edward, broad face already framed by a maille coif, grinned from one side to the other as he chatted to Jamie Douglas and young – God in heaven, painful young – Walter Steward; both of them would be raised by the King, as was the custom before a battle. Young Walter would become a knight and the Black, lisping when he spoke and gentle as any woman now, would be elevated to banneret.

Edward Bruce did not trust Seton, even when he had sworn on his life, on being drawn and quartered, that what he said was true; the English were exhausted and demoralized by the marches and defeats of the day before, the capture of Thomas Gray and the death of Hereford's nephew. Their foot was still straggling in and they believed the Scots would flee, not fight.

‘A trap,' Edward had growled and Seton, bristling like a routed hog, had sworn he spoke the truth.

Drawn and quartered, Bruce thought. Does Alexander Seton know what it means? He remembered Wallace, remembered watching the bloody horror of it, the moment when he hung there, with the blood pouring down his thighs and pooling underneath him because the executioners had already emasculated him, slit his belly open and let his entrails out.

Alive still, he made only one protest, when the pair of muscled men grabbed his arms, forcing his chest out so that the executioner could reach in the belly and up to grab the heart.

‘You are gripping my arms too hard.'

Bruce bowed his head. A stranger's hand is fumbling at the very core of you and you can say that. God keep you at His right Hand, Will Wallace.

The other thought rattled the lid of the black chest, burst briefly out – until he was gone, I could not set my foot on the way to the throne. Then it was wrestled back into the dark and the lid slammed on it, leaving it to coil and writhe with all the other sins he had committed to get to here.

Here, to this tent, with these lords, he thought wryly. In a month I will be forty years old. In an hour or two I might be dead, if these men do not fight and we fail. Dead. Not captured … the thought of capture brought a lurch of terror that almost doubled him; by God, he thought, I will not suffer like Will. Not that. They can stick my head on a London spike, but I will not be paraded like an entertainment of offal.

Nor fled … victory or death. Yet there was the nag of that, like his tunic catching on a nail as he went through a door, hauling him up short. The thought of returning to flight and harrowing if he failed, ducking back to heather and hill and outlawry, was a crushing weight – but if he stood and died rather than flee, then everything was for nothing. The deaths of his brothers, all those who had loyally served him and paid for it with lives and livelihoods … all the sins which bulged that chest in his head and, though he tried hard not to believe it, breathed out their foulness so that each one showed in the wreck of his face for all to see. All suffering made worthless if he gave in to noble death at the point of sure defeat.

And Elizabeth, his wife, lost to him for ever. Not that there was love in it – Christ's Wounds, her father's Irishmen stood opposite with the English – but the flower of the de Burghs held the chalice of Scotland's future.

If his disease permitted such matters as an heir by then, of course. He wondered about the others, the soft night bodies that consoled him, the Christinas and Christians and ones with no name that he could recall. They were not repelled by the rumours, he noted. More to the point, none of those women had been felled by his very breath, poison to all if he was truly a leper. And one at least had conceived him a son, a fine boy – but that had been a time ago and the lad was now old enough to be a squire. A king, he thought wryly, if I die and brother Edward with me.

The
nobiles
would never permit it, of course; young squire Robert Bruce was too bastard to be a king and if the worst happened here – as it might – then the Kingdom would be plunged into more chaos.

He felt the sour weight of it all, crushing him into the shape of a throne.

The crowded tent waited, shifting impatiently and wondering why they were here. They were here, Bruce thought, because I need them to fight and need to have them believe it is their own idea and not mine. I have led them to this ring, but they must dance to my tune, so that I know they will follow the steps and not jig off in entirely the wrong direction.

‘We have lost brothers, friends, relatives,' he began and the murmuring died. ‘Others of your kin and friends are prisoners. Prelates and clergy of this kingdom are closeted in stone.'

He saw that he had their attention and told them what Seton had reported.

‘If their English hearts are cast down, the body is not worth a jot. Their glory is in heavy horse and heavier carts,' he went on, while the air grew thick and still; outside, he heard the great, slow drone of men moving and talking.

‘Our glory is in the name of God and victory.'

He had them, could sense it swell like a fat prick. He told them he would fight and watched that chase itself across their faces. He told them they did not have to agree with him and that if they all believed it was right for them to withdraw, then he would do it, with a heavy heart.

‘If you stay to fight with me, my good lords,' he added, ‘know that this is a just cause and so a divine favour is with us, that you will garner all the great riches the English have brought with them, while your wives and children will bless you for defending them.'

There were shouts, now. ‘God wills it.' ‘St Andrew.' Even a growled-out ‘Cruachan' from Neil Campbell.

‘The enemy fight only for power,' Bruce added. ‘Take no prisoners or spoils until all is won, my lords. Know also that all previous offences against me and mine are pricked out for those who stand with me this day and that the heirs of all those who fall will freely receive their just inheritances.'

It was, he knew, a jewel of plaint, pitched perfectly between honour and greed.

‘Are you with me?' he demanded and knew the answer before the roar flapped the sides of the panoply with a dragon's breath.

Addaf watched them butcher the horse in the stream, so that it ran red with blood all the way back to the sea. It had been worth a year's wages, he thought bitterly, and had foundered trying to cross the tidal-swollen, steep-sided curse of a stream the night before; there were half a dozen more, slipped off the makeshift bridges of boards and tumbled to expensive ruin, unveiled as bloated, stiff-legged feasts for flies when the tide sucked the water back.

Men moved stiffly, red-eyed from lack of sleep. Most of the men-at-arms and knights had lain fully armoured by their bridled horses, starting fitfully at every noise, for everyone thought the Scotch imps of Satan would use the night for some foul, unchivalrous attack.

Now they levered themselves up, all the fine surcotes and plumes and trappers streaked with dust and dung, snatching bread or a mouthful of wine if they were lucky or had clever squires.