The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (148 page)

Panting, drenched, they paused to gasp in air and Hal clung to Isabel, who grinned back at him from her pearled face. The warp has found the weft, he thought, the song the throat. No matter what happens now I am as happy as when the sun first found shiny water and I know it is the same for her.

They moved on, at a gentler trot now, burst into a wynd and shrank back from fresh rush lights, mounted on a cart. Behind, the Watch flames bobbed – one less, Hal noted with grim satisfaction – and circled in confusion.

There was a smell here, a stink they all knew well, and Isabel covered her nose, while Hal and Kirkpatrick fell into the old trick of it, breathing through their open mouth.

The dead were here.

There were a heap of them. Brought and dumped, they were the ones too weak from hunger or disease to stay in this world any longer. Two men in rough sack overtunics worked with grunts under the poor light of damp torches to load them on the cart.

Kirkpatrick looked at Hal.

‘They will not be taking them to anywhere inside Berwick,' he said pointedly and Hal, after a pause, nodded and drew out his dagger. Isabel laid a hand on his arm and strolled forward, folding her hands into her nun's tunic, hearing Hal and Kirkpatrick slide sideways into the dark.

The two men paused and looked up, saw what it was and waited deferentially. One even hauled his rough hood from his head.

‘Sister,' the taller of the pair said. ‘Ye are ower late to bring succour to these.'

There was bitterness there, but whether at convent charity or his own condition at having to manhandle the nuns' failure was a mystery; his comrade nudged him sharply for his cheek.

‘I am sorry for it,' Isabel said piously. ‘Right sorry for this and everything else that will happen.'

The first man shuffled, made ashamed by the vehemence of her words.

‘Ye cannot tak' the weight of God's judgement all on yerself, Sister,' he said.

‘I am glad you feel so,' Isabel answered. ‘And so doubly sorry for this.'

They were puzzled as long as it took for the tall man to feel the savage wrench that took his head back, baring his throat for Hal's dagger. The other, bewildered, half turned and took Kirkpatrick's thin, fluted dagger through the eye.

There was silence for a moment or two, broken only by ragged breathing, the whisper of rain and the choke of dying men; blood washed down the cobbles into the open gurgling trench of the drain. Isabel looked at the two men and tried to feel some pity for innocents, but failed. The world was full of innocents, all as dead as these, she thought. A wheen of them are scattered nearby – and more are on the cart. They, at least, would serve the living one last time.

Then, in a flurry of movement, they stripped the rough tunics from the men and put them on. Isabel flung off the nun's habit and stood soaking in her undershift while Kirkpatrick tried not to stare at the cling of it. She shot him a warning glance as she climbed up on the cart and silenced Hal with another, so that he saw the inevitability of it.

‘If you make a single comment on what has been exposed here, Black Roger of Closeburn, I will blind you, so I will.'

Kirkpatrick, with a wan grin, held up his hands in mock surrender and watched, admiringly, as Isabel laid herself down amid the loaded corpses, as if settling for the night in a feather bed.

‘Roll on your side, lady,' Hal advised, ‘lest the rain get in your eyes and make you blink.The right side, mind.'

So you do not have to look into the blue-tinged wither of an old woman with her own marbled stare, Hal thought. Christ's Wounds, I have missed the courage of this woman among all else.

They each took a shaft and heaved; the cart ground reluctantly away, the torches bobbing and trailing sparks into the night.

Malise hurried through the slick streets, wrapped in a dark cloak and a hot fury. He might be a great lord, he ranted to himself, but de Valence had no right to speak to him the way he did. Jacob the Jew, indeed.

He wished he'd had the courage to spit Gaveston's old nickname for de Valence right in the Earl's face when Pembroke had looked down his long, hooked nose at him. It had been hard enough getting entry to the castle at all and his anger and fury at that had been fuelled by the fact that he had been sent from it in the first place by the same Earl.

But the guard knew him and let him in – eventually – growling that the ‘enemy was at the gate'. Malise suspected differently, saw the Earl himself in the bailey, naked sword in hand but unarmoured and sending men right and left with barely concealed irritation.

He had elbowed through them and demanded to know what had happened to Isabel MacDuff. Then he had had the Look.

‘Gone, though the matter is nothing to do with you,' the Earl had spat coldly and rounded on a luckless passing serjeant.

‘You – Hobman, is it? Yes. Go to the gate, find out who let this man in and arrest him. Then take the gate yourself and let no one in. You hear? No one. We are under attack here.'

He turned back to Malise.

‘You will go with him and leave. If I see you again I will make you suffer for the irritation in my eye.'

‘There is no attack. They came to free her,' blustered Malise. ‘You must send men to the town gates or she will escape …'

A look brought Hobman's hand on his shoulder and his firm voice in Malise's ear.

‘Come along now, there is a good sir.'

The soaking rain trickled down Malise's neck and brought him back to the moment, the night and the wet. He recoiled away from the dark mouths of alleys, fearing the feral eyes and worse that he imagined lurking there, and tried to work out what the bitch would do.

Not alone, he thought and the savage exultation of it drove into him like a spike: the Lothian lord, Hal of Herdmanston. It had to be him, silly old fool, come to rescue his light o' love as if he was Sir Gawain plucking the Grail from a high tower.

There was no way for her to escape, he thought. But if it were me, I would head for the gate nearest the Tweed where the old bridge, destroyed so often that Berwick had given up rebuilding it, was no more than a staggering line of black stumps like rotting old teeth.

Now folk had to ford the Tweed instead, but the postern that led to it kept its old name.

The Briggate.

He came down through the surging streets, worried at first by the knots of flame-lit men with grim faces and iron hats but realizing they were stumbling burghers, called out to the half-done walls and trembling at the idea of the Scots breaking in. Even if many of them were Scots themselves, Malise thought as he hurried through the trail of their torch embers, they had families and livelihoods here that Bruce's army would not treat kindly.

At the Briggate, he paused uncertainly; the area around the gate was thick with armed men now, at least twenty and perhaps more, all bristling with spears and crossbows, rain dripping from the rims of their helmets and soaking padded jacks.

Malise spotted the serjeant in charge by his maille and his attitude, bawling orders left and right, his bucket helm under one arm and his surcote dark with rain and bright with the badge of de Valence.

‘Have some men and a woman gone out the gate?'

The serjeant
turned at the sound of the voice, saw the dark, dripping figure and thought at once of a wet weasel in a dark wood.

‘Who are you?' he demanded, only half interested. The men he had were all call-outs, barely of use even when placed behind merlons. God help us if the Scotch come at us out of the dark, he thought …

‘Sir Malise Bellejambe.'

That snapped the serjeant's head round and he stared more closely at the wet weasel. It was possible this man was a
nobile
. Just possible enough to allow caution in dealing with him.

‘Well,' the serjeant said and added, with a hint of scathe, ‘my lord. Nothing has gone through this gate. Nor will it, coming or going.'

‘The deid kert.'

They both turned to the voice and the owner of it blinked from under his soaking hood, looking from one to the other uncertainly and wishing now that he had never spoken.

‘The what?'

Gib heard the tone of the serjeant and wished even more fervently that he had kept his lips snecked on the matter. But it was out now, so he stammered out the truth of it: the dead cart had been manhandled out through the open gate just before everyone had arrived.

‘You opened the gate?' the serjeant demanded and now Gib heard the growling thunder, so that he started to sweat, despite the rain.

‘Aye, for a brace of auld chiels. I telt them the gate could not be opened, for the alarm was sounded. So they said they would leave the bliddy thing, for they were not inclined to roll it back the way they had come.'

He looked imploringly at the serjeant, willing him to see the shock of it.

‘I didnae want a pile o' corpses blocking up the way and stinking my door all night.'

‘Ye opened the gate,' the serjeant replied in a disbelieving knell of a voice.

‘I said they would not be allowed back,' whined Gib, ‘but they laughed and answered that it was a fine excuse for their wives and they would spend the night at the Forge.'

Malise knew the Forge, a smithy just across the ford set to capture the passing trade. It provided a howf for travellers too late to gain entry to the town and was a notorious stew, providing drink and food and whores, even in times like these. More so, he added to himself, for folk trapped beyond Berwick's walls needed to lose their fears in drink and lust. Even the women.

‘They were rebels,' he explained to the frowning serjeant, ‘who have freed a prisoner from the castle and are now headed for escape. If you provide some men, we can overtake them …'

‘Open the gate?' thundered the serjeant. ‘Again?'

‘In pursuit …' Malise began and the serjeant closed one eye and scowled.

‘Aye, you would like that, I am sure, if you were a rebel spy. Get me to open the gate and spill in a lot of your friends.'

‘I am Sir Malise Bellejambe …'

‘So you say.'

‘He is, though,' Gib interrupted helpfully and withered under the glare. ‘The Witch-keeper.'

Now the serjeant knew who the man was: the jailor of the witch in the cage; an idea struck him.

‘Is she the one sprung, then?'

Malise, all nervous impatience, nodded furiously and the serjeant, wiping the rain from his face, thought with agonizing slowness and then nodded.

‘You can go alone,' he said, ‘out the postern. If there are only two old men and a woman, you should have little trouble. Mind – you will not be allowed back in this night.'

No one will, he added to himself, watching Malise scuttle to the small door set in one of the large ones. He gave a nod and the man unlocked it with a huge key while Malise fretted at his slowness; it was barely open before he wraithed through it.

‘Fair riddance to you,' the serjeant declared and spat, listening to the comfort of the lock clunking shut.

She rolled, stiff and shivering, off the cart and accepted the rough sodden sacking which Hal stripped off and gave to her.

‘Time we were not here,' Kirkpatrick muttered, looking back towards the distant gate; Isabel nodded, and then looked dubiously at the huge steel-pronged arbalest Hal handed her.

‘It is spanned. All ye need do is slot a bolt in it,' he said and handed her one with a look as sharp as its point; she nodded again, feeling the dragging weight.

‘Move yerselves,' Kirkpatrick hissed and Isabel paused once more and signed the cross over the tipped-forward cart of lolling dead.

‘God be praised,' she said.

‘For ever and ever,' they muttered and turned into the river. It only came up to their shins, but had spated with the rain and the force of it was enough, with the stone-littered gravel bed, to stumble them. They moved like sleepwalkers towards the distant flickering lights of the Forge, Kirkpatrick in the rear and concentrating on his footing, cursing the dark and the wet and bad cess of the whole business.

Lucky to get away with it, he thought to himself, just as he heard the scatter of pebbles sliding under an unsteady foot. He turned, saw a dark shape and started to duck – and then the world exploded the side of his head into a bright light.

Hal and Isabel turned as Kirkpatrick reeled backwards and hit the water with a great spray; Isabel screamed and part of the rain-soaked dark seemed to tear itself away and lunge at Hal. He had time to see the winking flash that sliced the explosion of water, had time to realize that the wild, flailing hilt of that dagger had felled Kirkpatrick. Had time for the crazed eyes to sear a name into his head …

Malise.

Then the black shape was on him and all was mayhem.

Isabel saw the shadow and screamed again, knowing who it was even as Hal took the rush of it and Kirkpatrick toppled into the water like a felled tree. She saw him, arms out and loose, launched away on the shallow water and turning like a log, so that she knew he was unconscious and would drown unless she helped.

She floundered to him, underkirtle and sacking and the slung arbalest conspiring to suck her to a stop, levered him face up, hearing the splash and grunt of the two men fighting.

‘Wake,' she roared at him, slapping his whey cheeks, aware of the great bloody bruise on one side of his face, but his head rolled back and forth and she shrieked her frustration at him, and then began hauling him to the nearby bank in a fury of panic that she would not get back to help Hal in time.

Hal thought Malise was the ugliest thing in creation, his greasy pewter hair plastered to his skull, his face a braided knot of hate, studded and pitted and marked down one side with nicks and glassy pocks and a nose bent sideways like a ruined spoon.

They held each other like fumbling bad lovers, Hal's fist clamped on Malise's wrist as he tried to bring the dagger down, Malise's other arm flailing wildly and blocked, time and again, by Hal's forearm. Hal felt the dull pain there and, in desperation, struck out between Malise's blows, felt the man stagger; for a moment they lurched and lumbered in the fountaining water, before Malise recovered and they strained, almost still.