The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (149 page)

‘I will finish you, Lothian.'

His breath was fetid as a dragon's; Hal remembered watching Bruce in a fight long ago and spat his own sourness into Malise's face, which made the man roar and tug. Malise tried to bite and gouge.

A mistake, Hal thought, clinging on with a panicked sense of his failing strength, the sear of the old wound along his ribs, the trembling ache of his wrist – he has turned rabid …

Malise, in a maddened, careless fury, tried to butt Hal; then he swung round, tumbling them both into the water in a spray fine as diamonds. Spitting and growling like soaked dogs, they rolled apart and came up looking for one another.

Hal turned an eyeblink too late and took a blow meant for his throat on his wildly flung hand, so that Malise's forearm smashed into the wrist Badenoch had damaged at the Pelstream fight. The shock and pain made him cry out; Malise gave a bellow of triumph and kicked, but the water hampered him enough to cushion the blow. Yet Hal, off balance, stumbled and fell, floundering.

Malise gave an exultant howl and started forward – only for something to drop round his neck and haul him up short, so that he almost fell backwards. Furious, puzzled, he twisted round in the grip of what felt like a noose – into the wet, grim face of Isabel, her hair a Medusa of wild wet snakes over her face and the arbalest held in both hands.

She had struck with it, but it was spanned and she had missed, dropping the loop of a prong and the taut braided cord over Malise's shoulders like a noose; there was no quarrel in it, for she had dropped that. He saw the lack, looked at her and snarled. He started forward and she pushed back, keeping him away as he came hard up against the braided cord. He reached up his dagger-free hand and started to lever it over his head.

‘You will burn in Hell,' he screeched and she heard the wild, strange cry, almost like a plea – and all that he had done to her, all the foul things he had poured on her body and in her ears, washed up like old sick. He saw it in her eyes.

‘Then I will meet you there,' she said and pressed the sneck.

The arbalest bucked and thrummed. The string took Malise in the throat like a ram, crushing apple and pipe and forging such a searing pain that he shrieked away from it and tore free, ripping the weapon from her grasp. He fell in the water, floundering free of the tangle of the arbalest and rolling over.

She picked up Sim's legacy, planning to club Malise with it, but instead she stood and watched him gasp. Like a fish, she thought. Drowning in air. Hal climbed to his feet, staggering a little, and she moved to him, supporting him, aware that riders were approaching.

So near to escape … She wondered if she could find Malise's dagger in the spate and stones of the Tweed, for she would not go back to the cage. Not with breath in her …

The riders came up and a great grin split the face of the leader, the black hair plastered to the diamond-netted beard.

‘Bigod, ye made it then. Who is that chiel?'

The Black Douglas. Isabel sagged, so that now Hal had to hold her up.

‘Malise Bellejambe,' he answered numbly and now he saw Dog Boy and Parcy and the others. He thought of Sweetmilk and felt the souring loss of him.

‘Is it, bigod?' Jamie Douglas said, looking down at the man making gug-gug sounds as he tried to suck breath into a throat long past caring, floundering in the rush of river. ‘I thought he would be bigger.'

Kirkpatrick came up, half staggering and with blood all down his face.

‘Time,' he began and could not finish it.

‘Past time,' Jamie Douglas agreed, ‘for we have fired the Forge. Mount up and let him drown here.'

But Dog Boy was off his horse and wading to the side of the gasping Malise. He looked down at him, looked down into the desperate rat eyes of him and, when he had recognition, nodded slowly.

‘Aye,' he said, strangely gentle. ‘Ye mind me, I can see. The wee boy from Douglas. You poisoned the dogs and red-murdered Tod's Wattie.'

Those old sins washed back into the fevered brain of Malise and he tried to explain that he had not meant to kill the dogs nor Tod's Wattie, which was a lie. But all that came out was a horrible rasping gurgle that appalled him – as did the blade appearing in the man's hand. The lurch of harsh realization sucked the final strength from him and he knew he had no future to speak in.

He saw flames flare and the Witch, outlined stark and eldritch as she turned on the back of the horse, her wet hair blown by a rain wind into a halo of snakes. The sudden sharp fear that he had lost her, his only love, was swamped by a sharper, disbelieving sorrow that everything would go on as before, save that now he would not be part of it.

Dog Boy slit the ruined throat, one hand over the man's eyes to still him, as you did with a dog that was too old or done up to live; the blood skeined away in the spate like an offering.

Then he rose up and went silently to his horse, swung up into the saddle and splashed back across the ford to safety without a backward glance.

Herdmanston

Feast of St Anthony, Father of All Monks, January 1315

It had started snowing on St Andrew's Feast and had scarcely stopped since, so that the world was all rime and white drape. Birds fell from under the eaves, killed by cold and leaving no more than a brief hole in the snow piled up round Herdmanston.

Folk moved slowly, less to do with the difficulty of forcing through the sifted banks than with the lack of energy. They were living now on nettle roots and burdock, which helped fill the belly and tease out the largesse of Herdmanston's lord, who still had oats and barley to give in a world where gold was easier to come by.

God's world starved and froze and those who knew the truth of it blessed the fact that they huddled round Herdmanston, where there was still food and warmth to be had.

Hal was in the undercroft looking at stores and calculating what he could keep as seed for next year, for he was sure that every villein and cottar on his land was eating their own stocks. They kept the weans in the dark as much as possible, to fool them into staying under poor covers and sleeping, but when they woke and wailed, bellies griping, Hal could not condemn parents for feeding them with next year's hope.

The calling summoned him up into a welcome heat; the undercroft was colder still than anywhere else, even the yett hall which needed a constant charcoal brazier to keep Parcy Dodd's teeth from rattling out of his head.

Swathed in wool, his face mottled like spoiled mutton, Parcy was out on the short stretch of walkway, manhandling the wooden bridge between it and the stairs. Below, sitting like a pile of washing on a rouncey, a familiar face squinted up into a clear, cold sky with enough blue to make a robe for every Virgin. A blood-sun sparkled diamonds from an endless world of white.

‘Kirkpatrick,' Hal said and the man acknowledged it, before waving to the even more shapeless bundle on an ass.

‘It would be good for myself and young Rauf here to sample some of your warm hospitality.'

Hal waved them up, sent Horse Pyntle to see to the mounts and brought the pair into the hall where the fire was banked. Folk, contriving to find work close to it, parted to let Hal and his visitors come up.

Hal waited while the pot of wine that stood near enough the flame to keep it warm was emptied into cups and seared with a hot iron, Mintie grinning at the trembling youngster called Rauf as she stirred in spices.

‘This'll thaw your cods,' she said, handing it to him, and he nodded, speaking in bursts between the chitter of his teeth.

‘Cauld. Ride. Long way frae Roslin.'

‘Why suffer it?' Hal asked pointedly and Kirkpatrick, unwrapping himself, waved an insouciant hand.

‘I was passing.'

It was a lie so blatant that the cold Hal felt on him was more chilled than anything God had handed the world so far. He waved Mintie away, waved all of them away, so that they moved off, reluctant and sullen at leaving the fire. In the end there was himself, Kirkpatrick and Rauf, who became aware of the eyes on him, looked from one to the other and grunted his way upright, clutching the precious warmth of the cup; melting droplets sparkled in the slight of his beard as he turned and lumbered off, trailing woollens.

‘A good lad,' Kirkpatrick noted. ‘Nephew to my wife and raised to squire, a station he could hardly have realized afore.'

‘I heard you got wed,' Hal replied easily, taking the sting out of the reminder that neither he nor Isabel had been invited to the September affair. Kirkpatrick had the grace to look embarrassed.

‘It was hastily arranged,' he said, but did not elaborate on why. ‘I hear your own is due in the spring,' he added by way of balm and Hal nodded. He and Isabel had planned it for May and he added, for the politeness of it, that Kirkpatrick was welcome.

‘Aye, it will be a rare event, I am sure,' Kirkpatrick added. ‘The King was pleased to sanction it. You will be equally pleased to know that he will not attend it and so save you a deal of expense.'

Hal raised his cup to that; the arrival of the King meant the arrival of the court, newly freed Queen, sister and all: a host of mouths eating like baby birds in a land of famine. They had been in Edinburgh for the Christ's Mass feast, which Hal had attended with Isabel because it was expected of him; he had, to his surprise, been given the gift of a sword, fancy-hilted and engraved on the blade with the words ‘
Le Roi me donne, St. Cler me porte
'
.

‘To replace the one you delivered to Glaissery with the Beauseant banner,' the King had said and Hal had acknowledged it with a bow of thanks and a concern that his visit there had been so noted. His own gift – a silver medallion of St Anthony, said to have been worn by his namesake, the blessed Anthony of Padua – seemed less than worthy after that, particularly in the light of St Anthony being the patron saint of lepers and the scabby peel of the royal face.

‘The court now moves to Perth,' Kirkpatrick went on, ‘afore it eats Edinburgh down to the nub. Yet we fair better than the English, since oats and barley are a hardy crop and wheat is not. They are starving beyond the Tweed.'

‘They are starving because Randolph and Jamie and the King's brother scourge them of all they have left,' Hal pointed out. Kirkpatrick waved a placating palm.

‘The winter has done for all that stravaigin',' he reported. ‘They have gone to their own homes. Jamie is back in Douglas, putting it in order.'

Hal had seen Douglas and Randolph at the Christ's Mass feast, red-faced and greasy with joy and victory, reeling to their feet every so often to throw toasts at Bruce, the hero king. Isabel, as ever, had been quietly scathing.

‘You would think they had fought the Philistines,' she muttered. ‘Instead, they took a kingdom from the son when, in all his life, they never managed to take as much as an ell of good Scots dirt from the father.'

It had been a harsh judgement on a victory which had cost so much blood; Hal mentioned it now for the enjoyment of seeing Kirkpatrick wince at the memory of his attempts to hush her as politely as could be managed.

In the end, only Dog Boy had soothed Isabel. He had moved up from below the salt, seeing her distress from down the length of the table, and brought his new wife, the smiling Bet's Meggy, to be reminded to her. They had fallen at once to talk of Bet's Meggy's mother, whom Isabel had known; Hal had nodded his thanks and relief to Dog Boy, marvelling at what the years had created: a tall, dark copy of Sir James Douglas in the livery of a royal houndsman, with his round-eyed son taking care of his wee sister down at the end of the feast table and trying to miss nothing of this glorious night.

Hal had been sorry to leave them, if nothing else at court.

‘How is your lady?' Kirkpatrick asked with a lopsided smile, breaking Hal's reverie. He was leaning back, at ease and with one foot carelessly thrown over the arm of his seat, dangling and bobbing to some unheard music; his boots smoked gently from the heat of the fire.

‘Fine as the sun on shiny water,' Hal answered and Kirkpatrick heard the uncertainty, cocking an eyebrow.

‘She talks to God a wee bit more than she did,' Hal added, almost defiantly, and Kirkpatrick nodded as if he had known that all along. He had not and the knowledge of it made him need to hide his frown; there was nothing worse, in his opinion, than a good woman gone to piety. A cage would do that, all the same, and he said as much.

‘These surroundings are safer and more of a comfort,' he added, waving his cup to encompass Herdmanston and all in it. ‘You have restored a deal of it.'

The smell of cut wood and stone dust permeated the air and every time he breathed it in Hal was reminded of Sim, who had worked so hard before to restore a burned-out Herdmanston. The absence of that great soul was still an unbalmed sore.

‘There is a roof over us,' he said, to chase away the memory, ‘but the floor above that is unfinished, while the top still opens to the sky. And the outbuildings are being redone in stone – harder to tear them down.'

Kirkpatrick nodded soberly at this pointed reminder that war still lurked, an unseen beast just beyond the hill, capable, he knew, of sweeping back and destroying all this and his own place at Closeburn, for all the victory at Bannock's burn.

‘Must have cost a fair sum,' he added, innocent as a nun's headsquare. ‘The King is convinced that you achieved it with the rents from his gift of Cessford.'

Hal stuck his nose in his cup and said nothing. The barony of Cessford was the Bruce reward to Herdmanston for his service, a poisoned chalice of burned-out manor and ruined fields whose folk needed as much help as Herdmanston or they, too, would starve.

‘Or using rents from Lady Isabel's wee holding at Balmullo, which is hers by right,' Kirkpatrick added gently, swinging his foot still and seeming to take great interest in it. ‘Of course, that is also long burned out by a wrathful Buchan when he lived. So both it and Cessford needs money more than sends it.'