The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (16 page)

‘Bloody hoor's by-blows, the lot,' he muttered again, a litany which those nearest now endured with an extra sink of the shoulders, as if hunching into more rain.

‘Bloody crockards. Pollards.'

Hal and Sim exchanged looks and wry smiles. Soon Sim would have to have words with Bangtail before he rasped everyone raw, but there was a deal of sympathy for man stuck with crockards and pollards, debased foreign coinage now flooding the country thanks to English reforms a decade since. Silver light, they looked like sterling English money until you brought them close.

It was yet another layer of misery to spread on the death of Dand and Red Cloak Thom the day before and the gratitude of hungry men for beef only went a little way as salve. The army, if you could call it that, was now all Carrick men, for the other nobles had taken their forces and gone their separate ways, having promised to turn up at this or that English-held place and bring their sons, daughters or wives as surety for their future good conduct.

Douglas men were trailing homeward, fretted and furious at having seen The Hardy taken off. That was bad enough, Hal thought, but he had been told by those who witnessed it that Percy had insisted on chains and The Hardy had been bound in them, kicking and snarling; it had not been a pleasant sight.

Even Wishart had gone, leaving Bruce to argue out the last hard-wrung details with Percy, who had already sent triumphal messages south to King Edward and his grandfather, De Warenne, that the rebellion had been dealt with. Yet Clifford's forces were fumbling northwards, trying to bring Wallace to bay and having no luck.

Hal would leave, too, he had decided. Tomorrow, he said to himself. I have had enough of the community of the realm – let them kick spurs at each other like cocks battling for a dung-hill …

‘Forty bloody days,' Bangtail announced bitterly, which was different enough to bring some heads up.

‘Forty days?' John the Lamb repeated. ‘Is that how long yon crockards and pollards last before turnin' into powrie mist?'

Men groaned; they had hoped to hear no more about the contents of Bangtail's dull-clinking purse.

‘Rain,' Bangtail spat back scathingly.

‘St Swithun's day if thou dost rain; for forty days it will remain,' he intoned.

‘Christ's Bones,' said Red Rowan, scrubbing his autumn bracken head, ‘you are a bowl of soor grue, man.'

‘Aye, weel,' Bangtail muttered back sourly. ‘I was thinkin' of Tod's Wattie, warm and fed and dry an' rattlin' the hot arse off that wee Agnes. I had some hopes for that quim, save that we were untimely torn apert.'

‘Man, man,' said Will Elliot admiringly, ‘Untimely … it is just like yon tale of the Knight and the Faerie. Ye ken – the yin where the Knight …'

‘O God, who adorned the precious death of our most holy Father, Saint Benedict, with so many and so great privileges,' declared a sonorous voice in good English; it brought all heads round to where the silver-grey figure moved.

‘Grant, we beseech You, that at our departure hence, we may be defended from the snares of the enemy by the blessed presence of him whose memory we celebrate. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.'

‘Amen,' men muttered, crossing themselves.

‘Christ be praised,' Sim offered.

‘For ever and ever,' they all repeated.

The monk squatted by the fire and took his hands from the sleeves of the rough, grey-white habit. His cadaverous face, flooded with firelight, became a death's head of shadows.

‘We have some meat,' Hal offered and the monk showed some teeth in a bearded smile.

‘This is a meatless day, my son. I came to offer both blessing and advice.'

‘The blessing is welcome,' Hal answered warily, expecting a sermon on the defilement of a meatless day; the rich smell of the roasting beef wafted betrayingly. The monk laughed softly from the depths of his cowl.

‘The advice is this – the picket guard is one Fergus the Beetle,' the monk said. ‘He is not one of God's sharpest tools, but honest and diligent. I fear, though, he is out of his depth with the visitors who have arrived at his post. He can understand only that your name was mentioned.'

He put his hands back in his sleeves and moved off, seeming to drift between the men, who crossed themselves humbly as he passed and tried to hide marrow bones. Sighing, Hal got up, looked at Sim and the pair of them went to find Fergus, the picket guard.

Fergus watched the company ahead of him closely, especially the rider with a face like a fat moon and the air of someone too close to the crotch of another's ancient hose. Fergus was from the north and, like all those men, disliked anyone from south of The Mounth ridge, who dressed peculiarly and spoke in ways hard for an honest man to understand. Further south than that, he knew, were men who scarcely warranted the name, soft perfumed folk who curled their hair and spoke in strange ways.

Hal and Sim, coming up behind the guards, saw the huddle of kerns and the short, dark little man, made darker by the black wolf cap and pelt he wore over bits and pieces of maille and leather filched from dead enemies. The black, hardened leather jack he wore made him look like some beetle, newly surfaced from the forest mulch, but no-one would voice that; they all knew the killing reputation of Fergus and his men who came from north of The Mounth with all the strangeness that implied.

‘Atweill than,' Fergus declared to the haughty rider, ‘this wul dae brawlie. Gin ye haed spoke The Tongue at the verra stert, ye wad hae spared the baith o us aw this hatter. Tak tent ti whit Ah hae ti say an lippen ti me weill – ye maun bide ther until I lowse ye.'

The rider, mailled and coiffed, flung up his hands, so that wet drops flew up from his green-gloved fingers, and cursed pungently in French.

‘I am Sir Gervaise de la Mare. Do you understand no language at all?'

‘Ah prigg the blissin o the blue heivins on ye,' Fergus scowled back. ‘There are ower mony skirrivaigin awhaurs, so bide doucelyke or, b'Goad's ane Wounds, Ah wul …'

‘Fergus,' Hal said and the dark man fell back and turned, his black-browed face breaking into a wary grin.

‘Yersel,' he greeted with about as much deference as he ever gave and then jerked his head contemptuously at the rider.

‘This yin an' his muckle freends came sklimming the heich brae, aw grand an' skerlet and purpie. Luikin to spier you somewhiles.'

‘You can understand this oaf?' demanded the rider. ‘Thanks be to God – I seek one Hal of Herdmanston and would be obliged if you … him … anyone, would find him.'

‘I am Sir Henry Sientcler of Herdmanston,' Hal declared and Gervaise blinked once or twice from under his hooded riding cloak.

‘You …' he began, then a rider moved from the shadows and laid a hand on his arm to silence him. Hal looked at this newcomer, sensible in brown and green though the cloth was quality. He had a long face made longer by the great droop of a wet moustache from his top lip and the washerwoman look of his arming cap, while his eyes were large and seal-soft.

‘I am Sir Marmaduke Thweng,' he announced and Hal felt his eyebrows raise. The man did not, he said to himself, look like one of the foremost knights in Christendom. A walrus in mourning, perhaps, but not Sir Galahad.

‘I have two folk to deliver safely,' Sir Marmaduke went on and offered a wan smile, the rain sliding off the length of his moustaches.

‘Sir Gervaise is proud of his skills with foreign tongues,' he added, ‘but seems to have met his match here.'

‘Ye have not the Scots leid, then,' Sim scoffed, which was rich coming from him, since even he barely understood what Fergus was saying and Hal frequently lost track of it altogether.

Gervaise, wet and ruffled, drew himself up and tilted his nose even higher to look down it at Sim, who was not about to give the noble his due, with a ‘my lord' and deferential bow.

‘I speak Spanish to my wife, Latin to my God, French to my king, English to my mistress and German to my horse,' Gervaise declared, then leaned forward a little and smeared an ugly little smile across his face.

‘I speak Scots only when I bark back at my dog.'

‘Deliver your visitors, Sir Marmaduke,' Hal interrupted, feeling Sim start to struggle forward and barely held by an arm and Hal's command.

‘Bigod,' Sim bellowed. ‘Let me loose on him the bauchlin' wee …'

‘Steady,' Hal interrupted harshly and Sim subsided, breathing like a mating bull. Hal turned to Thweng, whose mourn of a face had never altered.

‘Take this wee papingo away before his feathers are plucked.'

‘Only one visitor is for you,' Sir Marmaduke replied mildly and waved a hand. This brought up a palfrey and a small man on its back, hunched and dripping.

‘This is one Bartholomew Bisset,' Sir Marmaduke said. ‘He arrived without warning or writ in the English lines, saying he was bound for you and no other. Not even the Earl of Carrick, he says, to whom my other charge is due.'

Bisset? Hal knew the name but could not place it, and the wee fat man sat on the horse, drenched in rain and misery and silence. Then, out of the shadows, came a huge beast of a stallion that Hal knew well enough and his heart skipped. Sir Marmaduke's other charge.

Sitting on Balius, swathed in a dark cloak, Isabel, Countess of Buchan offered Hal a weary smile.

Bruce was with Kirkpatrick in his panoply, a sodden flap of red and white sail canvas reeking of old mildew, wet wool and stale sweat. It was scattered with a discard of hose, boots, maille
chausse,
and a squire worked furiously at ridding good leather boots of water stains.

‘The Comyn is out,' Bruce had said to Kirkpatrick and did not need to add anything. The Lord of Badenoch, kin to Buchan, had clearly been sent back north from Edward's Flanders-borne army to help bring Moray's rebellion to heel. Though all of that branch were known as Red Comyns because of their shield colours, the Lord of Badenoch was called John the Black as a grim joke on both his demeanour and his implacablity.

His return to Scotland meant that all the disgraced and dispossessed enemies of the Bruces had been restored to their rights and Kirkpatrick could almost hear Bruce's teeth grind on it. It was as well, he thought, that we were all bound for Lochmaben and some comfort, else The Bruce's bottom lip would trip him every time he stepped.

There was a noise from outside and a guard stuck his wet head inside.

‘A knight, my lord. Sir Marmaduke Thweng …'

Bruce was on his feet even before the man stepped through the flap on to the wooden boards.

‘Sir Emm,' he bellowed.

‘Sir R,' Thweng replied, grinning. It came out as ‘sirra', which was the jest in the piece, and they both growled like delighted dancing bears as they hugged and slapped.

‘Bigod, it is fine to see you,' Bruce exclaimed. ‘When was the last time we met?'

‘Feast of Epinette,' Thweng replied. ‘The tourney at Lille four years ago. You did that trick of facing a fully armed knight on a palfrey and daring him to hit you. Fine feat of horsemanship – but you were young then and reckless. Besides, they were all full of the French Method at Lille that year.'

‘Ha,' Bruce roared back. ‘The German Method will always defeat it.'

Kirkpatrick sat quietly and if he thought anything of being ignored it never showed in his face. In fact, he was so used to being overlooked that he was actually trying to recall what the French and German Methods were – and smiled when he remembered. A tourney style of fighting, the French Method involved training a warhorse to run full tilt and bring an opponent down by sheer momentum of horse and rider. The German was to use the dexterity of a much lighter horse to avoid such a rush, wheel round and reach the opponent before he could re-engage.

Thweng accepted the wine a squire brought him and sat, shoving aside a puddle of clothing. He looked pointedly at the smiling Kirkpatrick and Bruce waved one hand.

‘My man, Kirpatrick of Closeburn,' he announced. ‘Kirkpatrick, this is Sir Marmaduke Thweng of Kilton. He is kin – a cousin by marriage, is it? More than that, a friend from the tourney circuit.'

‘My lord,' Kirkpatrick replied softly, with a short bow. ‘Your reputation goes before you.'

Thweng nodded and sipped, while Kirkpatrick showed nothing on his face at all. More than a mere landless Bachelor knight of the household, Thweng thought as he studied the man. Less than a friend.

‘What brings you forth from Yorkshire, Sir Emm?' asked Bruce.

‘I bring greetings from your father in Carlisle,' Sir Marmaduke said and watched Bruce's face grow cold, though he managed a stiff nod of acknowledgement and thanks. Thweng drank and said nothing more on the subject, though there was a lot more he could say – Bruce the Father had spat and snarled like a wet cat and the pith of it was not what his son had done but that he had dared to do it at all. This was the first time young Bruce had acted for himself in matters of the Kingdom and it would not, Thweng knew, be the last.

‘I am off to Berwick from here,' Thweng said and looked sideways up at Bruce. ‘Edward is no fool. He in no wise believes Percy's assurances that the north is safe, but has held it up to the others so he can get the army off to Flanders to fight the French. However, he has kicked the Earl of Surrey off his estates to come up with another army to finish this Wallace off. I daresay the Scots are unimpressed by an old man who complains of the cold in his bones when he comes north – but come he now must and Treasurer Cressingham waits impatiently in Roxburgh. Ormsby is in Berwick, telling all who will listen about how he fought like a lion to escape the clutches of the infamous Wallace at Scone.'

‘A tale of marvels, for sure,' Kirkpatrick offered wryly, and Sir Marmaduke smiled.

‘I hear he ran out of a window,' he said and had it confirmed by a nod. Thweng laughed, shaking his long head.