The Kingdom Series – The Lion at Bay

by Robert Low

  Lamprecht saw the faces, knew what they were thinking and hoped they had not worked out that he was about to take himself off very soon; hoped, even more fervently, that they would not discover the truth of it all until it was too late and his revenge sprung. He remembered the time five years ago at least he and the lord and his retinue had met, in the lazar at Berwick. The one with Satan’s face, the Kirkpatrick who spoke the lingua, had held a knife at his throat then.

  The prick of it burned yet and it took all his will not to reach up one comforting hand to the spot, thus giving away his thoughts to the same Satan. Now the revenge was his. Dar cinquecento diavoli, che portar tua malora …

  Five hundred devils made no appearance to take the curse that was Kirkpatrick, so Lamprecht finished the action of spoon and mouth, chewed, swallowed and grinned.

  ‘Non andar bonu?’

  ‘Speak a decent tongue, ye wee heathen,’ growled Sim and Lamprecht scowled back at him.

  ‘Questo diavolo ignorante non consoce il merito,’ Lamprecht began, stopped, took a breath and began again, speaking deliberately to Hal, his English wavering like a sailor finding his land-legs. ‘This devil does not know talent when he sees it. I am to help. I have the thing. You want the thing. Capir?’

  He had the thing. Truth was, Hal thought, he had a portion of the thing, which he had brought out like a cradled bairn when Hal and Kirkpatrick had come with the Earl Bruce, chasing the promise of that single ruby.

  Lamprecht had unwrapped the sacking lovingly in the amber light of wax candles and the dancing shadows of the pilgrim’s cell he had claimed at Cambuskenneth.

  Even half the thing took Hal’s breath away and the whole, an ell length at least, must have been an ache on the eye.

  Bruce had taken the gilded fragment, the lower end of a cross lid, badly hacked off. Five similar rubies studded it and the nest for the prised-out sixth revealed the depth of beaten gold. Bruce, slow with wonder, nestled the ruby Lamprecht had given him into it, watched the perfect fit for a moment, then removed it again.

  ‘It is from the Westminster,’ Lamprecht had said, his voice reverently low. ‘From the furfanta – the swindler. Pardon … the robbery. Of the King’s treasure.’

  In the quiet of the cell no-one had spoken, for they had all heard of this, taken delight in it if truth was told. While Longshanks ravaged up and down Scotland, a nest of thieves – his own canons of the minster among them – had stolen the Crown treasure from Westminster. That had been almost a year ago and the howling rage that was Edward had not diminished, if the arrests and racks and beheadings were anything to go by.

  Nor had it all been recovered. Pieces of it were turning up all over the country – and abroad, too, Bruce had heard. Yet this was singular. This was part of the reliquary of the Black Rood, taken from Scone on the day Longshanks stripped John Balliol of everything that made him a king and a man and the Kingdom of everything that made it a realm.

  ‘Si,’ Lamprecht had said, as if reading Bruce’s thoughts. ‘I have this from Pudlicote man. For … some small services.’

  ‘Who is Pudlicote?’ Kirkpatrick had demanded and Bruce, turning the rubied cross over in his fingers so that it flared bloody in the light, knew the answer.

  ‘Baron of the thieves,’ he had said darkly. ‘Clever in the planning, stupid afterwards in spraying Crown jewels all over the county as if they were baubles. He paid the price for it – his flayed skin is nailed to the door of the Minster now.’

  ‘Si,’ Lamprecht had agreed. ‘Pudlicote is discovered – all is lost. Cosa bisogno cunciar? Pardone – what am I to do?’

  ‘What DID you do?’ Kirkpatrick had asked.

  ‘Ran,’ Lamprecht had revealed. ‘Ran with Jop. Jop had half, I have half. Six Apostles each and we go our way. Jop comes to the north.’

  The rubies, all twelve, were known as the Apostles, said to contain the very blood of Christ – but even they were not as valuable as the sliver of dark wood they had decorated.

  ‘And the Rood itself?’ Bruce had demanded. Lamprecht, pausing, tried not to look sly. Failed. Then he had shrugged his rat-boned shoulders and offered a brown smile.

  ‘Jop knows where relic is. Piece of Holy Cross which is of this land.’

  He had then managed, at last, a sly, knowing look.

  ‘Bishops of here will want it back. Jop, he will not tell me where it is – cane. Cornudo.’

  ‘This Jop,’ Bruce had said slowly. ‘A small man. Bald.’

  ‘He is not. Big. Fat belly. Much hairy. He is man who bears the standard. Ti credir per mi, mi pudir assicurar per ti.’

  ‘I do believe you,’ Bruce had answered grimly.

  ‘Ti star nobilé, è non star fabbola – sorry, permit me. As you are noble, this is no fable. I have no money. For this piece and the information, I ask only a paltry. A twenty pound of silver.’

  That had all but choked Kirkpatrick and made Hal blink. That price would keep Sim Craw for a year in England – six months longer if he stayed north of Berwick.

  ‘Does Jop have the Rood?’ Bruce had demanded.

  ‘If not, he know where,’ Lamprecht had replied. ‘I cannot get in to him. You go to where he is – you know this place?’

  ‘I do,’ Bruce had answered, then handed the gilded prize back, which surprised Hal – but not Kirkpatrick, who knew that possession of such an artefact would result in punishments from Edward that Hell would balk at. He scowled, however, when he realized the sixth Apostle was staying with Bruce – but at least a single, flawless ruby of price was explainable in the purse of an earl.

  ‘If Jop helps us, you shall have twice the price,’ Bruce had declared and Lamprecht’s grin was wide and foul. It did not waver when he was told that he would have to go along, for that had been taken into account in his planning – was the necessary risk in it.

  There were more questions – the Kirkpatrick man especially was all lowered brow and suspicion, wanting to know why Lamprecht had come to Bruce at such risk when he had, clearly, riches enough. Lamprecht, scornfully, had pointed out that losing such a gem to the Earl of Carrick was no loss, when even attempting to sell one would have a pilgrim like him arrested, drawn and quartered.

  ‘In an earl’s purse, is to be expected,’ he had sneered. ‘In mine, not.’

  Some of what Lamprecht had said was true – he could hardly sell what he had and hope to make money on the deal, or even escape. So he thought to profit from information with a man who would want to know about the Rood – though that fact brought its own unease. Bruce was, ostensibly, a loyal follower of King Edward so Lamprecht risked his neck bringing it to such a man – unless his loyalty was known differently. And if such as Lamprecht knew it, then Longshanks knew it; the thought brought a shiver up Hal’s spine.

  Kirkpatrick had subsided, glowering with unease, while Lamprecht kept the lie in the tale as a hugging secret close to the burning core of him, trying not to show a vengeful smile when he looked at the Lothian lord and Kirkpatrick.

  It did not take long for Bruce to reveal who Jop was, for the only Jop of the description was Gilbert of Beverley, a sometime lay brother who had been paid by the abbey to carry its borrowed Holy Standard in Edward’s army when he came north to fight Falkirk. A fine imposing sight Gilbert had made, too, having the height and width of shoulder for banner-bearing, which might have given the English something of a clue as to who he was.

  They found out soon enough. Gilbert, known as Jop to all his Wallace relatives, had promptly scurried off and joined them in rebellion, only to quit that when matters grew warm. He had vanished shortly after and now they all knew where and why.

  His arrival back in Scotland had come as no surprise to folk, who thought he had just lain low for a while. Now he was snugged up in Riccarton’s chapel to Saint Mirin, having claimed ‘the knowledge of Latin’ to wriggle out from under Edward’s harsh law into the court of the Church, who had some sympathy towards ex-rebels.

  There would be no church or God,
though, which would keep him from the wrath of Longshanks if he ever discovered Jop was one of the thieves of the Crown’s treasure from the minster.

  The fire sparked, little worm-embers snapping Hal from remembrance. That cloistered conversation had been a month ago and Lamprecht had grown no more easier to be with since. Neither him nor his tale, Hal thought.

  ‘Jop,’ he said and wanted to say more on this cousin of the Wallace, who had none of the man’s better qualities save height. He did not need to say more on it, all the same, for each man recognized the problem of Jop and, eventually, Sim voiced it.

  ‘This Jop,’ Sim said, breaking Hal’s reverie. ‘Is tight-fastened in a kirk. It will be as hard to crack open as Riccarton’s Keep, I am thinking.’

  ‘Less soldiery in the kirk,’ Kirkpatrick declared. ‘I hear the English have stuffed the keep wi’ English, to mak’ siccar The Ogre takes no rest there. They must be sleeping three to a cot in that wee place.’

  ‘Aye, weel, they will be dressed soon enough if a wee priest hurls up crying that mad drovers are beatin’ in his chapel door,’ growled Sim and Kirkpatrick’s laugh was low and mirthless.

  ‘Ye should get abroad more, Sim Craw,’ Kirkpatrick declared, his accent broadening, as it always did when he spoke with the likes of Sim. He could make it refined and French, too, when he chose and Hal realized this was part of the shifting shadow of the man.

  ‘Whit why?’ demanded Sim truculently.

  ‘Ye would learn things. Like the time there was an auld priest o’ Riccarton,’ Kirkpatrick answered. ‘Years since. Had the falling sickness, which laid him out as if he had died. He had such a fear o’ what would happen that even a week’s wake and a belled coffin was too little precaution for him – so he took steps to mak’ siccar he would never be buried alive.’

  He had them all now, locked tight in the shackles of his eyes and words.

  ‘He had a lidless kist made and passage cut from the chapel crypt into the graveyard beyond,’ Kirkpatrick went on, ‘in case they tombed him up alive.’

  ‘Did he ever have use o’ it?’ demanded the round-eyed Dog Boy and Kirkpatrick shook his head.

  ‘Went on a pilgrimage to Rome, for relief o’ his condition and sins. Drowned at sea.’

  ‘Ah, bigod,’ sighed Sim, shaking a rueful head. ‘What is set on ye will no’ go past ye, certes.’

  ‘So the passage is there still?’ demanded Hal and Kirkpatrick nodded, his grin catching the firelight in the dark.

  ‘We will be in and out o’ Saint Mirin’s wee house, easy as beggary.’

  He looked at where the sun was dying, seeping red into the horizon like blood from a flayed skin; insects hummed and wheeped in the iron-filing twilight.

  ‘When it gets dark,’ he said.

  Sim grunted as he levered himself up. Tapping Dog Boy on the shoulder, he went out to check on the cattle and the dogs, followed by the boy. Dog Boy kept glancing behind them.

  ‘Are yer sins hagging ye?’ Sim demanded eventually and Dog Boy shook his head, then shrugged.

  ‘Lamprecht,’ he said and Sim nodded.

  ‘There is something not right,’ Dog Boy insisted.

  ‘God’s Hook, laddie, ye have said a true thing there – stop twitching in the dark and help me with these God-cursed stirks.’

  Hal watched them go, hearing them mutter, while Lamprecht slithered off into a bower of leaves and branches, clutching his precious bundle to him and muttering morosely about the discomfort. Hal felt like telling him he was lucky it was summer still, for in winter the drovers made a bowl-shaped withy of sticks, then broke the ice on any stream or loch, dipped their cloaks and spread them out over the withy to freeze into a shelter.

  ‘Sim Craw must favour one o’ those cattle,’ Kirkpatrick said with a lopsided smile, ‘since he cares for them a deal, it seems.’

  Hal did not reply; Sim Craw had bought bullocks and horse both from Stirk Davey in Biggar and had them cheap on the promise that Davey would buy them back if they were returned undamaged. It meant Sim and Hal would keep the money, which had come from Bruce for the purpose, and it would go into the trickle of silver that would, one day, become the pool to rebuild Herdmanston.

  Instead, he wondered aloud his fears regarding Lamprecht and that it all might be a trap set by Longshanks himself to test Bruce loyalty.

  ‘It might,’ Kirkpatrick agreed laconically, ‘though such subtle work is not the mark of that king. If he suspects our earl to that extent, he would be hauling in folk likely to speak of it under the Question. Confessions would be enough without all this mummery.’

  Which was true enough to silence Hal to brooding on Kirkpatrick himself, until he finally voiced what had been on his mind for long enough regarding the man.

  ‘Whit why do ye serve the Earl?’

  The answering smile was bland, with some puzzle quirking the edge of it.

  ‘Same as yersel’,’ he replied and saw Hal’s laconic lip-curl, faint in the growing dim.

  ‘Ill luck and circumstance then.’

  ‘Circumstance, certes,’ Kirkpatrick answered, the slow, considered words of it forged in a steel that did not pass Hal by. ‘Ill luck? Hardly that for you, my lord. What have ye suffered?’

  A lost wife and son to ague. A light of love to politics. A keep to fire and pillage, done by those he counted kin and friends.

  ‘There is more,’ he finished sarcastically and Kirkpatrick stirred a little, then poked the fire so that flames rose and embers flared away and died like little ruby hopes.

  ‘Your wife and boy are a decade gone,’ he replied sudden as a slap. ‘Others have suffered loss o’ dear yins, from ague, plague an’ worse. Your light o’ love is someone else’s and you have been apart from her for five years at least, so the brooding is of your own making. Your wee keep was slighted a bit – it is lacking the timber floors and is blackened, but the folk still huddle around it, you still collect rents an’ your kin in Roslin manage it and oversee the repairs. Yourself provides the siller, from the rents, the money the Earl pays you as retinue … and what you can skim.’

  He stopped and turned his firelit blade of a face, challenging and grim, towards Hal.

  ‘Where is the suffering in this?’

  ‘You think you are worse?’ Hal bridled and Kirkpatrick sighed.

  ‘Ye have a dubbin’ as knight, the arms to prove it and lands,’ he answered, the wormwood of his voice a thickened gruel of bitterness, his face shrouded. ‘Yer da, blessed wee man that he was, had no learnin’ beyond weaponry and a wee bit tallying – but he made sure ye could read and write like a canting priest and provided other learning betimes.’

  ‘I am a Kirkpatrick o’ Closeburn, kin to the Bruces – my namesake holds the place from the Annandale Bruces, yet he has been more seen in the company o’ those who are King Edward’s men through an’ through. My namesake is the lord, and I am the poor relation, who has no way with letters or writin’, for who would bother hiring a wee dominie to teach the likes o’ me that?’

  Hal shifted uncomfortably, remembering his own teacher and how he had fretted against him; here was a man who was bitter that he never had the same.

  ‘I speak the French, mind you,’ he went on – breaking into that tongue and speaking as much to the fire and his own thoughts as to Hal. ‘And some of the Gaelic learned from the Bruce. And a little Latin, for the responses. And the lingua franca yon little toad Lamprecht uses, learned while in France and … elsewhere.’

  He stopped, paused, then continued in French, as if to prove his point.

  ‘I have never been touched by sword on shoulder, nor handed a set of gilded spurs. I can bear the arms of Closeburn, but so tainted with lowly markings for my station that it is less shameful to bear none at all. I can use the weapons of a knight, but I have never sat a warhorse in my life, nor expect it.’

  He broke off, bringing his stare back to fall on Hal’s face. He shook off the French, like a dog coming from a stream.

  ‘Yet
the Bruce esteems me for the talents I have, which are considerable. I ken the hearts o’ men and women both, ken when they lie and when they plot. I ken how to use a sword, my wee lord o’ Herdmanston, but I ken best how to wield a dirk in the night.’

  There was a chill after this that the flames could not dispel. Hal cleared his throat.

  ‘You expect advantage from all this, from the Earl when he is king?’

  ‘Weesht on that,’ Kirkpatrick answered softly, then sighed.

  ‘I did so,’ he added flatly. ‘Now I see that what an earl wants an’ what a king requires are differing things.’

  He was silent for a little while, leaving the fire to speak in pops and spits. Then he stirred.

  ‘When I was barely toddlin’,’ he said, ‘I got into the habit of makin’ watter wherever I stood.’

  He broke off at Hal’s chuckle, his scowl softening, then vanishing entirely into a smile of his own.

  ‘Aye, a rare vision, I daresay, but I was a bairn, for all that. My ma warned me never to piss in her herb garden, which were vegetables and did not benefit from such a waterin’. Being an obedient boy, I never did so, preferring to keep it in until I could spray the chickens, which was better fun entire. Until the day the rooster turned and pecked me on the pizzle.’

  Hal’s laugh was a sharp bark, quickly cut off lest he offend. Kirkpatrick’s chuckle was reassuring.

  ‘Jist so. A painful experience and it was so for a time. Peelin’ scab and stickiness was the least o’ it – but my mither soothed me with ministrations and good advice she thought a boy like me might remember. Chickens is vegetables, she says to me.’

  He stirred the fire again so that sparks flew.

  ‘Since then,’ he added, ‘I have been aware that nothin’ is as it appears.’

  ‘Nothin’ is, certes,’ Hal agreed morosely. ‘I fought at the brig o’ Stirlin’ and at Callendar woods with Wallace – yet these last months I have been fighting against the same men whose shoulders I once rubbed.’

  ‘So?’

  The challenge made Hal bristle.

  ‘So it is no way for a future king of Scots to behave, cleaving his own folk. They will not care for it, I am thinking.’