The Kingdom Series – The Lion at Bay

by Robert Low

‘You brought the Rood,’ he answered, breaking into English, seeing now the carriage of the man, a Templar travelling in secret; the one broiled alive on his horse leaped to his mind and his throat so that, before he could stop, the mention of it burst past his lips.

  De Bissot nodded, his eyes hard in a blank face and his accented English was terse and clipped.

  ‘You saw the abomination?’

  ‘I smelled it,’ he answered and Sim Craw growled that he had seen it. Hal’s eyes told de Bissot all that was needed and he sighed.

  ‘It is a heathen thing from Outremer,’ he said, flat as a blade. ‘Crusaders brought tales of it back and the Welsh took to it when their lands were invaded. A Cantref Roast they call it there and they did it against every English knight they could ambush during the wars. Left them like markers to put the fear in, like a gaff on a fish.’

  ‘Aye, weel,’ grunted Sim, squinting to understand the man’s way of speaking, ‘they had reason, no doubt.’

  De Bissot turned glassed eyes on him and nodded.

  ‘In the name of God,’ he said, ‘I have ridden down fleeing women, burst the heads of children, thrown old men on the pyres of their own homes, committed more bloody ruin on the unarmed and innocent than any priest can stand to hear in confession.’

  ‘In the name of God and against the heathen,’ Hal attempted, but the fish stare swung blankly on to him.

  ‘I did it against the Welsh, who were not considered Christian enough for mercy. This is one reason the Order is cursed by God.’

  Folk shifted uneasily at this confession; it was one thing to hear the gleeful, whispered rumours, another to have one of God’s own soiled angels admit his heresy.

  ‘No man, cursed or other, deserves to be cooked like a haunch.’

  The Dog Boy’s voice was firm and sure, cutting through them all to place a ghost of smile on the shadowed face of de Bissot.

  ‘The one they did it to here was called Jehan de Chaumont, a brave knight of the Order, who sacrificed himself so I might escape.’

  ‘Escape?’

  Rossal de Bissot nodded, broke back into swift French.

  ‘My task is to try and preserve as much of the Order as I can from the ruin it has brought on itself. The Comyn are working against me and are now friends of the English – so their enemies are my friends. The Comyn would prefer me removed from the world, so your king sought to see myself and young Jehan – may God wrap him in His Arms – safe to France, but a certain Malise Bellejambe had different ideas. He is the …’

  ‘I know who he is,’ Hal interrupted, feeling the sinking stone drag down to his bowels. ‘Malise Bellejambe fell out of Satan’s arse at birth and has been trying to find his way back ever since. He snared the wrong man – not the first time he has made such a mistake, but ruin for your friend, de Chaumont. Do you need help on your journey?’

  ‘I do not,’ de Bissot replied levelly, rising heavily to his feet. ‘I thought you might care to know – the man your king sent with us was taken and is now a prisoner. Bellejambe and some Comyn riders are taking the man to Berwick. If you wish to save him, you must move swiftly.’

  Hal knew the name as if God had whispered it in his ear, but he asked anyway.

  ‘Kirkpatrick,’ de Bissot answered and the shadows of his face writhed in a wry smile. ‘I saved his life once before, in London. I cannot, this time, afford to try alone.’

  The name, even allowing for the French knight’s way with it, brought all the heads up and a silence which stretched to wrap the sound of the Templar’s mount chewing the bit and shaking its head against the flies.

  Hal finally turned into the grim, inquiring faces and laid the matter out like a length of poor cloth. It was received in silence for a moment, then men shifted and spoke.

  ‘Kirkpatrick? Are you wit-struck?’

  Sim’s face was dark and truculent, a scowl which rasped Hal for no reason he could pin.

  ‘Aye,’ he answered. ‘The De’il o’ red murder hissel’ – in need o’ our aid.’

  ‘Have you taken leave of your sense?’ Mouse demanded and there were murmurs of agreement. Then Mouse saw Hal’s face and added, hastily: ‘Lord.’

  ‘A hard task, right enough,’ Clem Graham added sombrely. ‘Your man is in fetters for sure and surrounded by Comyn, thick as fleas on an auld dug.’

  ‘You are after wanting us to pluck him out, lord,’ Dirleton Will summarized, inspecting hard cheese for the worst of the mould. ‘From the teeth of the row we have already caused snatching away a Welsh archer, with folk out on the search for us.’

  He popped a piece of de-moulded cheese in the middle of his beard where his mouth should be and chewed once or twice.

  ‘And this Kirkpatrick is the same wee mannie who promised ye a bad turn, first chance he could take,’ he added pointedly, so that those around him growled agreement as to the man having put himself beyond all aid by his own foul actions.

  ‘Working for Templars,’ added Fingerless Tam, nodding his point to those who looked his way. ‘Who worship Baphomet.’

  Rossal de Bissot heard that and shifted slightly in his saddle.

  ‘They say,’ he murmured, ‘that God and all His angels have turned their backs on the Order of Poor Knights. Yet some of us hold to the vows.’

  There was silence while folk turned that round in their heads, then Chirnside Rowan waved midges away from his face and snorted derision.

  ‘Away wi’ ye Tam Scott,’ he jeered. ‘Ye would not ken a Baphomet if it came up and beshat ye.’

  There was laughter and Nebless Sandie, with a sly look at Jamie, took his chance.

  ‘Ask Sir Jamie,’ he declared, ‘for it seems some Baphomet loited on his lovelocks only recent.’

  ‘If he did,’ Jamie Douglas answered, whip-smart, ‘then Baphomet is a Welshman. If you have the belly for it, lads, there are a wheen of wee Baphomets over by, waiting for you to take a closer look.’

  There were mutters at this dig on their courage, but Hal knew his men well; courage they had in plenty, but there was a deal of practical in it.

  ‘It is fey, this plan,’ Bull rumbled and, since he seldom said anything at all, the astonishment provided silence for him. He looked surprised himself and grew uneasy under the stares until he stared at his stirrups and grew red in the face. But Sim had spotted the grim jut of Hal’s beard.

  ‘You are set on this, then?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am a dubbed knight,’ Hal said, feeling the closing jaws of it even as he spoke. ‘I might only be a wee one from the Lothians, but the obligation is on me for it. Besides – Malise Bellejambe is overdue his reward.’

  Those who remembered the murder of Tod’s Wattie nodded and the others had heard enough of it to want to be part of a vengeance.

  ‘Well said,’ Jamie declared cheerfully. ‘Count me with this mesnie, for I am a knight with no less honour than any here.’

  ‘No knight me,’ Sim Craw rumbled, ‘but my honour is as fine.’

  Dirleton Will stirred at that and shook his head.

  ‘Away, Sim – ye are ower auld for chargin’ into folk as if in a tourney fight. Better ye leave that to nobiles and folk who dinna need to roll out o’ their beds in the middle of the night to take a pish.’

  ‘Ye slaverin’ wee lume. I will show ye auld – ye will reflect on it when I take ye by the clap of the hass and rip the harigails from ye …’

  ‘Easy,’ Hal said warningly and Sim subsided while Dirleton Will, unfazed by a threat to grab him by the throat and tear out his entrails, held up placatory palms to the scowling Sim and ruined it with a wicked sickle of smile.

  Hal listened to the dry laughter, hoarse as a wind through stubble and knew it for the whistle in the dark that it was. Even this fearful, the Herdmanston men would still ride to war and Hal was sure much of it had to do with what the Welsh had done to the Templar knight in the pyre; he now had a name and that added to the horror for those who had seen and smelled him.

  ‘If you will g
ive me a brace of good men,’ de Bissot declared, ‘I will strike at their rear while you strike at their head. If, in the middle of this, someone can pluck Kirkpatrick free, we will have done God’s work this day. Speed and surprise.’

  ‘Och aye,’ Jamie Douglas declared, his grin wild, the Dog Boy a feral mirror on his right. ‘God’s work. We are the braw lads for that, mark me.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Abbey of Scone

  The same day …

  He made a face and twisted the scar into a snake writhe.

  ‘Christ’s Bones, that’s foul.’

  Isabel’s glance at the King was fouler still as she collected the bowl.

  ‘Yon Cathar never fed me anything so sour,’ Bruce persisted, smacking his mouth in a grimace of disgust.

  ‘He never fed you anything worthwhile,’ Isabel answered tartly, ‘and has run off besides. A wee proscribed French Cathar Perfect, heart-afraid for his life now that he has shackled himself to a usurping king declared red murderer and about to be cast loose from Holy Mother Church. Now you have only me.’

  ‘Aye, speak plain why don’t you? Never bother sweetening it, woman.’

  ‘You are a king and supposed to be stronger than others. Besides, I sweetened the brew I gave you with honey and spices and it seems to have made little difference to the taste.’

  ‘What was in it?’ he asked suddenly, his voice quiet; she heard the fear threnody in it.

  ‘Rue, valerian, fox’s clote, lady’s bedstraw and laurel among others. This is an ointment of radish – do not swallow it, rub it on.’

  ‘Will it work?’

  She looked at him and smiled.

  ‘It is not a cure for lepry,’ she said, ‘if that is indeed what you have. For that, any blessed water will be as good.’

  ‘Then why am I poisoning myself with it?’ he demanded, truculent as a babe.

  ‘Because it will help with the skin complaint you do have, which is common enough and nothing to do with the lepry,’ she answered. ‘At worst the lady’s bedstraw might dye your beard yellow, while the radish ointment, if you spread it on Lady Day, will keep you in funds all year if Hildegard of Bingen is to be believed.’

  He heard her tone and lost his irritation in an instant. She had always dabbled in herbs and potions, he knew, but he thought it was merely a mild woman’s interest, like they had in wool thread or good needles. He said as much, while managing to marvel at her expertise enough to rob the patronising sting of it.

  ‘Better still,’ she answered, ‘is that you can trust me with the secret. That scar is a worry, certes, but there is nothing here that makes me believe in lepry, Robert.’

  ‘The signs are slow,’ Bruce replied and it was clear he had found out all he could. ‘They take years to manifest.’

  That was true, but Isabel refrained from pointing out that the usual first signs were when the appendages started to rot – the end of the nose and fingers. And the prick.

  ‘I would stop hiding it,’ she said. ‘Once the skin clears, you can let the air and sun to that scar, which will do more than your hodden hoods. Besides – the mark of a great tourney knight is to have at least one scar on the face, to make women swoon and men cower.’

  ‘Christ, Izz,’ Bruce said, shaking his head and smiling. ‘I should have married you.’

  ‘Instead, you cast me back to my husband and married an earl’s daughter. That will learn you.’

  ‘I am a king now,’ he growled, eyeing her sideways. ‘You are not supposed to speak so.’

  ‘You are a great bairn,’ she answered lightly, ‘who cannot sup a wee grue without making a face. Besides – we have both made our respected beds and now must lie in them.’

  Bruce relaxed, tried not to pick skin from his cheeks.

  ‘Aye – how is the master of Herdmanston?’

  ‘More bitter these days than the brew you swallowed,’ she replied brutally. ‘His lands are scorched, his castle slighted, his folk scattered – and that done by those he has sworn fealty to. God help him when his enemies get to work.’

  ‘I hope he knows the necessity of it,’ Bruce answered suspiciously, then sighed wearily. ‘I do not need to lose more good men. There are few enough as it is.’

  Faintly through the thick walls, they both heard the sound of the few good men, drilling frantically in pike squares while their women stitched and sewed thick gambeson coats, the quilted flutes stuffed with straw.

  ‘He will stick,’ she said firmly, then gathered up her jars and packets. ‘Now I must attend your wife in the role you gave me – lady to a queen.’

  ‘An honour well earned,’ he answered and she smiled wryly.

  The last time she had seen the Queen she had been riding a palfrey using a sambue, a sidesaddle so elegant and so useless that the horse had to be led because the rider had no control of it. She and her new coterie were discussing the chansons of Guilhem and pointedly fell silent when Isabel approached; it annoyed Isabel, but only because all the other women were local wives and daughters who should know better – but the court, she knew, had a way of corrupting.

  ‘An honour that does not sit well with Her Grace,’ she answered, ‘which you might have known. Bad enough I placed the crown on her head without constantly attending her as a reminder of how I was once her husband’s hoor.’

  ‘God in Heaven, Izzie – moderate yer tongue.’

  He rose and paced for a moment, then rounded on her.

  ‘Is she aggrieved?’

  Her look was enough and he shook his head.

  ‘I do not know what …’ he began, then stopped and let his hands drop to his side.

  ‘Start mending that fence,’ she answered. ‘Dine with her. Spend time with her. Else you will find the chasm too broad to leap.’

  He straightened, breathed deeply, then nodded and turned to her with a smile.

  ‘Good advice and good treatment. God keep you, Isabel – and your Herdmanston lord.’

  ‘I trust he is safe,’ she said and felt the deep, welling panic that he was not.

  When she was gone, he went to a scrip on the table and pulled out the small, stoppered bottle, opened it and put a finger in. It came out bloody and he sniffed it suspiciously. Was that rot?

  He sighed. Probably. He should have known better, even if the bottle was gilded and the cap jewelled, to have bought it from his confessed heretic Cathar physicker, even if it came wrapped in vellum and sealed with the Order’s double-mounted knights as provenance. Yon wee pardoner, Lamprecht, would probably have sold me the same, he thought wryly.

  He glanced at the crumpled parchment, knowing the Latin on it by heart – Hoc quicumque stolam sanguine proluit, absergit maculas; et roseum decus, quo fiat similis protinus Angelis.

  Whomsoever bathes in the divine blood cleanses his sins and acquires the beauty of angels.

  He looked at the beautiful little bottle which had done nothing at all for him. What had he expected? That the blood which flowed from His Hands and Feet had been collected in this, then translated across the centuries, miraculously, to arrive at Bruce’s moment of need?

  Perhaps it was. Perhaps it really was His Divine Blood and not the escape fund of a cunning, desperate physician. He felt a chill at the idea – better it was chicken or pig, for if even the Blood of Christ Himself had failed, where did that leave King Robert Bruce?

  Yet, he thought, can Christ still save the world? All the signs are against it, Lord, and there are so few righteous left in a kingdom ravaged by endless strife, where Your flock is reduced to individuals and petty tribes suffering and killing one another.

  But there was a Plan. If I am not here then barbarism and madness become law, the weak have their throats cut or become slaves and the future is a terrible nightmare of cruelty and bloodletting.

  I am the leash, he thought. The leash and the lash and even tormented by the Curse of Malachy I will never give in. He thought of Wallace, saw the twist of his bloody face on the day they gralloched him l
ike a caught stag. He thought of his part in it.

  I think, he said aloud, that the wee Cathar was right – this world is, in fact, Hell.

  And there is no other.

  Near Cupar, Fife

  That same moment …

  Hell vomited over the ridge. Malise saw it, falling like some huge wave of horses that seemed to snarl, ridden by open-mouthed men desperate with fear and an anger that was as good as courage.

  He had been watching Kirkpatrick, stumbling along behind Malenfaunt’s horse, falling now and then to be dragged when Malenfaunt, vicious and laughing, spurred it a little to make it too fast for Kirkpatrick to keep up.

  ‘Walk faster,’ he would yell, ‘else you will be dragged to Carlisle.’

  No-one but Malise understood the gabble of him, but all understood what he was doing. A few of the other serjeants laughed, harsh as old crows, but most did not and the leader of them frowned disapprovingly, for it was his charge to get this prisoner alive to Carlisle and then to the King himself.

  What happened then, Sir Godard Heron thought, is none of my concern – but one of the red murderers of the Comyn leader would not be treated lightly. Still, he did not care for this Malenfaunt, a foresworn knight who should have lost his right hand, at the very least, for losing a joust before God.

  Malise was thinking that he would have to begin to persuade Malenfaunt to find a horse for Kirkpatrick, not least because they were ambling along as if on a ride through a deer park, too slow for anyone’s liking. Mostly because Kirkpatrick looked the worse for being dragged by a thin rope fastened round Malenfaunt’s waist and he knew the Earl of Buchan wanted this one alive to face the King’s questioners; it was essential Kirkpatrick admit his witness to the usurper Robert Bruce’s murder of Badenoch.

  He was on the point of saying so when the riders sprang up over the ridge and poured down on them, shrieking like the bean-shìdh.

  Hal saw that the mesnie were well-armed and armoured, serjeants mounted on decent horses, though he thanked the good God that there were no warhorses among them, not even under the knight with the herons on jupon and shield.