The Kingdom Series – The Lion at Bay

by Robert Low

  He saw all this in the eyeblink it took to cover the twenty or so strides down the gentle slope, the garrons half-stumbling through the gripping-beast bracken, to plough into the centre of the milling mass of riders, a stone in the confused pool of it.

  Hal rode close, almost belly to belly with the taller palfrey, which was wild-eyed and pawing the air. Hal backhanded the rider with a sweep of his shivering-crossed shield, cut across himself and missed, then was plunged on by the squealing, half-panicked garron he rode.

  He reined it in viciously, trying to turn, saw Chirnside Rowan hook a serjeant out of the saddle while Nebless Sandie half-trampled, half-stabbed the luckless man with a furious flurry of blows. The knight with silver herons on his blue shield cut hard and savage and Nebless arched, howled and went off the garron like a half-filled sack of grain. Hal lost them in the sudden whirl of bodies, saw Jamie Douglas charge down on the head of the column, his face wild with mad delight – and then his world reeled.

  The man who did it wore a new blue cloak and a feral snarl under a bristle of moustache, battering Hal’s bascinet with the wheel pommel of his sword while fighting to keep his horse facing front. Hal got his sword in the way of another cut, the bell clang of it loud even in the shriek and scream of the fight; the snarling-dog whirl of it broke them apart, then Blue Cloak surged back.

  What did I ever do to him, Hal thought wildly, as the blows thundered on his shield, that he seeks me out?

  Because he sees you as leader, he answered himself in the calm centre of the maelstrom within him. If you are downed, they win.

  He flailed with the sword, stabbed, felt it hit, saw the grimace of pain that twisted the black moustache and felt a surge of triumph at that. He took a blow on his shield, another that whipped the ailettes off one shoulder, a third that cut a deep groove in the cantle of the saddle. The sweat rolled in his eyes, he slashed hard, saw the edge dent the arming cap and rattle Blue Cloak’s head sideways, saw the sudden limpness of the man as he fell away into the storm of hooves and mud.

  ‘Deus lo vult.’

  The cry brought Hal’s head up briefly, as he fought for control of the garron, which just wanted to be away from this horror and was fighting the bit so hard he had to use both hands, awkward with sword and shield, to hold it steady. With the clear part of his blood-flushed head, he saw that Rossal de Bissot had timed it perfectly, waiting until the rear of the column had started to spur forward into the fight before launching his attack, bellowing the Templar warcry.

  It was that which broke them – that and Malise. He had watched, stunned, as the riders fell on them, saw the shivering blue cross and knew who it was at once. There had been a long, long time of sitting, it seemed to him, watching the men on their little horses dart in with their long, vicious spears which seemed to include a hook and an axe as well. It was no longer than a few breaths, but he would have sat there forever, like a huddled rabbit, watching the slow curl and snarl of it – save for the cry.

  Deus lo vult. It snapped him from the moment like a bell in a sleeping man’s ear. He heard himself whimper, his head full of all the vengeance that could be visited on him from the owners of both the shivering cross and the warcry – then he reined the palfrey round so that it screamed with the pain of the bit and spur and sped away like a gazehound on a scent.

  Some serjeants saw him, which took their panic to the winking brim, then spilled it over; they hauled their own mounts round and spurred away after him; Hal saw them go, felt the sheer exultant relief, the shock of it. We have actually won this, he thought to himself.

  Kirkpatrick loomed up at the plunging feathered feet of Hal’s garron. He had turned his back on a rider, seemed to be hauling on a rope like a man pulling on a heavy cart and he glanced up at Hal and grinned through the bloody bruise of his face.

  Malenfaunt, fighting the horse, cutting furiously at speeding figures on little horses who would not stand still, suddenly felt himself flying backwards as the animal surged forward, hitting the ground so hard it drove the air from him. He knew, with a sudden stab of fear, thin and cold as a blade, that Kirkpatrick had hauled him from the saddle by the rope that bound them both.

  ‘Kirkpatrick,’ Hal yelled, grabbing the horse’s bridle. A maddened rouncey plunged, bucking, from a knotted tangle of war and the rider, shield and sword both gone, hung on with both hands until a vicious backhand swipe took him in the ribs and swept him from the saddle.

  Sim Craw, his face like a wineskin of blood and streaming sweat, whirled a sword in one hand to flick the gore from it and forced his garron to Hal’s side scowling down at Kirkpatrick like a father on an awkward son.

  ‘Move yersel’,’ he growled.

  Kirkpatrick hirpled up and into the saddle of Malenfaunt’s horse, an agonizingly slow process to Hal, bouncing on the back of his own maddened garron. He could not believe his eyes when he saw Kirkpatrick pause, take the cord that fastened his lacerated wrists and loop it carefully round the cantle of the saddle.

  ‘In the name o’ God, Kirkpatrick,’ he bellowed, ‘ride, ye sow’s arse – we do not have all this day.’

  They rode, breaking from the fray while Dirleton Will, Sore Davey, Mouse and others closed round them protectively. In another minute they were forging back up the slope, riders joining them in dribs and drabs as they broke off from the fight.

  It took Hal another minute to realize that Kirkpatrick’s horse was ploughing harder than the others because he was towing something behind him, heavy as a log, rolling backwards and forward and shrieking.

  Malenfaunt.

  They rode on at a flogging canter for a few more minutes, then Hal brought them to a panting, sweating halt, the garrons splay-legged. Men dropped from the saddle on buckling legs; Hob o’ the Merse puked, bent over, hands on knees and Sore Davey was weeping like a bairn, his pustuled face twisted.

  ‘Find how many are missing,’ Hal ordered Sim and he nodded grimly.

  ‘We dinna have long,’ he warned. ‘They are good serjeants, who will be black affronted to have been bested by hobby horse like us. They will be after us when they have collected their wits.’

  Hal nodded, crossed to where Kirkpatrick wobbled by the side of the horse; he cut the man’s wrists free with a swift gesture.

  ‘Ye are hurt?’

  Kirkpatrick’s head echoed and he felt sick, while he only knew he was standing because he was upright, for his legs felt like wood, but he waved one hand and managed a grin. He could not understand why Hal had done what he had done and said so.

  ‘I am wondering the same,’ Hal answered grimly. ‘When I ken the cost, I will give ye an answer.’

  ‘Regardless,’ Kirkpatrick answered in French, ‘I am in your debt. I rescind our quarrel and am grateful to do so.’

  That was something at least, Hal thought, stepping through the bracken to where the moaning figure writhed at the end of the cord. Malenfaunt looked up through a mist of blood and fire and saw the face.

  ‘Aeel,’ he said mournfully. ‘Aeel.’

  ‘What’s he say?’ demanded Chirnside Rowan, all bland curiosity.

  ‘He yields,’ Hal answered, then frowned. ‘I think.’

  He was distracted by a knot of men riding in, including Rossal de Bissot and Jamie Douglas, still grinning from his sweating face and reliving the fight with the Dog Boy, the pair of them laughing as they did so.

  ‘Fower are gone,’ Sim muttered in Hal’s earshot. ‘Nebless Sandie, Andra, Roslin Rob an’ Blue Tam. Nebless an’ Andra are corpses, certes an’ the others will no’ survive the Heron’s hatred.’

  Which accounted for Sore Davey’s snot and tears – Andra was his brother.

  Kirkpatrick heard it, looked up and into the grey haar of Hal’s eyes. Four lost to save him; it was a harsh price for the Herdmanston lord and Kirkpatrick knew it. He heard de Bissot murmur ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena’ and found the Templar’s eyes with his own.

  ‘My thanks for your part in my rescue,’ he said in French. ‘I
am afraid I am hardly suitable escort now.’

  De Bissot looked at the figure, tattered and bloodied, his hands lacerated and his face lashed and scarred. There was a rib or two suffering in there, too, he thought and nodded.

  ‘I will make my own way, with the help of God,’ he said and turned to Hal.

  ‘You have the thanks of the Order,’ he said. ‘We will meet again, you and I.’

  Then he rode away, leaving Hal staring at his back and wondering, chilled, if that had been some blasphemous Templar prophecy. Malenfaunt’s moans broke him from it and Sim’s voice, urging movement, was sharp.

  Kirkpatrick lumbered stiffly over to Malenfaunt, bent and searched, then came up with a smile and his fluted dagger.

  ‘My knife – I thought so,’ he declared, blood welling from his lips with his burst grin. ‘Murderer and weapon both, to be presented in triumph to English Edward.’

  He glanced at the misery that was Malenfaunt, now climbed to his knees and swaying.

  ‘How the world turns, Malenfaunt,’ he sibilated in blood-spitted French. Then, before anyone could move, the dagger flashed. Hal heard a hiss, like the puncture of a bloated sheep and Malenfaunt cried out, wide-eyed and staring, one hand clamped to the side of his punctured neck and blood spuming through his fingers. No-one else made a move, Hal saw.

  ‘I have ruined that part of you called “the heart in the throat”,’ Kirkpatrick said softly, almost dreamily as men stared, horrified, at the whimpering Malenfaunt, his mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish.

  ‘You will die and only God can halt it, though I doubt He will. They say you experience visions o’ great wonder an’ beauty, dyin’ in this slow, peaceful fashion.’

  Malenfaunt tried to struggle to his feet, but he was already too weak and sank back, a strange, blissful look on his face as the blood poured like a cataract. Kirkpatrick’s face turned hard as a rolling millstone.

  ‘I would not give ye the gift,’ he added and took the dagger low and hard into Malenfaunt’s eye, straight through to the brain, so that the man’s last astounded look was open-mouthed with the horror and shrieking agony of it, the snake-fork of his ruined tongue flickering.

  Folk turned aside as the knight collapsed and bled.

  ‘Christ,’ Jamie Douglas said, half in disgust and half admiration, ‘you are a hard man, Kirkpatrick.’

  Kirkpatrick said nothing, simply looked at Hal with the wasteland of his face and hirpled back to his horse.

  ‘I have met corpse-strippin’ hoors with softer hearts,’ Sim called after him, ripe with disapproval. ‘Away home and nurse yer injuries – keep out of the road of decent folk for a while.’

  Kirkpatrick turned, bleak as a long roll of winter moorland.

  ‘Like yersel’,’ he answered bitterly, ‘I have no home. Unlike yersel’, I have never owned to such a thing, so it is no loss.’

  He crawled up on to the horse, the blood squeezing from between his ruined fingers as he took up the reins and cast away the rope that tied himself to a corpse.

  ‘Never fear, Sim Craw,’ he said, his voice thick with new weariness, ‘I will be back among ye afore long. Mark me.’

  ‘Ride,’ Hal ordered brusquely, wondering if anyone would have a home when all this was done. He climbed wearily on to the trembling, sweated garron and paused to look down at the raggled remains of Malenfaunt, lying in a slow-spreading viscous tarn of his own blood.

  This was red war, he thought, a war of the dragon unleashed and chivalry, even for the yielded, was now as lost as the Grail itself.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Methven

  Vigil of the Translation of the Relics of St Margaret, June, 1306

  In the murmuring night, spiced with woodsmoke and heavy as musk in the summer heat, the delegation came up between the lamplit panoplies, a series of shifting shadows flitting past the fumes of cooking fish and turnip, threading through the warm, fetid horse lines. They moved like ghosts in their dark robes to where the great pavilion stood with the yellow banner, the red lion on it limp.

  The warleader’s tent, Abbot Alberto saw, was dressed as Brother Jacobus had told him to expect – studied, with all the treasured care lavished on a concubine. There were swinging lanterns with mica panels, clean planked flooring strewn with fresh grasses and wildflowers, small tables with bowls of expensive pistacia, sugared almonds and gingibar.

  The faces that met him from under the fine, ribbon-sewn hangings were not hostile, simply those of men with work to do, impatient, confident and competent. Somewhere behind a curtained recess he heard the low murmur of women’s voices.

  Bruce considered the little Italian Abbot carefully. Not much to look at, he thought, so all the more dangerous. A Visconti with the ear of the Pope and so doubly so, yet he had not come, as Bruce had feared, bringing the ferendae sententia – the sentence of the ecclesiastic court – and ready to remove Bruce from Holy Church with bell, Book and candle.

  That was something, at least, thought Bruce, though that Papal Bull is charging on its way. It only remained to find out why this Visconti was here and if it was as he claimed – he bore a message from Aymer de Valence, currently crouched like a wary dog in Perth and challenged by Bruce to come out fighting.

  ‘I trust,’ he said, smooth and guarded, ‘your visit to our kingdom has been successful so far.’

  The abbot ignored the ‘our kingdom’ and glanced at the one they called the Bruce. Tall, hard-faced – as they all were – with a bad scar on one cheek and a surprisingly neat beard. The one to his right was a squatter version, a dancing bear of a man with a bush of beard and he was sure this was the brother called Edward. The others were all the same to the abbot – warriors who followed.

  ‘So far,’ he answered urbanely, ‘though King Edward would dispute the claim that it is your kingdom. Even if you are prepared to defend it – what was it you wrote to him, my lord? With the longest stick you have.’

  ‘Your Grace,’ corrected a stern voice. ‘He is king.’

  The abbot fluttered apologetic fingers.

  ‘Do you come from the Covetous King?’ asked Bruce coldly, forcing through the abbot’s breach of royal etiquette which, he knew, had been no mistake.

  ‘I come from the Holy Father, my son,’ the abbot replied smoothly, ‘to examine the commanderies of his Order of Poor Knights in the kingdoms of his brother in Christ, King Edward.’

  ‘Found any good heresies?’ interrupted the dancing bear; the abbot saw the flicker of irritation that crossed the elder Bruce’s face at it.

  ‘None of any note,’ he answered and heard Brother Jacobus grunt and shift. He almost smiled at it; at least this usurper king and I share that in common – irritating minions. None was more rasping than Brother Jacobus, one of those dogs the Holy See found useful to let off the leash now and then, but whose constant whine and bark on their singleminded nosing was annoying.

  The abbot knew that Brother Jacobus was clerk to Geoffrey D’Ablis, the Inquisitor in Carcassonne, and would return there in the spring. He also knew the man’s real name was Jean de Beaune, because he had reverted to it on the treatises he had begun to write detailing the proper way to carry out inquisitions; it seemed this sin of pride had been ignored in general admiration for this rising star.

  ‘Brother Jacobus thinks differently,’ the abbot replied smoothly, without looking at the Hound of God. ‘We have scoured the Poor Knights of the Order in … what is it called? Balan … something.’

  ‘Balantrodoch,’ growled the dancing bear. The abbot smiled.

  ‘Yes. Outlandish name.’

  ‘You found no heresies, you say,’ Bruce offered, steering the conversation back to the path.

  ‘Indeed. A few writings of no account …’

  ‘Heathen heresy,’ Brother Jacobus interrupted and Bruce saw the abbot close his eyes briefly, as if that triggered some damping of his temper. The abbot, opening them again, saw Bruce’s benign curiosity and shrugged.

  ‘Brother
Jacobus believes that a treatise concerning how the earth revolves around the sun is a dangerous wickedness, so that all who own such should be burned. But there – I have voiced it aloud and now put all our souls in mortal peril. Brother Jacobus’ pyre will need to be large.’

  His scathing clamped the Hound of God’s lips in a tight line. Bruce knew this Jacobus well enough, for he had been hag-haunting the Kingdom for a decade at least, flitting between York, Berwick and Edinburgh in pursuit of God knew what.

  Before that, he had been told, the Hound of God had been in the entourage of Cressingham at Stirling Brig and had come there fresh from scourging Carcassone’s Cathars. Bruce had learned all this from Kirkpatrick and his missing physicker – he wondered where the latter now was and what he was revealing. And to whom …

  ‘I thought the earth was the centre of things,’ said Edward Bruce, frowning and the abbot indulged him with another smile, his withered cheeks knobbed as winter apples.

  ‘Just so. This … heresy, as the good brother would have it … is a heathen affair, as he says. Moorish, though it was Saracen before that and, in fact, Persian before that. They were all Godless worshippers of fire then and the Sun, being the largest of fires, was a deity to them; thus they placed it at the centre of things.’

  He laced his fingers.

  ‘In fact, it is no heresy. If I state that a galloping horse does not move forward, but rather the ground goes backwards – is that heresy? Or simple stupidity?’

  ‘If enough believe it …’ Brother Jacobus muttered and the abbot ignored him.

  ‘So the Poor Knights of the Order are innocent of the charges against them?’ Bruce asked.

  ‘What charges are these?’ countered the abbot. ‘No charges have been made. The Order is guilty of arrogance, idleness, outlandish secrets and excessive wealth. What I have are copious sworn statements by come-lately initiates who allege that they refused to spit on the Cross, or kiss an idol of Baphomet. So far, I have seen no evidence of either.’

  ‘Yet heresy exists,’ Bruce declared grimly and waved a hand. ‘Ask any of these nobiles and they will tell you of the sin of the Order.’