by Robert Low
The physician bucked and kicked. Behind him, Kirkpatrick heard clattering and cursing.
Hal caught Sir Roger round the waist an instant before the man’s hand reached the sword hilt, dragging him back and on to the floor. A candle holder toppled; the chess set scattered with a patter like rain and they wrestled, panting and growling like pit dogs, amid the sputtering wax.
Sir Roger was stronger, almost hurled Hal off, managed to get to his feet and was gripped again, so that they strained like locked stags; Hal felt the sinews pop, felt the burn of overworked muscles and knew he could not win by strength.
He had come up with a desperate strategy when his opponent suddenly coughed and all resistance went from him. Then he vanished from in front of Hal, who stood and blinked at the curled snarl of Kirkpatrick, dagger in one hand and the dragging weight of his namesake in the other.
Kirkpatrick let the last of the Master of Closeburn sink to the bloody litter of the floor and he and Hal stood facing each other, half crouched and panting raggedly.
‘Done and done,’ Kirkpatrick said hoarsely and was wrenched forward into Hal’s face by a fisted hand.
‘Ye cantrip,’ Hal hissed. ‘No Isabel – ye cozened me, Kirkpatrick …’
‘Afore someone comes to find out the bangin’ in the solar,’ Kirkpatrick answered with a hiss of his own. ‘It would be better for us to be gone and argue this later.’
Hal burned with the rage of it, the sheer injustice of it – and the fact that Isabel was further away than before. In a cage, yet. A cage!
‘I hope this was worth it,’ he snarled at Kirkpatrick, who offered a shaky smile. Well, both men were dead and the secret of Bruce’s lepry, if that was what it was, was safe from the ears of his enemies. Mind you, Kirkpatrick thought, the wee physician did not deserve it – but the Master of Closeburn did. All the same, Kirkpatrick would have done in his kinsman namesake for the pleasure of personal revenge for old slights and the fact that he was an enemy of the Bruce was as good an excuse as any.
He said nothing all the same, only indicated for Hal to fetch the dead Sir Roger’s sword.
It was a fine weapon, with the Master’s arms emblazoned within the pommel circle – the blue cross of Bruce’s Annandale, surmounted by a blue bar with three glowing gold grain sacks, arrogant symbol of the source of Closeburn’s wealth; Hal offered it pointedly to Kirkpatrick, who grinned and shook his head.
‘You are handier with a sword than me,’ he declared. ‘I have little use for it.’
Then he was out, wraithing as silently as he had arrived on his deer-hide soles, leaving Hal to turn and look at the ruin they left, stinking with the fresh-iron of spilled blood, littered with the raggle of bodies. A slaughter, he thought bitterly, the wake Kirkpatrick always left.
He stuffed it into the great locked and iron-banded chest inside his head which was already creaking under all the sins put away in it. Pandora never had such a box, he thought.
Then he followed Kirkpatrick, sword in hand, felted sock-soles sticky with congealing blood, leaving only the gore and the bodies and the job done for a king. He had gone a dozen steps, back to the top of the spiralling stairs before he caught up with Kirkpatrick and they glided down together, back to the hall entrance, where they stopped and listened.
Breathing and snoring … and a shuffle below them, growing stronger. A jangle that Hal knew well enough, for the bruise it had left ached to the bone on his shoulder and he mimed the turning of a key for Kirkpatrick’s benefit, saw the man nod and felt the wind of him leaving.
There was a grunt and soft slap of sound and, a moment later Kirkpatrick was back, wiping the dagger on his sleeve; he gave Hal a feral grin and then moved quietly into the hall.
Jesu, Hal thought, that is four he has killed in less time than it would take to drink a stoup. He felt his gorge rise at the thought and quelled it with vicious panic – fine thing, to be caught because he bokked over his socked feet in the middle of a sleepin’ hall.
They got out of the hall because the small postern set in one of the big locked doors was unbarred and the servant sleeping near it could have been stepped on and never noticed, judging from the smell of pilfered drink seeping from him like heat.
They ran out of luck at the last. The main gate had its thick-grilled yett lowered, the great double doors heavily shut and barred, the guards awake and alert in the stamping cold – but this was Closeburn and Kirkpatrick knew it well; there was a postern sally-gate in a wall behind the stable and he led them to it unerringly.
Unguarded at every other time but this, he discovered, and cursed because he should have realized that the heightened alerts, the important captives, the swirl of English and the threat of Scottish raid would all have conspired to place two good men on this weak spot.
Hal and Kirkpatrick came up, sleekit as thieves and all unaware until the shapes materialized from the shadows and hailed them with growls.
It was the matter of them coming from inside that saved them, Hal thought, for the guards were looking for folk from outside trying to get in, so these were no threat. That changed when Hal swung up the sword and slashed one man’s forearm with it, the blow hitting leather and mail, slicing through both in a spray of metal rings and breaking the bone with the force.
The man screamed like a girl, high and shrill, so that Hal, cursing, rammed the point in his mouth, snapping teeth and driving straight to the back of the man’s skull and out the far side; the falling weight dragged Hal in a half-stumble and he wrenched and tore at the now trapped sword, while the dead man’s head flopped and jerked.
Kirkpatrick went for the other one, the adder’s tongue dagger flicking, only to hiss off the man’s maille. Shocked, the guard staggered away, losing his spear and fumbling for a sword even as he brought his shield up. No chance now for fancy dagger work, Kirkpatrick realized and hurled himself bodily on the man, bowling the pair of them over; the guard bellowed.
Hal saw them rolling, the guard frantic to shove Kirkpatrick away and the shield now a liability as Kirkpatrick fought to grab the sword hand. Hal put his blood-soaked foot on the dead man’s face, two hands on the hilt and hauled the sword out like Excalibur from the stone, the sudden release scattering a spray of bone and brain.
The second guard was wild and whimpering, flailing madly with the shield to keep Kirkpatrick at bay; a lucky blow whacked a knee and Kirkpatrick felt the white pain explode in him, the dazzling burst of it blinding. Scrabbling madly, he managed to get to his feet, the knee thundering with agony, saw the guard’s triumphant snarl and the sword in his other hand like a long bar of deadly light.
Then there was a hiss and a thump, the guard’s head bent sideways on his neck, a peculiar slew that was all wrong for his body; then he was gone and Hal stood over the fallen shadow, panting like a mad dog, the sword bloody in his fist.
‘Aye til the fore,’ he growled, his grin sharp in the clear moonlight. Kirkpatrick moved shakily, his knee buckling and lancing pain into him. There were shouts and lights – then the dread sound, like a knell, of someone beating an alarm-iron.
‘Said ye were the man for that sword,’ Kirkpatrick growled, limping to the postern and throwing up the bar on it. ‘Now we had better make like a slung stone.’
Their progress was more of a slow-rolling pebble and Hal had to help the hirpling Kirkpatrick along most of it until, stumbling out of the riggs of a back court on to a rough track at the edge of Closeburn he stopped and sank down. Even allowing for moonlight, Hal thought as he glanced at him, that is a milk-pale face. Behind, bringing both their heads round, they heard the bark and bay of dogs.
‘Hounds,’ Kirkpatrick said, hoarse with pain. ‘Go. Fetch the horses here. Hurry.’
It was as good a solution as could be found, so Hal did not argue and paused only to force his soaked, sticky feet into his boots, then moved off in a half-crouch to where Donald was supposed to be waiting, feeling the ooze of other people’s blood between his toes.
The
loom of the horse, like some dark nemesis from the shadows, almost made him scream and lash out, but he saw the figure leading it, caught a glimpse of her pale, anxious face and stopped the blow with an effort that left him shaking and panting.
‘Sir Hal.’
Annie was fretted and shivering and Hal knew something was badly wrong, so that when she laid the weird of it out, he was less stunned by it than he should have been.
Donald and Annie and her man had waited with the horses and even then Annie had known something was wrong. Then the alarm went and Donald announced he was leaving, though he could only manage the horse he rode and two others – the other two he left with Nichol and Annie ‘for mercy’.
‘Nichol is wild over Roger,’ she went on in a panicked, shrill whisper. ‘He waited only to tackle him – he heard us … exchanging auld whispers in the coal house. He cast loose the horse he held and has gone hunting Black Roger in the dark.’
She had brought this mount a little way, hoping to meet her old lover first, Hal thought and cursed them both.
‘Oh, Christ’s Mercy,’ Annie declared, giving up the reins to him and sinking down in the slush. ‘I did not want either of them harmed. In the name of God, I did not want any of this.’
Hal felt the rush of it – they were not so different, he and Annie, caught up in madness. He patted her awkwardly, as you would a sick dog, then left her there and went back to the road, trailing the one horse and looking for Kirkpatrick.
He was where Hal had left him, still hobbling desperately, but he stopped when he heard the hooves ring on the frozen ruts. Then his face got grim through the pain.
‘One?’
Hal told him, swiftly and Kirkpatrick groaned and hauled himself to the stirrup leather.
‘Aye. Well, there ye have it. Now ye can say that I am mainly for sense, save ower that wummin and have yer revenge.’
‘Haul yourself up,’ Hal declared. ‘We can ride double. Get settled while I have a listen for the hounds.’
He moved off, cocking his head and straining to hear deep into the dark, judging by the questing bell of the dogs whether they were on the scent or still looking. There was a sudden movement behind him and he turned, in time to see the dark figure spring out of the shadow between two howfs and run at Kirkpatrick’s back.
Kirkpatrick, laboriously hauling himself into the saddle of the patient mount, heard the final boot scuff too late; the blow smacked him in the back, slammed him into the horse, which skittered away and let Kirkpatrick fall and roll in the slush.
He knew he had been attacked and by whom, knew he had been stabbed, too, and was astonished by it, for he had never been in all his life so far. So that is what it is like to have the knife in, he thought, that terrible feeling of steel violating a place it should not be, that sickening, sucking grip of his own flesh, as if reluctant to see the blade withdrawn. Then the burn hit him and he struggled to rise.
‘Ye filthy boo,’ Nichol was spitting, breathing hard and standing straddle-legged. ‘Ye golach gowk-spit. I will learn ye to get on my wummin …’
He was cursing half in triumph, half in horror at what he had done, then turned and bellowed at the top of his voice.
‘Here. Over here. I have Black Roger …’
Then he remembered the reputation of the man who was struggling back to his weaving legs and whirled to face him, uncertain of what to do and afraid to close and finish it. The sudden clack of boots behind him made him whirl again, in time to see Hal come running up, the great blade of the sword bright in one hand.
Nichol yelped and fled, shrieking; Hal let him and darted to where Kirkpatrick, down on his one good knee, was gasping.
‘Christ and all His Saints,’ he panted. ‘That is sore.’
‘You are alive yet,’ Hal said, lifting him so that he grunted with pain.
The hounds were close, their baying loud. Hal forced Kirkpatrick up into the saddle, then looked steadily into the man’s pain-filled eyes.
‘Get gone back to your king,’ he said flatly. ‘Tell Dog Boy what happened here.’
Kirkpatrick knew that the horse would not outrun the dogs with two, knew what Hal was going to do and almost railed against it, but the hand came down on the horse’s rump and it sprang away into the night, leaving Kirkpatrick with all he could do to hang on as it went.
Hal was aware of what he had done, what was coming, with the small part of his mind not calculating the trajectory of the arrowing dogs. If he thought at all of whether Kirkpatrick deserved this, or whether this was some martyr’s posturing in the Kingdom’s Cause, it never registered more than a flicker.
He was here. He was a knight, defending the back of a weaker man who, for all his faults, had more to offer his king. It was enough …
The first dog darted out like a slim wraith and Hal stepped sideways, slashed once and left it tumbling behind him, yelping. The second he speared, but the wrench of it tore the sword from his grasp and then the rush of men came up, led by Fitzwalter and the Hospitaller, the fat young Ross lad peching up behind.
‘Alive,’ roared Fitzwalter. ‘Alive …’
Hal fought with fists and boots and teeth, until something crashed on him, a world of pain and dark scarlet, as if he had dived into a bloody pool that grew black and old the deeper he fell.
Then there was darkness only.
EPILOGUE
Crossraguel Abbey, Ayrshire
Feast of St Drostan, July, 1307
The fields lolled, the forest was still, both breathing in the hot air of noon through leaves and grasses, sifted with dragonflies, green frogs and brown toads all looking to the relief of water. There were curlews and hares and squirrels – but most of all, there were flies.
They came to feast on the bloat of dead cattle and sheep, rising off the carcasses as thick as the smoke that curled from the abbey buildings. Folk moved with cloths over their mouths against the stink and even the hardiest of them winced at the smell.
‘Bad cess to them,’ Jamie Douglas said and the Dog Boy, looking at the bloodied, snarling muzzles of the abbot’s dead hounds, could only agree. Bad cess to the English, who had viciously swiped one petulant claw at the defenceless, as if to reassure themselves that they were still in charge despite being beaten at Loudon Hill scant weeks before.
That had been the garland on a new spring. There had been a long hard winter of exile and then, as the thaw melted everything to drip and yellow, the news went out, leaping from head to head like wildfire.
The King was back.
Slowly, like a winter bear emerging from its cave, the Scots crawled out into the Kingdom and started to make their mark against the surprised English.
Kirkpatrick had been busy, too, with coin and promises, most of which came to ripeness – the last fruits had arrived only the night before, clutched in the brown mouth of a man who looked like a packman and had been taught as a priest.
There were a score or more of them, men and women both. Anonymous as dust and dark, they went where Kirkpatrick sent them and did as they were bid for revenge, the promise of advancement or – and Kirkpatrick’s cynical nature was amazed by it – increasingly for belief in the King and the Kingdom.
This one brought news.
‘He’s dead,’ the man said and, for a moment, Kirkpatrick felt the coursing shock of it plunge him to limpness – then the next words rushed him with relief.
‘At Burgh on the Sands, a week or less. They have not told the army yet.’
Longshanks. The news should have raised Kirkpatrick up, but he was too relieved that it was not the other man he had set agents to watching. Not Hal, then – Kirkpatrick blew out his cheeks. He had found where Hal was held and did not understand why the man was still alive. But he was, though no closer to rescue than before.
Now Kirkpatrick waited impatiently while the abbot of the charred Crossraguel, grim and resigned, accepted the commiserations of his king – after all, the Bruces of Carrick had founded the place and it was donation
s from there that kept it going. So the abbot tried to ignore the ruin and war that had been brought to him, smiled and bowed and fervently agreed to keep perpetual Mass for the souls of the King’s brothers, Thomas and Alexander, who had been slain at the start of the year.
The chapel was a miracle of beauty, left untouched even by de Valence’s rabble. It was a beautiful kingfisher of stone, small and perfect as a jewel, whose glowing painted walls were barely smoked by time, tallow and incense.
Bruce genuflected and then knelt, placing his hands on the eternal, untarnished altar as if to force it to prevail over the memory of those he mourned. He remained kneeling while all those half-in and half-out of the dimmed cool vault of it dared not come any closer, even though some were kin. Even the King’s chaplain remained outside, hands clasped inside his sleeves and head bowed.
They looked at the disordered, bowed head, the long, scarred face and the hands laid flat on the cold stone and thought he looked the very image of a warrior king, bowing before his Maker to ask for mercy and peace for those lost and for help in returning to claim the Kingdom from the Plantagenet father and son. They lowered their own heads, for they were back in the Kingdom – and would need all of God’s help to stay.
Bruce felt them like the rustle of moths in darkness, his mind full of the sins he had committed – and the ones yet to come – while the harsh taint of burning seemed to heighten the loss of two more of his brothers; Alexander, especially, was a crushing ache, for Bruce would miss the inciteful young mind.
Then there were the others, the defectors and waverers – Randolph, his own nephew, taken at Methven and pardoned into King Edward’s good grace on condition that he fought for the English; that he had so readily agreed to it was what rankled. And young David Strathbogie, new Earl of Atholl, who had been panicked enough to run off and clamour for English mercy from the very king who had hanged his father.
