The Lion at bay tk-2

by Robert Low

  Men laughed as Mabs whimpered and appealed to the one man who seemed detached and unconcerned.

  ‘The Rood. The Rood, lord,’ she said. Hal, nursing his ribs, was taken by surprise; he had been watching the giant sow, seeing her unconcerned and luxuriating. Sae cantie as a sou in glaur — happy as a pig in muck. It had been a phrase he thought he had understood until now, when he had seen a sow of this size luxuriating in her filth.

  Mabs’ desperation jerked him from the reverie, stunned him with a shock like cold water as to how he had been standing in the midst of all this, daydreaming.

  ‘The Rood,’ he repeated and Mabs leaped on it, worried it with feverish hope.

  ‘Jop and Lamb Prick had it, sir,’ Mabs wheezed, nodding furiously in agreement with her own words. ‘I gave Lamb Prick the little bitty wood in the thing, sir, of being more account to him than me. Jop wanted more and persuaded Lamb Prick to steal the cross with the stones. A murrain on them both.’

  Hal blinked as the words sank in like rain on a desert. He tried to straighten, felt something tear and gasped, so that Kirkpatrick turned to him, frowning.

  ‘Is that all of it?’ Hal managed.

  Her head threatened to nod itself from her shoulders, her huge breasts shook.

  ‘Round his neck on a string. It is no more than finger-length, lord.’

  Kirkpatrick and Hal exchanged glances. It was good to have matters confirmed, but no joy to be reminded that it had been under their noses at the start…

  ‘Faugh,’ said Edward Bruce. ‘This place stinks and is dangerous — time we were away.’

  Mabs saw the look in Kirkpatrick’s eye.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Wai — uurgh.’

  It was done before anyone could blink — a short thrust and a heave, enough to knock her off-balance. She rolled like a boulder through the flimsy sty fence right to the trotters of her surprised namesake, still squealing.

  The fresh blood hit the sow’s nostrils, and all the others raised their snouts, while Mabs struggled with the mud, floundering on all fours like a new and even bigger sow.

  They left, Hal trying to blot his ears to the sound of the pleading shrieks, then the grunts; he could not tell whether they came from an agonized Mabs or from the enthusiasm of chewing pigs.

  Cantie as a sou in glaur, he thought, then shivered, glad of the rain sluicing on him like cleansing balm and outside air to breathe.

  Nunnery of the Blessed Saint Augustine, Elcho, Perth

  Feast of Saint Mauritius, the martyred Knight, February, 1305

  God turned his hand over and changed the weather. When Sister Mary Margaret woke beside Bets the milcher, she heard the pea-rattle of the rain and did not want to leave the warm snuggle of her charge, the cow. But it was the water in her bladder that had roused her, so that she cursed, then rose up, shivering and offering apologies to God for the blasphemy.

  Bets stirred and Sister Mary Margaret, hunched and stiff, rubbed the curled nap between the horns; she much preferred sleeping here in the byre than her cell and, though the others carped about her appearance and her smell, she did not care.

  Did she moan about the stink of paints and the smears on their habits? She did not. Her skill lay with beasts and not pictures on walls and she offered it up to the glory of God daily.

  The wind and hissing rain smacked her as she opened the byre door and there was a moment when she blenched, considered hiking her clothes up and doing it there in the warm straw — after all, the cow did. Who would know that she had not scampered all the way to the privy?

  God would know. She took a deep breath as if to dive into a pool — I have not done that since I was a wee girlie, she thought incongruously, just as she ran into a door.

  Stunned, she recoiled, bewildered, for there was no door where she moved — she knew her way round Elcho blindfold. The door moved and she caught her breath at the great wet bulk of shield that towered over her. The owner flicked his massive mailled shoulders and slithered the shield on to his back with a hiss that drowned the rain, then he stuck one huge, armoured hand down to her.

  ‘Ye are all wet, sitting in the rain, Sister. Rise up.’

  Sister Mary Margaret was hauled upright; she was aware of being wet and that some of it was warm, so she had pished herself after all.

  ‘My name is Sir William Wallace,’ the man said, smiling like a wolf. ‘I seek a wummin and a particular yin among so many. A countess no less. Can you assist me, in the loving name of Christ?’

  Sister Mary Margaret had no words. Behind the giant, she saw other men and, in the midst of them, a slight dripping figure, flinging an axe blade stare at her. A woman, come with armed men — the prioress will needs be informed, she thought…

  ‘I am sure you can assist me, Sister,’ the giant said, cutting through the mad whirl of her thoughts and Sister Mary Margaret realized, suddenly, that the days of the prioress were probably over.

  Her hand flew to her mouth and smothered the sudden, savage scream — but she managed to point to where the Countess had been quartered. The giant grinned.

  ‘ Pax vobiscum, Sister,’ he said and left so suddenly that Sister Mary Margaret sat down with a squelch. Relief washed her like the rain.

  In the cloistered heart of Elcho, the sisters were running and shrieking as men spilled in, reeking of sweat and old blood, woodsmoke and feral lust. The prioress stood, her heart thundering like a mad bird, and stretched out her arms protectively, just as the Countess of Buchan came up behind her.

  ‘Stay behind me, Countess,’ she declared, throwing out her chest as a giant stepped forward, huge sword in one grimed fist and a twisted grin on his face. ‘God will save us.’

  ‘You have been called many things, Will Wallace, but never God Himself before,’ the Countess declared and pushed past the astounded prioress, who was shocked to see the great ogre with the sword take the Countess’ hand, delicate as any courtier and raise it to the mad tangle of beard.

  A small figure emerged from behind the giant Wallace and the smiling Countess recognized her tirewoman Ada beneath the sodden hood of the cloak, embracing her.

  Isabel turned to the pale, open-mouthed prioress and felt a wash of sympathy for what she had brought down on them. She quelled the feeling, ruthless as those who hunted nuns and food and drink through the sacred shadows of Elcho. Here was a wee wummin who had taken money from her husband to hold her as prisoner in the name of God.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ she said viciously to the prioress. ‘ Victoria veritatis est caritas — the victory of truth is love.’

  Outside, Sister Mary Margaret found a hand taloned on her shoulder and lifting her from the soaked ground. An eldritch face, scarred and gleaming wet, thrust itself at her, grinning, the broken nose dripping.

  ‘You will catch a chill, quine,’ Lang Jack declared and glanced at the open door of the byre. ‘We mun get you in the dry and oot of those wet clothes.’

  Now Sister Mary Margaret screamed.

  The Bruce House, London

  The same night

  The waxed paper windows turned the room to amber twilight even at midday and let in both the cold and the clamour from the Grass and Stocks markets; Hal could even hear the whine of the beggars on the steps of St Edmund’s Garcherche opposite and, naked to the waist, wished he could move closer to the brazier, a glowing comfort perched on a slate slab on the wooden floor.

  The physician finished bandaging Hal’s ribs, dipping his fingers in a basin and drying them fastidiously on a clean linen square as he turned to Bruce.

  ‘Your man,’ he said, haughty and dismissive, ‘has re-opened an old wound. I have fastened it and will give him a salve and two mole’s feet, for protection against infection in the bone.’

  He paused, then looked steadily at the Earl, ignoring Hal’s sullen scowl at the term ‘your man’.

  ‘In your own case, the tooth is healing nicely and your tongue is undamaged,’ he said. What was unsaid crouched between them like a rat on a c
orpse. Edward Bruce, oblivious to the exchange, laughed nastily and clapped his brother hard on the shoulder.

  ‘More than can be declared for your opponent,’ he growled. ‘I am told he gabbles like a bairn.’

  The physician turned fish eyes on him. He was called James and came, he claimed, from Montaillou, which most thought simply a village in France. Those who knew, all the same, could tell you that Montaillou lay smack in the middle of that Langue D’Oc stronghold of the Cathar heresy which the Pope was scouring from the world.

  James of Montaillou, Bruce mused to himself, was mostly a lie. He claimed to be a physician but had attended no university and was, at best, an inferior breed of skilled barber-surgeon. He claimed to be a Christian, but should, in truth, be wearing the compulsory yellow cross of a heretic Cathar.

  ‘I have it that Sir Robert Malenfaunt may never speak properly again,’ James commented, with more than a sting of mild rebuke in it. ‘His palate is pierced and his tongue slit longways into two halves.’

  His audience winced. Bruce managed a wan smile, the square of linen held to his cheek in what was becoming an ingrained habit; the gleet from the purpling-red half healed cicatrice was clear, yet stained the square a foul yellow, tinged faintly with pink.

  ‘God preserve him,’ he said thickly, though there were few present who thought God had much to do with Sir Robert Malenfaunt, who had so clearly been abandoned by Him on that tourney day.

  ‘Deserves that at least,’ Edward Bruce growled, ‘and a mark of God’s Hand that he suffered it as a result of the battle and not afterwards, for losing in the sight of the Lord.’

  But the worst injury done to him then is the one I fear myself, Bruce thought — the shunning by your peers.

  James of Montaillou left and, after a blink or two of silent messaging to Edward, the rest of the mesnie clacked across the boards, leaving Bruce alone with Hal, Kirkpatrick and his brothers Edward and young Alexander.

  ‘So this Lamprecht is lost to us,’ Bruce declared bitterly. ‘And the Rood with him.’

  ‘We’ll spier this wee pardoner out,’ answered Edward determinedly, only to have his elder brother savage him with a glance like a lance-thrust.

  ‘You should not have been there yester,’ he declared, the words mushed by anger and pain. ‘Scampering around in pig shite like some callow boy.’

  Edward’s smile was wide, but razor thin.

  ‘I thought to mak’ siccar it was done right,’ he declared and Kirkpatrick, hearing the phrase, spun round, glaring at him.

  ‘What mean you by that?’ he spat back, heedless of the protocols of rank. ‘D’you imply that it would not have been well done without ye?’

  ‘You needed our swords, certes, from what I saw,’ Edward snarled back, equally disregarding the differences in their station.

  ‘Who was it planned for such and summoned you?’

  ‘First time the dog has ever whistled up the master…’

  ‘Enough.’

  Bruce’s voice was harshened by pain and a slap across both their faces, so that they subsided, glowering.

  ‘With or without you, brother,’ Bruce went on sternly, ‘the matter was not well done. And if you had been caught in it, all of us were ruined. Christ’s Bones — here you are arguing with a lesser rank like some drunken cottar and showing exactly the same disregard for station and dignity as you did in Sty Lane. It is not just yourself you risk nowadays, Edward — it is the Bruce name. My name and rank more than yours.’

  Hal, fastening his belt back round his tunic, saw Kirkpatrick’s sullen scowl at being no better than ‘lesser rank’. He also saw Edward chew his bottom lip to keep silent; he knew why, too — the rumours of it were whispers within the mesnie that here was a man who wanted at least one of the titles his elder brother held and was not going to get it until that brother had the compensation of a crown. Only ambition outstripped Edward Bruce’s recklessness.

  ‘We must find and deal with Lamprecht,’ Bruce went on; Edward, still blunt as a hammer-blow, voiced what that really meant.

  ‘We have to kill him,’ he growled, ‘before he can tell others what he knows.’

  ‘He can tell no-one, my lords’ Hal replied carefully, ‘without giving away his own part in such affairs. Better to let him crawl away to a hole across the sea.’

  ‘He will tell all he knows if put to the Question,’ Bruce pointed out, patiently because he valued the Herdmanston lord and did not want to slap him down, as Edward was about to do until a look from his brother clapped his lips shut.

  ‘The pardoner is clever,’ Bruce went on, ‘but greedy. He will try and sell that reliquary treasure, or parts of it. Even the sight of one of those Christ-Blood rubies will trap him. Besides — there is the matter of the Rood itself. He has it. I want it.’

  He looked from one to the other of them like a stern father.

  ‘Aye, weel, Your Grace,’ Hal said sourly. ‘Whatever his business wi’ us, it is concluded and it is my opinion that Lamprecht will consider himself safer abroad now he has failed to discomfort myself and Kirkpatrick — and Your Grace’s honour. I dinna think his revenge runs so deep as will have him try again. I understand he was birthed in Cologne — mayhap he will return there wi’ his prize.’

  ‘Comyn will not let him,’ Bruce replied and the cutting blade of that was too sharp to answer. Bruce let the silence slide for a moment, the thoughts piling up behind his eyes as he removed, studied, then replaced the cheek pad.

  ‘Buchan has sent his animal Malise after Lamprecht, and Red John Comyn works hand in glove with his Comyn cousin, the Earl,’ he said eventually. ‘If all they suspect is that the pardoner has information contrary to my comfort, it will be enough to keep them searching. If Red John suspects the presence of the Rood, he will want it for himself and his own plans for the throne of Scotland. He will not rest until he unearths it.’

  Bruce removed the pad from his cheek, inspected it and put it back, his eyes bleak as a winter sea. For a moment, Hal saw the ugly wound and blanched at it, then the trailing conroi of his thoughts took him to Malenfaunt and the duel, incited by Buchan and Comyn.

  For Buchan it had probably been in response to the business of Isabel, whom Bruce had ransomed from Malenfaunt while pretending to be Isabel’s husband and using that man’s own money. But Buchan had not had his countess back — Hal had got her, however briefly.

  In turn, he thought bitterly, that act, for Bruce at least, was revenge for the time when Red Comyn had taken Bruce by the throat in public and threatened to knife him. Now it came to Hal, sudden as sin and just as thrillingly blasphemous, that perhaps English Edward was the best strong hand the unruly kingdom of Scots needed for, without it, the realm was already in a war with itself, played out in a mating-snake writhe of plot and counterplot, dark knifings and treachery.

  ‘Matters are not lost,’ Kirkpatrick said into Hal’s thoughts. ‘I can find Lamprecht — but not with Sir Hal in tow.’

  He looked into Hal’s outrage and shrugged.

  ‘Your idea of stealth and cunning in these matters is limited to not shouting who you are at the top of your voice,’ he said, half apologetically and in French, which softened the bile of it. ‘Besides — you are hurt.’

  Bruce looked from one to the other, removed the linen square and studied the stains, then replaced it.

  ‘Kirkpatrick,’ he said, ‘shall stay in London and seek out this Lamprecht. Hal — go back north. The men you sent must have found some trace of Wallace by now. Find Wallace, and take care of your wound, for I have need of you yet.’

  Hal nodded; he had had enough of London’s stew of streets and alleys, while his ribs ached and burned in equal measure, so he leaped on Bruce’s suggestion like a fox into a coop. He and Kirkpatrick headed for the door, pausing to offer passage to one another with exaggerated courtesy.

  Bruce watched them go, shoulder to shoulder like two padding hounds who snarled and growled at each other, yet seemed capable of springing to each oth
er’s defence in an eyeblink.

  He sent Edward off with some soothing words about his prowess and sighed when the door closed on his back, leaving him with Alexander. The youngest and yet the one he trusted most.

  The Curse of Malachy, he thought bitterly, is to have all the attributes of greatness handed to you by God and have to accept recklessness with it. Thank Christ and all His angels that he was not as reckless as brother Edward, who had been slathered with most of that — but the sudden stab of pain from his missing tooth was a reminder of his own rash fight with Malenfaunt.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ Alexander asked and Bruce felt a wash of panic and revulsion at the reality of the stained linen square and his cheek.

  ‘My tongue burns like the very De’il,’ Bruce replied laconically. ‘At least the rough edge of that tooth is no longer a nag on it.’

  The careful answer masked the truth. Alexander nodded, then flicked his fingers in an impatient gesture for his brother to remove the pad. He bent, inspected, then straightened with a sombre nod and face so at odds with his youth that Bruce almost grinned. Almost. A smile stretched the cicatrice into a gape; in all the weeks since the tourney, it had barely managed to close on itself and Bruce knew that Alexander and his physician feared infection.

  ‘The Curse of Malachy,’ Bruce said suddenly, though he contrived to make it light and laughable. Alexander did not laugh and finally voiced the truth of matters.

  ‘The cheek does not hurt at all?’

  Bruce shook his head, swallowed the rising panic. No pain when the knife had gone in. No pain when he had plucked it out. None at all when James of Montaillou had apologetically pulled his mouth aside to file down the pinked tooth, though the pain of that was a screamingly agonizing memory. Folk had marvelled at the stoic bravery of the Bruce, who felt no pain.

  No pain in a cheek deadened. The irony, of course, was that it had saved his life, for Malenfaunt’s blow should have reduced him to a blinding agony of tears and snot, leaving him at the mercy of a killing stroke.