by Robert Low
The earth was new bread. The frost had cracked it, the thaw and rain had watered it, a week of late February sun had warmed it and it crumbled, heaving with furiously busy earthworms, little ploughs shifting the earth into a bed for oats and barley.
Gulls screamed, the coulter-knife scooped up clod against the mouldboard, a great wave of new-turned earth rearing up, curving over and falling into a furrow. Below Hal, the Dog Boy was trying to teach the yapping terriers, all mad wriggle and fawning tails, some obedience and, from the laughter of those watching, was not having the best of it.
There was laughter, too, from the stone chapel where Father Thomas exercised his skills with a brush to construct a glowing Saint Michael, patron of the church in Saltoun, on the internal plastered walls – and emerged covered in ochre-red and looking like a man who had fallen in a slaughterhouse pit.
It was easy, on a day like this, to forget the winter, the war, the deaths. Isabel. Yet the world would not be kept back and its herald was Sim lumbering up the last steps, panting with climbing the winding stair to the roof.
‘Rider coming,’ he grunted. ‘It will be the messenger from Bruce about the ransom for Sir Henry. At bloody last – God curse all notaries and inky-fingered clerks.’
An uneasy truce had been agreed with the English, but raids continued – more from the Scots side than the English – and only the winter weather had halted them. Getting agreement on ransom, then writs of safe conduct to travel south had taken a long time and the weather had closed in the north until no more than a few weeks ago. The Auld Templar will be fretting at the delay, thought Hal. Not to mention Sir Henry’s wife and bairns, spending the Christ’s Mass without husband and father.
He watched the horse and man come up over the great expanse of open ground, studded with copses, that surrounded Herdmanston, a rise and fall that hid the rider for a time. It was only when he got closer that Hal started to feel anxious; the horse was lathered and had been ridden harder than a mere message about an exchange warranted.
The rider was from Roslin, a broad-faced man Hal knew slightly, a labourer rather than a soldier, whose right thumb, Hal noticed incongruously, was cracked open by cold and work. That must hurt, he thought…
It was a message from Fat Davey, who had taken over John Fenton’s duties at Roslin.
The Auld Templar had turned his face to the wall.
Cloaked in misery, they rode over to Roslin, where the Lady stood with her bairns gathered into her skirts and her lip trembling at the edge.
‘I am sorry for your loss, mistress,’ Hal told her, hearing the dull pewter clunk of the inadequate words.
‘Aye,’ added Sim and then tried to brighten matters. ‘We will ride south and bring your man home, mind you, so have comfort in that.’
It was a comfort, too, Hal saw, but only a little one. He met Fat Davey in the main hall of the stone keep that was perched on an outcrop of rock and surrounded by the timber and ditch of the old motte and bailey. They had started rebuilding Roslin in stone, but work had ceased when the Sientclers were captured, the money hoarded for expected ransom. At least they can start anew on that, Hal thought bleakly. Two dead, one to be freed and no money paid out at all.
Fat Davey was grateful for Hal’s offer to take the Auld Templar to Balantrodoch, as was proper. Him and his clothes, his maille, his equipage and his warhorse all belonged to the Temple in common; another knight would have it.
But not everything, it seemed. Hal found Fat Davey’s face staring into his own like a bleak moorland that sucked the life from any muttered commiserations.
‘It was too much for him, the loss of John Fenton and then his son,’ Fat Davey said, shaking his head. ‘He just took to his bed and stared at the wall.’
He paused, fought for control and wrenched it into himself.
‘Save for the once,’ he added, fished in his pouch and brought out a small linen bag, handing it to Hal.
‘He said, just before the last, that you should have this,’ he said, his cheeks a shadow of the squirrel satchels that had once bulged there. ‘For varying reasons, he said. Not least of them being ye are the only grown Sientcler free and in the world.’
Hal thought of the Auld Templar’s son, dead in the Tower and almost certainly bowstring murdered, or starved like The Hardy. Grandson Henry, father to the three bairns still at Roslin, was held in one of Edward’s own castles, Briavel in Gloucester and, with luck, would be home soon – if Edward continued to think Fitzwarin more of a gain than the loss of a Sientcler prisoner. Or was not simply feeling waspish over the Scots affair.
His shadow was long, dark and unpredictable, Hal thought and soon Edward Plantagenet would be back, when matters would rush like a flood. There would be no exchanges then, when Longshanks turned all his energy to the Scots; Hal had a moment of panic to be on the move, to have Henry Sientcler back with his wife and weans before the raging storm of a vengeful king broke on the world.
Hal realised that Davey was right – with his own father dead and the Auld Templar himself stiff in the neighbouring chamber, Hal was the only adult Sientcler left out in the world; the linen bag suddenly started to burn the palm of his hand.
He tipped it out, saw that it was a ring and heard the thunder in his ears for the seconds it took him to realise it was not the seal of Roslin.
‘Aye,’ Davey said with a grin, ‘I admit I was a wee bit facered when I first saw it. I thought the Auld Templar was offerin’ ye the keys of Roslin. He was awfy quiet and prayerful when he heard John Fenton had died at Cambuskenneth and the news of his son’s death cracked his heart open.’
‘Christ’s mercy on us all,’ Hal declared, astonished. ‘Roslin belongs to his grandson, Henry, whom we will bring back safe. And after him are his sons.’
He studied the ring. Sim peered at it over his shoulder.
‘Silver, chalcedony,’ he declared loftily, then looked blandly into the stares of the others. ‘What? It is a wise man who kens the look of baubles. Saves ye guddlin’ in a dead man’s armpit for the cess when ye can lift the real shine.’
‘What’s the markings, then?’ Hal challenged and Sim squinted, then shrugged.
‘A wee fishie,’ he said and Davey shrugged when Hal questioned him with silent eyes.
‘No wisdom from me,’ he said. ‘The Auld Templar just gave it me and told me to deliver it to yourself. His only words on the matter were that it was an auld sin.’
Hal studied it carefully. A series of lines drawn into a fish shape. The old Christ symbol from Roman times, he recalled vaguely, though he could not bring the Latin of it to mind. He tried it on, but his knuckles were too big.
An auld sin. Hal shivered.
Chapter Nine
Northumberland, on the road to Hexham Priory
Vigil of Saint Ebbe the Younger, April, 1298
The oaks unfurled new leaves and the world was raptured by rainbows. The writs came and Hal rode out with his men to join the Bruce cavalcade; on the ride south, they saw cows wrap their tongues round fresh green and rip it up, chewing contently; sheep nibbling in hurdled areas, brown land turned under the plough.
‘I thought Wallace had harried this place thoroughly,’ Bruce said, with a half-sneer, half-wry laugh. He sounded disappointed to see this evidence of life, even if folk hurried off, running out of their pattens to get away from the cavalcade.
‘Folks ken where to hide a brace of kine so that even the herschip misses it,’ Sim grunted back with his usual lack of deference. Hal said nothing, though he marvelled at the folk they passed, ploughing and husbanding, hoping to squeeze in a desperate harvest before war came in the summer and knowing there was a fair chance all that effort would go to waste. Yet they would burn fields and slaughter livestock themselves rather than see it fall into the hands of invaders – as the Scots would in their turn.
Like Saint Ebbe, he thought, who took a blade to her nose and face so that the invading Danes would think her too ugly to rape. The ones who suffer most
are the innocent.
Some folk never made it as far as the dreaming summer and they came on the evidence of it a day later, moving through lush valleys and low woodlands, the sweat itching them, the insects humming and pinging. The smoke brought half dreaming heads up and the scouts – Hal’s men on their sturdy garrons – came galloping back with the news that a steading burned on the far side of the ridge.
‘I would see,’ Bruce declared and was off before anyone could tell him differently. With a muffled curse, Kirkpatrick followed after, looking wildly round and waving to Hal. Wearily, Hal kicked the sleepwalking garron into surprised life, heard Sim bawling for Bangtail and Lang Tam to move.
It was an outwork of Hexham’s holding; probably, Hal thought, the peasant who worked it thought that the further he was from the influence of the priory reeves, the happier his life would be. Well, he had paid a high price for the freedom to cut firewood rather than collect it, or poach for the pot and miss a few plough days for the lordship.
He and his family lay on the sheep pasture near the softly muttering stream, not far from the blackened bones of their home; the wattle had burned, but the daub had hardened and cracked, so that the roof had fallen in and the walls stood like the shell of a rotted tooth.
The dead were all close together, Hal saw, and the women – a mother and a daughter becoming a woman, he thought -were still clothed. Led from the house and murdered, with no chance to flee and no attempt at rape.
‘Baistards,’ Sim growled and waved a hand at the churned earth. ‘Took what they needed in a hot trod and did red murder for the sake of it.’
‘How many, d’ye think?’ Bruce demanded, circling his horse.
‘Twenty,’ Kirkpatrick declared after a pause to study the hoof chewed ground and Sim nodded agreement.
‘Why would they kill them?’
The question was piped clear from the Dog Boy’s bewildered voice and Hal saw his face – puzzled, but not so shocked as it should have been for a young lad of a dozen years or so, coming on death on a warm April afternoon. He was growing fast, Hal thought. And hard.
‘For the sport in it,’ Sim declared bitterly.
‘For the terror in it,’ Bruce corrected. ‘So that others will see this and fear the ones who did it.’
‘Scots, then, you think?’
‘Aye,’ Bruce answered, ‘though belonging to no army. Left behind and on the herschip for the profit.’
‘We should rejoin the main force,’ Kirkpatrick offered nervously, as Bruce stepped his horse delicately round the strewn bodies.
The mother looked old and death had not been kind to her, yet she was no older than his own wife when she had died, Hal thought. No older than Isabel…
‘A mercy the child was slain,’ Bruce said, his voice a cat’s tongue of harsh rasp, and Hal blinked, then realised Bruce was thinking of his own dead wife and Marjorie, the daughter left to his care.
‘A father is no nurse. A young girl needs a mother,’ Bruce went on softly, speaking almost to himself. He remembered his own daughter then, dark eyes, little full lips parting in a smile, the image of her mother; he closed his eyes against the memory of the chubby-faced mommet he had so neglected. The best he ever did for her was keep her from being taken as a thumb-sucking hostage after Irvine – which was as well, since he had broken all his oaths since.
‘Riders,’ Bangtail called out sharply.
There were three, padded and mailled, mounted on good horses, with latchbows bouncing at the saddle. They all had little round shields and rimmed iron helmets and one carried a banner, yellow with a red cross on it. Behind were more; around thirty, Hal tallied swiftly.
‘Norfolk’s arms,’ Kirkpatrick murmured to Bruce and he nodded. Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk was, with his peers Hereford and Arundel, providing most of the army controlled by De Warenne for the defence of England. These riders, Bruce thought probably amounted to about half of the mounted crossbows in that army – his spies had told him there were scarcely 1,500 foot and 100 horse left to De Warenne.
The lead rider was tall, with a wisp of black beard and a dagger of cold stare which he switched between Bruce and Hal, taking in the jupons and surcoats, the heraldry there. On his own part, Hal saw a white shield with three little green birds on it, their wings folded across their backs. Argent, three alaudae, vert, addorsed, he registered and smiled; the Auld Sire would always be with him, in every coat of arms he looked at.
‘I thought you might be from the Priory,’ the rider said, his voice an accented French burr. ‘But I see you have come further than that – Carrick men, is it? I do not know the engrailed blue cross, mark you.’
‘We are passing through,’ Bruce replied easily. ‘To the Priory. We are Carrick men with a writ of utbordh from De Warenne – you know this term?’
‘I know it,’ the man said stiffly, then managed a smile. ‘Safe passage. I am Fulk d’Alouet.’
‘Oh, very good,’ Hal said before he could stop himself, and the cold stare settled on him.
‘Lark,’ he added limply, waving at the man’s shield with its three larks. ‘Your device.’
‘You are?’
Wishing I had kept my lip fastened, Hal thought, but forced a smile.
‘Sir Henry Sientcler of Herdmanston.’
There was no answering smile from Fulk.
‘I thought you were the ones who had done this,’ he declared, encompassing the tragedy with a spread of one arm. ‘They were Scots, of course.’
‘We had no hand in this,’ Bruce replied. ‘Though you are correct that they were Scots. Possibly some English there as well. Mayhap a Gascon or two.’
The smile broadened and Bruce knew he was right -D’Alouet and the riders coming up behind him were all Gascon mercenaries, last remnants of the ones who had ridden away from Stirling.
‘Yes. Brigands, then,’ Fulk d’Alouet replied, then sighed wearily. ‘I knew these folk well enough. We came to water our horses several times.’
‘Feel free to water them now,’ Bruce answered and the Gascon’s face darkened.
‘I am already free to water them,’ he snapped. The rider with the banner, dark-eyed, dark-bearded, dark-mannered, gave a little grunt and a gesture across his throat.
‘See to the horses,’ Fulk said to him and climbed heavily out of his saddle. Hal watched Bruce do the same and, with a glance to Kirkpatrick, levered over the rump of the animal and dropped to the ground, legs stiff as old logs.
There was a show of stretching and grunting while a Gascon led off the horses, leaving Fulk and the young man, on foot now and swaddled by the limp banner. Fulk unlaced the bascinet and pulled it off, then hauled off the maille coif and the padded arming cap, rubbing one hand through the sweat-streaked crop of his hair. Without it, he seemed younger, though the corners of his eyes were hardened with lines.
‘What is your business this far south?’
‘An exchange,’ Bruce answered, though he had been tempted, with a flash of anger, to tell this minor that it was none of his business.
‘My lord,’ Kirkpatrick said, ‘we should be rejoining the others.’
It was timely and calculated, letting this Fulk know that Bruce was someone of quality and that he had more men at his back. Yet Fulk’s head came up like a hound on scent.
‘You are the younger Bruce,’ he said slowly, the realisation closing on him. ‘The rebel Earl of Carrick.’
‘I have the honour,’ Bruce replied. ‘Though rebel is harsh.’
Hal saw that Kirkpatrick was watching the dark man with the banner and the line of dismounted men leading their horses to the stream, with little flicks of his eyes, one to the other. He turned to watch Bruce and the Gascon, who suddenly grinned broadly and dropped the helmet to his feet.
‘Bon chance to you, my lord earl,’ he said and thrust out a hand, which Bruce automatically took, found the Gascon’s grip on his wrist hard and realised, in a sudden, shocking flash, that Fulk had dropped his helmet to free up his left
hand – which was now behind his back.
In that moment, he was fourteen and back with the Auld Templar on the tiltyard at Lochmaben – and the knight had seemed old even then – being taught how to fight and, for the first time, given a real sword instead of a blunted one. Because of it, he had not tried to strike the Auld Templar once in the fight and, eventually the knight stopped and looked at him.
‘What,’ he said heavily, ‘d’ye think ye are at here, boy?’
‘Defending myself,’ Bruce answered sullenly, more question in it than certainty.
‘No,’ the Auld Templar replied, ‘for the best way to achieve that is…?’
‘Attack?’
‘So set to, laddie.’
Bruce swallowed.
‘You are unarmoured, sir,’ he pointed out stiffly. ‘Whereas I have helmet and maille and padding.’
He said this bitterly, for the weight was crushing him and the Auld Templar insisted he wore it from the moment he stepped on the yard to the moment he left it.
‘Are ye feared, laddie?’
The soft voice stung Bruce and the Auld Templar saw the lip come out.
‘I might hurt you, sir.’
‘You may dream of it,’ the Auld Templar chuckled, then his face grew set and dark. ‘I will come at ye, sirra, in the count of three. There will be blood on this yard and if ye don’t fight me as if ye meant it, it will be yer own, I swear. Mak’ a warrior of ye, yer da declares, even if it kills ye. So set to.’
Bruce felt the prickle of anger and fear.
‘Three,’ said the Auld Templar suddenly and came at him, so that Bruce yelped, barely managing to deflect the overarm broadsword stroke in a bell-clang shock that stunned his whole arm. What followed was the most intense three or four minutes of his life to that point, a whirr of blades scything like light and, at the end of it, the Auld Templar cursed and hurled himself away, sucking the back of his hand, where Bruce’s blade had nicked him.
