A Clash of Lions

by A. J. MacKenzie

  Mora splashed water on her face and body, washing away the sweat. ‘Spying on the Percys,’ she said calmly. ‘My lady wants to know where their true loyalty lies.’

  ‘Why?’

  Mora straightened, wiping the water from her strong arms. ‘It is no secret that there are factions in the Scottish camp,’ she said. ‘My lady and her husband are leaders of one such faction. The Seigneur de Brus leads another, along with Niall Bruce of Carrick and William Douglas of Liddesdale. Most of the nobility support them, largely because Brus pays them lavishly in French gold. My lady is suspicious of Brus, and believes he has ulterior motives.’

  Tiphaine shivered suddenly. ‘He does,’ she said, and she told Mora about the conspiracy last summer and Brus’s part in it. ‘When I last saw him three days ago, the herald was on his way to see your mistress.’

  ‘Was he now?’ Mora considered this. ‘That is interesting,’ she said slowly. ‘So, as you can guess, my lady has more than a passing interest in which way the Percys and the Disinherited will jump. If they take up the Scottish offer, Brus and his friends will win. If they stay loyal to England, there is still a chance of preventing disaster. A slim one, but a chance nonetheless.’

  ‘Brus set a trap for the herald. I don’t know if he reached your mistress, or even if he is still alive.’

  ‘News about dead heralds travels quickly. I think we would have heard by now. Perhaps Brus will tell me when we meet tonight.’

  Tiphaine stared at her. ‘You are going to the meeting?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mora picked up her shirt and pulled it on, tying up the laces. ‘This is what will happen. You will remain in this room and not go out. I will go and reconnoitre the convent, and then find a place to hole up. After this morning’s raids, it is not safe for a Scot to be in Berwick any longer than they must. I will attend the meeting and contrive to get word to you. You must then go to Sir Thomas Rokeby, the English commander in Berwick, and tell him what I have told you. Rokeby is a good man. Ask him to take you under his protection.’

  Tiphaine’s jaw dropped. ‘You would betray your own people?’

  ‘The Lords of the Isles are free and independent. My loyalty is to the Countess of Dunbar, not to Scotland. And from what you have said, this man Brus is dangerous and must be stopped.’

  Mora pulled on her jack and mail tunic, shrugging the links of the latter into place. She picked up her helmet and set it on her head. ‘Stay safe, and wait for my message.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tiphaine.

  ‘Good.’ Mora smiled. ‘It was a pleasure to know you, demoiselle. Perhaps we will meet again one day.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tiphaine repeated. ‘Perhaps.’

  From the window of the room she watched Mora walk away through the teeming, half-panicky turmoil of the street. Away in the distance, smoke hung in shrouds around the flanks of the hills. She waited until Mora was out of sight, then went to the door and called for a servant. A woman in plain kirtle and apron came to the door of the room, dusting her hands.

  ‘I need clothes,’ Tiphaine said.

  The woman glanced at her travel-stained gown. ‘I can send for a tailor, my lady.’

  ‘No. I need a disguise.’ Tiphaine lowered her voice. ‘I have a rendezvous with a lover. No one must know who I am.’

  She handed the woman some coins. ‘Find me a white robe with a cowl and hood, like a Cistercian habit,’ she said. ‘Bring it to me by vespers.’

  Harbottle, 26th of September, 1346

  Late morning

  The fires in the valley were dying out, but smoke still hung thick as a shroud. Some of the refugees sat or stood listless in the castle courtyard, while outside others were burying the dead. There was no point in anyone going home, not when further raids could happen at any time. Lady Joan, a capable woman, was in the kitchen organising food for the exhausted people. ‘Do we know what happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I have spoken to the men,’ Merrivale said. ‘All tell the same story. They followed the Scots at a safe distance, with your husband and the other three well out to the front. At Linbriggs, where the valley narrows, they rode through a dense cloud of smoke. When the smoke cleared, there was no sign of Sir Gilbert or his companions. The men at once abandoned the pursuit and searched the area, but no bodies were found.’

  ‘Could they track the horses?’

  Merrivale shook his head. ‘The ground was badly churned up by the passage of so many animals.’

  Lady Joan bit her lip. ‘They must have been taken prisoner,’ she said.

  The herald watched her, wondering how much she knew. ‘That is certainly possible,’ he said. ‘The Scots may have laid an ambush on the far side of the smoke.’

  ‘What is to be done now?’

  ‘Open negotiations,’ Merrivale said. He touched his tabard. ‘I will find Douglas and Bruce and confirm whether your husband and the others have been captured. If they have, I will bring you the terms of their ransom.’

  Her head went down at this; any ransom for a man as important as Umfraville was likely to be costly, more perhaps than his entire estate was worth. Something is wrong here, the herald thought. Why would the Scots go to the trouble of bribing the Disinherited and then take them prisoner? Unless they knew already that Umfraville and the others were going to refuse? And if so, how did they know?

  Predictably, Peter wanted to come with him. Mauro and Warin looked unhappy as well. ‘No,’ said Merrivale. He did not want to take Peter with him, and he could hardly take his two servants and leave Peter behind. ‘If there is trouble, it is best I face it alone.’

  ‘I hope there is trouble, sir,’ Peter said fiercely. ‘I’d like to pay a few of them back, for Davy Harkness.’

  Fifteen years old, and yet he had already killed two men in the past few days and was looking forward to killing more. If ever there was a reason why this war had to end, this was it. ‘You are thinking like a man-at-arms now, Peter, and not like a herald,’ he said. ‘You cannot be both. You must choose which course you will follow.’

  The boy subsided. Merrivale put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Patience is one of the virtues of an ambassador,’ he said. ‘I will return soon.’

  * * *

  Riding up the valley, his herald’s tabard a bright splash of colour in the grey and dun landscape, he wondered if he had done the right thing by taking on Peter as an apprentice. He makes me feel about a hundred years old, he thought, acting the role of an ancient sage passing on wisdom to the young. It is a role I do not yet feel ready to play. Tiphaine sometimes makes me feel the same.

  Last night’s rain and the passage of hundreds of hooves had churned the ground to mud. He passed farms, the same farms he had helped to evacuate yesterday, now piles of charred timbers still leaking smoke. The hills grew higher and steeper. He came to Linbriggs and paused for a while, surveying the ruins and listening to the roar of the river in its stony bed, and crows cawing around the silent heights. There was no sign of what might have happened to the four men. He nudged the horse with his heels and rode on.

  At Barrow Burn, where the hills crowded close and steep, he heard a clink of metal on stone and reined in, looking around and waiting. The crows cawed again, their voices harsh with warning. He heard the clink again and looked up to see a lone horseman riding down the valley, his surcoat and shield bearing the device of a red lion rampant on a field of gold. Merrivale’s hands clenched tight on the reins.

  He sat motionless on his horse, waiting. Niall Bruce, Lord of Carrick, reined in a dozen paces away and raised the visor of his bascinet. He was a big man, broad-shouldered with dark eyes and a full black beard, armoured in mail and plate with a lance in one hand and a sword at his belt. ‘What are you doing here, herald?’ he demanded.

  ‘Surprised to see me?’ Merrivale asked.

  ‘No. One of the rearguard spotted you following us.’

  ‘And you decided to investigate. Shall we get down to business? Did you take any prisoners during this morning’s raid?’
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  Bruce grinned at him. ‘Sir Gilbert d’Umfraville, Sir Thomas Clennell, Sir Walter Selby and Thomas Wake, Lord of Liddell. They are in our hands.’ He paused, clearly enjoying himself. ‘They will be taken before the king, where they will be tried and executed.’

  The herald’s eyebrows raised. ‘And what would be their crime?’

  ‘They claim lands in Scotland, but refuse to do homage for those lands to King David. They are foresworn, and they must die.’

  Merrivale thought for a moment. ‘I see. What would persuade your king to change his mind?’

  ‘All four must submit to him, along with all their tenants and their families. They must do homage to him, and fight for him as his loyal retainers.’

  ‘Which is what you asked them to do when you tried to bribe them,’ Merrivale said. ‘You raided Umfraville’s lands to increase the pressure on him, I understand that. But why take them prisoner today?’

  The other man grinned again. ‘Why not? If we can compel them to our will, we have no need to bribe them. Think of the money we shall save.’

  ‘But it looks uncommonly like bad faith,’ the herald said. ‘You need them to enter your service willingly, not through force. This all sounds rather clumsy, don’t you think? A bit like sending those men to ambush me in Tynedale three days ago.’

  Bruce’s smile faded. ‘Strong words. Killing a herald is a serious offence.’

  ‘Not one I imagine you would shrink from,’ Merrivale said. ‘Did you not wonder, my lord, when your men never came home?’

  ‘How do you know they were my men?’ Bruce demanded.

  Too late, the herald realised his mistake. ‘One of them told me before he died,’ he said.

  The lance came down, its point aimed at Merrivale’s chest. Shouting with anger, Bruce spurred his horse straight towards Merrivale. A second before the lance point reached him, Merrivale slipped out of the saddle and the lance passed through empty air above him. Bruce hauled on the reins, pulling up his mount, and as he did so Merrivale stepped out from behind his own horse and launched himself at the other man, seizing his arm and dragging him out of the saddle. Bruce hit the ground hard, crashing down on his back with a clash of metal and lying winded. His bascinet fell off, rolling in the mud. Standing over him, Merrivale ripped Bruce’s sword out of its scabbard and threw it into the nearby river. The lance lay useless behind him. The herald planted a foot on his chest, pushing him back down as he tried to rise.

  ‘Two things,’ he said. ‘First, just because heralds are unarmed doesn’t mean they can’t fight. Remember that. Second, everything you’ve just told me is a pack of lies. If you’d really taken Sir Gilbert and his friends prisoner, would you really drag them all the way back to Jedburgh? No, you would be outside the walls of Harbottle now, threatening to kill all four of them unless the castle surrendered. Harbottle is the key to Coquetdale, and once you have Coquetdale you can control most of Northumberland. Douglas is smart enough to realise that, even if you are not.’

  Bruce tried to push himself up from the ground again, and the herald stamped on his armoured chest, driving him down again. ‘You engineered their disappearance,’ he said, ‘and then tried to sell me this ridiculous story in hopes of throwing me off the scent. When you saw I wasn’t buying, you decided to attack me. Tell Brus if he wants to kill me, come and do it himself. Don’t send his cousin’s second-rate bastard in his place.’

  He stepped back. Roaring, Bruce clambered to his feet, but before he could gain his balance, Merrivale hit him on the point of the chin with a force that snapped his head back and sent him tumbling down the bank into the river where he lay, half in and half out of the water. The herald watched him for a moment to endure that he was in no imminent danger of drowning, and mounted his horse and rode away down the devastated valley.

  13

  Berwick-upon-Tweed, 26th of September, 1346

  Evening

  Berwick’s position as the sole English outpost on the north side of the Tweed meant that its garrisons and citizens lived in a constant state of watchfulness. The gates were closed at sunset, but a nun seeking to return to her convent outside the walls excited no suspicion; at the Saint Mary Gate, the guards opened the postern and let her through.

  The castle lay close on her left, and she could see the fluttering of torches on the ramparts and the restless movement of watchmen. She passed a small stream with a millpond and waterwheel and came to the ruins of Bondington, once a prosperous little suburb of the town; now the houses were roofless, and weeds grew in the gardens of the messuages. The clouds were breaking up a little, and stars shone from dark patches of sky. Every so often a half moon peeped through, lighting her way.

  The convent church of Saint Leonard’s was ruined too, its roof caved in and its tall windows bare of glass. As Mora had said, the cloister still stood and as she crept closer Tiphaine could hear the sound of voices in prayer. Not many; three or four at most.

  The moon came out again, and her robe glowed ghostly white. Cursing the nuns for choosing the Cistercian order over the more discreetly black-robed Benedictines, she walked into the ruined church. Weeds were growing out of the walls, and the altar was stained with bird and bat droppings. She looked around for a place to conceal herself. There were several chapels in the apse behind the presbytery, but those were the first places anyone would look; the same was true of the vestry.

  In the south transept she found the night stair, leading from the dorter down into the body of the church. In better times, the nuns would formerly have used this stair to come down and celebrate matins. Judging by the amount of rubble and bird shit, she thought, no one had used the stair since the church was ruined. The door at the top of the stair was securely barred, confirming her thought. The stone landing outside the door was in deep shadow. Crouching down and making herself as small as possible, Tiphaine waited, trying to ignore the pounding of her heart.

  * * *

  They came on foot, having tethered their horses some distance away, and without torches; the sentries on the castle walls would have seen any glint of light. ‘Where are the nuns?’ asked Selby.

  ‘Up in the dorter,’ said Clennell. ‘Did you not hear them singing as we came in?’

  ‘What if they hear us?’

  ‘They won’t be stupid enough to come and investigate. Not at night.’

  Gilbert d’Umfraville nodded. ‘But keep your voices down all the same.’

  ‘How long do we wait?’ asked Wake.

  ‘An hour,’ said Clennell. ‘If he hasn’t come by then, that settles it.’

  They stood in silence in front of the white-streaked altar. Only a few minutes passed before a shadow moved in the nave, and they turned. ‘Who is it?’ Umfraville demanded.

  ‘Who were you expecting?’ asked Rollond de Brus. He walked forward, still moving stiffly, and threw back the hood of his cloak, letting the moonlight play on his pale face and fair hair. ‘You’re all here,’ he said, his voice deceptively mild. ‘Good. Very good. For a time I wondered if you would come. Have you searched the place?’

  ‘No,’ Wake said sharply. ‘We assumed you had.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake.’ Brus walked around the apse end of the church, looking into the chantry chapels and then the vestry. He glanced up at the night stair, but saw nothing in the shadows. Walking back into the transept he stood facing the four men. ‘Well? Shall we begin?’

  ‘Why did you attack my lands?’ Umfraville demanded harshly. ‘You burned good farms and villages, for no reason. My tenants are homeless now, and winter is coming.’

  ‘I burned them, as you know full well, to concentrate your minds and help you focus on making the right decision. Why did you resist? Douglas and Bruce lost good men this morning.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, we had to do something,’ Clennell said sharply. ‘The herald was there, watching everything. He was already suspicious. Standing by and letting you do your worst would have been an admission of complicity.’

&n
bsp; ‘I don’t give a damn about the herald,’ Brus said. ‘The next time he comes among you, kill him and throw his body to the wolves. Make him disappear from the face of the earth. Is that clear?’

  ‘That seems a little excessive,’ said another voice.

  Brus wheeled around, pulling his sword out of the scabbard. The other four men drew as well. The man who had spoken, a man-at-arms in a mail tunic and helmet with a nose guard, walked forward, followed by Oswald of Halton carrying a heavy wooden staff. ‘What the devil?’ demanded Brus. He looked at Oswald. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘This is Murdo,’ said Oswald. ‘I’ll let him explain the rest.’

  ‘No more pretence,’ said the man-at-arms, pulling off her helmet. ‘I am the Lady Mora of Islay, shieldmaiden to the Countess of Dunbar. When her ladyship heard of this meeting, she vowed to be a part of it. Unable to make the journey herself, she sent me as her envoy.’

  There was a moment of stunned silence. ‘Is she telling the truth?’ demanded Rollond.

  ‘Yes,’ said the friar.

  ‘How did the countess learn about this meeting?’

  ‘I couldn’t exactly say.’ Mora’s voice was calm. ‘But her ladyship approves of your actions. Bringing the Disinherited back into the fold will be a great coup.’ Mora smiled at the four men. ‘It will be good to welcome you home.’

  Still furious, Rollond pointed his sword at the friar. ‘You worthless piece of shit. Did you tell her?’

  ‘Don’t blame him, my lord,’ said Mora. ‘I already knew the date of the meeting. All I needed was the place. I assumed Oswald would be working for you, because he works for anyone who needs dirty work done in the shadows. I persuaded him to tell me by threatening to enforce his vow of chastity, permanently.’