Kingdom 01 - The Lion Wakes (29 page)

Hal stared, wanting to speak, dumbed and numbed. He watched the armoured figure stump away into the throng, felt a presence on his shoulder and turned into Sim’s big squint.

‘Is Sir John fechtin’ then?’ he demanded and Hal could only nod. Sim shook his head.

‘Silly auld fool,’ he declared, then added hastily. ‘No slight intended.’

‘None ta’en,’ Hal answered, finding his voice. Then, more firmly, he added, ‘He will be fine, for we will be guarding his back. Seek young John Fenton, the steward of Roslin – that’s where father is, and so we will be.’

‘Good enough,’ Sim declared, glad to have some sort of plan for the day. Then he jerked a grimy thumb at lurking figures behind him; Hal realised, slowly, that they were Tod’s Wattie, Bangtail Hob and the rest, their faces shifty and eyes lowered. His heart sank.

‘Ye let the Savoyard get away,’ he said softly.

‘Aye and no,’ Tod’s Wattie began and Bangtail shushed him, stepping forward.

‘The Abbot came this morn,’ he said, ‘to tell us that a man arrived in the night and put the fear of God and the De’il both into the Savoyard. This stranger never got near our man, the Abbot says, but the Savoyard took fright and went out the infirmary drain.’

‘The what?’

Tod’s Wattie nodded, his eyes bright with the terror of it.

‘Aye. Show’s how desperate the chiel was. The spital drain, man . . .’

He left the rest unsaid and everyone regarded the horror for a silent moment. The infirmary drain was where every plague, every foulness from the sick lurked. For a man to risk himself to that, plootering like a humfy-backit rat through a slurry of ague, plague and worse . . .

‘Who arrived in the night?’ Hal demanded, suddenly remembering Bangtail’s words. Bangtail twisted his hands and cursed.

‘I saw him,’ he declared in a pained voice. ‘But ye said to keep folk from leaving, not to stop them getting in. If I had known who it was . . .’

‘Malise,’ Tod’s Wattie said, his voice like two turning querns. ‘Malise Bellejambe, who pizened the dugs. He is in there now, claimin’ the same sanctuary from us that the Savoyard did, for he kens what will happen whin I get my fists on him.’

‘I have sent men to find which way the Savoyard went,’ Sim added and Hal nodded slowly. Malise was on the trail of the Savoyard, which meant Buchan and the Comyn were involved.

Nothing more to be done with it on this, of all days. On the other side of it, God willing, he could start thinking matters through again.

Cressingham was a ranting, red-faced roarer, which did no good to his dignity with the troops he was supposed to be leading, Addaf thought. Mind you, the man is after having some reason.

The reason trailed behind him, coming back over the brig they had just crossed, led by the fat man bouncing badly on the back of his prancer of a horse so that the swans on his belly jumped.

‘I am thinking folk do not know their own minds, mark you,’ Heydin Captain declared, able to be loud and sour in Welsh, as they crowded back across the brig and sorted themselves out. Addaf saw the long-faced lord, Thweng, turn his mournful hound gaze back to where the Fore Battle straggled.

Cressingham scrambled off his horse and, already stiff and sore, stumped furiously up to the knot of men surrounding the magnificently accoutred Earl of Surrey, who stood deep in conversation with two men. One was the Scots lord, Lundie, the other was Brother Jacobus, his face quivering with outrage and white against his black robes.

‘He dismissed us, my lord. As if we were children. Said he had not come here to submit and would prove as much in our beards.’

Men growled and Lundie waved a dismissive hand.

‘Aye, Wallace has a way of speaking, has he not?’ he said, mockingly. ‘But Moray’s is the voice to listen to, my lords, and he will have some plan to take advantage of having to cross this narrow brig, my lord. You have seen how it is -two riders side by side can scarce find room to move. There is a ford further up. Give me some men and I will flank him – it will take me the best part of this day and you can cross in perfect safety tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow,’ bellowed Cressingham, forcing everyone to turn and look at him. The Earl of Surrey saw the red pig-faced scowl of him and sighed.

‘Treasurer,’ he said mildly. ‘You have something to add?’

‘Add? Add?’ Cressingham spluttered and his mouth worked, loose and wet for a moment. Then he sucked in breath.

‘Aye, I have something to add,’ he growled and pointed a shaking, gauntleted hand at De Warenne. ‘Why in the name of God and all his Saints am I marching back and forth across this bloody bridge? Answer me that, eh?’

The Earl of Surrey felt men stir at the insulting way Cressingham was speaking, but quelled his own anger; besides, he felt tired and his belly griped.
Deus juva me,
he thought as the pain lanced him, even the crowfoot powder no longer works.

‘Because, Treasurer,’ he answered slowly, ‘I did not order any movement.’

Cressingham blinked and his face turned an unhealthy colour of purple. He will explode like a quince in a metal fist, De Warenne thought.

‘I ordered it,’ the Treasurer exclaimed, his voice so high it was nearly a squeak. ‘I ordered it.’

‘Do you command here?’ De Warenne responded mildly.

‘I do when you are still asleep and half the day of battle wasted,’ roared Cressingham and folk started make little protesting noises now.

‘Have a care,’ someone muttered.

‘Indeed,’ De Warenne agreed sternly. ‘I will have my due from you, Treasurer. Remember your place.’

Cressingham thrust his great broad face into the Earl of Surrey’s indignantly quivering beard. Sweat sheened the Treasurer’s cheeks and trembled in drips along jowls the colour of plums.

‘My place,’ he snarled, ‘is to make sure you do the king’s bidding. My place is to get this army, gathered at great expense, to do the job it is supposed to and destroy this rabble of Scots rebels. My place is to explain to the king why the Earl of Surrey seems determined not to do this without spending the entire Exchequer. If you wish to stand in my place before the king himself, my lord earl, please feel free.’

He stopped, breathing like a mating bull; the coterie waited, watching the Earl of Surrey, who closed his eyes briefly against the hot wind of Cressingham’s breathing.

He wanted to slap this fat upstart down with a cutting phrase, but he knew the Treasurer was correct; the king wanted this business done as quickly and cheaply as possible and the last thing De Warenne wanted was to have to face the towering menace of Edward Plantagenet with a monstrous bill in one hand and failure in the other. He gathered the shreds of himself and turned to the Scot.

‘As you see, Sir Richard,’ he declared, mild as milk, ‘the ink-fingered clerks will not permit delay. I am afraid your war-winning strategy will have to be foregone in favour of Cressingham’s crushing delivery.’

Then he turned to Cressingham, his poached-egg eyes wide, white brows raising, as if surprised that the scowling Treasurer was still present. He waved a languid hand.

‘You may proceed across the river.’

***

Hal stood to the left of the little pike square, the front ranks heavy with padded, studded gambesons and iron-rimmed hats, the back ones filled with bare heads and bare feet, trembling, grim men in brown and grey.

A hundred paces in front of him was a long, thin scattering of bowmen, right along the front to right and left and for all Hal knew there were some four hundred of them, it looked like a long thread of nothing at all.

There were shouts; a horseman thundered past and sprayed up clods so that everyone cursed him. He waved gaily and shouted back, but it was whipped away by the wind and he disappeared, waving his sword.

‘Bull-horned, belli-hoolin’ arse,’ Sim growled, but the rider was simply the herald for Wallace and Moray. Hal saw the cavalcade, the blue, white-crossed banners and then the great red and gold lion rampant, with Moray’s white stars on blue flapping beside it. Wallace, Hal saw, wore a knight’s harness and a jupon, red with a white lion on it. He also rode a warhorse that Hal knew well and he gaped; Sim let out a burst of laughter.

‘Holy Christ in Heaven, the Coontess has lent Wallace your big stot.’

It was Balius, sheened and arch-necked, curveting and cantering along the line of roaring squares as Wallace yelled at them. When he came level, Hal heard what he said clearly, a shifting note as the powerful figure, sword raised aloft, rode along the line, followed by a grinning Moray and the scattered band of banner-carriers.

Tailed dogs.

As a rousing speech, Hal thought, it probably fell far short of what the chroniclers wanted and they would lie about it later. Six thousand waited to be lifted and not more than a hundred would hear some rousing speech on liberty, with no time to repeat it,
ad infinitum.

‘Tailed dogs’ repeated all the way along the long line did it this time: the ragged, ill-armoured horde, half of them shivering with fear and fevers, most of them bare-legged and bare-arsed because disease poured their insides down their thighs, flung their arms in the air and roared back at him.

‘Tailed dogs,’ they bellowed back with delight, the accepted way to insult an Englishman and popularly believed as God’s just punishment on that race for their part in the murder of Saint Thomas a-Becket; the Scots taunt never failed to arouse the English to red-necked rage.

Hal leaned out to look down the bristle of cheering pikes to where his father stood, leaning hip-shot on a Jeddart staff which had the engrailed blue cross fluttering from a pennon. He had his old battered shield slung half on his back, the cock rampant of the Sientclers faded and scarred on it – that device was older even than the shivering cross.

Beside him stood Tod’s Wattie, offered up as standard-bearer in a cunning ploy by Hal to get him close enough, so that he now struggled with both hands to control the great wind-whipped square of blue slashed with the white cross of St Andrew. He had that task and the surreptitious protection of the Auld Sire to handle and he did not know which one was the more troublesome.

The great cross reminded Hal of the one he wore and he looked at the two white strips, hastily tacked over his heart in the X of St Andrew. A woman with red cheeks and worn fingers had done it when he had taken Will Elliot to Isabel in the baggage camp, finding her with the woman and the Dog Boy, moving among those already sick.

‘This is Red Jeannie,’ Isabel declared and the bare-legged woman had bobbed briefly and then frowned.

‘Ye have no favour,’ she said and proceeded to tack the strips on Hal’s gambeson while he told Isabel that Will Elliot was here to guard her and the Dog Boy should the day go against them.

‘He will keep ye safe,’ he added. ‘Mind also you have that Templar flag, so wave that if it comes to the bit.’

She nodded, unable to speak, aware of the woman, tongue between her teeth, stitching with quick, expert movements while Hal looked over her head into Isabel’s eyes. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was, that it was all her fault that he was here, trapped in a battle he did not want, but the words would not come.

‘I . . .’ he said and a horn blared.

‘You had best away,’ Isabel said awkwardly and Red Jeannie finished, stuck the needle in the collar of her dress and beamed her windchaped face up into Hal’s own.

‘There, done and done,’ she said. ‘If ye see a big red-haired Selkirk man with a bow, his name is Erchie of Logy and ye mun give him this.’

She took Hal’s beard and pulled him down to her lips so hard their teeth clicked. He tasted onion and then she released him as fiercely as she had grabbed him.

‘God keep him safe,’ she added and started to cry. ‘Christ be praised.’

‘For ever and ever,’ Hal answered numbly, then felt Isabel close to him, smelled the sweat-musk of her, a scent that ripped lust and longing through him, so that he reeled with it.

‘Go with God, Hal of Herdmanston,’ she said and kissed him, full and soft on the lips. Then she stepped back and put her arm round the weeping Jeannie, leading her into the carts and sumpter wagons and the wail of women.

The kiss was with him now, so that he touched his gauntlet to his mouth.

‘Here they come again,’ Sim declared and Hal looked down the long, slope, sliced by the causeway that led to the brig. On it, small figures moved slowly, jostling forward, spilling out like water from a pipe and filtering up.

‘Same as afore,’ Sim said. ‘It seems they are awfy fond with walking back and forth across the brig.’

‘Good of them to show us the way of matters afore they did it for true,’ said a voice and they turned into the round red face of John Fenton, steward to the Auld Templar. He was nicknamed The Son Of Roslin by Hal and Sim and the others who had all gone rabbiting or hare coursing together, long days ago.

A good joke for young boys, since John’s cheeks were always fiery as the sun at summer noon; now they flared in the constriction of the bascinet helm, his dark-brown beard sticking over the lip of his maille coif like horsehair from a burst saddle.

The sight of it brought back smiling memories for Hal, of himself and John Fenton, young Henry Sientcler and his wee brother William, who had gone to the Church in England. The Sientclers, all Henrys, Johns and Williams, had rattled around the lands of Roslin and Herdmanston in company with the older Sim Craw and other lesser lights, sons of herdsman, ploughman and miller, causing mischief and being young. Hal grinned at the memory.

‘How’s your sister?’ Sim asked and John nodded his thanks for the inquiry.

‘Bearing up,’ he said. ‘The children keep her busy – Margaret is a handful.’

Fenton’s sister, Alice, was married to the imprisoned Henry Sientcler. She would be sitting close to tears in Roslin, Hal knew, trying to find soothing explanations for a toddling girl and two boys – John and William. Christ’s Wounds, Hal thought – John, William and Henry, do we have nae better names to pick for Sientclers? What was the collective for Sientclers, he wondered? A gaggle? A clutch? A brooding?

John Fenton looked up at the sky, squinting, then smiled.