Kingdom 01 - The Lion Wakes (38 page)

‘Wallace doesn’t fight like a Frenchie,’ said a voice from the dark, and the others laughed.

‘Sir William,’ Bruce said, choosing his words as if he fished in a purse to find whole coins that were not pollards, ‘is lately come to the
nobiles.
It is to be hoped he learns the ways of a knight well enough – but not the French Method.’

‘Is it hard to be a knight?’ demanded the Dog Boy and there were a few chuckles as this, from those who only saw a boy asking endless questions. Bruce felt himself dragged in by those dark, liquid eyes, as if pulled towards some centre far away; he felt a sudden fear and thrill mixed, as if he was a fledgling on a high place, teetering on flight’s edge.

‘Have ye plans to be a knight?’ demanded Will Elliott and, though the question dripped with ripe sarcasm, everyone was surprised when the Dog Boy shook his head vehemently.

‘No. I leave that to Jamie. I will be a spearman. They are the lads who win fights.’

‘From the mouth of a babe,’ Sim declared portentously.

‘Jamie?’ Bruce asked and Hal told him. Bruce nodded owlishly.

‘Young James Douglas in France, with Bishop Lamberton. He is now the lord of Douglas, though he is not of an age yet and Clifford now holds his lands.’

‘Jamie will get them back,’ the Dog Boy declared firmly. ‘When he is a knight. Is it hard to be a knight, lord?’

‘Hard enough, though the training for it is not the hardest part,’ Bruce answered and found he was amazing himself with what he was saying. ‘The hardest part is attending to the vows of it.’

‘What vows, maister?’

The question arrived with the inevitability of a rock rolling downhill. Hal was on the point of interrupting, seeing the strange, half-stunned look on Bruce’s face, when the earl spoke.

‘What vows would you have a knight take?’ he asked and everyone was silent, watching the Dog Boy intently, sensing there was something happening but not aware of what it was.

‘Speak up,’ Bruce demanded, staring round.
‘Jamais chat emmitoufle ne prit souris.’

The mice were safe enough, since all these cats remained muffled. Save one.

‘To never lie,’ the Dog Boy answered, screwing up his young face and remembering all the ones that had gone before – the one his ma had told him when she led him through the gate of Douglas Castle. ‘Just for a wee while’, she had said. ‘I will be back.’

Men nodded and chuckled their approval, though they did not know the boy’s reasons for the choice.

‘To not pizen dugs,’ the Dog Boy said and the murmurs were angrier, for all of the men knew his reasons for that one.

‘To nivver violet a lady,’ the Dog Boy declared, half remembering something Jamie had told him and suddenly, confusingly, aware of Agnes when Malise had come for her – and the Countess Isabel. There was a moment, a flash, of Agnes’s foot bobbing, with the Countess’s slipper trembling on the edge of falling.

‘Nivver violet a lady,’ echoed Bangtail and laughed. ‘Is that the same as makin’ yin a scarlet wummin?’

‘Even proper said that’s not a vow ye could hold to, Bangtail,’ Will Elliott chimed and everyone laughed. Hal saw the Dog Boy scowl, not realising what he had said and thinking they were laughing at him. To his surprise, he saw Bruce had noted the same and reached out to lay a hand on the boy’s hunching shoulder.

‘To fear God and maintain His Church,’ the earl declared, speaking to the Dog Boy and almost as much to himself. ‘To serve the liege lord in valour and faith. To protect the weak and defenceless. To give succour to widows and orphans. To refrain from the wanton giving of offence. To live by honour and for glory. To despise pecuniary reward. To fight for the welfare of all. To obey those placed in authority. To guard the honour of fellow knights. To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit. To keep faith. At all times to speak the truth. To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun. To respect the honour of women. Never to refuse a challenge from an equal. Never to turn your back upon a foe.’

He stopped; the silence was a cloak.

‘This we vow,’ he ended, almost in a whisper, for the image of the Auld Templar swam in him and the face was his father’s and he felt unmanned by the brimming of tears.

‘Aye,’ said Sim, bustling into the moment like a bull elbowing through a herd. ‘Noted more in the breach than the observance these days, your lordship.’

‘Sma’ wonder only Wallace can lead us,’ added Lang Tam Loudon sharply, ‘if all the grand
gentilhommes
of the realm struggle to joogle that in the air daily.’

Hal said a sharp warning word and Lang Tam subsided, but Bruce had heard and Hal waited for the thrust of that truculent lip. Instead, he got a face, raised up from looking at the ground and as despairing as a thirsting flower in a desert.

‘Aye,’ Bruce agreed. ‘It is to the shame of this realm that those charged with its protection have to lie and foreswear their vows to maintain their station and hold to the defence of it. And even that is sacrificed on occasion.’

He paused and raked them with a sudden glare and the wine-slack seemed to have fallen from him.

‘Mark me,’ he said. ‘There will come a day when the knights of this kingdom find their vows. Then our enemies had best look to their lives.’

There was a pause, then a low burr of approval, a small growl of sound that left Hal as amazed as he was at Bruce’s vehemence. Here was a Carrick he had not seen before . . .

‘You should never lie,’ the Dog Boy persisted and brought loud laughs that made him glare.

‘Aye,’ Bangtail declared, ‘ye are young yet to appreciate the need for a good lie, wee yin.’

‘Tell us,’ Bruce invited and Bangtail frowned, wondering if he was being cozened. But Bruce’s face was open and smiling, his eyes bright with wine and the moment.

‘Ach, yer grace – have ye never had a wummin come to ye with the ribbons ye bought her bound in her hair? Or a wee bit fancy cloth shawl? And she asks – how do I look in this?’

Everyone was nodding; even Bruce, whose smile was broader than ever.

‘Well,’ Bangtail went on, ‘d’ye risk the quim and tell her she will be a fat milcher even with a sack on her curly pow, but she is the only wummin for miles willing to part one leg from the other? No. Ye tell her she looks fine, or ye temper your honour and remark on how nice the colour is and how is suits her – even if the plain truth is that it would gag a sow.’

The laughter was loud and long now.

‘Now we ken why ye are named Bangtail,’ Ill Made Jock shouted from the fringes of the fire.

‘A glance at yer face,’ Bangtail countered, swift and vicious, ‘and we are in no doubt why ye are called Ill Made.’

‘Bangtail counts cunny more than honour,’ Sim declared, ‘which everyone kens. This is his excuse for a lie – but it is still an excuse.’

‘Ach, Sim,’ Bangtail said, ‘the world is not as divided, like the border atween this Kingdom and the English, where ye can declare “here we are and there you are and we are different from you”. When it comes to the bit, though, ye cannae tell an English Dodd from a Scots yin, or a Kerr in Hexham from another in Roxburgh.’

‘Ye can always tell a Kerr,’ growled Sim, ‘since all that breed are left-handed.’

Bangtail leaned forward, his sharp, fox face guttering with shadows and light from the flames. Hal saw that Bruce was fascinated, listening intently.

‘Let me spier ye this, Sim Craw,’ Bangtail went on. ‘Is it good to misguide your enemy? To make him think, maybes, that ye are weaker than ye are, so that he makes a bad fist of attacking ye?’

Sim nodded, reluctantly.

‘So it is fine to lie to an enemy,’ Bangtail ended triumphantly and Bruce slapped one hand against the other with delight at Sim’s scowl.

‘By God’s Grace,’ he roared in English, ‘I am truly sorry I never sat with Herdmanston men before this, for the entertainment in it is finer than a tumbler and juggling act.’

‘Aye, weel, so ye say, your lordship,’ Bangtail responded, preening, and Hal could not resist leaping in.

‘Thanks to his lordship, we have learned a deal this night,’ he declared, nodding deferentially to Bruce, who acknowledged it with an elegant, slightly mocking, one of his own.

‘We have learned,’ he went on smoothly, ‘that Bangtail cannot judge which leg of a wummin is finer, the left or the right.’

Hal paused and let the puzzled frown of the man in question squeak on his forehead for a heartbeat.

‘The truth of it for him is somewhere atween, of course,’ he added and there was laughter at that.

‘Abune all, there is the truth about lies,’ Hal went on, warming to matters now and aware that Bruce was watching him closely. Never harms to stamp the mark of who leads Herdmanston, like a firm seal impress in warm wax, Hal thought.

‘As I jalouse the workings of it, from his lordship and Bangtail here,’ he continued, ‘it seems that if a pig-faced friend appears with some pretty ribbons, ye crack their heart with the truth. If a pig-faced enemy appears with some pretty ribbons, ye tell them how wonderfully fine they look – an’ strike from behind as they preen.’

Above all, Sim Craw thought as the laughter roared and circled like the wind round the fires, we have learned that young Bruce is also a man who can win the hearts of hard men of no station – the commonality of the kingdom who, until now, Sim believed to be the province of Wallace alone.

Here was a new thing, to find a man who was a powerful
gentilhomme
of the kingdom, yet who could share a cup, in companionable friendship, with a boy who did not even own a proper name.

Hexham Priory, Northumberland

Feast of St Donan the Martyr of Eigg, April 1298

Hal came up whooping and streaming water, dashed it from his eyes and dried his face on his serk, the sun warm on his back and a breeze with enough chill in it to remind him that this was the north in April.

He blinked back into the garth at Hexham, to the walls with their unpleasant stone the colour of dried blood, blackened here and there by fires set the year before – even Wallace had not been able to prevent the Galloway men’s looting and arson, though he had hanged a few afterwards.

Hal saw Kirkpatrick staring at him intensely, a needle glare that almost made him recoil. Even when he stared back, the man’s gaze did not shift and Hal grew irritated, both at the rudeness and the lick of fear the man’s eyes smeared on him.

‘If ye bring ribbons an’ some decent wine ye might have a chance,’ he snarled. ‘Though I would not put much store by your supposed charm.’

Kirkpatrick blinked and flushed to the roots of his hair at the implication.

‘Yon bauble,’ he muttered. ‘Round yer neck. Looked mighty fine, that is all. Where did ye come by it?’

Hal glanced down at the ring on the cord round his neck, a little surprised. Still flustered, he scowled back at Kirkpatrick.

‘No doing of yours where this came from,’ he harshed out and Kirkpatrick’s face darkened even further, the eyes narrowing. Hal cursed; his weapons lay three steps away . . . but a loud burst of shouting snapped the moment away and they both turned.

Fitzwarin, his face thick with flush, came storming out of the priory guesthouse, waving his arms and bellowing incoherently. Behind him came a flustered man-at-arms, making little bleats of protest, and, after that, Bruce himself, frowning darkly.

‘Gone,’ Fitzwarin roared, then strode on before the man-at-arms could reply. Then he stopped, whirling on the man as he trotted up, forcing him to skid to a halt.

‘Gone,’ he repeated and waved his arms wildly. ‘To bloody Berwick. Are you entirely in your mind?’

‘He is on parole, my lord,’ the man-at-arms bleated. ‘I sent two men with him – but if he wants to go to Berwick, there is little I can do save protect his person.’

Fitzwarin gave a final pungent curse and strode away, leaving the man-at-arms floundering in his wake, turning with a pathetic, appealing look to Bruce. The Earl of Carrick merely looked at him, shrugged and walked across to where Kirkpatrick and Hal stood, the latter climbing into his sweat-yellowed serk, aware of a sudden chill breeze.

‘Sir Henry has taken himself to Berwick,’ Bruce explained, his languid delivery belied by the grit of his teeth. ‘Fitzwarin is less than pleased to be kept drumming his fingers here.’

‘Berwick?’ Hal demanded, bewildered. ‘Why for?’

‘A message, lord,’ said the man-at-arms coming up to join them, his face anguished. ‘I tried to tell the Lord Fitzwarin, but he would not listen.’

The man-at-arms was a captain from the braid in his belt and, in the next bobbing and deferential second Hal learned that he was Walter Elton, charged by Norfolk to bring Sir Henry Sientcler of Roslin to Hexham for the exchange.

‘Then he had a message,’ Elton went on. ‘From a pardoner.’

‘Message?’ Hal demanded.

‘Pardoner?’ said Bruce at the same time and the captain’s frantic eyes whipped between the two, then worked out that Bruce was an Earl and Hal of little account.

‘By name Lamprecht,’ he answered. ‘Has a strange way of speaking, as if all tongues were used at once. French and Latin, I heard in it. Some of the Italies, too, by the sound and even words I do not know, though they might be from the Holy Land, which he has visited.’

‘Lingua franca,’
Kirkpatrick mused, ‘which at least proves he has journeyed the lands round the Middle Sea, if nothing else.’

As have you, Hal suddenly saw and added a new dimension to the figure of the Bruce henchman.

‘Oh, he is from the Holy Land,’ enthused Elton. ‘Has the shell to prove it and lots of relics and wondrous objects -here, look, noble sirs.’

He fumbled out a cord from round his neck to reveal a stamped lead medallion, a quatrefoil on one side and a fish on the other.

‘Proof against evil spirits and wandering demons.’

No-one wanted to gainsay it, for demons existed, as everyone knew. Only last year one had been caught in the Tweed, a nasty black, snarling imp tangled in the salmon nets and beaten with sticks by the brave fishermen until it finally burst free and fled, shrieking laughter all the way back to the water. A bishop had written of it, so it must be true.