The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (10 page)

‘Foolish,' Bruce ranted, pacing and waving. ‘They are outlaws, cut-throats and raiders, not trained fighting men -they won't stand in the field and certainly not led by the likes of Wallace. Your desperation for a clear and indivisible king blinds you.'

He leaned forward and his voice grew softer, more menacing while the shadows did things to his eyes that Hal did not like.

‘Only the
nobiles
can lead men to fight Edward,' he declared. ‘Not small folk like Wallace. In the end, the
gentilhommes
– your precious “community of the realm” – is what will keep your Church free of interference from Edward, which is really what you finaigle for. Answerable only to the Pope, is that not it, Bishop?'

‘Sir Andrew Moray is noble,' Wishart pointed out, bland as a nun's smile, and that made Bruce pause. Aha, Hal thought, the bold Bruce does not like the idea of Moray. Moray and Wallace as Guardians of the Realm would go a long way to appeasing nobles appalled at the idea of a Wallace alone.

Bruce would not then be at the centre of things – he had not been party to any of it so far, nor would he have been if he had not turned up on his own, dangling The Hardy's family as security of his intentions and looking for the approbation of the other finely born in Wishart's enterprise. Hal, dragged along in the Auld Templar's wake, had wondered, every step of the way, what had prompted Bruce to suddenly become so hot for rebellion and Sim had remarked that Bruce's da would not care for it much.

Bruce the son had not got much out of it. The Hardy had been grudgingly polite, the Stewart brothers and Sir Alexander Lindsay had been cool at best while Wallace himself, amiable, giant and seemingly bland, had looked the Earl of Carrick up and down shrewdly and wondered aloud why ‘Bruce the Englishman' had decided to jump the fence. Now they were all glowering on the other side of the door, still wondering the same.

It was exactly what Wishart now asked.

‘If you have set your face against this enterprise and my choice of captain,' Wishart grunted, slopping wine on his knuckles, ‘why are you here when your da is in Carlisle, no doubt setting out his explanations to Percy and Clifford of why his son has gone over to Edward's enemies? I would have thought, my lord, that you would be bending your efforts against Buchan – and a body found in the woods.'

Hal leaned forward, for this was something he wanted to know as keenly – Bruce was young, his father's son in every way until now, and his family had been expelled from their Scottish lands by the dozen previous Guardians, only just returned to them by Edward's power. Why here? Why now?

Hal was sure the uncovered corpse had something to do with it, surer still that Wishart and Bruce shared the secret of it. He was also more certain than ever that he should not be here, mired in the midden of it all – how in the name of God and all His Saints had he become a rebel, sudden and easy as putting on a cloak?

He became aware of eyes, turned into the black, considered gaze of Kirkpatrick and held it for a long while before breaking away.

Bruce frowned, the lip pouted and the chin thrust out, so that the shadows turned his broad-chinned face to a brief, flickering devil's mask – then he moved and the illusion shattered; he smiled.

‘I am a Scot, when all said and done. And a
gentilhomme
of your community of the realm, bishop,' he answered smoothly, then plucked the prelate's glass from his fat, beringed fingers and drained it, a lopsided grin on his face.

‘Besides – you have your fighting bear,' he answered. ‘You need, perhaps, someone to point him in the right direction. To point you all in the right direction.'

Wishart closed one speculative eye, reached out and took the glass back from Bruce with an irritated gesture.

‘And where would that be, young Carrick?'

‘Scone,' Bruce declared. ‘Kick England's Justiciar, Ormsby, up the arse, the same way we did Heselrig.'

Hal heard the ‘we' and saw that Wishart had as well, but the bishop did not even try to correct Bruce. Instead he smiled and Hal was sure some subtle message passed between the pair.

‘Aye,' Wishart said speculatively. ‘Not a bad choice. To make sure of … matters. I will put it to the Wallace.'

He lifted the empty glass in a toast to Bruce, who acknowledged it with a nod, then smiled a shark-show of teeth at Hal.

Scone Priory

Feast of Saints Castus and Aemilius, martyrs – May, 1297

Dusk was hurrying on and dark clipping its heels, so that the heads and shoulders were stained black against the flames. Hal could hear the guttural snarls and spits of them, as fired as the sparks that flew; it had been a long time since he had heard such a large crowd of men all speaking Lowland and it brought back ugly memories of last year, when he and others had padded, cat-cautious and sick to their stomachs, in the fester that was Berwick after the English had gone.

The cooked-meat smells didn't help, for Hal knew the sweet, rich smell had nothing to do with food.

They came up through the huddle of wattle and daub that clustered round the priory like shellfish on a rock, crashing through the backland courts and the head riggs, splintering crude privy shelters, tossing torches, their own yelling drowned by the screams of the fleeing.

No looting or rape until the fighting is done, Wallace had said before they had set off, and Bruce, frowning at the impudence of the man, had been forced to agree, since the host was clearly his alone to command. At least there was no Buchan salting the wound of it – he was gone into his own lands, ostensibly to prevent Moray from joining with Wallace and managing to look the other way at the crucial moment.

Hal strode alongside outlaw roughs from all over Ayrshire, kerns and caterans from north of The Mounth, all here for love of this giant called Wallace and what he could do. Hal saw him stride up the rutted track between the mean houses, blood-dyed with flames, surrounded by whirling sparks.

He had a long tunic and a belted surcoat over that, no helmet and bare legs and feet; he was hardly different from the wild men he led save that he was head and shoulders above the tallest and carried a hand-and-a-half, a sword most men would have clutched in two fists but which he carried in one.

Hal and Sim and the Herdmanston men were on foot for there was little point in trying to plooter through flames and back courts on horses, but Bruce and his Carrick men were mounted, trying to force through the mob up the main track to Scone priory. Hal heard him yelling ‘A Bruce, a Bruce,' to try to keep his men from spilling off the road into the foundering tangle on either side.

‘Christ save us,' Sim Craw panted, shouldering some dark shape away from him with a curse. ‘What a mob. An army, bigod? A sorry rabble – the English will scatter this like chooks in a yard, first chance they get.'

It was true, but the English had no army here, only fleeing clerks, monks who wished they had never taken Edward's offer of Scottish prebenderies and a few soldiers. There were screams ahead and Hal saw Wallace's head come up, like a hound licking scent from the air. A snarling maurauder, wool cloak rolled up round his neck like a ruff, leaped a rickety fence, the woman he was chasing stumbling over her skirts and shrieking, he laughing with the mad joy of it.

Wallace never seemed to pause, but shot out his free hand and caught the man by the thick wool plaid, hauling him clean off his feet to dangle like a scruff-held cat, his toes scraping the road as Wallace walked steadily along.

‘I warned ye,' Wallace growled into the man's face and, in the light of the flames, Hal could see the utter terror burned into the man's eyes. Then Wallace hurled him away like an apple core, striding on as if nothing had barred his way.

‘He's feeling a wee bit black-bilious,' Sim Craw offered, but Hal never had a chance to reply, for the first serious resistance burst on them.

They roared out from the great dark bulk of the stone priory, a handful of desperately charging soldiers, the sometime-men hired to help collect taxes or bring in accused. They had padded jacks, heater shields, spears and all the skills of one-armed cripples. They were local men, who did not want to fight at all and were not English – save the one who led them, waving a sword and shouting; Hal couldn't hear what he said.

Surprise worked for them, all the same; they hit the leading straggle of Wallace men, who scattered away from them, too late. One, turning to run, was skewered and fell, screaming. The sword-armed leader hacked at another, who leaped away, cursing.

Wallace ploughed into them as if he was iron, the great sword whirring left and right, hardly pausing. He parried a spear thrust; his men rallied, sprang forward with hoarse shouts and daggers and spears of their own.

The soldiers scattered in their turn and a knot came stumbling towards Hal, who had blundered darkly into the midden of a back court, dragging his handful of men with him. Cursing, he saw Bangtail Hob and Ill Made Jock leaping as if in a dance with three men, while Sim Craw, spitting challenges and taunts, hurled himself at two more. Somewhere, he could here Maggie's Davey screaming.

Hal found a single dark shape in his way, saw the thrust of spear and batted it away with a yell, cut back, ducked, whirled and felt his second blow catch as if on cloth. There was a whimpering yelp and Hal saw the dark shape stagger away from him, run a few steps, then fall.

He followed, feeling the clotted black rot of the midden squelch under his boots. The shape mewed and clawed away from him, the fish heads and offal squeezing up between his fingers as he crawled.

Hal hit him on the back of the head, feeling the eggshell crunch of it, hearing the sharp cry. The shape went slack and still; Hal rolled him over, to make sure he was dead.

An unexceptional face, beardless and streaked with midden filth, a wish-mark clear on one cheek. A boy, no more.

Alive, but barely.

‘Mither,' he said and Hal swallowed the bile rising in him, for he knew what his sword had done to the back of the boy's head and that he would never see his mother.

‘Stop gawpin' at him like a raw speugh,' Sim growled in his ear. ‘Finish it …'

He broke off when he saw how old the boy was and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, looked at Hal's face and knew his head was full of wee Johnnie.

Sim knelt and whipped out his boot knife, slit the throat, swift and expert, closing the boy's eyes as he did so. Then he straightened, stepping in to break the shackle of Hal's stare on the boy's face.

‘Done and done – lose the memory o' it,' he gruffed, and Hal, blinking, nodded back into the screams and the flames. Bangtail Hob and Jock came up, supporting a third man between them.

‘Aye, we are braw rebels us, for we have gave this place freedom, certes,' Bangtail offered cheerfully and the sagging man in the middle cursed. Hal saw it was Maggie's Davey, then caught the reek of him and backed off a step.

‘Aye,' declared Ill Made Jock bitterly, ‘well may ye shy away – you do not have to lug him around.'

‘I fell ower a privy,' Davey moaned. ‘I have broke my neb, sure.'

‘I wish to Christ I had broke mine,' Sim offered viciously, ‘so that I could not smell your stink. That must have been the De'il's own jakes ye fell in.'

‘Bide here,' Hal said to the three men, then jerked his head savagely at Sim Craw to follow him. He wanted away from the smell and the memory of the dead boy's wish-marked face.

Sim looked at the dead boy. Nothing like wee John, he thought bleakly, but every young lad stared back at Hal with his dead son's face, Sim knew. There will be more and more of wee dead boys when this rebellion takes hold, he added to himself, ducking under the eyes of the boy which, though closed, seemed to stare at him accusingly.

They came up through the screams and the flame-stains, crouching against lurid shadows that might have been friend or enemy – but, in the end, Hal and Sim realised there were no enemies left, only the madmen of Wallace's army, fired by blood and running prey.

Hal stepped over a corpse, visible only in the dark because of the grey hair – a dark-robed Augustinian monk, his scapular sodden with his own blood. Sim grimaced and looked round at the fire and shadows and shrieking. Like Hell he thought, as painted on the wall of any church he had ever been in.

‘Priests yet,' Hal said and left the rest unsaid. Boys and priests, a fine start to resistance and made no better by the sight of Bruce, sitting on his arch-necked, prancing warhorse in the kitchen gardens, scattering herbs and beets while waving a sword, his jupon glowing in the light so that the chevron on it looked as if the dark had slashed it. Christ's Bones, he thought savagely – I will quit this madness, first chance I have …

‘Look,' Sim said suddenly. ‘It's yon Kirkpatrick.'

Hal saw the man, sliding off the back of a good horse and throwing the reins to Bruce, an act which was singular in itself – an earl holding the mount of his servant? Hal and Sim looked at each other, then Sim followed after, into the splintering of wood and breaking glass that was now the priory. With only the slightest of uneasy pauses, Hal padded after him.

They turned warily, swords out and gleaming; a shape lurched past, arms full of brasswork, saw them and turned away so hastily that a bowl dropped and clanged on the flagstones. Somewhere, there was singing and Hal realised they had lost Kirkpatrick in the shadows.

They moved towards the sound, found the door, opened it as cautious as mice from holes and felt the shadowed shift of bodies as the monks inside saw their two meagre candles waver in the sudden breeze from the open door. Someone whimpered.

‘A happy death is one of the greatest and the last blessings of God in this life,' said a sonorous voice and Hal saw the black-robed Prior step into the light of one candle, his arms raised as if in surrender, his face turned to the rafter shadows.

‘We dedicate this Vigil to St Joseph, the Foster Father of our Judge and Saviour. His power is dreaded by the Devil. His death is the most singularly privileged and happiest death ever recorded as he died in the Presence and care of Jesus and the Blessed Mary. St Joseph will obtain for us that same privilege at our passage from this life to eternity.'

‘There is cheery,' Sim muttered and someone came up close behind Hal and stuck his face over one shoulder, so that Hal saw the sweat-grease painted on it and smelled the man's onion breath. A cattle-lifting hoor's byblow, Hal thought viciously.

‘Here is the English and riches, then,' the man spat out of the thicket of his beard and turned to call out to others.

Sim's sword hilt smashed the words to silence, broke nose bones and sent the man to the flagstones as if he was a slaughtered ox.

‘May St Bega of Kilbucho have mercy on me,' Sim declared, waving a cross-sign piously over the stunned man as he snored through the blood. Hal closed the door on the refuge of slow-chanting monks and looked at the felled cateran; he was sure his friends would come sooner rather than later and they had given the clerics a respite only.

‘Kirkpatrick,' he said, shoving the fate of the monks to one side. Sim nodded. They went on.

‘Who is St Bega and where the bliddy hell is Kilbucho?' demanded Hal as they crept along into the great, dark hall of the place, where only the shift of air allowed the impression of a lofty ceiling. Sim grinned.

‘Up near Biggar,' Sim said mildly, peering left and right as they moved. ‘Very big on St Bee there, they are. I thought we could do with her charms here, for her only miracle.'

‘Oh aye? Good, was it?'

‘If ye had seen it,' Sim said in a hissed whisper that did not move his lips, ‘ye'd have begged a blessin'. Seems there was a noble who handed a monastery a wheen o'lands, but a lawsuit later developed about their extent.'

He moved in crouching half-circles, stepping carefully and speaking in a hoarse whisper, half to himself.

‘The monks feared that they'd be ransacked. The day appointed for boundary-walk arrived – and there was a thick snowfall on all the surrounding lands but not a flake on the lands of the priory, so you could see where the boundary really was. The monks were smiling like biled haddies.'

‘We could use some of her frost in here,' Hal answered, wiping his streaming face.

‘Christ be praised,' Sim declared, chuckling.

‘For ever and ever,' Hal responded piously, then held up a warning hand as they rounded a dark corner and came into an open area with an altar at one end and a series of fearsomely expensive painted glass windows staining the flagstones with coloured light from the fires that burned beyond. To the left was a door, slightly open, where light flickered and flared, falling luridly on the faded, peeling painting that graced one wall.

Daniel in the Lion's Den, Hal noted. Apt enough …

Sim thumped him on the shoulder and nodded to where, clear and blood-dyed by flames, Kirkpatrick shoved papers methodically into a fire he had started in the middle of the room. His shadow bobbed and stretched like a mad goblin.

Hal started to move when one of the glass windows above the altar shattered in an explosion of shards and lead which clattered and spattered over the altar and flagstones. There was a burst of laughter from beyond, then a series of angry shouts.

Hal glanced back into the room and cursed – Kirkpatrick was gone. He and Sim went in, their boots crunching on broken pottery and more glass; Sim circled while Hal stamped at the flames of the fire, which threatened to spread along the thin rushes over the flagstones. In the end Sim suddenly poured the contents of a pot on it and the fire went out, sizzling and reeking of more than char.

‘What was in yon?' Hal demanded and Sim glanced at the pot and made a face.

‘Ormsby pish, or I am no judge,' he answered, and Hal, looking round, realised this was the Justiciar's bedroom, with table, chair and straw-packed box bed; a wall hanging stirred in the night breeze through an open-shuttered window. Sim looked at the hanging, saw that it was a banner with a red shield of little crosses split diagonally by a gold bar.

Hal, making grunting noises of disgust, fished in the damp char for documents, squinting at them in the half-light and stuffing one or two inside his jack. There was a dovecote of similar rolls against one wall, the contents half-scattered on the straw, but Sim dragged down the fancy hanging, taken by the gilding work in it.