The Lion at bay

CHAPTER TEN

Herdmanston, Lothian

Feast of Saint Cuthbert of Dunbar, March, 1306

Even God rested on the seventh day, Hal thought, but Malenfaunt thinks himself greater than that — besides, he has the grim face of the Devil himself at his back, shaped for this occasion like the Earl of Buchan.

He and the young Patrick, heir to the earldom of March — here to legitimize the affair — had arrived at Herdmanston’s tower in a smoke of righteous power, ostensibly to assert the rights of Malenfaunt to Herdmanston and capture one of the foul slayers of the Lord of Badenoch — though the truth, as everyone on the besieging side was careful to step round, was more to do with Buchan’s wife and her lover.

There was a rustle and scrape as Sim scuttled to his elbow and both cautiously peered out between the roof merlons, the rain steady as sifting flour.

‘Is that the young Patrick there?’ Sim demanded and Hal raised himself a little to look. There was a dull thump of sound, a faint tremble up through the soles of their feet and both men instinctively ducked.

‘Mind yer head,’ muttered Sim, his badger-beard face dripping with sweat, rain and scowl. Hal slithered his back to the merlon, face to the wet-black sky; he did not think the springald bolts would be a danger to his head at this height, for they were aimed where they had been pointed since the arrival of the besiegers — at the Keep entrance.

The stout oak door, studded and banded with iron, had cost the enemy four dead and twice as many wounded to drench with oil and fire down to cinders and twisted hinge metal. Now the springald was trying to shoot through the archway to the metal grill of the yett, but had succeeded only in scabbing stone from round the entrance and putting everyone’s nerves on edge.

Sim promised himself that he would shoot one of the springald bolts up the arse of the wee hired mannie who had brought the bits and pieces of it to Herdmanston for the Earl of Buchan’s revenge.

He would like to have put a bolt from his own crossbow in him, but the range was too great — peering out cautiously he could see the timber-box shape of the springald, three clever wee Flemings painstakingly rewinding the contraption, checking the chucked tilt of it to raise it by another quim hair. Near it, proud on a prancing destrier draped with dripping heraldry, Patrick of Dunbar waved his arms and made suggestions which the Flemish ingeniators ignored.

Sim slithered round to sit, shoulder to shoulder with Hal in the wet misery of the roof.

‘The Earl o’ March’s boy himself, the wee speugh o’ Dunbar, sent to puff out his chest feathers on our fortalice,’ he voiced bitterly and left the rest hanging, thick as aloes in the wet air. Patrick of Dunbar was here because his da, the Earl of March, was too old for the business — and his mother Marjorie was a Comyn, sister to Buchan himself.

‘So — the Earl of March’s boy and Himself the Earl o’ Buchan. If a man is made great because of his enemies, then ye are the finest knight in Christendom, lord Hal. I hear Longshanks is comin’ here, too,’ Sim growled.

‘I hear he is in Berwick,’ Hal countered wryly. ‘And at Lochmaben, Stirling and Perth. And that he has grown horns to match his English tail.’

‘Still,’ growled Sim, ‘a brace of the Kingdom’s high nobiles is more than enow and a pair too many. D’ye think they have come for the Coontess — or the other?’

The very question that haunted Hal and the reason he had not fled and would stubbornly defend to the last. Below in the hall was Isabel and alongside her was a covered slab of sandstone — the ‘other’ Sim spoke of.

It seemed an age since Bruce had called him into the arched shadows of St Mungo’s, where the stretched shapes of Wishart and Bernard of Kilwinning argued with Lamberton, recently fled from Berwick and full of reports of stunned English unable, it seemed, to agree on what to do.

Bruce, full of fresh resolve and newly absolved of any Red Comyn murder by the old mastiff Bishop Wishart himself, was wry and sanguine about the supposed inability of the English.

‘Edward’s wrath may be slow, but it will be scorching when it comes. I have sent him a letter by the Lord of Tibbers, asking his forgiveness for certain matters and warning him that I will defend myself with the longest stick I have if he comes after me. I am not expecting forgiveness.’

None of which was what the bishops needed to hear while Wishart, all purpling indignation, was preparing sermons excusing Bruce’s actions and justifying his imminent coronation.

‘It is essential that the King is divorced from these actions. A king of this realm is not involved in low acts and red murder,’ he had pontificated at one of the many meetings and Kirkpatrick, with a bitter bravery that took even Hal by surprise, gave a bark of mirthless laughter.

‘No indeed — he has me for that.’

It was a truth no-one wanted to admit and the faces round the table blanked, then pretended it had not been said at all; Hal felt a sudden rush of sympathy for Kirkpatrick, saw the mesnie of new lords look sneeringly at his back and call him the ‘auld dug’ when they were sure he could not hear, because no-one was as feared as Black Kirkpatrick, or as close to the Bruce.

Yet Hal saw that the closer Bruce got to climbing on the throne, the more he distanced himself from his ‘auld dug’.

Hal, useless in the maelstrom of all this and more aware of Kirkpatrick’s smoulder than anything, was almost relieved when Bruce finally called him aside.

‘I have a service,’ he said and explained it. Wishart had rescued the rich royal vestements and even the royal banner and one of the crowns — but they lacked the meat of the matter. They even had, miraculously, the Rood which had been returned to Lamberton in Berwick by a stranger the bishop was certain was a Templar, a man called de Bissot, who had brought the relic ‘in the peace of Christ and for the return of the relic to its home in God’.

But one of Wishart’s notaries had been arrested, which had persuaded Lamberton to quit Berwick; he had no doubt the poor man would be put to the Question and did not want to be around when he told all he knew.

Hal and Kirkpatrick locked eyes at this revelation, knowing the chip of dark wood had been ripped from Lamprecht’s neck and when and where; for a moment there was a shared, intimate ghost of old friendship, which just as suddenly shredded away.

‘I have the Rood and a decent crown,’ Bruce said to Hal when he had drawn him aside. ‘But I need the Stone. And the Crowner, which should be a MacDuff. Because the MacDuff himself is a boy held by the English, there is only one candidate left.’

Isabel, Countess of Buchan. Bad enough that she was hunted by her husband because she had run off, Hal thought bitterly — now Bruce wishes her put beyond any mercy by having her actually place the crown on his head, legitimizing the entire affair as much as the Stone and the Rood and the blessings of bishops. There was not much left for Isabel to affront her husband with, Hal thought — but that would do it.

He had gone to Roslin with the Herdmanston men, riding hard for the place and welcomed by his kin and namesake Sir Henry, thirsting for news, raising men and preparing his castle. Once Hal had been fussed by Henry’s wife and assaulted by delighted bairns, Sir Henry and he and Ill-Made had descended to the dark, chill undercroft and the secret niche built in the floor. There, nestling, glowing red-gold in the torchlight, lay the smuggled Stone of Scone, not having seen daylight for a decade at least. Red murder and treachery had helped bury it from the English — now it was lugged up, wrapped in sacking and loaded on a cart.

Wiping sweat that was not all from his labours, Sir Henry of Roslin took Hal’s wrist in a firm, almost desperate clasp.

‘I am glad, mind you, to be rid of the burden of keeping that,’ he said, nodding towards the cart. ‘I don’t envy you the task of it now. I will come to Scone myself, all the same, bringing men for the King.’

The King. King Robert. The sound of it was strange as a death knell and, seeing the pale, stricken face of Henry’s wife, bairns half-grown clutched to her, Hal finally realized the full measure of snell wind blowing through the Kingdom. Another rebellion — Hal cursed Bruce for it, and for wanting Isabel dragged into his maelstrom.

He said as much to Isabel, heating himself by the big hall fire in Herdmanston after labouring the cart and Stone from Roslin with Dog Boy, Ill-Made, Mouse and the others, buffeted by a howling gale and driving rain so that they had been grateful to roll the wretched affair into the garth and be done with it for a day at least.

She had smiled at him then, all russet hair and green gown and gentian eyes.

‘There was always going to be a moment when this would be thrust on us,’ she replied, with more surety and bravery than she felt. Trembling, she added more to the sickle of her smile.

‘How often is it that a wee Lord of Herdmanston holds two of the three adornments to the coronation of a king?’

For a moment the kings and princes, the great and good, loomed over them, golden, invincible, filling the room like a drone of chanting with the hidden haar of their power. Then, with the defiant tilt of her head, they smoked away and were gone; Hal knew that if he raked the earth and searched through the bright hair of every star he would not find a greater love than the one he felt for her now.

The warmth of it had vanished in the chill, drookit dawn, when Scabbit Wull tumbled down the ladder from the roof, shivering and damp and full of news.

The enemy was almost at the gates.

Hal shook himself from the memory and the wet from his face, while the rain lisped on the stones; in Scone, Bruce was impatient to be crowned king and Hal wondered how long he would wait for the Stone and the Crowner before going ahead anyway. He might desire all the trappings of the Old Style as he could garner — but, in the end, he would prefer the crown alone on his head.

Even now Hal could not be sure if the secret of the hidden Stone was what had brought Buchan and Dunbar to his door, or revenge for Isabel. The one surety was that it had nothing to do with Malenfaunt’s spurious claims and that he was the string-worked mommet in this.

Not that it mattered much, since the cursed slab of sandstone, painfully and frantically manhandled up the stairs, across the plank bridge and into the keep, now lay in the Yett Hall, covered with a linen cloth and used as a table for Isabel’s accoutrements for treating the wounded. Both it and she would be paraded in triumph if Herdmanston fell, Hal was sure — as sure as he was that the only part of himself that would be paraded would be his head.

Hal followed Sim’s wet-black backside to the hatchway and down the steep stairwell to his own bedroom, stood there for a moment, dripping rain and staring at the shuttered folly of a window with its niched stone seats.

Out there somewhere, Buchan would be waiting, impatient as a wet cat to see his gloating revenge on his wife’s lover. Malenfaunt brooded vengeance on all things Bruce, but Dunbar and the rest were here in a flush of righteous wrath for the killing of Badenoch — and that was yet another reason Hal would never make it from this place alive if it fell.

A shape shifted, dragging him back to the present, where the Dog Boy sat with a bow in one hand, peering out between the shutters to make sure no-one was thinking of scaling up to this great weakness in the wall. He turned and grinned, his face dark with new beard, his forearms muscled from working with the big deerhounds.

‘Aye til the fore, my lord,’ he said and Sim grunted acknowledgement of still being alive over his shoulder as he clattered down the stairs to the hall.

Hal paused a moment and forced a grin in return; the Dog Boy, as dark and saturnine as the day he had come from Douglas when he was twelve, still reminded Hal of the son who lay dead under the stone cross nearby, together with his wife and his father.

A stone cross, he recalled bitterly, about forty paces from the bloody springald, the graves trampled and spoiled by the boots of the ingeniator and his minions, who stored their gear in the stone chapel.

Down in the dim of the Big Hall Alehouse Maggie and a handful of mothers — a Jane here and a Bess and a Muriel there, all from nearby cottar huts — cluttered round the meagre fire in the large hearth, singing quiet songs to calm the fretting weans. Isabel was at a nearby truckle bed, checking on the occupant and turned as Hal clacked across the sparsely-rushed flagstones.

‘No worse,’ she declared and then bent and sniffed. ‘Still smells like a privy hole, mark you.’

The figure on the bed chuckled weakly and Hal stepped to where he could see him, dark hair wild and ruffled, lopsided face pale as poor hope and a stain still leaking into the clean wrappings Isabel had only just bound him with.

‘After three days,’ said Ill-Made weakly, ‘twa things stink — fish and an unwanted guest.’

Hal said nothing. Ill-Made had been hit three days ago by a crossbow bolt, a half-spent ricochet, the shaft shattered and the head ragged, which was why he had not died at once. Digging it out of his armpit had cost him more blood than he could afford, all the same and Hal knew, with sick certainty, that he would go to join the four others who had died in the seven days of siege.

There were at least a dozen less of the besieging hundreds who surrounded the tower, most of them casualties of the first day, storming up the stair to where the six foot gap had to be spanned to a lip at the foot of the oak door.

Splintering that door with axe and fire had cost them most of the dozen and others were picked off by Sim and Dog Boy from the roof, until the springald had appeared and the besiegers had drawn back.

It had taken most of a day to assemble the confection of sticks and metal — but after that it had started plunking great, long, fat-headed bolts at the ruined doorway entrance, hoping to smash the grilled yett beyond. Scabbed stonework showed they had not hit it yet, but the tireless whirr and bang of it, the creakingly painful reloading, grated on everyone.

Isobel came up to him, hair tendrilling out from under her headcover, her fingers bloody from ministering to Ill-Made; the springald bolt cracked again, though it was only the noise that jangled everyone for the walls of Herdmanston, at this level, were thick enough for rooms to have been scabbed out of the inside and still leave a forearm’s length of solidity.

‘What will they do now?’ she asked in French, so that his answer would not be understood by Maggie and the others and he could speak freely.

Hal thought of it. The tower was the height of ten tall men and stood on a mound that not only gave it more height but pushed out the approach of any siege tower to where a ramp could not cross from it to the top of Herdmanston, even if one could be built that tall.

There was nowhere for a ladder less than such a height to reach, and no hook-ended ropes could be flung up that far. The garth was plundered and every hut burned — though that usually only meant the thatched roof, for the wattle and daub simply hardened and the few entire stone buildings were left blackened and roofless.

The Herdmanston cellar had beef and barley and oats enough and, providing it kept raining, the stone butts in the undercroft would keep enough water in them. Still, there was only a handful of fighting men in Herdmanston and too many women and weans for a lengthy siege, so sensible enemies, Hal thought, would sit and wait.

Buchan, he knew, was not sensible. None of them out there were, too twisted with their own desires to consider sitting and waiting. So they would assault and the only way was under the arch where the oak door had been and then the iron yett. That was where they would come and only after they had destroyed the yett.

‘At which point they will offer terms,’ Hal told her with a wry smile, ‘it being a breach and honour requiring it. Young Patrick will so insist, being a right wee Arthur for the chivalry.’

She nodded, then stared at him with eyes velvet and liquid as blue pools.

‘I should go,’ she began weakly and he placed a finger on her lips.

‘You will not, lamb,’ he said. ‘The terms are only for the nicety in it and to put a polite face on it for Dunbar. There is no good outcome from our failure to hold here — whatever peace is offered will not be offered to me, nor you.’

She looked round at the bairns, now being shushed by Annie and herded cautiously to the steps winding to the undercroft, where it was safer but dark and dank even with torches, which they could ill afford.

‘The bairns,’ she said with a pleading crack in her voice that Hal had to steel himself against.

‘The children and women might be offered leave,’ he answered, ‘but they would have to scamper far and wide, with nothing to their backs or bellies or over their heads, to be safe from soldiery like this.’

He scrubbed his head and she saw the weary lines of him.

‘Besides,’ he went on, waving a hand at the covered Stone, innocuous as a nun’s shift, ‘there is that. Not only will Buchan have it, to display against Bruce’s kingship, he will have you to show likewise. Is that what you want?’

‘I would die first.’

He felt the tremble in her as he took her, let her lay her head on his breast; he smelled of sweat and leather and woodsmoke, but there was strength in him that she sucked at greedily. Like a lamb at the teat, she thought with a soft smile. It faded when she thought of what would happen.

They would die here.

The sudden explosion of noise, as if someone had flung an entire tin cauldron down a flight steps, flung them apart. Bairns shrieked and there were frantic shouts — cursing, Sim and Hal sprang for the stairwell that led below, to the Yett Hall.

Men milled, armed and ready but Hal saw that no enemy had burst in on them. But the yett was open and flapping like an iron bird wing, part of it bent and twisted; in one corner was a bloody smear on the wall and, at the foot of it, a rag-bundle that slowly leaked darkly into a puddle.

‘Wull the Yett,’ Sim informed no-one in particular, scowling darkly as if Wull had committed some crime.

Hal felt the cold stone of it sink in him. Auld Wull the Yett had been gatekeeper since his father’s time, a recalcitrant, shuffling old misery, never done complaining. Until now, Hal corrected.

It was not hard to work out that the springald had scored a hit, spearing a fat iron-headed shaft in through the ruined doorway and striking the yett somewhere above the lock, where the iron grill had bent but not broken.

The springald shaft had shattered, though, sharding into a lethal spray of wood and metal in whose path had been Wull the Yett, lopsided pot helm on his head, raddled hand clutching a filthy, notched sword whose hilt rattled when he shook it defiantly. The blast of metal and wood had torn him to bloody pats and burst the lock on the yett.

‘Fetch hammers,’ Hal ordered, seeing the ruin of it. ‘And Leckie the Faber,’ he added as men sprang to obey.

For a moment Sim and he stood, pillars of silent grim in the whirl of activity round them. The lock was a ruin and could not be fastened, though the iron yett could still be barricaded shut…

Then they looked at each other.

‘They will have heard it,’ Sim forced out and Hal nodded. He heard the weans being soothed from snot and tears, became aware of the lack of rushes for the floor, torches for the walls, food, arrows…

They would ask for terms now and Hal did not know whether to refuse them, bad or good.

‘You are certain, Master Ingeniator?’

Gaultier nodded, while his two assistants, sacking draped over their filthy heads against the rain, bobbed like toys in agreement.

‘Through the arch,’ the Fleming said with smug satisfaction. ‘There was a great bang as it hit the gate — we all heard it.’

And the two toys nodded at him, at each other and then at the dark brooding Malenfaunt. Patrick of Dunbar, round, wisp-moustached face framed by the ringmetal coif, beamed at the Earl of Buchan.

‘Well — a palpable hit, by God. Damaged at least. Something we can claim as a practical breach, eh?’

Buchan, his thinned hair plastered to his bared head, nodded scowling, pouch-eyed agreement; there had been too long spent on this enterprise in his opinion and the reason for it sat cloistered in that hall, no doubt trembling at what might be done to her now. Well might she shake, he thought savagely.

‘A white peace,’ Patrick added pointedly. ‘As we agreed — I look to you, my lord, to hold to this, as agreed.’

Malenfaunt laughed sourly, but said nothing. He seldom spoke these days, the fork of his tongue rendering it almost unintelligible and that, coupled with the deep, banked smoulder in him kept everyone at a distance.

Malise, dripping patiently by the side of his earl, watched Malenfaunt and remembered how he had come off worst in a tourney duel with Bruce and that there had been some scandal over a nunnery in Berwick, which had had to have the occupants scoured out of it and questioned.

Depositions of Devil worship and worse were, even now, being taken and Malenfaunt’s name had come up more than once. Now he was here, banished from the mesnie of de Valence, shunned by every nobile who at least professed a measure of honour and trying to ingratiate himself into the grace of the Earl of Buchan, whose wayward wife he had once held to ransom.

War, Malise realized, would be a joy to this one for it would put an end to all the legalities threatening to swamp him and might even raise his stature; all knights would be needed soon, when Longshanks rose up off his skinny arse and started to roar like the mangy pard he was.

This time, he knew, there was no question of which side the Buchan and Balliol and Comyn chose — the one which had a Bruce on the opposite.

‘I have my reasons for being here,’ Buchan said sourly, peeling off a sodden gauntlet to wipe his streaming face. ‘Make what white peace ye care — but neither the Countess nor Hal of Herdmanston is included in it. That pair are mine, by God.’

They assembled in the lisping mirr by the stone cross, holding up a shield covered in white linen, turning dark with rain. Two figures came to the arched, flame-blackened doorway, the bigger, badger-bearded one holding a monstrous crossbow. Those who knew Sim and the lord Hal — Dunbar men and those locals who hired out for pay — gave a few friendly shouts, swiftly muffled. Save for one.

‘Holla, Sim Craw — aye til the fore I see.’

The irrepressible Davy Scott from Buccleuch made all the other Scotts laugh, then curl their lip at the glares from the Comyn retinue.

‘Davy Scott — I have heard nothing of ye since… bigod, it would be Roslin Glen. How long since was that?’

‘Three years,’ Scott called back, heedless of the glowers.

‘A rattlin’ time,’ Sim shouted. ‘A rare victory, so I hear.’

‘Aye, man,’ Davy enthused, his beady black eyes bright. ‘There were Kerrs every which where, skitin’ like hares. Ah saw Kerrs frae Cessford an’ Graden an’ others frae ower Teviotdale. A right rout it was.’

‘And the English,’ Sim pointed out wryly. Davy Scott had the grace to look embarrassed for a moment, realizing not only his preoccupation with an old feud but that he was now, to all intents, with the English he had once scattered so delightedly up and down Roslin Glen.

‘Oh aye — them as well.’

Then Sim swept his eyes round until he found the face he sought; still fox-sharp, the eyes as cold and dark as of old, though permanently narrowed now, as if the man squinted. Losing his sight, Sim thought. Then added viciously to himself: God blind you, Malise Bellejambe.

Malise felt the eyes on him and flicked briefly to them, then away. He did not like the big, keg-shaped grim of Sim Craw, who made him aware of a man he’d red murdered years before, the one called Tod’s Wattie. A friend of this one, Malise remembered, seeing the banked revenge in Sim Craw’s stare and not caring much for it.

Ignoring all of this, Buchan and Hal locked gazes. Hal saw the gaunt of the man and wondered at it. He has ten years on me, he thought to himself, but that did not explain the yellow tinge, the unhealthy fever of the stretched cheeks, the bones of his face like oak galls. He felt the heat of the man’s anger.

Buchan, in turn, saw the still figure, grizzled these days and limned with hard life, but he barely took in the look of the man; his belly turned, for here was his revenge, looking him in the face. It came to him, in a sudden, sick dizziness, that there was no triumph in it, only a reflection of his own mean rage.

Dunbar thought it best to grip the hilt of matters a little tighter.

‘Your folk may depart with honour and their lives,’ he said curtly to Hal. ‘You must hand over the Countess and yourself to the mercy of myself and the Earl of Buchan. Your fortress will be slighted.’

There was a pause, an indrawing of breath and no more, while everyone waited to see if Herdmanston would capitulate.

Patrick hoped he would not; though the prospect of storming the place was bloody, he wanted it with all the eager, frantic fervour of his twenty-two years; he had never been at such a matter before and Malenfaunt saw that and sneered at it. The wee earl’s son would find the truth out at cost — if he lived at all, Malenfaunt thought to himself.

He had avoided such engagements, for the prospect of dying at the hands of a grimy-handed cottar for some pointless heap of stones was not chivalrous enough — yet the high-chivalry tourney with Bruce, who could have killed him, brought back the sweating, shrieking moment when he had thought death would happen.

He knew he had babbled and pleaded for his life then and the yellow memory of it soured his life like vomit, while the sinuous wriggle and flap of his own forked tongue, the result of what Bruce had done instead, repulsed him.

The only two who mattered in this were horns-locked at the eyes, cold and unblinking as basilisks until, finally, Hal spoke into Buchan’s unflinching glare, though it was Patrick of Dunbar he addressed.

‘I am fine where I am,’ he said softly. ‘Besides — I have only just fixed matters from the last time I was raided. I would liefer have the place unsullied.’

‘I am your liege lord,’ Patrick declared loftily, then realized he actually was not and hastily corrected himself.

‘My father is. You owe him fealty and explanation for your constant turncoating. I have offered you more honour and mercy than you deserve…’

‘Save your words, he does not care — he is Bruce’s man now.’

Buchan’s voice was a whip that lashed Dunbar to silence.

‘If you do not give in now,’ he went on, never removing his eyes, ‘it will be the end of you. I will nail your entrails to a post and walk you round them until your life unfolds. I will allow that wanton bitch to watch, then throw her to my men and, when they are done, to the dogs.’

Patrick shifted and bleated protest at this, but Hal finally snapped his gaze from Buchan and rested it on the Dunbar lordling.

‘Dinnae fash, Patrick,’ he said companionably. ‘Ye have taken up with bad company, for if Christ Himself walked among ye, the Earl of Buchan would deceive Him.’

Malenfaunt stirred then and made a long series of gabbling sounds, increasing in fury because he realized no-one could understand him. He was wrong and the astonishment in it stunned him to silence.

‘My lord Malenfaunt declares,’ Malise Bellejambe said at the end of it all, seeing the blank faces, ‘that he has a writ from King Edward giving Herdmanston to himself. He has come to take over his fortress and desires you quit-claim from the place immediately.’

The silence and stares made him frown and he turned into the equally incredulous face of Malenfaunt.

‘What?’ Malise demanded. ‘That is what you said, is it not?’

Malenfaunt nodded, his eyes wide as a dog who has found someone without a whip.

‘I hold Herdmanston,’ Hal answered with a growl, ‘and will do so. If ye wish me or mine, nobiles, then you must exert yerself and do yer utmost.’

‘Come away in,’ said a new voice, lilting and smooth and so instantly recognizable that Buchan visibly jerked.

She came to the back of Hal, russet head proud and eyes blazing on her husband’s face.

‘There is little point in speaking with a man who would throw his wife to all his dogs,’ she added in French and laid a hand gently on Hal’s shoulder. Up on the roof, the Dog Boy saw the shift in the saddle and even from there, the rush of blood to Buchan’s jowled face turned it almost black.

Buchan saw Hal’s sudden smile at her touch as a glittering curve of leering triumph against him and all his walls broke. With a sharp cry, almost the scream of a girl, he raked the sides of the great warhorse; taken by surprise, it reared and pawed, then surged forward. Buchan’s blade was raised high and capable of striking Hal’s ankles, bringing him tumbling off the steps.

A dark shape slammed his horse on one shoulder, sending it skittering sideways. Davy Scott saw Patrick of Dunbar’s furious face as he balked Buchan’s horse with his own and he brought up the spanned latchbow he’d held, quiet and hidden, down one side of his horse, away from the sharp eyes of Sim Craw; if he shot Hal of Herdmanston now, Buchan would reward him richly…

‘Stay yer hand,’ Patrick of Dunbar bellowed furiously at Buchan. ‘This is a truce, by God.’

For a moment, it seemed the unthinkable would happen and that Buchan would strike the son of the Earl of March — then the arrow hissed, snaking over the heads of everyone, so that only a few saw it and fewer still cried out and reached for weapons. By the time hand was on hilt, though, the best shot the Dog Boy ever did struck Davy Scott on his top lip and drove straight through his head, slicing his brainstem in two.

As if someone had cut all the strings of him, he simply flopped, slid sideways and toppled off the horse, the latchbow falling free; it hit the ground and went off, so that the bolt wasped over ducking heads.

There was yelling and confusion; Hal slid Isabel backwards into the keep, covered by Sim’s crossbow, while Patrick of Dunbar bellowed at Buchan and everyone around him to stay their hand.

With a final savage wrench that took Bradacus’ head back with a protesting whine, the Earl of Buchan reined round and trotted off, the old warhorse stepping delicately over Davy Scott’s body, which Buchan never once looked at.

They came on in a rush an hour later. The rain had stopped and enough sun came out to steam the ground and bring out a rash of insects, which caused the horses to fret and quiver at their tethers; they were useless in this event and could only stand fast and be bitten.

The grim-faced men assembled, knowing this would be a hard affair, even though they hugely outnumbered the defenders; there was only one way in and that was up the stair, two wide.

The first four would have shields up, to front and above. The next two would lug the awkward man-length of wooden planking to span the gap between the top of the stair and the lip of the doorway. The others would come up with spears and axes, the first for forcing the defenders back from the yett, no doubt reinforced and barriered as best as could be managed, the second for the close in-fighting, where even a sword was too long.

Young Patrick, fired and eager, moved down the ranks, trying to behave as a knight should, his earnest face red where it could be seen in the framing of maille rings and bascinet. He clapped shoulders of men he would never dine with at home and prepared himself to lead the ones carrying the spanning plank.

Buchan stood and glowered, armed and armoured, a glory of gold wheatsheaves on blue, but patently not involved; it was not the place of earls to risk themselves in such a combat and if the silly sons of earls wished to be foolish that was their own affair.

He had said as much to Malise, while instructing him to join the affray. Malise, accoutred in uncomfortable maille, stumped bitterly towards the pack clutching an unfamiliar axe and shield, the whole panoply of it a crushing weight that made him wonder if he could even get up the steps.

Malenfaunt stopped him with a hand on one arm, muttering in his gabbled way. Malise could not work out why no-one else could understand the man; what he said was clear as day to him.

‘Stay out of it until they are inside,’ the knight warned, then grinned, thin-lipped and mirthless. ‘See the smoke there?’

Malise saw it, a curling wisp from a hole to one side, above the doorway; he nodded, confused.

‘They have a fire going. It is in a wee kitchen, but I do not think they are making a basket of chicken.’

They stood and watched as the attack went in, the shielding men huddled and crabbing as fast as they could go, the ones lugging the plank roaring in desperate fear and fury to keep themselves moving forward.

An arrow spanged off a shield, a bolt took one of the shieldmen in the thigh and he fell with a shriek of despair and a clattering thump. The spanning plank went down and Patrick of Dunbar led the rush, bellowing, into the maw of the doorway.

The yett had been barricaded and buttressed with the tower’s original spanning plank, while Leckie the Faber, expert blacksmith that he was, had hammered a bar of iron into a circle, fastening the grilled door shut after a fashion. Behind it, as Patrick’s eyes blinked from the sunlight to the dim, were shadowy figures, flicking out spear tips between the metal squares of the yett grill.

Men crushed forward, Patrick yelling for his own to hammer the bar off the gate. Spears clattered on shields — then, suddenly, inexplicably, the men behind the grill scampered away from it. There was a moment of confusion as the attackers, with nothing to stab at, milled round the yett door, getting in the way of the men bringing in hammers — then there was a hissing sound, like falling rain, and the screaming began as boiling water poured from the murder-holes above them.

Malenfaunt nodded with smug righteousness as men howled out of the door. Three of them missed their footing on the plank or were shoved aside by the pack of panicked to fall in a whirl of arms and legs and screams. The rest half-ran, half-stumbled back down the stairs; one was smacked on to his face by a bolt in his shoulderblades and Malise knew that came from Sim Craw, high on the roof and hidden by the merlons. He shivered at the idea of almost having been in all of that and glanced sideways at the smiling Malenfaunt, who had saved him.

Young Patrick came out, bawling and screaming, hauling off his coif in a frenzy, throwing bascinet to one side; squires and servants ran to assist and shield him while he stripped himself to his broiled, blistering face and head, finally falling, moaning.

‘Blood of Christ,’ Malise muttered. He crossed himself.

‘Amen,’ mouthed Malenfaunt wryly.

They carried Patrick of Dunbar off to be balmed with goose-grease and reflect on the reality of knightly conflict and the loss of his good looks, while Malenfaunt grinned and nudged Malise to look at the blazing fury that was Buchan’s own face. Even though he did not like the idea of Malenfaunt mocking his lord, Malise had to admit that the Earl of Buchan did look like an ox’s backside with a bee up it.

Hal had taken little or no part in any of this, for Ill-Made was dying and Mintie Laidlaw had worked herself into such a state over events that her birthing was early, a combination which made for a deal more pain and suffering than anything going on in Herdmanston’s scabbed doorway.

‘Fetch me warmed watter,’ Alehouse Maggie demanded of Mouse. ‘Not the boiling ye are dumping on our enemies, mind — softer than that. Likewise a sharp knife, to pare my nails.’

‘A good midwife,’ Isabel said with a smile, ‘needs short clean nails and should be a stranger to drink.’

‘Ah, weel, my lady,’ Maggie answered with a wink, ‘half right is all good — Mouse, fetch also a cup o’ fat. I would usually use almond oil to grease the privities o’ the likes of Araminta Laidlaw, but needs must.’

Those who knew Mintie and her cry of ‘I am nobiles born, albeit a poor yin’ laughed, but it was tempered by the crash and clatter and screaming not far from them.

‘Make certain ye fetch a cup with no burned bits in it,’ Maggie yelled at the flustered scampering back of Mouse. ‘We are easing a wean into the world, no’ frying bacon.’

Isabel knelt by Hal, who was wiping the sweat grease from Ill-Made’s uneven face. You could fry bacon on his forehead, he thought.

‘Get you gone,’ Isabel said gently. ‘You are needed elsewhere and this is no place for a man. This poor man will go, as we all go, alone to meet his God.’

‘Christ be praised,’ Hal said, eyeing the sight of Alehouse Maggie, trimming her nails and laying out a collection of vicious iron more seeming for a forge than a birthing.

‘For ever and ever — now go,’ Isabel responded.

By the time Hal reached the yett the fighting was done and the last moaning man was stumbling out. Two more lay dead, burned and stabbed and Hal’s wolf-grinning men panted and wiped wet mouths with the backs of their hands.

The hours crawled past in a drip of endless mirr. They used pike spears, twenty long feet of shaft and wicked point, to lever the dead out of the doorway without opening the yett.

Ill-Made died, sudden as a blown-out candle, so they put him and the blood-fretted remains of Wull the Yett down in the darkest, coldest part of the undercroft, which act was a banner-wave of hope — in order to decently bury them, everyone else had to survive.

Mintie’s bairn was born safely — a girl she was calling Margaretha, promptly christened Grets by everyone else and cooed over.

The attackers came again four hours later, just as the dark closed in and made them harder to see. This time, they had netted bags of burning straw which they hurled in the doorway, causing a storm of flaming embers and reeking smoke, under cover of which the men piled in, armed with forge hammers and a ram to smash the yett door open.

Hal watched them come through the swirling smoke, grey shapes half-crouched and huddled with shields up — black pard on white, a red tree, a series of red and yellow stripes, none of which made any sense to him other than that they provided cover for the men behind, the ones carrying the four-foot wooden ram, an iron cap crudely hammered on the end.

Beside him, Chirnside Rowan and Hob o’ the Merse loaded and shot the only two other latchbows they had besides the one Sim was using on the roof. The bolts flashed like kingfisher wings in the mirk, spanging and ricocheting wildly; a man cursed and reeled into another, clutching his ankle and hopping until someone barged him over. They trampled on him to get to the yett, crowding the narrow way while the flaming straw choked everyone.

Metal glinted and banged, men roared battle cries or just incoherent bellowings and Hal seemed to be underwater, where the noise seemed muffled and dull. He sweated inside the maille and padding, felt the powerful urge to run, to piss, to throw up, or all of them at once.

Then the yett broke open and sprang back under the piling weight of bodies, who surged through with fresh, exultant cries.

Hal and the others met them in a way their grandfathers would have nodded approval at — shoulder to shoulder in a shield wall. The shields were the wrong shape, but the wall of them was just as daunting as any who had sent the Norse scampering away at Largs nearly fifty years before.

A spear wobbled at him and Hal twisted to avoid it, landed a good hard chop with his axe on the shield of the man trying to wield it, while Sore Davey slashed a rent in the man’s gambeson, so that he tried to back away, grunting. The press was too great and the man was crushed forward, arms trapped so that he could see the needle point of Hal’s waraxe coming at his face but could no more avoid it than a cart rolling downhill can avoid the house. He squealed when it went in, shrieked when it came out and then vanished, sucked under the trampling feet.

There was a moment of swaying to and fro, where no-one seemed to do much more than curse and struggle, spluttering and choking in the reek — then, like a stone on a mirror, the attackers broke from the rear and stumbled away.

Feeling the pressure lift, those in front reeled away, blind and breathless with the smoke. For a moment, Hal saw the twisted smile and rat-desperate face of Malenfaunt, forced at last to take part and huddled behind his gashed, striped shield.

There was a moment when Malenfaunt was about to hurl himself at Hal, to end the business in the best heroic fashion — until he saw the axe. A blade with a pick on the other side curved like a bird beak and a point out of the top of the shaft, another at the foot. He blanched, remembering an axe just like it and how he failed to ruin Bruce with it during the tourney; he raised his shield against it and backed hastily away.

Coughing, spluttering, red-eyed and half blind, Hal and the others shouldered the yett door shut and held it while Leckie hammered round a new fastening — a sword this time, which was not only an expensive waste, but probably useless since the iron jamb was coming loose from the stone.

Leckie said all this like a chant to the accompaniment of hammer blows and no-one much cared who actually listened to it. By the time he was done, the air had cleared and women had brought water, to drink and wash faces in; it was as good as goose-grease balm, as Clem Graham announced.

The dark slithered over them like a merciful cloak. A man hailed them asking for truce to pick up those wounded and dead groaning at the foot of the steps and that was allowed, watched by a scowling Mouse holding a torch, backed up by Chirnside Rowan’s crossbow.

In the Lord’s Room with its folly window, the Dog Boy faced Sim Craw and Hal, while Isabel chewed a lip and looked on.

‘It is the only way,’ Dog Boy said again and Sim scrubbed his nit-cropped head, knowing the truth when he heard it and reluctant to admit it. He looked at the coiled mass on the floor, a mesnie of knotted bast, twisted linen and leather from belts and reins, one end looped and braided round the postered boxbed.

‘It will come to pieces like a hoor’s drawers,’ he growled, then bobbed apology to Isabel, who waved it away.

‘That’s why I must go,’ Dog Boy answered patiently, flashing a white grin in the dark, ‘since I am the lightest. Out and away, like a lintie off a branch. Easy.’

Hal knew someone had to get out, to find out if aid was coming, to remind Bruce what was at stake if he did not relieve Herdmanston. He nodded.

‘Go with God,’ he growled brusquely and, grinning ferally, Dog Boy hefted the coil and, helped by Sim, levered it to the window and over. Then he was out of it with a quick, neat movement, paused with his head and shoulders showing, grinned a last flash of teeth and was gone.

The bed groaned a little, shifted with a squeal. Sim, Hal and Isabel moved swiftly to it, adding their combined weight; it stopped; the makeshift rope trembled with Dog Boy’s unseen movement and the knots on it creaked.

‘If any daur tell how Isabel MacDuff lay in bed with Hal and Sim from Herdmanston, both at the one time,’ Isabel said grimly, ‘I will make his cods into a purse.’

‘Dinna tell Maggie,’ answered Sim vehemently and with more than mock fear.

Dog Boy slithered down the rope, his shoes skittering on the wet, mossed stones, each skid and scuff sounding like the ringing of a bell to him. He went down past the dark loom of the door, catching his breath at the stink of char and blood, down into the black well between wall and stair, reached the end of the makeshift, softly creaking rope and took a breath.

Then he dropped, almost shrieking aloud at the plunge into the unknown dark — he fell a foot, hit the slope of the slicked mound and skidded on his arse through the wet and the blood and fluids until he fell and rolled into where the dead had lain.

He lay in the cold seep of it, waiting and trying to hear over the thunder of his own heart and harsh breathing; no-one came. He heard distant laughter, a burst on the breeze, saw the red-flower flutter of flames and shrank away from it, crabbing towards the wall of the garth until the stones nudged his back.

It was taller than himself by an inch or two, a wall to keep out maurauding beasts on four or two legs from lifting valuable livestock and no more. Inside it, the keep’s buildings had been ransacked and part burned — until someone had wisely asked where the besiegers would stay; now the bakehouse and brewhouse glowed faintly from the fires lit within, the half-charred thatch of their roofs still a wet stink as Dog Boy climbed over the wall.

It was the quick way, cutting off a long, arse-puckering crawl round the wall and through the enemy camp — but it held dangers of its own.

The first was the dark, which struck Dog Boy almost blind and left him with only the glow of the fires to let him know what direction he moved.

Now he blessed the persistence of Hal in giving him the old sword and scabbard; Dog Boy had preferred his knife — but that would be no help in a stand-up fight, God save you, Hal had said. The awkward sword had been slung on his back for the climb down and was rendered useless, for he would have needed the arms of a babery beast to draw it from there.

Now, though, he took it off his back, drew it, took the scabbard and placed it on the very tip, holding the belt fastenings in his teeth. Now he had a wobbling curve near the length of a man in front of him and, by swinging gently from side to side, he moved it like the feeler of a giant beetle.

He fell only once, a stumble that spilled him his length and he lay, feeling the wet seep, clenching the sword in one hand and the leather scabbard ties in his teeth so that he would not lose either. He strained to hear; laughter in the near distance calmed him a little and he reached out his free hand to lever himself up — then recoiled at the sensation of rough wet hair.

It was the deerhound, the one he’d called Riach because it meant ‘brindled’. The beast’s throat had been cut and Dog Boy felt a great welling sadness — he had not brought the dogs in to the keep, for there was not much more useless a creature in a siege than a dog, which ate meat people needed and provided, in the end, poor fare of its own.

Dog Boy was certain the other, Diamant, was also dead for neither of these hounds would have countenanced strangers in the garth without contesting it.

He cursed the siegers then, promised vileness on them for it and a deal of his anger was for himself; I am ill-named, he thought as he pinch-stepped away, for it seems I bring nothin’ but doom on decent dugs.

The scabbard tapped the far garth wall gently and he flicked it away with the sword, then gathered it in and fastened it on his back; behind, the laughter rose enough for him to hear the drink in it and he smiled grimly. Be gaggling on the other side o’ yer face when I return, he thought. I will hang the doddles o’ yon dug-murderer from the kennel door.

It took him all night to reach the Auld Chiel’s Chelleis, a long, dark slog through whin and bracken in a wet drabble of night until the milk-glow horizon brought a marriage of birds and their joy of song to the dawn.

The thick, clumped bushes and trees that fringed the Chelleis grabbed his clothes and he had gone no further than a fingerlength in when he heard the rustle and then the voice.

‘Swef. Bide doucelike else ah’ll arrow ye.’

‘God be praised,’ Dog Boy gasped out at once and, after a pause, had back the reply.

‘For ever and ever.’

It was Scabbit Wull, easier in his mind that what he had in front of him was human and not Faerie — then delighted and relieved to see it was Dog Boy. All the cold, wet folk in the Chelleis were delighted, for they thought matters had been resolved and they could leave their crude, damp shelters and come home to warm fires — which they dare not light themselves — and decent food, which they were running out of.

There were fifteen of them, all women save for Wull, set to guard the hidden valuables of Herdmanston — the garrons of the men, the plough oxen and the milch kine of those cottars who had managed to drive them here in time.

The Auld Chiel’s Chelleis was apt named, Dog Boy thought, even as he explained the reality to Wull and the women. It was a great bowl of close bush and stunted forest, cleared in the centre to take the livestock and the people. Unless you knew the way of it, you could be lost inside the place two steps from the edge and it was where Herdmanston always hid when the enemy came — the English name for it was Satan’s Cup and they would not go there.

‘God go wi’ ye,’ Wull said to him as Dog Boy left and he promised he would break himself and the garron he rode to bring help.

An hour from the Chelleis, he ran into the armed riders.