The Lion at bay

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Abbey of Scone

Feast of the Annunciation, March, 1306

Dog Boy had never seen food like it. When he had gone from Douglas to Herdmanston he thought he had fallen into all the blessings of Heaven when he found he could eat a white porray of leeks with boiled bacon bits in it — but this, the crowning feast for a king, was another level raised entirely.

As was he, feted for being in the company bringing Stone and Isabel the Crowner to Scone, placed so high above the salt he was dizzy with it. Or it could have been the metheglin and ale, the Leche Lombard of pork and eggs, graced with pepper more precious than gold, or mortrews of chicken, pork and breadcrumbs, venison boiled in almonds and milk, seasoned with poudre douce.

Hal, catching a glimpse of the sweat-sheened joy of a face, the dags of hair like black knives stuck to his cheeks, thought it was because the boy had found Jamie Douglas, the pair of them grinning and chattering and eating and drinking as if there was no chasm in rank between them at all.

Hal had watched Dog Boy arrive with the mounted men, the youth clearly filled with the moment of it, sliding off his garron and running, shouting, to where Hal and the others were poking about in the slorach of the garth.

‘I have brought them,’ Dog Boy had shouted, and flung one hand delightedly back to the mass of armed men behind him, led by a slim, dark-haired youth riding at the right hand of Sir Henry of Roslin.

‘Look who I have brought,’ he added with a bright laugh and Jamie Douglas, with his deceptive, languid looks and lisp, had bowed from the waist, then squinted at Sim Craw and rubbed his ear.

Hal saw Sim flush like a maid; Jamie Douglas, heir to the Douglas estates in Lanarkshire, had been in France all this time and was now returned, like a bright flame, to the side of the Bruce. The last time Hal and Sim had seen Jamie Douglas he had been twelve and Sim had cuffed him for his cheek and impudence, which he was now reminded of.

‘I would not care to belt yer lug now,’ he added grudgingly and Jamie Douglas, grown to the full of his youth, laughed.

Hal and the others had known someone was coming because of a frantic scamper and a furious chopping as the Flemings started to hack axes at the wet-shrunk rawhide which bound the springald cage together.

There was more than hurry in it, there was a feverish flurry that let everyone know, sent Hal and Sim and others flinging upwards to the roof, to peer out through the merlons to where the Flemings were dismantling their springald in a frenzy, for the screw and windlass and skeins of catapult hair were their livelihood and should not fall into enemy hands.

Which is why they had their own lookouts to warn of a relief force.

Hal remembered seeing Buchan, sitting like a millstone and staring at the stone keep which had thwarted him. Without a word or a sign, he had suddenly reined round and ridden off and, within an hour, there was no-one to be seen and only the ruin and litter. Not long after that the Dog Boy had ridden up with Jamie Douglas, Sir Henry from Roslin and a long hundred of riders.

‘Timely,’ Hal had declared, bright with the moment of it and Isabel in the crook of his arm. Then he had seen Henry’s face and the stone sank back in his bowels.

‘It can’t be held as Roslin can,’ Henry had explained, though the words fell like dull pewter into Hal’s head. ‘You can send yer household to the care of Roslin and I will collect the rents…’

‘The King has ordered Herdmanston slighted,’ Jamie declared, wiping the smile from Dog Boy’s face.

‘Is Bruce king then?’ Sim had growled and Jamie, smiling and uncaring as a hunting pard, had nodded.

‘This very day. I foreswore my chance to be knighted on this day to fulfil his wishes to come here. He will go through the entire blethers of it again when we return with Stone and the crowning Countess — but he is king as of now.’

He offered a polite bow to Isabel who acknowledged it, aware of her soot-streaked dress and face and the frosted roots of her untreated hair.

Now Hal sat in the abbey hall at Scone with the feast flowing round him and the music of shawm and sithole, harp and fiddle circling and swooping. Douce Dame Debonaire, the troubadour sang, while the monks, daring as swooping swallows in the risk of their souls, peeked from hiding and tried not to let their toes tap.

Their betters — five bishops, three abbots and a slew of other clergy — were clearly safe from God’s wrath and could beat the tables in roaring time.

And yet, while the troubadour detailed the exchange between the horse Fauvel and Dame Fortune, Hal could only see the weeping women and the bairns being kissed farewell by their menfolk, while the black feathers of smoke spilled out of Herdmanston’s shattered doorway. Roslin men, grim with what they were doing, methodically fired Herdmanston to a ruin the Earl of Buchan would have exulted over.

‘I am benisoned, it seems, to be burned out by kin,’ Hal had remarked bitterly and Henry of Roslin, sick with the shame and sadness of it, could not speak at all.

From the top table, resplendent in finery that was not even his, Bruce surveyed the joy and would have been surprised to find another at the feast whose mood was as bitter as his own.

He was king. He had been crowned by the right person, in the right place with all the correct procedure and regalia, so that all the years of careful plans had come to final fruit — yet he sat in Balliol’s coronation robes, felt the strange weight of Toom Tabard’s gold circlet on his head, all hidden away by Wishart for this very moment.

Borrowed finery was bad enough — but because of it, he had to forsake the hiding hood and now his face, with the livid cheek scar weeping still, was there for all to see and wonder at.

Beside him sat the Queen and the bitter gruel of that flavoured all the meat and drink that found a way to his mouth. It was bad enough that they had been so estranged — he could not go to her with what he suspected he had, with his very breath the kiss of death — but now she was smouldering resentment, with all the fire of her seventeen years, at what he had done to her household.

It had been necessary for an age and Bruce had put it off — until the coronation loomed. He had gone to her then, been welcomed stiffly by a girl bewildered why her husband seemed to have taken a dislike to her. Wondering why he hid his face from her, all but his eyes, behind a veil like some Saracen.

He had told her that the entire ceremony would be repeated, this time with the Stone of Scone and the hereditary Crowner, the Countess of Buchan; that name brought her head up and flared her cheeks, for she had heard the rumours of the old love and did not care for it.

But it was the Lady Bridget, that older, pinched twist of scorn who had been Elizabeth’s nurse when she had been a babe, who set the seal on matters with her snort.

‘Bad enough my lady is made queen to your king of summer,’ she had spat, ‘without having to go through such mummery again, this time with yer old hoor.’

The silence had stretched an endless age, while Elizabeth’s eyes went wide with horror and all the entourage, down to the huddled little priest at the back, waited to see what would happen.

When it did, the sudden crack of it made them all jump; one or two squealed — all of them shoaled away from the fallen Lady Bridget, who struggled like a beetle and sat up, bewildered, astonished and afraid. She touched her lip, saw the blood on it and moaned.

Bruce, his knuckles stinging from the backhand slap, looked at his queen, feeling sick at what he had done — had to do, he reminded himself. Yet another stain…

‘I have been tolerant, lady,’ he said to Elizabeth, ignoring the whey-face sprawl of Lady Bridget, ‘and you have mistaken this for weakness. Say your farewells to all of these, for they return to your father in Ireland after the coronation. You will have new tirewomen from among my Scots subjects — and, if you need the comfort of God, there is the dean of the royal chapel.’

He raked them all with his eyes.

‘What I put up with as an earl was one matter,’ he added. ‘Now I am a king and at war, so I cannot have all my doings sent back to Ireland and on to Plantagenet.’

Yet the frightened, bloody face of Bridget, braided hate though it had been, left him feeling that stain yet and the sight of the one called Dog Boy brought it back in a rush. He remembered the boy, all those years ago round a campfire. Nivver violet a wummin, he had intoned as one of the vows a knight should follow and, even allowing for the mis-speaking of it, the memory of the strength in the lad’s voice made Bruce ashamed.

‘ Hare, hare, hye,’ they were singing, furious, red-faced, beating tempo on the tables until the trenchers jumped. ‘ Goudalier ont fet ouan d’Arras Escoterie. Saint Andrie — hare hare, goudeman et hare druerie.’

Hark, hear it now, Jamie translated for the Dog Boy, who marvelled at how his friend and new-dubbed knight had learned French in the years he had been in that country with Bishop Lamberton. Those ale brewers are turning Arras into Scotland. By St Andrew hear it — good men and good times…

Across the table from them sat Kirkpatrick, solitary in the crowd and counting the heads. The bishops of St Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld, Moray and Brechin. The abbot of Scone and another from Inchcolm. Three earls — John of Atholl, Malcolm of Lennox, Alan of Menteith, spilling alkanet-coloured gravy down their fine wool tunics.

And that was it, apart from a slew of lesser lights, some of them dubious — Randolph for one, Kirkpatrick thought, would bear watching. Not a single Comyn, nor a Balliol — it was hardly a rich vote of confidence in the new king of Scots.

They were bringing in brawn with mustard and starting in to toast the ‘good men and good times’, while Jamie was telling Dog Boy of how some woman called Agnes they had known as boys in Douglas had run off with Fergus the cook and they now had a pie shop in Perth. And how a falconer called Gutterbluid was still there, serving the Clifford folk who ruled now and how, one day, Jamie would scorch all of them out of Douglas Castle.

He said it loudly and often, flushed as much at having been made a knight by a king as the wine and there was no lisp in the boy when he did it; Kirkpatrick wondered if Edward, the Covetous King, knew what hatred he had created in the north out of the generation of Jamie Douglases.

He wondered if Edward knew what had happened here in Scone — though he already knew what Longshanks would do about it and could feel the sullen, embered wrath of the English king through the dark and the miles.

This was the last feast — what followed would be a famine of good men and good times.

The Painted Chamber, Westminster, London

Pentecost, May, 1306

Seraphs, prophets and the fulminating Judas Maccabeus all glared painted disapproval down at the huddle round the table, whose black echoes were stretched and monstrous on the walls; a wind flickered the sconces and the shadows danced like mad imps in Hell.

I have never been warm in that bed, Edward thought moodily, as the hangings of the gilded, green-postered bed swung like banners. For all that, he looked at it longingly, perched invitingly on a dais at the far end of his private chambers; it had been a long, long day weighted with fur and cloth of gold, crown and jewels, touching stumbling youths on the shoulders, youths who knelt as tyros and rose as knights.

Three hundred, at least, Edward thought wearily and all of them equally exhausted from their night of chapel vigil, the Templar courtyard choked with their tents and the press so great on the day that he’d had to clear a passage in the abbey with armoured knights on horseback.

It had been worth it, though, for the ceremony, the timing — Whitsun, when Arthur himself had held his fabled plenary court at Caerleon — and the binding of so many young knights to this one day and to his son.

He glanced at the boy, seeing his whey face and violet-ringed eyes. He had stood up well to the ritual of spending all night alone in the palace chapel. At dawn, he had knighted the boy and then the pair of them crossed to the abbey and, together, dubbed all the others.

After that was the feast of it, complete with the masterstroke of gilded swans on which Edward himself had sworn vengeance on Bruce, promising that, once he had vanquished his enemy, he would proceed to the Holy Land.

It was pure Arthur and only a few doubted that the King would do it, for he was magnificently prinked and preened, coloured and oiled. Not to be outdone, the prince had risen, resplendent in the heraldry of Gascony, to which he had also been newly raised, and swore loudly not to rest two nights in the same place until the Scotch had been defeated.

There were those who knew it was an echo of Perceval’s declaration from the Round Table, when Arthur’s knights set out to find the Holy Grail — but that was part of it all. That and the minstrels and the food and the drink and the boasts.

One or two looked at the old king and wondered, all the same… De Lacy, for one. He had seen Edward on the day news had arrived of Bruce’s murderous treachery, seen the grey cast that seemed to turn the King’s face to stone, then the mad flush that darkened it.

‘God rot him,’ he had exploded. ‘I will chain him like a mad dog. Let him and all those with him be cursed and their accomplices in evil with them. He is now ranked with the fratricide Cain, and with Judas the traitor, and with Core, Dathan and Abiron, who entered Hell while still living for their revolt against Moses…’

There had been more, until the King fell to the floor and caused a mad scramble of alarm. He had lain in a dead faint for half a day and spent the next two weeks being carried about in a litter, so that de Lacy had thought he would never recover.

He had, almost miraculously, growling for retribution and sending off Aymer de Valence to the north to commence red war. De Lacy was relieved that de Valence been handed the task — at fifty-six the Earl of Lincoln did not want to be the one raising the dragon banner in the north, with no quarter asked or given. De Lacy was the last of the old warriors from Edward’s early days — Aymer’s father, William, was long dead, John de Warenne was dead these three years since, Roger Bigod was too ill… the list went on.

Six wars and eight years it had taken not to defeat the Scots — and here they were again, setting off with an army to burn and scourge the north.

What settled despair in Edward, like a chill winter mist, was not the expense and weariness of yet another campaign, but the realization that there seemed no end to it; he had thought the matter done, thought Bruce, at least, valued the firm hand. Yet the very day of that lord’s spurious crowning was a slap with a metalled gauntlet — Lady Day, ten years to the very day Edward himself had declared war on the Scotch.

This would be the last of it, Edward thought. I will burn and scourge them as they have never been. I will give them the breath of the dragon…

But he also knew it had to be the last of it. His contemporaries were all gone and the new breed would need to step up to the ring from now on; he sat at the round table — the echo of Arthur yet again — and stared at his son — the new breed.

He had done his best to bind him to the young firebrand nobiles, but he was not sure if the boy understood what had been done or why; even now, invited to speak to his father in his private chambers, he had contrived to bring Gaveston.

The King glanced sourly at the man his son favoured over all others, grudgingly admitting that the youth had borne the vigil well enough, looked fresh still. He had been the first one his son had knighted and was, the King knew, a fearsome tourney fighter, which did not endear him any better to those who distrusted his particular favour, disliked his arrogance and did not care to be dumped on their arse in the mud.

Edward took him in, up and down in a moody glance, remembering bitterly that he had brought this one into his son’s circle thinking he would be a good influence. Of all the mistakes I have made in my life, he thought, this was the worst. It might be possible still to be rid of the man. Replace him with someone my son also favours — like that youngster, Roger Mortimer.

Gaveston’s gilded cap of hair was bright, his tunics blue and brown — and a red silk one over all, decorated with embroidered birds in gold. His shoes, Edward noted with distaste, had been shaped particular to each foot and were, God help us all, pointed at the toe.

‘I summoned you, Caernarvon,’ he growled. ‘I do not recall anyone else on that list.’

Caernarvon. The very name was a slap to a son who wanted a father; not even a son’s name, but a title.

‘I understood the summons to be a discussion on matters pertaining to the Scotch disturbances,’ his son replied, while Gaveston wisely stayed silent. ‘My brother here is well versed in matters of battle.’

Edward met the cool, bland eyes of Gaveston, then flicked his gaze back to his son’s whey face. Jesu, he thought to himself, feeling the deep sinkhole of despair open in him, I have to leave the Kingdom to this one. God help it.

He rallied; if he was to leave it to frivolity and, Christ preserve it, pointed shoes then he would leave it in the best condition he could manage; no-one would stand over the tomb of Edward Plantagenet and mourn about the state of the realm handed over to his son.

‘Brother you may call him,’ he replied, flat and cold, ‘but I never sired it. Out.’

Gaveston hesitated for a heartbeat, enough to bring the blood flushing up to Edward’s neck. Then the youth bowed languidly from the waist, backed away two steps, turned and was gone. The King regarded his son with a look that would have turned milk.

‘A summons to this place,’ he growled wearily, ‘is a family matter. You should know this by now — Christ and all His Saints, boy, you have had it dinned into you for long enough.’

‘I thought only to please you,’ his son replied miserably. ‘It was my intent to ask permission to bestow Ponthieu on my brother, Sir Piers.’

The words sank into Edward like slow knives, so slowly in fact that his son did not realize the cut of them until he saw the King suddenly rise, the chair behind him tumbling with a clatter. Then the droop-eyed horror, face a dark bag of blood, made him recoil, remembering all the other times he had been victim of this wrath.

‘Ponthieu,’ Edward roared. ‘Ponthieu… you bastard son of a bitch. Ponthieu?’

He was suddenly there, towering over his son, who had shrunk on to a chair. Then, with utter terror, the prince felt his father’s hands batter him, like the wings of some maddened bird.

‘You would give home lands away to a turd in silk? You? Who never gained as much as a clod in your entire life?’

He gave up trying to beat with a strength he did not possess; the prince had lost his cap and his senses, could no more resist this terrible old man than he could fight the wind, so he sat, bowed and let the thunder roll on him.

Edward saw the prinked and rolled perfection of his son’s hair, saw the attempts at gilding it in a vain parody of Gaveston’s and, finally, found a way to hurt. He grabbed handfuls of it while the prince, stung by pain and fear at last, shrieked and tried to free himself. Raw knots came away; blood flew.

In another eyeblink, the prince felt the storm rush away, stared up at the panting, furious figure who looked at the bloody tufts in his fists and blinked owlishly.

‘I only wished ever to please you,’ the prince managed, a whimper that he heard in his own ears and felt shame at; Edward let the bloody horror feather from his fists and bent to pick his son up. Twenty and three, he thought, taking him close, close enough to feel the stickiness of blood on his own cheek. He patted him absently and murmured, as if in some distant dream where the boy was still only three, with all hope bright.

‘I know, boy. I know.’

Then, suddenly, the prince had the weight in his arms and could not hold it, let his father slip to the rushed floor of the chamber and called for help.

Near Cupar Castle, Fife

Feast of St Baithen, Blessed Successor to Columba, June, 1306

Kirkpatrick knew he was done, that God had finally abandoned him. He had, in truth, known in the minute he had clacked his way across the flags of Scone’s private chapel, summoned by the King and running the gauntlet of scowling envy from the accumulated court as he did so.

He had heard them in his head, whispering about the Auld Dug, the De’il’s ain imp. The young mesnie, with their curled hair and matching lips, he thought sourly and then with satisfaction of how the Bruce, new kinged, still needed him.

At least that was some balm on his mood, which was all wolfsbane; he knew why and did not like to admit it, either — that the quarrel with the Herdmanston lord had left him feeling estranged and somehow lessened, which was a feeling he did not care for.

The new court officials watched him huffily; there was now an etiquette for being presented to King Robert, involving so many steps, so many bows, waiting until summoned, leaving backwards… but none of it involved Kirkpatrick and the chamberlains and doorwards resented this.

Not that the King was enthroned for receiving — exactly the opposite. The new king of Scots lay on the tiles, arms outstretched and his scarred cheek pressed to the embossed pattern of the one in front of the chapel altar. The tiles were all different, each one a coat of arms of Les Neufs Preux, the Nine Worthies, and Kirkpatrick was not certain whether the King thought the pattern on that particular tile would have some holy benefit. Hector, he saw, the hero of Troy.

The King, a cruciform of repentance and thanksgiving, was naked save for the play of red and blue light streaming down from the stained windows to pool exactly where he lay. He stirred, looked sideways up at Kirkpatrick and smiled wanly.

‘I am breathing in the smell of holiness,’ he declared, half muffled by the press of his cheek. Holiness seemed a little like scented smoke to Kirkpatrick, though that might have been the remains of incense clinging to him from the Mass the King had recently attended with Abbot Thomas. Like wasps, priests droned somewhere in the distance.

Kirkpatrick watched Bruce raise himself and sit naked and crosslegged, his still-flat belly stained red and blue with light. He knew, more than anyone, what had sucked the juice from Bruce, all the same, after a flurry of activity that had seen the new king trail his weary mesnie north as far as Aberdeen to put the fear in those supporters of the Comyn.

Bruce had extorted money from east coast ports and flung merchants into prison as hostage for it, demanded military service from Perth and elsewhere, threatened the Earl of Strathearn with hanging if he did not swear to the new king. His supporters had captured Brechin, Cupar and Dundee.

Now, though, it was beginning to unravel. Percy and Clifford were methodically scouring the southwest. Dumfries had fallen to them, as well as Ayr — and Tibbers, where the luckless John Seton had been dangled by the neck like bad fruit.

None of that was what had driven the King to the altar of a private chapel. A simple roll of vellum had done that, brought by two Templars, one of them the same Rossal de Bissot who had snatched Kirkpatrick from the long drop to the floor of St Olave’s, who had gifted the Rood for the coronation.

Kirkpatrick did not know exactly what it said, but the rumour of it was flowing out, coupled to the feverish, gleeful cries of the Comyn supporters — the new king, usurper and murderer, was about to have the Holy Church’s saving grace withdrawn from him and the Pope’s writ of excommunication was due any day.

‘Everyone else enters life unsullied,’ Bruce murmured, half to himself while Kirkpatrick tried to ignore the raising hairs on his arms. ‘I entered already cursed by a saint and now I am burdened with such a panoply of sin. The Devil stalks me, Kirkpatrick.’

There was not enough cynic in Kirkpatrick to ignore such a statement and he peered right and left, as if to see it lurking, even in such holy shadows. Last year, near the Tweed, a priest had come upon an imp which had a lamb held in sharp-toothed jaws and had beaten it with his holy staff until it had finally dropped the beast and run off.

The local abbot had confirmed all this and Kirkpatrick had no reason to doubt it, so that a king — and all those who supported him — left without holy aid in a world of Satan was a doom better not contemplated. It was hard to ignore it, all the same, with Bruce’s peeling nose and raddled cheeks cause for fascinating concern that the Devil had already paid him a visit and smacked leprosy into him.

Suddenly, Bruce unreeled a list of instructions, hurried and hoarse, as if he wanted the taste of it out of his mouth; Kirkpatrick struggled to take it all in — the Cathar physicker had disappeared and Bruce feared the worst in it. Find the Cathar physicker and make sure he could never speak of the medical secrets he had been privy to. On the way, ride with two Templars, one of them Rossal de Bissot, the knight who had rescued him in St Olave’s, and make sure the pair reach Berwick safely.

Kirkpatrick nodded, as if he had fully understood, which was a lie since he did not see the need to hunt down and kill the little physician — unless, as he thought later, the wee heretic knew more than Kirkpatrick himself regarding Bruce’s condition.

The idea of that soured him, but he growled out a repeat of his instructions and said that it would be done, though he marvelled quietly at how God tests you even as you are planning your life and thinking it your own.

Once before he had dealt with Cathars and the stink of the burnings had so choked him that he had vowed then to have nothing more to do with such an unholy Holy War. Now his vows would have to be broken. Deus lo vult. He did not realize he had spoken aloud until the King replied.

‘ Ave Maria gratia plena,’ Bruce said beatifically, smiling at the dubious Kirkpatrick, whose loose-jawed gape was only a mild irritant on the peace he now felt.

‘Do not worry,’ he added as a soothe to Kirkpatrick’s face. ‘God has a Plan.’

Kirkpatrick, mindful of the new protocols even with a naked king, had bowed and backed out, his heart thundering, his body in flames and his mind like a fish in a cauldron about to come to the boil. He only hoped God’s Plan included reminding the new king to put on some clothes before he stepped from his private chapel.

He could not shake the sight from him all the way down to Cupar with the two disguised Templars — the King with his skelpt-arse face and his naked body of parti-coloured light and, above all, that gentle, sure smile as if it was the most natural thing to be holding court with his pintle hanging like a dog and his soul hovering on the brink of eternal damnation.

The Templars did not help Kirkpatrick’s cat-ruffle; for all their attempts at discreet, they rode like knights dressed like poor merchants, while they prayed and crossed themselves so often that a blind man could see they belonged to the Order. It was, Kirkpatrick thought moodily, head sunk into his shoulders against the summer mirr and the flies, more than likely that the Bruce Curse of Malachy had finally been translated, like the red pox, to himself.

Which is why it came as no surprise when they ended up in the middle of the Welsh archers. Round a bend, down a straight portion of ruts, round another, with the peewits’ call descending like a mourn at the end of the day and all their thoughts misted as breath on glass.

None of the three had anything in his head but a desire for hot food and a decent bed — and did not realize they were taken until the men were round them, grinning and jabbering.

Then the Templar called Jehan had whipped out his sword from under his cloak and launched himself with a hoarse cry of ‘ Deus lo vult ’ which did not help. Kirkpatrick grabbed de Bissot’s bridle, dragged his horse away as the knight fought his own weapon out.

‘Leave him — he is giving you a chance,’ he roared and Rossal de Bissot saw it, even as Jehan cut down two archers, the palfrey circling and baiting. It was no warhorse, all the same and Kirkpatrick saw the Welsh, cursing and scattering, were recovering themselves and dragging big arrows on to their warbows.

Rossal wrenched the head of his horse round just as Kirkpatrick’s attention was locked on the desperately fighting Jehan and his hand on Bissot’s bridle — the jerk wrenched it from his fist and himself from the back of his own horse, the whirling tumble of it a momentary confusion, the thump that bellowed the air from him a harsh pain.

None of it drove out the leaden sound of hooves drumming off into the distance — and the harsh irony of how he had saved de Bissot at the cost of himself.

There was the sudden scuffle of feet, a spray of muddy grit into his face, a sauce for it of Welsh curses, harsh as a spitting fire. Then he was hauled up into the square block of face belonging to an archer wearing a studded jack and a dark scowl; behind him, he saw Jehan’s horse struggle to its feet, limping. The knight lay face down in the mud.

The dark scowl, clearly the leader, did not have much time for anything other than to make sure Kirkpatrick was disarmed before de Valence appeared, bareheaded but armoured and accoutred — Kirkpatrick knew him at once, the blue and white striped magnificence trailing a mesnie of serjeants behind him.

Then a figure shoved from behind the proud hawk of de Valence and Kirkpatrick felt the spear twist inside him at the sight of that battered, stained face.

‘Kirkpatrick,’ Malise Bellejambe said, his voice juiced with the relish of it. He sat back in his saddle while de Valence and the Welsh scowl exchanged information and, for a moment, there were only two men, Malise and Kirkpatrick, alone in the whole of splendid creation and horn-locked at the eyes.

‘God is good,’ Malise said and twisted his bruise of a face into a long, brown smear of smile, then turned as de Valence dismounted.

‘Make sure he has no daggers hidden about him, Your Grace,’ Malise informed de Valence viciously, fawningly climbing off his own horse so he would not be looking down on his betters.

De Valence did not like Bellejambe, the spy of the Earl of Buchan — but the Comyn earl was now England’s friend and so had to be appeased and his creatures treated with some courtesy.

De Valence had drawn the line at Malenfaunt, all the same, a knight who had foresworn himself before God in a tourney a l’outrance with Bruce himself. Well beaten, he had been thrown out of all respectable company, tongue-split in a just and fitting punishment. De Valence, who thought Malenfaunt should have been properly killed in the duel, did the foresworn knight the courtesy of treating him as if he were actually dead; he would not permit Malenfaunt anywhere near him.

The twist in that was that he had to accept this Bellejambe instead, though he did his best to ignore the man where possible. Like now, as he turned his back on Malise and looked at the muddied, dark apparition held firmly by two of his armoured serjeants. Swarthy, a secretive, sly-looking scum, he thought to himself. Just the sort to be up to no good.

‘You were with these Templars?’ De Valence demanded and Kirkpatrick saw Jehan being hauled upright and away, his toes furrowing the mud; senseless, but alive, he thought to himself. There’s a blessing at least.

‘Peaceful travellers,’ he began in French, which was designed to show his breeding but was brought up short when Malise snorted with derision, leaning forward with all the vengeance of the past welling like pus from his twisted soul.

‘Liar,’ he said and de Valence turned, his handsome face puckered in a frown of censure, for it was clear Kirkpatrick was something well-bred, if not a knight, and demanded some deference of rank. Malise wrenched all that from Kirkpatrick with his sneering hiss.

‘This is the red murderer of the Lord of Badenoch.’

Near Cupar Castle, Fife

Next day — the English Feast of St Margaret of Scotland, June, 1306

The monk’s face was inflamed, even over the wind-chilled redness that had chapped his cheeks and his dark olive eyes were brilliant with outrage. De Valence sighed and shifted in the saddle; his buttocks ached and the damp that was not quite rain, not quite mist seeped straight through the layers of leather and linen, maille and padding to gnaw his very bones.

He wanted a fire and hot food and something warm and spiced. He did not want an outraged Italian abbot.

‘In God’s holy name,’ this annoyance persisted stubbornly. ‘You must put a stop to this. It is against Heaven.’

Aymer de Valence agreed. He was also aware that this figure, trembling more with outrage and cold in his white wool swaddling, was Abbot Alberto of Milan, sent from York to ensure that the holy presences of Bishops Lamberton and Wishart were not harmed by their rebellion.

Before that, the shivering, sallow little priest had been sent from Rome to investigate the increasingly disturbing reports of outrage among the Templar knights in England — and the wilds of war-ravaged Scotland. He was finding more than he had expected, de Valence noted grimly, on that matter.

What outraged the good abbot was a murmur among the rain-darkened trees, trunks and twisted branches so black it seemed they had absorbed their own shadows. It was, in truth, a stark, eldritch horror which, under other circumstances, de Valence would have ridden down, shouting for God’s help and swinging a cleansing blade.

Not now, all the same. Now the dragon had been raised and the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ were caught in the vice of it — Aymer thought that was rather good. The vice of it; he had little sympathy nowadays with the Templars, whose arrogance and faked poverty had been annoying and whose blasphemies, if reports were to be believed, were vile — did his own men not say, grinning and nudging each other, that they were ‘going to the Temple’ each time they visited a brothel?

Still, what was being done was not exactly chivalrous, but that was the nature of matters when the dragon was raised by an angry king — it would breathe its fire on all, even an Order Knight who had contrived to entangle himself in a war he should have avoided.

Breathing fire was what the dragon was doing, if the Welsh could ever stir it to life. De Valence needed those dark, vengeful half-pagan little Welsh dwarves happy and, most of all, not focusing any resentment on himself. If that meant turning them loose to do what they pleased on a hated enemy, so be it.

Yet the abbot wore a ring on one finger which had the biscione engraved on it, a marvellous depiction of a coiled serpent seemingly eating a man but, in actual fact, giving birth to him — de Valence was sorely tempted to point out the heathen origins of that symbol.

He did not, for the symbol was the coat-of-arms of the Viscontis of Milan, one of the most powerful families in Lombardy and the conduit to papal sanction. Alberto may have been the least scion of it, but he was still a member and he had a slew of Inquisition priests at his back, the sinister black Hounds of God, the Dominicans.

‘My dear Abbot Alberto,’ he said through a smile like a sewer grating, ‘you must see that I cannot put a stop to it. This Templar has put himself beyond the pale and contrived to slay some of the Welsh in his attempts to evade capture. I have influence, no more — and it seems that my influence does not stretch to interfering with their… singular observances.’

‘Singular,’ shrilled the abbot, lifting the word out of himself so that de Valence fancied he saw the monk step out of his own shoes. ‘Observances.’

The little Italian opened and closed his mouth, the words so crowding his mouth, like gulls falling on abandoned fish, that he could not get a single one out. Taking advantage, Aymer waved one metal-gloved hand.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘These are Welsh, from the distant mountains of my lord’s kingdom and only recently gathered unto God’s blessing, for all that priests like yourself have waved censors and crosses and prayers over their peaks and forests for centuries. It is hardly surprising that they have… odd practices.’

‘Odd!’

It was a shriek now, so loud that it brought the heads of the Welsh round and de Valence closed his eyes and hoped they would not be offended. He felt the wolf stare of the one called Addaf fall on him and offered a prayer; if that one started in to be outraged, there would be a blood-bath and, though he had no doubt he and his handful of knights would kill them, it would certainly mean an end to the service of all his Welsh. The smoke of the badly-burning fire cloaked over them like a vile benediction.

Mark you, Aymer said to himself, ‘odd’ was perhaps the wrong choice of words for what was happening in the clearing a little way away.

In it was a piled heap of damp faggots that the Welsh were trying to fan into life. In the centre of it, staked fore and aft, was a mercifully dead horse — a fine destrier, Aymer noted wistfully, that had deserved a better fate than to be throat-slit and then staked upright, as if still alive. And one, he added viciously to himself, that a supposed Poor Knight should never have been riding.

The Poor Knight was riding it still, lashed to the dead animal in his armour, bucket helmet on, broken arms fitted with shield and a lance bound to his shattered fingers. Fully armed and mailled, the Templar sat the horse, his mouth gagged under the helmet, still alive and waiting to burn.

If the Welsh could ever get the fire lit.

A stocky, cadaverous man wearing a studded jack and a green hood shouted instructions and the Welsh obeyed Addaf, fetching more wood, more lit torches, fanning the flames while the pyre sputtered and smoked; the edifice rocked a little as the desperate knight struggled.

The Welshman and the abbot from Rome had bristled and scowled at each other when they had met, one making warding signs as well as the cross with string-calloused fingers, the other crossing himself and offering a clasp-handed prayer. Like barely leashed mastiffs, de Valence thought wearily; my money is still on Addaf, the Welsh archer they called Mydr ap Mydvydd — Aim the Aimer.

‘Madness,’ Abbot Alberto spat. ‘This is madness. The Pope shall hear of it.’

‘The Pope shall hear of the mischief of the Order,’ de Valence retorted, irritated now. ‘Besides — if you find the evidence you seek, what will become of those Templars Holy Mother Church finds guilty?’

There was silence, no-one wanting to admit, of course, that they would burn, no differently from what the Welsh were doing now.

‘You may have the other one when we capture him,’ de Valence added in a conciliatory fashion. ‘One Rossal de Bissot by name. Once the King’s justice has finished with him.’

‘They should not be party to secular justice,’ the abbot persisted. ‘They are of the Church and only the Pope may punish them. He will hear of this.’

‘You have mentioned that once already,’ de Valence spat back, then leaned forward a little in the saddle. ‘Be assured, dear Abbot, that the Pope may be deafened to complaints by all the accusations against the Order. That and the sound of victory over his excommunicated enemies, which forgives all sins.’

‘The end does not always justify the means,’ intoned the abbot, drawing himself up. Behind him, a coterie of monks and clerics nodded and clasped pious hands.

Go home, Aymer wanted to say. Go home and help Galeazzo and all the other Viscontis dominate Milan and the Pope. Leave the serious business of the day to fighting men, who can see the madness in this and in everything to do with war yet persist in it, like a peasant ploughing a stony field.

The madness was necessary, too. Lamberton had given in at Scotland as well — but not before he had sent off all the men he could to Bruce — while the siege of Cupar had secured that arch-priest of dissent, Lucifer’s Own secretary Bishop Wishart.

Resplendent in maille and helm, the recalcitrant old dog had dared plead the safety of his Holy Vestements, in an irony that would not be missed by anyone there, especially those who knew that the siege engines he had used to capture Cupar in the first place had been made by timbers sent by King Edward himself for the repair of Glasgow’s cathedral.

There was no time for the qualms of an abbot, whether he be a Visconti, papal spy or Christ’s Own Right Hand, for it was doubtful if King Edward would allow that to interfere with his own form of burning vengeance. Let the little Visconti pick the irony out of that, Aymer thought savagely.

A sudden high yell slashed through the stream of his thoughts, followed by cheers; the coterie of clerics crossed themselves and muttered prayers as de Valence stared into the furious eyes of the abbot, as burning as the sudden leap of flame from the pyre.

‘Justified or not,’ he said with a twisted smile. ‘We have, it seems, reached the end.’

He closed the visor of his new-style bascinet and hauled the surprised horse round, then set off at a frantic pace, almost blind and only eager to move, to course blood into him and all thoughts out.

Up on a hill, belly flat and peering through wet fronds, Hal, Sim and Jamie Douglas looked at the smoke-stained wood and the figures round it. De Valence was easily seen, in his blue and white striped mantle decorated with a ring of red birds — barry of twelve argent and azure, an orle of ten martlets gules Hal translated to himself.

The others were less easy to work out — a lot of arguing prelates, a host of ill-dressed Welsh rabble trying to light a huge fire and a wary knot of serjeants, who galloped off after de Valence. Hal had no idea what was going on.

‘I could have shot yon aff his fancy stot,’ Sim muttered, moody at having been told to hold his fire by Hal, who gave him a sour sidelong glance.

‘Which would have had us all looking like hedgepigs,’ he grunted. ‘Yon are Welsh bowmen — they have stacked their bagged weapons in shelter while they hunt dry wood for their fire.’

Sim’s eyebrows went up and he looked, then nodded admiringly.

‘Full price to ye — I missed that. Bigod, it is lucky for us they are so frowning over makin’ a heat for themselves. Not that it is chill, as anyone can tell…’

‘We should take a look,’ Jamie Douglas declared eagerly. ‘There are only a brace o’ them left — see there.’

He was right — the Welsh were straggling off after de Valence and their leader, the tall one in the jack fitted with little metal-leaf plates, had barked at two of them to stay behind. Hal could not understand why and said so.

‘Guarding their meal,’ Sim said with firm conviction based on nothing at all. Jamie and Hal looked at each other and did not have to put voice to it — it was a gey muckle fire for a meal, even for as many Welsh as that.

‘An entire coo at least,’ Sim agreed cheerfully and licked meaningful lips. It was a point fairly made — Hal and his men, with Jamie Douglas in tow ‘for the learnin g in it’, had been sent by Bruce to scout Cupar, last known position of the English. It had been a long, hard, meandering ride in the warm damp of summer, plagued by a host of flies and a lack of decent food.

Yet, for all the promise of beef, Hal was uneasy and sour at the coiled strike that was Jamie Douglas, envying his youth and how all was adventure to him, while annoyed that he was prepared to put everything at risk for it.

He and Dog Boy were a pair, he noted, padding round as if leashed to each other — even now, Dog Boy held the garrons no more than a hidden score of yards away. As Sim had remarked, the pair of them were like the brace of deerhounds Hal had once owned, with Jamie the fawning one with a streak of vicious savagery you did not want to unleash and Dog Boy as the solid, relentless, reliable partner at the hinter end.

Hal did not like remembering those dogs, the pride of their handler, Tod’s Wattie. Malise Bellejambe had poisoned the dogs and, not long after, red murdered Wattie in the back with a knife. What was worse, nothing had been done about that in the half score of years since.

‘Well?’

The challenge was in French and Hal turned into the cocked head and grin of Jamie Douglas. He wants to be a leader this one, Hal noted.

‘We can capture at least one,’ Jamie went on. ‘Valuable information for the King.’

‘Ach weel,’ interrupted Sim in a quiet whisper as he peered through the fronds, ‘where is that wee mannie headed now?’

They looked; one of the Welsh had started off into the trees, away from the other.

‘Bigod,’ said Sim, with a beam of realization, ‘he is away to do his business. Now’s oor chance…’

They were out and away before Hal could decide, Sim half-crouched like a lumbering bear, Jamie moving like a gazehound. They came circling round, to where they could just see the figure, unlacing his braies and studying the ground for stinging nettles.

‘Now,’ Jamie hissed and felt the clamp of Sim’s hand, turning into the quiet shake of the shaggy grey head.

‘Wait.’

The Welshman squatted, grunted, let loose a long, sonorous fart.

‘Now, while he is engaged,’ Jamie hissed, excitement making him break into French, forgetting Sim did not understand it — but Sim understood enough.

‘Wait.’

The man strained and fretted, then let loose a long sigh. He sought out a handful of leaves, reaching round to wipe himself; Jamie was in agonies of trying to contain himself, but Sim was a rock, grim and silent and implacable.

‘He will be gone in another wipe,’ Jamie whispered bitterly, but Sim merely smiled. The man stood, hauling up his braies to his knees — and turned.

Jamie saw it at last. The thing every man would do — he had done it himself — was to look at what he had created, a slow, almost proud examination. Now, with his back to them and braies half-way to his knees was the time, as Sim said with a hard nudge in Jamie’s ribs.

The youth was out and across the distance between them in the time it took the man to nod, as if happy with the steaming pile — then something smacked him hard in the back, an arm snaked round his neck and cut off his breathing and shouts.

They fell, as Sim knew they would, Jamie on top and driving the breath from the Welsh archer so that, when Sim lumbered up, the man was already weak and flopping; a swift dunt with the hilt of his dagger settled the matter and now Jamie became aware of the learning in this.

‘Christ’s Bones, Sim,’ he spat, looking at the smears, evil-smelling and fetid, on his clothes and hands, where they had rolled in the fresh pile. Sim Craw, who had known exactly what would happen, only smiled.

‘It is in yer hair a wee bittie,’ he pointed out helpfully. ‘Since ye are already besmeared, ye may as well take the shittiest end for cartin’ him back. Speedy now and we’ll be away, sleekit and brawlie.’

It was then that they became aware of a new smell cutting through the stench of shit, a rich, sweet smell of cooking meat that Sim knew well. From where he crouched he could see the pyre, shifting and shedding sparks as it collapsed and, revealing clear in it, the horror of a blackened horse and the man on it; even allowing for the soot and scorch, the shield fastened to one arm still bore the crude slash, a mocking red cross of the Templars smeared in blood.

‘Christ be praised,’ he whispered and Jamie, looking up in time to see it, crossed himself.

‘For ever and ever.’

They scampered from the place, half-dragging the man while his comrade sat on, oblivious, in the reek from the burning knight.

When they had reached their own camp, dumped the Welshman and told their tale, there were dark looks flung at the archer; as Gib’s Peggie said, even if it was a Templar steeped in sin it was not the Welsh who should be burning him but the Holy Mother Church and after guilt had been established.

Few, Hal noted, had ever liked the Templars, the supposed Poor Knights who arrogantly flaunted their wealth and power. No-one now questioned that these same knights were steeped in sin and he wondered how long it would be before the Inquisition writ stretched to nobiles who bore any semblance of the Templar cross, or had connection to them. The shivering blue cross of his own shield glowed like an accusation when he glanced at it.

The Auld Templar of Roslin, he added to himself, was well out of it these days but he had foreseen the ruin the Order had brought on itself the day they charged down Wallace at Falkirk, led by a brace of venal Masters who thought more of Longshanks’ favour than their vows.

Most disturbing of all, of course, was the fact that it threw a harsh light on all men of God — for if the Templars, who were priests when all said and done, could be so condemned, what of the wee friar? The bishop, the cardinal and — God forgive the thought — the Pope?

More pressing problems drove such thoughts away with the flies. The English, it had been noted, were on the move, north and east towards Perth. Hal wanted away from here, to where the Scots army was assembling; the archer would be missed soon enough and Hal did not want to be near when the searching commenced — but there was time for a swallow of small beer and a bite of bread.

Good bread, but not as good as the stuff in France, as Jamie loftily pointed out.

‘They make it with cheese in. Shaped in a ring and mair pastry than dough. Gougere, they call it an’ it is a recipe from angels themselves, you would swear.’

The others nudged each other and Sore Davey cleared his throat.

‘Is that the way of it right enough, Sir Jamie?’ he asked, bland and innocent as a nun at prayer. ‘Bigod, you are the one for style in France. Is it there you learned to comb shite in yer hair?’

The laughter was long and loud, so that Jamie, dark and bristling, looked on the point of exploding — until he saw Dog Boy’s grin and subsided with a rueful one of his own.

‘Lesson learned,’ he said to Sim, who nodded and handed him a leather flask of water, then helped him clean his curling hair, though a deal of lovelock had to be roughly hacked off with a knife, with much expression of disgust, which added to the chuckles.

Hal watched the Welshman, bound and afraid and miserably smeared with his own shite, which no-one offered to clean. Not that it would have mattered — after an hour, everyone mounted and moved off, the prisoner half-trotting, half-dragged behind Wynking Wull; each time Hal looked guiltily at the Welshman’s bruised face and bloody flayed elbows and knees, the smell of the burning knight came back to him, driving all mercy out.

They followed the English army for an hour or more, tracking them by cart ruts and the ordure, horse and human, which slimed their trail. There were sick and runaways, too, most of whom fled at the approach of a band of riders; those who were too weak or stupid were ridden down and killed by men with the stink of burned flesh still cloyed in their nostrils.

It was a fair-sized force of several long hundreds, Hal thought — but no King Edward in it. Satan has sent his lesser imp, de Valence to pitchfork us back to order.

Another hour convinced Hal the English were headed for Perth and he decided to break off following them, cut away with their prisoner to Scone, where he hoped the Scots were still assembling. He was growing wary with the approach of night, sure that the English would have heard of their dogged presence and be taking steps against it with their own light horse, the prickers and hobilars Hal did not want to meet.

They came up over a small rise, with the last of the day breathing itself out into a muggy dusk of insect whine and zip and halted, the garrons fretting, flicking tails and tossing their heads against the vicious bites.

Dirleton Will, scouting ahead, suddenly appeared, flogging his garron in a dead run into the pack of them, pointing behind him.

‘Horse… three prickers chasing a lone man,’ he panted. ‘They will be on us in an eyeblink.’

There was a flurry of panic and scowls, brandished weapons and a few shouts but they had barely sorted themselves when the lone rider bounded up over the brackened lip of the rise, checked a little at the sight of them, then plunged down like a grateful bird to a nest.

The three hobilars who rode after him, closing in like harrying wolves, suddenly found they had charged into a pack of hunting dogs. Jamie Douglas, Dirleton Will and Mouse led the rush on them and there was a moment of squealing, flailing and blood which Hal tried to ignore as he faced the lone rider.

Browns and muted greens made the man a shadow in the shadows, the worn patch of him at odds with the way he carried himself and the voice he used to greet them; the way he moved was as slow and careful as a strange dog.

‘God be praised,’ he said.

‘For ever and ever.’

The tension slackened a little because men had weapons ready and Sim’s big latchbow, spanned and quarrelled, was level, though it weaved and wavered with the irritated movement of his horse.

‘Unsmart that monster,’ the stranger said with a foreign lilt to his voice that Hal knew was French, ‘for if it goes off now, the dance of it is as likely to hit yourself as me.’

Sim scowled, though he lowered it and the stranger brought his arms carefully in, resting both hands lightly on the front of his saddle. Jamie Douglas plunged up on his excited, bouncing garron, grinning and waving a bloody sword.

‘All dead,’ he declared in French. ‘English hobilars… is this who they were chasing?’

Hal was suddenly irritated by the young lord of Douglas, but he managed a smile.

‘My lord James of Douglas,’ he said to the saturnine rider, trying to be elegant in French himself. ‘I am…’

‘Sir Hal, the lord of Herdmanston and friend of the King,’ the man declared with a twist of smile.

‘I know you. My name is Rossal de Bissot,’ he added and Hal’s eyebrows went up at that, for he knew the name well, suddenly saw the face more clearly.

‘You brought the Rood,’ he answered, breaking into English, seeing now the carriage of the man, a Templar travelling in secret; the one broiled alive on his horse leaped to his mind and his throat so that, before he could stop, the mention of it burst past his lips.

De Bissot nodded, his eyes hard in a blank face and his accented English was terse and clipped.

‘You saw the abomination?’

‘I smelled it,’ he answered and Sim Craw growled that he had seen it. Hal’s eyes told de Bissot all that was needed and he sighed.

‘It is a heathen thing from Outremer,’ he said, flat as a blade. ‘Crusaders brought tales of it back and the Welsh took to it when their lands were invaded. A Cantref Roast they call it there and they did it against every English knight they could ambush during the wars. Left them like markers to put the fear in, like a gaff on a fish.’

‘Aye, weel,’ grunted Sim, squinting to understand the man’s way of speaking, ‘they had reason, no doubt.’

De Bissot turned glassed eyes on him and nodded.

‘In the name of God,’ he said, ‘I have ridden down fleeing women, burst the heads of children, thrown old men on the pyres of their own homes, committed more bloody ruin on the unarmed and innocent than any priest can stand to hear in confession.’

‘In the name of God and against the heathen,’ Hal attempted, but the fish stare swung blankly on to him.

‘I did it against the Welsh, who were not considered Christian enough for mercy. This is one reason the Order is cursed by God.’

Folk shifted uneasily at this confession; it was one thing to hear the gleeful, whispered rumours, another to have one of God’s own soiled angels admit his heresy.

‘No man, cursed or other, deserves to be cooked like a haunch.’

The Dog Boy’s voice was firm and sure, cutting through them all to place a ghost of smile on the shadowed face of de Bissot.

‘The one they did it to here was called Jehan de Chaumont, a brave knight of the Order, who sacrificed himself so I might escape.’

‘Escape?’

Rossal de Bissot nodded, broke back into swift French.

‘My task is to try and preserve as much of the Order as I can from the ruin it has brought on itself. The Comyn are working against me and are now friends of the English — so their enemies are my friends. The Comyn would prefer me removed from the world, so your king sought to see myself and young Jehan — may God wrap him in His Arms — safe to France, but a certain Malise Bellejambe had different ideas. He is the …’

‘I know who he is,’ Hal interrupted, feeling the sinking stone drag down to his bowels. ‘Malise Bellejambe fell out of Satan’s arse at birth and has been trying to find his way back ever since. He snared the wrong man — not the first time he has made such a mistake, but ruin for your friend, de Chaumont. Do you need help on your journey?’

‘I do not,’ de Bissot replied levelly, rising heavily to his feet. ‘I thought you might care to know — the man your king sent with us was taken and is now a prisoner. Bellejambe and some Comyn riders are taking the man to Berwick. If you wish to save him, you must move swiftly.’

Hal knew the name as if God had whispered it in his ear, but he asked anyway.

‘Kirkpatrick,’ de Bissot answered and the shadows of his face writhed in a wry smile. ‘I saved his life once before, in London. I cannot, this time, afford to try alone.’

The name, even allowing for the French knight’s way with it, brought all the heads up and a silence which stretched to wrap the sound of the Templar’s mount chewing the bit and shaking its head against the flies.

Hal finally turned into the grim, inquiring faces and laid the matter out like a length of poor cloth. It was received in silence for a moment, then men shifted and spoke.

‘Kirkpatrick? Are you wit-struck?’

Sim’s face was dark and truculent, a scowl which rasped Hal for no reason he could pin.

‘Aye,’ he answered. ‘The De’il o’ red murder hissel’ — in need o’ our aid.’

‘Have you taken leave of your sense?’ Mouse demanded and there were murmurs of agreement. Then Mouse saw Hal’s face and added, hastily: ‘Lord.’

‘A hard task, right enough,’ Clem Graham added sombrely. ‘Your man is in fetters for sure and surrounded by Comyn, thick as fleas on an auld dug.’

‘You are after wanting us to pluck him out, lord,’ Dirleton Will summarized, inspecting hard cheese for the worst of the mould. ‘From the teeth of the row we have already caused snatching away a Welsh archer, with folk out on the search for us.’

He popped a piece of de-moulded cheese in the middle of his beard where his mouth should be and chewed once or twice.

‘And this Kirkpatrick is the same wee mannie who promised ye a bad turn, first chance he could take,’ he added pointedly, so that those around him growled agreement as to the man having put himself beyond all aid by his own foul actions.

‘Working for Templars,’ added Fingerless Tam, nodding his point to those who looked his way. ‘Who worship Baphomet.’

Rossal de Bissot heard that and shifted slightly in his saddle.

‘They say,’ he murmured, ‘that God and all His angels have turned their backs on the Order of Poor Knights. Yet some of us hold to the vows.’

There was silence while folk turned that round in their heads, then Chirnside Rowan waved midges away from his face and snorted derision.

‘Away wi’ ye Tam Scott,’ he jeered. ‘Ye would not ken a Baphomet if it came up and beshat ye.’

There was laughter and Nebless Sandie, with a sly look at Jamie, took his chance.

‘Ask Sir Jamie,’ he declared, ‘for it seems some Baphomet loited on his lovelocks only recent.’

‘If he did,’ Jamie Douglas answered, whip-smart, ‘then Baphomet is a Welshman. If you have the belly for it, lads, there are a wheen of wee Baphomets over by, waiting for you to take a closer look.’

There were mutters at this dig on their courage, but Hal knew his men well; courage they had in plenty, but there was a deal of practical in it.

‘It is fey, this plan,’ Bull rumbled and, since he seldom said anything at all, the astonishment provided silence for him. He looked surprised himself and grew uneasy under the stares until he stared at his stirrups and grew red in the face. But Sim had spotted the grim jut of Hal’s beard.

‘You are set on this, then?’ he demanded.

‘I am a dubbed knight,’ Hal said, feeling the closing jaws of it even as he spoke. ‘I might only be a wee one from the Lothians, but the obligation is on me for it. Besides — Malise Bellejambe is overdue his reward.’

Those who remembered the murder of Tod’s Wattie nodded and the others had heard enough of it to want to be part of a vengeance.

‘Well said,’ Jamie declared cheerfully. ‘Count me with this mesnie, for I am a knight with no less honour than any here.’

‘No knight me,’ Sim Craw rumbled, ‘but my honour is as fine.’

Dirleton Will stirred at that and shook his head.

‘Away, Sim — ye are ower auld for chargin’ into folk as if in a tourney fight. Better ye leave that to nobiles and folk who dinna need to roll out o’ their beds in the middle of the night to take a pish.’

‘Ye slaverin’ wee lume. I will show ye auld — ye will reflect on it when I take ye by the clap of the hass and rip the harigails from ye…’

‘Easy,’ Hal said warningly and Sim subsided while Dirleton Will, unfazed by a threat to grab him by the throat and tear out his entrails, held up placatory palms to the scowling Sim and ruined it with a wicked sickle of smile.

Hal listened to the dry laughter, hoarse as a wind through stubble and knew it for the whistle in the dark that it was. Even this fearful, the Herdmanston men would still ride to war and Hal was sure much of it had to do with what the Welsh had done to the Templar knight in the pyre; he now had a name and that added to the horror for those who had seen and smelled him.

‘If you will give me a brace of good men,’ de Bissot declared, ‘I will strike at their rear while you strike at their head. If, in the middle of this, someone can pluck Kirkpatrick free, we will have done God’s work this day. Speed and surprise.’

‘Och aye,’ Jamie Douglas declared, his grin wild, the Dog Boy a feral mirror on his right. ‘God’s work. We are the braw lads for that, mark me.’