The Lion at Bay

CHAPTER SIX

Holebourn Bridge, London

The Invention of John the Baptist’s Head, February, 1305

The rain came across the Fleet like a curtain, a thin, stinking mist of tar, salt, pickle and fish. It collided with the rich odour of meat and dung, pie shop and bakery, hissing on the smithy fire, rattling the flapping canopies of the stalls along the river.

Folk fled it, grey shapes scampering, looming out of it with faces soft as clay, baggy-cheeked and scowling, the women barrel-bottomed and harsh-voiced. Hal didn’t understand them, didn’t like the place, not even the comfort of the Earl of Lincoln’s Inn which they had just left, and thought the best of London lay back with the unseen St Andrew’s church where they had paused for word of Lamprecht.

Kirkpatrick, squinting from under a loop of cloak, grinned at Hal’s expression; the wee lord had never been in London before — Christ’s Blood, he had never been south of York — and the sights and sounds and stink of it were as stunning to his sense as a forge hammer on the temple.

Even to Kirkpatrick, who had been here twice before, it was hard to take. Tinkers, furriers, goldsmiths, hemp-sellers, all with the crudely-daubed bar over their stall to show what they were, bellowed against the calls of butcher and, above all, the horse copers, for this was the southern edge of Smoothfield, main market for livestock and the sale of prime horseflesh.

The frenetic throng was thinning as folk huddled in shelters from the rain, leaving the muddy, shit-clogged roadway to carts, barrows, litters. And the doggedly foolish like us, Hal thought bitterly as the rain wormed down his back.

‘Sty Lane,’ Kirkpatrick declared, pointing the fetid entrance to an alleyway. Hal wanted to know how he knew that, but did not bother to ask; Kirkpatrick’s skill at finding places and people had long since earned respect from Hal. Still, he did not like the look of the place, where the houses leaned in and blocked the sky, making it a dark and dangerous cave.

Two men came out of it, carrying the split carcass of a large pig, leaking rain-watered blood on to the sacking of their shoulders — which at least proves Kirkpatrick is right, Hal thought. Right, too, about Lamprecht making for here like a dog back to its own sick, though that had made no sense at first, even as they trailed him down to St Andrew’s and then the Purpure Lyon.

‘The little by-blow will offer this Mabs back the half-cross he has,’ Kirkpatrick had growled in answer. ‘In return, he will want passage to France, or Flanders or even Leon if he dares the crossing.’

‘Because that’s what you would do?’ Hal had queried, speaking in a soft hiss so as not to be heard by the muttering growlers and drinkers in the inn. They spoke French for the same reason and Kirkpatrick had laughed.

‘Because it is what I would not do. But I am clever and Lamprecht is not only afraid, he is as idiot as a moonstruck calf.’

‘He may have gone to Dover,’ Hal pointed out, not so convinced of Lamprecht’s stupidity. Kirkpatrick shrugged.

‘Without coin he can squat on the shingle and try to wish up a ship until we come on him, then.’

The more Hal looked at the rain-misted cleft of Sty Lane, the more the Lyon’s now-distant fug-warmth called to him. The Earl of Lincoln’s Inn had been the last haven for Lamprecht, two nights before; no-one called it anything other than the Purpure Lyon thanks to the sign, the arms of the Earl of Lincoln, nailed over the door. Lincoln owned it as he owned a deal of the land round it, but Hal doubted if the Earl had ever been in it. Which was a pity for him, since the roast goose had been a joy, with raisins, figs and pears in it. A barnacle goose, for it had been a fish day and that was aquatic, as any priest would tell you…

Kirkpatrick was on the move and Hal, flustered, shredded his dreams of food and followed on, hoping the rest of the plans made in the Lyon moved as smoothly.

The rain was flushing filth out of Sty Lane like a privy hole drain; Hal’s boots sloshed through a gurgling brown mess and the place stank, so that pushing into it made him open his mouth so as not to have to breathe through his nose.

Kirkpatrick stopped and Hal almost walked up his heels. There was silence save for the hiss and gurgle of rain and the squeal and honk of unseen pigs; sweat started to soak Hal from the inside at the sight of the grey shapes looming up in front of them.

Six he counted, their faces blurred by rain and beards and grease. Three wore broad-brimmed hats, turned up at the front and pinned so that the soaked droop of them would not blind them. Two wore coif hoods of rough wool, one a hat trimmed with ratty fur, all had the sacking tunics of slaughtermen, dark with old blood. Every one had a naked, long, knife.

‘Oo are ye and what d’yer wish in Sty Lane?’

Hal struggled with the thick accent, knowing it was English but unable to make it out without squinting. Kirkpatrick, seemingly easy, offered a smile and a spread of empty hands.

‘Looking fer Mabs,’ he declared. ‘Heard there was work for lads as was not afraid o’ blood.’

Which could mean much or little to slaughtermen, Hal thought, half crouched and silent in his role in the mummery. The rat-furred hat swivelled to take them both in, while the others circled in a ring; used to herding pigs, Hal thought wildly, his mouth dry, his heart thundering in his throat.

‘Sojers,’ Rat-Fur declared and then spat sideways. Kirkpatrick shrugged.

‘Have been, will be again if the shine is right. We knows the way of it, certes.’

Warned, Rat-Fur held his distance while the rain plinked and splashed. Then he nodded at Hal.

‘Tongueless, is he?’

‘From the Italies,’ Kirkpatrick countered smoothly. ‘Knows little of a decent way of speaking.’

Which hid Hal’s Scots accent.

‘Where did you hear about Mabs?’

The question came sudden as a hip-throw, but Kirkpatrick was balanced for it.

‘Old friend,’ he replied and winked. ‘Lamprecht. Ugly bastard of a pardoner. Said there was work in Sty Lane, with Mabs. Izzat yourself?’

Rat-Fur chuckled, glanced swiftly to his left. Oho, Hal thought, there is someone unseen jerking this one’s strings.

‘Not me,’ Rat-Fur said, while the others laughed, though there was little mirth in it. ‘Come and meet the bold Mabs, then.’

Cautious, sweating, Hal followed Kirkpatrick, who followed Rat-Fur, with the others closing in so that the flesh from the nape of Hal’s neck to his heels crawled with the unseen presence of them at his back. They went sideways, into a place of unbelievable stink and squeals from pigs jostling each other, as if they sensed that these men were slaughterers. That or the smell of old porker blood from them, Hal thought…

They halted. Rat-Fur leaned on the enclosure fence, where slurry slopped under a fury of trotters, then turned and grinned his last few ambered teeth at Kirkpatrick.

‘Mabs,’ he said. For a moment Kirkpatrick was confused — then a huge hump of the stinking slurry moved and the biggest sow he had ever seen lumbered forward, making him recoil; the slaughtermen laughed.

‘Mabs,’ said a new voice, ‘smells new blood and wonders if it is tasty.’

Hal and Kirkpatrick whirled and saw a lump of a woman with the biggest set of paps either of them had seen — bigger even, Hal thought, than Alehouse Maggie’s. She had a face like unbaked bread, grey and doughy and shapeless, though the cheeks were red with windchafe and drink. Her eyes were buried raisins.

‘Mabs,’ she repeated, looking fondly at the huge sow, which had now rolled over and was luxuriating in slurry, her line of fat, dangling teats dripping.

‘Queen of the Faerie,’ the woman went on wistfully. ‘Her name and mine.’

‘Ah,’ said Kirkpatrick, struggling. ‘Indeed.’

‘Mistress Maeve,’ Hal interrupted smoothly, giving the woman her full queen’s name and forgetting himself entirely. ‘We come seeking one Lamprecht, whom you ken. D’ye have word for us on his whereaboots?’

Kirkpatrick closed his eyes with the horror of it. The woman’s currants turned from the pig to Hal.

‘Now that is the strangest Italies I have heard spoke,’ she declared. ‘Much similar to Scotch, if me ears are working.’

Her men growled and seemed to loom closer. Kirkpatrick put a hand on the hilt of his dagger.

‘Stand back,’ he warned. ‘My friend has the right of it — we seek only Lamprecht, nothing more.’

‘And the Rood,’ Hal added, so that Kirkpatrick cursed him to silence.

‘Wood?’ queried Mabs.

‘Rood,’ repeated Hal before Kirkpatrick could stop him. ‘That what was in the reliquary ye split between Jop and Lamprecht.’

Christ’s Bones, Kirkpatrick thought, feeling his palm slick on the knife, he has doomed us all.

‘Lamb Prick,’ Mabs said slowly, rolling the name like a gob of greasy spit round her mouth, ‘is not welcome here. Nor that big whoreson dolt Jop, Gog’s malison on him — though I am told he is dead.’

She spat and looked slyly at the pair of them.

‘King’s men took him, or so I was told. Put him to the rack and the iron, or me name is not Queen Maeve. An’’ere yer are,’ she added, gentle as a poisoned kiss, ‘come lookin’ fer me.’

She thinks Jop spilled his all and that we are King’s men, Hal realized and started to deny it. Kirkpatrick, seeing his mouth open and fearing the worst, leaped into the breach of it.

‘Well,’ he managed through clenched teeth. ‘An error. No harm done …’

‘No?’

Kirkpatrick knew, with sick certainty, that there had been a great error and he was the one who had made it. Lamprecht was nowhere near here and Mabs would not want folk walking out of Sty Lane who could chain Jop and Lamprecht, Mabs and Sty Lane and robbery of the King’s Treasury in one shackle.

She leaned against the fetid timbers of the sty and gazed fondly at the giant sow.

‘Yes, yes,’ she crooned. ‘You are a greedy girl…’

Her giggle, strangely young and girlish, was chopped short by a thin, high whistle from Kirkpatrick as he sprang forward and Mabs reeled back. Rat-Fur slithered to put her behind him — but Kirkpatrick’s blow was no slaughterman’s cut, it was the flick of a killer.

Rat-Fur staggered away, choking and holding his throat, a thin jetting of blood forcing itself between the clench of both his hands. Both Mabs were squealing as loudly as each other and men were shouting — one of the big-hatted ones ran at Hal and he slashed the air, forcing the man to a skidding halt. For a few steps Hal danced awkwardly with him, slithering in the clotted mud, then the man bored in, a great slack, foolish grin splitting the tangled hair of his face.

Hal was no knife fighter, but he knew a few tricks. He raised his arm as if to strike, then lashed out with his foot, feeling it collide high up on the man’s thigh. It missed his cods, but the pain jolted him, deadened the leg so that he fell and then lay, one hand raised like a knight demanding ransom for yielding.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I have daughters…’

Hal stopped, the dagger poised. The man got on one knee, then lashed with his free hand, a sharp knuckle that slammed into Hal’s already damaged ribs. The pain whirled through him like fire, a blinding shriek that took him to his knees in the shite; he heard the man snarl, saw the long butcher knife winking.

Stupid, he thought. Should have just killed him.

Then there was a sudden spill of bodies, men with the lower part of their faces covered, wielding long swords and the wrists that knew how to use them. The man facing Hal half-turned, gave a short scream and tried to run; the better portion of a good blade flashed into his ribs, spraying gore as it came. As he fell away, the man holding the blade let it slide out with a soft suck and grinned with his eyes — even without the mask, Hal knew Edward Bruce.

The men brought by Kirkpatrick’s whistle came up fast and hard, muffled as much against the stink as recognition. There was a flurry of cuts and screaming, then Hal turned to see that Mabs, trembling and on her knees, was the only one left; only she and the pigs squealed in terror now.

‘God disposes,’ Kirkpatrick said to Mabs. ‘How fast the world turns, eh Mabs — one minute you are planning the diet of your pet. The next, you ARE the diet of your pet.’

‘Wait,’ said Mabs, looking from Kirkpatrick to Hal and then at the rest of the grim, masked men who had appeared. Armed like King’s men, she thought, but hidden against recognition, so not them. If not Longshanks, then there was a chance to deal…

‘Wait? For what? Friendship? Something deeper?’

‘Enough,’ growled the muffled voice of Edward. ‘This is no place to be toyin’ with your food, man. Eat the porker, or leave her on yer plate.’

Men laughed as Mabs whimpered and appealed to the one man who seemed detached and unconcerned.

‘The Rood. The Rood, lord,’ she said. Hal, nursing his ribs, was taken by surprise; he had been watching the giant sow, seeing her unconcerned and luxuriating. Sae cantie as a sou in glaur — happy as a pig in muck. It had been a phrase he thought he had understood until now, when he had seen a sow of this size luxuriating in her filth.

Mabs’ desperation jerked him from the reverie, stunned him with a shock like cold water as to how he had been standing in the midst of all this, daydreaming.

‘The Rood,’ he repeated and Mabs leaped on it, worried it with feverish hope.

‘Jop and Lamb Prick had it, sir,’ Mabs wheezed, nodding furiously in agreement with her own words. ‘I gave Lamb Prick the little bitty wood in the thing, sir, of being more account to him than me. Jop wanted more and persuaded Lamb Prick to steal the cross with the stones. A murrain on them both.’

Hal blinked as the words sank in like rain on a desert. He tried to straighten, felt something tear and gasped, so that Kirkpatrick turned to him, frowning.

‘Is that all of it?’ Hal managed.

Her head threatened to nod itself from her shoulders, her huge breasts shook.

‘Round his neck on a string. It is no more than finger-length, lord.’

Kirkpatrick and Hal exchanged glances. It was good to have matters confirmed, but no joy to be reminded that it had been under their noses at the start…

‘Faugh,’ said Edward Bruce. ‘This place stinks and is dangerous — time we were away.’

Mabs saw the look in Kirkpatrick’s eye.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Wai — uurgh.’

It was done before anyone could blink — a short thrust and a heave, enough to knock her off-balance. She rolled like a boulder through the flimsy sty fence right to the trotters of her surprised namesake, still squealing.

The fresh blood hit the sow’s nostrils, and all the others raised their snouts, while Mabs struggled with the mud, floundering on all fours like a new and even bigger sow.

They left, Hal trying to blot his ears to the sound of the pleading shrieks, then the grunts; he could not tell whether they came from an agonized Mabs or from the enthusiasm of chewing pigs.

Cantie as a sou in glaur, he thought, then shivered, glad of the rain sluicing on him like cleansing balm and outside air to breathe.

Nunnery of the Blessed Saint Augustine, Elcho, Perth

Feast of Saint Mauritius, the martyred Knight, February, 1305

God turned his hand over and changed the weather. When Sister Mary Margaret woke beside Bets the milcher, she heard the pea-rattle of the rain and did not want to leave the warm snuggle of her charge, the cow. But it was the water in her bladder that had roused her, so that she cursed, then rose up, shivering and offering apologies to God for the blasphemy.

Bets stirred and Sister Mary Margaret, hunched and stiff, rubbed the curled nap between the horns; she much preferred sleeping here in the byre than her cell and, though the others carped about her appearance and her smell, she did not care.

Did she moan about the stink of paints and the smears on their habits? She did not. Her skill lay with beasts and not pictures on walls and she offered it up to the glory of God daily.

The wind and hissing rain smacked her as she opened the byre door and there was a moment when she blenched, considered hiking her clothes up and doing it there in the warm straw — after all, the cow did. Who would know that she had not scampered all the way to the privy?

God would know. She took a deep breath as if to dive into a pool — I have not done that since I was a wee girlie, she thought incongruously, just as she ran into a door.

Stunned, she recoiled, bewildered, for there was no door where she moved — she knew her way round Elcho blindfold. The door moved and she caught her breath at the great wet bulk of shield that towered over her. The owner flicked his massive mailled shoulders and slithered the shield on to his back with a hiss that drowned the rain, then he stuck one huge, armoured hand down to her.

‘Ye are all wet, sitting in the rain, Sister. Rise up.’

Sister Mary Margaret was hauled upright; she was aware of being wet and that some of it was warm, so she had pished herself after all.

‘My name is Sir William Wallace,’ the man said, smiling like a wolf. ‘I seek a wummin and a particular yin among so many. A countess no less. Can you assist me, in the loving name of Christ?’

Sister Mary Margaret had no words. Behind the giant, she saw other men and, in the midst of them, a slight dripping figure, flinging an axe blade stare at her. A woman, come with armed men — the prioress will needs be informed, she thought…

‘I am sure you can assist me, Sister,’ the giant said, cutting through the mad whirl of her thoughts and Sister Mary Margaret realized, suddenly, that the days of the prioress were probably over.

Her hand flew to her mouth and smothered the sudden, savage scream — but she managed to point to where the Countess had been quartered. The giant grinned.

‘ Pax vobiscum, Sister,’ he said and left so suddenly that Sister Mary Margaret sat down with a squelch. Relief washed her like the rain.

In the cloistered heart of Elcho, the sisters were running and shrieking as men spilled in, reeking of sweat and old blood, woodsmoke and feral lust. The prioress stood, her heart thundering like a mad bird, and stretched out her arms protectively, just as the Countess of Buchan came up behind her.

‘Stay behind me, Countess,’ she declared, throwing out her chest as a giant stepped forward, huge sword in one grimed fist and a twisted grin on his face. ‘God will save us.’

‘You have been called many things, Will Wallace, but never God Himself before,’ the Countess declared and pushed past the astounded prioress, who was shocked to see the great ogre with the sword take the Countess’ hand, delicate as any courtier and raise it to the mad tangle of beard.

A small figure emerged from behind the giant Wallace and the smiling Countess recognized her tirewoman Ada beneath the sodden hood of the cloak, embracing her.

Isabel turned to the pale, open-mouthed prioress and felt a wash of sympathy for what she had brought down on them. She quelled the feeling, ruthless as those who hunted nuns and food and drink through the sacred shadows of Elcho. Here was a wee wummin who had taken money from her husband to hold her as prisoner in the name of God.

‘Brace yourself,’ she said viciously to the prioress. ‘ Victoria veritatis est caritas — the victory of truth is love.’

Outside, Sister Mary Margaret found a hand taloned on her shoulder and lifting her from the soaked ground. An eldritch face, scarred and gleaming wet, thrust itself at her, grinning, the broken nose dripping.

‘You will catch a chill, quine,’ Lang Jack declared and glanced at the open door of the byre. ‘We mun get you in the dry and oot of those wet clothes.’

Now Sister Mary Margaret screamed.

The Bruce House, London

The same night

The waxed paper windows turned the room to amber twilight even at midday and let in both the cold and the clamour from the Grass and Stocks markets; Hal could even hear the whine of the beggars on the steps of St Edmund’s Garcherche opposite and, naked to the waist, wished he could move closer to the brazier, a glowing comfort perched on a slate slab on the wooden floor.

The physician finished bandaging Hal’s ribs, dipping his fingers in a basin and drying them fastidiously on a clean linen square as he turned to Bruce.

‘Your man,’ he said, haughty and dismissive, ‘has re-opened an old wound. I have fastened it and will give him a salve and two mole’s feet, for protection against infection in the bone.’

He paused, then looked steadily at the Earl, ignoring Hal’s sullen scowl at the term ‘your man’.

‘In your own case, the tooth is healing nicely and your tongue is undamaged,’ he said. What was unsaid crouched between them like a rat on a corpse. Edward Bruce, oblivious to the exchange, laughed nastily and clapped his brother hard on the shoulder.

‘More than can be declared for your opponent,’ he growled. ‘I am told he gabbles like a bairn.’

The physician turned fish eyes on him. He was called James and came, he claimed, from Montaillou, which most thought simply a village in France. Those who knew, all the same, could tell you that Montaillou lay smack in the middle of that Langue D’Oc stronghold of the Cathar heresy which the Pope was scouring from the world.

James of Montaillou, Bruce mused to himself, was mostly a lie. He claimed to be a physician but had attended no university and was, at best, an inferior breed of skilled barber-surgeon. He claimed to be a Christian, but should, in truth, be wearing the compulsory yellow cross of a heretic Cathar.

‘I have it that Sir Robert Malenfaunt may never speak properly again,’ James commented, with more than a sting of mild rebuke in it. ‘His palate is pierced and his tongue slit longways into two halves.’

His audience winced. Bruce managed a wan smile, the square of linen held to his cheek in what was becoming an ingrained habit; the gleet from the purpling-red half healed cicatrice was clear, yet stained the square a foul yellow, tinged faintly with pink.

‘God preserve him,’ he said thickly, though there were few present who thought God had much to do with Sir Robert Malenfaunt, who had so clearly been abandoned by Him on that tourney day.

‘Deserves that at least,’ Edward Bruce growled, ‘and a mark of God’s Hand that he suffered it as a result of the battle and not afterwards, for losing in the sight of the Lord.’

But the worst injury done to him then is the one I fear myself, Bruce thought — the shunning by your peers.

James of Montaillou left and, after a blink or two of silent messaging to Edward, the rest of the mesnie clacked across the boards, leaving Bruce alone with Hal, Kirkpatrick and his brothers Edward and young Alexander.

‘So this Lamprecht is lost to us,’ Bruce declared bitterly. ‘And the Rood with him.’

‘We’ll spier this wee pardoner out,’ answered Edward determinedly, only to have his elder brother savage him with a glance like a lance-thrust.

‘You should not have been there yester,’ he declared, the words mushed by anger and pain. ‘Scampering around in pig shite like some callow boy.’

Edward’s smile was wide, but razor thin.

‘I thought to mak’ siccar it was done right,’ he declared and Kirkpatrick, hearing the phrase, spun round, glaring at him.

‘What mean you by that?’ he spat back, heedless of the protocols of rank. ‘D’you imply that it would not have been well done without ye?’

‘You needed our swords, certes, from what I saw,’ Edward snarled back, equally disregarding the differences in their station.

‘Who was it planned for such and summoned you?’

‘First time the dog has ever whistled up the master…’

‘Enough.’

Bruce’s voice was harshened by pain and a slap across both their faces, so that they subsided, glowering.

‘With or without you, brother,’ Bruce went on sternly, ‘the matter was not well done. And if you had been caught in it, all of us were ruined. Christ’s Bones — here you are arguing with a lesser rank like some drunken cottar and showing exactly the same disregard for station and dignity as you did in Sty Lane. It is not just yourself you risk nowadays, Edward — it is the Bruce name. My name and rank more than yours.’

Hal, fastening his belt back round his tunic, saw Kirkpatrick’s sullen scowl at being no better than ‘lesser rank’. He also saw Edward chew his bottom lip to keep silent; he knew why, too — the rumours of it were whispers within the mesnie that here was a man who wanted at least one of the titles his elder brother held and was not going to get it until that brother had the compensation of a crown. Only ambition outstripped Edward Bruce’s recklessness.

‘We must find and deal with Lamprecht,’ Bruce went on; Edward, still blunt as a hammer-blow, voiced what that really meant.

‘We have to kill him,’ he growled, ‘before he can tell others what he knows.’

‘He can tell no-one, my lords’ Hal replied carefully, ‘without giving away his own part in such affairs. Better to let him crawl away to a hole across the sea.’

‘He will tell all he knows if put to the Question,’ Bruce pointed out, patiently because he valued the Herdmanston lord and did not want to slap him down, as Edward was about to do until a look from his brother clapped his lips shut.

‘The pardoner is clever,’ Bruce went on, ‘but greedy. He will try and sell that reliquary treasure, or parts of it. Even the sight of one of those Christ-Blood rubies will trap him. Besides — there is the matter of the Rood itself. He has it. I want it.’

He looked from one to the other of them like a stern father.

‘Aye, weel, Your Grace,’ Hal said sourly. ‘Whatever his business wi’ us, it is concluded and it is my opinion that Lamprecht will consider himself safer abroad now he has failed to discomfort myself and Kirkpatrick — and Your Grace’s honour. I dinna think his revenge runs so deep as will have him try again. I understand he was birthed in Cologne — mayhap he will return there wi’ his prize.’

‘Comyn will not let him,’ Bruce replied and the cutting blade of that was too sharp to answer. Bruce let the silence slide for a moment, the thoughts piling up behind his eyes as he removed, studied, then replaced the cheek pad.

‘Buchan has sent his animal Malise after Lamprecht, and Red John Comyn works hand in glove with his Comyn cousin, the Earl,’ he said eventually. ‘If all they suspect is that the pardoner has information contrary to my comfort, it will be enough to keep them searching. If Red John suspects the presence of the Rood, he will want it for himself and his own plans for the throne of Scotland. He will not rest until he unearths it.’

Bruce removed the pad from his cheek, inspected it and put it back, his eyes bleak as a winter sea. For a moment, Hal saw the ugly wound and blanched at it, then the trailing conroi of his thoughts took him to Malenfaunt and the duel, incited by Buchan and Comyn.

For Buchan it had probably been in response to the business of Isabel, whom Bruce had ransomed from Malenfaunt while pretending to be Isabel’s husband and using that man’s own money. But Buchan had not had his countess back — Hal had got her, however briefly.

In turn, he thought bitterly, that act, for Bruce at least, was revenge for the time when Red Comyn had taken Bruce by the throat in public and threatened to knife him. Now it came to Hal, sudden as sin and just as thrillingly blasphemous, that perhaps English Edward was the best strong hand the unruly kingdom of Scots needed for, without it, the realm was already in a war with itself, played out in a mating-snake writhe of plot and counterplot, dark knifings and treachery.

‘Matters are not lost,’ Kirkpatrick said into Hal’s thoughts. ‘I can find Lamprecht — but not with Sir Hal in tow.’

He looked into Hal’s outrage and shrugged.

‘Your idea of stealth and cunning in these matters is limited to not shouting who you are at the top of your voice,’ he said, half apologetically and in French, which softened the bile of it. ‘Besides — you are hurt.’

Bruce looked from one to the other, removed the linen square and studied the stains, then replaced it.

‘Kirkpatrick,’ he said, ‘shall stay in London and seek out this Lamprecht. Hal — go back north. The men you sent must have found some trace of Wallace by now. Find Wallace, and take care of your wound, for I have need of you yet.’

Hal nodded; he had had enough of London’s stew of streets and alleys, while his ribs ached and burned in equal measure, so he leaped on Bruce’s suggestion like a fox into a coop. He and Kirkpatrick headed for the door, pausing to offer passage to one another with exaggerated courtesy.

Bruce watched them go, shoulder to shoulder like two padding hounds who snarled and growled at each other, yet seemed capable of springing to each other’s defence in an eyeblink.

He sent Edward off with some soothing words about his prowess and sighed when the door closed on his back, leaving him with Alexander. The youngest and yet the one he trusted most.

The Curse of Malachy, he thought bitterly, is to have all the attributes of greatness handed to you by God and have to accept recklessness with it. Thank Christ and all His angels that he was not as reckless as brother Edward, who had been slathered with most of that — but the sudden stab of pain from his missing tooth was a reminder of his own rash fight with Malenfaunt.

‘Does it hurt?’ Alexander asked and Bruce felt a wash of panic and revulsion at the reality of the stained linen square and his cheek.

‘My tongue burns like the very De’il,’ Bruce replied laconically. ‘At least the rough edge of that tooth is no longer a nag on it.’

The careful answer masked the truth. Alexander nodded, then flicked his fingers in an impatient gesture for his brother to remove the pad. He bent, inspected, then straightened with a sombre nod and face so at odds with his youth that Bruce almost grinned. Almost. A smile stretched the cicatrice into a gape; in all the weeks since the tourney, it had barely managed to close on itself and Bruce knew that Alexander and his physician feared infection.

‘The Curse of Malachy,’ Bruce said suddenly, though he contrived to make it light and laughable. Alexander did not laugh and finally voiced the truth of matters.

‘The cheek does not hurt at all?’

Bruce shook his head, swallowed the rising panic. No pain when the knife had gone in. No pain when he had plucked it out. None at all when James of Montaillou had apologetically pulled his mouth aside to file down the pinked tooth, though the pain of that was a screamingly agonizing memory. Folk had marvelled at the stoic bravery of the Bruce, who felt no pain.

No pain in a cheek deadened. The irony, of course, was that it had saved his life, for Malenfaunt’s blow should have reduced him to a blinding agony of tears and snot, leaving him at the mercy of a killing stroke.

‘Lepry,’ Alexander said, a slapped blade on the table of Bruce’s wild thoughts. Bruce said nothing, but the bleak truth of it was part of the Curse of Malachy.

‘Only you and I and James of Montaillou are party to that suspicion,’ he answered at length. Alexander, the scholar, had worked it out almost as swiftly as Bruce and the physician; he nodded, his eyes welling with a sympathy Bruce did not care to see. Too much like the look you give a dog you have to put down, he thought.

‘No-one else must know,’ he managed to rasp out and saw Alexander’s eyebrow raise.

‘Not your wife, brother?’

Not her, with her coterie of tirewomen spying for her, and her wee personal priest sending back the doings of the Bruces to the Earl of Ulster. From there, Bruce was sure, it arrived in the hands of Edward Plantagenet in short enough order.

He felt a crushing sadness at the mire she and he were in, how their life had become polite in public and distant now in private; the excuse of his wounds kept them in separate bedchambers as much as Bruce’s fear of the sickness he might have — a leper’s very breath was poison.

Alexander knew all this and required only a sour glance from his brother.

‘Not Edward?’ he persisted and now the glance was alarmed.

‘Especially not brother Edward.’

Especially him, the rash hothead who would ride through the fires of Hell to fetch Holy Water to heal his big brother — and turn every head to watch the glory of it as he did so.

Leprosy. Bruce pressed the linen to his cheek and stared blindly at the yellowed window, as if he could see through it to the street of the Grass and Stocks markets, the new, still-scaffolded houses of the Lombard goldsmiths and on up to Poultrey.

Where Buchan had his own house, lair of all Comyn activity in London; they would pay any amount, dare any dishonour, to discover that their arch-rival had even the suspicion of such an affliction.

Moffat, Annandale

Feast of Saint Kessog, March, 1305

Wallace was woken by the cow struggling to her feet. By the gleam of daylight smearing through the smoke-hole he saw Patie’s woman kneel by the firepit to blow life back into the banked peat smoulder.

One of the brood of bairns wailed as he shrugged out of the door into a muggy morning where colour slid back to the land. For a moment he stood, listening, turning his head this way and that, but only the chooks moved, murmuring in their soft way.

Eventually, he unlaced his braies with one hand and, grunting with the pleasure of it, pissed on the dungheap; it was the first time this year, he noticed, that it did not steam.

The sound shut off his stream like a closing door and he half-turned, but it was Patie, coming up to join him and, for a moment of still peace, they both wet the dungheap.

‘Fine day comin’,’ Wallace growled and Patie nodded.

‘A seven-day o’ this,’ he answered thoughtfully, ‘an’ I will sow peas in my own strip. Mayhap even oats. Pray to Goad there is no blight.’

Then he turned his big heavy face into the crag of Wallace’s own.

‘There is gruel to break yer fast.’

Wallace nodded, then rubbed the greasy tangle of his chin ruefully.

‘I have no siller left to offer ye,’ he said and Patie nodded sorrowfully, as if he had expected the news.

‘An’ ye a dubbed knight, no less,’ he answered, shaking his mournful head on the inequity of it. ‘Whit happened to yer siller, then? Wager or drink?’

Wallace laughed, remembering.

‘The most o’ it went on a wummin,’ he said and Patie sniffed. Hawked and spat.

‘Worth it, was she?’

‘She was,’ Wallace agreed, the image of her sharp and blade-bright in his mind when he had come to the priory weeks before with his handful of scarred, filthy army.

‘A coontess, no less.’

It was the last shine of glory and tarnished even then and he had known it was all over even as he stood, hip-shot, while the nuns of Elcho squealed and ran. He had tossed the red robin’s-egg ruby carelessly back to Isabel as she clasped her exhausted, trembling tirewoman, Ada, with her free hand.

‘I will take ye to Roslin,’ he had told her. ‘Ye will have to make yer own way to Herdmanston — I am no’ welcome there in these days.’

She had nodded, not knowing the why of it and too relieved to be free to do any asking. Wallace did not offer an explanation.

Patie’s final grunt shook him back to the moment and the dungheap; he saw the man was looking at the scarred pewter sky with a calculated, expert squint.

‘A good crop, if there is little rain and less war.’

‘No war, Patie,’ he answered and could hear the sorrowed loss of it in his voice, so that he was almost ashamed. No war, for his men were scattered and gone after taking Isabel, Countess of Buchan, to Roslin — Long Jack Short, Ralf Rae and the worst of them were briganding out of that old stronghold of outlaws, the Selkirk forests. Jinnet’s Jean and others were probably hooring with the English in Carlisle and robbing them blind when they could.

And he was here. Once he had ruled the Kingdom as sole Guardian, now he sheltered in the mean holding of a sokeman of his sister’s man, Tham Halliday, Laird of Corehead, because the castle itself was under watch. Soon, he knew, he would move to a house in Moffat, or another near Glasgow, those hiding him risking the penalty of harbouring, lying low until…

What? The thought racked him, as it had done from the moment he had woken to find most of the remaining men gone. Those left, he had realized, were starving and wasted, so he had given them what coin he had and watched the last of them melt away.

France, perhaps. The Red Rover, de Longueville, would get him away as he had done in the past and he and that old pirate had fought there before — but the French had given up as well and now no-one opposed the English; the idea of that burned him, but the old fire of it had little left of the great body to feed on save heart.

There was nothing in France for him — other than the relief of the Bruce; he almost managed a smile at that, but could not quite manage it, or the spit that went with it.

‘No war, Patie,’ he repeated.

Patie fumbled himself shut, wiped his fingers on his tunic and nodded meaningfully.

‘I would lay that aside, then, while ye break yer fast,’ he grunted. ‘Ye are scarin’ the bairns.’

Wallace looked down, was almost astonished to see the hand-and-half sword clasped in his right fist, so much part of him for so long that he no longer recognized it as a presence. He had woken with it clenched there, walked out of the mean hut with it and stood pissing with it. He had learned to do so many things left-handed, because the right was always occupied by that weapon. Naked, notched and spotted with rust, it was as done up as he was himself — yet sharp and ready.

He remembered cutting men down at Scone with it, carving bloody skeins off the fine English knights at Stirling’s bridge, slicing through the jawbone of the Templar Master, Brian de Jay, in the forest of Callendar.

His sword, so much part of him for so long, quenched in blood and wickedness, he thought. Now it was no more than a monstrous frightener of bairns.

Like myself.

Church of St Thomas of Acon, London

Thursday of Mysteries, April, 1305

He had risked it and was sure the dice had gone against him. When Lamprecht reached the herber’s stall he looked round and was sure the cloaked man was the same one he had seen. He was sure, also, that it was Kirkpatrick; there was something sickly familiar in the oiled way the man moved, turning sideways, stepping careful as a fox and never bumping or being jostled.

Money, thought Lamprecht bitterly. Always the driven curse of a poor man, it had lured him to the Church of St Thomas of Acon on the day he knew alms were liberally handed out for the celebration of Christ’s Last Supper on Earth. And here is me, he thought, with a ransom of rubies and so unable to make use of it that I am worth less than a beggar’s cloak.

Even as he waited for the chimes to open the City’s posterns, he had known that it was a bad idea, that he should have stayed in St Olave’s and waited for a suitable ship to take him away from these shores.

Yet the pretence of being a lowly painter was a strain, while the skin-crawling horror of knowing that a Scotchman was on his trail like a relentless gazehound was more than his nerves could stand; he should never have revealed himself to Kirkpatrick and Bruce and that Herdmanston lord at all, he knew now — but the chance of revenge had been too sweet a taste to resist.

The bell rang an hour before sunrise and the City’s wicket gates opened to the basket-carrying hucksters, the labourers, the journeymen, the beggars — Lamprecht hidden among them — and all the rest who lived in the stinking shadows of the City. And the shadow in the shadows, who trailed him, a presence like the crawl of cold sweat down Lamprecht’s spine, which sent his neck straining side to side in a desperate attempt to pick him out of the crowd.

El malvogio, ki se voet te tout, a nou se voet — the evil one, who is seen by all and is not seen.

At which point, he was seen having seen. Suddenly, across the chafering throng of Ironmonger Lane there was only himself and the dark hole in the raised hood where he knew the eyes were; he fancied he could see through the cloak to the shining bar of steel hidden beneath.

So he ran.

Slow-worm blind at first, skidding through the muddied slime and the throngs until, like a dash of cold water, he caught the shocked, suspicious faces and brought himself to a halt; a running man in a crowded street was a thief or worse.

The lane was a maze that led to the sudden, broadening rush of the Cheap, already thick with stalls and people. He forced himself to walk, hurried but not fast and tried not to look constantly over his shoulder.

There were two of them now, he was sure. He stopped at a cheese stall, peering through the great wheels; yes, two of them. Perhaps more… in his mind, every man suddenly became a sinister hunter.

‘Is there a lover’s face in that?’

The voice, rasping sarcasm, cut into his panic and, strangely, quelled it; the cheesemonger glared at Lamprecht.

‘You will wear a hole in that fine cheese with such staring — do you buy, or just look?’

Lamprecht offered a wan smile and moved away, half-fell over a large dog and was forced to jump it, colliding with something huge and soft, which staggered a little then cursed him. He looked up into the baleful glare of a fishwife, scales glinting on her folded forearms and a wicked gutting knife in one fist.

‘ Perdonar,’ he said, with an apologetic smile, but it was the foreign tongue that deepened the suspicious frown — and gave Lamprecht his idea.

‘ El malvogio. Lo baraterro. Se per li capelli prendoto come ti voler conciare.’

Rosia Denyz was a pillar of Cheap, a hard-mouthed matron who had dealt with every attempt to rob, coerce and cozen her for twenty years, so that few now treated her with anything but respect. She did not understand foreign tongues, but she knew curses when she heard them. When the ugly little man grabbed up one of her own fish and struck her in the face with it, she was so astonished that he had gained ten yards before she found her voice.

‘Thief,’ she bellowed, even though the fish was at her feet, giving the lie to it.

Across the other side of the market, Kirkpatrick saw the crowd boil like a feeding frenzy of shark, cursed the daring cunning of the little pardoner and headed after him.

Briefly he was balked by a string of horses coming from Smoothfield and beginning to get skittish at the crowd baying after an unseen thief — then he caught sight of Lamprecht, sprinting back up Ironmonger Lane.

He made a move past the flicking tail and shifting hindquarters of the last horse and slammed into a figure, the pair of them reeling back. Cursing, Kirkpatrick made to go round him, then drew up short, staring into the equally astounded face of Malise Bellejambe.

It took Malise a droop-mouthed moment to recognize Kirkpatrick through the grime and the dirt, the tunic that was more stain than cloth and a hooded cloak that was more sack than wool. When he did, he squealed, only later feeling a wash of shame for it, and ducked behind the man at his elbow.

Kirkpatrick saw this one, bemused, half turn to see Malise scuttling away in pursuit of Lamprecht, then turned back into the half-crouched figure of Kirkpatrick, who now realized that the man was with Malise. No henchman thug, he thought, a serjeant no less, wealthy enough to own a decent set of clothes — and a sword, which he hauled out just as the crowd jostled up, the cry of ‘thief, thief’ thundering joyously out.

The sight of the sword balked them, spilled them round the man who held it like a stream round a rock. People yelled at him to watch what he did with that blade — then the shriekers at the back, unable to see anyone who looked like their prey, spotted the wink of a drawn blade and decided that this was enough to mark their man.

The serjeant, surrounded, slashed wildly and sealed his fate with the first spill of blood; the baying mob, ignoring the flailing sticks of the bailiffs and the wild hornblowing of red-faced beadles, seemed to surge on him like a tide.

Kirkpatrick slid away, moving fast but not running; ahead he could see the bobbing head of Malise. Keep him in sight, Kirkpatrick muttered to himself, a litany that kept the curses damped; he had not spent all this time living like a beggar to lose Lamprecht now. Keep Malise in sight and, let him lead on like an unleashed rache.

Malise felt Kirkpatrick at his back like the heat of an unseen flame, but did not dare turn to look for fear of losing sight of the fleeing Lamprecht, beetling along the Lane. He slammed into a Crutched Friar, stammered apology and had back a less than holy spit of viper venom — when he turned back, Lamprecht was gone.

Lamprecht, sweating and gibbering to himself like a madman, knew only that he was pursued by everyone and that, if he started to sprint like a frantic hare he was a dead man. He fought the urge, sidled round a stall laden with red slabs of meat, collared with succulent yellow fat and only briefly flicked his eyes to them where before he would have stood and drooled.

He should have left London ages since, but was, in a bitter irony that did not escape him, the richest pauper in the country, his bag full of unsellable bounty and his purse full of nothing but wind. He had to get away.

Now he was pursued — he half-turned at a stall full of cabbage and celery and saw Malise, knew the man at once and was transfixed by fear. Him too? Christ’s Wounds — the Comyn had determined to hunt him out as well…

Lamprecht found himself staring at the shambles, realized he was at the place where offal was sold and the stalls were rich and ripe and dripping with heart and tripe, sweetbreads and kidney, pale white, blue-veined collops in strings and folds. Flies hummed like the murmur of chanting priests and the entrail piles on the stalls slithered over each other like glistening, mating snakes.

When Kirkpatrick came up on the place a moment later Lamprecht was huddled in the lee of an oxcart, mere feet away. If Kirkpatrick turned, he could not fail to see him…

Kirkpatrick felt it more than he saw it, a chill on the side of his neck and he whirled in time to see Malise launch at him, all snarl and feral scything with a blade that seemed to whine through the air, so that Kirkpatrick had all he could do to avoid it.

‘Ye hoor’s slip,’ Malise bellowed. Seeing Kirkpatrick hauling out his own blade, those nearest shied away, shouting, and a butcher called out to his companions that there was trouble.

‘Ye bloody-handed, cat-wittit crawdoun…’

It was a roaring invective to put fire in his belly; Kirkpatrick knew it as the sparks flew from their clashed knives and they circled in a slow-stepping half-crouched dance.

‘Here, here,’ said one of the fleshers indignantly and made the foolish move of stepping forward with one hand out to separate the combatants — then he reeled back, shrieking and holding his hand, the blood welling up where Malise had cut him.

‘Murder, murder…’

The cry went up just as the ones of ‘thief’ were fading into the distance and it was enough to fan the old embers into fresh flames; the baying horde surged out of Cheap, a wave that tossed aside a ragged, bloodied corpse that had once been a serjeant and left the gasping, weary, flustered beadles and bailiffs in its wake, washed up like flotsam.

Lamprecht could not believe his fortune when Malise attacked Kirkpatrick and kept those black eyes from him. He slithered right under the oxcart, jammed his fingers up between the boards and lifted his feet up in an awkward, splay-kneed stance, on to the axle. In a second they were moving and he almost laughed aloud at his cleverness, for he had realized in an instant that the oxcart owner would want beast and vehicle well clear of damage from a riot and men fighting with naked blades.

The cart lurched away from the shouting butchers and their shrieking customers, away along the lane, swaying and ponderous but fast enough for Lamprecht, who clung on underneath, like a barnacle to a hull.

He did not see the crush which spilled over a butcher’s stall, the flood of contents like a glistening shoal of fresh-caught eels. He did not see Kirkpatrick, leaping back from another wild Malise swing, collide with someone’s back, slip on the coiled guts and offal and disappear into the mass of it. He did not see Malise flung away from Kirkpatrick, losing his knife but slithering out of the fray and up an alley.

The oxcart driver wanted to see it; Lamprecht felt the cart stop, heard the man climb laboriously up into it, swing over and drop — then the world exploded in howling pain as the driver’s thick-soled wood and leather clogs ground Lamprecht’s plank-clutching fingers to pulp.

He shrieked, which made the driver move to the side to find the screamer beneath him, allowing Lamprecht to tear his fingers free and fall to the cobbles. He scrambled out, whimpering and stumbled away, ignoring the shouts of the driver, nursing his broken fingers and blinded by pain — by sheer animal instinct he headed for the one refuge he had known for some time now.

Malise, wiping his mouth and aware that he was covered in blood and guts and shit, sidled out of the alley and along the fringes of the howling maelstrom that was now Ironmonger Lane; somewhere in there, he thought to himself with a grim, hot glow of malevolent satisfaction, was Kirkpatrick — another second and I would have had him, liver and lights.

Reminded of his lost dagger, he instinctively looked down and round for it — then caught sight of a familiar figure.

Lamprecht, hands tucked under each armpit. Headed for Old Jewry, Malise thought. The little shit, putting him to all this trouble.

Kirkpatrick was still on Lamprecht’s trail. He had not drowned in the writhing, sodden spill of animal entrails, but fought out from it with his dagger still in his fist, surfacing like a breaching whale into the rat-eyed stare of a thief stuffing offal in his jerkin before darting off.

Kirkpatrick hid the dagger, skated his way across the slip-sliding cobbles between the struggling, bellowing fighters. He ducked a swung fist, half-skidded on the slimed cobbles past a shrieking harridan and was out of the struggle, moving swiftly along the side of buildings, then up an alley in the wake of the hurrying Malise. Old Jewry, he thought. They are headed for Old Jewry.

Old Jewry was a sinister place, abandoned a decade before when Longshanks had expelled the Hebrews from England, immediately plundered and now left to the rats and the rain and the wind. Houses, boarded up when their owners fled, had been ripped open like treasure kists, though they found precious little of worth left from a people too used to fleeing in a hurry with all that was worth taking.

A few folk had moved in, the desperate poor who preferred to shiver from fear of what heathen devilry still lurked in the shells of Jew houses than from the cold and wet of no shelter at all.

At the end closest to the lane, where the houses huddled round St Olave’s like children round a mother’s skirts, a few Lombard goldsmiths had moved in. They were the unlucky spill of Longshanks’ generous invite, who came too late to reap the benefits of the fine houses along the Street of Lombards and were now trying to raise the status of Old Jewry by donating generously to St Olave’s.

The old church had been there forever, Kirkpatrick knew, a refuge for Norwegians who came to the City — he knew this because the Bruce’s relations used it. He frowned, for the tall ragstoned edifice was where Malise was headed, sure as a night ship to a beacon.

Old Jewry in daylight was bad enough, Kirkpatrick thought as he crabbed up the overgrown street, with the gaping doorways leering at him and the half-splintered window shutters seeming to glare balefully, like injured eyes. At night, it would be a place of horrors, real and imagined, and he was glad to reach the sanctuary of St Olave’s, sliding through the open doorway into the dim and cool illusion of safety, all balm to his sweating fear.

Voices. He paused, feeling the sweat slide down his back, but he forced himself to speak when he saw the owners of the voices — a priest in black habit and scapular, tall, gaunt and angular, arguing with a white-haired, red-faced man in paint-stained tunic and hose which an apron, as riotously daubed as Joseph’s Coat, had failed to protect.

‘Ho,’ Kirkpatrick hoarsed out and both men whirled, startled.

‘Is this some alehouse?’ The red-faced man thundered, staring accusingly at Kirkpatrick, ‘where folk can rush in and out as they please?’

‘There is a riot in Ironmonger Lane,’ the priest said gently, adding woefully, ‘again.’

‘Have folk come in here?’ Kirkpatrick demanded in a rasp even he did not like. ‘A scuttling little man followed by another, black and spider-like?’

The priest looked him over and Kirkpatrick felt a spasm of irritation at how he must look; it had been bad enough when he was disguised as a beggar, in sackcloth hood and torn old clothes which stank of the cabbage smell you get from marinading in your own farts. Now he was slathered with fluids and watery blood and grease, so he realized he was unlikely to get reasonable treatment — the red-faced man confirmed it.

‘Who the Devil are you, sirra?’ he demanded truculently, but the priest held up one placating hand for he had heard the voice, at odds with a beggar’s look. No whine or deference in it — on the contrary, it had the tone and timbre of command so the priest stepped carefully.

‘Ekarius came in. Another followed him, asking after him as you have done.’

‘Who is Ekarius?’ demanded Kirkpatrick and the red-faced man elbowed the priest aside.

‘My assistant — and who are you?’

‘Assistant what?’ answered Kirkpatrick and the red-faced man went purple, drew some of the fat from his belly to his chest and puffed up like a pigeon.

‘I am William of Thanet, Master artist,’ he bellowed. ‘I will not ask again…’

‘Neither will I.’

Kirkpatrick showed him the dagger; even at six feet of distance it pricked a hole in the man’s pompous bluster and he sagged and sputtered. The priest made the sign of the cross and said: ‘Christ be praised.’

‘For ever and ever,’ Kirkpatrick answered, then jerked the dagger meaningfully.

‘Ekarius mixes paints for Master William,’ the priest answered quickly and the dumbed William nodded furious agreement.

‘Little man, speaks strangely, says he is a pilgrim from the Holy Land?’

‘As to that last, my son, I could not say,’ the priest declared and William of Thanet found his voice.

‘From Cologne,’ he spluttered. ‘He has seen the church of St Maria Lyskirchen, as have I — he can recall some of the frescoes and is helping me recreate them here…’

He waved and Kirkpatrick saw, for the first time, the great, intricate webbing of scaffold clawing up two of the walls, half masking Christ in His Glory and The Last Supper. Cologne — well, that fitted at least — Ekarius was almost certainly Lamprecht.

‘Can he paint?’ Kirkpatrick asked, bemused and William of Thanet exploded.

‘Christ in Heaven, no — he simply recalls figures and positions I have forgotten. I let him limewash, mind you. When he is not darting around…’

‘Where is he now?’

Both men pointed upwards.

‘He has made a nest up there,’ snorted William. ‘Like a squirrel.’

Kirkpatrick looked up, then back at the men.

‘It would be best,’ he said, ‘if you went about your business elsewhere for the moment.’

‘It would be best,’ the priest answered firmly, ‘if you were to hand me that dagger and kneel in prayer.’

William of Thanet knew that was not about to happen and dragged the priest away. At a safe distance they would run and fetch a bailiff — if they could find one in all the ructions and if they could find one willing to enter Old Jewry even in daylight.

Kirkpatrick found the way to the net of lashed poles, a series of slatted wooden rungs with ropes hung on either side as handholds; when he looked up, the edifice towered above him, the height of a good castle wall and, to his left, another scaffolding dappled the half-finished Annunciation with light. He bounced a little, testing the first rung and swallowed a dry spear in his throat as the entire cat’s cradle of wood swayed alarmingly.

Sixty feet above Malise felt it just as he closed in on the whimpering Lamprecht, who was huddled in the darkest corner among pots of limewash and long brushes; the stink of paint and flax seed oil caught his throat and stung his eyes so that his frayed nerves sprang to a temper he had to fight to control.

‘Lamprecht, you stinking little goniel erse o’ a hoor slip…’

Lamprecht heard the voice and found some rat courage.

‘ Non aver di te paura, malvoglio. Tocomo — er tutto lo mondo fendoto… ’

Malise cursed; he had no idea what Lamprecht was saying, but he heard the shrill, desperate threat in the voice and swallowed his ire until it all but choked him.

‘Lamprecht,’ he said soothingly in French, which he knew the little rat understood. ‘Listen to me — I am here to help you…’

‘You come to kill. Everyone she wishes to kill Lamprecht. Fater unser, thu in himilom bist…’

Malise heard the whine of him, heard also the descent into muttered German. Then he felt the sway of the platform and knew at once what had caused it.

‘Oaf,’ he hissed. ‘Unhalesome capernicous gowk…’

He caught himself again, forced French between the grind of his teeth.

‘Who is my master, imbecile? The Comyn Earl of Buchan, kin to the Comyn Lord of Badenoch and both of them seeking only to reward you for what you know. Why in the name of God and all His angels would I wish you harm? I wish only to keep you safe from the imps of Satan that the Earl of Carrick has set on your trail.’

Lamprecht, despite the screaming agony of his fingers and his crawling fear knew Malise almost certainly lied, so he shrank away and babbled; the platform swayed again and Malise was suddenly there, close enough to touch, his face lopsided with rage.

‘There,’ Malise declared, throwing one dramatic arm back the way he had come, ‘is the man who wants you dead. Tell me what you know…’

‘ Hilfe… save me first,’ Lamprecht whimpered, seeing a bargain to be made, even now.

Kirkpatrick was trembling and slick-wet when he finally hauled himself over the lip of the platform. Christ in His Heaven, he thought, whom I will surely meet two steps from here, I am so high.

He started to tremble his way to his feet, marvelling at how anyone could climb that spider’s web of wood every day… not for all the siller in the world, he thought, starting to pick a way over the coiled rope and paint-slathered pots.

Then the world hit him and he reeled, caught desperately with one hand and felt cloth, felt it tear, then fell, rolled and slid over the platform edge — and stopped, hanging by the snag of his sackcloth cloak. Something black fell past him with a shrill cry.

Malise thought he had succeeded when he rammed into Kirkpatrick, catching him unawares and driving him to the edge of the platform — then, just as the man teetered on the brink, Malise felt the clawing hand grab his sleeve, tugging him off balance and they staggered until it tore. Malise, feet tangled in a coiled rope, felt himself falling, flailed wildly at the air — then clattered to the plank walkway and rolled over the edge like a stone.

There was a sickening, bowel-opening moment of plunge, when the dim flagstones of the floor screamed towards him — then the rope-loop cinched tight round the ankle of his shoe and, the other end fastened to the winch for raising heavy loads, he swung like the pendulum of a bell, clear across the space of the nave where the white, open-mouthed blobs of the priest and the Master limner sped below him like strange birds.

He hit the other scaffolding with a sickening crash that drove sense and the air from him, swung back, spinning while the lashed wood creaked, cracked and finally collapsed in a rolling thunder of noise and dust clouds. On the way back again, his shoe slipped off releasing the loop and he fell the last little way like a bag of rags, rolling heavily to the feet of the astounded priest.

Above, Kirkpatrick heard his cloak start to rip, flailed in a panic to get a handhold and heard it tear even more, so that he dropped a foot. One hand reached up and grasped a pole, just as the cloak tore in two; he hung, feeling the savage pain of his own weight tearing his arm from the socket. He looked up at the sound of a step, saw Lamprecht leaning over, brown with wide grin.

‘ El malvoglio,’ Lamprecht said and wished he had a knife — wished he had unbroken fingers to be able to hold it. That gave him an idea and his grin grew wet and red; he raised his foot to bring it crushingly down on Kirkpatrick’s fingers.

Kirkpatrick braced, knew he would never resist the pain of it, that he was about to take a long, hard fall into Hell itself… looked up into the leering face for one final curse on the ugly little shit…

The face changed in an instant, to one of absolute bemusement, staring down at the length of bloody steel which had just sprung out of his belly. It disappeared with a sucking sound that seemed to cut some hidden string inside Lamprecht and the little pardoner slumped sideways, mewling.

Kirkpatrick, blinded by sweat and pain, saw a black-gloved hand grasp his wrist, then a tremendous strength hauled him up and on to the platform, where his legs refused to carry him; he sat, shaking, looking at the twitching remains of Lamprecht.

The man who had killed him was all brown and black, wiping the length of sword clean on Lamprecht’s tunic, so that Kirkpatrick saw the pommel of it, the Templar cross clear. The man’s black spade beard split in a grin as he tore free what was around the dying pardoner’s throat, already slick with his own bloody vomit.

‘Rossal de Bissot,’ he announced in French, then jerked his head back the way he had come. ‘You should have realized how a fat painter would get to his workplace and saved yourself a climb. Now we must hurry and use the same counterweight lift — this place is carnage, no?’