The Lion Rampant

CHAPTER SIX

Chapel of St Mary and the Holy Cross, Lothian

Feast of the Invention of the Cross, May 1314

Dog Boy wondered how he had done it. He had never killed a woman before and felt strange about the fact of it, even though it had not been deliberate.

They had caught the raiders off guard; those who didn’t have their thumbs up their hurdies were howkin’ lumps of fresh meat out of a boiling pot with their stolen livestock lowing and cropping grass nearby — the lucky beasts that were not jointed and bloody under sacking in the carts.

Hunger was the reason the men had raided out so far and it had been their ruin, for they should just have taken their scourings and run for it, not stopped to boil beef. But there were no skilled fighting men here, only shoemakers and fishmongers, tanners and labourers from Berwick, out on a desperate herschip for supplies because none were coming up from the south and bread was ten times the usual price.

The fact that they raided into the lands of the Earl of Dunbar, who was on their side, did not matter to them when their bellies were notched to their backbones. The fact that they were eating the badly boiled kine of the lord of Seton, another ally, did not count one whit.

Dog Boy was of the opinion that they should have left the raiders alone, since they were doing Black Jamie’s band a service with their ravaging and, besides, most were Lothian men themselves. Some of them, it was clear, knew one end of a spear from the other and probably served in the Berwick town garrison. They might have kin standing with the army sieging Stirling for the Bruce. Some might even have kin among the men here.

The Black considered Dog Boy when he had voiced this in the growing dark, frowning to show he was giving it serious thought, because that last part had made his men think. No one was fooled as to what he would decide in the end, all the same.

After a long moment of considered mummery, he had shrugged and met the knowing, feral grins of the others with one of his own.

‘As you ken, I hate the Welsh worse than the English and God will stand witness that I truly hate the English.’

He paused for the effect of it.

‘But I hate yon Plantagenet Scots worse than either.’

‘Is there any your lordship likes?’ asked a voice, daring in the dim. Patrick, Dog Boy thought. It will be Patrick and the mouth that will get him hanged this day or the next.

‘I am not overfond of you,’ Jamie Douglas answered, soft and sibilant. ‘But if you fasten your lip and follow where I lead, you will earn my liking by and by.’

The laughter was quiet and knowing, from men willing to follow the Black anywhere so that those left holding the horses were sullen at being left out of it. The others filtered a little closer to the red flowers of enemy flame, creeping like foxes on a coop; the Black shrilled out a piercing whistle and they rushed down on ragged men, blowing on barely cooked lumps of meat to cool them enough to cram down their throats.

No finesse, no spearwork in the tight formations they had been drilling in for weeks, just a slavering, howling madness of long knives and little axes, a growling rush that came up between tethered horses, Jamie bawling to ‘look out for rope’.

Dog Boy was so busy watching for the thin sliver of dark that would betray the horse tether, belly height and as good as a gate, that he did not realize these men had staked their horses to their own reins until he tripped on one of the pegs and fell, sprawling like a new-born calf to roll almost to the feet of an astonished man.

Gaping, the half-raw beef falling slowly from his open mouth, the man was so stunned that Dog Boy was able to spring to his feet, slashing with the little axe; that woke the man up and he fell back, screaming a spittled cream of pink froth, scrabbling away from this horror.

Dog Boy followed, battering him with the axe, hearing the flung-up forearm crack, the shriek of the man as the blade chopped lumps off his hands, flailing like desperate bird wings to ward off the swings to his head.

A blow finally cracked his skull and he rolled away, moaning; Dog Boy saw a flicker among the mad, dancing shadows and screams around him and half turned into the snarl of a new opponent, a rusted sword up and falling on him.

He jigged sideways, fell into the man and heard the long puffed roar of the air being driven out. Staggering, he had time to recover and backhand a swipe with the axe, for the man was on his knees and trying to suck in breath from lungs that were not working. The blow slipped the top of his head off, neat as tapping out a boiled egg, but Dog Boy had no time to admire the work of it; another snarler was coming from his left.

He flung the axe, watched it whirl, saw the man jerk his head sideways so that the weapon whined past his ear and struck the woman behind him in the chest, a dull thump Dog Boy could hear above the rest of the howling din.

He had time to see the woman fold round the blow like a half-empty bag — and then the man he had missed was on him, slashing right and left with a long knife as notched as a broken dyke.

Dog Boy only had the estoc left. That and the axe were the preferred weapons of men who stood in tight spear ranks, for when you dropped the spear and went for the fallen men-at-arms, you wanted a blade to bash in a face unprotected by a fancy bucket helm, or a thin flat needle to shove through the eyeslit of one that was.

The man Dog Boy faced was not a fancy man-at-arms, with maille and a bucket helm, though he dreamed of it, Dog Boy was sure. Instead, he was a garrison man in hodden grey, whose metal-flaked leather jack lay somewhere nearby with his iron hat and who had snatched out the knife because he had nothing else to hand.

He would be good at standing gate guard, or raiding the defenceless, Dog Boy thought, crabbing round in a half-circle, but he is no match for a good knifer in a deadly wee jig such as this. He said so and the man already knew it, licked his dry lips and kept his eyes fixed on Dog Boy’s blade as if the winking light fascinated him.

Should be watching my eyes, as I watch his, Dog Boy thought. Yet it was Dog Boy who made the mistake; he heard the woman gasp and cry out, the one who had taken his axe in the chest with a noise like a stone dropped on a slack drum, and he half turned his head. The man sprang forward and Dog Boy saw it at the last, knew it to be the last — but then the man careered sideways, stood for a moment and shook his head.

‘Warra?’ he demanded and Dog Boy saw Patrick stare at the back of the man’s head where he had thrust his own estoc; then he gazed at the bloody length of thin blade he had shoved into the base of the man’s neck and finally, bewildered as to why the man had not gone down like a felled ox, looked at Dog Boy.

‘Gurrurr,’ the man said, the side of his face gone slack. One eye had drooped almost shut, but he grasped his knife and rushed at Dog Boy. Away sideways, like a mad crab, straight through the fire where he fell over and lay, slobbering softly and smouldering up smoke as his limbs moved pointlessly, still running and not even aware that he lay on his side, burning.

‘Nivver seen that afore,’ Patrick declared, grinning madly, moving to finish the man. ‘Must have cut somethin’ loose in his head.’

Dog Boy was only vaguely aware of it, for he was with the woman. She was already dead, blood all over her mouth and her chest cracked inside, for sure. Not old nor young, once pretty and now nothing at all, as if she had never been.

He sat now and looked at where she had lain before the other women — captives, it was clear — came and took her away to be decently buried in the dark. He watched them filter back to the fires while his fingers turned and turned the axe that had killed her. He wondered if she had been kin to the other women, or even known to them.

They were wary, these women, but had nowhere else to go, as they said to Patrick and the others round the fire.

‘These yins you slew took us from our hearths,’ one declared, a big beldame with arms she could barely fold over her bosoms. ‘They were too hungered to bother us much — but it is timely, your arrival.’

‘You may not think so,’ Leckie’s Tam leered loudly, ‘for we have already eaten.’

‘You daur approach myself an’ I will clap yer lugs, you muckhoon’,’ countered another, equally formidable woman, jutting her chin out defiantly. ‘I had thought better of you, with our own menfolk off to the aid of King Robert.’

It could have been true, Dog Boy thought. The ragged-arse folk had never been needed for wars before, since armies were gathered up from tenants and burghers who could afford at least an iron hat and a stout spear. Not now, though. Now there were bare-footed chiels arriving in the siege litter round Stirling at the behest of their lieges, stripping vills and farms bare and looking to be fed and armed and trained, for the call had gone out that the Invader was coming with the biggest host ever seen and their king needed them. That and the ruin war had made of their lives made most of them bring their families, following their own stolen fodder and cattle in the hope of leaching a little of it back.

‘Aye, weel, we are braw, brave fighters for the King,’ Rowty Adam declared to the women, ‘so what you give to us, as it were, is no loss to your menfolk and a service to His Grace, King Robert.’

‘There will be no harm done to you,’ said a firm voice and Jamie stepped in to be blooded by firelight, his black dags of hair down round his cheeks. He put one foot up on a log bench and neck-bowed politely to the big beldame with the bosoms. ‘You have the word of Sir James Douglas on it.’

You could see men’s crests fall at the sound of that, but no one as much as whispered against it, while the big beldame grew red in the face and the other women simpered. Dog Boy was sure any one of them, gripped by an arm and led into the dark by the Black Douglas, would have gone eagerly, swaying her hips and with no thought of her missing man.

‘Weel,’ Leckie’s Tam said bitterly when Jamie had gone, ‘since the Black has put the reins on us, it seems we will have need of entertaining ourselves — a tale it is and your turn to tell it, Parcy Dodd.’

Dog Boy sat and twirled the axe as Parcy Dodd began his tale, thinking on how he had once sat with Bruce himself, before he was king and a wheen of years since. They had discussed the merits of knightly vows and Bruce had been drunk. ‘Nivver violet a lady,’ Dog Boy had said then, for he had been younger and more stupid; well, younger, at least.

He glanced to where the dead woman had lain, the stain on the grass merely one more shadow in the shadows. He had ‘violeted’ a lady now and though it was more than stupid to dwell on it, he thought he could feel the stain on him, as if he had foresworn some knightly vows.

‘So,’ Parcy Dodd was saying, ‘I am stravaigin’ with Ill-Made Jock, when-’

‘Ill-Made?’

They all turned to Dog Boy and Parcy, flustered and left threadless in his tale, blinked once or twice.

‘Aye — him who was with Bangtail Hob when he was murdered by the Wallace …’

He tailed off, aware of the frantic, silent eyes like headshakes; he sat with the air of a man who had plootered into a sucking bog and could neither go forward nor back.

‘That was me that was with Hob,’ Dog Boy said, bitter with the awareness that Parcy did not, in fact, know Ill-Made and had probably never met him. ‘Ill-Made died at Herdmanston, during the siege of it. Button your lip on folk ye never knew.’

‘Aye, aye,’ Parcy answered suddenly and Leckie’s Tam hauled him free of the morass with a joke and the conversation flowed shakily back.

‘You are ower harsh,’ said a voice and Dog Boy turned into Jamie Douglas’s half-amused stare. ‘He only gilded his tale a wee bit, with some name he thought the others would recall.’

‘Ill-Made?’ Dog Boy answered, bewildered, and Jamie chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Ill-Made Jock, Bangtail Hob, Sir Hal Sientcler,’ Jamie recited. ‘All famous men who fought with the Wallace and some now with the King.’

Then, seeing the bemused stare persist, he leaned a little closer.

‘Yourself, Aleysandir of Herdmanston,’ he declared with a wry grin. ‘A legend, with a name folk huddle closer to, as if they can take some heat and comfort out of it, like a good fire.’

Stunned, Dog Boy could only sit and think about Ill-Made Jock, who had died coughing in his own blood while folk hammered axes on the door of Herdmanston. He had not looked anything like a hero all the long, sore time he took doing it.

Now he is a hero warrior of the Kingdom. Like Aleysandir of Herdmanston.

I am not, neither one nor the other. I am Dog Boy, worn to a nub by war and who has just ‘violeted’ a lady. It will not be the last vow broken, he thought, for this struggle has grown mean.

Crunia, Kingdom of Castile

Feast of the Siete Varones Apostólicos, May 1314

Sun-ripened, breathing air heady as peaches, they came down to the mottled, dun-coloured roofs of the port amid the bang and clatter of the Seven Apostolic Men, a perfume of incense clinging to every sill of the unshuttered windows brocading the street.

Anonymous as dirt, Hal and Sim blessed the foresight that had paid two Compostella-sated pilgrims for their ragged filth of robes, they happy with the knowledge that not only had they extirpated their sins but they now had the silver to go home by ship — blessed be the Name of God.

Now those robes blended in with the rest of the throng as Hal and Sim came down to the chanting town, a sound at first muted as sea-surf, rising and falling like a distant marker bell on wrack, barely a disturbance to the birdsong and the smell of warm green and myrrh.

By the time Hal and Sim had traded ruts and dust for rough cobbles, heading for the last clear sight of the ships crowding the harbour, they were plunged into a sweaty noise and a swirl of perfumed smoke.

Torquatus, his painted nose already dented, wavered uncertainly, rising and falling in a sea of eager hands; Ctesiphon ploughed grimly through the throng, with Sts Hesychius and Secundius seemingly battling each other for some undetermined precedent. The rest of the Seven Apostolic Men were lost in the chants and the shouts.

‘Christ betimes,’ Sim bawled out, ‘how are we to achieve anythin’ in this conflummix?’

‘Keep moving,’ Hal said, shoving and jostling. Find the Bon Accord first — down to the harbour. In the end he had to bellow and point. Sim elbowed his way through, cursing folk roundly until they reached the fringes of the crush and popped out like pips from a squeezed apple.

‘Bloody lumes,’ Sim fumed. ‘Moudiewarts — look at my cloots.’

He pulled the filthy ragged robes out indignantly and Hal eyed him back with a raised brow until even Sim had to laugh ruefully; if there was a new stain or tear on his robe there was no way of telling.

Hal looked at the haven they had found, discovered the stone faces of men with brown arms folded across their chests and knives prominently displayed.

‘It looks like a tavern or an inn,’ he said and then realized why the men stared; paid to keep out the riffraff, they were plainly considering which way Hal and Sim should leave: upright or horizontal, with balance favouring the latter. Sim scowled back at them, which was no help and only served to have the men look one to the other and, as if on some unseen signal, start to move.

Hal, swift as winking, hauled out his purse, held it up like the dangle of a fresh-neutered sheep bollock and jingled it; as if spellbound the two men stopped, faces broadened into brown grins and they stood aside like two opening doors.

Beyond, the yard was as much a mayhem as the street outside, though the worship was different; here, men bellowed and waved fistfuls of deniers and silver pennies, tournois and grossi while a Savoyard with a black cloth over one eye grabbed them, matched them and, in some way neither Hal nor Sim could fathom, accepted the bet and the odds.

Beyond this quarrelling shriek was a cleared square where two men half crouched, the docked birds churring and baiting in their hands, one gold and green, the other red and white, their shaved necks stretching and straining like serpents.

‘Cockfight, bigod,’ Sim declared with delight, just as the men let go and fell back. Released, the birds sprang forward like tourney knights, their gilded spurs glittering, dashing towards each other with a clash, beak to beak. There was a pause, a strange sound like a sheet in a mad wind and then they fell on each other, wings flailing, beaks snapping, leaping and twirling in a mad dance as they struck out with their deadly feet.

A man screeched as the white drew blood with a strike, flinging up his arms, knocking his neighbour’s hat off and elbowing Sim in the ear; Sim swore and elbowed him back, hard enough to make the man grunt and double up, but Sim’s heart was not in it, for he was roaring for the white and red.

Hal spared the winded man a glance, no more, just to make sure he was not about to take revenge when he got his breath back — and then he saw Piculph moving through the crowd, oblivious to their presence. Hal almost cried out, but buckled it in his mouth. Widikind had said Piculph was on their side, a spy for Ruy Vaz, but Hal was no longer sure whom to trust.

There was a great roar and a surge forward; the gold had sunk one spur into the neck of the white and red and the fight was all but done. When Hal looked back, Piculph was gone; he caught Sim’s arm and dragged him close enough to shout what he’d seen in the man’s ear. Sim swivelled madly left and right while, out on the mud-bloody sand, the white cock staggered.

‘Do not look round.’

The voice was pitched low, no louder than normal and almost in Hal’s ear, so the first thing he did was start to turn until a knuckle drove into his kidneys.

‘Do not look, I said.’

It was Piculph. Hal caught himself, stared to the front, where the white cock reeled, a splash of blood forming a red cross on its breast, the spurs glittering and flashing still in the dust and the roars. Like a Templar, Hal thought. Like Rossal and the others, dying in their own final pit.

‘I thought you were all dead.’

The voice was tense and harsh, close enough so that Hal could smell the man’s wine breath and feel the hot flicker of it on his lobe; any minute now, Hal thought, Sim will turn and see this, ruining any further subterfuge in it. He spoke quickly.

‘Kirkpatrick and myself and Sim escaped. Kirkpatrick is gone to your Grand Master, who will now have proof of Guillermo’s treachery.’

He hoped this was true, though he had last seen Kirkpatrick as a wraith in the dim, vanishing in the opposite direction from the one he and Sim took from the base of the tower.

‘Then my master has won and there is hope,’ answered Piculph. ‘I am watched and suspected — in truth, I was abandoning this enterprise when I saw you as you saw me. De Grafton has worked out that the treasure, if not in the carts, was some Order magic I do not understand. He now knows that your king was warned long beforehand. That trail leads to me.’

‘De Grafton has told of this?’ Hal asked and felt the nod behind him.

‘To Doña Beatriz. He wishes the Templar called Rossal brought to him here, but the lady does not entirely trust him.’

A snake-knot of plots, Hal thought. Out on the sand, the white’s beak fell open, gasping, and the tongue trembled like a snake; one wing trailed and the gold and green battered it with a frenzy of wingbeats and slashes.

‘Doña Beatriz saw him fell the big steersman with a blow behind the ear,’ Piculph declared, ‘and so forced him to join her. He is sent by the enemies of your king to make sure no weapons arrive for your army but he has long fallen from the Grace of God and his Order; I am sure he sees profit in this now for himself.’

‘The crew?’

‘Held in the lady’s house,’ the voice replied. ‘The big white one to the west of the harbour on the hill above it. They were led by the Judas goat of de Grafton, told they were to be feasted and fêted — drink, whores and all. Instead, they found themselves locked in the emptied wine cellars. Your ship is guarded by Guillermo’s men of the Alcántara, and the plan was to use them to kill your crew — but they will abandon Doña Beatriz if they find this plot is unveiled and Guillermo exposed.’

‘Someone should let them know,’ Hal replied, seeing Sim turn in his direction. The white raised its stained head, twitching and shivering and, in a single moment, a miracle of energy and courage and anger, hurled itself into the fray for the last time, the whirl of spurs scything round to strike its enemy’s golden, red-crowned head.

‘It is dangerous-’ Piculph began.

‘Anything you do now is dangerous,’ Hal pointed out, just as the light of recognition went on in Sim’s head and the scowl came down on his brows.

‘Here,’ he began and then a great bellowing roar went up, jerking him back to the fighting birds.

‘There is still de Grafton and Doña Beatriz,’ Piculph said uncertainly, his voice drowning in the clamour, but still loud enough for Hal to hear the fear in it. ‘I do not want go there.’

For terror of the Knight or the lady? Hal could not work it out, but told Piculph he must; Sim swung back, his face sheened with sweat and excitement.

‘Blinded, bigod. The white has blinded the gold … where is yon moudiewart?’

‘Whisht,’ Hal said and fingered his lips to strengthen it, He half turned. Piculph had vanished.

On the sand, the gold spun and reeled in its terror of sudden darkness while the white gathered the last of itself and slashed and slashed the green plumage to bloody ruin. Then, one wing dragging a bloody line in the sand, it half crawled on to the barely moving body and wavered out a crowing triumph while the crowd went mad.

They love to fight, Hal had heard folk say. Bred in the bone of them, an instinct. Like a parfait, gentle knight. Like a Templar.

As I am supposed to be.

The siege lines at Stirling

At the same moment

It was already warm and fly-plagued, Thweng saw. In a week, perhaps less, there would be real sickness here, as always when too many folk gathered with no sense of where to safely shit. It was not, he noted, what King Robert would want the likes of him to see, but exactly what Aymer de Valence and the others would want to hear.

Clustered round the slabbed fortress on its great raised scab of rock, the mushroom sprout of shelters and tents brought back a shiver of memory to Sir Marmaduke Thweng; the last time he had been at Stirling was the disaster at the brig, when Cressingham had died and de Warenne fled from Wallace. Then Sir Marmaduke Thweng had taken charge of the defence of the castle — and had had to surrender it and himself in the end.

Mowbray saw his look and thought Thweng was studying and worrying on the besieged castle.

‘We will hold, my lord,’ he said, reassuringly cheerful, ‘until Midsummer’s Day.’

He had back a look as mournful as a bull seal on a wet rock.

‘So I thought myself, once,’ Thweng replied. With a jolt, he realized that he had been ransomed after Stirling fell in return for one of this Mowbray’s kin. Comyn connections, he recalled, which accounts for their change of cote.

Seventeen years since; the thought made his bones ache and he wondered, yet again, at the wisdom of dragging his three-score plus years all the way from the peace of Kilton to another round of Scottish wars.

At least this duty was simple if onerous: escort the commander of Stirling’s fortress under safe writ through the Scots siege lines and back to his castle where he would await, as per his agreement with Edward Bruce, the outcome of events.

‘Take careful note as you go,’ de Valence, Earl of Pembroke had said to him. ‘Ascertain if Bruce will stand and fight.’

Stand and fight, Sir Marmaduke thought. Pembroke and Beaumont think it is all a matter of bringing the army north and forcing the Scotch rebels to battle. The King himself, a copy of his father in everything but wit and wisdom, scarcely cares what happens after, only that a victory here will settle matters with Lancaster, Warwick and all the other disaffected. The King’s worst fear is that the Scots will run back to the hills.

He and Mowbray had come up Dere Strete, as much on a scout as ambassadors charged with the official chivalry of the upcoming affair round Stirling. They had taken the straight road to the castle, as the army would when it arrived, with the great loom of Coxet Hill on their left, heading to meet Bruce and the other lords at St Ninian’s little chapel.

Mowbray, his face sharp and ferret-eager with watchfulness, pointed out the pots dug at the crossings of the Bannock stream, each hole’s flimsy covering hiding the sharp stake within; beyond, to the north, a line of men sweated and dug.

‘Dangerous for horse,’ he pointed out, as if Thweng was some squire in need of instruction. ‘Trenches and pots, my lord: it means the Scotch will stand and fight as the King wishes.’

After what he had seen, the drilling men and the numbers of them, the grim hatred and the entire families they had brought — which you did not do if you thought of defeat — Sir Marmaduke felt a small needle of doubt lancing into the surety of an English success.

And yet … he knew Bruce of old, from the stripling days when he had been a tourney fighter of note and the pair of them had clattered round the circuit in a welter of expensive saddlery, horses and gear. They had shared bruises, victory, drink and jests — he was Sir M, Bruce was Sir R, which sounded like ‘sirrah’ and was the laugh in the piece.

The tourney-fighting Bruce he knew had not liked a straight pitched battle then, the French Method of fighting where you trained horse and rider to bowl a man over. His was the German Method, mounted on a lighter horse and avoiding the mad rushes to circle round and strike from behind.

His tactic was to grab knights round the waist and drag them bodily from the saddle, so that the Kipper — the man on foot with a great persuading club — could invite the lord to surrender himself to ransom. He and Bruce had played Kipper for each other, time and about for one profitable, glorious season, and Thweng recalled it with a dreamy mist of remembrance.

He has waged war the same way, Thweng thought as they rode up through the litter of men and shelters, avoiding anything that looked like a full commitment of all his force. He did it in ’10 and long before that. He’d had Wallace as teacher for it — why would he contemplate changing it now?

They passed Bannock vill, a rude huddle of cruck houses and drunken fences, where men leaned on spears and watched them; one spat pointedly. Nearby, hung from the shaft of a tipped-up and weighted two-wheeled cart, a festering corpse turned and swung, smoked with flies.

A black reminder about pillage, Thweng thought; the wee households in this hamlet had not fled, though they risked kitchen gardens and chooks, because armed men and Bruce’s bright writ ensured no looting.

That was order and organization and Thweng felt a slim sliver of cold slide around his backbone; when you see your enemies in discord, fill your cup and take your ease. When they are grim and resolved and of one mind, gather your harness and set your shield …

They dismounted outside the small stone chapel, garlanded with a splendid panoply of bright tents and banners. They had been brought the last little way by Sir James Douglas, though Sir Marmaduke found it hard to equate the lisping cheerfulness of dark youth with the man he had heard was a scowling scar on the lip of the world and whose very name, the Black, set men and women and bairns howling.

The small mesnie of English men-at-arms remained by their horses, nervous as levrets in a snakepit, while Mowbray and Sir Marmaduke clacked along the stones to the door of St Ninian’s and ducked under the Douglas smile into the musty dim of the chapel.

‘You will wait to be called, gentilhommes,’ said a voice from a shadow. ‘Then you will step forward and bow. You will not parley unless asked a question. Understood?’

‘Understood, my lord Randolph,’ Thweng answered, recognizing the voice and forcing the man into better light, where his unsmiling face could be clearly seen. ‘My lord earl, I should say. You have risen in the world since you betrayed one king for another, it appears.’

Randolph flushed.

‘I am loyal to the King,’ he blustered, but Thweng had made his point and waved, at once apologetic, insouciant and dismissive, which deepened Randolph’s flush — but their names were called and the Earl had no chance to reply.

Bruce was standing behind a table littered with papers, half-rolled, unfolded and pinned — the corner of one by a dagger. Beside him was his brother Edward, a coarse copy hewn of rougher stone, and behind was a coterie of shadows, waiting and watching.

‘My lords,’ Edward declared. ‘Present your writ.’

Mowbray passed across the rolled vellum, had it taken, examined and placed to one side.

‘You may proceed to the castle. Take no detours. Once inside, you will be considered quit-claimed from this writ. Is that understood?’

Edward was matter-of-fact and harsh, much changed from the smiling, eager man who had negotiated the midsummer surrender of Stirling, Mowbray thought and almost smiled at what must have passed between the brothers at the news of it. Instead, he merely inclined his head and hovered uncertainly until he realized he had been dismissed; he shot Sir Marmaduke a stiff look and vanished. There was a silence, thick as gruel.

‘You have seen enough to satisfy the Plantagenet?’

The voice was rough and rheumed and the face, when it was presented to the filtered light inside the still, close tent, was a stone to the temple; Sir Marmaduke jerked a little and blinked before he recovered his wit.

‘A deal of men,’ he answered, staring at the lesioned skin and the wounds. A scar down the left eye — Methven for that, he recalled — and the ruin of his right cheek. A tourney wound, he remembered, though that had been long since and if it had never healed there was something festering wrong; there had been rumours of sickness and reports that the usurper King of Scots was taken to his bed, feverish and practically dead, but Sir Marmaduke had always dismissed them as wishes. Now he was not so sure and he fought for more sense to his words.

‘A deal of men,’ he repeated, ‘in rough wool and drilling with sticks.’

‘For all that,’ Bruce said, stiff as old rock, ‘Plantagenet will find us here when he finds the courage to seek us out. And we will have sharp on the sticks.’

‘So I understand, sirrah,’ Thweng answered and heard the court of shadows suck in their breath at this breach of protocol. But the King smiled a little at the old joke only the pair of them knew, stretching the cheek — bigod, Sir Marmaduke thought, there is discolour on it all the way back to the ear …

‘I have a gift,’ Bruce declared suddenly. He turned to take an armful of folded cloth from one of the shadows behind him and then shook it out.

‘Return this to my lord Berkeley — he lost it recently in my domains.’

The bloodied, torn Berkeley banner taken by Jamie Douglas seemed to glow balefully as Thweng reached out and gathered the rough brocade, folding it into a loop over his arm, and all the time could not take his eyes from the face of the man he had known from youth.

God blind me, he thought, the changes in him. The fierce ambition had always been there, though Thweng had not realized what the young, chivalrous knight that had been Robert Bruce had had to sacrifice for it. It was as if the stains on his soul had manifested themselves, for all to see, on his face.

Thweng shook the idea from him as a bayed stag does a hound; he had his own stained liege and enough personal sins not to want to burden himself with others. And he had his own tasks. He steeled himself, couched his lance and dug in his spurs.

‘A gift for a gift,’ he replied, ‘and a counterweight to the knowledge I have garnered: Strathbogie has fallen from your chaplet.’

It was a strike, sure as point on shield. There was a long silence, followed by a moth-wing murmur from the unseen shadows as the news went round. David of Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl, had been a recent convert to the Bruce cause, despite being married to the daughter of the murdered John Comyn of Badenoch. His defection back to the English would send a shiver through the other titled lords who supported Bruce; they were few enough and he depended on them for the best of his army.

‘It seems’, Sir Marmaduke went on, driving home the spike of it, ‘he did not care much for your brother’s shift of dalliances to the daughter of the Earl of Ross. I am told wee Izzie Strathbogie is blinded with snot and red-eyed with weeping.’

Edward growled a little and leaned forward, flexing his knuckled hands on the table, for it was his seductions that had brought this about; Bruce cleared his throat and Edward, black scowling, straightened a little.

‘Fair exchange,’ Bruce said flatly. ‘And your observations on the reasons for it are cogent — you would know, of course, of the problems women can cause. How is Lady Lucy?’

Sir Marmaduke fought down his own hackles, admiring Bruce’s smooth parry even as he did so; Lucy Thweng’s wayward, single-minded progress through lovers, husbands and even abductions was a scandal to the Thwengs in general and himself, her uncle, in particular. Yet he fought the flicker of a wry smile on to his walrus-moustached face.

‘A splendid animal,’ he answered, which was how his own king had described her, grinning knowingly and nudging Despenser as he did so, for the rumours that old Sir Marmaduke had also plucked his niece’s fruit was rife. It had clearly reached here, too, for someone tittered in the dark behind Bruce and muffled it swiftly.

There was silence after that and Sir Marmaduke realized he had probably been dismissed, was turning to clack his way across the stones when the Bruce voice harshed out again.

‘You have seen our sticks, sir. Tell Plantagenet we will defend this realm with the longest one we have.’

And Thweng, nodding a lower bow, heard the last whispered phrase as he found his way back to sunlight.

‘Farewell, Sir M.’

Bruce watched him go with a dull ache of another lost friend settling stonelike in his belly. An old friend — he had been surprised at the sunk cheek, the white wisp of hair, yet now wondered why he had been so shocked; Sir M had to have sixty years lying on his shoulders — at least. He had seemed old when he and Bruce had tourneyed together — bigod, he must have been the age I am now.

A long time of friendship, now smoked away as if it had never been. Small wonder folk spoke of being raised to the throne — it was a place as high and lonely as any eyrie.

‘Did he see, d’ye think?’

Edward’s voice was harsh with eagerness, his great broad face shining, but his brother’s eye was jaundiced when it turned on him, blood-filled with Edward’s misdemeanours.

‘Sir M misses nothing,’ he answered shortly and Edward, sensing the mood, wisely tightened his lips, aware that the Strathbogie business was too raw; he could feel the accusing eyes of all the other nobiles searing his back.

‘He saw the work, Your Grace,’ Jamie confirmed, and then frowned. ‘Though I cannot see why you had men digging pretend holes as well as true.’

‘I want the Plantagenet blocked from coming up Dere Strete,’ Bruce answered patiently. ‘When he moves round to the north, as he then must if he wishes to officially relieve the siege on Stirling, I want him to believe I have trenched to our front there, too. That way he will think I wish to stand and fight.’

‘But you must,’ blurted Jamie and Edward’s sharp bark of laughter drowned the disapproving murmurs at this breach of etiquette.

‘If I fight at all,’ Bruce answered, slow and cold as a glacier and as much to them all as the flustered Jamie, ‘I will not be standing, my lords. This will not be Falkirk.’

The air was heavy with the sudden tense interest of all the others, who hung on whether the King would stand and fight. And Jamie understood it, sudden as a flaring light: if the area between the armies was trenched it would be as much a barrier to the spear blocks they had been drilling in and they needed to stay tight and together as they moved. That was why the holes were pretend: Bruce would not wait for the English; he would attack them, as Wallace did at the brig.

He almost exclaimed it out loud, but then recovered himself and bowed like a bobbing hen.

‘If Your Grace stands to fight,’ he added.

Bruce favoured him with a twist of smile.

‘Just so. If that is the case, you will attend in my own Battle on the day, with your mesnie. Until then, I want your men mounted and riding.’

‘We are not horse, Your Grace,’ Jamie argued lightly in French. ‘You have Sir Robert Keith’s men for that.’

‘The Earl Marischal’s horse are few and needed,’ Bruce answered. ‘Your men are good riders and I want them broken in two — yon Dog Boy will command the other half — and riding about the Lothians making a deal of noise and fire and smoke.’

‘Aleysandir? He is not stationed enough for command.’

‘Stationed or not, he is vital,’ Bruce replied. ‘I will tell you why, good Sir James, since I am your liege lord and king and can do so where others tremble — he is your double. The twig does not fall far from the tree and whether your difference in stations admits that you are sired by the same loins, the truth is palpable each time you stand side by side.’

He saw Jamie Douglas stiffen and frowned.

‘Loose your hackles, lad — I need the country in turmoil. I need every handful of horsemen as heralds of the terrible Sir James. If the Black can be in two places at once, all the better.’

Jamie Douglas saw it and his flattered anger subsided slowly. He glared round the other lords, daring them to comment on this shame on his father’s name — though the truth was that all of them could name some wee common woman tupped by a noble relative.

‘I need herschip, but of a particular sort,’ Bruce went on. ‘Fetch back all the iron you can carry from Northumberland’s smiths and forges. Strip it from the Church if needs be — we will need as much as we can, to beat ploughshares into swords.’

Nor will there be enough, he thought to himself, if the weapons fail to arrive from Spain.

‘Above all,’ Bruce added, ‘you watch. Put eyes on the road from Berwick and do not remove them until you can ride and tell me proud Edward is coming over the Tweed with his host, by which route and how many.’

He watched Jamie Douglas stride off and heard Randolph clear his throat.

‘The Earl of Atholl is a sore loss.’

Indeed. As if I had not realized that — Bruce almost spat it back, but swallowed it and offered an insouciant shrug instead.

‘If the great and good cannot be persuaded to fight for their king, then the sma’ folk can be persuaded to fight for their kingdom instead, my lord,’ he replied in English, and then turned to the shadows, picking one out from the others; Sir Henry Sientcler of Roslin bowed.

It was unkind and Bruce knew it as he spoke, but fear made him careless of the Roslin lord’s feelings.

‘And if your Herdmanston kinsman and namesake falters, my lord,’ he declared to the stricken lord of Roslin, ‘we will, in truth, be defending this realm with nothing better than long sticks.’

Crunia, Kingdom of Castile

That night …

They made a plan, of sorts; Sim levered himself up and flung himself into the turmoil of the streets like a man plunging into surf, while Hal stayed with a flask of watered wine in the maelstrom of cockfighters, waiting to see if Piculph returned.

The day slid to a groaning end, the sun a raw, bloodied egg trembling on the horizon. The cockfights filtered to an exhausted finish and the victors fed and watered their weary, wounded champions, before cosseting them carefully in the dark comfort of linen bags, which they hung high on posts to thwart the vermin. The losers made more pragmatic arrangements and chicken stew was cheap on the tavern bill of fare.

Sim ate his with considerable gusto, but Hal neither liked the taste nor the idea that the white and red might be mixed in with the green and gold — though the truth was that the dying light brought out hordes of fluttering insects, mad for the sconces and, in the dim, Hal could not tell what had started out in his stew and what had landed since, drunk with light.

Sim, presented with this, paused, shrugged and spooned on, observing only that the folk of Compostella could take perfectly good food and make it ‘as heated as the Earl of Hell’s hearth’. Yet he ate Hal’s bowl as well and, at the end, slid it away from him, belched and sighed.

‘They ken how to bliss saints, mark me well,’ he observed, swallowing watered wine and grimacing at the water. ‘The seven holy men have been duly worshipped, I can tell you. The wee saints they name Segundo and Tesifonte had a good stushie at the entrance to a street, though I think it had more to do wi’ the fact that tanners carried one and cobblers the other. And Cecilio cowped off his bier and crushed a wee nun, so she and God are not on speaking terms.’

‘God be praised,’ Hal said, to protect Sim from his own blasphemy.

‘For ever and ever — did yon Piculph come back?’

‘He did not,’ Hal answered. ‘Did ye spy out the ship?’

‘I did,’ Sim said, slurping; he paused and belched again. ‘Yon fightin’ chooks is fightin’ back … It is a good swim out in the bay,’ he went on, ‘unless we can find a wee boatie.’

They mulled this in silence, for neither of them swam well; none of the crew of the Bon Accord did, apart from Niall, who was called Silkie — half-man, half-seal — because he could dog paddle a bit.

‘There is not a sign of any of yon fancy Order Knights with the green crosses, either on board the Bon Accord, or anywhere in the town,’ Sim offered as a ribbon of hope. ‘Nor at yon Doña’s house on the hill.’

‘You went there? That was reckless.’

‘Not close,’ Sim soothed. ‘But we need to ken where it lies.’

Which was true enough, though Hal’s feathers were not smoothed by the lack of presence of the Alcántara men; it could be that they had slithered out of maille and marking surcotes, the better to spy out the pair they sought. Sim, frowning, considered this and reluctantly admitted, between belches, that it might be true, though he had thought any in the Holy Orders considered it a sin to be out of their garb as well as their cloistered commanderie.

The Order of Alcántara, Hal pointed out, was not like the Poor Knights and Sim had also to admit the truth of that.

‘Still,’ he added. ‘We can hardly bide here like a millstone. The crew are in that house, according to Piculph, and needs be freed.’

‘I would prefer to know more of what is also in that house. Piculph would answer it — if we knew where he was,’ Hal said.

‘Fled,’ Sim declared. ‘You said he was doing so when we stumbled on him.’

Their mood matching the gloom, they sat until darkness fell and slid away from the tavern into the drunken streets, moving carefully until the crowds thinned and straggled to an end and the streets grew steep and broad. Then Sim’s hand halted Hal.

‘That’s the place.’

It was a walled edifice, menacingly dark, which could mean that it was empty or a trap. Hal heaved in a deep breath and brought the hidden sword out from under his ragged robes. Sim, frowning at the gurgle in his belly, shouldered the bulk of the wrapped arbalest and brought out his knife, which was much better for close work.

They looked at each other, sweat-gleamed faces tense and ghostly in the dark.

‘Aye til the fore,’ Sim muttered with a grim tightening of lips and Hal shouldered into the shadows under the gate.

They moved into the hot closet of a walled garden, thick with scent and singing with night insects, both strange to Hal’s senses. Stranger still was the low gurgle, like a rain-washed drain in an Edinburgh wynd — and a groan which whirled him round in alarm, squinting into the silvered moonlight shadows.

‘Sim?’

There was another low groan and the rustle of cloth.

‘Are ye hurt, man?’

He pitched his second question more urgently than the first whispered hiss, and moved towards the groans, in time to hear an ugly wet sound; the rushing gush of stink made him reel.

‘Christ and His saints,’ Sim moaned. ‘The flux …’

Greed and two bowls of spiced chicken stew, Hal thought, and had to grit his teeth to keep from bellowing it. There were more sounds and Hal moved upwind a little.

‘Ah, bigod …’

‘Whisht,’ Hal hissed, but Sim, a squatting shadow in the dim with a face pale as moonlight, waved a hand.

‘If this has not brought a dozen guards then the place is empty,’ he grunted, which made enough sense for Hal to relax a little.

‘Go on,’ Sim added. ‘I’ll follow in a breath or two.’

Hal hestitated, but only briefly, for he needed a breath or two that did not have Sim’s innards in it. He moved through the neat undergrowth; no useful plants here, only decorative ones, which was a waste of growing land as far as Hal was concerned. The whirr and flap of wings made him pause, half-crouched in the bulked shadow of a building dominated by a tall, circular tower.

The double doors of the place were open, the inside dark as the Earl of Hell’s yett hall; Hal, sweating and icy, crept in, rolling his feet and wincing at every careless clack of booted sole on tiled floor.

The only light came from the moon and the faintest of pale glows ahead, but Hal’s eyes were dark-adapted now and made out the shape of arch and doorway. Cellar, he thought. That was where Piculph had said the crew of the Bon Accord were kept, so he looked for a way that led downward.

He scouted the edge of the room, slow and cat-wary, avoiding candlestand and statue, chair and bench, until he came to stairs leading down. Four steps and he was at a door, which yielded a fingerlength before the key-lock rattled it to a halt; a voice froze the blood in Hal.

‘Fit’s that thaur?’

Pegy’s northern Braid, faint and muffled through the thick timber of the door, permitted Hal to breathe again. He told Pegy who he was and heard the excited rush of murmurs from the others, but found that the door was thick, stout and locked. According to Pegy, Doña Beatriz had the key. Fretting and sweating, he promised them he would return and slid back into the shadows.

No guards; no sign of life. Perhaps, Hal thought, Piculph has done his work after all — there was a whirring sound and he ducked instinctively, throwing himself flat on the tiles. After a moment, when nothing else happened, he climbed back to a low crouch, heard a soft fluting call and perched, bewildered.

Light flared like a blast of icy breath and bobbed through the open door, a torch held in Sim’s big hand, so that Hal, blinking blindly into it, knew he was caught in a half-crouch, sword ready.

‘Whit why are ye hunkered there?’ Sim boomed and Hal sprang up.

‘Whisht, you — I heard something.’

Sim peered round, raising the sconce torch higher.

‘There is nobody …’ he began, then the whirr and the soft call came again, making Hal cry out.

‘Cooshie doos,’ Sim exclaimed with a bark of laughter. ‘Ye are hiding from the attentions o’ some cooshie doos.’

Hal realized Sim was right and that the high-roofed place had doves in it, though the next thought that struck him was where had they come from? He was too embarrassed to mention that as he straightened up and gave Sim a vicious glance.

‘Yer arse back in order?’ he demanded and Sim scowled, angry and ashamed.

‘For the minute,’ he admitted, ‘though I am black-affronted.’

‘Black-behinded as well, I am sure.’

Sim’s reply was interrupted by a dove which fluttered down, tame as a lap dog, and strutted into the torchlight in a hopeful search for food.

‘Cooshie doo,’ he declared with a triumphant grin. Hal scowled back. Doves did not fly in the dark normally, which he mentioned. Nor did they spontaneously bleed, which brought Sim’s head round to study the bird more carefully; it hopped and flapped up but there was time enough to see the pink staining on one wingtip.

Then, in the lip of light expanded by Sim holding up the torch at arm’s length, they both saw the limp white hand beyond.

Doña Beatriz had died quickly, struck from behind by a single blow from a blade that had sliced upwards off her shoulderblades and cracked open her skull; her hair lay like dead wet snakes in the spreading darkness of blood.

‘Backhand stroke wi’ a broadsword,’ Sim growled, waving away the flies greedy for gleet. ‘She was running, which spoiled the aim — planned to swipe her head off her neck but missed.’

‘Piculph?’ Hal suggested, bemused, but Sim had run out of knowledge and merely shrugged, winced and massaged his belly, trying not to look as Hal, swallowing his own spit hard, fumbled in the stiff, bloody ruin of the woman’s body.

‘No key,’ he declared finally, smearing the back of his clean hand across his sweat-moist lips.

They moved towards the faint pale glow, unnerved enough now for Sim to stub out the torch on the tiles, pressing his boots on the embers, swift and silent, as a prudent man would who had known only rush floors and wood surrounds; the acrid stink of the smoke trailed them towards the light.

There was a door, open just enough to let out the faintest of glows, an alarmed dove which flew off in a rattle of wings — and a faint, regular heartbeat of sound which paused them both and brought their heads together.

‘A wee fountain,’ Sim hissed, his breath foul in Hal’s face.

‘A horologe,’ Hal replied, having seen the ticking wonder of gears and cogs that had been mounted in Canterbury. Sim, who had only heard of such a thing, looked sceptical as they slid, fast and quiet, into the room.

The light came from the moon, which was almost straight above and shining through a roof tight-slatted with wooden beams, but otherwise open — Hal realized they were inside the tower he had seen from the outside and that this view of it was as strange.

The floor was earth and blue-tiled meandering paths, spattered with white splashes where it was not thick with exotic plants. A pool dominated the centre and the walls, all around, top to bottom, were pocked with regular square niches, as tall and wide as two fists one on top of the other; even as he stood and gaped, Hal heard the flute-note call that was now familiar.

It was the sprung stones, girdling the entire thing at waist height like a belt, that finally clicked it into place for the pair of them.

‘A doocot,’ Sim marvelled. It was exactly that: the sprung stones to keep the rats from climbing up to the eggs and squabs; the slatted roof to keep the hawks from the same, while allowing the doves in and out. Yet something had killed a couple of birds, their bodies splayed like orchids veined with blood. The ticking was louder.

‘Water,’ Sim declared, pushing through the veil of blossoms to the pool.

It was almost all blood, the pool, drained from the gently swinging nakedness of Piculph, hanging from the sorrowful bend of a willow-tree bough.

He had been hard used so that death had come as a mercy to him, but not before he had suffered the shrieking terror of being whipped to a flayed ruin. Nor had he been dead long enough for all the life to have drained away; it fell, viscous and soft as cat’s paws, drop by ticking drop from the dangle of his arms and head.

The slamming door whirled them round and Sim gave a sharp cry as something whirred like a dove wing through the air, curved round his neck and jerked him off his feet; he flew forward and was dragged, choking.

Hal, with reflexes even he did not know he possessed, slashed out with the sword and the black, thin snake that seemed to have leaped out and grabbed Sim round the neck whipped away; there was a curse and Hal sprang to Sim’s side as the man rolled over, coughing and choking.

He had time to see that it was no snake but the remains of a leather thong — a whip, he realized, remembering Piculph’s ruined body — and then a voice cut the air.

‘Quick, for an old man. You have spoiled my surprise — and I had spent a deal of time perfecting that lash; I did not know how many would come and needed an advantage.’

De Grafton stepped into the moonlight like a verse in black and silver, the limp dangle of the whip in one hand, the flash of steel in the other. He wore black Templar robes and it seemed as if the dark had eaten him.

‘Two only? Then Piculph told it true.’

He shrugged ruefully.

‘Pity. I did not believe him. I thought this Ruy Vaz would send his host at least — two old men is not a little insulting.’

‘Enough for you,’ Sim managed, but his voice was hoarse and the throat burn in it palpable.

‘Ruy Vaz and his men are on their way,’ Hal added, hoping it was true.

De Grafton moved, sudden as an adder, the tongue of ruined whip flicked and a dove veered off and flew away, calling alarms. De Grafton frowned.

‘You have severed enough to ruin my aim,’ he said and tossed the whip away with disgust. It was that, more than anything so far, which drove a cold steel blade of determined hate into Hal, suddenly revolted by a man who had spent the long, hot afternoon practising his whip on an innocence of doves while his human victims marbled in the heat.

‘Wee birds and women,’ Hal answered, finding his voice at last. ‘This seems your strength, de Grafton.’

He moved as he spoke, between the fronds of a palm, crushing the jade-pale stems and heads of some flowers, so that a cloying perfume rose up.

‘The lady? She believed this Piculph, thought to go with him and throw herself on the mercy of Ruy Vaz.’

De Grafton’s lip curled with revulsion.

‘Thought to use her women’s ways’, he said, ‘to slither out from punishment and leave me to bear the brunt of wrath. I killed her as you would the snake in Eden and then found out what was needed from Piculph.’

‘Who was no great fighter,’ Hal answered, sidling closer.

‘A Serjeant of the Order of Alcántara,’ de Grafton sneered. ‘If they are all like that, the Moors will be in this port within the year.’

‘You will never ken,’ roared Sim, bulling up from the floor, even as Hal shouted at him to stay.

De Grafton slid to one side, the sword flicked, fast as the whip, and there was a dull clang and a splash which curdled Hal’s blood; he sprang forward, but recoiled to a halt as the sword flicked out at him. From where he stood he could see Sim sprawled on the far side of the pool where the blow had flung him, half in and half out, covered in blood and not moving; Piculph’s disturbed body swung and turned while doves mourned in the moonlight.

‘You have a key I need,’ Hal said, trying not to look at Sim, while de Grafton cocked his head to one side like a curious bird.

‘I am charged with delaying you — preventing you entire if I can,’ he replied, almost sadly. ‘I gave my oath to my lord Percy and his English king, as a Poor Knight.’

‘The Poor Knights are no more and your oath is as worthless as your honour — you are long fallen from any grace,’ Hal replied, moving a bough of fragrant blossoms from in front of his face. ‘Piculph did not die because you wanted to know how many were coming here — he died because you wanted to know if Rossal was. Himself and the Templar writ he carries. Which you would take from his whipped body after he had revealed the secret word.’

There was silence, broken only by the gory drip and the flutter of terrified doves.

‘Did you work out that you alone had not been party to the knowledge? They did not trust you, de Grafton, even though they could prove nothing. Yet Rossal knew — perhaps God told him.’

He shifted slightly for advantage, poised and ready for a strike.

‘You can deny your oaths and cheat the Order enough to gull foolish men and silly women,’ he went on. ‘But God is watching, my lord.’

There was a pause, and then the doves erupted in fragile terror as de Grafton launched into a snarling frenzy, seeing all his plans shredded at the last.

He was fast and trained with all the honed skills of a Templar, so that Hal reeled away, a shock jolting through him at how slow he was, how far removed from his own old skills. Yet the same reflex that had cut the whip from Sim sprang the bough of blossoms from his hand and slapped its fragrance into de Grafton’s face, making him turn his head to avoid it; the scything blow hissed over Hal’s ducking shoulder like a bar of light.

Then the clouds drifted over the moon and everything was sunk into darkness.

There was silence, broken only by the frantic bird-sounds, which clouded Hal’s ears. There was nothing but scent and space and blackness — but it was the same for de Grafton, he thought, and fought to control the ragged rasp of his treacherous breathing.

A flurry of thrashing came from his left — a bird had blundered into de Grafton and he had struck out, so Hal moved as swiftly as he dared and slashed left and right, then retreated without, it seemed, hitting anything.

Birds whirred and slapped through the dark, flute-wailing their distress. Something splashed in the fountain and Hal wondered if de Grafton was there; the idea that he was finishing off a wounded Sim almost sprang him recklessly forward, but he fought the urge.

Sweat trickled down him and he found himself in a half-crouch, as if the ground would open up a safe hole and let him crawl in; the scent of flowers and old blood drifted on the night breeze.

The clouds slid off the moon; a silver and black shadow flitted across from his left and the blow almost tore the sword from Hal’s grip, forcing him to dance backwards. He parried once, twice, managed to block a low cut to the knee, and then was alone as de Grafton whirled away like a wraith.

In a moment he was back; the swords clashed and sparks flew, the blades slid together to the hilt and, for an eyeblink, Hal was breath to fetid breath with de Grafton, feeling the sweat heat of him, seeing the mad eyes and the white grin; but then the Templar’s head bobbed like a fighting cock and Hal reeled back from the blow on his forehead. Something seemed to snag his arm and he knew he had been cut.

De Grafton laughed softly.

‘Do you have the writ, I wonder? Or the secret word? Or both? I will cut you a little, then we will find out the truth.’

The pain crept through and Hal felt blood slide, felt the grip of his hand on the hilt grow slack and reinforced it with the left. A bird called throatily and de Grafton was suddenly close, his blade beating down Hal’s own.

‘We will find out,’ he repeated and Hal knew the next strike would be to render him helpless, for de Grafton to truss up and question.

‘It will do you no good,’ Hal panted through the red swirls of pain. ‘The writ and the word are both gone to Ruy Vaz.’

There was a pause and Hal cursed himself. Clever, he thought, gritting through the pain of his arm — give him no excuse to spare you. Yet he could only kneel like a drooping bullock at the slaughter and wait for it.

There was a whirring thump — De Grafton screamed and arched, and then bowed at the waist with the agony of the steel arbalest prong driven like a pickaxe into the join of neck and shoulder; behind, the bloody apparition that was Sim bellowed like a rutting stag, his face sliding with gore.

‘Kill me, would ye? Ye bliddy wee limmer, I will maul the sod wi’ ye.’

De Grafton, reeling and shrieking, gave up trying to reach the prong and started to swing round on the unarmed Sim — Hal’s desperate, lunging two-handed stroke tore his own sword from his weakened grasp, but not before it had cut the Templar from his wounded shoulder almost to his hip. He fell in two directions and his heels drummed.

The birds whirled and called and the heels danced to stillness. Sim wiped the mess on his face into a horror mask of streaks and heaved in a breath; his teeth were bright in the moonlit scarlet of his cheeks.

‘Aye til the fore,’ he panted and Hal blinked from his numbness.

‘I thought he had killed you,’ he said and Sim scowled.

‘The blow hit the arbalest — look, his cut has ruined it entire.’

He prised the weapon from the ruin of De Grafton and flourished it with disgust.

‘He has severed the string and put a bliddy great gash in the stem. I will never find another.’

‘Ye are all bloody,’ Hal managed to say and Sim wiped his gory face again.

‘From the pool — Piculph’s blood. Apart from a dunt on my back, I am unhurt — more than can be said for yerself.’

Hal allowed himself to be led away from the corpses and the stink of blood and exotic blooms. Sim struck up a light, which made them blink, and presented Hal with his sword, worked free from de Grafton’s corpse. Then he examined the arm with a critical eye.

‘Nasty and deep, but the lacings in yer arm are intact, so ye will get the use of it back.’

Hal tried not to let the pain wash him, concentrated on staring at the sword and wondering at the keen edge which had slashed de Grafton to ruin. Too fancy, Rossal had admitted when he had handed the sword over and now Hal saw the extent of it: the Templar cross in the pommel and letters etched down the blade and now outlined clearly in de Grafton’s blood: C+S+S+M+L. Across the hilt was N+D+S+M+L and Hal wondered if there was a Templar left who could tell him what they meant.

Sim searched de Grafton for the key and vanished with it; not long afterwards the place was suddenly filled with the Bon Accord sailors. Hal let Pegy have his head, listened dully to him sending Somhairl and some men to check on the ship while he sat, fired with the agony of his arm and trying not to move at all.

The big Islesman was back all too soon; the ship was foundered and half-sunk at its moorings, the steering whipstaff cut.

‘Baistit,’ Pegy swore and kicked the bloody ruin of de Grafton so that the head lolled sickeningly. ‘He knew he had won afore ye arrived, Sir Hal.’

Hal, crushed with the black dog of it, fell back to studying the sword, half-numbed, watching the gleet and blood crust into the grooves of the letters in a haar of weariness, until light and voices burst over him, driving him up and out of it, as if breaching from a dark pool.

‘Christ betimes,’ said a familiar voice, ‘what a charnel hoose.’

It was an effort to raise his head and stare into the wide grin.

‘Kirkpatrick,’ Hal slurred like a drunk. ‘You are late.’

ISABEL

Thou deckest Thyself with light as if it were a garment and spreadest out the Heavens like a curtain. A sign, Lord, to silence my weeping and I thank You for it. I saw him, through the smoke, through the crowds howling at the shrieks of the burning woman, a dark and strange angel, hooded and careful but the only one not looking at the poor soul writhing on the pyre, but up at me. He knows I saw him, too. O Lord. Joy of joys — a sign. Matters are changing; winds are shifting.

Dog Boy.