The Lion Wakes

Chapter Ten

Berwick

Feast of St Opportuna, Mother of Nuns, April 1298

They had the wrong Henry Sientcler. Malise would have split the little pardoner in two, save that he thought the foul little turd might still have a use. Now he and the thugs he had hired had to huddle in the leper house, holding to ransom monks already frightened by the deaths of Sir Henry’s two escorts. For ease of guarding, Sir Henry had been put in the same room as the gasping Savoyard, the priest who was caring for him and the bewildered uncle.

‘This is idiocy,’ Henry Sientcler had puffed, when matters had become clearer to him. ‘You will have the young Bruce down on you, not to mention Fitzwarin. Christ’s Bones, man, if you do not let me go free, you will have the English and Scots lords both coming at you. Your head is already on a spike, though you do not know it yet.’

Malise, gnawing his knuckles, could believe it – the Red Comyn, entrusted by the Earl of Buchan with this mission, had sent Malise into Berwick to seek out a certain Robert de Malenfaunt and hand over the ransom for the Countess Isabel. He would not do it himself, for he feared capture by the English, being Lord of Badenoch in all but name, but he had curled a lip when Malise expressed the same concern.

‘You are of no account to them,’ he declared with cutting assurance. ‘Take the Templar writ, hand it to Malenfaunt, take the Countess and return to me. This is a task a trained mastiff could carry out.’

Malise remembered the Red Comyn’s sneer, smeared on his freckled, red-haired face. Like all the Comyn, he was short, barrel-bodied, with the sort of fiery red hair that would turn, like his kin the Earl of Buchan, to wheat-straw with age. Like all the Comyn he was full of himself.

The Earl was another problem, Malise thought moodily. Unknown to the Red Comyn, who had been waiting a while and would fret for longer, the Earl had given further, private instructions to Malise regarding the Herdmanston lord who had been escorting the Countess all over Scotland until he had lost her at Stirling.

‘It is inconcievable, of course,’ the Earl declared silkily, ‘but even the rumour of a liaison is damaging to the honour of Buchan. Bad enough to have her linked to the young Bruce – but a ragged gentilhomme of no account? The Countess must be returned and shown the error of her ways. It is important that the lord of Herdmanston understand his own. Forcibly. And that the young Bruce, who is clearly this Herdmanston lord’s patron, receives a message he cannot fail to understand.’

Berwick was, ostensibly, controlled by the English, but they huddled in the castle, the town going about its business with little hindrance, couvre-feu or even law. Malise had tracked the Savoyard to it and thought, at last, to put the stupid little chiseller to the question – only to find him sicker than Pestilence on his Plague Horse. The idea of using the man to trap Hal of Herdmanston here had been too good to pass up… save that an idiot pardoner could not tell one Henry Sientcler from another.

A shape slid into the seat opposite and offered a brown smile. Lamprecht; Malise regarded the little man with a mixture of awe and distaste, not knowing whether he really did have Christian relics of power, not liking him because he was a snail who left a trail behind him as he moved.

‘My ripeness, my mouse,’ Lamprecht lisped in what he fondly believed was the way of the court in France. ‘I have my bargain fulfilled. D’argent, certes. Bezzef d’argent, tu donnara.’

It had been God’s Own Hand, Malise had thought, that brought him to the side of Lamprecht, a man he had used in small ways once or twice before. Useful, he had thought at the time – now he looked at the pardoner with distaste, seeing how he might have been handsome once, though all his years had played hop-frog with each other and landed on an ugly heap on his face, which was venal and pouched. He had once had long, clean hair, but it had been too fine to last and was now plastered in a few greasy wisps on his skull, which he covered, when he was not wringing it in his hands, with a soft, broad-brimmed hat lauded with a pilgrim’s shell.

‘I know what you want,’ Malise spat moodily, ‘and you are as far from it as always. Sir Henry Sientcler of Herdmanston, I said. You bring me Sir Henry Sientcler of Roslin.’

Lamprecht’s eyes never warmed to the smile he gave.

Non andar bonu,’ he began, then laboriously turned out the thick-accented English of it. ‘It is not going well. This is no fault of mine. Henry Sientcler you demand. Henry Sientcler you receive. Please to pay me, as agreed.’

He saw the aloes look he had back and realised he was not going to get his money. It was not, he thought to himself crossly, his fault that he had been sent to fetch a named man from a place where all the people, it seemed, were called the same. Now this man with a face like a kicked arse was scowling at him and denying him fair payment; not for the first time, he wished he had never met Malise Bellejambe.

He was no stranger to abuse, all the same; everyone seemed to believe they could gull, con or spit upon the likes of him, for all his pilgrim’s badge. You would think folk would honour someone wearing the shell that told of a trip all the way to the Holy Land and, to be fair, most of the simple folk did. The ones with some money and a little power always assumed he was a liar and had never been to the Holy Land at all, but had stolen the shell badge.

Which was not true, he thought indignantly to himself. He had traded for it – a tooth of the Serpent from Eden, no less, only slightly chipped but a fine specimen. Not as fine as the other three he had, admittedly, but a fair exchange for the shell of a pilgrim. And, if he had not been to the Holy Land exactly, he had been to the Sicilies – which still had paynim influences everywhere – and to Leon in Spain, which was the next room to the heathen Moors.

‘Dio grande, he said with weary bitterness to Malise. ‘God is great. I carry out my task and this is my reward. A esas palabras respondieron los ignorantos con decirle infinitas injurias como ellos acostumbran, llamdndole perro, cane, judio, cornudo, y otros semejantes…’

‘Speak English,’ Malise finally spat, irritated beyond measure, and Lamprecht shrugged, as if the man was a fool for not comprehending either the Lingua, or decent Castilian, tongues understood by every traveller around the eastern Middle Sea.

‘The ignorant,’ he said haughtily, ‘reply by uttering numerous insults as they are accustomed to do, calling me hound, dog, Jew, cuckold, and similar epithets. Mundo cosi – such is the world.’

‘Give me no airs, you purveyor of St Pintle the Apostle’s ball hairs,’ snarled Malise, angry now. ‘I have known you for a time – long enough to know that you would steal the contents of a dog’s arse and put it in a pie if you had found someone with a taste for such a thing and had a handy bag.’

He glared at Lamprecht.

‘You would sell the stolen skull of an infant and claim it to be Jesus when he was a baby,’ he added viciously and saw that he had stung Lamprecht, who did not like his wares denigrated.

‘Questo non star vero,’ he protested, then shook his head with exasperation and translated it into English. ‘That is not true. Que servir tutto questo? You should not say such things, even in anger, for God is watching. Dio grande. Besides, se mi star al logo de ti, mi cunciar… bastardo. If I was in your place, I would wait. The other Sir Henry will come, certes, to see after his amico, and here you hold him. Dunque bisogno il Henri querir pace. Se non querir morir. So the Henry will want peace. If he does not wish to die. CapirY

Malise understood and Lamprecht saw it. He yawned ostentatiously.

‘ Mi tenir premura,’ he said. ‘I am in a hurry. Let me dip my beak a little, then I go. Mi andar in casa Pauperes Commilitones.’

Lamprecht did not need to translate the latter, for he saw Malise had understood perfectly. The Pauperes Commilitones – the Poor Brother-Knights – was a name he calculated would make Malise think twice about keeping him here.

Malise knew what Lamprecht was up to, knew also that the pardoner was headed to Balantrodoch purely in the hope of persuading the Order knights there to add their seal to the provenancies of the relics he carried; the Templars made part of their fabled wealth from selling relics.

Malise glanced to where his scrip sat carelessly on a bench, the Templar writ snugged in it. He marvelled at how a piece of parchment with some seals and words could be worth the astonishing amount of 150 merks of silver.

The money, he knew, had been deposited at Balantrodoch and Malise wrestled dimly with the concept of how you could take the parchment to any Templar Commanderie, present it – and be given the money, as if it had magically transported itself there while folk slept. He shivered; from what he had heard of the Templars, such a thing was not beyond them.

No matter – if Lamprecht had the divine favour and miracles of the Pope himself, it would serve him no better.

‘You remain,’ Malise declared curtly and Lamprecht managed an insouciant shrug and a smile, while inwardly seething. He had been doing well recently in a land turmoiled by war and the rumour of it, for people were eager for quatrefoil amulets of St Thomas and St Anthony, the former proof against just about everything, the latter particular to ague and fever.

These were just enough to afford him vittles, but not enough for the finer things. Lamprecht had a box filled with plenary indulgences, pinches of the ashes of Saints Martin and Eulalia of Barcelona, Emilianus The Deacon and Jeremiah The Martyr. He still had a tooth of the Serpent – actually, he had several such teeth – a portion of the robe of Saint Batholomew The Apostle, a pinch of the earth on which the Lord Himself had stood, plus many others.

He had his finest cache, which he hoped the Templars would buy – three fingernails of St Elizabeth of Thuringia, only raised to sainthood thirty-odd years ago, so her relics were powerfully potent.

He was no fool, as Malise had declared – though Lamprecht had to admit that trying to sell the likes of Malise the thong of Moses’ sandal had been a bad error – but no-one who could afford it wanted plenary indulgences, or a thorn from Christ’s Crown these days. They preferred earthly necessities, like food and fuel for fires. As usual, the poorest were the ones who sickened first and they could barely afford the lead quatrefoil amulets.

So he smiled, though the purse he had been promised seemed to fade slowly away and he knew that his best chance of salvaging anything from this was to remove himself, in secret, far from the coming wrath of this wrong Sir Henry’s friends.

Outside, it rained on the dark of a Berwick glazed with a few pallid worms of light, the rat-eyed red wink of the castle braziers squirming through the rain as the garrison kept watch. It wasn’t the Scots they feared so much as the wrath of Longshanks if they lost the fortress.

For all the rain and dark, Hal thought, you could find Berwick easily enough by the smell, a heady mix of smoke, clot and rot that sifted out a long way, like the snake-hair of Medusa, barely shifted by a wind that was little more than a damp nudge.

They splashed across the ford with the old ruins of the bridge to their right, troll shadows in the dark. No-one challenged them and they came up through the repaired defences of wooden stockade, ditch and wall, under a gate that should have been guarded but was not – Bruce had predicted as much and garnered silent admiration from the others in the small cavalcade.

They climbed off the wet, mud-spattered garrons and led them up the sliding cobbles, ankle deep in fishbones and the old spill of dogs, pressed closer and closer by the leaning walls of the poorer houses, where the strewn rushes were never cleared and stank with the humours that brought on liver-rot, worms, palsy, abscess, wheezing lung and every other filthy ague.

Fitting, then, that this street, bordered by lurching houses that drifted like timber-rotted ships in a slow wind of alley, should puke them out at the leper house of St Bartholomew, a shrouded ghost of stone in the shadows – save for one area, spilling butter-yellow glow out through the cracks of great double doors that led to a garth and then under an archway to the street.

The dripping band stopped and Bruce offered a grin to the Dog Boy. Dressed like the rest of them in plain tunic and rough cloak fastened with an iron pin, with no blazoned jupon or blaring heraldic shield, the Earl of Carrick looked like the Dog Boy’s da and was clearly enjoying the entire event.

Unlike Kirkpatrick, who did not like the idea of the heir to Annandale and the rightful throne of Scotland dressed like a peasant and putting his life in such danger.

He had said as much at length, about the foolishness of an earl of the kingdom plootering about, risking his neck in a foolhardy adventure with a band of scum. The band of scum had growled back at him for that – Bangtail Hob, Lang Tam, Sim and Will Elliott, all scowling angry. Even Hal had curled his lip, seeing he was included in the insult until Bruce had told Kirkpatrick, in a voice like the flat slap of a blade, to keep his teeth together.

Now they handed the reins of their stolid, dripping garrons to Will and slithered wetly away to their assigned tasks. Sim and Hal took up positions on either side of the great doors; no-one spoke and the Dog Boy, a loop of rough cloth over his head as a hood, took a deep breath and moved forward.

Hal felt his throat constrict at the sight of the lad, looking smaller than ever against the great double door, heavy with beams and thick with studded nails. Beyond it was the cookhouse, the yellow-red glare of it unable to be contained even by a door like this, because it was the one part of the spital that never slept.

From somewhere in the town, faintly pressured by the limp wind, came the drifting sound of instrument and motet voice – ahi, amours, com dure departie. It spoke to Kirkpatrick, achingly, of ale and wine and warmth and fug – more than that, it spoke of Oc and what he had done with the Cathars there, so that he almost grunted with the kick of it. Suddenly, this unknown little pardoner Lamprecht seemed to have conjured up all the smoke-blackened memories Kirkpatrick had thought long since nailed up behind the door in his head.

The Dog Boy had known about cookhouses from his time in Douglas. The way to get in had been his idea and the only reason he had voiced it at all was because a great earl, an individual so far above him as to be lost in clouds, had shared a cup and his innermost thoughts one night. The Dog Boy had been his man from that moment and spilling out his plan to approving nods had filled him with a sudden flooding sense of his own new value, so that the rush of it left him reeling and light-headed.

He hammered on the door with his nut of a fist, then kicked it hard because he wasn’t sure he had made enough noise.

Inside, the cookhouse sweaters paused as if frozen. Abbot Jerome looked at the helpers, lepers all in various stages of illness, yet with skills needed to bake bread and prepare food. The only cuckoo in the nest was the big-bellied Gawter, charged by Malise with watching this door and the kitchen staff. He blinked once or twice at the thump, but when it came a second time, he moved to the postern set into one of the huge gates and slid back the panel that let him look out.

At first he could see nothing, then a voice dragged his eyes down to where a ragged boy stood, hunched under a piece of sodden sacking, rain dripping off the end of his nose. Gawter had seldom seen a more miserable sight.

‘Away with ye,’ he growled, relieved to see it was only a laddie. ‘No alms from here.’

‘Beggin’ only the blissen’ of God an’ a’ His saints on ye sir,’ he had back. ‘I am here deliverin’, not askin’ – a good lady whose man has recently passed on delivers her grace on the spital, for the elevation of his soul.’

Gawter paused, licking his lips with confusion.

‘A brace of lambs,’ the boy persisted and Gawter turned in confusion to Abbot Jerome and had back an approving nod. The Abbot tried to make it all seem as natural as breathing, but the truth of the matter was that his heart leaped, for he knew a ruse when he heard one. The spital depended on donatives and was guaranteed a lamb and a pig every ten days, from the guild of merchants.

They were delivered, butchered and hung, since no sensible man eats freshly killed meat – and the last delivery had been four days since; the remains of carcasses hung and swung in plain view and his cook teams were, even now, slathering joints of it with fat, herbs and mint.

But Gawter did not know this and, though there was a chance that there really were two lambs from a grief-stricken widow, Jerome fervently prayed there was not, that this was help, by Divine Grace.

‘Aye,’ Gawter said, uneasy and uncertain, but aware that refusal of such bounty would arouse suspicion. ‘That’s brawlie, wee lad – be smart with it. As weel suin as syne, as my ma said…’

Hal heard the clack and clunk of the beam locks coming off, then the grunt as Gawter heaved the beam out of the supports.

‘Bring in your lambs, then…’ he began and the door heaved in on his face, crashing him backwards to slide across the floor into a cauldron, whose contents spilled and sizzled on his legs. Gawter yelled and scrambled away, beating uselessly at the scalding soak, staggered round and came face to face with a beard like a badger’s arse and a great broad grin splitting it.

‘Baa,’ Sim said and punched Gawter in the ribs – once, twice, three times. Only on the third did Gawter feel the strange sensation which he instinctively knew was sharp metal sliding into his body but by the time he had started to reel with the horror of it, he was already dead. Sim was sliding him to the greasy straw and flagstones as Hal and the Dog Boy wolfed through the door.

‘Christ be praised,’ Abbot Jerome declared, almost sobbing.

‘For ever and ever,’ answered Hal automatically, looking from side to side for other enemies. ‘How many and where?’

‘Yin other and the leader himself’ mushed a voice, coming forward so that Sim recoiled at the sight of the wasted ruin of a face. It grinned blackly at him, waving a ladle in one dirty, swaddled fist.

‘Christ’s Bones,’ Sim yelped, ‘keep your distance and your breath from me.’

‘Where?’ Hal demanded, ignoring the gravy baster. Jerome recovered himself enough to stammer out where the other guard was – watching the main entrance to the spital – and that the leader was in the Dying Room, with Henry Sientcler, a poor foreign soul giving himself up to God and said poor soul’s Flemish uncle.

‘God be praised,’ Sim declared and was moving even before the rote responses had sighed to a finish, a grin splitting his cheekbones at the thought of coming face to face, at last, with Malise Bellejambe. Hal followed on – Bruce was at the main entrance, Kirkpatrick his ever-present shadow, while Bangtail and Lang Tam were prowling, looking for other doors.

It remained only to make sure that Sir Henry of Roslin did not die.

Lamprecht had gathered up his bits and pieces, the precious relics box slung over one shoulder – and the equally precious contents stolen from Malise, an act of savagely triumphant revenge that left the pardoner grinning like a rat as he slithered into the shadows of the spital. There were many of them, for even the cheapest tallow was too expensive for this place and only essential places were lit.

One was the barred door to the outside world, with the crop-headed, ox-muscled lout called Angus lounging under the light, yawning and exploring the painful rot of his mouth with one huge, filthy forefinger.

The pardoner grimaced at the sight. Sensal maledetto – there must be another way out of this festering place…

He was moving carefully away into the cloak of the place, folding himself into the shadows and away from the ox when the clatter and yells froze him to the spot. It came, he was sure, from the kitchens; he saw Angus shove himself away from the wall, pause with a great arrow of indecision between his eyes – then leave the light and head into the dark, towards the kitchens.

Si estar escripto en testa forar, forar, he thought – if it is written on your forehead that you leave, you leave. In another second he was at the door. In one more he had the beam in both hands and was levering it out of the retainers.

‘Haw…’

The bull bellow nearly made Lamprecht shriek and it did make him drop the heavy beam, so that it clattered to his feet and made him dance backwards while it bounced dangerously near his toes. He looked up to see Angus staring black daggers at him and heading back towards the door.

Which burst in with a blatting crash and a gust of rain-fresh air.

Neither Bruce nor Kirkpatrick could believe their luck when they heard the door opening, having found it fastened tight. Bruce was not sure if Hal or one of the others had unlocked it, but the thundering noise of the beam hitting the flagstones persuaded him that there was trouble enough to go in hard and fast.

Angus skidded to a halt, his mouth wet and wide at the sight of two armed men bursting in. Kirkpatrick darted forward, Bruce on his heels, and both of them saw a weasel of a man festooned with bags and a box – and, not far away, a collection of muscles on legs like trees, his mouth drooped, yet hauling out a long knife from his belt.

‘Aside,’ Bruce yelled and Kirkpatrick cursed – then the weasel shifted for the door and sealed the moment; Kirkpatrick rounded on him, catching him by the strap of the box and hauling him backwards.

‘Swef, wee man,’ he said, his mouth alongside the man’s ear and the long, slim dagger winking an inch from the side of one wild eye.

‘Let me loose,’ Lamprecht spat, struggling. ‘Let me go. Or. Else. I am as good as a priest. I am under the protection of the Pope himself. Bastonada, mumucho, mucho.’

The familiar tongue trailed down Kirkpatrick’s spine like a lick of ice. There was a moment of embers and shrieks before he actually realised what the pardoner had just said.

‘You will beat me?’

Lamprecht heard the words and the chuckle that went with them. Then his captor, now with a hand at the back of his neck, firm as an iron band, spoke in his ear, the breath stirring the greasy grey tangles of his hair.

‘ Si e vero que star inferno, securo papasos de vos autros non poter chappar de venir d’entro.’

If it is true there is a Hell, for sure your priests will not be able to avoid going there. The words circled into Lamprecht’s ear like the sensuous coils of a snake and he knew, with a sudden cold weight in the depths of his belly, that he was caught, for this was a man who had been places where he had gained fluency in lingua franca and – no doubt of it – done things which involved daggers. Or worse.

Kirkpatrick felt the little man go slack, heard his bitter muttering.

‘Si estar escripto in testa andar, andar. Si no, aca morir.’

If it’s written on your forehead for you to go, you will go. If not, you will die here.

Kirkpatrick kept the dagger point high enough, all the same, so that the little weasel could see it, while he tried to watch what Bruce was doing.

Bruce was discovering that he could not dance, that the German Method was of no use in a tight, dark passageway. The sword was too long and the knife man was good. Bruce saw the man come in, hunched and fast, with the knife held like a boar tooth, and he swung, caught the sword blade on an unlit sconce and the great ox, moving faster than his bulk promised, slashed a tavern brawl stroke which cut the homespun under Bruce’s heart and scored a fiery line.

Kirkpatrick yelled and almost let go of Lamprecht, but the pardoner sensed it and wriggled, making Kirkpatrick automatically clench the harder; the pardoner screeched.

Bruce, feeling the burn of the knife slash, saw the triumph in the slit eyes of his huge opponent, the realisation that the long sword was a hindrance.

Fear licked the earl, then, for he knew he was in trouble, so he did what a knight was supposed to do – took a deep breath, screamed ‘A Bruce’ until his throat burned, and hurled himself forward.

From the kitchens, turn right, Abbot Jerome had told them, and Hal and Sim did so, moving as swiftly as a watchful crouch would allow. They went past the doors to rooms which may have been priest cells, chapels or storehouses, but no light spilled from the chink of them.

Finally, they reached the end of the passageway, saw the door, limned in pale light which seeped through the bad fitting. Sim and Hal grinned at each other, then Hal, with a sudden leap, realised there were only two.

‘Where’s the boy?’

The boy had gone left, for he had paused to pluck the long thin dagger from Gawter’s dead hand, as much trembling at that as the sudden sight of swaddled folk, like dead risen in their grave rags, who came to stare.

With a last wild look at the smiling Abbot Jerome, the Dog Boy flung himself after Hal and Sim, turning left and birling up the passage, trying to look back and ahead at the same time.

He knew he had lost them a few heartbeats later, but by then he heard the loud roar of ‘A Bruce’ and the bell clangs of steel. He moved towards it, heard the grunts, came up behind the fighters and watched a huge man close in on a hapless victim, who could only wave a sword and back away.

He saw it was the earl and, beyond him and struggling with another man, the earl’s black-visaged man, who was clearly not able to help. He did not hesitate – this was the great lord who had shared wine with him, who had told him the vows of knighthood.

Bruce, backing away, desperately wondering if he would reach a more open area, hoping to get to the door, even if it meant going outside, saw the ox with a knife was about to rush him and end the affair. The French Method, he thought bleakly…

Then a wildcat screeched out of the dark and landed on the back of the ox, so that he half-stumbled forward and yelled with surprise and fear. He whirled and clawed with one free hand up behind him, but the wildcat hung on.

The Dog Boy. Bruce saw the frantic, snarling face of the boy and, just as the ox thought of crashing backwards into a wall to dislodge him, the little nut of a fist rose up, stabbed once, then the boy rolled free, the long sliver of dagger trailing fat, flying blood drops.

The ox howled, clapped a hand to his ear, the blood bursting from between his knuckles. He turned, the savage pain and anger of his face turning, as if washed by it, to a bewildered uncertainty. Then he collapsed like an empty bag, the blood spreading under his head.

There was silence save for ragged panting. Bruce saw the Dog Boy, half-crouched on all fours, feral as any forest animal, dagger bloody in one fist.

‘Good stroke,’ he managed hoarsely.

Hal and Sim burst in the door of the Dying Room to a tableaux of figures frozen in butter-yellow light, the shadows guttering wildly on the wall as the tallow was blasted by the wind of their entrance.

A little priest was untying Henry Sientcler from a chair, while a third figure knelt by a truckle bed, cradling the head of a man who gasped and gargled. He raised a face, bewildered and afraid, at the new arrivals.

‘Sir Henry,’ Hal declared and the lord of Roslin flung off the last of the ropes and staggered upright.

‘Hal – by God’s Wounds, I am pleased to see you.’

‘Malise…’ Sim declared, for it was clear the man was not here.

‘Gone, moments hence,’ Sir Henry declared, rubbing his wrists. Hal cursed and Sim was about to fling himself out of the door again when Bruce came in, the Dog Boy behind him and, behind that, Kirkpatrick clutching a man by the neck like a terrier with a rat.

‘Malise – did he pass you?’

‘He did not.’

Hal looked at Sim and the man grinned, then loped out to hunt Malise down. Bruce came to the truckle bed and looked down.

‘The Savoyard?’ he asked and Hal nodded.

‘I suspect so.’

‘Malise knifed him,’ the priest declared bitterly. ‘Not that he would have lived anyway… this is his uncle.’

The man by the bed stood up and Hal saw that he had a fine tunic stained with his nephew’s blood. His face was grimmed with weary lines of bitterness and resignation.

‘He is alive still,’ Bruce declared and knelt, shoving his face close to the dying man’s. ‘He is trying to speak…’

The man’s mouth opened and closed a few times; Bruce bent closer, so that his ear was almost to the lips of the man, and Hal was shamed that the earl was so bent on uncovering the secret of his Stone that he defiled the last peace of a dying man.

Then the man vomited a last wash of blood, on which sailed the wafer of the Last Rite like a little white boat. Bruce sprang up, his face peppered with bloody spray, which he wiped away with distaste. The uncle bowed his head and knelt, while the priest began to intone prayers.

Bruce blinked once or twice, then flung himself out and Hal went after him. Kirkpatrick, his hand numbing from clutching the sagging pardoner, thought to make sure that the man was, indeed, the Savoyard they had sought and not some luckless leper.

‘Manon de Faucigny?’ he rasped.

The uncle raised his head from his pious revery, gently brushed the sweat lank hair from the dead man’s paling forehead.

‘Malachy,’ he said and Kirkpatrick jerked.

‘His name was Malachy de Faucigny,’ the uncle went on softly. ‘He thought that had too much Jew in it for an England where they were banned, so he changed it.’

Kirkpatrick’s mouth went dry, then he shook the thoughts away from him. Best not to mention this, he thought.

Bangtail and Lang Tam were pitched into a nightmare. They had come up on a door, which did not yield, then ploughed on through the wet and the mud to stumble into the backcourt privy. Where there is a shitehouse, Bangtail hissed in Lang Tam’s ear, there is a wee door to get to it.

They found it, a darker shadow against the black – and it opened smoothly enough. Bangtail grinned as he stepped inside; no man liked to have a barrier between him and emptying his bowels when it came to the bit.

The pair of them halted in the dark of what seemed to be a large room, a hall or refectory. The air was fetid and rank and the dark yielded up the contents reluctantly – the flags of the floor, vague shapes on either side; the rushes shushed as they stepped.

A bed with a bench at the end of it. Another. Yet one more on the other side of them.

The figures loomed up suddenly, vengefully, the stuff of nightmares.

‘Ye baistits,’ screeched a voice and a blow struck Bangtail on the arm. Another whacked his knees. He heard Lang Tam curse.

Then he saw what attacked them. Noseless. Festering. Some with rags binding the worst of their wounds, some fresh from their dormitory beds and unswaddled, the fish-belly pale of them smeared with the black stains of rot.

The lepers, whose touch was condemnation, whose very breath was death.

Bangtail howled like a mad dog then and fought through them, panicked and flailing. He heard Lang Tam yelling, felt his fists strike something that he did not even wish to see.

Light flared at the far end, silhouetting the mad horde of lepers, whose dormitory sleep Bangtail and Lang Tam had shattered. Bangtail saw it and plunged towards it, finding, like a miracle from Christ Himself, that those who had been snarling in front of him had vanished like snow from a sunwarmed dyke.

Then he saw the figure scurrying forward, the naked-fang gleam of long steel waving like a brand in the dark.

Malise knew he had escaped from the Dying Room with seconds only. He had snatched up his cloak and slung the scrip over his shoulder at the sound of the Bruce warcry, heading down the corridor that linked the Dying Room, conveniently, to the leper dormitory; from there, he knew, he could reach the outside. His plans were thrown in the air and there was nothing now but escape and the gibbering fear of what was plunging at his heels drove him on.

The riot inside confused him and he hacked his knife at the mass of figures until they scattered, then hurled himself through before they could recover enough to counter. Suddenly, he was close to a face he knew, saw it was one of the Herdmanston men and lashed out with his other hand, a wild shriek of terror trailing it like flame.

Bangtail saw the blow only at the last, managed to duck the worst of it, but was still flung full length, stars whirling into him.

Lang Tam saw Bangtail fall and lunged forward, tearing free from the grasp of half-a-dozen hands. Kicking feet made him stumble as he roared forward and he was on his hands and knees when Malise lunged, kicked him savagely in the mouth, then slashed right and left with his knife, to keep the lepers away.

The last wild cut was just as Lang Tam surged back upright and he had time to marvel at the moment of it, the sheer bad cess of it, how poorly he stood in the grace of God. It was no more than a catch across his throat, a blow that made him gasp – but the roaring and the drench of blood down his front told him the truth of it. His eyes rolled and he looked at the astounded, frightened-pale face of Malise, the dagger dripping blood.

‘Bugger,’ Lang Tam wheezed wearily and fell full length, his head bouncing.

Malise leaped over him and made for the door, while the lepers fell over themselves trying to get away. Behind, he heard a man roaring pungent curses.

Bangtail, he remembered dully as he stumbled out into the rain.

Lamprecht knew that information was life. It was what he traded to Malise and, he admitted, was what he should have kept to instead of playing in this treacherous game.

Now he stood in a ring of folk he knew wanted to kill him, while they stood scowling and black-despaired by the death of one of their number. He knew he had limited options and thought he would begin by establishing his credentials.

‘Kretto a in deo patrem monipotante kritour sele a dera, ki se voet te tout, a nou se voet; e a in domnis Gizoun Kriston, filiou deous in soul…’

‘Enough,’ Kirkpatrick growled, slapping him. ‘It will not stand here – ye are spoutin’ lies like a horse cowper.’

‘What is he saying?’ demanded Bruce.

‘It is the Credo,’ Kirkpatrick said and Abbot Jerome frowned. It did not sound like any Credo he knew and he admitted as much.

‘The Greek way,’ Kirkpatrick said. ‘From Constantinople.’

‘Christ’s Wounds,’ Sim said, raking through the box while Lamprecht hovered in agony, watching. ‘Is this a wee toebone?’

‘Guarda per ti,’ Lamprecht pleaded. ‘Be careful. Chouya, chouya – sorry, in English – gently. That is the toebone of Moses himself.’

‘Away,’ exclaimed Sim in amazement. ‘Moses, is it? Now here is a miracle – if ye are to chain up all the toebones of Moses ye have in here, ye find the blessed wee man had four feet.’

‘Questo star falso. Taybos no mafuzes ruynes.’

Kirkpatrick, grinning, turned to the frowning Bruce.

‘He says is it is not true. All his wares are real.’

‘Ask him where Malise has gone,’ Hal demanded and Lamprecht winced at the eyes on this one. The others, even the one he now knew to be a great lord, were easier on matters, for they were reviling him. Lamprecht had found that those who paused to spit on him seldom, in the end, did him the sort of harm that balm and a decent arnica root could not cure.

Sim let a delicate sliver of white clatter to the flags and then ground it to powder, grinning – even that, though the pain of its loss hurt him to the soles of his own feet, would not have loosened Lamprecht’s throat. The one who spoke the Tongue might, but he was leashed by the great lord, so Lamprecht had no real fear of him.

But the grey-eyed one with a stare like a basilisk was different and Lamprecht knew, when the question came, that he would answer it humbly and truthfully, in the hope that he could step along the razor edge of this moment without shedding any of his blood.

Kirkpatrick listened and frowned, but Hal had caught a few words, so he could not dissemble.

‘He says Malise originally employed him to seek out a Countess. That one is in the nunnery near here, a place controlled by Robert de Malenfaunt. Folk send their unwanted women to it – unruly daughters, wee wives who have outlived their property attractions, widows fleein’ from some man who wants to get his hands on their inheritance. This Malenfaunt keeps it as a seraglio, the pardoner says.’

‘I have heard of this Malenfaunt,’ Bruce mused. ‘He is a minor lord of little account, but he serves in the mesnie of Ughtred of Scarborough. I hear he rode some decent Tourneys at Bamburgh one season.’

‘What’s a seraglio?’ Sim demanded and Kirkpatrick curled his lip in an ugly smile.

‘A hoorhoose.’

‘And he holds Isabel to ransom in sich a place?’ growled Hal.

‘I doubt she has been dishonoured or harmed,’ Bruce soothed, marvelling at the way of things, for it seemed this young Sientcler was smit with his Isabel – not his Isabel anymore, he corrected hastily, as if even the thought could reach the Earl of Buchan.

‘She is too valuable,’ he added, then clapped Hal on one shoulder. ‘Betimes – we will get her away.’

Kirkpatrick sighed, for he could see the way of it – bad enough charging down on St Bartholomew’s without thundering on to the nunnery at St Leonards. He said it, knowing it would make no difference.

‘Aye – raiding lazars and nunneries is meat an’ ale to the likes of us,’ Sim declared cheerfully and drew out the long roll of parchment. ‘What is this?’

The truth was that Lamprecht did not know – he had stolen it from Malise for the dangling Templar seal – two knights riding a single horse. He considered that the most valuable item, since he could carefully remove it from the document and attach it to another, this one painstakingly scribed to provenance the relics of Elizabeth of Thuringia. A Templar seal was as good as truth and doubled the value of his relics.

Now he watched it unroll, saw the other seal on it, one he did not know, and wished he had had the time to study it more closely. Bruce plucked it from Sim, who only held it the correct way up because the seals were at the bottom.

‘It is a jetton,’ Bruce said, marvelling and squinting in the poor light. ‘For a hundred and fifty merks.’

Lamprecht groaned at the thought of what he had just lost.

‘Whit is a jetton?’ Sim demanded.

‘A wee tally note, stamped by the Templar seal and – well, well, the Earl of Buchan’s mark,’ Bruce explained, grinning more and more broadly. ‘The Earl has clearly deposited the money at Balantrodoch and now anyone with this document can go to any Templar Commanderie from here to Hell itself and put a claim on hundred and fifty merks of silver. See? You mark off the sums given to you in these wee boxes. Like a chequerboard, which is how the Templars reckon up the sums. The jetton are really the wee counters they use to shuffle from box to box to keep track of it all.’

They all peered and murmured their awe.

‘Usury,’ Sir Henry Sientcler said, as if trying to spit out dung. Bruce smiled grimly.

‘Only the Jews have usury, my lord of Roslin. The Templars say this is not money lent, but a person’s own money, held in safety for him. Still – they make a profit on the transfer.’

‘What is this jetton for?’ demanded Hal, beginning to see the possibility. ‘In this case?’

Bruce blinked, bounced the parchment in his hand and his smile broadened further.

‘For the ransom of a Countess, for certes,’ he said, then offered a wry smile. ‘I have about four good warhorses that cost as much. Cheap for a Countess of Buchan.’

Hal began to smile, but Bruce saw the muzzle curl of it.

‘Ransomed by this wee tait of writing back to her husband,’ Hal said, with a slow, grim smile. ‘By a man this Malenfaunt will never have seen.’

‘What about Lang Tam?’ demanded Bangtail, which sobered everyone in an instant.

‘We will take care of him, if you permit,’ Abbot Jerome declared. ‘Both for your rescue and the fact that the folk here feel, in part, responsible for his death. They did not know who was who when they attacked, ye ken.’

‘He had brothers and a sister at home,’ Bangtail argued bitterly.

‘We can scarce cart his remains, Bangtail,’ Sim answered, but gently. ‘Enough for his kin to know he has a Christian burial in a fine house of God.’

Bangtail looked at Sim, then away and shivered at the memory of the inmates of this fine house of God.

‘Best make like a slung stone,’ Sim declared, ‘rather than stand here like a set mill.’

‘I would be joining you for the fight of it,’ Henry Sientcler declared mournfully, ‘but I am under parole and so cannot raise a weapon against the English.’

‘If it is done right,’ Bruce said slowly, looking at Hal as he spoke, ‘there will be no fight in it – but, by God, there will be discomfort for the Comyn. Isabel MacDuff will be freed and Sir Hal may take her into his care.’

He laughed with the sheer joy of it.

‘Everyone is made happy,’ he declared, beaming.

The sudden, sharp sound of pealing bells made them all freeze and cringe.

‘In the name of God…’ Sim began.

‘The alarm,’ Kirkpatrick declared, but Lamprecht, to everyone’s astonishment, started a mirthless laugh and rattled off another sibilant trill of his strange tongue.

Hal only caught the word, repeated several times – guastamondo.

Kirkpatrick, his face pale and sheened in the flickering light, turned and translated.

‘This Lamprecht came across to London from Flanders,’ he growled, ‘and hurried on north, to York and then here. To be first with his wares.’

He ripped a medallion from round the pardoner’s neck, fierce enough to jerk the man and snap the cord.

‘To peddle worthless shite such as this to the feared and desperate.’

‘Swef, chiel,’ Bangtail muttered uneasily, ‘lest God takes offence.’

‘This dog is an offence,’ Kirkpatrick snarled, then wiped his sweat-sheened face as the bells hammered out in the background.

‘He says he came across with someone named Guastamondo and has beaten the news of it by a week,’ Kirkpatrick declared and would have said more, save that Bruce forestalled him.

‘ Guastomondo,’ said Bruce softly. ‘My father told me that was the name he had in Outremer. The Breaker of Worlds.’

Even the bells paused as he stopped and looked round them all, his face serious as plague.

‘Edward is back in England.’

No-one spoke for a moment, then Sir Henry cleared his throat and touched Hal’s arm.

‘We had best stir ourselves. This will put a heart we do not need into the garrison.’

Hal did not reply. He was staring at the medallion swinging in Kirkpatrick’s fist and reached out to grasp it. Then he fixed his stone gaze on the pardoner.

‘This,’ he said, holding the amulet up to dangle like a dead snake. ‘Tell me of this.’

The pounding at the door was a great, dull bell that slammed Isabel from sleep, spilling her upright. The nun who had been assigned to sleep at her feet – latest in an endless rotation of watch-women – came awake as suddenly, whimpering and afraid.

Clothilde her name was. She was from France, part related to the kin of the Malenfaunts there and dispatched all the way from the warm dream of vineyards to the cold stone and damp of Berwick by a family who wanted rid of an unwanted child. What happened to her mother Isabel did not know, but Clothilde had been here almost all her life, as an Oblate. Isabel, who had been here for almost half a year, shivered at the thought of such a time trapped in this eggshell of stone and corruption.

‘Men are coming,’ Clothilde said in a small voice. Isabel knew the child – she could hardly see her, even at fifteen, as a woman – feared the arrival of men and the reason for their coming. Malenfaunt, Isabel knew, took money and favours for allowing a select few to plunder the delights of a nunnery and, though some of the women were willing and depraved enough, some were not and Clothilde was one.

‘Come closer to me,’ Isabel said and the little Oblate scurried to her. I am her prisoner, Isabel thought with a wry twist of smile, yet she cowers behind my nightdress. She saw the scarred forearms of the little nun, knew that the girl sat and crooned hymns and psalms to herself when she thought no-one could see, slicing her flesh for the glory of God and an offering to the Virgin to rescue her.

The door slammed open so suddenly that Clothilde shrieked. The Prioress stood like a black crow with a candle, the sputtering tallow pooling her in eldritch shadows.

‘You are to come,’ she said to Isabel, then frowned at Clothilde. ‘Get away from there, girl.’

‘Come where?’ Isabel answered. The Prioress turned the scowl on her, but it was a pallid affair by the time it rested on Isabel’s face; long weeks of realising that this Countess could not be cowed by words and was not to be beaten by sticks had sucked the surety from the Prioress.

‘You are to be released.’

The words spurred Isabel into dressing swiftly, her heart and mind whirling. Freed.

She followed the Prioress through the dark corridors to the Refectory, which seemed to be full of men – her heart thundered at the sight of the tall, saturnine Malenfaunt, leaning languidly on the table and studying a document. He raised his head and was smiling when she came in.

‘My lord earl – your wife, safely delivered.’

Bewildered, Isabel stared at Bruce, who stared back and offered a stiff little bow.

‘Good wife,’ he said blandly. Then Isabel saw Hal and her heart threatened to leap out of her throat, so that she flung one hand up to it, as if to trap it at the neck. She saw the warning in his narrowed eyes, saw the huge bearded face of Sim behind him and heard, like the tolling of a bell, the word ‘rescue’ clanging in her head.

‘Husband,’ she managed.

‘So it is, then,’ Malenfaunt declared in French, smiling with triumphant pleasure. ‘We part amicably, so to speak.’ Bruce turned a cold face on him.

‘For now,’ he answered, then held out one hand. Isabel, half numb and stumbling slightly, took it in one of her own and was led out. Behind her, Hal draped a warm cloak on her shoulders and pulled the hood up against the cold benediction of rain.

In the darkness of the nunnery garth were horses and more riders. Isabel felt a hand haul her long skirts up above her knees, then Sim was lifting her up, with a muttered apology.

‘No fancy sidesaddle, Coontess. Ye ride like ye usually do.’

His grin seemed like a bright light – then Hal was beside her and Bruce was leading the cavalcade away into the cobbles and ruts and stinking rubbish of the street, with the sea wind blowing clean and exhilerating through the bewilderment of her.

‘Isabel,’ Hal said and she leaned forward then, met his face in a fumble of salt and rainwashed lips, sucking as greedily as he until the horses parted them.

‘Aye,’ said Bruce wryly in French, ‘do not mind my part in this, mark you, for such chivalry and bravery is old clothes and pease brose to the likes of the Bruces.’

Isabel, starting to laugh with the bubbling realisation of it all, turned to answer him and heard a voice from the dark, slight shape on a big horse nearby.

‘Ye should nivver violet a lady.’

‘Dog Boy,’ she said and saw the great smile of him loom out of the dark. Then, sudden as a blow, she thought of Clothilde, trapped like a little bird and knew, for all she ached to free the girl, she could not persuade these men to risk it – nor should she.

She was crying so hard, the tears and snot mingling with the rain as Hal tried to get his horse close enough to comfort her, that she missed Kirkpatrick’s bitter growl – though Hal didn’t.

‘There will be the De’il to pay when Buchan finds his wife has been lifted like a rieved coo and his siller spent for no return.’

Neither of them missed the rain-pebbled exultation that was Bruce, grinning as he turned to them.

‘God’s Wounds, I only wish I could see his face when he is told of it.’

His laugh drowned out the mad tolling of the bell. Breaker of worlds, Hal thought wildly.