The Kingdom Series – The Lion at Bay

by Robert Low

  Those immediately behind checked a little, mainly because his powerful warhorse kicked up a spray of muddy gobbets, while to right and left lances and helms went bouncing, carelessly dangerous, as the knights followed Sir Robert Malenfaunt’s example and spurred on.

  They saw Malenfaunt lean out as he slowed to a canter so as to better judge the snatch at the fleeing woman’s wimpled head. They saw the woman turn, the wimple and barbette flying away to free a wild tangle of infested hair, the face a bearded snarl; Malenfaunt had time to realize the enormous horror of it before the man dropped to a crouch, brought round the two-handed axe he held hidden in his skirts and scythed out the legs of the destrier.

  It was the saving of Malenfaunt. At the same time as he was reeling through the air in a tumble of moss and trees and sky, the edge of the wood spat a sleet of arrows from two points. Between them, moving ragged and relentless, came a clot of spearmen; the shrieking falsities in women’s dresses raced to join them, their lure complete.

  Segrave, down at the foot of the small hill, heard the whoops turn to shrieks, almost felt the blows that rang like bells on the shields of the unseen knights, audible even at this distance and through the muffle of the great iron bucket of his helm. He urged the huge warhorse forward, surging up the sodden slope, the handful of men behind him.

  Ruin was beyond and Segrave saw it in a single glance when he breasted the rise. Horses were down, screaming and kicking, others cantering in aimless circles, the riders struggling to get up. Arrows sprouted from tussock and body, and a dark, bristling hedge of spearpoints – three hundred men in it if there was one – approaching. All the men who had ridden off with Malenfaunt were unhorsed, crawling like sheep, with horses scattering to every part, or kicking and dying.

  He saw, too, the figure in black with surcoat and shield, the silver cinquefoiles bright as stars and his heart thundered up into his head in a howl of triumph – Fraser, who had all but ruined him in Roslin Glen. By God, Segrave swore, he will not do it again.

  A flurry of arrows took the man next to him out of the saddle and set the great Frisian warhorse bolting, screaming from the pain of another two shafts in its chest, before it crashed to its knees and finally ploughed its proud Roman nose into a furrow of bog, kicking and snorting blood.

  The men with him balked at charging a hedge of points backed by three-score of Selkirk archers, but Segrave had fire and rage shrieking in his head and was not about to stop.

  Hal saw Segrave arrive, saw him charge, then Bruce, laughing out of his broad face with its music-master beard, pointed to the backs of the archers, took off his great helm and dropped it, then spurred his own warhorse forward.

  He had led them in a perfect outflank and it was not a fight but a flat-out chasse. The archers heard the thunder of hooves just soon enough to let them turn their heads from the business of killing English to see a score or more of howling Scots on fast-moving little garrons come at their back.

  Hal went through the wild scatter of them, trying to rein in the plunging horse and hack at a target, but he was sure he had hit no-one – the mount was no helpful destrier. He saw Bangtail Hob and others chasing running figures, circling in mad, short-legged gallops, for they were more used to fighting on foot than on horse, and he bawled at them, his voice deafening inside the full helm.

  He pulled it up and off, pointed and flailed and roared until they all got the idea and started kicking their horses towards the clot of spearmen, who had started, frantically, to form a ring.

  Too late, Hal thought, fighting the garron to a standstill, desperately trying to loop the helm into his belt – Segrave’s knot of riders, trailing up in ones and twos, smacked into it, picking spots between spears, riding the men into the muddy grass; the spearmen suddenly seemed to vomit running men, like the black yolk of a rotten egg.

  Blades clanged, bringing Hal’s head round. He saw Bruce, perfect and poised on the powerful destrier, which baited under his firm rein, huge feet ploughing earth on the spot. Confronting Bruce, Hal saw, with a lurch that took his heart into his mouth, a familiar figure.

  The autumn bracken hair was dulled and iron-streaked, the beard wild, untamed as it had been in the days when Hal had first seen him, before he’d had it neatly trimmed as befitted Scotland’s sole Guardian. Yet he stood tall – Christ, he was even taller than Hal remembered – and the hand-and-a-half was twirled easy and light in one hand, the other holding a scarred shield with the memory of his heraldry on it, a white lion rampant on red.

  Wallace took a step, feinted and struck, then sprang back. Bruce, light and easy as Wallace himself, parried and the blades rang; the warhorse, arch-necked, snorted and half-reared, wanting to strike out and held in by its rider.

  ‘Get you gone, Will,’ Bruce said coldly. ‘Get back to France, if you are wise, but get you gone. The war is all but over and you are finished. Mark me’

  ‘My wee lord of Carrick,’ Wallace acknowledged lightly, a grin splitting his beard. ‘Get ye to Hell, Englishman. And if ye care to step aff yon big beast ye ride, I will mark ye, certes.’

  Bruce shook his head, almost wearily; someone called out and Hal saw the scuttling shape of a figure he knew well, a Wallace man – the loyal Fergus, his black boiled-leather carapace scarred and stained. Beetle, they called him and it was apt.

  With Fergus and his broad-axe guarding his back, Wallace backed warily off. He was expecting Bruce to press, the surprise clear in his face when that did not happen. Hal saw Bangtail Hob and Ill-Made Jock circle, caught their eye and brought them to a halt; if this was to end in a fight, then it was Bruce’s own, though he felt sick at the thought of it, sicker still at the idea of having ridden down men he might once have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with. This was what we are brought down to, he thought bitterly, to where even the best of us can only find it in their hearts to battle one another.

  ‘Get you to France, Will,’ Bruce repeated softly. ‘If you remain, you are finished.’

  ‘If I remain,’ Wallace said in good French, sliding further into the dripping trees, ‘you cannot get started.’

  Then, like a wraith, he was gone. Hal heard Segrave calling out to the newly-arrived Clifford and bellowing curses because, somewhere in the trees and confusion, both Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser had vanished.

  Hal turned to where Bruce, his face a slab of wet rock, broke his stare from the hole Wallace had left in the air and settled it bleakly on Hal.

  ‘Not a word,’ he said and turned away, leaving Hal wondering if he spoke of personal censure or admitting to Segrave that he had let Wallace go. Sim Craw came up in time to hear this and sniffed, then blew rain and snot from the side of his nose, making his own mind up.

  ‘Good advice,’ he declared, ‘for if Black John hears that we had Will Wallace an’ let him loup away like a running hound …’

  He did not need to finish. The rain lisped down as the sun came out and curlews peeped as if horror and blood and dying had not visited the Sheean Stank.

  ‘Faerie,’ growled Dog Boy to Bangtail, half-ashamed as he stared at the dead in women’s dresses.

  Cambuskenneth Abbey, Stirling

  Feast of St Ternan, confessor of the Picts, June, 1304.

  ‘You missed your chance there, my lord earl.’

  Bruce did not turn his head, merely flicked his eyes at the broad grinning face of Bishop Wishart, the shadows and planes of it made grotesque by the flickering tallow lights.

  ‘There is one bishop too many in this game,’ he growled, which made Wishart chuckle fruitily and Hal, frowning with concentration, realize his inadequacy with chess. He was sure he had blundered, surer still that Bruce had missed an en passant; had he done it by accident – the rule was new and not much used – or was it some cunning ploy to lure him into even worse trouble?

  ‘Aye, well,’ came the blade-rasp voice of Kirkpatrick, looming from the shadows. ‘Here is yet another.’

  A figure in simple brown robes and tonsure swept past him into th
e light, swift enough to cause the flames to flicker and set shadows dancing madly. He was, Hal saw, astoundingly young to be a senior prelate, his round face smooth and bland, yet his eyes black and shrewd, while the beginnings of a paunch were belied by slim, white, long-fingered hands, one of which he extended.

  ‘Christ be praised,’ the prelate said portentously.

  ‘For ever and ever.’

  Bruce rose, kissed the fingers with dutiful deference, then scowled.

  ‘At last,’ he said sullenly. ‘We have been waiting, my lord bishop and my time is limited away from the King’s side.’

  ‘How is the good king of England?’ Lamberton demanded cheerfully.

  ‘Sickeningly well,’ Bruce replied with a wry twist of grin. ‘He sits at Stirling and plays with his great toys, while his wife and her women look on through an oriole he has made in their quarters. It is a great sport, it seems, for the ladies to watch huge stones being hurled at the walls while they stitch. His two new babes gurgle with delight.’

  ‘I hear he has several great engines,’ Lamberton declared, accepting wine from Wishart’s hand and settling himself with a satisfied sigh. ‘One called Segrave, I believe, which fires great heavy balls – now there is apt for you. I know this because of all the complaints I have had from wee abbots about the lead stripped from their roofs to make them.’

  ‘You had better pray for fine weather, else we will all be dripping,’ ‘Bruce replied sourly. ‘Cambuskenneth has also lost all the roofing, save from over the altar, so that God at least will not be offended. And Edward Plantagenet now has twelve war engines. One of them is my own, sent from Lochmaben – minus the throwing arm, mark you, which mysteriously took a wrong turn and will arrive too late to be of use.’

  ‘He has Greek Fire, too, I hear,’ Wishart added, with a disapproving shake of his head, ‘and weapons that burst with the Hellish taint of brimstone.’

  There was silence for a moment and Hal did not know what the others were thinking, but his mind was on the stunning sight and sound of those very weapons, great gouts of flame and blasts that hurled earth and stones into the air, fire that ran like water and could not be quenched. Yet the walls of Stirling, pocked and scorched, still held.

  ‘Aye, well,’ Lamberton declared suddenly, rubbing his hands as if presenting them to a fire. ‘Be of cheer – Stirling holds out yet, when all else has given in. Young Oliphant has done well there.’

  ‘Young Oliphant holds out because Longshanks refused to accept his capitulation,’ Bruce replied flatly. ‘He offered it a week since. The King wants to see his newest engine in action, the great Warwolf. Fifty folk it takes to handle it and Edward is determined to have it fling stones at Oliphant’s head before that man is allowed to come out.’

  There was silence, broken only by the soft, slippering sound of hesitant feet. Then Lamberton sighed.

  ‘Then all are finally given in,’ he said. ‘Save Wallace.’

  Bruce shot the bishop a hard look; Lamberton owed his appointment to Wallace when he was Guardian and needing all the gentilhomme allies he could garner; Bruce wondered how deep the bishop’s obligement went.

  Other diehards, finally persuaded to give in, had also been initially excluded from Edward’s conditions for submission. Yet even they had been forgiven in the end, by a Longshanks who had learned a little from all the previous attempts and was trying the kidskin glove as well as the maille mitten.

  All forgiven – all but Wallace.

  ‘That is one problem we are here to discuss,’ Bruce began, then broke off as a new figure shuffled painfully into the light. Bent, with a face like a ravaged hawk and iron-grey hair straggling round his ears from under a conical felted hat, the man nodded and muttered thanks to Kirkpatrick as he was helped into a chair, then refused wine with a wave of one weary hand.

  ‘John Duns,’ Bishop Wishart announced and the man managed a smile out of a yellow face. Bruce knew the priest by reputation – a man with a mind like a steel trap – but was shocked by his appearance. The cleric was scarce forty.

  ‘The new lord of Annandale,’ said Duns, his voice wisped as silk, but his eyes steady on Bruce’s own. ‘Which title also brings you the claim to the throne of Scotland. Which brings you here.’

  ‘I am here because the realm needs it,’ Bruce replied. ‘It needs a king.’

  ‘Just so,’ Wishart said smoothly, before anyone else could speak. ‘Let us first offer prayers to God that each man here preserves the tone of this meeting, as it were, from the ears of those who do us harm. On pain of endless tortures in Hell – not to mention on earth.’

  ‘And an agreed fine,’ Lamberton added, just as smoothly, ‘that would cripple a nation never mind a wee prelate in it. Was that necessary?’

  ‘It was – but let us pray to Saint Giles,’ Wishart responded with some steel, ‘patron saint of cripples everywhere, that such a thing will never come to pass.’

  The soft murmur of the bishops, moth-wings of holiness, brought the face of his father flickering across Bruce’s mind. Prayers would still be being murmured for him, Bruce thought, circling round Holm Abbey like trapped birds. He tried to remember the old man in a better light than the one which usually lit his memory.

  Saint-hagged, heavy-witted old man was what he recalled. Burned books and a splintered lute was what he recalled. Beatings, was what he recalled, for paying ‘too much mind to that auld reprobate’s teachings’.

  The auld reprobate had been his grandfather, who had dinned into him the Bruce claims to kingship and pointedly scorned, as he did so, his own son’s inadequacy in that regard. With some justice, Bruce thought to himself – grandda worked tirelessly to the end to further the kingship cause of the Bruces – God blind me, was he not called The Competitor for it – and my father, apart from one timid plea to Longshanks, did little.

  Yet when he heard there was a last breathed message from his father, brought by Kirkpatrick, for a moment Bruce’s heart leaped at the promise of a final affection, for all the marring of their relationship by mutual stubbornness and temper. Then hope faltered, stumbled and fell for the last time.

  Not before Longshanks is dead.

  Simple and stark, his final advice, with all the love in it the elder Bruce was capable of bestowing. That was the legacy of the Bruces; that and the Curse of Malachy, Bruce added silently, as his fingertips brushed against the hairless cheek.

  Hal saw the unconscious gesture and knew at once what Bruce was thinking.

  So did Kirkpatrick and he and Hal exchanged a brief glance while the candles flickered, each man knowing just enough of the tale – something about a previous Annandale Bruce thwarting Malachy the holy man by promising to release a condemned felon and then hanging him in secret. The said priest was angered and cursed the Bruces, a curse made more powerful still when Malachy eventually became a saint.

  It had hagged Bruce’s father, who had dedicated a deal of Annandale rents to endowing the saint’s last resting place at Clairveaux with perpetual candles and masses in an attempt to ease the burden of it.

  Bruce fought against the fear of it more often than he would allow – Kirkpatrick knew it well enough never to admit that the man who had breathed his last fetid breath on to this Bruce’s cheek years before had been named Malachy.

  Kirkpatrick. Bland as gruel, with a face that could settle to any shape save pretty and was more than servant, less than friend to the Bruce. A dagger of a man and a ferret for Bruce, sent down the darkest holes to rout out the truths hidden there – especially about the stone-carver. Everyone else here thought he had been called Manon, a dying man Bruce was sure knew a secret and was taking it to the grave, so that he had bent close to him in the hope of hearing his last words. The carver had vomited out blood – and the last administered Host, a white wafer floating like a boat in a flood into the Bruce face.

  Afterwards, Bruce’s right cheek had flared with red pustules, but soon they had faded to dots of white – and now no beard would grow on i
t; Bruce already thought this little flaw a part of the curse – to know the full of it, Kirkpatrick thought, might cause no end of turmoil in the man’s mind.

  As if he had heard, Bruce’s eyes flickered and he dropped his hand, dragged back to the dark room and the eldritch dancing shadows.

  ‘I can count on your lordships’ support,’ he said, cutting into Wishart’s final amen. ‘I am sure of Atholl and Lennox and a great part of the lesser lords – Hay of Borthwick, Neil Campbell of Lochawe for some of the names.’

  ‘You are assured of the bishoprics of St Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld and Scone,’ Wishart declared with some pride and looked pointedly at Lamberton, who stroked his hairless chin and smiled.

  ‘Moray, perhaps,’ he said. ‘Brechin more certainly. I have yet to sound out the abbot of Inchcolm, but I understand he esteems you well, my lord earl.’

  ‘You may have the Abbot of Arbroath,’ John Duns declared, ‘provided he is my clerk, Bernard of Kilwinning. A good man, who knows all my thoughts and deserves such an appointment – Longshanks threw him out of Kilwinning Abbey for his loyalty to the Kingdom’s cause.’

  ‘You cannot crown pawns in this game,’ Lamberton rebuked sternly. ‘Only kings.’

  Duns shrugged.

  ‘No game of chess here, my lords. A horse fair, perhaps, though Bernard is scarcely equine, albeit he works as hard as one – and has the same appetite, that I can attest. He is, reluctant though I am to admit it, too fine to be my clerk and be taken off to Paris when I return.’

  It was hard to take in, Hal thought. With the English king not a handful of miles away throwing stones at Stirling, last defended fortress of a failed rebellion, this wee room in the campanile of Cambuskenneth birled with fetid plans and trading in favours to make another, with Robert Bruce a defiant king.

  Yet it was not enough, Hal thought. Two earls, a wheen of bishops and a rickle of wee lords was not enough when a man planned to make himself king. He did not even realize he had said as much until the silence and the still cold of the stares jerked his head up.