The Kingdom Series – The Lion at Bay

by Robert Low

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

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

  ‘The cheek does not hurt at all?’

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Not your wife, brother?’

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

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

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

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

  ‘Especially not brother Edward.’

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

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

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

  Moffat, Annandale

  Feast of Saint Kessog, March, 1305

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘There is gruel to break yer fast.’

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

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

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

  Wallace laughed, remembering.

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

  ‘Worth it, was she?’

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

  ‘A coontess, no less.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘No war, Patie,’ he repeated.

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

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

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


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

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

  Like myself.

  Church of St Thomas of Acon, London

  Thursday of Mysteries, April, 1305

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  So he ran.

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

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

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

  ‘Is there a lover’s face in that?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Murder, murder …’

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

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

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