by Robert Low
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.
Chapter Eleven
Herdmanston Tower
Feast of St Theneva, Mother of Kentigern, July 1298
She woke to the sound of birds and the soft scent of broom from the fresh rushes, wafted from the tall window where the shutters were open against the stifle of the night. It had rained, though, so the heat had gone and insects buzzed in and out. The harsh wickedness of woodsmoke scattered the brief heaven of the moment.
Her leg was over his, the coverlet thrown back and he woke, slowly, as she watched the pulse in his neck, the trough of a slight pox scar dragging her eyes down to the muscled shoulder and another scar, a deeper, pale cicatrice. Lance wound from a tiltyard tourney, a mercifully glancing blow which, if it had struck full would have ripped the entire arm off.
Isabel’s flesh crept and tightened at the thought. Even in such a short time, she knew this man’s body almost as well as her own, each mole and scar of it – there were a lot of scars, she saw, and had mocked him for being careless.
‘None on my face, lass,’ Hal had answered, almost half-sorrowful. ‘Every man who is thought of as a great knight has a face like a creased linen sheet as far as I can tell.’
He stirred awake to her playful fingers, finally grunting as she clasped the rise of him.
‘Christ’s Bones woman – are there not Church laws that govern this?’ he growled throatily as she moved over him. ‘If so, we are condemned.’
‘Feast days, fast days and menses,’ she murmured. ‘Gravid, weaning and forty days after birthing.’
She stopped mouthing him and looked up.
‘I know them all, since it enabled me to avoid my marital duties more than once a week by canon law and more than that by contrivance.’
‘Condemned already,’ Hal muttered weakly, ‘so it would be a sin to stop now.’
‘Sheldrakes,’ she mumbled and Hal fought with his senses, eventually reaching the answer.
‘A dopping,’ he gasped and countered at once, before he lost it.