The Complete Kingdom Trilogy

by Robert Low

  He saw the sudden clench and curl of it, knew that Malenfaunt was spurring the beast and, with a sick lurch, dug his heels in to Phoebus, feeling the huge muscled rump gather and spring, almost rocking him backwards so that the lance wavered wildly.

  Seventy ells separated them and they were at lance-length in the time it took to say ‘Sire Pere, qui es es ceaus’. Bruce saw his lance slide over the top of Malenfaunt’s shield and miss his helmet by the length of a horse whisker – then the clatter of lance on his own shield slammed him sideways, reeling him in the saddle. Phoebus faltered, lost rhythm and rocked Bruce back upright before cantering on.

  Stunned, shocked, Bruce fought the horse round. Christ’s Bones, he shrieked to himself, his breathing a thunderous roar inside the helm, what madness drove me to this? Possession by some imp of Satan?

  The Curse of Malachy, a voice nagged at the back of his mind.

  Then Phoebus was round and he was thundering back down the tiltyard, trying to keep the long ash shaft’s bouncing point somewhere in the region of Malenfaunt’s unscarred shield.

  Malenfaunt, snatching up his second lance from the rack, was blazed with a relief bordering on the exultant – Bruce was inept. He could not fight like this, as Buchan had said and that lance stroke was one a still-wet squire would have scorned.

  He wrenched the head of the beast round, feeling it fight back against the cruel barb of the bit and cursing it until he deafened himself in the helmet. Then he levelled his lance and rowelled the animal into a great, leaping canter, hearing his own voice howling.

  Bruce saw the mad plunge of it and felt, as well as the fear, an anger that burned it away like morning mist. He was an earl, one of the recognized best knights of Christendom and would not be made afraid by anyone. He sat deeper in the cantled saddle, straightened his legs out in the stirrups, urged Phoebus with his weight alone and sprang forward.

  They clashed and the crowd roared at the perfection of the strokes, two lances burying their leafed points in each shield and shattering with a simultaneous crack that shivered splinters higher in the air than anyone could have thrown.

  Bruce rocked with the blow and Phoebus staggered sideways, crossing feet over each other, at first delicate as a cat and then stumbling like a drunk. Malenfaunt felt his head snap and his teeth cracked wickedly on his tongue; the horse was flung from a canter to a dead stop and sank back on its powerful haunches, skidding furrows along the sand.

  Bruce reached the far end, reined round, sobbing for breath. He threw down the splintered lance butt, worried the shattered point out of his shield and flung it away, more to give him and horse breathing space than anything. At the far end, he saw Malenfaunt drop his own shattered lance and seem to sit there while the horse snorted and shifted beneath him.

  Had he given in? Too injured to continue? In his heart, Bruce knew the lie of it; this was à l’outrance and there was no giving in at the edge of extremity, until one or the other was forced to it, for a loss here stripped you of honour and dignity. Under the rules, it stripped you of life, too, since your opponent had the right – the duty – to kill you and the very least that could be expected was that the tongue with which you swore your falsehood to God would be removed.

  For God was watching.

  So also was the King and he had sent a stern-eyed squire to inform Bruce that there was to be no death in this and that his opponent had agreed to the same. Mistakes can be made, Bruce thought grimly to himself, at the edge of extremity.

  Malenfaunt was now realizing how great a mistake had been made and that Bruce had all the skills others claimed for him – he had just been faltering until they came to him. From now, Malenfaunt thought with a sick sensation that threatened to loose his bowels, Bruce would be deadly with the lance – so best not to give him the advantage.

  Bruce saw the flick of wrist that brought up the wicked axe from the saddle-bow. There were three lances permitted and he had two still in the rack. There was no rule that said he had to give up the advantage – but God was watching. More importantly, all the other knights were watching.

  Bruce unsnagged his own axe and the two great warhorses came forward again, slower this time.

  They circled, hacking at each other, slicing splinters and chips from shields in a chivalric estampie. The axes locked heads now and then, a furious tugging, silent save for the grunts that could be heard even over the crowd.

  The axe was a wicked affair, three feet of wooden shaft with a sharp curve of blade on one side and a wicked pick-spike on the other. Another foot beyond the top was encased in a leaf-shaped spearpoint and the butt had a six-inch spike. It was designed to cleave helmets, spear through maille links, slip a point under the joints of fancy new plate vambrace and pauldron and open it like shelling crab – and Bruce loved it.

  Malenfaunt realized this after the first few cuts and, by the end of the first two harsh minutes he was sobbing for breath and in fear, his flesh ruching up under all the metal in terror at what that skilfully wielded weapon would certainly do, sooner rather than later.

  In desperation he cut down on the head of Bruce’s horse and shattered it to blood and brains. Phoebus barely made more than a high-pitched grunt before all four feet went out from under him and he fell like a dropped stone.

  The crowd roared anger at such a foul, unchivalric stroke – but there were no rules in that sand-scattered arena and Bruce, kicking free of the stirrups and rolling with mêlée-practised ease, knew it.

  He knew, too, as his unlaced helm flew off and rolled away, exposing his red, sweated face, that he was in trouble.

  The moors south of Yorkshire

  The Feast of St John the Evangelist, December, 1304

  The moors here in England were no different from back home, Malise thought bitterly. A tapestry in mottled black and white, patched here and there with the last faded russet of old bracken, studded with stones dark as iron. Neither should be travelled in this season.

  He glanced at the pewter sky, pregnant with snow and worried that it would fall on him like a shroud before he reached the safety of the Priory of Lund, yet one more knot in the long rope that Lamprecht trailed behind him.

  Find him, Buchan had ordered on the day he arrived to cart his wife off to a nunnery in Perth – at last, Malise thought viciously. Not before time, too, though the freedom he had envisaged on that day had been twisted by the loss of her. It was a witch thing she did to him, he had decided, a cauldron-brewed spell that made him think only of her until his groin ached and he had to take it out on some dirt-patched whore.

  Precious few of those in this plod through the winter north after the pardoner, he thought, and the Christ’s Mass gift of horse and silver from a strangely desperate Buchan had only gone a little way to balming the pain of journeying at this time of year.

  Find him, Buchan had ordered, for it was plain Bruce was now involved in the deadly game. Find the pardoner, and find out what he was doing with Bruce and why the relic of the Black Rood was involved in it. Discover why Bruce was involved in it. Find the proof.

  Malise mourned it all bitterly. Lamprecht, the wee dung beetle. The last time we met he made my life a misery and now here he is bringing bad cess to it once again. I will put him to the Question, right enough, he thought.

  First, hunt down the pardoner – not that it was hard to follow his trail. An ugly wee man with the conch of Compostella in a broad-brimmed hat, a strange way of speaking and a scrip full of wondrous relics could not hide in the places he preferred to haunt.

  Malise had already discovered simple priory priests in possession of lead amulets stamped with Caspar, Melchior or Balthazar and guaranteed proof against plague and ague, not to mention an abbot convinced he had a feather from the very wing of a seraphim. All sold by Lamprecht and proudly shown to Malise, who had also learned of two other men asking about the pardoner; he was sure one of them was Kirkpatrick.

  Malise had come across the bridge at York, along the Micklegate to the Bar with
its empty-eyed corpse-heads – rebel Scots, Malise knew. Malise kept his lips clenched and his accent hidden until he had passed through and on to the Tadcaster road.

  At St Mary’s in Tadcaster, Malise had learned that Lamprecht had sold the toebone of Moses, attested by a Templar-sealed parchment, and was moving on south. Malise had lost a day going in the wrong direction before he realized that the little coo’s hole of a pardoner was headed for London, slipping from abbey to priory and moving swiftly for a man on foot and with no fear of the weather.

  Doubling back through Tadcaster, Malise was sullen at the pardoner’s lack of regard for what a north winter might do; ignorance is bliss, he thought and Lamprecht would pay for it when the north stormed out snow and froze his black heart.

  Yet he knew the De’il looked after his own and the little pardoner would not suffer. Piously – fervently, as the first flake wafted on to the back of his gloved hand – he hoped God was also watching. He needed God’s help, for sure, since he had found out one more valuable item in doubling back.

  There was someone else on the trail of the pardoner, ahead of Malise now, someone well mounted on a black horse and with a sword of particular type, incised with a cross on the wheel pommel.

  A Templar sword.

  Lincoln

  The Feast of St John the Evangelist, December, 1304

  He was on the wrong side of his dead horse, for the axe lay on the other and all Bruce now had was a forearm’s length of thin estoc, an edgeless weapon too long to be a dagger and too short to be a sword, but perfect for sliding in a visor slit, or punching through maille. Against an axe-armed man on a horse it might just as well have been a reed.

  Malenfaunt was in a fever of triumph, tearing at the horse’s mouth to get it round, raking it cruelly to repeat the process, charge down his victim. Bruce was down, weaponless, unhelmed and helpless – he had won …

  Bruce saw it in Malenfaunt’s frantic movement. Nothing left but the German Method, he thought grimly and positioned himself, feeling the desert of his mouth and the wrench in his guts.

  The crowd was a bellowing beast as Malenfaunt came at him, all hooves and wicked axe, reversed so that the pick, brought hard down by a man raised up in his stirrups for the leverage, would spear through metal cervellier skull cap, the maille coif beneath it, the padded arming cap under that and, finally, the skull of his victim. Like a lance through a bladder, Malenfaunt exulted …

  At the last, Bruce sprang to one side – to his right, away from the axe. He heard a metalled scream of frustration from under Malenfaunt’s helm – then watched as the horse ploughed on, into the dead Phoebus.

  Malenfaunt was horrified as he felt his mount balk, stumble and then seem to sink, trying to thrash and heave back upright from its knees, while Malenfaunt perched in the saddle like an egg on a stick. In his panic he did not wait to find out if his mount fought free from the tangle of dead horse and drapery – he kicked out of the stirrups and stumbled to the ground.

  The crowd roared their approval and both men closed with one another, Bruce shieldless and with his long, thin estoc, Malenfaunt with axe and shield. They moved cautiously on the kicked up sand.

  They circled, Malenfaunt swinging in vicious swipes, Bruce crabbing away, looking for an opening. Malenfaunt heard his own breath rack and sob, deafening under the helmet, where the heat was smothering him and the sweat starting to run in his eyes. He realized, sickeningly, that he could not keep the axe in motion for much longer, that he would have to stop, to rest …

  Bruce struck when he saw the weary arm sink, an adder’s tongue flick of metal that speared through the maille of Malenfaunt’s forearm, grating on the bone. He heard the man’s muffled howl, the arm was whipped away and the axe sailed from nerveless, gauntleted fingers. Bruce closed in as Malenfaunt stumbled away, lashing with his shield, batting the striking point away from him while he fumbled.

  He came up with a dagger, just as Bruce took a shield swipe on his own arm. The blow numbed it and he cursed, fell back, the estoc tumbling from his hand. Gasping for breath, both men seemed to pause – then Malenfaunt, seeing Bruce unarmed, gave a high shriek and lunged forward, smashing with his shield at the same time as he cut back with the dagger.

  Bruce, in pain and off balance, saw the wink of it too late. It came at his shoulder, glanced off an aillette and went through the hood of the maille coif into his right cheek. He felt the tug of it, felt – shockingly – the cruel length of it like a bit in his mouth, felt it pink a tooth. The edge slashed his tongue and his mouth was full of blood.

  The crowd howled – the King sprang to his feet and Badenoch lurched forward, bellowing at Malenfaunt to kill him. Malenfaunt roared exultantly and stepped back, leaving the weapon in the wound, throwing up both hands as if to announce that he had won. He paused, a little dazed it seemed, by this turn of events, then half-turned as if to go for his axe.

  The shock of seeing Bruce reach up and remove the dagger unmanned him. The man should have been on his knees from the agony of it – Christ’s Bones, the blood was pouring down his face, streaking the chevronned jupon … Malenfaunt staggered back, caught his spurs and fell.

  There was a moment when the pewter sky, patched with iron clouds, swung wildly and Malenfaunt lay, trying to believe what he had seen. Magic. Had to be – the Devil looks after his own. Then the sky was blotted and he felt a shape settle on him, driving the air from his lungs and pinning him.

  Bruce straddled Malenfaunt, his knees crushing Malenfaunt’s arms into the muddied sand, and he heard desperate, babbled words come from under the helm. Comyn, he heard. Lord of Badenoch, he heard. His idea – he knows of your bid to be king of the Scotch. The King said not to kill you, he heard. To spare you. He told you the same, I know. Spare me …

  Bruce let the words wash him, grim and uncaring as rock. I yield, he heard. He should heed that one. God was watching, after all.

  More to the point, Badenoch and the rest of the Comyn were watching, so he lay closer, his head on Malenfaunt’s shoulder like an embracing friend, took Malenfaunt’s leaf-shaped dagger, bright with his own blood and shoved it up under the bucket helm to where it grated on the coiffed chin. He felt the man buck and start to shake his head from side to side, his metallic pig squeals increasing, his babbled desperation wilder still.

  Then he put the heel of his hand on the hilt of the weapon and slammed hammer-blows until he felt it pop through the links, the flesh of the chin, then the tongue and the roof of Malenfaunt’s mouth. He knew that because the blood spurted and the babbling was so high only dogs could hear it. Then there was only a sickening ‘thu … thu … thu’ from a man whose desperate speeches were now all pinned.

  The crowd was a great roaring beast, feeding on the pain and the blood.

  One more blow would drive it up into the stem of the man – Bruce stopped then, for it was a message he was sending, not death.

  He wobbled upright feeling the world whirl. The blood drooled from his mouth as he turned, half-blind like a blinkered horse; the crowd fell silent at the sight of him, at the twitching, moaning ruin that was Malenfaunt and into it, as loudly as he could muster, Bruce completed the bloody mummery of the day, spouting gore from his cheek with every word.

  ‘Ai-je fait mon devoir?’

  The Marshal nodded but it was the throated roar of the crowd that revealed that Bruce had done his duty. Released like arrows, the squires and his brothers raced for him, even as his legs finally gave way.

  Nunnery of the Blessed Saint Augustine, Elcho, Perth

  Feast of the Blessed St Fillan, January, 1305

  They had arrived in daylight when it should, to suit the mood and the deed, have been darkest night, she thought. A rare day as well, silvered with a weak coin of a sun fighting through the iron sky to shine on the enchantment of Elcho.

  She and the escort of her husband’s grim dog-soldiers, all swagger and lust, came to it past herb banks and trellised rose bushes, black and clawed now but, she knew, a
riot of beauty in the spring and summer. There was a carp pond, half-frozen and, beyond that, a cobbled path they had to walk to reach the nunnery, a series of stone buildings, some of the stones yellow, others rich pink, like jewels in the black-brown of it.

  Arrow-slit windows and a stout door told much of how it had survived and the woman who came to the gate revealed more without saying a word. She was dressed in plain grey homespun, but wore a small gold cross on a chain about her neck. As tall as me, Isabel thought, and pale-haired under the headcover if her brows were anything to go by. Not white, though – in the plain, shapeless clothes and veil it was hard to guess her age, but Isabel thought her not greatly older than herself. She moved with dignity and bowed to Isabel.

  ‘The lord of Buchan craves shelter, lady, for his countess and protection from the world. He begs you instruct her in the ways of God.’

  The serjeant said it by rote, having memorized it in mutters all the way here. The woman did not even look at him, but at Isabel.

  ‘I am the Prioress Bridget,’ she said simply and held out both hands. ‘Welcome. Are you with child?’

  Isabel, taken aback, almost shook her head, then recovered herself.

  ‘If I was,’ she answered with bitter haughtiness, ‘I would not be here. And I am the Countess of Buchan.’

  The prioress did not blench, merely nodded a receipt to this reminder of their station, but remained still as an icon, arms folded in her sleeves.

  ‘If you were,’ she answered blandly, ‘and are sent here, then it would not have been the Earl’s child.’

  ‘Countess,’ she added, with a slight, wintery smile, then looked at the scowling, shift-footed thugs.

  ‘Your task is done. You may leave the lady’s baggage – Elcho is no place for men.’

  The serjeants went, dismissed like the dogs they were; Isabel smiled, liking this prioress, yet recalling the other time she spent in a nunnery in Berwick as a prisoner of Malenfaunt.

  She turned, to take a last scornful look at the retreating backs of her husband’s thugs and saw another grey woman shut and bar the heavy door; she knew then that this was no different than the last time – save that the nuns here were truer Brides of Christ.