by Robert Low
‘Gules semy of crosses paty and a chevron argent,’ Jamie intoned darkly and Dog Boy, though he spoke no French, knew that Jamie was reeling off the fancy words for the banner they had spotted: red, covered with wee white crosses and with a big white chevron.
Sir Hal had the same skill, but he would have known whom the banner belonged to; wisely, Dog Boy did not voice this to the scowl of Jamie Douglas.
‘It is not the Earl of March,’ Jamie said, almost to himself. ‘His device is a rare conceit involving a lion rampant to remind everyone that Patrick of Dunbar thinks himself regal enough to be considered for the throne, like his da before him.’
He scrubbed his dark hair with confusion.
‘So who is it?’
‘No matter,’ Dog Boy answered. ‘They are unlikely to be friendly to us this close to Dunbar, for if Edward the Plantagenet stops of a sudden, wee Earl Patrick will be sticking his biled face up the royal arse.’
Jamie gave a harsh chuckle and clapped Dog Boy on the shoulder.
‘Little room up there,’ he answered. ‘Despensers an’ Gascon relations of Gaveston are elbowing for space.’
There was a long pause while the curlews wheeped in a rain-sodden sky. Dog Boy saw the ruin of fields round him, ones he remembered thick with oats and barley, studded with sheep. Sir Hal would be sore hurt to see his demesne in such a state, he thought.
Not that the rest of the land was better; Dog Boy had seen nothing but fields of rot all spring, for the early harvest had been ruined by rain and now folk were slaughtering livestock they could not feed. When all that was gone, starvation would set in and the rising leprous heat was now withering late-planted crops and forage. Coupled with the war that was clearly coming, it would be a harsh year for the Kingdom, where folk would eat grass.
It did not help that he was part of their bad luck – Jamie Douglas was raiding, with fast wee pack ponies and a couple of lumbering carts to load cut fodder and grain bags, his men all mounted to herd kine and sheep; the army slinking round Stirling like wolves on a kill needed a lot of feeding.
They had torn and scorched furrows back and forth across the Lothians, concentrating on the holdings of those they knew still supported the enemy. Then they had been chased by mounted men, whom they presumed came from Dirleton or Dunbar and had been running now for three days; Jamie Douglas did not like to run, Dog Boy thought, even when it was prudent.
‘I would like to ken them better,’ Jamie Douglas said and Dog Boy jerked out of his revery to look at him, and then followed the Black’s steady, meaningful stare. The top of Herdmanston tower.
‘Can you do it?’ Jamie demanded and Dog Boy grinned at him, sharp-toothed as any wolf.
‘Bigod, does a wee hound go three-legged at a tree? I came down it once, so I can get up it as well.’
Nor far away, Addaf took a knee and rubbed his grizzled chin. He knew there were riders somewhere ahead of him, but he could not be sure what they were – the Scots put everyone they could on tough, half-wild ponies, so it was more than likely just a band of ragged-arsed raiders, for he was sure he had seen scrubby little black cattle with them.
Yet the thought that they might be men with maille and lances made him uneasy and he did not like the feeling, not least because he was called Addaf Hen these days, which meant both old and respected for the cunning and knowledge it brought. Henaint ni ddaw ei hunan – old age does not come by itself, he thought, which is a comfort every time I climb up off my aching knees.
He looked round at his own men, a long hundred of whey-faced and grey-grim Welsh archers. Well they might look like corpses, he thought moodily, which was no more than they deserved for drinking the soured wine given to them to wash the heads of their own horses.
Mixed with water and applied carefully, it repelled the vicious flies and soothed their bites – Addaf’s own little mare had a forehead of fat lumps from them – but drink, no matter how foul, was never to be wasted by a good Welshman on sluicing a horse.
So they had swallowed it down and now groaned and shat noxiously down their legs and over their horses, for Addaf, viciously, would not let them rest. Scout the area, he had been told, and so that is what he forced them to do, even though the task was tedious. The point of it was to deter the Scotch from scouring it clean of anything that might help the King’s army when it arrived.
Small good the drink had done them. Now they had soiled the good coloured tabards issued by Sir Thomas Berkeley, complete with his badge on the breast; they would wipe their arses with the banner, too, Addaf was sure, if they got the chance. Sir Thomas would not like that – but Sir Thomas was not within a hundred miles of this hot, damp, flyblown, God-cursed place.
Hwyel came to his elbow, silent and narrow-eyed, taking a knee with a grunt that let Addaf know his innards stabbed him. He spared the man a glance, taking in the dark, close-cropped beard and the filth-grimed lines; he remembered the man when he had been young and colt-eager, full of irrepressible humour. It had been a long time since he had heard Hwyel laugh and the men now called him Hwyel Cuchiog – the Frowning.
‘Dduw bod ‘n foliannus,’ he grunted – God be praised. Addaf stared unpityingly into his jaundiced eyes and gave him the rote response.
‘In ois oisou.’ For ever and ever.
‘Now that we know that enemies of Christ do not inhabit us,’ Addaf went on wryly in a fluid cough of Welsh, ‘save for the devils in your belly, have you any thoughts on who might be ahead of us and, more to the point, where?’
‘None,’ Hwyel growled back. ‘Does it matter? If we go to them, there they will be and we can shoot them to ruin, same as ever, Mydr ap Mydvydd, for we are better than they.’
Mydr ap Mydvydd. Aim the Aimer was another of Addaf’s hard-earned names, though the truth of that these days was less than honest, since Addaf’s eyes were not what they had once been and he was sure folk knew it but stayed quiet, out of deference.
He half turned, glancing at the sour sky and then at the men waiting patiently beside their horses; he heard one retch and saw Lowarch suddenly thrust the reins to his neighbour and dart off, half squatting and moaning even as he moved.
Then Y Crach moved to him like a scowl, his roseate face flaring in the leprous heat.
‘Ye needs must punish these,’ he said in his singsong way and now Addaf matched him for frowns. Y Crach – Scab – was thin and wiry, a good archer but with no great muscle on him. Some said he had been a priest, licked by a sickness known to be a killer, yet he had survived untouched but for his plaguey face and was convinced the Hand of God was in it. Now he was hot for the Lord and hotter still to do His work against the heathen Scotch, but it made him careless of hierarchy.
‘Bedd a wna bawb yn gydradd,’ Addaf answered, pointedly dismissive – the grave makes everyone equal. Y Crach bristled and Hwyel laughed, but then winced as another fierce reminder of his transgression rippled his bowels.
‘Well, are we after fighting, or can we go home?’ he asked and Addaf cursed him for cutting to the core of matters. Of course they could not go home, even if they had one, without having done what they had been told to do. They were now in the retinue of the Berkeleys and, even if Sir Thomas was not here, his son Maurice was, fretting about his sick wife back in England and unlikely to be consoled by failure.
Addaf looked pointedly at Y Crach until the man took the hint and went away. Then he levered himself up.
Hwyel rose up with Addaf, taking in the silver and iron look of the man, the hump of muscle on one shoulder that made him look like a crookback. Hwyel had been with Addaf for seven years of hard life and killing and knew it had infected his leader with a disease which had driven out joy.
He wondered what Addaf had once been like, in the part long burned away by war. For a moment, he remembered his own younger self and grinned as Addaf turned to him.
‘We will make them dance, we will make them kick,’ he said, ‘with a clothyard shaft and a crooked stick.’
The echo o
f the boy he had been fell like dull pewter between them; Addaf’s gaze was sour.
‘Teg edrych tuag adref,’ he answered – it is good to think of home. Which was a lie for him, who had not thought of his little patch, two brothers and mam in many a long year.
Mam will be dead and gone, he thought with a sudden, vicious wrench of all that he had abandoned. Brothers, too, likely … and if they live yet it will no longer be my patch, but will belong to them now and the babanod they have made who grew up into it after them. No one there would know me if I walked into the centre of the place.
He shook it all off like a dog from water and went rolling away on bad knees.
Hwyel watched Addaf’s lumpen back as he hirpled away towards the others, barking orders; he wondered how long it would take and what he must endure to become as black-avowed as him.
An hour later, he found out.
Irish Sea
At the same moment …
Niall Silkie skinned down from the mast-nest on a tarred rope, swinging on to the sterncastle like some long-armed babery. He landed lightly, almost on the toes of the scowling Pegy Balgownie.
‘It is my sure opeenion’, he said, ‘that yon weirman weltering astern is afire.’
Pegy blinked and Hal saw the bewilderment in Rossal’s eyes.
‘He says the warship astern of us is burning.’
‘There’s after being a wheen o’ smoke,’ Niall Silkie persisted and Pegy stroked his beard, scowling at Rossal.
‘Perhaps it really is the other ship, this Maryculter,’ de Grafton offered in French, his spade-bearded face heavy with concern. ‘In which case, we must help, surely, if only to discover why it is afire and who attacked it.’
‘A ruse,’ Kirkpatrick countered, tension thickening his Braid Scots. ‘Designed to play on the chivalry of your graces … aw, it is creishie wi’ cunning, for they must ken that we have proper Knights of the Order here, who once wore the white mantle rather than the grey of lesser lights. They will rely on your nobility and honour blinding you, sirs, whether you are disbanded or no’.’
Rossal’s brow lashed itself with frowns and Pegy, sensing the balance, glanced at the filling sail, then at the fog bank.
‘The wind is up a notch. Two nicks on the steerin’ oar to farans and we can be in the haar and vanished like wraiths, my lord.’
Somhairl, looking up through the castle planks at the booted feet and able to hear every word, leaned expectantly on the starboard-quarter tiller, bunching his muscles to turn the ship at Pegy’s order. Men waited with coiled rope to lend their muscle to haul the unwieldy vessel quickly on to a new course; the moment clung and sucked the breath away.
Then Rossal shifted.
‘Bring in your sail, captain,’ he said firmly. ‘We will await the arrival of this burning vessel.’
Kirkpatrick made a disgusted growl in the back of his throat and Pegy, after a short pause, nodded and bawled out the orders; men sprang to obey and the Bon Accord balked and then started to roll and pitch. Sim gagged and stumbled to the thwarts.
‘Leave a gap in the mantlets,’ de Villers called out, almost joyously, ‘so our comrade can lose his belly over the side in peace.’
Below, Widikind heard the laughter and began to take his leave of Doña Beatriz, offering her a stiff little bow from the neck.
‘Are you afraid?’
He heard her voice, light and musical, the French tinged with a delicious accent; his eyebrows went up at the question.
‘If there is to be a fight, the Lord will hold His Hand over me – or He will lift me up and I will be gathered into His Grace. What is to fear?’
Her laugh was a trill and she unloosed the net of pearls, signalling Piculph to help; Widikind found the sight of the Moor-dark man running his fingers through her hair to tease the net free disturbing and uncomfortable.
‘I meant of me,’ she replied and he blinked, then recovered himself.
‘We believe it is a dangerous thing for any religious to look too much upon the face of a woman.’ He recited from memory the old catechism. ‘The Knighthood of Jesus Christ should avoid, at all costs, the company of women, by which men have perished many times.’
‘The Rule of Benedict,’ she answered, which astonished him; she saw it and smiled sweetly. ‘Though I remember the Rule as being that the Knighthood of Jesus Christ avoid, at all costs, the embraces of women rather than simply the company.’
Widikind felt himself prickle with an awkward heat and could not speak.
‘My brother is of the Order of Alcántara, whose knights have taken over your holdings in Castile,’ she went on. ‘He is, as are they all, Cistercian in his rulings and he says that all Templar Knights follow the Benedictine belief, which is altogether too harsh. He says you – when you were not a heretic, pardon me, Brother – slept in shoes, shirt and hose in order to avoid the sin of being catamites to each other. Do you still hold to that, Brother, even though your Order is dissolved?’
Widikind’s mouth opened and closed and he was aware of how stupid he must look, while his French grew thick with his Cologne accent, so that it sounded crow-harsh to his own ears.
‘Not seemly,’ he managed at last. ‘This talk. I must join my brethren. Battle.’
She waved a languid hand and slapped Piculph’s wrist as he tugged too hard.
‘La, sir, this is the slowest pursuit since Aesop’s Tortoise. There will be no fighting for an hour or more and none at all unless we are foolish enough to allow it. Which is worse?’
The last question sent Widikind reeling and he gaped, flustered and feeling his face flame.
‘Worse?’
‘Lying with men or with women? Which is worse for your Order … former Order?’
Widikind was staggering now, unable to think clearly or protest further. He wanted to turn and go, he wanted to spit out that all monastic life was a war against passions which women were ill equipped to resist. But he was rooted and saw, with the last edge of his eyes not locked like a stoat-fixed rabbit on the lady’s face, the slight mocking sneer on the lips of the Moor.
‘Men,’ he managed to gasp and Doña Beatriz snapped her fingers, a sharp sound that seemed to cut the strings that fixed Widikind to her face; he half fell, and then righted himself and, appalled, straightened. He felt the sweat roll down his back and forehead.
‘So,’ she said, softly vicious. ‘You avoid speaking or having contact with my sex, sir, because the Rule of Benedict considers the embrace of women to be … dangerous.’
She leaned forward, her beauty like a blade.
‘Yet the embrace of men is worse,’ she concluded, light as the kiss of a razor on a cheek, ‘and you are happy to consort with them freely. I do not understand this. Perhaps you can enlighten me, since I am a mere woman?’
Widikind blinked and grew suddenly cold. This was the Eden serpent, for sure, and an added coil was the sly, sneering Moor at her back. But Widikind von Esbeck was of the Order, his grandfather had been Master in Germany and, even interdicted and abandoned by the Holy Father, he would not be afraid of evil …
‘As you say, lady, you are a mere woman. Filling you with such enlightenment would be like pouring fine wine into a filthy cup. A pointless waste.’
He nodded briefly, turned on the spot and fumbled his way up the steps and on to the deck, feeling the sudden breeze like balm; behind, he heard the soft chuckle of the Moor.
Doña Beatriz waited until his shadow was gone.
‘Typical,’ she murmured, ‘and revealing. There is steel in these Knights of Christ, but a waft of perfume and a girlish laugh unmans them easily enough.’
She turned to smile at Piculph.
‘He imagines I am Satan’s own daughter, with a Moorish imp as a servant – did you see how he stared at you? If you had brought out a forked tail he would not have been surprised.’
Piculph, who was a good French Christian and a serjeant in the Order of Alcántara, nodded, though his smile was a bland cabinet that
hid his own secrets.
‘This Widikind and his so-called brethren were once Templar Knights, the wearers of white. You should be wary of thinking them the same as those grey-clad lay dogs you saw scampering away from Villasirga, señora.’
‘When the time comes,’ Doña Beatriz replied, ‘wile will win over weapon, Piculph.’
She heard the drumming of feet on the deck above, felt the lurch and sow-wallow of the ship and frowned.
‘We are slowing. Surely these fools are not about to fight. They do not even know how many enemies lie in wait on that boat.’
Piculph’s eyes narrowed and he folded the net of pearls neatly.
‘That is what I mean, señora. Fighting is what they do and they do not consider odds.’
Herdmanston
An hour later …
The odds, as Y Crach had declared, loudly and with relish, were perfect… . four carts, a scatter of sumpter ponies, a milling herd of long-horned black cattle and a handful of men, half-crouched with spears waving, clustered with desperate courage in front of the wagons.
Hwyel – the traitor, Addaf thought blackly – had agreed.
‘We will make them dance,’ he bawled out and Addaf saw the men who agreed, grinning and nodding between sick belches. Too many sick belches and more so than last time.
Reluctantly, Addaf signalled for his men to dismount, the younger ones grabbing handfuls of reins and dragging the horses away as the old hands slid easily into familiar ranks and heeled their bows, running the string up to the nock in a smooth movement.
Addaf looked at his own bowstave, the ribbon on the tip fluttering softly so that he knew the wind speed and direction. Twenty men oppose us, he thought, no more. Twenty and a handful of dogs for driving the kine – five to one he outnumbered them and one single volley would pin them to the turf.
So why was he so fretted? Because Y Crach seemed to have taken charge of this? He eyed the black ruin of the tower, the weathered cross and the battered chapel and did not like the omen of this place at all; his men, bows smarted and drooped to the ground, waited for the command that would lift the arrow points up, draw back the braided horsehair and silk string to the ear and release an iron sleet on the enemy.