The Complete Kingdom Trilogy

by Robert Low

  Hal looked from him to Kirkpatrick, but any help he sought from there was stillborn with the man’s weary shrug.

  They started up the ladder.

  Hal led the way, panting and sweated by the time he reached the top. Wet inside and out, he thought laconically as he heaved himself as quietly as he could over the crenellation. The misery of Dog Boy’s face brought him up short and he stared as the man looked bitterly at his bloody palms and then wiped them on his tunic.

  ‘I am ill named,’ he growled to Hal. ‘I am the curse of dogs. Every one I meet dies.’

  Never mind the men – aye, and women, too – that have regretted bumping into you, Hal thought, but he held his tongue in his teeth and merely patted Dog Boy on his sodden shoulder, glancing up and down the length of gleaming, empty walkway as he did so.

  A distant brazier glowed to his left; to the other side was the bulk of a tower, one of the nine Berwick’s fortress possessed and the one they wanted: the Hog Tower. Below, the bailey courtyard flickered in the dancing shadows from stray lights, pale as corpses in the sea-haar – forge, brewhouse, bakehouse, Hal recognized. The dark mass would be the stables, where no light was permitted. No one moved.

  Jamie Douglas slithered to his side and grinned, before wiping his streaming face.

  ‘Bigod,’ he hissed. ‘I should have brought more men. We could capture it easy.’

  ‘We could not,’ Hal flung back at him. ‘We could try and capture it and it would be hard and bloody. It would also ruin any rescue. Mind that, Sir James, when your heid is bursting with glory.’

  ‘In and out,’ added a panting voice as Kirkpatrick came up alongside them, ‘quiet and quick.’

  He beamed mirthlessly at Jamie Douglas.

  ‘Like you were taking the favour of someone else’s wife,’ he added.

  ‘You might have thought of another way to put that,’ Hal glowered back at him and Kirkpatrick acknowledged his lack of tact with an apologetic wave.

  ‘Aye, weel – the husband is long deid, Devil take him …’

  ‘Whisht, the lot of you.’

  Dog Boy’s glare froze them all and they obeyed him, regardless of station and suddenly, shockingly, aware of where they were perched. Like eggs on a high ledge, Hal thought, and cackling like gannets.

  ‘Bide here,’ he declared to Jamie, who scowled and looked about to protest.

  ‘We need to protect the way out,’ Hal pointed out. Besides, he added to himself, you should not be here at all and your lust for glory and your bloody-handed temper will carry you away when we least need it.

  Jamie, unused to taking orders from the likes of Hal, looked about to protest and Dog Boy thrust himself into the path of it.

  ‘I will also stay,’ he announced, ‘to guard our way to safety.’

  Jamie, suddenly realizing that this was not his quest and given a suitable task of bravery and honour, nodded and grinned. With a brief look of raised-eyebrow relief, Kirkpatrick passed Hal and led the way towards the Hog Tower, skulking along the walkway, pressed to the crenellations.

  There was a door and he imagined it would be shut and barred, which was the way if the castle was guarded, all perjink and proper. He tested it, heard the bar behind it clunk softly in the pins and did not know how they would get it open. He turned to say so to Hal, found that man’s face turned up and pebbling with moonlit rain.

  Hal stared up at the cage, clamped like a barnacle to the outside of the tower. She was there, the thickness of a wall, a few long strides away …

  Kirkpatrick saw it, too, and blinked the rainmist off his eyebrows.

  ‘A quick and strong young man’, he hissed, ‘could be up on that and inside in no time.’

  It took a moment for Sweetmilk to realize Kirkpatrick was staring at him and he blenched when he did so.

  ‘Aye, right,’ he whispered back scornfully. ‘In through the door it does not have, for what would be the point of that on the outside of a cage hung a long drop from the ground?’

  ‘It has a wee slanty half-roof,’ Kirkpatrick pointed out, ‘to shed the rain. With wooden shingles, easily removed. The bars, too, are wooden – ye might snap yer way in.’

  Sweetmilk eyed the half-roof, no more than a ledge to shoot rain into the courtyard below, and then the wrist-thick timber grill of the cage. He looked at Hal and saw the misery there, the rain like tears; he does not want to tell me to do something so foolish, Sweetmilk thought. But he wants his woman free.

  All folk’s plans for the best seem to involve me putting myself in the hardest places, he thought, moving to the wet rock of the tower and looking for handholds. Well, I came through the bloody horror at Stirling, so I will come through this also. He fumbled the dirk into his belt, ignoring Kirkpatrick’s advice to take it in his teeth. An idiot would suggest that, he wanted to say, for all it does is make you look like a red murderer and put cuts on your tongue and lips.

  He felt between the weathered mortar of the stones for crevices and nicks and little ledges. Christ’s Wounds, this would not be easy.

  Hal watched him swing up and out; he held his breath, seeing that Sweetmilk had removed his shoes and tied them round his neck. Clever – slick-smooth leather soles were no help at all and Sweetmilk’s shoes were more status than necessity for a man with such horned and calloused bare feet.

  As if to mock them, the rain started in earnest, a hissing curtain that shrouded everything to a few feet and sent rivulets and streams coursing down between the stones of the tower. Sweetmilk, arms and feet screaming in strained agony, reached up one wobbling hand and grasped the underside supports of the cage.

  For a moment he swung free, dangling by one hand like a limp banner while everyone held their breath. Then he swung up the other hand and slapped it on to the timber. Slowly, laboriously, he drew himself up and then hung on the outside of the cage, a grey figure in the misting rain.

  ‘Bigod,’ Kirkpatrick declared admiringly, ‘he climbs like a babery ape.’

  ‘He will fall like a bliddy stone,’ Hal muttered.

  Then the bar clunked out of the pins and and the door started to open outwards. Kirkpatrick, swift as shadow, moved into the swinging lee of it while Hal, caught like a thief in a larder, could only crouch and freeze, the rain dropping in his dry, open mouth, looking up into the shrouded, murderous stare of Sweetmilk, who clung to the outside of the cage, not daring to move.

  A man shouldered through the open doorway, cloak shrouding his head and shoulders, unlacing his braies and hunched up against the rain so that he saw only the tops of his own shoes.

  ‘Dinna loit on anyone,’ a voice called out from behind him and the man, head down and drawn in, cursed and stood between the merlons, fumbling out his prick.

  ‘No sensible soul is abroad on a night like this,’ he growled back, and grunted as his stream joined the rain. There was a moment, a long moment, when he stood and emptied himself, enjoying the feel and wishing it would hurry – he would have gone into the Witch’s cell and used her pot if it had not been for the sleeper across her door. That and the fact that she was called the Witch, of course.

  He shivered at the thought. Fine-looking woman, mark ye, for all her age … He turned sideways and stared into the face of a rainsoaked man, crouching like a hare on the walkway where he should not have been. The man grinned a sickly grin, his hair plastered wetly down his face in pewter daggers.

  ‘Who the f—’

  He was cut off, mid-flow, from speech, piss and life as Kirkpatrick took a step from the shadows and shoved.

  ‘Gardyloo,’ he muttered as the man fell off the wall, his last curse trailing behind him as he whirled his arms and legs in a futile dance in the air. There was a distant thud.

  Hal was already past them both, into the dark of the tower. Stairs, circling up and down; Hal went up, to where a light flickered.

  ‘Hurry up and close the door, else the candle will go out.’

  The voice was booming loud in the enclosed space and Hal fro
ze; then he edged up and round until he could peer over the last edge of the floor level above. The man sitting at the table, idly working at a leather strap, stared straight back at him, astonished.

  They sprang for one another at the same time and Hal’s wet soles slipped, so that he fell on the last part of the stair. Should have hung my shoes round my neck, like Sweetmilk, he thought wildly, and had to fall back a few steps as the man came down at him, sword out.

  Disadvantaged in every way, Hal thought, armed only with a knife, below a man with a longer weapon on a spiralling stair designed to suit him and not me. Sparks flew as the man struck and missed; Hal saw him glance wildly over his shoulder, saw the iron rod dangling from a hook, waiting to be struck like a ringing bell.

  The man slashed once more and sprang back, heading for the alarm iron; Hal was after him, stumbling, stabbing wildly. He felt the blow up his arm, the grate of it on bone and the man gave a sharp cry and fell, slamming face-first on to the table even as he groped for a soothing grasp on his pinked heel. Hal leaped on him, heard the air drive out with a choking gasp and battered his own head on the table so that it whirled with bright light and stars.

  Dazed, he rolled free, blood in his mouth, and felt the man scrabble up – and a dark shape moved past him like a wind from a grave; the man yelped as Kirkpatrick’s arm snaked round his neck and drew it back. The dagger gleamed in the guttering candle flame like a basilisk eye before the man’s throat smothered the wink of it.

  ‘Mak’ siccar,’ Kirkpatrick muttered and held the kicking man until the breath left him; there was blood everywhere, spattering in pats as the man struggled his last.

  Hal rolled on to all fours, spitting, to see Kirkpatrick wiping his bloody hand on the man’s tunic, following it up with the dagger; his entire sleeve was sodden with gore.

  ‘Aye til the fore,’ he growled and Hal, blinking the last of his daze away, climbed wearily to his feet and started up the stairs, Kirkpatrick behind.

  The shape was wraithed and black, hidden in the shadows and would have clattered the pair of them back down the stairs if a sharp warning voice had not called out.

  ‘Look out for her.’

  Hal saw the black shroud of nun rush from the shadows and had time to stick out a fist so that the woman, already starting to shriek, ran her face on to the ram of it. Her scream choked off into a grunt, her legs flew out from under her and she clattered limply to the flags at the foot of the door.

  That voice, Hal thought. It is her.

  The door was barred from the outside and he lifted it easily and wrenched it open.

  She saw the dark shape and felt her heart catch in her throat. There was so little light that he was all planes and shadows, might have been anyone – but she knew it was him. Hal. At last …

  She was not ready for it, had always seen this moment in her mind as something much different, with her in barbette and sewn-sleeved gown, her face immaculate, her hair glowing like autumn bracken. Sitting in her little room with her hands in her lap, all composed beauty.

  Not rousted from her bed, with straw in the greying raggle of her hair and barely dressed at all …

  ‘Lamb.’

  The old term flung all that away like shredding mist and he took a step to where a shard of flitting moonlight sliced across his face. Lined, grey-bearded, even in a moonlight never kind to colour, but with the eyes she remembered, focused like flames on her.

  ‘Am I so changed?’ he asked and she heard the uncertainty, the tremble, and the inside of her melted with knowing that he felt exactly the same as she.

  ‘I would know my heart’s delight anywhere,’ she managed and then they clung, fierce as tigers. She tasted iron and salt on his lips – blood, she realized.

  ‘Estat ai en greu cossirier, per un cavallier q’ai agut,’ he said, husky and muffled into the top of her head and she smiled. ‘I was plunged into deep distress, by a knight who wooed me’ … the words, in langue d’oc, belonged to the famed troubairitz the Countess of Dia and Hal and Isabel had played this game of line and line about before, when they and the world were younger and each moment almost as precious as this.

  ‘Eu l’autrei mon cor e m’amor, mon sen, mos huoills e ma vida,’ she replied and looked up at him, a smile blurred by tears. ‘To him I give my heart and love, my reason, eyes and life.’

  ‘Bigod, be done with sucking kisses aff her and find a way to get me in …’

  Isabel whirled, startled at a voice where none should be and saw the black shape clinging to the outside of her cage, outlined in rain.

  ‘Sweetmilk,’ Hal growled, and called out to the man, his voice hoarse and low: ‘Break the roof tiles, man, and keep yer voice down.’

  Cursing, Sweetmilk clung with one hand and worried the slick, stiff wooden tiles with the other; one came free with a crack and he forced it between the grilled bars of the cage, not wanting to clatter it like an alarm iron into the bailey. Then he stopped, craned his head to see and then back to where Hal and Isabel held each other.

  ‘Jamie and Dog Boy are discovered.’

  He came along the walkway through the rainmist, making kissing sounds and cursing between wheedles, wrenched from the comfort and warmth of his distantly glowing brazier and makeshift shelter. Dog Boy knew it was the owner of the hound he had throat-cut, wondering where his wee guard pet had got to. He shook his head, more at the bad cess of the dog’s revenge than to get the water out of his eyes.

  Beside him, Jamie crouched, balanced on the balls of his feet; in three more steps they would be seen.

  Jamie darted forward, lunging out of the shrouding water in the hope that surprise would conquer all – but the guard was a good man and trained well enough that the spear he was holding in one fist came down and level before he had even registered who or what was coming at him.

  Jamie, armed only with a long dirk, skidded to a halt, fell backwards and scrabbled upright; for a long moment they stared at each other, the guard with water dripping off the rim of his iron hat, studded jack soaked black, the spear pearling water from shaft and tip.

  Then Dog Boy came up and the man blinked out of the numbing shock, opened his dry mouth and bellowed.

  ‘Ware afore. Ware afore.’

  ‘Christ and His bliddy saints …’ Jamie hissed and threw the dirk. It whirled, struck the man in the face haft first and sent him staggering. Dog Boy, with a grim grunt, hurled forward and rammed the man to the wet walkway; the spear flew free, rolled off the edge and clattered noisily on to the cobbles below.

  The guard struggled and spat and cursed, but Jamie was on him now too and helped pin one arm and a leg, leaving Dog Boy, fighting the mad, fluttering panic of the man, to free up his dagger hand and drive the weapon into the man’s ear, the most vulnerable spot.

  For a moment he was years back, leaping on the back of a man fighting the Bruce – and winning – in a dark corridor of a leper house. He had knifed into an ear then, too, felt the same gush of blood over his hand, so hot he was amazed it did not scald him …

  Panting, slick with blood and rain, the three of them wrestled and grunted and gasped until, at last, one kicked frantically and then was still. Jamie, dashing rain from his eyes, grinned and got to his hands and knees, was about to say how Dame Fortune was smiling when the bitch betrayed them with the iron clang of an alarm.

  Dog Boy looked at the cage, where Sweetmilk clung like a barnacle, then to where men were spilling out of butter-yellow doorways below and up the stone stairs, more coming along the ramparts so that they would pass through the Hog Tower and along to where the ladder snaked to safety. There was no way he or Jamie could stop them.

  ‘Away,’ Jamie declared, clapping Dog Boy on the shoulder and half dragging him to his feet. ‘Or we are taken.’

  ‘We cannot leave them,’ Dog Boy spat and Jamie whirled him until they were face to face.

  ‘Too late, Aleysandir. All we can do is give them the best chance of escaping on their own.’

  Dog
Boy did not see it. If the guards already spilling up to the Hog Tower passed through it they would send some up one level, to check on the prisoner. When they did, all would be lost for the trapped Hal and Isabel, Kirkpatrick and Sweetmilk.

  Jamie saw all that in the Dog Boy’s face. He grinned and sprang along the walkway towards the guards, spreading his arms wide and bawling like a rutting stag.

  ‘A Douglas. A Douglas. The Black is here. Come ahead if you think yourselves warriors.’

  Even as he sprinted for the ladder, two steps behind Jamie, Dog Boy knew that the guards were elbowing each other to get through the door of the Hog Tower, desperate to close with the legendary Black Douglas, to capture or kill him, for ransom or reward. All of them, Dog Boy thought with a savage moment of exultation as he slid down the ladder, his palms and fingers scorching.

  Hal and Isabel clung to each other, breath pinched off. Kirkpatrick, half-crouched and with his knife out, looked from their gleaming faces to the dark shape of Sweetmilk, hanging on to the outside bars of the cage. It was so quiet Kirkpatrick could hear the hiss of the rain – and the loud shouts of ‘A Douglas’.

  Clever Sir Jamie, he thought as the thunderous clatter of men below spilled through from one walkway to the next, too eager to think; the throat-cut body of the guard below only spurred them on to more vengeance.

  There were loud shouts – but no one came up. Everyone clattered on through, bawling loudly about the castle in danger from the Black Douglas. They would be balked at pursuit, all the same, for the White Wall had a postern gate at the foot of a set of steps known as the Breakneck Stairs, with good reason. The only other way was to follow the Black down his own ladder in the dark.

  ‘We must go,’ he hissed and Hal looked, agonized, at Sweetmilk. He is doomed, Kirkpatrick wanted to say, but the nun groaned and focused all attention on her.

  ‘Strip her.’

  Isabel moved swiftly on her own advice, while the others gawped for a moment, before helping her. It took hardly a moment to pull off the nun’s outer habit and scapular, then Isabel had Hal and Kirkpatrick drag the woman into the cell. She came round as Isabel’s face came out of the scapular and they looked at each other, the nun round-eyed with astonishment; her mouth opened as if to scream.