Kingdom 01 - The Lion Wakes

by Robert Low

  The Dog Boy had known about cookhouses from his time in Douglas. The way to get in had been his idea and the only reason he had voiced it at all was because a great earl, an individual so far above him as to be lost in clouds, had shared a cup and his innermost thoughts one night. The Dog Boy had been his man from that moment and spilling out his plan to approving nods had filled him with a sudden flooding sense of his own new value, so that the rush of it left him reeling and light-headed.

  He hammered on the door with his nut of a fist, then kicked it hard because he wasn’t sure he had made enough noise.

  Inside, the cookhouse sweaters paused as if frozen. Abbot Jerome looked at the helpers, lepers all in various stages of illness, yet with skills needed to bake bread and prepare food. The only cuckoo in the nest was the big-bellied Gawter, charged by Malise with watching this door and the kitchen staff. He blinked once or twice at the thump, but when it came a second time, he moved to the postern set into one of the huge gates and slid back the panel that let him look out.

  At first he could see nothing, then a voice dragged his eyes down to where a ragged boy stood, hunched under a piece of sodden sacking, rain dripping off the end of his nose. Gawter had seldom seen a more miserable sight.

  ‘Away with ye,’ he growled, relieved to see it was only a laddie. ‘No alms from here.’

  ‘Beggin’ only the blissen’ of God an’ a’ His saints on ye sir,’ he had back. ‘I am here deliverin’, not askin’ – a good lady whose man has recently passed on delivers her grace on the spital, for the elevation of his soul.’

  Gawter paused, licking his lips with confusion.

  ‘A brace of lambs,’ the boy persisted and Gawter turned in confusion to Abbot Jerome and had back an approving nod. The Abbot tried to make it all seem as natural as breathing, but the truth of the matter was that his heart leaped, for he knew a ruse when he heard one. The spital depended on donatives and was guaranteed a lamb and a pig every ten days, from the guild of merchants.

  They were delivered, butchered and hung, since no sensible man eats freshly killed meat – and the last delivery had been four days since; the remains of carcasses hung and swung in plain view and his cook teams were, even now, slathering joints of it with fat, herbs and mint.

  But Gawter did not know this and, though there was a chance that there really were two lambs from a grief-stricken widow, Jerome fervently prayed there was not, that this was help, by Divine Grace.

  ‘Aye,’ Gawter said, uneasy and uncertain, but aware that refusal of such bounty would arouse suspicion. ‘That’s brawlie, wee lad – be smart with it. As weel suin as syne, as my ma said . . .’

  Hal heard the clack and clunk of the beam locks coming off, then the grunt as Gawter heaved the beam out of the supports.

  ‘Bring in your lambs, then . . .’ he began and the door heaved in on his face, crashing him backwards to slide across the floor into a cauldron, whose contents spilled and sizzled on his legs. Gawter yelled and scrambled away, beating uselessly at the scalding soak, staggered round and came face to face with a beard like a badger’s arse and a great broad grin splitting it.

  ‘Baa,’ Sim said and punched Gawter in the ribs – once, twice, three times. Only on the third did Gawter feel the strange sensation which he instinctively knew was sharp metal sliding into his body but by the time he had started to reel with the horror of it, he was already dead. Sim was sliding him to the greasy straw and flagstones as Hal and the Dog Boy wolfed through the door.

  ‘Christ be praised,’ Abbot Jerome declared, almost sobbing.

  ‘For ever and ever,’ answered Hal automatically, looking from side to side for other enemies. ‘How many and where?’

  ‘Yin other and the leader himself’ mushed a voice, coming forward so that Sim recoiled at the sight of the wasted ruin of a face. It grinned blackly at him, waving a ladle in one dirty, swaddled fist.

  ‘Christ’s Bones,’ Sim yelped, ‘keep your distance and your breath from me.’

  ‘Where?’ Hal demanded, ignoring the gravy baster. Jerome recovered himself enough to stammer out where the other guard was – watching the main entrance to the spital – and that the leader was in the Dying Room, with Henry Sientcler, a poor foreign soul giving himself up to God and said poor soul’s Flemish uncle.

  ‘God be praised,’ Sim declared and was moving even before the rote responses had sighed to a finish, a grin splitting his cheekbones at the thought of coming face to face, at last, with Malise Bellejambe. Hal followed on – Bruce was at the main entrance, Kirkpatrick his ever-present shadow, while Bangtail and Lang Tam were prowling, looking for other doors.

  It remained only to make sure that Sir Henry of Roslin did not die.

  Lamprecht had gathered up his bits and pieces, the precious relics box slung over one shoulder – and the equally precious contents stolen from Malise, an act of savagely triumphant revenge that left the pardoner grinning like a rat as he slithered into the shadows of the spital. There were many of them, for even the cheapest tallow was too expensive for this place and only essential places were lit.

  One was the barred door to the outside world, with the crop-headed, ox-muscled lout called Angus lounging under the light, yawning and exploring the painful rot of his mouth with one huge, filthy forefinger.

  The pardoner grimaced at the sight. Sensal maledetto – there must be another way out of this festering place . . .

  He was moving carefully away into the cloak of the place, folding himself into the shadows and away from the ox when the clatter and yells froze him to the spot. It came, he was sure, from the kitchens; he saw Angus shove himself away from the wall, pause with a great arrow of indecision between his eyes – then leave the light and head into the dark, towards the kitchens.

  Si estar escripto en testa forar, forar, he thought – if it is written on your forehead that you leave, you leave. In another second he was at the door. In one more he had the beam in both hands and was levering it out of the retainers.

  ‘Haw . . .’

  The bull bellow nearly made Lamprecht shriek and it did make him drop the heavy beam, so that it clattered to his feet and made him dance backwards while it bounced dangerously near his toes. He looked up to see Angus staring black daggers at him and heading back towards the door.

  Which burst in with a blatting crash and a gust of rain-fresh air.

  Neither Bruce nor Kirkpatrick could believe their luck when they heard the door opening, having found it fastened tight. Bruce was not sure if Hal or one of the others had unlocked it, but the thundering noise of the beam hitting the flagstones persuaded him that there was trouble enough to go in hard and fast.

  Angus skidded to a halt, his mouth wet and wide at the sight of two armed men bursting in. Kirkpatrick darted forward, Bruce on his heels, and both of them saw a weasel of a man festooned with bags and a box – and, not far away, a collection of muscles on legs like trees, his mouth drooped, yet hauling out a long knife from his belt.

  ‘Aside,’ Bruce yelled and Kirkpatrick cursed – then the weasel shifted for the door and sealed the moment; Kirkpatrick rounded on him, catching him by the strap of the box and hauling him backwards.

  ‘Swef, wee man,’ he said, his mouth alongside the man’s ear and the long, slim dagger winking an inch from the side of one wild eye.

  ‘Let me loose,’ Lamprecht spat, struggling. ‘Let me go. Or. Else. I am as good as a priest. I am under the protection of the Pope himself. Bastonada, mumucho, mucho.’

  The familiar tongue trailed down Kirkpatrick’s spine like a lick of ice. There was a moment of embers and shrieks before he actually realised what the pardoner had just said.

  ‘You will beat me?’

  Lamprecht heard the words and the chuckle that went with them. Then his captor, now with a hand at the back of his neck, firm as an iron band, spoke in his ear, the breath stirring the greasy grey tangles of his hair.

  ‘Si e vero que star inferno, securo papasos de vos autros non poter chap
par de venir d’entro.’

  If it is true there is a Hell, for sure your priests will not be able to avoid going there. The words circled into Lamprecht’s ear like the sensuous coils of a snake and he knew, with a sudden cold weight in the depths of his belly, that he was caught, for this was a man who had been places where he had gained fluency in lingua franca and – no doubt of it – done things which involved daggers. Or worse.

  Kirkpatrick felt the little man go slack, heard his bitter muttering.

  ‘Si estar escripto in testa andar, andar. Si no, aca morir.’

  If it’s written on your forehead for you to go, you will go. If not, you will die here.

  Kirkpatrick kept the dagger point high enough, all the same, so that the little weasel could see it, while he tried to watch what Bruce was doing.

  Bruce was discovering that he could not dance, that the German Method was of no use in a tight, dark passageway. The sword was too long and the knife man was good. Bruce saw the man come in, hunched and fast, with the knife held like a boar tooth, and he swung, caught the sword blade on an unlit sconce and the great ox, moving faster than his bulk promised, slashed a tavern brawl stroke which cut the homespun under Bruce’s heart and scored a fiery line.

  Kirkpatrick yelled and almost let go of Lamprecht, but the pardoner sensed it and wriggled, making Kirkpatrick automatically clench the harder; the pardoner screeched.

  Bruce, feeling the burn of the knife slash, saw the triumph in the slit eyes of his huge opponent, the realisation that the long sword was a hindrance.

  Fear licked the earl, then, for he knew he was in trouble, so he did what a knight was supposed to do – took a deep breath, screamed ‘A Bruce’ until his throat burned, and hurled himself forward.

  From the kitchens, turn right, Abbot Jerome had told them, and Hal and Sim did so, moving as swiftly as a watchful crouch would allow. They went past the doors to rooms which may have been priest cells, chapels or storehouses, but no light spilled from the chink of them.

  Finally, they reached the end of the passageway, saw the door, limned in pale light which seeped through the bad fitting. Sim and Hal grinned at each other, then Hal, with a sudden leap, realised there were only two.

  ‘Where’s the boy?’

  The boy had gone left, for he had paused to pluck the long thin dagger from Gawter’s dead hand, as much trembling at that as the sudden sight of swaddled folk, like dead risen in their grave rags, who came to stare.

  With a last wild look at the smiling Abbot Jerome, the Dog Boy flung himself after Hal and Sim, turning left and birling up the passage, trying to look back and ahead at the same time.

  He knew he had lost them a few heartbeats later, but by then he heard the loud roar of ‘A Bruce’ and the bell clangs of steel. He moved towards it, heard the grunts, came up behind the fighters and watched a huge man close in on a hapless victim, who could only wave a sword and back away.

  He saw it was the earl and, beyond him and struggling with another man, the earl’s black-visaged man, who was clearly not able to help. He did not hesitate – this was the great lord who had shared wine with him, who had told him the vows of knighthood.

  Bruce, backing away, desperately wondering if he would reach a more open area, hoping to get to the door, even if it meant going outside, saw the ox with a knife was about to rush him and end the affair. The French Method, he thought bleakly . . .

  Then a wildcat screeched out of the dark and landed on the back of the ox, so that he half-stumbled forward and yelled with surprise and fear. He whirled and clawed with one free hand up behind him, but the wildcat hung on.

  The Dog Boy. Bruce saw the frantic, snarling face of the boy and, just as the ox thought of crashing backwards into a wall to dislodge him, the little nut of a fist rose up, stabbed once, then the boy rolled free, the long sliver of dagger trailing fat, flying blood drops.

  The ox howled, clapped a hand to his ear, the blood bursting from between his knuckles. He turned, the savage pain and anger of his face turning, as if washed by it, to a bewildered uncertainty. Then he collapsed like an empty bag, the blood spreading under his head.

  There was silence save for ragged panting. Bruce saw the Dog Boy, half-crouched on all fours, feral as any forest animal, dagger bloody in one fist.

  ‘Good stroke,’ he managed hoarsely.

  Hal and Sim burst in the door of the Dying Room to a tableaux of figures frozen in butter-yellow light, the shadows guttering wildly on the wall as the tallow was blasted by the wind of their entrance.

  A little priest was untying Henry Sientcler from a chair, while a third figure knelt by a truckle bed, cradling the head of a man who gasped and gargled. He raised a face, bewildered and afraid, at the new arrivals.

  ‘Sir Henry,’ Hal declared and the lord of Roslin flung off the last of the ropes and staggered upright.

  ‘Hal – by God’s Wounds, I am pleased to see you.’

  ‘Malise . . .’ Sim declared, for it was clear the man was not here.

  ‘Gone, moments hence,’ Sir Henry declared, rubbing his wrists. Hal cursed and Sim was about to fling himself out of the door again when Bruce came in, the Dog Boy behind him and, behind that, Kirkpatrick clutching a man by the neck like a terrier with a rat.

  ‘Malise – did he pass you?’

  ‘He did not.’

  Hal looked at Sim and the man grinned, then loped out to hunt Malise down. Bruce came to the truckle bed and looked down.

  ‘The Savoyard?’ he asked and Hal nodded.

  ‘I suspect so.’

  ‘Malise knifed him,’ the priest declared bitterly. ‘Not that he would have lived anyway . . . this is his uncle.’

  The man by the bed stood up and Hal saw that he had a fine tunic stained with his nephew’s blood. His face was grimmed with weary lines of bitterness and resignation.

  ‘He is alive still,’ Bruce declared and knelt, shoving his face close to the dying man’s. ‘He is trying to speak . . .’

  The man’s mouth opened and closed a few times; Bruce bent closer, so that his ear was almost to the lips of the man, and Hal was shamed that the earl was so bent on uncovering the secret of his Stone that he defiled the last peace of a dying man.

  Then the man vomited a last wash of blood, on which sailed the wafer of the Last Rite like a little white boat. Bruce sprang up, his face peppered with bloody spray, which he wiped away with distaste. The uncle bowed his head and knelt, while the priest began to intone prayers.

  Bruce blinked once or twice, then flung himself out and Hal went after him. Kirkpatrick, his hand numbing from clutching the sagging pardoner, thought to make sure that the man was, indeed, the Savoyard they had sought and not some luckless leper.

  ‘Manon de Faucigny?’ he rasped.

  The uncle raised his head from his pious revery, gently brushed the sweat lank hair from the dead man’s paling forehead.

  ‘Malachy,’ he said and Kirkpatrick jerked.

  ‘His name was Malachy de Faucigny,’ the uncle went on softly. ‘He thought that had too much Jew in it for an England where they were banned, so he changed it.’

  Kirkpatrick’s mouth went dry, then he shook the thoughts away from him. Best not to mention this, he thought.

  Bangtail and Lang Tam were pitched into a nightmare. They had come up on a door, which did not yield, then ploughed on through the wet and the mud to stumble into the backcourt privy. Where there is a shitehouse, Bangtail hissed in Lang Tam’s ear, there is a wee door to get to it.

  They found it, a darker shadow against the black – and it opened smoothly enough. Bangtail grinned as he stepped inside; no man liked to have a barrier between him and emptying his bowels when it came to the bit.

  The pair of them halted in the dark of what seemed to be a large room, a hall or refectory. The air was fetid and rank and the dark yielded up the contents reluctantly – the flags of the floor, vague shapes on either side; the rushes shushed as they stepped.

  A bed with a bench at t
he end of it. Another. Yet one more on the other side of them.

  The figures loomed up suddenly, vengefully, the stuff of nightmares.

  ‘Ye baistits,’ screeched a voice and a blow struck Bangtail on the arm. Another whacked his knees. He heard Lang Tam curse.

  Then he saw what attacked them. Noseless. Festering. Some with rags binding the worst of their wounds, some fresh from their dormitory beds and unswaddled, the fish-belly pale of them smeared with the black stains of rot.

  The lepers, whose touch was condemnation, whose very breath was death.

  Bangtail howled like a mad dog then and fought through them, panicked and flailing. He heard Lang Tam yelling, felt his fists strike something that he did not even wish to see.

  Light flared at the far end, silhouetting the mad horde of lepers, whose dormitory sleep Bangtail and Lang Tam had shattered. Bangtail saw it and plunged towards it, finding, like a miracle from Christ Himself, that those who had been snarling in front of him had vanished like snow from a sunwarmed dyke.

  Then he saw the figure scurrying forward, the naked-fang gleam of long steel waving like a brand in the dark.

  Malise knew he had escaped from the Dying Room with seconds only. He had snatched up his cloak and slung the scrip over his shoulder at the sound of the Bruce warcry, heading down the corridor that linked the Dying Room, conveniently, to the leper dormitory; from there, he knew, he could reach the outside. His plans were thrown in the air and there was nothing now but escape and the gibbering fear of what was plunging at his heels drove him on.

  The riot inside confused him and he hacked his knife at the mass of figures until they scattered, then hurled himself through before they could recover enough to counter. Suddenly, he was close to a face he knew, saw it was one of the Herdmanston men and lashed out with his other hand, a wild shriek of terror trailing it like flame.

  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.