The Lion Rampant (The Kingdom Series)

by Robert Low

  The breath came out of them sudden and together, so that it sounded like a small wind; Kirkpatrick and Hal let go of Sim, who shook himself angrily, like a bristling dog.

  ‘You had better explain this,’ Hal said wearily to Kirkpatrick, ‘for it seems to me everyone kens the meat of it save myself and Sim. I am sick of your close mouth, Kirkpatrick, particularly when you drag me and those I care for by your side.’

  ‘Guillermo is an ambitious wee scrauchle,’ Kirkpatrick answered blandly, ignoring Hal’s scowls, ‘winsome, but with a wanthrifty soul, whose sister is as black-avowed as he is. Guillermo wants to be Grand Master of his Order and the one who occupies that space is no capering fool – his name is Ruy Vaz and he had his suspicions.’

  ‘He might well be behind it,’ Hal pointed out and Rossal shook his head, a quiet, sad smile lifting the black beard.

  ‘Ruy Vaz is the one who sent warning to us and a solution. The warning came by one of his agents, one close to the sister.’

  ‘Piculph,’ Sim declared, remembering the hissed revelations of Widikind; all heads turned to where the German, bundled in a cloak, lay trembling and rolling-eyed. Dying, Hal thought dully.

  ‘So it appears, though we were not told of it,’ Kirkpatrick went on. ‘But we devised this cheatry about the gold. Even sent out decoy ships as if it was real.’

  ‘It is fake?’ Sim demanded truculently. ‘We came all this way – I boaked up my guts for a ruse?’

  ‘The fish send their thanks,’ de Villers declared, grinning as he arranged the trestles round the door leading to the belltower.

  ‘The treasure is here,’ Rossal answered before Sim bubbled up, ‘and we must get it to Ruy Vaz to exchange for the weapons we have promised King Robert.’

  ‘It is not in the carts,’ Kirkpatrick explained, seeing Hal’s bewilderment, ‘nor is it on the ship, which Guillermo suspects and will have confirmed. Widikind—’

  ‘Brother Widikind has said nothing,’ Rossal interrupted sharply. ‘Else Guillermo would know the truth of matters. He is no fool, all the same, and will work to the meat of it in the end. Even without Brother Widikind.’

  Hal heard the bitter sadness in his voice and realized that de Bissot already considered Widikind as dead. Worse occurred to him as he recalled the German’s halting last words.

  ‘The others have been taken,’ he said. ‘We have no ship, then, and if we have a treasure as you say I cannot see how it is to be got to this Ruy Vaz, nor the weapons all the way back to King Robert.’

  He stopped, seeing Rossal and de Villers scramble out of their black priests’s robes, so that they stood in white undershirts, each with a small red cross on the breast. Rossal hauled out a leather pouch and handed it to Kirkpatrick.

  ‘The treasure,’ he declared solemnly, and leaned closer, so that his next words were low and hissed.

  ‘Ordo ex chao,’ he said and Kirkpatrick took the pouch, nodded and stuffed it inside his own tunic.

  ‘It is my task to get to Ruy Vaz,’ he said lightly, grinning at Hal and Sim. ‘It is yours to get back to the coast and find out what has happened to the Bon Accord. De Grafton is the traitor who nearly did for Somhairl.’

  He broke off and shook his head in genuine sorrow.

  ‘He has fallen a long way from grace. He may well now have thrown in his lot with Guillermo and his sister. Whether de Grafton has shackled himself to her or not, he is an agent of the English, I am sure of it.’

  ‘Christ betimes, how are we to achieve any of this?’ roared Sim, scrubbing his head with confusion. ‘You have contrived to fasten us up in a prison, Kirkpatrick.’

  ‘Mind yer station, ye moudiewart,’ Kirkpatrick replied, his wry smile balming the sting of it. ‘I hope you are as clever at getting down a long drop as you are at scaling one, Sim Craw. I will need your belts and those black robes, for we do not have one of your cunning ladders.’

  De Villers returned, grim and spade-bearded, to tell them he had muffled the bell with his own small clothes, cut the long bell rope and refastened it securely.

  ‘It is short,’ he replied tersely and Hal knew what they were about to do, for he had seen the commanderie, perched on the edge of a ravine: the belltower rope would lead to the base of the rock it was built on and then there would be another drop, a good ten ells, to the bottom of the brush-choked ravine. A man could break every limb in such a fall. A man could break his head.

  ‘The belts and cloth strips should make the difference,’ Kirkpatrick said cheerily and Hal looked at him; they were three men past their prime for hand-over-hand descents down makeshift ropes and his look said it all.

  Almost all. Sim, as ever, had his own thoughts on the drop and the dark.

  ‘God be praised,’ he declared piously and crossed himself.

  ‘For ever and ever.’

  Rossal came to Hal, looming sudden as a wraith.

  ‘Brother de Grafton’, he said, his French soft and sibilant, ‘was released into the care of Sir Henry Percy after the Order was proscribed in England and all Templars arrested. It is possible that he has renounced his vows to God in favour of King Edward, but probably works only for Percy. De Grafton was the only one of us who did not know the truth of the Templar treasure. Like this Guillermo and his sister, he believed that the wealth was boxed and in our carts.’

  Hal nodded, frowning and trying hard to keep pace with it all. Guillermo, if he had any sense at all, would wonder where the boxed treasure had vanished. If not here, or on the ship, it could only have been spirited away on a rest halt and that under the eyes of the escorting knights.

  Rossal nodded at this, his smile a sardonic twist in the dim.

  ‘De Grafton will know by now, for he is of the Order. He may even tell Guillermo the truth of it, though I am sure he will look for his own advantage first. If he does not tell, Guillermo will be left wondering. We are the Templars, after all, who worship Baphomet and have strange powers. Who is to say what spells such magi could cast on the eyes and minds of men? Or even on gold.’

  ‘If you have one to make us fly, now is the time to conjure it up,’ Sim Craw growled. ‘Better still, turn us invisible.’

  ‘God be praised,’ Rossal answered, cross-signing Sim’s blasphemy away.

  ‘For ever and ever,’ Hal intoned frostily, glaring at the unrepentant Sim. Then he looked at Rossal. ‘Mark you, he has a point – Guillermo is not so much of a fool that he will have forgot to have the tower surrounded.’

  ‘Not down in that ravine,’ Kirkpatrick answered, bustling up. ‘Mak’ haste – we have little time.’

  ‘They will expect us to try an escape,’ Hal persisted and Rossal laid a hand on his arm.

  ‘With the greatest of respect,’ he said, ‘they consider you three old men of little worth. It is the Templars they want and myself in particular. As long as they see us here, that is what they will fix on.’

  The sick lurch of it reeled Hal sideways; he had not considered what the Order knights would do and realized it now, all in a rush.

  ‘We are the last Templars,’ Rossal declared simply. Nearby, faint as a moth’s breath, came the sound of de Villers praying. Non nobis, non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam … not to us, not to us, O Lord, but to Your Name give glory.

  Rossal rolled his shoulders a little.

  ‘We will fight them in the narrow door and up the steps to the tower. It will take them a long time to overcome us and they must try and take at least one of us alive, in order to question.’

  He nodded to each of them.

  ‘You will have the night, perhaps more if God is with us. Then they will come after you.’

  Stunned, they watched him move away to kneel with the others. Kirkpatrick cleared his throat and exchanged glances with Hal.

  ‘Defending the treasure and the honour of his Order to the end,’ he growled. ‘No better way to end it.’

  Hal heard the gruffness tremble all the same and remembered that Kirkpatrick owed his life twice to the i
ntervention of Rossal de Bissot. He followed the man up the steps, with Sim grunting behind him. At the top, panting, Sim rounded on Kirkpatrick.

  ‘Whaur’s the treasure?’

  Sim’s truculent demand was a blot in the mirror of the moment.

  ‘Seems to me,’ he went on sullenly, ‘you are placing a deal of trust in this Ruy Vaz.’

  ‘The Grand Master of Alcántara has flushed out his traitor,’ Kirkpatrick declared, ‘who thinks Templar treasure can be lifted and weighed in boxes. Ruy Vaz kens the truth of matters.’

  ‘I wish I did,’ Sim muttered. ‘Are you payin’ for good King Robert’s armoury with the blessings of God?’

  ‘No,’ Hal said, remembering the pouch and the whisper: Ordo ex chao. Order out of chaos. A fitting password to go with the Templar jetton. He explained it to Sim, who also remembered it from the time they had ransomed Isabel using one – more years ago now than either of them cared to recall.

  A tally note for sums deposited elsewhere, it could be presented, together with the secret word known only to the deliverer and the recipient, in exchange for all or part of the sum. There was no gold in boxes or anywhere else, only a slip of scribbled parchment and a few spoken words.

  ‘There is a fearsome sum on this wee jetton tally note, stamped by the Templar seal and the Schiarizzi mercantilers of the Italies,’ Kirkpatrick declared, patting his tunic where the pouch was hidden. ‘One of those merchants waits in Villasirga with Ruy Vaz and when he gets this wee scrap o’ paper and the secret word, he will nod and Ruy Vaz will know his money is assured.’

  Sim worried it in his head, licked his lips and nodded uncertainly. Once he would have crossed himself and spat over his shoulder at this, as clear an indication of unholy magic as there could be – how else could the Templars transfer a man’s coin from one place to another, unseen and unheard?

  ‘You must get to the port and see to the crew and the ship,’ Kirkpatrick went on, grim as old rock. ‘When I bring this to Ruy Vaz, he will scourge Guillermo and his supporters and we are assured of weapons and armour – but we still need to bring them safe to King Robert.’

  Kirkpatrick’s eyes and sweat-sheened face seemed to gleam in the dark and the snake-hiss slither of the rope going over the side was loud. For a moment, Hal saw de Bissot and Kirkpatrick lock eyes with one another, saw the jaw muscles work Kirkpatrick’s beard. Then Kirkpatrick nodded once and turned away; he and Hal clasped wrist to wrist, brief and wordless, and Kirkpatrick, grunting with effort, levered himself over the belltower lip, hung for a moment and was gone.

  Blinking sweat from his eyes and rubbing his palms, Hal remembered when he, Isabel and Sim had watched Dog Boy perform the same feat out of the window of a besieged Herdmanston. The three of them had had to lie together on the great box bed to stop it being dragged across the floor by the makeshift rope Dog Boy hung from; Isabel, smiling bright, had sworn them all to secrecy about her lying abed with the pair of them, easing the strain on the moment if not the rope.

  Hal blinked back to the present, helped Sim grunt and pech his way over the lip and was not sure the big man had the strength of arm and leg to get him all the way down. Still, he heard no wild cry and thump so thought it went fine enough.

  He wondered if he had that strength himself and was taking up the rope when a soft voice stopped him; he turned to see Rossal de Bissot, a shadow at the top of the belltower stairs.

  ‘Take this,’ the Templar said, holding out his sword, ‘and give me your own. I would not see this fall into the hands of Guillermo and can think of no one better to wield it with honour. You are a Sientcler, after all.’

  Numbed and dumb, Hal took the sword and handed over his own; the new one felt heavier, though it slid into his sheath easily enough – all but a fingerwidth of blade below the hilt.

  ‘Hubris,’ Rossal declared with a smile like a sickle moon in the dark. ‘That sword is longer, heavier and has more decoration on it than was ever proper for a Poor Knight.’

  ‘I am honoured to wield it – though you put a deal of faith in the Sientcler name,’ Hal growled, dry-mouthed with the moment and aware, yet again, of that peculiar Sientcler connection with the Order, so that every member of that family seemed to have drunk from the Grail itself. And all because a female ancestor had once been married to Hugues de Payens, the founder.

  ‘You will not disgrace the blade,’ Rossal answered and Hal was not sure whether it was a statement or a command. Below, he heard de Villers chanting: Vade retro Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana – begone Satan, never suggest to me thy vanities.

  He knew the Knight was facing his own fear and desire for life, rejecting any possibility of salvation. Preparing to die.

  Hal glanced at de Bissot and saw nothing of fear or regret, only a slight sadness when the man revealed that Widikind had already died. The Templar raised his hand in a final salute and was gone like a wraith.

  Hal stood for a moment, and then crossed to the stone lip, wriggled his hips to the balance point and, with a final fervent prayer for his own salvation, slithered over the edge.

  Vade retro Satana, he heard as he scrabbled in a blind sweat for footholds. Ipse venena bibas. Begone Satan. Drink thou thine own poison.

  Hal, his hands straining, the sweat in his eyes, wondered how in the name of all Hell had Dog Boy ever managed this.

  ISABEL

  Now am I ripe in the understanding of what the love of God means. You sent me the little nun, the one called Constance, who whispered to me briefly, so briefly I hardly believed I had heard it all. He is free, she said to me. Roxburgh is taken and Hal is free. Blessed is the Lord.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Chapel of St Mary and the Holy Cross, Lothian

  Feast of the Invention of the Cross, May 1314

  Dog Boy wondered how he had done it. He had never killed a woman before and felt strange about the fact of it, even though it had not been deliberate.

  They had caught the raiders off guard; those who didn’t have their thumbs up their hurdies were howkin’ lumps of fresh meat out of a boiling pot with their stolen livestock lowing and cropping grass nearby – the lucky beasts that were not jointed and bloody under sacking in the carts.

  Hunger was the reason the men had raided out so far and it had been their ruin, for they should just have taken their scourings and run for it, not stopped to boil beef. But there were no skilled fighting men here, only shoemakers and fishmongers, tanners and labourers from Berwick, out on a desperate herschip for supplies because none were coming up from the south and bread was ten times the usual price.

  The fact that they raided into the lands of the Earl of Dunbar, who was on their side, did not matter to them when their bellies were notched to their backbones. The fact that they were eating the badly boiled kine of the lord of Seton, another ally, did not count one whit.

  Dog Boy was of the opinion that they should have left the raiders alone, since they were doing Black Jamie’s band a service with their ravaging and, besides, most were Lothian men themselves. Some of them, it was clear, knew one end of a spear from the other and probably served in the Berwick town garrison. They might have kin standing with the army sieging Stirling for the Bruce. Some might even have kin among the men here.

  The Black considered Dog Boy when he had voiced this in the growing dark, frowning to show he was giving it serious thought, because that last part had made his men think. No one was fooled as to what he would decide in the end, all the same.

  After a long moment of considered mummery, he had shrugged and met the knowing, feral grins of the others with one of his own.

  ‘As you ken, I hate the Welsh worse than the English and God will stand witness that I truly hate the English.’

  He paused for the effect of it.

  ‘But I hate yon Plantagenet Scots worse than either.’

  ‘Is there any your lordship likes?’ asked a voice, daring in the dim. Patrick, Dog Boy thought. It will be Patrick and the mouth that will get him hanged
this day or the next.

  ‘I am not overfond of you,’ Jamie Douglas answered, soft and sibilant. ‘But if you fasten your lip and follow where I lead, you will earn my liking by and by.’

  The laughter was quiet and knowing, from men willing to follow the Black anywhere so that those left holding the horses were sullen at being left out of it. The others filtered a little closer to the red flowers of enemy flame, creeping like foxes on a coop; the Black shrilled out a piercing whistle and they rushed down on ragged men, blowing on barely cooked lumps of meat to cool them enough to cram down their throats.

  No finesse, no spearwork in the tight formations they had been drilling in for weeks, just a slavering, howling madness of long knives and little axes, a growling rush that came up between tethered horses, Jamie bawling to ‘look out for rope’.

  Dog Boy was so busy watching for the thin sliver of dark that would betray the horse tether, belly height and as good as a gate, that he did not realize these men had staked their horses to their own reins until he tripped on one of the pegs and fell, sprawling like a new-born calf to roll almost to the feet of an astonished man.

  Gaping, the half-raw beef falling slowly from his open mouth, the man was so stunned that Dog Boy was able to spring to his feet, slashing with the little axe; that woke the man up and he fell back, screaming a spittled cream of pink froth, scrabbling away from this horror.

  Dog Boy followed, battering him with the axe, hearing the flung-up forearm crack, the shriek of the man as the blade chopped lumps off his hands, flailing like desperate bird wings to ward off the swings to his head.

  A blow finally cracked his skull and he rolled away, moaning; Dog Boy saw a flicker among the mad, dancing shadows and screams around him and half turned into the snarl of a new opponent, a rusted sword up and falling on him.

  He jigged sideways, fell into the man and heard the long puffed roar of the air being driven out. Staggering, he had time to recover and backhand a swipe with the axe, for the man was on his knees and trying to suck in breath from lungs that were not working. The blow slipped the top of his head off, neat as tapping out a boiled egg, but Dog Boy had no time to admire the work of it; another snarler was coming from his left.