Читать книгу: «The Lion at Bay»

CHAPTER ONE

The moors of Happrew, near Peebles

Sunday of Candelmas, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, February, 1304

Cold rain and Black John.

Not the recipe for a happy war at the best of times, Sir Hal thought, but if you add to that the grim cliff of Bruce’s face these days, the endless march through February wet and the wreck and ruin and smoulder they passed through, then the gruel of it was all henbane and aloes.

The riders were dripping and miserable as old mud, the horses standing with their heads down, hipshot in a sea of tawny bracken and the clawed black roots of heather and furze; only the moss splashed a dazzle of green into the mirr.

They were quiet, too, Hal saw. The knights and serjeants were all concentrated concern over the well-being of their expensive coddled wrapped and riderless warhorses. Wet and sullen squires were set to checking hocks and hooves which had already been inspected a dozen times. The rounceys the owners actually rode were splattered with mud and weary, but they were of no account next to the destrier, any one of which could be sold for the price of a good manor in Lothian.

The Scots sat their shaggy, mud-raggled ponies uneasily, talking so softly that the suck of feathered garron hooves pulling from the soft ground, the clink and chink and tinkle of harness and blade sounded loud against their hush. Hal knew why they hunched and spoke in whispers and it had nothing to do with rain or the suspected presence of enemy.

This was Sheean Stank, which no-one cared for, a sudden knoll in a vast expanse of sucking bog and carse where the sheean folk – the sidhean – lived. No more than a score of feet higher than the land around, it seemed a great hill in the flat and everyone knew that this was where a man could be lifted out of this world and into the next, where the Faerie would keep him for what seemed a day, then release him, no older, into a world aged sixty or a hundred years.

Black John Segrave did not care for Faerie much. Cold iron, he had heard, did for those ungodly imps same as it did for Scotch rebels and it was probable that they were one and the same in a land whose features revealed the nature of it and the folk who lived in it – Foulbogskye, Slitrig, Wolf Rig, Bloody Bush. And Sheean Stank.

He glanced across at Bruce, Earl of Carrick and heir to Annandale, and tried to keep his face equable, for this was the new favourite of Longshanks, and the score of filthy Scotchmen surrounding him were supposedly experts in scouting this sort of terrain. Supposedly loyal to King Edward, too, though Segrave was beginning to doubt both claims – yet his king had tied them together with the one purpose, to rout out the last of the brigand rebels and bring their leaders to the leash. Particularly Wallace.

Yet he was being led by Scotch who could have been rebels themselves from their dress and manner. They were led by Sir Henry Sientcler of Herdmanston, whom everyone called Hal, even his own ragged-arsed scum of a mesnie, and captained by a grizzled hog of a man called Sim Craw, whom Segrave would have hanged at another time just for the insolence in him.

Segrave did not trust any of them and wished that Sir Robert Clifford’s men had not become separated from him; there was a sudden sharp needle of fear at the last time he had split up a command, at Roslin the previous year. There had been ruin and death in it then – and a Sientcler involved, too, he recalled uneasily, another one of that arrogant breed, this time from Roslin itself; then, these two Sientclers had been enemies and now they were, ostensibly, friends.

He did not trust any of the Scots, even the most English of them – like the Earl of Carrick.

‘What think you, my lord?’ he demanded, his voice rheumed with damp. ‘Is the enemy hereabouts? Is it Wallace?’

‘So our intelligencers reported,’ Bruce replied easily and Hal saw the smile force itself across the heavy face. There was a beard, black and close-cropped in a strange way that included the droop of a moustache and a nap on the chin beneath, leaving the cheeks bare. Hal knew this was because no hair would grow on Bruce’s right cheek, so he had been forced to tailor his chin hair to suit, though it made him look, as Sim Craw had muttered, ‘like a wee Frenchie bachle o’ a music’ maister.’

A curlew piped somewhere and then a horseman burst over the hill and down the slope in a flat-out, belly-to-the ground gallop that brought heads up.

It was Dog Boy on the blowing garron, gasping harder than his horse, his mouth working, silent as a fresh-caught fish, black fuzz of beard dripping and the dags of his hair plastered to his cheeks. No iron hat could keep that thatch in, Hal thought with a wry smile to himself; he marvelled at what the years had made of the skelf-thin kennel lad he had found at Douglas – when was it? The eve of Wallace’s rebellion. Christ’s Wounds – eight years ago …

‘Take a breath,’ Sim advised Dog Boy smoothly, ‘afore ye try to speak.’

‘Though it would be good to learn what has sent you to us at the gallop,’ Segrave added, ‘before they come down on us.’

Hal saw Bruce’s eyes flicker.

‘No Roslin Glen here, my lord,’ Bruce said, viciously gentle and Segrave jerked as if stung.

It was almost a year to the day, Hal was reminded since Segrave made such a slorach of a raid similar to this that the English forces had been scattered in a few hours by Red John Comyn, Sir Simon Fraser and Hal’s Roslin kin and namesake, Sir Henry Sientcler.

Who had all then gone on to Herdmanston and burned it out. Hal grew sullen as old embers at the memory. Kin or not, the Sientclers of Roslin had been in the Scots camp then and Hal Sientcler of Herdmanston was in the Bruce camp. And Bruce was English. Again.

The price for following the Bruce was high – though not for Bruce himself, who had gained the daughter of the powerful Earl of Ulster as wife, new lands and the new favour of an old king who was wallowing in the winter of his years and had sired, so far, two wee bairns by his girlish French queen.

Now, of course, the Sientclers of Roslin had also bowed the knee, kissed the King’s foot and received back their own lands by a gracious Edward trying some velvet on the iron gauntlet.

Hal saw Segrave unconsciously touch his side, where three ribs had been broken when he was tumbled from his horse into the grin of Sir Simon Fraser and the other Scots lords, shredding Segrave dignity as well as likely bankrupting his purse for a ransom.

Worse than that was the moment when Fraser had argued for killing all the prisoners, fat ransoms or not. Fraser had been persuaded otherwise, but the screaming, belly-loosening fear of that lived with Segrave still.

Now Sir Simon Fraser was the last hold-out of the Scots lords who had been at Roslin Glen that day and the closer Segrave got to him, the closer he was to ridding himself of the stain of it. Bruce, however seemed determined to keep the memory of it alive and Segrave’s scowls grew blacker than his oil-boiled maille.

‘What have you seen?’ he spat, and Dog Boy, rain in his greasy new beard and streaking the filth on his face, finally managed to blurt out:

‘Weemin, my lord. Ower yon hill.’

There was silence and the men uncovering their great cosseted warhorses paused, wondering if it would be necessary. The grimy Scots looked on wordlessly, gripping the hafts of their Jeddart staffs, those lance-long weapons which combined spear, cutting edge and hook.

‘Women?’ Segrave repeated, bewildered.

‘How many, Dog Boy?’ Hal asked, seeing the slow blink of Segrave’s eyes counting down to explosive release.

‘A shilling’s worth,’ the boy replied, his breathing regular and then, with all the worldly experience of his bare score of years, added: ‘Fair quines too, in fine dresses.’

‘What in the name of God are a dozen women doing out here?’ Segrave snapped.

There came a low murmur from the men behind Bruce. The Earl smiled, bright and mild.

‘My lads mention Faerie, my lord,’ he explained. ‘Perhaps these are they. Pechs. Bogles. The Silent Moving Folk. Sheean.’

At each word, the men behind Hal shifted and made warding signs, some with the cross, others with older symbols they tried to make quick and hidden.

‘Christ be praised,’ growled Sim.

‘For ever and ever,’ men muttered automatically. Hal sighed; he knew Bruce was provoking Segrave, but forgetting the effect it had on men who believed. Only Dog Boy had dared ride to the top of the hill in the first place and Hal was proud of the courage that had taken. More of it was needed now.

‘Mair like a country event,’ he said into the locked stare of Bruce and Segrave and, at last, had the latter turn his wet eyes on him.

‘Country event?’

‘Mayhaps a tait o’ virgins,’ Sim flung in cheerfully. ‘Getting purified.’

The Dog Boy, still trying to control the trembling in his thighs at what he had done, was sure they were powrie women, for they were strange in their cavorting and one was almost certainly a bogle by the height and the raucous shouts. Still, he couldn’t be entirely certain and did not want to appear like a fool in front of Lord Hal.

‘They were dancin’,’ he ventured and wilted as all eyes clawed his face. ‘In a ring.’

The thrilling horror of it spilled on them like bad honey, sweet and rotted. Women dancing by themselves would bring the wrath of the Church; only sinners, pagans and the De’il’s own did such a thing. Dancing in a secret circle was proof of enough witchery to get all the women burned.

‘Sheean,’ growled Bangtail Hob from over Hal’s shoulder and the men growled their fearful agreement.

‘Christ be praised,’ repeated Sim, but the muttered response was lost when a man shouted out from the pack behind Segrave, ‘Faerie? Silent Folk? If you are afeared, my Scotch lords, then leave it to good, enlightened Christian Englishmen.’

Faces turned to stare at Sir Robert Malenfaunt, swarthy face darkened with rage and a scornful twist to his lips. Bruce merely smiled lightly, which was enough to crank Malenfaunt’s rage up a notch; here were all the men who had once tricked him over the Countess Isabel of Buchan’s ransom and, even if it had cost him nothing, Malenfaunt’s pride was worth any price.

Hal only remembered Isabel, who had been the prisoner ransomed from Malenfaunt into his arms. Just weeks later, Falkirk’s slaughter had ripped everything to shreds and forced her back to her husband. Hal had not seen her since and the dull ache of it was like cold iron in the heart of him.

Segrave regarded Malenfaunt with distaste, for he had heard things about the Berwick knight that were unsavoury. Yet he was forced to agree with the man’s sentiment here and was aware that others were already settling themselves into the high-cantled saddles of their powerful horses, placing domed bucket helms over their heads, taking lance and shield from hurrying squires.

He wanted to wait for Clifford, yet he wondered if the women were whores for the rebels; if so, they would have information …

‘Fetch me some Faerie virgins,’ Segrave said in French to Malenfaunt, ‘and we will purify them here.’

‘My lord,’ Hal began warningly and then stopped as, with a whoop and a roar, the warhorses surged forward in a great spray of mud. Someone yelled ‘til-est-hault’ as if it were a hunt.

But Segrave saw, for a fleeting moment, the spark of Hal’s defiant anger from a face beaten to leather by wind and weather, fretted with white lines at the corners of his eyes. Segrave cocked one insouciant challenge of an eyebrow at the flare and saw the storm-grey eyes turn to flint-blue – ‘Now we will see,’ Segrave declared, throwing up one hand to ward off the gouts kicked up by the disappearing horsemen.

Then Bruce’s voice cut through the tension.

‘There’s one of your Faerie women, my lord.’

They turned in time to see a fleeting swirl of disappearing skirts.

‘I would not want that yin, my lord,’ Sim Craw drawled and Segrave turned his wither on the white-streaked black beard and the broad, black-browed face it swamped. Unmoved, Sim nursed a powerful crossbow, wrapped against the rain, close to his great slab of body. ‘I like my weemin with their chins shaved,’ he noted casually.

There was a moment as the realization seeped in to Segrave, then he roared at a startled squire, ‘Bring them back. Bring them back – God curse it …’

He turned to Bruce, but too late. He had missed that man’s silent flick of signal; all he found was the back of the chevronned jupon, trailing a tippet of riders behind him away to the west.

Treachery. The word sprang at Segrave and he felt anger and fear in equal measure. A trap, by God, with Clifford a good gallop behind and Bruce running away and leaving him with yet another Scotch battle against odds. The thought settled something slimed and cold in his belly and he turned to survey his last score of men as the first hundred breasted the ridge and vanished.

Malenfaunt had spotted the women at once, tucking up their skirts and running for the shelter of the woods beyond them like scattering ducks. He gave a whoop, peeled off the constricting great helm and flung it away, along with the lance to free up one hand, then set his horse flying at the runner, leaning sideways a little in the saddle to make it easier to reach out and grab.

Those immediately behind checked a little, mainly because his powerful warhorse kicked up a spray of muddy gobbets, while to right and left lances and helms went bouncing, carelessly dangerous, as the knights followed Sir Robert Malenfaunt’s example and spurred on.

They saw Malenfaunt lean out as he slowed to a canter so as to better judge the snatch at the fleeing woman’s wimpled head. They saw the woman turn, the wimple and barbette flying away to free a wild tangle of infested hair, the face a bearded snarl; Malenfaunt had time to realize the enormous horror of it before the man dropped to a crouch, brought round the two-handed axe he held hidden in his skirts and scythed out the legs of the destrier.

It was the saving of Malenfaunt. At the same time as he was reeling through the air in a tumble of moss and trees and sky, the edge of the wood spat a sleet of arrows from two points. Between them, moving ragged and relentless, came a clot of spearmen; the shrieking falsities in women’s dresses raced to join them, their lure complete.

Segrave, down at the foot of the small hill, heard the whoops turn to shrieks, almost felt the blows that rang like bells on the shields of the unseen knights, audible even at this distance and through the muffle of the great iron bucket of his helm. He urged the huge warhorse forward, surging up the sodden slope, the handful of men behind him.

Ruin was beyond and Segrave saw it in a single glance when he breasted the rise. Horses were down, screaming and kicking, others cantering in aimless circles, the riders struggling to get up. Arrows sprouted from tussock and body, and a dark, bristling hedge of spearpoints – three hundred men in it if there was one – approaching. All the men who had ridden off with Malenfaunt were unhorsed, crawling like sheep, with horses scattering to every part, or kicking and dying.

He saw, too, the figure in black with surcoat and shield, the silver cinquefoiles bright as stars and his heart thundered up into his head in a howl of triumph – Fraser, who had all but ruined him in Roslin Glen. By God, Segrave swore, he will not do it again.

A flurry of arrows took the man next to him out of the saddle and set the great Frisian warhorse bolting, screaming from the pain of another two shafts in its chest, before it crashed to its knees and finally ploughed its proud Roman nose into a furrow of bog, kicking and snorting blood.

The men with him balked at charging a hedge of points backed by three-score of Selkirk archers, but Segrave had fire and rage shrieking in his head and was not about to stop.

Hal saw Segrave arrive, saw him charge, then Bruce, laughing out of his broad face with its music-master beard, pointed to the backs of the archers, took off his great helm and dropped it, then spurred his own warhorse forward.

He had led them in a perfect outflank and it was not a fight but a flat-out chasse. The archers heard the thunder of hooves just soon enough to let them turn their heads from the business of killing English to see a score or more of howling Scots on fast-moving little garrons come at their back.

Hal went through the wild scatter of them, trying to rein in the plunging horse and hack at a target, but he was sure he had hit no-one – the mount was no helpful destrier. He saw Bangtail Hob and others chasing running figures, circling in mad, short-legged gallops, for they were more used to fighting on foot than on horse, and he bawled at them, his voice deafening inside the full helm.

He pulled it up and off, pointed and flailed and roared until they all got the idea and started kicking their horses towards the clot of spearmen, who had started, frantically, to form a ring.

Too late, Hal thought, fighting the garron to a standstill, desperately trying to loop the helm into his belt – Segrave’s knot of riders, trailing up in ones and twos, smacked into it, picking spots between spears, riding the men into the muddy grass; the spearmen suddenly seemed to vomit running men, like the black yolk of a rotten egg.

Blades clanged, bringing Hal’s head round. He saw Bruce, perfect and poised on the powerful destrier, which baited under his firm rein, huge feet ploughing earth on the spot. Confronting Bruce, Hal saw, with a lurch that took his heart into his mouth, a familiar figure.

The autumn bracken hair was dulled and iron-streaked, the beard wild, untamed as it had been in the days when Hal had first seen him, before he’d had it neatly trimmed as befitted Scotland’s sole Guardian. Yet he stood tall – Christ, he was even taller than Hal remembered – and the hand-and-a-half was twirled easy and light in one hand, the other holding a scarred shield with the memory of his heraldry on it, a white lion rampant on red.

Wallace took a step, feinted and struck, then sprang back. Bruce, light and easy as Wallace himself, parried and the blades rang; the warhorse, arch-necked, snorted and half-reared, wanting to strike out and held in by its rider.

‘Get you gone, Will,’ Bruce said coldly. ‘Get back to France, if you are wise, but get you gone. The war is all but over and you are finished. Mark me’

‘My wee lord of Carrick,’ Wallace acknowledged lightly, a grin splitting his beard. ‘Get ye to Hell, Englishman. And if ye care to step aff yon big beast ye ride, I will mark ye, certes.’

Bruce shook his head, almost wearily; someone called out and Hal saw the scuttling shape of a figure he knew well, a Wallace man – the loyal Fergus, his black boiled-leather carapace scarred and stained. Beetle, they called him and it was apt.

With Fergus and his broad-axe guarding his back, Wallace backed warily off. He was expecting Bruce to press, the surprise clear in his face when that did not happen. Hal saw Bangtail Hob and Ill-Made Jock circle, caught their eye and brought them to a halt; if this was to end in a fight, then it was Bruce’s own, though he felt sick at the thought of it, sicker still at the idea of having ridden down men he might once have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with. This was what we are brought down to, he thought bitterly, to where even the best of us can only find it in their hearts to battle one another.

‘Get you to France, Will,’ Bruce repeated softly. ‘If you remain, you are finished.’

‘If I remain,’ Wallace said in good French, sliding further into the dripping trees, ‘you cannot get started.’

Then, like a wraith, he was gone. Hal heard Segrave calling out to the newly-arrived Clifford and bellowing curses because, somewhere in the trees and confusion, both Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser had vanished.

Hal turned to where Bruce, his face a slab of wet rock, broke his stare from the hole Wallace had left in the air and settled it bleakly on Hal.

‘Not a word,’ he said and turned away, leaving Hal wondering if he spoke of personal censure or admitting to Segrave that he had let Wallace go. Sim Craw came up in time to hear this and sniffed, then blew rain and snot from the side of his nose, making his own mind up.

‘Good advice,’ he declared, ‘for if Black John hears that we had Will Wallace an’ let him loup away like a running hound …’

He did not need to finish. The rain lisped down as the sun came out and curlews peeped as if horror and blood and dying had not visited the Sheean Stank.

‘Faerie,’ growled Dog Boy to Bangtail, half-ashamed as he stared at the dead in women’s dresses.

Cambuskenneth Abbey, Stirling

Feast of St Ternan, confessor of the Picts, June, 1304.

‘You missed your chance there, my lord earl.’

Bruce did not turn his head, merely flicked his eyes at the broad grinning face of Bishop Wishart, the shadows and planes of it made grotesque by the flickering tallow lights.

‘There is one bishop too many in this game,’ he growled, which made Wishart chuckle fruitily and Hal, frowning with concentration, realize his inadequacy with chess. He was sure he had blundered, surer still that Bruce had missed an en passant; had he done it by accident – the rule was new and not much used – or was it some cunning ploy to lure him into even worse trouble?

‘Aye, well,’ came the blade-rasp voice of Kirkpatrick, looming from the shadows. ‘Here is yet another.’

A figure in simple brown robes and tonsure swept past him into the light, swift enough to cause the flames to flicker and set shadows dancing madly. He was, Hal saw, astoundingly young to be a senior prelate, his round face smooth and bland, yet his eyes black and shrewd, while the beginnings of a paunch were belied by slim, white, long-fingered hands, one of which he extended.

‘Christ be praised,’ the prelate said portentously.

‘For ever and ever.’

Bruce rose, kissed the fingers with dutiful deference, then scowled.

‘At last,’ he said sullenly. ‘We have been waiting, my lord bishop and my time is limited away from the King’s side.’

‘How is the good king of England?’ Lamberton demanded cheerfully.

‘Sickeningly well,’ Bruce replied with a wry twist of grin. ‘He sits at Stirling and plays with his great toys, while his wife and her women look on through an oriole he has made in their quarters. It is a great sport, it seems, for the ladies to watch huge stones being hurled at the walls while they stitch. His two new babes gurgle with delight.’

‘I hear he has several great engines,’ Lamberton declared, accepting wine from Wishart’s hand and settling himself with a satisfied sigh. ‘One called Segrave, I believe, which fires great heavy balls – now there is apt for you. I know this because of all the complaints I have had from wee abbots about the lead stripped from their roofs to make them.’

‘You had better pray for fine weather, else we will all be dripping,’ ‘Bruce replied sourly. ‘Cambuskenneth has also lost all the roofing, save from over the altar, so that God at least will not be offended. And Edward Plantagenet now has twelve war engines. One of them is my own, sent from Lochmaben – minus the throwing arm, mark you, which mysteriously took a wrong turn and will arrive too late to be of use.’

‘He has Greek Fire, too, I hear,’ Wishart added, with a disapproving shake of his head, ‘and weapons that burst with the Hellish taint of brimstone.’

There was silence for a moment and Hal did not know what the others were thinking, but his mind was on the stunning sight and sound of those very weapons, great gouts of flame and blasts that hurled earth and stones into the air, fire that ran like water and could not be quenched. Yet the walls of Stirling, pocked and scorched, still held.

‘Aye, well,’ Lamberton declared suddenly, rubbing his hands as if presenting them to a fire. ‘Be of cheer – Stirling holds out yet, when all else has given in. Young Oliphant has done well there.’

‘Young Oliphant holds out because Longshanks refused to accept his capitulation,’ Bruce replied flatly. ‘He offered it a week since. The King wants to see his newest engine in action, the great Warwolf. Fifty folk it takes to handle it and Edward is determined to have it fling stones at Oliphant’s head before that man is allowed to come out.’

There was silence, broken only by the soft, slippering sound of hesitant feet. Then Lamberton sighed.