‘Man, man,’ said Will Elliot admiringly, ‘Untimely … it is just like yon tale of the Knight and the Faerie. Ye ken – the yin where the Knight …’
‘O God, who adorned the precious death of our most holy Father, Saint Benedict, with so many and so great privileges,’ declared a sonorous voice in good English; it brought all heads round to where the silver-grey figure moved.
‘Grant, we beseech You, that at our departure hence, we may be defended from the snares of the enemy by the blessed presence of him whose memory we celebrate. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ men muttered, crossing themselves.
‘Christ be praised,’ Sim offered.
‘For ever and ever,’ they all repeated.
The monk squatted by the fire and took his hands from the sleeves of the rough, grey-white habit. His cadaverous face, flooded with firelight, became a death’s head of shadows.
‘We have some meat,’ Hal offered and the monk showed some teeth in a bearded smile.
‘This is a meatless day, my son. I came to offer both blessing and advice.’
‘The blessing is welcome,’ Hal answered warily, expecting a sermon on the defilement of a meatless day; the rich smell of the roasting beef wafted betrayingly. The monk laughed softly from the depths of his cowl.
‘The advice is this – the picket guard is one Fergus the Beetle,’ the monk said. ‘He is not one of God’s sharpest tools, but honest and diligent. I fear, though, he is out of his depth with the visitors who have arrived at his post. He can understand only that your name was mentioned.’
He put his hands back in his sleeves and moved off, seeming to drift between the men, who crossed themselves humbly as he passed and tried to hide marrow bones. Sighing, Hal got up, looked at Sim and the pair of them went to find Fergus, the picket guard.
Fergus watched the company ahead of him closely, especially the rider with a face like a fat moon and the air of someone too close to the crotch of another’s ancient hose. Fergus was from the north and, like all those men, disliked anyone from south of The Mounth ridge, who dressed peculiarly and spoke in ways hard for an honest man to understand. Further south than that, he knew, were men who scarcely warranted the name, soft perfumed folk who curled their hair and spoke in strange ways.
Hal and Sim, coming up behind the guards, saw the huddle of kerns and the short, dark little man, made darker by the black wolf cap and pelt he wore over bits and pieces of maille and leather filched from dead enemies. The black, hardened leather jack he wore made him look like some beetle, newly surfaced from the forest mulch, but no-one would voice that; they all knew the killing reputation of Fergus and his men who came from north of The Mounth with all the strangeness that implied.
‘Atweill than,’ Fergus declared to the haughty rider, ‘this wul dae brawlie. Gin ye haed spoke The Tongue at the verra stert, ye wad hae spared the baith o us aw this hatter. Tak tent ti whit Ah hae ti say an lippen ti me weill – ye maun bide ther until I lowse ye.’
The rider, mailled and coiffed, flung up his hands, so that wet drops flew up from his green-gloved fingers, and cursed pungently in French.
‘I am Sir Gervaise de la Mare. Do you understand no language at all?’
‘Ah prigg the blissin o the blue heivins on ye,’ Fergus scowled back. ‘There are ower mony skirrivaigin awhaurs, so bide doucelyke or, b’Goad’s ane Wounds, Ah wul …’
‘Fergus,’ Hal said and the dark man fell back and turned, his black-browed face breaking into a wary grin.
‘Yersel,’ he greeted with about as much deference as he ever gave and then jerked his head contemptuously at the rider.
‘This yin an’ his muckle freends came sklimming the heich brae, aw grand an’ skerlet and purpie. Luikin to spier you somewhiles.’
‘You can understand this oaf?’ demanded the rider. ‘Thanks be to God – I seek one Hal of Herdmanston and would be obliged if you … him … anyone, would find him.’
‘I am Sir Henry Sientcler of Herdmanston,’ Hal declared and Gervaise blinked once or twice from under his hooded riding cloak.
‘You …’ he began, then a rider moved from the shadows and laid a hand on his arm to silence him. Hal looked at this newcomer, sensible in brown and green though the cloth was quality. He had a long face made longer by the great droop of a wet moustache from his top lip and the washerwoman look of his arming cap, while his eyes were large and seal-soft.
‘I am Sir Marmaduke Thweng,’ he announced and Hal felt his eyebrows raise. The man did not, he said to himself, look like one of the foremost knights in Christendom. A walrus in mourning, perhaps, but not Sir Galahad.
‘I have two folk to deliver safely,’ Sir Marmaduke went on and offered a wan smile, the rain sliding off the length of his moustaches.
‘Sir Gervaise is proud of his skills with foreign tongues,’ he added, ‘but seems to have met his match here.’
‘Ye have not the Scots leid, then,’ Sim scoffed, which was rich coming from him, since even he barely understood what Fergus was saying and Hal frequently lost track of it altogether.
Gervaise, wet and ruffled, drew himself up and tilted his nose even higher to look down it at Sim, who was not about to give the noble his due, with a ‘my lord’ and deferential bow.
‘I speak Spanish to my wife, Latin to my God, French to my king, English to my mistress and German to my horse,’ Gervaise declared, then leaned forward a little and smeared an ugly little smile across his face.
‘I speak Scots only when I bark back at my dog.’
‘Deliver your visitors, Sir Marmaduke,’ Hal interrupted, feeling Sim start to struggle forward and barely held by an arm and Hal’s command.
‘Bigod,’ Sim bellowed. ‘Let me loose on him the bauchlin’ wee …’
‘Steady,’ Hal interrupted harshly and Sim subsided, breathing like a mating bull. Hal turned to Thweng, whose mourn of a face had never altered.
‘Take this wee papingo away before his feathers are plucked.’
‘Only one visitor is for you,’ Sir Marmaduke replied mildly and waved a hand. This brought up a palfrey and a small man on its back, hunched and dripping.
‘This is one Bartholomew Bisset,’ Sir Marmaduke said. ‘He arrived without warning or writ in the English lines, saying he was bound for you and no other. Not even the Earl of Carrick, he says, to whom my other charge is due.’
Bisset? Hal knew the name but could not place it, and the wee fat man sat on the horse, drenched in rain and misery and silence. Then, out of the shadows, came a huge beast of a stallion that Hal knew well enough and his heart skipped. Sir Marmaduke’s other charge.
Sitting on Balius, swathed in a dark cloak, Isabel, Countess of Buchan offered Hal a weary smile.
Bruce was with Kirkpatrick in his panoply, a sodden flap of red and white sail canvas reeking of old mildew, wet wool and stale sweat. It was scattered with a discard of hose, boots, maille chausse, and a squire worked furiously at ridding good leather boots of water stains.
‘The Comyn is out,’ Bruce had said to Kirkpatrick and did not need to add anything. The Lord of Badenoch, kin to Buchan, had clearly been sent back north from Edward’s Flanders-borne army to help bring Moray’s rebellion to heel. Though all of that branch were known as Red Comyns because of their shield colours, the Lord of Badenoch was called John the Black as a grim joke on both his demeanour and his implacablity.
His return to Scotland meant that all the disgraced and dispossessed enemies of the Bruces had been restored to their rights and Kirkpatrick could almost hear Bruce’s teeth grind on it. It was as well, he thought, that we were all bound