Annick Water
Feast of St Swithun, July 1297
The fires were small, but a welcome warmth to the long hundreds of Scots huddled under rough shelters listening to the rain drift. In the dying light of a summer’s day which had never been graced by much sun, the shadows brought chill and the men huddled, enduring and mournful, waiting for the moment when they could all go home, trailing after the lords who had finally agreed on a peace.
Bangtail Hob was more furious than mournful, for the bodies he had plundered the day before had turned out to have cheated him.
‘Bloody hoor’s by-blows, the lot,’ he muttered again, a litany which those nearest now endured with an extra sink of the shoulders, as if hunching into more rain.
‘Bloody crockards. Pollards.’
Hal and Sim exchanged looks and wry smiles. Soon Sim would have to have words with Bangtail before he rasped everyone raw, but there was a deal of sympathy for man stuck with crockards and pollards, debased foreign coinage now flooding the country thanks to English reforms a decade since. Silver light, they looked like sterling English money until you brought them close.
It was yet another layer of misery to spread on the death of Dand and Red Cloak Thom the day before and the gratitude of hungry men for beef only went a little way as salve. The army, if you could call it that, was now all Carrick men, for the other nobles had taken their forces and gone their separate ways, having promised to turn up at this or that English-held place and bring their sons, daughters or wives as surety for their future good conduct.
Douglas men were trailing homeward, fretted and furious at having seen The Hardy taken off. That was bad enough, Hal thought, but he had been told by those who witnessed it that Percy had insisted on chains and The Hardy had been bound in them, kicking and snarling; it had not been a pleasant sight.
Even Wishart had gone, leaving Bruce to argue out the last hard-wrung details with Percy, who had already sent triumphal messages south to King Edward and his grandfather, De Warenne, that the rebellion had been dealt with. Yet Clifford’s forces were fumbling northwards, trying to bring Wallace to bay and having no luck.
Hal would leave, too, he had decided. Tomorrow, he said to himself. I have had enough of the community of the realm – let them kick spurs at each other like cocks battling for a dung-hill …
‘Forty bloody days,’ Bangtail announced bitterly, which was different enough to bring some heads up.
‘Forty days?’ John the Lamb repeated. ‘Is that how long yon crockards and pollards last before turnin’ into powrie mist?’
Men groaned; they had hoped to hear no more about the contents of Bangtail’s dull-clinking purse.
‘Rain,’ Bangtail spat back scathingly.
‘St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain; for forty days it will remain,’ he intoned.
‘Christ’s Bones,’ said Red Rowan, scrubbing his autumn bracken head, ‘you are a bowl of soor grue, man.’
‘Aye, weel,’ Bangtail muttered back sourly. ‘I was thinkin’ of Tod’s Wattie, warm and fed and dry an’ rattlin’ the hot arse off that wee Agnes. I had some hopes for that quim, save that we were untimely torn apert.’
‘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.