‘And if it is not the Maryculter,’ Kirkpatrick finished, after Hal had hoiked this up for everyone to consider, ‘then it is flying a false flag in order to gull us anyway.’
‘Which means it expected us and was lying in wait,’ Hal added and the rest was unspoken: we have a traitor, who might even be aboard. He met the eyes of Kirkpatrick and Rossal, saw the acknowledgement in them – saw, too, a lack of surprise that thrilled anger into him; this pair have knowledge kept from me, he thought bitterly. As if this old dog was not capable of learning the new trick of them, or did not matter in the scheme of it.
Kirkpatrick, oblivious to Hal’s bile, sucked a whistle through his teeth and grinned at Sim.
‘Bigod, man, that is a fearsome weapon you have. Sma’ wonder the Pope has banned it.’
‘Holy Faithers has scorned this, our king, the Kingdom an’ these Templars,’ Sim growled back. ‘Seems to me like every wee priest who sticks on yon fancy hat wants to put a mock on something.’
‘Lord bless and keep ye,’ Kirkpatrick answered, signing the cross over Sim, but it was hard to tell whether it was in chastisement or admiration, while his wry smile did not help.
‘God be praised,’ Sim answered, checking that the winding mechanism of his fearsome beast was oiled and smooth.
‘For ever and ever.’
The rote reply went almost unnoticed, while Sim worked methodically.
‘Are you fit for this?’ Hal asked and felt a fool when Sim looked at him and frowned, all trace of sickness burned away by the fire of imminent action. He said nothing, but his look hurled the same question back and Hal was not so sure he could answer it truthfully.
‘Aye til the fore,’ Sim said suddenly, grinning at him, and Hal felt the rush of years, like a whirl of leaves in a high wind. Still alive – the greeting that they had given one another as they staggered, amazed at the miracle of it, out of other lethal affairs.
Aye til the fore. The names of all the others who had fought reared up in his head and he wondered where they were – those he had last seen alive, at least. Sore Davey and Mouse; Chirnside Rowan and Jeannie’s Tam and a handful of others. Auld men, he thought, like me. If they lived yet.
Then he thought of Dog Boy and wondered where he was and if he was safe.
Herdmanston, Lothian
At the same moment …
Dog Boy could not help glancing behind him every other minute, for the sick lure of the Herdmanston remains would not stop itching a spot between his shoulderblades.
There, high in that arched folly of a gaping window, was where he had shinned down in the dark and sneaked off to find help when the tower was besieged by the Earl of Buchan and Patrick, the son of the March Earl. Now that same Patrick had taken the title and Dog Boy wondered if the ruin of his face, scalded by boiling water during the assault, was still as sorry a sight as the tower, gawping at the rain, draped with misery and withered grass.
There was where he had sneaked through Herdmanston’s garth, stumbling over the bodies of his slaughtered deerhounds, but then he’d had to scale the barmkin wall and now it was more gap than drystane.
The wee chapel was sound enough and had managed to take some of Jamie Douglas’s riders in shelter from the rain, though they had crept in, crossing themselves piously and apologetically to the blind-eyed Magdalene and the recumbent weathered stone tombs in which mouldered Hal’s parents. Beyond the chapel stood the solid haloed cross that marked where Hal’s wife and son lay buried; it was there, Dog Boy recalled, that the besiegers had assembled their springald, whose bolts had burst in the yett …
‘See anything?’
Dog Boy started guiltily at the voice, turning to see Jamie Douglas approach with his lithe, purposeful stride. He shook his head automatically.
‘Be a better view on the tower,’ he said and Jamie nodded, grinning.
‘I heard that you scrauchled down it once. You would be hard put to shin back up now, though, despite the handholds nature has provided.’
He peeled off his bascinet and shoved the maille coif back off his head like a hood, peering into the dying mirk of a wet day.
‘They are there,’ he growled. ‘I can feel them and smell them, like dung on my shoes.’
Dog Boy had no doubt that the Black was right, for the man could spy English in a mile round and only his hate was greater than his uncanny ability. Besides, they had seen a scatter of mounted men an hour before and only natural caution on both sides had kept them apart.
‘Gules semy of crosses paty and a chevron argent,’ Jamie intoned darkly and Dog Boy, though he spoke no French, knew that Jamie was reeling off the fancy words for the banner they had spotted: red, covered with wee white crosses and with a big white chevron.
Sir Hal had the same skill, but he would have known whom the banner belonged to; wisely, Dog Boy did not voice this to the scowl of Jamie Douglas.
‘It is not the Earl of March,’ Jamie said, almost to himself. ‘His device is a rare conceit involving a lion rampant to remind everyone that Patrick of Dunbar thinks himself regal enough to be considered for the throne, like his da before him.’
He scrubbed his dark hair with confusion.
‘So who is it?’
‘No matter,’ Dog Boy answered. ‘They are unlikely to be friendly to us this close to Dunbar, for if Edward the Plantagenet stops of a sudden, wee Earl Patrick will be sticking his biled face up the royal arse.’
Jamie gave a harsh chuckle and clapped Dog Boy on the shoulder.
‘Little room up there,’ he answered. ‘Despensers an’ Gascon relations of Gaveston are elbowing for space.’
There was a long pause while the curlews wheeped in a rain-sodden sky. Dog Boy saw the ruin of fields round him, ones he remembered thick with oats and barley, studded with sheep. Sir Hal would be sore hurt to see his demesne in such a state, he thought.
Not that the rest of the land was better; Dog Boy had seen nothing but fields of rot all spring, for the early harvest had been ruined by rain and now folk were slaughtering livestock they could not feed. When all that was gone, starvation would set in and the rising leprous heat was now withering late-planted crops and forage. Coupled with the war that was clearly coming, it would be a harsh year for the Kingdom, where folk would eat grass.
It did not help that he was part of their bad luck – Jamie Douglas was raiding, with fast wee pack ponies and a couple of lumbering carts to load cut fodder and grain bags, his men all mounted to herd kine and sheep; the army slinking round Stirling like wolves on a kill needed a lot of feeding.
They had torn and scorched furrows back and forth across the Lothians, concentrating on the holdings of those they knew still supported the enemy. Then they had been chased by mounted men, whom they presumed came from Dirleton or Dunbar and had been running now for three days; Jamie Douglas did not like to run, Dog Boy thought, even when it was prudent.
‘I would like to ken them better,’ Jamie Douglas said and Dog Boy jerked out of his revery to look at him, and then followed the Black’s steady, meaningful stare. The top of Herdmanston tower.
‘Can you do it?’ Jamie demanded and Dog Boy grinned at him, sharp-toothed as any wolf.
‘Bigod, does a wee hound go three-legged at a tree? I came down it once, so I can get up it as well.’
Nor far away, Addaf took a knee and rubbed his grizzled chin. He knew there were riders somewhere ahead of him, but he could not be sure what they were – the Scots put everyone they could on tough, half-wild ponies, so it was more than likely just