Once, but no longer. The memory of it burned him with shame and loss. He had woken, warm and languorous in the tangled bed under the eaves of Mariotta’s Howf in Kinghorn only this morning. A glorious, roaring night it had been, him and the Dog Boy both; Mariotta’s was a favourite of Bangtail’s and had been for years after Mariotta herself had gone to the worms.
He had woken in time to hear the rhythmic beat and grunt and squeal, in time to see the quine from last night sit up and stretch and yawn, her body white and marked here and there with ingrained dirt and the bruising of too-rough hands, but lithe still. She turned, smiling with a deal of teeth left, as he grunted upright and rubbed his eyes. The bed shook.
‘Sorry to have been sae much trouble,’ Bangtail growled, nodding at her bruises. The bed rattled and the squeals grew louder but Bangtail could not see behind the quine.
‘Och,’ she said gently, patting him like a dog, ‘ye were no bother, Bangtail — ye nivver are. It is the youngster ye brought that is loosening all our teeth.’
And there it was, laid out like bad road for Bangtail to glower on. Dog Boy, still ploughing exultantly and Bangtail who was ‘nivver any trouble’. His years whirled up like leaves and crashed on him like anvils; he had aches and the thinning hair on him was less straw and more silvered. He had to roll out of his bed most nights to piss.
He was old.
So it came as no surprise when the throw of dice — to see who would go with the Wallace guide, for only one was permitted — went against him. Grinning, Dog Boy saddled the garron and rode off back to Herdmanston, leaving Bangtail sour and scowling into his ale.
An hour later the Wallace guide had arrived, sleekit and slinking — as well ye might, Bangtail thought, wi’ half the country huntin’ ye like a staig. He went out, saddled the garron and rode to where the guide had hissed to meet him, then watched the man wraithing from cover, twitched as a coney in the open.
The man had no horse and started to run ahead, a long, loping wolf-run born of long use — and that was the measure of how far Wallace’s band had sunk. Without horses, they could no longer strike hard and fast and vanish. Without horses they were mere outlaws, locked to a place and easy to track.
The running man, in hodden wool with more stain than colour, said little, which suited Bangtail, brooding on his lot and the new reality of his life. Deliver the message from the Bruce, he said to himself, then get back to Herdmanston and begin huntin’ a new life, that included his own ingle-nook and a good wummin. The thought of dying, alone and cold and old, made him shiver. The thought of a wife made him shiver, too and he did not know which one was worse.
The guide vanished. Bangtail stopped the garron and sat it for a moment, staring at the hole where he had been and then, in the trees to his left, the shadows merged, edged themselves, took shape and stepped from the gloom; Bangtail’s mouth went dry.
Dark with the long grime of old dirt, wearing worn cloth, odd tanned hides, strips of fur, raggles of rusted maille and metal, they had skin the colour of old bog water, where you could see it through the tangle of hair and beard. They had spears and axes and round shields — one or two carried the shields of knights and Bangtail knew where they had come from. Some of them were women, he saw suddenly and swallowed hard at their eyes.
‘Christ be praised,’ Bangtail whispered.
‘For ever and ever,’ answered a cheerful voice and one man stepped from the others. His nose was broken and he was taller than the others, but he was not Wallace.
‘Noo ye ken we are not bogles,’ this one said in a broad growl of Braid and the others laughed, a sound like whetting steel with no mirth in it at all. Then Broken Nose gave a signal and Bangtail obeyed it, climbing off the garron, seeing the others close in on it with feverish eyes. He did not think he would get it back, nor the pack with his spare clothes, nor the weapons they took from him and the thought made him uneasy.
Wallace was easy enough to recognize when Bangtail arrived in his presence — head and shoulders taller than the others, dressed no differently save for the hand-and-a-half slung carelessly from one shoulder. Yet he was etched like a blade, elbows and knees knobbed on too-thin flesh, the muscle on him corded.
‘Ye are Bangtail Hob,’ Wallace said and had a nod in reply.
‘Ye are seekin’ me, it seems. Whit why — to join us?’
‘God, naw.’
The cry was out before Bangtail could smother it and he heard the growl from them, saw the cold-eyed, curled-lip gleam and started to back out of the hole he had walked himself into.
‘I have done my fighting with ye,’ he answered, trying to make amends and having to drown the spear in his throat with swallowed spit. ‘At Cambuskenneth and again in the trees at Callendar.’
‘Ye were there?’ Wallace remarked and Bangtail bridled at the mild sneer in it.
‘With lord Henry o’ Herdmanston. We saved yer skin yon day,’ he answered harshly.
Now Wallace remembered and the cold stone of what had to be done sat in his belly even deeper. He remembered the day and how the brace of Templar knights had almost ridden him down save for the skill and courage of Hal of Herdmanston and another — Sim Craw, that was it. Sim and his big latchbow.
And this one, or so he claimed. Wallace tried to see this Bangtail’s face on a man that day but could not make it work.
‘So — ye do not wish to stand with us, wee man,’ he said lightly. ‘Why, then, are ye here?’
Bangtail breathed in.
‘The Earl of Carrick bids ye friendship and his regard and offers what help ye might need to quit the realm for your own safety for there are those who would do you harm and give you in to the English.’
It was delivered all of a piece and Bangtail could not get the words out of his mouth fast enough. There were growls and it was not Bangtail’s feverish imagination that heard dissent. Wallace was silent for a time, then shifted.
‘Well, ye have delivered Bruce’s message. He has gave me it afore, but refuses to listen to any of my answers. Mayhap he will listen to this one.’
Bangtail’s skin crawled when Wallace said no more and the man with the broken nose grinned, wolf sharp and evil.
‘I came here thinkin’ this to be a perjink well-conducted meet,’ he hoarsed out. ‘Held by an honourable chiel.’
Wallace nodded, almost sadly. Men grabbed Bangtail’s arms and he struggled briefly, his heart pounding. He could not believe this was happening.
‘Ye thought wrang-wisely,’ Wallace said, gentle, bitter and sad, a note that chilled Bangtail to his belly. ‘We are trailbaston. Outlaws. You see how it is — we need time here an’ if I let ye loose, we will have to be on the move. Besides — yer master needs my answer.’
‘I will say not one thing about your presence here,’ Bangtail protested and was appalled at the whine that had appeared in his voice.
‘So you say,’ Wallace replied flatly, ‘but there was a man with ye and there may be more. I have others to think on besides my own self.’
‘I fought for you!’ Bangtail howled, seeing it now and struggling, far too late. Broken-Nose, grinning, started to unsheath a dagger and Wallace laid a hand on his wrist. For a moment, hope leaped like a salmon in Bangtail.
‘No,’ Wallace said firmly, then drew his own. ‘He deserves this at least.’
The blow drove the air from Bangtail and he sat, released from the arms, trying to suck in a breath and leaking snot and tears. Then the burn of it hit him. Then the pain. He found himself on his back, staring through the latticed trees, feeling a wry laugh bubble in him at the thought of how this had come about. Two threes instead of two fives and here he was in his worst nightmare — dying alone, cold and old…
‘Hang him from yon tree near Mariotta’s place,’ Wallace ordered Long Jack, feeling as if he had been slimed with someone’s sick.
‘You were not always as hard,’ said Jinnet’s Jean, starting to strip Bangtail of his welcome clothes and boots. Wallace said nothing, though he wanted to snarl that he did it for them, though it choked him.
Freedom, he thought. This is what it feels like.
