CHAPTER FIVE
Lincoln
The Feast of St John the Evangelist, December, 1304
It was all familiar, but tainted with the rust of long neglect and Bruce was alarmed by how fumbling he felt. He saw the distant shape of Malenfaunt on a powerful, arch-necked beast — not his own, for certes; Bruce wondered if it was one of Buchan’s, or even one of the King’s.
He saw the sudden clench and curl of it, knew that Malenfaunt was spurring the beast and, with a sick lurch, dug his heels in to Phoebus, feeling the huge muscled rump gather and spring, almost rocking him backwards so that the lance wavered wildly.
Seventy ells separated them and they were at lance-length in the time it took to say ‘ Sire Pere, qui es es ceaus ’. Bruce saw his lance slide over the top of Malenfaunt’s shield and miss his helmet by the length of a horse whisker — then the clatter of lance on his own shield slammed him sideways, reeling him in the saddle. Phoebus faltered, lost rhythm and rocked Bruce back upright before cantering on.
Stunned, shocked, Bruce fought the horse round. Christ’s Bones, he shrieked to himself, his breathing a thunderous roar inside the helm, what madness drove me to this? Possession by some imp of Satan?
The Curse of Malachy, a voice nagged at the back of his mind.
Then Phoebus was round and he was thundering back down the tiltyard, trying to keep the long ash shaft’s bouncing point somewhere in the region of Malenfaunt’s unscarred shield.
Malenfaunt, snatching up his second lance from the rack, was blazed with a relief bordering on the exultant — Bruce was inept. He could not fight like this, as Buchan had said and that lance stroke was one a still-wet squire would have scorned.
He wrenched the head of the beast round, feeling it fight back against the cruel barb of the bit and cursing it until he deafened himself in the helmet. Then he levelled his lance and rowelled the animal into a great, leaping canter, hearing his own voice howling.
Bruce saw the mad plunge of it and felt, as well as the fear, an anger that burned it away like morning mist. He was an earl, one of the recognized best knights of Christendom and would not be made afraid by anyone. He sat deeper in the cantled saddle, straightened his legs out in the stirrups, urged Phoebus with his weight alone and sprang forward.
They clashed and the crowd roared at the perfection of the strokes, two lances burying their leafed points in each shield and shattering with a simultaneous crack that shivered splinters higher in the air than anyone could have thrown.
Bruce rocked with the blow and Phoebus staggered sideways, crossing feet over each other, at first delicate as a cat and then stumbling like a drunk. Malenfaunt felt his head snap and his teeth cracked wickedly on his tongue; the horse was flung from a canter to a dead stop and sank back on its powerful haunches, skidding furrows along the sand.
Bruce reached the far end, reined round, sobbing for breath. He threw down the splintered lance butt, worried the shattered point out of his shield and flung it away, more to give him and horse breathing space than anything. At the far end, he saw Malenfaunt drop his own shattered lance and seem to sit there while the horse snorted and shifted beneath him.
Had he given in? Too injured to continue? In his heart, Bruce knew the lie of it; this was a l’outrance and there was no giving in at the edge of extremity, until one or the other was forced to it, for a loss here stripped you of honour and dignity. Under the rules, it stripped you of life, too, since your opponent had the right — the duty — to kill you and the very least that could be expected was that the tongue with which you swore your falsehood to God would be removed.
For God was watching.
So also was the King and he had sent a stern-eyed squire to inform Bruce that there was to be no death in this and that his opponent had agreed to the same. Mistakes can be made, Bruce thought grimly to himself, at the edge of extremity.
Malenfaunt was now realizing how great a mistake had been made and that Bruce had all the skills others claimed for him — he had just been faltering until they came to him. From now, Malenfaunt thought with a sick sensation that threatened to loose his bowels, Bruce would be deadly with the lance — so best not to give him the advantage.
Bruce saw the flick of wrist that brought up the wicked axe from the saddle-bow. There were three lances permitted and he had two still in the rack. There was no rule that said he had to give up the advantage — but God was watching. More importantly, all the other knights were watching.
Bruce unsnagged his own axe and the two great warhorses came forward again, slower this time.
They circled, hacking at each other, slicing splinters and chips from shields in a chivalric estampie. The axes locked heads now and then, a furious tugging, silent save for the grunts that could be heard even over the crowd.
The axe was a wicked affair, three feet of wooden shaft with a sharp curve of blade on one side and a wicked pick-spike on the other. Another foot beyond the top was encased in a leaf-shaped spearpoint and the butt had a six-inch spike. It was designed to cleave helmets, spear through maille links, slip a point under the joints of fancy new plate vambrace and pauldron and open it like shelling crab — and Bruce loved it.
Malenfaunt realized this after the first few cuts and, by the end of the first two harsh minutes he was sobbing for breath and in fear, his flesh ruching up under all the metal in terror at what that skilfully wielded weapon would certainly do, sooner rather than later.
In desperation he cut down on the head of Bruce’s horse and shattered it to blood and brains. Phoebus barely made more than a high-pitched grunt before all four feet went out from under him and he fell like a dropped stone.
The crowd roared anger at such a foul, unchivalric stroke — but there were no rules in that sand-scattered arena and Bruce, kicking free of the stirrups and rolling with melee — practised ease, knew it.
He knew, too, as his unlaced helm flew off and rolled away, exposing his red, sweated face, that he was in trouble.
The moors south of Yorkshire
The Feast of St John the Evangelist, December, 1304
The moors here in England were no different from back home, Malise thought bitterly. A tapestry in mottled black and white, patched here and there with the last faded russet of old bracken, studded with stones dark as iron. Neither should be travelled in this season.
He glanced at the pewter sky, pregnant with snow and worried that it would fall on him like a shroud before he reached the safety of the Priory of Lund, yet one more knot in the long rope that Lamprecht trailed behind him.
Find him, Buchan had ordered on the day he arrived to cart his wife off to a nunnery in Perth — at last, Malise thought viciously. Not before time, too, though the freedom he had envisaged on that day had been twisted by the loss of her. It was a witch thing she did to him, he had decided, a cauldron-brewed spell that made him think only of her until his groin ached and he had to take it out on some dirt-patched whore.
Precious few of those in this plod through the winter north after the pardoner, he thought, and the Christ’s Mass gift of horse and silver from a strangely desperate Buchan had only gone a little way to balming the pain of journeying at this time of year.
Find him, Buchan had ordered, for it was plain Bruce was now involved in the deadly game. Find the pardoner, and find out what he was doing with Bruce and why the relic of the Black Rood was involved in it. Discover why Bruce was involved in it. Find the proof.
Malise mourned it all bitterly. Lamprecht, the wee dung beetle. The last time we met he made my life a misery and now here he is bringing bad cess to it once again. I will put him to the Question, right enough, he thought.
First, hunt down the pardoner — not that it was hard to follow his trail. An ugly wee man with the conch of Compostella in a broad-brimmed hat, a strange way of speaking and a scrip full of wondrous relics could not hide in
