the places he preferred to haunt.
Malise had already discovered simple priory priests in possession of lead amulets stamped with Caspar, Melchior or Balthazar and guaranteed proof against plague and ague, not to mention an abbot convinced he had a feather from the very wing of a seraphim. All sold by Lamprecht and proudly shown to Malise, who had also learned of two other men asking about the pardoner; he was sure one of them was Kirkpatrick.
Malise had come across the bridge at York, along the Micklegate to the Bar with its empty-eyed corpse-heads — rebel Scots, Malise knew. Malise kept his lips clenched and his accent hidden until he had passed through and on to the Tadcaster road.
At St Mary’s in Tadcaster, Malise had learned that Lamprecht had sold the toebone of Moses, attested by a Templar-sealed parchment, and was moving on south. Malise had lost a day going in the wrong direction before he realized that the little coo’s hole of a pardoner was headed for London, slipping from abbey to priory and moving swiftly for a man on foot and with no fear of the weather.
Doubling back through Tadcaster, Malise was sullen at the pardoner’s lack of regard for what a north winter might do; ignorance is bliss, he thought and Lamprecht would pay for it when the north stormed out snow and froze his black heart.
Yet he knew the De’il looked after his own and the little pardoner would not suffer. Piously — fervently, as the first flake wafted on to the back of his gloved hand — he hoped God was also watching. He needed God’s help, for sure, since he had found out one more valuable item in doubling back.
There was someone else on the trail of the pardoner, ahead of Malise now, someone well mounted on a black horse and with a sword of particular type, incised with a cross on the wheel pommel.
A Templar sword.
Lincoln
The Feast of St John the Evangelist, December, 1304
He was on the wrong side of his dead horse, for the axe lay on the other and all Bruce now had was a forearm’s length of thin estoc, an edgeless weapon too long to be a dagger and too short to be a sword, but perfect for sliding in a visor slit, or punching through maille. Against an axe-armed man on a horse it might just as well have been a reed.
Malenfaunt was in a fever of triumph, tearing at the horse’s mouth to get it round, raking it cruelly to repeat the process, charge down his victim. Bruce was down, weaponless, unhelmed and helpless — he had won…
Bruce saw it in Malenfaunt’s frantic movement. Nothing left but the German Method, he thought grimly and positioned himself, feeling the desert of his mouth and the wrench in his guts.
The crowd was a bellowing beast as Malenfaunt came at him, all hooves and wicked axe, reversed so that the pick, brought hard down by a man raised up in his stirrups for the leverage, would spear through metal cervellier skull cap, the maille coif beneath it, the padded arming cap under that and, finally, the skull of his victim. Like a lance through a bladder, Malenfaunt exulted…
At the last, Bruce sprang to one side — to his right, away from the axe. He heard a metalled scream of frustration from under Malenfaunt’s helm — then watched as the horse ploughed on, into the dead Phoebus.
Malenfaunt was horrified as he felt his mount balk, stumble and then seem to sink, trying to thrash and heave back upright from its knees, while Malenfaunt perched in the saddle like an egg on a stick. In his panic he did not wait to find out if his mount fought free from the tangle of dead horse and drapery — he kicked out of the stirrups and stumbled to the ground.
The crowd roared their approval and both men closed with one another, Bruce shieldless and with his long, thin estoc, Malenfaunt with axe and shield. They moved cautiously on the kicked up sand.
They circled, Malenfaunt swinging in vicious swipes, Bruce crabbing away, looking for an opening. Malenfaunt heard his own breath rack and sob, deafening under the helmet, where the heat was smothering him and the sweat starting to run in his eyes. He realized, sickeningly, that he could not keep the axe in motion for much longer, that he would have to stop, to rest…
Bruce struck when he saw the weary arm sink, an adder’s tongue flick of metal that speared through the maille of Malenfaunt’s forearm, grating on the bone. He heard the man’s muffled howl, the arm was whipped away and the axe sailed from nerveless, gauntleted fingers. Bruce closed in as Malenfaunt stumbled away, lashing with his shield, batting the striking point away from him while he fumbled.
He came up with a dagger, just as Bruce took a shield swipe on his own arm. The blow numbed it and he cursed, fell back, the estoc tumbling from his hand. Gasping for breath, both men seemed to pause — then Malenfaunt, seeing Bruce unarmed, gave a high shriek and lunged forward, smashing with his shield at the same time as he cut back with the dagger.
Bruce, in pain and off balance, saw the wink of it too late. It came at his shoulder, glanced off an aillette and went through the hood of the maille coif into his right cheek. He felt the tug of it, felt — shockingly — the cruel length of it like a bit in his mouth, felt it pink a tooth. The edge slashed his tongue and his mouth was full of blood.
The crowd howled — the King sprang to his feet and Badenoch lurched forward, bellowing at Malenfaunt to kill him. Malenfaunt roared exultantly and stepped back, leaving the weapon in the wound, throwing up both hands as if to announce that he had won. He paused, a little dazed it seemed, by this turn of events, then half-turned as if to go for his axe.
The shock of seeing Bruce reach up and remove the dagger unmanned him. The man should have been on his knees from the agony of it — Christ’s Bones, the blood was pouring down his face, streaking the chevronned jupon… Malenfaunt staggered back, caught his spurs and fell.
There was a moment when the pewter sky, patched with iron clouds, swung wildly and Malenfaunt lay, trying to believe what he had seen. Magic. Had to be — the Devil looks after his own. Then the sky was blotted and he felt a shape settle on him, driving the air from his lungs and pinning him.
Bruce straddled Malenfaunt, his knees crushing Malenfaunt’s arms into the muddied sand, and he heard desperate, babbled words come from under the helm. Comyn, he heard. Lord of Badenoch, he heard. His idea — he knows of your bid to be king of the Scotch. The King said not to kill you, he heard. To spare you. He told you the same, I know. Spare me…
Bruce let the words wash him, grim and uncaring as rock. I yield, he heard. He should heed that one. God was watching, after all.
More to the point, Badenoch and the rest of the Comyn were watching, so he lay closer, his head on Malenfaunt’s shoulder like an embracing friend, took Malenfaunt’s leaf-shaped dagger, bright with his own blood and shoved it up under the bucket helm to where it grated on the coiffed chin. He felt the man buck and start to shake his head from side to side, his metallic pig squeals increasing, his babbled desperation wilder still.
Then he put the heel of his hand on the hilt of the weapon and slammed hammer-blows until he felt it pop through the links, the flesh of the chin, then the tongue and the roof of Malenfaunt’s mouth. He knew that because the blood spurted and the babbling was so high only dogs could hear it. Then there was only a sickening ‘thu… thu… thu’ from a man whose desperate speeches were now all pinned.
The crowd was a great roaring beast, feeding on the pain and the blood.
One more blow would drive it up into the stem of the man — Bruce stopped then, for it was a message he was sending, not death.
He wobbled upright feeling the world whirl. The blood drooled from his mouth as he turned, half-blind like a blinkered horse; the crowd fell silent at the sight of him, at the twitching, moaning ruin that was Malenfaunt and into it, as loudly as he could muster, Bruce completed the bloody mummery of the day, spouting gore from his cheek with every word.
‘ Ai-je fait mon devoir? ’
The Marshal nodded but it was the throated roar of the crowd that revealed that Bruce had done his duty. Released like arrows, the squires and his brothers raced for him, even as his legs finally gave way.
Nunnery of the Blessed Saint Augustine, Elcho, Perth
Feast of the Blessed St Fillan, January, 1305
They had arrived in daylight when it should, to suit the mood and the deed, have been darkest night, she thought. A rare day as well, silvered with a weak coin of a sun fighting through the iron sky to shine on the
