She had nodded, not knowing the why of it and too relieved to be free to do any asking. Wallace did not offer an explanation.
Patie’s final grunt shook him back to the moment and the dungheap; he saw the man was looking at the scarred pewter sky with a calculated, expert squint.
‘A good crop, if there is little rain and less war.’
‘No war, Patie,’ he answered and could hear the sorrowed loss of it in his voice, so that he was almost ashamed. No war, for his men were scattered and gone after taking Isabel, Countess of Buchan, to Roslin — Long Jack Short, Ralf Rae and the worst of them were briganding out of that old stronghold of outlaws, the Selkirk forests. Jinnet’s Jean and others were probably hooring with the English in Carlisle and robbing them blind when they could.
And he was here. Once he had ruled the Kingdom as sole Guardian, now he sheltered in the mean holding of a sokeman of his sister’s man, Tham Halliday, Laird of Corehead, because the castle itself was under watch. Soon, he knew, he would move to a house in Moffat, or another near Glasgow, those hiding him risking the penalty of harbouring, lying low until…
What? The thought racked him, as it had done from the moment he had woken to find most of the remaining men gone. Those left, he had realized, were starving and wasted, so he had given them what coin he had and watched the last of them melt away.
France, perhaps. The Red Rover, de Longueville, would get him away as he had done in the past and he and that old pirate had fought there before — but the French had given up as well and now no-one opposed the English; the idea of that burned him, but the old fire of it had little left of the great body to feed on save heart.
There was nothing in France for him — other than the relief of the Bruce; he almost managed a smile at that, but could not quite manage it, or the spit that went with it.
‘No war, Patie,’ he repeated.
Patie fumbled himself shut, wiped his fingers on his tunic and nodded meaningfully.
‘I would lay that aside, then, while ye break yer fast,’ he grunted. ‘Ye are scarin’ the bairns.’
Wallace looked down, was almost astonished to see the hand-and-half sword clasped in his right fist, so much part of him for so long that he no longer recognized it as a presence. He had woken with it clenched there, walked out of the mean hut with it and stood pissing with it. He had learned to do so many things left-handed, because the right was always occupied by that weapon. Naked, notched and spotted with rust, it was as done up as he was himself — yet sharp and ready.
He remembered cutting men down at Scone with it, carving bloody skeins off the fine English knights at Stirling’s bridge, slicing through the jawbone of the Templar Master, Brian de Jay, in the forest of Callendar.
His sword, so much part of him for so long, quenched in blood and wickedness, he thought. Now it was no more than a monstrous frightener of bairns.
Like myself.
Church of St Thomas of Acon, London
Thursday of Mysteries, April, 1305
He had risked it and was sure the dice had gone against him. When Lamprecht reached the herber’s stall he looked round and was sure the cloaked man was the same one he had seen. He was sure, also, that it was Kirkpatrick; there was something sickly familiar in the oiled way the man moved, turning sideways, stepping careful as a fox and never bumping or being jostled.
Money, thought Lamprecht bitterly. Always the driven curse of a poor man, it had lured him to the Church of St Thomas of Acon on the day he knew alms were liberally handed out for the celebration of Christ’s Last Supper on Earth. And here is me, he thought, with a ransom of rubies and so unable to make use of it that I am worth less than a beggar’s cloak.
Even as he waited for the chimes to open the City’s posterns, he had known that it was a bad idea, that he should have stayed in St Olave’s and waited for a suitable ship to take him away from these shores.
Yet the pretence of being a lowly painter was a strain, while the skin-crawling horror of knowing that a Scotchman was on his trail like a relentless gazehound was more than his nerves could stand; he should never have revealed himself to Kirkpatrick and Bruce and that Herdmanston lord at all, he knew now — but the chance of revenge had been too sweet a taste to resist.
The bell rang an hour before sunrise and the City’s wicket gates opened to the basket-carrying hucksters, the labourers, the journeymen, the beggars — Lamprecht hidden among them — and all the rest who lived in the stinking shadows of the City. And the shadow in the shadows, who trailed him, a presence like the crawl of cold sweat down Lamprecht’s spine, which sent his neck straining side to side in a desperate attempt to pick him out of the crowd.
El malvogio, ki se voet te tout, a nou se voet — the evil one, who is seen by all and is not seen.
At which point, he was seen having seen. Suddenly, across the chafering throng of Ironmonger Lane there was only himself and the dark hole in the raised hood where he knew the eyes were; he fancied he could see through the cloak to the shining bar of steel hidden beneath.
So he ran.
Slow-worm blind at first, skidding through the muddied slime and the throngs until, like a dash of cold water, he caught the shocked, suspicious faces and brought himself to a halt; a running man in a crowded street was a thief or worse.
The lane was a maze that led to the sudden, broadening rush of the Cheap, already thick with stalls and people. He forced himself to walk, hurried but not fast and tried not to look constantly over his shoulder.
There were two of them now, he was sure. He stopped at a cheese stall, peering through the great wheels; yes, two of them. Perhaps more… in his mind, every man suddenly became a sinister hunter.
‘Is there a lover’s face in that?’
The voice, rasping sarcasm, cut into his panic and, strangely, quelled it; the cheesemonger glared at Lamprecht.
‘You will wear a hole in that fine cheese with such staring — do you buy, or just look?’
Lamprecht offered a wan smile and moved away, half-fell over a large dog and was forced to jump it, colliding with something huge and soft, which staggered a little then cursed him. He looked up into the baleful glare of a fishwife, scales glinting on her folded forearms and a wicked gutting knife in one fist.
‘ Perdonar,’ he said, with an apologetic smile, but it was the foreign tongue that deepened the suspicious frown — and gave Lamprecht his idea.
‘ El malvogio. Lo baraterro. Se per li capelli prendoto come ti voler conciare.’
Rosia Denyz was a pillar of Cheap, a hard-mouthed matron who had dealt with every attempt to rob, coerce and cozen her for twenty years, so that few now treated her with anything but respect. She did not understand foreign tongues, but she knew curses when she heard them. When the ugly little man grabbed up one of her own fish and struck her in the face with it, she was so astonished that he had gained ten yards before she found her voice.
‘Thief,’ she bellowed, even though the fish was at her feet, giving the lie to it.
Across the other side of the market, Kirkpatrick saw the crowd boil like a feeding frenzy of shark, cursed the daring cunning of the little pardoner and headed after him.
Briefly he was balked by a string of horses coming from Smoothfield and beginning to get skittish at the crowd baying after an unseen thief — then he caught sight of Lamprecht, sprinting back up Ironmonger Lane.
He made a move past the flicking tail and shifting hindquarters of the last horse and slammed into a figure, the pair of them reeling back. Cursing, Kirkpatrick made to go round him, then drew up short, staring into the equally astounded face of Malise Bellejambe.
It took Malise a droop-mouthed moment to recognize Kirkpatrick through the grime and the dirt, the tunic that was more stain than cloth and a hooded cloak that was more sack than wool. When he did, he squealed, only later feeling a wash of shame for it, and ducked behind the man at his elbow.
Kirkpatrick saw this one, bemused, half turn to see Malise scuttling away in pursuit of Lamprecht, then turned back into the half-crouched figure of Kirkpatrick, who now realized that the man was with Malise. No henchman thug, he thought, a serjeant no less, wealthy enough to own a decent set of clothes — and a sword, which he
