For a moment Sim and he stood, pillars of silent grim in the whirl of activity round them. The lock was a ruin and could not be fastened, though the iron yett could still be barricaded shut…
Then they looked at each other.
‘They will have heard it,’ Sim forced out and Hal nodded. He heard the weans being soothed from snot and tears, became aware of the lack of rushes for the floor, torches for the walls, food, arrows…
They would ask for terms now and Hal did not know whether to refuse them, bad or good.
‘You are certain, Master Ingeniator?’
Gaultier nodded, while his two assistants, sacking draped over their filthy heads against the rain, bobbed like toys in agreement.
‘Through the arch,’ the Fleming said with smug satisfaction. ‘There was a great bang as it hit the gate — we all heard it.’
And the two toys nodded at him, at each other and then at the dark brooding Malenfaunt. Patrick of Dunbar, round, wisp-moustached face framed by the ringmetal coif, beamed at the Earl of Buchan.
‘Well — a palpable hit, by God. Damaged at least. Something we can claim as a practical breach, eh?’
Buchan, his thinned hair plastered to his bared head, nodded scowling, pouch-eyed agreement; there had been too long spent on this enterprise in his opinion and the reason for it sat cloistered in that hall, no doubt trembling at what might be done to her now. Well might she shake, he thought savagely.
‘A white peace,’ Patrick added pointedly. ‘As we agreed — I look to you, my lord, to hold to this, as agreed.’
Malenfaunt laughed sourly, but said nothing. He seldom spoke these days, the fork of his tongue rendering it almost unintelligible and that, coupled with the deep, banked smoulder in him kept everyone at a distance.
Malise, dripping patiently by the side of his earl, watched Malenfaunt and remembered how he had come off worst in a tourney duel with Bruce and that there had been some scandal over a nunnery in Berwick, which had had to have the occupants scoured out of it and questioned.
Depositions of Devil worship and worse were, even now, being taken and Malenfaunt’s name had come up more than once. Now he was here, banished from the mesnie of de Valence, shunned by every nobile who at least professed a measure of honour and trying to ingratiate himself into the grace of the Earl of Buchan, whose wayward wife he had once held to ransom.
War, Malise realized, would be a joy to this one for it would put an end to all the legalities threatening to swamp him and might even raise his stature; all knights would be needed soon, when Longshanks rose up off his skinny arse and started to roar like the mangy pard he was.
This time, he knew, there was no question of which side the Buchan and Balliol and Comyn chose — the one which had a Bruce on the opposite.
‘I have my reasons for being here,’ Buchan said sourly, peeling off a sodden gauntlet to wipe his streaming face. ‘Make what white peace ye care — but neither the Countess nor Hal of Herdmanston is included in it. That pair are mine, by God.’
They assembled in the lisping mirr by the stone cross, holding up a shield covered in white linen, turning dark with rain. Two figures came to the arched, flame-blackened doorway, the bigger, badger-bearded one holding a monstrous crossbow. Those who knew Sim and the lord Hal — Dunbar men and those locals who hired out for pay — gave a few friendly shouts, swiftly muffled. Save for one.
‘Holla, Sim Craw — aye til the fore I see.’
The irrepressible Davy Scott from Buccleuch made all the other Scotts laugh, then curl their lip at the glares from the Comyn retinue.
‘Davy Scott — I have heard nothing of ye since… bigod, it would be Roslin Glen. How long since was that?’
‘Three years,’ Scott called back, heedless of the glowers.
‘A rattlin’ time,’ Sim shouted. ‘A rare victory, so I hear.’
‘Aye, man,’ Davy enthused, his beady black eyes bright. ‘There were Kerrs every which where, skitin’ like hares. Ah saw Kerrs frae Cessford an’ Graden an’ others frae ower Teviotdale. A right rout it was.’
‘And the English,’ Sim pointed out wryly. Davy Scott had the grace to look embarrassed for a moment, realizing not only his preoccupation with an old feud but that he was now, to all intents, with the English he had once scattered so delightedly up and down Roslin Glen.
‘Oh aye — them as well.’
Then Sim swept his eyes round until he found the face he sought; still fox-sharp, the eyes as cold and dark as of old, though permanently narrowed now, as if the man squinted. Losing his sight, Sim thought. Then added viciously to himself: God blind you, Malise Bellejambe.
Malise felt the eyes on him and flicked briefly to them, then away. He did not like the big, keg-shaped grim of Sim Craw, who made him aware of a man he’d red murdered years before, the one called Tod’s Wattie. A friend of this one, Malise remembered, seeing the banked revenge in Sim Craw’s stare and not caring much for it.
Ignoring all of this, Buchan and Hal locked gazes. Hal saw the gaunt of the man and wondered at it. He has ten years on me, he thought to himself, but that did not explain the yellow tinge, the unhealthy fever of the stretched cheeks, the bones of his face like oak galls. He felt the heat of the man’s anger.
Buchan, in turn, saw the still figure, grizzled these days and limned with hard life, but he barely took in the look of the man; his belly turned, for here was his revenge, looking him in the face. It came to him, in a sudden, sick dizziness, that there was no triumph in it, only a reflection of his own mean rage.
Dunbar thought it best to grip the hilt of matters a little tighter.
‘Your folk may depart with honour and their lives,’ he said curtly to Hal. ‘You must hand over the Countess and yourself to the mercy of myself and the Earl of Buchan. Your fortress will be slighted.’
There was a pause, an indrawing of breath and no more, while everyone waited to see if Herdmanston would capitulate.
Patrick hoped he would not; though the prospect of storming the place was bloody, he wanted it with all the eager, frantic fervour of his twenty-two years; he had never been at such a matter before and Malenfaunt saw that and sneered at it. The wee earl’s son would find the truth out at cost — if he lived at all, Malenfaunt thought to himself.
He had avoided such engagements, for the prospect of dying at the hands of a grimy-handed cottar for some pointless heap of stones was not chivalrous enough — yet the high-chivalry tourney with Bruce, who could have killed him, brought back the sweating, shrieking moment when he had thought death would happen.
He knew he had babbled and pleaded for his life then and the yellow memory of it soured his life like vomit, while the sinuous wriggle and flap of his own forked tongue, the result of what Bruce had done instead, repulsed him.
The only two who mattered in this were horns-locked at the eyes, cold and unblinking as basilisks until, finally, Hal spoke into Buchan’s unflinching glare, though it was Patrick of Dunbar he addressed.
‘I am fine where I am,’ he said softly. ‘Besides — I have only just fixed matters from the last time I was raided. I would liefer have the place unsullied.’
‘I am your liege lord,’ Patrick declared loftily, then realized he actually was not and hastily corrected himself.
‘My father is. You owe him fealty and explanation for your constant turncoating. I have offered you more honour and mercy than you deserve…’
‘Save your words, he does not care — he is Bruce’s man now.’
Buchan’s voice was a whip that lashed Dunbar to silence.
‘If you do not give in now,’ he went on, never removing his eyes, ‘it will be the end of you. I will nail your entrails to a post and walk you round them until your life unfolds. I will allow that wanton bitch to watch, then throw her to my men and, when they are done, to the dogs.’
Patrick shifted and bleated protest at this, but Hal finally snapped his gaze from Buchan and rested it on the Dunbar lordling.
‘Dinnae fash, Patrick,’ he said companionably. ‘Ye have taken up with bad company, for if Christ Himself walked among ye, the Earl of Buchan would deceive Him.’
Malenfaunt stirred then and made a long series of gabbling sounds, increasing in fury because he realized no-one could understand him. He was wrong and the astonishment in it stunned him to silence.
