him know what direction he moved.
Now he blessed the persistence of Hal in giving him the old sword and scabbard; Dog Boy had preferred his knife — but that would be no help in a stand-up fight, God save you, Hal had said. The awkward sword had been slung on his back for the climb down and was rendered useless, for he would have needed the arms of a babery beast to draw it from there.
Now, though, he took it off his back, drew it, took the scabbard and placed it on the very tip, holding the belt fastenings in his teeth. Now he had a wobbling curve near the length of a man in front of him and, by swinging gently from side to side, he moved it like the feeler of a giant beetle.
He fell only once, a stumble that spilled him his length and he lay, feeling the wet seep, clenching the sword in one hand and the leather scabbard ties in his teeth so that he would not lose either. He strained to hear; laughter in the near distance calmed him a little and he reached out his free hand to lever himself up — then recoiled at the sensation of rough wet hair.
It was the deerhound, the one he’d called Riach because it meant ‘brindled’. The beast’s throat had been cut and Dog Boy felt a great welling sadness — he had not brought the dogs in to the keep, for there was not much more useless a creature in a siege than a dog, which ate meat people needed and provided, in the end, poor fare of its own.
Dog Boy was certain the other, Diamant, was also dead for neither of these hounds would have countenanced strangers in the garth without contesting it.
He cursed the siegers then, promised vileness on them for it and a deal of his anger was for himself; I am ill-named, he thought as he pinch-stepped away, for it seems I bring nothin’ but doom on decent dugs.
The scabbard tapped the far garth wall gently and he flicked it away with the sword, then gathered it in and fastened it on his back; behind, the laughter rose enough for him to hear the drink in it and he smiled grimly. Be gaggling on the other side o’ yer face when I return, he thought. I will hang the doddles o’ yon dug-murderer from the kennel door.
It took him all night to reach the Auld Chiel’s Chelleis, a long, dark slog through whin and bracken in a wet drabble of night until the milk-glow horizon brought a marriage of birds and their joy of song to the dawn.
The thick, clumped bushes and trees that fringed the Chelleis grabbed his clothes and he had gone no further than a fingerlength in when he heard the rustle and then the voice.
‘Swef. Bide doucelike else ah’ll arrow ye.’
‘God be praised,’ Dog Boy gasped out at once and, after a pause, had back the reply.
‘For ever and ever.’
It was Scabbit Wull, easier in his mind that what he had in front of him was human and not Faerie — then delighted and relieved to see it was Dog Boy. All the cold, wet folk in the Chelleis were delighted, for they thought matters had been resolved and they could leave their crude, damp shelters and come home to warm fires — which they dare not light themselves — and decent food, which they were running out of.
There were fifteen of them, all women save for Wull, set to guard the hidden valuables of Herdmanston — the garrons of the men, the plough oxen and the milch kine of those cottars who had managed to drive them here in time.
The Auld Chiel’s Chelleis was apt named, Dog Boy thought, even as he explained the reality to Wull and the women. It was a great bowl of close bush and stunted forest, cleared in the centre to take the livestock and the people. Unless you knew the way of it, you could be lost inside the place two steps from the edge and it was where Herdmanston always hid when the enemy came — the English name for it was Satan’s Cup and they would not go there.
‘God go wi’ ye,’ Wull said to him as Dog Boy left and he promised he would break himself and the garron he rode to bring help.
An hour from the Chelleis, he ran into the armed riders.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Abbey of Scone
Feast of the Annunciation, March, 1306
Dog Boy had never seen food like it. When he had gone from Douglas to Herdmanston he thought he had fallen into all the blessings of Heaven when he found he could eat a white porray of leeks with boiled bacon bits in it — but this, the crowning feast for a king, was another level raised entirely.
As was he, feted for being in the company bringing Stone and Isabel the Crowner to Scone, placed so high above the salt he was dizzy with it. Or it could have been the metheglin and ale, the Leche Lombard of pork and eggs, graced with pepper more precious than gold, or mortrews of chicken, pork and breadcrumbs, venison boiled in almonds and milk, seasoned with poudre douce.
Hal, catching a glimpse of the sweat-sheened joy of a face, the dags of hair like black knives stuck to his cheeks, thought it was because the boy had found Jamie Douglas, the pair of them grinning and chattering and eating and drinking as if there was no chasm in rank between them at all.
Hal had watched Dog Boy arrive with the mounted men, the youth clearly filled with the moment of it, sliding off his garron and running, shouting, to where Hal and the others were poking about in the slorach of the garth.
‘I have brought them,’ Dog Boy had shouted, and flung one hand delightedly back to the mass of armed men behind him, led by a slim, dark-haired youth riding at the right hand of Sir Henry of Roslin.
‘Look who I have brought,’ he added with a bright laugh and Jamie Douglas, with his deceptive, languid looks and lisp, had bowed from the waist, then squinted at Sim Craw and rubbed his ear.
Hal saw Sim flush like a maid; Jamie Douglas, heir to the Douglas estates in Lanarkshire, had been in France all this time and was now returned, like a bright flame, to the side of the Bruce. The last time Hal and Sim had seen Jamie Douglas he had been twelve and Sim had cuffed him for his cheek and impudence, which he was now reminded of.
‘I would not care to belt yer lug now,’ he added grudgingly and Jamie Douglas, grown to the full of his youth, laughed.
Hal and the others had known someone was coming because of a frantic scamper and a furious chopping as the Flemings started to hack axes at the wet-shrunk rawhide which bound the springald cage together.
There was more than hurry in it, there was a feverish flurry that let everyone know, sent Hal and Sim and others flinging upwards to the roof, to peer out through the merlons to where the Flemings were dismantling their springald in a frenzy, for the screw and windlass and skeins of catapult hair were their livelihood and should not fall into enemy hands.
Which is why they had their own lookouts to warn of a relief force.
Hal remembered seeing Buchan, sitting like a millstone and staring at the stone keep which had thwarted him. Without a word or a sign, he had suddenly reined round and ridden off and, within an hour, there was no-one to be seen and only the ruin and litter. Not long after that the Dog Boy had ridden up with Jamie Douglas, Sir Henry from Roslin and a long hundred of riders.
‘Timely,’ Hal had declared, bright with the moment of it and Isabel in the crook of his arm. Then he had seen Henry’s face and the stone sank back in his bowels.
‘It can’t be held as Roslin can,’ Henry had explained, though the words fell like dull pewter into Hal’s head. ‘You can send yer household to the care of Roslin and I will collect the rents…’
‘The King has ordered Herdmanston slighted,’ Jamie declared, wiping the smile from Dog Boy’s face.
‘Is Bruce king then?’ Sim had growled and Jamie, smiling and uncaring as a hunting pard, had nodded.
‘This very day. I foreswore my chance to be knighted on this day to fulfil his wishes to come here. He will go through the entire blethers of it again when we return with Stone and the crowning Countess — but he is king as of now.’
He offered a polite bow to Isabel who acknowledged it, aware of her soot-streaked dress and face and the frosted roots of her untreated hair.
