John.’
‘I am,’ growled the knight. ‘You would do well to remember that.’
‘You are also Sir Oristin Del Ard,’ Kirkpatrick went on, ‘and have retained the arms of your house on the hilt of that fine eating knife. Not permitted by your Order, of course, for the sin of pride and avarice and a few others no doubt. But excusable — you are not alone in it.’
The knight was all coil now, like a snake waiting to pounce.
‘The Del Ards are in the retinue of the Earl of Ross in the north,’ Kirkpatrick went on and then waved one hand to the young scowl on the other side of the Hospitaller.
‘And here is your liege lord’s kin, from Wark. No doubt he will be pleased with the news you bring to him first, before you take it to Torphichen.’
Now both the knights were on their feet and snarling demands for this to end. Fitzwalter thumped the table until the noise of that beat down the cries and shouts; the young Ross and the Hospitaller subsided, scowling.
‘Well,’ said Fitzwalter with a thin smile. ‘That was more entertainment than any imagined. I am sure these two nobiles are pleased that it is over, before the curiosity of their very heads is brought out for our amusement.’
There was laughter and the talk flowed back, soft as honey; Kirkpatrick was not surprised when Fitzwalter sent a man down with coin — more than was necessary for the amusement provided. He wants to know the news the Hospitaller brings to Ross, he thought to himself, and will be disappointed, for I am not about to reveal it.
Kirkpatrick was almost sure — and revealing it would unveil his own standing in places too high for his disguised station — that the knights of St John were planning an attack on heathen-held Rhodes. That had been the talk in the quiet of the Bruce night, between brothers and those as trusted. Partly, they had worked out, because the Hospitallers needed a new base, not dependent on the good graces of the Lusignan who owned Cyprus, and because such an attack would show the Pope and others that they, unlike the Templars, were still capable of striking a blow against the infidel.
Knowledge of the when and where of all that would be financially advantageous to the Ross, who had trading concerns in Cyprus.
‘What does your companion do?’ demanded the young Ross loudly, cutting through the chatter. ‘Is he as gifted with reason?’
‘Almost the opposite, my lord,’ Kirkpatrick said, standing and bowing deferentially, ‘since he has not the sense to avoid drinking water from streams, which accounts for the state of his belly. Never drink water in preference to small beer, my ma said to me.’
There was laughter at that, but Kirkpatrick was sweating at the attention drawn to the absent Hal. Yet he had his own plan and started to put it out.
‘In truth, I hardly know the man. I met him on the road two days since and we travelled for the safety in it.’
‘You say?’ murmured Fitzwalter thoughtfully, but Ross of Wark had the recent bitterness of plots revealed still stuck in his craw and wanted to bring this mountebank cheapjack down.
‘I reason,’ he said triumphantly, ‘that you are a lute player, since you wrap those grimy rags round each individual finger, so allowing you to strum.’
‘A good bowman does the same,’ Kirkpatrick pointed out and Ross dismissed it with a scornful wave.
‘You never drew one well,’ he sneered.
‘A lockpick does the same,’ Fitzwalter offered. ‘Or a light-fingered dip.’
‘Heaven forfend,’ Kirkpatrick answered, crossing himself piously and hoping that no-one worked out that a good man with a dirk needed his fingers nimble, too. Then he smiled.
‘Or a wee chiel who sells fiddly needles and thin thread and needs pick them out o’ a pack,’ he added and Fitzwalter acknowledged it with a thin smile, while the rest of the table laughed.
‘Your reason is flawed,’ Fitzwalter said to the sulking young Ross. ‘Your monger here wraps his fingers to preserve his fortune. Pity — I would have welcomed a good lute player.’
‘Reason and Fortune were ever rivals,’ Kirkpatrick declared, while the food wafted in and out of his nostrils, clenching his belly with desire. ‘I have tale on it, if your lordship pleases — and is disposed to make a wee bit meat come my way, by way of recompense.’
‘A tale? Good enow. Steward, I daresay you have mutton, hung for the right amount of time and now cooked — hung since Martinmas if these wool dealers are any mark. I am expecting it on my own trencher and am sure you can find a bone or three for this man.’
The steward managed a smile and a deferential bow. The hall silenced, looking at Kirkpatrick, who took a breath.
‘Once,’ he began, ‘Reason and Fortune argued over who had rank on the other. Fortune declared that the one who managed to do more would be the better. “See that ploughboy there?” he said to Reason. “Get inside him and if he is better with you than with me, I will stand aside for you anywhere we meet.” So Reason got inside the boy’s head.
‘When the boy felt Reason in his head, he began to think: “Why should I plough field all my life? I could be happy somewhere else, too.” He went hame then and telt his da, who promptly beat him for his impudence and ignorance, since serfs bound to the land cannot just do as they wish.’
‘And with good reason,’ the friar announced, then realized what he had said and subsided, face flaming, amid a welter of laughter.
Good, good, Kirkpatrick thought as he waited for it to die. Now they have forgotten the wee Lord o’ Herdmanston; I hope he takes due advantage.
Hal had gone out and up the spiral of worn stairs, for all jakes were up and there was a servant nearby who could see him on the stairtop. He wanted to go down, for captives were more likely to be down — but there was the chance that the chess-playing lord of Closeburn would not be pushing rooks and pawns in the cellar, but in his own comfortable solar. With Isabel.
He went up, reached the next floor. Left or right — he went right, along a flagged corridor, narrow enough to make him weave along it to avoid the sconces. Well lit, he thought, feeling for the hidden dagger — then recoiling from the hilt as if it stung.
Foolishness. Try anything with a blade in it and they were lost…
He stepped cautiously round a corner — this was the keep at Closeburn, square and solid as a stone block — and came face to face with an astonished servant, his hands full of bowls and a brass ewer. Food and wine, Hal noted swiftly, for those who were behind the door, open enough to spill out yellow light — expensive yellow light, Hal noted, from beeswax candles, which turned the helmet of the guard to gold.
‘Who… whit why in the name o’ God are ye up here?’
The servant was astounded and truculent, his round face indignant. Hal clutched his belly and whimpered.
‘That way, ye jurrocks,’ the servant declared, pointing with his chin back the way Hal had come. ‘An’ dinna you mess the floors afore ye get to it.’
Hal, obedient and scurrying, whipped round and left, his mind racing with the certainty that he had found the Master’s refuge. Behind him, he heard the servant berating the guard to follow Hal and make sure of him; in turn, the guard stolidly defended his remaining where he was, as ordered.
He reached the spiral stair and went down, back to the level of the hall, paused to make sure the servant could no longer see him and darted downwards. Incongruously, he heard only one voice and knew it was Kirkpatrick’s but did not know why — if he had heard it right — the man would be discoursing about ploughboys.
‘The ploughboy,’ Kirkpatrick declared to his rapt audience, ‘whose name was Tam, then ran off, never thinking of what ruin this brought on his da and his brithers, left to pay the price to their liege lord. Tam ran to the nearest toon, for it is kent that if ye can stay hidden in a toon for a year and a day, ye escape the punishment o’ yer rash disregard for God’s plan for the world.’
Kirkpatrick paused, to allow for the head-shaking and tutting of noble and friar.
‘He sleekit himself into work at the castle, though it was of the meanest kind — he became a gong farmer, covered in shite crown to toe every day. But paid well for it — as much as a good latch bowman.’
The crossbow soldiery took the jeers of their comrades well enough, though some sharp words from the top
