Harry turns around and vomits onto the flagstones.
Rabbie is keening, half in pain, half in fury, touching the ragged, bloody edge of what remains of his right ear. Montagu steps between him and the boy’s limp form. ‘Don’t touch him,’ Montagu growls. ‘We need him alive.’ Montagu turns towards Harry, and in the faltering torchlight Harry can see dark, bloody scratches down Montagu’s cheek and neck from the boy. And something small and nasty in Harry thinks good for you to the Scottish boy. Good for you.
Montagu is suddenly in Harry’s face. ‘Got a problem?’ he says, quiet and threatening.
‘This … it’s not chivalry,’ Harry stutters, his hand sweeping to encompass the death and desecration of the hall.
Montagu snorts at him. ‘You really think kingdoms are maintained by chivalry?’ Then he points to the boy. ‘Tie him up, gag him, and throw him in the boat.’
They’re out of Galloway Forest by dawn, riding hard southeast, all of them exhausted when they reach the main road towards the border and can pull the horses up into a walk. The boy is thrown over a spare palfrey like a sack of oats, bound tightly under the horse’s stomach so he can’t escape. Harry can’t help glancing back at him. He’s so thin, his clothes almost rags on him. What of his face isn’t pressed to the horse’s side is covered by filthy, matted dark hair, and he either stays unconscious or fakes it, because he doesn’t stir once.
Harry wants to see his face. Wants to understand this danger to England that they’ve ridden clear across the country to retrieve.
While he is staring, Montagu rides up next to him. Harry is too tired to school his expression into anything other than disapproval.
Montagu rolls his eyes and sighs. ‘What do you think happened at Halidon Hill, Harry?’
Harry’s brow furrows. ‘I don’t understand—’
‘No, you don’t,’ Montagu says. ‘Do you think we jousted sweetly with the Scots? Do you think it was like a mêlée?’
Harry blinks. War was like a mêlée. Wasn’t it? That’s why they had them to start off each tournament. Ten to twelve a side fake battles, blunt swords. So they could know what to do in real ones.
He’s about to respond when Montagu cuts him off. ‘We instructed our archers to shoot the nobles first. Set the longbows up on top of the hill where they could send arrows down like hail. We paid off Scottish lords to turn traitor, and tell us their order of battle. De Beaumont got himself a castle out of it. We had spies in their camp reporting to us.’
‘That’s horrible,’ Harry says.
‘And they had spies in ours.’ Montagu smiles. ‘Well, until I killed them.’
‘I don’t—’
‘It’s war, Harry. Pray it never comes to the West Country.’ Montagu stretches, putting a hand to his lower back. ‘The best thing you can do with war is win it as quickly and conclusively as possible. That is what we did.’
‘Who is he?’ Harry asks. He doesn’t even need to specify who he’s talking about. Montagu immediately glances over at the boy.
‘He’s insurance,’ he responds carefully, after a moment. He glances back at Harry and takes in his look of hurt and confusion.
‘But he’s just a boy,’ Harry says.
‘As are you,’ Montagu growls. ‘Look at him. You can see his bones. They wouldn’t have lasted the winter in that keep. They’d have starved. They suffered less with us. And the boy may even live to see a few more years.’
Harry thinks back to the woman’s dress, finer than any his mother had ever owned. Of drops of blood on turquoise velvet. Of holes where cloth-of-gold embroidery and jewels might once have been.
‘Who were they?’ he asks.
‘They’re what happens when power moves on and leaves you behind, m’boy,’ Montagu says. ‘Never forget that.’ Then the Baron nudges his horse into a trot, to resume his place at the head of their little party. As he passes Rabbie, bandaged and sullen, he squeezes the man’s shoulder in reassurance.
The Scottish boy wakes up as the day grows hotter, a short while before they’re due to rendezvous with Balliol and his wagons. He thrashes in his bonds, shouting as loudly as he can through the gag. It doesn’t come out as anything more than unintelligible keening, but passers-by on the road begin to look at them.
Montagu draws his sword and the passers-by quickly find other things to stare at.
A few hours later, the boy has shouted himself out. His voice is shredded, nothing but angry growls and grunts coming from him, but he watches all of them as if cataloguing them for weaknesses he will exploit as soon as he can escape his bonds. His face through the lank hair is thin, wolfish, with fierce, pale eyes and sharp cheekbones.
When Balliol turns north to Galloway, towards his new lands, he takes their two Scottish guides but leaves a small horse-cart behind, its strange, boxy load covered in canvas. Montagu pulls their little group off the road behind a nearby copse. Then he nods to Crocker and Ufford. They cut the boy off the palfrey and manhandle him towards the cart. Though the boy must be exhausted, he still tries to fight, kicking his bound feet and trying to hit his captors with his head. Harry winces as he sees Rabbie drop the boy on the ground and boot him in the guts a few times.
Then Crocker throws the canvas off the thing on the cart.
Harry gasps.
It’s a cage. A barred steel cage, the sort he’s seen in Exeter Market transporting bears to the baiting pit. There are even shallow gouges in the metal bars, marks of claws or teeth or maybe both. Rabbie opens its door and they pick up the boy, still bound, and slam
