Crocker pulls down the canvas again and the boy is out of sight. Would be out of mind entirely but for the low, animalistic hisses and growls that come from inside the cage; the dull ringing of the bars as the boy slams his body into them.
Montagu signals that they should break for dinner. The rest of them slide off their horses, glad of the rest.
There’s little food other than hard biscuit and dried beef, but they’d all had the presence of mind to fill their skeins with the lake’s cool water before they left. Harry catches Montagu’s eye and nods towards the boy, holding up his skein and a bit of biscuit.
Montagu shakes his head.
‘But—’ Harry begins. The day is sweltering. The Scottish midges are back in full force as Montagu’s dozen Galloway raiders wend their way south through the Lowlands, and it must be hotter than an oven under the thick canvas of the cage. ‘I thought we were trying to keep him alive.’
Rabbie snorts. ‘That rabid dog? He’s too mean to die.’
Montagu gazes at him, serious. There’s an air of disappointment in his eyes, as if he expected better of Harry. As if Harry should understand. ‘You take that gag off, or untie him enough that he can get it off by himself, and he’ll be howling in Scots that we’re English knights who killed his family and took him prisoner. We’re still a day’s travel from English soil. You want to fight our entire way back?’
Harry looks down, ashamed. He hates what they’ve done, the ceaseless cruelty of it, but he can’t fault Montagu’s operational logic. He never can. Everything Montagu says makes perfect, terrible sense.
Harry falls in towards the rear of the group as they head back down the road. The cage sways in front of him, and along with the smell of horse and steel there’s the sharp tang of human urine, and the stomach-churning scent of shit. I’m sorry, Harry whispers. He racks his brain for a way to give their young prisoner some dignity, but he can’t think of anything that wouldn’t compromise them all.
They stop for the night on the far side of a stand of trees, near a stream. There’s been little traffic on the road. As word of Scotland’s rout at Halidon Hill spreads, it’s as if both kingdoms are holding their breath, waiting to see what will happen. These Lowlands have passed back and forth between Scottish and English rulership for years, and the people know to keep their heads down, to mind their business while borders shift around them.
Montagu decides they can risk a fire. The cart with its cage is drawn up at the edge of camp, close enough to be in the fire’s light, but not its warmth. Rabbie has left the sheet over the cage. Harry can hear the occasional small scuffling sound from inside. It’s easy to forget there’s a human in there, a boy only a few years younger than Harry.
Seemingly, the rest of the men have. They’re busy with the cask of beer Crocker bought from a passing merchant, and the chickens they’re plucking to roast over the fire. They’re giving less attention to the prisoner than they would a caged dog, Harry thinks. At least the dog would get tossed a bone or two.
Harry feels sick. He gets up, ostensibly to fetch his horse some water from the stream. The stench of piss is overwhelming as he approaches the cage. Trapped heat still radiates from under the canvas, fermenting the nauseating stink within. It must be unbearable inside.
Harry whispers an apology to his palfrey as he steals her water bucket and strides down to the stream. He fills it, and his skin, with the cool water.
When he approaches the cage again, he circles around it from the rear, away from the fire. He reaches up and flips the back of the canvas sheet over the top. He immediately has to cover his mouth and nose as the fetid smell assaults him. The boy had been near the bars; he scuttles away on his elbows and knees, his hands and ankles still bound, and turns to glare at him from the far side of the cage. All Harry can see in the dim shadows is a curtain of dark hair and pale wolf’s eyes glinting in the dark.
Harry shivers, despite himself. The boy is every cautionary story he’s been told of Scottish savagery, of Lowland bandits burning and raping their way over the border; of Highland tribes sweeping down like a barbarian tide to kill everything in their path.
But then, he thinks, what tales do the Scots tell of them? Pale monsters cased in steel who kill defenceless women and old men; who leave children to starve in their own filth.
Harry sticks his water skin through the bars. The Scottish boy flinches further back and hisses at him. ‘Here,’ Harry says in English. ‘I don’t have the key, but I can give you water to drink through the gag. You need to come closer, though.’
The boy glares at him uncomprehendingly, and Harry feels a hot blush of shame. He’d just switched automatically to the native, vulgar tongue, as if he were talking to a peasant at Dartington Manor. But they are a long way from Devon, and nobody speaks English here. Harry has not one word of Scots. For lack of anything better to try, he switches back into French, with no expectation of success.
But the boy is cocking his head at him, as if he understands.
‘I swear it’s not poisoned,’ Harry says, waggling the skin.
The boy snorts, as if disappointed that Harry’s offering won’t finish the job.
But the boy inches closer.
‘You understand French?’ Harry asks.
The boy is still out of Harry’s reach, but close enough for Harry
