The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (13 page)

‘She gave me the slippers,' she heard herself say. ‘Afore she left …'

‘She came back, did she not?' Malise persisted, his mouth close to her ear; his breath smelled like stale milk. ‘Ran to here – who better to shelter the hot-arsed Bruce hoor than Douglas Castle's ain wee hot-arsed trollop, eh? Who was her tirewummin when she was first here.'

‘Never,' Agnes said, feeling the fingers burn. Her head swam and she swore she heard the snake-slither of the dagger leaving the sheath. ‘Came back.'

‘Ye will tell me,' Malise started to say, then something clamped on the back of his neck and jerked him backwards. Loosed, Agnes crumpled in a heap.

At first Malise thought a horse had bit him and struggled, cursing, to get free. Then a second hand swam into view, a huge grimed affair with split nails which snaked out of the dazzle of sun and locked on his throat, instantly cutting off his breathing. Choking, kicking, Malise looked up into the big, round face of Tod's Wattie, boar-eyed with rage.

‘Ye cantrips ye,' he bellowed. ‘I'll maul the stanes with ye, ye bauchlin' wee bastard. I'll dunt ye some manners …'

Desperately, Malise half-fumbled out the dagger and Tod's Wattie spotted it and roared even louder. He shook Malise left and right like a terrier with a rat and Malise felt the world whirl and turn red at the edges. The dagger clattered from his fingers and his vision blackened and and started to narrow.

‘Drag a dirk out on me, is it?' Tod's Wattie shouted and flung Malise away from him. ‘I'll tear aff yer head and shite down yer neck, ye jurrocks.'

‘Here, here – enough of that.'

The new voice brought Tod's Wattie round in a whirl, in time to see one of the castle's garrison come panting up, sweating in his helmet and leather jack. He staggered to a halt and leaned on his spear, looking from one to the other.

‘What's all this?'

Tod's Wattie had turned to help Agnes back on to shaky legs and he felt her hanging on him like a wrung-out dishcloth, which only made him angrier. He waved a free hand at Malise, who was on his hands and knees, retching and whooping in air.

‘He was footerin' with Agnes here,' Tod's Wattie declared. He knew the guard, Androu, was sweet on Agnes, so he was not surprised at the narrow-eyed look the man gave Malise.

‘Was he so?' Androu said, then looked at Agnes. ‘Is this right?'

Agnes nodded and Androu shut one eye and glared grimly with the other, while Malise climbed, wavering, back to his feet.

‘Right you,' Androu said, scooping up the dropped dagger. ‘You and me will see what Tam … the Sergeant … thinks of this.'

‘Mistake,' Malise managed to croak, appalled at the ruin of his voice. He has torn my throat, he thought wildly. I will be dumb.

‘Aye,' said Tod's Wattie viciously. ‘It was a mistake right enough. If ye make it again it will be your last.'

Androu soothed him, then prodded Malise with the spear butt, so that he was forced to weave off. Tod's Wattie, Agnes leaning on his arm, started to help her back to the kitchen.

‘Dog Boy,' she said, but the Dog Boy was gone.

Dog Boy was not having the finest of days. He knew this when he ran in blind panic from the man, sure he could hear the boots scuffing after him. He went back across the Ward and found himself heading for the only safety he knew, the kennels.

He knew it was a mistake when he skidded round the wattle-and-daub corner, into the raised, curious faces of the kennel lads, carrying the dirty straw out to the courtyard. Gib and The Worm stopped and straightened.

‘Blood of Christ,' The Worm declared, snorting snot from his nose. ‘It's yon hawk botherer who was too fine for the like of us.'

Dog Boy saw Gib's pig-faced pout. Almost everything irritated Gib and Dog Boy knew that included him – even more after the showing-up he'd had during the hunt and because Dog Boy had been plucked from the castle kennels to serve with the Lothian lord.

Now he wandered around with only two big dogs to see to, which was not work at all; Gib was convinced it should have been him chosen and that, somehow, Dog Boy had contrived his downfall.

‘What are you seeking?' he demanded, slightly more curious than angry but still careful to sneer. He always sneered these days.

Dog Boy stumbled his tongue on an answer. The sight of them had been cold water on his panic and he realised, suddenly, that the man was nowhere to be seen and almost certainly not pursuing him. He felt confused and embarrassed.

‘N-n-nothing,' he stammered eventually.

‘N-n-nothing,' mimicked Gib in a piping voice, then chuckled nastily. ‘Looking for hawks, probably.'

The Worm hooted at this, a few others joined in and Gib's sneering smile broadened with the audience. Dog Boy kept silent, for he knew Gib's moods well enough. He waited, leaden with inevitability, wanting to back away and unable to move.

‘Well? Answer me, you dropping?'

Answer what? I gave you an answer. Dog Boy wanted to say this but stitched his mouth in a neat, tight hem and said nothing, sick with what he knew would come next.

‘Whore turd,' Gib spat. He liked the sound of it and repeated it, rolling it off his tongue, savouring. The Worm laughed. Everybody laughed. Dog Boy tried one and Gib scowled at him and stepped closer.

‘Think it funny, do you?' he snarled and cuffed Dog Boy hard. The blow stung, but Dog Boy made no sound and only half-ducked. Gib did it again, excited by the first one. It was an act worn by use, the steps in it as set as any dance, and Gib knew it well. He would strike a few more unresisted blows, then he would spring on Dog Boy, wrestle him down, punch him, then bounce on him until he had suitably shown his superiority among all the dog-boy barons. It was what always happened.

Except this time. Gib's second blow met air and his belly met a hard nut of fist that drove the air from him. Then Dog Boy's bare foot slammed into his cods and drove shrieking agony into him.

Dog Boy hardly knew he had done it. He wanted to leap on Gib and beat him to bloody paste, but his nerve broke as Gib, howling, fell to the filthy, dog-turd straw and writhed, curling and uncurling round his clutching hands. Dog Boy turned to run and the rest of the pack sprang on him and bore him down.

There was a confused welter of dust and flying fists, snarling faces and curses. Then came a series of sharp cracks and yelps and the bellow of a deeper voice until Dog Boy, curled into a ragged, bloody ball, found himself hauled up into Malk's scowl, while the others nursed the marks of the whip he had used on them.

Dog Boy wiped his bloody nose. It had been a bad day. He did not think he had ever had a worse one, or that this one could grow more rotten.

He thought to revise the opinion in the dim of the gatehouse arch, where the torch flickered red light on Berner Philippe's face. When he smeared the smile on it, he looked to Dog Boy like one of the devils cavorting on the walls of the church in the nearby town. Gib moaned.

‘Get in,' he ordered and Dog Boy swallowed. The black square gave off a faint stink of grave rot and led to the pit of the pivot bridge, a black maw where the weighted end hung and the great pivots waited to be greased.

Dog Boy felt Gib tremble and started to shake himself; they would climb into the pit with a pot of stinking grease and a torch and, in the tomb dark of it, they would labour, smearing grease on the pivots. It was Berner Phillipe's clever idea for punishment and Dog Boy never even dared point out that he was no longer the Berner's to command.

‘The torch will burn for an hour,' Philippe said, the smile still a nasty streak. ‘I will return in that time – give or take a minute or so. Take care of yon light, or you will be left in the dark.'

They stared into the pit, the dank, cold stink of it reaching out like coils of witch hair, the wood and knotted rope ladder dangling into the dark; Dog Boy sat on the edge, turned gingerly and slithered down. The grease pot was handed to him, then a shivering, weeping Gib thumped down beside him and the torch was flung in.

The trapdoor shut, cutting out the last of the dim, dappled sunlight under the gatehouse arch. With the final shunk, they were alone with torch and the flickering shadows and the huge roll of the bridge weight, locked in place by timber supports shoved through from the walls on either side.

‘Jesu, Jesu, Jesu,' muttered Gib.

Dog Boy looked at his nemesis, at the pinch-face and the tear-streaked cheeks, then handed him one of the two flat sticks. Worldlessly, dry-eyed and shaking, he moved to the steps, climbed to one of the great pivots and began slapping grease on it. He could not believe he had been afraid of leaving Douglas and now could not wait to be quit of the place and all the folk in it.

***

Malise massaged his throat and fumed. Thomas the Sergeant had been no more than an old, scarred man-at-arms, no better in rank than Malise himself, yet he stood there like some belted earl and lectured, finally throwing Malise out of the castle.

Black scowled, Malise collected his horse and tried not to worry about bumping into Tod's Wattie, though he saw the dim grey shapes of the deerhounds in the depth of the stable. An idea came to him.

He went out and found what he sought – the discarded pot of offal, thrown away by that little rat-runt. The flies had found the contents, but nothing else had, and Malise scooped it back into the pot wearing his gauntlets, then fumbled out a small glass bottle, unstoppered it and poured half the contents in, tossing the whole to mix it.

He went back to the stable and gingerly came close to the dogs, making kissing sounds. He laid the pot down, backed away and watched as the nearest hound sniffed, rose up, stretched front, then back and ambled towards the delicious smell, click-clicking across the flags. The other followed. Malise smiled and collected his horse.

Thomas the Sergeant, from the window nook high above, watched Buchan's creature slither towards the gatehouse with his horse. Good riddance, he thought to himself and then shook his head. How had he gotten in? Androu, half-shamed, had thought it was probably because Crozier the Keep had recognised him from before as the Earl of Buchan's man and saw no reason to keep him out.

‘Christ's Wounds,' Thomas declared, watching Malise leave. ‘You would think the year was all good crops and peace. Our lord is at odds with the English again and his enemies are everywhere.'

It had been a moment of crushing despair for Thomas when the Lady had admitted a Bruce into the sacred centre of The Hardy's Douglas, but nothing more than he expected from the woman, who did not have much inkling of what that meant. Nor cared, he thought.

Mind you, he had expected better from the hard-eyed Sientcler lord from Lothian with his blessing of good men -but then another Sientcler, a Templar no less, had stood on the Bruce side and, of course, that high and mighty family had no thought for Douglas then, only themselves.

As if to make a mockery of it all, the Earl of Buchan had arrived at the gates not long after to find Bruce on the stone gatehouse battlements, making sure his red chevronned surcoat was clearly visible. That had been worse still, for the Comyn and Bruce hated each other and none of them, as far as Thomas knew, supported the cause of his master, Sir William.

He had stood beside the Earl of Carrick and the Herdmanston lord, Sir Hal, looking out on the patient riders on mud-spattered horses, armed and righteous and wanting entry. Bruce, Thomas recalled, looked young and petted – more two than twenty-two – and he'd felt a momentary spasm of concern about how the Earl of Carrick would handle this affair.

There had been two others on the wooden battlements -Bruce's sinister wee shadow, the man called Kirkpatrick, who had nodded to the giant called Sim. That yin had needed nothing more than the nod to foot one worn boot into the stirrup of his great crossbow and, scorning the bellyhook, drag the thick string up by brute force and click it into place. Thomas had been impressed by the feat, yet mortally afraid of what might result.

He recalled the riders' pale faces looking up, framed in arming cap bascinets and maille coifs, their great slitted helms tucked under one arm and shields pointedly brought forward.

‘Open in the name of the King,' one had shouted, urging his mud-spattered horse forward a little. Davey Siward, Thomas remembered, with John of Inchmartin behind him – a clutch of Inchmartins had been there, in fact.

‘Which King is that, then?' Bruce had asked. ‘John Balliol, in whose name you attacked me and my father in Carlisle last year? Or Edward of England, whose army you are supposed to be with? I should point out that I am here because Sir William Douglas has also absconded from that army and King Edward is less than pleased.'

Which was as sure a seal on the fate of Douglas as any Thomas had heard and he burned with indignation. Before he could say anything at all in his master's defence, a light, easy voice rolled sonorously up like perfumed smoke.

‘Is that a shivering cross I see? Could that be young Hal Sientcler from Herdmanston?' the Earl of Buchan had asked. Thomas remembered the way the Lothian lord had unconsciously touched that engrailed blue cross on his chest. It was an arrogance, that symbol, signifying a Templar connection and allusions to the Holy Grail, as if only the Sientclers held the secret of it beyond Jesus himself.

‘Sir William of Roslin is also here,' the Lothian lord had replied and Thomas knew he had done it deliberately, hoping a mention of the Auld Templar might unlatch the situation a little. Buchan had sighed a little and shook his head, so that the sweat-damp hair stirred in the bold wind.

‘Well, there it is,' Buchan answered. ‘God's Own Chosen, the Sientclers, together with the Young Himself of Carrick, all descended here to punish a wee woman and her wee sons. Such we have been driven down to, Bruce.'

There had been a clipped, frosted exchange after that, Thomas recalled, but more to score points than for any serious questioning of intent. Buchan presented his Writ from King Edward, permitting him to go home and contain the rebels of Sir Andrew Moray. Bruce had taken his time to study it, letting Buchan savour the fact that he had no more than sixty riders, too few to tackle a castle like this, stuffed to the merlons with Carrick men.