Lion at Bay (15 page)

They halted. Rat-Fur leaned on the enclosure fence, where slurry slopped under a fury of trotters, then turned and grinned his last few ambered teeth at Kirkpatrick.

‘Mabs,’ he said. For a moment Kirkpatrick was confused – then a huge hump of the stinking slurry moved and the biggest sow he had ever seen lumbered forward, making him recoil; the slaughtermen laughed.

‘Mabs,’ said a new voice, ‘smells new blood and wonders if it is tasty.’

Hal and Kirkpatrick whirled and saw a lump of a woman with the biggest set of paps either of them had seen – bigger even, Hal thought, than Alehouse Maggie’s. She had a face like unbaked bread, grey and doughy and shapeless, though the cheeks were red with windchafe and drink. Her eyes were buried raisins.

‘Mabs,’ she repeated, looking fondly at the huge sow, which had now rolled over and was luxuriating in slurry, her line of fat, dangling teats dripping.

‘Queen of the Faerie,’ the woman went on wistfully. ‘Her name and mine.’

‘Ah,’ said Kirkpatrick, struggling. ‘Indeed.’

‘Mistress Maeve,’ Hal interrupted smoothly, giving the woman her full queen’s name and forgetting himself entirely. ‘We come seeking one Lamprecht, whom you ken. D’ye have word for us on his whereaboots?’

Kirkpatrick closed his eyes with the horror of it. The woman’s currants turned from the pig to Hal.

‘Now that is the strangest Italies I have heard spoke,’ she declared. ‘Much similar to Scotch, if me ears are working.’

Her men growled and seemed to loom closer. Kirkpatrick put a hand on the hilt of his dagger.

‘Stand back,’ he warned. ‘My friend has the right of it – we seek only Lamprecht, nothing more.’

‘And the Rood,’ Hal added, so that Kirkpatrick cursed him to silence.

‘Wood?’ queried Mabs.

‘Rood,’ repeated Hal before Kirkpatrick could stop him. ‘That what was in the reliquary ye split between Jop and Lamprecht.’

Christ’s Bones, Kirkpatrick thought, feeling his palm slick on the knife, he has doomed us all.

‘Lamb Prick,’ Mabs said slowly, rolling the name like a gob of greasy spit round her mouth, ‘is not welcome here. Nor that big whoreson dolt Jop, Gog’s malison on him – though I am told he is dead.’

She spat and looked slyly at the pair of them.

‘King’s men took him, or so I was told. Put him to the rack and the iron, or me name is not Queen Maeve. An’’ere yer are,’ she added, gentle as a poisoned kiss, ‘come lookin’ fer me.’

She thinks Jop spilled his all and that we are King’s men, Hal realized and started to deny it. Kirkpatrick, seeing his mouth open and fearing the worst, leaped into the breach of it.

‘Well,’ he managed through clenched teeth. ‘An error. No harm done …’

‘No?’

Kirkpatrick knew, with sick certainty, that there had been a great error and he was the one who had made it. Lamprecht was nowhere near here and Mabs would not want folk walking out of Sty Lane who could chain Jop and Lamprecht, Mabs and Sty Lane and robbery of the King’s Treasury in one shackle.

She leaned against the fetid timbers of the sty and gazed fondly at the giant sow.

‘Yes, yes,’ she crooned. ‘You are a greedy girl …’

Her giggle, strangely young and girlish, was chopped short by a thin, high whistle from Kirkpatrick as he sprang forward and Mabs reeled back. Rat-Fur slithered to put her behind him – but Kirkpatrick’s blow was no slaughterman’s cut, it was the flick of a killer.

Rat-Fur staggered away, choking and holding his throat, a thin jetting of blood forcing itself between the clench of both his hands. Both Mabs were squealing as loudly as each other and men were shouting – one of the big-hatted ones ran at Hal and he slashed the air, forcing the man to a skidding halt. For a few steps Hal danced awkwardly with him, slithering in the clotted mud, then the man bored in, a great slack, foolish grin splitting the tangled hair of his face.

Hal was no knife fighter, but he knew a few tricks. He raised his arm as if to strike, then lashed out with his foot, feeling it collide high up on the man’s thigh. It missed his cods, but the pain jolted him, deadened the leg so that he fell and then lay, one hand raised like a knight demanding ransom for yielding.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I have daughters …’

Hal stopped, the dagger poised. The man got on one knee, then lashed with his free hand, a sharp knuckle that slammed into Hal’s already damaged ribs. The pain whirled through him like fire, a blinding shriek that took him to his knees in the shite; he heard the man snarl, saw the long butcher knife winking.

Stupid, he thought. Should have just killed him.

Then there was a sudden spill of bodies, men with the lower part of their faces covered, wielding long swords and the wrists that knew how to use them. The man facing Hal half-turned, gave a short scream and tried to run; the better portion of a good blade flashed into his ribs, spraying gore as it came. As he fell away, the man holding the blade let it slide out with a soft suck and grinned with his eyes – even without the mask, Hal knew Edward Bruce.

The men brought by Kirkpatrick’s whistle came up fast and hard, muffled as much against the stink as recognition. There was a flurry of cuts and screaming, then Hal turned to see that Mabs, trembling and on her knees, was the only one left; only she and the pigs squealed in terror now.

‘God disposes,’ Kirkpatrick said to Mabs. ‘How fast the world turns, eh Mabs – one minute you are planning the diet of your pet. The next, you ARE the diet of your pet.’

‘Wait,’ said Mabs, looking from Kirkpatrick to Hal and then at the rest of the grim, masked men who had appeared. Armed like King’s men, she thought, but hidden against recognition, so not them. If not Longshanks, then there was a chance to deal …

‘Wait? For what? Friendship? Something deeper?’

‘Enough,’ growled the muffled voice of Edward. ‘This is no place to be toyin’ with your food, man. Eat the porker, or leave her on yer plate.’

Men laughed as Mabs whimpered and appealed to the one man who seemed detached and unconcerned.

‘The Rood. The Rood, lord,’ she said. Hal, nursing his ribs, was taken by surprise; he had been watching the giant sow, seeing her unconcerned and luxuriating.
Sae cantie as a sou in glaur
– happy as a pig in muck. It had been a phrase he thought he had understood until now, when he had seen a sow of this size luxuriating in her filth.

Mabs’ desperation jerked him from the reverie, stunned him with a shock like cold water as to how he had been standing in the midst of all this, daydreaming.

‘The Rood,’ he repeated and Mabs leaped on it, worried it with feverish hope.

‘Jop and Lamb Prick had it, sir,’ Mabs wheezed, nodding furiously in agreement with her own words. ‘I gave Lamb Prick the little bitty wood in the thing, sir, of being more account to him than me. Jop wanted more and persuaded Lamb Prick to steal the cross with the stones. A murrain on them both.’

Hal blinked as the words sank in like rain on a desert. He tried to straighten, felt something tear and gasped, so that Kirkpatrick turned to him, frowning.

‘Is that all of it?’ Hal managed.

Her head threatened to nod itself from her shoulders, her huge breasts shook.

‘Round his neck on a string. It is no more than finger-length, lord.’

Kirkpatrick and Hal exchanged glances. It was good to have matters confirmed, but no joy to be reminded that it had been under their noses at the start …

‘Faugh,’ said Edward Bruce. ‘This place stinks and is dangerous – time we were away.’

Mabs saw the look in Kirkpatrick’s eye.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Wai –uurgh.’

It was done before anyone could blink – a short thrust and a heave, enough to knock her off-balance. She rolled like a boulder through the flimsy sty fence right to the trotters of her surprised namesake, still squealing.

The fresh blood hit the sow’s nostrils, and all the others raised their snouts, while Mabs struggled with the mud, floundering on all fours like a new and even bigger sow.

They left, Hal trying to blot his ears to the sound of the pleading shrieks, then the grunts; he could not tell whether they came from an agonized Mabs or from the enthusiasm of chewing pigs.

Cantie as a sou in glaur
, he thought, then shivered, glad of the rain sluicing on him like cleansing balm and outside air to breathe.

Nunnery of the Blessed Saint Augustine, Elcho, Perth

Feast of Saint Mauritius, the martyred Knight, February, 1305

God turned his hand over and changed the weather. When Sister Mary Margaret woke beside Bets the milcher, she heard the pea-rattle of the rain and did not want to leave the warm snuggle of her charge, the cow. But it was the water in her bladder that had roused her, so that she cursed, then rose up, shivering and offering apologies to God for the blasphemy.

Bets stirred and Sister Mary Margaret, hunched and stiff, rubbed the curled nap between the horns; she much preferred sleeping here in the byre than her cell and, though the others carped about her appearance and her smell, she did not care.

Did she moan about the stink of paints and the smears on their habits? She did not. Her skill lay with beasts and not pictures on walls and she offered it up to the glory of God daily.

The wind and hissing rain smacked her as she opened the byre door and there was a moment when she blenched, considered hiking her clothes up and doing it there in the warm straw – after all, the cow did. Who would know that she had not scampered all the way to the privy?

God would know. She took a deep breath as if to dive into a pool – I have not done that since I was a wee girlie, she thought incongruously, just as she ran into a door.

Stunned, she recoiled, bewildered, for there was no door where she moved – she knew her way round Elcho blindfold. The door moved and she caught her breath at the great wet bulk of shield that towered over her. The owner flicked his massive mailled shoulders and slithered the shield on to his back with a hiss that drowned the rain, then he stuck one huge, armoured hand down to her.

‘Ye are all wet, sitting in the rain, Sister. Rise up.’

Sister Mary Margaret was hauled upright; she was aware of being wet and that some of it was warm, so she had pished herself after all.

‘My name is Sir William Wallace,’ the man said, smiling like a wolf. ‘I seek a wummin and a particular yin among so many. A countess no less. Can you assist me, in the loving name of Christ?’

Sister Mary Margaret had no words. Behind the giant, she saw other men and, in the midst of them, a slight dripping figure, flinging an axe blade stare at her. A woman, come with armed men – the prioress will needs be informed, she thought …

‘I am sure you can assist me, Sister,’ the giant said, cutting through the mad whirl of her thoughts and Sister Mary Margaret realized, suddenly, that the days of the prioress were probably over.

Her hand flew to her mouth and smothered the sudden, savage scream – but she managed to point to where the Countess had been quartered. The giant grinned.

‘
Pax vobiscum
, Sister,’ he said and left so suddenly that Sister Mary Margaret sat down with a squelch. Relief washed her like the rain.

In the cloistered heart of Elcho, the sisters were running and shrieking as men spilled in, reeking of sweat and old blood, woodsmoke and feral lust. The prioress stood, her heart thundering like a mad bird, and stretched out her arms protectively, just as the Countess of Buchan came up behind her.

‘Stay behind me, Countess,’ she declared, throwing out her chest as a giant stepped forward, huge sword in one grimed fist and a twisted grin on his face. ‘God will save us.’

‘You have been called many things, Will Wallace, but never God Himself before,’ the Countess declared and pushed past the astounded prioress, who was shocked to see the great ogre with the sword take the Countess’ hand, delicate as any courtier and raise it to the mad tangle of beard.

A small figure emerged from behind the giant Wallace and the smiling Countess recognized her tirewoman Ada beneath the sodden hood of the cloak, embracing her.

Isabel turned to the pale, open-mouthed prioress and felt a wash of sympathy for what she had brought down on them. She quelled the feeling, ruthless as those who hunted nuns and food and drink through the sacred shadows of Elcho. Here was a wee wummin who had taken money from her husband to hold her as prisoner in the name of God.

‘Brace yourself,’ she said viciously to the prioress. ‘
Victoria veritatis est caritas –
the victory of truth is love.’

Outside, Sister Mary Margaret found a hand taloned on her shoulder and lifting her from the soaked ground. An eldritch face, scarred and gleaming wet, thrust itself at her, grinning, the broken nose dripping.

‘You will catch a chill, quine,’ Lang Jack declared and glanced at the open door of the byre. ‘We mun get you in the dry and oot of those wet clothes.’

Now Sister Mary Margaret screamed.

The Bruce House, London

The same night

The waxed paper windows turned the room to amber twilight even at midday and let in both the cold and the clamour from the Grass and Stocks markets; Hal could even hear the whine of the beggars on the steps of St Edmund’s Garcherche opposite and, naked to the waist, wished he could move closer to the brazier, a glowing comfort perched on a slate slab on the wooden floor.

The physician finished bandaging Hal’s ribs, dipping his fingers in a basin and drying them fastidiously on a clean linen square as he turned to Bruce.

‘Your man,’ he said, haughty and dismissive, ‘has re-opened an old wound. I have fastened it and will give him a salve and two mole’s feet, for protection against infection in the bone.’

He paused, then looked steadily at the Earl, ignoring Hal’s sullen scowl at the term ‘your man’.

‘In your own case, the tooth is healing nicely and your tongue is undamaged,’ he said. What was unsaid crouched between them like a rat on a corpse. Edward Bruce, oblivious to the exchange, laughed nastily and clapped his brother hard on the shoulder.