Lion at Bay (28 page)

The warmth of it had vanished in the chill, drookit dawn, when Scabbit Wull tumbled down the ladder from the roof, shivering and damp and full of news.

The enemy was almost at the gates.

Hal shook himself from the memory and the wet from his face, while the rain lisped on the stones; in Scone, Bruce was impatient to be crowned king and Hal wondered how long he would wait for the Stone and the Crowner before going ahead anyway. He might desire all the trappings of the Old Style as he could garner – but, in the end, he would prefer the crown alone on his head.

Even now Hal could not be sure if the secret of the hidden Stone was what had brought Buchan and Dunbar to his door, or revenge for Isabel. The one surety was that it had nothing to do with Malenfaunt’s spurious claims and that he was the string-worked mommet in this.

Not that it mattered much, since the cursed slab of sandstone, painfully and frantically manhandled up the stairs, across the plank bridge and into the keep, now lay in the Yett Hall, covered with a linen cloth and used as a table for Isabel’s accoutrements for treating the wounded. Both it and she would be paraded in triumph if Herdmanston fell, Hal was sure – as sure as he was that the only part of himself that would be paraded would be his head.

Hal followed Sim’s wet-black backside to the hatchway and down the steep stairwell to his own bedroom, stood there for a moment, dripping rain and staring at the shuttered folly of a window with its niched stone seats.

Out there somewhere, Buchan would be waiting, impatient as a wet cat to see his gloating revenge on his wife’s lover. Malenfaunt brooded vengeance on all things Bruce, but Dunbar and the rest were here in a flush of righteous wrath for the killing of Badenoch – and that was yet another reason Hal would never make it from this place alive if it fell.

A shape shifted, dragging him back to the present, where the Dog Boy sat with a bow in one hand, peering out between the shutters to make sure no-one was thinking of scaling up to this great weakness in the wall. He turned and grinned, his face dark with new beard, his forearms muscled from working with the big deerhounds.

‘Aye til the fore, my lord,’ he said and Sim grunted acknowledgement of still being alive over his shoulder as he clattered down the stairs to the hall.

Hal paused a moment and forced a grin in return; the Dog Boy, as dark and saturnine as the day he had come from Douglas when he was twelve, still reminded Hal of the son who lay dead under the stone cross nearby, together with his wife and his father.

A stone cross, he recalled bitterly, about forty paces from the bloody springald, the graves trampled and spoiled by the boots of the
ingeniator
and his minions, who stored their gear in the stone chapel.

Down in the dim of the Big Hall Alehouse Maggie and a handful of mothers – a Jane here and a Bess and a Muriel there, all from nearby cottar huts – cluttered round the meagre fire in the large hearth, singing quiet songs to calm the fretting weans. Isabel was at a nearby truckle bed, checking on the occupant and turned as Hal clacked across the sparsely-rushed flagstones.

‘No worse,’ she declared and then bent and sniffed. ‘Still smells like a privy hole, mark you.’

The figure on the bed chuckled weakly and Hal stepped to where he could see him, dark hair wild and ruffled, lopsided face pale as poor hope and a stain still leaking into the clean wrappings Isabel had only just bound him with.

‘After three days,’ said Ill-Made weakly, ‘twa things stink – fish and an unwanted guest.’

Hal said nothing. Ill-Made had been hit three days ago by a crossbow bolt, a half-spent ricochet, the shaft shattered and the head ragged, which was why he had not died at once. Digging it out of his armpit had cost him more blood than he could afford, all the same and Hal knew, with sick certainty, that he would go to join the four others who had died in the seven days of siege.

There were at least a dozen less of the besieging hundreds who surrounded the tower, most of them casualties of the first day, storming up the stair to where the six foot gap had to be spanned to a lip at the foot of the oak door.

Splintering that door with axe and fire had cost them most of the dozen and others were picked off by Sim and Dog Boy from the roof, until the springald had appeared and the besiegers had drawn back.

It had taken most of a day to assemble the confection of sticks and metal – but after that it had started plunking great, long, fat-headed bolts at the ruined doorway entrance, hoping to smash the grilled yett beyond. Scabbed stonework showed they had not hit it yet, but the tireless whirr and bang of it, the creakingly painful reloading, grated on everyone.

Isobel came up to him, hair tendrilling out from under her headcover, her fingers bloody from ministering to Ill-Made; the springald bolt cracked again, though it was only the noise that jangled everyone for the walls of Herdmanston, at this level, were thick enough for rooms to have been scabbed out of the inside and still leave a forearm’s length of solidity.

‘What will they do now?’ she asked in French, so that his answer would not be understood by Maggie and the others and he could speak freely.

Hal thought of it. The tower was the height of ten tall men and stood on a mound that not only gave it more height but pushed out the approach of any siege tower to where a ramp could not cross from it to the top of Herdmanston, even if one could be built that tall.

There was nowhere for a ladder less than such a height to reach, and no hook-ended ropes could be flung up that far. The garth was plundered and every hut burned – though that usually only meant the thatched roof, for the wattle and daub simply hardened and the few entire stone buildings were left blackened and roofless.

The Herdmanston cellar had beef and barley and oats enough and, providing it kept raining, the stone butts in the undercroft would keep enough water in them. Still, there was only a handful of fighting men in Herdmanston and too many women and weans for a lengthy siege, so sensible enemies, Hal thought, would sit and wait.

Buchan, he knew, was not sensible. None of them out there were, too twisted with their own desires to consider sitting and waiting. So they would assault and the only way was under the arch where the oak door had been and then the iron yett. That was where they would come and only after they had destroyed the yett.

‘At which point they will offer terms,’ Hal told her with a wry smile, ‘it being a breach and honour requiring it. Young Patrick will so insist, being a right wee Arthur for the chivalry.’

She nodded, then stared at him with eyes velvet and liquid as blue pools.

‘I should go,’ she began weakly and he placed a finger on her lips.

‘You will not, lamb,’ he said. ‘The terms are only for the nicety in it and to put a polite face on it for Dunbar. There is no good outcome from our failure to hold here – whatever peace is offered will not be offered to me, nor you.’

She looked round at the bairns, now being shushed by Annie and herded cautiously to the steps winding to the undercroft, where it was safer but dark and dank even with torches, which they could ill afford.

‘The bairns,’ she said with a pleading crack in her voice that Hal had to steel himself against.

‘The children and women might be offered leave,’ he answered, ‘but they would have to scamper far and wide, with nothing to their backs or bellies or over their heads, to be safe from soldiery like this.’

He scrubbed his head and she saw the weary lines of him.

‘Besides,’ he went on, waving a hand at the covered Stone, innocuous as a nun’s shift, ‘there is that. Not only will Buchan have it, to display against Bruce’s kingship, he will have you to show likewise. Is that what you want?’

‘I would die first.’

He felt the tremble in her as he took her, let her lay her head on his breast; he smelled of sweat and leather and woodsmoke, but there was strength in him that she sucked at greedily. Like a lamb at the teat, she thought with a soft smile. It faded when she thought of what would happen.

They would die here.

The sudden explosion of noise, as if someone had flung an entire tin cauldron down a flight steps, flung them apart. Bairns shrieked and there were frantic shouts – cursing, Sim and Hal sprang for the stairwell that led below, to the Yett Hall.

Men milled, armed and ready but Hal saw that no enemy had burst in on them. But the yett was open and flapping like an iron bird wing, part of it bent and twisted; in one corner was a bloody smear on the wall and, at the foot of it, a rag-bundle that slowly leaked darkly into a puddle.

‘Wull the Yett,’ Sim informed no-one in particular, scowling darkly as if Wull had committed some crime.

Hal felt the cold stone of it sink in him. Auld Wull the Yett had been gatekeeper since his father’s time, a recalcitrant, shuffling old misery, never done complaining. Until now, Hal corrected.

It was not hard to work out that the springald had scored a hit, spearing a fat iron-headed shaft in through the ruined doorway and striking the yett somewhere above the lock, where the iron grill had bent but not broken.

The springald shaft had shattered, though, sharding into a lethal spray of wood and metal in whose path had been Wull the Yett, lopsided pot helm on his head, raddled hand clutching a filthy, notched sword whose hilt rattled when he shook it defiantly. The blast of metal and wood had torn him to bloody pats and burst the lock on the yett.

‘Fetch hammers,’ Hal ordered, seeing the ruin of it. ‘And Leckie the Faber,’ he added as men sprang to obey.

For a moment Sim and he stood, pillars of silent grim in the whirl of activity round them. The lock was a ruin and could not be fastened, though the iron yett could still be barricaded shut …

Then they looked at each other.

‘They will have heard it,’ Sim forced out and Hal nodded. He heard the weans being soothed from snot and tears, became aware of the lack of rushes for the floor, torches for the walls, food, arrows …

They would ask for terms now and Hal did not know whether to refuse them, bad or good.

‘You are certain, Master
Ingeniator
?’

Gaultier nodded, while his two assistants, sacking draped over their filthy heads against the rain, bobbed like toys in agreement.

‘Through the arch,’ the Fleming said with smug satisfaction. ‘There was a great bang as it hit the gate – we all heard it.’

And the two toys nodded at him, at each other and then at the dark brooding Malenfaunt. Patrick of Dunbar, round, wisp-moustached face framed by the ringmetal coif, beamed at the Earl of Buchan.

‘Well – a palpable hit, by God. Damaged at least. Something we can claim as a practical breach, eh?’

Buchan, his thinned hair plastered to his bared head, nodded scowling, pouch-eyed agreement; there had been too long spent on this enterprise in his opinion and the reason for it sat cloistered in that hall, no doubt trembling at what might be done to her now. Well might she shake, he thought savagely.

‘A white peace,’ Patrick added pointedly. ‘As we agreed – I look to you, my lord, to hold to this, as agreed.’

Malenfaunt laughed sourly, but said nothing. He seldom spoke these days, the fork of his tongue rendering it almost unintelligible and that, coupled with the deep, banked smoulder in him kept everyone at a distance.

Malise, dripping patiently by the side of his earl, watched Malenfaunt and remembered how he had come off worst in a tourney duel with Bruce and that there had been some scandal over a nunnery in Berwick, which had had to have the occupants scoured out of it and questioned.

Depositions of Devil worship and worse were, even now, being taken and Malenfaunt’s name had come up more than once. Now he was here, banished from the
mesnie
of de Valence, shunned by every
nobile
who at least professed a measure of honour and trying to ingratiate himself into the grace of the Earl of Buchan, whose wayward wife he had once held to ransom.

War, Malise realized, would be a joy to this one for it would put an end to all the legalities threatening to swamp him and might even raise his stature; all knights would be needed soon, when Longshanks rose up off his skinny arse and started to roar like the mangy pard he was.

This time, he knew, there was no question of which side the Buchan and Balliol and Comyn chose – the one which had a Bruce on the opposite.

‘I have my reasons for being here,’ Buchan said sourly, peeling off a sodden gauntlet to wipe his streaming face. ‘Make what white peace ye care – but neither the Countess nor Hal of Herdmanston is included in it. That pair are mine, by God.’

They assembled in the lisping mirr by the stone cross, holding up a shield covered in white linen, turning dark with rain. Two figures came to the arched, flame-blackened doorway, the bigger, badger-bearded one holding a monstrous crossbow. Those who knew Sim and the lord Hal – Dunbar men and those locals who hired out for pay – gave a few friendly shouts, swiftly muffled. Save for one.

‘Holla, Sim Craw – aye til the fore I see.’

The irrepressible Davy Scott from Buccleuch made all the other Scotts laugh, then curl their lip at the glares from the Comyn retinue.

‘Davy Scott – I have heard nothing of ye since … bigod, it would be Roslin Glen. How long since was that?’

‘Three years,’ Scott called back, heedless of the glowers.

‘A rattlin’ time,’ Sim shouted. ‘A rare victory, so I hear.’

‘Aye, man,’ Davy enthused, his beady black eyes bright. ‘There were Kerrs every which where, skitin’ like hares. Ah saw Kerrs frae Cessford an’ Graden an’ others frae ower Teviotdale. A right rout it was.’

‘And the English,’ Sim pointed out wryly. Davy Scott had the grace to look embarrassed for a moment, realizing not only his preoccupation with an old feud but that he was now, to all intents, with the English he had once scattered so delightedly up and down Roslin Glen.

‘Oh aye – them as well.’

Then Sim swept his eyes round until he found the face he sought; still fox-sharp, the eyes as cold and dark as of old, though permanently narrowed now, as if the man squinted. Losing his sight, Sim thought. Then added viciously to himself: God blind you, Malise Bellejambe.