‘God be praised,’ Hal said, to protect Sim from his own blasphemy.
‘For ever and ever — did yon Piculph come back?’
‘He did not,’ Hal answered. ‘Did ye spy out the ship?’
‘I did,’ Sim said, slurping; he paused and belched again. ‘Yon fightin’ chooks is fightin’ back … It is a good swim out in the bay,’ he went on, ‘unless we can find a wee boatie.’
They mulled this in silence, for neither of them swam well; none of the crew of the Bon Accord did, apart from Niall, who was called Silkie — half-man, half-seal — because he could dog paddle a bit.
‘There is not a sign of any of yon fancy Order Knights with the green crosses, either on board the Bon Accord, or anywhere in the town,’ Sim offered as a ribbon of hope. ‘Nor at yon Doña’s house on the hill.’
‘You went there? That was reckless.’
‘Not close,’ Sim soothed. ‘But we need to ken where it lies.’
Which was true enough, though Hal’s feathers were not smoothed by the lack of presence of the Alcántara men; it could be that they had slithered out of maille and marking surcotes, the better to spy out the pair they sought. Sim, frowning, considered this and reluctantly admitted, between belches, that it might be true, though he had thought any in the Holy Orders considered it a sin to be out of their garb as well as their cloistered commanderie.
The Order of Alcántara, Hal pointed out, was not like the Poor Knights and Sim had also to admit the truth of that.
‘Still,’ he added. ‘We can hardly bide here like a millstone. The crew are in that house, according to Piculph, and needs be freed.’
‘I would prefer to know more of what is also in that house. Piculph would answer it — if we knew where he was,’ Hal said.
‘Fled,’ Sim declared. ‘You said he was doing so when we stumbled on him.’
Their mood matching the gloom, they sat until darkness fell and slid away from the tavern into the drunken streets, moving carefully until the crowds thinned and straggled to an end and the streets grew steep and broad. Then Sim’s hand halted Hal.
‘That’s the place.’
It was a walled edifice, menacingly dark, which could mean that it was empty or a trap. Hal heaved in a deep breath and brought the hidden sword out from under his ragged robes. Sim, frowning at the gurgle in his belly, shouldered the bulk of the wrapped arbalest and brought out his knife, which was much better for close work.
They looked at each other, sweat-gleamed faces tense and ghostly in the dark.
‘Aye til the fore,’ Sim muttered with a grim tightening of lips and Hal shouldered into the shadows under the gate.
They moved into the hot closet of a walled garden, thick with scent and singing with night insects, both strange to Hal’s senses. Stranger still was the low gurgle, like a rain-washed drain in an Edinburgh wynd — and a groan which whirled him round in alarm, squinting into the silvered moonlight shadows.
‘Sim?’
There was another low groan and the rustle of cloth.
‘Are ye hurt, man?’
He pitched his second question more urgently than the first whispered hiss, and moved towards the groans, in time to hear an ugly wet sound; the rushing gush of stink made him reel.
‘Christ and His saints,’ Sim moaned. ‘The flux …’
Greed and two bowls of spiced chicken stew, Hal thought, and had to grit his teeth to keep from bellowing it. There were more sounds and Hal moved upwind a little.
‘Ah, bigod …’
‘Whisht,’ Hal hissed, but Sim, a squatting shadow in the dim with a face pale as moonlight, waved a hand.
‘If this has not brought a dozen guards then the place is empty,’ he grunted, which made enough sense for Hal to relax a little.
‘Go on,’ Sim added. ‘I’ll follow in a breath or two.’
Hal hestitated, but only briefly, for he needed a breath or two that did not have Sim’s innards in it. He moved through the neat undergrowth; no useful plants here, only decorative ones, which was a waste of growing land as far as Hal was concerned. The whirr and flap of wings made him pause, half-crouched in the bulked shadow of a building dominated by a tall, circular tower.
The double doors of the place were open, the inside dark as the Earl of Hell’s yett hall; Hal, sweating and icy, crept in, rolling his feet and wincing at every careless clack of booted sole on tiled floor.
The only light came from the moon and the faintest of pale glows ahead, but Hal’s eyes were dark-adapted now and made out the shape of arch and doorway. Cellar, he thought. That was where Piculph had said the crew of the Bon Accord were kept, so he looked for a way that led downward.
He scouted the edge of the room, slow and cat-wary, avoiding candlestand and statue, chair and bench, until he came to stairs leading down. Four steps and he was at a door, which yielded a fingerlength before the key-lock rattled it to a halt; a voice froze the blood in Hal.
‘Fit’s that thaur?’
Pegy’s northern Braid, faint and muffled through the thick timber of the door, permitted Hal to breathe again. He told Pegy who he was and heard the excited rush of murmurs from the others, but found that the door was thick, stout and locked. According to Pegy, Doña Beatriz had the key. Fretting and sweating, he promised them he would return and slid back into the shadows.
No guards; no sign of life. Perhaps, Hal thought, Piculph has done his work after all — there was a whirring sound and he ducked instinctively, throwing himself flat on the tiles. After a moment, when nothing else happened, he climbed back to a low crouch, heard a soft fluting call and perched, bewildered.
Light flared like a blast of icy breath and bobbed through the open door, a torch held in Sim’s big hand, so that Hal, blinking blindly into it, knew he was caught in a half-crouch, sword ready.
‘Whit why are ye hunkered there?’ Sim boomed and Hal sprang up.
‘Whisht, you — I heard something.’
Sim peered round, raising the sconce torch higher.
‘There is nobody …’ he began, then the whirr and the soft call came again, making Hal cry out.
‘Cooshie doos,’ Sim exclaimed with a bark of laughter. ‘Ye are hiding from the attentions o’ some cooshie doos.’
Hal realized Sim was right and that the high-roofed place had doves in it, though the next thought that struck him was where had they come from? He was too embarrassed to mention that as he straightened up and gave Sim a vicious glance.
‘Yer arse back in order?’ he demanded and Sim scowled, angry and ashamed.
‘For the minute,’ he admitted, ‘though I am black-affronted.’
‘Black-behinded as well, I am sure.’
Sim’s reply was interrupted by a dove which fluttered down, tame as a lap dog, and strutted into the torchlight in a hopeful search for food.
‘Cooshie doo,’ he declared with a triumphant grin. Hal scowled back. Doves did not fly in the dark normally, which he mentioned. Nor did they spontaneously bleed, which brought Sim’s head round to study the bird more carefully; it hopped and flapped up but there was time enough to see the pink staining on one wingtip.
Then, in the lip of light expanded by Sim holding up the torch at arm’s length, they both saw the limp white hand beyond.
Doña Beatriz had died quickly, struck from behind by a single blow from a blade that had sliced upwards off her shoulderblades and cracked open her skull; her hair lay like dead wet snakes in the spreading darkness of blood.
‘Backhand stroke wi’ a broadsword,’ Sim growled, waving away the flies greedy for gleet. ‘She was running, which spoiled the aim — planned to swipe her head off her neck but missed.’