A flurry of thrashing came from his left — a bird had blundered into de Grafton and he had struck out, so Hal moved as swiftly as he dared and slashed left and right, then retreated without, it seemed, hitting anything.
Birds whirred and slapped through the dark, flute-wailing their distress. Something splashed in the fountain and Hal wondered if de Grafton was there; the idea that he was finishing off a wounded Sim almost sprang him recklessly forward, but he fought the urge.
Sweat trickled down him and he found himself in a half-crouch, as if the ground would open up a safe hole and let him crawl in; the scent of flowers and old blood drifted on the night breeze.
The clouds slid off the moon; a silver and black shadow flitted across from his left and the blow almost tore the sword from Hal’s grip, forcing him to dance backwards. He parried once, twice, managed to block a low cut to the knee, and then was alone as de Grafton whirled away like a wraith.
In a moment he was back; the swords clashed and sparks flew, the blades slid together to the hilt and, for an eyeblink, Hal was breath to fetid breath with de Grafton, feeling the sweat heat of him, seeing the mad eyes and the white grin; but then the Templar’s head bobbed like a fighting cock and Hal reeled back from the blow on his forehead. Something seemed to snag his arm and he knew he had been cut.
De Grafton laughed softly.
‘Do you have the writ, I wonder? Or the secret word? Or both? I will cut you a little, then we will find out the truth.’
The pain crept through and Hal felt blood slide, felt the grip of his hand on the hilt grow slack and reinforced it with the left. A bird called throatily and de Grafton was suddenly close, his blade beating down Hal’s own.
‘We will find out,’ he repeated and Hal knew the next strike would be to render him helpless, for de Grafton to truss up and question.
‘It will do you no good,’ Hal panted through the red swirls of pain. ‘The writ and the word are both gone to Ruy Vaz.’
There was a pause and Hal cursed himself. Clever, he thought, gritting through the pain of his arm — give him no excuse to spare you. Yet he could only kneel like a drooping bullock at the slaughter and wait for it.
There was a whirring thump — De Grafton screamed and arched, and then bowed at the waist with the agony of the steel arbalest prong driven like a pickaxe into the join of neck and shoulder; behind, the bloody apparition that was Sim bellowed like a rutting stag, his face sliding with gore.
‘Kill me, would ye? Ye bliddy wee limmer, I will maul the sod wi’ ye.’
De Grafton, reeling and shrieking, gave up trying to reach the prong and started to swing round on the unarmed Sim — Hal’s desperate, lunging two-handed stroke tore his own sword from his weakened grasp, but not before it had cut the Templar from his wounded shoulder almost to his hip. He fell in two directions and his heels drummed.
The birds whirled and called and the heels danced to stillness. Sim wiped the mess on his face into a horror mask of streaks and heaved in a breath; his teeth were bright in the moonlit scarlet of his cheeks.
‘Aye til the fore,’ he panted and Hal blinked from his numbness.
‘I thought he had killed you,’ he said and Sim scowled.
‘The blow hit the arbalest — look, his cut has ruined it entire.’
He prised the weapon from the ruin of De Grafton and flourished it with disgust.
‘He has severed the string and put a bliddy great gash in the stem. I will never find another.’
‘Ye are all bloody,’ Hal managed to say and Sim wiped his gory face again.
‘From the pool — Piculph’s blood. Apart from a dunt on my back, I am unhurt — more than can be said for yerself.’
Hal allowed himself to be led away from the corpses and the stink of blood and exotic blooms. Sim struck up a light, which made them blink, and presented Hal with his sword, worked free from de Grafton’s corpse. Then he examined the arm with a critical eye.
‘Nasty and deep, but the lacings in yer arm are intact, so ye will get the use of it back.’
Hal tried not to let the pain wash him, concentrated on staring at the sword and wondering at the keen edge which had slashed de Grafton to ruin. Too fancy, Rossal had admitted when he had handed the sword over and now Hal saw the extent of it: the Templar cross in the pommel and letters etched down the blade and now outlined clearly in de Grafton’s blood: C+S+S+M+L. Across the hilt was N+D+S+M+L and Hal wondered if there was a Templar left who could tell him what they meant.
Sim searched de Grafton for the key and vanished with it; not long afterwards the place was suddenly filled with the Bon Accord sailors. Hal let Pegy have his head, listened dully to him sending Somhairl and some men to check on the ship while he sat, fired with the agony of his arm and trying not to move at all.
The big Islesman was back all too soon; the ship was foundered and half-sunk at its moorings, the steering whipstaff cut.
‘Baistit,’ Pegy swore and kicked the bloody ruin of de Grafton so that the head lolled sickeningly. ‘He knew he had won afore ye arrived, Sir Hal.’
Hal, crushed with the black dog of it, fell back to studying the sword, half-numbed, watching the gleet and blood crust into the grooves of the letters in a haar of weariness, until light and voices burst over him, driving him up and out of it, as if breaching from a dark pool.
‘Christ betimes,’ said a familiar voice, ‘what a charnel hoose.’
It was an effort to raise his head and stare into the wide grin.
‘Kirkpatrick,’ Hal slurred like a drunk. ‘You are late.’
ISABEL
Thou deckest Thyself with light as if it were a garment and spreadest out the Heavens like a curtain. A sign, Lord, to silence my weeping and I thank You for it. I saw him, through the smoke, through the crowds howling at the shrieks of the burning woman, a dark and strange angel, hooded and careful but the only one not looking at the poor soul writhing on the pyre, but up at me. He knows I saw him, too. O Lord. Joy of joys — a sign. Matters are changing; winds are shifting.
Dog Boy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Berwick Town, Berwick
Ember Day, Feast of the Visitation, May 1314
He should not have been there, in the thronged Marygate. He could hear Jamie say it even as he walked into the crowd of the place. You are not meant to be strolling inside Berwick town, Aleysandir. You are supposed to be observing the folk in it, their movements and their bought truce. You are supposed to be me, Aleysandir — so says the King — and I am too kent a face for you to be waving its like at the English in Berwick.
I am supposed to be kin, Dog Boy answered himself, grimly exultant with the daring of it, though he would never say it to Jamie’s face. My blood is your blood, Jamie Douglas — and your blood would bring you here if you were in my boots.
His boots were clotted with filth of alleys and wynds choked with ‘English sojers’, though the truth of matters was that they were not English at all, but the mesnies of those Scots lords still loyal to the Plantagenet and fearing for the loss of their lands in the north. Unable now to go home, they were lost men, all of their old lives torn from them and only soldiering left. Swaggering and roaring, they lurched through the streets in search of drink and whores and, above all, food.
That was part of what had brought Dog Boy into the town, mingling easily with the other travel-stained, just one more well-worn fighting man with an iron hat, a gambeson that had seen better days and a festoon of hand weapons dangling from belt and back.