The rider came in at a trot and heaved up at the sight of the man standing, waiting, a blade winking faint light in a bar across his chest. He had an iron-rimmed hat on and did not look to be running, which made the rider grin; the horseman was mailed and coiffed and armed, and was a skilled fighter, as were all the royal couriers who wore the jupon with the pards of England. Bigod, the others would be envious of what the capture of the notorious outlaw Sir James Douglas would bring him.
‘Ho,’ he said and slid off the horse, sword out; he did not want to attack on horseback in the slippery, cobbled, confining courtyard and, besides, taking the outlaw on foot would add to the glory of it. God blind me, he thought, he is a big lad all the same.
‘Does tha yield?’ he demanded and had silence back, which unnerved him a little. He thought of calling to the others, the garrison men, but he wanted none to share this moment, so he shrugged and moved in swiftly, striking out.
The ringing clang of it sent a dreadful shock up his arm so that he recoiled, cursing and barely hanging on to his weapon with numbed fingers. Nom de Dieu, did the man have new-fangled plate underneath the padded jack?
The blow took him in the back and flung him face down to the cobbles, where he gasped and spluttered and writhed, all the air driven from him. In that part of his mind not mad with gibber at the thought of having been crippled or killed, he saw the figure he had attacked was a dressed stone cross and that the one who had struck him from behind was vaulting into the saddle of his horse.
Grinning down at him, black beard bright with pearled water, the man reined round and saluted him mockingly.
‘I could have killed ye. Remember that and tell them Aleysandir of Douglas has eluded them this day,’ the man declared loudly. ‘As daring as the Black Sir James — but better looking.’
Then he was gone, in a scrape of iron-shod hooves, a mad laugh and a mist that swirled in where he had been.
The Firth of Lorn
Feast of St Ronan of Locronan, June 1314
Unshaven, snowed with spindrift, hollow-eyed and tired beyond anything they had known, the crew staggered into the merciful wind-dropped morning and called greetings, messages and obscenities.
The bread was sodden and moulded, the cheese so rancid it was thrown over — and Hal realized how bad it had to be for sailors, who would eat almost anything, to contemplate that. They chewed bacon, which was as hard as the peas that went with it, washed it down with water filtered through a linen serk to get rid of the worst in it, while the Señor Glorioso pitched and rolled, heavy with cargo and sodden with leak.
Hal, the sweat rolling off him in drops fat as wren’s eggs, ate nothing and Sim was too busy boaking to try to put anything down the other way.
‘If it holds like this,’ Pegy said cheerfully, looking at the sky, ‘we will be in Oban in a week, or less.’
Hal, the arm throbbing in time to his every heartbeat, heard the false in Pegy’s voice.
‘If it holds?’
Pegy shrugged. The truth was that he did not like the iron and milk sky in every direction and thought they had pierced through to the eye of a vicious smack of weather which would be on them in less than half a day. He did not say any of this, but realized he did not need to to the lord of Herdmanston.
‘How is yourself bearing up?’ he asked instead. ‘Have ye had yer wound seen to this morn?’
Hal grunted, the memory of it sharp as the pain Somhairl had inflicted, his great face, braids swinging round it, a study of lip-chewing concentration as he squeezed the pus from it.
‘Green it was,’ Hal reported, ‘as Sim’s face. I take it there is slim chance of getting to Oban without worry, at this time of year and without weather?’
Pegy frowned and sucked his moustache ends.
‘Weel… we have to try, for there is little choice else, other than to put into some wee island and wait for it to blaw away.’
‘Which might take hours, or days — or weeks,’ Hal replied with a rueful smile, wincing as he adjusted his arm. ‘I have little liking to spend weeks in a driftwood shed, living on crabs and herring. Besides that, we will have failed in our endeavour.’
‘Aye, right enough,’ Pegy answered. ‘Ye are poor company for shed-life, but tak’ heart, my lord, at least the wind blaws away the midgies.’
‘If it blaws us back to where the Bruce waits,’ growled a familiar voice, ‘it can howl all it pleases. Where are we, Pegy?’
The captain turned to Kirkpatrick, his face a sour smear of disapproving.
‘Ye will change that tune when the howling wind makes ye jig to the dance it makes,’ he answered. ‘Besides, we are in the Firth o’ Lorn, coming up to the narrow of it and the last run to Oban. It is no place to be at the mercy of a storm wind.’
‘Christ betimes, this is summer,’ Kirkpatrick exclaimed bitterly. ‘You would think there would be kinder weather.’
Those nearest laughed, none heartier than Somhairl, shaking his head mockingly at Kirkpatrick, who gave him a scarring scowl in return and then turned to Pegy.
‘Clap on all sail, or whatever you mariners shout. Sooner we are back in Oban, sooner this cargo is in the keeping of the King.’
‘And Sim’s innards are back in his belly,’ Hal answered, sitting suddenly as the rush of fever-sweat swamped him.
‘Oh aye,’ Pegy replied, knuckling a forehead dripping as much with spray as sarcasm. ‘Clappin’ on sail, yer lordship, as ordered. Now if only any of us here had a wee idea of what that might actually do to this baist o’ a boat …’
They plodded on, heavy and sodden as a wet cow in pasture, with the wind full from the east, the men singing as much to raise their spirits as any sail.
Hal stayed on deck and up at the beakhead, until his face was stiff and salted, his eyes bloodshot and his brow ridged; Pegy found him there and had Angus and Donald cart him to the shelter for the storm was rising again. Hal already knew this, since his raggled hair was straight out and whipping either side of his face as he stared ahead and Pegy had to shout above the moan and whine of a rising wind.
The sea greened round the stern, washing over the stepped deck that rose up there — the nearest to a castle it had, since there was none at all in the fore — and the sails flapped and ragged, the men struggling to bring them in.
It became clear to everyone, with each man Pegy put to bailing and pumping, that the ship was taking on too much water, was too loaded to ride this out.
‘We are sinking,’ Pegy reported to Kirkpatrick and Hal, blunt as a blow to the temple. ‘We need to make landfall.’
‘Where?’
They were shouting, hanging on to lines, buffeted and shoved by a bulling wind. Pegy bawled out where he thought they were and Kirkpatrick squinted; it had started to rain, squalling and hissing, stippling the wet deck.
‘We are closer, then, to Craignish. We could be up that wee loch to Craignish Castle and the Campbells, who are good friends to our king.’
Pegy closed one eye and contemplated, and then spoke, slow and hesitant.
‘Aye, we are. If the weather and wind stay as they are we could be in Craignish watter as you say. Run up through the sound at Islay and then hope the wind has changed a wee, to beat back north.’
‘I dinna ken much,’ Kirkpatrick roared, ‘but I ken that is a long way for a short cut. Can we not go on as we are, straight up to Craignish, round Scarba?’
‘Shorter, but in this wind …’ Pegy bawled back, though the truth was that he did not think he or the crew could handle this bitch-boat well enough. He did not want to admit it, but it was clear in his seamed face, pebbled with spray and rain.
‘If she is sinking,’ Kirkpatrick persisted, with Gordian blade logic, ‘we have no time for a wee daunder to gawp at the sights, Pegy. Besides — taking her through the Islay Sound as she is risks being driven ashore and those island rats will strip her bare with nae thought for the ruin that will bring our kingdom. Run her truer than that.’