Normal, as if the sky was not falling; Dog Boy ducked into the sweltering roar of the Bitch and his appearance swelled the bellow of it with a joy of noise from the six men who had ridden into Edinburgh with him and now dominated the tavern. The others in it, even the scarred and hard, kept to the sidelines of them.
Shining with sweat and drink, his men thrust a horn beaker of ale into one hand and hailed him loudly; he was their darling now, was the elevated Dog Boy.
‘The Royal Dog Boy he is now,’ bellowed Patrick and the others roared their approval once again, while Troubadour Tam Napier struck up his battered old viel in a tune that set everyone jigging.
Buggerback Geordie shoved forward a woman, dark-eyed and dark-haired, half-moon sweat under the arms of her dress and her smile only partly ruined by some missing teeth. She had the finest pair of breasts Dog Boy had seen in a time and, coyly batting her eyes, she pulled them out for him to see.
‘This is Dame Trapseed,’ said Archie Gower, known to everyone as Sweetmilk, for no reason anyone could fathom. ‘We brings her as Yer Honour’s gift on this night and hopes she elevates ye higher still.’
‘Ma Dame,’ Dog Boy said with a mocking, courtly bow and the laughter rang into the rafters. He went to a bench in the deeper shadows of the flickering tavern and took her on his knee, felt the heat of her through the dress as she wriggled on his lap and giggled at what she was creating underneath her; her breasts were slick.
‘If you do not sit still,’ Parcy Dodd yelled at her across the fug and noise, ‘you will stop our captain thinking entire, as God ordained.’
‘God? Whit has God to do wi’ this?’ demanded the woman, who had fumbled loose the ties on Dog Boy’s braies by feel alone. She adjusted herself, hiked her dress a little and Dog Boy could not believe the skill of her when he felt the heat and wet and knew what she had done.
‘God it was who created Man,’ Parcy went on, ‘and gave him both a pyntle and a keen and cunning mind. In His wisdom though, he ordained that Man could only use one of them at a time.’
The crowd roared and demanded more. Parcy obliged. Dame Trapseed wriggled and bounced a little, so that Dog Boy grunted in the half-dark.
‘Once,’ Parcy began, while folk shushed their neighbours, ‘there was a great rain, a gushing scoosh that some folk thought was the second Flood sent by the Lord.’
Dog Boy, anticpitating a gushing scoosh of his own, tried to concentrate on Parcy.
‘They ran to their priest, a good wee man, who went out into the pour of it all, even down to the banks of the burn, which rose in spate as he begged and pleaded with the Lord. The watter rose up roon his ankles and the reeve came up to ask if he would no’ be better climbin’ oot — the reeve would help. The priest refused, saying that the Lord would save him, and the reeve went on his way.’
The woman was in a rhythm now, a gentle sway, like reeds on a riverbank; Dog Boy gave up with Parcy.
‘The watter rose up to his waist and still the priest begged the Lord to save him. His own sire rode up on a fine horse, all drookit but come to save the wee priest from the flood. But the priest refused, allowing that only the Lord would save him, and the sire rode away as the river spouted on.’
Dog Boy bit the back of the woman’s shoulder, for the place was silent now save for the rhythmic swish of the woman and the sound of her ragged breathing. No head even bothered turning to them, all the same.
‘Finally, the watter was at the priest’s neck and up comes the King himself in a boatie, rowin’ like a bloody raider frae the isles, demanding that the priest save himself by climbin’ in. But the priest refused, claiming that God would save him — and the King swept on doon the river.’
‘What happened?’ demanded an incredulous voice and Parcy paused for the effect, spoiled by the sudden shrill whine of the woman, who felt Dog Boy’s moment arrive.
‘He drooned, of coorse,’ Parcy scathed and the place roared with laughter, drowning out the final noises from Mistress Trapseed.
‘Then he went to Heaven and stood before the Lord God Himself, a wee bit annoyed at not having had his prayers answered, for all he had been a good priest an’ Christian his entire life. God be praised.’
‘For ever and ever,’ the crowd answered in a rushing moth-murmur. Parcy held up one hand to silence them, a master of his art.
‘He carps about havin’ been abandoned. So the good Lord scowls at the wee priest. “I sent ye a reeve, a sire and the King himself to save ye. What more did ye want?”’
The crowd roared and thumped the tables in approval, demanded more; Dame Trapseed slithered off Dog Boy’s lap and he tried to cover himself as best he could, though he had to stand to lace his braies while the woman, sheened and smiling with triumph, turned out of the shadows to Buggerback Geordie and demanded her money.
Buggerback, grinning round his gap of gums, held out his hand to Patrick and had a scowl and a handful of coin, some of which went to the woman.
‘I did not believe she could hump ye in the middle o’ the tavern,’ Patrick complained bitterly to Dog Boy as Geordie went off, jingling the coin in his palm. ‘Ye may be practically nobile these days, but ye are worse than Horse Pyntle Johnnie there, who would swive a knothole. Yer foul, lowly lusts have cost me a pretty penny.’
Dog Boy, greasy with the ale and the moment, grinned back at him and then froze as the tavern door crashed open. Like a cold wind, the Black strode in and surveyed the silence, aware that those who did not know who he was knew what he was.
‘I am truly sorry to spoil yer doings,’ he said, nodding to Dog Boy. ‘But the English are at Berwick and on the move north. Shift yourselves.’
Then he closed the door on a boiling panic.
Kilmartin Glen
At the same time
Push. Drive. Plod. Tug, strain at wheels, eat dust and then eat the mud that sweat made of it on your face. Work the sun up and work it down again. Hal laboured at it, heaving into the grind of it so that his head thundered and his shoulder ached.
At the end, though, he could fall into a patch of scrubby heather, wrap himself in a cloak and sleep without dreaming of Sim, whirling down and round in the maelstrom with his white crown wisped like maidenhair.
In the days after he had fallen in a dead faint, slowly recovering while Kirkpatrick and Campbell dragged the weapons out of the stricken ship and gathered up every wheeled contrivance and pulling beast, Hal had stumbled down to the water’s edge and walked the breathing shingle in hope. Kirkpatrick sent a man with him every time, sometimes Niall, sometimes Somhairl, just to make sure he didn’t fall in another dead faint, this time face down in a rock pool. And Campbell sent one of his own, a cateran called, in the English, Duncan; he had been a drover and so spoke the southron enough to be understood.
They found bodies, but none Hal knew and only one Niall recognized, kneeling beside the fish-eaten, crab-gnawed face and squinting.
‘They are seldom returned by Carry Vaar,’ Duncan lilted, seeing Niall’s distress. ‘She is in her sleeping with them all.’
Hal was torn between finding Sim with his water-bloated face like curdled cheese and not finding him at all. In the end, it was as if he had simply vanished and, by the time they were ready to leave, Hal had to force himself away from the place.
‘It’s a sore loss,’ Kirkpatrick offered awkwardly on the day the Campbells set out to join the King, already having to lever the laden wagons up stony, rutted tracks. Kirkpatrick did not expect an answer; he had seen the yellow-blue ruin of the face and the haunt in the eyes and thought, with a sudden shift of concern, that Hal of Herdmanston was all but done.
The struggle of the next few days made him wonder at the fevered strength in the Lothian lord and, though he wished he could tell the man to slow himself, the truth was that they needed everyone’s strength.