Bruce frowned, the lip pouted and the chin thrust out, so that the shadows turned his broad-chinned face to a brief, flickering devil’s mask – then he moved and the illusion shattered; he smiled.
‘I am a Scot, when all said and done. And a gentilhomme of your community of the realm, bishop,’ he answered smoothly, then plucked the prelate’s glass from his fat, beringed fingers and drained it, a lopsided grin on his face.
‘Besides – you have your fighting bear,’ he answered. ‘You need, perhaps, someone to point him in the right direction. To point you all in the right direction.’
Wishart closed one speculative eye, reached out and took the glass back from Bruce with an irritated gesture.
‘And where would that be, young Carrick?’
‘Scone,’ Bruce declared. ‘Kick England’s Justiciar, Ormsby, up the arse, the same way we did Heselrig.’
Hal heard the ‘we’ and saw that Wishart had as well, but the bishop did not even try to correct Bruce. Instead he smiled and Hal was sure some subtle message passed between the pair.
‘Aye,’ Wishart said speculatively. ‘Not a bad choice. To make sure of… matters. I will put it to the Wallace.’
He lifted the empty glass in a toast to Bruce, who acknowledged it with a nod, then smiled a shark-show of teeth at Hal.
Chapter Three
Scone Priory
Feast of Saints Castus and Aemilius, martyrs – May, 1297
Dusk was hurrying on and dark clipping its heels, so that the heads and shoulders were stained black against the flames. Hal could hear the guttural snarls and spits of them, as fired as the sparks that flew; it had been a long time since he had heard such a large crowd of men all speaking Lowland and it brought back ugly memories of last year, when he and others had padded, cat-cautious and sick to their stomachs, in the fester that was Berwick after the English had gone.
The cooked-meat smells didn’t help, for Hal knew the sweet, rich smell had nothing to do with food.
They came up through the huddle of wattle and daub that clustered round the priory like shellfish on a rock, crashing through the backland courts and the head riggs, splintering crude privy shelters, tossing torches, their own yelling drowned by the screams of the fleeing.
No looting or rape until the fighting is done, Wallace had said before they had set off, and Bruce, frowning at the impudence of the man, had been forced to agree, since the host was clearly his alone to command. At least there was no Buchan salting the wound of it – he was gone into his own lands, ostensibly to prevent Moray from joining with Wallace and managing to look the other way at the crucial moment.
Hal strode alongside outlaw roughs from all over Ayrshire, kerns and caterans from north of The Mounth, all here for love of this giant called Wallace and what he could do. Hal saw him stride up the rutted track between the mean houses, blood-dyed with flames, surrounded by whirling sparks.
He had a long tunic and a belted surcoat over that, no helmet and bare legs and feet; he was hardly different from the wild men he led save that he was head and shoulders above the tallest and carried a hand-and-a-half, a sword most men would have clutched in two fists but which he carried in one.
Hal and Sim and the Herdmanston men were on foot for there was little point in trying to plooter through flames and back courts on horses, but Bruce and his Carrick men were mounted, trying to force through the mob up the main track to Scone priory. Hal heard him yelling ‘A Bruce, a Bruce,’ to try to keep his men from spilling off the road into the foundering tangle on either side.
‘Christ save us,’ Sim Craw panted, shouldering some dark shape away from him with a curse. ‘What a mob. An army, bigod? A sorry rabble – the English will scatter this like chooks in a yard, first chance they get.’
It was true, but the English had no army here, only fleeing clerks, monks who wished they had never taken Edward’s offer of Scottish prebenderies and a few soldiers. There were screams ahead and Hal saw Wallace’s head come up, like a hound licking scent from the air. A snarling maurauder, wool cloak rolled up round his neck like a ruff, leaped a rickety fence, the woman he was chasing stumbling over her skirts and shrieking, he laughing with the mad joy of it.
Wallace never seemed to pause, but shot out his free hand and caught the man by the thick wool plaid, hauling him clean off his feet to dangle like a scruff-held cat, his toes scraping the road as Wallace walked steadily along.
‘I warned ye,’ Wallace growled into the man’s face and, in the light of the flames, Hal could see the utter terror burned into the man’s eyes. Then Wallace hurled him away like an apple core, striding on as if nothing had barred his way.
‘He’s feeling a wee bit black-bilious,’ Sim Craw offered, but Hal never had a chance to reply, for the first serious resistance burst on them.
They roared out from the great dark bulk of the stone priory, a handful of desperately charging soldiers, the sometime-men hired to help collect taxes or bring in accused. They had padded jacks, heater shields, spears and all the skills of one-armed cripples. They were local men, who did not want to fight at all and were not English – save the one who led them, waving a sword and shouting; Hal couldn’t hear what he said.
Surprise worked for them, all the same; they hit the leading straggle of Wallace men, who scattered away from them, too late. One, turning to run, was skewered and fell, screaming. The sword-armed leader hacked at another, who leaped away, cursing.
Wallace ploughed into them as if he was iron, the great sword whirring left and right, hardly pausing. He parried a spear thrust; his men rallied, sprang forward with hoarse shouts and daggers and spears of their own.
The soldiers scattered in their turn and a knot came stumbling towards Hal, who had blundered darkly into the midden of a back court, dragging his handful of men with him. Cursing, he saw Bangtail Hob and Ill Made Jock leaping as if in a dance with three men, while Sim Craw, spitting challenges and taunts, hurled himself at two more. Somewhere, he could here Maggie’s Davey screaming.
Hal found a single dark shape in his way, saw the thrust of spear and batted it away with a yell, cut back, ducked, whirled and felt his second blow catch as if on cloth. There was a whimpering yelp and Hal saw the dark shape stagger away from him, run a few steps, then fall.
He followed, feeling the clotted black rot of the midden squelch under his boots. The shape mewed and clawed away from him, the fish heads and offal squeezing up between his fingers as he crawled.
Hal hit him on the back of the head, feeling the eggshell crunch of it, hearing the sharp cry. The shape went slack and still; Hal rolled him over, to make sure he was dead.
An unexceptional face, beardless and streaked with midden filth, a wish-mark clear on one cheek. A boy, no more.
Alive, but barely.
‘Mither,’ he said and Hal swallowed the bile rising in him, for he knew what his sword had done to the back of the boy’s head and that he would never see his mother.
‘Stop gawpin’ at him like a raw speugh,’ Sim growled in his ear. ‘Finish it…’
He broke off when he saw how old the boy was and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, looked at Hal’s face and knew his head was full of wee Johnnie.
Sim knelt and whipped out his boot knife, slit the throat, swift and expert, closing the boy’s eyes as he did so. Then he straightened, stepping in to break the shackle of Hal’s stare on the boy’s face.
‘Done and done – lose the memory o’ it,’ he gruffed, and Hal, blinking, nodded back into the screams and the flames. Bangtail Hob and Jock came up, supporting a third man between them.
‘Aye, we are braw rebels us, for we have gave this place freedom, certes,’ Bangtail offered cheerfully and the sagging man in the middle cursed. Hal saw it was Maggie’s Davey, then caught the reek of him and backed off a step.