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  The Lion at bay

  ( The Kingdom - 2 )

  Robert Low

  Robert Low

  The Lion at bay

  Being a chronicle of the Kingdom in the Years of Trouble, written at Greyfriars Priory on the octave of Septuagisma, in the year of Our Lord one thousand three hundred and twenty-nine, 23rd year of the reign of King Robert I, God save and keep him.

  In the year of Our Lord one thousand two hundred and ninety-nine, our goodly king, then simply Sir Robert, Earl of Carrick, found he could no longer work together with his enemy and fellow Guardian of Scotland, Red John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, who sought many and divers ways to undermine the good of the Kingdom.

  Wherefore Sir Robert resigned, in order that Bishop Lamberton of St Andrews could become Guardian in his stead, hoping that, if Red John of Badenoch could find no favour in the Earl of Carrick, then surely he would not work against God. Meanwhile, Sir William Wallace, discredited after his failure to win at Falkirk, stayed in France, both for his safety and to seek the aid of King Philip IV for the good of the Kingdom.

  The Kingdom was at war with itself and even with God — the Order of Poor Knights had incited the wrath of kings and popes by its pride and arrogance, so that they contrived in bringing it to heel. The Pope wished to join it with that other Holy Order, the Knights Hospitaller. The king of France wished, through his greed and perfidy, to bring it down entire and sent out agents to conspire to that end.

  At this same moment, Edward was persuaded to release the imprisoned John Balliol, the King in whose name Scotland still resisted, into the custody of the Pope. The Comyn and Balliol, with Wallace in France, seemed set to force King Edward of England to agree to return John Balliol to the throne.

  It was this, the imminent return of a king already deposed, unsuited to a throne he did not want and unwelcomed by much of the community he had abandoned, which spurred Sir Robert to seek his own peace with Longshanks, sure that the community of the Kingdom had set foot on the wrong path. Others were of a similar mind — though some, scurrilous and cruel, claimed that good Sir Robert had sold himself for Longshanks’ promise of the crown of Scotland and the hand of Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the powerful Red Earl of Ulster.

  For all that, the deed was done and Sir Robert, new husband and newly returned to the king’s peace, rode with King Edward the Plantagenet, the greying pard who had savaged Scotland summer after summer until the very earth groaned.

  In the year of Our Gracious Lord thirteen hundred and four, the Kingdom was weary of war, the lords who fought it and the ruin they brought because of it. It seemed that even Longshanks grew tired of the ritual though he was determined to stamp his vengeful foot on the neck of the Kingdom, once and for all.

  Uneasily, Sir Robert was forced to watch the last remnants of Scottish resistance crumble, as most of the nobility of Scotland scrambled to make their peace with Longshanks. Then, as the Kingdom’s enemies gathered to witness the fall of Stirling, last bastion of the Scottish defence, God raised both His Hands and changed the world.

  The first Hand hovered over the Lord of Annandale and Robert Bruce’s goodly father, who fell ill unto death. When God decided to take him into His Grace, it would invest the son not only with the lands and titles of all the Bruce holdings, but the claim to the Kingdom’s crown. Sir Robert, aware of this sad and momentous event, was already laying the plans to bring about his kingship even as the last echoes of rebellion seemed to be fading.

  The second of God’s Hands raised The Wallace out of France and back to Scotland, so that, just as it seemed King Edward had crushed all before him, one talon of the lion remained unsheathed.

  And was as much sharpened against Sir Robert Bruce as any English.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The moors of Happrew, near Peebles

  Sunday of Candelmas, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, February, 1304

  Cold rain and Black John.

  Not the recipe for a happy war at the best of times, Sir Hal thought, but if you add to that the grim cliff of Bruce’s face these days, the endless march through February wet and the wreck and ruin and smoulder they passed through, then the gruel of it was all henbane and aloes.

  The riders were dripping and miserable as old mud, the horses standing with their heads down, hipshot in a sea of tawny bracken and the clawed black roots of heather and furze; only the moss splashed a dazzle of green into the mirr.

  They were quiet, too, Hal saw. The knights and serjeants were all concentrated concern over the well-being of their expensive coddled wrapped and riderless warhorses. Wet and sullen squires were set to checking hocks and hooves which had already been inspected a dozen times. The rounceys the owners actually rode were splattered with mud and weary, but they were of no account next to the destrier, any one of which could be sold for the price of a good manor in Lothian.

  The Scots sat their shaggy, mud-raggled ponies uneasily, talking so softly that the suck of feathered garron hooves pulling from the soft ground, the clink and chink and tinkle of harness and blade sounded loud against their hush. Hal knew why they hunched and spoke in whispers and it had nothing to do with rain or the suspected presence of enemy.

  This was Sheean Stank, which no-one cared for, a sudden knoll in a vast expanse of sucking bog and carse where the sheean folk — the sidhean — lived. No more than a score of feet higher than the land around, it seemed a great hill in the flat and everyone knew that this was where a man could be lifted out of this world and into the next, where the Faerie would keep him for what seemed a day, then release him, no older, into a world aged sixty or a hundred years.

  Black John Segrave did not care for Faerie much. Cold iron, he had heard, did for those ungodly imps same as it did for Scotch rebels and it was probable that they were one and the same in a land whose features revealed the nature of it and the folk who lived in it — Foulbogskye, Slitrig, Wolf Rig, Bloody Bush. And Sheean Stank.

  He glanced across at Bruce, Earl of Carrick and heir to Annandale, and tried to keep his face equable, for this was the new favourite of Longshanks, and the score of filthy Scotchmen surrounding him were supposedly experts in scouting this sort of terrain. Supposedly loyal to King Edward, too, though Segrave was beginning to doubt both claims — yet his king had tied them together with the one purpose, to rout out the last of the brigand rebels and bring their leaders to the leash. Particularly Wallace.

  Yet he was being led by Scotch who could have been rebels themselves from their dress and manner. They were led by Sir Henry Sientcler of Herdmanston, whom everyone called Hal, even his own ragged-arsed scum of a mesnie, and captained by a grizzled hog of a man called Sim Craw, whom Segrave would have hanged at another time just for the insolence in him.

  Segrave did not trust any of them and wished that Sir Robert Clifford’s men had not become separated from him; there was a sudden sharp needle of fear at the last time he had split up a command, at Roslin the previous year. There had been ruin and death in it then — and a Sientcler involved, too, he recalled uneasily, another one of that arrogant breed, this time from Roslin itself; then, these two Sientclers had been enemies and now they were, ostensibly, friends.

  He did not trust any of the Scots, even the most English of them — like the Earl of Carrick.

  ‘What think you, my lord?’ he demanded, his voice rheumed with damp. ‘Is the enemy hereabouts? Is it Wallace?’

  ‘So our intelligencers reported,’ Bruce replied easily and Hal saw the smile force itself across the heavy face. There was a beard, black and close-cropped in a strange way that included the droop of a moustache and a nap on the chin beneath, leaving the cheeks bare. Hal knew this was because no hair would grow on Bruce’s right cheek, so he had bee
n forced to tailor his chin hair to suit, though it made him look, as Sim Craw had muttered, ‘like a wee Frenchie bachle o’ a music’ maister.’

  A curlew piped somewhere and then a horseman burst over the hill and down the slope in a flat-out, belly-to-the ground gallop that brought heads up.

  It was Dog Boy on the blowing garron, gasping harder than his horse, his mouth working, silent as a fresh-caught fish, black fuzz of beard dripping and the dags of his hair plastered to his cheeks. No iron hat could keep that thatch in, Hal thought with a wry smile to himself; he marvelled at what the years had made of the skelf-thin kennel lad he had found at Douglas — when was it? The eve of Wallace’s rebellion. Christ’s Wounds — eight years ago…

  ‘Take a breath,’ Sim advised Dog Boy smoothly, ‘afore ye try to speak.’

  ‘Though it would be good to learn what has sent you to us at the gallop,’ Segrave added, ‘before they come down on us.’

  Hal saw Bruce’s eyes flicker.

  ‘No Roslin Glen here, my lord,’ Bruce said, viciously gentle and Segrave jerked as if stung.

  It was almost a year to the day, Hal was reminded since Segrave made such a slorach of a raid similar to this that the English forces had been scattered in a few hours by Red John Comyn, Sir Simon Fraser and Hal’s Roslin kin and namesake, Sir Henry Sientcler.

  Who had all then gone on to Herdmanston and burned it out. Hal grew sullen as old embers at the memory. Kin or not, the Sientclers of Roslin had been in the Scots camp then and Hal Sientcler of Herdmanston was in the Bruce camp. And Bruce was English. Again.

  The price for following the Bruce was high — though not for Bruce himself, who had gained the daughter of the powerful Earl of Ulster as wife, new lands and the new favour of an old king who was wallowing in the winter of his years and had sired, so far, two wee bairns by his girlish French queen.

  Now, of course, the Sientclers of Roslin had also bowed the knee, kissed the King’s foot and received back their own lands by a gracious Edward trying some velvet on the iron gauntlet.

  Hal saw Segrave unconsciously touch his side, where three ribs had been broken when he was tumbled from his horse into the grin of Sir Simon Fraser and the other Scots lords, shredding Segrave dignity as well as likely bankrupting his purse for a ransom.

  Worse than that was the moment when Fraser had argued for killing all the prisoners, fat ransoms or not. Fraser had been persuaded otherwise, but the screaming, belly-loosening fear of that lived with Segrave still.

  Now Sir Simon Fraser was the last hold-out of the Scots lords who had been at Roslin Glen that day and the closer Segrave got to him, the closer he was to ridding himself of the stain of it. Bruce, however seemed determined to keep the memory of it alive and Segrave’s scowls grew blacker than his oil-boiled maille.

  ‘What have you seen?’ he spat, and Dog Boy, rain in his greasy new beard and streaking the filth on his face, finally managed to blurt out:

  ‘Weemin, my lord. Ower yon hill.’

  There was silence and the men uncovering their great cosseted warhorses paused, wondering if it would be necessary. The grimy Scots looked on wordlessly, gripping the hafts of their Jeddart staffs, those lance-long weapons which combined spear, cutting edge and hook.

  ‘Women?’ Segrave repeated, bewildered.

  ‘How many, Dog Boy?’ Hal asked, seeing the slow blink of Segrave’s eyes counting down to explosive release.

  ‘A shilling’s worth,’ the boy replied, his breathing regular and then, with all the worldly experience of his bare score of years, added: ‘Fair quines too, in fine dresses.’

  ‘What in the name of God are a dozen women doing out here?’ Segrave snapped.

  There came a low murmur from the men behind Bruce. The Earl smiled, bright and mild.

  ‘My lads mention Faerie, my lord,’ he explained. ‘Perhaps these are they. Pechs. Bogles. The Silent Moving Folk. Sheean.’

  At each word, the men behind Hal shifted and made warding signs, some with the cross, others with older symbols they tried to make quick and hidden.

  ‘Christ be praised,’ growled Sim.

  ‘For ever and ever,’ men muttered automatically. Hal sighed; he knew Bruce was provoking Segrave, but forgetting the effect it had on men who believed. Only Dog Boy had dared ride to the top of the hill in the first place and Hal was proud of the courage that had taken. More of it was needed now.

  ‘Mair like a country event,’ he said into the locked stare of Bruce and Segrave and, at last, had the latter turn his wet eyes on him.

  ‘Country event?’

  ‘Mayhaps a tait o’ virgins,’ Sim flung in cheerfully. ‘Getting purified.’

  The Dog Boy, still trying to control the trembling in his thighs at what he had done, was sure they were powrie women, for they were strange in their cavorting and one was almost certainly a bogle by the height and the raucous shouts. Still, he couldn’t be entirely certain and did not want to appear like a fool in front of Lord Hal.

  ‘They were dancin’,’ he ventured and wilted as all eyes clawed his face. ‘In a ring.’

  The thrilling horror of it spilled on them like bad honey, sweet and rotted. Women dancing by themselves would bring the wrath of the Church; only sinners, pagans and the De’il’s own did such a thing. Dancing in a secret circle was proof of enough witchery to get all the women burned.

  ‘Sheean,’ growled Bangtail Hob from over Hal’s shoulder and the men growled their fearful agreement.

  ‘Christ be praised,’ repeated Sim, but the muttered response was lost when a man shouted out from the pack behind Segrave, ‘Faerie? Silent Folk? If you are afeared, my Scotch lords, then leave it to good, enlightened Christian Englishmen.’

  Faces turned to stare at Sir Robert Malenfaunt, swarthy face darkened with rage and a scornful twist to his lips. Bruce merely smiled lightly, which was enough to crank Malenfaunt’s rage up a notch; here were all the men who had once tricked him over the Countess Isabel of Buchan’s ransom and, even if it had cost him nothing, Malenfaunt’s pride was worth any price.

  Hal only remembered Isabel, who had been the prisoner ransomed from Malenfaunt into his arms. Just weeks later, Falkirk’s slaughter had ripped everything to shreds and forced her back to her husband. Hal had not seen her since and the dull ache of it was like cold iron in the heart of him.

  Segrave regarded Malenfaunt with distaste, for he had heard things about the Berwick knight that were unsavoury. Yet he was forced to agree with the man’s sentiment here and was aware that others were already settling themselves into the high-cantled saddles of their powerful horses, placing domed bucket helms over their heads, taking lance and shield from hurrying squires.

  He wanted to wait for Clifford, yet he wondered if the women were whores for the rebels; if so, they would have information…

  ‘Fetch me some Faerie virgins,’ Segrave said in French to Malenfaunt, ‘and we will purify them here.’

  ‘My lord,’ Hal began warningly and then stopped as, with a whoop and a roar, the warhorses surged forward in a great spray of mud. Someone yelled ‘ til-est-hault ’ as if it were a hunt.

  But Segrave saw, for a fleeting moment, the spark of Hal’s defiant anger from a face beaten to leather by wind and weather, fretted with white lines at the corners of his eyes. Segrave cocked one insouciant challenge of an eyebrow at the flare and saw the storm-grey eyes turn to flint-blue — ‘Now we will see,’ Segrave declared, throwing up one hand to ward off the gouts kicked up by the disappearing horsemen.

  Then Bruce’s voice cut through the tension.

  ‘There’s one of your Faerie women, my lord.’

  They turned in time to see a fleeting swirl of disappearing skirts.

  ‘I would not want that yin, my lord,’ Sim Craw drawled and Segrave turned his wither on the white-streaked black beard and the broad, black-browed face it swamped. Unmoved, Sim nursed a powerful crossbow, wrapped against the rain, close to his great slab of body. ‘I like my weemin with their chins
shaved,’ he noted casually.

  There was a moment as the realization seeped in to Segrave, then he roared at a startled squire, ‘Bring them back. Bring them back — God curse it…’

  He turned to Bruce, but too late. He had missed that man’s silent flick of signal; all he found was the back of the chevronned jupon, trailing a tippet of riders behind him away to the west.

  Treachery. The word sprang at Segrave and he felt anger and fear in equal measure. A trap, by God, with Clifford a good gallop behind and Bruce running away and leaving him with yet another Scotch battle against odds. The thought settled something slimed and cold in his belly and he turned to survey his last score of men as the first hundred breasted the ridge and vanished.

  Malenfaunt had spotted the women at once, tucking up their skirts and running for the shelter of the woods beyond them like scattering ducks. He gave a whoop, peeled off the constricting great helm and flung it away, along with the lance to free up one hand, then set his horse flying at the runner, leaning sideways a little in the saddle to make it easier to reach out and grab.

  Those immediately behind checked a little, mainly because his powerful warhorse kicked up a spray of muddy gobbets, while to right and left lances and helms went bouncing, carelessly dangerous, as the knights followed Sir Robert Malenfaunt’s example and spurred on.

  They saw Malenfaunt lean out as he slowed to a canter so as to better judge the snatch at the fleeing woman’s wimpled head. They saw the woman turn, the wimple and barbette flying away to free a wild tangle of infested hair, the face a bearded snarl; Malenfaunt had time to realize the enormous horror of it before the man dropped to a crouch, brought round the two-handed axe he held hidden in his skirts and scythed out the legs of the destrier.

  It was the saving of Malenfaunt. At the same time as he was reeling through the air in a tumble of moss and trees and sky, the edge of the wood spat a sleet of arrows from two points. Between them, moving ragged and relentless, came a clot of spearmen; the shrieking falsities in women’s dresses raced to join them, their lure complete.