The Lion Rampant (34 page)

From sea to shit, Bruce thought. A skilled man brought down to one fit only to handle other people’s leavings. In the dream, sometimes, he gave the leper a coin, sometimes a benefice to keep him for the rest of his life without shovelling dung. He could not remember if he had done that for true – but he always knew the last part, for it had happened and was seared on his mind.

The priest, apologetic, said that because Gawter had encountered someone on the path and not warned them away sufficiently, the leper had to be publicly abjured and reminded of his station. So Bruce had sat in the chilling haar and listened to the priest tell Gawter the leper what he must do. Which seemed to consist of telling him what he must not do.

Forbidden to enter a church or brewery or bakery or butcher or anywhere Christian souls use. Forbidden to wash in a stream or drink unless water has been placed in a vessel. Forbidden to touch food, or clothing, or even the ground barefoot. If you buy food, the payment coin is to be placed in a bowl of vinegar and you must eat or drink in the company of others like yourself, or alone. Forbidden to have intercourse with any woman, or to approach any child, or any person on the road, or pass down a narrow alleyway, lest you encounter a decent Christian soul and brush against them.

You must warn Christian souls away from you with your clapper, wear the garb appointed so that all are in no doubt of what you are and must be buried outside the parish bounds when you die. God grant you grace in endurance.

The words echoed still, more chill than the cold mist. Grace. Grace …

He woke to hear Bernard, gentle and soft in his urgent call. It was dim save for the yellow pool of Bernard’s fluttering candle.

‘Your Grace. Your Grace …’

‘I am awake. What is it, Chancellor?’

‘Your brother is here and Lord Randolph.’

‘Is it time?’

‘Almost – but it is not that. They have news …’

He swung out of the bed, splashed water from a basin, pulled on braies and his underserk; his arm and shoulder hurt still and, in the candlight, the hand was dark and mottled with bruising.

Yet he could feel the fingers and the hand would be blue and yellow in proper daylight, not white. He could feel all his fingers and his toes and flexed them thinking ‘one more day’.

The night, which had never been truly dark, was a smoked sapphire sparkled with diamonds when he moved to the panoply entrance and signalled for the fretting, impatient pair to be let in. In the distance, puzzling him, was a dull red glow which he took to be part of the English camp.

They were fully dressed; Edward was in maille and jupon and Bruce thought he had probably never got out of it, nor slept. Randolph was dressed, but uncombed, without a belt round his tunic and barefoot; spilled out of sleep like me, Bruce thought.

‘You saw it, brother?’ Edward demanded brusquely and Bruce blinked a little, trying to rout the last shreds of the leper from his mind.

‘Saw what?’

‘The glow. Cambuskenneth burning.’

This was a dash of cold water and Bruce sucked in his breath at it, while a slight figure padded silently in bringing a tray with wine and some slices of cold fish and bread.

‘The English have dared to fire the priory?’ Bruce demanded, feeling the anger well in him and then die of confusion at Randolph’s headshake; Edward splashed wine into a cup and handed it to his brother.

‘Atholl, Your Grace,’ Randolph said, almost languidly. ‘One of our men survived the attack and brought news of it. The Earl of Atholl has burned it. The storehouses are in flames but not the priory itself, though the wee monks are having a sleepless night making sure it does not spread. A right balefire for Midsummer’s Night, in truth.’

There was little enough at Cambuskenneth – stuff used in the siege and lifted when the English army drew close; straw hurdles, picks, shovels, fodder for horses, a few lengths of timber in the hope of building some sort of siege machine in time. Guarded, Bruce recalled, by no more than six men.

‘A survivor?’ he asked and Edward wiped his moustaches with the back of one hand.

‘Sole,’ he answered gruffly. ‘The Frenchman Guillaume, whose piety saved him – he was holding vigil for St John in the chapel. The other five are slaughtered … Christ, Sir William Airth is killed. God’s Wounds, Rob, young Strathbogie deserves the worst punishment. Bad enough that he runs off on the eve of battle, but this act is the foulest treason.’

‘The Earl of Atholl is young,’ Bruce murmured, ‘and afraid. And I am your king, brother. Not Rob.’

‘Not so young that he cannot tell right from wrong, my lord king,’ Randolph answered as Edward scowled. ‘Forfeiture is the least he can expect.’

Aye, Bruce thought wryly. Dispossess him of his lands to the Crown, so I can hand them out like sweetmeats to the favoured. With Randolph, Earl of Moray, at the head of the line.

‘No great loss,’ Edward added. ‘If he thought to harm our cause by burning stores, he has missed the mark.’

‘Sir William Airth,’ Bruce pointed out. ‘And four other good men.’

Edward had the grace to flush, a darkening of his skin under the yellow candle glow, while Bruce thought of what he would say to old Sir John, William’s father. Your son is slaughtered, not by the English, but by the Earl of Atholl – God’s hook swung exceeding slow, but it snagged bitterly, for all that.

‘There is other news,’ Randolph said into the chill which followed. ‘A balance of the pan, as it were.’

Bruce waited and saw Randolph stride from the panoply, while the broad grin of his brother gave nothing away. It was the same grin, Bruce recalled with a sharp pang, when he was toddling on fat little legs, bringing some strange insect or animal to present for inspection.

None had been stranger than the one Randolph brought into the candlelight. Tall, so that he had to stoop underneath the canvas lintel, dark-haired, sallow-skinned, his black eyes alive with a fevered light … Bruce knew him well.

‘Seton,’ he said weakly, for it was the last man he had thought to see. Then he recovered himself as the man flung to one knee, reached out and raised him up gently by the elbow. ‘Alexander,’ he said. ‘Nephew. Welcome.’

The noise of clatter and weans woke him, starting him out of sleep with a jerk; he saw little Bet half crouch with the sudden movement, cautious and wary. Beyond, studying him with dark solemnity, was Hob.

Hob. She would call him that, since that was the name of the King of Summer. He was of age and Bet’s Meggy had claimed the boy as his, seeded on that very midsummer night. It was possible … he had known it even as he said, accusingly: ‘Ye might have let me know.’

‘For why?’ she had replied, tart as young apples. ‘For you to stop skirrievaigin’ with Jamie Douglas at the herschip and come to Roslin to provide for me? You have no skill for anythin’ but hounds and Roslin did not need that.’

She had looked at the crumbled ruin of maslin and smiled.

‘I mak’ bread, even from poor leavings like this, so I can provide. I did not need another useless mouth.’

He had gawped at her and she had smiled the bitter out of it in an eyeblink.

‘No matter how loving a man you are,’ she had added softly, and then tapped his arm lightly. ‘Besides, John the Lamb took me, Hob and all, and provided for us until he died. Now you have rose up in the world and mayhap the Lady brought you back to better provide for your imp of a son.’

He had glanced at the sleeping boy and managed a wan smile of his own while his head birled with it all.

‘Less imp now that he sleeps,’ he said and she laughed.

‘Aye – maybe he is not yours at all,’ she offered and laughed when he’d rounded on her with a scowl.

‘Men,’ she scoffed. ‘You never knew of him until now and scarce thought of me at all, yet the idea of someone else having laid a cuckoo’s egg in your nest crests you up like a dunghill cock.’

Abashed, confused, Dog Boy had no answer, so she had provided one.

‘It might have been the Faerie,’ she said. ‘On that night of nights.’

Midsummer, he remembered. As now, filled with the silent moving folk. Her smile only broadened at his look.

‘As any will tell you who knew you as a bairn,’ she had offered, ‘he is the same as you looked at that age.’

Dog Boy thought of it and the blood washed up into his head. There was no one who remembered him at that age left alive, for Jamie and he and all the others had seen to that when they had struck at Douglas Castle. Palm Sunday, seven years ago. Old Tam, former serjeant-at-arms, had hirpled up to their hiding place with news of the garrison attending the kirk in town and they’d fallen on the English like a dog pack, dragging them back and capturing the castle.

After that had come a sin-slather of revenge led by the grim stone of Jamie. Dog Boy recalled Gutterbluid the falconer, pleading for his life as Jamie ordered him strangled with a bowstring. Dog Boy had stared into the hopeless, silent-screaming eyes of Berner Philippe and then nodded so that big, grinning Red Corbie could start turning the stick that slowly broke the houndsman’s neck. Put me in the drawbridge undercroft, he’d thought, exultant with the triumph of it. Near killed me there …

They had pitched those two down the well, everyone else in the underground store, pissed on the lot and fired it. The Douglas Larder folk called it and Dog Boy thought he had forgotten it – all but the glory of discovering, in the hound record books, that he had a name.

Aleysandir.

And a place, not far from Douglas Castle itself.

He went back to it, remembering his da and his prized brace of oxen, an amazement of riches that even the reeve or priest could not match. I was sold for that, he thought bitterly, recalling all the half-dredged clues of it. When I was old enough to run fast as the dugs, my ma walked me up to Douglas as the Sire had told her to do.

He could not remember his mother’s face, but it must have been pretty for Sir William the Hardy to have been captivated enough to pump a child into her belly. And his da, who had always seemed a distant giant, must have loved her to have put up with it.

And loved me in his way, Dog Boy thought, remembering the sad wistfulness on the big slab face the day he had shown how he could run. He must have loved me a bittie, even though I was not his and a constant reminder of his wife’s faithlessness. Yet he had oxen out of it, he added bitterly to himself, so perhaps that was the love in it.

There were no signs of them when he had gone to the small vill, for time and change had brought new tenants to the half-remembered fields and they had no memory of a couple who owned a brace of oxen. Fire and famine and red war had scoured the area more than once – God save me, Dog Boy thought with a sharp sudden pang, I may have ridden it myself. He offered thanks to God then, on his knees, that he had memory of no old couple slain by him or anyone he knew. The thought that he might well have killed his own parents left him trembling every time he thought of it.

Yet they had vanished, as if they had never been, and were almost certainly dead. The clogged drain of it had shifted over the years under the weight of all he had seen and done, so that such memories came back to him at the oddest and most unlooked-for times, clenching the insides of him until he felt he must scream, or weep, or fist something to ruin.

The shift and yawn and scratch alongside him wrenched him back to the present and he turned his head to her, remembered the warm and sticky of last night. Possibly, there now would be another Hob …

He fetched his clothes and dressed as she got up and patted Hob like a dog for his cleverness in blowing life back into the fire. She clattered pots and mixed water and oats; little Bet played quietly with a straw doll and, beyond the confines of the mean withy and cloak shelter, the whole camp stirred like fleas on a dog.

Dog Boy went out into the poor night, which was racing towards lighter hues of blue; it was cool now, but would be a hot day for it, he thought, unlacing himself and making sure where he had picked would offend no one. He grunted with the pleasure of it, becoming aware, slowly, of the boy’s eyes.

‘Are you my da, truly?’

That cut him off mid-flow and it took a long moment before he managed to renew it; longer moments still, of shaking and lacing, before he turned and looked at the boy. Dark and wary, thin, with a deerlike crouch that spoke of an alertness to run.

It was himself at the same age, he thought with a sudden leap of certainty. I would have looked like this when I was turned into the kennels at Douglas and all that went with it.

‘What does your ma say?’ he demanded and the boy frowned at that.

‘She says you are.’

‘Is she to be obeyed and always in the right?’

Hob considered it a while, before nodding uncertainly. Dog Boy grinned.

‘Aye, well, there is your answer. I am your da, God help you.’

There was a silence, and then Dog Boy moved back to the fire and the bent figure of Bet’s Meggy, stirring the oats and water in her cauldron; mean fare, he thought. I will bring better when I can.

‘I must go,’ he said and she stood and faced him, hipshot and with her head tilted. The smile was slight, but her eyes were serious.

‘Will you die?’

Bet’s Meggy wheeshed Hob and threatened him with the spurtle for his cheek, but he never moved, kept staring at Dog Boy.

‘I’ll come back,’ he said awkwardly, turning to Bet’s Meggy. ‘When I can. I’ll bring vittles and …’

‘I make no claim on you, Dog Boy,’ she said softly. ‘Neither for him, nor last night.’

Dog Boy knew that Hob did, though he would not voice it, but he nodded, and then grew more firm.

‘I will be back, God willing, when this is done with.’

She dragged him close then, held him hard for a moment or two, and released him so quickly that the pair of them staggered. He blinked, frantic not to unman himself with tears, and bent to little Bet, who put a thumb in her mouth and stared.

‘Have you a buss for me, wee yin?’ he asked and she looked uncertainly at her mother, who nodded. She took out the thumb, grinned and kissed his cheek, a sparrow peck that left snotters on his beard.