J. Tomlin - The Templar's Cross

Scottish cries of “A Douglas! A Douglas!” as they shielded the duke still rang in his head. He twitched a shoulder and described the bloody hell as the remainder of the thousands of Scots fell, guarding their lords. Around him men were mowed down like wheat by a scythe.

“My father and brother?” Douglas asked stiffly. “The Earl of Buchan?”

“They stood their ground within our schiltron, but I did not see them die. We were making a last stand when…” He cleared his throat. “An English knight put his lance through my leg. They rode over us as we fell. Then I remember no more.”

“Yet you escaped.”

“Luck of a sort, though I’m not sure if it was good or ill. There were thousands of bodies in piles. After the battle, they were looting, but you know such looting can go on for days. After dark, I clawed my way out.” He suppressed a shudder at a memory that was more of a nightmare.

His leg screaming with pain, he found the strength to push off a body heavy across his chest. The reek of blood and shit and death was thicker than the black night. Somehow, before the English returned to loot the bodies, he had to get away. Hands shaking with exhaustion and pain, he was using his tabard to wrap his mangled leg when Duncan grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. “They’ll be back anon. But I’ll want gold for hauling your sorry carcass with me to safety.”

For days after, Law had sworn the stink and feel of stiffening bodies clung to his skin. Law made his account of the horror of his escape with Duncan’s aid as brief as possible. “We reached a monastery nearby in the Forest of Piseux. Our luck held since the abbot was French and hid us for a week until my leg was well enough that we could flee. But it took us a week to reach a ship and another to reach Stirling.”

“Your leg was sore hurt,” King James said, turning his eyes back to Law. “And you brought us more news than we’d had. I am certainly grateful, man.”

“Aye.” The earl gave a sigh. “I am glad to hear such details that you have of their deaths.”

“I am sure you will find a peaceful place in the kingdom since your fighting days look as though they are done for the nonce,” the king said.

Law feared the king was right, but what was left for a landless knight who could not fight?

“You are the first to return to Scotland from the battle. And there is the matter of reward for carrying out a duty to bring us this news though no one would have held you to it. My lord Douglas, you’ll see to a reward.”

Recalling that he’d heard the king’s treasury had been drained dry to pay his ransom to the English, Law clamped his lips tight on a wry smile. Any reward would come from the purse of the Earl of Douglas.

“Your leg?” Douglas asked, looking thoughtful. “Is there any chance the hurt will not leave you halt?”

Even as a youth, the earl had been blunt-spoken. Law winced but there was no point in delicacy. “The friars who treated me said I shall always limp, for the muscle was much torn. But that won’t keep me from holding a sword. I can still fight.”

“That is too bad. I suppose you understand that I dinnae need a knight who is lame. I could nae believe you’d be able to do what is required.” He continued to look thoughtfully at Law, tapping on the table. A ring glittered on each of his fingers.

Laws felt the blood drain from his face. For a moment, he was light-headed, though he wasn’t quite sure if it was from rage or from fear. He gritted his back teeth to keep the curse welling up his throat from spewing forth. After his years of service to the Douglas’s father, he was to be tossed aside like a lame dog. He took a deep breath, clenching his hands so tight his nails dug into his palms. The sting of them helped calm him. Again he filled his lungs with the cool night air.

“But the king is right that I owe you a debt for telling us as much as you could.”

“A last duty to my patron, your lord father,” Law said, keeping his face blank. “Though I wullnae refuse a reward for I…” He almost choked on the need to beg. “I served your sire faithfully. Surely, I deserve…” He couldn’t bring himself to go on.

Douglas stood and took his purse from his belt. He seemed to weigh it for a moment in his hand, but then handed it over. It was heavy in Law’s hand, and he was ashamed of a rush of relief. Once split with Duncan it could not be a great sum, but enough that it would keep him for a few months, surely long enough for him to find a new patron to serve.

“If any ask, I shall assure them you served my lord father well.”

“I thank you for that, my lord.”

The king waved his dismissal, so Law bowed and Douglas strolled with him towards the door. “So where will you go from here?”

“I have nae yet decided, my lord. Wherever I’m most likely to find a new patron.”

“Aye, that is wise, man. I suggest you look in Perth. The king favors it, which means half of Scotland favors it as well. I believe he means to make it his capital.”

The curfew bell was ringing as Law set off toward the inn where Duncan awaited. In the gloaming, rough-dressed laborers were plodding home. A troop of mounted men rode by, tack and armor jangling, the lion of the king of Scotland gleaming golden on their cloaks.

He stopped before a yard above which swung a crudely painted sign of a foaming cup of ale. Inside, beside the door, people sat at a long table eating. Across the room, around a barrel of ale on a trestle, others stood, a raucous group, talking, and laughing. Law spotted Duncan sitting near a brazier where a peat fire burned and a youth stirred a steaming cooking pot that gave up a scent of onions and thyme. He hurried to the small table and sank gratefully onto a stool. Duncan stared at him, eyebrows raised expectantly, eyes bright with greed just as they had been in France. The memory was so clear, it made Law’s leg throb.

Law shrugged off the unwelcome memory, reached into his jerkin, and fumbled out two half-nobles that he tossed onto the table.

Duncan slapped his hand down on the coins. “This wullnae keep me long.” Duncan had stuck to him like a limpet, convinced Law owed him for his half-dragging him from the battlefield in France, and Law supposed that he did. Besides that, he could trust Duncan at his back, no mean consideration, and the loss of every friend from his past left an empty place in his chest. Duncan was not much of a friend, but a friend of a sort, nonetheless.

“On the morrow then, we’re off for Perth,” Law said with a yawn. “I hope they have a decent bed to let here.”

Through a gray curtain of drizzle, Law looked down from his window at the muck of the vennel below. Narrow shops where the shutters were closed against the damp chill, under the shadow of overhanging jetties, moldering plaster walls interspersed with graying timber uprights. All of the poor parts of Perth were like this: streets lined with taverns, shops, and drear houses crammed with the leavings of their betters, not much like the castles where he’d spent his life serving the duke.

He had not remembered Scottish Octobers being so miserable. Life had been wars unending and the plague, now an autumn so cold and wet it made the fires of Hell seem tempting. Had he not lost his faith on some battlefield that God cared, he would have thought the Maker was angry. After spreading his gaze across the rooftops that hid the dark River Tay where it seethed in its banks, he snapped the shutters shut.

A tiny peat fire in a brazier threw fingers of red across Law’s scarred table. The room was small, smaller even than his tent in the days when he’d followed the Douglas to war. His narrow pallet bed was against the opposite wall, separating his room from the landlord Wulle Cullen and his wife, Mall. The meager bits of furniture were rented with the room. A wooden kist near the door held the few belongings he had salvaged from the disaster in France. In the month that he’d been in Perth, he’d talked to a dozen lords hoping for service, with no luck. It was time for a new plan, though what that might be… He sighed.