Robert Low - The Lion Rampant

‘Aye,’ said a savage growl of voice, ‘the pair o’ you would know that best, for sure.’

They turned into the tinged face of Sim Craw, clutching a huge bundle to him and looking liverish. If there is one who hates the sea more than me, Hal thought, it is Sim.

‘You have ceased feeding the fish,’ Kirkpatrick responded viciously and Sim nodded, though there was no certainty in it.

‘I am fine when matters are moving,’ he answered, ‘but wallowing here is shifting my innards.’

Hal looked at the sail, filling weakly and sinking again; down at the tillers, a muscled red-head teased the cog into what wind there was while the barrel-shaped Pegy Balgownie scowled at the fog bank, swirling ahead as proof there was no wind.

‘You should set that bairn on deck,’ Kirkpatrick mocked Sim, ‘afore you lose it ower the side when you are boaking.’

‘Would make little difference,’ Sim mourned back, glancing sadly at the swaddled bundle of his arbalest. ‘Soaked or safe, the dreich will rust it.’

He paused, looked Hal up and down meaningfully.

‘And your maille, lord …’ he began, but paused, blinked a little and headed feverishly for the side of the cog, clapping a hand over his mouth.

Pegy was scarcely aware of the retching and the good-natured jeers, too busy with fretting over the lack of wind. Next to him, Somhairl bunched the muscles needed to shift the heavy tiller and grumbled, in his lilting Islesman English, about wetting the sail.

He had the right of it, for sure, Pegy thought. A good man, Somhairl, who learned his craft crewing and leading birlinn galleys for Angus Og of the Isles. Somhairl was a raiding man every bit as skilled as any old Viking and called Scáth Dearg — the Red Shadow — by those who feared to see him oaring up swift and silent, with his red hair streaming like flame.

No chance o’ that here, Pegy mourned. Scarce enough wind to shift as much as the man’s brow braids and even soaking the sail would not gain them much; they were moving, but slowly. Now would be the time, he thought bitterly, when the Red Rover would appear out of yon fog, with myself close behind, to pluck some becalmed chick.

But the pirate scourge de Longueville, better known as the Red Rover, had long since thrown in his lot and was now married into the nobiles of Scotland and calling himself Charteris. While his auld captains, Pegy thought bitterly, were left scrambling for the favour of kings. I liked life better when I was a wee raider — though he crossed himself piously for the heresy of such thinking.

As if in answer, a sepulchral voice boomed out from above.

‘Sail ho, babord quarter.’

It was not God, it was Niall Silkie high in the nest, but even as Pegy sprang for the sterncastle for a better look, he knew that the De’il’s hand was in this.

ISABEL

My God, You have chastised me by this man’s hand and I have learned submission, I swear it on Your mother’s life. I have suffered and learned about the power of the body over us and how, by way of it, the soul is branded. Grant me, O Lord, that I have learned, that I may not have to bring this branded body to You broken also, as this Malise would wish, given away by him as waste goods. Your will has compassed me round, O Lord, and closed all other ways to me.

Irish Sea

Octave of St Benedict of Montecassino, March 1314

A white flag with a red cross, that was what Niall Silkie, squinting furiously, declared he could see. On his mother’s eyes he swore it. Fluttering — limply — from the topmost mast of another cog. The pegy mast, ironically, which was what John of Balgownie was ekenamed after.

‘A Templar flag?’ Kirkpatrick demanded, and the black-robed figures looked at one another and chewed their drooping moustaches. The English flew three golden pards on red, so it was not them.

Finally, de Grafton stared meaningfully at Rossal de Bissot.

‘We sent out decoy ships, Brother, did we not?’

Rossal, stroking his close-cropped chin, nodded uneasily.

‘Two from Leith and another, the Maryculter , two days before we sailed ourselves,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘It could be the Maryculter .’ He looked at Pegy Balgownie. ‘Can you tell from here?’

‘A cog is a cog,’ Pegy said, after a pause. ‘Twenty-five guid Scots ells long, six wide, with fighting castles and a sail — they look much similar, yin to another. Nor do we fly any flag … but the captain of the Maryculter is Glymyne Ledow, as smart a sailor as ever tarred his palms on a rope. He might ken me and my Bon Accord .’

Hal did not see how, since the one that approached them was the same as the one he was on: an ugly, deep oval bowl with a pointed bow and a squared stern and two fighting castles of wood rearing at both ends. The prospect of a fight on it did not fill him with confidence.

‘Mind ye, he would ken it as the Agnes ,’ Pegy went on, peering furiously up at ropes and sails, as if to spring something to life, ‘though it is presently named Bon Accord .’

He paused and beamed at Kirkpatrick.

‘After the watchword on the night our goodly king took Aberdeen.’

‘Very apt and loyal,’ growled Kirkpatrick dryly, ‘but of little help.’

‘I named it Agnes ,’ Pegy went on, almost to himself, ‘after my wife.’

He paused again, before bellowing a long string of instructions which sent men scurrying. Then he hammered a meaty fist on the sterncastle.

‘She was also a wallowing sow who could not be made to move her useless fat arse,’ he roared at the top of his voice. Someone snickered.

Rossal’s quiet, calm voice cracked in like a slap on a plank.

‘Mantlets to the babord,’ he said and the black-robed figures sprang to life. Rossal smiled, almost sadly, at Hal.

‘Assume that this is not the Maryculter and not friendly,’ he said in French. ‘Brother Widikind, please to escort the lady to the safety of below and guard her well.’

The big German Templar blinked, paused uncertainly, and nodded, the forked ends of his black beard trembling with indignation. Doña Beatriz, with a slight smile, swayed to the companionway that led below, the dark Piculph at her back.

‘That’s a tangle of “nots” ye have there, Brother,’ Sim said, unwrapping his swaddled bundle and bringing the bairn — a great steel-bowed arbalest — into the daylight. ‘I hope you are mistook.’

Unlikely, Hal thought. If Pegy Balgownie could not tell the Maryculter from any other cog, then the reverse held true — yet no ship would flaunt that Beauseant banner of the heretic Templars unless it knew at whom it was waving.

‘And if it is not the Maryculter ,’ Kirkpatrick finished, after Hal had hoiked this up for everyone to consider, ‘then it is flying a false flag in order to gull us anyway.’

‘Which means it expected us and was lying in wait,’ Hal added and the rest was unspoken: we have a traitor, who might even be aboard. He met the eyes of Kirkpatrick and Rossal, saw the acknowledgement in them — saw, too, a lack of surprise that thrilled anger into him; this pair have knowledge kept from me, he thought bitterly. As if this old dog was not capable of learning the new trick of them, or did not matter in the scheme of it.

Kirkpatrick, oblivious to Hal’s bile, sucked a whistle through his teeth and grinned at Sim.

‘Bigod, man, that is a fearsome weapon you have. Sma’ wonder the Pope has banned it.’

‘Holy Faithers has scorned this, our king, the Kingdom an’ these Templars,’ Sim growled back. ‘Seems to me like every wee priest who sticks on yon fancy hat wants to put a mock on something.’