Robert Low - The Lion Rampant

He’d stared moodily, glassily, into the wine and had spoken almost to himself.

‘Now he is fixed on securing matters, on ensuring that everyone kens he is king. Nothing else matters but that and you step soft round him these days.’

‘I have read the Declaration of the Clergy,’ Hal had told him and had back a surprised look.

‘Have you indeed? They were solicitous of your welfare in the end, to fit you with a copy of that in your cell. Shame we had to poke out Sir William’s best eye, then, for it seems he did not deserve it — what did you think of that document?’

Hal remembered what that question had raised in him. Aggie, the girl who had served him meals, had brought it and she had plucked it from the kirk door, one of the many expensive and laboriously made copies nailed there. She had wanted to know what was in it but could not read, nor dared take it to anyone in Roxburgh who might.

What was in it? At first, the joyous honey of a candle, the first Hal had seen up close in an age and even the blur of tears it brought to his squinting eyes was a joy. The second was the smell: the musk of the parchment, the sharpness of the oak-gall ink — the breath of Outside. That, in the end, was worth more than the Declaration of the Clergy itself, a pompous piece of huff and puff to make Robert Bruce seem the very figure of a king and his sitting on the throne far removed from any hint of murderous usurping.

‘Smoke and shiny watter,’ Hal had told Edward eventually. ‘Bigod, though, they almost convinced me that the Bruce is descended from Aeneas o’ Troy himself. A Joshua and white as new milk on a lamb’s lip.’

Edward had laughed then, sharp and harsh, spilling wine on his knuckles and sucking it off. It came to Hal that the Earl of Carrick was mightily drunk and that it was no strange thing for him.

‘Ah, Christ’s Wounds, we have missed you, Lord Hal — but it is as well you were safe locked up, for plain speaking is not the mood of now, certes. I would not share your view of the bishops’ fine work with my brother. If you even get to see him.’

He’d paused moodily.

‘I mind you were close to him, mark you. You and Kirkpatrick. Like a brace of clever wee dugs working sheep for their master.’

There was old envy and bitterness there, which Hal had decided was best to ignore.

‘How is Kirkpatrick?’ he’d asked, suddenly ashamed that he had not thought of the man since he had been released.

‘Auld,’ Edward had replied shortly. ‘You may not see the King at all,’ he then said. ‘And if you do, it will not be a straight march in to where the Great Man sits, taking your ease in the next seat. Naw, naw. There are steps, neat as a jig: walk forward and stop. Kneel. Never look at him. Never speak to him unless invited.’

This kingdom is not large enough for the pair, Hal had thought, hearing the savage bile in his voice. Then Edward had recovered himself and smiled, drained the goblet and risen.

‘Well, good journey to you. I am away to kick the stones out of Roxburgh. Pity — it is a pretty place.’

Prettier than here, Hal thought now, looking up at the rotting-tooth rock of Edinburgh Castle, while they wound a way through the siege lines.

They passed tents, a black Benedictine who was crouched like a dog to hear confessions, a sway-hipped gaud of shrill, laughing women who stared brazen invites at the newly arrived heroes of Roxburgh. Somewhere behind them a pair coupled noisily while the camp dogs circled, looking to steal anything vaguely edible.

Hal felt the heat of forges, tasted the sweat and stale stink of a thousand unwashed, the savour of cook and smith fire as they picked their way through the tangle and snarl of a siege camp. He was fretted and ruffled by the place even as it seemed to him that he moved in a dream, too slowly and somehow detached from it all.

Too much, too quick after seven years of being a prison hermit, he thought, yet the sights and sounds flared his nostrils with old memories.

The world passed him like a tapestry in a long room: a ragged priest singing psalms; squires rolling a barrel of sand through the mud to flay the maille in it of rust; a hodden-clad haughty with his lord’s hawk on one wrist; two men, armoured head to toe but without barrel-helms, running light sticks at each other in practice tourney, pausing to raise greeting hands to Jamie. Only their eyes could be seen in the face-veiled coifs of maille.

Out beyond them, close under the great rock and walls, was a line of hurdles, pavise protection for the crossbows and archers. Beyond that, close under the looming hunch of Edinburgh’s rock, a cloak of murderous crows picked mournfully through the faint stench of rot and the festering corpses of men who were too far under the enemy bows to be recovered for decent burial.

Men moved in blocks, drilling under the bawls of vintenars; Hal saw that some had only long sticks, as if the spearheads had been removed from their shafts, and that too many were unarmoured, with not even as much as an iron hat.

‘Thrust — thrust. Push.’

The sweating men clustered in a block, hardly knowing right from left, half of them unable to speak the other half’s tongue and none of them having met before; they staggered and stumbled and cursed.

The ones who had done this before, the better-armed burghers and armoured nobiles of the realm, moved smoothly through the drills, but they did not laugh at the rabble; they would all depend on each other when push came to thrust.

Hal moved through this misty, half-remembered world of noise and stink and death, made more grotesque by the shattering bright of banners and tents and surcotes dotting it like blooms.

Brightest of all was the Earl of Moray’s flag, big as a bedsheet, fluttering in the dank breeze. It did not show the arms Hal remembered, but the old lessons dinned into him by his father surfaced like leaping salmon: or, three cushions within a double tressure flory counterflory gules . It was the arms of Randolph, right enough, but new-wrapped in the red and gold royal trappings of Scotland.

He saw Jamie Douglas jerk at his reins, black-browed, but then order his own banner dipped; Sim Craw, knee to knee with Hal, gave a quiet coughing bark of laughter and touched Hal’s arm as the entrance of the rich yellow panoply parted to reveal Randolph himself.

‘The paint is scarce dry on his new earl’s arms,’ Sim whispered hoarsely. ‘Jamie resents having to hand Randolph his due as Earl o’ Moray, him being a mere lord of Douglas. Resents, too, the royal mark in that shield that reminds folk Randolph claims the King’s kinship.’

‘Good Sir James,’ Randolph called in French, sweet as milk so that the grue in it was almost masked. ‘I hear you have triumphed at Roxburgh. Bigod, you are a byword for trickery, certes.’

Hal expected wildness and ranting, but Jamie lost his black brow almost at once and threw back his head; the mock of laughter he flung out was more stinging than any curse.

‘Bigod, Thomas, are you still sittin’ here?’ he lisped back. ‘Would you like some ideas on taking fortresses?’

Flushing, Randolph managed a twist of smile.

‘His Grace the King, of course, demands to see the Good Sir James — and the rescued Sir Henry of Herdmanston. Welcome, my lord. Seven years gone from us and now plucked forth like a plum from a pie.’

Hal, taken aback by the sudden focus on himself, managed only a weak nod, but Randolph had never been part of the circle round Bruce seven years ago, so neither man knew the other save by repute — and Hal’s had moss on it.

The moment was broken by a distant thud and all the heads swivelled and craned skywards.

‘There.’

Hal saw the shaped stone arc downwards, scurf up a huge wad of mud and bounce harmlessly almost to the foot of the hurdles; a protesting smoke of crows rose up off their old feasts.