Robert Low - The Lion Rampant

Now folk had to ford the Tweed instead, but the postern that led to it kept its old name.

The Briggate.

He came down through the surging streets, worried at first by the knots of flame-lit men with grim faces and iron hats but realizing they were stumbling burghers, called out to the half-done walls and trembling at the idea of the Scots breaking in. Even if many of them were Scots themselves, Malise thought as he hurried through the trail of their torch embers, they had families and livelihoods here that Bruce’s army would not treat kindly.

At the Briggate, he paused uncertainly; the area around the gate was thick with armed men now, at least twenty and perhaps more, all bristling with spears and crossbows, rain dripping from the rims of their helmets and soaking padded jacks.

Malise spotted the serjeant in charge by his maille and his attitude, bawling orders left and right, his bucket helm under one arm and his surcote dark with rain and bright with the badge of de Valence.

‘Have some men and a woman gone out the gate?’

The serjeant turned at the sound of the voice, saw the dark, dripping figure and thought at once of a wet weasel in a dark wood.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded, only half interested. The men he had were all call-outs, barely of use even when placed behind merlons. God help us if the Scotch come at us out of the dark, he thought …

‘Sir Malise Bellejambe.’

That snapped the serjeant’s head round and he stared more closely at the wet weasel. It was possible this man was a nobile . Just possible enough to allow caution in dealing with him.

‘Well,’ the serjeant said and added, with a hint of scathe, ‘my lord. Nothing has gone through this gate. Nor will it, coming or going.’

‘The deid kert.’

They both turned to the voice and the owner of it blinked from under his soaking hood, looking from one to the other uncertainly and wishing now that he had never spoken.

‘The what?’

Gib heard the tone of the serjeant and wished even more fervently that he had kept his lips snecked on the matter. But it was out now, so he stammered out the truth of it: the dead cart had been manhandled out through the open gate just before everyone had arrived.

‘You opened the gate?’ the serjeant demanded and now Gib heard the growling thunder, so that he started to sweat, despite the rain.

‘Aye, for a brace of auld chiels. I telt them the gate could not be opened, for the alarm was sounded. So they said they would leave the bliddy thing, for they were not inclined to roll it back the way they had come.’

He looked imploringly at the serjeant, willing him to see the shock of it.

‘I didnae want a pile o’ corpses blocking up the way and stinking my door all night.’

‘Ye opened the gate,’ the serjeant replied in a disbelieving knell of a voice.

‘I said they would not be allowed back,’ whined Gib, ‘but they laughed and answered that it was a fine excuse for their wives and they would spend the night at the Forge.’

Malise knew the Forge, a smithy just across the ford set to capture the passing trade. It provided a howf for travellers too late to gain entry to the town and was a notorious stew, providing drink and food and whores, even in times like these. More so, he added to himself, for folk trapped beyond Berwick’s walls needed to lose their fears in drink and lust. Even the women.

‘They were rebels,’ he explained to the frowning serjeant, ‘who have freed a prisoner from the castle and are now headed for escape. If you provide some men, we can overtake them …’

‘Open the gate?’ thundered the serjeant. ‘Again?’

‘In pursuit …’ Malise began and the serjeant closed one eye and scowled.

‘Aye, you would like that, I am sure, if you were a rebel spy. Get me to open the gate and spill in a lot of your friends.’

‘I am Sir Malise Bellejambe …’

‘So you say.’

‘He is, though,’ Gib interrupted helpfully and withered under the glare. ‘The Witch-keeper.’

Now the serjeant knew who the man was: the jailor of the witch in the cage; an idea struck him.

‘Is she the one sprung, then?’

Malise, all nervous impatience, nodded furiously and the serjeant, wiping the rain from his face, thought with agonizing slowness and then nodded.

‘You can go alone,’ he said, ‘out the postern. If there are only two old men and a woman, you should have little trouble. Mind — you will not be allowed back in this night.’

No one will, he added to himself, watching Malise scuttle to the small door set in one of the large ones. He gave a nod and the man unlocked it with a huge key while Malise fretted at his slowness; it was barely open before he wraithed through it.

‘Fair riddance to you,’ the serjeant declared and spat, listening to the comfort of the lock clunking shut.

She rolled, stiff and shivering, off the cart and accepted the rough sodden sacking which Hal stripped off and gave to her.

‘Time we were not here,’ Kirkpatrick muttered, looking back towards the distant gate; Isabel nodded, and then looked dubiously at the huge steel-pronged arbalest Hal handed her.

‘It is spanned. All ye need do is slot a bolt in it,’ he said and handed her one with a look as sharp as its point; she nodded again, feeling the dragging weight.

‘Move yerselves,’ Kirkpatrick hissed and Isabel paused once more and signed the cross over the tipped-forward cart of lolling dead.

‘God be praised,’ she said.

‘For ever and ever,’ they muttered and turned into the river. It only came up to their shins, but had spated with the rain and the force of it was enough, with the stone-littered gravel bed, to stumble them. They moved like sleepwalkers towards the distant flickering lights of the Forge, Kirkpatrick in the rear and concentrating on his footing, cursing the dark and the wet and bad cess of the whole business.

Lucky to get away with it, he thought to himself, just as he heard the scatter of pebbles sliding under an unsteady foot. He turned, saw a dark shape and started to duck — and then the world exploded the side of his head into a bright light.

Hal and Isabel turned as Kirkpatrick reeled backwards and hit the water with a great spray; Isabel screamed and part of the rain-soaked dark seemed to tear itself away and lunge at Hal. He had time to see the winking flash that sliced the explosion of water, had time to realize that the wild, flailing hilt of that dagger had felled Kirkpatrick. Had time for the crazed eyes to sear a name into his head …

Malise.

Then the black shape was on him and all was mayhem.

Isabel saw the shadow and screamed again, knowing who it was even as Hal took the rush of it and Kirkpatrick toppled into the water like a felled tree. She saw him, arms out and loose, launched away on the shallow water and turning like a log, so that she knew he was unconscious and would drown unless she helped.

She floundered to him, underkirtle and sacking and the slung arbalest conspiring to suck her to a stop, levered him face up, hearing the splash and grunt of the two men fighting.

‘Wake,’ she roared at him, slapping his whey cheeks, aware of the great bloody bruise on one side of his face, but his head rolled back and forth and she shrieked her frustration at him, and then began hauling him to the nearby bank in a fury of panic that she would not get back to help Hal in time.

Hal thought Malise was the ugliest thing in creation, his greasy pewter hair plastered to his skull, his face a braided knot of hate, studded and pitted and marked down one side with nicks and glassy pocks and a nose bent sideways like a ruined spoon.

They held each other like fumbling bad lovers, Hal’s fist clamped on Malise’s wrist as he tried to bring the dagger down, Malise’s other arm flailing wildly and blocked, time and again, by Hal’s forearm. Hal felt the dull pain there and, in desperation, struck out between Malise’s blows, felt the man stagger; for a moment they lurched and lumbered in the fountaining water, before Malise recovered and they strained, almost still.