Robert Low - The Lion at bay

‘Whit where are ye drivin’ the baists?’

The question took him by the chin and forced his head back into the frowning chap-cheeked concern of the Heidsman’s face. He grinned without parting his lips.

‘Here an’ there. To those who might need the comfort of good beef.’

It was as clear as waving a saltire who the cattle were meant for and Hal had hopes that the Heidsman in Riccarton, a Wallace stronghold, would be sympathetic. He was not wrong, but a few idle questions later had determined that, supporters though they were, no-one in Riccarton knew where the Wallace was — or even his uncle Adam, who was also on the outlaw. Riccarton’s wee keep was now garrisoned by English, which made it doubly unlikely that Wallace would be nearby.

The priest appeared puzzled.

‘He speaks awfy strange, yon friar,’ he said to the Heidsman and Hal forced his smile wide, a satchel of innocence.

‘He is a pilgrim, from the Holy Land,’ he replied and that was enough, it seemed, not only to answer the puzzle of his strange way of speaking, but to gain Lamprecht a measure of spurious respect.

Dog Boy heard the boy’s father call him and the daftie turned reluctantly away, then smiled, innocent as God himself, at the scowl that was Lamprecht.

‘Shell,’ he said and the pardoner waved him away like an annoying fly. Sulkily, the boy turned away, muttering about how he wanted the shell and was never given it.

The deputation moved away, satisfied; Hal returned to sit by the fire, where he told them that Wallace was not lurking around here.

‘Aye well, it was a poor chance at best,’ Sim sighed. ‘Still — we have the other matter.’

The other matter felt the eyes on him and stopped, spoon halfway to his gums, food sliding on to the raggle of his beard. I take it back, Sim thought to himself, Lamprecht is uglier even than Malise Bellejambe.

Lamprecht saw the faces, knew what they were thinking and hoped they had not worked out that he was about to take himself off very soon; hoped, even more fervently, that they would not discover the truth of it all until it was too late and his revenge sprung. He remembered the time five years ago at least he and the lord and his retinue had met, in the lazar at Berwick. The one with Satan’s face, the Kirkpatrick who spoke the lingua, had held a knife at his throat then.

The prick of it burned yet and it took all his will not to reach up one comforting hand to the spot, thus giving away his thoughts to the same Satan. Now the revenge was his. Dar cinquecento diavoli, che portar tua malora…

Five hundred devils made no appearance to take the curse that was Kirkpatrick, so Lamprecht finished the action of spoon and mouth, chewed, swallowed and grinned.

‘ Non andar bonu?’

‘Speak a decent tongue, ye wee heathen,’ growled Sim and Lamprecht scowled back at him.

‘ Questo diavolo ignorante non consoce il merito,’ Lamprecht began, stopped, took a breath and began again, speaking deliberately to Hal, his English wavering like a sailor finding his land-legs. ‘This devil does not know talent when he sees it. I am to help. I have the thing. You want the thing. Capir?’

He had the thing. Truth was, Hal thought, he had a portion of the thing, which he had brought out like a cradled bairn when Hal and Kirkpatrick had come with the Earl Bruce, chasing the promise of that single ruby.

Lamprecht had unwrapped the sacking lovingly in the amber light of wax candles and the dancing shadows of the pilgrim’s cell he had claimed at Cambuskenneth.

Even half the thing took Hal’s breath away and the whole, an ell length at least, must have been an ache on the eye.

Bruce had taken the gilded fragment, the lower end of a cross lid, badly hacked off. Five similar rubies studded it and the nest for the prised-out sixth revealed the depth of beaten gold. Bruce, slow with wonder, nestled the ruby Lamprecht had given him into it, watched the perfect fit for a moment, then removed it again.

‘It is from the Westminster,’ Lamprecht had said, his voice reverently low. ‘From the furfanta — the swindler. Pardon… the robbery. Of the King’s treasure.’

In the quiet of the cell no-one had spoken, for they had all heard of this, taken delight in it if truth was told. While Longshanks ravaged up and down Scotland, a nest of thieves — his own canons of the minster among them — had stolen the Crown treasure from Westminster. That had been almost a year ago and the howling rage that was Edward had not diminished, if the arrests and racks and beheadings were anything to go by.

Nor had it all been recovered. Pieces of it were turning up all over the country — and abroad, too, Bruce had heard. Yet this was singular. This was part of the reliquary of the Black Rood, taken from Scone on the day Longshanks stripped John Balliol of everything that made him a king and a man and the Kingdom of everything that made it a realm.

‘ Si,’ Lamprecht had said, as if reading Bruce’s thoughts. ‘I have this from Pudlicote man. For… some small services.’

‘Who is Pudlicote?’ Kirkpatrick had demanded and Bruce, turning the rubied cross over in his fingers so that it flared bloody in the light, knew the answer.

‘Baron of the thieves,’ he had said darkly. ‘Clever in the planning, stupid afterwards in spraying Crown jewels all over the county as if they were baubles. He paid the price for it — his flayed skin is nailed to the door of the Minster now.’

‘Si,’ Lamprecht had agreed. ‘Pudlicote is discovered — all is lost. Cosa bisogno cunciar? Pardone — what am I to do?’

‘What DID you do?’ Kirkpatrick had asked.

‘Ran,’ Lamprecht had revealed. ‘Ran with Jop. Jop had half, I have half. Six Apostles each and we go our way. Jop comes to the north.’

The rubies, all twelve, were known as the Apostles, said to contain the very blood of Christ — but even they were not as valuable as the sliver of dark wood they had decorated.

‘And the Rood itself?’ Bruce had demanded. Lamprecht, pausing, tried not to look sly. Failed. Then he had shrugged his rat-boned shoulders and offered a brown smile.

‘Jop knows where relic is. Piece of Holy Cross which is of this land.’

He had then managed, at last, a sly, knowing look.

‘Bishops of here will want it back. Jop, he will not tell me where it is — cane. Cornudo.’

‘This Jop,’ Bruce had said slowly. ‘A small man. Bald.’

‘He is not. Big. Fat belly. Much hairy. He is man who bears the standard. Ti credir per mi, mi pudir assicurar per ti. ’

‘I do believe you,’ Bruce had answered grimly.

‘ Ti star nobile, e non star fabbola — sorry, permit me. As you are noble, this is no fable. I have no money. For this piece and the information, I ask only a paltry. A twenty pound of silver.’

That had all but choked Kirkpatrick and made Hal blink. That price would keep Sim Craw for a year in England — six months longer if he stayed north of Berwick.

‘Does Jop have the Rood?’ Bruce had demanded.

‘If not, he know where,’ Lamprecht had replied. ‘I cannot get in to him. You go to where he is — you know this place?’

‘I do,’ Bruce had answered, then handed the gilded prize back, which surprised Hal — but not Kirkpatrick, who knew that possession of such an artefact would result in punishments from Edward that Hell would balk at. He scowled, however, when he realized the sixth Apostle was staying with Bruce — but at least a single, flawless ruby of price was explainable in the purse of an earl.

‘If Jop helps us, you shall have twice the price,’ Bruce had declared and Lamprecht’s grin was wide and foul. It did not waver when he was told that he would have to go along, for that had been taken into account in his planning — was the necessary risk in it.