Robert Low - The Lion at bay

Hal saw the gleam in Lamprecht’s eyes, like animals in the dark of the cowl. He glanced at Bruce and saw he had seen the same. There was a moment — then Bruce reached out, took the bread and turned to Kirkpatrick.

‘Give him a coin.’

Pilgrim Lamprecht, with obvious delight, took the coin from under Kirkpatrick’s scowl, frowned at how small it was, then made it disappear.

‘Cambuskenneth,’ he said, clear as new water, then he was gone, leaving bemused men looking at his scuttling back. Edward Bruce looked at the bread, then smiled his broad, slit-eyed grin, his cheeks knobbed as late apples.

‘I would not eat that if I were you, brother.’

He went off, hooting, while the others trailed after him. Bruce looked at the half-loaf, rough maslin with a grey dough interior, indented as if someone had poked a finger in it. He scooped, found something hard and pulled it out; Kirkpatrick whistled, then looked right and left while Bruce closed his fist on the object and moved on, nodding and smiling as if it was the everyday thing for the powerful lord of Carrick and Annadale to be holding one half of a poor loaf.

But all of them had seen the red gleam of a ruby, big and round as a robin’s egg and that itself would have been marvel enough. Bruce knew more, had known that ruby and its eleven cousins when they had been snugged up next to each other along the length and breadth of a reliquary cross last seen tucked under the arm of an English knight heading south to Westminster.

Inside the jewelled and gilded crucifix-casket, Bruce knew, had lain the Holy Black Rood of Scotland, the holiest relic of the Kingdom and, together with the Stone of Scone, as much the mark of a coronation as the crown itself.

Riccarton, Ayrshire

Transfiguration of Christ, August, 1304

Mattie Broon first caught sight of them as he plodded through the drizzle, his idiot son lumbering awkwardly at his side and jumping in puddles. Late in a wet August afternoon for Mattie to be heading out to his sheep, folk said later. Too long in Creishie Jean’s alehouse, the knowing said. Too slow and indulgent with that daftie boy said those who knew better.

Mattie saw the cattle first, small black shapes with long, curved horns. Being a sheepman he did not care for cattle much and was surprised to see them, for this was no drover’s road. The dogs came next, rough-coated slinkers moving the score or so stirks along the road.

First came long shadows, eldritch as Faerie, from men walking determinedly on foot, four of them — no five. One a priest, or a pilgrim lay brother — Mattie had never known such a thing before. His original thought, that they had stolen the beasts, was now thrown into confusion, for surely no priest would be party to cattle-lifting?

The cattle lumbered over the low ground, a seemingly disorganized mob of shaggy bodies and wickedly curving horns. The topsman — Mattie presumed — lifted one hand in greeting and to show it was empty, that they meant no harm.

No harm, Mattie snorted to himself. It was clear they were circling the beasts, planning to make camp and he shifted away from them, ignoring the plaintive repeat of questions from his son. He moved off a little way and hunkered, hearing their rough laughter, the lowing of cattle and sharp barks of the dogs clamouring to be fed.

When the breeze brought the smell of onions and oatmeal with the whisper of grass Mattie rose up, chivvied his son from digging in the mud and moved off. His sheep would be untended, but he knew that this would have to be told to Heidsman. He would know what to do.

The drovers watched him go from under the loops of rough wool drawn up over their heads, eating stolidly from horn spoon and wooden bowl, save for the young, dark one who was making a fuss of the fawning hounds.

‘Is he away?’ asked Hal, who had his back to the man. Kirkpatrick flicked his eyes up and toed a loose brand back towards the fire.

‘Heading away, fast,’ he growled. ‘Herding the boy like a coo. No right in the head, that boy.’

‘Away to fetch the maister,’ Sim Craw said and looked over at the Dog Boy. ‘Leave the dugs, man. Sit and eat — nivver miss a meal, for ye dinna ken when the next will appear.’

Dog Boy gave a last friendly cuff to the fawning beasts and then went to the fire, taking his bowl and spoon from Sim and offering a wide grin in payment. Hal smiled with him — the Dog Boy was enjoying himself, even if it was only a couple of sleekit cattle dogs he worked with and the price for it was spending the last weeks looking at the shitty arses of a dozen scrubby kine. He was the only one with any joy of the affair.

‘I said,’ Kirkpatrick muttered, ‘that this idea of pretending to be drovers was bad. We are nowheres close to a drove road, so any who spy us will think we stole the baists.’

‘Which is for why we brought our own wee priest,’ Sim replied, bowing his neck to Lamprecht and having back a brown sneer for it. ‘No stolen kine here, wi’ a wee friar in tow.’

It was one reason they had brought Lamprecht from Stirling weeks since and not the most important, Kirkpatrick thought. He caught himself staring at Sim, taking in the slab of a face, the span of shoulder, the grizzled beard. More iron than black in that beard, he thought and that monster crossbow he used to span constantly with a heave of those shoulders is now latched back with the belly hook and belt more and more these days. We are all getting old, he thought moodily.

Sim Craw felt the eyes on him and spared Kirkpatrick a brief flick of glance, which took in the sharp, long-nosed mummer’s mask of a face, little knife points of dagged hair, wintered here and there, plastered wetly to hollowed cheeks. Bigod the wee man was ugly.

The only one uglier, Sim Craw agreed with himself, was yon murderous Malise Bellejambe, the Earl o’ Buchan’s man just as Kirkpatrick was Bruce’s murderous wee man. It seemed to Sim that every highborn in the land needed a murderous wee man like a shadow and he was ruffled as a wet cat at the idea that he and Hal were somehow included in that mesnie.

‘Farthing for that thought,’ Hal offered, seeing Sim’s familiar glazed scowl. The man blinked and grinned loosely.

‘Malise Bellejambe,’ he answered and saw the cloud darken Hal’s face. He wished he had not answered so truthfully now, for Malise was dark and unfinished business, a man who, for sure, had killed Tod’s Wattie and two prime deerhounds as well as a yielded English lord waiting for ransom. There were other killings that could be laid at his feet, though none of them could be proved — but the worst about Malise Bellejambe was that he was Isabel’s keeper, the Earl of Buchan’s snarling guard dog on his wife and one reason why Hal had kept away from her these past years.

Hal was spared the brooding of it by the arrival of the Heidsman, with a bustle of curious and concerned locals at his back, one of them the local priest. In his pretend role of topsman of the drovers, Hal stood up and moved to greet him, being polite but not fawning.

‘Christ be praised,’ the priest announced.

‘For ever and ever,’ Hal responded and there was a slight ease of the tension now that it was established that the strange drovers were neither Faerie nor imps of Satan, who could never get such words past their lips. He saw the idiot boy laughing with the fawning dogs and Dog Boy grinning with him, the shared delight in hounds an instant bond.

After that, matters were established quickly enough — that this was an overnight camp only and that the cattle would not be allowed to stray into plots of beet, or the fields of uncut hay. The priest, Hal saw out of the corner of one eye, moved to greet his brother in Christ and Hal felt a momentary stab of concern.