Robert Low - The Complete Kingdom Trilogy - The Lion Wakes, The Lion at Bay, The Lion Rampant

Anything else, he had told Hal pointedly, can be left to die.

Now he rose in the stirrups and held up a hand like a knotted red furze root, mottled as a trout’s belly. Then he turned to Malk, who was valet de limier for the day.

‘Roland,’ he said quietly and the dog was hauled out of one cartload. White Tam dismounted stiffly and, grunting, levered himself to kneel by the hound; they regarded each other sombrely and White Tam stroked the grey muzzle of it with a tenderness which surprised Hal.

‘Old man,’ he said. ‘Beau chien, go with God. Seek. Seek.’

He handed the leash to the grim-faced Malk and Roland darted off, tongue lolling, moving swiftly from point to point, bush to root, head down and snuffling impatiently as he hauled Malk after him. He paused, stiffened, loped a few feet, then determinedly pushed through the scrub and off into the trees at a fast, lumbering lope. The houndsmen and dog boys followed after, struggling with the carts.

Hal turned to Tod’s Wattie, who merely grinned and jerked his head: Gib came up on foot, the two deerhounds loping steadily ahead and hauling him along like a wagon. Hal returned the grin and knew that Tod’s Wattie would keep a close eye on the boy and, with a sudden sharpness deep in him, saw the dark dog boy slogging through the bracken.

Sim Craw saw it too and caught his breath – wee Jamie’s likeness, just as Hal had pointed out. Now there is a mystery …

‘Follow Sir Wullie and stay the gither,’ Hal said loudly, so that his men could hear. ‘Spread the word – bide together. If something happens, follow me or Sim. I do not want folk scattered, eechie-ochie. Do this badly and I will think shame to be seen with you.’

The men grunted and growled their assent and Sim urged his horse close to Hal.

‘What of the wummin, then?’ he asked, babe innocent. ‘Mayhap ye would rather chase the hurdies of the Coontess of Buchan?’

Hal shot him daggers and felt his face flame. God’s curses, had he been so obviously smit with Isabel MacDuff’s charms?

‘Let that flea stick to the wall,’ he warned and Sim held up a placatory hand.

‘I only ask what’s to be done,’ he said with a slight smile and the mock of it in his eyes. ‘Leave the Coontess to her husband – or Bruce, who is sookin’ in with her, as any can spy but the blind man wed on to her?’

Hal shot a look at the Countess, a flame in the dim light under the green-black trees, remembering how she had shone in the dark, too.

He had been fumbling his way to the jakes after the awkward feast, flitting as mouse-quiet as he could through the chill, grey, shadowed castle to the latrine hole. Halfway up the turn of a stair he had heard voices and stopped, knowing one was hers almost before the sound had cleared his ear. He moved on, so that he could peer over the top step along the darkened passage.

She was at the door of her room, barefoot and bundled in a great bearskin bedcover and clearly naked underneath it. Her hair was a russet ember in the shadows, tumbling in tendrils down white shoulders.

At the side of her door hung a shield, a little affair glowing unnaturally white in the grey dim, with a bar of blue across the top and the Douglas mullets bright on it. A gauntlet hung over it.

‘Young Jamie’s shield,’ she explained to the shadow, who clasped her close. ‘He hung it there with the metal glove, look there. He has sworn to be my knight and champion and hangs that there to prove it. If any refuse to admit that I am the most beauteous maid in all the world, they must strike the shield with the glove and be prepared to fight.’

The shadow shifted and laughed softly at this flummery while Isabel pouted hotly up into his mouth. For a moment, Hal’s breath had caught in his throat and he wished he was looking down, feeling that warmth on his lips.

‘Shall I strike it for you?’ she’d asked archly, and raised her long, white fingers, which spilled the fur from her shoulders and one impossible white breast, ruby-tipped like flame in the grey; Hal’s breath caught in his throat. ‘A tap, perhaps, just to see if he storms along the corridor.’

‘No need,’ the shadow declared, moving closer to the heat of her. ‘I have no argument with what he defends.’

She reached and he grunted. She smiled up into his eyes, moved a hand.

‘Nevertheless, Sir Knight,’ she said, slightly breathy. ‘It seems your lance is raised.’

‘Raised,’ the shadow agreed, guiding her into the doorway, so that the firelight fell on his face.

‘But not yet couched,’ Bruce added and the door closed on the pair of them.

A low, hackle-prickling bay snapped Hal from his revery and the caged hounds went wild.

‘Wind, wind!’ White Tam called out hoarsely – and unnecessarily, for everyone was heading towards the sound; Hal saw that Isabel had handed her hawk to the loping, hunched figure of the Falconer and was now spurring her horse away. Bruce, who had been admiring Eleanor’s hawk, now thrust it back at the Falconer and followed, the pair of them forging ahead. Hal heard her laugh as Bruce blew a long, rasping discordance on a horn.

The limiers, hauling against their leashes as the luckless dog boys panted after, forged stealthily off in the eerie silence bred into them, the scent Roland had spoored for them strong in their snouts.

Malk appeared with Roland, the hound panting and trembling with excitement. He struggled at the leash and sounded a long, rolling cry from his outstretched throat that was choked off as Malk hauled savagely on the leash.

‘Enough!’ growled White Tam and shot Philippe a harsh look, which carried censure and poison in equal measure. He saw the Berner’s mouth grow tight and then he was bellowing invective at the luckless Malk.

‘Hand him up,’ demanded White Tam and Malk, scowling, hauled the squirming Roland off the ground and up on to the front of the old huntsman’s saddle.

‘Swef, swef, my beauty. Good boy.’

White Tam suffered the frantic face licks and fawning of the hound, then tucked it under one arm and turned to Hal with a wry smile.

‘What a pity that when the nose is perfect, the legs have to go, eh?’

Roland was returned to Malk, who took him as if he were gold and carried him gently back to the cage. White Tam, frowning, looked down at the berner.

‘We will have Belle, Crocard, Sanspeur and Malfoisin,’ he declared. ‘Release the rapprocheurs.’

The hounds were drawn out and let slip, flying off like thrown darts, coursing left and right. Dog Boy saw Gib stagger a little under the slight strain of the two deerhounds, but a word from Tod’s Wattie made them turn their heads reproachfully and whine.

Dog Boy saw Falo start to run after the speeding dogs, leashes flapping in his sweating hands and remembered all the times he had been the one with that thankless, exhausting task. Now he had been handed to this new lord and it was no longer part of his life. He realised, with a sudden leap of joy, so hard it was almost rage, that he was done with Gutterbluid and his birds, too.

Behind Falo the peasant beaters struggled to keep up, locals rounded up for the purpose and, in the mid-summer famine between harvests, weak with hunger and finding the going hard on foot; the rapprocheurs’ sudden distant baying was wolfen.

Cursing, Hal saw the whole hunt fragment and stuck to the plan of following the Auld Templar, knowing Sir William would stick close to the Bruce and that Isabel would be tight-locked to the earl as well. If any Buchan treachery was visited, it would fall on that trio and Hal was determined to save the Auld Templar, if no-one else.

He forced through the nag of branches, looking right and left to make sure his men did the same. He urged Griff after the disappearing arse of Bruce’s mare, growling irritatedly as one of the Inchmartins loomed up, his stallion caught in the madness, plunging and fighting for the bit.