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

He did not see the face until the man spilled down the steps and into the sour, dappled light dancing wearily through the shutters.

His heart juddered in him; he knew the man. Hob, or Rob – one of the men from Douglas who had been with the Sientcler from Lothian. His mouth went dry; if he was here, then the other one might also be, the one called Tod’s Wattie, and he had fingers at his throat, massaging the memory of the gripping iron hand before he realised it and stopped.

‘Lizzie, my wee queen,’ Bangtail Hob said thickly, ‘pour me some of that.’

‘If you can pay, there is another flask,’ Tam declared and the man nodded wobblingly, then fished a purse from under his armpit and counted out coins. Malise fought to control his shaking, to stop glancing behind him, as if to find Tod’s Wattie there.

‘Ah, God take my pain,’ Bangtail said, holding his head. The wine arrived, the man poured, swallowed, puffed, blew and shuddered, then drank again. Finally, he looked at Malise.

‘I ken you, do I not?’ he asked and Malise could not speak at all, but wondered, wildly, if he could get to the dagger through the tangle of his clothes and under the table.

Bangtail drank deeply again and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand as his brain caught up with his mouth and he regretted admitting he knew this man. In Bangtail’s experience, almost all the half-remembered men he knew were husbands or sweethearts of the quim he was stealing from them; he did not not want to press this in case memory returned for both of them.

‘See men?’ he asked, swallowing more wine. ‘Carts. Horses. Men on the road ye came up?’

Malise swallowed, found words and croaked them out, nodding.

‘Took the turn for Elderslie,’ he lied and saw Bangtail jerk his head up.

‘Ach, no. Away. Ye are jestin’, certes.’

Malise shook his head and then had to fight to stop shaking it. Bangtail Hob cursed and slammed away from the table, heading for the stairs.

‘You told me they would be here the day,’ Tam yelled truculently to the vanishing back of Hob. ‘A wheen of sojers an’ a knight, you said, needin’ lodgin. I have been sair put out to accommodate them.’

‘Away,’ scoffed Lizzie, slack smiled and bathing in warm pools with the drink. ‘Ye have had no visitors at all, ken.’

Tam’s hand smacked her in the mouth, just as the cup was rising towards it. The cup and the wine went one way, Lizzie went the other and she lay for a moment, dazed. Then, slowly, she climbed back to her knees and then feet.

‘Any further lip from you, my lass …’ Tam added warningly.

Malise sat still as rock. He could not have moved if he had wanted to and all the time he ached to turn round and yet did not dare, for fear of seeing Tod’s Wattie and the face on him for what had been done to the dogs. Not pleasant, Malise admitted. Henbane, realgar and hermadotalis, better known as Snake’s Head iris, was a vicious poison on man or beast and they did not die peacefully.

Hob clattered back down the stairs, this time dressed in boots and braies and shirt, with a studded leather jack, a long knife and a sword at his waist and a round-rimmed iron helmet in one hand. He shouted for his horse to be got ready and Tam jerked a sullen head at Lizzie to tell the ostler.

Hob paused at the table and snatched up the flask he had paid for, grinning from his broad-chinned face.

‘Elderslie, ye say,’ he said, then frowned and shook his head. ‘Bastits. They were to come this way. No man tells me a thing.’

Malise smiled nervously back at him and the man swept out. There was a pause, then the sound of hooves, speeding away. Malise forced himself on to unsteady legs and, as soon as he was up and moving, he was almost in a panic to be gone. The tavern keeper looked moodily at him.

‘God speed,’ he said sourly, ‘for it appears ye are no decent luck for business.’

Malise would have slit him for his attitude on another day. This day, though, he only wanted distance between him and the Sientclers from Lothian and was so gripped and blinded by it that he never saw the flitting figures in the trees as he whipped the staggeringly exhausted horse out on to the muddy road.

He did not know that they had let him by as too small a prize when there was an inn to be plundered.

Bangtail Hob was not a happy man, as he kept telling everybody out of the sour scowl of his face. It did not help that it had rained on his ride from a warm, comfortable inn and that he had left his cloak behind.

‘When I find yon arse who swore he had come up this road and saw ye turn for Elderslie,’ he growled for the umpteenth time, ‘I will hand him a lick such as to dunt his head from his neck.’

‘She was a rare piece, then, this quine ye climbed off?’ demanded Will Elliott, who was licking his lips in anticipation of the delights of the inn Bangtail Hob had described.

‘She was,’ Hob enthused, then blackened his face with a new scowl. ‘Now we will be lucky to get a whiff, when these lads reach it. Elderslie road – the serpent-tongued hoor-slip.’

‘Enow, ye midden,’ Sim growled and nodded towards the palfrey, approaching at a posting trot, the Countess riding as easily as was possible on a sidesaddle. Hal and Sim Craw looked at each other, though there was only mild amusement in it for the entire affair was, as Sim put it when they’d set out, a guddle of nae good.

‘Master Hob,’ the Countess called and Bangtail turned obediently, smiling his most winsome.

‘You are certain of the description of this man? That it was Malise Bellejambe?’

‘I am, Lady,’ Bangtail replied firmly. ‘I kent his face, but he flustered me with his falsehoods and it was only when I reached here that I minded him. Malise, for sure. It is not a face I will forget again, mark me.’

‘He seeks me,’ she said and Hal heard the catch in her voice.

‘You’re safe with us,’ he said firmly and she shook herself, as if a goose had walked over her grave.

‘I am in no danger from him,’ she replied. ‘He would have the skin taken off his back by my husband if he as much as bruised me. That privilege belongs to Buchan.’

Hal blinked at the bleakness of the last words and Isabel came out of the dark place she had gone, blinked and forced a new smile.

‘But he is not … pleasant,’ she said. ‘And he may do harm to others.’

‘I would worry about Tod’s Wattie if I were he, lady,’ piped a new voice and they looked at the Dog Boy, hovering round Isabel’s stirrup. ‘Tod’s Wattie loved they baists and yon man killed them with evil potions.’

Sim studied the Dog Boy, seeing the pinch of his face, the bruised eyes. Seeing what Hal saw, that wavering faint image of wee dead Johnnie. God alone knew what had gone through this lad’s mind while he had been in the moatbridge pit but it had only been the grace of Our Lady that it had not been the moat weight itself. Yet the lad had had to listen to it crush Gib to bloody fragments and the Lord alone knew what that had done to him.

The Dog Boy felt the eyes on him and grinned at Sim before turning back into Isabel’s fond stare. He was not sure what it was he felt for this high-born woman but he wanted, at one and the same time, to put his head on her breast and have his forehead stroked – and his hands on those same breasts. The combined raggle of these feelings frequently left him flustered, tight in chest and groin.

Hal caught Bangtail’s eye and sent him off down the column. Twenty riders and four wagons had set off from Annick Water three days ago, following the arrival of Tod’s Wattie just as peace broke out and everyone went their way. Hal and his small mesnie were headed north, first to Stirling, then on into Buchan lands. Delivering, Hal thought, like a mercantile carter.