the fire again so that sparks flew.
‘Since then,’ he added, ‘I have been aware that nothin’ is as it appears.’
‘Nothin’ is, certes,’ Hal agreed morosely. ‘I fought at the brig o’ Stirlin’ and at Callendar woods with Wallace – yet these last months I have been fighting against the same men whose shoulders I once rubbed.’
‘So?’
The challenge made Hal bristle.
‘So it is no way for a future king of Scots to behave, cleaving his own folk. They will not care for it, I am thinking.’
Kirkpatrick waved one hand, which had the added effect of scattering the midges.
‘Sma’ folk,’ he growled and jerked his shadowed head at where Sim and Dog Boy sat, shadows against the last of the bloodstained sky. ‘D’ye think they care who rules them? As long as they have their livelihood, the De’il could wear the crown. It is the
nobiles
of this kingdom Bruce will have to worry ower.’
Hal thought about it. He had seen the sma’ folk, barefoot, shit-legged, trembling, yet determinedly hanging on to their long spears and immovable from the shoulders of the men next to them. Not noble, some not even landed, unable in many cases to understand the very speech of the man next to them and with the men from north and south of The Mounth suspicious of one another, they came together for one reason. They had cared enough to be angered.
Though it had been slow and long in the growing, a realization was sprouting in Hal that there was a kingdom here that the commonality marked enough to defend – more to the point, it was one where the bare-footed shitlegs considered they had as much say in who ruled them as any earl. He said as much to Kirkpatrick.
‘Mayhap,’ Kirkpatrick growled at this, trying to shrug the matter off and failing, for he was no longer as sure as he once had been.
Chickens is vegetables, he thought.
CHAPTER THREE
Balmullo, Fife
The same night
They brought him in the dark on a litter, a milling crowd of riders and footmen strangely silent save for a grunt here, a hissed warning there. They hefted the litter up the steep stairs and across the span of wooden walkway to the door of the stout stone house.
There were lights from torches that let the curious, peeping from the wattle buildings clustered around Balmullo, see who it was who had arrived, but not who they carried in. The Earl of Buchan, visiting his wife, they saw; one or two of the women, swaddled in shawls, added ‘puir sowl’ to that, for it was hard enough for the Countess of Buchan to have to endure the presence of the Earl’s creature as her gaoler without The Man Himself descending on her for his rights.
The creature met the litter at the door, spider-black and hair-thin with a face somehow twisted out of true. The nose, speckled with the fade of old pox-marks, was bent and twisted and there was a permanent stain, like a birthmark or blood bruise, on one cheek where he had once been hit with an iron skillet. There was a chin on the man, but not much of one and it made the teeth stick out like a rat from between damp lips limned by a wisped fringe of beard and moustache, greying now.
He was preparing, Isabel saw, to be scraping and deferential to his master, the Earl of Buchan, in the hope of preferment away from his duties at Balmullo. No more than a mastiff, she thought, set to watch as much as guard and knowing he is hated.
Yet the mastiff that was Malise Belljambe had to stand aside when the grunting men sweated through the yett and into the main hall with their burden, who said nothing beyond a muffled curse when they set him down too hard.
Malise did not want to tangle with the carriers, who stank of sweat, woodsmoke and old blood; the leader lay in the litter like the Devil at rest, but a lesser imp, in his black carapace of boiled leather, spat curses at the careless handlers in a tongue Malise knew to be the
Gaelic
used by those strange caterans north of The Mounth.
Buchan followed, peeling off
‘Since then,’ he added, ‘I have been aware that nothin’ is as it appears.’
‘Nothin’ is, certes,’ Hal agreed morosely. ‘I fought at the brig o’ Stirlin’ and at Callendar woods with Wallace – yet these last months I have been fighting against the same men whose shoulders I once rubbed.’
‘So?’
The challenge made Hal bristle.
‘So it is no way for a future king of Scots to behave, cleaving his own folk. They will not care for it, I am thinking.’
Kirkpatrick waved one hand, which had the added effect of scattering the midges.
‘Sma’ folk,’ he growled and jerked his shadowed head at where Sim and Dog Boy sat, shadows against the last of the bloodstained sky. ‘D’ye think they care who rules them? As long as they have their livelihood, the De’il could wear the crown. It is the
nobiles
of this kingdom Bruce will have to worry ower.’
Hal thought about it. He had seen the sma’ folk, barefoot, shit-legged, trembling, yet determinedly hanging on to their long spears and immovable from the shoulders of the men next to them. Not noble, some not even landed, unable in many cases to understand the very speech of the man next to them and with the men from north and south of The Mounth suspicious of one another, they came together for one reason. They had cared enough to be angered.
Though it had been slow and long in the growing, a realization was sprouting in Hal that there was a kingdom here that the commonality marked enough to defend – more to the point, it was one where the bare-footed shitlegs considered they had as much say in who ruled them as any earl. He said as much to Kirkpatrick.
‘Mayhap,’ Kirkpatrick growled at this, trying to shrug the matter off and failing, for he was no longer as sure as he once had been.
Chickens is vegetables, he thought.
CHAPTER THREE
Balmullo, Fife
The same night
They brought him in the dark on a litter, a milling crowd of riders and footmen strangely silent save for a grunt here, a hissed warning there. They hefted the litter up the steep stairs and across the span of wooden walkway to the door of the stout stone house.
There were lights from torches that let the curious, peeping from the wattle buildings clustered around Balmullo, see who it was who had arrived, but not who they carried in. The Earl of Buchan, visiting his wife, they saw; one or two of the women, swaddled in shawls, added ‘puir sowl’ to that, for it was hard enough for the Countess of Buchan to have to endure the presence of the Earl’s creature as her gaoler without The Man Himself descending on her for his rights.
The creature met the litter at the door, spider-black and hair-thin with a face somehow twisted out of true. The nose, speckled with the fade of old pox-marks, was bent and twisted and there was a permanent stain, like a birthmark or blood bruise, on one cheek where he had once been hit with an iron skillet. There was a chin on the man, but not much of one and it made the teeth stick out like a rat from between damp lips limned by a wisped fringe of beard and moustache, greying now.
He was preparing, Isabel saw, to be scraping and deferential to his master, the Earl of Buchan, in the hope of preferment away from his duties at Balmullo. No more than a mastiff, she thought, set to watch as much as guard and knowing he is hated.
Yet the mastiff that was Malise Belljambe had to stand aside when the grunting men sweated through the yett and into the main hall with their burden, who said nothing beyond a muffled curse when they set him down too hard.
Malise did not want to tangle with the carriers, who stank of sweat, woodsmoke and old blood; the leader lay in the litter like the Devil at rest, but a lesser imp, in his black carapace of boiled leather, spat curses at the careless handlers in a tongue Malise knew to be the
Gaelic
used by those strange caterans north of The Mounth.
Buchan followed, peeling off
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