‘If you tell me where you had the sword and the answer suits me I will service to you.’
It was proud, but he was a smith and knew his worth – as did Hal, so he took no offence, simply studied the sword more closely.
‘You know this blade?’ he countered, lifting it slightly and the smith nodded. Somewhere, a horn blew, stirring Hal to a half-movement, until he realized with an avalanche of loss that it was not for him. No longer for him, for he was done … he felt like that white and red fighting cock, hauling itself on to the corpse of its opponent, crowing bloody victory and half-dead because of it.
That brought a reminder of Sim, a sharp pang that sucked breath from him for a moment.
‘I may do,’ the smith replied. ‘There are many like it, but they are crockards – the inscription is hammered into a made blade and hilt, whereas this was forged with the letters in it. Only one is like that and it belonged to the de Bissot, who was one of the founders of the Order of Poor Knights long ago.’
‘I had it from a de Bissot,’ Hal answered. ‘Rossal de Bissot, who is dead in Castile and did not want this blade in the hands of his enemies.’
‘Blessed be,’ the smith said. ‘I am sorrowed to hear it, for he was the last o’ his line if he handed it to you for keeping. So that is the true sword – I never thought to see it in life.’
‘Has it a name, then?’ Hal said wonderingly, handling it as if it had suddenly warmed. The smith smiled and shook his head.
‘No name, your honour. Only fame. It was made, they say, from the heathen crescent ripped off the roof of the Temple when Crusaders took the Holy City. Gold, they thought it was and were mightily disappointed to find gilded iron. Yet they put the iron to good use – the letters were put in it during the forging.’
‘What do they mean?’ Hal asked and the smith reached out one cracked thumb, running it in a caress across the fat round pommel inset with the Templar cross, then traced the letters of the hilt: N+D+S+M+L.
‘It is in the Latin,’ Davey of Crauford said. ‘I have no great skill with it, but I know this – every decent smith does. “Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux”, which means “let not the dragon be my guide” if I have been told true.’
Hal nodded confirmation and touched the blade’s letters: C+S+S+M+L.
‘Then that says “Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux”,’ the smith went on.
‘“The Holy Cross be my light”,’ Hal translated and the smith smiled.
‘So it is said. A good, blessed weapon, fit for St Michael himself. Or a Sientcler of the shivered cross.’
He went down on one knee so suddenly that Hal took a pace back, alarmed, as he felt hands round his foot. But the smith, head bowed, simply swore fealty to the lord of Herdmanston and, as the words rolled out of the man, Hal felt something shift and fill him.
He was a knight and a landed lord. He was the Sire of Herdmanston, auld or not, and folk depended on him. Neither he nor the Kingdom was done yet …
The horn blasts racked him, flared his nostrils, brought his head up like a warhorse.
They crowded into the sweating tent while the horns farted and blared. They stank of staleness and leather and oiled maille, clanked when they moved and were stiff-ruffed like strange hounds, trying to sniff another’s arse to take the measure of the meeting.
The Scots lords gathered, the high and wee and as many as could be brought together, fretting to be away and attending to their mesnie as the men gathered for muster. Hot and anxious, hungry some of them and weighted with fear, Bruce thought – but not as bad as the ones opposite, if Seton was to be believed.
His brother Edward, broad face already framed by a maille coif, grinned from one side to the other as he chatted to Jamie Douglas and young – God in heaven, painful young – Walter Steward; both of them would be raised by the King, as was the custom before a battle. Young Walter would become a knight and the Black, lisping when he spoke and gentle as any woman now, would be elevated to banneret.
Edward Bruce did not trust Seton, even when he had sworn on his life, on being drawn and quartered, that what he said was true; the English were exhausted and demoralized by the marches and defeats of the day before, the capture of Thomas Gray and the death of Hereford’s nephew. Their foot was still straggling in and they believed the Scots would flee, not fight.
‘A trap,’ Edward had growled and Seton, bristling like a routed hog, had sworn he spoke the truth.
Drawn and quartered, Bruce thought. Does Alexander Seton know what it means? He remembered Wallace, remembered watching the bloody horror of it, the moment when he hung there, with the blood pouring down his thighs and pooling underneath him because the executioners had already emasculated him, slit his belly open and let his entrails out.
Alive still, he made only one protest, when the pair of muscled men grabbed his arms, forcing his chest out so that the executioner could reach in the belly and up to grab the heart.