‘Here is aid for us,’ Kirkpatrick voiced. ‘A nun, delivering succour to the poor, with two braw lads to keep her from harm …’
‘Until the cry is raised and Alise found like a goose trussed for a Yule table,’ Isabel answered. ‘Then two men and a nun will be all they look for.’ She looked pointedly at Hal and added: ‘One with a bloody great crossbow slung on his back.’
‘It was Sim Craw’s,’ he answered and she heard the bleak in his voice, knew it for what it was and brought one hand to her mouth as if to choke the misery that wanted to spill from it. Sim. Gone. There was no time for the tale of it, but she knew the truth and simply nodded silence on the matter of the crossbow.
They moved as swiftly as they dared, away from the brooding bulk of the castle, pausing now and then like mice on a dark larder floor when they saw the lambent sputter of torches that marked the Watch on their rounds.
‘Dog Boy did this,’ Isabel said suddenly, sinking into the lee of a rough wall. ‘I saw him when he came here and heard the alarm raised later – yet he escaped.’
‘Well minded,’ Hal said admiringly. ‘He did and was raised in station for his daring. The way he told the tale involved rooftops and running.’
He was half our ages, Kirkpatrick wanted to add but did not.
‘How did he get out?’ Isabel persisted patiently and Hal, nodding, frowned and thought.
‘The Briggate.’
The distant clanging of the alarm iron brought their heads up, like stags hearing a baying. There was shouting.
‘Shut fast now,’ Kirkpatrick mourned bitterly.
They went on all the same, walked round a corner and into four men of the Watch. They knew nothing yet and Isabel was on the point of saying so when Kirkpatrick, panicked, gave a sharp yelp like a dog. Hal saw the hackles of the Watch come up, already bristled by the alarm.
‘Run,’ he said.
They ran, she gathering up her wet habit and looping it through her belt as she went, making a pair of fat breeches to the knee so her legs moved more freely. They went down streets and up alleys like gimlets through butter, half stumbling over the cursing sleepers seeking the shelter of the narrowest of places, where the houses almost came together like an arch against the rain.
Up steps, over courts, and Kirkpatrick, turning to tumble a water-sodden butt in the path of their pursuers, was stunned to hear her laugh and Hal’s answering wild cry of ‘gardyloo’. Like bliddy weans, he thought bitterly, with no idea of the dangers here.
Panting, drenched, they paused to gasp in air and Hal clung to Isabel, who grinned back at him from her pearled face. The warp has found the weft, he thought, the song the throat. No matter what happens now I am as happy as when the sun first found shiny water and I know it is the same for her.
They moved on, at a gentler trot now, burst into a wynd and shrank back from fresh rush lights, mounted on a cart. Behind, the Watch flames bobbed – one less, Hal noted with grim satisfaction – and circled in confusion.
There was a smell here, a stink they all knew well, and Isabel covered her nose, while Hal and Kirkpatrick fell into the old trick of it, breathing through their open mouth.
The dead were here.
There were a heap of them. Brought and dumped, they were the ones too weak from hunger or disease to stay in this world any longer. Two men in rough sack overtunics worked with grunts under the poor light of damp torches to load them on the cart.
Kirkpatrick looked at Hal.
‘They will not be taking them to anywhere inside Berwick,’ he said pointedly and Hal, after a pause, nodded and drew out his dagger. Isabel laid a hand on his arm and strolled forward, folding her hands into her nun’s tunic, hearing Hal and Kirkpatrick slide sideways into the dark.
The two men paused and looked up, saw what it was and waited deferentially. One even hauled his rough hood from his head.
‘Sister,’ the taller of the pair said. ‘Ye are ower late to bring succour to these.’
There was bitterness there, but whether at convent charity or his own condition at having to manhandle the nuns’ failure was a mystery; his comrade nudged him sharply for his cheek.
‘I am sorry for it,’ Isabel said piously. ‘Right sorry for this and everything else that will happen.’
The first man shuffled, made ashamed by the vehemence of her words.
‘Ye cannot tak’ the weight of God’s judgement all on yerself, Sister,’ he said.
‘I am glad you feel so,’ Isabel answered. ‘And so doubly sorry for this.’