At the same moment …
Dog Boy could not help glancing behind him every other minute, for the sick lure of the Herdmanston remains would not stop itching a spot between his shoulderblades.
There, high in that arched folly of a gaping window, was where he had shinned down in the dark and sneaked off to find help when the tower was besieged by the Earl of Buchan and Patrick, the son of the March Earl. Now that same Patrick had taken the title and Dog Boy wondered if the ruin of his face, scalded by boiling water during the assault, was still as sorry a sight as the tower, gawping at the rain, draped with misery and withered grass.
There was where he had sneaked through Herdmanston’s garth, stumbling over the bodies of his slaughtered deerhounds, but then he’d had to scale the barmkin wall and now it was more gap than drystane.
The wee chapel was sound enough and had managed to take some of Jamie Douglas’s riders in shelter from the rain, though they had crept in, crossing themselves piously and apologetically to the blind-eyed Magdalene and the recumbent weathered stone tombs in which mouldered Hal’s parents. Beyond the chapel stood the solid haloed cross that marked where Hal’s wife and son lay buried; it was there, Dog Boy recalled, that the besiegers had assembled their springald, whose bolts had burst in the yett …
‘See anything?’
Dog Boy started guiltily at the voice, turning to see Jamie Douglas approach with his lithe, purposeful stride. He shook his head automatically.
‘Be a better view on the tower,’ he said and Jamie nodded, grinning.
‘I heard that you scrauchled down it once. You would be hard put to shin back up now, though, despite the handholds nature has provided.’
He peeled off his bascinet and shoved the maille coif back off his head like a hood, peering into the dying mirk of a wet day.
‘They are there,’ he growled. ‘I can feel them and smell them, like dung on my shoes.’
Dog Boy had no doubt that the Black was right, for the man could spy English in a mile round and only his hate was greater than his uncanny ability. Besides, they had seen a scatter of mounted men an hour before and only natural caution on both sides had kept them apart.
‘Gules semy of crosses paty and a chevron argent,’ Jamie intoned darkly and Dog Boy, though he spoke no French, knew that Jamie was reeling off the fancy words for the banner they had spotted: red, covered with wee white crosses and with a big white chevron.
Sir Hal had the same skill, but he would have known whom the banner belonged to; wisely, Dog Boy did not voice this to the scowl of Jamie Douglas.
‘It is not the Earl of March,’ Jamie said, almost to himself. ‘His device is a rare conceit involving a lion rampant to remind everyone that Patrick of Dunbar thinks himself regal enough to be considered for the throne, like his da before him.’
He scrubbed his dark hair with confusion.
‘So who is it?’
‘No matter,’ Dog Boy answered. ‘They are unlikely to be friendly to us this close to Dunbar, for if Edward the Plantagenet stops of a sudden, wee Earl Patrick will be sticking his biled face up the royal arse.’
Jamie gave a harsh chuckle and clapped Dog Boy on the shoulder.
‘Little room up there,’ he answered. ‘Despensers an’ Gascon relations of Gaveston are elbowing for space.’
There was a long pause while the curlews wheeped in a rain-sodden sky. Dog Boy saw the ruin of fields round him, ones he remembered thick with oats and barley, studded with sheep. Sir Hal would be sore hurt to see his demesne in such a state, he thought.
Not that the rest of the land was better; Dog Boy had seen nothing but fields of rot all spring, for the early harvest had been ruined by rain and now folk were slaughtering livestock they could not feed. When all that was gone, starvation would set in and the rising leprous heat was now withering late-planted crops and forage. Coupled with the war that was clearly coming, it would be a harsh year for the Kingdom, where folk would eat grass.
It did not help that he was part of their bad luck – Jamie Douglas was raiding, with fast wee pack ponies and a couple of lumbering carts to load cut fodder and grain bags, his men all mounted to herd kine and sheep; the army slinking round Stirling like wolves on a kill needed a lot of feeding.
They had torn and scorched furrows back and forth across the Lothians, concentrating on the holdings of those they knew still supported the enemy. Then they had been chased by mounted men, whom they presumed came from Dirleton or Dunbar and had been running now for three days; Jamie Douglas did not like to run, Dog Boy thought, even when it was prudent.
‘I would like to ken them better,’ Jamie Douglas said and Dog Boy jerked out of his revery to look at him, and then followed the Black’s steady, meaningful stare. The top of Herdmanston tower.