‘Yourself, Aleysandir of Herdmanston,’ he declared with a wry grin. ‘A legend, with a name folk huddle closer to, as if they can take some heat and comfort out of it, like a good fire.’
Stunned, Dog Boy could only sit and think about Ill-Made Jock, who had died coughing in his own blood while folk hammered axes on the door of Herdmanston. He had not looked anything like a hero all the long, sore time he took doing it.
Now he is a hero warrior of the Kingdom. Like Aleysandir of Herdmanston.
I am not, neither one nor the other. I am Dog Boy, worn to a nub by war and who has just ‘violeted’ a lady. It will not be the last vow broken, he thought, for this struggle has grown mean.
Crunia, Kingdom of Castile
Feast of the Siete Varones Apostólicos, May 1314
Sun-ripened, breathing air heady as peaches, they came down to the mottled, dun-coloured roofs of the port amid the bang and clatter of the Seven Apostolic Men, a perfume of incense clinging to every sill of the unshuttered windows brocading the street.
Anonymous as dirt, Hal and Sim blessed the foresight that had paid two Compostella-sated pilgrims for their ragged filth of robes, they happy with the knowledge that not only had they extirpated their sins but they now had the silver to go home by ship – blessed be the Name of God.
Now those robes blended in with the rest of the throng as Hal and Sim came down to the chanting town, a sound at first muted as sea-surf, rising and falling like a distant marker bell on wrack, barely a disturbance to the birdsong and the smell of warm green and myrrh.
By the time Hal and Sim had traded ruts and dust for rough cobbles, heading for the last clear sight of the ships crowding the harbour, they were plunged into a sweaty noise and a swirl of perfumed smoke.
Torquatus, his painted nose already dented, wavered uncertainly, rising and falling in a sea of eager hands; Ctesiphon ploughed grimly through the throng, with Sts Hesychius and Secundius seemingly battling each other for some undetermined precedent. The rest of the Seven Apostolic Men were lost in the chants and the shouts.
‘Christ betimes,’ Sim bawled out, ‘how are we to achieve anythin’ in this conflummix?’
‘Keep moving,’ Hal said, shoving and jostling. Find the Bon Accord first – down to the harbour. In the end he had to bellow and point. Sim elbowed his way through, cursing folk roundly until they reached the fringes of the crush and popped out like pips from a squeezed apple.
‘Bloody lumes,’ Sim fumed. ‘Moudiewarts – look at my cloots.’
He pulled the filthy ragged robes out indignantly and Hal eyed him back with a raised brow until even Sim had to laugh ruefully; if there was a new stain or tear on his robe there was no way of telling.
Hal looked at the haven they had found, discovered the stone faces of men with brown arms folded across their chests and knives prominently displayed.
‘It looks like a tavern or an inn,’ he said and then realized why the men stared; paid to keep out the riffraff, they were plainly considering which way Hal and Sim should leave: upright or horizontal, with balance favouring the latter. Sim scowled back at them, which was no help and only served to have the men look one to the other and, as if on some unseen signal, start to move.
Hal, swift as winking, hauled out his purse, held it up like the dangle of a fresh-neutered sheep bollock and jingled it; as if spellbound the two men stopped, faces broadened into brown grins and they stood aside like two opening doors.
Beyond, the yard was as much a mayhem as the street outside, though the worship was different; here, men bellowed and waved fistfuls of deniers and silver pennies, tournois and grossi while a Savoyard with a black cloth over one eye grabbed them, matched them and, in some way neither Hal nor Sim could fathom, accepted the bet and the odds.
Beyond this quarrelling shriek was a cleared square where two men half crouched, the docked birds churring and baiting in their hands, one gold and green, the other red and white, their shaved necks stretching and straining like serpents.
‘Cockfight, bigod,’ Sim declared with delight, just as the men let go and fell back. Released, the birds sprang forward like tourney knights, their gilded spurs glittering, dashing towards each other with a clash, beak to beak. There was a pause, a strange sound like a sheet in a mad wind and then they fell on each other, wings flailing, beaks snapping, leaping and twirling in a mad dance as they struck out with their deadly feet.
A man screeched as the white drew blood with a strike, flinging up his arms, knocking his neighbour’s hat off and elbowing Sim in the ear; Sim swore and elbowed him back, hard enough to make the man grunt and double up, but Sim’s heart was not in it, for he was roaring for the white and red.