Frixco de Fiennes was more than a little drunk, on wine and fame both. He had watched his brother die of the festering wound he had taken at Roxburgh and discovered that, without him, he was that worst of creatures, a noble so low and Gascon he might just as well have been dung.
He had taken work – welcome to a man with scarce two coins to rub against each other – with the harassed officials still trying to carry out King Edward’s writs in a land where he had no power. It had taught him, in short order, that the years of juggling accounts in Roxburgh had honed a talent for tallying, where a merk was two thirds of a pound, a shilling of twelve silver pennies one-twentieth of a pound and the penny the only actual coin in all of it.
It had taught him, too, that there was a new-fangled way of tallying, using some foul heathen Moorish numbering system which made it all easier, according to the young, thrusting clerks who promoted it. Frixco saw the tallying up for his own talents and the bleak future of it soured him.
It was Aggie’s misfortune to stumble on him at that moment, pleading for help for ‘his bairn’. Turning her in had been desperation – but it had also netted him a reward, which he had spent on clothes and wine. Now he was staggering from the burning stink and wondering where he could make more such coin.
He collided with the man, the pair of them as much at fault as the other. Frixco, alarmed at having annoyed one of the hundreds of rough, armed men slouching and reeling about the streets, stammered out an apology – and then saw the face.
He blinked, puzzled, for he knew the face but could not place it … the knowledge crashed on him like the apple in Eden flung at his forehead; he saw the black, dagged hair and the bearded face, saw it as he had at Roxburgh, the scowl arched over a fistful of steel.
Dog Boy and Frixco stared at one another for a long moment and Dog Boy knew he had been recognized, knew it was all up with him in Berwick and felt a sudden, savage exultation.
‘Nivver violet a lady,’ he growled and slammed a horny-handed fist into Frixco’s face, wishing he had a dagger in it. He leaped over the mud-spattered sprawl of the man and was off down the street like a new lamb. He ran no more than a few paces, fell into a swift walk and filtered on down through the throng lurching away from the remains of the pyre.
He was a hundred ells away before he heard the distant shouts, but they floated clear and eldritch through the encroaching sea-haar.
‘The Black is in Berwick. Ware. The Black Douglas is in Berwick.’
The sea, off Colonsay
At the same time
The Se?or Glorioso was like a ship, Pegy declared, in that it floated and had sails. Other than that it might well have been an ox cart to him and, despite the alleged generosity of Grand Master Ruy Vaz in presenting it in exchange for the half-sunk Bon Accord, Pegy was sullen and convinced that they had had the worst of the deal.
He said it loud and often, all the struggling way back towards Scotland, and Hal, drifting in and out of wound fever, knew it was because the new beast was a long-runner more suited to the Middle Sea, whose ropes and spars and sails were as strange as a six-legged foal to the cog-men of the old Bon Accord. They knew it as a carib, the best way they could pronounce the Moorish word for it: qaríb.
The lateen rig, with its huge, unwieldy yardarms, defeated the best efforts of Niall Silkie, Angus and Donald, while the single big rudder confused Somhairl. Pegy, unable to judge the speed of ‘the ugly baist’, was barely able to work out where they were never mind where they were going; he knew the cargo was overloaded, too, and prayed for good weather.
Somewhere, the Devil laughed.
A wind rose and freshened as they came up round the shoulder of Colonsay – Pegy was fairly sure it was Colonsay – and the sailors brought in as much sail as they thought might work, only to find the Se?or Glorioso blundering and pitching like a mad, blind stot.
Then, whirling away the sea-haar and the sunshine, the gale backed up with a witch’s shriek, backed up full south and west and hurled them like a driven stag towards the coast.
Berwick town
Some hours later
His back hurt from crouching, so that he swore he heard it crack when he finally straightened and began to move into the dark and the fog, out of the stinking alley he had been hiding in since God forged the world, it seemed.
Surely, Dog Boy thought, they would have given up by now. It had been hours since the alarm was raised, was now dark and the sea-haar had witch-fingered in and grown thicker and stronger. He had heard the soldiers calling for couvre-feu at least an hour ago, so the streets were dark, wet and should have been empty.
Save that they were not. Torches, lambent in the swirling mist, showed the bobbing presence of men in packs, still searching, relentless as an avalanche; the Black Douglas was trapped in Berwick and, sooner or later, would be found. Dog Boy cursed his likeness to Jamie. Then, for the first time, he cursed his own stupidity.