‘What happened?’ demanded an incredulous voice and Parcy paused for the effect, spoiled by the sudden shrill whine of the woman, who felt Dog Boy’s moment arrive.
‘He drooned, of coorse,’ Parcy scathed and the place roared with laughter, drowning out the final noises from Mistress Trapseed.
‘Then he went to Heaven and stood before the Lord God Himself, a wee bit annoyed at not having had his prayers answered, for all he had been a good priest an’ Christian his entire life. God be praised.’
‘For ever and ever,’ the crowd answered in a rushing moth-murmur. Parcy held up one hand to silence them, a master of his art.
‘He carps about havin’ been abandoned. So the good Lord scowls at the wee priest. “I sent ye a reeve, a sire and the King himself to save ye. What more did ye want?”’
The crowd roared and thumped the tables in approval, demanded more; Dame Trapseed slithered off Dog Boy’s lap and he tried to cover himself as best he could, though he had to stand to lace his braies while the woman, sheened and smiling with triumph, turned out of the shadows to Buggerback Geordie and demanded her money.
Buggerback, grinning round his gap of gums, held out his hand to Patrick and had a scowl and a handful of coin, some of which went to the woman.
‘I did not believe she could hump ye in the middle o’ the tavern,’ Patrick complained bitterly to Dog Boy as Geordie went off, jingling the coin in his palm. ‘Ye may be practically nobile these days, but ye are worse than Horse Pyntle Johnnie there, who would swive a knothole. Yer foul, lowly lusts have cost me a pretty penny.’
Dog Boy, greasy with the ale and the moment, grinned back at him and then froze as the tavern door crashed open. Like a cold wind, the Black strode in and surveyed the silence, aware that those who did not know who he was knew what he was.
‘I am truly sorry to spoil yer doings,’ he said, nodding to Dog Boy. ‘But the English are at Berwick and on the move north. Shift yourselves.’
Then he closed the door on a boiling panic.
Kilmartin Glen
At the same time
Push. Drive. Plod. Tug, strain at wheels, eat dust and then eat the mud that sweat made of it on your face. Work the sun up and work it down again. Hal laboured at it, heaving into the grind of it so that his head thundered and his shoulder ached.
At the end, though, he could fall into a patch of scrubby heather, wrap himself in a cloak and sleep without dreaming of Sim, whirling down and round in the maelstrom with his white crown wisped like maidenhair.
In the days after he had fallen in a dead faint, slowly recovering while Kirkpatrick and Campbell dragged the weapons out of the stricken ship and gathered up every wheeled contrivance and pulling beast, Hal had stumbled down to the water’s edge and walked the breathing shingle in hope. Kirkpatrick sent a man with him every time, sometimes Niall, sometimes Somhairl, just to make sure he didn’t fall in another dead faint, this time face down in a rock pool. And Campbell sent one of his own, a cateran called, in the English, Duncan; he had been a drover and so spoke the southron enough to be understood.
They found bodies, but none Hal knew and only one Niall recognized, kneeling beside the fish-eaten, crab-gnawed face and squinting.
‘They are seldom returned by Carry Vaar,’ Duncan lilted, seeing Niall’s distress. ‘She is in her sleeping with them all.’
Hal was torn between finding Sim with his water-bloated face like curdled cheese and not finding him at all. In the end, it was as if he had simply vanished and, by the time they were ready to leave, Hal had to force himself away from the place.
‘It’s a sore loss,’ Kirkpatrick offered awkwardly on the day the Campbells set out to join the King, already having to lever the laden wagons up stony, rutted tracks. Kirkpatrick did not expect an answer; he had seen the yellow-blue ruin of the face and the haunt in the eyes and thought, with a sudden shift of concern, that Hal of Herdmanston was all but done.
The struggle of the next few days made him wonder at the fevered strength in the Lothian lord and, though he wished he could tell the man to slow himself, the truth was that they needed everyone’s strength.
There were not enough carts and beasts – Campbell of Craignish, frowning, said that his men did not make war in that way. Once the blazing cross had been fired from crest to crest and the men gathered, they would pack some oats, ready cooked into a slab with water, add a portion of herring for the salt in it, then make a fast lick across rock and heather.