A pantler went over suddenly, by accident or tripped by the howl of knights at another table, and the clattering clang of his dropping tray was echoed by the baying laughter. He picked himself up, collected as many of the pastries as he could and served them anyway, straw and all; servants and scullions fought the dogs to snatch those he missed.
It snapped the tension and Hereford went back to his close-head mutterings with his clerk, Walwayn; Thweng saw that little man, aware that he was being watched, turn and stare insolently back at him.
Walwayn sweated with secrets, so that any stare made him twitch, but the one from that droop-moustached cliff of a face made his bowels turn; Sir Marmaduke Thweng, he recalled briefly, a lord from Yorkshire reputed to be a hunter of trailbaston and brigands for the head-reward. The thought made him shiver and Hereford scowled, thinking he was not being paid enough attention.
‘Stir yourself. You say Lord Percy sent a man, a Templar heretic, to spy out some plot with that discredited Order and the Scotch?’
‘Just so, my lord,’ Walwayn answered in a softer hiss, appalled at the lack of discretion in Hereford’s voice. The Earl saw it and frowned, but tempered his volume.
‘What plot? Is the excommunicate King about to visit us with heretic Templars?’
Walwayn shook his head furiously.
‘I do not know, my lord. The Lord Percy understands it is more to do with acquiring weapons. Or treasure.’
Hereford stroked his beard while the noise swirled, thick and hot. The famed Templar treasure was a gleaming lure that would not be banished, but Templar weapons, even the expertise of the Order’s former knights, would be formidable – and God forbid that Bruce had enlisted fled Templars to his cause.
And Percy, already firmly in the camp of the King’s opponents, had said nothing. A thought hit Hereford.
‘Who is Percy’s spy?’
Walwayn, who wanted away to drink and women, blinked sweat from his eyes.
‘A Knight formerly of the Order is all I understand, lord.’
Hereford nodded, thought for a time longer, and then patted Walwayn on the shoulder.
‘Keep track of it and keep me informed.’
Walwayn, released at last, merely nodded and slid away. He did not ask if Hereford would inform the King; he thought it unlikely – all was rumour, though Walwayn could taste the truth of it. Hereford would wait until matters were firmer and there was advantage in it for himself, but Walwayn would have to be the one setting such an advantage. Until then, there was drink and women …
There were no women of any worth, Thweng noted, which accounted for the knights’ behaviour. There were serving trulls, who would be caught and tupped before the night was over, and a wet nurse sitting by the fire with someone’s babe, but no woman of quality to put a curb chain on the revels, for this was war and even if the entire court travelled with the King, the Queen and her women did not.
He dropped the fish and wiped his fingers on his tunic front; he thought the sweet taste was less to do with spices and cooking than incipient rot, which echoed the entire court as far as he was concerned.
He watched the great Sir Giles, scarred paladin of the first rank, his red jupon with its silver grail-cups stained with meat juice and his own piss, glowering at the fiery de Bohun nephew.
Young Henry’s uncle, finished with his clerk and his rank established like the big-ruffed wolf in a pack, returned to stabbing a finger at the younger Earl of Gloucester. No doubt pointing out that, as Constable of England and a veteran of the Scots wars, it should have been his right to command the Van alone and not in tandem with an inexperienced sprig of the de Clares. Politely and with due deference to rank, of course.
‘What say you, my liege lord?’ d’Argentan bellowed at the King. ‘A chivalric passage of arms on the morrow, to set the start of a glorious day?’
He spoiled the moment of it by belching and Thweng saw the droop of the royal eyelid. Bad idea to mention time to the King, he thought, since he was running out of it. They would be hard put to make it to within three leagues of Stirling by the Feast of St John the Baptist as it was and even then would have to leave all the foot and baggage behind. Delaying for a ‘passage of arms’ was not an option.
Sir Giles was too canny a court rat to argue the point, bowing graciously and then leering at Henry de Bohun. A hurrying wench, goosed by one of the Nevilles, clumsily dropped a torch and there was a furious moment of stamping, sparks and soot; a dog took the opportunity to filch Miles de Stapledon’s meat from his plate and he chased it round, bellowing and threatening until it gave up and dropped it.
Thweng, sweating in the leprous heat, looked at the mortrews and gristle on his plate, the nightlife fliers which seemed to congregate on it and wished he were somewhere else. Anywhere else.