‘To fear God and maintain His Church,’ the earl declared, speaking to the Dog Boy and almost as much to himself. ‘To serve the liege lord in valour and faith. To protect the weak and defenceless. To give succour to widows and orphans. To refrain from the wanton giving of offence. To live by honour and for glory. To despise pecuniary reward. To fight for the welfare of all. To obey those placed in authority. To guard the honour of fellow knights. To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit. To keep faith. At all times to speak the truth. To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun. To respect the honour of women. Never to refuse a challenge from an equal. Never to turn your back upon a foe.’
He stopped; the silence was a cloak.
‘This we vow,’ he ended, almost in a whisper, for the image of the Auld Templar swam in him and the face was his father’s and he felt unmanned by the brimming of tears.
‘Aye,’ said Sim, bustling into the moment like a bull elbowing through a herd. ‘Noted more in the breach than the observance these days, your lordship.’
‘Sma’ wonder only Wallace can lead us,’ added Lang Tam Loudon sharply, ‘if all the grand gentilhommes of the realm struggle to joogle that in the air daily.’
Hal said a sharp warning word and Lang Tam subsided, but Bruce had heard and Hal waited for the thrust of that truculent lip. Instead, he got a face, raised up from looking at the ground and as despairing as a thirsting flower in a desert.
‘Aye,’ Bruce agreed. ‘It is to the shame of this realm that those charged with its protection have to lie and foreswear their vows to maintain their station and hold to the defence of it. And even that is sacrificed on occasion.’
He paused and raked them with a sudden glare and the wine-slack seemed to have fallen from him.
‘Mark me,’ he said. ‘There will come a day when the knights of this kingdom find their vows. Then our enemies had best look to their lives.’
There was a pause, then a low burr of approval, a small growl of sound that left Hal as amazed as he was at Bruce’s vehemence. Here was a Carrick he had not seen before . . .
‘You should never lie,’ the Dog Boy persisted and brought loud laughs that made him glare.
‘Aye,’ Bangtail declared, ‘ye are young yet to appreciate the need for a good lie, wee yin.’
‘Tell us,’ Bruce invited and Bangtail frowned, wondering if he was being cozened. But Bruce’s face was open and smiling, his eyes bright with wine and the moment.
‘Ach, yer grace – have ye never had a wummin come to ye with the ribbons ye bought her bound in her hair? Or a wee bit fancy cloth shawl? And she asks – how do I look in this?’
Everyone was nodding; even Bruce, whose smile was broader than ever.
‘Well,’ Bangtail went on, ‘d’ye risk the quim and tell her she will be a fat milcher even with a sack on her curly pow, but she is the only wummin for miles willing to part one leg from the other? No. Ye tell her she looks fine, or ye temper your honour and remark on how nice the colour is and how is suits her – even if the plain truth is that it would gag a sow.’
The laughter was loud and long now.
‘Now we ken why ye are named Bangtail,’ Ill Made Jock shouted from the fringes of the fire.
‘A glance at yer face,’ Bangtail countered, swift and vicious, ‘and we are in no doubt why ye are called Ill Made.’
‘Bangtail counts cunny more than honour,’ Sim declared, ‘which everyone kens. This is his excuse for a lie – but it is still an excuse.’
‘Ach, Sim,’ Bangtail said, ‘the world is not as divided, like the border atween this Kingdom and the English, where ye can declare “here we are and there you are and we are different from you”. When it comes to the bit, though, ye cannae tell an English Dodd from a Scots yin, or a Kerr in Hexham from another in Roxburgh.’
‘Ye can always tell a Kerr,’ growled Sim, ‘since all that breed are left-handed.’
Bangtail leaned forward, his sharp, fox face guttering with shadows and light from the flames. Hal saw that Bruce was fascinated, listening intently.
‘Let me spier ye this, Sim Craw,’ Bangtail went on. ‘Is it good to misguide your enemy? To make him think, maybes, that ye are weaker than ye are, so that he makes a bad fist of attacking ye?’
Sim nodded, reluctantly.
‘So it is fine to lie to an enemy,’ Bangtail ended triumphantly and Bruce slapped one hand against the other with delight at Sim’s scowl.
‘By God’s Grace,’ he roared in English, ‘I am truly sorry I never sat with Herdmanston men before this, for the entertainment in it is finer than a tumbler and juggling act.’
‘Aye, weel, so ye say, your lordship,’ Bangtail responded, preening, and Hal could not resist leaping in.
‘Thanks to his lordship, we have learned a deal this night,’ he declared, nodding deferentially to Bruce, who acknowledged it with an elegant, slightly mocking, one of his own.
‘We have learned,’ he went on smoothly, ‘that Bangtail cannot judge which leg of a wummin is finer, the left or the right.’
Hal paused and let the puzzled frown of the man in question squeak on his forehead for a heartbeat.
‘The truth of it for him is somewhere atween, of course,’ he added and there was laughter at that.