Feast of St Opportuna, Mother of Nuns, April 1298
They had the wrong Henry Sientcler. Malise would have split the little pardoner in two, save that he thought the foul little turd might still have a use. Now he and the thugs he had hired had to huddle in the leper house, holding to ransom monks already frightened by the deaths of Sir Henry’s two escorts. For ease of guarding, Sir Henry had been put in the same room as the gasping Savoyard, the priest who was caring for him and the bewildered uncle.
‘This is idiocy,’ Henry Sientcler had puffed, when matters had become clearer to him. ‘You will have the young Bruce down on you, not to mention Fitzwarin. Christ’s Bones, man, if you do not let me go free, you will have the English and Scots lords both coming at you. Your head is already on a spike, though you do not know it yet.’
Malise, gnawing his knuckles, could believe it – the Red Comyn, entrusted by the Earl of Buchan with this mission, had sent Malise into Berwick to seek out a certain Robert de Malenfaunt and hand over the ransom for the Countess Isabel. He would not do it himself, for he feared capture by the English, being Lord of Badenoch in all but name, but he had curled a lip when Malise expressed the same concern.
‘You are of no account to them,’ he declared with cutting assurance. ‘Take the Templar writ, hand it to Malenfaunt, take the Countess and return to me. This is a task a trained mastiff could carry out.’
Malise remembered the Red Comyn’s sneer, smeared on his freckled, red-haired face. Like all the Comyn, he was short, barrel-bodied, with the sort of fiery red hair that would turn, like his kin the Earl of Buchan, to wheat-straw with age. Like all the Comyn he was full of himself.
The Earl was another problem, Malise thought moodily. Unknown to the Red Comyn, who had been waiting a while and would fret for longer, the Earl had given further, private instructions to Malise regarding the Herdmanston lord who had been escorting the Countess all over Scotland until he had lost her at Stirling.
‘It is inconcievable, of course,’ the Earl declared silkily, ‘but even the rumour of a liaison is damaging to the honour of Buchan. Bad enough to have her linked to the young Bruce – but a ragged gentilhomme of no account? The Countess must be returned and shown the error of her ways. It is important that the lord of Herdmanston understand his own. Forcibly. And that the young Bruce, who is clearly this Herdmanston lord’s patron, receives a message he cannot fail to understand.’
Berwick was, ostensibly, controlled by the English, but they huddled in the castle, the town going about its business with little hindrance, couvre-feu or even law. Malise had tracked the Savoyard to it and thought, at last, to put the stupid little chiseller to the question – only to find him sicker than Pestilence on his Plague Horse. The idea of using the man to trap Hal of Herdmanston here had been too good to pass up . . . save that an idiot pardoner could not tell one Henry Sientcler from another.
A shape slid into the seat opposite and offered a brown smile. Lamprecht; Malise regarded the little man with a mixture of awe and distaste, not knowing whether he really did have Christian relics of power, not liking him because he was a snail who left a trail behind him as he moved.
‘My ripeness, my mouse,’ Lamprecht lisped in what he fondly believed was the way of the court in France. ‘I have my bargain fulfilled. D’argent, certes. Bezzef d’argent, tu donnara.’
It had been God’s Own Hand, Malise had thought, that brought him to the side of Lamprecht, a man he had used in small ways once or twice before. Useful, he had thought at the time – now he looked at the pardoner with distaste, seeing how he might have been handsome once, though all his years had played hop-frog with each other and landed on an ugly heap on his face, which was venal and pouched. He had once had long, clean hair, but it had been too fine to last and was now plastered in a few greasy wisps on his skull, which he covered, when he was not wringing it in his hands, with a soft, broad-brimmed hat lauded with a pilgrim’s shell.
‘I know what you want,’ Malise spat moodily, ‘and you are as far from it as always. Sir Henry Sientcler of Herdmanston, I said. You bring me Sir Henry Sientcler of Roslin.’
Lamprecht’s eyes never warmed to the smile he gave.
Non andar bonu,’ he began, then laboriously turned out the thick-accented English of it. ‘It is not going well. This is no fault of mine. Henry Sientcler you demand. Henry Sientcler you receive. Please to pay me, as agreed.’