Black scowled, Malise collected his horse and tried not to worry about bumping into Tod’s Wattie, though he saw the dim grey shapes of the deerhounds in the depth of the stable. An idea came to him.
He went out and found what he sought – the discarded pot of offal, thrown away by that little rat-runt. The flies had found the contents, but nothing else had, and Malise scooped it back into the pot wearing his gauntlets, then fumbled out a small glass bottle, unstoppered it and poured half the contents in, tossing the whole to mix it.
He went back to the stable and gingerly came close to the dogs, making kissing sounds. He laid the pot down, backed away and watched as the nearest hound sniffed, rose up, stretched front, then back and ambled towards the delicious smell, click-clicking across the flags. The other followed. Malise smiled and collected his horse.
Thomas the Sergeant, from the window nook high above, watched Buchan’s creature slither towards the gatehouse with his horse. Good riddance, he thought to himself and then shook his head. How had he gotten in? Androu, half-shamed, had thought it was probably because Crozier the Keep had recognised him from before as the Earl of Buchan’s man and saw no reason to keep him out.
‘Christ’s Wounds,’ Thomas declared, watching Malise leave. ‘You would think the year was all good crops and peace. Our lord is at odds with the English again and his enemies are everywhere.’
It had been a moment of crushing despair for Thomas when the Lady had admitted a Bruce into the sacred centre of The Hardy’s Douglas, but nothing more than he expected from the woman, who did not have much inkling of what that meant. Nor cared, he thought.
Mind you, he had expected better from the hard-eyed Sientcler lord from Lothian with his blessing of good men -but then another Sientcler, a Templar no less, had stood on the Bruce side and, of course, that high and mighty family had no thought for Douglas then, only themselves.
As if to make a mockery of it all, the Earl of Buchan had arrived at the gates not long after to find Bruce on the stone gatehouse battlements, making sure his red chevronned surcoat was clearly visible. That had been worse still, for the Comyn and Bruce hated each other and none of them, as far as Thomas knew, supported the cause of his master, Sir William.
He had stood beside the Earl of Carrick and the Herdmanston lord, Sir Hal, looking out on the patient riders on mud-spattered horses, armed and righteous and wanting entry. Bruce, Thomas recalled, looked young and petted – more two than twenty-two – and he’d felt a momentary spasm of concern about how the Earl of Carrick would handle this affair.
There had been two others on the wooden battlements -Bruce’s sinister wee shadow, the man called Kirkpatrick, who had nodded to the giant called Sim. That yin had needed nothing more than the nod to foot one worn boot into the stirrup of his great crossbow and, scorning the bellyhook, drag the thick string up by brute force and click it into place. Thomas had been impressed by the feat, yet mortally afraid of what might result.
He recalled the riders’ pale faces looking up, framed in arming cap bascinets and maille coifs, their great slitted helms tucked under one arm and shields pointedly brought forward.
‘Open in the name of the King,’ one had shouted, urging his mud-spattered horse forward a little. Davey Siward, Thomas remembered, with John of Inchmartin behind him – a clutch of Inchmartins had been there, in fact.
‘Which King is that, then?’ Bruce had asked. ‘John Balliol, in whose name you attacked me and my father in Carlisle last year? Or Edward of England, whose army you are supposed to be with? I should point out that I am here because Sir William Douglas has also absconded from that army and King Edward is less than pleased.’
Which was as sure a seal on the fate of Douglas as any Thomas had heard and he burned with indignation. Before he could say anything at all in his master’s defence, a light, easy voice rolled sonorously up like perfumed smoke.
‘Is that a shivering cross I see? Could that be young Hal Sientcler from Herdmanston?’ the Earl of Buchan had asked. Thomas remembered the way the Lothian lord had unconsciously touched that engrailed blue cross on his chest. It was an arrogance, that symbol, signifying a Templar connection and allusions to the Holy Grail, as if only the Sientclers held the secret of it beyond Jesus himself.
‘Sir William of Roslin is also here,’ the Lothian lord had replied and Thomas knew he had done it deliberately, hoping a mention of the Auld Templar might unlatch the situation a little. Buchan had sighed a little and shook his head, so that the sweat-damp hair stirred in the bold wind.