Frixco de Fiennes said nothing, all the same, for he knew that Stirling should have had stores for two years, but complacency and greed had corroded that. In the end, Cressingham gave up expecting a reply.
‘The townspeople of Stirling must work if they wish the protection of the fortress,’ Cressingham declared. ‘Make it clear to them that rations will be given to those who volunteer for service.’
Frixco duly made a note, tongue between his teeth, juggling parchment and quill and the ink pot hung round his neck, though he knew Cressingham only did this because the commander at Stirling was Fitzwarin, a relative of the Earl of Surrey.
Frixco had already delivered lists to Cressingham regarding Roxburgh itself, which should have made it clear to the man how unlikely it was that any castle in Scotland could fully equip enough townspeople – Roxburgh had 100 iron helmets, 17 maille tunics cut for riding, seven pairs of metal gauntlets, two sets of vambrace and a single cuisse. What use a solitary thigh guard? Frixco wondered. And if one was found – what use a one-legged knight?
‘My lord.’
Ralph was back, announcing that the Earl of Surrey and Sir Mamaduke Thweng were in the main hall, awaiting Cressingham’s pleasure. Brother Jacobus had joined them.
The scathe of it lashed Cressingham, so that he scowled. My pleasure, indeed. He was tempted to let them wait – two tottering old warhorses, he thought viciously, though he had to temper that in Sir Marmaduke’s case, since he was younger than De Warenne by a decade or more and still held a formidable reputation as a chivalric knight. Muttering, he swept from his room.
The three sat at the high table benches in the huge hall, misted with faint blue smoke from badly lit fires and empty but for De Warenne, Sir Marmaduke and Brother Jacobus, Cressingham’s chaplain from the Ordo Praedicatorum.
Before Cressingham had even slippered his way across the flagged floor, Frixco scuttling behind him, he could hear De Warenne’s complaints, saw that Thweng stared ahead, forearms on the table, and with the air of a man shouldering through a snowstorm while Brother Jacobus, piously telling his rosary, listened without seeming to listen.
‘Plaguey country,’ the Earl of Surrey was saying, then broke off and looked up at Cressingham with watery, violet-rimmed eyes.
‘Here you are at last, Treasurer,’ he snapped. ‘Did you plan to sleep all day?’
‘I have been busy,’ Cressingham fired back, stung by his tone. ‘Trying to sort out the feeding and equipping of this rabble you have brought, claiming it to be an army.’
‘Rabble, sirra? Rabble . . .’
De Warenne bristled. His trimmed white beard was shaped into a curve and pointed; with his round arming cap he looked like some old Saracen, Cressingham thought.
‘Good nobiles, chided Brother Jacobus and the soft voice stilled everything. De Warenne muttered, Sir Marmaduke went back to staring at nothing and Cressingham almost smiled, though he resisted the triumph of it, for fear the priest would notice. Domini canes – God’s Dogs – folk called the Order of Preachers, but not to their face, since they had been given the papal permission to preach the Word and root out heresy, a wide and sinister writ.
Now this bland-faced little man sat in his frosting of habit and jet cappa, the over-robe that gave them yet another name, Black Friars. He let the polished rosewood beads slip, sibilant as whispers, through his fingers.
Shaven and washed so clean his face seemed to shine like a white rose, Jacobus was, Cressingham knew, using the rosary as a pointed reminder to everyone that this was the Thursday of the Transfiguration of Christ, one of the days of Luminous Mystery. He also knew those beads were just as easily used to tally and list in the service of the Treasurer; if Jacobus was a hound of God, Cressingham thought, then he is kennelled at my command – though it would be prudent to check his chain now and then.
The beads, click-clicking through the friar’s smooth fingers, brought tallying surging back to Cressingham.
‘Gascons,’ he declared viciously, startling De Warenne out of a slump so suddenly he could not form a response; the air hissed out of the Earl and he gobbled like a chicken.
‘Three hundred crossbows from Gascony,’ Cressingham went on accusingly. ‘Now more than half have no crossbows.’
‘Ah,’ said De Warenne. ‘The carts. Missing. Lost. Strayed.’
‘It was the Earl of Surrey’s quite proper military decision,’ Sir Marmaduke said suddenly, his voice a slice across them both, ‘to relieve the march burden on the Gascons by loading their equipment on wagons. After all, they were not to need it until Berwick, at least – unless your reports were misleading about the extent of the rebel problem and it was possible to have encountered this huge ogre Wallace somewhere around York.’
Cressingham opened and closed his mouth. De Warenne barked a short laugh.