‘My thanks for yer care, Dog Boy,’ he answered, slow and serious, ‘but Chirnside is not wrong. A man gets to feel the years pile up an’ I am not so spry sometimes in the morn, while I have to roll out at night to let out watter and my bones are mostly ache.’
Men stared, amazed and Hal felt a flicker of uncertain fear, seeing the lines on Sim and the grizzle that was more grey than black these days. He was old, Hal thought suddenly – Christ, he is a handful of years more than me and I am old myself. If he was starting to fail, then the world was trembling …
Then he saw the sly look peeping out from under the shag of eyebrow and almost leaped to his feet with the delighted relief of it.
‘But I can still maul the sod with the likes o’ a cuntbitten hoorslip such as yersel’, Chirnside Rowan.’
The hoots and laughter flamed the face of Rowan, while the nudges from his neighbours threatened to topple him off his log seat. He eventually acknowledged Sim’s mastery of the moment with a flap of one hand, which turned into a slap against a nipping midge.
‘Christ,’ he growled. ‘We must be the blissin’ o’ Beelzebub on his Lowland midgies, and if their dinner would only cease slapping them it would be a midgie paradise.’
‘These are wee yins,’ growled Sim Craw. ‘Where Black MacRuiraidh is from they are bigger and thicker, with a stinger like a tourney lance.’
The Lothian men laughed and the butt of the joke joined in. In months past all the Lowlanders would have stared at the Islesman, Black MacRuiraidh, his tangle of jet hair and his big axe, as if he had landed from the Moon itself, but already they were used to him and the others of his kin who had come to join King Robert. Christina of Garmoran had sent them and there were nudges and winks about what their new king had done to this Isles queen to have had such richesse lavished on him.
Scots all, Hal noted, from Chirnside Rowan of the Border, busy feeding a twist of dried bracken into the fire, to the near-unintelligible men of Dingwall beyond The Mounth, who had come, freely enough, defying the Earl of Ross who was not a declared supporter of the Bruce.
Not yet – tomorrow would decide all things.
The galloping horse that was Jamie Douglas burst on them, stirring them like a wind shifting embers from the fire. He stuck bread at the Dog Boy, had shared meat in return and, within minutes, the pair of them were off, restless as hounds into a dusk like smoke and the faint music and screeches of women’s laughter.
Life was all in the way a man thought of it, Hal had decided. The way a young man thought of it, in fact, for when the blood was strong and hot the whole earth was new, like a calf waiting to be licked dry.
When he got some years on him, all the same, it was different. Down deep, bone-deep, Hal knew the world was old, so old he wondered sometimes what chiels and lords had been on it before civilized people came to it, before even the dark, fey Faerie.
Jamie Douglas made a man feel old with the knowing that the younger ones believe the world was new and that they alone were discovering it, as if no-one else ever had.
The squeals and shrills of women – God alone knew where they came from, or how they survived – brought grins and the backs of hands to dry mouths from men considering their luck or their siller.
Sim Craw did not think of thighs and quim. He thought of the shrieks of the Welshman, the shit-smeared archer brought in as prisoner and put to the Question; not hard, Sim recalled and, in fact, not hard enough for Sim’s liking, for he was sure the man had more he might have told.
Let off light, Sim had thought – until Edward Bruce’s retinue men had held the man down, cut off the first two fingers of his right hand, the drawing hand, and seared the wound shut with pitch, for mercy.
‘You will never shoot another Scot,’ one of them had declared, hands on hips and straddle-legged as the Welshman was set free, hugging his pain to his breast and hirpling off scarce able to see through tears and snot, yet blessing his luck that he was alive. Sim had seen Edward Bruce’s scowl at it.
‘You should have cut the tongue from him as well,’ he had growled, ‘so he could not tell what he saw here.’
Hal, on the other hand, was glorious with thoughts of Isabel, somewhere in the rich panoply behind the King’s own tent attending to the Queen. In a while he would go off and find her, when he was sure the Queen had been bedded down for the night and that he could claim Isabel for his own.
For now he lay back and looked at the darkening sky, already shot with sharp, bright stars like fresh-struck tinder, listening to the men slap and complain about the whirling moths and midgies.
‘If ye listen close,’ Bull rumbled, ‘ye can hear their war cries. If they were as big as we, no army would stand agin them.’
‘Aye, weel,’ answered Erchie Scott, ‘we needs offer a soul to some wee imp o’ Bellies-bub, Lord of Flies, in return for such an army. Then we leave them to fight the English and we can all ride home.’