The physician bucked and kicked. Behind him, Kirkpatrick heard clattering and cursing.
Hal caught Sir Roger round the waist an instant before the man’s hand reached the sword hilt, dragging him back and on to the floor. A candle holder toppled; the chess set scattered with a patter like rain and they wrestled, panting and growling like pit dogs, amid the sputtering wax.
Sir Roger was stronger, almost hurled Hal off, managed to get to his feet and was gripped again, so that they strained like locked stags; Hal felt the sinews pop, felt the burn of overworked muscles and knew he could not win by strength.
He had come up with a desperate strategy when his opponent suddenly coughed and all resistance went from him. Then he vanished from in front of Hal, who stood and blinked at the curled snarl of Kirkpatrick, dagger in one hand and the dragging weight of his namesake in the other.
Kirkpatrick let the last of the Master of Closeburn sink to the bloody litter of the floor and he and Hal stood facing each other, half crouched and panting raggedly.
‘Done and done,’ Kirkpatrick said hoarsely and was wrenched forward into Hal’s face by a fisted hand.
‘Ye cantrip,’ Hal hissed. ‘No Isabel – ye cozened me, Kirkpatrick …’
‘Afore someone comes to find out the bangin’ in the solar,’ Kirkpatrick answered with a hiss of his own. ‘It would be better for us to be gone and argue this later.’
Hal burned with the rage of it, the sheer injustice of it – and the fact that Isabel was further away than before. In a cage, yet. A cage!
‘I hope this was worth it,’ he snarled at Kirkpatrick, who offered a shaky smile. Well, both men were dead and the secret of Bruce’s lepry, if that was what it was, was safe from the ears of his enemies. Mind you, Kirkpatrick thought, the wee physician did not deserve it – but the Master of Closeburn did. All the same, Kirkpatrick would have done in his kinsman namesake for the pleasure of personal revenge for old slights and the fact that he was an enemy of the Bruce was as good an excuse as any.
He said nothing all the same, only indicated for Hal to fetch the dead Sir Roger’s sword.
It was a fine weapon, with the Master’s arms emblazoned within the pommel circle – the blue cross of Bruce’s Annandale, surmounted by a blue bar with three glowing gold grain sacks, arrogant symbol of the source of Closeburn’s wealth; Hal offered it pointedly to Kirkpatrick, who grinned and shook his head.
‘You are handier with a sword than me,’ he declared. ‘I have little use for it.’
Then he was out, wraithing as silently as he had arrived on his deer-hide soles, leaving Hal to turn and look at the ruin they left, stinking with the fresh-iron of spilled blood, littered with the raggle of bodies. A slaughter, he thought bitterly, the wake Kirkpatrick always left.
He stuffed it into the great locked and iron-banded chest inside his head which was already creaking under all the sins put away in it. Pandora never had such a box, he thought.
Then he followed Kirkpatrick, sword in hand, felted sock-soles sticky with congealing blood, leaving only the gore and the bodies and the job done for a king. He had gone a dozen steps, back to the top of the spiralling stairs before he caught up with Kirkpatrick and they glided down together, back to the hall entrance, where they stopped and listened.
Breathing and snoring … and a shuffle below them, growing stronger. A jangle that Hal knew well enough, for the bruise it had left ached to the bone on his shoulder and he mimed the turning of a key for Kirkpatrick’s benefit, saw the man nod and felt the wind of him leaving.
There was a grunt and soft slap of sound and, a moment later Kirkpatrick was back, wiping the dagger on his sleeve; he gave Hal a feral grin and then moved quietly into the hall.
Jesu, Hal thought, that is four he has killed in less time than it would take to drink a stoup. He felt his gorge rise at the thought and quelled it with vicious panic – fine thing, to be caught because he bokked over his socked feet in the middle of a sleepin’ hall.
They got out of the hall because the small postern set in one of the big locked doors was unbarred and the servant sleeping near it could have been stepped on and never noticed, judging from the smell of pilfered drink seeping from him like heat.
They ran out of luck at the last. The main gate had its thick-grilled yett lowered, the great double doors heavily shut and barred, the guards awake and alert in the stamping cold – but this was Closeburn and Kirkpatrick knew it well; there was a postern sally-gate in a wall behind the stable and he led them to it unerringly.
Unguarded at every other time but this, he discovered, and cursed because he should have realized that the heightened alerts, the important captives, the swirl of English and the threat of Scottish raid would all have conspired to place two good men on this weak spot.