‘Which is for why we brought our own wee priest,’ Sim replied, bowing his neck to Lamprecht and having back a brown sneer for it. ‘No stolen kine here, wi’ a wee friar in tow.’
It was one reason they had brought Lamprecht from Stirling weeks since and not the most important, Kirkpatrick thought. He caught himself staring at Sim, taking in the slab of a face, the span of shoulder, the grizzled beard. More iron than black in that beard, he thought and that monster crossbow he used to span constantly with a heave of those shoulders is now latched back with the belly hook and belt more and more these days. We are all getting old, he thought moodily.
Sim Craw felt the eyes on him and spared Kirkpatrick a brief flick of glance, which took in the sharp, long-nosed mummer’s mask of a face, little knife points of dagged hair, wintered here and there, plastered wetly to hollowed cheeks. Bigod the wee man was ugly.
The only one uglier, Sim Craw agreed with himself, was yon murderous Malise Bellejambe, the Earl o’ Buchan’s man just as Kirkpatrick was Bruce’s murderous wee man. It seemed to Sim that every highborn in the land needed a murderous wee man like a shadow and he was ruffled as a wet cat at the idea that he and Hal were somehow included in that mesnie.
‘Farthing for that thought,’ Hal offered, seeing Sim’s familiar glazed scowl. The man blinked and grinned loosely.
‘Malise Bellejambe,’ he answered and saw the cloud darken Hal’s face. He wished he had not answered so truthfully now, for Malise was dark and unfinished business, a man who, for sure, had killed Tod’s Wattie and two prime deerhounds as well as a yielded English lord waiting for ransom. There were other killings that could be laid at his feet, though none of them could be proved – but the worst about Malise Bellejambe was that he was Isabel’s keeper, the Earl of Buchan’s snarling guard dog on his wife and one reason why Hal had kept away from her these past years.
Hal was spared the brooding of it by the arrival of the Heidsman, with a bustle of curious and concerned locals at his back, one of them the local priest. In his pretend role of topsman of the drovers, Hal stood up and moved to greet him, being polite but not fawning.
‘Christ be praised,’ the priest announced.
‘For ever and ever,’ Hal responded and there was a slight ease of the tension now that it was established that the strange drovers were neither Faerie nor imps of Satan, who could never get such words past their lips. He saw the idiot boy laughing with the fawning dogs and Dog Boy grinning with him, the shared delight in hounds an instant bond.
After that, matters were established quickly enough – that this was an overnight camp only and that the cattle would not be allowed to stray into plots of beet, or the fields of uncut hay. The priest, Hal saw out of the corner of one eye, moved to greet his brother in Christ and Hal felt a momentary stab of concern.
‘Whit where are ye drivin’ the baists?’
The question took him by the chin and forced his head back into the frowning chap-cheeked concern of the Heidsman’s face. He grinned without parting his lips.
‘Here an’ there. To those who might need the comfort of good beef.’
It was as clear as waving a saltire who the cattle were meant for and Hal had hopes that the Heidsman in Riccarton, a Wallace stronghold, would be sympathetic. He was not wrong, but a few idle questions later had determined that, supporters though they were, no-one in Riccarton knew where the Wallace was – or even his uncle Adam, who was also on the outlaw. Riccarton’s wee keep was now garrisoned by English, which made it doubly unlikely that Wallace would be nearby.
The priest appeared puzzled.
‘He speaks awfy strange, yon friar,’ he said to the Heidsman and Hal forced his smile wide, a satchel of innocence.
‘He is a pilgrim, from the Holy Land,’ he replied and that was enough, it seemed, not only to answer the puzzle of his strange way of speaking, but to gain Lamprecht a measure of spurious respect.
Dog Boy heard the boy’s father call him and the daftie turned reluctantly away, then smiled, innocent as God himself, at the scowl that was Lamprecht.
‘Shell,’ he said and the pardoner waved him away like an annoying fly. Sulkily, the boy turned away, muttering about how he wanted the shell and was never given it.
The deputation moved away, satisfied; Hal returned to sit by the fire, where he told them that Wallace was not lurking around here.
‘Aye well, it was a poor chance at best,’ Sim sighed. ‘Still – we have the other matter.’