Outside, Sister Mary Margaret found a hand taloned on her shoulder and lifting her from the soaked ground. An eldritch face, scarred and gleaming wet, thrust itself at her, grinning, the broken nose dripping.
‘You will catch a chill, quine,’ Lang Jack declared and glanced at the open door of the byre. ‘We mun get you in the dry and oot of those wet clothes.’
Now Sister Mary Margaret screamed.
The Bruce House, London
The same night
The waxed paper windows turned the room to amber twilight even at midday and let in both the cold and the clamour from the Grass and Stocks markets; Hal could even hear the whine of the beggars on the steps of St Edmund’s Garcherche opposite and, naked to the waist, wished he could move closer to the brazier, a glowing comfort perched on a slate slab on the wooden floor.
The physician finished bandaging Hal’s ribs, dipping his fingers in a basin and drying them fastidiously on a clean linen square as he turned to Bruce.
‘Your man,’ he said, haughty and dismissive, ‘has re-opened an old wound. I have fastened it and will give him a salve and two mole’s feet, for protection against infection in the bone.’
He paused, then looked steadily at the Earl, ignoring Hal’s sullen scowl at the term ‘your man’.
‘In your own case, the tooth is healing nicely and your tongue is undamaged,’ he said. What was unsaid crouched between them like a rat on a corpse. Edward Bruce, oblivious to the exchange, laughed nastily and clapped his brother hard on the shoulder.
‘More than can be declared for your opponent,’ he growled. ‘I am told he gabbles like a bairn.’
The physician turned fish eyes on him. He was called James and came, he claimed, from Montaillou, which most thought simply a village in France. Those who knew, all the same, could tell you that Montaillou lay smack in the middle of that Langue D’Oc stronghold of the Cathar heresy which the Pope was scouring from the world.
James of Montaillou, Bruce mused to himself, was mostly a lie. He claimed to be a physician but had attended no university and was, at best, an inferior breed of skilled barber-surgeon. He claimed to be a Christian, but should, in truth, be wearing the compulsory yellow cross of a heretic Cathar.
‘I have it that Sir Robert Malenfaunt may never speak properly again,’ James commented, with more than a sting of mild rebuke in it. ‘His palate is pierced and his tongue slit longways into two halves.’
His audience winced. Bruce managed a wan smile, the square of linen held to his cheek in what was becoming an ingrained habit; the gleet from the purpling-red half healed cicatrice was clear, yet stained the square a foul yellow, tinged faintly with pink.
‘God preserve him,’ he said thickly, though there were few present who thought God had much to do with Sir Robert Malenfaunt, who had so clearly been abandoned by Him on that tourney day.
‘Deserves that at least,’ Edward Bruce growled, ‘and a mark of God’s Hand that he suffered it as a result of the battle and not afterwards, for losing in the sight of the Lord.’
But the worst injury done to him then is the one I fear myself, Bruce thought – the shunning by your peers.
James of Montaillou left and, after a blink or two of silent messaging to Edward, the rest of the mesnie clacked across the boards, leaving Bruce alone with Hal, Kirkpatrick and his brothers Edward and young Alexander.
‘So this Lamprecht is lost to us,’ Bruce declared bitterly. ‘And the Rood with him.’
‘We’ll spier this wee pardoner out,’ answered Edward determinedly, only to have his elder brother savage him with a glance like a lance-thrust.
‘You should not have been there yester,’ he declared, the words mushed by anger and pain. ‘Scampering around in pig shite like some callow boy.’
Edward’s smile was wide, but razor thin.
‘I thought to mak’ siccar it was done right,’ he declared and Kirkpatrick, hearing the phrase, spun round, glaring at him.
‘What mean you by that?’ he spat back, heedless of the protocols of rank. ‘D’you imply that it would not have been well done without ye?’
‘You needed our swords, certes, from what I saw,’ Edward snarled back, equally disregarding the differences in their station.
‘Who was it planned for such and summoned you?’
‘First time the dog has ever whistled up the master …’
‘Enough.’
Bruce’s voice was harshened by pain and a slap across both their faces, so that they subsided, glowering.