Kirkpatrick knelt by the prone figure, swathed in bloody linen, the budded mouth slack and the face pale as milk, so that even the neat little beard seemed to have faded to wheat-straw. He was aware of Hal above him, bull-breathing and dripping pats of slow blood from his blade; someone was screaming.
Hal stared in appalled disbelief at the foot he had severed, still in the raggles of a boot, which leaked blood in front of him. Strange, Hal thought with that detached madness that came on in the middle of carnage, to be lying there looking at your own foot where it should not be.
Kirkpatrick knew Red John was dying, that all the padded linen cloths, sodden with blood, were not choking the flow of life from him. His own fluted dagger seemed an irrelevance, but he slid it in anyway, so that Red John gave a little jerk, a final flicker.
‘Da.’
The voice snapped heads up and they all saw the youth, half-sheltered behind a whey-faced Malise Bellejambe. Two panting men-at-arms stood to one side, blades bloody and faces desperate – Mouse was already closing on one.
The boy. Red John’s boy, a gawky seventeen-year-old, brought to say his farewells … the realization of it hit Hal and Kirkpatrick at the same moment, but Lyndsay of Donrod was quicker still.
‘Ach, no – would ye?’ he gasped out, clutching Kirkpatrick’s arm and half-hauling the man back to his knees as he rose, grim as a rolling boulder and the knife bloody. With a savage curse, Kirkpatrick swept his free hand like a closing door, slapping Lyndsay in the face and sending him arse over tip to the flagstones.
Malise saw him coming, his worst nightmare, blood-dripping blade and all and he shrieked, backing away, almost thrusting the boy at him. Hal saw it and, in a flicker of time, curled a sneer into the wide eyes of Bellejambe – then turned and slammed his fist into Kirkpatrick’s face.
He was holding his sword when he did it, and it was only fate that made the flat of it slam Kirkpatrick forehead to chin, while the hilt-hardened fist knocked teeth from him and sent him spilling backwards to join Lyndsay.
The pair of them struggled like beetles until they righted themselves, Lyndsay scrabbling away from Kirkpatrick, who came up bellowing and blowing blood from his split lip.
‘Would you?’ demanded Hal, his blade held pointedly at Kirkpatrick. ‘A boy, now. Why no’ hunt out the mother and cousins, bring them to the altar and drown it in Comyn blood?’
Kirkpatrick saw, out of the corners of his eyes, the Herdmanston men moving subtly to defend their lord and realized he would make no headway here, though the anger and pain thundered in him. Dog Boy stepped closer to him, his face set as a quernstone and his foot on Kirkpatrick’s spilled dagger. Kirkpatrick glared, then lashed it back to Hal.
‘I will remember this, Herdmanston,’ he spat. Dog Boy tipped the dagger towards him with the toe of one shoe, a tinkle of sound that was suddenly bell-loud in the silence. Kirkpatrick scooped it up, whirled like a black cloud and spun away.
Hal turned to the men-at-arms, half-crouched and wary; Malise had gone, but Red John’s son still stood, pale and determined, his mouth a thin seam. The footless man had passed out or died, his final whimpers trailing echoes round the chapel.
‘Take the boy an’ run,’ Hal told the men-at-arms, ‘’afore Kirkpatrick has mind to return.’
He stood while they hurried off, looking at the bloody bag that had been the Lord of Badenoch; he saw the boy’s face again, grey with that shock of having your world reel and tip, of having the great tower and rock of someone you thought immortal vanish like haar. Hal knew that loss well and the needle of it was still sharp.
Lyndsay of Dornod let out his breath.
‘Christ be praised,’ he growled.
‘For ever and ever,’ everyone replied.
Hal’s added laugh was a mirthless twist at this parody of piety in a place drenched with blood and sin.
Tibbers Castle, Dumfries
Feast of St Kevoca of Kyle, February, 1306
Thrushes and blackbirds and fluttering white doves spun the black smoke from the burning thatch of the outbuildings while a handful of grim, blackened men lounged against the remains of a stable wall and watched, chewing crusts.
Yet the hall of Tibbers had dogs gnawing bones and chickens scratching hopefully among the rushes; somewhere in the rafters baby sparrows were learning to fly, as if the world had not turned upside down.
Hal sat and watched Bruce and a huddle of others scatter vellum, plucked from the Rolls Chest with its brightly-painted coat-of-arms, a white trefoil-ended cross on black – sable, a cross flory argent, he said by rote to himself.
The owner sat at the far end of his own hall, face blank as scraped sheepskin, hands resting on his knees and flanked by two more of the Bruce men. Hal felt sorry for Sir Richard Siward, sitting there tasting the ashes of his outbuildings and the bitterness of defeat.