Gaultier nodded, while his two assistants, sacking draped over their filthy heads against the rain, bobbed like toys in agreement.
‘Through the arch,’ the Fleming said with smug satisfaction. ‘There was a great bang as it hit the gate – we all heard it.’
And the two toys nodded at him, at each other and then at the dark brooding Malenfaunt. Patrick of Dunbar, round, wisp-moustached face framed by the ringmetal coif, beamed at the Earl of Buchan.
‘Well – a palpable hit, by God. Damaged at least. Something we can claim as a practical breach, eh?’
Buchan, his thinned hair plastered to his bared head, nodded scowling, pouch-eyed agreement; there had been too long spent on this enterprise in his opinion and the reason for it sat cloistered in that hall, no doubt trembling at what might be done to her now. Well might she shake, he thought savagely.
‘A white peace,’ Patrick added pointedly. ‘As we agreed – I look to you, my lord, to hold to this, as agreed.’
Malenfaunt laughed sourly, but said nothing. He seldom spoke these days, the fork of his tongue rendering it almost unintelligible and that, coupled with the deep, banked smoulder in him kept everyone at a distance.
Malise, dripping patiently by the side of his earl, watched Malenfaunt and remembered how he had come off worst in a tourney duel with Bruce and that there had been some scandal over a nunnery in Berwick, which had had to have the occupants scoured out of it and questioned.
Depositions of Devil worship and worse were, even now, being taken and Malenfaunt’s name had come up more than once. Now he was here, banished from the mesnie of de Valence, shunned by every nobile who at least professed a measure of honour and trying to ingratiate himself into the grace of the Earl of Buchan, whose wayward wife he had once held to ransom.
War, Malise realized, would be a joy to this one for it would put an end to all the legalities threatening to swamp him and might even raise his stature; all knights would be needed soon, when Longshanks rose up off his skinny arse and started to roar like the mangy pard he was.
This time, he knew, there was no question of which side the Buchan and Balliol and Comyn chose – the one which had a Bruce on the opposite.
‘I have my reasons for being here,’ Buchan said sourly, peeling off a sodden gauntlet to wipe his streaming face. ‘Make what white peace ye care – but neither the Countess nor Hal of Herdmanston is included in it. That pair are mine, by God.’
They assembled in the lisping mirr by the stone cross, holding up a shield covered in white linen, turning dark with rain. Two figures came to the arched, flame-blackened doorway, the bigger, badger-bearded one holding a monstrous crossbow. Those who knew Sim and the lord Hal – Dunbar men and those locals who hired out for pay – gave a few friendly shouts, swiftly muffled. Save for one.
‘Holla, Sim Craw – aye til the fore I see.’
The irrepressible Davy Scott from Buccleuch made all the other Scotts laugh, then curl their lip at the glares from the Comyn retinue.
‘Davy Scott – I have heard nothing of ye since … bigod, it would be Roslin Glen. How long since was that?’
‘Three years,’ Scott called back, heedless of the glowers.
‘A rattlin’ time,’ Sim shouted. ‘A rare victory, so I hear.’
‘Aye, man,’ Davy enthused, his beady black eyes bright. ‘There were Kerrs every which where, skitin’ like hares. Ah saw Kerrs frae Cessford an’ Graden an’ others frae ower Teviotdale. A right rout it was.’
‘And the English,’ Sim pointed out wryly. Davy Scott had the grace to look embarrassed for a moment, realizing not only his preoccupation with an old feud but that he was now, to all intents, with the English he had once scattered so delightedly up and down Roslin Glen.
‘Oh aye – them as well.’
Then Sim swept his eyes round until he found the face he sought; still fox-sharp, the eyes as cold and dark as of old, though permanently narrowed now, as if the man squinted. Losing his sight, Sim thought. Then added viciously to himself: God blind you, Malise Bellejambe.
Malise felt the eyes on him and flicked briefly to them, then away. He did not like the big, keg-shaped grim of Sim Craw, who made him aware of a man he’d red murdered years before, the one called Tod’s Wattie. A friend of this one, Malise remembered, seeing the banked revenge in Sim Craw’s stare and not caring much for it.
Ignoring all of this, Buchan and Hal locked gazes. Hal saw the gaunt of the man and wondered at it. He has ten years on me, he thought to himself, but that did not explain the yellow tinge, the unhealthy fever of the stretched cheeks, the bones of his face like oak galls. He felt the heat of the man’s anger.
Buchan, in turn, saw the still figure, grizzled these days and limned with hard life, but he barely took in the look of the man; his belly turned, for here was his revenge, looking him in the face. It came to him, in a sudden, sick dizziness, that there was no triumph in it, only a reflection of his own mean rage.