Men crushed forward, Patrick yelling for his own to hammer the bar off the gate. Spears clattered on shields – then, suddenly, inexplicably, the men behind the grill scampered away from it. There was a moment of confusion as the attackers, with nothing to stab at, milled round the yett door, getting in the way of the men bringing in hammers – then there was a hissing sound, like falling rain, and the screaming began as boiling water poured from the murder-holes above them.
Malenfaunt nodded with smug righteousness as men howled out of the door. Three of them missed their footing on the plank or were shoved aside by the pack of panicked to fall in a whirl of arms and legs and screams. The rest half-ran, half-stumbled back down the stairs; one was smacked on to his face by a bolt in his shoulderblades and Malise knew that came from Sim Craw, high on the roof and hidden by the merlons. He shivered at the idea of almost having been in all of that and glanced sideways at the smiling Malenfaunt, who had saved him.
Young Patrick came out, bawling and screaming, hauling off his coif in a frenzy, throwing bascinet to one side; squires and servants ran to assist and shield him while he stripped himself to his broiled, blistering face and head, finally falling, moaning.
‘Blood of Christ,’ Malise muttered. He crossed himself.
‘Amen,’ mouthed Malenfaunt wryly.
They carried Patrick of Dunbar off to be balmed with goose-grease and reflect on the reality of knightly conflict and the loss of his good looks, while Malenfaunt grinned and nudged Malise to look at the blazing fury that was Buchan’s own face. Even though he did not like the idea of Malenfaunt mocking his lord, Malise had to admit that the Earl of Buchan did look like an ox’s backside with a bee up it.
Hal had taken little or no part in any of this, for Ill-Made was dying and Mintie Laidlaw had worked herself into such a state over events that her birthing was early, a combination which made for a deal more pain and suffering than anything going on in Herdmanston’s scabbed doorway.
‘Fetch me warmed watter,’ Alehouse Maggie demanded of Mouse. ‘Not the boiling ye are dumping on our enemies, mind – softer than that. Likewise a sharp knife, to pare my nails.’
‘A good midwife,’ Isabel said with a smile, ‘needs short clean nails and should be a stranger to drink.’
‘Ah, weel, my lady,’ Maggie answered with a wink, ‘half right is all good – Mouse, fetch also a cup o’ fat. I would usually use almond oil to grease the privities o’ the likes of Araminta Laidlaw, but needs must.’
Those who knew Mintie and her cry of ‘I am nobiles born, albeit a poor yin’ laughed, but it was tempered by the crash and clatter and screaming not far from them.
‘Make certain ye fetch a cup with no burned bits in it,’ Maggie yelled at the flustered scampering back of Mouse. ‘We are easing a wean into the world, no’ frying bacon.’
Isabel knelt by Hal, who was wiping the sweat grease from Ill-Made’s uneven face. You could fry bacon on his forehead, he thought.
‘Get you gone,’ Isabel said gently. ‘You are needed elsewhere and this is no place for a man. This poor man will go, as we all go, alone to meet his God.’
‘Christ be praised,’ Hal said, eyeing the sight of Alehouse Maggie, trimming her nails and laying out a collection of vicious iron more seeming for a forge than a birthing.
‘For ever and ever – now go,’ Isabel responded.
By the time Hal reached the yett the fighting was done and the last moaning man was stumbling out. Two more lay dead, burned and stabbed and Hal’s wolf-grinning men panted and wiped wet mouths with the backs of their hands.
The hours crawled past in a drip of endless mirr. They used pike spears, twenty long feet of shaft and wicked point, to lever the dead out of the doorway without opening the yett.
Ill-Made died, sudden as a blown-out candle, so they put him and the blood-fretted remains of Wull the Yett down in the darkest, coldest part of the undercroft, which act was a banner-wave of hope – in order to decently bury them, everyone else had to survive.
Mintie’s bairn was born safely – a girl she was calling Margaretha, promptly christened Grets by everyone else and cooed over.
The attackers came again four hours later, just as the dark closed in and made them harder to see. This time, they had netted bags of burning straw which they hurled in the doorway, causing a storm of flaming embers and reeking smoke, under cover of which the men piled in, armed with forge hammers and a ram to smash the yett door open.
Hal watched them come through the swirling smoke, grey shapes half-crouched and huddled with shields up – black pard on white, a red tree, a series of red and yellow stripes, none of which made any sense to him other than that they provided cover for the men behind, the ones carrying the four-foot wooden ram, an iron cap crudely hammered on the end.