‘Leave him – he is giving you a chance,’ he roared and Rossal de Bissot saw it, even as Jehan cut down two archers, the palfrey circling and baiting. It was no warhorse, all the same and Kirkpatrick saw the Welsh, cursing and scattering, were recovering themselves and dragging big arrows on to their warbows.
Rossal wrenched the head of his horse round just as Kirkpatrick’s attention was locked on the desperately fighting Jehan and his hand on Bissot’s bridle – the jerk wrenched it from his fist and himself from the back of his own horse, the whirling tumble of it a momentary confusion, the thump that bellowed the air from him a harsh pain.
None of it drove out the leaden sound of hooves drumming off into the distance – and the harsh irony of how he had saved de Bissot at the cost of himself.
There was the sudden scuffle of feet, a spray of muddy grit into his face, a sauce for it of Welsh curses, harsh as a spitting fire. Then he was hauled up into the square block of face belonging to an archer wearing a studded jack and a dark scowl; behind him, he saw Jehan’s horse struggle to its feet, limping. The knight lay face down in the mud.
The dark scowl, clearly the leader, did not have much time for anything other than to make sure Kirkpatrick was disarmed before de Valence appeared, bareheaded but armoured and accoutred – Kirkpatrick knew him at once, the blue and white striped magnificence trailing a mesnie of serjeants behind him.
Then a figure shoved from behind the proud hawk of de Valence and Kirkpatrick felt the spear twist inside him at the sight of that battered, stained face.
‘Kirkpatrick,’ Malise Bellejambe said, his voice juiced with the relish of it. He sat back in his saddle while de Valence and the Welsh scowl exchanged information and, for a moment, there were only two men, Malise and Kirkpatrick, alone in the whole of splendid creation and horn-locked at the eyes.
‘God is good,’ Malise said and twisted his bruise of a face into a long, brown smear of smile, then turned as de Valence dismounted.
‘Make sure he has no daggers hidden about him, Your Grace,’ Malise informed de Valence viciously, fawningly climbing off his own horse so he would not be looking down on his betters.
De Valence did not like Bellejambe, the spy of the Earl of Buchan – but the Comyn earl was now England’s friend and so had to be appeased and his creatures treated with some courtesy.
De Valence had drawn the line at Malenfaunt, all the same, a knight who had foresworn himself before God in a tourney à l’outrance with Bruce himself. Well beaten, he had been thrown out of all respectable company, tongue-split in a just and fitting punishment. De Valence, who thought Malenfaunt should have been properly killed in the duel, did the foresworn knight the courtesy of treating him as if he were actually dead; he would not permit Malenfaunt anywhere near him.
The twist in that was that he had to accept this Bellejambe instead, though he did his best to ignore the man where possible. Like now, as he turned his back on Malise and looked at the muddied, dark apparition held firmly by two of his armoured serjeants. Swarthy, a secretive, sly-looking scum, he thought to himself. Just the sort to be up to no good.
‘You were with these Templars?’ De Valence demanded and Kirkpatrick saw Jehan being hauled upright and away, his toes furrowing the mud; senseless, but alive, he thought to himself. There’s a blessing at least.
‘Peaceful travellers,’ he began in French, which was designed to show his breeding but was brought up short when Malise snorted with derision, leaning forward with all the vengeance of the past welling like pus from his twisted soul.
‘Liar,’ he said and de Valence turned, his handsome face puckered in a frown of censure, for it was clear Kirkpatrick was something well-bred, if not a knight, and demanded some deference of rank. Malise wrenched all that from Kirkpatrick with his sneering hiss.
‘This is the red murderer of the Lord of Badenoch.’
Near Cupar Castle, Fife
Next day – the English Feast of St Margaret of Scotland, June, 1306
The monk’s face was inflamed, even over the wind-chilled redness that had chapped his cheeks and his dark olive eyes were brilliant with outrage. De Valence sighed and shifted in the saddle; his buttocks ached and the damp that was not quite rain, not quite mist seeped straight through the layers of leather and linen, maille and padding to gnaw his very bones.
He wanted a fire and hot food and something warm and spiced. He did not want an outraged Italian abbot.
‘In God’s holy name,’ this annoyance persisted stubbornly. ‘You must put a stop to this. It is against Heaven.’
Aymer de Valence agreed. He was also aware that this figure, trembling more with outrage and cold in his white wool swaddling, was Abbot Alberto of Milan, sent from York to ensure that the holy presences of Bishops Lamberton and Wishart were not harmed by their rebellion.