The Lion at Bay. Robert Low
days from now to hand Wallace over. They will be watched to see how they do.’
‘There are Scots loyal to you,’ Wishart declared, which was stepping carefully with words, Bruce thought. Then a voice crashed in like a stone in a pool.
‘All Scotch are thieves.’
Eyes turned and Malenfaunt, leaning through the huddle around the prince, drew back a little – but his eyes were fixed firmly on Bruce. The King, about to storm the man into the rushes and out of the castle for his impudence, paused.
He had heard rumours about the lord of Annandale, of course, but whispered by Bruce’s enemies … still, it might pay to let this hound run a little. Besides, his wayward son and that bastard of a serpent, Gaveston, were watching, so a lesson in kingship might be timely.
‘You have something to say, sirra?’ he rasped and Bruce saw Malenfaunt quail a little, lick his lips and flick one snake-tongue glance sideways. Bruce followed the glance and came into the sardonic face of John the Red Comyn.
‘I merely insist, Your Grace, that all Scotch are thieves,’ Malenfaunt said, almost desperately. He was not so sure as he had been concerning this. Bruce, he had been told, was no true knight, preferring the German Method of fighting, and his reputation as the second best knight in Christendom was badly earned. Malenfaunt had seen for himself the tactics used and paid for them. Or Badenoch had, since the ransom Bruce had demanded was beyond the means of any Malenfaunt.
‘All Scots, my lord?’ Bruce answered softly, with a wry smile and Malenfaunt felt the surge of anger in him, the flaring rage against the man who had cozened him out of the Countess of Buchan years before, who had laid him in the mud yesterday with a foul trick. It was the sneering smile on Bruce that angered Malenfaunt and anger was as good as courage for what he had been set to do.
‘Some more than others,’ he replied. ‘Thieves of honour especially, who swear one thing and do another at the expense of their better’s mercy.’
That was clear enough and even Wishart’s warning hand on his arm did no good. Bruce shook it off and any sense with it.
‘You will defend that, of course, before God,’ he replied and Malenfaunt felt the cold, sick slide of fear in his belly. Bruce did not seem afraid at all, for a man who could not fight like a true knight …
‘In your beard,’ he spat back. ‘God defend the right.’
‘Swef, swef,’ Wishart demanded, attempting to patch the tearing hole of this. ‘The King forbids such combats à l’outrance …’
‘Usually,’ the King replied and staved in the hull of Wishart’s hopes. Usually. The King had not meant matters to go this far, yet he had recently removed Bruce from the sheriffdoms of Ayr and Lanark because of the whispers, seeing the dangers in handing too much power to the man.
He felt a sharp pang of annoyance and sadness; he did not want to lose Bruce to his own foolish ambition, so perhaps a humbling would be good for him. It was clear this Malenfaunt creature had been set to the task by Bruce’s enemies, but he could be leashed by a king. He would have a word with both men, make it clear that, despite the use of edged weapons, death was not the finale here – though defeat in the sight of God would be humbling enough for either of them.
Afterwards, reeling with the surprise of it, Bruce was still wondering how he had landed in such a mire. Wishart was sure of how – and why.
‘You lost yer head, my lord,’ he declared bitterly and Bruce had to admit that was true enough, cursing himself for it.
‘A family trait,’ he managed lightly. ‘I thought my brother Edward had stolen most of it for himself, mark you.’
‘No laughing matter,’ Wishart spat back. ‘It is clear who has put this Malenfaunt up to it – Badenoch and Buchan both gave him the siller that ransomed him from his tourney loss. Now he is in debt to that pair and flung in like a dog in a pitfight.’
‘They must rate him highly, then,’ Bruce replied sourly, ‘if they think to humble me using such poor fare.’
Wishart waved an impatient hand and broke fluidly into French without missing a heartbeat.
‘They win, no matter the outcome. If you beat Malenfaunt, then Buchan and Badenoch have revenge on the man who captured the Countess of Buchan and held her to ransom. If you are defeated, they have humbled you. Better still for Badenoch if you were killed in such a combat – and those will be Malenfaunt’s instructions, mark me.’
He broke off and shook his head sorrowfully.
‘And The Plantagenet, of course, permits it in the hope of bringing you tumbling, my lord earl,’ he added. ‘Mark me, the King will send word soon that you are not to kill. He will send the same to Malenfaunt – though that one may ignore it. But a defeat over such a matter will ruin your honour, leave you ostracized at court, denied the peace of God and so left at the mercy of the royal favour.’
‘If he defeats me,’ Bruce declared, then frowned and shook his head. ‘Malenfaunt is a brave man, for all that, to put himself, with no great reputation as a knight, against me.’
Wishart snorted. In times of stress, Bruce noted wryly, he reverts to his roots and the lisping French was banished like mist.
‘Think yersel’ all silk and siller? Aye, mayhap – second-best knight in Christendom after the German emperor? When was the last time ye jousted à l’outrance, my lord earl? Using the French Method and bound to it?’
Bruce thought and the sudden, thin sliver of fear speared him. A long time, he had to admit. The French Method – charging home on a warhorse trained to bowl a man over – was one he had used as a youth on the tourney circuit.
Then he had learned the German Method – riding a lighter horse, avoiding the mad rushes of French Method knights and attacking from behind or the side in the mêlée. It was called ‘German’ as a sneer by the French, for everyone knew it was a Saracen trick learned by crusading German knights of the Empire and brought back by them. Better for prizes and sensible in war, it was not considered honourable for the nobiles of the civilized world to the west. Worse even than that, it was not French.
Acceptable – barely – in the whirl of the mêlée, it was not permitted in that perfect contest of skill and bravery, the joust, which was the epitome of the French Method, preferred by the young and daring.
This joust was à l’outrance and there was no German Method permitted at the edge of extremity.
For God was watching.
Lincoln
The day after – The Feast of St John the Evangelist, December, 1304
It was cold, so that the King was ushered to a seat with heated cushions and swathed in warm furs alongside his wife. In the striped pavilion, with the horse gently steaming and two coal braziers smouldering, Bruce saw the leprous sheen on his maille as the trembling squire helped him into the jupon emblazoned with his arms.
The horse shifted, clattered bit metal and champed froth. Bruce eyed the beast, which had been given to him by his brother since he had no decent warhorse for a joust like this. Castillians his were, fine, fast and strong but no match in a stand-up fight with something like this terror, all muscle and vein like an erect prick, with heavy legs and hindquarters. A Lombard, crossed with Germans, his brother had told him – black as the De’il’s face and called, with bitter irony, Phoebus.
Somewhere outside, Malenfaunt stood with his own horse in a similar pavilion; custom decreed that neither should see each other once the processions and oaths and mummery of it all had been concluded, save at the very moment of combat. The mummery, Bruce thought to himself wryly, had possibly been the worst part of the affair.
The King had processed, the witnesses and bishops and officials of the tourney had processed, the ladies of the court had processed – including the stiff, disapproving Elizabeth. When presented