The Lion at Bay. Robert Low
Folk. Sheean.’
At each word, the men behind Hal shifted and made warding signs, some with the cross, others with older symbols they tried to make quick and hidden.
‘Christ be praised,’ growled Sim.
‘For ever and ever,’ men muttered automatically. Hal sighed; he knew Bruce was provoking Segrave, but forgetting the effect it had on men who believed. Only Dog Boy had dared ride to the top of the hill in the first place and Hal was proud of the courage that had taken. More of it was needed now.
‘Mair like a country event,’ he said into the locked stare of Bruce and Segrave and, at last, had the latter turn his wet eyes on him.
‘Country event?’
‘Mayhaps a tait o’ virgins,’ Sim flung in cheerfully. ‘Getting purified.’
The Dog Boy, still trying to control the trembling in his thighs at what he had done, was sure they were powrie women, for they were strange in their cavorting and one was almost certainly a bogle by the height and the raucous shouts. Still, he couldn’t be entirely certain and did not want to appear like a fool in front of Lord Hal.
‘They were dancin’,’ he ventured and wilted as all eyes clawed his face. ‘In a ring.’
The thrilling horror of it spilled on them like bad honey, sweet and rotted. Women dancing by themselves would bring the wrath of the Church; only sinners, pagans and the De’il’s own did such a thing. Dancing in a secret circle was proof of enough witchery to get all the women burned.
‘Sheean,’ growled Bangtail Hob from over Hal’s shoulder and the men growled their fearful agreement.
‘Christ be praised,’ repeated Sim, but the muttered response was lost when a man shouted out from the pack behind Segrave, ‘Faerie? Silent Folk? If you are afeared, my Scotch lords, then leave it to good, enlightened Christian Englishmen.’
Faces turned to stare at Sir Robert Malenfaunt, swarthy face darkened with rage and a scornful twist to his lips. Bruce merely smiled lightly, which was enough to crank Malenfaunt’s rage up a notch; here were all the men who had once tricked him over the Countess Isabel of Buchan’s ransom and, even if it had cost him nothing, Malenfaunt’s pride was worth any price.
Hal only remembered Isabel, who had been the prisoner ransomed from Malenfaunt into his arms. Just weeks later, Falkirk’s slaughter had ripped everything to shreds and forced her back to her husband. Hal had not seen her since and the dull ache of it was like cold iron in the heart of him.
Segrave regarded Malenfaunt with distaste, for he had heard things about the Berwick knight that were unsavoury. Yet he was forced to agree with the man’s sentiment here and was aware that others were already settling themselves into the high-cantled saddles of their powerful horses, placing domed bucket helms over their heads, taking lance and shield from hurrying squires.
He wanted to wait for Clifford, yet he wondered if the women were whores for the rebels; if so, they would have information …
‘Fetch me some Faerie virgins,’ Segrave said in French to Malenfaunt, ‘and we will purify them here.’
‘My lord,’ Hal began warningly and then stopped as, with a whoop and a roar, the warhorses surged forward in a great spray of mud. Someone yelled ‘til-est-hault’ as if it were a hunt.
But Segrave saw, for a fleeting moment, the spark of Hal’s defiant anger from a face beaten to leather by wind and weather, fretted with white lines at the corners of his eyes. Segrave cocked one insouciant challenge of an eyebrow at the flare and saw the storm-grey eyes turn to flint-blue – ‘Now we will see,’ Segrave declared, throwing up one hand to ward off the gouts kicked up by the disappearing horsemen.
Then Bruce’s voice cut through the tension.
‘There’s one of your Faerie women, my lord.’
They turned in time to see a fleeting swirl of disappearing skirts.
‘I would not want that yin, my lord,’ Sim Craw drawled and Segrave turned his wither on the white-streaked black beard and the broad, black-browed face it swamped. Unmoved, Sim nursed a powerful crossbow, wrapped against the rain, close to his great slab of body. ‘I like my weemin with their chins shaved,’ he noted casually.
There was a moment as the realization seeped in to Segrave, then he roared at a startled squire, ‘Bring them back. Bring them back – God curse it …’
He turned to Bruce, but too late. He had missed that man’s silent flick of signal; all he found was the back of the chevronned jupon, trailing a tippet of riders behind him away to the west.
Treachery. The word sprang at Segrave and he felt anger and fear in equal measure. A trap, by God, with Clifford a good gallop behind and Bruce running away and leaving him with yet another Scotch battle against odds. The thought settled something slimed and cold in his belly and he turned to survey his last score of men as the first hundred breasted the ridge and vanished.
Malenfaunt had spotted the women at once, tucking up their skirts and running for the shelter of the woods beyond them like scattering ducks. He gave a whoop, peeled off the constricting great helm and flung it away, along with the lance to free up one hand, then set his horse flying at the runner, leaning sideways a little in the saddle to make it easier to reach out and grab.
Those immediately behind checked a little, mainly because his powerful warhorse kicked up a spray of muddy gobbets, while to right and left lances and helms went bouncing, carelessly dangerous, as the knights followed Sir Robert Malenfaunt’s example and spurred on.
They saw Malenfaunt lean out as he slowed to a canter so as to better judge the snatch at the fleeing woman’s wimpled head. They saw the woman turn, the wimple and barbette flying away to free a wild tangle of infested hair, the face a bearded snarl; Malenfaunt had time to realize the enormous horror of it before the man dropped to a crouch, brought round the two-handed axe he held hidden in his skirts and scythed out the legs of the destrier.
It was the saving of Malenfaunt. At the same time as he was reeling through the air in a tumble of moss and trees and sky, the edge of the wood spat a sleet of arrows from two points. Between them, moving ragged and relentless, came a clot of spearmen; the shrieking falsities in women’s dresses raced to join them, their lure complete.
Segrave, down at the foot of the small hill, heard the whoops turn to shrieks, almost felt the blows that rang like bells on the shields of the unseen knights, audible even at this distance and through the muffle of the great iron bucket of his helm. He urged the huge warhorse forward, surging up the sodden slope, the handful of men behind him.
Ruin was beyond and Segrave saw it in a single glance when he breasted the rise. Horses were down, screaming and kicking, others cantering in aimless circles, the riders struggling to get up. Arrows sprouted from tussock and body, and a dark, bristling hedge of spearpoints – three hundred men in it if there was one – approaching. All the men who had ridden off with Malenfaunt were unhorsed, crawling like sheep, with horses scattering to every part, or kicking and dying.
He saw, too, the figure in black with surcoat and shield, the silver cinquefoiles bright as stars and his heart thundered up into his head in a howl of triumph – Fraser, who had all but ruined him in Roslin Glen. By God, Segrave swore, he will not do it again.
A flurry of arrows took the man next to him out of the saddle and set the great Frisian warhorse bolting, screaming from the pain of another two shafts in its chest, before it crashed to its knees and finally ploughed its proud Roman nose into a furrow of bog, kicking and snorting blood.
The men with him balked at charging a hedge of points backed by three-score of Selkirk archers, but Segrave had fire and rage shrieking in his head and was not about to stop.
Hal saw Segrave arrive, saw him charge, then Bruce, laughing out of his broad face with its music-master beard, pointed to the backs of the archers, took off his great helm and dropped it, then spurred his own warhorse forward.
He