Still, after a while, when Will got to be in charge of a small force, it became safer, and anyway, he got used to it all. And it was fun. And Christ’s Balls, it was a good life. All that time in taverns and alehouses and pillaged halls, drinking until everyone was fit to burst. Yes, those were times worth living for. There was nothing like it. The rush as you realised that your side was victor again, the thrill of finding the wine and the women and taking them both until you were sated; that was living, boys. That was life.
He’d had many good times, and even when there was a disaster, he’d invariably managed to be safe from real danger. The only time he’d been close to harm was when the Queen had been left to her own devices, and the Scots had invaded again, sneaking round behind the King’s men and threatening to cut off their defeat.
Will had been with the King during that campaign in the summer after Boroughbridge. For some reason, Edward II, who was intelligent and brave enough in his own right, was an abject failure whenever he tried to attack the Scots. Will couldn’t understand it at all. Still, there it was. When Edward was flushed with his success at Boroughbridge, and all thought he couldn’t fail so long as he had his men at his side, just then, the Scots surprised him at Blackhow Moor, and the King and his favourite fled. Isabella, Edward’s wife, was deserted at the Abbey at Tynemouth, and she had to make her own way past the Bruce’s men to escape. Luckily, Will had been there with her, and he had been able to join her on her boat which threaded its way past the blockading Flemish craft there to support the Scots.
The Queen lost two of her ladies-in-waiting during that flight. It was a sore grief to her, and Will saw her weeping over them long into the night, but that was nothing compared to what might have happened had they been captured. When Edward I, the King’s father, had invaded Scotland, he captured the Bruce’s sister and his mistress. Both were held in wooden cages for three years, on the walls of Roxburgh and Berwick Castles. Isabella knew, as well as any of the men and women with her, the sort of fate she could expect, were she to be captured by the Bruce. At the very least she would be humiliated and shamed.
William knew that she had seen how little her husband cared for or about her during that flight. That he made no effort to save her was shameful, and it proved to her beyond doubt that her man considered her as nothing more important to him than a chest of gold with which to buy influence. She was, after all, the daughter of a French King.
It was soon after that war that Will had developed this strange malady. He’d been bled for it often enough, but still it would come back. It was a weakness that sometimes affected him when he had taken a shock. The first episode occurred after a brisk fight just before he boarded the ship with the Queen, when a mace caught him on the helm, and he was felled like an ox. Another man from his force found him and took him off to the boat, throwing him aboard, still stunned. It saved his life.
But since then, and he assumed it was caused by that blow, he found that if he had a sudden shock, his heart started to race, his breath grew short, and his head felt light — dizzy. It was damned strange and inconvenient, but he must learn to cope with it.
That had been the first motivation for him to consider leaving the King’s service. A warrior with such a handicap must surely die. There was no possibility of his surviving.
Not if slipping on a child’s turd could make him feel so weakly.
He bared his teeth and forced himself to carry on along the alley. Only a short while ago he had been a warrior who could instil fear into the heart of any opponent, but now he was just a sad old man, no good for anything.
The alley stopped and he walked out into the street, along to North Gate Street, and thence to Carfoix. As twilight took over the city, it grew astonishingly dark between the tall houses, and he slipped again on half-seen obstacles. Soon, though, he was approaching the main entrance to the Priory. He should hurry, he knew, because the gate there would soon be closed and barred, and if the corrodian was not there, that was no concern of the gate-keeper.
Hurrying his steps, Will found himself limping a little on his bad leg. He could see the open gateway, and was about to call out, when there was a tinny clatter to his side. As soon as his mind registered the noise, he had just enough energy to hurl himself sideways as the next arrow flew at his throat.
He crashed to the ground, tasting the bile of fear once more, crawling to the relative safety of a rotten barrel and pulling his cloak about him. In a moment the street disappeared, and he was back on the miserable bogs of Scotland.
In his ears he heard again the shrieks and agonised cries. Arrows wailed and hissed through the air, to strike flesh with a damp slap, or to pock at steel armour. Mail rattled and chinked, men fell, hiccuping or screaming, and William waited for the next bolt to strike him, pushing himself into the edge of the lane as though he could re-form his body to fit the cobbles and hide. Appalled, terrified, he expected to die, and he wasn’t ready!
There were no more arrows. Only the rasp of his breath, the smell of terror in his sweat and the sound of footsteps running away on the cobbles; and then, as the noise faded, so too did his petrification, and he found his soul swamped with vengeful rage.
He would find this would-be assassin, no matter who it was, and he would see him sent to hell with as much anguish as one man could inflict upon another.
Chapter Ten
Simon awoke early enough, but his mind was fuzzy after the wine and ale of the night before, and he lay back in bed, his eyes resolutely shut, demanding that sleep should once more overtake him.
Yesterday had been another day much like all the rest. He had woken, got up and dressed, walked to the hall to meet that pale reflection of a human, Andrew, and continued with his work.
God’s Bones, but it was tedious. They added figures, checked the tallies of tolls taken compared with the ships that had come to dock, and more or less busied themselves with little problems all the long day. It was detailed, painstaking work, and Andrew was as meticulous as he could be.
Halfway through the morning, Andrew looked up with a smile to hear the hail falling outside. ‘It sounds as if God is throwing His pebbles again, does it not? A terrible time to be out on the moors in this weather. Are you not glad to be indoors with a good fire roaring?’
Simon could not speak. He had listened to the hail with the lifting spirits of a man who remembered that there was a real life out there, beyond the walls of this dreary chamber. He had crossed the moors more than a hundred times, often feeling those icy balls striking his face with the fruitless desperation of a toddler beating at an older sibling. Yes, sleet and hail and snow could grind a man down and put him in his grave, were he unlucky enough to succumb, but Simon thought of hail as only a mild threat. He knew all the places to which he might run in the event of the weather closing in, and all the safe paths which would lead him to a warm fire and spiced wine or ale.
He couldn’t even look at the happy clerk who sat scratching with his damned reed all day. Instead he had muttered an excuse and left the room. There was an alehouse three doors away, and Simon entered to find some refreshment. He had a couple of good, meaty pies, with three quarts of strong ale to wash them down, but even that didn’t improve his mood. The town was fine; in reality it was moderately more comfortable and pleasant than his last home, with access to food, drink and luxury items which were never seen in Lydford, and yet the work was dull in the extreme, his companion was a pedantic, boring old woman, and …
No. It wasn’t Andrew’s fault. Simon knew that before he’d started his second quart. Rather, it was Simon himself and Simon’s family that were worrying him.