The Lion Rampant Read Online Free PDF Page A

watter,’ Hal had told Edward eventually. ‘Bigod, though, they almost convinced me that the Bruce is descended from Aeneas o’ Troy himself. A Joshua and white as new milk on a lamb’s lip.’
    Edward had laughed then, sharp and harsh, spilling wine on his knuckles and sucking it off. It came to Hal that the Earl of Carrick was mightily drunk and that it was no strange thing for him.
    ‘Ah, Christ’s Wounds, we have missed you, Lord Hal – but it is as well you were safe locked up, for plain speaking is not the mood of now, certes. I would not share your view of the bishops’ fine work with my brother. If you even get to see him.’
    He’d paused moodily.
    ‘I mind you were close to him, mark you. You and Kirkpatrick. Like a brace of clever wee dugs working sheep for their master.’
    There was old envy and bitterness there, which Hal had decided was best to ignore.
    ‘How is Kirkpatrick?’ he’d asked, suddenly ashamed that he had not thought of the man since he had been released.
    ‘Auld,’ Edward had replied shortly. ‘You may not see the King at all,’ he then said. ‘And if you do, it will not be a straight march in to where the Great Man sits, taking your ease in the next seat. Naw, naw. There are steps, neat as a jig: walk forward and stop. Kneel. Never look at him. Never speak to him unless invited.’
    This kingdom is not large enough for the pair, Hal had thought, hearing the savage bile in his voice. Then Edward had recovered himself and smiled, drained the goblet and risen.
    ‘Well, good journey to you. I am away to kick the stones out of Roxburgh. Pity – it is a pretty place.’
    Prettier than here, Hal thought now, looking up at the rotting-tooth rock of Edinburgh Castle, while they wound a way through the siege lines.
    They passed tents, a black Benedictine who was crouched like a dog to hear confessions, a sway-hipped gaud of shrill, laughing women who stared brazen invites at the newly arrived heroes of Roxburgh. Somewhere behind them a pair coupled noisily while the camp dogs circled, looking to steal anything vaguely edible.
    Hal felt the heat of forges, tasted the sweat and stale stink of a thousand unwashed, the savour of cook and smith fire as they picked their way through the tangle and snarl of a siege camp. He was fretted and ruffled by the place even as it seemed to him that he moved in a dream, too slowly and somehow detached from it all.
    Too much, too quick after seven years of being a prison hermit, he thought, yet the sights and sounds flared his nostrils with old memories.
    The world passed him like a tapestry in a long room: a ragged priest singing psalms; squires rolling a barrel of sand through the mud to flay the maille in it of rust; a hodden-clad haughty with his lord’s hawk on one wrist; two men, armoured head to toe but without barrel-helms, running light sticks at each other in practice tourney, pausing to raise greeting hands to Jamie. Only their eyes could be seen in the face-veiled coifs of maille.
    Out beyond them, close under the great rock and walls, was a line of hurdles, pavise protection for the crossbows and archers. Beyond that, close under the looming hunch of Edinburgh’s rock, a cloak of murderous crows picked mournfully through the faint stench of rot and the festering corpses of men who were too far under the enemy bows to be recovered for decent burial.
    Men moved in blocks, drilling under the bawls of vintenars; Hal saw that some had only long sticks, as if the spearheads had been removed from their shafts, and that too many were unarmoured, with not even as much as an iron hat.
    ‘Thrust – thrust. Push.’
    The sweating men clustered in a block, hardly knowing right from left, half of them unable to speak the other half’s tongue and none of them having met before; they staggered and stumbled and cursed.
    The ones who had done this before, the better-armed burghers and armoured nobiles of the realm, moved smoothly through the drills, but