Master of Shadows Page 3

  His nightly devotion to the fireplace in the great hall had become a source of amusement to the rest. At mealtimes he made sure always to occupy the last place on the bench, right beside the hearth. He then switched from side to side of the trestle table during the course of the evening to ensure that both sides of his body received an even toasting. At least as important to him as the food was the chance to bake his sorry hide in the searing heat of the flames curling around pine logs heaped and hissing.

  Angus Armstrong, the man who had first confronted Badr on his approach to Hawkshaw, sat apart on a dark wooden chair so worn and polished with years it shone like the surface of deep water. He flexed his legs so as to rock back and forth, allowing the back of his head to brush against the wall in the deep shadow cast by the fire. He watched the big man, saw a gleam in the eyes he interpreted not as malice but mischief. He waited.

  ‘Is it good red blood in your veins, old Bear?’ shouted Jamie Douglas from the opposite end of the table. ‘Or maybe water – cold water, at that!’

  The taunt was good-natured and Badr knew it, but he adopted the body language of one struck by insult and rebuke. He had been among these lowland Scots long enough to learn the nature of their humour. Among the men at least it was all about teasing and challenging one another in hope of scoring points, and he knew how much the castle’s inhabitants enjoyed the possibility of seeing him finally, and for once, flex his muscles. If you were ever to be allowed to give it out, you had first to prove you could take it. His size and obvious strength had marked him as a slumbering giant, and the chance that he might one day be provoked into action made him a prime target.

  He froze, head down over a plate of venison stew (the climate might not have been to his liking, but he had to admit the food available hereabouts made up for some of the discomfort). All at once he seemed like a figure carved from seasoned wood. He had even stopped chewing. Undaunted, Jamie’s voice came again.

  ‘You’re like a big old hound, steaming there by the hearth!’ he shouted, nudging the men to his left and right as he leaned forward to look down the length of the table toward Badr’s hulking form, silhouetted against snapping flames.

  Here was bravery indeed from a young blade. Badr was twice Jamie’s age and twice his size. Any physical clash seemed certain to end in disaster for the slighter man.

  ‘Mind these teeth then, boy,’ said Badr evenly, his gaze fixed on his food. And then he growled. It was a trick he had learned in boyhood and perfected since. It was the first time he had used it among these folk, however, and the effect was instantaneous. It was a primal sound, animal – and for as long as it lasted, Badr’s humanity seemed far away, buried deep, or gone. Every spine around the table felt icy fingernails traced lightning fast from waist to neck and back again. Every hair rose on every square inch of skin and not a soul moved. Every spine and hair, that is, save those of Angus Armstrong, who read the signs for what they really had to say and remained on his perch, calmly rocking. For everyone else around the table, the air seemed sucked from the room and replaced by fear. The sound came from low down, and it tugged like a cold hand at the curled tail of monkey brain that waited tensely in the dark cave of every man’s imagination.

  Without moving, without even raising his head, Badr growled a second time, louder and more menacingly than before. After a handful of seconds he began to rise from his seat, pushing himself back with so much power that the whole bench, with half a dozen full-grown men upon it, swung slowly away from the table with a squeal of wood on stone. Once he had room to move, he stepped clear of the bench and turned to face the younger man, still seated between his comrades. None of them had the nerve to meet Badr’s eye; instead, each waited, motionless, praying that the coming storm would pass them by. He growled a third time and kept his stance low, careful not to straighten to his full height, the better to increase his width. Every other fellow seemed turned to stone. Most forgot to breathe. It was finally happening. Badr began to advance, slowly. A bear right enough.

  Jamie found his voice. He stayed on his bench, small now and getting smaller, recoiling inside his own frame. His face suddenly grey, he offered only:

  ‘Come on, Bear … just playing you … No offence meant …’

  It was almost the voice of a child.

  Badr’s lip curled and at once the growling stopped. Silent seconds passed, and time dripped from the rafters high above like cold water.

  ‘NONE TAKEN!’ he bellowed, so that every man around the table jumped, and now other ears and eyes paid attention. ‘Got you there, boy!’ he shouted, and roared with easy laughter.

  All the while Badr had dominated the space, time had seemed to stand still, but at once the world jolted back into motion. The noise of the Bear’s laughter and the accompanying release of tension were so abrupt that a few of the men let out helpless yelps of relief. Then it was all about slapping the table and regaining lost ground by laughing along with the friendly giant in their midst – desperate to appear party to the joke.

  Still low, weight on the balls of his feet, Badr launched himself at Jamie, grabbed him in a steely hug where he sat, and scooped him into the air like a little boy. He set him down on his two feet, roughly, so that the younger man almost fell backwards, and then ruffled his sandy hair with one hand. Jamie breathed out heavily, his relief still huge and making him grin gormlessly in his happiness at finding himself alive and unharmed. Armstrong only watched, eyes alight with reflected flames, as he let the front legs of his chair come to rest upon the floor.

  If the air in the room had been crushed, as though by a storm cloud that had loomed and lowered, it was clear once more. Food and drink appealed as before and the men in Badr’s company breathed deeply of life as they turned their attentions back to the meals in front of them.

  The knowledge of a happening at the men’s table spread rapidly around the hall. From the raised dais, Sir Robert Jardine, master of the house and uncle and guardian to young Jamie, saw only his charge being hoisted high. Satisfied that it was nothing more than horseplay, he said nothing. Though his motivations remained hard to fathom, the big man had been something of an asset. His presence among the armed patrols that checked the borders of Sir Robert’s lands had added weight to Jardine authority hereabouts. His calm confidence steadied the younger men, and their air of self-possession while on duty meant that nowadays their job was half done without the need for word or action.

  Turning to address the man on his right, Sir Robert said: ‘I would not be without … remind me, what name is it they use for Khassan nowadays? He’s practically a war band all on his own.’

  ‘Bear,’ muttered the cadaverous figure, hunched over his plate like a crow. ‘They call him the Bear, sire.’

  As he said the nickname the second time, he nodded his head from side to side, loftily, adding mocking emphasis to the word. He took a moment to consider his master’s face and glimpsed the shadow of the handsome man of years before, now all but consumed.

  ‘You don’t care for our guest, Davey?’ said Sir Robert, his thin lips twisting into a smile.

  ‘You don’t need me to like him – or any of the men, sire,’ he replied. ‘I’m wary of strangers – especially strangers dark as Badr Khassan, or as massive. Allowing something that size indoors is like giving house room to a bull … if you ask me.’

  ‘I care less about the colour of his skin than the strength of his sword arm,’ said Sir Robert. ‘As for a bull, he has the manners of a gentleman. I’ve heard not a bad word about him in all the time he’s been among us. They say he hasn’t so much as raised his voice in anger to man or woman.’

  While Sir Robert spoke, he kept his eyes on the room and on the men and women enjoying his hospitality. His gaze was tireless. A borderer by birth and inclination, he lived by little wars – either raiding or fending off his neighbours. Scottish, English – their nationality was of no significance and no concern to a Reiver such as he. His holdings were his world, jealously guarded an
d set apart from all other obligations. He lived as he saw fit, and neither listened to nor tolerated any authority but his own. Here, where the kingdom of the Scots rubbed together with that of the English, were all the unhealed wounds and jagged ends of broken bones left by uncounted years of feuding. No distant monarch held sway here, and those folk that made their homes along the disputed borderlands understood they were beyond the help or care of kings. It was therefore to local strongmen – men like Sir Robert Jardine – that they looked for any kind of security, never mind the maintenance of law and order.

  ‘Nine weeks,’ said Davey carefully. ‘Nine weeks he’s been here, and anyway, that’s the thing about animals: bonny enough outdoors and from a distance but less appealing squatting by a man’s own fireside.’

  ‘My fireside, Davey,’ said Sir Robert. ‘Mine.’

  Davey Kennedy, master of Sir Robert Jardine’s stables and elder brother of Will – Will of the sheathed knife and the severed toggles – turned his attention back to his food.

  ‘And no word of Grant?’ said Sir Robert, wiping up the remnants of his meal with a last lump of bread. He licked his lips and remembered the taste of sweeter flesh.

  It was a statement of fact rather than a question, but Davey heard his master’s dissatisfaction coiled around each syllable.

  ‘It’s been years since there was more than rumour of him hereabouts,’ he said. ‘I doubt he’s even in the country. There’s no safe bed for him within a hundred miles of Hawkshaw – nor will there ever be again. He has accepted that. Patrick Grant is gone, and will stay gone.’

  Sir Robert chewed his food. He took up his cup and drank long and slow of the finest wine his folk could find. He tasted only blood and bile.

  ‘Why the troubles on my land, then?’ he asked. ‘Who torments my tenants? Who burns their homes and takes their beasts?’

  He turned to look at Kennedy and his gaze seemed to burn the other man’s face so that he squirmed.

  ‘His bitch is here, and his brat,’ said Sir Robert, running his tongue back and forth over his teeth to clear them of the scum of half-chewed food. ‘He’ll be back for them one day. If not, then he’ll send for them sooner or later.’

  ‘More likely he’s dead in a ditch,’ said Davey Kennedy. ‘And there’s an end of it.’

  ‘That,’ said Sir Robert, ‘would be more disappointment than I could bear. If I don’t stretch Patrick Grant’s neck myself, I won’t rest easy in my own grave.’

  He took another gulp of wine before continuing.

  ‘Keep watch over his family,’ he said. ‘They are the key to it, bait in the trap. The day will come when I’ll see all of them swinging on the gibbet. Mark me, now – they will all hang for what he did to me.’

  4

  Given all that was to happen that day, it started quietly enough for the folk of Hawkshaw. There had been reports through the night of trouble on the southern marches – cattle taken, homes raided and set ablaze. A patrol was to ride out, assess the damage and set others to work to put things right.

  Sir Robert Jardine considered himself beholden to none and policed his own lands as he saw fit. The men he gathered around him to those ends were bound either by blood or by the silver coins in his purse, but he placed the full weight of his trust in none of them, not even close family. He reviewed his situation every day and made whatever adjustments he felt necessary.

  Before he had finally retired to his bedchamber on the uppermost floor of the tower house, he had given Davey Kennedy the task of leading whatever force he deemed necessary to the site of the trouble. A little after dawn, with a watery sun rising, the master of the stables was at the head of a dozen mounted men trotting out through the gateway of Hawkshaw’s palisade. There was little in the way of conversation. Each man remained withdrawn, maintaining as much distance as possible from the rest and from the chill of the morning.

  Davey Kennedy was fuming. The task of leading such a routine patrol was a long way beneath his dignity, as he saw it. It was, however, in keeping with his master’s way of doing things. If challenged (and who would have dared?), Sir Robert would have said it was important his senior men remained battle ready at all times, and vital that they had up-to-date, first-hand experience of the people and the lie of the land.

  What use to the household and the estate was any who had grown distanced from the day-to-day realities of the fight and the need for restless vigilance? Sir Robert therefore insisted (and a grudging part of Davey Kennedy both understood and even approved of the strategy, in principle at least) that rank was no bar to service. Even the laird himself was no stranger to the drudgery of riding the marches, maintaining the boundaries of his own lands and underlining his authority through the simple tactic of remaining visible at all times.

  But early morning was early morning, and Davey, a man who liked his bed more and more with every passing year, was in a foul temper. It had given him some little satisfaction, therefore, to insist that his quarrelsome brother join the party, and he looked back over his shoulder to the end of the line of horsemen where Will, as silent and morose as Davey himself, trailed some half a dozen horse lengths behind the others. Davey kept watching his brother until he made eye contact. With a jerk of his head he signalled that Will should join him at the head of the troop. Once they were trotting side by side, he slowly looked his brother up and down.

  ‘Like what you see, do you?’ said Will, without lifting his gaze from his garron’s mane.

  ‘Aye, you’re a pleasure to be around, brother,’ said Davey. ‘No chance anyone will ever mistake you for a ray of sunshine.’

  ‘If you’ve nothing worth saying, I’d prefer the quiet,’ said Will, eyes now fixed straight in front of him.

  They rode in silence for several minutes.

  ‘I’ll go on ahead, Davey,’ said Will at last. ‘See what’s to see.’

  ‘For what reason, when we’re all going anyway?’ said Davey, meeting his brother’s gaze. ‘Not like you to put yourself out on behalf of others.’

  ‘It suits me to be by myself,’ said Will, his face expressionless. Then he smiled, dripping sarcasm. ‘It might make me happy.’

  ‘This ride out is for no one’s pleasure,’ said Davey. ‘The point is to be seen. To let it be known we will respond to any and every breach of our lands.’

  ‘Oh, it’s our lands, is it now?’ said Will.

  He dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks. The beast reared in pain and surprise and plunged away from the line.

  By the time Davey Kennedy and the rest of the riders reached the Henderson farm, the focus for the trouble during the night just past, there were no signs of life. There was a chaotic mess, sure enough. While the thatched roofing of the main cottage was largely intact, there were clear signs of burning. The whole lot of it was sodden, evidence of efforts to douse a fire, but it looked as though the flames had never fully caught. In any event, much of the thatch had slumped into the interior under its own weight. Some of the poor belongings of the Henderson family, tenant farmers who paid Sir Robert rent for the privilege of their miserable existence, were strewn around the doorway. Smashed pottery, clothing, bits and pieces of broken furniture were testament to a raid. But for all the signs of destruction, there was not a soul to be seen or heard. The cattle were gone too – driven off by whoever had descended upon the place in the night. No doubt the Hendersons had sought comfort and shelter with some or other neighbours.

  ‘Will!’ shouted Davey Kennedy. ‘Show yourself!’

  Nothing. Not a reply, not a murmur.

  ‘Look inside,’ he ordered, gesturing to Jamie Douglas and another of the troopers, Donny Weir. The pair jumped down from their horses and sauntered over to the doorway. The lintel was low, no more than five feet off the ground, and both had to duck awkwardly to pass beneath and into the darkened interior.

  Seconds later Donny re-emerged, his usually ruddy cheeks white as a fish’s belly. He said nothing, but looked straight at Davey Kennedy for a l
ong moment, and then away again.

  Kennedy dismounted and ran to the doorway. Misjudging the height in his haste, he bumped his head on the lintel hard enough for the men to hear, and to wince in sympathy.

  When his eyes adjusted to the gloom inside, he spotted Jamie crouched by his brother’s side. Will Kennedy was slumped in one corner of the ransacked cottage, eyes wide and his throat laid open from ear to ear. His dead face was discoloured with bruises, evidence of a heavy beating administered before the fatal wound.

  Davey said nothing at all, just walked slowly over to his brother’s corpse. Hearing his approach, Jamie turned to look at him. He was holding Will’s cold right hand.

  ‘Look,’ he said, holding it up for Davey to see. The knuckles were split and bloodied. ‘Put up a fight.’

  ‘Aye,’ Davey replied. ‘I’m sure, for all the good it did him.’

  Back outside, the word had spread, courtesy of a whispered account from Donny Weir.

  ‘I’d like to meet the man that bested Will Kennedy,’ said one man. And then, after a pause: ‘Or maybe I wouldn’t.’

  Davey emerged from the cottage, followed by Jamie Douglas, who was wiping his hand hard on his trousers.

  ‘Donny Weir,’ he said, ‘and you, Jamie: you found him – take word of my brother’s death back to Hawkshaw. The rest of you mount up.’

  He spat on the ground, then walked smartly to his horse and climbed back into the saddle. Donny Weir and Jamie Douglas made ready to depart. Silently, the rest got back on their mounts. Davey Kennedy set off first. There would be time later for the business of seeing that his brother’s body was properly taken care of. For now, his time would be best spent elsewhere, and he nudged his beast towards the rutted track they had followed to reach the Henderson place. The troopers, heads down and stealing glances at one another, followed suit. When they reached the track, Kennedy kicked his garron into a gallop.