He remembered cutting men down at Scone with it, carving bloody skeins off the fine English knights at Stirlings bridge, slicing through the jawbone of the Templar Master, Brian de Jay, in the forest of Callendar.
His sword, so much part of him for so long, quenched in blood and wickedness, he thought. Now it was no more than a monstrous frightener of bairns.
Like myself.
Church of St Thomas of Acon, London
Thursday of Mysteries, April, 1305
He had risked it and was sure the dice had gone against him. When Lamprecht reached the herbers stall he looked round and was sure the cloaked man was the same one he had seen. He was sure, also, that it was Kirkpatrick; there was something sickly familiar in the oiled way the man moved, turning sideways, stepping careful as a fox and never bumping or being jostled.
Money, thought Lamprecht bitterly. Always the driven curse of a poor man, it had lured him to the Church of St Thomas of Acon on the day he knew alms were liberally handed out for the celebration of Christs Last Supper on Earth. And here is me, he thought, with a ransom of rubies and so unable to make use of it that I am worth less than a beggars cloak.
Even as he waited for the chimes to open the Citys posterns, he had known that it was a bad idea, that he should have stayed in St Olaves and waited for a suitable ship to take him away from these shores.
Yet the pretence of being a lowly painter was a strain, while the skin-crawling horror of knowing that a Scotchman was on his trail like a relentless gazehound was more than his nerves could stand; he should never have revealed himself to Kirkpatrick and Bruce and that Herdmanston lord at all, he knew now but the chance of revenge had been too sweet a taste to resist.
The bell rang an hour before sunrise and the Citys wicket gates opened to the basket-carrying hucksters, the labourers, the journeymen, the beggars Lamprecht hidden among them and all the rest who lived in the stinking shadows of the City. And the shadow in the shadows, who trailed him, a presence like the crawl of cold sweat down Lamprechts spine, which sent his neck straining side to side in a desperate attempt to pick him out of the crowd.
El malvogio, ki se voet te tout, a nou se voet the evil one, who is seen by all and is not seen.
At which point, he was seen having seen. Suddenly, across the chafering throng of Ironmonger Lane there was only himself and the dark hole in the raised hood where he knew the eyes were; he fancied he could see through the cloak to the shining bar of steel hidden beneath.
So he ran.
Slow-worm blind at first, skidding through the muddied slime and the throngs until, like a dash of cold water, he caught the shocked, suspicious faces and brought himself to a halt; a running man in a crowded street was a thief or worse.
The lane was a maze that led to the sudden, broadening rush of the Cheap, already thick with stalls and people. He forced himself to walk, hurried but not fast and tried not to look constantly over his shoulder.
There were two of them now, he was sure. He stopped at a cheese stall, peering through the great wheels; yes, two of them. Perhaps more in his mind, every man suddenly became a sinister hunter.
Is there a lovers face in that?
The voice, rasping sarcasm, cut into his panic and, strangely, quelled it; the cheesemonger glared at Lamprecht.
You will wear a hole in that fine cheese with such staring do you buy, or just look?
Lamprecht offered a wan smile and moved away, half-fell over a large dog and was forced to jump it, colliding with something huge and soft, which staggered a little then cursed him. He looked up into the baleful glare of a fishwife, scales glinting on her folded forearms and a wicked gutting knife in one fist.
Perdonar, he said, with an apologetic smile, but it was the foreign tongue that deepened the suspicious frown and gave Lamprecht his idea.
El malvogio. Lo baraterro. Se per li capelli prendoto come ti voler conciare.
Rosia Denyz was a pillar of Cheap, a hard-mouthed matron who had dealt with every attempt to rob, coerce and cozen her for twenty years, so that few now treated her with anything but respect. She did not understand foreign tongues, but she knew curses when she heard them. When the ugly little man grabbed up one of her own fish and struck her in the face with it, she was so astonished that he had gained ten yards before she found her voice.
Thief, she bellowed, even though the fish was at her feet, giving the lie to it.
Across the other side of the market, Kirkpatrick saw the crowd boil like a feeding frenzy of shark, cursed the daring cunning of the little pardoner and headed after him.
Briefly he was balked by a string of horses coming from Smoothfield and beginning to get skittish at the crowd baying after an unseen thief then he caught sight of Lamprecht, sprinting back up Ironmonger Lane.
He made a move past the flicking tail and shifting hindquarters of the last horse and slammed into a figure, the pair of them reeling back. Cursing, Kirkpatrick made to go round him, then drew up short, staring into the equally astounded face of Malise Bellejambe.
It took Malise a droop-mouthed moment to recognize Kirkpatrick through the grime and the dirt, the tunic that was more stain than cloth and a hooded cloak that was more sack than wool. When he did, he squealed, only later feeling a wash of shame for it, and ducked behind the man at his elbow.
Kirkpatrick saw this one, bemused, half turn to see Malise scuttling away in pursuit of Lamprecht, then turned back into the half-crouched figure of Kirkpatrick, who now realized that the man was with Malise. No henchman thug, he thought, a serjeant no less, wealthy enough to own a decent set of clothes and a sword, which he hauled out just as the crowd jostled up, the cry of thief, thief thundering joyously out.
The sight of the sword balked them, spilled them round the man who held it like a stream round a rock. People yelled at him to watch what he did with that blade then the shriekers at the back, unable to see anyone who looked like their prey, spotted the wink of a drawn blade and decided that this was enough to mark their man.
The serjeant, surrounded, slashed wildly and sealed his fate with the first spill of blood; the baying mob, ignoring the flailing sticks of the bailiffs and the wild hornblowing of red-faced beadles, seemed to surge on him like a tide.
Kirkpatrick slid away, moving fast but not running; ahead he could see the bobbing head of Malise. Keep him in sight, Kirkpatrick muttered to himself, a litany that kept the curses damped; he had not spent all this time living like a beggar to lose Lamprecht now. Keep Malise in sight and, let him lead on like an unleashed rache.
Malise felt Kirkpatrick at his back like the heat of an unseen flame, but did not dare turn to look for fear of losing sight of the fleeing Lamprecht, beetling along the Lane. He slammed into a Crutched Friar, stammered apology and had back a less than holy spit of viper venom when he turned back, Lamprecht was gone.
Lamprecht, sweating and gibbering to himself like a madman, knew only that he was pursued by everyone and that, if he started to sprint like a frantic hare he was a dead man. He fought the urge, sidled round a stall laden with red slabs of meat, collared with succulent yellow fat and only briefly flicked his eyes to them where before he would have stood and drooled.
He should have left London ages since, but was, in a bitter irony that did not escape him, the richest pauper in the country, his bag full of unsellable bounty and his purse full of nothing but wind. He had to get away.
Now he was pursued he half-turned at a stall full of cabbage and celery and saw Malise, knew the man at once and was transfixed by fear. Him too? Christs Wounds the Comyn had determined to hunt him out as well
Lamprecht found himself staring at the shambles, realized he was at the place where offal was sold and the stalls were rich and ripe and dripping with heart and tripe, sweetbreads and kidney, pale white, blue-veined collops in strings and folds. Flies hummed like the murmur of chanting priests and the entrail piles on the stalls slithered over each other like glistening, mating snakes.
When Kirkpatrick came up on the place a moment later Lamprecht was huddled in the lee of an oxcart, mere feet away. If Kirkpatrick turned, he could not fail to see him
Kirkpatrick felt it more than he saw it, a chill on the side of his neck and he whirled in time to see Malise launch at him, all snarl and feral scything with a blade that seemed to whine through the air, so that Kirkpatrick had all he could do to avoid it.
Ye hoors slip, Malise bellowed. Seeing Kirkpatrick hauling out his own blade, those nearest shied away, shouting, and a butcher called out to his companions that there was trouble.
Ye bloody-handed, cat-wittit crawdoun
It was a roaring invective to put fire in his belly; Kirkpatrick knew it as the sparks flew from their clashed knives and they circled in a slow-stepping half-crouched dance.
Here, here, said one of the fleshers indignantly and made the foolish move of stepping forward with one hand out to separate the combatants then he reeled back, shrieking and holding his hand, the blood welling up where Malise had cut him.
Murder, murder
The cry went up just as the ones of thief were fading into the distance and it was enough to fan the old embers into fresh flames; the baying horde surged out of Cheap, a wave that tossed aside a ragged, bloodied corpse that had once been a serjeant and left the gasping, weary, flustered beadles and bailiffs in its wake, washed up like flotsam.
Lamprecht could not believe his fortune when Malise attacked Kirkpatrick and kept those black eyes from him. He slithered right under the oxcart, jammed his fingers up between the boards and lifted his feet up in an awkward, splay-kneed stance, on to the axle. In a second they were moving and he almost laughed aloud at his cleverness, for he had realized in an instant that the oxcart owner would want beast and vehicle well clear of damage from a riot and men fighting with naked blades.