Kemp: An Arrow for the Crown

By Jonathan Lunn

There’s no way out this time… An unputdownable medieval adventure from a master of the genre

Haunted by guilt and his sins, archer Martin Kemp is in Scotland to collect on a debt when war breaks out afresh. The border erupts in bloody violence.

Stalked through heather and forest by French men-at-arms sent to stir up the Scots against the English, Kemp and his friend Ieuan find themselves roped into escorting a motley band of civilians to safety. Matters are complicated by a Scottish knight who is not what he seems, but not nearly as much as by the presence of one of Kemp’s old flames.

Pursued to Berwick, Kemp and his companions find themselves besieged in the castle with no hope of relief or escape. When the Scots launch an all-out attack, Kemp may have to sacrifice everything in a brutal showdown that will determine the destiny of the Scottish crown…

A rollicking adventure in the bestselling series, this brilliant novel from Jonathan Lunn will leave you battered and exhilarated. Perfect for readers of Angus Donald, Bernard Cornwell and Matthew Harffy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Adventure
• Release date: Jun 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800321342

Jonathan Lunn

Born in London a very long time ago, Jonathan Lunn claims to have literary antecedents, being descended from the man who introduced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the Reichenbach Falls. To relax he goes for long strolls in the British countryside, an activity which over the years has resulted in him getting lost (multiple times), breaking a rib, failing to overcome his fear of heights atop dizzying precipices, fleeing herds of stampeding cattle, providing a feast for blood-sucking parasites, being shot at by hooligans with air-rifles, and finding himself trapped by rising floodwaters. He lives in Bristol where he writes full time.

Book preview

For Kit

One

Kemp was woken by the sound of someone throwing up. Sitting hunched on the pitching deck with his back to the Pelican’s timbers, he pushed up the brim of his kettle helmet and opened one eye to make sure Ieuan had found the pail. Given the state the Welshman had been in when he had staggered back on board, singing a lewd ditty, after their stop in Castletown, Kemp had anticipated he would have need of something to spew into when he awoke.

There had been no question of them both going ashore to sample the taverns of the Isle of Man: Kemp did not entirely trust the shipman, Master Flodman, and had not been convinced that if they had, the Pelican would have tarried at the quayside till their return. So they had tossed for it, and Ieuan had won.

When the Welshman had finished throwing up, he rested the pail between his knees and pressed his head to the rim, groaning softly. Pushing forty, he was a short, stocky man with a bushy, drooping moustache. He wore a Monmouth cap over his bowl-cropped hair, and a quilted green aketon that came down to his knees when he stood, though now the hem was pushed up to accommodate the pail. ‘What is it they say? Sin in haste, repent at leisure?’

Kemp had feared the smell of vomit would set him off too, but it only added a layer to the stench that had risen from the bilges all the way from Brittany, a stench he knew would have been much worse in the heat of summer. ‘Aye and like,’ he grunted in his East Midlands accent. A rangy, broad-shouldered young man with flint-blue eyes and close-cropped blond hair, he wore a brigandine over his chain-mail habergeon, the pattern of studs on the leather covering betraying the presence of steel plates below.

‘What hour is it?’ asked Ieuan.

‘Past midday. We should be nigh Eastholm soon. That’s where we’re bound now.’

‘Eastholm? What’s wrong with Kirkcudbright?’

‘While you were carousing in Castletown, Master Flodman supped with the shipman of another ship in the harbour. He’d just sailed from Kirkcudbright. Word is there’s been fighting near Norham.’ Even as he said it, Kemp unconsciously moved his hand to the hilt of the broadsword scabbarded at his hip.

‘Norham’s way over on t’other side of the country. Closer to Berwick than Lochmaben. You remember? We marched past it on our way to Roxburgh the last time we were in Scotland.’

‘Aye, but if there’s fighting on the border then evidently we cannot depend upon the truce Lord Neville agreed with Lord Douglas.’

‘Pay no heed to that. There’s always fighting on the Scottish Border, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what I said. But Flodman’s afeared that if he lands at Kirkcudbright, the Scots will impound his ship.’

‘So where’s this Eastholm?’

‘A small island off the south coast of Galloway. And it’s closer to Lochmaben than Kirkcudbright, so that’s better for us.’

‘Unless the whole country’s up in arms, in which case we’ll be trapped far from the border.’

‘Closer than if we landed at Kirkcudbright.’

‘Could Flodman not put us ashore at Carlisle? I warrant someone there would be able to warn us about what condition things are in on the border.’

Kemp shook his head. ‘Carlisle’s up a river with many twists and turns. Flodman reckons he’ll lose a day if he sails there. But he needn’t go far out of his way to put us ashore at Eastholm.’

The ship’s timbers creaked, and somewhere overhead Kemp could hear the mewing of the seagulls circling the top of the cog’s mast. He gave his friend a sidelong glance. Nineteen times out of twenty, Ieuan was the most easy-going man in the world, but there was always that twentieth time when he dug his heels in, and when that happened no power on earth could change his mind. Kemp wondered if this was going to be one of those times.

But Ieuan only groaned and clutched his stomach. Taking exaggerated care not to spill the contents of the pail, he pushed himself to his feet and ascended the companion ladder to the deck. He was gone some time, but when he descended to the ’tween decks again, he had divested himself of the pail, and the sea air had put some colour back in his cheeks.

He sat down next to Kemp on the deck. ‘If Eastholm’s an island, how are we to reach the mainland?’

‘There’s a causeway at low tide. Half a mile. Plenty of time to cross.’

‘Flodman’s sure of that, is he? He’s not stranding us on some deserted island?’

Kemp shook his head. ‘The King of the Scots has a palace there.’

‘Which King of the Scots?’

‘What’s his name? You know… the one our king supports.’

‘Edward Balliol, you mean.’

‘Aye, Balliol.’ When Robert the Bruce had been King of the Scots, those who had supported his rival John Balliol had been forced into exile. When Bruce’s death had left a four-year-old boy as his heir, Balliol’s supporters had encouraged his son Edward to seize the opportunity to reclaim his father’s throne. After defeating the Bruce’s supporters in battle at Dupplin Moor three-and-twenty years ago and having himself crowned King of the Scots, Balliol had performed homage to King Edward of England in return for his support, but the war had been far from over. Young David Bruce had been smuggled to France by supporters of his father, where he had remained till he was old enough to lead the resistance to Balliol himself. The war had dragged on, with neither side gaining the upper hand, until Bruce had injudiciously invaded England only for his army to be defeated at Neville’s Cross. That had been nine years ago. Since then, Bruce had been a prisoner in England, but his supporters continued to oppose Balliol and his English allies in Scotland: men like the Earl of Dunbar, Lord William Douglas, and Robert Stewart, the High Steward of Scotland, who ruled as regent in Bruce’s absence.

‘Supposing Balliol doesn’t like us trespassing on his island?’ asked Ieuan.

‘Then we apologise and head for the mainland as soon as the tide ebbs. He’ll not chance rousing the wrath of our king by mistreating two of his subjects.’

‘Very well,’ said Ieuan. ‘Let’s say Balliol doesn’t mind us taking a shortcut across his island, and we can reach Lochmaben without getting caught by Lord Douglas’s men. How then are we to return to where Hudd and Reynold await us in Brittany? I don’t suppose it’ll be as simple as returning to Eastholm and flagging down a passing ship.’

‘From Lochmaben it’s a day’s ride across the border to Carlisle. From there we can get a ship to Bristol.’

‘And where are we to get horses?’

‘We’ll buy a couple of rouncies at Lochmaben with the money the bourc owes me.’

‘You’re assuming the bourc is at Lochmaben. And that he’ll have the money he owes you.’

‘If he doesn’t, his arse is in for the kicking of a lifetime!’

The ship’s constable thrust his head through the hatch. ‘We’m about to drop anchor off Eastholm,’ he said in a broad West Country accent. ‘Master Flodman asked I to let ’ee know.’

Kemp nodded, and he and Ieuan tucked their sheaves of arrows under their belts at the back before slinging their bowstaves from their shoulders in their greasy woollen bow bags. Ascending the companion ladder, they emerged through the hatch and stepped on deck. The Pelican was a round-hulled, clinker-built vessel, about fifty feet from stem to stern. A painter from the stern ran out to where the ship towed a cockboat in its wake. The mariners hauled on the halliards, swinging the yardarm around on the mast, and the square sail flapped and sagged as the wind spilled from it.

‘Let go the anchor!’ Flodman shouted from the aftercastle above the cabin. There came a splash from the bow, and the anchor cable buzzed out through one of the hawse holes. ‘Furl the sail!’

Kemp and Ieuan turned the hoods of their mantles up against the wind and the spindrift, and crossed to the bulwark in the lee waist. It was the Friday after the Feast of St Jude, a chill day late in October, and a flock of barnacle geese flapped honking as they flew across a lowering sky in a V-formation. The gusting wind tore whitecaps from the choppy grey sea. Kemp saw a coastline of rocky headlands and low hills about a mile off. Less than a cable’s length away, breakers foamed whitely where they crashed against the rocks at the foot of the low, dark cliffs of an island, bare of trees, not much more than two furlongs in length from north to south, and rather less than a bowshot from east to west.

Kemp turned to where Flodman descended the companion way from the aftercastle, and pointed to the island. ‘That’s Eastholm?’ he demanded incredulously.

‘Arr.’

‘Cheery looking spot,’ Ieuan said drily.

Kemp was inclined to share the Welshman’s misgivings. ‘I see no palace.’

‘It be o’er on the north side o’ the isle,’ said Flodman. ‘Ye’ll see it once ye crest the brow o’ the hill. Be ye sure ye want to land here? Ye can stay on board and we’ll put ’ee ashore at Carrickfergus for no more money. Or for another two shillings we’ll take ye to Bristol.’

Kemp shook his head. ‘There’s a man at Lochmaben who owes me twelve hundred scudoes, and I mean to collect.’

‘Twelve hundred scudoes, eh?’ mused Flodman. ‘That be a pretty penny.’ He looked Kemp up and down doubtfully. ‘How be it he owes ye so much?’

‘That’s my business,’ said Kemp.

Flodman shrugged and ordered the boatswain to have the cockboat drawn alongside the hull. The cock’s swain and four mariners shinned down a rope to the boat, and Kemp and Ieuan descended after them, taking their places on one of the thwarts. The mariners shoved off from the cog’s side and fitted their oars in the rowlocks, pulling for the island. It was not long before the boat’s keel ground against the shingle in a cove, and the two archers climbed out into the surf. The four mariners jumped out after them, but only to push the boat off the shingle before jumping back in and taking up the oars again. The two archers watched as they rowed back to the Pelican.

‘What if Flodman was lying about the causeway?’ wondered Ieuan.

‘We’ll needs must swim for it,’ said Kemp.

They picked their way up a footpath that ascended a shallow gully carpeted with brown and shrivelled ferns between the cliffs on either side of the cove. Ieuan was panting by the time they reached the pastureland above.

‘What ails ye, old man?’ asked Kemp, smiling. ‘You seem short of breath.’

‘Who do you call old man? I’m not yet past my fortieth winter, damn your nose!’

‘Aye, but it’s approaching, in’t it?’

Ieuan scowled. ‘Next time you need to come to Scotland, you can bring someone nigh your own age. We’ll see how well you do without my wisdom and experience.’

‘Someone less cantankerous, you mean?’

Ieuan wafted the jest away with a hand as if it were a fly buzzing around his head. The two of them had been friends for more than nine years now, ever since the Welshman had saved Kemp’s life on the road to Crécy, and they could bicker with one another safe in the knowledge the other would not take offence.

They passed an enclosure perhaps four acres in area, ringed by a drystone wall, where goats munched thistles. Cresting the brow of the hill, they saw a headland on the mainland, perhaps half a mile from the island. The intervening space looked as though it was partly mudflat and partly open water, with no sign of a causeway. On the slope leading down to the sandy beach at the northern tip of the island, a timber palisade enclosed several buildings, the largest of which appeared to be a turf-roofed bothy with walls of mortared rubble.

‘Do not tell me that’s Balliol’s palace!’ snorted Ieuan.

‘I see no other buildings,’ admitted Kemp, wondering what else Flodman might have lied about.

He saw no gate in the palisade; he supposed it would be on the other side, facing down the slope towards where the causeway was supposed to be. They were making their way to the front of the enclosure when Ieuan stopped, nudged Kemp and pointed to something lying at the palisade’s foot. ‘What’s that?’

They drew nearer to investigate. She had been a peasant girl judging from the coarse cloth of her kirtle, which lay torn and discarded in the grass nearby. Her eyes stared glassily into the sky, her fair white skin was mottled with ugly bruises, and the blood streaking down from the gaping wound in her throat was still slick and glistening.

‘Oh, Duw!’ said Ieuan. ‘What manner of man would do such a thing?’

Kemp glared at him with haunted eyes, then checked his anger. ‘Men like you and me, Ieuan,’ he said softly.

The Welshman opened his mouth as if to protest, then he too caught himself, and grimaced. ‘Aye, right enough.’

‘She’s fresh-killed. That means that unless whoever slew her is a strong swimmer, he’s still on this island. Anyone we meet might be him.’

‘Him, or some other who’d be glad to pin the blame on a couple of hapless archers who had blundered onto the scene.’

They unslung their bowstaves, stripped off the bow bags and tucked them under their belts. Working swiftly with practised motions, they braced the lower ends of the staves against the inside of a foot so they could bend them enough to loop the end of the string over the upper nock. With their bows strung, each took an arrow from the sheaf tucked under his belt and nocked it.

Kemp led the way, pausing at the corner of the palisade and peering around, ready to loose an arrow if need be. There were no guards at the entrance to the enclosure. The two of them hurried along the foot of the palisade to the gate, which was pushed wide open, and peered through. The bothy was forty feet from end to end and half as wide. At a stretch, it might have been described as a manor house. There were no windows in the front wall, but steps led up to a doorway in the middle, about four feet above the ground. Evidently the hall was on the first floor; Kemp guessed there would be a door on the opposite side, with stairs leading down to an undercroft. There were other buildings in the enclosure besides: stables, a pigsty and a smokehouse. The place looked deserted, but for a cockerel preening itself on a small midden in one corner.

A shriek of agony came from the manor house. Kemp and Ieuan exchanged glances. ‘We’ll not stand here and do nothing, shall we?’ asked the Welshman.

‘What would you have us do?’ asked Kemp. ‘Rush in there with our swords drawn? We know not how many men are in there, or what their quarrel is.’

Even as he spoke, a man emerged from the door of the house and descended the short flight of steps to the ground. Kemp and Ieuan withdrew hurriedly back behind the gatepost, then looked around more cautiously. Wearing a brigandine over an aketon, and a polished bascinet on his head, the man walked across to the stables.

‘Maybe he can tell us what’s happening in there,’ murmured Ieuan.

Kemp frowned. But he had been wondering if there were horses they could steal in those stables, and whether or not the advantage such mounts would afford in carrying the two archers to Lochmaben would counterbalance any grief they might come to if the horses were recognised as stolen. ‘Wait here,’ he told Ieuan. ‘Anyone else comes out, shoot an arrow into the back of the stable to warn me.’

The Welshman nodded. By now the man wearing the bascinet had disappeared into the stable. Kemp glanced towards the house to make sure no one else was coming out, then ducked through the open gate and dashed across to the stable. As he drew near the door, he slung his bow across his back by its bowstring, and drew his ballock-knife – a handier weapon for confined spaces than a broadsword – from the sheath on his belt.

The man had left the door open. Another scream came from the house. Kemp glanced towards it. No one else had appeared, but the longer he tarried outside the stables, the greater the chance that someone else would emerge.

He glanced inside. Within were a dozen stalls, eight of them with horses in them: coursers, palfreys and rouncies. The man wearing the bascinet was in a stall with a courser, buckling a girth to the left-hand side of the saddle. Kemp waited until he moved around to the courser’s right-hand side to buckle the girth to the straps there. The top of the man’s bascinet nodded above the courser’s withers as he worked. As Kemp crept silently into the adjoining stall, the rouncy there whinnied nervously, so he patted her to calm her. The man finished with the girth, and Kemp ducked below the level of the partition before the man moved back to the courser’s left-hand side to put on the bridle.

Kemp straightened again, waiting until the man had finished adjusting the nose band before grabbing him by the shoulder and dragging him back against the partition. Caught off guard, the man came easily enough, and when his spine was hard against the planks, Kemp could loop his left arm around his throat to hold him in place. The man struggled, protesting in a Scots accent, until Kemp’s right hand pressed the flat of his knife’s blade to the man’s cheek, the tip an inch below his eye. The man went very still.

‘If you struggle, cry out, or lie, I’ll stab you in the eye,’ said Kemp. ‘How are you called?’

‘Angus. Angus Lamberton.’

‘Who d’you serve, Angus?’

‘Lord William Douglas.’

‘How many in the house?’

‘Seven… no, eight.’

‘All friends of yours?’

‘No.’

‘Name them.’

‘There’s Mathieu de Jutras and his squire, Hélie de Quéneaux; and Torquil Borthwick, Magnus Fenton and Colin Randolph.’

‘That’s only five. Who are the other three?’

‘There’s a middle-aged man, an old feller and a young lad. They’re retainers of the usurper. I dinnae ken their names.’

‘Is it their screams I hear?’

‘Aye. Sir Mathieu’s questioning them to learn where the usurper’s gone.’

‘By usurper you mean Edward Balliol?’

‘Aye.’

‘Mathieu and Hélie… not very Scottish names?’

‘They’re French… vassals of King Jehan. They’re two of the Frenchmen that came to Scotland with Eugène de Garencières in the spring. Sir Archibald told me and the other lads to keep an eye on them, make sure they didnae get into any trouble.’

Kemp was not particularly shocked to learn there were Frenchmen active amongst the Scots on the border. When he had been a boy, his father had marched off to serve as an archer in the Earl of Salisbury’s retinue in Scotland. Before he left, he had told his son how, in the days when his own father had been a young man, the wars between England and Scotland had been sparked off by the Scots’ decision to ally themselves with the French against Edward Longshanks. Ever since, the kings of France had periodically dispatched knights by sea to Scotland to stir things up on the Scottish Marches.

‘How many Frenchmen arrived with Garencières?’ Kemp was not all that bothered, but it would be useful information if he needed to curry favour with the constable of the castle at Lochmaben.

‘I dinnae ken. Mebbe five dozen?’

Something thunked softly against the back wall of the stable: one of Ieuan’s arrows, warning Kemp someone else had emerged from the house. If the man was headed for the stable, then Kemp had only a few heartbeats to weigh up his options. He thrust the blade of his knife through the soft jelly of Lamberton’s eye. The Scotsman shuddered against the partition of the stall, then went limp. Kemp let him fall to the hay.

There was no time to wipe the blood from his knife’s blade. He thrust the tip into the planks of the partition and stepped out of the stall, unslinging a bow and selecting an arrow from the sheaf under his belt. He was drawing just as the man came through the stable door. It was another stranger, wearing a brigandine and a bascinet like Lamberton’s. Kemp let fly his arrow before the man had a chance to register him standing there. At that range, the arrowhead punched clean through the man’s forehead. He staggered back with an expression of astonishment frozen on his face, collapsing against the stable door and sliding to the ground. Kemp grabbed his ankles and dragged him out of sight, before retrieving his ballock-knife from the partition, wiping the blade clean on a horse blanket, and returning it to its sheath.

He looked out of the stables towards the house. No one else was coming. He waved to where Ieuan peered around the corner of the gate, making sure he had recognised him and was not going to shoot him by accident. Then he dashed across to join him.

‘Two down, four to go… if the fellow I spoke with told the truth.’

Another shriek came from the house. ‘Who’s squealing?’ asked Ieuan.

‘Three of Balliol’s retainers. A French knight and his squire are doing the torturing, with a couple of Scotsmen to help them. Maybe we should not meddle, but walk down to the beach and wait for the tide to ebb?’

‘The Jehans might be worth a ransom, if we can take them alive.’

Kemp glanced towards the house again. There was a window at the eastern end, where it would catch the sun in the morning. He would lay odds there was a solar there: a private room where the lord of the manor might sit with his wife and enjoy the sun coming through the window. ‘You go in through the door and distract them while I come at them through the solar.’

Ieuan pulled a face. ‘How is it I must go in through the door?’

‘You feel nimble enough to climb in through the window, old man? Come on, you can help me climb to it.’

The two of them dashed across to the end of the house. Ieuan stood with his back to the wall and clasped his hands together. Kemp used them as a step-up to climb on the Welshman’s shoulders. From there, he could raise his head high enough to peer over the sill. The limewashed walls of the bedchamber within were decorated with murals depicting pastoral scenes, dozens of sheep grazing in green pastures on one wall, a shepherd carrying a stray lamb on the other. There was a four-poster bed with a chest at the foot of it, and a writing desk near the window. An arras hung over a doorway in the far wall. The only person in the room was a corpse sprawled on the rush-strewn tiles, its threadbare tunic soaked with blood.

A scream from the other side of the arras reminded Kemp he did not have time to hang around admiring how the other half lived. He pulled himself up through the window, tumbling through face-first, bracing his hands against the window seat to stop himself from thudding noisily to the floor. Standing up, he leaned back out of the window to signal to Ieuan that so far all was well. As the Welshman hurried around the corner, Kemp unslung his bow and tiptoed across to the doorway.

He tweaked one edge of the arras far enough aside to let him peep into the next room. It was a hall, with a dais immediately outside the bedchamber. A fat, bearded man was suspended from the roof beams by his ankles, his head a few inches from the floor. Two men in brigandines and bascinets pushed him to and fro, his head passing perilously close to the fire blazing in the hearth in the middle of the floor, sometimes even passing through the flames. His face was blackened and blistered and there was a stench of burned hair in the room.

A man stood watching with arms folded. He wore full armour: a steel breastplate over a chain-mail habergeon, greaves and cuisses buckled over the chain-mail chausses on his legs, brassarts on his upper arms, plate gauntlets on his hands, articulated sabatons on his feet, and a polished bascinet laced to his aventail with the pointed visor raised to reveal an aquiline profile. Such good armour did not come cheap, so presumably its wearer was a knight. Kemp guessed he must be the Mathieu de Jutras whom Lamberton had named. If so, a younger nobleman leaning back against a pillar would be the knight’s squire, Hélie de Quéneaux, his bascinet doffed and the coif of his habergeon pulled back to reveal a mop of blond curls. He was in his mid-twenties, old for a squire, but not every young nobleman who distinguished himself on the field of battle was wealthy enough to become a knight.

Two other men sat on a bench to one side: they were bound at the ankles, and judging from the way they sat with their hands behind their backs, Kemp guessed their wrists were bound also. One was younger even than the archer, his features finely chiselled, with a strong jaw, high cheekbones and sensuous lips. He wore a tunic and chaperon with matching dagged hems, armbands with streamers hanging down from his elbows, and exaggerated points to the toes of his leather-soled hose. His companion was an old man, though age had not bowed his back, for he sat tall and erect, with a shock of white hair over a thin, haggard face with hollow cheeks and stubble on the jaw, while a straggly white goatee beard dangled from his chin. There was a distinct odour of pig shit in the hall, and judging from the brown stains smeared on the old man’s coarse clothing, he was the source of the smell. Kemp guessed he was a swineherd.

Kemp took an arrow from his belt and nocked it to his bow.

‘I think the fools have slain him,’ Jutras said in French, a language Kemp was fluent in after several years spent serving in France.

Quéneaux pushed himself away from the wall. ‘Hold him out of the fire,’ he told the two Scotsmen in good if strongly accented English. They did as he bid them, and he knelt, drawing a knife from a sheath on his belt and buffing the blade with a cloth before holding it before the hanging man’s lips. When he took it away again, the steel was evidently unclouded. ‘Damnés imbéciles! You’ve killed him!’

‘It boots not,’ said Jutras, again speaking French. ‘Torture one of the others.’

‘String the swineherd up in his place,’ Quéneaux ordered in English.

‘No!’ sobbed the young man with his hands tied. His face was streaked with tears.

‘You do not want your friend to suffer?’ asked Quéneaux. ‘Then tell us where Balliol has gone!’

The door opened and Ieuan came through with his bow in his left hand, quickly drawing a broadhead arrow with his right and nocking it as he moved aside, so he was not silhouetted by the daylight coming through the doorway. The Welshman had timed it to perfection: while Jutras and Quéneaux both clapped hands to the hilts of their swords, the two Scotsmen were caught in the act of lowering the fat man’s corpse to the floor and could not easily get at their weapons.

Kemp shouldered aside the arras and stepped out onto the dais, aiming his arrow down at Jutras. ‘The first man who draws a blade will die.’

‘Who are you?’ asked Jutras.

‘Just a passer-by.’ Keeping his arrow nocked, ready to draw and loose in the blink of an eye, Kemp jumped down from the dais to the tiles below. ‘Unfasten your sword belts and let your swords fall to the floor.’

Jutras and Quéneaux did as they were bidden.

‘Now everyone step back,’ ordered Kemp.

The French knight began to back away… then hooked an armoured foot under one of the logs burning in the hearth and kicked it at Kemp’s head.

Two

Kemp ducked as the burning log spun through the air towards him, missing him by inches. It hit the arras and fell to the floor, at once setting the cloth alight. Jutras darted forward, his left hand snatching his scabbarded sword from the floor, his right closing over the hilt to draw it. Straightening, Kemp drew his bow and let fly. The arrow entered Jutras’s mouth and jammed somewhere at the back of his throat, the wooden shaft sticking out between the knight’s teeth. He staggered back against a pillar and slumped to the tiled floor as his legs crumpled beneath him.

Quéneaux howled in rage. ‘Murderer!’ He lunged to where his own sword lay on the tiles. Kemp was reaching for a second arrow when one of the Scotsmen came from his left, thrusting a halberd at his face. There was no time to reach for another arrow, or to draw his sword. Kemp could only sidestep, dropping his bow to grab the shaft of the halberd with both hands. He tried to tear it from the Scotsman’s grip and the two of them struggled with the halberd between them. A thickset fellow, the Scotsman pushed Kemp inexorably back.

Quéneaux approached Kemp from the right, sword in hand. Ieuan had another arrow nocked and, aiming at Quéneaux, was starting to draw, when the other Scotsman stuck him with a mace. The blow missed the Welshman’s skull by inches, landing heavily on his shoulder, throwing his aim off. Quéneaux reeled with a cry as the arrow whipped past him. For a moment Kemp thought the shaft had done its deadly work, but then he saw it had only scored a line of blood from the Frenchman’s cheek.