The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  “Why so?” he asked Lundie.

  “What wey? Is that whit ye’re askin’? I’m talkin’ about honour here, an’ dishonour. An’ that’s what I saw. Dishonour—Scotland’s noblest sellin’ their honour again for English coin. It happens a’ the time, and I was sick o’ it.”

  “You … took a scunner, and so joined the enemy in protest?”

  “Aye, I did.” The Scot scowled.

  Earl Warrenne sat up straighter and blew out a short, sharp breath. “I see. I mean, I don’t really, but I know how it feels to be driven to rebellion. So be it, then, Sir Richard Lundie, I find your sentiment acceptable. Now, if you will, tell us what my grandson wants us to know. Unless, of course, you have now taken a scunner to us …”

  Several of the listeners laughed, but it was evident that Sir Richard Lundie was deficient in his appreciation of humour. He merely frowned, then cleared his throat and launched into his explanation.

  “There’s a ford a few mile upstream frae the auld brig down in the carse there, at a place called Drip. It’s broad—broader than here—and it’s naewhere near as deep. They ca’ it the Fords o’ Drip. It’ll tak up tae saxty abreist.”

  “Saxty abreesh?” The earl glared at his grandson. “In God’s name, what does that mean?”

  “It means abreast, my lord,” Percy said hastily. “Sixty men abreast was what he said, meaning that three score men may cross the fords there side by side, at the same time. What Sir Richard is suggesting is that we—he and I—could lead a striking force of horse and foot upstream today and cross the Forth up there in safety and at speed before the sun goes down. That would leave us safe and dry on the far side, to move forward in the morning in support of your advance across the bridge. That would serve double purpose, in protecting your flank against attack as you advance and in surprising the Scotch by doing something they had not expected.”

  “Aha …” There followed a long pause before Warrenne spoke again, and when he did he sounded less hostile than before. “So we would stand down today and attack tomorrow, with an added margin of surprise. Is that what you are saying?”

  “Yes, my lord. Precisely so.”

  “Hmm … How far is it to these Fords of Drip? How long to get there?”

  Percy wrinkled his nose. “With horse and foot? Say two hundred of each? It’s slightly more than eight miles, Lundie says, so we could reach there and cross over easily in daylight, were we to leave here within the next hour or two. We would set out again at dawn tomorrow, and be safely in place across from here, threatening the rebels’ western flank before you are ready to set out.”

  Now the earl was nodding his head. “Do you know,” he mused, “I am inclined to think that might be worthwhile pursuing. In fact, the more I think about it, the more good sense I see in it …”

  I had been watching Cressingham while the earl was speaking, for I had seen him stiffen and sit up straighter when the Scots knight started to talk, and now I could see that he was livid, though I could not have said whether it was with peevish anger or righteous disapproval. Now he pushed himself to his feet, his face dark with dissatisfaction.

  “My Lord Surrey,” he protested. “Surely you cannot intend to heed this fellow? His idea is preposterous.”

  Warrenne turned slowly to gaze at the big man from beneath lowered brows. “Preposterous, Cressingham? How so?” He spoke quietly and without obvious heat, but venom dripped audibly from his tone.

  “Damnation, sir, the man is a Scot and a turncoat, by your own word! And he is proposing to take four hundred of our best men— they would have to be the best, to undertake a task like this in proper fashion—and to lead them off somewhere into the wilderness where, not inconceivably, he could lose them when they are most needed here. My lord, it scarce bears thinking about.”

  “Is that a fact? And yet I am doing precisely that, Master Cressingham. I am thinking about it, and I like the sound of it. I am examining the notion and perceiving great merit in what appears to me to be a solid, practical idea based upon clear-headed thinking. And so …” The earl’s voice was filled again with the blistering scorn he had used so scathingly towards the Scottish knight mere moments earlier, and no one dared to stir as he fell silent, lest his displeasure be turned on them. “And so I have a suggestion to propose to you.”

  He thrust himself away from the table and stood up, placing his palms flat against his hips and arching his spine backwards, grunting as he pushed against the restriction of the heavy suit of mail beneath his brightly coloured surcoat of yellow and blue squares. He was sixty-six years old that year, and though he frequently complained of being too old for many of his duties, he yet retained the stamina and the athletic physique of a much younger man and he enjoyed being able to flaunt both attributes. He completed the exercise by throwing his arms in the air and then bending forward from the waist until his knuckles touched the ground in front of him, after which he straightened with a sigh and began to pace the floor, the sound of his heavy, nail-studded soles crunching on the flagstones.

  “Let us suppose, Master Cressingham, that we have come to an agreement, you and I,” he said, speaking as though he and the treasurer were alone in the anteroom. “An agreement to be truthful with each other in all things. You are a treasurer, defined by your title and appointment. You deal in fiscal things, monies and matters arising from the gathering and dissemination of those monies—taxes, levies, financial arrangements, incomes and expenditures. Is that not correct?”

  “It is, my lord,” Cressingham responded, his voice conveying the tacit comment, as you well know.

  “I thought so. Well, since we are to deal in truths here, why would you not tell me the real reasons for your refusal to consider this plan being proposed by my grandson and his client Sir Richard Lundie? The truth, mind you. A truth that I am convinced will be closely connected, at base, to your fiduciary responsibility. Then, once I am in possession of that information, and speaking to you as a knight, a soldier, and a lifelong student of military matters, I will inform you, in turn, exactly why I intend to ignore all your unsought advice and proceed with what I perceive, from my position as King Edward’s deputy, to be the right thing to do.”

  Cressingham had frozen where he stood, and for long moments he said nothing. But then, just as people were beginning to feel uncomfortable, he spoke up. “You malign me, Lord Surrey,” he said in a quiet voice that struck a pang of sympathy inside me that I never would have suspected might be there.

  To my very great surprise, the earl stopped pacing and looked back at him, no vestige of his sudden flaring anger now apparent. “No, sir,” he said, shaking his head gently. “As God is my judge, I do not malign you. I speak the simple truth, with no intention of defaming or insulting you in person. You are a functionary, as I said earlier, Master Cressingham, and as such you are circumscribed by your own designation as treasurer. Your life is governed, and your actions are dictated, by the responsibilities laid upon you by our monarch, may God bless him. Those responsibilities are onerous, I know, and I thank God that they are yours and not mine, for they entail the constant, unrelenting need to fill the coffers of the treasury and an equally restrictive requirement to detect and account for needless expenses and to curtail them wherever possible. That is why you and I will never be in harmony while we supposedly hold joint command of this or any other army. The very nature of our callings sets us at odds.”

  Cressingham opened his mouth to respond, but found no words.

  “For God’s sake, man,” the earl said, and his voice was urgent but not angry. “You undercut my strength at every move, or you try to. You sent one-third of our army home—one-third of our strength—before we even reached the border. Men and resources we might need before we are done here. And why? Because some addle-headed fool named them as reinforcements in your hearing. We had no need of reinforcements, you said. They would be a needless expense once Wallace and his rogues were put to death. Is that not the truth? Speak up.”

/>   “Aye, it is the truth,” Cressingham said, though not defiantly. “It was true when I said it and it remains true. We have had no need of them.”

  “And pray you to God it remains that way, else I shall be really displeased with you. But now you seek to do the same again, in this matter of the Fords of Drip.” He snapped a hand up to forestall whatever Cressingham might try to say. “I know how your mind works, Master Treasurer, and I could almost tell you what you thought when you first heard of this. Expense, you thought, and at once set about calculating the associated costs of sending four hundred men away on a dubious venture while retaining an entire army in the field for a full, extra day—food, provisions, weaponry, supplies, and all the other thousand things that must be bought and paid for every single day of an army’s existence. And that, Master Cressingham, is where we differ irrevocably. I see what must be done in terms of duty, fighting men, and objectives, in terms of casualties suffered in exchange for victories gained, and I will suffer damnation before I will allow a man of mine to die because some tight-fisted money counter deems him to be worth less than the cost of saving him might justify.”

  I have never been a gambler, but at that moment I would have wagered heavily that Percy would be sent out that day with his four hundred men, to cross the Forth upstream and threaten Will’s flank the next morning. And I would have lost.

  The last words had barely left the earl’s lips when the door to the chamber opened and his captain of the guard stepped inside to report that Lord Stewart’s party was safely out of the area, as His Grace had ordered. Then, in addition, he volunteered the information that his guards on the castle walls had reported that there were no signs of activity on the Scots’ side of the river valley.

  Warrenne went utterly still, digesting what he had heard, then swivelled his shoulders slowly towards the guardsman. “Nothing? No signs of activity at all?”

  The captain, standing rigidly at attention, spoke to a point somewhere above his superior’s head. “Nothing, my lord. According to my man Dickon, who’s ’ad ’is people watching ’em since dawn, the rebels ’asn’t dared to show their face all mornin’.”

  “And why might that be? Did Dickon say, or do you know?”

  “My lord?”

  “I am asking for your opinion, Captain, yours and Dickon’s. Do you have any thoughts on why the rebels are keeping out of sight? Speak out, now. I would not ask you if I didn’t want to hear what you have to say.”

  The captain blinked, frowning beneath the rim of his helmet. “Aye … Well, they might be afeared, my lord, if there was less on ’em. But they’s too many to be that afeared.” He paused, then plunged on. “I wondered the same thing when Dickon give me the word, an’ so I asked him wot ’e thought about it.”

  “And?” the earl prompted.

  Sallis jerked his head in a terse nod. “’E’d been wonderin’ what they was up to, too. ’E reckoned they was watchin’ us an’ saw us turnin’ back this mornin’. Reckons they think we’ve changed our minds an’ don’t think as we’ll be comin’ back today. Not till tomorra, an’ ’e thinks—an’ I do, too—that they’m all gettin’ ready for us to attack come mornin’.”

  “Tomorrow morning … You think that, too, you say?”

  The guardsman nodded again, more confidently. “Aye, sir, I do. That’s why we’re seein’ no sign of ’em, ’cause they’s not there no more. They’s round be’ind the woods down there at the foot o’ yon big crag, thinkin’ they’m safe out o’ sight, an’ doin’ summat to entrap us come mornin’.”

  “And you may be absolutely right,” the earl said quietly. Then he straightened and nodded abruptly. “My thanks, Captain Sallis, for your opinion. I’ll think upon it before I make any decisions.”

  The guardsman saluted smartly and left, and Warrenne turned back to his grandson, resting his elbow on the high back of his chair and propping his chin on his thumb as he rubbed the side of one finger pensively against the tip of his nose.

  “I like your man’s suggestion, Grandson, for crossing the Fords of Drip and mounting a combined attack tomorrow, but Sallis is no fool, and his factotum Dickon has been soldiering against King Edward’s enemies for almost as long as I have myself. I suspect their judgment may be absolutely right and that the Scots are not expecting us to come at them today. Which means that were we to attack right now—immediately—we might well catch them off guard. What think you, Sir Roger?”

  Mortimer blinked and his eyebrows shot up, betraying how shocked he was at having his opinion sought. He opened and closed his mouth twice before he found his voice. “I believe Captain Sallis may be absolutely right, my lord, and if he is, then your assertion, too, is correct. We might catch Wallace unprepared if we strike now, while his people believe that we do not intend to come at them until tomorrow.” He paused, then continued: “I like Sir Richard’s idea, too, and such a move would give us full protection against a flank attack when we attack tomorrow, but at the same time we would be running the risk of giving Wallace more time to prepare to fend off our attack. There is much to be said, both pro and contra, on both sides, but in truth I favour a hard strike now, when they are least expecting it.”

  “Henry?”

  If Percy was surprised to be addressed by his first name, he showed no sign of it. Instead he cocked his head to one side. “I don’t know, Grandfather,” he said. “We’ll fight one way or the other, and we’ll win, but I have a feeling, almost a conviction, that the Fords of Drip offer us the greater advantage. What say you, Despencer?”

  It was obvious from his tone that he expected Sir Hugh Despencer to agree with him, and I, too, expected Sir Hugh to support him, if for no other reason than to spite Mortimer. Despencer pushed his chair back from the table and sat staring at the ground between his feet, and when he looked up, it was to Earl Warrenne that he spoke.

  “My lord,” he said, “I believe you are right in wanting to strike now. I think your judgment is sound in trusting the wisdom of your veterans and their opinions on what seems best for you and for them. On the other hand,” he added, raising one hand towards the Scots knight, “looking at Lundie’s plan to cross the fords at Drip, I cannot fault it. We could do exactly as he suggests—send men upstream to cross the stream in safety and swing around to outflank Wallace’s people in the morning. The logic of such a move is self-evident, and there is no valid reason for not executing it. None, that is, save for one consideration. Is there really any need for such a move? Certainly, it might protect us against a counterattack as we advance, but is a counterattack being planned? The evidence indicates to me that there is not. The rebels have not set up any battle lines, and therefore, as you said, they have no anchor point, no rallying place. They also have no formal leadership, in the sense that we understand leadership—they have no senior commanders of proven worth and experience, trained in the craft and tempered in the realities of war, to lead and inspire men by example.

  “They have two men in charge, as do we.” He indicated Cressingham with a wave of his hand. “But theirs are men of straw, unbloodied and untried in formal battle. Even their own Scotch nobles have no faith in either one of them. We heard the High Steward himself say they are too young and too callow to be taken seriously by any man of rank. And to top everything, they have no cavalry—at least, no cavalry that we would recognize as such. I’m told they have a hundred mounted men on Highland garrons, but garrons are hill ponies, not warhorses. So, no cavalry, no archers, and no discipline among their rank and file. In fact, my lord, they have no rank and file!”

  That earned him a few grim smiles from his listeners, and as they were nodding and grunting in agreement he rose to his feet.

  “I think, Your Grace, that you should strike now. A wiser man than I once said, ‘Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.’ It means seize the day and make the most of it; put not your faith in tomorrow.” He paused, smiling, aware of the astonishment on every face around him. Thomas turned to me with raised eyebrows. I look
ed back at him equally wide-eyed, amazed at hearing a knight, even a well-spoken English knight, quoting Horace, and not merely spontaneously but accurately.

  Despencer spoke again into the admiring silence. “We have the strength to win, my lord, and since they think we will not move again today, we have the opportunity. We might not have as much tomorrow.”

  It was a truly astounding speech for a young knight, and in other circumstances I would have stood up and applauded him, but of course he was advocating a surprise attack upon my own friends and kinsmen, and I felt no enthusiasm. It was not so with the remainder of his audience, though. Every man around the table had been caught up in his sweeping declamation, and there was no doubt at all that he had wholly won their approbation.

  The Earl of Surrey spread his arms, commanding silence, and when it fell he looked at Despencer. “Well spoken, Sir Hugh,” he said. “I could not have said it more clearly myself. And you have aided me to my decision.” He looked around the table. “To your positions, my friends, and rally your charges. We march within the hour to teach these Scotch rogues the error of their rebellious ways. Spread the word and make your preparations immediately.”

  Within moments, Thomas and I found ourselves alone in a suddenly empty room, staring at each other apprehensively across our table. We could hear voices shouting in the distance, and from even farther away came the sound of trumpets, but otherwise the silence surrounding us was unsettling.

  “It’s happening,” Thomas said, his voice low and strained. “What should we do?”

  “We should send word to Will and Andrew faster than a bird can fly, but we can’t. It would mean stealing horses and fleeing, and we would never make it through the gates, let alone across the bridge. So all we can do now, really, is wait, and pray that Will has keen-eyed scouts down there watching for signs of activity on the road down from the gates.”

  Thomas shook his head impatiently, “I know all that, Jamie. What I meant was, how do we get down there? We’ll be needed, once the battle starts.”