The Complete Kingdom Trilogy

by Robert Low

  ‘“You have been my help and in the shadow of Your Wings I rejoice,”’ Thweng had quoted to the astonished Badenoch. Sir Marmaduke had left him astonished, but did not tell him it was not the first time the name had been so used.

  He had heard every permutation of such names from scripture and psalm; the last time I fought at Stirling, he recalled with a shiver, the bold oathsworn knights had been called the Wise Angels, after the Lord Jesus’ admonition to St Peter at the time of His arrest.

  Most of those knightly angels had unwisely stayed on the wrong side of the brig, to die under the blades of Wallace’s men; most of them were angels for true now, sitting at the Feet of God and wondering how they had got there.

  There was a stir and the ranks parted as Mowbray arrived back, red-faced and with a constipated strain about him; he made straight for Hereford while a youth broke from the pack and rode over to Thweng.

  He was no more than fifteen, dark hair plastered to his sweating skull and a frantic anxiety about him; Thweng recognized him as a squire to one of Sir Maurice Berkeley’s young sons and hestitated a name.

  ‘Alexander de Plant.’

  ‘My lord,’ the squire replied, brightening with relief that he was, at least, known. ‘My lord the King has sent me with instructions for the commanders of the Van,’ the boy went on, spilling it out as fast as the words would tumble. ‘My lord of Pembroke told me to bring them to you and that you would know why and what to do.’

  Thweng grunted and cursed de Valence. Of course he knew why – because whomever the squire went to with the King’s orders for the Van would incur the wrath of the other earl and it was better that a respected veteran such as Thweng do it. That way the wrath would be tempered and the instructions at least considered.

  The orders were simple enough: the Van was to proceed straight on while the trusted Sir Robert Clifford took his Battle round to the right, with the intent of cutting the Scots off from retreat. The left, it seemed, was cut about with traps and pits, which Mowbray knew about.

  When Thweng approached, Mowbray had already revealed most of what he had learned in his passionate, sweating plea to Hereford and Gloucester not to proceed through the Torwald.

  ‘They are prepared for it, my lords,’ he declared, waving his arms. ‘Betimes – there is no need. The castle is relieved …’

  Gloucester, his darkly handsome young face greasy with joy as much as sweat, gave a sharp bark of laughter.

  ‘Did you think we came all this way for the pleasant ride in it?’ he demanded and even Hereford had to agree with him, dismissing Mowbray with an armoured wave.

  ‘Return to Stirling and wait, sir. If the King orders the Van to proceed, proceed it will.’

  Thweng delivered the King’s orders, and then sat silently as the entire place suddenly erupted into a frantic flurry. As Philip de Mowbray rode back under his white banner to where the Scots waited in the Torwald he nodded curtly to Thweng, who answered it as briefly. If all went the way it should they would toast each other and victory in the great hall of Stirling three days from now, at most.

  If all went the way it should …

  Squires hurried off with palfreys, brought up the powerful destriers, most of them fractious with the heat and the imminence of action. Others fetched pauldron, rerebrace and vambrace for the great who could afford this new fashion; there was a clattering and clanking as they began fitting this extra armour to arms and shoulders.

  Thweng found his squire at his elbow, leading Garm by the rein. Garm was solid as a barn and old enough not to be champing froth at the possibility that this was more than his master at practice. He was black and gleaming, the polish of him thrown up by a light sheen of sweat and the white trapper bearing the three green popinjays of the Thwengs.

  Sir Marmaduke climbed on and settled himself, took the shield and the lance from young John, who then climbed on to his own horse and tried not to tremble. He was no older than Alexander de Plant, Thweng thought, moodily studying the Torwald’s tight nap of trees with a jaundiced eye, and I promised his mother I would keep him from harm.

  I brought him because I owed the King four men and he qualifies as one, but barely. It was a carping childish rebellion on my part, for all the other good men I have supplied to the Edwards, father and son. Now my petulance has put this lad in danger …

  He turned.

  ‘Remain here with the rounceys,’ he growled. ‘No sense in risking them before we know what lies ahead.’

  No one spoke, though John went tight around the lips and reddened even more than he had in the heat, because he knew what his lord had done and why – and was shamed at the relief he felt for it. Thweng returned to looking sourly at the wood. A lance was probably more liability than asset in there, he thought.

  He waited, watching with his plain, battered old barrel-helm tucked under his shield arm while the feverish knights had plumes fixed, demanded tippets and banners, both of which hung limply in the breathless air. The younger ones, who had never been in such an event before, called out greetings in high, nervous voices, pretending nonchalance and a boldness they did not entirely feel.

  Thweng saw Hereford scowl at his nephew as Henry de Bohun fought the mouth of his huge bay, foam-sweated round the neck already and baiting on the spot with huge hooves. De Bohun, encumbered with shield and lance, had his helm clamped under his lance arm and was trying to see over the ornament of it. The helm was a great domed full-face affair, draped in a fold of blue and gold mantle, surrounded by a coloured blue and gold twist of cloth like a Saracen’s turban, surmounted by a padded heraldic lion in gold cloth spouting three great plumes of heron feathers in blue and yellow.

  He was as proud of this new-fangled confection as he was of his ruinously expensive horse, which he called Durandal after Roland’s sword – but, at this moment, he would cheerfully have rendered it into several hundredweight of offal.

  ‘Tight rein that mount, boy,’ his uncle called out, irritated and hot, trying to argue with Gloucester while mounting his own equally annoyed warhorse, which fretted under the leather barding round its head.

  ‘Look to your conrois, my lords – and mount those damned Welsh,’ bawled the Earl of Gloucester; the Earl of Hereford, hands full of rein and mouth full of his own egret plumes as he fought with helm and horse, fumed helplessly at this de Clare imposition of command.

  Addaf caught Thweng’s eye and nodded briefly; once he would have knuckled his forehead, but he was too old to care these days unless it was a lord who mattered. Besides, he remembered the Yorkshire knight as a man unimpressed by such things; he had met him years before – by God, during his first campaign, in fact, against the Wallace.

  Thweng’s was not a face you could forget, with eyebrows so bushy that they looked stuck on with fish glue for some mummer’s performance. Two deep, vertical furrows, like the gills of a porpoise, ploughed from the wings of his nostrils to the bearded angles of his wide mouth and the upper lip hung, ape-long, over the lower, which made his drooping moustache seem more baleful.

  Thweng did not recognize Addaf, which made the archer smile wryly. He had been a husky, hump-shouldered youth, dark and sullen, in those days, and was now a grizzled, iron-grey veteran – but, from his cool gaze and quiet nod, it was clear the Yorkshire lord knew the worth of the archers. Clear, too, from his frown that he wished they were on foot, flitting through the trees rather than riding.

  Addaf would have fervently agreed if they had spoken on it; he led the Van down from the blazing brass of sunlight into the immediate cooling balm of the Torwald shade, such a relief that men gasped aloud. Addaf filtered his mounted men out as far as he could, like a fan on either side of the narrow trackway, threading their mounts through the trees; he felt the place close on him.

  Bigod, thought Thweng, here is as good a spot for an ambush as any Vegetius could come up with. Others thought so, too, for the sighs and cries about being in the shade faded and died. Tight-packed in twos and threes, they rode knee
to knee in a deep, dark green gloom with only a creak and jingle that was suddenly too loud.

  Five hundred at least, Thweng thought moodily, strung out like wet washing; he felt, in the dappled closeness, as if he was under water.

  They burst out of the Torwald like a shout of relief, into a blaze of sun and a new barrier ahead – yet another scar of woodland, though this was the New Park, a mere imp of the Great Satan that was Torwald. Beyond that, no more than six English miles away, lay Stirling Castle.

  Hereford, his voice muffled and booming inside his splendid helm, bawled out orders which Gloucester, his own helmet tucked under one arm, took delight in repeating so that they would be understood; his red face was beaming with pleasure and heat.

  ‘Sir Henry’, he yelled to de Bohun, ‘is to command the foot forward while the horse gathers itself. Scour the enemy ahead, sirrah, with all despatch.’

  Addaf looked sourly at the great confection that was Henry de Bohun, brilliant in his bright blue surcote and jupon and horse trappings, all studded with little gold lions. He was, with that great lion-topped helmet clapped on his head, identical to his uncle save for the red slash through his shield. A bowl of frumenty, Addaf thought scornfully, and about as much use to me and mine, look you – but it was the way of things that an English lord oversaw what the Welsh did, even if he was a cont gwirion on four legs.

  Addaf signalled with a wave of his sword and the Welsh dismounted at last, the horse-holders calming their charges while the rest padded forward like hunting hounds, bows smarted and arrows nocked. They filtered into the trees while de Bohun followed and his squire, Dickon, trailed at his back on his own palfrey, encumbered with spare lance and a host of other weapons his sire might need.

  Thweng watched them go while the rest of the Van horse came up and reordered, the bright face of the lord of Badenoch like a child’s slapped arse as he arrived at Sir Marmaduke’s elbow.

  ‘The rebels will not stand, it seems,’ he said in polite French and wrinkled his snub nose. ‘A pity. I owe the Bruce a mighty blow.’

  Bruce is owed one, true enough, Thweng thought to himself, but you are not the one to give it, little lord. He wondered, though, if the Bruce he had seen was the same one he had known in younger, tourney days. Did he still deserve the title of second-best knight in Christendom?

  Addaf dashed sweat from his eyebrows and blew it off the end of his moustache. There were men ahead; he had seen them filtering away ahead of them, keeping out of decent bowshot. Beyond, he heard shouts and a familiar rattle of spears, a sound he remembered well.

  ‘Ware – spearmen,’ he bawled out in Welsh, and then repeated it in English, so Henry de Bohun knew of it, though whether that lord understood or heard was a mystery, since he was a faceless metal creature who gave no signs.

  Arrows flicked and rattled suddenly, so that the Welsh went into a half-crouch, searching for targets and returning fire. An arrow spanged off Henry’s helmet, the ring of it jerking him so that the warhorse’s head came up and it blew out heavily in protest.

  The Welsh, Henry de Bohun saw, were going to ground, which was sensible when you had no protection and were not bound by the chivalry of knighthood. He curled a sweating lip at them and urged his horse forward.

  Addaf saw the splendid lord, the padded gold lion and plumes on his helmet nodding, the trailing blue and red tippets fluttering prettily and thought, well, there’s the last we will see of that uffar gwirion and good riddance to another English. He saw the muttering-anxious squire kick his own horse up past the Welsh and revised his thoughts to include him, too; a shaft hit a branch near him, clattered off into the trees and he forgot the pair entire, bawling at his men to stop shaming him and kill the Scotch bowmen.

  Already, though, he saw the Scots archers slink away, knew their task was done; behind them, no doubt formed and ready, would be a host of close-ranked men bristling with spears and, vaguely through the trees, he saw a helmeted horseman.

  A spearwall, archers and knights – there was no way through this without a hard fight which needed foot and spears rather than just his nearly-hundred of archers and a lot of heavy horse. He handed command to Coch Deyo and shouldered back through the wood and into the sunlight, squinting at the great horde of wilting, patient horsemen. He padded across like a stiff wolf to Hereford and Gloucester, careful to report what he had seen to both of them at once.

  They took it well enough and the young one, the de Clare, was hot for going on but the older Earl of Hereford was more clever, Addaf saw, seeing at once that he might win with his five hundred heavy horse, but would ruin them doing it. Clever, too, the Welshman saw, not to admit that was why he hesitated; instead, he ordered the walrus-faced lord called Thweng to ride forward with his mesnie and see how many men opposed them.

  And, as Addaf turned to lope back to his men, anxious about what Coch Deyo had done with them in his absence, the Earl of Hereford suddenly barked out:

  ‘Where is my nephew?’

  Henry de Bohun was in an oven with the sweat stinging his eyes, the lance rattling and banging off low branches, so that he had to lean it back on one shoulder. The proud trailing tippets of his helmet seemed to hook on every branch and threatened to tear the whole cumbersome affair from his head.

  Which might be a relief, he thought to himself – until the first arrow strikes my nose. Through the blurry slit of his helmet, he saw a rider, a vague figure and no more. Behind, he saw – like a deer moving and revealing itself in the dapple of sunlit wood – a great mass of men and spears. He paused, considering, looked right and left and saw no one at all.

  Which is at least a mercy, he thought, blowing frantically upward to try and dislodge the sweat coursing down his face and over his lips, for I would not know Scotch from Welsh in here.

  It was idiocy to go on – stupidity to be this close to start with – so he started to turn the head of Durandal, who did not like putting his back to an enemy and resisted, baiting on the spot. Cursing, de Bohun savaged his mouth a little to get his attention – and then froze.

  The rider had moved, was shouting and waving a little axe. He was on a palfrey and wore a splendid jupon of gold, blazoned with a red lion, a bloody replica of the gold ones Henry himself wore. On the man’s head, clapped atop the open-faced bascinet, was a little domed cap in red leather surrounded by a circlet of spiked gold.

  A crown.

  The King himself and without a coterie of knights, only spearmen and only one or two in maille and plate to show that they might have been nobiles – but afoot. Not another horseman in sight.

  The blood shushed in Henry’s ears, thundering deafeningly inside the cave of his steel helm and he almost cried out. Then he fumbled the lance round, battering it through the clutch of branches until he could couch it, kicked Durandal so that he squealed and rode out at as fast a trot as he could manage, cursing the tangle of his tippets.

  ‘Ogre!’ he yelled, for it was only chivalrous to announce his presence and not ambush like an outlaw. ‘Face me in single combat. I am Henry de Bohun, knight. It will be glorious …’

  Bruce was anxious and fretting; he was sure that the English Van had balked at turning to their left and were pushing straight ahead, which was to the good.

  Yet Jamie and his riders, now dismounting to fight on foot, had reported that the Van and the Main were coming up together and the third Battle was further to the right of the English, coming up by another road which would bring it out along the Way, to St Ninian’s and the castle itself.

  That is fine, he consoled himself while the sweat coursed off him. That is where I want them all, round to my left, in the Carse to the north and east – though I wish I knew where this third Battle was now and if Randolph has them under watch. He glanced at the sky and the great relentless ball, slowly, slowly, swinging down to the horizon.

  Too late for the English to force matters this day, if we hold firm here – and find out where this other Battle is. Clifford, he said to himself. It wil
l be Clifford. Or Beaumont. Hereford is here in front of me and Gloucester with him; that is an unnatural mating, Bruce thought, which may work to my advantage. Yet he is not short of good commanders, is the Plantagenet …

  Too many ifs and buts and peering at heraldry, trying to work out who and where and with what. A battle lasts as long as the first steps of a plan, Bruce thought; after that, you may just as well try herding cats.

  Bruce shouted at the rearguard, about half of his own Battle, chivvying them into a barrier against the English Van when – if – it debouched from the trees, while the archers flitted back and forward like midgies to buy them time. Behind, the rest of the Scots army reordered itself at right angles, marching along under the great hump of Coxet Hill.

  Dangerous, dangerous, Bruce thought to himself, to move in front of an advancing enemy – yet they are not in a position to do me harm and all I need do here is discourage them, make it clear there is no easy passage into the New Park. Buy time for the end of this day and then, having taken the measure of them, decide what to do on the morrow …

  Which would be run, he decided. I do not have the men or the arms to risk anything else.

  The shouting brought his head up and he stared, amazed, at the vision which presented itself. He knew the gold lions on blue at once; for one heart-stopping moment he thought it was the Earl of Hereford himself, but then saw the red diagonal slash on the shield. A sprig from the tree, he thought and frowned, because the man was yelling, incoherent under the muffle of great helm.

  ‘The King. Protect His Grace …’