The Complete Kingdom Trilogy

by Robert Low

  He wanted this business done with, so that he could put Gray behind him and if it meant riding across this strange terrain into the gates of Hell itself, he would spur on.

  The Carse was strange, no doubt of it. They had all been told how treacherous it was, a sward that looked firm yet was a soft and sinking bog. Not now. Not after weeks of summer sun. Now it was like fresh bread, slightly spongy and new-toasted so that it crumbled; Clifford voiced this and his mesnie laughed dutifully, but they were nervous. They had started out slightly later than the Van, knew nothing of what was happening in the New Park away to their left and Clifford was apprehensive. The distant sound of cheers and shouting did not help; who was celebrating and why?

  Yet, if he was to achieve his king’s orders and ride round to cut off the retreat of the Scots, he needed speed. That was why he had three hundred mounted knights and men-at-arms, all flogging expensive warhorses in the heat to come up on St Ninian’s little chapel; the nearest foot were miles away, slogging desperately up with the baggage.

  Clifford eyed the wood to his left, which had some outlandish name, as did the plain they rode across; they were coming up on another steep-sided stream and Clifford slowed to a walk, Gray and Beaumont coming up alongside.

  ‘The Pelstream, my lord,’ Gray offered. ‘Tidal, like all the rest. We are leaving the Carse of Balqhuiderock and heading out into the Dryfield. As the name suggests, it is firm ground even in bad weather.’

  No one could tell the difference; the plain looked exactly the same, though Clifford beamed, the beads forming on his fleshy nose and pouched cheeks.

  ‘Good ground for horse,’ he exclaimed cheerfully. ‘The King will be pleased – this is where the army wants to be, my lords.’

  Gray looked dubiously at the constrictions of wood and stream and mentioned them; he and Clifford fell to arguing the merits of the place as a ‘good field’.

  ‘God-cursed place,’ Beaumont growled into the middle of their polite debate, wiping his face with a corner of his surcote. ‘What’s that there?’

  He pointed one mittened fist and everyone followed it, some rising in the stirrups to try and see better.

  It was a line, a scar on the landscape, seeming to undulate and sparkle. Gray laughed, which made Beaumont’s scowl all the darker.

  ‘That, my lord,’ Gray said, almost joyously, ‘is the enemy.’

  Bruce had blinked and shaken himself out of the daze, ruthlessly forcing it away along with the memory of that fury, that great, crunching crack as he brought the axe down – hard enough to snap the shaft, by God’s Wounds. His hand and arm hurt, wrenched with the power of the blow.

  Like a blown egg, he recalled with a shudder. On the back of the boy’s head as he rode away … he quelled that, too, stuffing it in the choked chest along with all the other sins.

  The irony was not lost on him as he rode into an avenue of cheers and furious joy from those who had heard that the English Van had been repulsed, that a proud English champion lay dead like an offering, slain in single combat by their hero king. A good start, for all the sin in it, Bruce thought, and tried not to concern himself with the Curse of Malachy.

  Yet it was lurking there, made itself plain when he rode up to Randolph’s thousands and found no Earl of Moray, only Duncan Kirkpatrick of Torthorwald, anxious and stumping up and down in front of the serried ranks. At a glance, Bruce saw that the best of the Battle was gone; only the ill-armed were here, stripped down to a shift that barely covered their decency and leaning carelessly on their tall shafts; some had only shaved and fire-hardened points, some had strange hand-scythes and long shafts with other crude blades lashed to them, but none was a proper spear or bill.

  I shall defend myself with the longest stick I have, Bruce thought.

  Duncan Kirkpatrick, his face twisted as if in pain, blinked the sweat out of his eyes and knelt dutifully, thinking to himself that he was damned by Hell itself to be the one having to explain to his king what Sir Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, was doing.

  Bruce felt the rise of panic in him, welling up like shit from a privy as he stared at Duncan. Kirkpatrick’s kinsman, he recalled. Where is that auld dug – and Hal of Herdmanston? If we do not get them back, their mission successful, then we are done with this day and possibly this life. And where is Randolph with the best-armed men we have? The thought that he might have deserted like Atholl almost crushed him, but he heard Jamie Douglas give a surprised grunt and then a snort of derision.

  ‘What in the name of Christ’s Wounds is he thinking?’

  ‘May the Lord forgive you,’ said fat little Gilbert de la Haye piously and Jamie barked out a crow laugh, pointing with one hand down across the Dryfield.

  ‘Not me that needs forgiveness, my lord,,’ he answered. ‘Him.’

  They all looked. Out on the Dryfield, long hundreds of men skeined forward, their spears glinting, the Randolph bedsheet banner fluttering boldly alongside the saltire. It was his own mesnie, stripped from this command, all the well-armed and best-armoured men committing the unthinkable – the unforgivable – and marching unsupported out into the open against heavy horse.

  Coming at them, hard and fast, Bruce saw, the pennons and streamers and blazing flags, the lances and tippets and heraldry glowing brightly through the golden haze.

  Clifford’s checky banner he recognized. And Beaumont’s. The black fork-tailed lion of the Stapledons. The Leyburns. Tailleboys. Christ’s Bones – three hundred or more heavy horse of Clifford’s command, bearing down on a little knot of men, already coalescing into a shield ring, as seeming vulnerable and small as a robin’s egg in the middle of a busy stone path. Bruce felt the breath squeeze from him with the vice-crush of it.

  ‘What possessed him?’ gasped an incredulous de la Haye.

  Carelessness, thought the Dog Boy, panting in the heat-flushed ranks of men behind Jamie; The Earl of Moray was supposed to watch for this and has missed it. Now, too late, he puts himself out like a stopper in a leather bottle to prevent the English going further towards Stirling’s fortress.

  Glory, Jamie Douglas thought laconically. Randolph has heard what the King did with the rearguard and seeks to outdo it, rub all our noses in his paladin splendour. He did not know what would be worse: that the Earl of Moray be ridden into the dust like a martyr or skewer the English to ruin like a hero. Either way, he thought moodily, we will never hear the end of it.

  ‘He sought to prevent them reaching the castle, Your Grace,’ Duncan Kirkpatrick offered miserably.

  Bruce had his own answer to the why of it, watching with a sick, stone-heavy lump of fear in him as the English closed like a fist on the schiltron.

  The Curse of Malachy.

  Clifford could not believe it and said so. Beaumont, shaking sweat from his eyebrows like a dog does water, agreed with him, yet the sight gave him a sudden burst of savage exultant triumph.

  ‘Let them come on further,’ he bawled out, red-faced and beaming. ‘The more ground we give them, the easier they are cut off and cut up.’

  ‘Give them any more,’ Gray answered wryly, ‘and they will have it all, my lord.’

  He meant nothing by it that anyone else could ascertain, but Beaumont swelled like an angry toad and astonished everyone by his ugly snarl; those who knew the tale of it were doubly shocked, for if anyone deserved Sir Henry de Beaumont’s undying respect it was the man who had saved his life.

  ‘If you are so concerned about them,’ Beaumont savaged out, his face sweat-greased and dark with suffused blood, ‘then feel free to flee.’

  Now Gray boiled up, almost standing in the stirrups as he quivered with fury.

  ‘You dare?’ he demanded. ‘You dare say that to me, sirrah. To me?’

  ‘If it fits, wear it,’ Beaumont growled, realizing he had been too harsh, yet unable to retreat from it.

  ‘By God, Beaumont,’ Deyncourt burst out, his own face raging. ‘That is mean – this is the man you owe for being here at all.’

  T
hat did not help. Deyncourt, as Beaumont hissed out, was nothing at all and should mind his station when addressing an earl. That drew a sharp seal-bark of laughter from the furious Deyncourt and his brother, Reginald, came scowling up to make his presence felt.

  ‘Earl? You may style yourself Earl of Buchan, Beaumont,’ Deyncourt bawled, ‘but when you have more than a wife’s portion and a parchment to show for it, then you may have your due from me.’

  ‘Gentilhommes,’ Clifford shouted. He had three hundred mounted men on plunging horses which – already highly strung – not only sensed action but the nervousness of their riders; it meant that men were cavorting in circles to keep them from bolting; Clifford needed calm and did not get it.

  ‘Be damned to you, Beaumont. I never ran from a fight and none should know that better than yourself.’

  Gray spat it out with all the venom he could make, wrenched savagely at the reins, dragging the squealing warhorse round. Before anyone could understand what he was doing, he had turned, couched his lance, set his shield and was trotting out, breaking into a canter. Behind him, like a grim shadow, trailed the Deyncourts, fumbling helms on as they went; young Reginald whooped with mad delight.

  Alone, they thundered down on the hundreds of men forming into a bristling circle of spears.

  In the circle it was blazing. Hot, Will thought. I hate the heat. I have always hated the heat, the way it prickled the skin and turned it dark as a saddle, as a Moorish heathen. When the rest of the bairns longed for the endless days of summer, when barefoot did not mean cold blisters, when they needed to swim in the river to cool off rather than get the dirt and shite off, I knew what it was doing to Da’s stock.

  My da would be fretting now, Will thought. Down in the undercroft, wondering if it was cool enough and fretting mad. This was more fiery than any heat Da had known, mark you, made worse because I am pressed fore and aft, shoulder to shoulder with men as boiled as me, sweating fear out in a nose-pinching stink. Smelling rank in ranks, he thought and nearly laughed.

  Yet my da is to blame for me being here, squashed and melting like mutton tallow in a roaring ring, waiting for Hell to fall on me.

  It’s not our fight, I told him. What do we care who wears the crown – would the priory not need candles under an English king? And my da put me right on it, as he always did, as he did when he taught me how to measure to the last drop the tallow needed for a candle clock – a proper one, not the thin streaks of piss stuck in a graded pewter sconce that some folk affect.

  ‘Who do we pay rent to?’ my da demanded and there it was, perfect as coloured wax; the priory owned us and the rent, though I had never known this before, included service as a man-at-arms. My da had gone before, back in ’07 and again in ’10 and was lucky to escape with his life both times.

  I was nine when he first went, Will thought, and understood nothing. Now I am sixteen and since Da is too old, it is me chosen – so here I am, dripping as if rained on, in Da’s rusting rimmed iron hat, patched old gambeson, rattle-hilted sword and a long pike-spear given me by the King.

  Yet the hands that hold that spear are mine, the cunning of bone and joint and broken nails was made to answer my order and no one else’s, just as were the sweating, stinking feet in the battered shoes and the legs atop them.

  He was Will the chandler’s boy and he was sixteen and lived in himself, somewhere under the ribs or inside his skull, thinking thoughts that had never been thought, feeling things that were so big and full no one had ever experienced them.

  Will the chandler’s boy, melting like wax and waiting to be smeared like old grease. No chance now to make a name as great as Master Overhill, who had invented the candle clock. No chance to find some cleverness to combat the creeping horror of steel cogs and wheels that was the fancy Frenchified horologe, no chance to raise himself from dipping wick in tallow to make nothing better than poor light the rest of his life.

  No place for candles this, he thought, hearing the booming roar of the vintenars to keep close – charge your pikes. Behind him, in the thinned centre of the ring, barely enough room for him alone, he knew the lord Randolph stood. How he stayed upright in this heat, with maille and plate and padding all over him, was something approaching magic, part of the mystery of the nobiles and what they did.

  Yet he was not only upright, but roaring defiance and demands that they hold to the ring; out beyond the shoulders of the man in front, Will saw two riders and tried to dash the sweat out of his eyes with a fist swathed in thick leather gauntlet. It made his spear sway and clatter off the helmet of the man in front, but he only grunted, did not turn round.

  The riders came on. Just three – someone laughed in disbelief but the men around Will suddenly seemed to stop breathing and Will saw that the riders were coming straight at his part of the ring; if they kept going they would crash into it.

  ‘Hold to the ring!’

  Surely no sane man or beast would plunge straight in a hedge of points … Will did not even realize he had said it aloud until the man next to him growled out a reply.

  ‘They are no’ sane, beast nor man,’ he declared and Will turned to look briefly at the grizzled face. It smiled at him.

  ‘Dinna fash, lad. Hold to the ring, keep your pike charged as you trained and it will be fine enough.’

  ‘You have done this afore?’

  Will heard the tremble in his voice and was ashamed of it, but the man did not seem to notice and merely grinned brownly.

  ‘Och, this is auld cloots an’ gruel to the likes o’ us,’ he said and men to his front and side laughed agreement. Will could not understand why anyone would want to do this more than once. Then the grizzled man looked to his front and shifted as if to plant himself.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said and Will saw the horsemen, big as giants and growing larger, the huge legs of the beasts pounding the ground to dust as they came on them at a full gallop.

  Gray’s fury thundered with every hoofbeat, a blood pulse that sent him shrieking at the ring of spears, cursing Bruno’s slowness and raking him until he squealed. Even the sight of the spear points, wavering as they drew together to point at him, provided only the briefest spasm of apprehension, no more.

  That was driven away by the sight of Sir William Deyncourt spurring past him, sitting forward and almost lunging with his lance – bad posture that, he thought, for you are off balance when you hit and will go straight through the gatehouse, out between the ears like a slung stone …

  Deyncourt rode Bruno’s stablemate, a big Frisian cross called Morningstar. The pair of them had been trained together, at the straw men in ranks, at the weak withy hurdles so that they believed there was no barrier they were put to which was stronger than their own muscle and bone. All it took was a madly determined rider and they would try to punch a hole in a castle wall – or a deadly shrike’s nest of points.

  Gray sat back, legs stuck almost up by the arched neck of Bruno, the last furious gallop into the ring a great roar that rang inside his helm and deafened the splintering crash.

  Will saw the leading horseman as a flicker to the left of him, heard the grating crash and felt the slam of bodies rippling away from the impact point. Staggering, frantic, he was peering to see when the second knight erupted out of the golden haze, a massive monster with bared yellow teeth topped with a featureless creature of metal.

  There was a brief confusion of red and white, a glimpse of a silver lion on a shield and then the horse struck the front rank as if it did not exist; there was the sound like a great tree falling and Will saw the man in front of him flung into the air to disappear with a shriek. He ducked instinctively at the great whirl of splintered wood from broken spears, saw the snapped-off points lanced into the horse’s chest and head – straight through the flaring nostril and out of the other eye.

  Then there was a moment when the world seemed to stop, when the man on the dying horse’s back took his lance to within a foot of Will and skewered the astonished grizzle of the vetera
n through the neck; he seemed to float up in the air, higher and higher so that Will started to follow him with a tilt of his gape-mouthed stare.

  The dying horse, legs flailing still, screaming a high-pitched shrill, ploughed on and skittled the ranks of men. Time sucked back to Will, just as the horse capsized, the last mad shriek and kick arriving into the sunlight of Will’s world like a huge black cloud.

  He felt the blow, felt himself hurled backward into other men and wanted to apologize. He saw himself as if he stood outside the blackness that had cloaked him, with his fine sprout of red-gold beard like stubble on a sparse field, big-handed, big-footed and awkward. Proved and not a coward, all the same, he thought, even if I am in the dark and afraid of it.

  I need a candle.

  Gray knew Sir William was already dead when Bruno hit the spearwall and died in an instant. He barely had time for the regret of such a loss before he was shot upward as if launched from a trebuchet, sprung up but not cleanly; one foot was briefly caught in the stirrup and he felt his leg wrench. Then it was free and he was flying in a whirl of arms and legs, like the tumblers he had seen at a fair day once. There was a brief flicker through his helmet slit, an eyeblink vision of a boy with his mouth open.

  He crashed down in a great heap, the air driven from him. He thought he had been pinned like a sheep’s eye on a crow beak, but felt himself dragged and kicked, felt his mind narrowing to a last small point of light. I am too young, he thought frantically. I have achieved nothing … he felt the savage wrenching of his neck, then light flared as his helm was torn off; blind, stunned, he blinked into a growl of shadows.

  God preserve my soul …

  This was chaos and Randolph flailed in the centre of it, bawling for the bodies to be cleared away, the dead spat out like gristle, for the ring to hold, for it to crab away from the dead horses. Someone flung a body at his feet and he stared down into the glassed daze of the knight, his red surcote torn, the silver lion streaked with gore.