by Robert Low
There might have been more, save that a knot of riders flogged up and, with a shock, Kirkpatrick saw the blazing lion and the gold-circleted helmet. Bruce …
He watched, feeling sick, as Keith, Marischal of Scotland, kneed his mount close to the King, who spoke quickly and gestured once behind him with an axe – he has a new one, Kirkpatrick thought wildly. To replace the one he broke yesterday …
Then, with a rush of spit to his dry mouth, he realized the Marischal was detailing men – and one of them was himself. Sixty or so, he reckoned, with that part of his mind not numbed. He fumbled Cerberus after the trail of them, finding himself next to a knight bright with gold circles on flaming red. Vipond, he recalled. Sir William …
‘What are we to do?’ he asked, feeling his voice strange. He was aware that, somehow, his lips seemed to have gone numb.
‘Chase away that wee wheen of bowmen,’ Vipond replied gruffly, ‘who are annoying the Earl of Moray.’
The bugger with the Earl of Moray, Kirkpatrick wanted to say. Let him look to himself …
‘Dinna fash,’ Vipond said and Kirkpatrick realized he had been muttering to himself and felt immediately shamed, another great rush of heat that made him dizzy.
‘Stay by me, my lord,’ the knight said, smiling a sweat-greased sickle on to his face. ‘You will be as fine as the sun on shiny watter.’
‘Form.’
Kirkpatrick found his hands shaking so hard that he could not make them do anything, but the loose visor of his bascinet clanged shut as if he had ordered it; the world closed to a barred view, as if he was in prison.
He heard the command to move at the trot and did not seem to do much, but Cerberus knew the business and followed the others; he heard his own ragged breathing, echoing inside the metal case of the helm, turned his head a little and saw Vipond sliding his great barrel heaume on, becoming a faceless metal ogre.
‘On – paulatim,’ he heard and Cerberus surged forward so that the cantle banged Kirkpatrick hard in the back. He felt the warm, sudden, shaming flush as his bladder gave way.
Nyd hyder ond bwa.
They roared it out as they nocked, savaged strength into their draw with it and shrieked it out on the release of the coveys of whirring death they sent into the men struggling in their ragged square of spears.
There is no dependence but on the bow.
Addaf, striding up and down behind his men, streamed with sweat and his clothes stuck to him as if he had plunged into the stream they had just crossed. All the men were dark with stains, but there was no water in that stream, only a slush of bog at the bottom, ochre pools that stank.
Yet the sides were steep enough that men had had to haul themselves up by the choke of weeds – but it had been worth it, for they were now given a clear shot straight into the left of the rebel ranks.
The ripping silk sound of the arrows fletched away into the great roar of the battle and Addaf clapped a shoulder here, patted another there and bawled out for them to be steady, aware that there were not enough of them.
He looked across, trying to pick out one of the Berkeley lords; he needed more bowmen – even the Gascons with their silly, slow latchbows would do.
He turned and put a hand on the shoulder of Rhys, planning to bawl the message in his ear and have him repeat it before sending him away; it took him half a sentence to realize that Rhys was neither listening, not shooting, but staring, his mouth slightly open.
Addaf followed his gaze and felt as if he had been struck by lightning. Horses. Riders were coming at them, fast, and the banners they flew were all blue and white, red and gold.
‘Away,’ he roared and was astonished to hear a scream of outrage – and another voice, raised in shrill counter to his command.
‘Stand. Shoot. Kill the heathens.’
Y Crach, shaking with fervour, glared at Addaf and pointed his bowstave at him.
‘You run if you wish, old man.’
Addaf felt the rage in him, so rushed that it seemed the top of his head would explode and shower them all with the foul thoughts surging in it. Hywel, Y Crach, the whole sorry mess … he was, in the one small part of him still calm and sane, astonished to see the vale of Cilybebyll there in his head, the patch of land he had once owned and had not been back to see for decades. The ache was like a sudden blow.
Y Crach had not realized the old man had it in him. He knew he had badly miscalculated when the hand reached out and gripped the front of his tunic. The shoulder muscles, honed to a hump by years of pull and not yet completely ravaged by age, twitched like a horse’s rump and Y Crach felt himself fly.
Men gawped as the scabby archer whirled to the edge of the steep-sided stream, then vanished over it with a despairing yelp.
‘A fo ben, bid bont,’ Addaf roared, his red face scattering sweat drops and spit.
If you want to be a leader, be a bridge.
The old proverb, so aptly delivered, made the others laugh, but Addaf was done with it and turned from the hole Y Crach had left in the air when he vanished over the lip of the stream. He found the horsemen rolling relentlessly towards them. Too close, God blind me, he thought …
‘Run,’ he bawled, ‘if you want to live.’
This was the dark heart of the matter and Dog Boy knew it with every man he dragged out, with every man he grabbed by a handful of cloth and flung in. Most of those dragged out were not even bloody, just felled by heat.
Yet they are thinning us, Dog Boy thought. Down to four deep and growing less. He helped Parcy Dodd pull out a man, turned and took the first gambesoned shoulder he could find in a grimy fist.
‘There,’ he ordered. ‘Get ye there.’
There was little sound now, from men too weary to roar, but the eldritch shriek from beyond the line of backs ruched the skin on Dog Boy even as it leaked sweat. Horses never made such a sound, he thought. Not ever, save now, when they are dying in pain.
A knot of men surged past him, saffron cloth flashed and he realized that the moment had come for the madmen from north of the Mounth to go in, filtering through the spearmen ranks, baring their long axes and feral snarls. He saw shields with the black galley of Angus Og of the Isles and felt a brief moment of pity for the English.
Out in front, horsemen were stuck fast, some of them unable to move forward or back; there was a dead horse, belly to belly with its neighbours and held upright by the press as the man still struck wearily from its back. Two down from him, Dog Boy knew, was a knight either dead or heatstruck on his still living horse and sitting there like a wilted metal flower, again jammed in with his neighbours and unable even to fall.
‘Ah, Christ betimes.’
Parcy’s bitter voice turned Dog Boy into his face, then down his gaze to the body at his feet. Parcy had just dragged him out and the bloody waste of what had been Buggerback Geordie lolled like a discarded straw man.
He remembered Geordie in the Black Bitch Tavern in Edinburgh, thrusting the gift-whore at him and grinning the remains of his bad teeth. Sweetmilk had been part of that, too, Dog Boy recalled, and glanced at the straining forest of legs; he is somewhere in that.
‘I hope he did not owe you money, lads,’ said a resonant voice and they looked up into the maille-framed face of Jamie Douglas, greasy with sweat and joy. Parcy, with a bitter grunt, flung himself away and back into the fray, while Dog Boy looked into Jamie’s grin, marvelling at how the gentle, lisping courtier vanished to be replaced by this, a hellish version written in hate.
‘Ye’re a hard man, Sir James,’ he offered and had back a wolfish grin.
‘Hard times. Besides, have you not heard that I am called the Black?’
Then he was gone, axe in one hand, shield in the other and roaring out his name so that folk glanced over their shoulders and tried to make way for him.
In case he cuts them down to get to the English, Dog Boy thought savagely. Which he may well do.
He became aware then, sitting by Buggerback Geordie’s shattered remains
, with the great haze of dust sifting like gold down into a ground made slurry by blood and shit, that he wanted no more of this. He thought of Bet’s Meggy and the bairns.
My son, he said aloud. All that needs be done to get back to him and Bet’s Meggy is to kill Englishmen until they give up and go away … or are all dead.
Then, as if in a slow-motion dream, the ranks ahead seemed to part for a moment, opening like the Red Sea to Moses. Beyond, across a rampart of dead men and horses, he saw a knot of riders surrounding a single man, blazing with colours unstained, the gold pards gleaming, his helm proud with a padded silk lion on it and a clear crown embracing it with gold.
King Edward, by the Grace of God.
An Englishman.
The squire flogged up on a failing palfrey, wet mouth open and the sweat almost trailing behind him in the wind. Before he had reached two lance-lengths from the King, d’Argentan had spurred forward and raised a halting hand.
De Valence saw the squire’s livery, with the lions of Clifford smeared and spattered; he grew cold as the squire and d’Argentan exchanged words, the former panting, mouth open like a dog. The wheyed shock of his face made de Valence grow colder still, but he was turned from the sight by the King’s uncertain voice.
‘My lord Earl of Pembroke, have we sent for the foot?’
De Valence nodded politely.
‘We have, sire. They will be along presently.’
‘It seems to me’, Edward said querulously, ‘that our horse is being sore hurt. Get archers here, de Valence, and with all speed.’
D’Argentan arrived back, his sweating face twisted with concern.
‘Clifford is down. Dead,’ he said. Then he blinked a little and added harshly: ‘Sir Miles de Stapleton also. And both his sons.’
‘God blind me,’ de Valence spat. ‘They are carving us like a joint.’
The King turned, his grim face puzzled beneath the lappets and ermine and padded lion confection of his visored helm.
‘Who orders there now?’
‘Huddleston, according to that squire,’ d’Argentan answered, pleased that he had remembered to ask. The King shook his heavy head.
‘No, no, no – that will not hold. Huddleston does not have the rank for that. Tailleboys, or Leyburn – de Valence, send word that Leyburn is to order poor Clifford’s host.’
God curse it, de Valence thought bitterly as he screwed round in the saddle to where his retinue sat expectantly, what does it matter who orders? In that heaving mass no order given could be obeyed anyway … he caught the glow of a shield with a barred cross and waved to the man. A moment later, Sir William Vescy cantered away in search of the dead Clifford’s command.
‘Well, my lords,’ the King said, lowering his visor until his voice grew to a metal muffle. ‘It is time for the King to strike a blow. Give them heart.’
‘Certes, Your Grace. We will scatter them like chaff,’ boomed d’Argentan, grinning.
Christ’s Wounds, de Valence thought. Is he seriously contemplating riding his royal person into this? God save us all …
He followed, all the same, urging his mount to the King’s left side while men, caught out by the quickness of it, fumbled with shield and lance on the backs of their fractious, eager mounts.
Even as they picked a way over the scattered dead, the screaming, kicking horses slick with fluid, the groaning men, de Valence saw the thickening carpet of it, then the mound, piled with horse and man – some were still alive and pinned, limbs waving like weary beetle feelers.
And over it, sliding out from the bristling ranks and through a gap in the jammed wall of horse, he saw figures, creeping horrors winking with naked blades.
Dog Boy knew the knight, knew him from old and, it seemed to him in that moment, had been fighting him all his life. Blue and white stripes and a rondel of little red birds – an important knight, for sure, and there was a name for him somewhere in Dog Boy’s head, but he could not recall it. He went for him, all the same, half-crouched and snarling, aware of Patrick and Parcy and others at his back.
De Valence saw the figures, the leading one with a feral scuttle, axe and long dirk in his hands, his rimmed iron hat dented and his black-bearded face twisted; he was slavering, de Valence saw with wonder, like a rabid wolf …
The curving overhand blow of the axe made him cry out and the destrier reared – too late, de Valence saw that had been the intent, for the dirk flashed out and the warhorse shrieked and lashed out front and back; de Valence felt the shock that told him someone close behind had received the brunt of it.
Trying to cut the saddle girths, he thought wildly – and then his men surged forward and he lost sight of the slavering man. There were others, all the same, and de Valence knew they had recognized the King.
‘The King,’ he bawled. ‘Ware the King.’
De Valence, Dog Boy thought suddenly. His name is de Valence and he is an earl, no less – then he was whirled away by the sudden arrival of more horsemen, found himself next to a prancing power of a horse, a white beast draped in red and glowing with gold pards. He looked up into the metal face and the surmounting lion. King Edward, by the Grace of God – an Englishman …
Dog Boy struck and the King, unable to lower his shield enough, felt the shock of the axe blow on the padded armour of his warhorse, which squealed and snaked out a vicious bite. Dog Boy jerked away from it, slashing with the dirk; he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the screaming figure of Patrick launch himself forward.
The sword that snicked the iron hat from Patrick’s head, and most of his skull with it, came from a knight in red and silver, who hurled his shield at Dog Boy and then used the free hand to grab the king’s rein.
‘Away, sire …’
Dog Boy, staggering under the battering of the shield, blinded by the vision of Patrick’s iron hat flying bloodily into the air, gave a last, despairing lunge and a mad swipe of the axe – but the King of England was gone.
De Valence battered his way through his own men to the side of the King, who had shoved up his visor and now stared from a sweat-coursed daze of a face.
‘Get the King away,’ de Valence said to d’Argentan, shouting above the howling din.
‘You get him away,’ d’Argentan replied tersely. ‘I am unaccustomed to fleeing.’
He reined round and de Valence, at once heart-leaped with admiration and cursing him for dereliction, took the King’s bridle in one metalled fist and started to force a way through the press to safety.
D’Argentan was all fire. As he had been in his youth, he thought, exultant and roaring with the moment. Third-best knight in Christendom – he would raise that ranking by seeking out and slaying the Bruce himself, if he had to carve through the entire Scotch army to do it.
Beginning with that weeping little scut in the iron hat …
Dog Boy saw the knight ride at him. It was the same one who had killed Patrick, a red figure with little silver goblets on his jupon, shieldless but with his sword drawn back ready to sweep down. Dog Boy was blinded by snot and tears and could not be sure if it was for Patrick, or all the others, or simply rage.
Or for himself, who was surely about to die. He flung the axe, almost wearily, in a last futile gesture.
D’Argentan saw it coming and raised his shield to block it. The shield I do not have, he remembered at the last. The axe whirled over his forearm and struck him on the chest, bouncing off. He had time to bless the padding and maille before he lost his balance, like a tyro, and fell with a clatter as the warhorse crow-hopped delicately over the dead.
There was a moment of disbelief, of sheer incredulity. Third-best knight in Christendom. It came to him then how that had been when he was younger, for a rank beginner would not have fallen so easily. Then d’Argentan realized he was flat on his back, half-draped over a dead horse, and began to struggle upright.
The figure landed on him with both feet, driving all the air out of him, so that he whooped and gasped and knew, with all the
experience of his tourney years, that something had snapped in his chest.
‘Bastard,’ the man snarled and d’Argentan, struggling weakly, felt the visor wrenched up, stared into the black-bearded hate of the Scot; slaver dripped on his cheek.
He had time to feel unutterably weary, to wonder if God would forgive him his many sins.
Then Dog Boy drove the dagger into his eye and roared out revenge for Patrick.
‘On them,’ he bawled out, looking right and left. ‘They fail.’
ISABEL
I woke striped with light. I do not often sleep in the cage, save when the heat is oppressive as now; it does not happen often in Scotland. It annoys the gawpers, who come to see a scowl of witch, not a wee auld wummin snoring. Constance stirred me, then begged me to come into the chamber to eat the meal she had brought and was so flustered and secretive that I did, wondering. She presented her daring gift – mother’s milk. Brought from a wet nurse whose wee charge died, she told me, greatly daring. I did not want it, especially from a wet nurse whose charge had died – who was to say it was not the milk?I did not say this, for I knew why Constance had brought it. She would say it was because it was the perfect food for the old and invalid and begging my pardon as she did so, for insinuations – but it was all because of Sister Petra of Cologne, whose story had just reached Constance’s ears. That nun, so the story went, had eaten nothing else, nor moved much. She closeted herself in a tower and drank the mother’s milk through a reed in the door, waiting – so it was said – for her lover to come for her and she would have the face of the girl of fourteen he knew when they parted and she was forced to the veil. I did not ruin it for Constance by telling her the rest of the tale – how the other nuns grew tired of milking the village women, who were tired themselves of being heifers. So they simply stopped and Sister Petra, too weak to move after years of lying around, could not get out and died when her exertions at the door snapped her heartstring. When the nuns found Christian charity and courage enough to break down the door of the tower they found her, emaciated, wizened, dead and with the face of a 70-year-old, which matched her age to perfection.