by Robert Low
I will not need mother’s milk to preserve my face for Hal – he will come before I age out another year. I read it in the pattern of the mother’s milk I threw in the bailey when Constance had gone. If Malise wants a witch to burn I can give him one, for God is dead and Heaven is ugly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bannockburn
Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314
Thweng stood patiently as John, his arming squire, fought to relace the skewed ailettes, and another squire, William, took the saddle and clothing off Garm and put it on Goliath. Garm stood, his pained hoof up, snuffling now and then as another squire soothed him.
There was a strange, summer-singing quiet here, dusted with drifting motes and only faint squeals and screams and the clash of metal, where the murmur of the surrounding voices was no louder than bees. It was as if there was no battle at all, Thweng thought, for all that it looks as if one had already taken place.
The whole of the toasted-bread carse around them was littered with bodies, slumped or sitting in the hazing of heat and dust, some of them dangle-headed with weariness. They were not dead, but most of them wished they were, felled by a crippling march in a heat that sucked the strength away. Others gathered in knots, leaning on spears or tall shields to talk earnestly and all of them wondered what was happening.
What was happening, Thweng thought grimly, is that the foot have been marching all night and are arriving in dribbles, like wine from a drunk’s slack mouth. The folk who should be ordering them have all charged off.
This whole affair was beyond rotted now, he knew. John finished with the ailettes and stood back to review his lord; he nodded and smiled, his face sheened and eager to please. Thweng felt a sharp stab, as if someone had driven a dagger under his heart, at the thought of this one going under the dirk-wielding horrors. John de Stirchley was the least of a neighbour’s brood, not yet fifteen, not yet knighted and bursting with having been brought here by the great Sir Marmaduke while his elder brother had to stay behind.
Thweng recalled the boy’s father and his mother, a spring bride for a winter groom. A late fruit is John, Thweng thought, and favoured because of it. I promised both his parents I would not get him bruised.
‘Listen carefully,’ he said to the squire and then laid it out: saddle palfreys, gather up as many as you can of the men who came with us, take food, and make sure every man has a weapon. Leave the carts and the panoply – it is sticks and canvas, no more – and plate and furniture. Kilton can afford to lose a little carved oak and some pewter, but do not forget the Rolls, those vellum lists of who is owed what. Be ready to ride – you will know when, even if I am not here to tell you.
He saw John’s throat bob as he swallowed the dry stick in it, but the nod was firm with understanding. Thweng wanted to reassure the lad, but he was leaving him with the burden of it all, for his duty lay with the King and he was not so sure there would be an afterwards.
He was spared the awkward moment of it by a voice, thick with the south in it, talking to William as he fought with the girth of the saddle and Goliath’s attempts to be mischievous and blow out his belly.
‘How bist?’
The man was red-faced and sweltering in a padded jack, the iron helmet dangling from his belt, the spear dark with hand-sweat and old use.
Thweng saw William, flustered and damp, spare the man a sour glance and then shoulder Goliath’s big belly until the animal grunted and let out air.
‘Does tha ken what?’ the man persisted and Thweng, finally freed from his armouring, stepped forward so that the man was forced to look at him instead. The expression changed, the hand came up and knuckled his furrowed, dripping forehead.
‘Beg pardon, yer honour. Lookin’ to find what is.’
‘Who are you?’ Thweng asked and the man drew himself up a little, permitting a small shine of pride.
‘Henry, my lord. I orders ten from Wyndhome for the Sire there, good Sir John.’
‘Where is good Sir John?’ Thweng asked patiently and had back the look someone gave a dog who would not fetch.
‘Why, ee be with old Sir Maurice, baint ee?’
Berkeley, Thweng thought. They are Gloucester men, spearmen of Sir Maurice Berkeley brought by some fealtied lord called Sir John; Thweng had no idea who he was or where Wyndhome lay – but he knew where good Sir John would be.
‘He is there,’ Thweng said, shooting one metalled arm to where the dust was a thick cloud laced with shouts and clangs and screaming horses, faint as birdsong. ‘You should go.’
‘Without us havin’ ordern?’
Henry shook his head vehemently, and then turned as someone shouted his name.
‘Oi, ’Enry, lookee there. Be that not our king?’
A man pointed, squinting and shading his eyes with his entire iron-rimmed hat.
The knot of riders cantered out of the pall of dust and the sun flared off the gold on the centre rider’s fancy war hat. Behind, the coterie of armoured men rode under the streaming pennant, the Dragon and the huge royal banner that marked them for all to see. The King, Thweng thought, feeling the stone settle in his bowels.
‘It be our king. Be ee leavin’, then?’
‘No,’ Thweng lied and signalled for John to leg him up on to Goliath’s back. When the squire came close, he whispered harshly in his ear, aware of the Gloucester men turning one to the other, frowning and gabbling like chickens.
‘Now is the time. Go, boy, and do not look back.’
He reined round, seeing Henry and the other Gloucester men craning for a better look; others were climbing to their feet to watch the gilded passage of the King, riding to the rear. Thweng felt the whole day shudder, like a sweated horse in a chill wind.
He cantered after them, caught up and forced himself alongside a flustered, bewildered de Valence.
‘Turn about,’ he yelled, scorning protocol for an earl. The Earl of Pembroke turned his streaming, boiled-beet face, the scowl on it like a scar; he reined in a little so that the pair of them fell behind the cavalcade.
‘They think the King is leaving, that the day is lost,’ Thweng roared out. De Valence’s scowl grew deeper, his eyes black caves of misery in the blood of his face.
‘What makes you think it is not?’ he answered.
Thweng, astounded, jerked Goliath to a halt and let the Earl surge away to join his king. What now, he thought, that the truth is out?
He looked left and right, at first disbelieving that the great host of men he saw, uncommitted and waiting, were defeated. Even as he stood, bewildered, he saw the resting foot surge to their feet as someone shouted and pointed off to the right, up to the wooded heights.
Thweng followed the gesture … there, fey as Faerie, figures moved on the distant hill beyond the Scots. A rider with a banner – he squinted to make it out, saw other banners floating above thick clumps of black shapes. The sun – God, it was not even noon yet – flung itself back and forth like fire from sharp metal tips.
More men? Thweng could not believe it. More Scots, coming down on the flank of the army? And that banner – black and white. The one the rider carried had a huge cross on it, he was sure even at this distance and with his old eyes.
It could not be, was impossible … yet the thrilling terror that the banner might be Beauseant, that the God-rotted proscribed Templars had launched their perfect vengeance on all Christendom’s chosen warriors, shot through Thweng like a fire.
Unbelievable …
Others believed it and even those who did not saw an armed host, for certes. They shouted it, one to another, sucked up the memory of their king riding to safety and drew their own conclusion. Men began trotting, aimlessly at first and then, like a covey of starlings, all in the one direction.
Away.
In a second, Thweng saw the brittle might of Edward’s host shatter like poor pottery.
The big banner seemed to have a life of its own, a bedsheet straight off the Earl of Hell’s canopy, as far as Hal
was concerned. It did look right, he admitted as he glanced up at it, for the limner’s blue paint had smeared from the arms of the cross and produced, almost perfectly and by divine accident, the shivering blue cross of the Sientclers on the spread of linen.
That, at least, was an acceptable device to ride under, he thought, and then looked to where Davey the Smith strode, forge hammer in one massive fist, Beauseant in another and the black and white Templar hat just one among the many.
Last wave of that banner, Hal thought. I hope it works, for the Bruce’s wrath will be mighty and only victory will turn it to smiles. If we fail, then I am a lost man for bringing the spectre of the Order to his army and his great battle; he will think it the final curse of St Malachy on his head. It will not matter, for if we fail then Isabel is lost and it does not matter about the world after that …
The idea had been daring, but the camp on Coxet Hill had embraced it like a fervent lover, since it let them loose with little or no danger to plunder the fallen. So they took up the Templar gear uncovered in the unpacking and put it on, laughing, and Sir John Airth, glowing like an ember and puffing in the heat, had been carried up in a litter to present the Beauseant, unwrapped from the bottom of the Templar armoury like the sick horror of a bad dream.
‘You mun be hung for the whole sheep as the half lamb,’ he growled and then shook his head, scattering drips from his jowls, his face like a raspberry mould and his fat legs bandaged against the gout.
‘I will pray for you, Sir Hal, as I pray for the soul of my son,’ he added and watched as the silk Beauseant was tacked crudely to a tall pole and handed to the smith, who could carry it one-handed.
I hope Sir John is praying now, Hal thought, and that I have timed it right.
He looked right and left at the straggling mass, loping like wolves down the hill and into the fringe of the fighting and the scattering of bodies. If it came to a fight, of course, they would run like leaping lambs, but all they had to do was look fierce and magnificent for a glorious eyeblink.
The figure loomed up at his stirrup and he glanced down to see the impish grin of Bet’s Meggy, an iron hat tilted sideways on her head and a pole clutched in one fist. It had a sharp kitchen knife tied to the end of it.
‘Sir Hal,’ she shouted. ‘Is your army ordered to your lordship’s satisfaction?’
Full of cheek, that one, Hal thought, yet he found himself grinning. Then he saw the boy, serious as plague and gripping a dirk as long as his arm in one hand and the hand of a wee girl in the other.
‘Christ’s Wounds,’ he bellowed. ‘Did you need to bring the bairns to this?’
‘Who would look after wee Bet, lord?’ she yelled back at him, her grin wild as a cat snarl. ‘And you could not hope to keep Dog Boy’s son out of such an affair.’
Dog Boy’s son. Hal looked at the boy and laughed at the fierce look of the lad, drowning in a borrowed – stolen – maille coif, with his too-big Templar warhat and his long dirk. Hob, he remembered Dog Boy saying the boy was called. Hob. He was younger than the Dog Boy Hal had first met all those years ago in Douglas, but he had the same look. The look that had reminded Hal of his own son, John, dead and dead these many years.
Dog Boy had balmed the loss of John, and now here was another. He wondered if the new Royal Houndsman would countenance his son coming to Herdmanston. If Bet’s Meggy was going off with her new man, we will need a new baker, he thought. Or a new dog boy.
Hal saw a succession of them, all the way into the future of Herdmanston and laughed with the sheer joy of it; Bet’s Meggy joined in and, after a moment, Hob cackled out a laugh as well, shrill with the moment if not the complete understanding. Even wee Bet, finger up her nose, smiled beatifically.
Then, sudden as a cold wind, the loss of Sim scoured his joy away and his sudden blackness soured its way to the others, so that they stopped laughing, all at once. After a moment, they all put their heads down and plodded, as if through a rain squall, down to the war.
He had been sitting for some time, had lost any idea of how long, so that it came as a cold-water shock to snap back to reality. He blinked at the bloody teeth of the man he sat next to and realized he had the man’s hand in his own.
Vipond. Kirkpatrick remembered bobbing along in the knight’s wake, trying to control reins, shield and lance until, with a curse, he had thrown the latter away and then tried to screw his head round to see out of the narrow slit of the helm.
He hated it, the sweating cave of the helm, the jostle and bounce and desperate straining of the warhorse, which wanted to be moving faster after the others; in the end, Kirkpatrick had let it and hung on. He heard his breath rasp in and out in the furnace of his helmet, heard dull clangs, felt a blow on his shield and panicked, thinking they had contacted enemy.
Unable to see, he had dragged out his sword and swung it wildly left and right, cursing his own foolishness in ever having thought to ride as a knight, at ever having thought he was one, for all his dubbing.
Suddenly, through the slit, he had seen Vipond, half turning towards him and reeling in the saddle. The knight seemed to slip sideways, put out one arm and grasping hand, as if to clutch Kirkpatrick, and then fell and disappeared from view.
Kirkpatrick had hauled the warhorse to a halt, cursing it. He had been told that it was beautifully trained and biddable, worth every penny of thirty marks, but Kirkpatrick would have fed the beast to the pigs he kept on the manor which this warhorse represented in price.
He climbed off it, half sliding, half falling, threw down the shield and unlaced the helm and hauled it off, whooping in air as if he had breached from water. Then he tore off the bascinet, forced the maille hood back and ripped off his arming cap, glorying in the feel of air on his sweat-tousled bare head.
When he managed to focus, he found himself looking at his own shield; two broken shafts were in it, neatly puncturing the fist with the upraised dagger. Those were the blows I felt, Kirkpatrick thought with a sudden lurch. If they had not hit the shield …
Then they would have hit me, he thought when he found the body of the fallen Vipond. As they had hit him – the knight lay on his back, metal face pointed to the sky, a shaft so deep in the bicep of his right arm that Kirkpatrick knew it had gone through and then snapped off in the fall. A second arrow was buried almost to the fletch in his right side.
Kirkpatrick’s legs were buckling as the weight of maille fell on them. He lumbered up to Vipond, not knowing what he was about to do with a dead man – and then he heard the metal rasp of breathing from the faceless creature and dropped his sword. He grunted his way down to one knee, fumbling with the knight’s helmet lacings; when he drew it off, Vipond’s sweat and gore-streaked face stared up at him, the smile on it crimson; he had vomited blood, Kirkpatrick saw.
‘Thank … you,’ Vipond wheezed and Kirkpatrick looked him up and down, went to touch the arrow in his side, thought better of it and grasped the one in the knight’s bicep; the man groaned and Kirkpatrick let it go as if it had been on fire.
He sat down with a hiss of maille links and the clank of pauldron and ailette, aware that he was as useless at physicking this man as he was at knightly combat, that he was flapping his arms like a hopeless chicken and no help to anyone.
‘I will get help,’ he muttered. ‘Water …’
He found Vipond’s fierce clutch on his wrist.
‘Stay.’
The knight’s eyes had become hot and afraid.
‘Do not … let … me die … alone.’
You are not alone, Kirkpatrick wanted to say. God is watching. But it sounded trite and hollow, so he said nothing at all and sat there holding Vipond’s hand while his destrier cropped contentedly, picking delicately at the grass not trampled or soaked to muddy gore.
Vipond’s own mount had vanished, but three others moved across the sprawled bodies, their trappings torn and streaked. A fourth limped back and forth, every now and then making a plaintive screaming whinny from a snaked-out neck,
as if shouting for help.
Somewhere, time slipped away. Kirkpatrick was half aware of the sudden increase in the noise of battle to his right but it did not seem important enough to turn and look. He was fixed, frozen, staring at nothing at all, yet aware of surge, like a flood tide, as the fighting moved away from him. The heat beat on him, melted him to dull lethargy.
When he snapped out of his daze, it took him a moment to realize that movement had done it; a horseman was coming, wavering through the heat haze, all faerie and stretched.
‘A rider – help is coming,’ he said, turning to Vipond. He had intended to remove his hand from the knight’s clutch and pat it soothingly, reassuringly – but the death grip was fierce and Kirkpatrick had to prise it free, shocked at the fact that the knight had died and he had not known when it had happened. He might as well have died alone, Kirkpatrick thought bitterly, for all the help I have been; he smelled the rankness of himself, remembered what he had done and felt sick shame.
The rider stopped. Kirkpatrick was suddenly aware that there was only himself and the man on the horse in this part of the world; to the left was the great hump of Coxet Hill where, incongruously, birds sang and insects whined and hummed, headed for the feast. To his right, the battle was a carpet of dead and the moaning dying, with a great mass of heat and dust haze beyond where figures flitted and roared sullenly.
The English have been forced back … We have won, Kirkpatrick realized with a sudden heartleap of exultation. We have actually won …
The rider was closer and now Kirkpatrick saw that the warhorse was plodding, head bowed with weariness, the trapper on it stained and torn so that dags and tippets of material trailed on the ground. The rider had lost all head coverings – torn them off, Kirkpatrick thought, as I have done, to get some relief from the heat – and his surcote was streaked and splashed with fluids. He had no shield, but held a sword in what appeared to be a tired fist, dangling dangerously close to the horse’s unsteady feet. He looked as if he had ridden out of some ancient barrow mound.