"Oh, no!" Margaret cried.
"Quiet, woman! This is man's business. Robert will have marched for hundreds of miles. His men and beasts will be weary and hungry. Especially those great horses on which the Normans so rely. What they call their heavy chivalry. Any food and fodder they may have carried with them will long be finished. So I want all hay and grain burned before them, all cattle and sheep driven off into the hills. All food destroyed. You understand? Ten thousand men and thousands of horses need a deal of feeding. They are not to find any in my territories. This is your task. And you will not weaken in it — I know your softnesses! The realm requires it. This will give me time to gather my strength — and bring Robert to me weakened, famished!"
"It is cruel, cruel!" the Queen protested. "And not necessary. We have been discussing how to treat with this Robert, not fight him. There is much that we can put forward. That will give him pause . . ."
"Then he can pause where we can hold him — and talk if so minded. Either at the Forth, at Stirling. Or at the Carron, at Ecclesbreac. In Calatria, where Lothian ends. I shall be waiting for him there — you hear, Maldred? Hold him up for five days — I must have five days. Now — go sleep you, if you must. Then ride . . ."
* * *
So Maldred presently resumed his travelling, with a fresh horse but a heavy heart, the thought of the grim duty ahead leaden within him. All the way back through fertile Lothian he rode haunted by the thought of what he must bring to this fair and lovely land, amongst the most rich in all Scotland — a land of which he himself was, temporarily, lord and protector. Yet he knew that, so far as strategy went, the King was right. It was undoubtedly the most effective way of slowing down and weakening the invaders. He supposed that always the few must suffer for the many. But it went sorely against the grain. Would Cospatrick himself have done it, whose land it was? He almost certainly would indeed, being the man he was.
Maldred had one lift of the spirit on his journey, when he encountered Magda and the children, with their escort, on the way north. The parting again was the sorer trial.
At Dunbar, where the manpower of the Lothian earldom was now largely assembled, he lingered only long enough for an hour or two of sleep and a setting of affairs in order, before moving on southwards again at the head of this force of some seven hundred mounted men. Down by the Pease passes and over into the Eye valley they went, to cross the wide green Merse, making for Tweed. He argued that these men should guard the Tweed fords, under local guidance, rather than the Mersemen and Borderers themselves — on the recognition that the latter would be much more likely to burn Lothian thoroughly and effectively than would Lothian men, unkind thought as this was.
At Tweedside his own guards had sent out their spies into the Northumbrian lands across the river, and were able to inform Maldred that the van of the English host was now none so far away, having crossed Aln, and was making for the upper Till valley; but it was much strung out for almost a score of miles, and not covering many miles each day. Most of it, after all, had come nearly four hundred miles, from Winchester.
He placed the Lothian men at all the possible Tweed fords — some six of them over a twenty-five mile stretch of the great river — instructing them that their task was to hold up the enemy for as long as they could but not to throw their lives away in any last-ditch struggle. They were then to retire northwards, by Lauderdale and the hills, to make their own way through the west of Lothian to Calatria, the area between the Rivers Avon and Carron. The King would be waiting at the far side of Carron.
Then he sent word for the March earldom muster at Ersildoune to leave there and march eastwards by the southern skirts of Lammermuir, to join him at Dunbar. He allowed himself a few hours' rest, then led the Mersemen northwards.
At Dunbar again, that night, he slept in his own bed for eight hours, and required every minute of them.
Next day by mid-forenoon the Ersildoune contingent of about five hundred arrived. Maldred gave his joint force, of almost one thousand, their grievous orders. It was mid-June. All growing corn was to be trampled flat; all hay already cut and stacked, burned; all threshed grain likewise. To whomsoever it belonged and whatever pleas to spare it. All food which could not be carried away, to be destroyed. The people were to be kindly used, but firmly forced to leave their homes, and helped drive their flocks and herds and poultry up into the fastnesses of Lammermuir. Nothing was to be left to feed or solace the invader. They need not burn houses and farmeries — only what was eatable for man and beast. This was war, and they must steel their minds to it. There were to be no exceptions.
So the dire process commenced, there at Dunbar itself, Maldred, torch in hand, setting alight to the castle granaries and commanding his people to ride back and forth over the rigs of green standing oats to trample them flat, shutting his ears to the cries of the husbandmen, the millers, the women and children. The light wind off the sea blew growing clouds of smoke ahead of them as they slowly progressed westwards, so that they performed their grim work in its choking pall. Before them went fast-moving groups, to warn the folk and get them out of their homes, by force if necessary. And everywhere the sad processions of the dispossessed streamed away southwards for the secret Lammermuir valleys, with their food and most precious gear, driving their livestock, carrying their aged and infirm and infants, calling down the curses of God and all His saints on the men who ordained this wickedness.
It was as slow a proceeding as it was soul-destroying, for all had to be done on a very wide front, to be effective, stretching from the foothills to the coast; and even one thousand incendiaries and tramplers could not cover an eight-to-ten miles wide belt with any speed. Progress, if so it could be called, was very uneven too, for of course the terrain varied greatly. It was not all cultivated rigs and infields, strips and pasture and meadow, fertile as the plain was. There was much of undrained marshland, especially in the vales of Tyne and Peffer, scrub forest, whin-clad slopes and moorland and outcropping low isolated hills and ridges. By nightfall, blackened, red-eyed, sore-throated and unhappy, they had not progressed more than five miles westwards from Dunbar.
The night behind them blazed smoking, murky red.
The next miserable day they advanced for an average of eight miles, and included in that the abbey-town of Haddington, the largest in this part of Lothian, in the centre of the valley of Tyne, the abbot and monks there yielding up their food and fodder and stock but refusing to leave the monastic precincts, claiming God's own authority. The Primate's son bowed to that authority.
He had given his monarch four days.
The following red and reeking dawn was Sunday, St. Fillan's Eve, making the task seem all the more obscene. In the afternoon they were joined by the Lothian men from Tweedside, who had come up Lauderdale and over the Soltra pass — and who were notably tight-lipped about what they could see of their native province under its shroud of smoke, which now rose as a vast sun-denying brown canopy hundreds of feet into the air. They informed that they had held up the Norman advance parties at most of the fords satisfactorily, for a full day. Indeed they might still be holding them, had not one of the crossings groups failed to stand, for some reason; when the enemy had got across there in sufficient numbers to threaten the rear of all. So they had had to retire. The English van, by now, well mounted, would be half-way across the Merse.
At least Maldred now had more men for the work. He was gaining manpower all the way, to be sure. The Dunbar earldom comprised only the eastern half of Lothian, almost to Edinburgh, the western half being under a variety of independent lords and thanes. These the King had sent orders direct, and most had already departed northwards with their fighting-men. But some, more dilatory or delayed, now joined Maldred. There was no enthusiasm for the programme of destruction, but these also had had the royal command, and had to co-operate.
Nevertheless, from then onwards, the burning and trampling was less thoroughly carried out. Admittedly this part of Lothian was less fertile th
an the east, with more of hill and moor and forest. The town of Edinburgh, nestling beneath the great Pictish fortress-crowned rock of Dunedin, so like that of Stirling, made a troublesome place to clear, with its warrens of cot-houses and hovels — in fact took most of that day. Although there were hills in plenty round about to offer refuge, most of the folk merely fled up to the fortress itself, which was extensive enough to hide thousands behind its tall ramparts. Maldred's people left them there.
He had, of course, left a small rearguard behind to keep watch on the enemy advance; and reports now revealed that the invaders had reached the devastated area. Whether this would slow them or hasten their oncoming remained to be seen.
On the sixth day after leaving the Ward, hoarse, smoke-blackened, fatigued and depressed to his very bones, Maldred crossed Avon into Calatria, near Linlithgow. Only eight miles ahead, across extensive swampy tidal flats, was the mouth of the Carron. Behind him, flame-tinged smoke rose like an enormous towering wall. He had done his duty — to his earthly master, at least.
He found the King at Ecclesbreac, capital place of Calatria, where there was a small monastery and township near the thane's hall-house. It was no major centre, but with its own importance, situated to command the first crossing of Carron which, because of the low-lying, marshy plain of the Forth here, was wide and muddy, splitting into many channels and constituting a formidable barrier. Also it was where Lothian ended and the Lennox, the extreme southern province of Alba, the ancient Scotland, began. Here had been a Roman port — indeed this place marked the extreme northern limit of actual Roman settlement. This frontier character was how the vicinity had got its name — or names, for it was probably unique in bearing three of them, all meaning the same. Here, in the eighth century, an Anglian missionary, St. Ronan, had established a church which, being Roman-educated, he named Varia Capella, the church of the mixed or varied people. In due course, the Saxon-Danish imposition on the Picts of Lothian changed that to the Faw or Falkirk. Later the Celtic Church took over, and used the Gaelic for the same thing, Eaglais Bhreac, or Ecclesbreac, the variegated or speckled church. But the importance of the spot lay not in its name or even church, but in the strategic significance of its position, the first strong line of defence after Tweed and before the Forth was bridged at Stirling.
Maldred was not surprised to find the Queen at Ecclesbreac with her husband and the army — knowing her hopes for a negotiated settlement. She, at least, sympathised with his state of body and mind, which was more than Malcolm felt called upon to express. The King did, however, acknowledge that his cousin had given him an extra day beyond that stipulated, for his mustering and dispositions; and he appeared to accept that curtain of smoke behind the newcomers as adequate proof that they had turned Lothian into the required desert.
Maldred, to be sure, sought neither sympathy nor acclaim but only a couch in the monastery and blessed sleep.
When he was aroused, it was to be informed that the Normans were only a few miles off, and coming on fast — at least their van. He was to report to the King, at once.
He found the Scots array drawn up along the muddy north bank of the Carron, in a line well over a mile in length. Although totalling only about six thousand men, as yet, it would make an impressive-looking phalanx from the far side. Malcolm, Margaret and the senior leadership, stood under the great boar-flag of Scotland, near the monastery, at the northern end of the stake-marked ford.
"Ah, here is my cousin Maldred, a most notable sleeper!" the King announced, as he came up. "I hope that you are sufficiently rested? I have given your command to Lachlan of Buchan — rather than disturb you, man! And the Athollmen are well enough under the Thane of Struan. Yonder is the enemy van. Do you wish to await them here, with me? Or would you prefer to return to your couch?"
There was suitable laughter at that.
Maldred gazed heavily ahead of him. "I think — not the van," he said. "More like to be Duke Robert himself and his leaders. All those banners . . ."
"So you are sufficiently awake to perceive that, are you! Yes, I judge this is Robert Bastardson himself, and his chiefest men, come to prospect the field and our strength. Think you he will find our Carron mud to his taste?"
The Queen came to Maldred's side. "Do not heed him," she murmured. "He pretends to be confident, but is not. His throne hangs in the balance, here."
Maldred nodded. "I know my cousin," he said.
They watched the enemy forward force advance, a gallant sight, all glittering steel and chain-mail, colourful heraldic surcoats and banners, on heavy war-horses, perhaps one thousand strong. Behind, a mile or so back, could be seen a much larger host advancing. The Carron here was fully three hundred yards across, just out of effective bowshot; but there was a muddy islet in mid-stream.
The Normans reined up on the south bank, a group of notables under the great standard of England directly opposite the boar-banner of Scotland. For minutes the two sides eyed each other across the water. It was too far for shouting.
"They look fine enough — but they will have empty bellies!" the King said. "Go you, Gillibride."
The Earl of Angus, chosen as spokesman, and his banner-bearer, mounted and rode forward alone into the muddy waters of the ford. There was a causeway of stones beneath the silt here, otherwise there would have been no crossing, save by boat. As it was, the Earl's horses were up to their bellies. The two men rode out as far as the tidal mud-bank, on to which the horses mounted in a slippery slaister.
"I am Gillibride, Earl of Angus," that man shouted. "I speak for the most puissant prince, Malcolm mac Duncan, High King of Scots. He demands to know who you are who come in this martial array upon the soil of his Scotland, without his leave? And your business — which had better be honest!"
From the north bank they could not hear the answer. But presently the Earl came splashing back.
"The Duke Robert, my lord King — he who wears the whitened mail — says that he summons you in the name of the King of England, Lord Paramount, to lay down your arms and come to yield up your kingdom to him. He says that you have broken your royal oath of allegiance. That you are, in consequence, no longer King of Scots. That King William has deposed you. And that your son Duncan, in his care, will now rule Scotland under him, in your stead."
"Ha — he crows so loud, does he — this tanner's grandson! Go you back, Gillibride, and tell him . . . No, wait. We shall give him his answer otherwise. Horns, my friends — all horns to sound. Loud and long. Blow, I tell you — blow!"
At first only those around the King, but soon all along the Scots line the curling bulls' horns were lifted to lips, and the wailing, hooting cacophony rose and continued, a sufnciendy derisive bellowing to make the Scots attitude entirly clear.
Before it had finished, a splendid horseman and his bannerman detached themselves from the Norman central group and rode in turn into the ford and out to the islet.
"I am William de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey," this individual shouted, when the hooting had died away. "The Duke Robert requires immediate obedience to his commands. Or he will come for you, my lord Malcolm, in person. And be not gentle when he reaches you! He has eighteen thousand men to enforce his will."
The King answered that himself. "I, Malcolm, urge him to come, Norman!" he called. "I am ready for him. The only way that he will get across this river is over a bridge of his own slain! We shall see whether eighteen thousand bodies are sufficient for that — for there is a notable depth of mud! And we shall be waiting for such as remain."
Surrey turned and relayed that to the other side.
After an interval of mixed shoutings, he faced the Scots again. "My lord Duke reminds you, sir, that this river is none so long. A few miles up and he can cross it with ease. And once across, he will see that you pay for every minute that you have delayed him. Wiser to yield now — while you still have your eyes, at least!" Gouging out his victims' eyes was one of the Conqueror's methods of showing his displeasure with persons whom it w
as politic not actually to slay.
"Tell your duke that his eyes must be failing him if he has reached as far north as this and cannot see that he will get no further. And that his journey south again will be less comfortable — for such as may live to essay it! Remember that. And remember that none such will eat until they are over Tweed! As for this Carron river, I have other forces further up. Think you this is all the manpower of Scotland?"
While Surrey conveyed all that to his friends, the Queen spoke, strongly. "Malcolm — this is folly! Children's folly. Like bairns at play! Can grown men not do better than this? Shouting insults! Let us go speak to him, face to face. With some dignity. There is much to put to this Robert. . ."
"This one requires humbling before he will talk."
"And is this humbling him? Seeing who may shout the loudest threats? Our young sons could do better! Let us go out to that mud-bank, Malcolm. Ourselves. Call on the Duke to do likewise. And speak. If you went, he would come, I think."
"To what purpose? When he has three times our numbers."
"He may not have three times our wits, husband."
The King shrugged. "Very well. Even if we gain nothing, it can do little harm." He signed for the horses of his immediate group. Margaret insisted on accompanying them.
As about a dozen of them rode forward into the water, the Earl of Surrey and his banner-bearer decided to rejoin his colleagues.
Out on the islet, unlovely stance as it was for so illustrious a company, Malcolm, still under his royal standard, raised his voice.
Margaret the Queen Page 38