by Glen Craney
JAMES WATCHED AS CLIFFORD, D'ARGENTIN, and Gloucester led their knights out from the English camp in single file and fell into a faster pace along the bridle path that ran parallel to the old Roman road. He held his breath in rising hope: Just as he had predicted, Clifford appeared intent on making for Stirling Castle rather than forming up battle lines. He had read his old enemies perfectly: Caernervon had positioned his infantry to the far side of his cavalry, where they could offer no protection.
The whoresons had taken the bait.
Three blasts from the horn sounded by Robert’s herald sent Randolph and Edward Bruce hurling down the escarpment.
Clifford and his knights wheeled left in a stunning maneuver.
James lurched forward in his saddle. Damn him! It’s a feint!
He tried to stall the other schiltrons, but he was too late. Clifford had only mimicked the attempt for Stirling to draw them out. The English knights lowered their lances and drove their chargers toward the Carse.
Both armies were locked in a desperate race for the Dryfield.
The Lanarkshire men waited for his order to join in the charge, but James sat motionless in the saddle. He spotted the Comyn banner at the royal pavilion. Why was Clifford keeping Cam in the rear?
Comyn is the courier to Berwick.
“Jamie?” Ledhouse shouted. “On them, or the lads will be turned!”
James heard his name called out by a hundred pleading voices, but one rose above the others. He looked to his right, where a dead oak had been splintered and blackened by lightning. A solitary bloom sprouted on one of its pocked branches.
“Jamie! I love you! Give the order, Jamie!”
Belle’s voice seemed to inhabit the hollowed tree trunk.
Perplexed, he rode closer to the log to examine it.
A raven crawled from the detritus and pecked at the bloom until the last vestige of life in the oak was destroyed. The raven shape-shifted into the goddess Morgainne, who confronted him with a fearsome glare. “You plot to deny me?”
“Away!” James screamed at the death hag. “Not this day!”
“Aye, this day it is. I will have a soul dear to thee.”
“Not her!”
Morgainne shot him a wicked smile, and before he could accost her again, she melded back into the raven’s form and flew off.
All around him, the men were staring, as if questioning his sanity.
Randolph and Edward Bruce’s divisions careened into Clifford’s knights across the Carse, their long-necked axes and claymores clashed against the English armor with a rat-a-tat-tat that was overtaken by screams and groans. The sky exploded with splinters as the Scots rushed to the underbellies of the English horses and hacked at their fetlocks. The field erupted into a bedlam of flailing limbs, agonized neighing, dying curses, bleeding horseflesh, thumping cudgels, and hurdling maces.
On the summit, Robert watched James from afar, vexed by his delay.
IN HIS TENT, CAERNERVON'S ATTENDANTS attired him in the black hammered armour that his father had worn in the French and Welsh campaigns. He had ordered the breastplate tailored to his specifications for this long-awaited day. Within the hour, he would ride into Stirling and finally silence the insults that he had suffered since childhood. He was about to prove beyond all doubt that he was indeed the son of Edward the First, conqueror of Wales. He would accomplish what even his even father had failed to attain: The complete subjugation of Scotland.
Of course, he would have to chase Bruce into the Highlands to finish him off, but the fickle clans would deliver up that ungrateful brood with Douglas rather than suffer the consequences, just as they had done with Wallace. For years he had dreamt of marching the two cutthroats back to England in a triumphant procession reminiscent of Caesar’s return to Rome with the Gaulish savages. He had promised to hold Douglas’s execution under that Scotswoman’s cage. But he would save Robert Bruce for a public quartering at London Tower.
He peered through his tent flaps and saw Cam Comyn waiting on a horse. “How goes Clifford’s progress?”
Cam could barely sputter the reply. “Slow, my lord.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“The Bruce … ” Cam had trouble finishing the report. “… has attacked.”
Caernervon rushed out of the pavilion. Instead of retreating, the Scots were charging down the sloping ground toward his encampment. Stunned, he commandeered his mount and, after several awkward stabs at the stirrups, leveraged to the saddle. As he spurred toward the lines, his frown of confusion became a broad grin. “Bruce, you fool! This is even better than I could have imagined! I will destroy you before the hour is up!” He saw the Lanarkshire division still holding its first position. “Does Douglas not engage?”
Cam followed the king on the precipitous ride toward the front. “He is learning a rough lesson from Clifford!”
“Indeed?” cried the king, laughing. “What lesson would that be?”
On their rush to victory, Cam reached under his gambeson and felt for Belle’s execution order. “Never go to battle pining for a wench!”
ROBERT GALLOPED DOWN FROM Coxet Hill and hurled an ax into the sky.
James deflected the falling weapon with his forearm. He looked at the trampled grass and could barely believe his eyes. During the night, Robert had recovered the splintered remnants of the Dun Eadainn relic and had cobbled its handle with twine and nails. The ax still bore the markings where Belle had retraced his name to preserve the memory of his boyhood victory.
Rob or Belle, again.
How many times had he been forced to make that choice?
He took a deep breath and brought Belle’s face to his memory. One soul was what Morgainne demanded this day. By God, he would give it to her! If he could never see Belle again, he would make certain she would not be the one to die.
Nodding sternly to Robert, he led his division into the Dryfield.
On the run, he found Randolph and Edward Bruce being thrown back into their outnumbered hedgehog formations. Clifford’s knights were trying to break their schiltrons by hurling maces at them. Gloucester, unidentifiable without his heraldic armor, was swallowed up in the scramble of English knights and pike-thrusting Scots. The earl’s helmet was ripped from his head. He fought bravely, but there was a wearied resignation in his eyes. As the Scots dragged him from his horse, he left his chest exposed, as if wishing to die.
James shouted, “Spare that man!”
The din of the battle drowned out his plea.
He fought a path toward Gloucester, but the baron fell to the bottom of the bloody scrum.
JAMES STOOD IN THE CENTER OF his mangled schiltron, barking orders and whipsawing maces while Cull and Chullan attacked any Englishman who had the misfortune of breaking through. Hours had passed since the first clash of arms that morning, but the sun now seemed locked at its apex, turning the battle into a desperate struggle of endurance. Stout legs and hearts would win this day, he knew, not more tactics.
Clifford’s banner suddenly appeared above a pack of English knights trying to hack a path through the Yorkshire conscripts pressed upon its rear. Ledhouse was about to reach for Clifford and hammer him from his horse, but James pushed his officer aside and lunged to strike the deathblow.
Cull sprang over his master’s head and dug his fangs into Clifford’s biceps. Wrangled from his saddle, Clifford pummeled the mastiff with his spiked arm-guards. The old hound, gushing blood from its nose, dropped lifeless. Clifford heaved James to the muck and shouted for more English reinforcements to pour through the breach and drive back the schiltrons.
James sank deeper into the loam, trampled by the rush of boots.
Clifford dug a heel into James’s neck and shouted, “Bring up the longbows!”
A thousand Welsh archers blazoned with the crosses of St. George formed a wedged herce across from the Lanark division. With practiced precision, they impaled their staves into the ground for quick loading and leveraged their tall yew bows
by malleting them into holes. The masters threw tufts of grass to judge the wind and then barked orders for their bowmen to error on the side of overshooting to increase the odds of hitting deserters.
The Scot ranks groaned with despair, bracing to suffer deadly volleys from the same sharp-eyed mercenaries who had brought down Wallace at Falkirk.
With a slight incline of their heads, the Welsh archers leaned into their bows and filled the sky with a shrill whistling. Seconds later, both Scots and English knights fell impaled. The schiltrons lurched back and crumbled, and some of the men threw down their pikes and ran.
Half buried in the mud, James slipped from consciousness.
Clifford left him for dead and rushed ahead to lead the charge that would win the day.
My time. Not yours.
Morgainne’s command in his ear revived James. He resurrected from the mire with his face streaked in loam. Coughing and gasping, he turned and found Robert galloping across the Dryfield, leading Keith’s cavalry in a frantic effort to rally the survivors back to the New Park.
Clifford drove his panting levies up the Dryfield slope.
Just as the last of the Scot squares were about to break, an unnatural stillness overtook the field. Both armies lowered their weapons and gazed toward Giles Hill, behind the Scot lines, where a hundred mounted knights now appeared on the horizon. Framed by the crimson sun, the riders unrolled the packs from their saddles and donned white mantles blazoned with red crosses. One of the knights raised a banner with a black square adjacent to a white square.
Clifford spotted the Beausant insignia. Breaking a triumphant grin, he shouted Longshanks’s famous quip from the Berwick tourney years ago. “The Templars always pick the winning side!”
Those Scots who were still holding the lines now backed away, stricken by the unexpected arrival of the crusader monks.
James’s heart sank. Here was Falkirk all over again.
Clifford signaled for his archers to close ranks and move forward. “Finish them!”
The Templars lashed to the charge, taking aim at the Scot schiltrons.
Trapped, James quickly revamped his depleted squares and ordered his survivors to face both directions. He had no choice but to sacrifice a few to save many. “Those in front! At my command, fall on those behind you!”
His men in the front row turned ashen glares on him, stunned that he was ordering the veterans to take the brunt of the arrows.
Now even more confident of victory, the Welsh archers methodically notched their bows and waited for the Templars to drive the Scots from the squares and expose the enemy to their murderous fire. A few lengths from the schiltrons, the Templars veered to their left and charged instead at the Welsh.
The archers, panicking, wavered and broke without firing their bodkins.
Undone by the Templar perfidy, Clifford clambered across the wounded in a desperate effort to marshal his retreating archers. “No! Damn you! Hold!”
James thrilled at his sudden turn of fortune. The Templars had merely dissembled an attack on his Scots in a ruse to escape the range of the Welsh arrows. The crusader monks drove into the phalanx of archers shouting the names of their brethren who had been murdered by the Roman Church and its allies, the French and English monarchs.
Peter d’Aumont and Jeanne de Rouen threw off their helmets, gasping for breath in the stifling air. Riding hard, they took aim at Caernervon’s encampment, where a cadre of Dominican friars had congregated in preparation to take over the Scot abbeys. As Jeanne raced past the crumbling Scot schiltrons, she glanced fiercely at James to spur him to the promise of the moment.
James rallied his survivors back down the scarp. The English infantry, no longer certain who they were fighting, broke for the protection of their camp and swept up Clifford and his knights in the retreat.
“On them!” James screamed. “They fail!”
Clifford stumbled in the quagmire. On his knees, he looked up to see James swinging his ax. The officer rolled and kicked James’s feet from under him, then crawled toward the burn.
James dropped to his knees, too exhausted to give chase.
Chullan, circling his dead twin in grief, pinned its ears back on hearing Clifford’s shout. As if inspirited with a miracle of returned youth, the old mastiff darted through the whirlpool of legs and dived into the burn. Slowed by his armour, Clifford tried to escape. Chullan paddled furiously across the burn and pounced for the officer’s jugular. Clifford thrashed to parry the attack, but the mastiff latched onto his neck and dragged him under the water.
Moments later, Clifford’s head—torn from its neck—bobbed to the surface.
CAERNERVON WATCHED IN DISBELIEF AS his army stampeded back toward him. The Scots were driving his infantry into the burn; those levies who could not swim sank under the weight of their padded doublets.
D’Argentin high-stepped his charger over the crawling mass of panic to reach the royal pavilion. “Sire, I must remove you to safety at once!”
Caernervon threw off his helmet and tore at his hair. “Rally them!”
“You must flee!” d’Argentin warned. “Else England will pay a ransom it can ill afford!”
Finding Caernervon too disoriented to move, d’Argentin dragged him to a horse, leaving behind the royal shield and armory. Accompanied by Cam Comyn and an escort of twenty knights, the Frenchman led the king across a ford in the burn and circled the battle in a race to reach Stirling Castle.
Minutes later, the royal entourage reined up under Stirling’s battlements.
Caernervon, his eyes wild with panic, looked up at the walls and shouted a demand for sanctuary. “Open these gates!
Philip Mowbray, the English commander of the besieged castle, had been watching the battle from the ramparts. His scowl betrayed his disdain for this king who now begged protection under the very law he had violated in abducting the Scotswomen in Tain. “I gave my word to the Bruce. If you do not relieve this castle by dusk, I must relinquish it to him.”
“To Hell with your word! I am your liege, damn you!”
Mowbray remained adamant in his refusal to violate his oath to the Scots.
While the king raved on with hysterical threats, d’Argentin spied Keith’s cavalry massing near St. Ninian’s kirk. Seeing that they were about to be trapped, the French knight ordered Cam, “Take him to Linlithglow without delay.”
“Where are you going?” Caernervon demanded.
“Back to the battle.”
“I paid for your protection!”
D’Argentin’s eyes hooded with revulsion for the sobbing king. “There has been dishonor enough this day. I do not intend to add to that roll.”
Caernervon reached into his belt pouch, pulled out a gold groat, and threw the coin at the knight. “Inconstant Frank! Take your Judas pay with you!”
D’Argentin stared at the king’s profile on the coin, as if searching an explanation for how he had been seduced into the service of such a feckless monarch. “All my life I have fought for gold. This day, I will fight for something else, as do Gloucester and those Scots.” He flung the coin off the wall and rode off to join the overwhelmed English troops.
ROBERT SPURRED HIS FROTHING DESTRIER down the Carse to exhort his men to finish the victory and leave off taking booty. He found James below the brow of the scarp, tending to the wounded. “Jamie, are you injured?”
Surrounded by slashed and writhing bodies, James struggled to his feet to show that he was unscathed. “The field is ours!”
“Aye, but not the prize.” Robert pointed toward a band of horsemen circling around Stirling crag. “Caernervon escapes!”
Belle’s execution order.
In the heat of battle, he had forgotten about Cam Comyn.
He captured the nearest horse and galloped west along the burn, accompanied by a contingent of Templars. His only chance to stop Caernervon and Comyn now would be to head them off before they reached the bridge that led to the only passable road west. He cut throug
h the bramble of New Park and came upon the royal entourage hurrying toward the river. The far bank was thick with English pike men—and Caernervon had already gained the bridge.
Seeing Cam still waiting to cross, James lashed to the chase. “Comyn!”
Caernervon sped on, but Cam stopped to taunt James with a finger in the air. James heaved his ax at the turncoat Scot, and Cam laughed as the weapon bounced short off the bridge. He waved the execution order and shouted, “Any last words for your Fife whore?”
James leapt from his staggered horse and charged the bridge, but a hail of arrows stopped his advance. When he lifted his eyes from under his arm, Cam was halfway across. He shouted at Cam, “I’ll see you in Hell!”
“Save me a place when you—”
Cam stared down at his chest. He ripped open his gambeson to find an arrow point emerging from his sternum. He held a perplexed look, as if questioning how a missile had reached him from that distance. With blood dribbling from his mouth, he tried to hand the order to a sergeant at the bridge gate. A second arrow whistled through the air and sent his horse plummeting over the abutment. He was caught in the stirrups and dragged under the river’s currents.
The order slipped from his grasp and floated away.
At the river’s edge, James searched for the source of the arrows.
An English knight armed with a spent crossbow rode out from behind a tree on the far side of the river. James Webton, the officer whose honor he had spared seven years ago at Castle Douglas, nodded to confirm that his debt was paid, and then galloped off rejoin his king in the retreat.
FOR TWO WEEKS, JAMES AND the Templars stalked Caernervon in a circuitous chase west and south of Stirling. Yet despite fighting a series of hard-pitched skirmishes, the Scots had been unable to break through the royal guards, and now Caernervon was approaching the port city of Dunbar, where a galley waited to take him down the coast to the safety of Berwick’s walls.
Randolph, hurrying south from the battlefield, intercepted James and his fellow pursuers riding north along the Tweed River in a desperate attempt to intercept Caernervon’s fleet before it reached the sea. “Hold off, Jamie! The king wishes you back to Stirling! I am to take command here!”