by Robert Low
The singing brought sweat-sheened, crack-lipped faces up, red as skelpt arses, with tight white lines of fear round mouths and eyes.
Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli
Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem
The song rolled out from triumphant throats away to their left, and everyone who heard it knew that the spear-ring there was shattered and gone – that both the other schiltrons were broken, with men shrieking and scattering, to be chased down and slaughtered like fleeing chicks.
Loving Mother of our Savior, hear thou thy people’s cry
Star of the deep and Portal of the sky,
Mother of Him who thee from nothing made.
Sinking we strive and call to thee for aid
‘The Auld Templar will be birling in his grave,’ Wallace growled to Hal and then turned left and right into the grim faces around him, who had spotted the black-barred banner of the exultantly singing Templar knights.
‘Why do they do this?’ Hal asked, plaintive and bewildered. Wallace braided a half-sneer of grin into the sweat-spiked tangle of his beard.
‘Because we are the only heathen they have left to fight, young Hal. They need us to dangle before God and the Pope, as proof that they have purpose.’
His teeth were feral as the grin widened and he hefted the long, clotted sword.
‘Weel – much can break in the proving, as any smith will tell ye,’ he added, then raised his chin and raised his voice to a bull bellow.
‘Hold,’ he roared. ‘Never be minding the Bawsant flag and their wee chirrups. They are heavy horse, same as ye have been ruining all the day, my bonnie lads. Stay in the ring . . .’
The Templars came on, across the field where they had ruined the left schiltron, ignoring the mad, fleeing screamers of the other two, leaving them to the snarling, vengeful spears and swords of the plundering Welsh and Brabancons. They came after the final spear-ring, the one they knew must have Wallace in it; there were a handful only, but seemed a grim black cliff of serjeants, with two white streaks marking the true knights. Above it, like an accusing stare, streamed the black-barred Beau Seant banner.
The Order have ruined themselves, Hal thought, wild and sad. Ruined, as sure as if they had cursed God and spat on the Pope – what merchant, lord or priest, after this, will believe the word of a Templar, entrust his riches to the care of a brotherhood dedicated to saving Christians and who now prey on them?
They were a tight black fist aimed at the last mis-shapen ring of spearmen, the two white knuckles of Brian De Jay and John de Sawtrey blazing in the front. Like a long-haired star, the black-clad serjeants of the Order trailed other knights after them like embers, but these could not move with the arrogant fast trot of the Templars.
Poor knights, Hal thought bitterly, supposed to ride two to a horse – yet even the least of the Templars had destrier that were better than some ridden by the chivalry, who were stumbling over the dead and dying at no better than a walk.
The Templars trotted, the highly trained warhorses delicate as cats. It took five years to train the best warhorse, Hal recalled wildly, almost hearing his father’s voice in his head. From two, before it can even be ridden, until the age of seven when, if you have done it properly, you have a mount which will charge a stone wall if the rider does not flinch. With luck, the beast will survive to the age of twelve, when it will be too old for the business of war and you put it out to breed more of its kind.
No sensible horse will suffer this, so what you have is a mad beast on four legs – and if you add a rider who fears only displeasing God you have a combination fit to punch a hole through the Gates of Hell.
The mad beasts broke into a canter; someone whimpered and Hal saw that it was the whey-faced boy, his filthy face streaked with tears.
‘Stay in the ring. Hold to the ring.’
Wallace’s bellow went out on a rising note, growing more shrill as the ground trembled; the last file captains beat and chivvied their men, the last men-at-arms, the armoured nobiles who had opted to fight on foot, braced themselves and hunched into their jazerant and maille.
‘Hold to the ring.’
Beyond, the black tide curled on them, their iron-rimmed kettle hats painted black round the rim, white on the crown and with a great red cross to the fore. Their reins were loosed entirely, leaving both hands free, and the crosses on their black shields were like streaks of blood.
‘Hold to the ring.’
Deus lo vult.
The Templars throated it out on the last few thundering strides and came in like a ram, knee-to-knee and at a rising canter where, all day, no horseman beyond the first clatter of them had managed better than a fast walk.
There should have been a great shudder, a splintering of spears, a loud lion roar of desperate, defiant Scots – but the ring, too thinned by bolts and arrows, too worn by fear, shattered like an egg hit by a forge hammer.
The whey-faced boy was plucked from Hal’s side and torn away with a vanished, despairing shriek as a lance skewered him; the rider swept past Hal like a black wind. On the other side, a great shaft went over Hal’s head, slamming into men like a swinging gate – Hal fisted his battered shield into the rider’s armoured foot, braced straight out and high on his mount’s shoulders and the man reeled wildly, then was gone, tilting and crashing into the mass of men.
The Templars carved through the struggle of foot like claws through an apple, bursting out the far side, lances splintered or tossed aside, their great warhorses rutting up the blood-skeined turf in ploughed riggs as they fought to turn. The riders hauled out swords or little axes.
‘Run,’ yelled a voice, but Hal was already moving. A lumbering bear he seemed, his limbs moving as if he was underwater, fighting a current – yet he remembered hurdling a dead horse, remembered the whip and smear of thin branches, the collision with a tree that spun him half-round and lost him his shield.
Then he was on his knees spitting blood, the world a whirl of sky and trees and torn earth that smelled of autumn.
‘Up,’ said a voice, as mild as if lifting a bairn from a puddle. Hal leaned in the iron grasp, looked up into the blood and mud of Wallace’s face and had back a grin.
‘Aye til the fore,’ the Guardian said, then glanced back over his shoulder, to where the milling riders were slaughtering the slow. ‘Into the woods.’
No sensible knight risked a good warhorse by forcing it into a tangle of undergrowth and trees, where his vision, already no more than a narrow slit, was arrowed down to nothing by leaves and branches, so that it was impossible to resist the temptation to rip off the heavy constriction of helm. Vulnerable, slow, unable to use weight and power, a man in his right mind knows woods are not for heavy horse.
Hal knew, as soon as he heard the great crashing, that sanity had run from this part of the world, with a frightened look over one shoulder at the madness of God which rode in to replace it.
Hal, following the stained gold surcoat with the red lion snarling defiantly, turned to see a white camilis billowed, ripping apart on the snatching talons of tree and bush as Brian De Jay, Master of the Templars and righteous with the power of the Lord in him, closed with a triumphant roar on the running fox of Wallace, that offence to God.
Hal did not think. He turned, stepped to one side as the warhorse plunged, De Jay reeling in the saddle, half pulled out by the snag of the treacherous white robes. The German Method, Hal heard himself say aloud, though the voice did not seem to be his at all – then he half crouched and spun, putting all the weight in a backhand cut, the sword grasped in both hands.
It broke the warhorse’s hind leg with a crack like a snapping branch and the shriek of it falling was high and thin, piercing as any blade. Brian De Jay went out between the ears of it, smashing into the mulch and the briars, rolling over and over until he slammed into a tree with a sound like a
n acre of tin kettles falling off a cart.
Pulled off balance by his blow and the weariness of a hard day, Hal tipped sideways and fell his length, then started to scramble up. De Jay, struggling weakly, also started to rise, bellowing rage and pain out in bloody froth; then a shadow fell on him and he looked up.
‘Ye were seeking a wee word with me?’ Wallace asked mildly and De Jay tried a cut, so weak that Wallace only had to put his sword out for the Templar blade to ring a soft chime, then fall limply to the ground.
‘Aye, weel,’ Wallace said softly, ‘here I am, my wee lord. May God forgive ye for what ye have done to Templar honour this day – argue your case when ye see Him.’
The hand-and-a-half, clotted to the hilt already, came round in a vicious two-handed swipe that took De Jay badly.
It was meant to be a neck kill, a single-stroke beheading that men would later marvel at, but rage and fear and the black howl of defeat made Wallace poor with it; the blade slammed into the Templar Master’s expensive, new-fangled plate gorget and skittered upwards, taking the man in the jaw and carving through into the tree beyond, where it stuck.
With a pungent curse and a frown, Wallace put his foot up – he had taken off his boots, Hal noted dazedly – on De Jay’s chest and began to work the blade out, his toes flexing in the vomited mess flooding from the Master of Templars’ ruined face.
The forest crashed and a new rider, like the ghost of De Jay himself, came bounding out like a stag on the run. Hal, halfway to his feet, saw that Wallace was trapped, saw the Guardian let go of the wedged sword and whirl, fumbling for a dagger.
Brother John De Sawtrey, his white robes shredded and stained, his helmet and bascinet, maille coif and all flung away, whirled a little fluted mace in a circle and his purpled face under a thorn-crown of sweat-spiked tonsure was a vicious snarl.
He saw the fallen De Jay and howled at the outrage of it until his throat corded. His head was a storm of vengeance and he dug in his spurs; the warhorse’s great rump bunched and it squealed – Hal levered himself to his feet, knowing he was between Wallace and this charging knight.
He tried to brace, but his legs trembled and his arms felt as if they had two anvils on the end; De Sawtrey rocked as the great warhorse shot forward – four strides and it would plough Hal into the forest floor.
One stride. Hal saw small twigs and acorns bounce up off the ground with the powered weight of each hoof.
Two strides. Something flicked at the corner of Hal’s eye, but he could not turn his head from the sight of the warhorse’s snarl of yellow teeth, the angry pink flare of nostrils and the great, slow-motion rise of massive feet.
Three strides – something went between Hal and the great loom of beast and rider, whirring like startled bird. John De Sawtrey flung up one hand as if arrogantly dismissing the world and then vanished over the back of his cantled saddle.
The warhorse, veering, slammed a shoulder into Hal and there was a moment of flying, a great tempest of leaves and earth that left him breathless and sprawled. Gasping and desperate, he struggled to rise, to find his sword -MacDuff’s sword, he remembered wildly. He staggered and weaved, then a shape lurched into trembling view, the crossbow across one shoulder. Beyond, John De Sawtrey lay with the black leather fletches of a bolt perched like a crow in his eye.
‘Aye til the fore,’ said a familiar voice. Hal’s head wobbled on his neck as he looked up into Sim’s badger-beard grin and, beyond, other faces he knew, twisting and sliding like heat haze in the dappled, dying light of the forest – Ill Made Jock, Dirleton Will, Sore Davey, Mouse . . .
‘Aye til the fore,’ echoed Bangtail Hob from the filth of his face and stuck out a hand to haul Hal back to his feet. ‘Time we were not here.’
The fires were piled high, as if to ward off all the bewildered ghosts who wandered that field and, in the dark, the moans and cries of those still alive crawled on everyone’s skin.
Edward sat in his curule chair, sullen and droop-lidded, looking at the stained, bloody rag they had brought to lay at his feet. Red jupon with a white lion, someone had pointed out; you could see it if you squinted, Edward thought, but even this man’s own mother would not know him now.
‘The Wallace arms, I am told, your Grace,’ De Warenne declared proudly, his Saracen beard a quivering silver curve as he smiled.
‘The Ogre,’ Edward declared sarcastically, ‘seems to have shed the arms of Scotland which I was reliably informed he wore at the start of this affair – yellow-gold, my lord of Surrey, with a red lion rampant.’ De Warenne’s eye flickered a little.
‘Also,’ Edward went on savagely, ‘even allowing for the exaggerations of the fearful, this giant ogre Wallace seems to have diminished. I have a court caperer whose little bauble is taller than this.’
With a sudden, sullen twist, De Warenne signalled for the body to be removed and followed it, stiff with indignation. De Lacy leaned forward, his face bloody with torchlight.
‘Possibly a cousin, your grace,’ he said softly. ‘I heard there were three such in the field here. The search goes on . . .’
‘He is gone,’ Edward muttered and gnawed a nail. Gone. Wallace was gone, into the damned forests where had had come from, where he fought best.
There was a slew of bloody grass studded with Scots dead like winnowed stooks – and only two English deaths of note, Sir Brian De Jay and John de Sawtrey. The Master of England’s Templars and the Master of the Scottish Templars – there is a harsh justice in that, Edward thought, chilled by the presence of the Hand of God.
He did not bother with the tally of lesser lights, dead Welsh, Gascons and foot, for they were mainly men of little or no account – but the victory he’d had here was no more than possession of a blood-slimed field near Callendar.
Wallace was gone. Nothing had been resolved.
Chapter Thirteen
Herdmanston
Feast of St Merinus, September 1297
She stood between the merlons and looked out and down to where the riders sat, patient as stones, while a crow circled like a slow crucifix in the grey-blue.The rider in the centre looked up as it racked out its hoarseness and, even from this height, she saw the red-gold of his beard and hair. She knew who he was and glanced sideways at Bangtail Hob.
‘Ye were right, Hob,’ she said.
‘No’ me, Lady. Sir Hal sent me to warn ye this might occur – him and the rest of the men are running and hidin’ with The Wallace.’
He was matter-of-fact about it, but Isabel knew that the running and hiding he spoke off hid a wealth of hurt, fear, blood and rough living. The fact that Bangtail Hob had managed to slither his way unseen to Herdmanston with the message was not the only miracle in it.
Below, the man with the red-gold head waved.
‘I can shoot the een oot of his head from here,’ muttered Wull The Yett, nocking an arrow to the hunting bow and getting a scathe of glance back from Bangtail Hob.
‘Away. Ye could not hit a bull’s arse at five paces when ye could see clear, Wull The Yett. Ye have not seen clearly the length of your own arm in years.’
‘Go down and tell Sir John Comyn he can come up to the yett,’ Isabel said. ‘Then escort him into the hall.’
Wull shot them both a black scowl and slid the arrow from the string.
‘Oh aye, no bother,’ he declared bitterly, hirpling his way to the stairwind. ‘Open the yett to our enemies – let the place scorch betimes, for it seems there is no respect left for a hauflin’ like myself, the least of a clekkin’ of bairns to a poor widow wummin . . .’
They ignored him, as folk always did, while his long, bitter murmur trailed behind him like damp grey smoke.
The Red Comyn heard the invite and dismounted, then handed his sword to the nearest of his men, smiling back into their warnings and anxiety. He went up the steep, cobbled incline, across the laid plank bridge and into the short arch with its opened, iron-grilled yett. There was the scent of woodsmoke and new-baked bread fighting
with the headiness of broom in his nose.
Briefly, in the dim of the small hall, he was blind and took a few breaths to accustom himself before following the shuffling old servitor to where the lady sat in the high seat, as neatly arranged in Lenten grey and snowy barbette as any nun, while the glowing brazier of coals and freshly lit sconces bounced the light back off the too-brilliant gentian of her eyes.
But her hair and skin were damp from fresh grooming and her rings were loose enough on the fingers he kissed for him to know she had thinned, while the marks of sleeplessness told him much.
‘Countess,’ he said, with a formal bow.
‘My lord.’
The voice was steady, even musical, but the strain was evident in it and the Red Comyn was suddenly irritated by the whole business – he had more to do these days than play advocate in the life of his kinsman Earl of Buchan and his wayward wife.
‘I am told your father is unwell.’
The solicitous inquiry stumbled him off the track of matters, but he recovered, swift as a russet fox.
‘His humour is turned overly choleric,’ he declared, which was a bland description of the paralysis which had twisted one side of the Lord of Badenoch’s body and exchanged his power of speech for a constant drool from one side of his mouth. His own temper, folk said, that had given him the name Black John, had finally choked him – but his son knew better and his voice was thick and bitter when he said.
‘Imprisonment in the Tower did that.’
‘He is fortunate, then,’ Isabel replied steadily, ‘since most of those sent to the Tower never come out alive at all.’
She was baiting him, he knew, but he held himself in check and nodded to the man at her side.
‘I do not know your man, there,’ he said in sibilant French, ‘but I know what he is, so I am certain you have been told of the events that bring me here.’
‘His name is Hob,’ she replied and felt Bangtail’s head come up at the name, the only part he understood. She switched to English, deliberately to include him.