The Lion Rampant (The Kingdom Series)

by Robert Low

  Even the lines that spoke of hardship in the service of a lord, of having to endure great heat and great cold.

  Even of being parted, flesh from blood …

  ISABEL

  O for your spirit, holy John, to chasten lips sin-polluted, to loosen fettered tongues; so by your children might your deeds of wonder meetly be chanted. In honour of the eve and the day, the nun called Constance brought me St John’s wort and sat and combed my hair, a blessing in itself. Better yet was hearing the unseen street player, scaling out the monk’s chant on his instrument – Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La – to offer his own prayer to the blessed St John.

  Ut queant laxis

  Resonare fibris

  Mira gestorum

  Famuli tuorum,

  Solve polluti

  Labii reatum

  Sancte Ioannes

  I sang the words with him then: So that these your servants may, with all their voice, resound your marvellous exploits, clean the guilt from our stained lips, O St John.

  As the blessed St John heralded the coming of Our Lord, so this feast heralds the coming of mine. Keep the hearts of Thy faithful fixed on the way that leads to salvation.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bannockburn

  Vigil of the Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314

  The sun was tipping past noon, a glaring orb searing grass to gold, the half-dried velvet of the great hill sweltering beyond. It glittered the leaves of trees, darkening the long shadows to a tempting coolness – but no one wanted the balming relief of the Torwald’s shade; it was safer out here under the fist of a sun which hammered on their maille and leather, wilted the fine plumes and turned jupon and gambeson and haketon to ovens.

  Addaf had ordered his men off their horses, because they were mounted foot when all was said and done and that made sense to the commanders of the Van. Now, while they lolled or squatted in the shade of shelters made from their unstrung bows and the corner of a cloak, the proud knights and men-at-arms stayed mounted, their only saving grace being that they were not on their warhorses.

  Sir Marmaduke, the sweat coursing down him, noted that the finer of the nobiles were not even fully armoured and so had that curse yet to come – yet, if it came to plunging into the dark greening lurk of the Torwald, they would pile all the new-fangled plate-armour bits they could on and wish for more against the evils they imagined waiting for them there.

  Evil was there, certes, Thweng thought, though all they saw of it was a handful of Scots riders led by Sir Robert Keith, who had brought the seneschal of Stirling to King Edward, as was right and proper under the terms of siege and relief. When de Mowbray was done informing the King that, by all the accepted terms – coming within three leagues of the besieged fortress – he had effectively fulfilled the terms of the agreement, he would return under the same escort.

  What Mowbray thought it might mean remained a mystery, Thweng thought. Did he seriously imagine everyone – Scot and English – would simply nod, smile, turn round and ride off, writ fulfilled? Yet the ritual dance had to be gone through, step by step. By all means, Thweng thought grimly to himself, let us observe the niceties; later we can rip the gizzard from a man in a chivalric and honourable fashion.

  He watched the Welsh enviously, wishing someone had the sense to order the rest of the Van to emulate them, but Hereford and Gloucester were hazed with as much hatred as heat; the de Bohuns and de Clares clustered in clearly defined knots apart from each other and were not about to agree on anything.

  Thweng, too, had his knot of riders, not only his own mesnie of four men-at-arms but the coterie of young knights who had come, as they always did, to beg to ride with him. They had formed – again as they always did – little ad-hoc groupings of brotherhood, sworn to great deeds or death. This one, Thweng remembered, was called the Knights of the Shadow – from the psalm, the lord of Badenoch had informed Sir Marmaduke; the one about singing in the shadow of His Wings. It was clear he did not know any more than that, nor wanted to.

  Sir Marmaduke had studied the Comyn lord for a long moment, taking in the red-gold dust of hair, the sandy lashes and brows, the snub nose. He looked like a lean, truculent piglet, Thweng decided, but the Yorkshireman had some sympathy with the young Scot – seeing your father murdered by the man who went on to be hailed as king would have an effect. Standing with only seventeen years on you and your boots in the tarn of your da’s blood, watching the killers argue about whether to murder you, too, would make you swear vengeance as a Knight of the Shadow.

  ‘“You have been my help and in the shadow of Your Wings I rejoice,”’ Thweng had quoted to the astonished Badenoch. Sir Marmaduke had left him astonished, but did not tell him it was not the first time the name had been so used.

  He had heard every permutation of such names from scripture and psalm; the last time I fought at Stirling, he recalled with a shiver, the bold oathsworn knights had been called the Wise Angels, after the Lord Jesus’ admonition to St Peter at the time of His arrest.

  Most of those knightly angels had unwisely stayed on the wrong side of the brig, to die under the blades of Wallace’s men; most of them were angels for true now, sitting at the Feet of God and wondering how they had got there.

  There was a stir and the ranks parted as Mowbray arrived back, red-faced and with a constipated strain about him; he made straight for Hereford while a youth broke from the pack and rode over to Thweng.

  He was no more than fifteen, dark hair plastered to his sweating skull and a frantic anxiety about him; Thweng recognized him as a squire to one of Sir Maurice Berkeley’s young sons and hestitated a name.

  ‘Alexander de Plant.’

  ‘My lord,’ the squire replied, brightening with relief that he was, at least, known. ‘My lord the King has sent me with instructions for the commanders of the Van,’ the boy went on, spilling it out as fast as the words would tumble. ‘My lord of Pembroke told me to bring them to you and that you would know why and what to do.’

  Thweng grunted and cursed de Valence. Of course he knew why – because whomever the squire went to with the King’s orders for the Van would incur the wrath of the other earl and it was better that a respected veteran such as Thweng do it. That way the wrath would be tempered and the instructions at least considered.

  The orders were simple enough: the Van was to proceed straight on while the trusted Sir Robert Clifford took his Battle round to the right, with the intent of cutting the Scots off from retreat. The left, it seemed, was cut about with traps and pits, which Mowbray knew about.

  When Thweng approached, Mowbray had already revealed most of what he had learned in his passionate, sweating plea to Hereford and Gloucester not to proceed through the Torwald.

  ‘They are prepared for it, my lords,’ he declared, waving his arms. ‘Betimes – there is no need. The castle is relieved …’

  Gloucester, his darkly handsome young face greasy with joy as much as sweat, gave a sharp bark of laughter.

  ‘Did you think we came all this way for the pleasant ride in it?’ he demanded and even Hereford had to agree with him, dismissing Mowbray with an armoured wave.

  ‘Return to Stirling and wait, sir. If the King orders the Van to proceed, proceed it will.’

  Thweng delivered the King’s orders, and then sat silently as the entire place suddenly erupted into a frantic flurry. As Philip de Mowbray rode back under his white banner to where the Scots waited in the Torwald he nodded curtly to Thweng, who answered it as briefly. If all went the way it should they would toast each other and victory in the great hall of Stirling three days from now, at most.

  If all went the way it should …

  Squires hurried off with palfreys, brought up the powerful destriers, most of them fractious with the heat and the imminence of action. Others fetched pauldron, rerebrace and vambrace for the great who could afford this new fashion; there was a clattering and clanking as they began fitting this extra armour to arms and shoulders.

  Thweng found
his squire at his elbow, leading Garm by the rein. Garm was solid as a barn and old enough not to be champing froth at the possibility that this was more than his master at practice. He was black and gleaming, the polish of him thrown up by a light sheen of sweat and the white trapper bearing the three green popinjays of the Thwengs.

  Sir Marmaduke climbed on and settled himself, took the shield and the lance from young John, who then climbed on to his own horse and tried not to tremble. He was no older than Alexander de Plant, Thweng thought, moodily studying the Torwald’s tight nap of trees with a jaundiced eye, and I promised his mother I would keep him from harm.

  I brought him because I owed the King four men and he qualifies as one, but barely. It was a carping childish rebellion on my part, for all the other good men I have supplied to the Edwards, father and son. Now my petulance has put this lad in danger …

  He turned.

  ‘Remain here with the rounceys,’ he growled. ‘No sense in risking them before we know what lies ahead.’

  No one spoke, though John went tight around the lips and reddened even more than he had in the heat, because he knew what his lord had done and why – and was shamed at the relief he felt for it. Thweng returned to looking sourly at the wood. A lance was probably more liability than asset in there, he thought.

  He waited, watching with his plain, battered old barrel-helm tucked under his shield arm while the feverish knights had plumes fixed, demanded tippets and banners, both of which hung limply in the breathless air. The younger ones, who had never been in such an event before, called out greetings in high, nervous voices, pretending nonchalance and a boldness they did not entirely feel.

  Thweng saw Hereford scowl at his nephew as Henry de Bohun fought the mouth of his huge bay, foam-sweated round the neck already and baiting on the spot with huge hooves. De Bohun, encumbered with shield and lance, had his helm clamped under his lance arm and was trying to see over the ornament of it. The helm was a great domed full-face affair, draped in a fold of blue and gold mantle, surrounded by a coloured blue and gold twist of cloth like a Saracen’s turban, surmounted by a padded heraldic lion in gold cloth spouting three great plumes of heron feathers in blue and yellow.

  He was as proud of this new-fangled confection as he was of his ruinously expensive horse, which he called Durandal after Roland’s sword – but, at this moment, he would cheerfully have rendered it into several hundredweight of offal.

  ‘Tight rein that mount, boy,’ his uncle called out, irritated and hot, trying to argue with Gloucester while mounting his own equally annoyed warhorse, which fretted under the leather barding round its head.

  ‘Look to your conrois, my lords – and mount those damned Welsh,’ bawled the Earl of Gloucester; the Earl of Hereford, hands full of rein and mouth full of his own egret plumes as he fought with helm and horse, fumed helplessly at this de Clare imposition of command.

  Addaf caught Thweng’s eye and nodded briefly; once he would have knuckled his forehead, but he was too old to care these days unless it was a lord who mattered. Besides, he remembered the Yorkshire knight as a man unimpressed by such things; he had met him years before – by God, during his first campaign, in fact, against the Wallace.

  Thweng’s was not a face you could forget, with eyebrows so bushy that they looked stuck on with fish glue for some mummer’s performance. Two deep, vertical furrows, like the gills of a porpoise, ploughed from the wings of his nostrils to the bearded angles of his wide mouth and the upper lip hung, ape-long, over the lower, which made his drooping moustache seem more baleful.

  Thweng did not recognize Addaf, which made the archer smile wryly. He had been a husky, hump-shouldered youth, dark and sullen, in those days, and was now a grizzled, iron-grey veteran – but, from his cool gaze and quiet nod, it was clear the Yorkshire lord knew the worth of the archers. Clear, too, from his frown that he wished they were on foot, flitting through the trees rather than riding.

  Addaf would have fervently agreed if they had spoken on it; he led the Van down from the blazing brass of sunlight into the immediate cooling balm of the Torwald shade, such a relief that men gasped aloud. Addaf filtered his mounted men out as far as he could, like a fan on either side of the narrow trackway, threading their mounts through the trees; he felt the place close on him.

  Bigod, thought Thweng, here is as good a spot for an ambush as any Vegetius could come up with. Others thought so, too, for the sighs and cries about being in the shade faded and died. Tight-packed in twos and threes, they rode knee to knee in a deep, dark green gloom with only a creak and jingle that was suddenly too loud.

  Five hundred at least, Thweng thought moodily, strung out like wet washing; he felt, in the dappled closeness, as if he was under water.

  They burst out of the Torwald like a shout of relief, into a blaze of sun and a new barrier ahead – yet another scar of woodland, though this was the New Park, a mere imp of the Great Satan that was Torwald. Beyond that, no more than six English miles away, lay Stirling Castle.

  Hereford, his voice muffled and booming inside his splendid helm, bawled out orders which Gloucester, his own helmet tucked under one arm, took delight in repeating so that they would be understood; his red face was beaming with pleasure and heat.

  ‘Sir Henry’, he yelled to de Bohun, ‘is to command the foot forward while the horse gathers itself. Scour the enemy ahead, sirrah, with all despatch.’

  Addaf looked sourly at the great confection that was Henry de Bohun, brilliant in his bright blue surcote and jupon and horse trappings, all studded with little gold lions. He was, with that great lion-topped helmet clapped on his head, identical to his uncle save for the red slash through his shield. A bowl of frumenty, Addaf thought scornfully, and about as much use to me and mine, look you – but it was the way of things that an English lord oversaw what the Welsh did, even if he was a cont gwirion on four legs.

  Addaf signalled with a wave of his sword and the Welsh dismounted at last, the horse-holders calming their charges while the rest padded forward like hunting hounds, bows smarted and arrows nocked. They filtered into the trees while de Bohun followed and his squire, Dickon, trailed at his back on his own palfrey, encumbered with spare lance and a host of other weapons his sire might need.

  Thweng watched them go while the rest of the Van horse came up and reordered, the bright face of the lord of Badenoch like a child’s slapped arse as he arrived at Sir Marmaduke’s elbow.

  ‘The rebels will not stand, it seems,’ he said in polite French and wrinkled his snub nose. ‘A pity. I owe the Bruce a mighty blow.’

  Bruce is owed one, true enough, Thweng thought to himself, but you are not the one to give it, little lord. He wondered, though, if the Bruce he had seen was the same one he had known in younger, tourney days. Did he still deserve the title of second-best knight in Christendom?

  Addaf dashed sweat from his eyebrows and blew it off the end of his moustache. There were men ahead; he had seen them filtering away ahead of them, keeping out of decent bowshot. Beyond, he heard shouts and a familiar rattle of spears, a sound he remembered well.

  ‘Ware – spearmen,’ he bawled out in Welsh, and then repeated it in English, so Henry de Bohun knew of it, though whether that lord understood or heard was a mystery, since he was a faceless metal creature who gave no signs.

  Arrows flicked and rattled suddenly, so that the Welsh went into a half-crouch, searching for targets and returning fire. An arrow spanged off Henry’s helmet, the ring of it jerking him so that the warhorse’s head came up and it blew out heavily in protest.

  The Welsh, Henry de Bohun saw, were going to ground, which was sensible when you had no protection and were not bound by the chivalry of knighthood. He curled a sweating lip at them and urged his horse forward.

  Addaf saw the splendid lord, the padded gold lion and plumes on his helmet nodding, the trailing blue and red tippets fluttering prettily and thought, well, there’s the last we will see of that uffar gwirion and good riddance to anot
her English. He saw the muttering-anxious squire kick his own horse up past the Welsh and revised his thoughts to include him, too; a shaft hit a branch near him, clattered off into the trees and he forgot the pair entire, bawling at his men to stop shaming him and kill the Scotch bowmen.

  Already, though, he saw the Scots archers slink away, knew their task was done; behind them, no doubt formed and ready, would be a host of close-ranked men bristling with spears and, vaguely through the trees, he saw a helmeted horseman.

  A spearwall, archers and knights – there was no way through this without a hard fight which needed foot and spears rather than just his nearly-hundred of archers and a lot of heavy horse. He handed command to Coch Deyo and shouldered back through the wood and into the sunlight, squinting at the great horde of wilting, patient horsemen. He padded across like a stiff wolf to Hereford and Gloucester, careful to report what he had seen to both of them at once.

  They took it well enough and the young one, the de Clare, was hot for going on but the older Earl of Hereford was more clever, Addaf saw, seeing at once that he might win with his five hundred heavy horse, but would ruin them doing it. Clever, too, the Welshman saw, not to admit that was why he hesitated; instead, he ordered the walrus-faced lord called Thweng to ride forward with his mesnie and see how many men opposed them.

  And, as Addaf turned to lope back to his men, anxious about what Coch Deyo had done with them in his absence, the Earl of Hereford suddenly barked out:

  ‘Where is my nephew?’

  Henry de Bohun was in an oven with the sweat stinging his eyes, the lance rattling and banging off low branches, so that he had to lean it back on one shoulder. The proud trailing tippets of his helmet seemed to hook on every branch and threatened to tear the whole cumbersome affair from his head.

  Which might be a relief, he thought to himself – until the first arrow strikes my nose. Through the blurry slit of his helmet, he saw a rider, a vague figure and no more. Behind, he saw – like a deer moving and revealing itself in the dapple of sunlit wood – a great mass of men and spears. He paused, considering, looked right and left and saw no one at all.