by Robert Low
‘Well?’ Hereford demanded and Walwayn knew his lord was eager to be up and away, though he was pouch-eyed from lack of sleep and had spent the night in prayer beside the body of his nephew Henry; somewhere nearby they were boiling him down to the bones, which would be carried home. Walwayn knew that his news had arrived late – but not too late, as he pointed out.
‘My lord Percy’s man has failed,’ he said in a low, hoarse whisper. ‘I have word from Alnwick that the Templar Knight he sent is dead in Spain and Bruce has succeeded in gaining a cargo of weapons. If they encountered no other trouble on the way, my lord, then the Scotch have Templar arms and armour aplenty. That message was at Alnwick a ten-day ago.’
Hereford blinked and pursed his lip, the scowl of his face framed in metal links. If that was true … He glanced briefly at Walwayn and knew it to be; the man had never failed him before with intelligence. It also meant that Percy had not bothered to inform the King of his failure and the possible delivery of arms and armour to the Scots. It would make all the difference, Hereford knew. Well, there would be a reckoning with Percy after this was all done with.
‘The Scotch will stand, then,’ he mused and waved for a squire to leg him up on to the tall horse – the new leg armour made it awkward to mount unaided. Settling himself, he looked down at Walwayn.
‘You have done well. When this is done, come to me for reward.’
Walwayn wondered if Hereford had understood and almost said as much, but broke into a sweat at the near error and forced a smile. It was not for him to question whether his lord and master had fully grasped the import of the news he had brought.
The Scotch would stand and fight, was no ragged army of trailbaston, but one which had had weeks to train and was now armed and armoured with former Templar weapons – perhaps even captained by former Templar Knights, the most formidable fighters of the day and now raised to righteous fury at what had been done to them.
He moved away, jostled to a stagger by squires and men-at-arms mounting and trailing after their earl; after a moment, he realized he was alone, with the sickly sweet smell of Henry de Bohun’s boiling seeping into the air like the worst of omens.
Somewhere, Walwayn heard shouting, drifting on an errant wisp of morning breeze and, for all it was a faint ghost of sound, it made him shiver, so that his long shadow trembled.
Tailed dogs, he heard, like the Devil whispering.
Jamie Douglas took the staff from the hand of the King and raised it high, so that it caught the morning sun and the welcome breeze blowing out of the wood. Freshly, ritually, shorn of its pennant streamers into the square of a banner proper, the flag rippled with the arms of Douglas and, even if there had been no breeze at all, the roar of thousands of voices would have been breath enough.
Bareheaded, Jamie vaulted into the saddle of his little rouncey, while Bruce watched and envied the man his youth and his moment. There was no other way for a knight to be created banneret, a step only slightly lower than an earl, than to have it done on the field of battle by the sovereign himself. Such moments were hen’s teeth, but part of the ritual of committing to battle and important, Bruce knew, because it let the army see the King raise folk to greatness in the panoply of the court; you did not do that if you worried about losing.
Now he saluted the darling of the host: the dreaded Black Douglas if you were on the opposing side, the Good Sir James if he stood with you. The great stained horde roared their pleasure, for all that half of them were shivering with fear and fevers. Bare-legged and bare-arsed because disease poured their insides down their thighs, they still flung their arms in the air and cheered back at him – and the King they were prepared to die for.
A Douglas, Jamie yelled, and they screamed it back at him. Tailed dogs, he bellowed with delight, riding the length of them with his banner in one fist and flung into the air – and they howled that back at him, too.
Tailed dogs, popularly believed as God’s just punishment on the English for their part in the murder of St Thomas Becket: the Scots taunt never failed to arouse their enemy to red-necked rage and Bruce, cantering on in the wake of Jamie Douglas, nodded and smiled even as he felt his ruined skin tighten at that coming anger.
The mummery was almost done and everyone saw the final act of it: Maurice, Abbot of Inchaffray, stumbled unsteadily across the tussocks with his coterie of priests, bearing the Mayne, St Fillan’s own arm bone in a silver reliquary; one cassocked boy trembled so much that his swinging censer almost brained the brindle-haired abbot and the prelate had to duck. Those nearest laughed, brittle and harsh, as the abbot raised his long-staffed crozier – the Coygerach, holy icon of St Fillan Himself, no less – as if to strike the boy, then thought better of it and passed along the line.
They knelt, the thousands crammed into three large blocks of bristling nails, Edward Bruce and Randolph, Douglas and de la Haye and the Bruce himself, while the vintenars and centenars took the opportunity, as the old abbot moved down the line blessing them with sonorous mumbles, to dress the ranks for the last time.
Dog Boy wondered if that bone inside the reliquary really was the famed left arm of St Fillan, said to glow in the dark so the wee holy man could read the Scriptures at night. Bigod, he would like to see that marvel one time! He crossed himself for the impiety of the thought.
When the priests had gone, this great forest of spikes would rise up and roll down on their enemy and, if the priests had done their job true, then God would hand them victory in the name of St Fillan.
Patron saint of the mad.
Thweng arrived into the jingling splendour that surrounded the King in time to have Badenoch thrust his beaming face forward, a manic grin fixed on it. Behind him, equally toothy, was another sprig of the seemingly endless forest of Comyns – Edmund, Thweng recalled suddenly. From Kylbryde.
‘My lord,’ Badenoch called out, ‘splendid news.’
Thweng eyed the Scot sourly; what the man considered ‘splendid news’ boded ill, he was sure. The next words confirmed it.
‘I have permission for the Knights of the Shadow to join the Van.’
Every fool was petitioning to join the Van, Thweng thought, because the Van was where the first glory and best of the ransom plunder was to be had. It was also the most dangerous place to be and sucked far too many into it, making it huge and impossible to order as well as impoverishing the other Battles.
And he has dragged me into it. The thought made Thweng’s scowl so venomous that Badenoch’s eyebrows went up in the coif-framed face.
Gloucester’s arrival broke apart any twisting tension and all heads turned to him. The King, splendid in his blood-crimson royal surcote with the three golden lions leopardes, sat tall in the saddle of an ice-white horse and knew exactly how he looked. Surrounded by the royal standards and the sinister, jewel-eyed, flickering-tongued Dragon Banner, he stared haughtily at Gloucester, who did not wear his spendidly blazoned surcote.
‘You are ill-dressed and late, my lord earl.’
Gloucester, his coif hooded down his back, flushed to the roots of his unruly hair.
‘Not too late, Your Grace, to plead that you honour the saint whose feast day this is and refrain from fighting. The army needs rest …’
The chorus of protest that went up from the eager young throats round the King was loud and scornful enough for Gloucester to bristle. D’Argentan, Thweng noted, stayed silent.
‘It seems no one agrees with you, my lord earl,’ Edward growled, and nodded out towards the serried ranks of horse. ‘My lord Hereford is already with the Van.’
Which was a dismissal Gloucester should not have ignored, Thweng thought afterwards. But the Earl, almost desperately, repeated his plea for the army not to fight and everyone saw the drooping royal eye flicker dangerously.
‘You would have better employed your time fetching your cote than inventing reasons not to fight,’ Edward rasped out venomously. ‘But vacillating was ever your way – you allowed my Gaveston to die because o
f it.’
The only noise was a deep grunt of assent from behind the King – Aymer de Valence, of course, Thweng realized, who had pleaded with Gloucester to come to his aid when Lancaster threatened to sieze Gaveston. Gloucester had refused, Lancaster had succeeded and Gaveston had died.
All the raw wounds reopened and everyone saw it. Gloucester, his face purple, wrenched at the reins of his protesting destrier, the words flinging back over his shoulder as he went.
‘There is no treachery in me, my lord king, and the field will prove it.’
Badenoch, after a moment’s surprise, waved half-apology, half-farewell to the King and spurred after him; with a swallowed curse, Thweng kicked Garm into his wake.
Edward, blinking and uncertain at what he had created, tried a harsh laugh which came out too squeaked to be reassuring. The noise of voices and rasping last-minute whetstones on blades seemed suddenly deafening.
‘If the Scotch are standing,’ d’Umfraville offered into the awkwardness, ‘then we should reorder, Your Grace.’
Attentions were all sucked back into the moment; heads turned to the dark line of enemy and Edward frowned, stood up a little in his stirrups and pointed one mailled fist.
‘They are not standing, they are kneeling,’ he declared and then beamed. ‘Are they asking for my mercy?’
D’Umfraville, who had clearly had enough, almost spat and nearly choked on swallowing it.
‘No, lord King,’ he managed to rasp out politely. ‘They beg forgiveness, certes, but not from you. From God. They will win or die this day, it seems.’
The King scowled blackly at the admiration he heard in that voice, but the sudden great blare of horns made them all jerk; a few horses were taken aback, bounced and baited. Horrified, everyone saw the dark line seem to swell.
‘We should beg our own forgiveness,’ d’Umfraville added, ‘for they are not standing nor kneeling, my lords, but coming down on us.’
‘God’s Blood,’ de Valence bellowed. ‘Too late. Too late.’
Too late, Addaf thought with belly-clenching terror, to get the horse out of the way and the foot forward. Too late, as it was at this place’s bridge seventeen years ago, when the Scots of Wallace and Moray came down on the English, trapped in the coils of the river.
Now they were trapped again, and again by their own making, the reassurance against night attack of the streams and ditches on three sides now a deadly bag. Addaf remembered the last time, the frantic rabbit-running, throwing away everything he had save the bowstave itself, the desperate plunge into the river, the floundering like a wet cat to drag himself out, panting and half-drowned.
He turned, stunned as if by a blow to the temple, and Sir Maurice Berkeley saw it, saw the same look on other lordly faces around him and the bewilderment of those they led, waiting for orders that did not come.
‘Ware archers,’ he bawled, throwing one iron fist to his right. Heads turned and men fell into the unconscious movements that braced the stave and felt for the bowstring, though they would not string the bows until ordered by Addaf.
‘Addaf Hen,’ Maurice roared and that jerked the man as if stung, so that he seemed to shake himself like a dog, looked at his lord, then to where he pointed; enemy flitted like starlings, working their way to the flanks of the army and protected from horse by the steep-sided ditch of a tidal run Addaf had heard called the Pelstream.
‘Smart your sticks,’ Addaf bawled, starting to feel the reassurance that came with familiar things. ‘Pick your targets, look you. Shoot only when I say.’
Even as he had them nock and draw, he could feel the sick, leprous presence of that great mass rolling down on them, like a fever heat down the side of his body. He did not want to turn and look.
In the camp under Coxet Hill, they had lit a glare of fires and danced round them all night – the young, single girls had to circle and prance round seven of them if they wanted to marry the next year and they were diligent in it. They had eaten the destiny cakes, though there was more pea and straw in them than good barley or wheat. They’d made wishes on wisps of straw, which were burned and sent as dangerously flaming embers into the hot night sky.
It had ended with Threading the Needle, a skein of folk moving in a seemingly endless dreamy dancing procession to the sound of drum and viel and fipple flute.
Now in a rising-hot St John’s Day of ash and bad heads, Hal saw a mood of resentment move towards where he sat with Sir John Airth, enjoying the brief cool of the morning. Sir John, red-faced, big-bellied and with a beard like a great burst of dirty wool, had not slept well for the loss of his son sat heavy, while the noise and his gouty leg was no balm; he was scowling at the shuffling group even before they spoke.
Hal was no better, for he could hear the horns and had seen men clattering off, late to muster and clutching their gear, hopping with one shoe on. He wanted so badly to be with them that it was a bone ache, though not as deep as the one which had replaced Sim in his heart. Added to that was the dull fire in his wounded arm, while his face, still splendidly blue and yellow, thumped like a bad tooth.
The guard stopped the men coming closer, but they stood in a nervous huddle, with one thrust out in front and clearly expected to speak for them all; Sir John waved them forward.
‘Well?’
The spokesman was an average man in all but forearms, which came from working the handquern. Hal had seen him endlessly turning it to grind what poor grain folk brought to him to be milled, taking a tithe of it for himself as payment.
‘Beggin’ the blessings of your lordship,’ the man began, twisting his felted cap in his hands and then indicating the men behind him with a nervous flap of one hand. ‘I have been asked to speak to your lordship on a matter.’
‘Name?’ demanded Sir John. ‘Who are you, man?’
‘Begging yer blessing, sir, John of Noddsdale, sir. Miller to Sir Robert Boyd, God bless and keep him.’
Hal saw Sir John close his eyes briefly and sympathized, for John the Miller of Noddsdale had a voice like the whine of a stonemason’s saw and was, for all his nervousness, clearly impressed at having been picked from the pack to speak for them. It was not, Hal thought wryly, because he had the finest voice, nor because he was most respected, but the opposite; he would not be sadly missed if Sir John decided to hang him out of hand.
The gist of it was clear enough. The pack behind whining John were all in this camp at the behest of some lord now setting himself to battle. They had been left out of matters and did not care for it much.
‘We wish tae fight, Sir John,’ the miller finished. ‘Yet we are held here by yer wish.’
‘The King’s wish,’ Sir John answered flatly. ‘If you were proper called-out men you would come with an iron hat, a coat of plates or a gambeson, a long spear and another blade. Have you such?’
The men shifted and shuffled. They had seen others of their rank and station handed iron hats and spears, but there had not been enough for everyone and they had been given to ones who had been here for some time and seen at least a measure of training in their use. These were the come-lately men and they knew it. Someone called out that they had made spears and waved a shaft with a lashed-on hand-scythe. Hal smothered a smile.
‘There you have yer answer,’ Sir John growled dismissively. ‘A heuch on a pole, carried by an unarmoured, bareheaded chiel of no training and less account is of no use to the King.’
It was harshly said, from the lips of a man crushed under the loss of his son that very morning, killed at Cambuskenneth by a petulant swipe from the Earl of Atholl. These folk did not know that, Hal saw, or care. Faces darkened.
‘Others are going, slipping away,’ John of Noddsdale blurted out daringly. ‘Chiels from beyond the Mounth. Women amang them.’
Now Hal grasped it; the women and older bairns, men too old to fight and those who had contrived to avoid it, were sneaking out, hunkering down at the fringes to wait and watch for a chance to plunder the dead, and these men wanted a
share of it. Fighting was not in it at all and they saw the sneer on Hal’s face when he stood up; there were some brief, defiant glances, but all of them lowered their heads in the end and shuffled, shamed.
Yet Hal could see the beast of it almost unleashed. The camp was full of men and women like this, anxious for their loved ones already fighting, struggling with hunger and thirst and fearful of the outcome. They would want something plucked from it, no matter who won, and if thwarted would cause more trouble than could be controlled.
If they could not be prevented, then they must be led.
The idea soared in him and he turned to Sir John Airth, who saw something of it in Hal’s eyes. Truthfully, Sir John was glad the Herdmanston lord was here, for the loss of his son had stripped the last fire from him. He had known he was too old for this even before arriving, but had come, bolstered by the determined joy of William to be here, on this momentous day. Now William was laid out, cold and stiff, in the dead room of Cambuskenneth Priory and all the determined joy in the world had dissipated for Sir John Airth.
‘With your lordship’s permission,’ Hal began and Sir John waved one hand. So Hal turned to the men and laid it out for them, all the glory and riches of it, so that their eyes gleamed and they were his men before he had stopped speaking.
At the end of it, when they were scattering eagerly through the camp to fire others to the work, Sir John eyed Hal with a jaundiced look.
‘You can borrow William’s big stot,’ he said. ‘His name is Cornix, a good, well-trained beast. And my boy’s armour will fit you better than me and you can carry the weight at least.’
Hal began stammering his thanks, but Sir John waved them away, frowning.
‘It is a dangerous stratagem you have began,’ he growled. ‘For even if the enemy are fooled by it, your own king may not thank you.’
‘Victory forgives all sins,’ Hal answered and turned away, hoping it was true. Victory was essential, not just for king, not only for kingdom.
For Isabel.
ISABEL
Constance came to me and we sewed, sitting like peaceful sisters together in the cage. It was a defiance for her, placing herself in full view of the sweating gawpers and hecklers in the bailey and, because she was a nun, placing God with us both. I was grateful, but aware of feverishness in the air that had nothing to do with the heat, a tremble that made me slip and stick the needle in my finger. Constance saw it and gave a little cry, her hand to her mouth, but moved to draw it out, slow and careful as she could so that the bone needle would not break. I have enough bone in my finger, I said when it came free, and we laughed. Then she took some stale bread and wrapped it round the dark welling of blood. Perhaps you will fall asleep, like the princess in the tale, she whispered daringly, to be woken by a lover’s kiss in your imprisoning tower. I told her the truth of that story – it was not a princess, but the daughter of a merchant, whose maid slipped and stabbed her with the pin of a golden brooch, so that she fell in a faint. The furious father had the maid put to death and her blood used to water his garden – whereupon the roses grew fast and equally furious, pulling down the merchant’s house in only three days and killing everyone in it save the sleeping daughter. She woke on the fourth day and her lover found her wandering the wilding garden, her wits vanished entire. When I had finished, Constance sat, stunned and silent, and I was sorry for having torn the happy child’s tale away from her. I tried to go back to sewing but the blood had seeped through the bread and, when I peeled it off, a drop still welled, bright as a berry, dark as an omen.