by Robyn Young
Will turned his horse sharply as the archer pulled the bow taut. Thundering up behind, he leaned out in the saddle and chopped down with his sword. The archer whirled around, hearing the drumming hooves and Will caught him in the shoulder. The blade cut through the man’s armor and sliced into the flesh beneath. The archer shrieked in agony and let go of the bow. The arrow sprang into the air to curve harmlessly into the river. The man went down a second later, kicked in the back by another rider. It was Gray.
He had lost his helmet and his white bristly hair was covered in blood from a wound on his scalp, but he grinned savagely at Will. “On them!” he yelled, thrusting his blade toward the tattered English lines. “On them! They fail!”
As the Scottish spearmen closed in to take the bridge, John de Warenne stared in horror from the other side of the river. His mighty army had been neatly split in two, the head severed from the body. Now, with the Scots barring entry to the causeway with a wall of spears, he could only watch, impotent, as nearly six thousand of his men were butchered before his eyes. His archers might have been able to ward off the Scots long enough for him to clear the crush on the bridge and lead a charge. But they had gone with Cressingham in the vanguard. Unable to use their deadly weapons at such short range, they were being cut down in the hundreds. De Warenne couldn’t see the treasurer’s banner anymore. He opened his mouth to shout orders to his troops, but no words came. The din of battle would drown anything he could say.
“My lord,” one of his knights murmured at his side, his face pale. “What shall we do?”
John de Warenne, one of the most powerful men in England, veteran commander of more than a dozen campaigns, shook his head. “I do not know,” he said hoarsely. “I . . .” He faltered, his vision filling with the sight of armored knights jumping into the river, herded and jabbed at by the Scots. The last of the men on the bridge were surging back across it, some crawling on hands and knees, others dragging comrades. A few Scottish spearmen were advancing slowly along it, finishing off the dying, but they seemed wary about coming too far down. “Burn it,” rasped de Warenne. “Burn the bridge and sound the retreat.”
Leaving the last of their men to be cut down behind them and the bridge going up in flames, the rest of the English Army, led by John de Warenne, turned their backs on the Forth and departed.
In less than an hour, the battle was over, the Scots triumphant beyond measure. The gruesome work of dispatching the wounded continued for a while longer, but soon, the only things living in the churned-up fields were the victors. Over one hundred English knights had perished along with more than five thousand infantry and a large contingent of Welsh archers. All the dead were relieved of their weapons and armor, and pushed into the river. Very few Scots had perished, although Andrew de Moray sustained a bad wound to his chest and was carried from the field by his men. The bloated body of Hugh Cressingham was found among the dead, his stomach ripped open by a spear. Grimly, the Scots stripped their hated treasurer, whose taxes had drained them to the point of starvation, jostling one another to get at the fleshy corpse. One man took his blade and with a savage cry sliced off the treasurer’s genitals to the fierce cheers of his comrades. This signaled a frenzied attack as others, all desperate to prove to their countrymen what they had achieved this day, drew daggers and knives and began to hack and flay Cressingham’s body, each bloody scrap of his skin a token of their victory, hard won and long in coming.
Will found David in the fields near the river, where Stirling Bridge was blazing. Black smoke belched into the sky, making their eyes smart. Both of them were sweat-drenched and bloody. Pulling off his helmet, Will embraced his nephew fiercely, then drew back to see Simon limping up, covered in mud and leaning on his spear, a cut on his thigh. Will, who had hardly said two words to the groom since securing his release from Wallace’s prison, held out his hand. Simon clasped it as the breathless cheers of the Scots echoed around them.
After finding someone to tend Simon’s wound, Will slumped exhausted on the causeway. His shield arm and shoulder burned and his sword arm was throbbing. Sitting there in the midday sun, the stink of death in his nostrils, he closed his eyes and imagined Edward’s face as he was told how his mighty army had been defeated by peasants and outlaws. He savored the image, rejoiced in it. A shadow fell across him and Will opened his eyes to see Wallace standing before him, drenched in gore.
“Gray tells me I am to thank you. You covered my back.”
“I need no thanks.”
Wallace smiled. “Come.” He held out his hand. As Will took it, Wallace pulled him to his feet. “It isn’t over yet.”
As the tide turned on the Forth, Wallace and his generals roused their weary men and led the cavalry down to the lower ford, where they crossed the river. From there they pursued the retreating English Army relentlessly, picking off lagging foot soldiers and snatching packhorses, all the way to the Borders.
It was later said John de Warenne rode so furiously to escape them, he didn’t stop to rest his horse until he reached Berwick.
15
Selkirk Forest, Scotland
JUNE 21, 1298 AD
Removing his shirt and rolling up his breeches, Will made his way across the mossy stones and stepped into the pool. In contrast to the heat in the air, the water was freezing. Bending, he dunked the bowl in and, using a fistful of soapwort, began to wipe away the grease from last night’s meal, the rush of the river loud in his ears.
“Good morning.”
Will looked up to see Christian heading down the bank, her arms piled with wooden bowls. He gave a nod.
She smiled as she pushed up the sleeves of her pale green dress and plunged one of the bowls into the foaming water. Sunlight, filtering through the leaves of the alders and wych elms that bordered the river, played on her face. “It’s going to be hot again today.” As she looked back at Will, her smile became curious. “Who did that to you?”
When she pointed to his back, Will realized she was referring to the faint silvery lines that crisscrossed his spine, made when Everard whipped him, all those years ago. “An old master.”
Christian set the bowl on the grass and sat back, drawing her knees up. She was in her early thirties, but sitting there like that, her red hair tousled from sleep, she could have passed for eighteen. Will realized he was staring and thrust the bowl back into the water, even though it was now clean.
“And that one?” Christian nodded to his knee, where his breeches were rolled up over a lumpy riddle of scar tissue.
“I fell down a well,” he murmured, recalling Angelo Vitturi’s blistered face, twisted in triumph, disappearing above him as he slipped back into nothing. The leg, which had broken in two places, still pained him, usually in winter; a lingering ache that sometimes woke him in the night.
“Those I know,” said Christian, gesturing to his forehead, shoulder and calf, marked with wounds from more recent injuries, borne over the past year since the battle at Stirling Bridge. “And . . .” She squinted in scrutiny, then shook her head. “That is it. I cannot see any—No, wait. There is one more, on your arm.”
Will stared at the pinkish patch of skin on the side of his arm, the bowl forgotten in his hand. The scar was barely visible. He was surprised she had seen it at all. He had thrown his arm up against the billowing flames. Blazing embers rained down on him and a wall of fire raged in front of him as he tried to climb the staircase. The hairs on his arm had burned away, the skin beginning to blister. Yet the scar was so small, so insignificant. Pathetic. If he had something more disfiguring, he might have felt better. But every time he saw that patch of hairless pink skin he was mocked by how feeble his efforts to save his wife had been. You wanted her to burn because of Garin, because of what she did with him. She betrayed you and you wanted her to suffer. “ No.” Realizing, by the frown on Christian’s face, that he’d spoken out loud, Will straightened and shook the water from the bowl. But his fingers were trembling as he tried to wipe it on his breeche
s, and he dropped it. The bowl hit the water and spun away from him, bobbing like a toy boat.
Christian lifted her dress and stepped down the shallow bank, wincing as stones crunched beneath her bare feet.
“I can do it,” said Will, as she waded in, one arm outstretched for balance, the other holding her dress above her knees. “Careful, it gets deeper here.” He went toward her, his feet tentative on the slippery stones.
“There,” she said, gasping with the cold, as she plucked it from the pool. The water was almost up to her thighs. Her dress was trailing in it, darkening as it soaked into the thin material. She held the bowl out, but as Will went to take it she slipped. The bowl flew up from her hand and he grabbed her wrist instead. Christian caught her balance and steadied with a breathless laugh. She looked up at him and a flush of color leapt into her cheeks.
Beneath his thumb, Will felt her pulse flicker, agitated.
“Will, I—”
“You’ve dropped your bowl.”
Looking over her shoulder, Will saw Simon and David on the bank. The groom was staring at him inquiringly. David was grinning. Will let go of Christian’s wrist and fished out the bowl.
“Sir William Wallace wants to see you,” said David, as he climbed out of the pool, Christian close behind. “If you’re not too busy,” he added.
“Does it look as though I’m busy?” Will glanced at Christian, who had wrung out her dress and was bent over the stack of dirty bowls, her back to him. He snatched up his shirt and pulled it on.
As they set off through the trees toward the main camp, David moved in alongside him. “Don’t play the fool, Uncle. We saw you.”
Will halted and turned to him. “Whatever you thought you saw, you are mistaken.”
David’s smile faded. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Just get back to your training, will you. It isn’t as if you don’t need the practice.”
David stared at him. “If I’m so incompetent, why did Sir William dub me?” He pushed his way through the undergrowth.
Will went to call after him, but stopped and shook his head.
“Making friends?”
“I shouldn’t have said that, I know.”
“I meant back there,” said Simon, nodding toward the river.
Will’s brow creased. “You as well?”
“When you live on top of one another, things get noticed,” said Simon, hastening to keep up as Will strode off. “I’d be careful if I were you. You don’t want to go making an enemy of her brother.”
“She was married to Gray’s brother,” said Will tightly. “That makes him her brother-in-law.”
“Well, whatever, he’s very protective of her. Ysenda said when Christian’s husband was dying, Gray pledged to take care of her.”
“Christ, Simon, she came to wash dishes. What was I supposed to do? Ignore her?”
“What are you doing here, Will?” said Simon suddenly. “It’s been over a year. How long are you going to keep hiding in this place, acting as if there’s not a world outside you’ve left behind?”
“Hiding?” Will faced him. “I’ve been fighting a war!”
“Someone else’s war. This is Wallace’s fight. Him, Gray, the others, even David. This is their home.”
“As it is mine.”
“You spent longer in the Holy Land.”
“And do years make a place home?”
“No. We make a place home. We make it home when we are settled, when a place gives us joy and comfort. I know you, Will. I’ve known you since you were eleven years old and I know you aren’t happy, or comfortable, or settled here.”
“I don’t want to talk about this. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
Simon followed when he moved off. “I’ll stop asking when you give me an honest answer and tell me when we’ll leave.”
“I’ll leave when Edward is defeated.”
“Is that what you think you were doing in England? Defeating Edward? Making him pay for what he did here?” Simon’s brown eyes were hard. “Because I thought you were robbing and murdering.”
Will rounded on him. “I never killed anyone. I’m not like ...” He trailed off.
“Who? These men you call comrades?”
“Wallace tried to stop the ones who were taking it too far. You know he did.” Will shook his head. “You cannot blame them, Simon. They wanted revenge; revenge for seven years of rape and slaughter, revenge for Berwick, Edinburgh. But more than that, they wanted to survive. Scotland was on its knees after Stirling. While we were trying to save the kingdom, the harvests were dying in the fields. Victory couldn’t make the corn grow taller or the cattle fatten, could it? We had to invade England or the country would have starved.”
“And the people of Northumberland and Cumbria? What did they eat through the winter?”
“Most of them found shelter in Newcastle and Carlisle,” said Will gruffly. But his words were hollow.
After the battle at Stirling Bridge the resistance hadn’t stopped. It had grown. News of the incredible victory over the English spread like wildfire, blazing in the hearts and minds of the Scots. The English were no longer a terrifying, unstoppable force. They were just men, vulnerable men. Even after the death of Andrew de Moray, who succumbed to the wound sustained in the battle, the Scots continued to flock to Wallace’s banner, until, barely weeks later, the scent of blood still fresh, the fierce young giant led his army into England.
Sweeping down over the Tweed into Northumberland, they destroyed crops and livestock, burned monasteries, looted towns, slaughtered inhabitants. The people of northern England, most of whom had taken no part in the sack of their neighbor, paid the price for their king’s brutality. And paid in full. Those who fled before the marauding Scots returned to their homes once the horde moved on, only to find they had no food or shelter for the coming winter. Newcastle was soon packed to the walls with the homeless and the destitute. The Scots stripped the county bare and everything they took was conveyed back across the border to feed the starving families they left behind.
With no one to oppose them, the Scots vented years of pent-up anger on towns and villages. Wallace and his generals attempted to restore order, even resorting to hanging in the worst cases of unnecessary violence, but they had broken a dam at Stirling and unleashed a tide that couldn’t be stopped, until it had drained. Wallace’s men called him William the Conqueror and his name was quickly taken south, rippling through all the shires of England, where the fear and hatred of him and his men grew. But their king was still in Flanders and there was no protection for his subjects. The reprieve for the people of northern England only came at midwinter, when the first snows began to fall, forcing the Scots back across the Tweed.
“You gave me your word you would think about returning with me to France,” said Simon, watching the emotions change on Will’s face. “Robert might be able to get you back into the Temple. You don’t know for sure that Hugues will prevent you. He used to be your friend. But either way you have to make amends for the oaths you have broken. You cannot stay here, pretending you were never a knight. It was all you ever wanted to be. You cannot let your grief for what happened to Elwen ruin everything you ever were. And I know you miss your daughter. I can see it in your eyes every time you see Ysenda embrace Alice, or scold Margaret, or praise David. God damn it, I miss Rose! I miss our comrades, our home.”
“I don’t believe she’s mine, Simon.” The words came in a rush and Will looked surprised after he’d uttered them.
Simon was silent. “Garin?” he said finally, following Will with his eyes as he turned away. “I wondered after the fire at Andreas’s, with what he was saying. Do you know for certain she is his?”
Will opened his mouth to speak, then pressed his lips together. “I promised to think about returning to France before word came that Edward and his army were on the march. I cannot leave now. I am needed here.”
“You are needed more elsewhere,” the groom called a
s he walked away. But this time he didn’t follow.
The words ringing in his ears, Will made his way to Wallace’s tent. Following their reconciliation at Stirling, he had found himself glad of Simon’s company, the familiarity of their friendship a relief after so long with strangers. But after the invasion of England, Simon once again started questioning him on when they would return to their old lives, as if it were inevitable. Simon didn’t understand. The groom thought he had left the Temple and fled to Scotland because of grief over Elwen and concern for his family. Will couldn’t tell him the truth, because then he would have to explain about the Brethren and Edward; would have to tell Simon he had been lying to him all these years and that the groom didn’t really know him at all. That it hadn’t been a stray Mamluk arrow that had sent Garin into hell. That it had been his sword.
“Campbell.” Wallace greeted him tersely, as Will approached the circle of tents. He was standing by the fire holding a ragged map. Adam and Gray were poring over it. In the past year since his great victory, Wallace had grown gruffer. The deaths of comrades and enemies were marked in him, visible in his eyes, and in his face and arms, carved with more scars. “We’ve had news.”
“The English?”
“They are headed for Roxburgh. The vanguard should reach it in a matter of days. Their king will not be far behind.”