by Robert Low
‘Amen,’ said Lincoln and reined round.
The army shifted, like a huge stone trembling at the top of a mountain.
Addaf felt it, even in a belly as clappit as his, where his belt buckle rattled against his spine. Buttered capons and golden, crusted pastries rich with mushroom and onion, soups luxurious with eggs and milk – if you are dreaming of food it is always better to dream large, rather than of rye bread and pease brose.
‘Captain Heydin.’
The voice bellowed out from a splendid figure, all red and gold on a barded horse. His banners and accoutrements were all marked with a golden flower and a studding of little gold daggers on a bright red background; as Heydin Captain said, he would not be missed at a thousand paces, would the Lord FitzAlan of Bedale.
In the retinue of Bishop Bek, he had been appointed millinar, the command of the foot and took the task seriously.
‘Captain Heydin,’ he said in careful English, his helm tucked under one arm, the other fighting to control the warhorse, which wanted to be away with all the others riding ahead. ‘Watch your station and do not get between the horse and the enemy. Mark me, now.’
‘Yer honour,’ Heydin Captain replied and put a fist across his chest in salute as the knight rode away, then turned to the other Welsh archers, a wry smile plastered on his face.
‘The mannie wants us to stay out of the way of those caperers on their fat ponies,’ he boomed in Welsh. ‘Let the proud folk have their fun and then we will win the day for them. Nyd hyder ond bwa.’
There is no dependence but on the bow. The Welshmen all growled and grinned at that, while Addaf checked his flights. It had taken him a long while to make new arrows with fine peacock flights to replace the ones he had thrown away at Stirling – the memory of that floundering panic of a day, when he had hauled himself out on the safe side of the river like a half-drowned dog, made him shiver.
He had lost his bowbag and arrows, his shoes and a good gambeson that day, a hard loss for a man with little enough; he touched the new leather shoes – hung round his neck like an amulet, for you never risked their loss on a field cut with sucking streams and churned mud. He would not lose this time. This time, he would gain.
The knight of Bedale forced a way through the throng of spears and bows, repeating his message to those he had found spoke English, though he was not sure whether some were cozening him with that or not. The Welsh nodded and saluted and watched him ride off; he was not a bad commander for an Englishman, but he was still an Englishman, who had asked Heydin Captain why his name was round the wrong way.
It was not, he was told. For over there was Heydin ap Daffyd and there was Heydin, nicknamed Gwrnerth Ergydlym, or Powerful Sharpshot since he was the worst archer of them all, barely putting six out of ten in a palm’s width at a hundred paces. Then he had to explain to the bemused lord that it was a jest, just as Rhodri was called Gam – Squint-Eyed – because he was the best shot of all, even to putting it round corners and killing a bear with a straw arrow, it was rumoured.
In the end, just as Heydin was patiently explaining that Gwynned ap Mydr was nicknamed One Eye though he actually had two – he could not close his aiming eye and had to have a black patch placed over it for shooting – the Lord of Bedale had held up one hand.
‘He is the best shot of all, look you, my lord,’ Heydin Captain tried to add as the knight rode away, still unsure whether he was being made a fool of. ‘He can shoot the wren through his claw, from Caenog, in the Vale of Clwyd, to Esgair Vervel in Ireland…’
Now the Lord of Bedale put his great bucket helm on the saddle bow and leaned on it, looking wistfully after the knights of Bishop Bek’s command, the Second Battle all riding ahead to join the heavy horse of the king himself, the combined Battles forming the hard right hook of the army. He wanted to be there rather than the millinar of foot, trying to herd the great body of spearmen and archers, gabbling in their own foul language and ploughing harsh furrows over Redding Muir down to the Westquarter Burn.
Addaf did not care what the Lord of Bedale felt, only what he belly felt. Away to his left, he saw a magnificent galloper, bright in horizontal stripes, tippets flying from the dome of his sugarloaf heaume; he and other archers who saw him growled deep in their throats, for this was De Valence, who had charged down good Welshmen not long before – eighty were dead of it.
One or two of the archers aimed their unstrung bows at him in future promise, then hurried on when a knot of bright riders surged up past them, thick with banners and purpose. The king himself…
One arrow, Addaf thought. One good peacock-fletched shaft with a bodkin point at the back of that red jupon with the three gold pards and Llewellyn is avenged, Ylfron Bridge’s ghosts laid to rest, Maes Moydog and Madog ap Llewellyn paid for. Yet no-one shot more than surly looks, just kept their heads down and slogged on.
Edward saw them, all the same, and both parties would have been surprised to find they were thinking of Maes Moydog, though for differing reasons.
Like the Welsh then, Edward thought, the Scots are trying great bands of spearmen to resist the knights. Well, we shot them down with Gascon crossbows at Maes Moydog and we will do so again here – there will be no repeat of the idiocy at Stirling. The idea cheered him – even if Maes Moydog had been the victory of the Earl of Warwick – and he raised a hand to wave to delighted youngsters, who had never been in great battle before and were bright with the thrill of it all.
‘Dieu vous garde!
‘Felicitas.’
‘Dieu vivas.’
They threw greetings like gaudy tokens to lovers and Edward watched them, wondering where his own fire for this had gone, thinking savagely to himself that they would find the truth of it all when the spear points tumbled them and their expensive horse to the mud and the shite rolled fearfully out of them as they scrabbled to be away. In the end, he knew, the Gascon crossbows would decide it. And the Welsh bowmen if they stuck to the task of it.
Maes Moydog…
He saw Sir Giles D’Argentan ride up, splendid and grim and was cheered by the sight of the second-best knight in Christendom, admitting in his inner heart that, since the foremost knight was himself in his better days, the laurels had shifted a little to a much younger man.
Alongside D’Argentan was an even younger squire, riding easy and lithe and splendid, his hair like fine gold mist wisping from under the coif and his helmet tucked under one arm so that he could drink in all that was happening around him. With a shock, Edward saw that this was a boy, no older than his own son.
D’Argentan reined in and bowed his inhuman, barrel-heaumed head, then removed it to reveal his beaming, scarred face. He saw the king was looking elsewhere and turned to the squire.
‘Do you not know your king, boy?’ he said. The squire bowed at once. No scowl or resentment, Edward thought; this boy knows the dignity of knights and how to behave as one, which starts with obedience. My own son is as tall and as strong and rides the lists as well – but this one knows the style of his profession, as surely as little Edward fails to grasp the dignity of the Crown he must one day wear. Thatching and ditch-digging; the thought made him scowl.
‘If your grace permits,’ D’Argentan declared, ‘may I present Piers Gaveston, esquire. I have been given him for the instructioning.’
‘Gaveston,’ Edward repeated slowly. Son of Sir Arnaud, he recalled suddenly, the Gascon I used as hostage with the French twice. He remembered welcoming Arnaud into his household after the man had fled France.
The boy had a smooth, beardless face, innocent as prayer and capped with an angel’s gold hair. Like mine once was, the king thought wistfully.
‘How old are you, boy?’ he demanded.
‘Fourteen years and two months, if it please your grace.’
The answer was steady and not in the least overawed by the stern old ogre king, Edward thought. This lad is good material and of ages with my own son.
‘Keep him safe,’ he said to the smil
ing D’Argentan. ‘I may have uses for this lad.’
He watched them ride off, pleased to see the straight back of the boy and the easy way he controlled a destrier. Perhaps an example like this, he thought, would turn Edward to kingly matters. Thatching and digging ditches, by God’s Arse. Mimers and mummers and naked swimming in rivers…
‘Quod non vertat iniquita dies, said a sonorous voice and Edward knew it was the Bishop of Durham before he had even turned his head.
And so it comes, the wicked day – typical of the round-faced little cant, Edward thought sourly. Yet Bek was another of those necessary evils of ruling, a churchman of power, armed, armoured and resplendent in red with his ermined cross and his pudding-bowl tonsure.
‘Regis regum rectissimi prope est Dies Domini, he rasped back. The day of the Lord, the rightful King of Kings, is close at hand – let him chew that one over, Edward thought with savage humour. ‘Virtutis fortuna comes,
Fortune favours courage was what folk took it to mean – but the comes in it originally referred to the elite Roman horsemen and Bek knew the king had made a clever wordplay on the knights of his own army. Since the king’s jests were few, Bek never faltered or frowned, offering a small, admiring smile instead.
‘Very good, my liege,’ he said, then glanced up the long roll of slope and dips to where the faint line marked the enemy. ‘Do you think they fear us yet, sire?’
Wallace felt the fear behind him, washing like stink from a shambles as the coloured skeins of armoured horsemen advanced over the meadow, careless and bright as trailing ribbons. A Battle, forming the left of the English line, it was a dazzle of fluttering pennons and banners that Wallace knew well and he smiled grimly to himself. De Warenne again…
The Van, pushing forward to the right of De Warenne, were singing, the voices faint and eldritch on a fickle wind: Quant Rollant veit que la bataille serat, plus se fait fiers que leon ne leupart.
When Roland sees that now must be combat, more fierce he’s found than lion or leopard – Wallace knew that chanson de geste to Roland well enough and screwed half round in his saddle, into the drawn, pinched grimness behind him.
‘Have we no voices, my lords?’ he demanded in halting French.
A high, clear voice started it and Wallace thanked God for his kin – Simon, his cousin. The other two, Adam and Richard, joined in almost at once, for they had been known as the Unholy Trinity since they had started to tear around together, causing mischief. You would not know that now from their angel voices and the thought made him smile, even as other throats, gruff, out of tune, trembling, rose to join in.
Hostem repellas longius, pacemque dones protinus; Ductore sic te praevio, Vitemus omne noxium
Drive far away our wily foe, and Thine abiding peace bestow; If Thou be our protecting Guide, no evil can our steps betide.
In the tight ring of dry-mouthed spearmen, men unflexed a hand from the shaft and crossed themselves. Even if they did not understand the Latin of it, they knew it was a call to God to hold His Hand over them as the coloured talons scarred towards them, paused, then started to coalesce into fat, tight blocks of silver-tipped dazzle.
Deep in the forest of spears, someone was sick.
Peering through the leaves like an animal, Hal saw the horse of the Van gather like wolves, the great bedsheet banners of Lincoln and Hereford smothering the host of lesser pennons of their retinues. They were planning to fall on the centre and Hal grinned through the sweat as he saw the sudden flutter in them; the Selkirk archers had released.
The horsemen bunched; commanders galloped back and forth and, in the still, fly-pocked swelter of the woods, men who knew the muscled sign of it grunted expectantly as the huge blocks started forward at a determined, knee-to-knee walk.
‘Not long afore they find oot,’ Bangtail shouted with glee and was shushed for his pains. Still, the joy of it was hard to keep from bubbling up, Hal thought and almost let out a sharp yell of triumph as the splendid, implacable riders came up over a slight lip – and found the great slew of boggy loch they had not seen before, spread out like a moat in front of the first two schiltron rings.
Confusion. Milling. The Selkirk men let loose again and horses were goaded to plunge and buck, flinging men to the ground with a noise like falling cauldrons. The faint sound of cheers washed up the Hal’s ears, followed by the great tidal roar…
Tailed dogs.
Slowly, painfully, the commanders galloping and yelling – even striking shields, Hal saw, so that the whole straggling mass started to turn to the left, towards the Battle of De Warenne, their unshielded side to the arrows as they circled the long strip of muddy marshland that had balked them. Many of them had not put on their full-face helms and were hunched and turned from the arrows as if in a snow storm.
It was a moment to savour – yet Hal saw that all this did was concentrate all the force from the centre to the right of the Scots line, where he and the other Herdmanston riders huddled in the trees.
‘Watch to yer right, lads,’ Sim growled and the men crouched on the patient garrons as De Warenne’s knights came up, wheeled into formation and started in towards the great shield ring – and the Scots knights that blocked the passage between it and the woods. They would pass close to Hal, he saw, funnelled by wood and schiltron spears to a mass the Scots knights could match for frontage – and Hal would lead his twenty riders out into their flank, hoping the flea bite would be enough to unnerve the crush of English knights.
‘God preserve us,’ muttered Ill Made Jock.
‘For ever and ever,’ came the muttered rote response.
‘Lente aleure!
The cry came, faint as lost hope, from the English commanders of the echelles as, one by one from the right, these sub-units began to move off, lances raised.
‘Paulatim.’
The pace picked up slightly, the huge mass of mailled men churning forward, horses snorting and calling out in high-pitched squeals of excitement. Griff shifted under Hal, for he smelled the rank battle stink, felt the tremble – as they came level, the great quake of it came up through the saddle into Hal’s belly. Leaves shook; a twig fell.
‘In the name of all God’s Saints…’ someone whimpered.
‘Pongnie.’
One by one the units obeyed and spurred, the great warhorses churning up the ground, the riders bellowing. Yet they were so closely pressed that they could not manage more than an ungainly half-canter, half-trot and still remain knee to knee.
‘Now,’ Hal hissed, watching the distant block of horse, the figure of Wallace head and shoulders above the tallest in it, watched him raise that hand-and-half to arm’s length over his head…
Someone broke from the back ranks, speeding off into the woods like a pursued fox. Another joined him. Then another. Wallace brought the sword down and surged forward, trailing a knot of men – twice as many hauled their mounts round and bolted.
The nobiles of Scotland had run after all.
To fight and win was now a dream. Hal saw it even as he saw Wallace and the pitiful knuckle of remaining knights slam into the great chest of English lances. The only sensible thing to do was run – the sudden rush of that made him jerk Griff’s head back – but, in the same moment, he saw the horse fall, saw the red and gold giant vanish into the mass; Hal raised his sword, kicked Griff hard enough to make the garron squeal and every man at his back surged out of the wood, screaming, ‘A Sientcler.’
They ploughed into the flanks of the struggling knights, just at the point they piled up like water at the dam. Hal cut and thrust and heard his sword bang like a hammer on a forge, felt the shock of it up his arm. A figure in stripes loomed; Hal cut and the man’s armoured head snapped back like a doll, his helmet dented on one side. A blow smacked Hal’s shield, reeled him so that he had to hang grimly on, while Griff spun in a half-circle.
He saw Nebless Clemmie hook his Jeddart staff in a knight’s fancy jupon, then spin his horse and ride off, dragging the knight to the gro
und with a clatter, where Ill Made Jock, elbow working like a mad fiddler, rained a flurry of furious stabs until the battle surged his plunging garron away.
The dam broke; the great mass of armoured horse rode over the remains of the Scots knights, who were either unhorsed and dying, or fleeing for the woods. Hal knew that his own attack had achieved only a moment of surprise and now the English were cursing and turning to fight. He saw Ill Made Jock’s garron, Wee Dan, smashed in the chest by the fearsome hooves of a warhorse, go down screaming – Hal lost sight of Jock in the whirl of hooves and legs and spuming blood.
Corbie Dand, on foot and with his face all bloody, was screaming and wielding the remains of his Jeddart, splintered down to a short-handled axe; the blow that crushed his head, kettle hat and all, came from a knight in blue and gold.
‘Wallace…’ yelled a voice and Hal turned into it, ducked a mad axe-cut at his head, took a mace on his shield and slashed back. He registered Sim as a flicker, on foot, open-mouthed and pointing; Hal spun Griff, felt the animal stumble, cursed and flogged it with cruel heels.
Wallace, off his mount, stood like a tree in a flood, the sword in both hands now and the added power hacking Hell into his enemies. Horsemen struggled and fought to get to him, for they saw the red lion rampant blazing on his chest and knew who it was, could taste the glory of it – but he stood there, a roaring giant, more ogre than man.
He turned briefly as Hal surged Griff up on one side, not even sure of what he was doing or why – then he saw the sheer joy of Wallace, the great beatific smile.
He is prepared to die, Hal thought, stabbed with sudden wonder. He is not afraid at all…
Sim staggered out of a ruck, slashing right and left, and stood on one side of Wallace, so that Hal found himself on the other, feeling Griff stagger and buckle.
‘Make for the ring,’ Wallace yelled and they did so, moving as swiftly as they could. Hal suddenly felt Griff sink and managed to kick free and drop; the snapped lance shaft was deep in the animal’s chest and, even as Hal cursed himself for not having seen it – when had it happened, in the name of Christ? – he heard the animal blow a last bloody froth and die.