by Griff Hosker
The next morning, we headed east. It would not be a quick journey. It would take two days. Masood and Aiden rode to the castle to ascertain the position. Edward and Edgar had still to return.
The archers acted as scouts. Aelric and Sir Philip said that they felt like frauds. They had been protected during the fight by men at arms and the trees. None had been hurt. I told them that was as it should be for without them we would have lost. More than half the men who were killed in the battle fell to our archers. It was their victory.
Alston was exactly half way and we camped there. I found it hard to sleep. Once again, I found myself saddened that there was no lord here. King Henry was too preoccupied with Normandy and the Vexin. Had he made his own land more secure then he could have called upon more men to fight in Normandy. As I lay down to sleep that night I wondered how my father was faring. My disturbed sleep was also due to the ground. I found it hard to sleep on the ground these days. My father was twenty years older. I did not know how, or why, he did it. He had a great attachment to King Henry. I supposed it was because of the Empress. I knew that my father and she had been close. He was now the last knight of the Empress. That was a remarkable feat.
My four scouts returned when we were ten miles from Alston. Edward and Edgar had delivered my message and brought news that the Sheriff was sending forty knights with a hundred men at arms and crossbowmen. They would help us relieve the siege. Aiden and Masood brought us the news that the castle was surrounded but the Scots were unable to bring large numbers into the valley for the archers on the walls and the stone throwers Sir Hugh had deployed made the passage of horsemen impossible. The bad news was that Balliol had almost a thousand men in addition to his knights.
As we travelled the last twenty miles I wracked my brains for a way to end the siege without losing too many of my men. It was when we stopped to water the horses that Aiden gave me the answer. “Lord do you wish to fight a battle with the Scots in order to reach the castle?”
“Not if I can avoid it. We have lost too many men already.”
“Then why not use the Wear valley. You can then approach the castle from the west. There are no horsemen there. The Scots have dug a ditch and are felling trees for a ram and stone throwers but there would be no mounted men to oppose you.”
“But it is further.”
“It would take an extra day.”
I called over Sir John. “I plan to divide my forces. I will give you the knights and men at arms of the Palatinate. I will take your men at arms and archers. I will ride down the Wear valley. You need to camp close enough to the Scots for them to think it is my whole army. I will give you my banner to aid the deception.”
“Do I attack?”
“No, you build counter siege lines. Have the men dig a ditch. You are there to stop the Scots escaping. I will attack the men at the western end of the castle and then we will sortie. You will hear our horns.”
“If you think that I can do this lord.”
“I do. I believe that the knights of the Palatinate will fight now.”
And so we parted. I left the priests with Sir John and the baggage train. It meant we could travel quicker. The route we were taking was on a rough road. It had not been built by the Romans. It was not a well-cobbled surface and the rain began as we headed for Stanhope. It made the journey longer and harder. We did not arrive at this remote manor until evening. There was no castle but there was a hall and a lord of the manor. Sir John Fitzurse was a knight who had fought alongside my father at the Battle of the Standards. Unlike my father he was old. He made us welcome and had his servants provide food. When he heard of our battle and what we intended he insisted that we take his twelve men at arms and his six archers.
“I know that I am old and should have been put out of my misery but these eighteen are all good men. It would make me feel less useless if they fought alongside you. I hate the Scots. When your father and the Archbishop led us against the Scots it was one of the greatest days of my life.” He shook his head, “King Stephen has much to answer for. In addition, they know roads which will bring you there quicker.”
Sir Morgan smiled when he heard what the old knight had said. “There are men in the Varangian Guards who would say that we were meant to come here and to meet with Sir John. There is a thread which ties him to your father and thence to Sir Hugh. I believe in God lord but there are other powers in this world that I do not understand.” He grinned, “Nor do I wish to. I just believe that they are neither good nor are they bad. They just are and we can do nothing about them.”
Sir Harold shook his head, “Talking with you, Alf, makes my head hurt!”
My former squire shrugged. “It comes from being born in the east. Had Sir William not found me then I would have died years ago. My master would have had me punished for some minor offence and I would have struck him and then been executed. Every day that I look on the sun I feel glad to be alive. It could have been so different.”
The next day the rain had stopped but, as we headed down trails little bigger than paths we found the going treacherous and our surcoats became so muddied that you could not tell one from the other. Sir John, however, was right. We made good time despite the weather and the conditions underfoot. When, not long after noon, Stephen of Stanhope told us that we were just five miles from the castle I sent out Masood and Aiden to scout. We prepared for battle. We had to strike quickly. My plan was simple. There were two gates to the castle: the town gate and the north gate. The Scots had invested the town. We would attack the Scots who were assaulting the north gate. It was the one direction they would least expect an attack. The fact that we would be attacking at dusk would also catch them by surprise. I knew that Sir John and the rest of my men would be camped on the other side of the Tees. Balliol would have moved men to counter that threat. Aelric and Sir Philip were aggrieved that it would be the horsemen who would mount the attack. That could not be helped. I gave them the task of following up and capturing, then destroying the siege engines.
We walked our horses through the trees until we were four hundred paces from the walls. It was late afternoon and the sun was already brighter in the west and we were in the gloom. Sir Hugh had cleared the trees to enable his defenders to keep an attacker away from the walls. There was an untidy sprawl of small camps and fires dotted around the periphery of the siege lines. The tents and the odd horse marked the knights. There were few of them. It was as Aiden had told us the majority of the Scottish knights were still on the other side of the river and were awaiting the taking of the castle which would allow them to use the bridge. I saw Scots walking back to their fires. The assault for the day was largely over. Even as we began to mount we heard the crack of a stone thrower as Sir Hugh’s men sent a huge rock towards the men we could see building a ram. Even though the stone fell short it still struck a camp fire scattering burning embers and logs. I saw one man fall clutching his eyes. Orders were shouted and half of the men who had been retreating turned to face the stone thrower which cracked a second time. The others scrambled around for whatever shelter they could find. The half-built ram and stone thrower were the only ones they could find.
All eyes were on the walls and it was a perfect opportunity to strike. I raised my spear and dug my spurs into Lightning. Our squires would not fight this day. They would wait in the woods. If we succeeded then they would join us and if not, they would head back to Stanhope. The archers’ horses were also left in the woods and they followed us to run across the open ground. There were few of us to charge their lines. We had less than sixty horsemen but we had something every commander and general dreams of; surprise.
There was no horn and no cheer. The sound of the cries from the camp hid us for the first hundred paces and then they heard us. Even though the ground was wet and soggy the thunder of sixty horses made the ground vibrate. They turned and saw, to their horror, a line of horsemen, mailed and with spears charging at them. There were shields and men holding them but they were closer
to the walls and facing the bows and stone throwers of the defenders.
Sir Ralph and Sir Samuel flanked me. My more experienced knights were spread out along my perilously thin line. The first Scot I killed fell not to my spear but to Lightning’s hooves. He tripped as he ran from me and there was a crunch as his head was crushed. A Scottish knight grabbed his shield and shouted orders. We were not boot to boot and so I veered towards him. He tried to make himself as small a target as possible. I pulled back and punched at his middle. All that I could see was his shield. Lightning’s speed and power allied to a perfect thrust struck him so hard that he was thrown backwards. His head hit the mail of two of his men at arms who were standing behind him. They fell too. Aelric, Sir Philip and his archers would capture the wounded.
I knew that we were seen from the walls for I saw hands waving. The stones would cease and Sir Hugh would have his archers ready to aid us. We were approaching the ditch and, as we had planned, I would lead half of the men to ride west while Sir Harold would lead the other half to ride east. Some of the men we charged now had shields but these were not knights nor were most of them men at arms. The majority of men we faced were the levy. They were mormaer’s men who followed their lord to battle. The shields they had were crudely made willow boards to stop Sir Hugh’s arrows. They were not meant to block the blow of a steel tipped spear. I rammed my spear at one such board and my spear head split the shield and struck the unarmoured chest of the man who held it. The Scots were fleeing and heading towards the town. I am sure that there were enough men in the town to have outnumbered us but panic is like the plague and the pestilence; it is contagious and it spread amongst those who had not yet seen us. All that they heard was the thunder of horses and all that they saw was a wall of horsemen. They did not know that it was a thin wall.
The main street of the town was wide and I headed down it. Wilfred led my men at arms down the smaller side streets. From the walls of the castle Sir Hugh’s archers directed their missiles at the fleeing Scots. The townsfolk who had had to endure the privations of the Scots joined in and they burst from their homes to fall upon the hapless Scots. The handful of knights knew that they could not outrun us and wished to avoid an arrow which did not discriminate between lord and peasant and towns people anxious for revenge. As we raised our weapons to slay them they yielded.
By the time we neared the bridge only Samuel and Ralph remained at my side. We reined our exhausted horses in and surveyed the bridge. The accuracy of the defender’s bows could be clearly seen in the swathe of bodies clustered before and on the bridge. On the hill opposite I saw the Scottish camp and Balliol and the majority of his knights. I could not see Sir Harold for there was no road from the north save the one we had taken. I took off my helmet and looked up at the two towers which rose from the walls. I spied Sir Hugh. He raised his hand and shouted, “I knew you would be here my lord.”
I nodded, “And all is well within?”
“We were prepared.”
“Good.” We turned our horses and, as the sun began to set we headed towards the town gate. The first part of my plan had succeeded. Now we had to force the Scots to head back to Scotland. I was not certain that we had enough men left to defeat them in a pitched battle. We had killed the common men but not their knights. The bulk of them and their mounted men at arms remained at large on the other side of the river.
It was dark by the time we had collected all the Scottish dead and made a pyre of them and their siege engines. The wind was from the west and the fire, to the north of the castle, was one of burning wood and flesh. The smell was carried to the Scottish camp. My archers and men at arms used the Scottish camp. We were housed in the castle. The five knights who had surrendered were secured and we ate with Sir Hugh and his wife. We ate the animals the Scots had captured and butchered. When this was over there would be reparations and those who had lost would be compensated.
Sir Hugh told us what had happened. “We had warning of their attack and, when they tried to cross the bridge our archers killed so many of their horses that they abandoned that attempt and instead built rafts to ferry their men across the river. We could do little about that but it meant their horsemen could not do as, I think, they had planned and ravage the valley. The attack on the walls began this morning. They spent the first day sending men across the river. How did the battle at Gretna go?”
I smiled, “We won. Thanks in no small part to our sons who led a charge to rout the enemy. They truly won their spurs.”
Sir Hugh looked proudly at his son. His wife, Lady Anne, looked less happy. She was thinking of the word ‘charge’ and all that it implied. Sir Hugh said, “And what now?”
“Sir John has the knights and men of Durham blocking the road west. He will wait to hear our horns sound three times and then he will attack.” I drank some of the ale which was before me. “Are the rafts the Scots used still in the river?”
“We had no means to destroy them so I am guessing that they are.”
I smiled. “Then we use our enemies’ own weapon against them. They will have men watching the bridge. They will expect an attack there. We send our archers across the river on rafts first and then the rest of our men. We attack through the woods and not the road. I will have the archers cross before dawn.”
“Will they not be tired lord?”
Sir Philip answered for me, “Sir Hugh we have been the passengers in this campaign thus far. We have watched Earl William, his knights and his men at arms do all the fighting and taking all of the risks. The archers are desperate to show that they too have the strength to fight the Scots.” He stood. “I will go and begin.”
Sir Hugh said, “And I will fight alongside my son, the lion of the north. Perhaps he can teach this old dog some new tricks.”
Our squires took our weapons and mail. Swords were sharpened and mail was cleaned. They would have no horses to tend and they were eager for the battle. Gretna had whetted their appetite. They had fought their foes and won. The dead they had buried in the Scottish church by the river only steeled their resolve to do well.
I went with my knights to the chapel. All of us would pray to God that we would emerge victorious and that we would lose no more men. All men prayed before a battle. It was in the nature of war but praying in a house of God seemed to improve our chances of victory.
I slept well. I was in a bed! Ralph woke me before dawn so that I could dress and go to the river to see my archers slip across on the rafts. Aiden and Masood had gone first. They were deadly with their knives. The Scottish sentries would be silenced. After watching them slip across the river on the three Scottish rafts I returned to the middle ward. Wilfred and his men were all ready to go to the outer ward where they would leave by the sally port and try to force the bridge. Ralph had my shield and my helmet. My knights and the men at arms I would lead were waiting. Leaving by the town gate we went around the castle to the rafts. The sun would be breaking soon but the huge bulk of the castle would delay the lightening of the sky. That suited us. We would be able to slip up through the undergrowth and attack the Scottish camp. Ralph had the horn. He would be at my side until I gave him the order to sound the horn.
We moved up through trees. The first Scot we found was close to a tree. His throat had been cut. He must have been a sentry and in the process of making water for the ground was wet. As we moved up the slope we saw more dead Scots. I knew that our luck could not hold and I was grateful that there was a line of archers before us. They would be at the edge of the trees and their bows would have the camp covered. I heard a shout from before us.
“Ralph, sound the horn three times.” The night was shattered by the three strident notes. I drew my sword and swung my shield from around my back. I moved up the slope and saw the archers with drawn bows. Even as I approached they released and I heard the cries from their victims. To the west I heard a horn sound three times. It was Sir John. He had heard the signal and was preparing to charge. This was the moment for the knight
s of Durham to atone for the cowardice of a handful of knights.
The camp was in a state of confusion. Horns sounded all around them and arrows were coming from the woods. Wilfred would be leading my men at arms across the bridge. The Scots would be attacked on three sides. This would be a test of Lord Balliol and his strategy. With Samuel and Ralph by my side we burst into the camp. They were awake but not ready for war. Few had armour and men were scrambling around for weapons. I blocked a blow from a pole axe as I swept my sword sideways into a warrior who was trying to spear my son. This was an unknown country for the two young knights. This was not a tourney. This was a brutal battle where anything was allowed. You needed the reactions of a fox and the determination and guile of a wolf.
I saw a Scottish knight. He was mailed and ready for war. He ran towards me wielding a war axe. I balanced myself and made certain that my shield was angled so that anything less than a horizontal strike would slide down it. I held my sword behind me. It would disguise my intention. I noticed that he was bigger than I was. Unless he kept his feet wide then a swinging blow with an axe could unbalance him. Around me I heard the clash of metal on metal and the screams and cries as men died. Even as I approached the knight I saw an arrow fly from behind me and impale the Scot who was rushing to the knight’s aid.
The Scottish knight saw the flight of the arrow and he rushed to close with me before a second one hit him. He swung too early. I was able to shift my weight and move inside the strike. It was the haft which hit my shield and not the edged blade of the weapon. I lunged with my sword not at his middle, his shield protected that, but his thigh. My sword came away bloody and as he cursed I stepped back and ducked as the axe swung over my head. The knight was angry and that is never the best way to fight.