The Lion Rampant (29 page)

They were still echoing when the first elements of the English horse plunged out of the trees, chasing panicked Welshmen out of the dim and into the sunlight. Blinded by the transition, horses and riders balked and wavered, but the next wave was thundering on after them and horses collided, screaming and snapping.

Forced forwards, eyes scarred by light, the leading horses rode up to the ranks of spearmen at no better than a trot, with half of them trying to veer right and left, banging shoulder to shoulder with others. The ones at the fringes discovered the Scots archers on the flanks of the spearwall and the first to find them was Gloucester.

An arrow hit him on the placket, a reeling clang on his breastbone that drove the wind from him, made him jerk the rein and tear his horse’s head back. Half-blind, half-mad and totally confused, the animal veered sideways and ran on to a knot of sharp points and glaive blades, worked by furious-elbowed men with screaming mouths and desperate eyes.

The horse’s shriek was even louder and the young Earl felt it go, felt the sickening plunge of dying animal and tried to kick free. He only half succeeded – the horse fell and rolled, kicking and shrieking, tangling itself in the long, golden tippets trailing from its rider’s helm.

Gloucester rolled free – was snatched up short, as if grabbed by his hair, and collapsed back choking as the helmet thongs dug under his chin. Frantically, howling with frustration and anguish, he wrenched at the great helm, as if the padded gryphon was a living beast which had seized him in its claws.

He saw the adder-tongue flick of spears kill the horse, saw the horror of how close he was to the spear ranks: the legs like a tangled copse; mailled braies, leather shoes, bare horny feet and filthy calves. Scuttling from the dark, fetid depths of them came the dirk men on all fours, moving like mad-grinning spiders to finish him.

He bellowed and tugged, but the helm stayed on and the treacherous tippets chained him to the dead horse; he fumbled frantically for his sword.

Thweng saw it in the instant he broke from cover, saw the dead horse, the shackle of tippets, the frantic struggles of the man, the dark vengeance scrambling out towards him. He bawled at Badenoch and waved his sword in case he could not be heard and plunged forward into the haze of dust and grass motes chewed up from the dry earth by hundreds of hooves.

The darting little figures scampered back under the protective hedge of spears, which started to stab at this new warhorse. Thweng let Garm rear and strike, the neck stretching like a snake as he snapped and squealed; Sir Marmaduke felt the impact of the spears on the padded barding and saw the straw wisp out from the ruin of it, then he threw his lance into the grimace of faces and hauled out his sword.

He slashed once, twice, and the Earl staggered as the tippets parted and freed him. Then, as Badenoch and others rode forward, pressing and cavorting against the wicked hedge which stabbed and slashed at them, Thweng flung one leg over the front cantle of the saddle and slid to the ground, feeling the jolt on his knees. Too old for this, he thought …

He cut backwards and forward with his sword, keeping the spears away from him – though one clattered and skidded off his shield as he grabbed the Earl and flung him towards the plunging Garm who remained, obedient and blowing, near his master.

Dazed, fevered, frantic, the Earl knew what Thweng was doing and clambered up into the saddle, sobbing with relief. Thweng flung him the rein, slapped Garm on the neck and the pair of them were suddenly gone from him.

A figure launched from the undergrowth of the spearwall, naked dirk stabbing for Thweng’s helmet slit; he stepped into it, shouldered the man to the ground with the shield and cut the throat from him as easy as parting cheese rind. A hooked bill caught his surcote and tore it, pulling him further forward and off balance, so that he half fell at the feet of the Scots.

Another figure came at him and Thweng had time to see that he was bare-headed and part-bald so that the hair left to him stuck up in tufts like a moulting owl. The man collided with him, trying to wrestle him to the ground and thrust the narrow-bladed dirk inside the great helm, but Thweng got his shield in the way and heaved.

The man flew over Thweng, landing on the Earl’s dead horse with a thump that drove the air out of both of them with a great farting groan; before he could recover one of the Shadows stabbed him repeatedly with his lance until it stuck and he had to let it go.

Thweng staggered back from the spearwall just as Badenoch forced himself between them, throwing his lance. He would, Thweng was sure, have hauled off his helm and hurled that, too, save that arrows were flicking at him.

Then he heard a horn blast; Hereford had recovered himself and was ordering the Van to break off the attack. Sir Marmaduke trudged away, seemingly contemptuous of the enemy at his back but, in reality, too staggeringly weary to care. He saw Badenoch canter up, salute with his sword and then remain a little way away as a polite escort; Thweng was grateful and made a vow to thank the little Scots lord personally.

A little way into the forest he saw two knots of sweating knights, half dragging, half carrying the bodies of Henry de Bohun and his squire and he wondered how many lives had been lost to achieve that. Yet he knew it was something rescued from the stunning disaster of a knight’s death. It was an almost unheard-of event, even in war, for a knight of such high degree to be slain.

The stun of it was already being felt, Thweng thought, seeing the trembling horses and the sweat-soaked, disbelieving riders trail back through the trees, chased by the flickering shadows and the arrows and the jeers of the men they had failed to best.

Sitting slumped on his expensive horse, streaming with tears and sweat, was the black misery of the Earl of Hereford watching his nephew’s corpse bob past him, one bloody hand flapping as if waving a last farewell.

ISABEL

Liberation: from
liber
, meaning free. Little Constance told me that, come to comb and dye my hair, enjoying it because she is not allowed to perform such an act on herself. The crowds in Berwick town roll like waves, fleeing the armies of both sides, seeking sanctuary here and finding madness. There is drink and dancing, Constance tells me, half excited, half fearful, but that does not surprise me – half will fall on their knees to worship God, the rest will worship, for as long as they can, their own bodies. Constance tells me that one of her own, a nun who has decided to call herself Giles in honour of the saint, has demanded to be immured. She had first demanded to replace me in my cage on the wall until she discovered that I did not live in it all the while, but had a Hog Tower room with a privy pot, a decent cot and a fire in winter. Too soft, she said.

I told Constance that Sister Giles was welcome to my cage, as I shall be leaving it soon enough. God wills it.

The sky is thick and umber, heavy with that thunder that brings no rain, only oppressive heat – there has been no rain for weeks.

CHAPTER TEN

Bannockburn

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

There had been no rain for weeks, so six hundred cantering hooves slashed up the sere grass and dirt of the carse into a haze that filtered the sun to a gold coin. The Carse was supposed to be boggy, cut about by vicious little streams and hard going for horses, but Sir Robert Clifford saw only a trickle of water in the bottom of steep-sided, bush-choked ditches.

‘Still a barrier, my lord,’ William Deyncourt noted, indicating the dark-streaked horses, foamed at the neck where the reins champed the sweat into a lather; they’d had to work hard to cross the dry streams.

‘Yet the undergrowth is green enough,’ Sir Thomas Gray added, ‘which means it is watered regularly.’

Beaumont, grimming along in a world of reeling heat, wished he had the energy to argue, to growl at Deyncourt that it was only a barrier if men defended the opposite side of it, to spit at Gray that none here were bloody churl farmers and who cared where a bush got water? But Clifford nodded as if he understood what Gray had meant, which only flared Beaumont the more.

Too clever by half, he thought hotly. He did not like Deyncourt much, the more so because he was in Gray’s retinue. He liked Gray even less and knew he should not harbour the feeling, which made matters worse still. Sir Thomas Gray had almost been killed saving him at the last siege of Stirling – Christ’s Bones, a decade ago now.

The memory of that great hook, swinging down to try and grab the siege tower, made him whimper even now. It had missed its target and snagged him like a fish, catching in his surcote – the thought that it might have been his flesh still made his hole pucker.

Like a giant hand it had lifted him up and swung him, arms and legs flailing like a pathetic insect, to batter into the walls – but Gray had leaped forward, risking arrows and showers of stones to grab and hack the hook out of the surcote. Just then a springald bolt had taken Gray in the helmet, straight through it and into his face, so that they’d needed smithing tools to cut him free.

Guiltily, Beaumont glanced at Gray now, seeing the great scar like an accusing beacon that flushed more heat through him, composed of shame and gratitude. Gray should have died, Beaumont thought. He had lain under a pile of dead until Beaumont had come to his senses and gone back with men to look for him, expecting a corpse and finding what he thought was one; it was only when they paraded him back, all solemn and sorrowful for burial, that he had groaned and moved, shocking everyone – especially those who had tugged and heaved at the helm and then given up because it was skewered fast to his head.

He should have died anyway, Beaumont thought, from a horror wound like that – but he had recovered and Beaumont knew he should have been pleased for his saviour, should be sending prayers to God to preserve the life of this man who had preserved his.

Yet that face only reminded Beaumont of his bowel-loosening fear on that day, his utter helplessness and what he had babblingly offered to God for deliverance, which no man nor saint could possibly have fulfilled.

He wanted this business done with, so that he could put Gray behind him and if it meant riding across this strange terrain into the gates of Hell itself, he would spur on.

The Carse was strange, no doubt of it. They had all been told how treacherous it was, a sward that looked firm yet was a soft and sinking bog. Not now. Not after weeks of summer sun. Now it was like fresh bread, slightly spongy and new-toasted so that it crumbled; Clifford voiced this and his
mesnie
laughed dutifully, but they were nervous. They had started out slightly later than the Van, knew nothing of what was happening in the New Park away to their left and Clifford was apprehensive. The distant sound of cheers and shouting did not help; who was celebrating and why?

Yet, if he was to achieve his king’s orders and ride round to cut off the retreat of the Scots, he needed speed. That was why he had three hundred mounted knights and men-at-arms, all flogging expensive warhorses in the heat to come up on St Ninian’s little chapel; the nearest foot were miles away, slogging desperately up with the baggage.

Clifford eyed the wood to his left, which had some outlandish name, as did the plain they rode across; they were coming up on another steep-sided stream and Clifford slowed to a walk, Gray and Beaumont coming up alongside.

‘The Pelstream, my lord,’ Gray offered. ‘Tidal, like all the rest. We are leaving the Carse of Balqhuiderock and heading out into the Dryfield. As the name suggests, it is firm ground even in bad weather.’

No one could tell the difference; the plain looked exactly the same, though Clifford beamed, the beads forming on his fleshy nose and pouched cheeks.

‘Good ground for horse,’ he exclaimed cheerfully. ‘The King will be pleased – this is where the army wants to be, my lords.’

Gray looked dubiously at the constrictions of wood and stream and mentioned them; he and Clifford fell to arguing the merits of the place as a ‘good field’.

‘God-cursed place,’ Beaumont growled into the middle of their polite debate, wiping his face with a corner of his surcote. ‘What’s that there?’

He pointed one mittened fist and everyone followed it, some rising in the stirrups to try and see better.

It was a line, a scar on the landscape, seeming to undulate and sparkle. Gray laughed, which made Beaumont’s scowl all the darker.

‘That, my lord,’ Gray said, almost joyously, ‘is the enemy.’

Bruce had blinked and shaken himself out of the daze, ruthlessly forcing it away along with the memory of that fury, that great, crunching crack as he brought the axe down – hard enough to snap the shaft, by God’s Wounds. His hand and arm hurt, wrenched with the power of the blow.

Like a blown egg, he recalled with a shudder. On the back of the boy’s head as he rode away … he quelled that, too, stuffing it in the choked chest along with all the other sins.

The irony was not lost on him as he rode into an avenue of cheers and furious joy from those who had heard that the English Van had been repulsed, that a proud English champion lay dead like an offering, slain in single combat by their hero king. A good start, for all the sin in it, Bruce thought, and tried not to concern himself with the Curse of Malachy.

Yet it was lurking there, made itself plain when he rode up to Randolph’s thousands and found no Earl of Moray, only Duncan Kirkpatrick of Torthorwald, anxious and stumping up and down in front of the serried ranks. At a glance, Bruce saw that the best of the Battle was gone; only the ill-armed were here, stripped down to a shift that barely covered their decency and leaning carelessly on their tall shafts; some had only shaved and fire-hardened points, some had strange hand-scythes and long shafts with other crude blades lashed to them, but none was a proper spear or bill.

I shall defend myself with the longest stick I have, Bruce thought.