Lion at Bay (38 page)

‘No raggy chiel, but Sir John Lauder of the Bass,’ said Sim Craw and proceeded to put them right on the matter while Hal lay back and thought on the likes of Sir John Lauder of the Bass, the least scion of the Lauders who held Bass Rock from Patrick of Dunbar.

Sir John had a wee manor at Whitekirke, a half-stone affair where his ‘baists’ were quartered below and his family above, a holding barely raised above the level of a villein, though he was a
nobile
.

Yet he had sacrificed even this for the Bruce, slaughtering his beasts, burning his crops and hall, sending his family off to their kin and marching to Methven with the raggles of his father’s armour and his grandda’s sword.

He had no servants and certainly no warhorse – the peck of oats was for himself and the only food, mixed with a little water, he would eat unless he could beg better without losing the last ragged cloak of his dignity.

In the morning – if there was to be a fight at all – he would take station with a solid square of pikes, shoulder to shoulder with barefoot sokemen and others of lesser rank, closing files and keeping the unwieldy phalanx together until they won or died.

Beside him somewhere would be young Jamie Douglas, a powerful
nobile
of Scotland in his own right, yet no richer now than Lauder of the Bass because the English sat in his castle and took rent from his lands.

Hal thought of Herdmanston under a blue sky, blue as the paint they used on the Virgin’s mantle on a church wall, with the good brown earth rolling beneath it and himself between. He put himself in the tower that was his own, with a great feeling that threatened to burst his chest. But for all he tried, squeezing his eyelids tight shut, he could not rid himself of the last rotten-tooth black vision of its stones and the crow-feather smoke staining the sky like a thundercloud.

Gone and gone, like the wee house of Lauder of the Bass by now. All gone, save for the great feeling in his chest and the reason for that lay in the gathered dark, tending to a queen. He got up then, urgent with the need to see her, hold her.

He found her spreading bracken in a bower of bent hawthorn at the back of the proud tents and she straightened from the task as he approached; he saw the weariness in her.

‘How is Her Grace?’ he asked and had a Look for it, even as he drew her into the cage of his arms.

‘Stoic,’ Isabel told him, muffled against his chest, then surfaced for breath.

‘Behold, a wee love nest.’

‘Brawlie,’ he admired, trying to keep the smirk from his face and failing. She struck him lightly on the chest.

‘Less to do with your voracious appetite than not wanting to spend another minute in that wee cloister o’ weemin,’ she informed him and he nodded, sinking on to the soft bracken and feeling her stretch out the length of him.

‘Bad is it?’

‘Enough to make me consider passing time in the company of any of the men round a fire,’ she snorted and he laughed.

‘Best not, love,’ he advised. ‘I would then spend the evening fighting them all, one by one.’

‘Ah, gallant knight,’ she replied in a strained falsetto. ‘Hold me not so tight, you are crushing the rose blossom of me.’

‘There will be a few round those fires who would desire to nip your rosy buds,’ Hal answered wryly. ‘Little they know of the thorns they risk.’

‘I need all my thorns for the Queen and her women, so it is hard to put them away easily at the end of day.’

‘You need them still?’

Isabel made a ‘tsschk’ of annoyance.

‘The Queen is stoic, as I say. Like some auld beldame faced with fire, flood and famine, for all she is a girl yet. She does not care for it much, but she will dutifully follow her man, to Hell if that is where he is headed. I am sure she believes it lies beyond the next hill.’

‘The King’s sister is not so bad – Lady Mary is of an age not to have her head turned by events. It is the others,’ she went on sourly. ‘Good dames o’ the court whom I have to remind that I am a countess, even if they sneer at the title these days. An’ Marjorie …’

She broke off to shake a sorrowful head.

‘She is a recent elevation to princess, yet still enough of a bairn to pout about the lack of ermine and pearls, or warm hall being feted by all the young men.’

‘Which she would be,’ Hal noted, knowing the attraction rank added to a woman, ‘for all her chin.’

They grinned at each other, sharing the sly spite on the chin of Bruce’s daughter, a heavy inheritance for such a flower. ‘You have an interest there?’ Isabel demanded archly. ‘If you can suffer the chin you will have a princely reward.’

‘And leave you to pine in some hawthorn arbour?’ he countered. ‘Alone and weeping?’

‘I am told that has attractions for some.’

‘Ach weel – pray for luck that kills me then. Men love to comfort a mourning lover.’

The game ended with her sudden, fierce clutch.

‘Weesht on that,’ she said, her eyes big and round. ‘I am not so stoic a matron that I can listen to that sort of talk.’

‘Swef, swef,’ he soothed. ‘Lamb. Shall I comfort you with the poetry of the Court of Love? Demand you turn the moon of your countenance on the misery of my night?’

‘God forbid,’ she answered and lay back, suddenly loose and lush. ‘I would concentrate on unlacing instead.’

He began, then paused.

‘The King will send his queen away in the morn, for safety,’ he said into the moonlit pools glowing in her face. ‘This may be the last time we see each other for some time.’

‘I know it,’ she said and buried her face in the curve of his neck and shoulder – then dropped back on to the bracken.

‘Are you having trouble with the knots?’ she demanded. ‘I have dirk if ye need to cut them.’

Afterwards, lying in the strewn bracken bed, he listened to the soft laughter and the sudden chords as Humfy Johnnie struck up a harp tune, his crooked back as bent as his gaping grin.

There was still the wild, strange feeling in Hal as he listened to her breathe softly beside him and, when he fell asleep, he dreamed that the blue sky and the brown earth were tilting him away from her altogether.

He woke in the dark, afraid.

Methven

Translation of the Relics of St Margaret, June, 1306

In the lush of morning, the summer lay on the ground, delicate and soft as a cat’s paw. The sun drifted lazily in a sky like deep water, soaking the spread of fields round Methven so that it seemed to Hal that the land lost the pinched skin of itself, softening and rolling under the hooves of the horses. Larks sang, hovering.

They were coming round in a wide sweep, out north and west from the raggle of poverty that was Methven vill, swinging round in a forage that had found nothing but horse fodder and beans.

Half the army, Hal knew, was trying to glean something from the empty basket of this place. He was glad that the household was to be packed up and sent north with two of the Bruce brothers, for it meant Isabel might get a decent meal. He would miss the music of her, all the same.

Sore Davey, scouting ahead, came back at a fast lick, flinging one hand back behind him as he gasped up.

‘Men,’ he said and, by the time Hal had established where, how many and whether they were on foot or horsed, the rest of the riders had tightened their straps and loosened their weapons.

A column of foot, three wide and deep enough to contain a good hundred, even allowing for Sore Davey’s poor tallying and seeing double, was moving at a steady pace up over the fields, having come out of a copse at one side.

Such a column moving without straggling or stravaigin’ was certainly not Scots, for none of them were this far out on foot and none were as disciplined on a march. They were no foragers either, who would be in handfuls like thrown gravel, just strong enough to overcome a few peasants and steal their livelihood.

‘English,’ savoured Chirnside, ‘plootering aboot the countryside spierin’ out chickens.’

In threes, neat as a hem? Hal voiced the doubt aloud and those with heads agreed, nodding soberly. Still – there was nothing to be done with his twenty riders but take a look, so they rode forward, steady and careful, to where the column scarred across the green grain, cutting a careless swathe through it. Some snatched ears, even though it was unripe and had been left unburned because of it.

Lightly armoured, Hal saw, in leather and bits of maille with hardly a helmet between them and those no more than light leather caps. The one who led them, stepping out and pausing now and then to watch his men go past, was dark-haired and had a studded leather jack; all of them seemed to have short spears for throwing or stabbing and were bundled about with scrip and cloak and pack.

Then, sudden as a shock of iced water, Hal saw the black columns behind, first two, then four, then five, all footmen, moving in loose blocks. A swift tally gave him three, perhaps four hundred.

‘Christ betimes, they have broke the truce.’

It was a fact as harsh as a stab in the eye. The English had come out of Perth, hard and fast and Hal knew that he saw the foot only because he had already missed the horse, riding eagerly ahead.

He called Dog Boy, whey faced from his night with Jamie Douglas, yet grimly determined.

‘Ride to Bruce, hard as ye can,’ Hal said. ‘Charge into his fancy tentage if needs be but warn him that the English have broke the truce and the horse are upon him, wi’ the foot comin’ up hard.’

He did not add what he was doing, for he knew Bruce would work it out. The others had already done so, looked at the vanishing back of Dog Boy with envy while the warm summer’s morning turned cold as blade; yet their hands sweated on the shafts of the Jeddarts as they wheeled out like a flock of sparrows, into the view of the worming column.

Addaf saw the horsemen at once across the far side of the field and threw up a hand to bring his men to a halt; they stood in the sea of calf-height green stalks, watching the faint morning breeze ruffle it in slow ripples, like waves.

Light horse, Addaf saw without even narrowing his eyes much. Prickers, but Scotch ones and he had seen these kind before – more mounted foot than horsemen, though they could manage the latter at a pinch. Glancing quickly behind, he was pleased to see his men, quiet and calm in their ranks, standing hipshot and still as if paused on a pleasant stroll.

Good men, mostly with around twenty summers on them, a few older – and one, Hwyel, colt-young and eager. It struck him, suddenly and for no reason, that he was the oldest one and that none of them had been with him more than a five-year.

It would be the Scotch, he thought, bringing on such memories, for he had been leading men in the French wars for long enough and the last time he had been this far north had been the King’s campaign of’97 against Wallace. Christ – near ten years since, he realized.

Not one of the men he had been with then were around now and most of them were dead of sickness and disease, the others gone home. He alone had survived and the Welsh band who had fought for Edward then had become a company hired out to the highest bidder and he, though he hated to think of it, had become that most reviled of men, a contract captain.

Contracted, in this case, to de Valence, a retinue Addaf did not care to be in because he remembered de Valence riding down Welsh archers in that same campaign against Wallace. Drunk and quarrelsome Welsh, he admitted, but none that deserved death at the hands of English knights; King Edward had been fortunate that any of the Welsh archers had fought at all on the day and most had not out of spite, leaving most of the work to the Gascon crossbows.

That was when Addaf had seen Scots like this, whirling in and out on their little, fast-gaited horses, hauling proud knights out of their saddles with hooks, stabbing and slashing them as they scrabbled on the ground.

That was then and this was now; none of the ones he barked orders at cared who de Valence was, only that he paid on time and let them plunder. Obedient to Addaf’s instructions, the column turned smartly to the right, to become a loose-ranked block three-deep, facing the horsemen; there was a birdwing rustle as the bows came out of their bags.

‘Smart your sticks,’ Addaf called and his bowmen strung the weapons with swift, easy movements.

Hal led his riders out at a fast walk, all spread out to look more threatening towards the flanks of the column. His plan was to keep just beyond the hurling range of these spear throwers and harass them with shouts and waving, pinning them in place with the idea that, if they turned to move off, the riders would fall on them. He saw another fat column, coming to an uncertain halt to one side and tried to watch it as well as the one in front. Slow them all down, he thought. Give Bruce time to fight the English heavy horse.

The flicker in the middle of the three-deep column of spear throwers disturbed him a little, as did the determined, cool way it moved – unlike the second one, who were now waving spears like beetle-feelers and milling in an ungainly, uncertain mob.

Closer still and his unease turned to a deeper chill; not one of these little javelinmen had a shield. Not one … the cold plunge in his belly coincided with the pungent curse from Sim Craw.

‘Virgin’s erse-cheeks – they are Welsh bowmen.’

Bowmen. Welsh. The two words struck a gibbering panic into everyone and Hal had to fight himself for control. It wasn’t that they had better bows or more skill than the archers Hal knew from Selkirk and elsewhere – it was because the Welsh delivered death in steel sleet, all loosed together rather than the ragged shooting Hal was used to seeing, even from the vaunted Gascon crossbows.

It was a rain of arrows that swept men down like sudden storm did summer wheat, flattening them to ruined stooks.

‘Turn. Away,’ he yelled and took his own advice, hearing the giant barndoor creak of drawing strings, then the Devil’s-breath rush of feathers in flight.

Too late. Hal knew it even as he flogged the garron into a mad race for the far side of the field, half-stumbling through the fetlock-clinging barley. Too late. He heard the evil breath of it the way a night mouse hears the owl’s wing, an eyeblink before the talons close.