The Lion Rampant (38 page)

Hal was no better, for he could hear the horns and had seen men clattering off, late to muster and clutching their gear, hopping with one shoe on. He wanted so badly to be with them that it was a bone ache, though not as deep as the one which had replaced Sim in his heart. Added to that was the dull fire in his wounded arm, while his face, still splendidly blue and yellow, thumped like a bad tooth.

The guard stopped the men coming closer, but they stood in a nervous huddle, with one thrust out in front and clearly expected to speak for them all; Sir John waved them forward.

‘Well?’

The spokesman was an average man in all but forearms, which came from working the handquern. Hal had seen him endlessly turning it to grind what poor grain folk brought to him to be milled, taking a tithe of it for himself as payment.

‘Beggin’ the blessings of your lordship,’ the man began, twisting his felted cap in his hands and then indicating the men behind him with a nervous flap of one hand. ‘I have been asked to speak to your lordship on a matter.’

‘Name?’ demanded Sir John. ‘Who are you, man?’

‘Begging yer blessing, sir, John of Noddsdale, sir. Miller to Sir Robert Boyd, God bless and keep him.’

Hal saw Sir John close his eyes briefly and sympathized, for John the Miller of Noddsdale had a voice like the whine of a stonemason’s saw and was, for all his nervousness, clearly impressed at having been picked from the pack to speak for them. It was not, Hal thought wryly, because he had the finest voice, nor because he was most respected, but the opposite; he would not be sadly missed if Sir John decided to hang him out of hand.

The gist of it was clear enough. The pack behind whining John were all in this camp at the behest of some lord now setting himself to battle. They had been left out of matters and did not care for it much.

‘We wish tae fight, Sir John,’ the miller finished. ‘Yet we are held here by yer wish.’

‘The King’s wish,’ Sir John answered flatly. ‘If you were proper called-out men you would come with an iron hat, a coat of plates or a gambeson, a long spear and another blade. Have you such?’

The men shifted and shuffled. They had seen others of their rank and station handed iron hats and spears, but there had not been enough for everyone and they had been given to ones who had been here for some time and seen at least a measure of training in their use. These were the come-lately men and they knew it. Someone called out that they had made spears and waved a shaft with a lashed-on hand-scythe. Hal smothered a smile.

‘There you have yer answer,’ Sir John growled dismissively. ‘A heuch on a pole, carried by an unarmoured, bareheaded chiel of no training and less account is of no use to the King.’

It was harshly said, from the lips of a man crushed under the loss of his son that very morning, killed at Cambuskenneth by a petulant swipe from the Earl of Atholl. These folk did not know that, Hal saw, or care. Faces darkened.

‘Others are going, slipping away,’ John of Noddsdale blurted out daringly. ‘Chiels from beyond the Mounth. Women amang them.’

Now Hal grasped it; the women and older bairns, men too old to fight and those who had contrived to avoid it, were sneaking out, hunkering down at the fringes to wait and watch for a chance to plunder the dead, and these men wanted a share of it. Fighting was not in it at all and they saw the sneer on Hal’s face when he stood up; there were some brief, defiant glances, but all of them lowered their heads in the end and shuffled, shamed.

Yet Hal could see the beast of it almost unleashed. The camp was full of men and women like this, anxious for their loved ones already fighting, struggling with hunger and thirst and fearful of the outcome. They would want something plucked from it, no matter who won, and if thwarted would cause more trouble than could be controlled.

If they could not be prevented, then they must be led.

The idea soared in him and he turned to Sir John Airth, who saw something of it in Hal’s eyes. Truthfully, Sir John was glad the Herdmanston lord was here, for the loss of his son had stripped the last fire from him. He had known he was too old for this even before arriving, but had come, bolstered by the determined joy of William to be here, on this momentous day. Now William was laid out, cold and stiff, in the dead room of Cambuskenneth Priory and all the determined joy in the world had dissipated for Sir John Airth.

‘With your lordship’s permission,’ Hal began and Sir John waved one hand. So Hal turned to the men and laid it out for them, all the glory and riches of it, so that their eyes gleamed and they were his men before he had stopped speaking.

At the end of it, when they were scattering eagerly through the camp to fire others to the work, Sir John eyed Hal with a jaundiced look.

‘You can borrow William’s big stot,’ he said. ‘His name is Cornix, a good, well-trained beast. And my boy’s armour will fit you better than me and you can carry the weight at least.’

Hal began stammering his thanks, but Sir John waved them away, frowning.

‘It is a dangerous stratagem you have began,’ he growled. ‘For even if the enemy are fooled by it, your own king may not thank you.’

‘Victory forgives all sins,’ Hal answered and turned away, hoping it was true. Victory was essential, not just for king, not only for kingdom.

For Isabel.

ISABEL

Constance came to me and we sewed, sitting like peaceful sisters together in the cage. It was a defiance for her, placing herself in full view of the sweating gawpers and hecklers in the bailey and, because she was a nun, placing God with us both. I was grateful, but aware of feverishness in the air that had nothing to do with the heat, a tremble that made me slip and stick the needle in my finger. Constance saw it and gave a little cry, her hand to her mouth, but moved to draw it out, slow and careful as she could so that the bone needle would not break. I have enough bone in my finger, I said when it came free, and we laughed. Then she took some stale bread and wrapped it round the dark welling of blood. Perhaps you will fall asleep, like the princess in the tale, she whispered daringly, to be woken by a lover’s kiss in your imprisoning tower. I told her the truth of that story – it was not a princess, but the daughter of a merchant, whose maid slipped and stabbed her with the pin of a golden brooch, so that she fell in a faint. The furious father had the maid put to death and her blood used to water his garden – whereupon the roses grew fast and equally furious, pulling down the merchant’s house in only three days and killing everyone in it save the sleeping daughter. She woke on the fourth day and her lover found her wandering the wilding garden, her wits vanished entire. When I had finished, Constance sat, stunned and silent, and I was sorry for having torn the happy child’s tale away from her. I tried to go back to sewing but the blood had seeped through the bread and, when I peeled it off, a drop still welled, bright as a berry, dark as an omen.

Somewhere men were dying.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Bannockburn

Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314

He knew battles, did Marmaduke Thweng, knew them as a shepherd understands sheep or a wee priest how to handle hecklers in a sermon. This one, he saw as he rode up in the furious wake of Gloucester, was already spoiled and rotting.

‘The enemy, my lord,’ Gloucester bawled out to a blinking, confused Hereford. ‘We must attack at once.’

Hereford glanced to where the dark line scarred ever closer, resolving in the glare of a full sun into a wicked wink of sharp points and glowing men, moving steadily under a flutter of bright banners. The St Andrew’s cross on blue, the chevrons of Carrick. The brother Bruce, Hereford thought, with a deal of men …

‘We must attack.’

Hereford turned into the full of Gloucester’s face. No helm, he saw – nor surcote either. Fool comes charging up, half-dressed and bawling like some green squab of a squire …

‘We must withdraw, sirrah,’ he bawled back. ‘Make way for the foot … the archers.’

‘God’s Bones, it is too late for that,’ Gloucester yelled, and then turned to the milling confusion of knights. ‘Form,
gentilhommes
, form on me.’

Hereford’s roar was incoherent and loud enough to make everyone pause. Red-faced and driven long past the politic, he slammed a mailed fist on the front of his saddle, so that his mount shifted and protested.

‘Bigod, de Clare, I am Constable of England. I command here, not you. Do as you are bid, sirrah.’

Thweng arrived in time to see Gloucester rise up in his stirrups, the fewtered lance squivering like a tree in a gale and his face dark and flushed.

‘Be damned to you. I command here, by order of the King, and while you argue, de Bohun, the enemy laugh their way to a slaughter and king’s carp of treachery. Well, I will not wait for defeat and dishonour.’

He savaged the horse’s head round so that it squealed and thundered off, trailed by Badlesmere and others of his
mesnie
. Payn Tiptoft looked at Hereford and then at the disappearing back of Gloucester; when he had no guidance from the former, he flung up his shielded hand in exasperation and spurred away. With a sharp bark from under his full helm, de Maulay, the King’s steward, announced that he had joined the Van to fight, not run, and thundered after, trailing more men with him.

Badenoch and his kinsman, the Comyn of Kylbryde, looked pointedly at Thweng, who gave Hereford a pouch-eyed mourn of stare, and then put his helm over his head, as clear a signal as any shout. With a whoop, Badenoch and his kinsman thundered off, hauling all the other Knights of the Shadow after them and, a reluctant last, Sir Marmaduke.

Hereford, his temples thundering, watched them ribbon their way obliquely across to the dark line of Edward Bruce’s Battle and felt the tic kick under his eye as he saw another line, this one to the left of the Bruce brother and more distant. It had the blazing banner of the lion rampant marking where Bruce himself marched. Beyond that, further to the left of it, was another growing line, the banners in it proclaiming a third command.

The Earl of Moray, Hereford thought, coming up on his master’s left. The Scots were in an echelon of Battles, as steady ranked as any Macedonians of Alexander, and Hereford, with a sickening lurch, knew that Gloucester was right – there was no time left. No time at all.

Hew stumbled and fell to his knees, had curses and kicks for it as the ranked men baulked and tried to get round or walk over him. A hand took him by the collar and hauled him up as he struggled like a beetle in the forest of legs and feet.

He tried to mutter thanks, but the sweating mass was an animal that did not care, simply hammered him in the back with a curse and a call to keep moving.

He kept moving, spearless, the axe in one hand, the dirk in his belt and in his free hand a fist of the dirt and grass he had grabbed when he fell. Bad soil for digging, Hew thought. Not stable. Looks fine now, but it will be as dangerous as scree when it rains here; the ground will seep water. If you came here after rain, he thought, and thumb-tested the ground as was proper, you would lose most of the digit up to the first joint.

Cannot dig a ditch in such, he thought, half falling again, the motes and dust swirling with the grunt and clack and clatter of the sweating press. You need no more wet in the ground than a thumbnail-length entry for a good ditch. Incline the walls away, to prevent fall-ins. Most folk did not know that a square ell of soil weighs as much as a full-armoured knight on his big stot and if that falls on you, you are in the grave, certes.

He heard the men next to him shout out and grunt, saw hands flex and heard the great bawling roar that was Edward Bruce, the King’s brother himself, standing in their sweating, stinking midst and bellowing for them to keep going, that it was only a wee man on a big horse.

A square ell of soil, Hew thought, moving fast on four legs and about to fall on someone …

There was a noise like a clatter of cauldrons on a stone path and the great block Hew was in trembled like a fly-bitten horse’s haunch; men rippled away from the front. Someone shrieked, high and loud, and voices called out, but they kept moving, forcing Hew onward.

You should properly shore up steep sides – wood if it is no more than a ditch, but good stone cladding if it is a decent, perjink moat …

He stepped on something that moved and groaned, fell forward with an apology as he tried to skip round it, appalled that he had put his foot on a wounded man.

‘Kill him, man,’ someone growled, forcing past him and Hew saw the groaning figure was a knight, helmed and mailled and lying on his shield. There was blood on his metal links and he had no surcote. Hew started to try and turn him, to see the device on the shield – there was a lot of expensive war gear on this one for him to be a simple man-at-arms – but feet trampled and baulked and cursed him.

‘He has no mark, is of no account. Kill him and be done with it,’ the voice savaged at him and Hew looked up, blinking into the great, broad, red face, sweat-gleamed and truculent as a thwarted boar. He saw the surcote beneath it, stained and torn but blazing with the device of Edward Bruce.

With a last, annoyed snort, the great lord moved on and Hew, swallowing, took his dirk and began to prise open the downed man’s fancy new visor. It took some time and he gave a sharp cry when it finally popped up to reveal the half-dazed, rolling-eyed face beneath. A young face, grimaced with pain and with blood on his teeth.

‘Yield …’ said the man, but Hew the Delver had been given his orders by the Earl of Carrick, who was James to Jesus as far as the ditcher was concerned. He hauled out his axe and blessed the man with the blade of it – the sign of the cross, writ bloody in a blinding stroke across the eyes and then one which split the face from brow to nose.

He looked up, wiping the sweat and a splash of blood from himself, saw the retreating backs of the block he had lately been in, saw it stop. More men came trotting up, a loose leaping of axe and dirk men, like a fringed hem to Edward Bruce’s battle.