The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (52 page)

Robert slapped his thigh, bringing them to attention. “Tom, set your schiltrons below this kirk. Eddie and I will guard the approach up the Falkirk road.”

James waited to hear his name in the battle plan, but Robert
retired to the altar and knelt for prayer without even looking at him. Coldly
rebuffed, James dropped his head in defeat, burned by Edward’s infuriating
smirk. Robert was preparing a retreat by keeping his Southern men in the rear
to lead the escape west while Edward and Randolph fought a rear-guard action.
Despondent, James walked toward the door while searching for the words to
explain the shameful decision to his troops.

Robert, kneeling at the altar, asked, “Jamie, can your lads hold the
center?”

At the door, James turned, uncertain what he meant.

Robert arose from the kneeler. “You will command the third
division.”

Edward’s condescending grin gave way to a dropped jaw.
“Douglas has never led more than raiding party! You cannot place our fate in
the hands of—”

“Enough!” Robert shouted.

Having silenced his brother, the king walked to the map and
aimed his dagger at the spot called the Way, a drover’s path between the high
ground and the marshes along the Bannock stream. Looking at James pointedly, he
ordered, “Leave a gap between your schiltrons and the burn.” He drove the
cutting edge of his dagger into the ancient pew to demonstrate what he prayed
would be the result. “Just wide enough for the head of a snake to slither in.”

C
LIFFORD RODE AHEAD OF THE
lumbering English army to scout
the narrow cart track through the Torwood. He despised this damp, endless
forest and its threatening silence broken only by the occasional upshoot of
leaves or flap of wings. His entire career had been wasted putting down raids
in this wilderness; he had chased Douglas so many years that he could now feel
the scoundrel’s proximity in the prickliness of his skin. His repeated failures
to capture the felon had turned him into an object of derision in London. Had
he delivered up Douglas’s head, by now he would have been stationed in the
king’s court, perhaps even elevated to an estate. Instead, he was relegated to
these Marches for the rest of his days, denied even the privilege of a
knighthood.

A sharp crackling of branches chased the black grouse from
the treetops. He reined off the path and hid behind the brush. The dull sucking
of ironclad hooves against the mud became louder, and he drew his blade,
certain that Douglas was shadowing his advance. When the oncoming riders closed
within range, he cut across their approach. Gloucester and Cam Comyn reined up,
causing their spooked horses to whinny and rear to their hinds.

“Damn you, Clifford!”
Gloucester shouted, finally regaining control of his mount. He looked over to
see Clifford’s fingers quivering at his side. “What in Hell’s name is wrong
with you? Are you not well?”

Clifford could not steady
his hand sufficiently to sheath his blade. “I was well enough until you came up
on me like scofflaws!”

“Bohun requires your
presence.”

Clifford persisted in staring at his own traitorous fingers.

“Did you hear me? I said Bohun—”

“I am not a goddamned wet nurse!” Clifford spat to curse
Henry Bohun, the king’s hotfoot brother-in-law, a poseur who had never come
near even a tavern brawl, let alone a battle. He had wasted half his time on
this invasion attending to that coxcomb’s complaints. “He can find his own way,
by Christ!”

Gloucester despised Clifford, but he agreed with the
officer’s indictment of the stupefying manner in which this invasion was being
conducted. Bohun was merely the most recent addition to the bloated influx of
court dandies being brought north. Also in the slowly advancing retinue rode
the king’s new favourite, Hugh Despenser, a dolt whose ambitions were exceeded
only by his appetite. Although Despenser could not have been more different in
appearance and temperament from Gaveston, Caernervon had somehow become
convinced that the Gascon’s soul had returned to him in Despenser’s youthful
but dissolute frame. He searched the path up ahead. “Where is Bruce?”

Clifford squeezed his fist, finally regaining control of his
hand. “North of this bramble wood, by my surmise. I can smell the piss trail
from him wetting his pants with fright.”

“His bed-warmer Douglas will be with him,” Cam Comyn
reminded.

Clifford shielded his eyes from the first morning rays piercing the tall pines. He was determined to avoid battle until the entire army had mustered on the same field. The van marching up from Falkirk would reach the outskirts of Stirling within the hour, but its arrival would present him with a new difficulty. He was coordinating a procession, not an invasion. Caernervon alone traveled with a thirty baggage wagons, and Humphrey Bohun was so certain that Stirling Castle would be his new residence that he had commissioned a small navy to transport his furniture up the coast. Clifford had begged permission to divide the army and come at Stirling from three sides. Yet Caernervon, an aficionado of theatrics, insisted that the Scots be forced to witness his thirty thousand men marching together for dramatic effect. This narrow path through the Torwood required bringing the troops north in a single line, three abreast. The second division, escorting the king, would not arrive before nightfall.

Henry Bohun, bouncing in the saddle like a sack of apples, came galloping up with his splashy gaggle of thirty knights. Against orders, he and his band of ale-swilling blowhards had left the king behind and were now hurrying ahead, lusting for blood sport with their silk banners flapping. The portly Bohun lifted the visor of his shiny new bascinet and, unloosing his white whiskers that resembled tusks, advised Clifford, “If you don’t increase the pace, we will run out of daylight before we can scare off the Scots.”

Clifford felt his hand shaking again. “You and your tourney
poltroons will frighten them enough with those fox plumes flying from your
scalps. Perhaps you might make more noise to alert them.”

“The king wishes Stirling taken before dusk,” Bohun
insisted.

Clifford bristled at the man’s incessant name-dropping
regarding his private confidences with the king. “The infantry can cover barely
a league at three hours.”

“Then we shall ride on.”

“The Hell you will! I command this—”

Bohun ignored Clifford’s demand to wait for the rest of the army and instead drove deeper north into the Torwood with his thrill-seekers.

A
N HOUR LATER,
H
ENRY
B
OHUN
outraced his comrades to a
clearing at the northern edge of the Torwood. He rode out into a sun-drenched
meadow below Stirling Castle in the distance and found the Scots practicing
their battle maneuvers on the far side of the burn. He pranced his magnificent
steed to give the foot-bound bumpkins a fright.

Clifford, giving chase, galloped out from the tangle of
brush and saw to his dismay that the London popinjay was about to ruin his
careful plans for a coordinated surprise attack. “Bohun! Back, damn you!”

Bohun ignored the command and strutted closer to the burn.
On the far side of the stream, the astonished Scots stared wide-eyed at his
caparisoned warhorse. He spied a Scot officer on a palfrey riding across their
lines in a harried effort to set them in battle formation. Grinning, he turned
over his shoulder and shouted at Clifford, “God’s blessing! That’s the Bruce!”

Clifford wheeled on hearing that cry. In his bumbling haste, Bohun had caught Robert Bruce on a transport pony without a stint of armor. The Scots around Bruce were in disarray, with a gap between their flank and the burn. He tensed with anticipation. Fortune had finally shined on him. He and his arriving knights would stare Bruce down and freeze the unprepared Scot levies in place until the first column of his English infantry came up. Then he would launch a flanking charge and order his archers to finish them off. At last he would gain his due glory, even before Caernervon even reached the field and—

Bohun slammed his visor and galloped toward the burn.

“No!” Clifford shouted.

J
AMES SHOUTED FROM ACROSS THE
the field. “Rob!”

On the near ridge, Robert turned on his palfrey toward the
Torwood and saw the first elements of the English cavalry trickling out from
the thick brush. A lone English knight had splashed across the burn and was
now bearing down on him. He sat exposed on the open ground with no weapon.

James reached behind his back for his Dun Eadainn ax. Too
far to intercept the onrushing knight, he galloped up and heaved the weapon
toward Robert.

Robert caught the ax and held it on his pommel, restraining
his frightened palfrey as the Englishman kicked his charger into its final
approach. Bohun lowered in the saddle on the gallop and took aim at Robert’s
exposed right pectoral. Seconds from impact, Robert reined his palfrey left,
rearing it to its hinds, and shifted the ax to his right hand. Bohun swept past
without finding his target. Robert drove the ax into the Englishman’s
helmet—the handle splintered, but the blade impaled the crease of Bohun’s
visor.

Bohun dropped his lance and slumped against the cantle. His
head dipped, his plume fluttering in the wind as his charger pawed for
direction. With a sudden heave, he careened to the ground, crashing with a
great clang of metal.

Blood seeped from the slits of his bascinet.

A stunned silence fell across the field.

Several of the Scots in the ranks rushed up to pull off
Bohun’s helmet. They found the Englishman’s head crushed between his bloodied
side-whiskers.

A
T THE ENTRY TO THE
Torwood, Clifford scrambled to form a
battle line with the hundreds of his knights pouring into the clearing. Across
the burn, he saw a dark-faced officer point toward the mounted English ranks
and then lead a screaming charge down the slope.

Was that Douglas’s banner with its field of robin-egg blue
flying above them?

Clifford reined his
horse back a step. The Scots were hurling themselves at him like savages. Damn
that fool Bohun! He signaled Gloucester and fifty knights forward, but when Cam
Comyn held back, he demanded of the Scot, “Are you going to fight, or just
watch?”

“I’ll fight,” Cam said. “On my terms, not Douglas’s.”

Halfway to the burn, James
halted his Lanark men and back-stepped them into a slow retreat.

Clifford laughed at their
sudden loss of courage. Stoked for the easy kill, he signaled for his mounted
knights to double their pace and charge the fleeing Scots. In an act of sheer
luck, Bohun’s festoonery had seduced the undisciplined Scot mob into giving
battle too soon. He was about to give the order for his archers, now rushing
forth from the brush, to finish the Scots off when he saw Gloucester and his
knights plunge into the earth. Confounded by their disappearance, he stood in
his stirrups to search the terrain for his cavalry.

One by one, his dazed English knights climbed out of the holes that had
been hidden with sod. Their mounts, impaled on the caltrop spikes, writhed and
whinnied in agony. Gloucester staggered across the piles of mangled horseflesh
in a frantic effort to rally his survivors.

The Scot retreat had been a sham.

Clifford watched, stunned, as Douglas turned and led his
Lanark men back into the valley. With bloodcurdling yells, the Scots descended
on the confused English knights and hacked at them with their clubs and
claymores. Rattled, Clifford rushed his Welsh archers to the front and gave orders
to fire. The sergeant of the archers delayed, fearful of hitting their own men,
but Clifford nodded grimly for the enfilade to proceed. Commanded to the task,
the archers reluctantly drew their bows and unleashed a hail of missiles that
darkened the sky.

Shouts of warning shook the field, and James and his men
fell in unison, retracting their legs under their shields. The English knights
who had survived the pits now suffered the impact of the arrows from their own
archers. The vale filled with screams and the pings of iron points. Gloucester
dodged the enfilade as he fought his way back to the Torwood.

James and his men sprinted toward the forest to finish off
Clifford’s unhorsed knights, but they were halted by hundreds of English
infantrymen flooding out of the Torwood onto the Roman road. Only a few yards
from Clifford, James found himself surrounded by Yorkshire pikemen.
Outnumbered, he fought his way out and led his men back across the burn. Edward
Bruce’s schiltrons broke ranks to provide him cover. The hellish maze of pits
and wounded men slowed the English infantry, which finally gave up its chase
and retreated to the Torwood. The Northern Scots mobbed their returning
comrades and lifted James onto their shoulders.

“You gave them a bonnie taste of Lanark steel, Jamie!”
Randolph shouted.

The risky charge had given Robert time to retrieve his
armour from Coxet Hill, and now he rode down the lines on his battle charger.
“To your squares!”

Sobered by that warning, James ordered the celebration to cease
and reformed his men to meet the inevitable English counterattack.

I
N THE
T
ORWOOD,
C
LIFFORD MARCHED
up to Bohun’s mangled body
and kicked it so hard that some swore they saw it twitch. In the span of mere
minutes, the London upstart had managed to destroy what had taken Longshanks
two decades to gain: Scot fear of heavy cavalry. For the first time, those clan
savages hooting and hollering beyond that burn had witnessed one of their own
vanquish an English knight on an open field.

Clifford looked across the rising ground that ran through
the Bannock village. This opening skirmish had allowed Bruce time to set his
defenses. The Scot right flank, commanded by Edward Bruce, appeared strong and
fixed against the dense foliage of New Park, and Douglas was now stationed in
the center. But Randolph’s division sat farther north, overlooking the road to
Stirling. Bruce’s nephew would command Northern men, many who were deserters
and disaffected conscripts from Comyn’s old army. Clifford smiled grimly as he
traced the battle line toward Stirling Castle. Bruce had been forced to stretch
his reserves so thin that he had left a gap in the crease between the divisions
led by Douglas and Randolph.