Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) (39 page)

“No, no. Not yet, I told you. Don’t take what belongs to Thomas. Faith, faith. He will persist.”

Exasperated, I took to my saddle, slapped my horse on the rump and sped back to my division, where at least I could watch more closely and go to him if his men fell into worse trouble – with or without Robert’s blessing.

The sun began to slide behind the looming silhouette of Stirling Castle. The fighting had slowed, for their strength was waning. A wounded Scottish soldier, one arm hacked off just above the elbow crawled from beneath the crowding legs of his comrades. He pulled himself along with that bony stump of a limb and one good hand, biting his lip in silence, trying to escape without notice. But an English knight, or perhaps a squire judging by his piecemeal, rusted armor, who had been pushed from the fray and could not find a hole to go at the schiltron, saw him and ran him down, clubbing him in the back of the head with a mace. Leaning from his saddle, the knight struck again and again as the Scotsman lay there helpless, his legs twitching and his face drowning in his own pool of blood.

Now
. I motioned to Walter and told him to make ready to go to Randolph’s aid. He called the men up into their circular formation and as our lines shifted forward and took their first steps, several English knights fell back, shouting to the others to retreat. They had suffered too many losses and could neither rip nor hammer their way through. Randolph’s schiltron had held together, warding off last moment blows of desperation. The English trickled away, beaten and bedraggled on wounded horses, back along the path and over the burn. With a collective moan, Randolph’s men sank to their knees. They leaned against their spears and looked around them.

A cheer broke – first from my own men and then from each of the other divisions. Randolph managed to rally his men back up the slope a ways, collecting the wounded and clearing away the fallen as they went.

That night, there was a great celebration among the soldiers of Scotland. King Robert called together his commanders and we met in the woods of New Park at the southern foot of Gillies Hill as dusk yielded to darkness. But while we floated giddily about, voices raised in song and men already re-telling the tale with the usual Scottish embellishments, the English were beginning to move onto the carse. Not a detachment of vanity-laden cavalry, but the whole of the English army. They took their axes to the houses of Bannockburn and ripped loose the doors, the rafters and the thatch of those empty shells and began laying them down across the boggy places so their men, horses and wagons could pass over. I watched for a long time at the edge of the wood. Their progress was so slow and the number of men yet needing to cross so huge, that I surmised it would take them most of the night. They had come a long ways in a short time and would get no rest this night.

Sunrise would come early. The day had been brutally long. I had divested myself of my mail and all but my sword, intending to gain a few precious and direly needed hours of sleep before the morrow arrived. First, I would attend to Robert’s call and so I went from the edge of the wood to the place where Robert’s tent stood. Joyful voices came from within and the light of a lamp threw shifting shadows on the canvas walls. Just outside, Randolph parted from some of his men. The infusive exhilaration of their victory had washed away all traces of fatigue.

“Hugh? How is he?” I asked uneasily.

“Never better, James. Brave and strong as any Douglas. I will tell him that you asked after him when I see him again. Come on.”

I followed Randolph inside.

Boyd crushed Randolph in his brutish arms. “Ah ha!” he laughed. “By God, you sent the bastards off with a sound thrashing!”

Robert stood in the middle of the gathering. His hands were clasped behind his lower back. “You have done well today, Thomas. Edinburgh and now this. You and your men are to be congratulated.”

A sheepish grin flicked over Thomas Randolph’s mouth. The lamplight revealed a bruise, slowly purpling, on his right cheek. He nodded in thanks. “I fought as a Scotsman, that is all.”

“And tomorrow, my lord,” I addressed the king, “tomorrow, what would you have of us? The day is here. We are armed. They have come and shown they’ll fight. Tell us... what to do.”

All went silent inside. The evening’s jubilation continued on outside the crowded tent. Robert came to me and laid a hand firm upon my shoulder. “The English came thinking we would do nothing but watch as they passed by. Twice today we stood them down and sent them running. So what do you suppose they think now, James?” He gripped both of my shoulders, then let go and turned to the others in the circle. “Thomas, Edward, Gil, Keith?”

Sir Robert Keith, one of only three yet in full mail, said, “I would think we had come up against a mob of stubborn fools begging for a lesson in humility.”

“Ah.” Robert raised a single finger and tapped at his temple. “You’re thinking as knights, though. Boyd, what would a footsoldier, an English footsoldier, think of his predicament? Of facing us, after his own leaders have been turned back by mere Scotsmen?”

Rubbing at his belly, Boyd chuckled. “I’d think I might as well be a lamb on a spit.” He sniffed. “And I could damn well smell my own flesh roasting right now.”

“So?” Edward jumped to the heart of the reason for our gathering. “You’re saying we’re going to fight?”

“I won’t tell any of you that,” Robert said. “But I’ll ask you what you want to do. Stirling is only one castle among dozens. Between Roxburgh and Inverness, how many fortresses are yet in English hands and how many lie either in ours or obliterated? For eight years, we have slowly whittled away at their possessions without ever meeting them in full battle. Clan by clan, stone by stone, Scotland is becoming one. One country, as it has never been before. The process has been long and tedious to many of you, but has it not served? Without shame, we could go from here tomorrow and live to fight another day in the same way we always have. And we could win everything back that way... in time. But the question remains – how will you fight them? When? And where?”

Randolph shifted in the weighty silence that ensued. His shoulders humbly stooped, he raised his chin from his chest and said, “Order us to the field at first light. We will not fail you. Some will die, but better that they should do so fighting for their freedom, than having given it up.”

“Very well. As you would have it. In the morning – make ready, my friends.”

Ch. 36

Robert the Bruce – Bannockburn, 24th of June, 1314

As I looked out on a sea of faces – their eyes set on the thin strand of tomorrow, their heartbeats echoing with the rhythm of all their yesterdays – I thought surely I looked upon all the sons of Scotland of all the ages there in one place at one time, ready to fight for the very fistful of dirt they were each standing on. And in that I never saw more truth... than to truly live, was to have something worth dying for.

I held my fingers out to the new day. In that virgin light – bold strands of pink and orange breaking over the rim of the horizon – I saw hope, and I wrapped my fingers around that light and brought it to my heart. Dawn’s long shadows stretched across the land and the golden light of summer filtered down through the green-cloaked trees where my men stirred and woke. Prayers were whispered. Soldiers made the sign of the cross over and over. They kissed the ground. Counted arrows. Tightened straps. Memorized the faces around them... Small things that had already been done a hundred times. Then we began to assemble beyond the wood, out on the high ground where we could see what awaited us... and be clearly seen by those who had come to meet our challenge.

That same light pouring over the army of Scotland, that was that day spread out on the gentle slopes of New Park, also shone down upon the army of England, gathered now upon the carse in the openness between the loop of the Bannock Burn and the Pelstream. The tide was up. The water would be deep behind them. They filled the whole place, with as many men as I had ever seen in all my life put together. James and Keith had not exaggerated. Pennons and banners fluttered in a rising breeze, heralding the nobility of England and abroad.

The noble Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, was already among their fallen. His stepfather Ralph de Monthermer had spared me from Longshanks’ gallows when he warned me of Comyn’s plot to betray me at Windsor. Because of Ralph’s debt to my grandfather, he had shown me a grace, allowing my escape, so I could live to see this day. Now that I was here, I prayed God would have the grace to bring me through to tomorrow. But of late, I could not discern one day from the previous or the next. The sign of a soul living in a dream. Of a body that has known too little sleep.

Last night I had knelt in prayer through most of the dark hours next to Gilbert de Clare’s body. He had been laid before the altar in St. Ninian’s Kirk, wrapped up in a shroud stained brown with the seeping blood from his deep, singular wound, his sword and shield set honorably upon his lifeless chest. Behind his corpse glowed a hundred tallow candles, flickering like points of starlight, as if this one knight had already been taken into heaven.

Up above him on the yellowed wall behind the altar dangled a cross wrought of bronze. In its center was set a small dark, blood-red jewel, surrounded by the writhing knotwork of the people who once roamed this land freely – a people who had left as their legacy not the written word or great, soaring castles, but jewels and weapons and mysterious relics such as this one. A nearly forgotten people, overrun throughout the centuries by greedy neighbors and far-traveled foreigners whose own riches were not enough for them. And now come the English, once more.

I called to me James and Walter, among others, and laid the flat of my blade upon their shoulders as they knelt in newly granted knighthood.

I mounted and put spurs to my pony. My helmet tucked under my arm so that all could see my face, I rode past the tiny cluster of houses of St. Ninian’s, between the watchful divisions of Keith and Douglas and on past Randolph’s until I reached the edge of Edward’s men. Their voices rose in a rolling wave, until I raised my hand in the air. The rumble broke in places and fell away like the surf meeting its end against a ragged shore.

“This is the day... when you ask yourselves, how great is your faith in God and your love of freedom? For eight years, I have toiled to make this kingdom one. And in that time, I have lost three brothers and more. Who among you has not lost a kinsman or friend in this struggle? You have paid the price in blood. Scotland has paid the price. You see there those who have exacted that price and say that you have no right to freedom. They come, on their warhorses and in their mail, to destroy you and take what little you have. They want what is yours. Will you let them have it? Your wives, your children, your freedom?”

They rattled their weapons and cried out. Again, I lifted my hand to heaven and spoke:

“Nay. You are here with me, of your own will, so for that, I say you will not bend in slavery one more day. I have fought with you, known your courage and your honor. Within your hands, lies victory. So with those hands and with all your strength, pray to God, that His right will prevail – for this is the day that they will one day say honorable men came and fought for what was theirs. But to win this day you must be valiant. Do not let your hearts fail you. Be steadfast and brave. Go forth, my men. God is with you!”

Abbot Maurice blessed the army of Scotland.

The English had barely moved. Their archers had not yet been rallied to the fore, as was the English custom.

Ah, a blessing, Edward of Caernarvon, that you are so dull in your arrogance. You bide your time, expecting to make the first move at your leisure. One day you leap before looking at the size of the chasm before you and the next you are yet in your nightclothes while your enemy is pounding on your door. Wake now, Edward, before we set fire to your thatch and smoke you out. You came for a fight. You have one.

As the brave of Scotland roared on, I resumed my position behind the first three columns with my own men. To my far right, my brother Edward’s standard fluttered – the blue lion on a field of white. Directly to his left, Randolph waited. My division was stationed in reserve just behind Randolph’s and James Douglas’. To the far left and further behind, Sir Robert Keith sat with his light cavalry to take the English flank.

I gave the signal to my standard bearer. The red lion dipped, rose, then swept to the left before returning upright. Edward’s division started forward. They continued on over the open ground, unchallenged until they came within a hundred yards of the English. There, Edward halted them. They knelt one last time in rapid prayer, for never were enough prayers said when battle impended. Then quickly, as had been practiced a thousand times, my brother’s men formed their schiltron.

The call to arms sounded from the English camp. In a sleepy and yet frantic fashion, one of their cavalry divisions began to mobilize. I squinted hard.
No bloody archers
. Perhaps King Edward thought our schiltrons would scatter at the first charge. Clearly, he had never listened to the events of Stirling or Falkirk. His father had learned from Wallace’s use of the spearmen at Stirling. At Falkirk, archers had been employed to tear holes in them.
Still, no archers
...

Prematurely, a ragged stream of mounted English knights flew forward. Scottish spears were anchored into the earth, their points arrayed at varying heights and reaching a full twelve feet from their ends. Hooves drummed wildly across the ground. Brave, blindly loyal warhorses forged on. English lances slammed into braced shields. A few ripped open the chests of valiant Scotsmen. But a lance once used in the charge is a worthless instrument. And so the English knights, who had snatched at what they believed would be easy prey, were now reduced to flailing swords a fraction of the length of the spears that jabbed at them and rammed into the flesh of their horses, so that the beasts reared and screamed and tossed them. Once on the ground, the knights were set upon by nimble Scottish footmen, armorless, but lightning-quick, who hacked at them with stunted swords and heavy axes.