The Lion at Bay

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Methven

Vigil of the Translation of the Relics of St Margaret, June, 1306

In the murmuring night, spiced with woodsmoke and heavy as musk in the summer heat, the delegation came up between the lamplit panoplies, a series of shifting shadows flitting past the fumes of cooking fish and turnip, threading through the warm, fetid horse lines. They moved like ghosts in their dark robes to where the great pavilion stood with the yellow banner, the red lion on it limp.

The warleader’s tent, Abbot Alberto saw, was dressed as Brother Jacobus had told him to expect — studied, with all the treasured care lavished on a concubine. There were swinging lanterns with mica panels, clean planked flooring strewn with fresh grasses and wildflowers, small tables with bowls of expensive pistacia, sugared almonds and gingibar.

The faces that met him from under the fine, ribbon-sewn hangings were not hostile, simply those of men with work to do, impatient, confident and competent. Somewhere behind a curtained recess he heard the low murmur of women’s voices.

Bruce considered the little Italian Abbot carefully. Not much to look at, he thought, so all the more dangerous. A Visconti with the ear of the Pope and so doubly so, yet he had not come, as Bruce had feared, bringing the ferendae sententia — the sentence of the ecclesiastic court — and ready to remove Bruce from Holy Church with bell, Book and candle.

That was something, at least, thought Bruce, though that Papal Bull is charging on its way. It only remained to find out why this Visconti was here and if it was as he claimed — he bore a message from Aymer de Valence, currently crouched like a wary dog in Perth and challenged by Bruce to come out fighting.

‘I trust,’ he said, smooth and guarded, ‘your visit to our kingdom has been successful so far.’

The abbot ignored the ‘our kingdom’ and glanced at the one they called the Bruce. Tall, hard-faced — as they all were — with a bad scar on one cheek and a surprisingly neat beard. The one to his right was a squatter version, a dancing bear of a man with a bush of beard and he was sure this was the brother called Edward. The others were all the same to the abbot — warriors who followed.

‘So far,’ he answered urbanely, ‘though King Edward would dispute the claim that it is your kingdom. Even if you are prepared to defend it — what was it you wrote to him, my lord? With the longest stick you have.’

‘Your Grace,’ corrected a stern voice. ‘He is king.’

The abbot fluttered apologetic fingers.

‘Do you come from the Covetous King?’ asked Bruce coldly, forcing through the abbot’s breach of royal etiquette which, he knew, had been no mistake.

‘I come from the Holy Father, my son,’ the abbot replied smoothly, ‘to examine the commanderies of his Order of Poor Knights in the kingdoms of his brother in Christ, King Edward.’

‘Found any good heresies?’ interrupted the dancing bear; the abbot saw the flicker of irritation that crossed the elder Bruce’s face at it.

‘None of any note,’ he answered and heard Brother Jacobus grunt and shift. He almost smiled at it; at least this usurper king and I share that in common — irritating minions. None was more rasping than Brother Jacobus, one of those dogs the Holy See found useful to let off the leash now and then, but whose constant whine and bark on their singleminded nosing was annoying.

The abbot knew that Brother Jacobus was clerk to Geoffrey D’Ablis, the Inquisitor in Carcassonne, and would return there in the spring. He also knew the man’s real name was Jean de Beaune, because he had reverted to it on the treatises he had begun to write detailing the proper way to carry out inquisitions; it seemed this sin of pride had been ignored in general admiration for this rising star.

‘Brother Jacobus thinks differently,’ the abbot replied smoothly, without looking at the Hound of God. ‘We have scoured the Poor Knights of the Order in… what is it called? Balan… something.’

‘Balantrodoch,’ growled the dancing bear. The abbot smiled.

‘Yes. Outlandish name.’

‘You found no heresies, you say,’ Bruce offered, steering the conversation back to the path.

‘Indeed. A few writings of no account…’

‘Heathen heresy,’ Brother Jacobus interrupted and Bruce saw the abbot close his eyes briefly, as if that triggered some damping of his temper. The abbot, opening them again, saw Bruce’s benign curiosity and shrugged.

‘Brother Jacobus believes that a treatise concerning how the earth revolves around the sun is a dangerous wickedness, so that all who own such should be burned. But there — I have voiced it aloud and now put all our souls in mortal peril. Brother Jacobus’ pyre will need to be large.’

His scathing clamped the Hound of God’s lips in a tight line. Bruce knew this Jacobus well enough, for he had been hag-haunting the Kingdom for a decade at least, flitting between York, Berwick and Edinburgh in pursuit of God knew what.

Before that, he had been told, the Hound of God had been in the entourage of Cressingham at Stirling Brig and had come there fresh from scourging Carcassone’s Cathars. Bruce had learned all this from Kirkpatrick and his missing physicker — he wondered where the latter now was and what he was revealing. And to whom…

‘I thought the earth was the centre of things,’ said Edward Bruce, frowning and the abbot indulged him with another smile, his withered cheeks knobbed as winter apples.

‘Just so. This… heresy, as the good brother would have it… is a heathen affair, as he says. Moorish, though it was Saracen before that and, in fact, Persian before that. They were all Godless worshippers of fire then and the Sun, being the largest of fires, was a deity to them; thus they placed it at the centre of things.’

He laced his fingers.

‘In fact, it is no heresy. If I state that a galloping horse does not move forward, but rather the ground goes backwards — is that heresy? Or simple stupidity?’

‘If enough believe it…’ Brother Jacobus muttered and the abbot ignored him.

‘So the Poor Knights of the Order are innocent of the charges against them?’ Bruce asked.

‘What charges are these?’ countered the abbot. ‘No charges have been made. The Order is guilty of arrogance, idleness, outlandish secrets and excessive wealth. What I have are copious sworn statements by come-lately initiates who allege that they refused to spit on the Cross, or kiss an idol of Baphomet. So far, I have seen no evidence of either.’

‘Yet heresy exists,’ Bruce declared grimly and waved a hand. ‘Ask any of these nobiles and they will tell you of the sin of the Order.’

The abbot frowned, not understanding.

‘Most of them had kin, or were themselves with Wallace at Callendar Woods,’ Bruce explained stonily. ‘Where the Order rode in the retinue of King Edward and slaughtered our people. Christians, Abbot Alberto, descending like wolves on Christians. Is that not a heresy worthy of the Holy Father’s sanction?’

Now the abbot understood and nodded slowly, like a man falling asleep.

‘Not heresy. More of that arrogance I mentioned and certainly a sin — that and the other sins they have fallen into are reason enough for them to merge with the Order of St John. Perhaps then these warriors can turn their sights back to God and the relief of his Holy Places.’

‘The Order of St John wishes nothing to do with them,’ Bruce replied. ‘Wisely.’

The abbot tutted.

‘We should be wary of casting the first stone,’ he said gently. ‘The sin of envy is in great part responsible for the problems of the Order — too wealthy by far, as I have said, even to the whispered rumour of usury. Brother Jacobus would have them scorching for that alone, but he and others of his calling have forgotten the teachings of Saint Bernard — “Persecution shows who is a hireling and who a true pastor”.’

He paused, his sentiment genuine if only because of the vision of the Templar, strapped to his horse and burning…

‘Amen,’ Bruce answered and a muttered chorus followed it. Jacobus stirred a little, his hands shoved into his sleeves, but remained silent, a cowled mastiff leashed for the moment.

‘But you are less interested in this and more in what the English commander in Perth has to say,’ the abbot went on. ‘He agrees to meet you on the field — but not on the morrow. It is the Sabbath and the Feast of St Gervase, the Martyr.’

‘Of Margaret, saintly queen of Scotland and the translation of her relics,’ Bruce corrected, that strange lopsided twist of a smile on his face. To avoid stretching the scar on the other, the abbot realized suddenly, which meant it was not healed, even after all this time…

‘So — we have a truce until the morn’s morn?’ Edward Bruce persisted.

The abbot hesitated, a heartbeat only that he would not have got away with in the cowled politicking of Rome. What caused it was — yet again — the vision of the burning Templar. That, coupled with the uncaring stone face of de Valence as he excused it, sure in his writ from pope and king, sanctioned by the fluttering of as pagan a symbol as anyone might find — a dragon banner which permitted men to risk any sin.

Yet the heartbeat went unnoticed here and the abbot nodded, for a truce was what he had been told and chivalry dictated the truth of it, even from the thinned, dubious lips of the lordly Aymer de Valence.

There was nothing else to be said; Bruce watched them ghost their way out again and waited for the clamour that would swamp him when they were out of earshot. It was not held back for long and the charge was led, as ever, by Edward.

They throw ‘chivalry’ at me like an accusation of heresy, Bruce thought, turning into their concern and outrage. There would now be an argument which would, in the end, come to eat itself because there was no way out of the circle.

They all knew it, too, even if they jerked and strained — de Valence was locked securely in Perth with an army roughly the size of the one Bruce had scraped together. The English lords, Percy and Clifford, were scouring the west with another and, somewhere to the south, like a distant stain of thundercloud, the Covetous King himself gathered yet another force with his son.

‘If we do not force a fight here and win, my lords,’ Bruce declared to their scowls and frowns, ‘then we will gain no further support and will be too weak to face Longshanks when he comes. We must defeat de Valence here and to do that, we must persuade him to come out of his fastness and fight.’

If they did not, then my kingship is ended, he thought. Fleetingly, he saw the purse-lipped moue of his wife, preparing the ‘I-told-you-so’. King and queen of summer only, she had once said. Unspoken had been the other part of that old pagan custom, where the King of Summer was ritually sacrificed, his blood making the Kingdom and all in it fecund.

Well, that would not be. Winning here, at Methven, would bring some solidity to his throne and, to do that, he needed someone to beat in an honest tourney. He needed to force apokalupsis.

He said as much, but only the scholarly Alexander understood that it did not mean the catastrophe it implied, simply a revelation, a new light. A new world.

Chivalry would bring de Valence out for a fair fight, he thought. The joust a l’outrance, writ large, would do it.

Because God is always watching at the edge of extremity.

Hal watched the train of priests and their escort coil between the fires, heading out of the camp and the road back to Perth. He heard one mutter ‘ Te deum ’ but they passed in a wraith of silence for the most part, sinister as darkness. He did not care for these Dominie Canes much and remembered the ones who had brought Cressingham’s ultimatum to Wallace and Moray at Stirling… God’s Wounds, almost ten years to the day.

Ten years. It weighed on him, sudden and heavy as an anvil and he sighed under it, so that Sim Craw glanced up from under his own shaggy brows — then surprised Hal with his own thoughts.

‘I remember thon chiels,’ he muttered. ‘At Abbey Craig. Christ, Sir Hal, that was a wheen o’ years ago.’

‘Aye, ye were sprightly then,’ chaffered Chirnside, grinning.

‘Sprightly still,’ Dog Boy replied. ‘If you keep charkin’ your gums on such, you will find how he can stop your yatter.’

Sim stirred a little, fed a stick and some dried grass to the fire.

‘My thanks for yer care, Dog Boy,’ he answered, slow and serious, ‘but Chirnside is not wrong. A man gets to feel the years pile up an’ I am not so spry sometimes in the morn, while I have to roll out at night to let out watter and my bones are mostly ache.’

Men stared, amazed and Hal felt a flicker of uncertain fear, seeing the lines on Sim and the grizzle that was more grey than black these days. He was old, Hal thought suddenly — Christ, he is a handful of years more than me and I am old myself. If he was starting to fail, then the world was trembling…

Then he saw the sly look peeping out from under the shag of eyebrow and almost leaped to his feet with the delighted relief of it.

‘But I can still maul the sod with the likes o’ a cuntbitten hoorslip such as yersel’, Chirnside Rowan.’

The hoots and laughter flamed the face of Rowan, while the nudges from his neighbours threatened to topple him off his log seat. He eventually acknowledged Sim’s mastery of the moment with a flap of one hand, which turned into a slap against a nipping midge.

‘Christ,’ he growled. ‘We must be the blissin’ o’ Beelzebub on his Lowland midgies, and if their dinner would only cease slapping them it would be a midgie paradise.’

‘These are wee yins,’ growled Sim Craw. ‘Where Black MacRuiraidh is from they are bigger and thicker, with a stinger like a tourney lance.’

The Lothian men laughed and the butt of the joke joined in. In months past all the Lowlanders would have stared at the Islesman, Black MacRuiraidh, his tangle of jet hair and his big axe, as if he had landed from the Moon itself, but already they were used to him and the others of his kin who had come to join King Robert. Christina of Garmoran had sent them and there were nudges and winks about what their new king had done to this Isles queen to have had such richesse lavished on him.

Scots all, Hal noted, from Chirnside Rowan of the Border, busy feeding a twist of dried bracken into the fire, to the near-unintelligible men of Dingwall beyond The Mounth, who had come, freely enough, defying the Earl of Ross who was not a declared supporter of the Bruce.

Not yet — tomorrow would decide all things.

The galloping horse that was Jamie Douglas burst on them, stirring them like a wind shifting embers from the fire. He stuck bread at the Dog Boy, had shared meat in return and, within minutes, the pair of them were off, restless as hounds into a dusk like smoke and the faint music and screeches of women’s laughter.

Life was all in the way a man thought of it, Hal had decided. The way a young man thought of it, in fact, for when the blood was strong and hot the whole earth was new, like a calf waiting to be licked dry.

When he got some years on him, all the same, it was different. Down deep, bone-deep, Hal knew the world was old, so old he wondered sometimes what chiels and lords had been on it before civilized people came to it, before even the dark, fey Faerie.

Jamie Douglas made a man feel old with the knowing that the younger ones believe the world was new and that they alone were discovering it, as if no-one else ever had.

The squeals and shrills of women — God alone knew where they came from, or how they survived — brought grins and the backs of hands to dry mouths from men considering their luck or their siller.

Sim Craw did not think of thighs and quim. He thought of the shrieks of the Welshman, the shit-smeared archer brought in as prisoner and put to the Question; not hard, Sim recalled and, in fact, not hard enough for Sim’s liking, for he was sure the man had more he might have told.

Let off light, Sim had thought — until Edward Bruce’s retinue men had held the man down, cut off the first two fingers of his right hand, the drawing hand, and seared the wound shut with pitch, for mercy.

‘You will never shoot another Scot,’ one of them had declared, hands on hips and straddle-legged as the Welshman was set free, hugging his pain to his breast and hirpling off scarce able to see through tears and snot, yet blessing his luck that he was alive. Sim had seen Edward Bruce’s scowl at it.

‘You should have cut the tongue from him as well,’ he had growled, ‘so he could not tell what he saw here.’

Hal, on the other hand, was glorious with thoughts of Isabel, somewhere in the rich panoply behind the King’s own tent attending to the Queen. In a while he would go off and find her, when he was sure the Queen had been bedded down for the night and that he could claim Isabel for his own.

For now he lay back and looked at the darkening sky, already shot with sharp, bright stars like fresh-struck tinder, listening to the men slap and complain about the whirling moths and midgies.

‘If ye listen close,’ Bull rumbled, ‘ye can hear their war cries. If they were as big as we, no army would stand agin them.’

‘Aye, weel,’ answered Erchie Scott, ‘we needs offer a soul to some wee imp o’ Bellies-bub, Lord of Flies, in return for such an army. Then we leave them to fight the English and we can all ride home.’

‘God be praised,’ declared his brother, Fingerless Tam as he crossed himself. ‘To speak it is to summon it — clap yer gums on that, brother.’

‘Besides,’ yawned Chirnside, ‘it is clear there will be no fight on the morn. Yon wee priests will have come to beg King Robert not to break the Sabbath.’

‘Away,’ scoffed Sim Craw. ‘The Sabbath is it? When has that made a difference? When God handed Wallace yon fat Treacherer Cressingham on a silver platter, we fought wee fights with them from one Holy Sabbath Day to the other at Stirling Brig — and the big battle itself was fought on the Ferial Day after Finian’s feast, which is also holy.’

He beamed into their chuckles.

‘Holy Days, my wee rievin’ ribald,’ he added, ‘is when we fight best — in the sight o’ God.’

Those who remembered the tale of Wallace’s triumph nodded into the soft chorus of ‘amens’, then sat, smeared with the honey memory of that glorious day.

It came to Hal that there were few who had actually been there at the time, kneeling on the wet grass to receive the Sabbath pyx from the monks of Cambuskenneth Abbey. The promise of that day had vanished in hunger and death and defeat so that here they all were, too many years later, still fighting and no closer to victory.

A figure loomed, turning all eyes. He was a middling man in all respects, from height to years, dangled about with maille that seemed more collected than worn and with a battered shield on his back, deviced with something almost too faded to read.

‘God be praised,’ he said from a weary threadbare face, bushed with grizzled beard.

‘For ever and ever,’ came the rote reply, then Hal rose up and grasped the man, wrist to wrist. There was a brief exchange of greetings, a request answered at once and the man skliffed off through the trampled grass with a peck of oats for his warhorse.

‘Christ betimes,’ grumbled Wynking Wull, his tic working furiously with annoyance. ‘Bad enough that the likes of the landless Douglas boy can steal our meat. We will all have buckles clappit to backbones if we give out hard-gotten fodder to any raggy chiel who asks.’

‘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.

There was a rising hiss and then the rain fell on them. He saw Jemmie o’ The Nook arch, heard the drumming thumps and the scream from him as his back turned to a hedgepig; the garron, stuck in rump and haunch, squealed, veered off and he was gone.

Another garron went over its own nose, but the man on it was pinned to the saddle through the thigh and backbone and was plunged to the bloody greenery whether he cared or not.

Hal’s horse leaped in the air, came down half on and half off the ragged bundle of him, then stumbled on for a stride or two until it stopped, head down, legs splayed. A great gout of blood and a groan came from it, then it started to fold and Hal kicked free of it, only seeing the strange sprout of feathered twig in one side. Into the lungs, he thought wildly; it missed my knee by a hair.

Addaf was satisfied with the one shoot, for he would have to send men out to recover what arrows they could; they were in short supply and too crafted to waste. He watched the riders vanish into the treeline on the far side of the field, saw the riderless little horses, some running in mad circles, most limping painfully.

A single man staggered and Addaf, tempted, started to nock an arrow — a long shot, but no longer than ones where he had put a big battle-arrow through a willow-wand…

The sudden shouts distracted him and he turned to see the second column, now no more than a crowd, waving weapons and cheering.

‘An audience appreciates you,’ he said, nodding to them, and his men laughed.

‘We make them jig, we make them kick,’ yelled out the irrepressible Hywel, ‘with a feather shaft and a crooked stick.’

All of them laughed aloud and, when Addaf remembered the limping man and looked for him, there was nothing to see. He frowned, unsmarted the bow and sent men out to fetch the arrows back, or dig out the valuable points for re-shafting.

In the treeline, Hal sank down, sweating and panting, while others retched, spat and then examined each other and their mounts for unseen wounds.

‘How many?’

‘Six,’ Sim Craw told him. ‘Five are gone down the brae, certes, and Hob o’ the Merse has a barb in his back and says he cannae feel his legs. Eight garrons down. God be praised.’

‘For ever and ever,’ Hal answered, then struggled up. ‘But not this day, I think. Mount and ride, double if you need — Sore Davey, I will climb ahint you, since you are lighter. Throw Hob over a saddle an’ bring him. There is a battle yet to be won.’

He was wrong. There was no battle left to be won and they discovered the heart-sick lurch of truth when they came up on their old camp, into a confused, whirling affray of men in knots and struggling knuckles, fighting like dog-packs with no order or command.

There were men on foot, formed in little rings half-armed and defiant, while others ran like fox-struck chooks in a coop, pursued by vengeful men in maille mounted on warhorses. Glancing over the shoulder of Sore Davey, to the left of where they had come up, Hal saw a huddle of riders, the bright blue and white stripes and red martlets of Aymer de Valence blazing from the horse barding of himself and his retinue.

‘The King…’ Sim Craw bellowed and pointed to the fist of riders surrounding a figure. He had no jupon, but the golden lion rampant shield was clear and he wore maille and a coif, but only a bascinet, the gold circlet on it gleaming in the sun. Beyond, half-sunk like some sugarloaf in the rain, the striped confection of the royal panoply sagged and round the tangle of it came Dog Boy, his tired garron staggering after his flat-out run to warn the King.

Isabel, Hal thought and slapped Sore Davey on one shoulder, even as he bawled out to the others to go right, towards the tents, away from de Valence. The Dog Boy saw them and turned the garron obediently to meet them, though he was thinking of Jamie Douglas somewhere in the chaos of blade and blood.

They rode past three men, two of them on foot, the rider holding horses; Hal’s heart missed several beats at the sight of the woman struggling between them, but it was one he did not know and was grateful for it.

Dog Boy did. He hauled the garron up short, which balked Sore Davey and Hal cursed him for it, sliding over the rump as he saw the armed men turn in shocked surprise; he shrugged his shield off his back to his arm and hauled out a blade, while Dog Boy, his face ugly with anger, forced the garron at the rider, roaring incoherently and striking out with the big Jeddart staff.

Sim Craw saw the weave of it and brought his own mount to its haunches; two or three others followed and they whirled, flogging back to help; the rest rode on, oblivious so that the shrieks of the slung Hob, woken to a world of terror and agony, faded into the distance.

Dog Boy rode the Jeddart at the serjeant, who cursed and ducked, letting the horses loose as he did so; the shaft slithered over his mailled shoulder, the hook caught in his jupon and Dog Boy, slamming briefly into one of the shocked and plunging horses, rode on, dragging the man out of the saddle. Whooping and roaring, Sim Craw and the handful of men with him rode over him, stabbing downwards.

The woman went flying, discarded and forgotten in an instant while the men dragged out their weapons and turned with the desperate air of cornered rats. One of them saw Sim and the others and bolted away while the other stood in a half-crouch, head moving from Sim to Dog Boy and back to Hal.

He glanced briefly at the shield, discarded in pursuit of the woman, then he made his mind up and charged at Hal, sword held in both hands.

He was a wet-mouthed raver and Hal offered no finesse after the first blow scarred a new ruin on the shivering blue cross of his shield, the shock wave rattling his teeth; he put his shoulder down and launched himself forward, snarling. With a last mighty heave he took the shield in a swinging door slam that made the man grunt, yelp and stagger backwards to fall on his arse, legs and arms waving like an upturned beetle, the sword spilled from his grasp.

In the next second, he found himself staring at a new world, shrunk down to the wicked point of Dog Boy’s Jeddart, which hovered over his face; behind, the abandoned garron snorted at the stink of blood and moved to join the riderless rounceys.

‘I yield,’ squeaked the man and there was a moment when he thought this snarling youth would kill him anyway, a shocking, bowel-loosening moment.

Chirnside Rowan, still mounted, gave a grunt of derision.

‘Christ betimes,’ he growled. ‘No content wi’ dreaming of a rank ye can never have, ye think of being Roland at Roncesvalles, or Sir Galahad chasing the Grail.’

‘Aye,’ Sim Craw declared, coming up behind him, ‘our wee Dog Boy is a gentle parfait for sure. He holds the knightly vow that ye should nivver violet a lady.’

Dog Boy turned to see the woman he’d rescued squatting by the serjeant ’s corpse, rifling it expertly, and Hal was standing over her.

‘The Queen and her women?’ Hal was asking her urgently. ‘Where are they?’

The woman hauled off a boot, turned it up and shook it, frowning when nothing fell out.

‘Rode away,’ she answered. She grinned up at Dog Boy.

‘Marthe,’ he said. ‘Are ye weel?’

Marthe tore off the other boot and up-ended it; a double-edged dagger fell out and she took it, frowning when nothing followed it, then beamed back at Dog Boy.

‘Weel enow, thanks to yersel’ an’ yer freends,’ she declared and then winked lewdly at him. ‘I owe ye — whin it is convenient, I will rattle the teeth out of yer head.’

Dog Boy’s face flamed as he looked at Hal.

‘Creishie Marthe,’ he explained. ‘Her man is a woodcutter from Selkirk…’

‘The Coontess,’ Hal growled and Creishie Marthe’s head came up, eyes narrowed in recognition.

‘Och — it is yersel’, yer honour.’

She scambled up, bobbed a curtsey.

‘The blissin’ o’ Heaven on ye, yer honour,’ she went on calmly, ‘but the Coontess went aff some time since, wi’ loaded ponies an’ yon nice wee brother o’ the King, Niall.’

Hal sagged with relief. Escaped — he almost laughed aloud, then Dog Boy brought him to his senses by growling and pointing to the ruin of blue and white tents nearby; in the depths of them, something stirred and cursed.

In a moment, all the men were off their horses and closing in. Sore Davey slashed expertly and the sail canvas parted like ripe fruitskin — a figure rose out of it, flailing and cursing. There was a moment of raised blades and snarls — then they all recognized the figure and subsided like empty wineskins.

‘Kirkpatrick,’ Hal declared weakly. ‘In the name o’ God, man — what are ye up to now?’

Kirkpatrick, his bruised face sweating red, hirpling still with his hurts, clutched a casket tight to him and managed a smile as he tapped it with a free hand.

‘Saving secrets,’ he announced. ‘The royal Rolls.’

Hal knew it at once and raised an eyebrow — everyone had fled in such haste that they had left the list of those in service to the King, what they had brought as retinue and how much they were owed. In the hands of de Valence, it would provide all the evidence needed as to who the Bruce supporters were.

‘Not that they deserve it, mind,’ Kirkpatrick added bitterly. ‘Half our brave community of the realm stuffed their jupons under their saddles, covered their shields so as not to be recognized and ran like hunted roe.’

Creishie Marthe had turned her attention to the yielded serjeant, and drawn a swift second smile under his chin with a dagger she’d taken. Ignoring the blood and the kicking, she was rifling under the hem of his maille for hidden wealth.

‘Bigod,’ said Chirnside admiringly to Dog Boy, ‘your choice in weemin’ is growin’ dangerous, my lad.’

Kirkpatrick saw the ring when Marthe peeled back the man’s maille mittens; the knife flashed and the bloody finger was already vanishing inside her considerable bosom when Kirkpatrick caught her wrist.

‘Dinna even think o’ it,’ he hissed into her savage glare and flourished dirk and she saw the eyes on him, knew instantly who it was and whimpered, giving up the grisly prize and the ring on it.

Hal saw it all and shot a quick look at Dog Boy to see if he had noticed that Creishie Marthe had been ‘violeted’ — but Dog Boy was staring blankly back at the whirling battle. Men sprinted past; a horseman galloped furiously further down and it was clear to everyone that the fighting was closing in on the royal tents. Creishie Marthe knew it and was already gathering her skirts and running off.

‘Jamie,’ Dog Boy muttered, gathering the reins of his garron, and Hal, half-way into the saddle of one of the patient rounceys, looked back to the black thundercloud of struggling men.

‘The King,’ he said, though he knew there was nothing that would make him drag the remains of his mesnie into that mess.

The King was in trouble and he knew it. Truth was he had known it from the moment the messenger rode up, the one he recognized as Dog Boy. It had given him and the others enough time to struggle into maille hauberk, though he had thrown the awkward leggings to one side. He had a coif attached to the hauberk and long sleeves with mittens, and now blessed the one-piece garment he had roundly cursed in the past for its weight while trying to get it on.

Dog Boy’s arrival had given him time to issue orders sending the Queen to safety, to have a palfrey saddled — his warhorses all went with the Queen, having just been fed and now useless for battle — and take up the bascinet with the golden circlet.

Balliol’s, of course, as was so much of his royal finery, though that king had never worn it. Truth was, it was a little loose for Bruce but he gave up on comfort for the advantage of being seen easily by his own side, who would take heart from their battling king.

The other side of that spun coin, he thought to himself in the sweating, belly-clenching moments before the English knights closed on them, was that being tumbled off would rip the heart out of them.

He thought of that in the eyeblink before the charging figure came down on him, featureless in his bucket helm, waving a battleaxe and trying to rein in the over-eager warhorse. Bruce danced to one side, slashed out with his sword and spun the palfrey as the warhorse went plunging mad, half its tail sheared off and all of its rump bloody and fired with agony; the knight sailed off and hit the ground with a clatter. The German Method…

Bruce had little time to exult and none at all to see if the knight got up, for others were on him and his own mesnie closed in protectively. He realized at once that this was no battle and was lost whatever you called it — there was only a melee now and Bruce was master of that.

He ducked a swinging blade, banged the man out of the saddle with his shield, cut right, cut left, took a blow that made him grunt and hope his maille was good and the sword blunt. A man plunged out, on foot, to grab the bridle of his horse, helmetless and roaring with triumph that he had taken the King.

Bruce slashed down and the man shrieked and fell away, while the rouncey threw up its head and panicked at the grisly ornament of hand and wrist that dangled, clenched and bloody in the bridle. Bruce lost a foot from one stirrup and sat deep while the rouncey plunged itself to a trembling halt.

The knight who had first attacked suddenly lurched from the other side, having thrown away his bucket helm and dragged out a sword. He was bleeding from a broken nose and snoring in desperate breaths, but he reached out a free hand and tried to grab Bruce by his leg, missed and grasped the free stirrup.

‘He is mine,’ he bellowed in a spray of blood. ‘Yield yerself sirra — aaaaah.’

His triumph ended in a shriek when Bruce rammed his booted foot back in the stirrup, grinding fingers into the metal and trapping the hand; when he spun the rouncey the knight was dragged off his feet and whirled sideways, screaming, until he bowled into a knuckle of men, scattering them and tearing his fingers free.

Then a blow seemed to stave in the whole side of Bruce’s face, a crash as if the world had fallen on him and he reeled at the edge of consciousness, hanging on to the palfrey by some last reserve of tourney skill.

‘I have him,’ yelled a voice. ‘I have him.’

He saw a silver lion on a red shield and thought it might be Mowbray — but he was dimly aware that everything was red on the left side, felt the sudden strange coldness there. God help me, he thought wildly, I am blinded…

He felt himself dragged off the horse, saw hands frantic to grasp him — then there was a roaring sound which he thought was his own blood in his ears and he lay, staring blindly up at the red-misted sky, watching the flurry of legs. Mailled, hooved, booted, they stamped and circled — there was a rushing crash and someone fell full length, so that when Bruce turned — oh, so laborious and slow — he saw the twisted agony that was Mowbray falling from a vicious blow, blood washing down over unfocused eyes.

Hands gripped him, hauled him up.

‘Into the saddle, Your Grace,’ said an urgent voice and Bruce felt himself hefted up, found a reflex that cocked a leg and dropped him into the cantled security of a fresh horse. He looked dazedly down through the blood, saw the black figure of Simon Frazier grinning back at him.

‘Seton — tak’ the King to safety. He is sore hurt.’

Sore hurt. Bruce did not want to know how sore his hurt was; he could feel it like a great numbing on the side of his face and was sure he had lost it, eye, cheek and all.

Lost. All was lost on this Malachy-cursed day…

Methven

Late evening, the same day

The priests droned like flies in the growing dim and de Valence thought of the abbot, somewhere back in Perth, carefully out of the way of matters, so he could not see what sins were being done here under the dragon banner.

There were a lot of sins, de Valence knew, as many as there were flies, and the flattened fields of rye and barley around Methven were as good as a pewter plate smeared with meat juice to them. Flies and shadows flitted in the dark, both of them stripping the corpses.

De Valence sat on his warhorse, surrounded by grim-iron men and sweating in the heavy drape of his heraldry, wishing the last dregs of this mummery were done with and he could climb off the beast and out of the war gear.

It was as well he had won here, he thought, otherwise he would have to face the wrath of Longshanks for failing to capture Bruce — or anyone else who mattered — and losing Badenoch’s murderer en route to Berwick.

The bitter sauce of it all was having to sit here and smilingly acknowledge and reward all the galloping fools who came up clutching a pennon, or hauling in some luckless lordling of no account until it became dark enough to admit that the battle was over.

Sourly, he watched the lone figure come up on foot, the torch he held bobbing as he strode in a curious, long-limbed way. He knew the walk, though the face of the Welshman, Addaf, was made no easier on the eye in the dancing shadows from the torch. Christ’s Bones, he thought, now even the contract captains are behaving like chivalry.

‘Your Grace,’ the man said, offering as little a head nod as he thought he could get away with and de Valence smiled wryly to himself. The Welshman was still of use, him and his mountain dwarves, even if he used the ‘Your Grace’ like a spit in the eye, so de Valence gave the man his due.

‘Mydr ap Mydvydd,’ he said, the title given by admiring Welsh archers to someone they trusted to lead them.

‘Found this, Your Grace,’ Addaf said in his sing-song English and handed the object up. De Valence examined the bascinet and Robert Tuke leaned over, squinting for a better look, then gave a short bark of laughter at the sight of the battered helmet with its twisted circlet of gold, only half of it still remaining.

‘We have his usurper’s crown,’ he crowed over his shoulder to the others. ‘Soon we’ll have his head to match it.’

The laughter rolled out into the night, over the scatter of darkened corpses and the wounded, desperate for relief, yet trying not to groan because it would bring the throat-cutting scavengers.

De Valence looked at the ruin of the helmet and did not need to wonder where the missing half of the crown was, though he would not pursue Addaf on the matter. More to the point was the damage done to it, a hard sword blow.

A man who had worn that had taken a harsh face cut, he thought. It will be a ruined head when we eventually find it.

Bruce woke from a nightmare where his loving daughter’s kisses had turned to sucking wolf bites, ripping his skin, grinding into the bones. He woke to pain and mad, flickering torchlight, a sickening tugging and pulling on the left side of his face, which he tried to dash away with one hand.

‘Hold him,’ growled a voice.

‘Howk the torch higher, yer honour,’ said a woman. ‘Else I will sew up his bloody neb.’

Get off me, Bruce said. Get away — I am the King…

He was appalled at his own weakness and heard only gug-gug sounds coming from his mouth; a face swam into view, big and sheened with sweat with a grin like a sickle moon. The light danced mad, lurid shadows of blood on it, but he knew it all the same. Edward, he thought. Brother Edward. He said it, feeling his mouth strange on one side, almost sick with the relief of hearing something approaching sense from himself.

‘Swef, Rob,’ said Edward. ‘Ye ken me — that’s good. At least yer wits are still in yer head, though it’s a miracle — God’s Holy Arse, wummin, do not pull his face to bits.’

‘A wee bit bone — it fell oot,’ Bruce heard the woman answer, indignantly shrill. Dear God, he thought, what has been done to me? What is being done to me?

There was sharp pain, one fierce sliver after another and he tried to cry out but could only make incoherent sounds, tried to thrash the pain away then found he was gripped by strong hands. Eventually, his face seamed with fire, the hands relaxed.

‘Done, yer honour,’ the woman’s voice said and he saw her briefly in the torchlight, sallow skinned, a tangle of hair which she brushed back from her face with bloodied hands; there was a needle held in the thin clench of her lips. Edward loomed into view again, peering.

‘Not bad, Creishie Marthe. Neat as a hem.’

‘A wish my ma were here to see,’ the woman answered with a shrill cackle. ‘She swore at my stitchin’ betimes — now it is part o’ a king’s face forever.’

‘Aye, weel — now there are two things ye are good at,’ someone said and the woman huffed indignantly at this affront to her honour.

Edward grinned cheerfully at Bruce and nodded.

‘Rest. We must be away from here, brother, and swiftly.’

‘What happened to me?’ Bruce managed to ask, coherent at least. Edward dismissed it with a casual wave.

‘Lost a wee tourney fight with the English,’ he answered, ‘and took a dunt. Your eye is fine, mark you — the cut is above and below it. It will leave a fine scar — you have a naming face now, brother.’

A naming face. Bruce heard the others laugh, daringly suggest names their king would be remembered by — Robert the Scarred, Dinged Rob, King Hob the Screed… the voices faded and Edward, frowning, patted his shoulder.

‘We left your fancy war hat behind, mark you,’ he said. ‘The crown is lost.’

The crown is lost. Bruce struggled and Edward looked alarmed as his brother sat up.

‘I have not lost the crown,’ he shouted, before pain wrenched his face and sank his swimming head down on the pallet again.

I have not lost, he thought through the swirling agony. By God, I have not.