The Lion Rampant

CHAPTER TEN

Bannockburn

Vigil of the Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314

There had been no rain for weeks, so six hundred cantering hooves slashed up the sere grass and dirt of the carse into a haze that filtered the sun to a gold coin. The Carse was supposed to be boggy, cut about by vicious little streams and hard going for horses, but Sir Robert Clifford saw only a trickle of water in the bottom of steep-sided, bush-choked ditches.

‘Still a barrier, my lord,’ William Deyncourt noted, indicating the dark-streaked horses, foamed at the neck where the reins champed the sweat into a lather; they’d had to work hard to cross the dry streams.

‘Yet the undergrowth is green enough,’ Sir Thomas Gray added, ‘which means it is watered regularly.’

Beaumont, grimming along in a world of reeling heat, wished he had the energy to argue, to growl at Deyncourt that it was only a barrier if men defended the opposite side of it, to spit at Gray that none here were bloody churl farmers and who cared where a bush got water? But Clifford nodded as if he understood what Gray had meant, which only flared Beaumont the more.

Too clever by half, he thought hotly. He did not like Deyncourt much, the more so because he was in Gray’s retinue. He liked Gray even less and knew he should not harbour the feeling, which made matters worse still. Sir Thomas Gray had almost been killed saving him at the last siege of Stirling — Christ’s Bones, a decade ago now.

The memory of that great hook, swinging down to try and grab the siege tower, made him whimper even now. It had missed its target and snagged him like a fish, catching in his surcote — the thought that it might have been his flesh still made his hole pucker.

Like a giant hand it had lifted him up and swung him, arms and legs flailing like a pathetic insect, to batter into the walls — but Gray had leaped forward, risking arrows and showers of stones to grab and hack the hook out of the surcote. Just then a springald bolt had taken Gray in the helmet, straight through it and into his face, so that they’d needed smithing tools to cut him free.

Guiltily, Beaumont glanced at Gray now, seeing the great scar like an accusing beacon that flushed more heat through him, composed of shame and gratitude. Gray should have died, Beaumont thought. He had lain under a pile of dead until Beaumont had come to his senses and gone back with men to look for him, expecting a corpse and finding what he thought was one; it was only when they paraded him back, all solemn and sorrowful for burial, that he had groaned and moved, shocking everyone — especially those who had tugged and heaved at the helm and then given up because it was skewered fast to his head.

He should have died anyway, Beaumont thought, from a horror wound like that — but he had recovered and Beaumont knew he should have been pleased for his saviour, should be sending prayers to God to preserve the life of this man who had preserved his.

Yet that face only reminded Beaumont of his bowel-loosening fear on that day, his utter helplessness and what he had babblingly offered to God for deliverance, which no man nor saint could possibly have fulfilled.

He wanted this business done with, so that he could put Gray behind him and if it meant riding across this strange terrain into the gates of Hell itself, he would spur on.

The Carse was strange, no doubt of it. They had all been told how treacherous it was, a sward that looked firm yet was a soft and sinking bog. Not now. Not after weeks of summer sun. Now it was like fresh bread, slightly spongy and new-toasted so that it crumbled; Clifford voiced this and his mesnie laughed dutifully, but they were nervous. They had started out slightly later than the Van, knew nothing of what was happening in the New Park away to their left and Clifford was apprehensive. The distant sound of cheers and shouting did not help; who was celebrating and why?

Yet, if he was to achieve his king’s orders and ride round to cut off the retreat of the Scots, he needed speed. That was why he had three hundred mounted knights and men-at-arms, all flogging expensive warhorses in the heat to come up on St Ninian’s little chapel; the nearest foot were miles away, slogging desperately up with the baggage.

Clifford eyed the wood to his left, which had some outlandish name, as did the plain they rode across; they were coming up on another steep-sided stream and Clifford slowed to a walk, Gray and Beaumont coming up alongside.

‘The Pelstream, my lord,’ Gray offered. ‘Tidal, like all the rest. We are leaving the Carse of Balqhuiderock and heading out into the Dryfield. As the name suggests, it is firm ground even in bad weather.’

No one could tell the difference; the plain looked exactly the same, though Clifford beamed, the beads forming on his fleshy nose and pouched cheeks.

‘Good ground for horse,’ he exclaimed cheerfully. ‘The King will be pleased — this is where the army wants to be, my lords.’

Gray looked dubiously at the constrictions of wood and stream and mentioned them; he and Clifford fell to arguing the merits of the place as a ‘good field’.

‘God-cursed place,’ Beaumont growled into the middle of their polite debate, wiping his face with a corner of his surcote. ‘What’s that there?’

He pointed one mittened fist and everyone followed it, some rising in the stirrups to try and see better.

It was a line, a scar on the landscape, seeming to undulate and sparkle. Gray laughed, which made Beaumont’s scowl all the darker.

‘That, my lord,’ Gray said, almost joyously, ‘is the enemy.’

Bruce had blinked and shaken himself out of the daze, ruthlessly forcing it away along with the memory of that fury, that great, crunching crack as he brought the axe down — hard enough to snap the shaft, by God’s Wounds. His hand and arm hurt, wrenched with the power of the blow.

Like a blown egg, he recalled with a shudder. On the back of the boy’s head as he rode away … he quelled that, too, stuffing it in the choked chest along with all the other sins.

The irony was not lost on him as he rode into an avenue of cheers and furious joy from those who had heard that the English Van had been repulsed, that a proud English champion lay dead like an offering, slain in single combat by their hero king. A good start, for all the sin in it, Bruce thought, and tried not to concern himself with the Curse of Malachy.

Yet it was lurking there, made itself plain when he rode up to Randolph’s thousands and found no Earl of Moray, only Duncan Kirkpatrick of Torthorwald, anxious and stumping up and down in front of the serried ranks. At a glance, Bruce saw that the best of the Battle was gone; only the ill-armed were here, stripped down to a shift that barely covered their decency and leaning carelessly on their tall shafts; some had only shaved and fire-hardened points, some had strange hand-scythes and long shafts with other crude blades lashed to them, but none was a proper spear or bill.

I shall defend myself with the longest stick I have, Bruce thought.

Duncan Kirkpatrick, his face twisted as if in pain, blinked the sweat out of his eyes and knelt dutifully, thinking to himself that he was damned by Hell itself to be the one having to explain to his king what Sir Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, was doing.

Bruce felt the rise of panic in him, welling up like shit from a privy as he stared at Duncan. Kirkpatrick’s kinsman, he recalled. Where is that auld dug — and Hal of Herdmanston? If we do not get them back, their mission successful, then we are done with this day and possibly this life. And where is Randolph with the best-armed men we have? The thought that he might have deserted like Atholl almost crushed him, but he heard Jamie Douglas give a surprised grunt and then a snort of derision.

‘What in the name of Christ’s Wounds is he thinking?’

‘May the Lord forgive you,’ said fat little Gilbert de la Haye piously and Jamie barked out a crow laugh, pointing with one hand down across the Dryfield.

‘Not me that needs forgiveness, my lord,’ he answered. ‘Him.’

They all looked. Out on the Dryfield, long hundreds of men skeined forward, their spears glinting, the Randolph bedsheet banner fluttering boldly alongside the saltire. It was his own mesnie, stripped from this command, all the well-armed and best-armoured men committing the unthinkable — the unforgivable — and marching unsupported out into the open against heavy horse.

Coming at them, hard and fast, Bruce saw, the pennons and streamers and blazing flags, the lances and tippets and heraldry glowing brightly through the golden haze.

Clifford’s checky banner he recognized. And Beaumont’s. The black fork-tailed lion of the Stapledons. The Leyburns. Tailleboys. Christ’s Bones — three hundred or more heavy horse of Clifford’s command, bearing down on a little knot of men, already coalescing into a shield ring, as seeming vulnerable and small as a robin’s egg in the middle of a busy stone path. Bruce felt the breath squeeze from him with the vice-crush of it.

‘What possessed him?’ gasped an incredulous de la Haye.

Carelessness, thought the Dog Boy, panting in the heat-flushed ranks of men behind Jamie; The Earl of Moray was supposed to watch for this and has missed it. Now, too late, he puts himself out like a stopper in a leather bottle to prevent the English going further towards Stirling’s fortress.

Glory, Jamie Douglas thought laconically. Randolph has heard what the King did with the rearguard and seeks to outdo it, rub all our noses in his paladin splendour. He did not know what would be worse: that the Earl of Moray be ridden into the dust like a martyr or skewer the English to ruin like a hero. Either way, he thought moodily, we will never hear the end of it.

‘He sought to prevent them reaching the castle, Your Grace,’ Duncan Kirkpatrick offered miserably.

Bruce had his own answer to the why of it, watching with a sick, stone-heavy lump of fear in him as the English closed like a fist on the schiltron.

The Curse of Malachy.

Clifford could not believe it and said so. Beaumont, shaking sweat from his eyebrows like a dog does water, agreed with him, yet the sight gave him a sudden burst of savage exultant triumph.

‘Let them come on further,’ he bawled out, red-faced and beaming. ‘The more ground we give them, the easier they are cut off and cut up.’

‘Give them any more,’ Gray answered wryly, ‘and they will have it all, my lord.’

He meant nothing by it that anyone else could ascertain, but Beaumont swelled like an angry toad and astonished everyone by his ugly snarl; those who knew the tale of it were doubly shocked, for if anyone deserved Sir Henry de Beaumont’s undying respect it was the man who had saved his life.

‘If you are so concerned about them,’ Beaumont savaged out, his face sweat-greased and dark with suffused blood, ‘then feel free to flee.’

Now Gray boiled up, almost standing in the stirrups as he quivered with fury.

‘You dare?’ he demanded. ‘You dare say that to me, sirrah. To me?’

‘If it fits, wear it,’ Beaumont growled, realizing he had been too harsh, yet unable to retreat from it.

‘By God, Beaumont,’ Deyncourt burst out, his own face raging. ‘That is mean — this is the man you owe for being here at all.’

That did not help. Deyncourt, as Beaumont hissed out, was nothing at all and should mind his station when addressing an earl. That drew a sharp seal-bark of laughter from the furious Deyncourt and his brother, Reginald, came scowling up to make his presence felt.

‘Earl? You may style yourself Earl of Buchan, Beaumont,’ Deyncourt bawled, ‘but when you have more than a wife’s portion and a parchment to show for it, then you may have your due from me.’

‘Gentilhommes,’ Clifford shouted. He had three hundred mounted men on plunging horses which — already highly strung — not only sensed action but the nervousness of their riders; it meant that men were cavorting in circles to keep them from bolting; Clifford needed calm and did not get it.

‘Be damned to you, Beaumont. I never ran from a fight and none should know that better than yourself.’

Gray spat it out with all the venom he could make, wrenched savagely at the reins, dragging the squealing warhorse round. Before anyone could understand what he was doing, he had turned, couched his lance, set his shield and was trotting out, breaking into a canter. Behind him, like a grim shadow, trailed the Deyncourts, fumbling helms on as they went; young Reginald whooped with mad delight.

Alone, they thundered down on the hundreds of men forming into a bristling circle of spears.

In the circle it was blazing. Hot, Will thought. I hate the heat. I have always hated the heat, the way it prickled the skin and turned it dark as a saddle, as a Moorish heathen. When the rest of the bairns longed for the endless days of summer, when barefoot did not mean cold blisters, when they needed to swim in the river to cool off rather than get the dirt and shite off, I knew what it was doing to Da’s stock.

My da would be fretting now, Will thought. Down in the undercroft, wondering if it was cool enough and fretting mad. This was more fiery than any heat Da had known, mark you, made worse because I am pressed fore and aft, shoulder to shoulder with men as boiled as me, sweating fear out in a nose-pinching stink. Smelling rank in ranks, he thought and nearly laughed.

Yet my da is to blame for me being here, squashed and melting like mutton tallow in a roaring ring, waiting for Hell to fall on me.

It’s not our fight, I told him. What do we care who wears the crown — would the priory not need candles under an English king? And my da put me right on it, as he always did, as he did when he taught me how to measure to the last drop the tallow needed for a candle clock — a proper one, not the thin streaks of piss stuck in a graded pewter sconce that some folk affect.

‘Who do we pay rent to?’ my da demanded and there it was, perfect as coloured wax; the priory owned us and the rent, though I had never known this before, included service as a man-at-arms. My da had gone before, back in ’07 and again in ’10 and was lucky to escape with his life both times.

I was nine when he first went, Will thought, and understood nothing. Now I am sixteen and since Da is too old, it is me chosen — so here I am, dripping as if rained on, in Da’s rusting rimmed iron hat, patched old gambeson, rattle-hilted sword and a long pike-spear given me by the King.

Yet the hands that hold that spear are mine, the cunning of bone and joint and broken nails was made to answer my order and no one else’s, just as were the sweating, stinking feet in the battered shoes and the legs atop them.

He was Will the chandler’s boy and he was sixteen and lived in himself, somewhere under the ribs or inside his skull, thinking thoughts that had never been thought, feeling things that were so big and full no one had ever experienced them.

Will the chandler’s boy, melting like wax and waiting to be smeared like old grease. No chance now to make a name as great as Master Overhill, who had invented the candle clock. No chance to find some cleverness to combat the creeping horror of steel cogs and wheels that was the fancy Frenchified horologe, no chance to raise himself from dipping wick in tallow to make nothing better than poor light the rest of his life.

No place for candles this, he thought, hearing the booming roar of the vintenars to keep close — charge your pikes. Behind him, in the thinned centre of the ring, barely enough room for him alone, he knew the lord Randolph stood. How he stayed upright in this heat, with maille and plate and padding all over him, was something approaching magic, part of the mystery of the nobiles and what they did.

Yet he was not only upright, but roaring defiance and demands that they hold to the ring; out beyond the shoulders of the man in front, Will saw two riders and tried to dash the sweat out of his eyes with a fist swathed in thick leather gauntlet. It made his spear sway and clatter off the helmet of the man in front, but he only grunted, did not turn round.

The riders came on. Just three — someone laughed in disbelief but the men around Will suddenly seemed to stop breathing and Will saw that the riders were coming straight at his part of the ring; if they kept going they would crash into it.

‘Hold to the ring!’

Surely no sane man or beast would plunge straight in a hedge of points … Will did not even realize he had said it aloud until the man next to him growled out a reply.

‘They are no’ sane, beast nor man,’ he declared and Will turned to look briefly at the grizzled face. It smiled at him.

‘Dinna fash, lad. Hold to the ring, keep your pike charged as you trained and it will be fine enough.’

‘You have done this afore?’

Will heard the tremble in his voice and was ashamed of it, but the man did not seem to notice and merely grinned brownly.

‘Och, this is auld cloots an’ gruel to the likes o’ us,’ he said and men to his front and side laughed agreement. Will could not understand why anyone would want to do this more than once. Then the grizzled man looked to his front and shifted as if to plant himself.

‘Fuck,’ he said and Will saw the horsemen, big as giants and growing larger, the huge legs of the beasts pounding the ground to dust as they came on them at a full gallop.

Gray’s fury thundered with every hoofbeat, a blood pulse that sent him shrieking at the ring of spears, cursing Bruno’s slowness and raking him until he squealed. Even the sight of the spear points, wavering as they drew together to point at him, provided only the briefest spasm of apprehension, no more.

That was driven away by the sight of Sir William Deyncourt spurring past him, sitting forward and almost lunging with his lance — bad posture that, he thought, for you are off balance when you hit and will go straight through the gatehouse, out between the ears like a slung stone …

Deyncourt rode Bruno’s stablemate, a big Frisian cross called Morningstar. The pair of them had been trained together, at the straw men in ranks, at the weak withy hurdles so that they believed there was no barrier they were put to which was stronger than their own muscle and bone. All it took was a madly determined rider and they would try to punch a hole in a castle wall — or a deadly shrike’s nest of points.

Gray sat back, legs stuck almost up by the arched neck of Bruno, the last furious gallop into the ring a great roar that rang inside his helm and deafened the splintering crash.

Will saw the leading horseman as a flicker to the left of him, heard the grating crash and felt the slam of bodies rippling away from the impact point. Staggering, frantic, he was peering to see when the second knight erupted out of the golden haze, a massive monster with bared yellow teeth topped with a featureless creature of metal.

There was a brief confusion of red and white, a glimpse of a silver lion on a shield and then the horse struck the front rank as if it did not exist; there was the sound like a great tree falling and Will saw the man in front of him flung into the air to disappear with a shriek. He ducked instinctively at the great whirl of splintered wood from broken spears, saw the snapped-off points lanced into the horse’s chest and head — straight through the flaring nostril and out of the other eye.

Then there was a moment when the world seemed to stop, when the man on the dying horse’s back took his lance to within a foot of Will and skewered the astonished grizzle of the veteran through the neck; he seemed to float up in the air, higher and higher so that Will started to follow him with a tilt of his gape-mouthed stare.

The dying horse, legs flailing still, screaming a high-pitched shrill, ploughed on and skittled the ranks of men. Time sucked back to Will, just as the horse capsized, the last mad shriek and kick arriving into the sunlight of Will’s world like a huge black cloud.

He felt the blow, felt himself hurled backward into other men and wanted to apologize. He saw himself as if he stood outside the blackness that had cloaked him, with his fine sprout of red-gold beard like stubble on a sparse field, big-handed, big-footed and awkward. Proved and not a coward, all the same, he thought, even if I am in the dark and afraid of it.

I need a candle.

Gray knew Sir William was already dead when Bruno hit the spearwall and died in an instant. He barely had time for the regret of such a loss before he was shot upward as if launched from a trebuchet, sprung up but not cleanly; one foot was briefly caught in the stirrup and he felt his leg wrench. Then it was free and he was flying in a whirl of arms and legs, like the tumblers he had seen at a fair day once. There was a brief flicker through his helmet slit, an eyeblink vision of a boy with his mouth open.

He crashed down in a great heap, the air driven from him. He thought he had been pinned like a sheep’s eye on a crow beak, but felt himself dragged and kicked, felt his mind narrowing to a last small point of light. I am too young, he thought frantically. I have achieved nothing … he felt the savage wrenching of his neck, then light flared as his helm was torn off; blind, stunned, he blinked into a growl of shadows.

God preserve my soul …

This was chaos and Randolph flailed in the centre of it, bawling for the bodies to be cleared away, the dead spat out like gristle, for the ring to hold, for it to crab away from the dead horses. Someone flung a body at his feet and he stared down into the glassed daze of the knight, his red surcote torn, the silver lion streaked with gore.

‘Yield, my lord?’ he asked, out of politeness’ sake, and Sir Thomas Gray, his senses rushing back into the dubious blessing of a world of pain, could only nod.

A few feet away, Davey the Cooper fought the splintered length of lance from the neck of Bannock and rolled him away — helpful feet kept him going, feeding him out of the ring as it drew back. Peel o’ the Bannock, Davey thought, the hero of Linlithgow who had driven the haywain under the cullis and stopped it dropping long enough for men to spring through and take the place. It is a weeping shame to be leaving him in his own blood for the birds to peck, him who had sworn to defend his own birthplace. Him and a dozen others, he saw, torn and savaged to death by only three knights.

He examined the boy at his feet, hearing him softly moaning out of his smashed face.

‘Swef, swef,’ he soothed, though he knew the lad — Will, he thought the name was — had been sore hurt. Christ’s Bones, you could see the half-moon circle where the iron-shod hoof had caught him full in the face, the bloody furrows where the raised shoenails had gouged him.

‘Candle,’ he heard the boy mush out of his ruined mouth; somewhere, men shouted out a warning and Davey had no more time to think about it, drew his knife and slit the boy’s throat, the blood scalding on his hands.

No candle would bring light to the poor boy, he thought, wiping his fingers down the front of his tunic. Not when his eyes have been torn from his head and his face so monstered his own ma would not recognize him. Better this way …

He helped the press to roll the boy out and rose up, shouldered into a space and braced for the rest of the English to arrive.

Clifford was near weeping with frustration and had torn his helmet off, flinging it away with a bawled curse so pungent it would strip the gilding off a saint’s statue. Beaumont, horrified at what had happened, saw that the entire Battle was in disarray.

There were knights flung to the ground trying to fight their horses for control, others who had failed were streaming away in all directions on mad bolters and a good long hundred or so had compromised with their mounts and were rolling forward against the spear ring but at a steady foam-mouthed canter and all strung out.

‘Form. Form,’ Clifford roared and those remaining fought their plunging mounts into some semblance of tight knee-to-knee order — but the act of this, familiar and tantalizing, simply fanned the flames as the warhorses fought for their heads, squealing and blowing like whales.

‘Advance,’ Clifford called in desperation and, like a bolt from a springald, the relax of reins sent the whole pack raggedly forward in a fast canter. Throwing up his iron fists, Clifford gave in and followed, his own mount held in a steel grip that Beaumont could only admire, smiling and nodding his praise.

Clifford scowled back at him.

‘This is your fault, my lord,’ he said as he swept past and Beaumont, floundering for a reply, could only fume in his wake.

In the end, they could only circle the ring, kept at bay by stabbing spears, reduced to hurling their lances and maces. Beaumont cantered round once, threw his lance, thought about hurling his helmet into the sea of wet, open-mouthed scum, but considered the pointless expense and kept it.

His excellent mount, at a trot, picked a delicate step over the flung bodies, snorting at the dust and blood as Beaumont searched for Sir Thomas.

If God had been just, he thought, he would have discovered Gray alive and bloodied, been able to climb off his expensive warhorse and present it to the man and so expunge his odious obligation. But there was no sign of Gray, only the battered and bloodied remains of his horse, something that might have been Sir William Deyncourt — and, to Beaumont’s added horror, young Reginald Deyncourt as well, who had clearly decided to avenge his elder brother and paid the price for it.

He swung round as Clifford, red-faced and hoarse with shouting, galloped up to him, flinging one hand behind him. Lifting the fancy visor of his new bascinet, Beaumont squinted; there were more men coming out of the woods, spears up and hedged.

Bruce sat and watched the three riders crash to ruin; Jamie Douglas gave an admiring shout as they did so, even as he shook his head at the futility of it. He had uncowled himself from maille and bascinet so that his tousled dark hair stood up in sweat-spikes and his face was bright with joy.

He loves all this, Bruce thought as he massaged the ache of his right hand, pulling off gauntlet and maille mitt to study it; he carefully wiggled his fingers and noted the signs of blue bruising, mottled and ugly. Count the blessings of Heaven, he thought wryly, at least you can still feel all your fingers. And toes.

‘Do you wish me to go to the Earl of Moray’s aid?’

The tone was bland but the question was as loaded as any latchbow; when Bruce turned, Jamie Douglas had a face and smile as innocent as a nun’s headscarf.

‘Let my nephew bide a wee,’ Bruce answered laconically. ‘He seems to have matters in hand.’

And if you go to his aid, Jamie Douglas, he thought, it will only be to preen and wave the rescue of it at Randolph for the rest of his life, so that he will not forgive either you or me.

They watched while the horsemen rode up in ragged skeins and then balked and circled. One dashed in and the horse went down — men cheered as the rider was clearly pounced on by the dirkmen and sent, as Patrick announced cheerfully, ‘all the way tae his ain Hell’.

Other horses were downed, but the riders weaved and staggered away, half walking, half falling. Eventually, as if tiring of the entertainment, Bruce turned back to Jamie Douglas.

‘Move your men to the line of the wood. No farther, Sir James, upon your honour.’

Jamie pouted, but then grinned, for he knew what his king was up to and he turned to the waiting men, winking at Dog Boy.

‘Rank up, lads. Make some noise, too, just to let the bloody English ken who we are.’

They marched out, shouting and singing as if it was a parade of apprentices on the spree — but, as Bruce had planned, the English saw reinforcements arriving. There was a flurry among them, the distant faintness of shouting and then a horn blew.

Bruce sat deeper in his saddle, suddenly aware of the tension leaking out of him like grain from a burst bag; his arm and hand pulsed with a vicious heartbeat. He heard horsemen and turned to see his brother ride up, grinning like a shark out of his broad face and waving vaguely at the sky.

‘The sun is going down,’ he declared as if he had been personally responsible for it. ‘They will try no more until the morn.’

Bruce nodded and sucked in a long, deep breath; below, Randolph’s schiltron was uncurling like a cautious hedgepig, waving their sharpness and hurling jeers at the backs of the retreating knights.

The day had gone well, Bruce thought. Yet tomorrow it would all have to be done again — or else tonight we will have to be gone. And smartly, too, since it is the shortest night of the year.

He wondered, suddenly, why his brother was here at all and not with his own command, turned to ask and saw the broad grin widen further as Edward nudged his horse aside to reveal the men he had been hiding.

Bruce stared. Kirkpatrick was dappled with sweat and leaning wearily on the cantle of his mount’s saddle. Beside him, with a great half-bruised face and a bound arm, swaying with fatigue but grim and steady as ever, sat Hal of Herdmanston. Behind them prowled a slew of Campbells, all bristle-bearded and proud, but scowling to have arrived too late for this day’s fighting.

His brace of dogs returned. He blurted it out before he could think and saw Hal’s raised eyebrow and Kirkpatrick’s lopsided smile.

‘Aye, betimes,’ Kirkpatrick answered, ‘with our jaws stuffed with retrievals.’

‘There are cartloads coming,’ Edward Bruce declared, unable to keep silent any longer. ‘Weapons and armour and more of the same.’

His face was shining with it as he stared at his regal brother.

‘Now we can stand and fight.’

ISABEL

They can feel it, the irregular heartbeat of it. The seneschal here, a fat and fussy man, has banned Malise from my side by order of the new warden, John de Luka. It is not pity nor mercy that does it, but Your Hand, my Lord. That and the fact that, if all goes badly, I might be a counter for bargaining a truce of peace for this town, as good as gold to some folk. So here I am, curled in my cage like a cat, prinked and preened and dyed and painted and dressed, with one hand clutching an ivory sieve holding balls of musk and crushed amber, the other carefully hidden because of what Malise has done to the nails and fingers. I have a barbette edged with cloth of gold. Nestling between my breasts is a gift from the warden himself, a fat enamelled pendant which has two lovers kissing on one side and, on the other, a grinning Death; it is a common enough theme, but it reveals more sensibility than I saw in the hard face of that royal squire. I wonder if he chose it himself or had someone do it? Either way, Your Hand is in it, Lord. I am still on display, but more gilded and most of those who still come to gawp think I have a toad hidden somewhere the better to curse them, or suck on an emerald in my sleep to preserve my seeming youth.

Let them. I am Isabel MacDuff, with a dowry portion of Fife. I am a long ways past girlhood, yet I am ready to receive my lover. God wills it that he comes soon.