The Lion Rampant

CHAPTER TWELVE

Bannockburn

Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314

He heard the clack-clack through the swirl of mist and saw the heads of his men come up; one rode ahead and, by the time Bruce arrived a seeming instant later, there was the tapestry of it laid out: the rider — who was sometimes his brother, sometimes Jamie Douglas; the wee priest in his brown robes, patient as a nubbed oak; and the hooded figure.

There was never any doubting, even in the dream, what the hooded figure was, standing there with head bowed and a pail at his feet. The white hand which held the clapper flapped like a gull wing and the faint smell of rotten meat rose up, even over the stench from the bucket.

Yet it was a dream and he knew it even in his sleep, a skewed version of the true events — but the essential parts of it were always the same and always as they had happened.

It was Liston in the late autumn two years ago, where he had gone with a select band to try the waters of the place yet again and, though no one spoke it, everyone knew the point of the journey was that Liston’s well was noted for its efficacy with lepers.

The dream played out: the rider demanding the hooded leper withdraw from the path, the patient priest agreeing and then kneeling, as he had done, in abject, appalled apology when he saw his king. The leper had tried to kneel, a painful display that Bruce had halted.

He remembered the shock of it, the sight of that white hand and, at one and the same moment, wanted to see the face and did not want ever to set eyes on it.

‘Who are you?’ he asked and the priest began to reply until Bruce’s raised hand cut him off. There was silence from the leper.

‘Can he speak?’ Bruce asked the priest and then the leper cleared a thickness from his throat, a rot of rheum that turned his voice into the growl of a beast.

‘Still,’ he said, ‘though I do not, for I am considered as dead.’

This was only true and Bruce had forgotten it; lepers were always considered as dead men and had to convey themselves as such. He wondered, trying not to shiver, how old the man was and asked but it was as if the man had used up all his allotment of words for that day; his mouth opened and closed and no sound came.

‘He was born in the year the Norse were defeated at Largs, Your Grace,’ the priest offered helpfully.

Forty and nine, Bruce had calculated. Eleven years older than me — is this me in eleven years?

‘What is his name?’

The priest told the details of it; he was called Gawter, came from Tantallon where he had been a sailor, a skilled man at the navigation. Now he was at Liston for a time, working as a gongfermour for the priory.

From sea to shit, Bruce thought. A skilled man brought down to one fit only to handle other people’s leavings. In the dream, sometimes, he gave the leper a coin, sometimes a benefice to keep him for the rest of his life without shovelling dung. He could not remember if he had done that for true — but he always knew the last part, for it had happened and was seared on his mind.

The priest, apologetic, said that because Gawter had encountered someone on the path and not warned them away sufficiently, the leper had to be publicly abjured and reminded of his station. So Bruce had sat in the chilling haar and listened to the priest tell Gawter the leper what he must do. Which seemed to consist of telling him what he must not do.

Forbidden to enter a church or brewery or bakery or butcher or anywhere Christian souls use. Forbidden to wash in a stream or drink unless water has been placed in a vessel. Forbidden to touch food, or clothing, or even the ground barefoot. If you buy food, the payment coin is to be placed in a bowl of vinegar and you must eat or drink in the company of others like yourself, or alone. Forbidden to have intercourse with any woman, or to approach any child, or any person on the road, or pass down a narrow alleyway, lest you encounter a decent Christian soul and brush against them.

You must warn Christian souls away from you with your clapper, wear the garb appointed so that all are in no doubt of what you are and must be buried outside the parish bounds when you die. God grant you grace in endurance.

The words echoed still, more chill than the cold mist. Grace. Grace …

He woke to hear Bernard, gentle and soft in his urgent call. It was dim save for the yellow pool of Bernard’s fluttering candle.

‘Your Grace. Your Grace …’

‘I am awake. What is it, Chancellor?’

‘Your brother is here and Lord Randolph.’

‘Is it time?’

‘Almost — but it is not that. They have news …’

He swung out of the bed, splashed water from a basin, pulled on braies and his underserk; his arm and shoulder hurt still and, in the candlight, the hand was dark and mottled with bruising.

Yet he could feel the fingers and the hand would be blue and yellow in proper daylight, not white. He could feel all his fingers and his toes and flexed them thinking ‘one more day’.

The night, which had never been truly dark, was a smoked sapphire sparkled with diamonds when he moved to the panoply entrance and signalled for the fretting, impatient pair to be let in. In the distance, puzzling him, was a dull red glow which he took to be part of the English camp.

They were fully dressed; Edward was in maille and jupon and Bruce thought he had probably never got out of it, nor slept. Randolph was dressed, but uncombed, without a belt round his tunic and barefoot; spilled out of sleep like me, Bruce thought.

‘You saw it, brother?’ Edward demanded brusquely and Bruce blinked a little, trying to rout the last shreds of the leper from his mind.

‘Saw what?’

‘The glow. Cambuskenneth burning.’

This was a dash of cold water and Bruce sucked in his breath at it, while a slight figure padded silently in bringing a tray with wine and some slices of cold fish and bread.

‘The English have dared to fire the priory?’ Bruce demanded, feeling the anger well in him and then die of confusion at Randolph’s headshake; Edward splashed wine into a cup and handed it to his brother.

‘Atholl, Your Grace,’ Randolph said, almost languidly. ‘One of our men survived the attack and brought news of it. The Earl of Atholl has burned it. The storehouses are in flames but not the priory itself, though the wee monks are having a sleepless night making sure it does not spread. A right balefire for Midsummer’s Night, in truth.’

There was little enough at Cambuskenneth — stuff used in the siege and lifted when the English army drew close; straw hurdles, picks, shovels, fodder for horses, a few lengths of timber in the hope of building some sort of siege machine in time. Guarded, Bruce recalled, by no more than six men.

‘A survivor?’ he asked and Edward wiped his moustaches with the back of one hand.

‘Sole,’ he answered gruffly. ‘The Frenchman Guillaume, whose piety saved him — he was holding vigil for St John in the chapel. The other five are slaughtered … Christ, Sir William Airth is killed. God’s Wounds, Rob, young Strathbogie deserves the worst punishment. Bad enough that he runs off on the eve of battle, but this act is the foulest treason.’

‘The Earl of Atholl is young,’ Bruce murmured, ‘and afraid. And I am your king, brother. Not Rob.’

‘Not so young that he cannot tell right from wrong, my lord king,’ Randolph answered as Edward scowled. ‘Forfeiture is the least he can expect.’

Aye, Bruce thought wryly. Dispossess him of his lands to the Crown, so I can hand them out like sweetmeats to the favoured. With Randolph, Earl of Moray, at the head of the line.

‘No great loss,’ Edward added. ‘If he thought to harm our cause by burning stores, he has missed the mark.’

‘Sir William Airth,’ Bruce pointed out. ‘And four other good men.’

Edward had the grace to flush, a darkening of his skin under the yellow candle glow, while Bruce thought of what he would say to old Sir John, William’s father. Your son is slaughtered, not by the English, but by the Earl of Atholl — God’s hook swung exceeding slow, but it snagged bitterly, for all that.

‘There is other news,’ Randolph said into the chill which followed. ‘A balance of the pan, as it were.’

Bruce waited and saw Randolph stride from the panoply, while the broad grin of his brother gave nothing away. It was the same grin, Bruce recalled with a sharp pang, when he was toddling on fat little legs, bringing some strange insect or animal to present for inspection.

None had been stranger than the one Randolph brought into the candlelight. Tall, so that he had to stoop underneath the canvas lintel, dark-haired, sallow-skinned, his black eyes alive with a fevered light … Bruce knew him well.

‘Seton,’ he said weakly, for it was the last man he had thought to see. Then he recovered himself as the man flung to one knee, reached out and raised him up gently by the elbow. ‘Alexander,’ he said. ‘Nephew. Welcome.’

The noise of clatter and weans woke him, starting him out of sleep with a jerk; he saw little Bet half crouch with the sudden movement, cautious and wary. Beyond, studying him with dark solemnity, was Hob.

Hob. She would call him that, since that was the name of the King of Summer. He was of age and Bet’s Meggy had claimed the boy as his, seeded on that very midsummer night. It was possible … he had known it even as he said, accusingly: ‘Ye might have let me know.’

‘For why?’ she had replied, tart as young apples. ‘For you to stop skirrievaigin’ with Jamie Douglas at the herschip and come to Roslin to provide for me? You have no skill for anythin’ but hounds and Roslin did not need that.’

She had looked at the crumbled ruin of maslin and smiled.

‘I mak’ bread, even from poor leavings like this, so I can provide. I did not need another useless mouth.’

He had gawped at her and she had smiled the bitter out of it in an eyeblink.

‘No matter how loving a man you are,’ she had added softly, and then tapped his arm lightly. ‘Besides, John the Lamb took me, Hob and all, and provided for us until he died. Now you have rose up in the world and mayhap the Lady brought you back to better provide for your imp of a son.’

He had glanced at the sleeping boy and managed a wan smile of his own while his head birled with it all.

‘Less imp now that he sleeps,’ he said and she laughed.

‘Aye — maybe he is not yours at all,’ she offered and laughed when he’d rounded on her with a scowl.

‘Men,’ she scoffed. ‘You never knew of him until now and scarce thought of me at all, yet the idea of someone else having laid a cuckoo’s egg in your nest crests you up like a dunghill cock.’

Abashed, confused, Dog Boy had no answer, so she had provided one.

‘It might have been the Faerie,’ she said. ‘On that night of nights.’

Midsummer, he remembered. As now, filled with the silent moving folk. Her smile only broadened at his look.

‘As any will tell you who knew you as a bairn,’ she had offered, ‘he is the same as you looked at that age.’

Dog Boy thought of it and the blood washed up into his head. There was no one who remembered him at that age left alive, for Jamie and he and all the others had seen to that when they had struck at Douglas Castle. Palm Sunday, seven years ago. Old Tam, former serjeant-at-arms, had hirpled up to their hiding place with news of the garrison attending the kirk in town and they’d fallen on the English like a dog pack, dragging them back and capturing the castle.

After that had come a sin-slather of revenge led by the grim stone of Jamie. Dog Boy recalled Gutterbluid the falconer, pleading for his life as Jamie ordered him strangled with a bowstring. Dog Boy had stared into the hopeless, silent-screaming eyes of Berner Philippe and then nodded so that big, grinning Red Corbie could start turning the stick that slowly broke the houndsman’s neck. Put me in the drawbridge undercroft, he’d thought, exultant with the triumph of it. Near killed me there …

They had pitched those two down the well, everyone else in the underground store, pissed on the lot and fired it. The Douglas Larder folk called it and Dog Boy thought he had forgotten it — all but the glory of discovering, in the hound record books, that he had a name.

Aleysandir.

And a place, not far from Douglas Castle itself.

He went back to it, remembering his da and his prized brace of oxen, an amazement of riches that even the reeve or priest could not match. I was sold for that, he thought bitterly, recalling all the half-dredged clues of it. When I was old enough to run fast as the dugs, my ma walked me up to Douglas as the Sire had told her to do.

He could not remember his mother’s face, but it must have been pretty for Sir William the Hardy to have been captivated enough to pump a child into her belly. And his da, who had always seemed a distant giant, must have loved her to have put up with it.

And loved me in his way, Dog Boy thought, remembering the sad wistfulness on the big slab face the day he had shown how he could run. He must have loved me a bittie, even though I was not his and a constant reminder of his wife’s faithlessness. Yet he had oxen out of it, he added bitterly to himself, so perhaps that was the love in it.

There were no signs of them when he had gone to the small vill, for time and change had brought new tenants to the half-remembered fields and they had no memory of a couple who owned a brace of oxen. Fire and famine and red war had scoured the area more than once — God save me, Dog Boy thought with a sharp sudden pang, I may have ridden it myself. He offered thanks to God then, on his knees, that he had memory of no old couple slain by him or anyone he knew. The thought that he might well have killed his own parents left him trembling every time he thought of it.

Yet they had vanished, as if they had never been, and were almost certainly dead. The clogged drain of it had shifted over the years under the weight of all he had seen and done, so that such memories came back to him at the oddest and most unlooked-for times, clenching the insides of him until he felt he must scream, or weep, or fist something to ruin.

The shift and yawn and scratch alongside him wrenched him back to the present and he turned his head to her, remembered the warm and sticky of last night. Possibly, there now would be another Hob …

He fetched his clothes and dressed as she got up and patted Hob like a dog for his cleverness in blowing life back into the fire. She clattered pots and mixed water and oats; little Bet played quietly with a straw doll and, beyond the confines of the mean withy and cloak shelter, the whole camp stirred like fleas on a dog.

Dog Boy went out into the poor night, which was racing towards lighter hues of blue; it was cool now, but would be a hot day for it, he thought, unlacing himself and making sure where he had picked would offend no one. He grunted with the pleasure of it, becoming aware, slowly, of the boy’s eyes.

‘Are you my da, truly?’

That cut him off mid-flow and it took a long moment before he managed to renew it; longer moments still, of shaking and lacing, before he turned and looked at the boy. Dark and wary, thin, with a deerlike crouch that spoke of an alertness to run.

It was himself at the same age, he thought with a sudden leap of certainty. I would have looked like this when I was turned into the kennels at Douglas and all that went with it.

‘What does your ma say?’ he demanded and the boy frowned at that.

‘She says you are.’

‘Is she to be obeyed and always in the right?’

Hob considered it a while, before nodding uncertainly. Dog Boy grinned.

‘Aye, well, there is your answer. I am your da, God help you.’

There was a silence, and then Dog Boy moved back to the fire and the bent figure of Bet’s Meggy, stirring the oats and water in her cauldron; mean fare, he thought. I will bring better when I can.

‘I must go,’ he said and she stood and faced him, hipshot and with her head tilted. The smile was slight, but her eyes were serious.

‘Will you die?’

Bet’s Meggy wheeshed Hob and threatened him with the spurtle for his cheek, but he never moved, kept staring at Dog Boy.

‘I’ll come back,’ he said awkwardly, turning to Bet’s Meggy. ‘When I can. I’ll bring vittles and …’

‘I make no claim on you, Dog Boy,’ she said softly. ‘Neither for him, nor last night.’

Dog Boy knew that Hob did, though he would not voice it, but he nodded, and then grew more firm.

‘I will be back, God willing, when this is done with.’

She dragged him close then, held him hard for a moment or two, and released him so quickly that the pair of them staggered. He blinked, frantic not to unman himself with tears, and bent to little Bet, who put a thumb in her mouth and stared.

‘Have you a buss for me, wee yin?’ he asked and she looked uncertainly at her mother, who nodded. She took out the thumb, grinned and kissed his cheek, a sparrow peck that left snotters on his beard.

Hob stood, eyes large and bright, so that Dog Boy was lost, had no words. Then, suddenly, he dipped in his boot top and came out with his long dagger, thrust the hilt at the boy and watched his eyes widen further.

‘Take it. Defend your ma until I come back.’

Hob looked at the hilt, up at Dog Boy, then across to his ma, who smiled. He reached out a hand and took the dagger, dragging it close to his chest and cradling it like a new pup.

‘Dinna cut yerself,’ Dog Boy said with a grin, ‘or we will both of us suffer an even sharper edge — your ma’s tongue.’

There was a shared moment, the pair of them against the women, before Dog Boy nodded to Bet’s Meggy and turned away, aware of all their eyes on his back and anxious to put distance between them, yet feeling every step drag.

He was still bleared with it when he came to the forge, red-glowed and shifting with silhouettes, eldritch against the rising sun behind him. He stood, peering and shifting to try and see better, until a voice growled out of the last shadows of the night.

‘Dog Boy, stop jigging there and come closer.’

He knew it, even before he saw the shock of the battered face, the filthy wrappings round one arm and a body gone past lean and saluting scrawny. Yet the eyes were bright enough and laughing at him.

‘Sir Hal,’ he said. ‘God’s Wounds, it is good to set an eye on you.’

‘Set the pair — I do not charge.’

Dog Boy was still grinning when the loss of Sim Craw fell on him; Hal saw the eyes cloud with misery and knew at once what it was.

‘Sore,’ said Dog Boy, bowing his head. ‘He will be much missed.’

Hal had no words to say to Dog Boy, for all of them had been taken out by him in the past days, examined and thrown away as not adequate. Sim was gone and the hole he left in the world was filled only with black sadness.

Instead, he gripped Dog Boy by the arms — Gods, there was iron in them — and drew him close. For a moment Dog Boy stood limp, then his own arms came up and wrapped Hal and they stood for a moment, sucking the comfort of it into one another, before breaking apart.

‘You have grown a tait,’ Hal said, noting the height and width of him. He flicked the badge on the mostly unstained jupon. ‘Come up a station or two, betimes.’

Dog Boy nodded, and then blurted out the wonder of the last night before he could stop himself.

‘I have a son,’ he ended.

Hal listened to the tale of it, spilled out in fits and starts as if Dog Boy could scarce believe it himself. If my Johnnie had not died, Hal thought, he would be of ages with Dog Boy. Maybe sired his own son. The realization hit him hard and he blinked. I could be a grandda. I am now the Auld Sire of Herdmanston, as my father was.

‘They are here,’ Dog Boy went on, as if he had read Hal’s mind. ‘All the Herdmanston folk who could come to support the Kingdom and our king.’

There was marvel in his voice, but Hal already knew, had been told by his kin from Roslin about how the Herdmanston fields were being tended. Chirnside Rowan, grizzled and grinning, had come up with Sore Davey, pox-marks unfaded. One by one, old familiar faces had come up to him out of the midsummer night, bending a knee and anxious to give him news, to offer balm and solace for the loss of Sim Craw.

Fingerless Will, Dirleton Will, Mouse — they were all here, older and leaner and with wives and bairns and even grandweans. Full of news and hope.

Alehouse Maggie had died the previous month, they told him, so it was a blessing that Sim had not lived to learn of that, for it would have broken his heart. Cruck houses had been rebuilt around Herdmanston’s broken tower, the garth wall had been drystaned anew, but neither brewhouse nor forge nor bakery had been rebuilt — the first because they had no brewer with the death of Maggie, the second because they had no smith since Leckie the Faber had run off to spend a year and a day in a town and so escape his bondage. And the third because Bet’s Meggy had no one in the keep to bake for.

It was probably burned out anew, he thought, by the English foragers, or the deserters and outlaws from both sides — but the hopeful eyes lashed him to silence on this.

He had thought only of Isabel, yet he was still the lord of Herdmanston — the Auld Sire, no less. He told them he would be back once matters were settled here. He told them Herdmanston would be rebuilt — which got him a look from Sir Henry of Roslin, worried that he would be asked to help foot the bill. Hal put Henry at ease by telling him he would not call on his liege-lord aid and, because of what he had done to help the King, Henry relaxed, thinking Hal had been promised royal largesse.

The truth Hal kept to himself; underneath the stone cross, nestling with the remains of his son and his wife, were six Apostles, buried long ago by himself and Isabel; those wren’s-egg rubies which had once graced the reliquary of the Black Rood would more than pay for Herdmanston.

Given by Wallace to Isabel as a gift, he recalled.

Isabel. He stared at the dawn until the light started to blind him; somewhere beyond the glare of it, she waited for him. Or so he hoped.

A horn blared and Dog Boy shifted.

‘Muster,’ he said simply and Hal nodded. Dog Boy waited expectantly, but Hal made no move and, when he spoke, the bitterness tainted it.

‘On your way, Dog Boy,’ he said. ‘I remain here, by order of the King. I have, it seems, done enough service.’

He managed a wry twist of smile up into Dog Boy’s obvious confusion.

‘What he means is that I am auld and wounded and long removed from the practice of arms. He means it well, but I am left with the women and bairns.’

Dog Boy felt a rush of anger at that treatment of this man, but let it slide away — even from just looking, it was clear that Hal of Herdmanston would be a danger to himself if he put on harness and stood in a wall of men in such an affair as this.

Unlike Kirkpatrick, who stumped up, cowled and braied in maille and wreathed in smiles. He thrust a shield at Hal.

‘Fresh done by the limner here. I took your advice.’

Hal stared at the upraised iron fist, clutching a dagger which dripped blood. It was exactly as he had described it to Kirkpatrick in a fit of venomous pique.

‘Aye,’ he said, seeing the glint of laughter in Kirkpatrick’s eyes. ‘You will put the fear in them with this, certes.’

‘They will ken me, which is to the point,’ Kirkpatrick declared vehemently. ‘They know me as the royal wolfhound, a wee sleekit backstabber. Now they will see that I am a knight of this realm as well.’

Hal did not know whether Kirkpatrick meant the English or all the Scots lords who fought them. Both, he decided as Kirkpatrick frowned down at him.

‘I am sorry you have to remain here, but Sir John will be happy to have some expert help. See what came out of those tun barrels …’

He turned away to follow Dog Boy, laughing as he did so, then paused.

‘The smith says your sword is ready.’

Hal went into the forge lean-to, wondering what Kirkpatrick meant about the tun barrels. The smith was a dark, unsmiling man, his leather apron pitted with old spark-burns, and he handed Hal the sword wordlessly; it had been cleaned and sharpened and polished lovingly.

Behind the smith was a clatter and rattle, a curse and then the limner came into view, spotted with paints from where he had been touching up lordly shields all night. Red-eyed and weary, he was a small, mouse-haired ferret of a man, indignant and angry at what he had been given to do.

Hal craned to see: iron hats, rimmed and tumbled like scree, every one of them black, with a white crown and a red cross. Templar war hats. Of course, Hal thought, this is the stuff out of the tun barrels, the stuff that had not been issued because of the old ghosts that haunted it.

‘Blue,’ the limner raged. ‘With St Andrew’s white cross on it. By the time I have pented them all anew and they are dry enough to wear, the battle will be ower — and a dozen more like it. What is so wrang with clappin’ them on needful skulls and being done with it?’

‘There is no Order of Poor Knights,’ the smith answered sonorously, ‘and our king will not wish it back to life.’

Hal heard the pain in it, knew at once that the man had been a Templar. He and the smith looked briefly at each other; the other nodded.

‘At Liston, until the St John Knights took it,’ he said. ‘I was only a lay brother, skilled at smithing, so I broke no oath to man or God to leave that which was cast down by the Pope himself.’

Hal nodded, then thought.

‘It is the Feast of St John,’ he said, smiling lopsidedly because his face still hurt. ‘A quarter day — a hiring day. Are you serviced?’

‘I’m Davey of Crauford, your honour,’ the smith replied. ‘Serviced to none but the King by my own desire and God by my birth into this world.’

‘I need a smith at Herdmanston.’

Hal saw the hesitation, and then the smith jerked his chin at the naked blade in Hal’s hand.

‘If you tell me where you had the sword and the answer suits me I will service to you.’

It was proud, but he was a smith and knew his worth — as did Hal, so he took no offence, simply studied the sword more closely.

‘You know this blade?’ he countered, lifting it slightly and the smith nodded. Somewhere, a horn blew, stirring Hal to a half-movement, until he realized with an avalanche of loss that it was not for him. No longer for him, for he was done … he felt like that white and red fighting cock, hauling itself on to the corpse of its opponent, crowing bloody victory and half-dead because of it.

That brought a reminder of Sim, a sharp pang that sucked breath from him for a moment.

‘I may do,’ the smith replied. ‘There are many like it, but they are crockards — the inscription is hammered into a made blade and hilt, whereas this was forged with the letters in it. Only one is like that and it belonged to the de Bissot, who was one of the founders of the Order of Poor Knights long ago.’

‘I had it from a de Bissot,’ Hal answered. ‘Rossal de Bissot, who is dead in Castile and did not want this blade in the hands of his enemies.’

‘Blessed be,’ the smith said. ‘I am sorrowed to hear it, for he was the last o’ his line if he handed it to you for keeping. So that is the true sword — I never thought to see it in life.’

‘Has it a name, then?’ Hal said wonderingly, handling it as if it had suddenly warmed. The smith smiled and shook his head.

‘No name, your honour. Only fame. It was made, they say, from the heathen crescent ripped off the roof of the Temple when Crusaders took the Holy City. Gold, they thought it was and were mightily disappointed to find gilded iron. Yet they put the iron to good use — the letters were put in it during the forging.’

‘What do they mean?’ Hal asked and the smith reached out one cracked thumb, running it in a caress across the fat round pommel inset with the Templar cross, then traced the letters of the hilt: N+D+S+M+L.

‘It is in the Latin,’ Davey of Crauford said. ‘I have no great skill with it, but I know this — every decent smith does. “Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux”, which means “let not the dragon be my guide” if I have been told true.’

Hal nodded confirmation and touched the blade’s letters: C+S+S+M+L.

‘Then that says “Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux”,’ the smith went on.

‘“The Holy Cross be my light”,’ Hal translated and the smith smiled.

‘So it is said. A good, blessed weapon, fit for St Michael himself. Or a Sientcler of the shivered cross.’

He went down on one knee so suddenly that Hal took a pace back, alarmed, as he felt hands round his foot. But the smith, head bowed, simply swore fealty to the lord of Herdmanston and, as the words rolled out of the man, Hal felt something shift and fill him.

He was a knight and a landed lord. He was the Sire of Herdmanston, auld or not, and folk depended on him. Neither he nor the Kingdom was done yet …

The horn blasts racked him, flared his nostrils, brought his head up like a warhorse.

They crowded into the sweating tent while the horns farted and blared. They stank of staleness and leather and oiled maille, clanked when they moved and were stiff-ruffed like strange hounds, trying to sniff another’s arse to take the measure of the meeting.

The Scots lords gathered, the high and wee and as many as could be brought together, fretting to be away and attending to their mesnie as the men gathered for muster. Hot and anxious, hungry some of them and weighted with fear, Bruce thought — but not as bad as the ones opposite, if Seton was to be believed.

His brother Edward, broad face already framed by a maille coif, grinned from one side to the other as he chatted to Jamie Douglas and young — God in heaven, painful young — Walter Steward; both of them would be raised by the King, as was the custom before a battle. Young Walter would become a knight and the Black, lisping when he spoke and gentle as any woman now, would be elevated to banneret.

Edward Bruce did not trust Seton, even when he had sworn on his life, on being drawn and quartered, that what he said was true; the English were exhausted and demoralized by the marches and defeats of the day before, the capture of Thomas Gray and the death of Hereford’s nephew. Their foot was still straggling in and they believed the Scots would flee, not fight.

‘A trap,’ Edward had growled and Seton, bristling like a routed hog, had sworn he spoke the truth.

Drawn and quartered, Bruce thought. Does Alexander Seton know what it means? He remembered Wallace, remembered watching the bloody horror of it, the moment when he hung there, with the blood pouring down his thighs and pooling underneath him because the executioners had already emasculated him, slit his belly open and let his entrails out.

Alive still, he made only one protest, when the pair of muscled men grabbed his arms, forcing his chest out so that the executioner could reach in the belly and up to grab the heart.

‘You are gripping my arms too hard.’

Bruce bowed his head. A stranger’s hand is fumbling at the very core of you and you can say that. God keep you at His right Hand, Will Wallace.

The other thought rattled the lid of the black chest, burst briefly out — until he was gone, I could not set my foot on the way to the throne. Then it was wrestled back into the dark and the lid slammed on it, leaving it to coil and writhe with all the other sins he had committed to get to here.

Here, to this tent, with these lords, he thought wryly. In a month I will be forty years old. In an hour or two I might be dead, if these men do not fight and we fail. Dead. Not captured … the thought of capture brought a lurch of terror that almost doubled him; by God, he thought, I will not suffer like Will. Not that. They can stick my head on a London spike, but I will not be paraded like an entertainment of offal.

Nor fled … victory or death. Yet there was the nag of that, like his tunic catching on a nail as he went through a door, hauling him up short. The thought of returning to flight and harrowing if he failed, ducking back to heather and hill and outlawry, was a crushing weight — but if he stood and died rather than flee, then everything was for nothing. The deaths of his brothers, all those who had loyally served him and paid for it with lives and livelihoods … all the sins which bulged that chest in his head and, though he tried hard not to believe it, breathed out their foulness so that each one showed in the wreck of his face for all to see. All suffering made worthless if he gave in to noble death at the point of sure defeat.

And Elizabeth, his wife, lost to him for ever. Not that there was love in it — Christ’s Wounds, her father’s Irishmen stood opposite with the English — but the flower of the de Burghs held the chalice of Scotland’s future.

If his disease permitted such matters as an heir by then, of course. He wondered about the others, the soft night bodies that consoled him, the Christinas and Christians and ones with no name that he could recall. They were not repelled by the rumours, he noted. More to the point, none of those women had been felled by his very breath, poison to all if he was truly a leper. And one at least had conceived him a son, a fine boy — but that had been a time ago and the lad was now old enough to be a squire. A king, he thought wryly, if I die and brother Edward with me.

The nobiles would never permit it, of course; young squire Robert Bruce was too bastard to be a king and if the worst happened here — as it might — then the Kingdom would be plunged into more chaos.

He felt the sour weight of it all, crushing him into the shape of a throne.

The crowded tent waited, shifting impatiently and wondering why they were here. They were here, Bruce thought, because I need them to fight and need to have them believe it is their own idea and not mine. I have led them to this ring, but they must dance to my tune, so that I know they will follow the steps and not jig off in entirely the wrong direction.

‘We have lost brothers, friends, relatives,’ he began and the murmuring died. ‘Others of your kin and friends are prisoners. Prelates and clergy of this kingdom are closeted in stone.’

He saw that he had their attention and told them what Seton had reported.

‘If their English hearts are cast down, the body is not worth a jot. Their glory is in heavy horse and heavier carts,’ he went on, while the air grew thick and still; outside, he heard the great, slow drone of men moving and talking.

‘Our glory is in the name of God and victory.’

He had them, could sense it swell like a fat prick. He told them he would fight and watched that chase itself across their faces. He told them they did not have to agree with him and that if they all believed it was right for them to withdraw, then he would do it, with a heavy heart.

‘If you stay to fight with me, my good lords,’ he added, ‘know that this is a just cause and so a divine favour is with us, that you will garner all the great riches the English have brought with them, while your wives and children will bless you for defending them.’

There were shouts, now. ‘God wills it.’ ‘St Andrew.’ Even a growled-out ‘Cruachan’ from Neil Campbell.

‘The enemy fight only for power,’ Bruce added. ‘Take no prisoners or spoils until all is won, my lords. Know also that all previous offences against me and mine are pricked out for those who stand with me this day and that the heirs of all those who fall will freely receive their just inheritances.’

It was, he knew, a jewel of plaint, pitched perfectly between honour and greed.

‘Are you with me?’ he demanded and knew the answer before the roar flapped the sides of the panoply with a dragon’s breath.

Addaf watched them butcher the horse in the stream, so that it ran red with blood all the way back to the sea. It had been worth a year’s wages, he thought bitterly, and had foundered trying to cross the tidal-swollen, steep-sided curse of a stream the night before; there were half a dozen more, slipped off the makeshift bridges of boards and tumbled to expensive ruin, unveiled as bloated, stiff-legged feasts for flies when the tide sucked the water back.

Men moved stiffly, red-eyed from lack of sleep. Most of the men-at-arms and knights had lain fully armoured by their bridled horses, starting fitfully at every noise, for everyone thought the Scotch imps of Satan would use the night for some foul, unchivalrous attack.

Now they levered themselves up, all the fine surcotes and plumes and trappers streaked with dust and dung, snatching bread or a mouthful of wine if they were lucky or had clever squires.

Addaf had not slept, nor many of his archers other than the eight who had been sent to eternal rest, ploughed under by the Van horse the day before. Now the remainder stretched, gathered their gear and moved like a black scowl into the day, smouldering still at what had been done to them.

They would not fight, Addaf thought. Not after being ridden over by the pig English, but it probably did not matter, since it seemed only the disarray of heavy horse would take to the field. He hoped that was so, for he did not want to put his men to the test.

Ironically, it would be Y Crach who fired them up, with his demands to do God’s work. I will have to deal with him, Addaf thought, sooner rather than later. But the thought crushed him with weariness.

Sir Maurice Berkeley would have been surprised to find that he was in agreement, at least with the latter part of Addaf’s reckoning. The foot, exhausted from a long march — and still struggling to the field — were littered like fallen trees, Hainaulters, Genoese crossbowmen, Cheshire archers and all.

Only my Welsh dogs, Sir Maurice thought, are fit to get to their feet and draw a bow, and he did not much like the lowered brows of them; he was angered at what had been done to them by Gloucester and Hereford, but kept that choked.

He was glad to be quit of the Van, back with the King’s Battle and assigned to the Earl of Pembroke’s retinue: the further his Welsh were from the mesnies of Hereford and Gloucester the better. He wished he could keep his son and two grandsons out of it as easily.

Just as well the Scotch won’t stand, he thought.

Addaf glanced at Sir Maurice, seeing the blackness on the man. The Berkeleys should have that chevron on their fancy shields turned up the other way, he thought, as a better representation of the scowl between their brows.

Mounted men worked the stiffness out of horses and their own muscles, calling out the bright, shrill ‘Je vous salue’ one to another. These were the ones who had risen early and found a priest who could take their confession and shrive them — now the priests were too busy taking Mass as the sun filtered up, for this was the Feast of St John.

Sir Marmaduke had mounted Garm, feeling half-dead and chilled; enjoy it, he growled to himself, for it is the best part of the day, which promises to be hotter than Hades — and better half-dead than entirely so.

He turned as a ragged wave of shouting spread from head to head; Sir Giles d’Argentan, splendid in scarlet and silver, cantered through the throng, heading for the mass of horse out to the front. He smiled and waved right to left, the perfect paladin leading the King to battle.

Edward followed, even more splendid in scarlet, the three gold pards glowing in the rising light. To his left, de Valence kept pace with him and, trailing behind, came the royal mesnie, a little bedraggled but still grinning.

Thweng fell in beside Sir Payn Tiptoft, who raised a gauntleted hand in greeting.

‘Dieu vous garde.’

Thweng returned the compliment, but he had hands full of reins and shield and lance, so it was an awkward fumbled affair; Tiptoft’s squire, he saw, rode unarmoured at his master’s back, carrying lance and shield both, but Thweng liked his own squire, young John, too much to place him at such risk.

‘Will he speak, d’ye think?’ Tiptoft demanded and Thweng knew Sir Payn referred to the King. He did not think so and saw the headshake and frown when he said as much. No holy banners from Beverley and no rousing royal speech. No knightings either — every custom and usage of battle, it seemed, was being ignored.

He saw the King rein in suddenly, forcing everyone to hastily follow; horses veered and swerved and there were muted curses and a clatter of arms and armour. Perhaps he realizes he should have done more, Thweng thought as the King screwed round in his saddle and flung one triumphant hand to the east.

‘The sun, my lords,’ he yelled out, his coroneted helmet flashing with the first rays of it. ‘Come to look on our glorious victory.’

There were cheers, soon fading, and they rode on with their shadows stretched thin and leading them on.

Addaf watched them go; it was clear that the foot were being left to their own for now and he was not sorry for it. He saw his own shadow, turned and stared, narrow-eyed into the first rays of dawn.

Right in the Scots’ eyes, look you, with them lit up plain as day for any one-eyed squinter to hit — well, once the horse had pinned them, the bowmen would finish them. Not those silly little slow-firing Genoese crossbows either, nor the plunking Cheshire men, but the steady volleyed mass shafts of his veteran Welshmen — and if hatred of the pig English made his men tardy, then the thought of plundering Scotch would put wings on their heels.

He felt the sun soak warm glory into his stiffness and almost smiled.

Nyd hyder ond bwa — there is no dependence but on the bow.

ISABEL

There were fires all last night beyond the walls of the castle and town, the old way of celebrating Midsummer’s Eve. Even in the town they lit wakefires and danced and drank — I could hear them and smell the stink of the bones they threw in to ward off evil spirits. All it did for me was bring a harsh memory of the poor girl they burned. The night never got truly dark and early in the morning Constance brought boughs of greenery, for every house and shopfront is decorated with garlands and birch branches. Tonight, she told me with hugging delight, there will be a parade of men, with weapons and torches and mummers — and naked boys painted black to look like Saracens. And services and Mass, she added, remembering God just in time. If you wish to be shriven, she told me, I can fetch a priest.

I do not need to be shriven. I need freedom, O Lord. Your Son, blessed Jesus Christ, restored Lazarus to life after four days. You Yourself preserved Jonah in the belly of a whale, drew out Daniel from the lion’s den. Why then, O Lord, can You not liberate me, a miserable wretch, from this prison?