The Lion Rampant

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Bannockburn

Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314

He knew battles, did Marmaduke Thweng, knew them as a shepherd understands sheep or a wee priest how to handle hecklers in a sermon. This one, he saw as he rode up in the furious wake of Gloucester, was already spoiled and rotting.

‘The enemy, my lord,’ Gloucester bawled out to a blinking, confused Hereford. ‘We must attack at once.’

Hereford glanced to where the dark line scarred ever closer, resolving in the glare of a full sun into a wicked wink of sharp points and glowing men, moving steadily under a flutter of bright banners. The St Andrew’s cross on blue, the chevrons of Carrick. The brother Bruce, Hereford thought, with a deal of men …

‘We must attack.’

Hereford turned into the full of Gloucester’s face. No helm, he saw — nor surcote either. Fool comes charging up, half-dressed and bawling like some green squab of a squire …

‘We must withdraw, sirrah,’ he bawled back. ‘Make way for the foot … the archers.’

‘God’s Bones, it is too late for that,’ Gloucester yelled, and then turned to the milling confusion of knights. ‘Form, gentilhommes, form on me.’

Hereford’s roar was incoherent and loud enough to make everyone pause. Red-faced and driven long past the politic, he slammed a mailed fist on the front of his saddle, so that his mount shifted and protested.

‘Bigod, de Clare, I am Constable of England. I command here, not you. Do as you are bid, sirrah.’

Thweng arrived in time to see Gloucester rise up in his stirrups, the fewtered lance squivering like a tree in a gale and his face dark and flushed.

‘Be damned to you. I command here, by order of the King, and while you argue, de Bohun, the enemy laugh their way to a slaughter and king’s carp of treachery. Well, I will not wait for defeat and dishonour.’

He savaged the horse’s head round so that it squealed and thundered off, trailed by Badlesmere and others of his mesnie. Payn Tiptoft looked at Hereford and then at the disappearing back of Gloucester; when he had no guidance from the former, he flung up his shielded hand in exasperation and spurred away. With a sharp bark from under his full helm, de Maulay, the King’s steward, announced that he had joined the Van to fight, not run, and thundered after, trailing more men with him.

Badenoch and his kinsman, the Comyn of Kylbryde, looked pointedly at Thweng, who gave Hereford a pouch-eyed mourn of stare, and then put his helm over his head, as clear a signal as any shout. With a whoop, Badenoch and his kinsman thundered off, hauling all the other Knights of the Shadow after them and, a reluctant last, Sir Marmaduke.

Hereford, his temples thundering, watched them ribbon their way obliquely across to the dark line of Edward Bruce’s Battle and felt the tic kick under his eye as he saw another line, this one to the left of the Bruce brother and more distant. It had the blazing banner of the lion rampant marking where Bruce himself marched. Beyond that, further to the left of it, was another growing line, the banners in it proclaiming a third command.

The Earl of Moray, Hereford thought, coming up on his master’s left. The Scots were in an echelon of Battles, as steady ranked as any Macedonians of Alexander, and Hereford, with a sickening lurch, knew that Gloucester was right — there was no time left. No time at all.

Hew stumbled and fell to his knees, had curses and kicks for it as the ranked men baulked and tried to get round or walk over him. A hand took him by the collar and hauled him up as he struggled like a beetle in the forest of legs and feet.

He tried to mutter thanks, but the sweating mass was an animal that did not care, simply hammered him in the back with a curse and a call to keep moving.

He kept moving, spearless, the axe in one hand, the dirk in his belt and in his free hand a fist of the dirt and grass he had grabbed when he fell. Bad soil for digging, Hew thought. Not stable. Looks fine now, but it will be as dangerous as scree when it rains here; the ground will seep water. If you came here after rain, he thought, and thumb-tested the ground as was proper, you would lose most of the digit up to the first joint.

Cannot dig a ditch in such, he thought, half falling again, the motes and dust swirling with the grunt and clack and clatter of the sweating press. You need no more wet in the ground than a thumbnail-length entry for a good ditch. Incline the walls away, to prevent fall-ins. Most folk did not know that a square ell of soil weighs as much as a full-armoured knight on his big stot and if that falls on you, you are in the grave, certes.

He heard the men next to him shout out and grunt, saw hands flex and heard the great bawling roar that was Edward Bruce, the King’s brother himself, standing in their sweating, stinking midst and bellowing for them to keep going, that it was only a wee man on a big horse.

A square ell of soil, Hew thought, moving fast on four legs and about to fall on someone …

There was a noise like a clatter of cauldrons on a stone path and the great block Hew was in trembled like a fly-bitten horse’s haunch; men rippled away from the front. Someone shrieked, high and loud, and voices called out, but they kept moving, forcing Hew onward.

You should properly shore up steep sides — wood if it is no more than a ditch, but good stone cladding if it is a decent, perjink moat …

He stepped on something that moved and groaned, fell forward with an apology as he tried to skip round it, appalled that he had put his foot on a wounded man.

‘Kill him, man,’ someone growled, forcing past him and Hew saw the groaning figure was a knight, helmed and mailled and lying on his shield. There was blood on his metal links and he had no surcote. Hew started to try and turn him, to see the device on the shield — there was a lot of expensive war gear on this one for him to be a simple man-at-arms — but feet trampled and baulked and cursed him.

‘He has no mark, is of no account. Kill him and be done with it,’ the voice savaged at him and Hew looked up, blinking into the great, broad, red face, sweat-gleamed and truculent as a thwarted boar. He saw the surcote beneath it, stained and torn but blazing with the device of Edward Bruce.

With a last, annoyed snort, the great lord moved on and Hew, swallowing, took his dirk and began to prise open the downed man’s fancy new visor. It took some time and he gave a sharp cry when it finally popped up to reveal the half-dazed, rolling-eyed face beneath. A young face, grimaced with pain and with blood on his teeth.

‘Yield …’ said the man, but Hew the Delver had been given his orders by the Earl of Carrick, who was James to Jesus as far as the ditcher was concerned. He hauled out his axe and blessed the man with the blade of it — the sign of the cross, writ bloody in a blinding stroke across the eyes and then one which split the face from brow to nose.

He looked up, wiping the sweat and a splash of blood from himself, saw the retreating backs of the block he had lately been in, saw it stop. More men came trotting up, a loose leaping of axe and dirk men, like a fringed hem to Edward Bruce’s battle.

‘What are you after having there, wee man?’ demanded a voice and Hew stood up into the gaze of a mailled and well-armed man with a proper shield and the air of a lord. One of the Gaelic spitters from north of the Mounth, Hew thought, and was clever enough to be polite.

‘I dinna ken, lord, He has no device. I was told to slay him.’

The north lord called out and men came running up, obedient as dogs, and bent to roll the dead knight off his face-down shield so he could turn it to see who he was; Hew glanced at the solid line of backs down the slope and licked his lips, wondering when he could get back to the dark, sweating forest of it. Wondering if he wanted to, while the sun shone here, on this sandy loam of hill.

‘Christ’s Bones.’

The curse jerked him from his reverie and he saw the Gaelic lord staring at the dead knight’s revealed shield. Then he turned to Hew.

‘Run to the King — that way. Look for the great lion banner and the man with a crown on his helm,’ the lord spat out in his sibilant, singsong way. ‘None of mine can speak your tongue well enough, so it has to be you. Tell him that Neil Campbell of that ilk begs to inform His Grace that the Earl of Gloucester has been slain.’

He paused.

‘What is your name?’

‘Hew. Hew the Delver.’

‘Tell him you did it.’

Neil Campbell watched the man trot off and shook his head. A great shout from his front made him look up and set his shield, feeling the heat beat on him like a fist.

A great lord is dead of a ditch-digger, he thought. There will be more of that this day.

Garm did not like the scattered bodies, the horses that were down, screaming and kicking in a frantic fury to get back on all fours, the slicked skid of entrails and slimed fluids. He had been trained to ride into anything if his master insisted, but was cat cautious and prancing over the bodies.

Thweng was grateful. He saw no sign of Gloucester, but caught the flash of blood-smeared jupons and dead eyes all around him, saw Badlesmere and others circling and bellowing, stabbing and throwing and as ineffectual as a breeze on a stone wall.

They suffered for it. As he rode up to the bristling, snarling dyke of spears, which had stopped and braced, Thweng saw the stained, crumpled heap that had once been Sir Payn Tiptoft, crushed and bloody underneath his still-kicking horse.

Thweng, moving no faster than a trot, turned sideways and rode the length of the hedge, stabbing with the lance, hearing the clack of it on the long spearshafts, felt the tremble of it up his arm. At the end of the line, he threw it like a javelin, wheeled left as he drew his sword, circled and came in again, avoiding the mad rush of Badenoch and a fat knot of the Shadows, forcing forward to impale themselves on the shrike’s hedge.

Then, suddenly, in the gilded haze of raised dust, he saw the bright flash of a familiar shield, raised aloft by some saffroned warrior at the rear of the wall of spears — the de Clare arms. Gloucester was there, on that slope of hillside behind the Scots, and Thweng spurred Garm mercilessly so that the horse chested into the ranks, then reared on command, striking out with his great iron-shod hooves.

Points lanced, clattering off his shield. A hook snagged in the horse barding and Garm crashed down on all fours with more force than intended, screamed aloud as he landed on a bloody hoof, speared through when he struck out.

Stabs and slashes spilled expensive cotton padding from the horse-armour, drove the breath from Thweng with a few well-aimed blows which did not penetrate, but reeled him in the saddle. Then he saw sense and turned Garm away, rode him hard for a few steps and reined in.

Sweating, trembling, Garm stood, the injured leg raised so that only the point of one hoof touched the ground. Cursing, Thweng levered himself out of the saddle, feeling his legs buckle as he hit the hard earth and the full weight of his harness fell on him. Too old, he thought. Too God-cursed old for this. And the Earl of Gloucester was down — taken, he hoped, but recalling the triumphantly waved shield he felt a sick horror at what that might mean.

He was examining Garm’s wound when he felt the sightless open eyes of a dead man staring at him. He turned to the gore-spattered ruin of a face. The arms on the tabard and shield belonged to the Comyn of Kylbryde, but Thweng would not have known the man after what spear and a tearing hook had done to his face.

‘Should not have thrown away his helm.’

The bleak voice spun Thweng round into the grim stare of Badenoch, his own face sheened with sweat and the loss of yet another of his kin. Yet his concern was all for Sir Marmaduke.

‘Are you injured, my lord?’

Thweng shook his head.

‘Need a new mount. I will lead this one off and find my squire.’

He paused, feeling the madness of the moment as he sought to find words of consolation while shrieks and bellows and dying whirled round them; the ground was now a churned red mud.

‘I am sorry for your loss.’

Badenoch nodded, as if he had expected no more. Then he took a breath, as if about to plunge underwater, slid the domed helm over his head and reined back into the fray.

Wearily, trying to avoid the mad, plunging arrivals of the rest of the horse, Thweng led the limping Garm back across the blood-red mud to where the ground firmed and the dust billowed like cloth of gold.

Deep in the clacking forest of spears, surrounded by the grunts and pants and squealed curses, Tam Shaws thought this the worst moment of his life. He had thought this before, from the moment the heidman of Shaws had picked him for the wool path.

It was bewildering then. Tam, who had never been away from Shaws, had travelled down to Coldingham Shore with six others and the staple, that year’s wool from Shaws. That had been a mazed journey, almost a dream to Tam and gilded with the knowledge that fifty pounds of the fleece-wrapped wool on those three pack ponies was his.

He remembered his old life as part of that same dream, now. At the height of that summer he had, with the others of the vill, driven the sheep in fours to the pool, ducked them, rubbed them with ashes, doused them with fresh water and then let the herders shoo them, complaining loudly, to a prepared fold in the hay meadow.

All that day the sun had smoked the water off them and the next Tam had joined in the back-aching work of shearing, trying not to scab them with careless clip and having to dab the wounds with hot tar when he failed. Then, their shaved arses daubed with a varying swirl of ochre shapes, the beasts were sent bounding and kicking back to pasture and men grinned wearily, backs aching but glowing with the knowledge that the job was done.

‘Up beyond the Mounth,’ Davey’s Pait announced, ‘they pluck the wool aff their sheep, like taking feathers from a chook.’

‘Away!’

But Davey’s Pait swore he’d had the truth from his auld grandsire and they went off, marvelling at the work involved in plucking sheep.

When the wool was delivered safe to Coldingham Shore, where packmen would take it on to Berwick and beyond, the heidman had come to Tam and told him he was chosen again — this time to go as a sojer. Lord had picked Tam as the Shaws obligation to their liege, Earl Patrick, because Tam had no wummin or bairns dependent on him.

So Tam, done up like a kipper in a padded jacket and iron hat, a big, awkward spear in one hand and a dirk bouncing strangely at his hip, had endured the jeers of the others and knew it had been more out of relief that it was him and not them.

He had been handed two silver pennies for the journey, told to report to the steward at Dunbar’s castle and announce that he was ‘the obligation from Shaws’.

Four years ago. Tam Shaws had thought, then, that the worst moment of his life was being sent as garrison, first to Edinburgh, then to Roxburgh, clearly never to be returned to Shaws after his forty days were up. He thought, often, of simply leaving but did not trust in the Law that much.

After a while, bitter as aloes, he realized he had been forgotten by the lord of Shaws and by God Himself; he had grown accustomed to the life, settled to it. Not long after that, the rebels had come to Roxburgh and Tam thought that had been the worst moment of his life, for he had come face to face with the dreaded Black Douglas and had actually surrendered the castle to him, because his commander was dying and unable to even speak.

He had, in fact, surrendered to a wee lord from Lothian, a man who had been prisoner in Roxburgh for seven years. Tam had been sure this Lothian lord would be vengeful but, to his surprise, the garrison survivors had all been spared. Sure of what would happen if he stayed in his old ‘obligement’, he had switched and joined the rebels, which moment he had been sure was truly the worst of his life.

He had been wrong all along, he realized, looking round him at the blood and the shrieking. Nearby was Davey the Cooper, the man who had mourned the loss of his friend, the man who had cut the throat out of the blinded boy yesterday. Davey had three arrows in him, buried to the fletchings, and even as he knelt by him Tam heard the whirring hiss of more arriving. Like clippers and us the fleece, he thought, and then they hit, like stones thrown against a wet daub wall.

Someone behind Tam grunted as if slapped; the man in front seemed to have been hit by a forge hammer, lifted off his feet and flung past Tam like a loose-packed grain bag.

‘Up, lad.’

The voice dragged up Tam’s head until the iron rim of the helmet dug into his shoulders. He saw the maille and the jupon and then the great, frowning, bearded face of the Earl of Moray himself.

‘No hiding place there, lad,’ Randolph declared, as careless of the arrows as if they were spots of rain. ‘Besides, you are needed.’

An earl needs me. The thought made Tam get up, wobbling on shaky legs; he glanced out to where the enemy archers stood, on the far side of the steep-banked stream and with a clear shot. Randolph, with a satisfied grunt, turned away and shouldered into the struggling, howling mass of the schiltron as if he was only trying to get to a friend across a crowded courtyard.

The men in front of Tam suddenly seemed to tremble and stir, then braced with a great stream of sibilant curses — the English horse, spiked like shrike offerings, were being rammed into the wall of spears by the blind eagerness of those behind.

This, Tam thought, leaning his shoulder against the man in front and bracing, his head down at the man’s waist, seeing shit-streaks down the naked legs and sucking in the stench of it, really is the worst moment of my life.

Kirkpatrick felt the pressure of his bladder and tried to ease the crush of maille and gambeson on it by shifting himself slightly in the saddle. That made the warhorse think movement and action was imminent, so it dragged the bit and jerked him forward. Cursing, he reined it savagely back, clattering lance against shield; the visor of his fancy new bascinet dropped with a clang and blinded him.

‘You need to pinch that.’

Kirkpatrick, fumbling with four things and only two hands, raised the visor into the sardonic grin of the Earl of Ross, sitting easily on his own mount. He made a gesture with one gauntleted hand, the lance locked upright in the crook of his arm and firmed into the stirrup fewter.

‘Smithing nips,’ he elaborated, beaming. ‘Get your man to pinch the hinges a little, so that it stiffens and remains up until you want it down. That’s what I did with mine.’

Kirkpatrick hated him and his good advice, hated the bloody warhorse which had cost an entire season’s wool tolts and hated the beast’s name — Cerberus — which he was starting to realize was because it had clearly been spawned in Hell.

Above all, he hated being here in the metal huddle of Sir Robert Keith’s horse, nervous and awkward on a baiting destrier, being clumsy with shield and lance. Aware that his skills with weapons and horse were not only inadequate, but marked him as a rank beginner to the armoured men around him, he knew they watched and sneered, enjoying the sight of Bruce’s loathsome ‘auld dug’ trying to be a true knight of the realm.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ he managed to grit out and Ross nodded politely, but then frowned.

‘Would you not be better with the baggage, Sir Roger?’ he asked innocently. ‘For certes you seem a little out of place. Should you be here?’

Kirkpatrick, rocked back and forth by the head-tossing Cerberus, felt the rush of blood through him at this casual viciousness, washing away the cold sweat on his spine.

‘No,’ he answered thickly. ‘For certes I should not. Nor any of us. Nor would I be if it had not been for those less than loyal.’

Which made the Earl of Ross jerk so hard with shock and anger that his own horse threw its head up and squealed. Kirkpatrick’s smile was a twisted ugliness, for he thought Ross more than deserved the lick of a viperish tongue; here was the man who had been on the English side until recently, who had broken the sanctuary of a holy place to capture Bruce’s queen and sisters seven years ago, sending them to captivity and Bruce’s brothers to death.

And Isabel MacDuff, Kirkpatrick recalled suddenly. As well Hal is not here, since he would care even less than myself for Ross’s rank. As the King should have done, instead of gathering this earl into his peace with a forgiving kiss … the things you do when you want to wriggle your arse to fit on a throne.

‘Bigod,’ Ross spat out eventually. ‘When this matter is done …’

‘I will be back to my old tasks,’ Kirkpatrick finished and Ross clicked his teeth shut in his sweating face, remembering the fearsome reputation of the King’s right-hand man. He tried to pull his own visor down to cover his confusion, but it had stuck and Kirkpatrick grinned.

‘You need to loose the hinges on that,’ he offered in a voice like poisoned silk. ‘I have a wee sharp dirk that will do it.’

There might have been more, save that a knot of riders flogged up and, with a shock, Kirkpatrick saw the blazing lion and the gold-circleted helmet. Bruce …

He watched, feeling sick, as Keith, Marischal of Scotland, kneed his mount close to the King, who spoke quickly and gestured once behind him with an axe — he has a new one, Kirkpatrick thought wildly. To replace the one he broke yesterday …

Then, with a rush of spit to his dry mouth, he realized the Marischal was detailing men — and one of them was himself. Sixty or so, he reckoned, with that part of his mind not numbed. He fumbled Cerberus after the trail of them, finding himself next to a knight bright with gold circles on flaming red. Vipond, he recalled. Sir William …

‘What are we to do?’ he asked, feeling his voice strange. He was aware that, somehow, his lips seemed to have gone numb.

‘Chase away that wee wheen of bowmen,’ Vipond replied gruffly, ‘who are annoying the Earl of Moray.’

The bugger with the Earl of Moray, Kirkpatrick wanted to say. Let him look to himself …

‘Dinna fash,’ Vipond said and Kirkpatrick realized he had been muttering to himself and felt immediately shamed, another great rush of heat that made him dizzy.

‘Stay by me, my lord,’ the knight said, smiling a sweat-greased sickle on to his face. ‘You will be as fine as the sun on shiny watter.’

‘Form.’

Kirkpatrick found his hands shaking so hard that he could not make them do anything, but the loose visor of his bascinet clanged shut as if he had ordered it; the world closed to a barred view, as if he was in prison.

He heard the command to move at the trot and did not seem to do much, but Cerberus knew the business and followed the others; he heard his own ragged breathing, echoing inside the metal case of the helm, turned his head a little and saw Vipond sliding his great barrel heaume on, becoming a faceless metal ogre.

‘On — paulatim,’ he heard and Cerberus surged forward so that the cantle banged Kirkpatrick hard in the back. He felt the warm, sudden, shaming flush as his bladder gave way.

Nyd hyder ond bwa.

They roared it out as they nocked, savaged strength into their draw with it and shrieked it out on the release of the coveys of whirring death they sent into the men struggling in their ragged square of spears.

There is no dependence but on the bow.

Addaf, striding up and down behind his men, streamed with sweat and his clothes stuck to him as if he had plunged into the stream they had just crossed. All the men were dark with stains, but there was no water in that stream, only a slush of bog at the bottom, ochre pools that stank.

Yet the sides were steep enough that men had had to haul themselves up by the choke of weeds — but it had been worth it, for they were now given a clear shot straight into the left of the rebel ranks.

The ripping silk sound of the arrows fletched away into the great roar of the battle and Addaf clapped a shoulder here, patted another there and bawled out for them to be steady, aware that there were not enough of them.

He looked across, trying to pick out one of the Berkeley lords; he needed more bowmen — even the Gascons with their silly, slow latchbows would do.

He turned and put a hand on the shoulder of Rhys, planning to bawl the message in his ear and have him repeat it before sending him away; it took him half a sentence to realize that Rhys was neither listening, not shooting, but staring, his mouth slightly open.

Addaf followed his gaze and felt as if he had been struck by lightning. Horses. Riders were coming at them, fast, and the banners they flew were all blue and white, red and gold.

‘Away,’ he roared and was astonished to hear a scream of outrage — and another voice, raised in shrill counter to his command.

‘Stand. Shoot. Kill the heathens.’

Y Crach, shaking with fervour, glared at Addaf and pointed his bowstave at him.

‘You run if you wish, old man.’

Addaf felt the rage in him, so rushed that it seemed the top of his head would explode and shower them all with the foul thoughts surging in it. Hywel, Y Crach, the whole sorry mess … he was, in the one small part of him still calm and sane, astonished to see the vale of Cilybebyll there in his head, the patch of land he had once owned and had not been back to see for decades. The ache was like a sudden blow.

Y Crach had not realized the old man had it in him. He knew he had badly miscalculated when the hand reached out and gripped the front of his tunic. The shoulder muscles, honed to a hump by years of pull and not yet completely ravaged by age, twitched like a horse’s rump and Y Crach felt himself fly.

Men gawped as the scabby archer whirled to the edge of the steep-sided stream, then vanished over it with a despairing yelp.

‘A fo ben, bid bont,’ Addaf roared, his red face scattering sweat drops and spit.

If you want to be a leader, be a bridge.

The old proverb, so aptly delivered, made the others laugh, but Addaf was done with it and turned from the hole Y Crach had left in the air when he vanished over the lip of the stream. He found the horsemen rolling relentlessly towards them. Too close, God blind me, he thought …

‘Run,’ he bawled, ‘if you want to live.’

This was the dark heart of the matter and Dog Boy knew it with every man he dragged out, with every man he grabbed by a handful of cloth and flung in. Most of those dragged out were not even bloody, just felled by heat.

Yet they are thinning us, Dog Boy thought. Down to four deep and growing less. He helped Parcy Dodd pull out a man, turned and took the first gambesoned shoulder he could find in a grimy fist.

‘There,’ he ordered. ‘Get ye there.’

There was little sound now, from men too weary to roar, but the eldritch shriek from beyond the line of backs ruched the skin on Dog Boy even as it leaked sweat. Horses never made such a sound, he thought. Not ever, save now, when they are dying in pain.

A knot of men surged past him, saffron cloth flashed and he realized that the moment had come for the madmen from north of the Mounth to go in, filtering through the spearmen ranks, baring their long axes and feral snarls. He saw shields with the black galley of Angus Og of the Isles and felt a brief moment of pity for the English.

Out in front, horsemen were stuck fast, some of them unable to move forward or back; there was a dead horse, belly to belly with its neighbours and held upright by the press as the man still struck wearily from its back. Two down from him, Dog Boy knew, was a knight either dead or heatstruck on his still living horse and sitting there like a wilted metal flower, again jammed in with his neighbours and unable even to fall.

‘Ah, Christ betimes.’

Parcy’s bitter voice turned Dog Boy into his face, then down his gaze to the body at his feet. Parcy had just dragged him out and the bloody waste of what had been Buggerback Geordie lolled like a discarded straw man.

He remembered Geordie in the Black Bitch Tavern in Edinburgh, thrusting the gift-whore at him and grinning the remains of his bad teeth. Sweetmilk had been part of that, too, Dog Boy recalled, and glanced at the straining forest of legs; he is somewhere in that.

‘I hope he did not owe you money, lads,’ said a resonant voice and they looked up into the maille-framed face of Jamie Douglas, greasy with sweat and joy. Parcy, with a bitter grunt, flung himself away and back into the fray, while Dog Boy looked into Jamie’s grin, marvelling at how the gentle, lisping courtier vanished to be replaced by this, a hellish version written in hate.

‘Ye’re a hard man, Sir James,’ he offered and had back a wolfish grin.

‘Hard times. Besides, have you not heard that I am called the Black?’

Then he was gone, axe in one hand, shield in the other and roaring out his name so that folk glanced over their shoulders and tried to make way for him.

In case he cuts them down to get to the English, Dog Boy thought savagely. Which he may well do.

He became aware then, sitting by Buggerback Geordie’s shattered remains, with the great haze of dust sifting like gold down into a ground made slurry by blood and shit, that he wanted no more of this. He thought of Bet’s Meggy and the bairns.

My son, he said aloud. All that needs be done to get back to him and Bet’s Meggy is to kill Englishmen until they give up and go away … or are all dead.

Then, as if in a slow-motion dream, the ranks ahead seemed to part for a moment, opening like the Red Sea to Moses. Beyond, across a rampart of dead men and horses, he saw a knot of riders surrounding a single man, blazing with colours unstained, the gold pards gleaming, his helm proud with a padded silk lion on it and a clear crown embracing it with gold.

King Edward, by the Grace of God.

An Englishman.

The squire flogged up on a failing palfrey, wet mouth open and the sweat almost trailing behind him in the wind. Before he had reached two lance-lengths from the King, d’Argentan had spurred forward and raised a halting hand.

De Valence saw the squire’s livery, with the lions of Clifford smeared and spattered; he grew cold as the squire and d’Argentan exchanged words, the former panting, mouth open like a dog. The wheyed shock of his face made de Valence grow colder still, but he was turned from the sight by the King’s uncertain voice.

‘My lord Earl of Pembroke, have we sent for the foot?’

De Valence nodded politely.

‘We have, sire. They will be along presently.’

‘It seems to me’, Edward said querulously, ‘that our horse is being sore hurt. Get archers here, de Valence, and with all speed.’

D’Argentan arrived back, his sweating face twisted with concern.

‘Clifford is down. Dead,’ he said. Then he blinked a little and added harshly: ‘Sir Miles de Stapleton also. And both his sons.’

‘God blind me,’ de Valence spat. ‘They are carving us like a joint.’

The King turned, his grim face puzzled beneath the lappets and ermine and padded lion confection of his visored helm.

‘Who orders there now?’

‘Huddleston, according to that squire,’ d’Argentan answered, pleased that he had remembered to ask. The King shook his heavy head.

‘No, no, no — that will not hold. Huddleston does not have the rank for that. Tailleboys, or Leyburn — de Valence, send word that Leyburn is to order poor Clifford’s host.’

God curse it, de Valence thought bitterly as he screwed round in the saddle to where his retinue sat expectantly, what does it matter who orders? In that heaving mass no order given could be obeyed anyway … he caught the glow of a shield with a barred cross and waved to the man. A moment later, Sir William Vescy cantered away in search of the dead Clifford’s command.

‘Well, my lords,’ the King said, lowering his visor until his voice grew to a metal muffle. ‘It is time for the King to strike a blow. Give them heart.’

‘Certes, Your Grace. We will scatter them like chaff,’ boomed d’Argentan, grinning.

Christ’s Wounds, de Valence thought. Is he seriously contemplating riding his royal person into this? God save us all …

He followed, all the same, urging his mount to the King’s left side while men, caught out by the quickness of it, fumbled with shield and lance on the backs of their fractious, eager mounts.

Even as they picked a way over the scattered dead, the screaming, kicking horses slick with fluid, the groaning men, de Valence saw the thickening carpet of it, then the mound, piled with horse and man — some were still alive and pinned, limbs waving like weary beetle feelers.

And over it, sliding out from the bristling ranks and through a gap in the jammed wall of horse, he saw figures, creeping horrors winking with naked blades.

Dog Boy knew the knight, knew him from old and, it seemed to him in that moment, had been fighting him all his life. Blue and white stripes and a rondel of little red birds — an important knight, for sure, and there was a name for him somewhere in Dog Boy’s head, but he could not recall it. He went for him, all the same, half-crouched and snarling, aware of Patrick and Parcy and others at his back.

De Valence saw the figures, the leading one with a feral scuttle, axe and long dirk in his hands, his rimmed iron hat dented and his black-bearded face twisted; he was slavering, de Valence saw with wonder, like a rabid wolf …

The curving overhand blow of the axe made him cry out and the destrier reared — too late, de Valence saw that had been the intent, for the dirk flashed out and the warhorse shrieked and lashed out front and back; de Valence felt the shock that told him someone close behind had received the brunt of it.

Trying to cut the saddle girths, he thought wildly — and then his men surged forward and he lost sight of the slavering man. There were others, all the same, and de Valence knew they had recognized the King.

‘The King,’ he bawled. ‘Ware the King.’

De Valence, Dog Boy thought suddenly. His name is de Valence and he is an earl, no less — then he was whirled away by the sudden arrival of more horsemen, found himself next to a prancing power of a horse, a white beast draped in red and glowing with gold pards. He looked up into the metal face and the surmounting lion. King Edward, by the Grace of God — an Englishman …

Dog Boy struck and the King, unable to lower his shield enough, felt the shock of the axe blow on the padded armour of his warhorse, which squealed and snaked out a vicious bite. Dog Boy jerked away from it, slashing with the dirk; he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the screaming figure of Patrick launch himself forward.

The sword that snicked the iron hat from Patrick’s head, and most of his skull with it, came from a knight in red and silver, who hurled his shield at Dog Boy and then used the free hand to grab the king’s rein.

‘Away, sire …’

Dog Boy, staggering under the battering of the shield, blinded by the vision of Patrick’s iron hat flying bloodily into the air, gave a last, despairing lunge and a mad swipe of the axe — but the King of England was gone.

De Valence battered his way through his own men to the side of the King, who had shoved up his visor and now stared from a sweat-coursed daze of a face.

‘Get the King away,’ de Valence said to d’Argentan, shouting above the howling din.

‘You get him away,’ d’Argentan replied tersely. ‘I am unaccustomed to fleeing.’

He reined round and de Valence, at once heart-leaped with admiration and cursing him for dereliction, took the King’s bridle in one metalled fist and started to force a way through the press to safety.

D’Argentan was all fire. As he had been in his youth, he thought, exultant and roaring with the moment. Third-best knight in Christendom — he would raise that ranking by seeking out and slaying the Bruce himself, if he had to carve through the entire Scotch army to do it.

Beginning with that weeping little scut in the iron hat …

Dog Boy saw the knight ride at him. It was the same one who had killed Patrick, a red figure with little silver goblets on his jupon, shieldless but with his sword drawn back ready to sweep down. Dog Boy was blinded by snot and tears and could not be sure if it was for Patrick, or all the others, or simply rage.

Or for himself, who was surely about to die. He flung the axe, almost wearily, in a last futile gesture.

D’Argentan saw it coming and raised his shield to block it. The shield I do not have, he remembered at the last. The axe whirled over his forearm and struck him on the chest, bouncing off. He had time to bless the padding and maille before he lost his balance, like a tyro, and fell with a clatter as the warhorse crow-hopped delicately over the dead.

There was a moment of disbelief, of sheer incredulity. Third-best knight in Christendom. It came to him then how that had been when he was younger, for a rank beginner would not have fallen so easily. Then d’Argentan realized he was flat on his back, half-draped over a dead horse, and began to struggle upright.

The figure landed on him with both feet, driving all the air out of him, so that he whooped and gasped and knew, with all the experience of his tourney years, that something had snapped in his chest.

‘Bastard,’ the man snarled and d’Argentan, struggling weakly, felt the visor wrenched up, stared into the black-bearded hate of the Scot; slaver dripped on his cheek.

He had time to feel unutterably weary, to wonder if God would forgive him his many sins.

Then Dog Boy drove the dagger into his eye and roared out revenge for Patrick.

‘On them,’ he bawled out, looking right and left. ‘They fail.’

ISABEL

I woke striped with light. I do not often sleep in the cage, save when the heat is oppressive as now; it does not happen often in Scotland. It annoys the gawpers, who come to see a scowl of witch, not a wee auld wummin snoring. Constance stirred me, then begged me to come into the chamber to eat the meal she had brought and was so flustered and secretive that I did, wondering. She presented her daring gift — mother’s milk. Brought from a wet nurse whose wee charge died, she told me, greatly daring. I did not want it, especially from a wet nurse whose charge had died — who was to say it was not the milk?I did not say this, for I knew why Constance had brought it. She would say it was because it was the perfect food for the old and invalid and begging my pardon as she did so, for insinuations — but it was all because of Sister Petra of Cologne, whose story had just reached Constance’s ears. That nun, so the story went, had eaten nothing else, nor moved much. She closeted herself in a tower and drank the mother’s milk through a reed in the door, waiting — so it was said — for her lover to come for her and she would have the face of the girl of fourteen he knew when they parted and she was forced to the veil. I did not ruin it for Constance by telling her the rest of the tale — how the other nuns grew tired of milking the village women, who were tired themselves of being heifers. So they simply stopped and Sister Petra, too weak to move after years of lying around, could not get out and died when her exertions at the door snapped her heartstring. When the nuns found Christian charity and courage enough to break down the door of the tower they found her, emaciated, wizened, dead and with the face of a 70-year-old, which matched her age to perfection.

I will not need mother’s milk to preserve my face for Hal — he will come before I age out another year. I read it in the pattern of the mother’s milk I threw in the bailey when Constance had gone. If Malise wants a witch to burn I can give him one, for God is dead and Heaven is ugly.