The Lion Rampant

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Bannockburn

Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314

Thweng stood patiently as John, his arming squire, fought to relace the skewed ailettes, and another squire, William, took the saddle and clothing off Garm and put it on Goliath. Garm stood, his pained hoof up, snuffling now and then as another squire soothed him.

There was a strange, summer-singing quiet here, dusted with drifting motes and only faint squeals and screams and the clash of metal, where the murmur of the surrounding voices was no louder than bees. It was as if there was no battle at all, Thweng thought, for all that it looks as if one had already taken place.

The whole of the toasted-bread carse around them was littered with bodies, slumped or sitting in the hazing of heat and dust, some of them dangle-headed with weariness. They were not dead, but most of them wished they were, felled by a crippling march in a heat that sucked the strength away. Others gathered in knots, leaning on spears or tall shields to talk earnestly and all of them wondered what was happening.

What was happening, Thweng thought grimly, is that the foot have been marching all night and are arriving in dribbles, like wine from a drunk’s slack mouth. The folk who should be ordering them have all charged off.

This whole affair was beyond rotted now, he knew. John finished with the ailettes and stood back to review his lord; he nodded and smiled, his face sheened and eager to please. Thweng felt a sharp stab, as if someone had driven a dagger under his heart, at the thought of this one going under the dirk-wielding horrors. John de Stirchley was the least of a neighbour’s brood, not yet fifteen, not yet knighted and bursting with having been brought here by the great Sir Marmaduke while his elder brother had to stay behind.

Thweng recalled the boy’s father and his mother, a spring bride for a winter groom. A late fruit is John, Thweng thought, and favoured because of it. I promised both his parents I would not get him bruised.

‘Listen carefully,’ he said to the squire and then laid it out: saddle palfreys, gather up as many as you can of the men who came with us, take food, and make sure every man has a weapon. Leave the carts and the panoply — it is sticks and canvas, no more — and plate and furniture. Kilton can afford to lose a little carved oak and some pewter, but do not forget the Rolls, those vellum lists of who is owed what. Be ready to ride — you will know when, even if I am not here to tell you.

He saw John’s throat bob as he swallowed the dry stick in it, but the nod was firm with understanding. Thweng wanted to reassure the lad, but he was leaving him with the burden of it all, for his duty lay with the King and he was not so sure there would be an afterwards.

He was spared the awkward moment of it by a voice, thick with the south in it, talking to William as he fought with the girth of the saddle and Goliath’s attempts to be mischievous and blow out his belly.

‘How bist?’

The man was red-faced and sweltering in a padded jack, the iron helmet dangling from his belt, the spear dark with hand-sweat and old use.

Thweng saw William, flustered and damp, spare the man a sour glance and then shoulder Goliath’s big belly until the animal grunted and let out air.

‘Does tha ken what?’ the man persisted and Thweng, finally freed from his armouring, stepped forward so that the man was forced to look at him instead. The expression changed, the hand came up and knuckled his furrowed, dripping forehead.

‘Beg pardon, yer honour. Lookin’ to find what is.’

‘Who are you?’ Thweng asked and the man drew himself up a little, permitting a small shine of pride.

‘Henry, my lord. I orders ten from Wyndhome for the Sire there, good Sir John.’

‘Where is good Sir John?’ Thweng asked patiently and had back the look someone gave a dog who would not fetch.

‘Why, ee be with old Sir Maurice, baint ee?’

Berkeley, Thweng thought. They are Gloucester men, spearmen of Sir Maurice Berkeley brought by some fealtied lord called Sir John; Thweng had no idea who he was or where Wyndhome lay — but he knew where good Sir John would be.

‘He is there,’ Thweng said, shooting one metalled arm to where the dust was a thick cloud laced with shouts and clangs and screaming horses, faint as birdsong. ‘You should go.’

‘Without us havin’ ordern?’

Henry shook his head vehemently, and then turned as someone shouted his name.

‘Oi, ’Enry, lookee there. Be that not our king?’

A man pointed, squinting and shading his eyes with his entire iron-rimmed hat.

The knot of riders cantered out of the pall of dust and the sun flared off the gold on the centre rider’s fancy war hat. Behind, the coterie of armoured men rode under the streaming pennant, the Dragon and the huge royal banner that marked them for all to see. The King, Thweng thought, feeling the stone settle in his bowels.

‘It be our king. Be ee leavin’, then?’

‘No,’ Thweng lied and signalled for John to leg him up on to Goliath’s back. When the squire came close, he whispered harshly in his ear, aware of the Gloucester men turning one to the other, frowning and gabbling like chickens.

‘Now is the time. Go, boy, and do not look back.’

He reined round, seeing Henry and the other Gloucester men craning for a better look; others were climbing to their feet to watch the gilded passage of the King, riding to the rear. Thweng felt the whole day shudder, like a sweated horse in a chill wind.

He cantered after them, caught up and forced himself alongside a flustered, bewildered de Valence.

‘Turn about,’ he yelled, scorning protocol for an earl. The Earl of Pembroke turned his streaming, boiled-beet face, the scowl on it like a scar; he reined in a little so that the pair of them fell behind the cavalcade.

‘They think the King is leaving, that the day is lost,’ Thweng roared out. De Valence’s scowl grew deeper, his eyes black caves of misery in the blood of his face.

‘What makes you think it is not?’ he answered.

Thweng, astounded, jerked Goliath to a halt and let the Earl surge away to join his king. What now, he thought, that the truth is out?

He looked left and right, at first disbelieving that the great host of men he saw, uncommitted and waiting, were defeated. Even as he stood, bewildered, he saw the resting foot surge to their feet as someone shouted and pointed off to the right, up to the wooded heights.

Thweng followed the gesture … there, fey as Faerie, figures moved on the distant hill beyond the Scots. A rider with a banner — he squinted to make it out, saw other banners floating above thick clumps of black shapes. The sun — God, it was not even noon yet — flung itself back and forth like fire from sharp metal tips.

More men? Thweng could not believe it. More Scots, coming down on the flank of the army? And that banner — black and white. The one the rider carried had a huge cross on it, he was sure even at this distance and with his old eyes.

It could not be, was impossible … yet the thrilling terror that the banner might be Beauseant, that the God-rotted proscribed Templars had launched their perfect vengeance on all Christendom’s chosen warriors, shot through Thweng like a fire.

Unbelievable …

Others believed it and even those who did not saw an armed host, for certes. They shouted it, one to another, sucked up the memory of their king riding to safety and drew their own conclusion. Men began trotting, aimlessly at first and then, like a covey of starlings, all in the one direction.

Away.

In a second, Thweng saw the brittle might of Edward’s host shatter like poor pottery.

The big banner seemed to have a life of its own, a bedsheet straight off the Earl of Hell’s canopy, as far as Hal was concerned. It did look right, he admitted as he glanced up at it, for the limner’s blue paint had smeared from the arms of the cross and produced, almost perfectly and by divine accident, the shivering blue cross of the Sientclers on the spread of linen.

That, at least, was an acceptable device to ride under, he thought, and then looked to where Davey the Smith strode, forge hammer in one massive fist, Beauseant in another and the black and white Templar hat just one among the many.

Last wave of that banner, Hal thought. I hope it works, for the Bruce’s wrath will be mighty and only victory will turn it to smiles. If we fail, then I am a lost man for bringing the spectre of the Order to his army and his great battle; he will think it the final curse of St Malachy on his head. It will not matter, for if we fail then Isabel is lost and it does not matter about the world after that …

The idea had been daring, but the camp on Coxet Hill had embraced it like a fervent lover, since it let them loose with little or no danger to plunder the fallen. So they took up the Templar gear uncovered in the unpacking and put it on, laughing, and Sir John Airth, glowing like an ember and puffing in the heat, had been carried up in a litter to present the Beauseant, unwrapped from the bottom of the Templar armoury like the sick horror of a bad dream.

‘You mun be hung for the whole sheep as the half lamb,’ he growled and then shook his head, scattering drips from his jowls, his face like a raspberry mould and his fat legs bandaged against the gout.

‘I will pray for you, Sir Hal, as I pray for the soul of my son,’ he added and watched as the silk Beauseant was tacked crudely to a tall pole and handed to the smith, who could carry it one-handed.

I hope Sir John is praying now, Hal thought, and that I have timed it right.

He looked right and left at the straggling mass, loping like wolves down the hill and into the fringe of the fighting and the scattering of bodies. If it came to a fight, of course, they would run like leaping lambs, but all they had to do was look fierce and magnificent for a glorious eyeblink.

The figure loomed up at his stirrup and he glanced down to see the impish grin of Bet’s Meggy, an iron hat tilted sideways on her head and a pole clutched in one fist. It had a sharp kitchen knife tied to the end of it.

‘Sir Hal,’ she shouted. ‘Is your army ordered to your lordship’s satisfaction?’

Full of cheek, that one, Hal thought, yet he found himself grinning. Then he saw the boy, serious as plague and gripping a dirk as long as his arm in one hand and the hand of a wee girl in the other.

‘Christ’s Wounds,’ he bellowed. ‘Did you need to bring the bairns to this?’

‘Who would look after wee Bet, lord?’ she yelled back at him, her grin wild as a cat snarl. ‘And you could not hope to keep Dog Boy’s son out of such an affair.’

Dog Boy’s son. Hal looked at the boy and laughed at the fierce look of the lad, drowning in a borrowed — stolen — maille coif, with his too-big Templar warhat and his long dirk. Hob, he remembered Dog Boy saying the boy was called. Hob. He was younger than the Dog Boy Hal had first met all those years ago in Douglas, but he had the same look. The look that had reminded Hal of his own son, John, dead and dead these many years.

Dog Boy had balmed the loss of John, and now here was another. He wondered if the new Royal Houndsman would countenance his son coming to Herdmanston. If Bet’s Meggy was going off with her new man, we will need a new baker, he thought. Or a new dog boy.

Hal saw a succession of them, all the way into the future of Herdmanston and laughed with the sheer joy of it; Bet’s Meggy joined in and, after a moment, Hob cackled out a laugh as well, shrill with the moment if not the complete understanding. Even wee Bet, finger up her nose, smiled beatifically.

Then, sudden as a cold wind, the loss of Sim scoured his joy away and his sudden blackness soured its way to the others, so that they stopped laughing, all at once. After a moment, they all put their heads down and plodded, as if through a rain squall, down to the war.

He had been sitting for some time, had lost any idea of how long, so that it came as a cold-water shock to snap back to reality. He blinked at the bloody teeth of the man he sat next to and realized he had the man’s hand in his own.

Vipond. Kirkpatrick remembered bobbing along in the knight’s wake, trying to control reins, shield and lance until, with a curse, he had thrown the latter away and then tried to screw his head round to see out of the narrow slit of the helm.

He hated it, the sweating cave of the helm, the jostle and bounce and desperate straining of the warhorse, which wanted to be moving faster after the others; in the end, Kirkpatrick had let it and hung on. He heard his breath rasp in and out in the furnace of his helmet, heard dull clangs, felt a blow on his shield and panicked, thinking they had contacted enemy.

Unable to see, he had dragged out his sword and swung it wildly left and right, cursing his own foolishness in ever having thought to ride as a knight, at ever having thought he was one, for all his dubbing.

Suddenly, through the slit, he had seen Vipond, half turning towards him and reeling in the saddle. The knight seemed to slip sideways, put out one arm and grasping hand, as if to clutch Kirkpatrick, and then fell and disappeared from view.

Kirkpatrick had hauled the warhorse to a halt, cursing it. He had been told that it was beautifully trained and biddable, worth every penny of thirty marks, but Kirkpatrick would have fed the beast to the pigs he kept on the manor which this warhorse represented in price.

He climbed off it, half sliding, half falling, threw down the shield and unlaced the helm and hauled it off, whooping in air as if he had breached from water. Then he tore off the bascinet, forced the maille hood back and ripped off his arming cap, glorying in the feel of air on his sweat-tousled bare head.

When he managed to focus, he found himself looking at his own shield; two broken shafts were in it, neatly puncturing the fist with the upraised dagger. Those were the blows I felt, Kirkpatrick thought with a sudden lurch. If they had not hit the shield …

Then they would have hit me, he thought when he found the body of the fallen Vipond. As they had hit him — the knight lay on his back, metal face pointed to the sky, a shaft so deep in the bicep of his right arm that Kirkpatrick knew it had gone through and then snapped off in the fall. A second arrow was buried almost to the fletch in his right side.

Kirkpatrick’s legs were buckling as the weight of maille fell on them. He lumbered up to Vipond, not knowing what he was about to do with a dead man — and then he heard the metal rasp of breathing from the faceless creature and dropped his sword. He grunted his way down to one knee, fumbling with the knight’s helmet lacings; when he drew it off, Vipond’s sweat and gore-streaked face stared up at him, the smile on it crimson; he had vomited blood, Kirkpatrick saw.

‘Thank … you,’ Vipond wheezed and Kirkpatrick looked him up and down, went to touch the arrow in his side, thought better of it and grasped the one in the knight’s bicep; the man groaned and Kirkpatrick let it go as if it had been on fire.

He sat down with a hiss of maille links and the clank of pauldron and ailette, aware that he was as useless at physicking this man as he was at knightly combat, that he was flapping his arms like a hopeless chicken and no help to anyone.

‘I will get help,’ he muttered. ‘Water …’

He found Vipond’s fierce clutch on his wrist.

‘Stay.’

The knight’s eyes had become hot and afraid.

‘Do not … let … me die … alone.’

You are not alone, Kirkpatrick wanted to say. God is watching. But it sounded trite and hollow, so he said nothing at all and sat there holding Vipond’s hand while his destrier cropped contentedly, picking delicately at the grass not trampled or soaked to muddy gore.

Vipond’s own mount had vanished, but three others moved across the sprawled bodies, their trappings torn and streaked. A fourth limped back and forth, every now and then making a plaintive screaming whinny from a snaked-out neck, as if shouting for help.

Somewhere, time slipped away. Kirkpatrick was half aware of the sudden increase in the noise of battle to his right but it did not seem important enough to turn and look. He was fixed, frozen, staring at nothing at all, yet aware of surge, like a flood tide, as the fighting moved away from him. The heat beat on him, melted him to dull lethargy.

When he snapped out of his daze, it took him a moment to realize that movement had done it; a horseman was coming, wavering through the heat haze, all faerie and stretched.

‘A rider — help is coming,’ he said, turning to Vipond. He had intended to remove his hand from the knight’s clutch and pat it soothingly, reassuringly — but the death grip was fierce and Kirkpatrick had to prise it free, shocked at the fact that the knight had died and he had not known when it had happened. He might as well have died alone, Kirkpatrick thought bitterly, for all the help I have been; he smelled the rankness of himself, remembered what he had done and felt sick shame.

The rider stopped. Kirkpatrick was suddenly aware that there was only himself and the man on the horse in this part of the world; to the left was the great hump of Coxet Hill where, incongruously, birds sang and insects whined and hummed, headed for the feast. To his right, the battle was a carpet of dead and the moaning dying, with a great mass of heat and dust haze beyond where figures flitted and roared sullenly.

The English have been forced back … We have won, Kirkpatrick realized with a sudden heartleap of exultation. We have actually won …

The rider was closer and now Kirkpatrick saw that the warhorse was plodding, head bowed with weariness, the trapper on it stained and torn so that dags and tippets of material trailed on the ground. The rider had lost all head coverings — torn them off, Kirkpatrick thought, as I have done, to get some relief from the heat — and his surcote was streaked and splashed with fluids. He had no shield, but held a sword in what appeared to be a tired fist, dangling dangerously close to the horse’s unsteady feet. He looked as if he had ridden out of some ancient barrow mound.

Kirkpatrick watched the rider pick a careful way round the litter of dead here — mainly archers, he realized. So we did as we were bid, he thought bitterly, even though I had no good part in it. He stood up, levering himself to his feet and feeling the dragging weight of maille chausse and hauberk; the horse stopped a moment later, the rider straightening in the saddle and bringing the sword up.

He thinks I am a danger, Kirkpatrick thought to himself and laughed with the irony of that. He opened his mouth to call out — but froze, gaping as the sword came up and pointed at him.

He knows me, Kirkpatrick thought, and felt the blood in him stop, had a surge of mad panic as he saw, through the blood-spatters and stains, the man’s device; three gold wheatsheafs on red. No cadet marking of any lesser branch of the Comyn, so this was the lord of Badenoch himself.

Red John, he thought wildly. I killed you. At least I slid a wee dagger into your heart, though the Bruce had already done the work. I watched your vain wee raised bootheels spatter up the tarn of your own heart’s blood in Greyfriars, years since …

He caught himself. No ghost, he told himself firmly and looked round for his shield and sword. Worse than that.

The son, delivered by the Devil to the one part of the field of struggling men where he would find Kirkpatrick, the man he hated above all others.

The man who had murdered his father. Aye, Kirkpatrick added bitterly, and would have done for the boy, too — the boy now grown to stand opposite me — if Hal had not intervened.

Badenoch sat for a moment and Kirkpatrick, glancing wildly left and right to see if any help was close, saw his sword sticking in the sere turf like a grave cross. He eyed it, but did not move; like a mouse to the cat, the act of going for it might spring the puss forward and Kirkpatrick did not want that. Not a man on a warhorse, he thought desperately, with blood in his eye …

Then Badenoch, slowly — painfully, Kirkpatrick thought with a sudden thrill — clambered off the beast, which stood, legs splayed and head bowed. The man patted it fondly before he turned, straightened, twirled the sword lightly in one hand and started forward.

Not wounded then, Kirkpatrick thought, just weary, though not as done up as his mount. He sprang then, tore out his sword and turned. Badenoch stopped, close enough for Kirkpatrick to see his face, which was straw-coloured and sheened slick with sweat so that the beard seemed darker and was pearled with droplets. Perhaps he is injured after all, Kirkpatrick thought. Or heat-struck. Not that he was in any better state himself, stiff with sitting and crushed by the unfamiliar weight of maille and pieces of plate steel.

‘You,’ Badenoch declared curtly. Kirkpatrick managed a grin.

‘It was when I rose this morning,’ he replied, and could not resist the vicious stab, for all that prudence told him to toggle his lip: ‘You will be the new Badenoch. I knew your father. I knew you, too, when you were a stripling and would have known you better if someone had not got in the way of it.’

The whey face flushed and then drained to an almost unnatural white; Kirkpatrick saw his knuckles tighten on the hilt of the sword.

Clever Kirkpatrick, he cursed silently, who never could keep his tongue still … the man’s savage rush drove whimpering panic into him and a thrill of shock like a bolt of lightning that seemed to spear through his groin to the soles of his feet.

He barely managed to block the first cut, almost lost the sword parrying the second and slashed wildly right and left even as the echoes of the steel faded and Badenoch drew away.

He knew then, in that first exchange, that a sword was no dirk and that Badenoch, trained knight that he was, younger as he was, would kill him.

Badenoch knew it too, and smiled.

The King wanted to turn and fight. Which was laudable and courageous, but no bloody help at all, de Valence thought bitterly.

‘Your Grace is best kept from the grip of the rebels,’ he explained, though it was hard to seem reasonable and pragmatic when you had to bawl to be heard above the din of an army gone to a baying horde of runners.

Around them, kept away by the hard-faced mesnie, the fleeing mass surged and jostled, battering up to the walls of Stirling, clambering — and falling — from the rock it hunched on, already clotted thick with the peasantry who had run there long before. Perched like gulls on a cliff, they defied the roaring soldiery, who begged and shrieked for entrance at the stubbornly closed gates.

‘My lord de Mowbray,’ the King said and de Valence heard the mix of astonishment, anger and bitterness. There was no point in replying that Mowbray was right to shut the gates of Stirling Castle to everyone, King included — the battle was lost and now he would have to hand Stirling over to the Scots, as agreed. To do other risked slaughter of everyone in it, as per the accepted rules of war, so refusing to let the King into a cage where he was sure to be taken was only sense.

King Edward had none of that left, de Valence saw, only stubborn courage and the surety that they had been, somehow, betrayed. We have been, de Valence thought. Betrayed by our own arrogance, which has been enough to irritate God.

They beat a path through the maggot-boil of infantry, cursing and flailing at them until they parted. They breasted through them, down from the castle, into the coiled loops of the Forth, which forced them back across the littered dead and the howling vengeance of Scots who ruled there now, hunting in wolf packs. De Valence, looking round him, saw a handful of knights and the last remnants of mounted Welsh archers.

‘My lord earl …’

De Valence turned to where old Thomas Berkeley pointed one mailled fist; riders were picking a determined way over the dead and dying, coming at them fast. Like magpies, de Valence thought, attracted to the glitter of that bloody crown.

‘Get His Grace the King away,’ he growled to Vescy, and then detailed off the knights he needed and lowered his helmet visor.

‘Bonne chance, Pembroke.’

De Valence acknowledged the King’s fading cry even as he spurred the weary warhorse, followed by a tippet of riders. He felt rather than saw the men on either side of him as he cantered up to a low bush and popped a jump, cruel spurs raking his tired horse up to a gallop; he had the surge of exultation, familiar and strangely comforting as old shoes, as the enemy came closer.

Someone streaked ahead — de Valence saw the labelled lion device and noted it for later censure at this outrageous breach of protocol. A Kingston, he registered. Sir John or Sir Nicholas … I shall have words with them later.

They clattered into the riders and swept halfway through them with a series of shrieks and bell-clangs. De Valence took a sweeping blow on his shield, answered it with a pointless one of his own, and then was wheeling round and round in a mad pirouetting dance, striking blows and being struck in turn. Little shaggy men on little hairy horses, like all the Scots, de Valence thought. Knights who ride deerhounds to a battle …

Suddenly, the beating stopped and de Valence, blinking through the sweat-blurred slit of his helm, stopped flailing with his sword, turning his head this way and that to see.

The Scots had all been downed or were running — but more were coming and, worse than that, de Valence saw the mad scramble of axe-wielding foot, with their wild northern cries and bare legs. Rats, lice and Scots, he thought savagely, you can keep killing all three, but no matter where you turn, there they are again …

‘Back,’ he cried, waving his sword in a circle and reining round.

They cantered off, leaving the pursuing Scots floundering and yelling insults. A long way away, riding hard on blowing horses to catch up with the King, de Valence stopped and tore off his helm, whooping in air while the rest of the mesnie cantered up. Some were laughing, mad with excitement still. One — young Hastang — was hauling off his helm and pouring the puke out of it, trying to wipe his face with the decorative mantle dangling from the crest.

It took a moment to find out who was missing: Sir Thomas Ercedene, the Lovel of Northants and the Lovel of Norfolk both — and the brace of Kingstons. Well, de Valence thought dully, no need to find out which of them dared to ride in front of me then.

And old Thomas Berkeley. No one had seen him fall. Back with the King’s party, de Valence broke the news to Maurice, Thomas’s son, and offered up the slim hope that he was captured and not killed — though the memory of those leaping axemen welled in his mind and almost robbed his mouth of the words.

Maurice said nothing, though Addaf saw the tight-lipped tension in the man and hoped he would not do anything mad-brained, like try and avenge his old father. If he did, Addaf thought, he will do it alone — all me and mine want now is to be gone from this place.

‘Protect the King.’

The cry went up and the armoured riders closed round Edward to force another great surge of milling foot to part like the Red Sea.

Protect the King. Addaf hawked and spat.

Let God protect the King of the English, he added to himself, though it was clear to everyone that He had removed His Hand from them this day.

And the Welsh. Addaf found out how poorly the Welsh stood in God’s Grace less than an hour later.

That was when they turned at bay to face the pursuing Scots riders, who had been closing in for some time, held up by knots of scattering foot. Those running spearmen contributed less than nothing to the day, Addaf thought bitterly, and now they are getting in everyone’s way, us as much as the Scots.

‘Dismount.’

Addaf heard the shout and cursed; Maurice was speaking earnestly to de Valence, who trotted after the knights huddled round the hunched figure of King Edward. Addaf watched the blue and white striped trapping of the de Valence’s horse flap heavily, sodden with blood, streaked and torn. None of the knights left to the King looked any better, he realized, which is why the work is now given to us. Welshmen protecting the King of the English — the savage irony of it was not lost on anyone, as Addaf saw from the sullen embered looks.

‘Nyd hyder ond bwa,’ he shouted and the Welsh laughed, though it was bitter, as the horse-holders took the mounts and the others sorted themselves out.

There is no dependence but on the bow — Addaf had always held that to be a fundamental truth, but he did not think there were enough bows now. He looked at the line of them, counting: twenty shooters, perhaps, no more. Ahead he saw running men and recognized them as Hainaulters, trying to scatter from the path of the oncoming riders.

He raised his bow so that he could judge the wind from the trail of ribbon — there was one, by God’s hook, a blessed breeze suddenly blowing cool in the sweating dragon’s breath day. Addaf turned to where Sir Maurice sat like a sullen sack on his big horse.

‘Dduw bod ’n foliannus,’ he grunted — God be praised. Maurice, who had been around the Welsh long enough, stared unpityingly from eyes miserable with loss and gave him the rote response in Welsh.

‘In ois oisou.’ For ever and ever.

The last Hainaulters staggered out of the path of the riders — sixty, Addaf thought with a sudden bowel-curdling chill. Or more. He saw the banner flying above the sweat-foamed garrons they were riding and anger burned up in him — stars on blue, the mark of the Black Douglas himself. He remembered his men, dead and dying in puddles of their own blood, spilled from the stumps of the right wrists Douglas had chopped off with an axe.

‘Draw.’

There was the familiar sound of drawn strings, that creaking-door rasp.

‘Shoot.’

The air quivered and thrummed. Addaf saw horses and men fall, saw the others veer left and right, reining round and flogging their mounts out of range. He looked up at Sir Maurice and had nothing back but a poached-egg stare and knew they would stay here for a time, letting the King put some distance between himself and his enemies.

He looked at the sky, saw clouds building up like bulls herding in a paddock, felt the breeze, a freshening balm on his face. It was a good day, he thought, to stand peaceful and cool …

The Hainaulters staggered away. More men followed, a few riders, a handful of horses — all fleeing from the Scots, who stayed out of range, waiting. More of them came up.

‘Mount.’

The sigh was audible.

‘Dduw bod ’n foliannus,’ Addaf grunted, but did not turn around or move, deliberately waiting until everyone else was in the saddle and already moving off. Last to leave the field of battle, he thought to himself proudly. Does no harm to let folk see that …

‘In ois oisou,’ said a crow-harsh voice and, surprised, Addaf turned.

He had time to see the twisted knot of savage vengeance that was the bruised face of Y Crach before the scything arc of blade whirled into his ribs, driving air, sense and light out of him, all at once.

Hal was left only with the smith, stolid and determinedly stumping along in the wake of Cornix; all the others had dropped off, one by one, half-apologetic, half-ashamed. Chirnside, Sore Davey, Mouse — all lured by the glint of gold spurs, or the sight of a ring on a dead finger.

Hal shifted in the saddle and looked at Davey of Crauford, holding up the great silken Beauseant banner, so fine it rippled like maiden hair in the sudden breeze. Lay brother though he might only have been, the smith was proud as any deadly sin at being chosen to carry this, the famed Order banner, in what was its last flutter on a field of battle.

‘Tear that aff its pole,’ Hal said, more harshly than he had intended, but saw the sad regret in Davey’s eyes and felt a flicker of sympathy.

‘Fold it up,’ he added more gently. ‘I ken where to take it when this is done with.’

Aye, and Rossal de Bissot’s sword as well. The anonymous black brothers of Glaissery could keep their venerated relics in secret, for they had no part left in the world of men.

He heard the clang and spang of metal even as he rode on, leaving Davey to his task, the horse threading its own path through the groaning, slathered mass of spilled bodies, the blood making a sucking mud that stained the feathering on its hooves.

Two men fought still — well, one did, while the other, white hair whisping in the breeze, seemed to be at his last, down on one knee and weakly fending off the wild blows. If his opponent ever gathers himself of sense and strength, Hal thought, yon wee auld man will be carved like a joint at table.

He was filled with the useless waste of it; the battle was done and he was sure Bruce had won it, so this was a pointless exercise and he was about to shout that when he saw the horse draped in its trapping and bright still with heraldry.

A blue shield with the cross of St Andrew — Hal knew that mark and that Kirkpatrick had not had time to change it on the horse trapping or his surcote, though his actual shield wore that arrogant hand holding a bloody dagger.

‘Ho,’ he bawled and the pair sprang apart, the old man — Kirkpatrick, Hal now realized — falling backwards and lying outstretched on the bloody grass like Christ crucified.

The other was Badenoch. Hal saw it at once and the shock of it was a sickening thrill at this, the clearest indication of the Hand of God. Badenoch, who had watched Kirkpatrick kill his da, who had stood there as a gawky 17-year-old youth while Kirkpatrick was restrained from killing him, too. By me, Hal thought. By me.

Now he is grown to prime and has killed Black Roger. A great surge of feeling swamped Hal, a wave crested with the knowledge that he had let the youth live then, to visit his vengeance on Kirkpatrick. The Christ-crucified vision of the man lying there roared luridly into his head and he hissed the Templar sword out of its scabbard.

Badenoch saw Hal, saw the smith behind him and the scatter of men, coming up hard from their plunder and trying to make up for their shameful greed by being first back to Sir Hal’s side. He sprang for Kirkpatrick’s horse like a hare, was in the saddle and reining round in a fluid movement.

It was all the spur needed; before he had thought, Hal was after him.

He raked Cornix into a jagged canter, weaving as best he could between the scatter of bodies; once or twice the big horse swerved and hare-hopped before struggling on after the fleeing Badenoch.

Headed the wrong way, Hal thought triumphantly. Keep going and you will run into the Forth …

There was a great growling roar and a sudden flash which jerked Hal’s head up and made the horse falter and stumble. Thunder and lightning, he registered, and then they were bursting through some low bushes, into the kicked-up haze still swelling from Badenoch’s mad gallop, the motes dancing in it. The light had gone strange and yellowed.

Badenoch realized his mistake, turned sharply and lost his balance, reeling a little in the saddle; Hal turned more sharply still, gained a stride or two, leaped a bush and thumped down with a jar that banged his belly into the pommel and rattled his teeth.

They burst from the bushes to where the bodies started to clot again, horses among them this time. Hal saw Badenoch veer to avoid a still-kicking one, guided his own to the left of it and heard the beast’s iron hoofs clatter off something — skull or helmet he did not know.

They were coming to a crease in the ground: the Pelstream, by God, Hal thought. Now he will have to come at bay …

It took him a moment to realize that Badenoch was not coming to a halt, but checking to a canter, turning and riding parallel to the steep-sided stream — looking for a narrow part, Hal realized. By God’s Hook, he plans to leap it.

Badenoch suddenly spurred; Hal heard the horse squeal in pain, saw it surge and knew Badenoch had chosen his leaping point. He watched as the beast flung itself in an ungainly four-legged sprawl of jump, hit the far side, stumbled forward to safety and collapsed like a burst bag, spilling itself and the rider.

He cantered up and checked; the point was narrow, right enough, which was why all the fleeing Welsh archers had tried to use it. Hal had no idea how deep the narrow wedge of the Pelstream was — at least the height of a tall man — but it was choked to a bridge by bodies.

Hal saw Badenoch struggling on the ground, trying to free himself from a tangle of reins and realized what he had to do if he wanted to get to the man. Did he want it that badly? Kirkpatrick was dead … the thought burned him. Mea culpa, he voiced, savage with the loss and the horror at being the cause of it.

The horse could not leap the stream and would not step on the bodies, so Hal slithered off and put out one foot, only to draw it hastily back when he heard the farting gasp from the body. Dead air, he said savagely to himself. Only dead air …

He walked the bridge, three, four ungainly steps, no more, feeling the sickening roil of soft death, hearing the groans which might only have been the last gasp of the dead or men still dying.

Badenoch was up, weaving, sword at the guard and his eyes rat-desperate.

‘Different,’ Hal said coldly to him, ‘when you face a knight who actually knows the ways of sword and lance, my wee lord.’

‘You saved me,’ Badenoch blurted out, his voice harsh and rasping in breath. ‘The day my father was slain in Greyfriars.’

‘I did,’ Hal replied and then moved forward, de Bissot’s sword arcing round. ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’

Badenoch’s sword stopped the blow, glissaded away and the echoes were lost in another growling roar of thunder. Hal realized the world had darkened, wondered if the battle had lasted so long that it was now night.

Doggedly, Badenoch gathered himself and came back, lashing right and left, sweeping blows that thrummed the air; Hal countered, hitting nothing. They circled like wary dogs.

‘You could yield,’ Badenoch offered suddenly. ‘No shame in it. You are ower old for this, after all, and I will kill you if you do not, for all I owe you my life.’

‘I own your life since that day — now I have come for my due,’ Hal answered flatly and moved in as the wind hissed down on them, whirling up the tired, torn grass. Badenoch crouched, half turned and struck, the sword whicking the last flat of itself on to Hal’s mittened fist; even through the maille he felt the blow of it, the numbing that spilled the sword from his grasp.

With a howl of triumph, Badenoch went for the killing strokes, but caught his gilded spurs and stumbled a little; Hal scuttled away, staggered over a body and made for a nearby spear, stuck point down in the hard ground.

He had no feeling in his right hand; he gripped with his left and wrenched, but the spear was buried deep and would not come loose. Behind him, he heard Badenoch closing in like a panting hound.

Hal lurched forward, still gripping the spear, so that it bent — but it still stuck fast. He let it go just as Badenoch rushed in, snarling — and the shaft sprang back and took the man in the chest and face, a smack like a hammer; he went flying backwards, his own sword spilling free.

Ahead, Hal saw a shield and made for it; a man with a shield had a weapon yet. He fumbled it up — and cursed, for the straps had been sheared and it was useless. Badenoch, back on his feet and his face a twisted mask of blood, sprang forward and wrenched the spear free.

Now it comes free, Hal thought bitterly. He lurched to one side as the point of the spear stabbed at him. He kicked out, hearing himself squeal like a horse.

The blow took Badenoch in the thigh, made him cry out and reel away. Then he hurled himself back into the fight, the spear flicking out like a snake’s tongue; Hal spun, found the shaft under his right armpit and himself with his back to Badenoch; in a panic he gripped with his arm and heaved sideways, hoping to tear the spear from the knight’s grasp, or spill him to the ground if he held on to it.

The shaft snapped, which came as a shock to them both. It cracked like an old marrow bone, so that Hal found himself with the last foot of wood and the wicked tip couched under his armpit like a silly lance.

Badenoch, left with four feet of splinted shaft, flung it down in disgust and hurled himself at Hal, all mailled fists and vengeance.

Hal whipped the shattered spearshaft from under his arm with his left hand and drove it into Badenoch’s face. The man ran on to it like a charging bull, impaled himself through his open, snarling mouth and staggered on past for a few reeling steps before falling forward; Hal saw the bloody point burst from the back of the skull.

He stood for a long moment, and then something inside seemed to give up and he fell on to his knees, rolled to one side and, finally, on to his back, staring at the sky and listening to Badenoch’s mailled feet kick wetly in his own blood.

Like his da, Hal remembered. He wanted to get up but could not move, only stare at the sky, which had turned bruised and ugly. It is all over, he thought dully. Badenoch is dead. Kirkpatrick … bigod, the world is slain this day.

The thunder rolled, sonorous as a bell.

He lay like that for what seemed an age, until the spatter of water made him blink. It grew and started to hiss like a nest of adders: rain, sheeting in a curtain which suddenly parted to reveal a limping grey figure who reached out a sodden hand to haul Hal to his feet.

‘Bigod,’ said Kirkpatrick. ‘That was well done — but you should have let me end him in Greyfriars and saved the pair o’ us all this bother.’

Goliath was dead. Thweng had not known when the horse had been hit, only the moment it had checked, coughed and started to sink, slowly, like a deflating bladder. He had time to kick free of it and drop with a jar to the ground, watched it fall to its knees and finally on to one side, blowing blood out of its nose; the arrow that had killed it was buried so deep, just to the rear of the girth, that only the span of peacock fletchings could be seen. A great spreading stain of blood soaked the trapper.

Welsh archers, Thweng thought bitterly, God curse them. That horse was worth more than fifty of those dark mountain dwarves put together …

Men flooded round him, splitting right and left, away from the sword-armed, mailled figure and his dying horse. Our foot, Thweng thought moodily, running like chooks; he hoped John and the others had managed to get away — and, with a surprising detachment, wondered if he would manage that himself.

He walked away from the horse, stepping over bodies. Archers had let loose here and felled a deal of Scots horse; there were little shaggy ponies down, kicking and squealing among the ragdoll shapes of men. Arrows littered all around, in beast and man and turf, broken, splintered and trampled — and one hit Goliath, he added bitterly, though there was no telling if it had been an accident or some vicious last Welsh swipe at the English.

A man rose up suddenly with a whoop of sucked-in air and Thweng took a grip of his sword as the man felt himself, as if in wonder at finding no injuries. Thweng saw the stained gambeson and the two roughly tacked strips of cloth in the shape of the St Andrew’s cross on one breast. A Scot …

Dog Boy hauled himself up from the ruin of his horse, could not help but run his hands over his body, amazed that he had escaped the sleet of arrows.

He had thought he had done enough for this day when he had stopped chasing fleeing Englishmen — but then Jamie Douglas had come up, mounted and grinning, streaked and stained and joyous.

‘Get yerself legged up on this, Aleysandir,’ he ordered and Dog Boy, weary and sick of it all, saw the others and the extra garrons they had.

So he had hauled himself up and followed after them — chasing the King, he had been told — until the horse had squealed and veered and pitched him off. He did not know whether it had been hit or just so tired it had collapsed; he was only vaguely aware of the archers, but he was so exhausted himself that he did not struggle much when he fell.

Until now, when a tait of sense had come back to him and he’d heard someone coming. He did not want to lie there while some harridan with a dirk gralloched him, uncaring what side he belonged to.

Now he eyed the knight warily. He knew the markings of the man, though he could not recall the name — and then he saw a pile of nearby dead heave like a rise of marsh gas; a body rolled slackly away and a figure crawled out from the heap.

Thweng saw the man lever out from under bodies, rolling them to one side and climbing painfully to his knees. He raised a blood-spattered face and Thweng, with a shock, realized suddenly that he knew the man. An old Welsh archer …

Addaf stared from one to the other. He recognized Thweng by his heraldry and, with a shock, saw the dark, slim shape he was sure was Black Sir James Douglas.

‘Kill him,’ he croaked to Thweng, pointing at Dog Boy, who fumbled in his boot with a curse, only to realize he had given his spare dagger to Hob. Weaponless, he trembled and waited, wild-eyed and watching.

‘It is the Black,’ Addaf persisted and Thweng, knowing it was not, waved his sword wearily.

‘We are all done with killing here,’ he replied and sank down on one knee, feeling the weight of his armour suddenly drag at his sixty years. Addaf, confused and bewildered, angry at having been so careless of Y Crach as to have imagined him dead if not cowed, suddenly felt the sharp, stabbing lance of pain in his ribs and sat down in a squelch of bloody puddle, aware that he was probably dying and that nothing mattered, not even Y Crach’s betrayal. We were all betrayed here, he thought.

They stayed that way for some time, it seemed to the three, surrounded by dead and dying, groans and cries for God and mothers, while the wind rose and the light turned sickly in the brightness of the day. Then the first thunder growled and brought heads up.

‘Well,’ said Thweng. ‘It seems you have won this day, Scotchman. Have you a name?’

Dog Boy eyed the English knight, sure he knew the man and desperate to remember him.

‘Aleysandir,’ he said, and cocked a jaundiced eye at the wheezing Welsh archer lying in a tarn of his own blood. ‘As daring as the Black Sir James, but better looking.’

Addaf flapped a weary hand in acknowledgement of his mistake, but it was a pallid gesture and Dog Boy saw the Welshman was nearly gone from the world. Addaf lay back, looking at the great slow wheel of the sky and thinking dreamily of his ma. There was a point when he passed out of the world but no one recognized it, not even himself.

Dog Boy eyed Thweng and then straightened a little, haughty as any earl.

‘Do you yield, then?’

Sir Marmaduke barked out a short, harsh laugh.

‘Not to you,’ he replied and Dog Boy shrugged and pointed behind Sir Marmaduke.

‘Is he more of a rank for you, then?’

Bruce had picked his way slowly through the great maggot carpet of dead and dying, riding in the wake of his leaping, howling, vengeful army, the huddle of horsemen with him so stunned by it, so overwhelmed by victory that they could not speak more than low, awed murmurs.

‘We have won,’ Keith kept saying.

We have won, Bruce thought and felt the divine glow of it. God made me to a Plan and I have made the Kingdom, out of the stones of these bodies and the mortar of their blood. Christ’s Bones, what a slaughter …

The sheer scale of it was numbing, yet Bruce already felt it crushing him, felt the black chest of sins in his head creak at the seams with what it had to contain now. It would get worse, he knew, when the price for this victory became clear.

Ahead, he saw two figures, turning to face him. To his astonishment, he knew both — the Lothian man he had made his houndsman, the one called Dog Boy.

And Sir Marmaduke Thweng.

He levered himself off the horse, ignoring the warnings from Keith, and stumped across to face the knight.

‘Sir M,’ he said weakly.

‘Sirrah,’ Thweng replied. There was a pause and then they were wrapped in each other’s arms before stumbling apart.

‘I yield. You have won a great victory,’ Thweng said, managing a wry twist of grin. ‘I should now call you Your Grace the King, for it has been hard-earned.’

The King. Bruce nodded. He had taken the Crown and, at long last, made a Kingdom for it … yet, even now, he knew that it was not the end of anything, certainly not the English. They might be skulking south, bewildered and beaten, but they would be back — unless Edward could be persuaded to give up his claims and end this war, it would rumble on …

Thunder rolled out and he looked up, half hoping, half afraid to see some holy sign. It was there, but it was clear that Malachy, as ever, had a cursed saintly hand in it.

Heaven parted and God and all His angels wept into the Bannock burn and the sightless eyes of the dead.

ISABEL

The town drones like a smacked byke; there has been a great battle at Stirling and King Edward is fled. He came to Berwick, having sailed to Bamburgh from Dunbar and ridden back up to the town, to meet his escort lords who took the coast road. I saw him, clattering into the bailey with no more than four riders, but I could not say which one had been him, for they all looked pinched and afraid, arriving drookit as gutter rats in the lightning-split dark so no one would see them. Save me, crept into my cage to peer down through the rain and feeling, suddenly, more liberated than whichever of the dark, wet shadows was the King. That was a fortnight since … Constance came this day to say that now King Edward is leaving, fleeing back to London before Berwick is proper besieged. She was frightened and pale; Malise slithered in not long after like a mottled spider and snarled at her to be gone; poor wee nun, she had no courage for it and fled, weeping. Then he fell on his knees and raised his face to me as if I was Heaven itself, his mouth like a wet opening in a bog. Christ Jesus, he moaned, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, was crucified, died and was buried — I know You. You touched Heaven and came to Hell and cast out that which offended You. What You loved, O Lord, You destroyed. I understand that.

There was more, so that it was clear that Badenoch was dead and Malise had no more liege lord, nor living to be had, either from him or me. Now he has thrown me to the Hounds of God, who will need some witch to blame, to sacrifice as in darker times to older gods, to make sense of such a loss to the English.

O Lord, I am shamed and sorry to have so vexed You with myself. Give me leave to repent, for You shall know me well, soon enough.