The Lion Wakes

Chapter Twelve

The woods at Callendar, near Falkirk

Feast of St Mary Magdalene, July, 1298

They were singing, which reminded Hal of the last time he had heard voices glorifying God – at Stirling, when they had been raised sweetly over the smell of churned earth, the stink of fresh blood, shite from horses and men and the high, thin acrid smell of fear.

‘Brabancons,’ muttered Sim knowingly. ‘Celebrating Mass.’

The whole English army was celebrating mass in the midst of some colourful tentage, as if there was no hurry. They had arrived like a great, slow wave that radiated power and numbers, so that Hal could see men near him shift in their saddles, looking uneasily from one to the other. Strathearn and Lennox, he saw, Mentieth and the Stewards, all trying to make their mouths summon up some spit.

There were retinues from Carrick and Comyn here, too, Hal noted – but no Earl of Buchan or any Badenoch or Bruce with them. Wallace saw the strained look on the Lothian lord’s face as he glanced at the small – God’s Hook, pathetically small – mesnie of Scots horse.

Aye, well may ye worry, young Hal, he thought bitterly. They all had good reasons for being elsewhere, none more so than Buchan, who had brought his men personally weeks ago, riding like a sack of wet grain and waspish as a damp cat.

‘I am with ye in spirit, Sir William,’ he had announced, ‘but I go to keep the north in order.’

‘Does it need so kept?’ Wallace countered and Buchan had merely smiled and flapped a dismissive hand.

‘It always needs order,’ he answered politely. ‘God keep you safe – and the English at a distance. Where are they anyway?’

‘Under the smoke they make,’ Wallace had answered laconically and had then watched Buchan ride away, looking right and left constantly. Looking for the Lothian lord, Wallace thought, So I know what business Buchan has and where. At least his quarrel with his wife and her new wee lover is a genuine, if selfish, excuse and not some callow tale like others presented to justify their absence.

But their lack had been noted by those of the nobiles who had turned up, sitting in their fine trappings on barded horses – few of them the fearsome and expensive destrier – feeling their bowels turn to water. Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist Um den rechten Glauben allermeist

It drifted on the wind, sometimes louder, sometimes fading, but a constant reminder of what Longshanks had brought. Thirty thousand, some said he had gathered – the largest army ever seen. Not now, the sensible heads pointed out, for there is less than half of it left.

But even that was more than enough and Hal could see the nobiles knew it. Brabancons, Gascons, Welsh spears and bows, the scouts reported with assurance – and, above all, three thousand heavy horse. We have ten thousand men, Hal thought bleakly, with only five hundred of it horse and not all of that fit to match the English knights if his own men were anything to judge – twenty hard fighters on tough little garrons, with latchbows, Jeddart staffs, daggers, little axes and less armour. Dass er uns behute an unserm Ende, Wenn wir heimfahr’n aus diesem liende.

‘Christ, I wisht they would be doucelike,’ said a voice, thick with fear. Hal swivelled; Sir William Hay of Lochwarret, desperate to wipe his mouth and face, kept raising his hand, then remembering his steel-segmented gauntlet and letting it fall again.

‘What are they chantin’?’ demanded Ramsay of Dalhousie, his bascinet-framed face the colour of spoiled suet.

Kyrieleis!

‘I do not ken,’ Wallace answered languidly, grinning, ‘but I jalouse they are done, so it matters little.’

‘Ye mun find,’ said a gruffer voice, ‘that they are calling on the Holy Ghost to protect them. It is also the first of several verses, so they are not done with it yet.’

Hal knew the grizzled Robert de Ros of Wark by sight, though he had not known the man was any expert on the Brabancon. Wallace, however, resplendent in his Guardian’s gold jupon, blazoned with the red lion of Scotland, did not seem surprised. He had cut the tangle of his hair into a style more suited for the Guardian of Scotland and clipped his beard short and neat – but the man beneath had not been changed one whit.

‘Aye, weel,’ he said, turning from one to the other of the clustered knights, a grim, lopsided grin twisting his face. ‘It is a nice tune. I have brought you to the ring, gentilhommes. Now ye dance if ye can.’

He nodded to Hal and then jerked his head to send him and the hobilars, the light horse, far out to the right flank, into the trees to hide and watch and, hopefully, fall on the rear of English knights once they had fallen foul of the great ring of men which stood there.

Wallace watched them go. He liked the new lord of Herdmanston and wished him well – the man had uncovered the business with Bruce and the Stone with skill and stuck to his word, though Wallace did not know what to do with the knowledge of it.

On the one hand, a valuable relic of the realm had been saved. On the other, red murder had been done, by Bruce and the Comyn. If we still stand by the end of the day, he thought, I will have to think more on it.

He shifted and looked right and left at the nobiles of Scotland. Steady as an egg on a stick, he thought morosely, and those who are not thinking on how to get advantage over their immediate neighbour and enemy are wondering how to hang on to their lands and titles.

They will run, he thought.

Sim thought so, too, and said as much, though Hal tried to ignore him. It was that Sim Craw rasp, perhaps, that prompted Nebless Clemmie to force out from the ranks and alongside, turning his ruin of a face towards Hal.

It was not entirely true to call him Nebless, since he had half the proboscis left, though the wen that had caused the loss had left a disturbing hole. For all that, it was an honest face and a Herdmanston one, which was the meat of his words.

‘The lads,’ he said to Hal in his rheumy voice, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure they were still agreed, ‘wish it known that they are all proud to be at yer stirrup, my lord. Ye ken us and you are auld in the horn when it comes to red war.’

Hal blinked, a little stunned by this. Since he had been old enough to know his place, he had taken his rank as a given, however slight it may be in the eyes of greater lords. Riding a shaggy pony across to a rickle of sticks with the Herdmanston oxen in tow for some poor plough got him a knuckle on a seamed forehead from a peasant who relied for his life on the loan of the beasts.

Rattling around with the Henry and others, Hal had even abused his rank, only sometimes realising that the food and drink he and his band took from a blank-faced family was more than they could afford.

Even later, into the full of himself, there had been times when he considered that his fruitful raiding into the English Borders had been the saving of Herdmanston in lean times. Later still, of course, he had come to realise that it was his father’s constant, sure and steady stewardship which provided.

Now it was his hand. The Lord of Herdmanston – in time, he thought, I might have become the Auld Sire of Herdmanston save that a covetous king and a beautiful wummin got in the road of it and placed it all at hazard.

He shook the mordbid thoughts just as a rider came up, with men at his back; he did not need Sim’s warning growl to know who it was – the red lion shield told him and sent a block of ice into his belly.

MacDuff of Fife, Isabel’s kin, his florid face and wisped hair like autumn bracken in snow, a distant ghost of herself.

‘Herdmanston,’ MacDuff called out and Hal stopped. Behind the man was his mesnie of men-at-arms, a dozen men in maille and surcoats and lances, lacking only the slap of a sword on shoulder and a decent horse to rank them beside any knight on the field.

‘Ye impugn my honour, sirra, and I am Fife. Ye have been gallivanting with the Countess of Buchan, I hear. Bad enough that her name should be tied with The Bruce, but he at least is an earl. You are of no account at all.’

That was flat out as an unsheathed blade and Sim’s eyes narrowed.

‘Have a care…’ he began and Hal laid a hand on his arm to silence him. He was fighting for words and against angry ones when a shadow fell on them both, making them turn into the blazing blue of Wallace’s eyes.

‘Ye are not Fife,’ Wallace said and, though it was low and soft, everyone heard it grating across the pride of MacDuff like an edge on maille. ‘The Lord of Fife is a wee laddie, held by the English these last dozen years. Fife is now the provenance of the Crown until he is returned to it – and in the absence of a king, it is held by the Guardian. Who is me.’

He leaned forward a little and MacDuff, before he could resist, leaned back.

‘So who is Fife, my wee lord?’

There was silence and Wallace smeared a savage smile on his face and slapped his jupon. ‘It is me.’

He waved a hand behind him, never taking his eyes from MacDuff’s pallid face.

‘Down there, beyond the pows and a burn or two, is the enemy. Turn your ire on them, my lord, not yer own.’

He nodded to Hal.

‘On yer way, as commanded.’

Hal kicked Griff and moved under the scowl of MacDuff, his men trailing after him like a snow wind. It took MacDuff a yard or so before he recovered his voice and enough anger to substitute for courage, though he glared at Hal’s back first, before he dared turn it on Wallace.

‘This is what we have become then,’ he snarled, reining round. ‘Petty lords and brigands rule in these days. It will not stand, sirra. It will not stand.’

Neither will you, Wallace thought bitterly.

Hal and the hobilars rode away from it, feeling the imagined heat on their backs, past the right flank, upwards of a thousand men in a ring that was being called schiltron. It was a word from the old time and the north that meant Shield Troop, though half of the men in it would not know that and the other half would not care much: they were busy hammering stakes all round themselves, out to four or five feet distant, linking them with a tangle of ropes.

There were four such rings in a line, with at least a thousand, not more than two, in each one. In between, the tall, muscled Selkirk men waited quietly, bows still unstrung, checking arrow flights and trying to ignore the galloping of their commander, Sir John Steward, riding up and down with instructions, exhortations, a manic energy that would not let him or his slathered horse rest.

‘They will run,’ Bangtail muttered and Hal realised he was talking of the knights, glanced back to the shift and stamp of Scotland’s finest.

No Bruces, or Balliols, or a single Comyn lord; for all they had sent men they stayed away because they would not be second to each other and certainly not to the upstart Wallace. Knighted or not, they sneered – though never to his face – he is still a brigand of little account.

At least, that would be the excuse of it, Hal thought, but the lie in it was more to do with their terror of Longshanks and what they could do to placate the beast.

They will run, Hal said to himself and the dull cold of it sifted into his belly, chill as wet rock.

The cloy of the communion wine, too sweet for Edward’s taste, made his mouth feel thick. His ribs hurt where the fool of a groom had let his own warhorse step on him the previous night – it gave the king no comfort to know that the groom was nursing his own ribs and most of his striped back.

If truth was told, Edward thought moodily to himself, his ribs only ached worse than the rest of him – sleeping like a spearman on the wet ground, wrapped in a cloak, may perform wonders for his image but it did nothing for his joints.

Stabat Mater dolorosa, iuxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius.

The Templars, on this day dedicated to their favourite, the Virgin Herself, were almost as ecstatic as the crazy Brabancon, Edward thought, and smiled grimly. Good – let the Mournful Mother weep at her station by the Cross if it left Sir Brian de Jay and Frere John de Sawtrey rolling-eyed with martial fervour.

They, brilliant in their white and black and red, would turn Scots bowels to water when they charged with their retinues, small though they were – but that black-barred Beau Seant banner was worth another five-score knights, without a doubt.

The distant bleat of shouts from the rebel ranks wafted to him and he did not need to hear it clearly to know what it was they bellowed.

Berwick.

As if he had perpetrated some sort of bloody massacre -only a few hundred had died after all. A thousand at most and that was no more than any other stormed town in a red war suffered, and rightly, for resistance. Hardly the lake of blood the Scots painted the affair with

…

Raised voices shook him from his revery and he found the Earl Marshal arguing with Surrey; it had reached the leaning and pointing stage, but they subsided, glaring and panting, as Edward clumped up, his prick-spurs rasping the muddied grass.

‘My lord king,’ said the pouch-eyed stare of Bigod, the Earl Marshal of England. Beside him, sullen as thwarted babes, Hereford and Lincoln dripped poisonous stares and coloured finery.

‘What?’ demanded Edward savagely and had the satisfaction of seeing them wince and shuffle like boys.

‘I thought to allow the men to take some sustenance before we attack,’ growled Bigod and saw the droop-eyed scowl that made his belly curl.

‘Foolish,’ De Warenne interrupted, drawing on his full dignity as Earl of Surrey, his white arrow of beard quivering above the steel gorget. ‘A thin stream barriers us from the rebels – what if they come down on us while we sit on our arses chewing?’

Edward felt the press on his temples, as if the gold circlet was tightening on the maille coif. Christ’s Holy Arse – was he the only one with any sense here?

‘It is a Holy Day,’ he said to Bigod, soft as silk, and those who knew him braced themselves. ‘So mayhap the Virgin will summon up the miracle of a loaf and some fishes – otherwise, my lord Marshal, what God’s Anointed sustenance are you suggesting the men take?’

The Earl Marshal opened and closed his mouth a few times, but Edward had already started to savage the triumphantly smiling De Warenne.

‘As for you – you need not grin like a mule’s cunny pissing in a heat-wave,’ he snarled. ‘It is a great pity you did not have this caution the first time you encountered this Wallace, else we would not be in this mess.’

The Earl of Surrey glowered, his face turning dark with suffused blood, which brought a savage leap of exultation in Edward’s heart; he twisted the knife harder.

‘He will not, of course, come down on us here, for we are not hemmed in on three sides as you contrived at Stirling.’

‘We will attack at once,’ the Earl of Lincoln said swiftly, with a neat little bow from the neck. Edward saw the smoothly transmitted warning from De Lacy and reined himself in; it would not do to antagonise every great lord of his realm on the morning of battle.

‘Of course you bloody will,’ Edward growled, waving to his arming squire to bring up Bayard. ‘Over there is the ogre we have spent weeks on empty bellies to find. Now slay the beast, in the name of God and all His Saints, and let us be done with this business once and for all.’

‘Amen,’ said Lincoln and reined round.

The army shifted, like a huge stone trembling at the top of a mountain.

Addaf felt it, even in a belly as clappit as his, where his belt buckle rattled against his spine. Buttered capons and golden, crusted pastries rich with mushroom and onion, soups luxurious with eggs and milk – if you are dreaming of food it is always better to dream large, rather than of rye bread and pease brose.

‘Captain Heydin.’

The voice bellowed out from a splendid figure, all red and gold on a barded horse. His banners and accoutrements were all marked with a golden flower and a studding of little gold daggers on a bright red background; as Heydin Captain said, he would not be missed at a thousand paces, would the Lord FitzAlan of Bedale.

In the retinue of Bishop Bek, he had been appointed millinar, the command of the foot and took the task seriously.

‘Captain Heydin,’ he said in careful English, his helm tucked under one arm, the other fighting to control the warhorse, which wanted to be away with all the others riding ahead. ‘Watch your station and do not get between the horse and the enemy. Mark me, now.’

‘Yer honour,’ Heydin Captain replied and put a fist across his chest in salute as the knight rode away, then turned to the other Welsh archers, a wry smile plastered on his face.

‘The mannie wants us to stay out of the way of those caperers on their fat ponies,’ he boomed in Welsh. ‘Let the proud folk have their fun and then we will win the day for them. Nyd hyder ond bwa.’

There is no dependence but on the bow. The Welshmen all growled and grinned at that, while Addaf checked his flights. It had taken him a long while to make new arrows with fine peacock flights to replace the ones he had thrown away at Stirling – the memory of that floundering panic of a day, when he had hauled himself out on the safe side of the river like a half-drowned dog, made him shiver.

He had lost his bowbag and arrows, his shoes and a good gambeson that day, a hard loss for a man with little enough; he touched the new leather shoes – hung round his neck like an amulet, for you never risked their loss on a field cut with sucking streams and churned mud. He would not lose this time. This time, he would gain.

The knight of Bedale forced a way through the throng of spears and bows, repeating his message to those he had found spoke English, though he was not sure whether some were cozening him with that or not. The Welsh nodded and saluted and watched him ride off; he was not a bad commander for an Englishman, but he was still an Englishman, who had asked Heydin Captain why his name was round the wrong way.

It was not, he was told. For over there was Heydin ap Daffyd and there was Heydin, nicknamed Gwrnerth Ergydlym, or Powerful Sharpshot since he was the worst archer of them all, barely putting six out of ten in a palm’s width at a hundred paces. Then he had to explain to the bemused lord that it was a jest, just as Rhodri was called Gam – Squint-Eyed – because he was the best shot of all, even to putting it round corners and killing a bear with a straw arrow, it was rumoured.

In the end, just as Heydin was patiently explaining that Gwynned ap Mydr was nicknamed One Eye though he actually had two – he could not close his aiming eye and had to have a black patch placed over it for shooting – the Lord of Bedale had held up one hand.

‘He is the best shot of all, look you, my lord,’ Heydin Captain tried to add as the knight rode away, still unsure whether he was being made a fool of. ‘He can shoot the wren through his claw, from Caenog, in the Vale of Clwyd, to Esgair Vervel in Ireland…’

Now the Lord of Bedale put his great bucket helm on the saddle bow and leaned on it, looking wistfully after the knights of Bishop Bek’s command, the Second Battle all riding ahead to join the heavy horse of the king himself, the combined Battles forming the hard right hook of the army. He wanted to be there rather than the millinar of foot, trying to herd the great body of spearmen and archers, gabbling in their own foul language and ploughing harsh furrows over Redding Muir down to the Westquarter Burn.

Addaf did not care what the Lord of Bedale felt, only what he belly felt. Away to his left, he saw a magnificent galloper, bright in horizontal stripes, tippets flying from the dome of his sugarloaf heaume; he and other archers who saw him growled deep in their throats, for this was De Valence, who had charged down good Welshmen not long before – eighty were dead of it.

One or two of the archers aimed their unstrung bows at him in future promise, then hurried on when a knot of bright riders surged up past them, thick with banners and purpose. The king himself…

One arrow, Addaf thought. One good peacock-fletched shaft with a bodkin point at the back of that red jupon with the three gold pards and Llewellyn is avenged, Ylfron Bridge’s ghosts laid to rest, Maes Moydog and Madog ap Llewellyn paid for. Yet no-one shot more than surly looks, just kept their heads down and slogged on.

Edward saw them, all the same, and both parties would have been surprised to find they were thinking of Maes Moydog, though for differing reasons.

Like the Welsh then, Edward thought, the Scots are trying great bands of spearmen to resist the knights. Well, we shot them down with Gascon crossbows at Maes Moydog and we will do so again here – there will be no repeat of the idiocy at Stirling. The idea cheered him – even if Maes Moydog had been the victory of the Earl of Warwick – and he raised a hand to wave to delighted youngsters, who had never been in great battle before and were bright with the thrill of it all.

‘Dieu vous garde!

‘Felicitas.’

‘Dieu vivas.’

They threw greetings like gaudy tokens to lovers and Edward watched them, wondering where his own fire for this had gone, thinking savagely to himself that they would find the truth of it all when the spear points tumbled them and their expensive horse to the mud and the shite rolled fearfully out of them as they scrabbled to be away. In the end, he knew, the Gascon crossbows would decide it. And the Welsh bowmen if they stuck to the task of it.

Maes Moydog…

He saw Sir Giles D’Argentan ride up, splendid and grim and was cheered by the sight of the second-best knight in Christendom, admitting in his inner heart that, since the foremost knight was himself in his better days, the laurels had shifted a little to a much younger man.

Alongside D’Argentan was an even younger squire, riding easy and lithe and splendid, his hair like fine gold mist wisping from under the coif and his helmet tucked under one arm so that he could drink in all that was happening around him. With a shock, Edward saw that this was a boy, no older than his own son.

D’Argentan reined in and bowed his inhuman, barrel-heaumed head, then removed it to reveal his beaming, scarred face. He saw the king was looking elsewhere and turned to the squire.

‘Do you not know your king, boy?’ he said. The squire bowed at once. No scowl or resentment, Edward thought; this boy knows the dignity of knights and how to behave as one, which starts with obedience. My own son is as tall and as strong and rides the lists as well – but this one knows the style of his profession, as surely as little Edward fails to grasp the dignity of the Crown he must one day wear. Thatching and ditch-digging; the thought made him scowl.

‘If your grace permits,’ D’Argentan declared, ‘may I present Piers Gaveston, esquire. I have been given him for the instructioning.’

‘Gaveston,’ Edward repeated slowly. Son of Sir Arnaud, he recalled suddenly, the Gascon I used as hostage with the French twice. He remembered welcoming Arnaud into his household after the man had fled France.

The boy had a smooth, beardless face, innocent as prayer and capped with an angel’s gold hair. Like mine once was, the king thought wistfully.

‘How old are you, boy?’ he demanded.

‘Fourteen years and two months, if it please your grace.’

The answer was steady and not in the least overawed by the stern old ogre king, Edward thought. This lad is good material and of ages with my own son.

‘Keep him safe,’ he said to the smiling D’Argentan. ‘I may have uses for this lad.’

He watched them ride off, pleased to see the straight back of the boy and the easy way he controlled a destrier. Perhaps an example like this, he thought, would turn Edward to kingly matters. Thatching and digging ditches, by God’s Arse. Mimers and mummers and naked swimming in rivers…

‘Quod non vertat iniquita dies, said a sonorous voice and Edward knew it was the Bishop of Durham before he had even turned his head.

And so it comes, the wicked day – typical of the round-faced little cant, Edward thought sourly. Yet Bek was another of those necessary evils of ruling, a churchman of power, armed, armoured and resplendent in red with his ermined cross and his pudding-bowl tonsure.

‘Regis regum rectissimi prope est Dies Domini, he rasped back. The day of the Lord, the rightful King of Kings, is close at hand – let him chew that one over, Edward thought with savage humour. ‘Virtutis fortuna comes,

Fortune favours courage was what folk took it to mean – but the comes in it originally referred to the elite Roman horsemen and Bek knew the king had made a clever wordplay on the knights of his own army. Since the king’s jests were few, Bek never faltered or frowned, offering a small, admiring smile instead.

‘Very good, my liege,’ he said, then glanced up the long roll of slope and dips to where the faint line marked the enemy. ‘Do you think they fear us yet, sire?’

Wallace felt the fear behind him, washing like stink from a shambles as the coloured skeins of armoured horsemen advanced over the meadow, careless and bright as trailing ribbons. A Battle, forming the left of the English line, it was a dazzle of fluttering pennons and banners that Wallace knew well and he smiled grimly to himself. De Warenne again…

The Van, pushing forward to the right of De Warenne, were singing, the voices faint and eldritch on a fickle wind: Quant Rollant veit que la bataille serat, plus se fait fiers que leon ne leupart.

When Roland sees that now must be combat, more fierce he’s found than lion or leopard – Wallace knew that chanson de geste to Roland well enough and screwed half round in his saddle, into the drawn, pinched grimness behind him.

‘Have we no voices, my lords?’ he demanded in halting French.

A high, clear voice started it and Wallace thanked God for his kin – Simon, his cousin. The other two, Adam and Richard, joined in almost at once, for they had been known as the Unholy Trinity since they had started to tear around together, causing mischief. You would not know that now from their angel voices and the thought made him smile, even as other throats, gruff, out of tune, trembling, rose to join in.

Hostem repellas longius, pacemque dones protinus; Ductore sic te praevio, Vitemus omne noxium

Drive far away our wily foe, and Thine abiding peace bestow; If Thou be our protecting Guide, no evil can our steps betide.

In the tight ring of dry-mouthed spearmen, men unflexed a hand from the shaft and crossed themselves. Even if they did not understand the Latin of it, they knew it was a call to God to hold His Hand over them as the coloured talons scarred towards them, paused, then started to coalesce into fat, tight blocks of silver-tipped dazzle.

Deep in the forest of spears, someone was sick.

Peering through the leaves like an animal, Hal saw the horse of the Van gather like wolves, the great bedsheet banners of Lincoln and Hereford smothering the host of lesser pennons of their retinues. They were planning to fall on the centre and Hal grinned through the sweat as he saw the sudden flutter in them; the Selkirk archers had released.

The horsemen bunched; commanders galloped back and forth and, in the still, fly-pocked swelter of the woods, men who knew the muscled sign of it grunted expectantly as the huge blocks started forward at a determined, knee-to-knee walk.

‘Not long afore they find oot,’ Bangtail shouted with glee and was shushed for his pains. Still, the joy of it was hard to keep from bubbling up, Hal thought and almost let out a sharp yell of triumph as the splendid, implacable riders came up over a slight lip – and found the great slew of boggy loch they had not seen before, spread out like a moat in front of the first two schiltron rings.

Confusion. Milling. The Selkirk men let loose again and horses were goaded to plunge and buck, flinging men to the ground with a noise like falling cauldrons. The faint sound of cheers washed up the Hal’s ears, followed by the great tidal roar…

Tailed dogs.

Slowly, painfully, the commanders galloping and yelling – even striking shields, Hal saw, so that the whole straggling mass started to turn to the left, towards the Battle of De Warenne, their unshielded side to the arrows as they circled the long strip of muddy marshland that had balked them. Many of them had not put on their full-face helms and were hunched and turned from the arrows as if in a snow storm.

It was a moment to savour – yet Hal saw that all this did was concentrate all the force from the centre to the right of the Scots line, where he and the other Herdmanston riders huddled in the trees.

‘Watch to yer right, lads,’ Sim growled and the men crouched on the patient garrons as De Warenne’s knights came up, wheeled into formation and started in towards the great shield ring – and the Scots knights that blocked the passage between it and the woods. They would pass close to Hal, he saw, funnelled by wood and schiltron spears to a mass the Scots knights could match for frontage – and Hal would lead his twenty riders out into their flank, hoping the flea bite would be enough to unnerve the crush of English knights.

‘God preserve us,’ muttered Ill Made Jock.

‘For ever and ever,’ came the muttered rote response.

‘Lente aleure!

The cry came, faint as lost hope, from the English commanders of the echelles as, one by one from the right, these sub-units began to move off, lances raised.

‘Paulatim.’

The pace picked up slightly, the huge mass of mailled men churning forward, horses snorting and calling out in high-pitched squeals of excitement. Griff shifted under Hal, for he smelled the rank battle stink, felt the tremble – as they came level, the great quake of it came up through the saddle into Hal’s belly. Leaves shook; a twig fell.

‘In the name of all God’s Saints…’ someone whimpered.

‘Pongnie.’

One by one the units obeyed and spurred, the great warhorses churning up the ground, the riders bellowing. Yet they were so closely pressed that they could not manage more than an ungainly half-canter, half-trot and still remain knee to knee.

‘Now,’ Hal hissed, watching the distant block of horse, the figure of Wallace head and shoulders above the tallest in it, watched him raise that hand-and-half to arm’s length over his head…

Someone broke from the back ranks, speeding off into the woods like a pursued fox. Another joined him. Then another. Wallace brought the sword down and surged forward, trailing a knot of men – twice as many hauled their mounts round and bolted.

The nobiles of Scotland had run after all.

To fight and win was now a dream. Hal saw it even as he saw Wallace and the pitiful knuckle of remaining knights slam into the great chest of English lances. The only sensible thing to do was run – the sudden rush of that made him jerk Griff’s head back – but, in the same moment, he saw the horse fall, saw the red and gold giant vanish into the mass; Hal raised his sword, kicked Griff hard enough to make the garron squeal and every man at his back surged out of the wood, screaming, ‘A Sientcler.’

They ploughed into the flanks of the struggling knights, just at the point they piled up like water at the dam. Hal cut and thrust and heard his sword bang like a hammer on a forge, felt the shock of it up his arm. A figure in stripes loomed; Hal cut and the man’s armoured head snapped back like a doll, his helmet dented on one side. A blow smacked Hal’s shield, reeled him so that he had to hang grimly on, while Griff spun in a half-circle.

He saw Nebless Clemmie hook his Jeddart staff in a knight’s fancy jupon, then spin his horse and ride off, dragging the knight to the ground with a clatter, where Ill Made Jock, elbow working like a mad fiddler, rained a flurry of furious stabs until the battle surged his plunging garron away.

The dam broke; the great mass of armoured horse rode over the remains of the Scots knights, who were either unhorsed and dying, or fleeing for the woods. Hal knew that his own attack had achieved only a moment of surprise and now the English were cursing and turning to fight. He saw Ill Made Jock’s garron, Wee Dan, smashed in the chest by the fearsome hooves of a warhorse, go down screaming – Hal lost sight of Jock in the whirl of hooves and legs and spuming blood.

Corbie Dand, on foot and with his face all bloody, was screaming and wielding the remains of his Jeddart, splintered down to a short-handled axe; the blow that crushed his head, kettle hat and all, came from a knight in blue and gold.

‘Wallace…’ yelled a voice and Hal turned into it, ducked a mad axe-cut at his head, took a mace on his shield and slashed back. He registered Sim as a flicker, on foot, open-mouthed and pointing; Hal spun Griff, felt the animal stumble, cursed and flogged it with cruel heels.

Wallace, off his mount, stood like a tree in a flood, the sword in both hands now and the added power hacking Hell into his enemies. Horsemen struggled and fought to get to him, for they saw the red lion rampant blazing on his chest and knew who it was, could taste the glory of it – but he stood there, a roaring giant, more ogre than man.

He turned briefly as Hal surged Griff up on one side, not even sure of what he was doing or why – then he saw the sheer joy of Wallace, the great beatific smile.

He is prepared to die, Hal thought, stabbed with sudden wonder. He is not afraid at all…

Sim staggered out of a ruck, slashing right and left, and stood on one side of Wallace, so that Hal found himself on the other, feeling Griff stagger and buckle.

‘Make for the ring,’ Wallace yelled and they did so, moving as swiftly as they could. Hal suddenly felt Griff sink and managed to kick free and drop; the snapped lance shaft was deep in the animal’s chest and, even as Hal cursed himself for not having seen it – when had it happened, in the name of Christ? – he heard the animal blow a last bloody froth and die.

‘The ring,’ yelled Sim, grabbing an elbow – a horse slammed into them, splitting them apart and sending Hal over in a dizzying whirl that left him dazed and looking at calloused, filth-clogged feet; when he rolled over, trying to get his eyes in focus, he saw the hedge of shafts over him.

Then a hand grabbed his surcoat, dragging him backwards; he heard the cloth tear and thought, mad as gibbering, that Bet the Bread would be furious at the ruin of her sewing.

A figure floated in front of him, a hand came forward and he felt the blow only faintly, then the second, sharp as a bee-sting. He flung up a hand to ward off a third and saw Wallace, his face streaked with blood, grinning at him.

‘Back with us? Good – there is work yet to do.’

Hal had lost his sword and his helmet and there was something wrong with the coif, which seemed to be flapping loose on one side. A mad-eyed figure with hair bursting out from under a leather helmet shoved a long knife at him, grinning insanely. Hal took it, looked up and round, feeling the shudder through the nearest shoulders and backs as English knights tried to force into the hedge-ring of grim men, standing like a single beast at bay.

The riders circled, frustrated and hurling curses, maces, axes, the remains of their lances and – now that the Selkirk bowmen had been scatteered and ridden down – their huge barrel helmets. The spearmen thrust and slashed, panting and snarling, and the great horses died, spilling the proud blazon of their riders into the crushed grass and bloody mud, where men in dirty wool came from the back ranks of the ring of spears, squirming between legs and feet to scuttle out and pounce on the trapped, or those too slow to struggle away on foot.

‘No’ chantin’ noo, ye sou’s arse,’ howled one, leaping like a spider on a black and silver figure, crawling wearily on hands and knees away from the kicking shriek of his dying horse. The thin-bladed knife went in the visor and blood flooded out the breathing holes – then the spider was back beneath the shelter of the spears, breathing hard and smiling at Hal like a fox fresh on a kill.

He wiped the dagger on his filthy, ripped braies and Hal saw it was Fergus the Beetle, black-carapaced in his boiled leather and grinning with blood on his teeth. He winked, as if he had just spotted Hal across a crowded alehouse.

‘Aye til the fore, my lord.’

Hal blinked. Still alive. Beyond the safety of the spear rings, the Scots archers were being ridden down and killed in a running slaughter and he wondered what had happened to Sim.

The Bishop’s horse limped and his surcoat was torn open under one arm, so that it flapped like the wounded wing of a red kite. Behind him stumbled a knight on foot, helmet and bascinet both gone and his maille coif shredded; there was blood on his face and a great spill of it down a once-cream surcoat, almost obliterating the two ravens blazoned on it.

Addaf did not need to hear Bek to know his anger, for it was plain in the wild, red-faced hand-waving he did at the knight in red and gold stripes, who sat sullenly on his expensive warhorse. It was draped in pristine white barding scattered with little red-and-gold-striped shields, each one ermined in the top left quarter; Basset of Drayton, Addaf had been told after the first angry encounter between the knight and the Bishop.

That was when Bek had tried to check the knights of his command and wait for the king before attacking, but this Basset of Drayton had arrogantly pointed his sword at Bek and told him to go and celebrate Mass if he wished, for the knights would do the fighting. Bek’s retinue heard it and took off in a mad gallop, a great metal flail that splintered itself to ruin on the nearest Scots ring of spears while the Bishop beat his saddle with futile anger.

Now the survivors of it, their horses dead, staggered away – and Addaf knew that Bek was scathing Basset because neither he nor any of his two bachelor knights nor nine sergeants had ridden anywhere near the Scots.

‘This horse is worth fifty marks,’ Basset argued, scowling as Addaf and the other archers came level with the arguing pair.

‘Then point it and spur – it should charge home,’ Bek snarled back, ‘even if the rider does not care to.’

‘By Christ’s Wounds,’ Basset bellowed, his beard bristling. ‘I will not take that from the likes of a tonsured byblow…’

‘Neither will you charge home,’ bellowed a new voice and everyone turned as Edward and his retinue came cantering up. Eyes went down; no-one wanted to look at the furious, droop-lidded lisping rage that stormed out of the king’s face.

Especially not Basset, who went as white as his horse barding and started to stammer.

‘Quiet,’ Edward ordered, then surveyed the wreckage of staggering, unhorsed knights, trailing back like drunks from an alehouse. A groaning knight in green, torn and spattered with mud and blood, was helped by two others; his left hand was hanging from a bloody mess by a few last fragments of tendon and flesh and someone had tied his baldric round the forearm to stop him bleeding to death.

‘My Lord of Otley,’ Edward said, nodding to the green knight as if they had met in cloistered court. The green knight moaned and another limped out behind him, bare-headed and leaking blood; he paused, looked up at his king and bowed.

Edward returned it.

‘My good lord,’ he said blandly. ‘You have lost your horse.’

Voiced as commiseration, it had a vicious twist to it – Eustace de Hacche had refused to sell his splendid charger to the king and now the beautiful bay with one white sock was lying, screaming in a tureen of its own entrails.

De Hacche turned away, nursing his ribs and more bitter about the horse than the spear which had burst him open; he did not want to have to remove his maille and gambeson for fear of what might tumble to the ground. I will look like my horse, he thought.

Esward watched him stumble off, his face a dog’s dinner of anger, then turned his droop-eyed fury on Bek and Basset.

‘Neither of ye have the sense of an egg,’ he growled and watched them bristle, mildly curious to see if they would spill it over to argument. They winked on the brim of it – then puffed it away and Edward sat deeper in his saddle, slightly disappointed but not surprised.

Christ blind me, he thought, good men have died because this Basset fool has a head fit only for carrying a metal helmet and as empty. Not that he is alone in it, he added bitterly, else I would not have to be here, completing the task I set for the Earl of Surrey and others.

‘If you have finished squandering the chivalry of England,’ Edward growled at the pair, ‘perhaps we can return to completing this affray?’

He gave a signal; a horn blew and Addaf heard the Lord of Bedale shouting at Heydin Captain, who, in turn, roared out orders in his sonorous Welsh for the war-winners to step on this bloody stage.

Addaf rolled his shoulders expectantly, then looked right and left, dismayed. Around him, the Welsh archers, watching the expensively hired Gascon crossbowmen trot forward and start rattling shafts, twisted smiles of braided scorn on their faces. The Welsh spearman butted their weapons and leaned on them insolently.

Addaf’s heart sank – the sullen hatred for the English was more to the Welsh than honour and, though they would not change sides, they did not want to participate further, a defiant response to the slaughter perpetrated on them earlier.

The archers stood, stolid faces blank, one horned nock of their unstrung bows on the instep of a shoed foot to keep it out of the mud, the other clamped between two fists as they leaned gently, pointedly going nowhere.

Like all the other millinars, Bedale yelled and galloped back and forth, but it was Heydin Captain and all the other captains of a hundred who persuaded the reluctant Welsh of his command into the business, with a combination of scathing curses on their bravery and wheedling promises of being first at the plunder.

That lashed them to action and they moved forward, knowing that each step took them closer to the part that mattered – the plundering of the bodies when the field was won. Yet Addaf was aware of the low mumured growl of all the other Welsh, conscious of the burn of their eyes on his back.

It was not Bedale or even Heydin Captain – for all their shouting and waving – who did the serious work for Addaf and his fellows: that task belonged to Rhys, the Master. Mydr ap Mydfydd, they called him – Aim the Aimer – and with good reason.

He brought them to within a hundred paces, while the remaining knights circled aimlessly round the thicket of spears, waving weapons and trying to dart in now and then and stab with their lances – though most of them had thrown them down. They saw the Welsh archers come up and frantically spurred or staggered away from the schiltrons as if the men in them had plague; they did not want to be anywhere near the arrow storm when it fell, for they knew the Welsh would take as great a delight in killing English horse as the enemy.

There were no more enemy bowmen left, Addaf saw, peering through the two ranks ahead of him – all scattered and cut down. Yet someone snugged in the ring of spears had a crossbow and was shooting it at that portion of the line where Addaf stood; he did not like the angry whip of the bolts.

Aim the Aimer ignored them as if they were spots of light rain, strolling down the front ranks, his own bow raised, judging wind and distance from the red and green ribbon fluttering from the end. The Gascon crossbowmen, sweating and sullen at being left to do the work on their own, belly-hooked their bows to the latch, firing in slow, uncontrolled flurries and the Welsh curled a lip at them.

‘Nock.’

There was a rustle as the long arrows snugged into braided string.

‘Draw.’

The great creak of tensioned wood was like the opening of a heavy door.

‘Shoot.’

God ripped the sky as if it were cheap linen and the spear-ring began to shriek. The real killing had begun.

It was like a giant wasp byke someone had kicked, a mad, black, humming mass that fell on them. The cry went up when the arrows were loosed and Hal saw the man nearest him, a whey-faced boy, turn his face to the sky to try to find them.

‘Get yer head down, Tam ye arse,’ his neighbour hissed and the boy saw that everyone else was hunched up and staring at the ground, as if their eyes could dig holes in the mud and blood. Those with steel helmets hunched up as if to climb inside them, those with leather or none instinctively covering up with their arms; spears rattled and clacked like a forest of reeds in a high wind. Hal braced, feeling his flesh crawl, ruching up tight as if hardening against the impact.

The wasps buzzed and zipped. Tam thought it sounded like the gravel he had thrown against the wattle wall of Agnes’s place when he had been trying to entice her out into the night. Instead, he remembered, her da had stormed out and told him to bugger off…

He straightened, turned to Erchie to thank him for the good advice – Christ, yin of those in the eye would have ruined my good looks, he started to say. Then he saw the feathers perched incongruously in the side of Erchie’s neck, like some wee bird. When he realised it was all that could be seen of the yard of metal-tipped wood that had gone in the top of Erchie’s shoulder and was slanted down into his kneeling, still upright body, he gave a wail.

Hal saw the whey-faced boy weep and start to pat his neighbour as if he was an injured dog. He wanted to tell the boy that his friend wasn’t injured, was certainly dead for no man could survive what that arrow had done to his insides. But he thought the boy probably already knew all that.

There was no time to tell him much, for the second sleet was lancing on them and Hal saw three shafts spit the turf at his feet. In front, a man reeled with the deep spanging bell of a hit on a steel plackard and the arrow splintered sideways in ruin. Yet the man fell like a mauled ox, gasping like a fish from lungs collapsed by the shock of the impact. Even without penetrating, Hal saw, fighting the rising panic in him, their arrows are killing us; he was not alone in the thought.

‘They will shoot us to ruin,’ Wallace bellowed. ‘If we are here to allow it. Time we were away, lads. Step now, in time. Towards the woods. Now – step. Step. Step.’

Towards the woods. A short walk across a litter of dead horses, groaning men and the bloody dead. You could pick your way into the trees in five minutes, Hal thought, unless you were in an ungainly ring of men all trying to move in the same direction and keep some semblance of a shape. Thirty minutes if we are lucky, he thought mournfully – any longer and it will not matter much.

The wasps arrived again, a fierce, angry sting. Men shrieked and screamed and fell, clattering into their neighbour, to be pitched away with a curse. Slowly, like a huge dying slug, the schiltron lurched towards the trees, spitting out a slime-trail of bloody dead and wounded.

‘One wants Wallace, my lords,’ Edward rasped, listening to the thrum and rasp of his archers at work. Like music, he thought. The song of battle, as the monks’ chant is the song of the church.

‘One wants the Ogre,’ he repeated and the Earl of Lincoln, spattered with mud and blood, grinned, saluted him with his sword and clapped down his fancy new pig-snout visor.

‘The cruel Herod,’ he bellowed, metallic and muffled, ‘the madman more debauched than Nero. He will be brought to Your Grace’s footstool.’

Hal knew the knights were circling like wolves on a stag, waiting for the moment of supreme weakness to pounce – it would not be long, he thought. He did not know how the other rings fared, but the one he was in was a nightmare of sweat and fear and bloody dying.

It stretched slowly, became egg-shaped and halted on one side for the ranks to re-form. It thinned – the space in the middle was larger, so that Hal could walk now, helping those shuffling backwards to negotiate the dead horses, the still groaning men, some of them pleading to be taken – all of them disgorged with no mercy.

They stumbled over things that cracked out marrow, skidded in fluids and slithered entrails, heard the last, farting gasp of the dead they stepped on and had breath themselves only for a muttered ‘Ave Maria, Gracia plena… ’

Hal saw a sword, bent to pick it up and looked into the unseeing bloody remains of MacDuff of Fife, a great blue-black hole in the side of his head like a blown egg. He blinked once or twice, thoughts whirling in him – so MacDuff had not run after all and paid the price for it. Then Wallace knelt suddenly and, for a shocking moment, Hal thought he had been hit. The arrows were coming in flocks like startled starlings out of a covey, steady and fast from practised hands.

‘Ach, Christ’s Mercy on him,’ Wallace said, rising up, and Hal saw the bloodied face and battered, muddy ruin that had been a cousin – Simon, Hal remembered, the sweet-voiced singer.

‘Keep moving,’ bellowed a file commander. ‘Not far now.’

Far enough, Hal thought. It had taken an eternity – but the trees were closer, tantalisingly within touching.

The singing brought sweat-sheened, crack-lipped faces up, red as skelpt arses, with tight white lines of fear round mouths and eyes. Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti, Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti, Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem

The song rolled out from triumphant throats away to their left, and everyone who heard it knew that the spear-ring there was shattered and gone – that both the other schiltrons were broken, with men shrieking and scattering, to be chased down and slaughtered like fleeing chicks. Loving Mother of our Savior, hear thou thy people’s cry Star of the deep and Portal of the sky, Mother of Him who thee from nothing made. Sinking we strive and call to thee for aid

‘The Auld Templar will be birling in his grave,’ Wallace growled to Hal and then turned left and right into the grim faces around him, who had spotted the black-barred banner of the exultantly singing Templar knights.

‘Why do they do this?’ Hal asked, plaintive and bewildered. Wallace braided a half-sneer of grin into the sweat-spiked tangle of his beard.

‘Because we are the only heathen they have left to fight, young Hal. They need us to dangle before God and the Pope, as proof that they have purpose.’

His teeth were feral as the grin widened and he hefted the long, clotted sword.

‘Weel – much can break in the proving, as any smith will tell ye,’ he added, then raised his chin and raised his voice to a bull bellow.

‘Hold,’ he roared. ‘Never be minding the Bawsant flag and their wee chirrups. They are heavy horse, same as ye have been ruining all the day, my bonnie lads. Stay in the ring…’

The Templars came on, across the field where they had ruined the left schiltron, ignoring the mad, fleeing screamers of the other two, leaving them to the snarling, vengeful spears and swords of the plundering Welsh and Brabancons. They came after the final spear-ring, the one they knew must have Wallace in it; there were a handful only, but seemed a grim black cliff of serjeants, with two white streaks marking the true knights. Above it, like an accusing stare, streamed the black-barred Beau Seant banner.

The Order have ruined themselves, Hal thought, wild and sad. Ruined, as sure as if they had cursed God and spat on the Pope – what merchant, lord or priest, after this, will believe the word of a Templar, entrust his riches to the care of a brotherhood dedicated to saving Christians and who now prey on them?

They were a tight black fist aimed at the last mis-shapen ring of spearmen, the two white knuckles of Brian De Jay and John de Sawtrey blazing in the front. Like a long-haired star, the black-clad serjeants of the Order trailed other knights after them like embers, but these could not move with the arrogant fast trot of the Templars.

Poor knights, Hal thought bitterly, supposed to ride two to a horse – yet even the least of the Templars had destrier that were better than some ridden by the chivalry, who were stumbling over the dead and dying at no better than a walk.

The Templars trotted, the highly trained warhorses delicate as cats. It took five years to train the best warhorse, Hal recalled wildly, almost hearing his father’s voice in his head. From two, before it can even be ridden, until the age of seven when, if you have done it properly, you have a mount which will charge a stone wall if the rider does not flinch. With luck, the beast will survive to the age of twelve, when it will be too old for the business of war and you put it out to breed more of its kind.

No sensible horse will suffer this, so what you have is a mad beast on four legs – and if you add a rider who fears only displeasing God you have a combination fit to punch a hole through the Gates of Hell.

The mad beasts broke into a canter; someone whimpered and Hal saw that it was the whey-faced boy, his filthy face streaked with tears.

‘Stay in the ring. Hold to the ring.’

Wallace’s bellow went out on a rising note, growing more shrill as the ground trembled; the last file captains beat and chivvied their men, the last men-at-arms, the armoured nobiles who had opted to fight on foot, braced themselves and hunched into their jazerant and maille.

‘Hold to the ring.’

Beyond, the black tide curled on them, their iron-rimmed kettle hats painted black round the rim, white on the crown and with a great red cross to the fore. Their reins were loosed entirely, leaving both hands free, and the crosses on their black shields were like streaks of blood.

‘Hold to the ring.’

Deus lo vult.

The Templars throated it out on the last few thundering strides and came in like a ram, knee-to-knee and at a rising canter where, all day, no horseman beyond the first clatter of them had managed better than a fast walk.

There should have been a great shudder, a splintering of spears, a loud lion roar of desperate, defiant Scots – but the ring, too thinned by bolts and arrows, too worn by fear, shattered like an egg hit by a forge hammer.

The whey-faced boy was plucked from Hal’s side and torn away with a vanished, despairing shriek as a lance skewered him; the rider swept past Hal like a black wind. On the other side, a great shaft went over Hal’s head, slamming into men like a swinging gate – Hal fisted his battered shield into the rider’s armoured foot, braced straight out and high on his mount’s shoulders and the man reeled wildly, then was gone, tilting and crashing into the mass of men.

The Templars carved through the struggle of foot like claws through an apple, bursting out the far side, lances splintered or tossed aside, their great warhorses rutting up the blood-skeined turf in ploughed riggs as they fought to turn. The riders hauled out swords or little axes.

‘Run,’ yelled a voice, but Hal was already moving. A lumbering bear he seemed, his limbs moving as if he was underwater, fighting a current – yet he remembered hurdling a dead horse, remembered the whip and smear of thin branches, the collision with a tree that spun him half-round and lost him his shield.

Then he was on his knees spitting blood, the world a whirl of sky and trees and torn earth that smelled of autumn.

‘Up,’ said a voice, as mild as if lifting a bairn from a puddle. Hal leaned in the iron grasp, looked up into the blood and mud of Wallace’s face and had back a grin.

‘Aye til the fore,’ the Guardian said, then glanced back over his shoulder, to where the milling riders were slaughtering the slow. ‘Into the woods.’

No sensible knight risked a good warhorse by forcing it into a tangle of undergrowth and trees, where his vision, already no more than a narrow slit, was arrowed down to nothing by leaves and branches, so that it was impossible to resist the temptation to rip off the heavy constriction of helm. Vulnerable, slow, unable to use weight and power, a man in his right mind knows woods are not for heavy horse.

Hal knew, as soon as he heard the great crashing, that sanity had run from this part of the world, with a frightened look over one shoulder at the madness of God which rode in to replace it.

Hal, following the stained gold surcoat with the red lion snarling defiantly, turned to see a white camilis billowed, ripping apart on the snatching talons of tree and bush as Brian De Jay, Master of the Templars and righteous with the power of the Lord in him, closed with a triumphant roar on the running fox of Wallace, that offence to God.

Hal did not think. He turned, stepped to one side as the warhorse plunged, De Jay reeling in the saddle, half pulled out by the snag of the treacherous white robes. The German Method, Hal heard himself say aloud, though the voice did not seem to be his at all – then he half crouched and spun, putting all the weight in a backhand cut, the sword grasped in both hands.

It broke the warhorse’s hind leg with a crack like a snapping branch and the shriek of it falling was high and thin, piercing as any blade. Brian De Jay went out between the ears of it, smashing into the mulch and the briars, rolling over and over until he slammed into a tree with a sound like an acre of tin kettles falling off a cart.

Pulled off balance by his blow and the weariness of a hard day, Hal tipped sideways and fell his length, then started to scramble up. De Jay, struggling weakly, also started to rise, bellowing rage and pain out in bloody froth; then a shadow fell on him and he looked up.

‘Ye were seeking a wee word with me?’ Wallace asked mildly and De Jay tried a cut, so weak that Wallace only had to put his sword out for the Templar blade to ring a soft chime, then fall limply to the ground.

‘Aye, weel,’ Wallace said softly, ‘here I am, my wee lord. May God forgive ye for what ye have done to Templar honour this day – argue your case when ye see Him.’

The hand-and-a-half, clotted to the hilt already, came round in a vicious two-handed swipe that took De Jay badly.

It was meant to be a neck kill, a single-stroke beheading that men would later marvel at, but rage and fear and the black howl of defeat made Wallace poor with it; the blade slammed into the Templar Master’s expensive, new-fangled plate gorget and skittered upwards, taking the man in the jaw and carving through into the tree beyond, where it stuck.

With a pungent curse and a frown, Wallace put his foot up – he had taken off his boots, Hal noted dazedly – on De Jay’s chest and began to work the blade out, his toes flexing in the vomited mess flooding from the Master of Templars’ ruined face.

The forest crashed and a new rider, like the ghost of De Jay himself, came bounding out like a stag on the run. Hal, halfway to his feet, saw that Wallace was trapped, saw the Guardian let go of the wedged sword and whirl, fumbling for a dagger.

Brother John De Sawtrey, his white robes shredded and stained, his helmet and bascinet, maille coif and all flung away, whirled a little fluted mace in a circle and his purpled face under a thorn-crown of sweat-spiked tonsure was a vicious snarl.

He saw the fallen De Jay and howled at the outrage of it until his throat corded. His head was a storm of vengeance and he dug in his spurs; the warhorse’s great rump bunched and it squealed – Hal levered himself to his feet, knowing he was between Wallace and this charging knight.

He tried to brace, but his legs trembled and his arms felt as if they had two anvils on the end; De Sawtrey rocked as the great warhorse shot forward – four strides and it would plough Hal into the forest floor.

One stride. Hal saw small twigs and acorns bounce up off the ground with the powered weight of each hoof.

Two strides. Something flicked at the corner of Hal’s eye, but he could not turn his head from the sight of the warhorse’s snarl of yellow teeth, the angry pink flare of nostrils and the great, slow-motion rise of massive feet.

Three strides – something went between Hal and the great loom of beast and rider, whirring like startled bird. John De Sawtrey flung up one hand as if arrogantly dismissing the world and then vanished over the back of his cantled saddle.

The warhorse, veering, slammed a shoulder into Hal and there was a moment of flying, a great tempest of leaves and earth that left him breathless and sprawled. Gasping and desperate, he struggled to rise, to find his sword -MacDuff’s sword, he remembered wildly. He staggered and weaved, then a shape lurched into trembling view, the crossbow across one shoulder. Beyond, John De Sawtrey lay with the black leather fletches of a bolt perched like a crow in his eye.

‘Aye til the fore,’ said a familiar voice. Hal’s head wobbled on his neck as he looked up into Sim’s badger-beard grin and, beyond, other faces he knew, twisting and sliding like heat haze in the dappled, dying light of the forest – Ill Made Jock, Dirleton Will, Sore Davey, Mouse…

‘Aye til the fore,’ echoed Bangtail Hob from the filth of his face and stuck out a hand to haul Hal back to his feet. ‘Time we were not here.’

The fires were piled high, as if to ward off all the bewildered ghosts who wandered that field and, in the dark, the moans and cries of those still alive crawled on everyone’s skin.

Edward sat in his curule chair, sullen and droop-lidded, looking at the stained, bloody rag they had brought to lay at his feet. Red jupon with a white lion, someone had pointed out; you could see it if you squinted, Edward thought, but even this man’s own mother would not know him now.

‘The Wallace arms, I am told, your Grace,’ De Warenne declared proudly, his Saracen beard a quivering silver curve as he smiled.

‘The Ogre,’ Edward declared sarcastically, ‘seems to have shed the arms of Scotland which I was reliably informed he wore at the start of this affair – yellow-gold, my lord of Surrey, with a red lion rampant.’ De Warenne’s eye flickered a little.

‘Also,’ Edward went on savagely, ‘even allowing for the exaggerations of the fearful, this giant ogre Wallace seems to have diminished. I have a court caperer whose little bauble is taller than this.’

With a sudden, sullen twist, De Warenne signalled for the body to be removed and followed it, stiff with indignation. De Lacy leaned forward, his face bloody with torchlight.

‘Possibly a cousin, your grace,’ he said softly. ‘I heard there were three such in the field here. The search goes on…’

‘He is gone,’ Edward muttered and gnawed a nail. Gone. Wallace was gone, into the damned forests where had had come from, where he fought best.

There was a slew of bloody grass studded with Scots dead like winnowed stooks – and only two English deaths of note, Sir Brian De Jay and John de Sawtrey. The Master of England’s Templars and the Master of the Scottish Templars – there is a harsh justice in that, Edward thought, chilled by the presence of the Hand of God.

He did not bother with the tally of lesser lights, dead Welsh, Gascons and foot, for they were mainly men of little or no account – but the victory he’d had here was no more than possession of a blood-slimed field near Callendar.

Wallace was gone. Nothing had been resolved.