Besides, this was his army, gathered at vast expense and despite the refusal of the likes of Lancaster and Warwick. When this was concluded, Edward thought with savage glee, I will be able to deal with them as I wish — as a true king would wish — but, for now, there is the rare freedom of being out from under the Ordinances, with my own army at my back. Better still, it had men in it he could trust enough to have at his back.
Like Ebles de Mountz — Edward raised his cup to the Savoyard and saw the man flush with pride at being so singled out by his king. A valuable asset was de Mountz, whom Edward had set to watching his wife for a time and then appointed constable of Edinburgh. Too late, as it turned out, because the place fell to the Scotch before de Mountz could take command — but the man had fourteen years of experience in the Scottish wars and had served as constable of three castles in his time. Including Stirling.
De Mountz was bench-paired with Sir Marmaduke Thweng, that ancient warhorse who had also commanded at Stirling — I am not short of local knowledge, Edward thought, of the ground we will have to fight across.
But the men he felt a glow for, a warmth borne of old comradeship and safety, were roistering and roaring all round him: Sir Payn Tiptoft, d’Argentan, the de Clares and the de Bohuns and the lesser lights of chivalry, such as Lovel and Manse and the Ercedenes, all the gilded youth of yesterday who were now the golden warriors of the royal household.
Edward stood suddenly and saluted them loudly, feeling the exultant moment racing in him; they roared their appreciation back to King Edward, second of that name by the Grace of God, ringing the rafters of the rugged, solid storehouse built by his father as a supply base for the armies.
Endless armies, Edward thought, traipsing ever northwards. This would be the last of them. This would end it once and for all …
If Bruce stood to fight.
Thweng watched the King, flushed face singing with wine and the moment. The cheers of his salute to the ‘golden warriors’ were still echoing when the most golden of them all, the paragon of chivalry and the third-best knight in Christendom slammed his cup on the table, levered away from his bench and unlaced himself. Hitching up his tunic, he pissed into the floor-straw not far from the table and his neighbours scrabbled away from the vinegar-reek splashes of it.
‘Christ betimes, d’Argentan,’ protested Henry de Bohun, ‘can you not use the privy like a gentilhomme?’
‘Like you, little maid?’ d’Argentan replied and grabbed his cock so that the last of the stream arced higher and splashed more. ‘I give you a look at what a man is like. Compare with your own and be downhearted.’
Those nearest hooted and banged the table. Henry de Bohun’s face went stiff. He was young, not yet twenty, and crested with a curling mass of dark copper hair, which he kept like an arming cap on the top of his head, while shaving it all off round the ears.
It was a deliberate statement to all those who had grown their hair long in their gilded youth and still kept it that way, even if much of it was faded and thinner. It hinted at how Henry de Bohun was a warrior in the old Norman way while they were ageing fops, and it did not help that you could see how his hair, if left to grow, would ringlet magnificently round his ears with no need of the curling tongs.
Everything about Henry de Bohun was a slap to the others, from his youth to his cool efficient mastery of the lists and the avoidance of anything to do with the ‘golden warriors’. The biggest smack of all to them was his being the nephew of Humphrey, Earl of Hereford, Constable of England and bitter rival to the de Clare Earl of Gloucester, whose men were doing most of the hooting.
‘I think you have had too much wine,’ Henry answered flatly, his voice a scourge of distaste.
‘Not nearly enough,’ d’Argentan answered, and drank more to prove it, wiping the dribble off the five-inch scar on his chin — mêlée wound, tourney proper for the Honour of the Round Table, Brackley, five years ago. He licked the remains of the brew from the fingers of his left hand, all but the missing little one — a bohort, in some French town he could not even remember, eight years ago.
‘But already too much for you to match,’ he added and grinned raggedly at Henry from a mouth extended on the left by a three-inch scar — tourney proper, in Rhodes, all of a decade ago.
The memory soured him, as did the sight of Henry de Bohun, who was already an acknowledged master of the joust, that one-on-one test of arms altogether too popular for d’Argentan’s liking and replacing the mayhem of the mêlée these days.
He saw the splendour of youth in the de Bohun brat and wanted his own back again, so that he did not have to think about the three decades and more of his own life, least son of four and owning nothing but a name and the distinction of being the third-best knight in Christendom. Not even the second, which title belonged to the very Bruce they were going to fight.
The years were falling on him like a charging mass of knights and he did not like the fear it lanced him with.
‘You stick to almond milk, child,’ he growled, more harshly than he had intended and heard the mocking oohs and aahs from his coterie at this clear challenge. He also saw de Bohun half rise, before a voice cut through the din.
‘You provoke my nephew’s honour, Sir Giles, so you provoke mine own.’
Sir Giles acknowledged the Constable of England with an apologetic bow.
‘If your nephew wishes redress,’ he said, ‘I am sure we can find time to run a friendly passage at dawn.’
‘As you wish and when you wish,’ Henry retorted sharply.
A pantler went over suddenly, by accident or tripped by the howl of knights at another table, and the clattering clang of his dropping tray was echoed by the baying laughter. He picked himself up, collected as many of the pastries as he could and served them anyway, straw and all; servants and scullions fought the dogs to snatch those he missed.
It snapped the tension and Hereford went back to his close-head mutterings with his clerk, Walwayn; Thweng saw that little man, aware that he was being watched, turn and stare insolently back at him.
Walwayn sweated with secrets, so that any stare made him twitch, but the one from that droop-moustached cliff of a face made his bowels turn; Sir Marmaduke Thweng, he recalled briefly, a lord from Yorkshire reputed to be a hunter of trailbaston and brigands for the head-reward. The thought made him shiver and Hereford scowled, thinking he was not being paid enough attention.
‘Stir yourself. You say Lord Percy sent a man, a Templar heretic, to spy out some plot with that discredited Order and the Scotch?’
‘Just so, my lord,’ Walwayn answered in a softer hiss, appalled at the lack of discretion in Hereford’s voice. The Earl saw it and frowned, but tempered his volume.
‘What plot? Is the excommunicate King about to visit us with heretic Templars?’
Walwayn shook his head furiously.
‘I do not know, my lord. The Lord Percy understands it is more to do with acquiring weapons. Or treasure.’
Hereford stroked his beard while the noise swirled, thick and hot. The famed Templar treasure was a gleaming lure that would not be banished, but Templar weapons, even the expertise of the Order’s former knights, would be formidable — and God forbid that Bruce had enlisted fled Templars to his cause.
And Percy, already firmly in the camp of the King’s opponents, had said nothing. A thought hit Hereford.
‘Who is Percy’s spy?’
Walwayn, who wanted away to drink and women, blinked sweat from his eyes.
‘A Knight formerly of the Order is all I understand, lord.’
Hereford nodded, thought for a time longer, and then patted Walwayn on the shoulder.