Too many ifs and buts and peering at heraldry, trying to work out who and where and with what. A battle lasts as long as the first steps of a plan, Bruce thought; after that, you may just as well try herding cats.
Bruce shouted at the rearguard, about half of his own Battle, chivvying them into a barrier against the English Van when — if — it debouched from the trees, while the archers flitted back and forward like midgies to buy them time. Behind, the rest of the Scots army reordered itself at right angles, marching along under the great hump of Coxet Hill.
Dangerous, dangerous, Bruce thought to himself, to move in front of an advancing enemy — yet they are not in a position to do me harm and all I need do here is discourage them, make it clear there is no easy passage into the New Park. Buy time for the end of this day and then, having taken the measure of them, decide what to do on the morrow …
Which would be run, he decided. I do not have the men or the arms to risk anything else.
The shouting brought his head up and he stared, amazed, at the vision which presented itself. He knew the gold lions on blue at once; for one heart-stopping moment he thought it was the Earl of Hereford himself, but then saw the red diagonal slash on the shield. A sprig from the tree, he thought and frowned, because the man was yelling, incoherent under the muffle of great helm.
‘The King. Protect His Grace …’
Gilbert de la Haye, commander of the bodyguard and frantic for his king, stumped forward on his thick legs like an armoured toddler, screamed his fear loudly. The mass of foot surged forward as the blue and gold knight spurred on and Bruce, for the first time, felt a spasm of alarm, for he knew the knight would reach him first; the sight of the lance, big as an axle and wickedly pointed, made his belly clench and all his skin try to harden with gooseflesh.
The point was almost at him; he heard his own men yelling in desperation, as if they could throw shouts to deflect the horror of the English knight’s descent on their king — and then he nudged the palfrey sideways, more by instinct than conscious thought and watched, almost dispassionately, as the blue and gold figure hurtled harmlessly past him in a snorting thunder, a flap of embroidered trapper.
The German Method, he thought triumphantly. Wins every time. Then he reined round and stood while the blue and gold knight scarred up clods of sere turf, narrowly missed colliding with a tree and spun the horse almost on the spot. Good, well-trained beast, Bruce thought and suddenly recognized the rider. Henry de Bohun — he had met the youth once, though he had clearly grown since. The new breed of Edward’s warriors, he thought, young, fierce and hot for tourney, as he had been himself once. He felt a strange, mad exultation welling up in him, so that he laughed.
Henry could not believe he had missed. By the time he had wrenched Durandal round, he could see that the foot were running up and would be on him in another minute, a band of open-mouthed screamers frantic to protect their king.
Yet he would not give in — could not. Here was Bruce — and laughing at him. But if Henry wiped the laughter off his face, the entire affair was done, battle, rebellion, all; he launched himself forward, even as a fourteen-foot pike-spear was flung in desperation, skittering under the warhorse’s plunging hooves like a giant snake.
Bruce waited, nudged — and the blue and gold knight sailed past him again; he thought he heard a howl of anguished frustration and he laughed so hard he had to lean on the cantle, little forgotten axe clutched in one maille-mittened fist.
Henry routed the horse round, flung the lance at the nearest of the spearmen, wrenched off the confectionary helm and hurled that in a fury, so that another of them bowled over backwards, taken smack in the face by it.
‘Face me like a warrior!’ he bawled at Bruce, his face a bag of sweat-streaked wine.
Bruce lost his humour in a moment. He knew Henry de Bohun only slightly, but he knew the family only too well. The de Bohuns had been given the Bruce lands of Annandale and Lochmaben by Longshanks and were smarting at having been flung off them since. He did not like this little lord’s insults on his manhood and his chivalry — did the popinjay think this was a tourney? A neat little joust with a friendly clap on the shoulder and commiserations to the loser at the finish?
‘Get you gone,’ he roared back and de Bohun unhooked a mace from the cantle and flung it in a mad temper, so that Bruce had to duck. The spearmen crabbed towards Henry, their long weapons up and forcing him back. He shrieked and pounded the saddle with one metal fist.
‘Coward,’ he yelled, the spittle flying. ‘Coward for a king.’
The fury rose in Bruce then, a great overweening tidal surge of red rage, swollen and festered with all the worry heaped on his shoulders. It burst like a plague boil and he gave a sharp bellow, like the coughing bark of a boar charging. De Bohun, contemptuous of the spearmen, turned his back on them all and trotted Durandal away.
He heard Bruce at the last, heard the tight drumming of fast, small hooves and half turned into the ruin of a snarling face, the sight of the King almost on tiptoe in the stirrups and his arm raised high. The axe in it winked briefly in a shaft of sunlight.
‘Chivalry is it? Here is war, you fool.’
The axe crashed down and Bruce felt it crack like a twig, plunged on with the shaft and fought the maddened palfrey round. When he looked up, he saw the proud blue and gold warhorse cantering on with a swaying Henry briefly upright, the last quarter of shaft and axe buried in his skull, through the bascinet and the maille and down to the brow. He seemed like a strange-crested beast with a face masked in blood.
Henry de Bohun swayed, tilted and then slid from the saddle with a crash; there was a huge roar from the Scots foot and Bruce, sick and bewildered at what he had done, saw them leap forward like crows, stabbing with the beaks of their spears, battering the fallen body with the butts.
The frantic, half-weeping squire who rode up was dragged off his horse and beaten, stabbed and bludgeoned; the tight, coiled heat grew thick and heavy with the iron stink of blood and flies droned in like a host of praying monks.
Then hands grabbed the bridle of the palfrey and forced it away to safety, but Bruce did not know much as they led him back into the blazing sunlight; he came to his senses only when his brother and Randolph were shouting at him for having so exposed himself.
‘You are the Kingdom, brother,’ Edward was yelling, purple-faced. ‘You must take more care, for we all hang from your crowned head — and we will all be hanged with it if it falls.’
‘I broke a good axe,’ Bruce said dazedly, staring at the splintered shaft. Those nearest laughed aloud, even the furious Edward, and spread the word of it, of how the King had defeated the English champion, a full-panoplied knight, armed only with a little axe and royal courage. The New Park sounded and resounded to the cheers.
The English saw Durandal as he thundered out into the sunlight, the saddle empty save for blood. He veered sideways and plunged and kicked, frantic with bewildered fury and fired with the stink of gore and battle in his nostrils, so that it took long minutes to capture him. By then the distant cheers, like surf on a rocky shore, were surging through the dying heat of the day.
Hereford seemed dazed by it, disbelieving. He peeled his own helmet off and dropped it, sat slumped on his horse and stared at the empty, blood-spattered saddle as if the mount itself had contrived some trick or magic spell to hide the rider. It was Gloucester who shook himself from it, turning to the others and raising one hand.