Sitting slumped on his expensive horse, streaming with tears and sweat, was the black misery of the Earl of Hereford watching his nephew’s corpse bob past him, one bloody hand flapping as if waving a last farewell.
ISABEL
Liberation: from liber, meaning free. Little Constance told me that, come to comb and dye my hair, enjoying it because she is not allowed to perform such an act on herself. The crowds in Berwick town roll like waves, fleeing the armies of both sides, seeking sanctuary here and finding madness. There is drink and dancing, Constance tells me, half excited, half fearful, but that does not surprise me — half will fall on their knees to worship God, the rest will worship, for as long as they can, their own bodies. Constance tells me that one of her own, a nun who has decided to call herself Giles in honour of the saint, has demanded to be immured. She had first demanded to replace me in my cage on the wall until she discovered that I did not live in it all the while, but had a Hog Tower room with a privy pot, a decent cot and a fire in winter. Too soft, she said.
I told Constance that Sister Giles was welcome to my cage, as I shall be leaving it soon enough. God wills it.
The sky is thick and umber, heavy with that thunder that brings no rain, only oppressive heat — there has been no rain for weeks.
CHAPTER TEN
Bannockburn
Vigil of the Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314
There had been no rain for weeks, so six hundred cantering hooves slashed up the sere grass and dirt of the carse into a haze that filtered the sun to a gold coin. The Carse was supposed to be boggy, cut about by vicious little streams and hard going for horses, but Sir Robert Clifford saw only a trickle of water in the bottom of steep-sided, bush-choked ditches.
‘Still a barrier, my lord,’ William Deyncourt noted, indicating the dark-streaked horses, foamed at the neck where the reins champed the sweat into a lather; they’d had to work hard to cross the dry streams.
‘Yet the undergrowth is green enough,’ Sir Thomas Gray added, ‘which means it is watered regularly.’
Beaumont, grimming along in a world of reeling heat, wished he had the energy to argue, to growl at Deyncourt that it was only a barrier if men defended the opposite side of it, to spit at Gray that none here were bloody churl farmers and who cared where a bush got water? But Clifford nodded as if he understood what Gray had meant, which only flared Beaumont the more.
Too clever by half, he thought hotly. He did not like Deyncourt much, the more so because he was in Gray’s retinue. He liked Gray even less and knew he should not harbour the feeling, which made matters worse still. Sir Thomas Gray had almost been killed saving him at the last siege of Stirling — Christ’s Bones, a decade ago now.
The memory of that great hook, swinging down to try and grab the siege tower, made him whimper even now. It had missed its target and snagged him like a fish, catching in his surcote — the thought that it might have been his flesh still made his hole pucker.
Like a giant hand it had lifted him up and swung him, arms and legs flailing like a pathetic insect, to batter into the walls — but Gray had leaped forward, risking arrows and showers of stones to grab and hack the hook out of the surcote. Just then a springald bolt had taken Gray in the helmet, straight through it and into his face, so that they’d needed smithing tools to cut him free.
Guiltily, Beaumont glanced at Gray now, seeing the great scar like an accusing beacon that flushed more heat through him, composed of shame and gratitude. Gray should have died, Beaumont thought. He had lain under a pile of dead until Beaumont had come to his senses and gone back with men to look for him, expecting a corpse and finding what he thought was one; it was only when they paraded him back, all solemn and sorrowful for burial, that he had groaned and moved, shocking everyone — especially those who had tugged and heaved at the helm and then given up because it was skewered fast to his head.
He should have died anyway, Beaumont thought, from a horror wound like that — but he had recovered and Beaumont knew he should have been pleased for his saviour, should be sending prayers to God to preserve the life of this man who had preserved his.
Yet that face only reminded Beaumont of his bowel-loosening fear on that day, his utter helplessness and what he had babblingly offered to God for deliverance, which no man nor saint could possibly have fulfilled.
He wanted this business done with, so that he could put Gray behind him and if it meant riding across this strange terrain into the gates of Hell itself, he would spur on.
The Carse was strange, no doubt of it. They had all been told how treacherous it was, a sward that looked firm yet was a soft and sinking bog. Not now. Not after weeks of summer sun. Now it was like fresh bread, slightly spongy and new-toasted so that it crumbled; Clifford voiced this and his mesnie laughed dutifully, but they were nervous. They had started out slightly later than the Van, knew nothing of what was happening in the New Park away to their left and Clifford was apprehensive. The distant sound of cheers and shouting did not help; who was celebrating and why?
Yet, if he was to achieve his king’s orders and ride round to cut off the retreat of the Scots, he needed speed. That was why he had three hundred mounted knights and men-at-arms, all flogging expensive warhorses in the heat to come up on St Ninian’s little chapel; the nearest foot were miles away, slogging desperately up with the baggage.
Clifford eyed the wood to his left, which had some outlandish name, as did the plain they rode across; they were coming up on another steep-sided stream and Clifford slowed to a walk, Gray and Beaumont coming up alongside.
‘The Pelstream, my lord,’ Gray offered. ‘Tidal, like all the rest. We are leaving the Carse of Balqhuiderock and heading out into the Dryfield. As the name suggests, it is firm ground even in bad weather.’
No one could tell the difference; the plain looked exactly the same, though Clifford beamed, the beads forming on his fleshy nose and pouched cheeks.
‘Good ground for horse,’ he exclaimed cheerfully. ‘The King will be pleased — this is where the army wants to be, my lords.’
Gray looked dubiously at the constrictions of wood and stream and mentioned them; he and Clifford fell to arguing the merits of the place as a ‘good field’.
‘God-cursed place,’ Beaumont growled into the middle of their polite debate, wiping his face with a corner of his surcote. ‘What’s that there?’
He pointed one mittened fist and everyone followed it, some rising in the stirrups to try and see better.
It was a line, a scar on the landscape, seeming to undulate and sparkle. Gray laughed, which made Beaumont’s scowl all the darker.
‘That, my lord,’ Gray said, almost joyously, ‘is the enemy.’
Bruce had blinked and shaken himself out of the daze, ruthlessly forcing it away along with the memory of that fury, that great, crunching crack as he brought the axe down — hard enough to snap the shaft, by God’s Wounds. His hand and arm hurt, wrenched with the power of the blow.
Like a blown egg, he recalled with a shudder. On the back of the boy’s head as he rode away … he quelled that, too, stuffing it in the choked chest along with all the other sins.
The irony was not lost on him as he rode into an avenue of cheers and furious joy from those who had heard that the English Van had been repulsed, that a proud English champion lay dead like an offering, slain in single combat by their hero king. A good start, for all the sin in it, Bruce thought, and tried not to concern himself with the Curse of Malachy.
Yet it was lurking there, made itself plain when he rode up to Randolph’s thousands and found no Earl of Moray, only Duncan Kirkpatrick of Torthorwald, anxious and stumping up and down in front of the serried ranks. At a glance, Bruce saw that the best of the Battle was gone; only the ill-armed were here, stripped down to a shift that barely covered their decency and leaning carelessly on their tall shafts; some had only shaved and fire-hardened points, some had strange hand-scythes and long shafts with other crude blades lashed to them, but none was a proper spear or bill.