Now here she was, as if sprung from a faerie hill.
‘I heard ye married,’ he blurted and she paused, frowning at what her attempt at cutting the bread had brought; it had broken to crumbs of shrivelled beans and peas, mixed with rye and a little wheat. Dog Boy, remembering the good bread he had eaten earlier, felt ashamed.
‘I did,’ she answered, scooping the crumbs into the bowls and handing them out. Dog Boy refused the one she handed to him and she looked relieved, fed more crumbs to it and stirred them in.
‘John the Lamb,’ she answered and Dog Boy nodded. He had been a score of years older than her.
‘A good man,’ she answered defiantly, as if he had spoken aloud. Then she smiled softly. ‘Perfect, in fact — away for days at a time tending the sheep and always bringing back a peck of wool or a tait of mutton.’
Her eyes clouded.
‘Died two — no, I lie, three — years since. Cold and a hard winter and age took him.’
She scowled at Hob, who was eyeing the gruel with distaste.
‘Eat that. Learn to like it or go hungry — there is little else.’
She sighed and turned apologetically to Dog Boy.
‘He disnae care for the meat in it, which is horse.’
Dog Boy nodded; horse was the one meat they were not short of now and he wondered if the fine English who had donated it knew of the fate of their proud mounts.
‘You are chewing on the most expensive meat there is,’ Dog Boy said to Hob and explained why. The boy’s dark eyes flickered with interest, but the scowl remained.
‘The priest says it is a sin to eat the flesh of the horse,’ he persisted and Dog Boy shrugged as if it did not matter at all.
‘If it is still Father Thomas who is priesting you, then he has knowledge of it, for sure,’ he answered, staring idly at the fire. ‘He was happy to eat it when Herdmanston was sieged.’
‘Away …’
The blurt was out and Hob took the scowling censure of his mother and fell silent.
‘Besides,’ Dog Boy went on, ‘Jamie says the French eat it — he was in that land for the learning in it. He says it was the Northmen who so upset the priests, for they used to fight prize stots and sacrifice the winner in their heathen rites, eating the meat. Since wee priests hate the raiding Norsemen, horses got called all kinds of bad cess.’
‘I likes it.’
Dog Boy grinned back at the smiling little Bet and then looked at Hob, who was half scathing, half impressed.
‘Jamie,’ Dog Boy added, ‘is Sir James Douglas. Good Sir James. He eats horse when he can get it.’
‘The Black,’ Hob blurted out admiringly and Dog Boy laughed. Somewhere music struck up and people cheered as flames leaped; they were lighting the balefires for Midsummer’s Night and Dog Boy glanced at Bet’s Meggy with a look of remembrance that made her flush and shift a little. Then he turned back to the boy.
‘Sir James is known as that as well.’
Bet’s Meggy, smiling, nudged her son.
‘Give thanks for being put right on matters,’ she said and Hob, gingerly spooning gruel to his mouth, found the scowl again, though it was uncertain this time.
‘I dinna ken who he is, Ma,’ he offered and she beamed, looking from him to Dog Boy.
‘He’s your da, boy.’
Bannockburn, the English Camp
Midsummer’s Night, June 1314
Like Mongols, Giles d’Argentan bawled into the retelling of the Clifford charge. Round and round and round — a pity they had no bows.
The other laughed and Ebles de Mountz, daringly drunk, shouted out that d’Argentan had never seen a Mongol; for a moment the sweating night was chilled — but Sir Giles threw back his head and roared out a laugh.
‘I have too — the Emperor in Constantinople has some. They look like this.’
He put thumbs to the side of his face, pulling back his eyes and squinting, while another finger shoved his nose up to a pig snout. Folk cheered and beat their thighs.
‘Begone,’ shouted one of the Berkeleys. ‘Nothing looks that ugly.’
‘It does if it is sired by Satan,’ d’Argentan replied and folk crossed themselves, then went back to wassailing one another with loud shouts and laughter.
‘Like Mongols,’ d’Argentan persisted, louder than ever so that it would carry through the leprous night to where Clifford’s mesnie huddled, morose and silent, round their own cookfires. ‘Round and round …’
The laughter shrilled out and then died as d’Argentan held up a stilling hand.
‘Of course,’ he declared, owlishly drunk but not reckless, ‘I offer a salute to the brave fallen, who knew their duty. To the Deyncourt brothers and Sir Thomas — I am glad to know that Sir Thomas Gray is held for ransom and not dead. God preserve him.’
Solemnly, the knights gathered at the food-littered trestle raised their cups. Somewhere beyond, the rest of the knights cursed the dark and the steep-sided streams as they coaxed or forced horses across the hasty bridges made from doors and planks culled out of Bannock vill.
It would take them all night, Thweng thought, and the foot are still straggling up and will have precious little rest — the bulk of the baggage will be lucky to have made it before dawn.
‘Mongols,’ d’Argentan bawled, which was enough to set the roisterers off on another cackle; Thweng moved off into the dark, seeking his own fire. His baggage was a long way off in the dark, so he had no tent and comforts and had only eaten because he had shared the King’s table. He had
only done that because Edward was anxious, needing reassurance and all the advice he could get.
‘Will they stand?’ he asked everyone and it was the very question, the caged corpse swinging in the tree of the affair. Would the Scots stand and fight, or melt away? Everyone at the meal had knowledge of the Scots, had fought them before this — Beaumont, Segrave, de Valence, himself. Even the King was no beginner at the work, having been in the campaign of ’04 under his father and ones in ’07 and ’10 in his own right.
‘The Scotch will not stand,’ Segrave growled, shaking his head while the black-clad wraith that was his son, Stephen, echoed him like a shadow. ‘They have run each time we have sent a host at them.’
Which was not quite true: they had stood at Methven, which de Valence was quick to point out with a pompous flourish, since that had been his battle and he had beaten Bruce soundly. Thweng tried and failed to prevent himself pointing out that Bruce had also stood against de Valence at Loudon Hill only a year later — and repaid that lord in full. He wisely did not then add to the black scowl of the Earl of Pembroke by mentioning that he had only won at Methven because he had unchivalrously broken an arranged truce and attacked by surprise.
But it was true enough that the Scots had avoided battle on the two occasions since then that English armies had rolled north. Not once in seven years had they stood to fight, Thweng thought.
The talk rolled on, with Edward’s head swinging from side to side to take in all the good advice he was getting, though the best of it was lost on him, it appeared to Sir Marmaduke. When your veterans of the Scottish wars advise waiting another day so that the army can recover strength and morale, you ought to listen.
Eventually, Thweng lost interest in the King’s refusal to see that sense, managed to move off unnoticed, a little way into the dark — then found d’Umfraville and Badenoch at either elbow and became aware of their grim looks.
Mark me, he thought, they have been grim for an age now; they probably only managed to smile when the King announced this campaign — they had forfeited vast estates in Scotland to Bruce’s insurrection and were never done carping about the loss to anyone who would listen.
Yet this was a darker brother of what they usually exuded, a chilled sea-haar which made Thweng look from one to the other, raising the white lintel of his eyebrows.