‘We are missing one for our feast,’ d’Umfraville growled out eventually and, for a moment, Thweng thought this was a strangely couched invitation to join all the lords who called themselves the Dispossessed and wore the title like a tourney favour. The English termed them ‘the Scotch lords’ but most of them were as English as anyone else here, save that they had huge lands in Scotland that they wanted back.
Badenoch, his sandy lashes blinking furiously as if to hold back tears, put him right on the matter of it.
‘Seton is missing.’
‘Neither with us nor anywhere else. His mesnie has also gone,’ d’Umfraville added morosely.
Thweng’s insides gave a lurch, even though the news was not such a surprise to him; Alexander Seton had had a father gralloched by the old King Edward. His mother was imprisoned in a convent far to the south because she was sister to the Bruce who sat opposite them with an army. Which made Seton the nephew to King Robert Bruce.
‘He swore to serve King Edward,’ Badenoch rasped with disgust. ‘Now we must tell the King that he is foresworn. It reflects badly on all of us Dispossessed.’
A blind man could have seen this coming, Thweng thought, but the Scotch Lords consider the restoration of their lands take precedent over any ties of blood. It was interesting — and disturbing — that at least one of them thought differently, that he considered he had a better chance of having his lands returned from the hands of a Scotch king than an English one.
‘I would not take on so,’ Thweng offered laconically. ‘Seton has served King Edward for six years — yet he once swore an oath to protect the Bruce. Until his dying day, if I recall it.’
‘Aye,’ sneered d’Umfraville. ‘We will see about his oaths when this matter is done. They say every man ends up like his father.’
‘Will you take the news to the King?’ Badenoch asked and Thweng realized that that was why they were here. He recalled the young squire earlier, charged with carrying the King’s orders to Hereford and Gloucester — he had been told to speak to me first, he thought irritatedly. Why am I the stalking horse of this host?
He stroked his mourn of moustaches and smiled thinly back at them. Let them do it this time and reap the reward all heralds with bad news garner. He said as much and watched them wince and huff.
‘It may help to tell His Grace the King that we are still ahead in this game,’ Thweng added dryly, moving away. ‘Atholl for Seton — an earl for a baron. A fair sacrifice in this game of kings …’
They moved off, arguing with each other and leaving Thweng with little option but to return to the King’s table. There was argument and counter-argument here, too, as the King and his advising lords tried to make sense of where they were and what to do. Gloucester — sensibly, in Thweng’s opinion — continued to speak out against fighting at all in the morning; the army was exhausted and the foot were still straggling in, so it would be better to wait a day.
Hereford curled a lip, but wisely bit it at openly scorning Gloucester. The King, of course, would not be halted.
‘If the Scotch are willing to fight in the morning, my lord,’ he growled, ‘then we must do so. They will not wait upon our leisure.’
Which was also sensible, Thweng thought, for if Bruce actually steeled himself for a fight, a day mulling it over in the presence of a force three times his size would leach the resolve from him and he would vanish. Besides, Edward’s own army was powerful and large, but the eagerness and resolve in it was brittle since the events of today. Any new setback might throw it over and a day spent under the noses of the Scots might bring exactly that.
There was a shifting of bread and the harrigles of the meal. A curling wetness of wine became the Pelstream, a crooked series of greased chicken bones became the heavy horse, a line of expensive emperor salt represented archers. Gradually, a plan was formulated, argued, scorned and, finally, adopted.
‘The horse will form to the fore, then, gentilhommes,’ the King declared. ‘In full expectation of having to pursue the Scots removing themselves at dawn or before it. I want them pinned to the spot and destroyed, my lords.’
And if they do not withdraw, Thweng thought grimly, then the foot and, above all, that little line of white salt, would have to be reorganized to the front, which could take all day and them still weary from having marched into the night to get here.
Still, he mused, it would be as long a day as this night is short …
There were shouts in the dark and men rose up suddenly, overturning makeshift benches.
‘An attack?’ demanded Segrave, but no one thought that likely — they had contrived to place themselves inside a fortress of streams and woods on three sides for that very reason. Like the Stirling Brig affair, Thweng had thought when this was proudly announced and still felt a chill of fear at the memory of those rolling spearwalls coming down on the constricted, trapped horse.
That would not happen again, surely, he thought. The Scots never stand and Bruce is outnumbered considerably, so that only a fool would attack. He will be gone by morning if he has any sense at all.
It was no night sally, but a flaring light sparked the distance like a beacon; de Valence thought it was the castle itself on fire, but Thweng had a better lay of the land.
‘Cambuskenneth,’ he declared. ‘The priory is burning.’
ISABEL
Inter faeces et urinam nascimur — between piss and shit are we born and the way to God’s Grace in Heaven also lies between the two. I told Malise that when he came slithering out of the dark, knowing his time of power over me is almost gone. He has scarce any loins left and the strength of his arm is held from me by Your Grace, O Lord — and the orders of John de Luka — but he has venom still to spit. It takes only a word from me, he said with that twisted grin he has, and you will burn like the heretic we watched together. He made it sound as if we had stood, arms linked like spent lovers, quietly contemplating the moon and the future. All your finery then will be gone, he went on, slathering it out with spittle as if the rage in him could not be contained. But I knew, O Lord — had known for a time — that the rage was against himself. Once, a wolf-hunter came to Mar and told me how it was done. You take three inches of thin beech wood and sharpen either end, then bend it into a ring and fasten it with linen thread. This you hide inside a dead bird, or a lump of rotting meat, which a wolf will gobble, as they do, all at once, deadly ring and all. When the linen thread snaps, as it must, the sliver pierces the wolf’s insides and it bleeds to death, desperately trying to sick up its own life blood and unable to do so. That is Malise; speared by his own hate and bile and unable to boak it up. Yet he tried hard enough. Your hurdies will be sagging in the breeze long afore the De’il comes for you, he sprayed. He touched me then, a trail of fingers; I let him, though my flesh crawled. When the flames touch you, he hissed, your wee serk will shrivel away and this pretty hair with it. You will be trussed in chains on that fire, naked and hairless as a scalded pig. He will do it, too, if matters do not change. He can claim anything and folk already believe I am a cunning-woman. After he had gone, I split a vein with my eating knife and here is what was shown in the pattern of my blood on the floor — a woman who loves. A woman who dies. A saving grace either way.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bannockburn
Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314
He heard the clack-clack through the swirl of mist and saw the heads of his men come up; one rode ahead and, by the time Bruce arrived a seeming instant later, there was the tapestry of it laid out: the rider — who was sometimes his brother, sometimes Jamie Douglas; the wee priest in his brown robes, patient as a nubbed oak; and the hooded figure.