He saw the King rein in suddenly, forcing everyone to hastily follow; horses veered and swerved and there were muted curses and a clatter of arms and armour. Perhaps he realizes he should have done more, Thweng thought as the King screwed round in his saddle and flung one triumphant hand to the east.
‘The sun, my lords,’ he yelled out, his coroneted helmet flashing with the first rays of it. ‘Come to look on our glorious victory.’
There were cheers, soon fading, and they rode on with their shadows stretched thin and leading them on.
Addaf watched them go; it was clear that the foot were being left to their own for now and he was not sorry for it. He saw his own shadow, turned and stared, narrow-eyed into the first rays of dawn.
Right in the Scots’ eyes, look you, with them lit up plain as day for any one-eyed squinter to hit — well, once the horse had pinned them, the bowmen would finish them. Not those silly little slow-firing Genoese crossbows either, nor the plunking Cheshire men, but the steady volleyed mass shafts of his veteran Welshmen — and if hatred of the pig English made his men tardy, then the thought of plundering Scotch would put wings on their heels.
He felt the sun soak warm glory into his stiffness and almost smiled.
Nyd hyder ond bwa — there is no dependence but on the bow.
ISABEL
There were fires all last night beyond the walls of the castle and town, the old way of celebrating Midsummer’s Eve. Even in the town they lit wakefires and danced and drank — I could hear them and smell the stink of the bones they threw in to ward off evil spirits. All it did for me was bring a harsh memory of the poor girl they burned. The night never got truly dark and early in the morning Constance brought boughs of greenery, for every house and shopfront is decorated with garlands and birch branches. Tonight, she told me with hugging delight, there will be a parade of men, with weapons and torches and mummers — and naked boys painted black to look like Saracens. And services and Mass, she added, remembering God just in time. If you wish to be shriven, she told me, I can fetch a priest.
I do not need to be shriven. I need freedom, O Lord. Your Son, blessed Jesus Christ, restored Lazarus to life after four days. You Yourself preserved Jonah in the belly of a whale, drew out Daniel from the lion’s den. Why then, O Lord, can You not liberate me, a miserable wretch, from this prison?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bannockburn
Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314
They formed up at the edge of the woods, a great, fat line muted but not silent, a soft noise like a stirring beast, composed of the muttered drone of prayer and orders, the jingle and clatter of arms and armour, the creak of leather, the crack and rustle of branch and undergrowth.
Dog Boy, cloistered in the deep ranks of Jamie’s command, itself part of the massive block commanded by the King himself, saw only the rust and filth-streaked gambesons of the men in front. He squinted between their shoulders, into the sun, seeing a forest of silhouetted spearshafts and a sparkle of firefly lights in the distance.
It took him a long time to realize, with a cold-water shock, that the sparkling was the sun bouncing from gleaming spear point and helmet to burnished armour. The Enemy.
There were a lot of them, a great glowing sea that curdled his bowels, made him look right and left to find Parcy Dodd, Troubadour, Sweetmilk, Horse Pyntle and the others, a cage of shoulders and tight grins, grimed calloused hands flexing on the sweat-polished shafts of their weapons.
A great block of such men was no accidental mob, Dog Boy knew. It started with a Grip of five men, called so because it was likened to five fingers curled like a fist on a spearshaft. Two such, lined up one behind the other, was called a Charge, because when you charged your spear, you gripped with both fists. Two Charges made a Vinten, twenty men ordered about by a vintenar, who was Sweetmilk in that part where Dog Boy stood. Vintens were ordered into ten times ten, called Centans, though the reality was the ‘long hundred’, which actually came to 120 or thereabouts — and were commanded by centenars. Dog Boy was centenar for this part and all the men under him were from Jamie Douglas’s own mesnie.
After that, the Centans were grouped in tens, so that a Battle could have 1,200 men or any number up to twice that — rarely more, since it grew unwieldy. The one Dog Boy stood in was the King’s Battle, with 2,000 men. Since the King would be busy commanding the whole army, half of his Battle was ordered by Jamie and the other half by Gilbert de la Haye, Scotland’s Constable.
To the right and slightly ahead was another Battle of similar size, commanded by Edward Bruce, to the left yet another with Randolph’s arrogant banner waving about it.
Flitting in and out, as if wandering lost, were Selkirk and Gallowegian bowmen and the tribal caterans from north of the Mounth: MacDonalds of Angus Og, Camerons, Campbells, Frasers, MacLeans, a wildness of men who did not fight in a great square of pike and glaive and bill but preferred leaping about with little round spike-bossed shields, long knives and axes. Scowling in with them came the strangest of all, the Irish of the O’Neill, O’Hagan and others, more interested in finding their English-supporting counterparts and settling old scores. The best of them had great jingling coats of mail to their ankles and fearsome long-handled axes.
Nearby, squeezed tight together, was the small — ludicrously small, Dog Boy thought — huddle of Keith’s horsemen.
It was all small, Dog Boy knew, seeing the golden horde ahead of him. It had been better in the days when he had not been cursed with knowing that he stood with a third or less men than the enemy opposite, that good men who might have made the difference had been turned away and left to mutter their displeasure in the baggage camp, because they could not be fed, or equipped, or trained in time.
Then he heard, above the rasp and mutter, clatter and creak, the incongruous plaint of birdsong, a fluted throating furious at being disturbed from praising the dawn. A moment later the sudden blare of horns drowned them out, sending them flurrying skywards like swirls of black smoke signalling the advance.
He saw the two Battles ahead of him shift and roll forward ponderously, thought of his son and laughed for the sheer, birdlike joy of the moment.
Hereford, a pillar of dull iron clanking towards his splendidly trappered warhorse, paused briefly as the figure wriggled through the throng like a pup through a fence. John Walwayn, he thought sourly, come a little late. Everyone was a little late — Gloucester, he had heard, had even ridden off without his surcote. Rather than permit me to get to the Van first and start ordering it about, he thought moodily.
Walwayn was breathless with rush and self-importance, ignoring as best he could the sneers from the squires, scornful of this ink-finger with his dagged tunic and dun-coloured hose.
‘Well?’ Hereford demanded and Walwayn knew his lord was eager to be up and away, though he was pouch-eyed from lack of sleep and had spent the night in prayer beside the body of his nephew Henry; somewhere nearby they were boiling him down to the bones, which would be carried home. Walwayn knew that his news had arrived late — but not too late, as he pointed out.
‘My lord Percy’s man has failed,’ he said in a low, hoarse whisper. ‘I have word from Alnwick that the Templar Knight he sent is dead in Spain and Bruce has succeeded in gaining a cargo of weapons. If they encountered no other trouble on the way, my lord, then the Scotch have Templar arms and armour aplenty. That message was at Alnwick a ten-day ago.’
Hereford blinked and pursed his lip, the scowl of his face framed in metal links. If that was true … He glanced briefly at Walwayn and knew it to be; the man had never failed him before with intelligence. It also meant that Percy had not bothered to inform the King of his failure and the possible delivery of arms and armour to the Scots. It would make all the difference, Hereford knew. Well, there would be a reckoning with Percy after this was all done with.