If they could not be prevented, then they must be led.
The idea soared in him and he turned to Sir John Airth, who saw something of it in Hal’s eyes. Truthfully, Sir John was glad the Herdmanston lord was here, for the loss of his son had stripped the last fire from him. He had known he was too old for this even before arriving, but had come, bolstered by the determined joy of William to be here, on this momentous day. Now William was laid out, cold and stiff, in the dead room of Cambuskenneth Priory and all the determined joy in the world had dissipated for Sir John Airth.
‘With your lordship’s permission,’ Hal began and Sir John waved one hand. So Hal turned to the men and laid it out for them, all the glory and riches of it, so that their eyes gleamed and they were his men before he had stopped speaking.
At the end of it, when they were scattering eagerly through the camp to fire others to the work, Sir John eyed Hal with a jaundiced look.
‘You can borrow William’s big stot,’ he said. ‘His name is Cornix, a good, well-trained beast. And my boy’s armour will fit you better than me and you can carry the weight at least.’
Hal began stammering his thanks, but Sir John waved them away, frowning.
‘It is a dangerous stratagem you have began,’ he growled. ‘For even if the enemy are fooled by it, your own king may not thank you.’
‘Victory forgives all sins,’ Hal answered and turned away, hoping it was true. Victory was essential, not just for king, not only for kingdom.
For Isabel.
ISABEL
Constance came to me and we sewed, sitting like peaceful sisters together in the cage. It was a defiance for her, placing herself in full view of the sweating gawpers and hecklers in the bailey and, because she was a nun, placing God with us both. I was grateful, but aware of feverishness in the air that had nothing to do with the heat, a tremble that made me slip and stick the needle in my finger. Constance saw it and gave a little cry, her hand to her mouth, but moved to draw it out, slow and careful as she could so that the bone needle would not break. I have enough bone in my finger, I said when it came free, and we laughed. Then she took some stale bread and wrapped it round the dark welling of blood. Perhaps you will fall asleep, like the princess in the tale, she whispered daringly, to be woken by a lover’s kiss in your imprisoning tower. I told her the truth of that story — it was not a princess, but the daughter of a merchant, whose maid slipped and stabbed her with the pin of a golden brooch, so that she fell in a faint. The furious father had the maid put to death and her blood used to water his garden — whereupon the roses grew fast and equally furious, pulling down the merchant’s house in only three days and killing everyone in it save the sleeping daughter. She woke on the fourth day and her lover found her wandering the wilding garden, her wits vanished entire. When I had finished, Constance sat, stunned and silent, and I was sorry for having torn the happy child’s tale away from her. I tried to go back to sewing but the blood had seeped through the bread and, when I peeled it off, a drop still welled, bright as a berry, dark as an omen.
Somewhere men were dying.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bannockburn
Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314
He knew battles, did Marmaduke Thweng, knew them as a shepherd understands sheep or a wee priest how to handle hecklers in a sermon. This one, he saw as he rode up in the furious wake of Gloucester, was already spoiled and rotting.
‘The enemy, my lord,’ Gloucester bawled out to a blinking, confused Hereford. ‘We must attack at once.’
Hereford glanced to where the dark line scarred ever closer, resolving in the glare of a full sun into a wicked wink of sharp points and glowing men, moving steadily under a flutter of bright banners. The St Andrew’s cross on blue, the chevrons of Carrick. The brother Bruce, Hereford thought, with a deal of men …
‘We must attack.’
Hereford turned into the full of Gloucester’s face. No helm, he saw — nor surcote either. Fool comes charging up, half-dressed and bawling like some green squab of a squire …
‘We must withdraw, sirrah,’ he bawled back. ‘Make way for the foot … the archers.’
‘God’s Bones, it is too late for that,’ Gloucester yelled, and then turned to the milling confusion of knights. ‘Form, gentilhommes, form on me.’
Hereford’s roar was incoherent and loud enough to make everyone pause. Red-faced and driven long past the politic, he slammed a mailed fist on the front of his saddle, so that his mount shifted and protested.
‘Bigod, de Clare, I am Constable of England. I command here, not you. Do as you are bid, sirrah.’
Thweng arrived in time to see Gloucester rise up in his stirrups, the fewtered lance squivering like a tree in a gale and his face dark and flushed.
‘Be damned to you. I command here, by order of the King, and while you argue, de Bohun, the enemy laugh their way to a slaughter and king’s carp of treachery. Well, I will not wait for defeat and dishonour.’
He savaged the horse’s head round so that it squealed and thundered off, trailed by Badlesmere and others of his mesnie. Payn Tiptoft looked at Hereford and then at the disappearing back of Gloucester; when he had no guidance from the former, he flung up his shielded hand in exasperation and spurred away. With a sharp bark from under his full helm, de Maulay, the King’s steward, announced that he had joined the Van to fight, not run, and thundered after, trailing more men with him.
Badenoch and his kinsman, the Comyn of Kylbryde, looked pointedly at Thweng, who gave Hereford a pouch-eyed mourn of stare, and then put his helm over his head, as clear a signal as any shout. With a whoop, Badenoch and his kinsman thundered off, hauling all the other Knights of the Shadow after them and, a reluctant last, Sir Marmaduke.
Hereford, his temples thundering, watched them ribbon their way obliquely across to the dark line of Edward Bruce’s Battle and felt the tic kick under his eye as he saw another line, this one to the left of the Bruce brother and more distant. It had the blazing banner of the lion rampant marking where Bruce himself marched. Beyond that, further to the left of it, was another growing line, the banners in it proclaiming a third command.
The Earl of Moray, Hereford thought, coming up on his master’s left. The Scots were in an echelon of Battles, as steady ranked as any Macedonians of Alexander, and Hereford, with a sickening lurch, knew that Gloucester was right — there was no time left. No time at all.
Hew stumbled and fell to his knees, had curses and kicks for it as the ranked men baulked and tried to get round or walk over him. A hand took him by the collar and hauled him up as he struggled like a beetle in the forest of legs and feet.
He tried to mutter thanks, but the sweating mass was an animal that did not care, simply hammered him in the back with a curse and a call to keep moving.
He kept moving, spearless, the axe in one hand, the dirk in his belt and in his free hand a fist of the dirt and grass he had grabbed when he fell. Bad soil for digging, Hew thought. Not stable. Looks fine now, but it will be as dangerous as scree when it rains here; the ground will seep water. If you came here after rain, he thought, and thumb-tested the ground as was proper, you would lose most of the digit up to the first joint.
Cannot dig a ditch in such, he thought, half falling again, the motes and dust swirling with the grunt and clack and clatter of the sweating press. You need no more wet in the ground than a thumbnail-length entry for a good ditch. Incline the walls away, to prevent fall-ins. Most folk did not know that a square ell of soil weighs as much as a full-armoured knight on his big stot and if that falls on you, you are in the grave, certes.