All shipping, boats and fishing-craft to be sent up-Forth to Culross.
And fires to be lit everywhere along the shore. Inland also. Great fires, with much smoke. Burn straw, thatch, brushwood-what they will. So that from Edinburgh and the Lothian coast it will seem as though all life is being burned, as Lothian has been. That there will be no food for the hungry English there! It may discourage Edward from his sailing. Aye-but tell the Fifers to be ready to fire the food and forage in truth, if and when the enemy sails. But meantime, let the smoke serve …
August 1322 was wet and cold and windy. In it, East Scotland smoked, while still King Edward sat in Holyrood Abbey, at Edinburgh, and did not move. Every chill, rain-soaked day of it the Scots forces grew in numbers and preparedness, at Stirling and Culross. Probing English sallies were made south and west, into Ettrick Forests outskirts and North Clydesdale, in especial-but these were in search of cattle, sheep, even deer, and grain and hay, sustenance for 100,000 hungry men, and rather fewer hungry horses, since the latter were now being eaten. The Scots grim joke was that the invaders were settled down to wait for this years harvest.
It was no secret in Edinburgh-and therefore to Bruces innumerable spies therein-that Edward was in fact waiting for a provisioning fleet to sail up from the Humber. A wiser commander would surely have organised this somewhat earlier.
When Bruce heard the reason for the English delay, he sent immediate word to his Lord High Admiral, Angus Og, now recruiting legions of Islesmen, amongst the Hebrides, to send to the aid of his friend. The Kings request-he never sent commands to the Lord of the Isles-was that he cease these activities forthwith, and drive with his galleys, with all their famed speed, up and round the north coasts of Scotland, through the Pentland Firth, and so down the eastern seaboard, to intercept Edwards victualling fleet if at all possible. How many days it would take these wolves of the sea to make the difficult 500-mile circuit depended on the winds and tides, as well as on strong mens sinews. But the MacGregor himself an expert on galleys, come limping from Loch Lomondside with his Children of the Mist, declared that he could do it in five days and nights of even winter seas. Though MacDonalds, of course, were not MacGregors …!
Be that as it may, on the 10th of August a single long, low galley
came racing up Forth from the open sea, its great square sail painted with the black Galley of the Isles, its double-banked oars raising a curtain of spray on either side. On board was young John of Islay, Anguss son and heir, little more than a boy, but splendid in antique Viking-style winged-helm and golden chain-mail. He announced that his fathers full strength, in ships, now lay in the Tay estuary, hidden, with scouting craft as far south as Berwick and the Fames. There had been no sign of any English fleet-save what they had glimpsed, in passing, in Leith harbour. Did the Lord Robert want that routed out, and sunk?
Laughing, in his relief and satisfaction, Bruce declined this particular service meantime, and knighted the young man there and then.
By the third week in August there was still no sign of the victualling fleet. The cold, wet and unseasonable northerly winds continued, and the Islesmens protracted vigil must have been a sore one.
Presumably it was the said contrary winds which delayed the English ships-or else treachery at home, from whence rumours of new revolts of rebellious barons came daily. King Edward ventured neither upon the Forth nor along its Lothian shores, westwards.
The tales from famine-stricken Edinburgh were harrowing.
Bruce had now some 25,000 men assembled, the majority at Culross, some 8,000 at Stirling. He had even sent a couple of thousand Highlanders south to reinforce Douglas in the Forest, from which that stalwart was assailing the English lines of communication and preventing food-trains and cattle-herds from winning northwards through the hills.
On the 2nd of September, Holyrood Abbey went up in flames, and a valedictory slaughter took place in unhappy Edinburgh. It was the equally unhappy Plantagenets leave-taking. He turned his petulant and haggard face to the south, and led-if that is the word-his now semi-mutinous host homewards. Knowing too well the burned and smoking desert of East Lothian and the Merse, they took the hill road this time, by Soutra and Lauderdale and the eastern skirts of the Forestbut found neither food nor comfort there, for now Douglas gave them no rest. Out-of-hand, unruly, the English were easy prey for that hardened scourge of their kind. He and his slew and slew, but seemed to make only little impact on the vast, sprawling, starving thousands. There was nothing like a battle, nor even a standing fight. The nearest to anything of the sort was when Douglas came rushing to the rescue of Melrose Abbey, that lovely fane where Leader joined Tweedbut not before most of the rose-red buildings were ablaze and Abbot William Peebles and many of his monks crucified or otherwise shamefully slaughtered.
It was a disorganised and demoralised rabble, of barely half the numbers that had gone north, which crossed the Border on the 5th and 6th of September, the King and the Despensers spurring far ahead. Northumberland thereafter wilted and cringed under the infamous influx.
Douglas followed on, direly busy.
It did not seem so long since Elizabeth de Burgh had been concocting activities to keep her husbands mind off himself. Now, despite her pleas that he hold back, rest awhile, himself was not to be considered. The words sickness and leprosy had not passed his lips in months. He saw opportunity wide before him, and was not the man to fail to take it. He had an un blooded army standing impatient, and an enemy in hopeless rout and confusion, their land defenceless. He sent some mounted reinforcements for the busy Douglas; besought Angus Og to continue down the English east coast with his ships; and, saying good-bye to his protesting Queen, left Lamberton, Lennox and Abbot Bernard in charge of his kingdom and set off with Moray and Walter Stewart for England once more, with a picked force of 20,000 light cavalry and Highlanders.
The iron was hot, he said. He would forge a lasting peace out of it, for Scotland, if it was the last thing he did.
It was early October before Bruce and Douglas joined forces.
They met deep in the North Riding of Yorkshire, indeed just three miles
from Northallerton, on the same hill where, nearly two centuries
earlier, the Kings ancestor, David the First, had suffered resounding
defeat at the Battle of the Standard. Bruce had come, more slowly this
time-for now his host was an army, even though a small one, and no
mere swift raiding force-once more by the tidal sand of Solway and
Cumberland, since he had no wish, at this stage, to try conclusions
with Harcla, sulking at Carlisle. Then, hearing that King Edward was
in the neighbourhood of York again, and joined by his doleful cousin
John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, with a new English army from the
south, the Scots had turned eastwards through the Pennine passes,
warily-for here they could, indeed should have been ambushed. But they
encountered no opposition, and proceeding down Wensleydale towards the
lowlands of Swale and Ouse, they saw once again the familiar sight of
burning towns, villages and farmsteads in the plain below, and
recognised that Douglas was there before them. So presently summoned
from blazing Northallerton, the now saturnine Sir James came cantering up to meet his liege lord on the Hill of the Standard, their first encounter in eight months.
Jamie, Jamie-what an executioner, what a brand of destruction, I have made of the gentle chivalrous youth once I knighted! Bruce said, clasping the other to him.