The Lion Rampant (33 page)

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.

‘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.

There was never any doubting, even in the dream, what the hooded figure was, standing there with head bowed and a pail at his feet. The white hand which held the clapper flapped like a gull wing and the faint smell of rotten meat rose up, even over the stench from the bucket.

Yet it was a dream and he knew it even in his sleep, a skewed version of the true events – but the essential parts of it were always the same and always as they had happened.

It was Liston in the late autumn two years ago, where he had gone with a select band to try the waters of the place yet again and, though no one spoke it, everyone knew the point of the journey was that Liston’s well was noted for its efficacy with lepers.

The dream played out: the rider demanding the hooded leper withdraw from the path, the patient priest agreeing and then kneeling, as he had done, in abject, appalled apology when he saw his king. The leper had tried to kneel, a painful display that Bruce had halted.

He remembered the shock of it, the sight of that white hand and, at one and the same moment, wanted to see the face and did not want ever to set eyes on it.

‘Who are you?’ he asked and the priest began to reply until Bruce’s raised hand cut him off. There was silence from the leper.

‘Can he speak?’ Bruce asked the priest and then the leper cleared a thickness from his throat, a rot of rheum that turned his voice into the growl of a beast.

‘Still,’ he said, ‘though I do not, for I am considered as dead.’

This was only true and Bruce had forgotten it; lepers were always considered as dead men and had to convey themselves as such. He wondered, trying not to shiver, how old the man was and asked but it was as if the man had used up all his allotment of words for that day; his mouth opened and closed and no sound came.

‘He was born in the year the Norse were defeated at Largs, Your Grace,’ the priest offered helpfully.

Forty and nine, Bruce had calculated. Eleven years older than me – is this me in eleven years?

‘What is his name?’

The priest told the details of it; he was called Gawter, came from Tantallon where he had been a sailor, a skilled man at the navigation. Now he was at Liston for a time, working as a gongfermour for the priory.