Vagabond

‘It is not your battle!’ Eleanor insisted. ‘We should go to the city! We should find the monk.’

Thomas paused. He was thinking of the priest who, in the swirl of fog and smoke, had killed the Scotsman and then spoken to him in French. I am a messenger, the priest had said. ‘Je suis un avant-coureur,’ had been his exact words and an avant-coureur was more than a mere messenger. A herald, perhaps? An angel even? Thomas could not drive away the image of that silent fight, the men so ill matched, a soldier against a priest, yet the priest had won and then had turned his gaunt, bloodied face on Thomas and announced himself: ‘Je suis un avant-coureur.’ It was a sign, Thomas thought, and he did not want to believe in signs and visions, he wanted to believe in his bow. He thought perhaps Eleanor was right and that the conflict with its unexpected victor was a sign from heaven that he should follow the avant-coureur into the city, but there were also enemies up on the hill and he was an archer and archers did not walk away from a battle. ‘We’ll go to the city,’ he said, ‘after the fight.’

‘Why?’ she demanded fiercely.

But Thomas would not explain. He just started walking, climbing a hill where larks and finches flitted through the hedges and fieldfares, brown and grey, called from the empty pastures. The fog was all gone and a drying wind blew across the Wear.

And then, from where the Scots waited on the higher ground, the drums began to beat.

Sir William Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, prepared himself for battle. He pulled on leather breeches thick enough to thwart a sword cut and over his linen shirt he hung a crucifix that had been blessed by a priest in Santiago de Compostela where St James was buried. Sir William Douglas was not a particularly religious man, but he paid a priest to look after his soul and the priest had assured Sir William that wearing the crucifix of St James, the son of thunder, would ensure he received the last rites safe in his own bed. About his waist he tied a strip of red silk that had been torn from one of the banners captured from the English at Bannockburn. The silk had been dipped in the holy water of the font in the chapel of Sir William’s castle at Hermitage and Sir William had been persuaded that the scrap of silk would ensure victory over the old and much hated enemy.

He wore a haubergeon taken from an Englishman killed in one of Sir William’s many raids south of the border. Sir William remembered that killing well. He had seen the quality of the Englishman’s haubergeon at the very beginning of the fight and he had bellowed at his men to leave the fellow alone, then he had cut the man down by striking at his ankles and the Englishman, on his knees, had made a mewing sound that had made Sir William’s men laugh. The man had surrendered, but Sir William had cut his throat anyway because he thought any man who made a mewing sound was not a real warrior. It had taken the servants at Hermitage two weeks to wash the blood out of the fine mesh of the mail. Most of the Scottish leaders were dressed in hauberks, which covered a man’s body from neck to calves, while the haubergeon was much shorter and left the legs unprotected, but Sir William intended to fight on foot and he knew that a hauberk’s weight wearied a man quickly and tired men were easily killed. Over the haubergeon he wore a full-length surcoat that showed his badge of the red heart. His helmet was a sallet, lacking any visor or face protection, but in battle Sir William liked to see what his enemies to the left and right were doing. A man in a full helm or in one of the fashionable pig-snouted visors could see nothing except what the slit right in front of his eyes let him see, which was why men in visored helmets spent the battle jerking their heads left and right, left and right, like a chicken among foxes, and they twitched until their necks were sore and even then they rarely saw the blow that crushed their skulls. Sir William, in battle, looked for men whose heads were jerking like hens, back and forth, for he knew they were nervous men who could afford a fine helmet and thus pay a finer ransom. He carried his big shield. It was really too heavy for a man on foot, but he expected the English to loose their archery storm and the shield was thick enough to absorb the crashing impact of yard-long, steel-pointed arrows. He could rest the foot of the shield on the ground and crouch safe behind it and, when the English ran out of arrows, he could always discard it. He carried a spear in case the English horsemen charged, and a sword, which was his favourite killing weapon. The sword’s hilt encased a scrap of hair cut from the corpse of St Andrew, or at least that was what the pardoner who had sold Sir William the scrap had claimed.

Robbie Douglas, Sir William’s nephew, wore mail and a sallet, and carried a sword and shield. It had been Robbie who had brought Sir William the news that Jamie Douglas, Robbie’s older brother, had been killed, presumably by the Dominican priest’s servant. Or perhaps Father de Taillebourg had done the killing? Certainly he must have ordered it. Robbie Douglas, twenty years old, had wept for his brother. ‘How could a priest do it?’ Robbie had demanded of his uncle.

‘You have a strange idea of priests, Robbie,’ Sir William had said. ‘Most priests are weak men given God’s authority and that makes them dangerous. I thank God no Douglas has ever put on a priest’s robe. We’re all too honest.’

‘When this day’s done, uncle,’ Robbie Douglas said, ‘you’ll let me go after that priest.’

Sir William smiled. He might not be an overtly religious man, but he did hold one creed sacred and that was that any family member’s murder must be avenged and Robbie, he reckoned, would do vengeance well. He was a good young man, hard and handsome, tall and straightforward, and Sir William was proud of his youngest sister’s son. ‘We’ll talk at day’s end,’ Sir William promised him, ‘but till then, Robbie, stay close to me.’

‘I will, uncle.’

‘We’ll kill a good few Englishmen, God willing,’ Sir William said, then led his nephew to meet the King and to receive the blessing of the royal chaplains.

Sir William, like most of the Scottish knights and chieftains, was in mail, but the King wore French-made plate, a thing so rare north of the border that men from the wild tribes came to stare at this sun-reflecting creature made of moving metal. The young King seemed just as impressed for he took off his surcoat and walked up and down admiring himself and being admired as his lords came for a blessing and to offer advice. The Earl of Moray, whom Sir William believed was a fool, wanted to fight on horseback and the King was tempted to agree. His father, the great Robert the Bruce, had beaten the English at the Bannockburn on horseback, and not just beaten them, but humiliated them. The flower of Scotland had ridden down the nobility of England and David, King now of his father’s country, wanted to do the same. He wanted blood beneath his hooves and glory attached to his name; he wanted his reputation to spread through Christendom and so he turned and gazed longingly at his red and yellow painted lance propped against the bough of an elm.

Sir William Douglas saw where the King was looking. ‘Archers,’ he said laconically.

‘There were archers at the Bannockburn,’ the Earl of Moray insisted.

‘Aye, and the fools didn’t know how to use them,’ Sir William said, ‘but you can’t depend on the English being fools for ever.’

‘And how many archers can they have?’ the Earl asked. ‘There are said to be thousands of bowmen in France, hundreds more in Brittany and as many again in Gascony, so how many can they have here?’

‘They have enough,’ Sir William growled curtly, not bothering to hide the contempt he felt for John Randolph, third Earl of Moray. The Earl was just as experienced in war as Sir William, but he had spent too long as a prisoner of the English and the consequent hatred made him impetuous.

The King, young and inexperienced, wanted to side with the Earl whose friend he was, but he saw that his other lords were agreeing with Sir William who, though he held no great title nor position of state, was more battle-hardened than any man in Scotland. The Earl of Moray sensed that he was losing the argument and he urged haste. ‘Charge now, sir,’ he suggested, ‘before they can make a battleline.’ He pointed southwards to where the first English troops were appearing in the pastures. ‘Cut the bastards down before they’re ready.’

‘That,’ the Earl of Menteith put in quietly, ‘was the advice given to Philip of Valois in Picardy. It didn’t serve there and it won’t serve here.’

‘Besides which,’ Sir William Douglas remarked caustically, ‘we have to contend with stone walls.’ He pointed to the walls which bounded the pastures where the English were beginning to form their line. ‘Maybe Moray can tell us how armoured knights get past stone walls?’ he suggested.

The Earl of Moray bridled. ‘You take me for a fool, Douglas?’

‘I take you as you show yourself, John Randolph,’ Sir William answered.

‘Gentlemen!’ the King snapped. He had not noticed the stone walls when he formed his battleline beside the burning cottages and the fallen cross. He had only seen the empty green pastures and the wide road and his even wider dream of glory. Now he watched the enemy straggle from the far trees. There were plenty of archers coming, and he had heard how those bowmen could fill the sky with their arrows and how their steel arrow heads drove deep into horses and how the horses then went mad with pain. And he dared not lose this battle. He had promised his nobles that they would celebrate the feast of Christmas in the hall of the English King in London and if he lost then he would lose their respect and encourage some to rebellion. He had to win and, being impatient, he wanted to win quickly. ‘If we charge fast enough,’ he suggested tentatively, ‘before they all reach their lines—’

‘Then, you’ll break your horse’s legs on the stone walls,’ Sir William said with scant respect for his royal master. ‘If your majesty’s horse even gets that far. You can’t protect a horse from arrows, sir, but you can weather the storm on foot. Put your pikes up front, but mix them with men-at-arms who can use their shields to protect the pike-holders. Shields up, heads down and hold hard, that’s how we win this.’

The King tugged at the espalier which covered his right shoulder and had an annoying habit of riding up on the top edge of the breastplate. Traditionally the defence of Scottish armies was in the hands of pikemen who used their monstrously long weapons to hold off the enemy knights, but pikemen needed both hands to hold their unwieldy blades and so became easy targets for English bowmen who liked to boast that they carried the lives of Scottish pikemen in their arrow bags. So protect the pikemen with the shields of the men-at-arms and let the enemy waste their arrows. It made sense, but it still irked David Bruce that he could not lead his horsemen in an earth-shaking assault while the trumpets screamed at the heavens.

Sir William saw his King’s hesitation and pressed his argument. ‘We have to stand, sir, and we have to wait, and we have to let our shields take the arrows, but in the end, sir, they’ll tire of wasting shafts and they’ll come to the attack and that’s when we’ll chop them down like dogs.’

A growl of assent greeted this. The Scottish lords, hard men all, armed and armoured, bearded and grim, were confident that they could win this fight because they so outnumbered the enemy, but they also knew there was no short cut to victory, not when archers opposed them, and so they would have to do what Sir William said: endure the arrows, goad the enemy, then give them slaughter.

The King heard his lords agree with Sir William and so, reluctantly, he abandoned his dream of breaking the enemy with mounted knights. That was a disappointment, but he looked about his lords and thought that with such men beside him he could not possibly lose. ‘We shall fight on foot,’ he decreed, ‘and chop them down like dogs. We shall slaughter them like whipped puppies!’ And afterwards, he thought, when the survivors were fleeing southwards, the Scottish cavalry could finish the slaughter.

But for now it would be footman against footman and so the war banners of Scotland were carried forward and planted across the ridge. The burning cottages were mere embers now that cradled three shrunken bodies, black and small as children, and the King planted his flags close to those dead. He had his own standard, red saltire on yellow field, and the banner of Scotland’s saint, white saltire on blue, in the line’s centre and to left and right the flags of the lesser lords flew. The lion of Stewart brandished its blade, the Randolph falcon spread its wings while to east and west the stars and axes and crosses snapped in the wind. The army was arrayed in three divisions, called sheltrons, and the three sheltrons were so large that the men on the far flanks jostled in towards the centre to keep themselves on the flatter ground of the ridge’s summit.

The rearmost ranks of the sheltrons were composed of the tribesmen from the islands and the north, men who fought bare-legged, without metal armour, wielding vast swords that could club a man to death as easily as cut him down. They were fearsome fighters, but their lack of armour made them horribly vulnerable to arrows and so they were placed at the rear and the leading ranks of the three sheltrons were filled by men-at-arms and pikemen. The men-at-arms carried swords, axes, maces or war-hammers and, most important, the shields that could protect the pikemen whose weapons were tipped with a spike, a hook and an axehead. The spike could hold an enemy at bay, the hook could haul an armoured man out of the saddle or off his feet, and the axe could smash through his mail or plate. The line bristled with the pikes that made a steel hedge to greet the English and priests walked along the hedge consecrating the weapons and the men who held them. Soldiers knelt to receive their blessings. A few of the lords, like the King himself, were mounted, but only so that they could see over the heads of their army, and those men stared south to see the last of the English troops come into view. So few of them! Such a small army to beat! To the left of the Scots was Durham, its towers and ramparts thick with folk watching the battle, and in front was this small army of Englishmen who did not possess the sense to retreat south towards York. They would fight on the ridge instead and the Scots had the advantage of position and numbers. ‘If you hate them!’ Sir William Douglas shouted at his men on the right of the Scottish battleline, ‘then let them hear you!’

The Scots bellowed their hatred. They clashed swords and spears against their shields, they shrieked to the sky and, in the line’s centre, where the King’s sheltron waited under the banners of the cross, a troop of drummers began to beat huge goatskin drums. Each drum was a big ring of oak over which were stretched two goat skins that were tightened with ropes until an acorn, dropped onto a skin, would bounce as high as the hand that had let it go and the drums, beaten with withies, made a sharp, almost metallic sound that filled the sky. They made an assault of pure noise.

‘If you hate the English, let them know!’ the Earl of March shouted from the left of the Scottish line that lay closest to the city. ‘If you hate the English, let them know!’ and the roar became louder, the clash of spear stave on shield was stronger, and the noise of Scotland’s hate spread across the ridge so that nine thousand men were howling at the three thousand who were foolish enough to confront them.

‘We shall cut them down like stalks of barley,’ a priest promised, ‘we shall soak the fields with their stinking blood and fill all hell with their English souls.’

‘Their women are yours!’ Sir William told his men. ‘Their wives and their daughters will be your toys tonight!’ He grinned at his nephew Robbie. ‘You’ll have your pick of Durham’s women, Robbie.’

‘And London’s women,’ Robbie said, ‘before Christmas.’

‘Aye, them too,’ Sir William promised.

‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ the King’s senior chaplain shouted, ‘send them all to hell! Each and every foul one of them to hell! For every Englishman you kill today means a thousand less weeks in purgatory!’

‘If you hate the English,’ Lord Robert Stewart, Steward of Scotland and heir to the throne, called, ‘let them hear!’ And the noise of that hate was like a thunder that filled the deep valley of the Wear, and the thunder reverberated from the crag where Durham stood and still the noise swelled to tell the whole north country that the Scots had come south.

And David, King of those Scots, was glad that he had come to this place where the dragon cross had fallen and the burning houses smoked and the English waited to be killed. For this day he would bring glory to St Andrew, to the great house of Bruce, and to Scotland.

Thomas, Father Hobbe and Eleanor followed the prior and his monks who were still chanting, though the brothers’ voices were now ragged for they were breathless from hurrying. St Cuthbert’s corporax cloth swayed to and fro and the banner attracted a straggling procession of women and children who, not wanting to wait out of sight of their men, carried spare sheaves of arrows up the hill. Thomas wanted to go faster, to get past the monks and find Lord Outhwaite’s men, but Eleanor deliberately hung back until he turned on her angrily. ‘You can walk faster,’ he protested in French.

‘I can walk faster,’ she said, ‘and you can ignore a battle!’ Father Hobbe, leading the horse, understood the tone even though he did not comprehend the words. He sighed, thus earning himself a savage look from Eleanor. ‘You do not need to fight!’ she went on.

‘I’m an archer,’ Thomas said stubbornly, ‘and there’s an enemy up there.’

‘Your King sent you to find the Grail!’ Eleanor insisted. ‘Not to die! Not to leave me alone! Me and a baby!’ She had stopped now, hands clutching her belly and with tears in her eyes. ‘I am to be alone here? In England?’

‘I won’t die here,’ Thomas said scathingly.

‘You know that?’ Eleanor was even more scathing. ‘God spoke to you, perhaps? You know what other men do not? You know the day of your dying?’

Thomas was taken aback by the outburst. Eleanor was a strong girl, not given to tantrums, but she was distraught and weeping now. ‘Those men,’ Thomas said, ‘the Scarecrow and Beggar, they won’t touch you. I’ll be here.’

‘It isn’t them!’ Eleanor wailed. ‘I had a dream last night. A dream.’

Thomas put his hands on her shoulders. His hands were huge and strengthened by hauling on the hempen string of the big bow. ‘I dreamed of the Grail last night,’ he said, knowing that was not quite true. He had not dreamed of the Grail, rather he had woken to a vision which had turned out to be a deception, but he could not tell Eleanor that. ‘It was golden and beautiful,’ he said, ‘like a cup of fire.’