Cambuskenneth Brig, Stirling
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity – August 11, 1297
This was no place for a bowman, and Addaf, jostled and elbowed, was not the only one to think it. As he cradled the bow-bag to his front, protecting the fletches and shafts from the crush as if it was a babbie, he heard other voices curse in Welsh.
‘Make room for us,’ Heydin Captain bawled, red-faced. ‘Make room.’
There was no room; the horse had crossed and the foot after that, but the line of enemy was a distant raggle of spearpoints – about ten times our killing range, Addaf thought, measuring it with one closed eye as they staggered in the press.
The horse was closer, waiting impatiently for the crush of foot to sort themselves out from a mass of iron- rimmed hats and skull caps, spears, round shields, bucklers – not one of them, Addaf thought to himself, is armed the same as the next. Only the Welsh, he corrected, as a knot of them panted past in padded jacks, their spears and shields ready and the trailing red and green braid round their kettle helmets marking who they were.
He saw the last of them run off the bridge, lumbering like upright bears.
Far away, a horn blared.
Malise came up the causeway from Cambuskenneth at a fast lick on the horse, fearful that the Lothian men were hunkered and hidden, even though he had risked this throw of the dice by betting on all of them not wanting to miss the fight.
It had come as a shock to find the Abbey surrounded by hidden men – the thought that he had ridden so close to the likes of Tod’s Wattie made his hole pucker enough to shift him in the saddle.
Having arrived, he found himself no closer to the Savoyard Bisset had told him of – the stone carver had panicked at having an enemy so close and had sneaked off. How he had got out was a mystery to Malise but, he thought savagely, it left me the one seeking sanctuary.
On his right, the Abbey Craig loomed like a hunchback’s shoulder. Malise glanced to his left, seeing the banners and pennons waving, the fat white flags with red crosses snapping in the breeze, the St Andrew’s cross flags whipped steadily in answer. No sign of hunting men…
Let them fight, Malise sneered to himself. If things contrived out the way he had planned it, he would skirt the left of Wallace’s rebels and come up into the camp. There he would find the Countess – at last – and remove her. There, too, he might find the Savoyard, or a clue as to why the Lothian lord Hal hunted him and, more importantly, for whom he did so; there was Bruce in it, Malise was sure of it and he wanted to take the certainty of it to his master, the Earl of Buchan.
The horse skidded on the muddy road almost pitching him off and he cursed, steadied and slowed a little – no sense in panicking now. Careful and steady… Far away, a horn blared.
Almost in his ear, it seemed, a horn blared. Here we go, God save us. Hal heard someone yell it and then the whole line of hedgepig squares surged forward, like stones dropping from a castle wall. As if he was tethered like a goat, Hal felt himself move too, half stumbling over the tussocked, boggy ground, while the great murmuring beast-growl began, low and rising, to hackle his neck.
‘They are coming,’ shouted a voice, high and thin with disbelief and Thweng turned to where the man was pointing. Dear God preserve us, he thought bleakly, Moray has gulled us after all.
‘Whoever heard of foot attacking horse?’ demanded a voice and Thweng turned into the astonished gaze of the Wise Angel who had craved to be at his side. The dark little imps of the Welsh for one, he wanted to say, and those Englishmen who had been in those wars would know that – but few of them were here.
He said nothing, for it made no difference – if the Scots kept going they would roll down and trap the Fore Battle in the loop of the river. Water on three sides, no room to form anything coherent, no way back save across the brig, two at a time. Only one way out and that was ahead, into the shrike’s nest of points.
‘Cressingham,’ he bawled and the fat Treasurer saw it, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly, the growl and roar and wind whipping the words away.
‘… charge them, my lord. Charge.’
Thweng saw the Treasurer’s sword come up and the Van knights stirred like a pack on the scent. The sword came down and the horse moved out at a walk, growing faster with each pace.
There was no other way to buy time for the foot, especially the archers, Thweng saw. All of them Welsh – the irony was not lost on him and he wondered, briefly, if the likes of Addaf would stand and fight.
He slipped into the great cave of his helmet and adjusted his shield, then moved out after Cressingham, hearing the sudden rise of song, high and firm. Young Angel voices, their sweetness not yet muffled by the steel of their great helms.
Foolish men, buried in evil, listen.
The Almighty shines all His power of joyous faith into your hearts,
May not the serpent drive you back to former perdition.
Our best and true Redeemer will restore you to His kingdom
And his wise angels will conquer by the sign of the Cross.
They were singing. Hal could hear it faintly as he loped past the archers, who were lobbing high, ragged shots into the mass of men crushed between the shining snake coils of the river. The Selkirk men were snatching up what shafts remained in front of them, for they heard the singing too, saw the movement of horse towards them and wanted away from it, back to safety behind the relentless boulder-grind of pike squares.
The slow, rolling roar of those squares drowned out the voices of angels. It swelled, red and angry, bloated with fear and fury, almost in pace with the approaching horses, now into a flogged trot, until it vomited out in a great, throat-ripping scream as the pikes stopped raggedly and braced.
The front ranks dropped their chests on to the left knee, supporting the pike, right leg trailing. The men behind raised their long pike spears over their heads and heeled the butt of the front man’s pike into the soft ground with the stamp of a left foot, then leaned their weight to keep it fixed. The men behind them thrust long shafts between heads, resting them on shoulders in front of them when the weight became top heavy, butting the shafts into their own cloak-padded shoulders against the expected impact.
Breathing hard, sweating like bulls, roaring like wet-mouthed beasts, they stood in their own stink and fear, close as lovers, waiting for the curling wave of spurred horse to fall on them.
Time flowed, thick and golden as honey. Sheltered in the rear of his father’s pike square, Hal saw the horses, each barded, snorting, mad-eyed beast, the waving lances, the bouncing shields – white swans, red boars, chequered, ermined. The breath crawled in and out his nose, his palms itched and his groin felt drawn in, tight and hard; he wanted to run, to piss, to scream. It did not seem possible to resist
…
They struck, with a crashing splinter like falling trees, and time howled back. Horses shrieked and flailed and reared, yellow teeth gnashing, necks snaking this way and that. Men screamed and stabbed, fell into the grinding, mud-splattering whirl of hooves and metal to be chewed and pounded.
Hal heard someone yelling meaningless sounds, discovered it was his own voice and started to move, crabbing into the maelstrom whirl that had the hedged knot of pikes at the centre of it, looking for the fallen and the dazed. A figure crawled, shoving and pushing out from under the dead weight of his horse, barded in thick padding and leather studded with bronze rings. He wore maille and a surcoat of the same leather and bronze, emblazoned with a blue lion on a yellow shield. He saw Hal and staggered weakly upright, holding out his hands to yield.
Knights did not die in tourney melee. Knights lost, were unhorsed and taken as ransom. Even in battles, only the ill-armed scum died. The slash of Hal’s sword brought reality slicing in on the knight, a cut that spilled the fine wool padding from his cuisses and the blood from the thigh beneath it. He had time to feel the pain and shock of it, then the point of Hal’s sword, growing as large as the whole world, came in through the slit of his helmet and stole his life.
No quarter here. Not with Berwick a raw wound on the body of the Kingdom – community and commonality were as one in the pain of that and no ransoms would be accepted by Scots this day. No-one had said so – but every Scot had determined it.
Hal felt something smack the back of his armoured head, the glancing blow staggering him, deafening as a bell. He whirled as the rider, twisting in the saddle as the warhorse skidded and turned, tried to face front and find a better blow from the axe he swung. A pike swung sideways, caught in the horse’s legs and it went down with a
