which the prior was working himself into a frenzy. 'Go and do God's work,' he shouted at some nearby archers, 'for the Scots are animals! Animals! Cut them down! Kill them all! God will reward each death!
Go and smite them! Kill them!' He saw Thomas approaching. 'You want a blessing, my son? Then God give strength to your how and add bite to your arrows! May your arm never tire and your eye never dim. God and the saints bless you while you kill!'
Thomas crossed himself then held out the letter. 'I came to give you this, sir,' he said. The prior seemed astonished that an archer should address him so familiarly, let alone have a letter for him and at first he did not take the parchment, but one of his monks snatched it from Thomas and, seeing the broken seal, raised his eyebrows. 'My lord the bishop writes to you,' he said.
'They are animals!' the prior repeated, still caught up in his peroration, then he realized what the monk had said. 'My lord bishop writes?'
'To you, brother,' the monk said.
The prior seized the painted pole and dragged the makeshift banner down so it hung near to Thomas's face. 'You may kiss it,' he said grandly.
'Kiss it?' Thomas was quite taken aback. The ragged cloth, now it was close by his nose, smelt musty.
'It is St Cuthbert's corporax cloth,' the prior said excitedly, 'taken from his tomb, my son! The blessed St Cuthbert will fight for us! The very angels of heaven will follow him into the battle.'
Thomas, faced with the saint's relic, went to his knees and drew the cloth to his lips. It was linen, he thought, and now he could see it was embroidered about its edge with an intricate pattern in faded blue thread. In the centre of the cloth, which was used during Mass to hold the wafers, was an elaborate cross, embroidered in silver threads that scarcely showed against the frayed white linen. 'It is really St Cuthbert's cloth?' he asked.
'His alone!' the prior exclaimed. 'We opened his tomb in the cathedral this very morning, and we prayed to him and he will fight for us today!' The prior jerked the flag up and waved it towards some men-at-arms who spurred their horses northwards. 'Perform God's work! Kill them all! Dung the fields with their noxious flesh, water it with their treacherous blood!'
'The bishop wants this young man to speak with Brother Hugh Collimore,' the monk who had read the letter now told the prior, 'and the King wishes it too. His lordship says there is a treasure to be found.'
'The King wishes it?' the prior looked in astonishment at Thomas. 'The King wishes it?' he asked again and then he came to his senses and realized there was great advantage in royal patronage and so he snatched the letter and read it himself, only to find even more advantage than he had anticipated. 'You come in search of a great thesaurus?' he asked Thomas suspiciously.
'So the bishop believes, sir,' Thomas responded.
'What treasure?' the prior snapped and all the monks gaped at him as the notion of a treasure momentarily made them forget the proximity of the Scottish army.
'The treasure, sir' — Thomas avoided giving a truthful answer — 'is known to Brother Collimore.'
'But why send you?' the prior asked, and it was a fair question for Thomas looked young and possessed no apparent rank.
'Because I have some knowledge of the matter too,' Thomas said, wondering if he had said too much.
The prior folded the letter, inadvertently tearing off the seal as he did so, and thrust it into a pouch that hung from his knotted belt. 'We shall talk after the battle,' he said, 'and then, and only then, I shall decide whether you may see Brother Collimore. He is sick, you know? Ailing, poor soul. Maybe he is dying. It may not be seemly for you to disturb him. We shall see, we shall see.' He plainly wanted to talk to the old monk himself and so be the sole possessor of whatever know-ledge Collimore might have. 'God bless you, my son,' the prior dismissed Thomas, then hoisted his sacred banner and hurried north. Most of the English army was already climbing the ridge, leaving only their wagons and a crowd of women, children and those men too sick to walk. The monks, making a procession behind their corporax cloth, began to sing as they followed the soldiers. Thomas ran to a cart and took a sheaf of arrows, which he thrust into his belt. He could see that Lord Outhwaite's men-at-arms were riding towards the ridge, followed by a large group of archers. 'Maybe the two of you should stay here,' he said to Father Hobbe.
'No!' Eleanor said. 'And you should not be fighting.' 'Not fight?' Thomas asked.
'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 vore 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 English-man, on his knees, had made a mewing sound that had made Sir William's men laugh. The man had surren-dered, 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 per-haps 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.
