'Don't waste arrows on words,' he called.
'Cowards!' A Scotsman dared to come even closer to the English line, well within half a bowshot. 'You bastard cowards! Your mothers are whores who suckled you on goat piss! Your wives are sows! Whores and sows! You hear me? You bastards! English bastards! You're the devil's turds!' The fury of his hatred made him shake. He had a bristling beard, a ragged jupon and a coat of mail with a great rent in its backside so that when he turned round and bent over he presented his naked arse to the English. It was meant as an insult, but was greeted by a roar of laughter.
'They'll have to attack us sooner or later,' Lord Outhwaite stated calmly. 'Either that or go home with nothing, and I can't see them doing that. You don't raise an army of that size without hope of profit.'
'They sacked Hexham,' the prior observed gloomily.
'And got nothing but baubles,' Lord Outhwaite said dismissively. 'The real treasures of Hexham were taken away for safekeeping long ago. I hear Carlisle paid them well enough to be left alone, but well enough to make eight or nine thousand men rich?' He shook his head. 'Those soldiers don't get paid,' he told Thomas, 'they're not like our men. The King of Scotland doesn't have the cash to pay his soldiers. No, they want to take some rich prisoners today, then sack Durham and York, and if they're not to go home poor and empty-handed then they'd best hitch up their shields and come at us.'
But still the Scots would not move and the English were too few to make an attack, though a straggle of men were constantly arriving to reinforce the Arch-bishop's army. They were mostly local men and few had any armour or any weapons other than farm implements like axes and mattocks. It was close to midday now and the sun had chased the chill off the land so that Thomas was sweating under his leather and mail. Two of the prior's lay servants had arrived with a horse-drawn cart loaded with casks of small beer, sacks of bread, a box of apples and a great cheese, and a dozen of the younger monks carried the provisions along the English line. Most of the army was sitting now, some were even sleeping and many of the Scots were doing the same. Even their drummers had given up, laying their great instruments on the pasture. A dozen ravens circled overhead and Thomas, thinking their presence presaged death, made the sign of the cross, then was relieved when the dark birds flew north across the Scottish troops. A group of archers had come from the city and were cramming arrows into their quivers, a sure sign that they had never fought with the bow for a quiver was a poor instrument in battle. Quivers were likely to spill arrows when a man ran, and few held more than a score of points. Archers like Thomas preferred a big bag made of linen stretched about a withy frame in which the arrows stood upright, their feathers kept from being crushed by the frame and their steel heads projecting through the bag's neck, which was secured by a lace. Thomas had selected his arrows carefully, rejecting any with warped shafts or kinked feathers. In France, where many of the enemy knights possessed expensive plate armour, the English would use bodkin arrows with long, narrow and heavy heads that lacked barbs and so were more likely to pierce breastplates or helmets, but here they were still using the hunting arrows with their wicked barbs that made them impossible to pull out of a wound. They were called flesh arrows, but even a flesh arrow could pierce mail at two hundred paces.
Thomas slept for a time in the early afternoon, only waking when Lord Outhwaite's horse almost stepped on him. His lordship, along with the other English commanders, had been summoned to the Archbishop and so he had called for his horse and, accompanied by his squire, rode to the army's centre. One of the Arch-bishop's chaplains carried a silver crucifix along the line. The crucifix had a leather bag hanging just below the feet of Christ and in the bag, the chaplain claimed, were the knuckle bones of the martyred St Oswald. 'Kiss the bag and God will preserve you,' the chaplain promised, and archers and men-at-arms jostled for a chance to obey. Thomas could not get close enough to kiss the bag, but he did manage to reach out and touch it. Many men had amulets or strips of cloth given them by their wives, lovers or daughters when they left their farms or houses to march against the invaders. They touched those talismans now as the Scots, sensing that some-thing was about to happen at last, climbed to their feet. One of their great drums began its awful noise.
Thomas glanced to his right where he could just see the tops of the cathedral's twin towers and the banner flying from the castle's ramparts. Eleanor and Father Hobbe should be in the city by now and Thomas felt a pang of regret that he had parted from his woman in such anger, then he gripped his bow so that the touch of its wood might keep her from evil. He consoled him-self with the knowledge that Eleanor would be safe in the city and tonight, when the battle was won, they could make up their quarrel. Then, he supposed, they would marry. He was not sure he really wanted to marry, it seemed too early in his life to have a wife even if it was Eleanor, whom he was sure he loved, but was equally sure she would want him to abandon to yew bow and settle in a house and that was the very last thing Thomas wanted. What he wanted was be a leader of archers, to be a man like Will Skeat. He wanted to have his own band of bowmen that he could hire out to great lords. There was no shortage of opportunity. Rumour said that the Italian states would pay a fortune for English archers and Thomas wanted part of it, but Eleanor must be looked after and he did not want their child to be a bastard. There were enough bastards in the world without adding another. The English lords talked for a while. There were a dozen of them and they glanced constantly at the enemy and Thomas was close enough to see the anxiety a their faces. Was it worry that the enemy was too many? Or that the Scots were refusing battle and, in the next morning's mist, might vanish northwards? Brother Michael came and rested his old bones on the herring barrel that had served Lord Outhwaite as a seat. 'They'll send you archers forward. That's what I'd do. Send you archers forward to provoke the bastards. Either that or drive them off, but you don't drive Scotsmen off that easily. They're brave bastards.'
'Brave? Then why aren't they attacking?'
'Because they're not fools. They can see these.' Brother Michael touched the black stave of Thomas's bow. 'They've learned what archers can do. You've heard of Halidon Hill?' He raised his eyebrows in surprise when Thomas shook his head. 'Of course, you're from the south. Christ could come again in the north and you southerners would never hear about it, or believe it if you did. But it was thirteen years ago now and they attacked us by Berwick and we cut them down in droves. Or our archers did, and they won't be enthusiastic about suffering the same fate here.' Brother Michael frowned as a small click sounded. 'What was that?'
Something had touched Thomas's helmet and he turned to see the Scarecrow, Sir Geoffrey Carr, who had cracked his whip, just glancing the metal claw at its tip off the crest of Thomas's sallet. Sir Geoffrey coiled his whip as he jeered at Thomas. 'Sheltering behind monks' skirts, are we?'
Brother Michael restrained Thomas. 'Go, Sir Geoffrey,' the monk ordered, 'before I call down a curse onto your black soul.'
Sir Geoffrey put a finger into a nostril and pulled out something slimy that he flicked towards the monk. 'You think you frighten me, you one-eyed bastard? You who lost your balls when your hand was chopped off?' He laughed, then looked back to Thomas. 'You picked a fight with me, boy, and you didn't give me a chance to finish it.'
'Not nosy!' Brother Michael snapped.
Sir Geoffrey ignored the monk. 'Fighting your betters, boy? You can hang for that. No'
– he shuddered, then pointed a long bony finger at Thomas – 'you will hang for that! You hear me? You will hang for it.' He spat at Thomas, then turned his roan horse and spurred it back down the line.
'How come you know the Scarecrow?' Brother Michael asked.
'We just met.'
'An evil creature,' Brother Michael said, making the sign of the cross, 'born under a waning moon when a storm was blowing.' He was still watching the Scarecrow. 'Men say that Sir Geoffrey owes money to the devil himself. He had to pay a ransom to Douglas of Mesdale and he borrowed deep from the bankers to do it. His manor, his fields, everything he owns is in danger if he can't pay, and even if he makes a fortune today he'll just throw it away at dice. The Scarecrow's fool, but a dangerous one.' He turned his one eye on Thomas. 'Did you really pick a fight with him?'
'He wanted to rape my woman.'
'Aye, that's our Scarecrow. So be careful, young man, because he doesn't forget slights and he never forgives them.'
The English lords must have come to some agreement r they reached out their mailed fists and touched metal knuckle on metal knuckle, then Lord Outhwaite turned his horse back towards his men. 'John! John!' he called to the captain of his archers. 'We'll not wait for them to make up their minds,' he said as he dismounted, 'but be provocative.' It seemed Brother Michael's prognostication was right; the archers would be sent forward to annoy the Scots. The plan was to enrage them with arrows and so spur them into a hasty tack.
A squire rode Lord Outhwaite's horse back to the walled pasture as the Archbishop of York rode his destrier
