'Thesaurus, sir, that's what's in it, thesaurus.'
'Thesaurus?' Sir Geoffrey said, stumbling over the foreign word. 'And what, you gelded piece of weasel shit, what, in the name of a thousand virgins, is a thesaurus?'
'Treasure, sir, treasure. Latin, sir. Thesaurus, sir, is Latin for . . .' the monk's voice trailed away. .. treasure,' he finished lamely.
'Treasure.' Sir Geoffrey repeated the word flatly.
The monk, half choking, was suddenly eager to repeat the gossip that had circulated amongst the brethren since Thomas of Hookton had encountered the prior. 'The King sent him, sir, his majesty himself, and my lord the bishop too, sir, from France, and they're looking for a treasure, sir, but no one knows what it is.' 'The King?'
'Or where it is, sir, yes, sir, the King himself, sir. He sent him, sir.'
Sir Geoffrey looked into the monk's eyes, saw no guile and so unlooped the whip.
'You dropped some apples, boy.'
'I did, sir, I did, sir, yes.'
'Feed one to my horse.' He watched the monk retrieve an apple, then his face suddenly contorted with anger. 'Wipe the mud off it first, you toadspawn! Clean it!' He shuddered, then stared northwards, but he was not seeing the surviving Scots of the enemy's right wing scramble out of the low ground and he did not even notice the escape of his hated enemy, Sir William Doug-las, who had impoverished him. He saw none of these things because the Scarecrow was thinking of treasure. Of gold. Of heaps of gold. Of his heart's desire. Of money and jewels and coins and plate and women and everything a heart could ever want.
The sheltron on the Scottish left, rampant and savage, forced the English right so far back that a great gap appeared between the English centre, behind its stone wall, and the retreating division on its right. That retreat meant that the right flank of the central division was now exposed to Scottish attack, indeed the rear of the Archbishop's battle was exposed to the Scots, but then, from all across the ridge, the archers came to the rescue. They came to make a new line that protected the Archbishop's flank, a line that faced sideways onto the triumphant Scottish assault and the swarm of archers drove their arrows into Lord Robert Stewart's sheltron. They could not miss. These were bowmen who started their archery practice at a hundred paces and finished over two hundred paces from the straw-filled targets, and now they were shooting at twenty paces and the arrows flew with such force that some pierced through mail, body and mail again. Men in armour were being spitted by the arrows and the right-hand side of the Scottish advance crumpled in blood and pain, and every man who fell exposed another victim to the bow-men who were shooting as fast as they could lay their arrows on the cords. The Scots were dying by the score. They were dying and they were screaming. Some men instinctively tried to charge the archers, but were immediately cut down; no troops could stand that assault of feathered steel and suddenly the Scots were pulling back, tripping over the dead left by their charge, stumbling back across the pasture to where they had begun their charge and they were pursued every step of the way by the hissing arrows until, at last, an English voice ordered the archers to rest their bows. 'But stay here!' the man ordered, wanting the archers who had come from the left wing to stay on the beleaguered right. Thomas was among the archers. He counted his arrows, finding only seven left in his bag and so he began hunting in the grass for shot arrows that were not badly damaged, but then a man nudged him and pointed to a cart that was trundling across the field with spare sheaves. Thomas was astonished. 'In France we were ever running out of arrows.'
'Not here.' The man had a hare lip, which made him hard to understand. 'They keep
'em in Durham. In the castle. Three counties send 'em here.' He scooped up two new sheaves.
The arrows were made all across England and Wales. Some folk cut and trimmed the shafts, others collected the feathers, women span the cords and men boiled the hide, hoof and verdigris glue while smiths forged the heads, and then the separate parts were carried to towns where the arrows were assembled, bundled and sent on to London, York, Chester or Durham where they awaited an emergency. Thomas broke the twine on two sheaves and put the new arrows in a bag he had taken from a dead archer. He had found the man lying behind the Archbishop's troops and Thomas had left his old torn bag beside the man's body and now had a new bag filled with fresh arrows. He flexed the fingers of his right hand. They were sore, proof he had not shot enough arrows since the battle in Picardy. His back ached as it always did after he had shot the bow twenty or more times. Each draw was the equivalent of lifting a man one-handed and the effort of it dug the ache deep into his spine, but the arrows had driven the Scottish left wing clean back to where it had started and where, like their English enemies, they now drew breath. The ground between the two armies was littered with spent arrows, dead men and wounded, some of whom moved slowly as they tried to drag themselves back to their comrades. Two dogs sniffed at a corpse, but skittered away when a monk shied a stone at them.
Thomas unlooped the string of his bow so that the stave straightened. Some archers liked to leave their weapons permanently strung until the stave had taken on the curve of a tensioned bow, and were said to have followed the string; the curve was supposed to show that the bow was well used and thus that its owner was an experienced soldier, but Thomas reckoned a bow that had followed the string was weakened and so he unstrung his as often as he could. That also helped to preserve the cord. It was difficult to fashion a cord of exactly the right length, and inevitably it stretched, but a good hempen string, soaked with glue, could last the best part of a year if it was kept dry and not subjected to constant tension. Like many archers, Thomas liked to reinforce his bowcords with women's hair because that was meant to protect the strings from snapping in a fight. That and praying to St Sebastian. Thomas let the string hang from the top of the bow, then squatted in the grass where he took the arrows from his bag one by one and span them between his fingers to detect any_ warping in their shafts.
'The bastards will be back!' A man with a silver crescent on his surcoat strode down the line. 'They'll be back for more! But you've done well!' The silver crescent was half obscured by blood. An archer spat and another impulsively stroked his unstrung bow. Thomas thought that if he lay down he would probably sleep, but he was assailed by the ridiculous fear that the other archers would retreat and leave him there, sleeping, and the Scots would find and kill him. The Scots, though, were resting like the English. Some men were bent over as if they caught their breath, others were sitting on the grass while a few clustered round a barrel of water or ale. The big drums were silent, but Thomas could hear the scrape of stone on steel as men sharpened blades blunted by the battle's first clash. No insults were being shouted on either side now, men just eyed each other warily. Priests knelt beside dying men, praying their souls into heaven, while women shrieked because their husbands, lovers or sons were dead. The English right wing, its numbers thinned by the ferocity of the Scottish attack, had moved back to its original place and behind them were scores of dead and dying men. The Scottish casualties left behind by the precipitate retreat were being stripped and searched and a fight broke out between two men squabbling over a handful of tarnished coins. Two monks carried water to the wounded. A small child played with broken rings from a mail coat while his mother attempted to prise a broken visor off a pike that she reckoned would make a good axe. A Scotsman, thought dead, suddenly groaned and turned over and a man-at-arms stepped to him and stabbed down with his sword. The enemy stiffened, relaxed and did not move again. 'Ain't resurrection day yet, you bastard,' the man-at-arms said as he dragged his sword free. 'Goddamn son of a whore,' he grumbled, wiping his sword on the dead man's ragged surcoat, 'waking up like that! Gave me a turn!' He was not speaking to anyone in particular, but just crouched beside the man he had killed and began searching his clothes.
The cathedral towers and castle walls were thick with spectators. A heron flew beneath the ramparts, following the looping river that sparkled prettily under the autumn sun. Thomas could hear corncrakes down the slope. Butterflies, surely the last of the year, flew above the blood-slicked grass. The Scots were standing, stretching, pulling on helmets, pushing their forearms into their shield loops and hefting newly sharpened swords, pikes and spears. Some glanced over to the city and imagined the treasures stored in the cathedral crypt and castle cellars. They dreamed of chests crammed with gold, vats overflowing with coin, rooms heaped with silver, taverns running with ale and streets filled with women. 'In the name of the Father and of the Son,' a priest called, 'and of the Holy Ghost. St Andrew is with you. You fight for your King! The enemy are godless imps of Satan! God is with us!'
'Up, boys, up!' an archer called on the English side. Men stood, strung their bows and took the first arrow from the bag. Some crossed themselves, oblivious that the Scots did the same.
Lord Robert Stewart, mounted on a fresh grey stal-lion, pushed his way towards the front of the Scottish left wing. 'They'll have few arrows left,' he promised his men, 'few arrows. We can break them!' His men had so nearly broken the damned English last time. So nearly, and surely another howling rush would obliterate the small defiant army and open the road to the opulent riches of the south.
'For St Andrew!' Lord Robert called and the drummers began their beating, 'for our King! For Scotland!' And
