stabbed beneath it and felt his blade pierce a mail coat. He turned the sword and jerked it free before the flesh could grip the steel. He pushed with his shield, unable to see over its top rim, felt the enemy stagger back, lowered the shield in anticipation of a lunge underneath, then rammed it forward again, throwing the enemy back. He stumbled forward, almost losing his footing by tripping on the man he had wounded, but he caught his weight by dropping the bottom edge of the shield on the ground, pushed himself upright and thrust the sword into a bearded face. The blade glanced off the cheekbone, taking an eye, and that man fell backwards, mouth agape, abandoning the fight. Sir William half ducked to avoid an axe blow, caught another sword on his shield and stabbed wildly towards the two men attacking him. Robbie, swearing and cursing, killed the axeman, then kicked a fallen man-at- arms in the face. Sir William lunged underhand and felt his sword scrape on broken mail and he twisted to stop the blade being trapped and yanked it back so that a gush of blood spilled through the metal rings of the wounded man's armour. That man fell, gasping and twitching, and more Englishmen came from the right, desperate to stop the Scottish attack that threatened to pierce clean through the Archbishop's line. 'Douglas!' Sir William roared. 'Douglas!' He was calling on his followers to come and support him, to shove and to gouge and to hack the last enemy down. He and his nephew had carved a bloody path deep into the Archbishop's ranks and it would take only a moment's fierce fighting to break the English centre and then the real slaughter could begin.
Sir William ducked as another axe flailed at him. Robbie killed that man, driving his sword through the axeman's throat, but Robbie immediately had to parry a spear thrust and in doing it he staggered back against his uncle. Sir William shoved his nephew upright and hammered his shield into an enemy's face. Where the hell were his men?
'Douglas!' Sir William thundered again. 'Douglas!'
And just then a sword or spear tangled his feet and he fell and instinctively he covered himself with the shield. Men pounded past him and he prayed that they were his followers who were breaking the last English resistance and he waited for the enemy's screaming to begin, but instead there was an insistent tap on his helmet. The tapping stopped, then started again. 'Sir William?' a gentle voice enquired.
The screaming had begun so Sir William could scarcely hear, but the gentle tapping on the crown of his helmet persuaded him it was safe to lower his shield. It took him a moment to see what was happening for his helmet had been wrenched askew when he fell and he had to pull it round. 'God's teeth,' he said when the world came into view.
'Dear Sir William,' the kindly voice said, 'I assume you yield? Of course you do. And is that young Robbie? My, how you've grown, young man! I remember you as a pup.'
'Oh, God's teeth,' Sir William said again, looking up at Lord Outhwaite.
'Can I give you a hand?' Lord Outhwaite asked solicitously, reaching down from his saddle. 'And then we can talk ransoms.'
'Jesus,' Sir William said, 'God damn it!' for he understood now that the feet pounding past had been English feet and that the screaming was coming from the Scots. The English centre had held after all, and for the Scots the battle had turned to utter disaster. It was the archers again. The Scots had lost men all day and still they outnumbered their enemy, but they had no answer to the arrows and when the Scottish centre broke down the wall and surged across its remains, so the Scottish left had retreated and exposed the flank of the King's sheltron to the English arrows.
It took a few moments for the bowmen to realize their advantage. They had joined the pursuit of the broken Scottish left and were unaware how close to victory was the Scottish centre, but then one of Lord Neville's men understood the danger. 'Archers!' His roar could be heard clear across the Wear in Durham. 'Archers!' Men broke off their plundering and pulled arrows from the bags. The bows began sounding again, each deep harp note driving an arrow into the flank of the rampaging Scots. David's sheltron had forced the central English battle back across a pasture, they had stretched it thin and they were closing on the Archbishop's great banner, and then the arrows began to bite and after the arrows came the men-atarms from the English right wing, the retainers of Lord Percy and of Lord Neville, and some were already mounted on their big horses that were trained to bite, rear and kick with their iron-shod hooves. The archers, discarding their bows yet again, followed the horsemen with axes and swords, and this time their women came as well with knives unsheathed.
The Scottish King hacked at an Englishman, saw him fall, then heard his standardbearer shout in terror and he turned to see the great banner falling. The standard-bearer's horse had been hamstrung; it screamed as it collapsed and a rabble of archers and menat-arms clawed at man and beast, snatched at the banner and hauled the standard-bearer down to a ghastly death, but then the royal chaplain seized the reins of the King's horse and dragged David Bruce out of the melee. More Scotsmen gathered about their King, escorting him away. and behind them the English were hacking down from saddles, chopping with their swords, cursing as they killed, and the King tried to turn back and continue the fight, but the chaplain forced his horse away. 'Ride, sir! Ride!' the chaplain shouted. Frightened men blundered into the King's horse that trampled on a clansman then stumbled on a corpse. There were Englishmen in the Scottish rear now and the King, seeing his danger, put back his spurs. An enemy knight took a swing at him, but the King parried the blow and galloped past the danger. His army had disintegrated into groups of desperate fugitives. He saw the Earl of Menteith try to mount a horse, but an archer seized his lordship's leg and hauled him back, then sat on him and put a knife to his throat. The Earl shouted that he yielded. The Earl of Fife was a prisoner, the Earl of Strathearn was dead, the Earl of Wigtown was being assailed by two English knights whose swords rang on his plate armour like blacksmiths' hammers. One of the big Scottish drums, its skins split and tattered, rolled down the hill, going faster and faster as the slope steepened, thumping hollow on the rocks until at last it fell sideways and slid to a halt.
The King's great banner was in English hands now as were the standards of a dozen Scottish lords. A few Scots galloped north. Lord Robert Stewart, who had so nearly won the day, was free and clear on the eastern side of the ridge while the King plunged down the western side, going into shadow because the sun was now lower than the hills towards which he rode in desperate need of refuge. He thought of his wife. Was she pregnant? He had been told that Lord Robert had hired a witch to lay a spell on her womb so that the throne would pass from Bruce to Stewart. 'Sir! Sir!' One of his men was screaming at him and the King came out of his reverie to see a group of English archers already down in the valley. How had they headed him off? He pulled on the reins, leaned right to help the horse round and felt the arrow thump into the stallion's chest. Another of his men was down, tumbling along the stony ground that was tearing his mail into bright shreds. A horse screamed, blood fanned across the dusk and another arrow slammed into the King's shield that was slung on his back. A third arrow was caught in his horse's mane and the stallion was slowing, plunging up and down as it laboured for breath. The King struck back with his spurs, but the horse could not go faster. He grimaced and the gesture opened the crusted wound on his cheek so that blood spilled from his open visor down his ripped surcoat. The horse stumbled again. There was a stream ahead and a small stone bridge and the King marvelled that anyone should make a masonry bridge over so slight a watercourse, and then the horse's front legs just collapsed and the King was rolling on the ground, miraculously free of his dying mount and without any broken bones and he scrambled up and ran to the bridge where three of his men waited on horseback, one with a riderless stallion.
But even before the King could reach the three men the arrows flickered and hammered home, each one making the horses stagger sideways from the shock of its impact. The stallion screamed, tore itself free of the man's grasp and galloped eastwards with blood dripping from its belly. Another horse collapsed with an arrow deep in its rump, two in its belly and another in its jugular. 'Under the bridge!' the King shouted. There would be shelter under the arch, a place to hide, and when he had a dozen men he would make a break for it. Dusk could not be far off and if they waited for nightfall and then walked all night they might be in Scotland by dawn.
So four Scotsmen, one of them a King, huddled under the stone bridge and caught their breath. The arrows had stopped flying, their horses were all dead and the King dared to hope that the English archers had gone in search of other prey. We wait here,' he whispered. He could hear screams from the high ground, he could hear hooves on the slope, but none sounded close to the little low bridge. He shuddered, realizing the magnitude of the disaster. His army was gone, his great hopes were nothing, the Christmas feast would not be in London and Scotland lay open to its enemies. He peered northwards. A group of clansmen splashed through the stream and suddenly six English horsemen appeared and drove their destriers off the high bank and the big swords hacked down and there was blood swirling downstream to run around the King's mailed feet and he shrank back into the shadows as the men-at-arms spurred westwards to find more fugitives. Horses clattered over the bridge and the four Scotsmen said nothing, dared not even look at each other until the sound of the hooves had faded. A trumpet was calling from the ridge and its note was hateful: triumphant and scornful. The King closed his eyes because he
