Robert Low - The Lion Rampant

A man rose up suddenly with a whoop of sucked-in air and Thweng took a grip of his sword as the man felt himself, as if in wonder at finding no injuries. Thweng saw the stained gambeson and the two roughly tacked strips of cloth in the shape of the St Andrew’s cross on one breast. A Scot …

Dog Boy hauled himself up from the ruin of his horse, could not help but run his hands over his body, amazed that he had escaped the sleet of arrows.

He had thought he had done enough for this day when he had stopped chasing fleeing Englishmen — but then Jamie Douglas had come up, mounted and grinning, streaked and stained and joyous.

‘Get yerself legged up on this, Aleysandir,’ he ordered and Dog Boy, weary and sick of it all, saw the others and the extra garrons they had.

So he had hauled himself up and followed after them — chasing the King, he had been told — until the horse had squealed and veered and pitched him off. He did not know whether it had been hit or just so tired it had collapsed; he was only vaguely aware of the archers, but he was so exhausted himself that he did not struggle much when he fell.

Until now, when a tait of sense had come back to him and he’d heard someone coming. He did not want to lie there while some harridan with a dirk gralloched him, uncaring what side he belonged to.

Now he eyed the knight warily. He knew the markings of the man, though he could not recall the name — and then he saw a pile of nearby dead heave like a rise of marsh gas; a body rolled slackly away and a figure crawled out from the heap.

Thweng saw the man lever out from under bodies, rolling them to one side and climbing painfully to his knees. He raised a blood-spattered face and Thweng, with a shock, realized suddenly that he knew the man. An old Welsh archer …

Addaf stared from one to the other. He recognized Thweng by his heraldry and, with a shock, saw the dark, slim shape he was sure was Black Sir James Douglas.

‘Kill him,’ he croaked to Thweng, pointing at Dog Boy, who fumbled in his boot with a curse, only to realize he had given his spare dagger to Hob. Weaponless, he trembled and waited, wild-eyed and watching.

‘It is the Black,’ Addaf persisted and Thweng, knowing it was not, waved his sword wearily.

‘We are all done with killing here,’ he replied and sank down on one knee, feeling the weight of his armour suddenly drag at his sixty years. Addaf, confused and bewildered, angry at having been so careless of Y Crach as to have imagined him dead if not cowed, suddenly felt the sharp, stabbing lance of pain in his ribs and sat down in a squelch of bloody puddle, aware that he was probably dying and that nothing mattered, not even Y Crach’s betrayal. We were all betrayed here, he thought.

They stayed that way for some time, it seemed to the three, surrounded by dead and dying, groans and cries for God and mothers, while the wind rose and the light turned sickly in the brightness of the day. Then the first thunder growled and brought heads up.

‘Well,’ said Thweng. ‘It seems you have won this day, Scotchman. Have you a name?’

Dog Boy eyed the English knight, sure he knew the man and desperate to remember him.

‘Aleysandir,’ he said, and cocked a jaundiced eye at the wheezing Welsh archer lying in a tarn of his own blood. ‘As daring as the Black Sir James, but better looking.’

Addaf flapped a weary hand in acknowledgement of his mistake, but it was a pallid gesture and Dog Boy saw the Welshman was nearly gone from the world. Addaf lay back, looking at the great slow wheel of the sky and thinking dreamily of his ma. There was a point when he passed out of the world but no one recognized it, not even himself.

Dog Boy eyed Thweng and then straightened a little, haughty as any earl.

‘Do you yield, then?’

Sir Marmaduke barked out a short, harsh laugh.

‘Not to you,’ he replied and Dog Boy shrugged and pointed behind Sir Marmaduke.

‘Is he more of a rank for you, then?’

Bruce had picked his way slowly through the great maggot carpet of dead and dying, riding in the wake of his leaping, howling, vengeful army, the huddle of horsemen with him so stunned by it, so overwhelmed by victory that they could not speak more than low, awed murmurs.

‘We have won,’ Keith kept saying.

We have won, Bruce thought and felt the divine glow of it. God made me to a Plan and I have made the Kingdom, out of the stones of these bodies and the mortar of their blood. Christ’s Bones, what a slaughter …

The sheer scale of it was numbing, yet Bruce already felt it crushing him, felt the black chest of sins in his head creak at the seams with what it had to contain now. It would get worse, he knew, when the price for this victory became clear.

Ahead, he saw two figures, turning to face him. To his astonishment, he knew both — the Lothian man he had made his houndsman, the one called Dog Boy.

And Sir Marmaduke Thweng.

He levered himself off the horse, ignoring the warnings from Keith, and stumped across to face the knight.

‘Sir M,’ he said weakly.

‘Sirrah,’ Thweng replied. There was a pause and then they were wrapped in each other’s arms before stumbling apart.

‘I yield. You have won a great victory,’ Thweng said, managing a wry twist of grin. ‘I should now call you Your Grace the King, for it has been hard-earned.’

The King. Bruce nodded. He had taken the Crown and, at long last, made a Kingdom for it … yet, even now, he knew that it was not the end of anything, certainly not the English. They might be skulking south, bewildered and beaten, but they would be back — unless Edward could be persuaded to give up his claims and end this war, it would rumble on …

Thunder rolled out and he looked up, half hoping, half afraid to see some holy sign. It was there, but it was clear that Malachy, as ever, had a cursed saintly hand in it.

Heaven parted and God and all His angels wept into the Bannock burn and the sightless eyes of the dead.

ISABEL

The town drones like a smacked byke; there has been a great battle at Stirling and King Edward is fled. He came to Berwick, having sailed to Bamburgh from Dunbar and ridden back up to the town, to meet his escort lords who took the coast road. I saw him, clattering into the bailey with no more than four riders, but I could not say which one had been him, for they all looked pinched and afraid, arriving drookit as gutter rats in the lightning-split dark so no one would see them. Save me, crept into my cage to peer down through the rain and feeling, suddenly, more liberated than whichever of the dark, wet shadows was the King. That was a fortnight since … Constance came this day to say that now King Edward is leaving, fleeing back to London before Berwick is proper besieged. She was frightened and pale; Malise slithered in not long after like a mottled spider and snarled at her to be gone; poor wee nun, she had no courage for it and fled, weeping. Then he fell on his knees and raised his face to me as if I was Heaven itself, his mouth like a wet opening in a bog. Christ Jesus, he moaned, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, was crucified, died and was buried — I know You. You touched Heaven and came to Hell and cast out that which offended You. What You loved, O Lord, You destroyed. I understand that.

There was more, so that it was clear that Badenoch was dead and Malise had no more liege lord, nor living to be had, either from him or me. Now he has thrown me to the Hounds of God, who will need some witch to blame, to sacrifice as in darker times to older gods, to make sense of such a loss to the English.

O Lord, I am shamed and sorry to have so vexed You with myself. Give me leave to repent, for You shall know me well, soon enough.