Robert Low - The Lion Wakes

Stabat Mater dolorosa, iuxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius.

The Templars, on this day dedicated to their favourite, the Virgin Herself, were almost as ecstatic as the crazy Brabancon, Edward thought, and smiled grimly. Good – let the Mournful Mother weep at her station by the Cross if it left Sir Brian de Jay and Frere John de Sawtrey rolling-eyed with martial fervour.

They, brilliant in their white and black and red, would turn Scots bowels to water when they charged with their retinues, small though they were – but that black-barred Beau Seant banner was worth another five-score knights, without a doubt.

The distant bleat of shouts from the rebel ranks wafted to him and he did not need to hear it clearly to know what it was they bellowed.

Berwick.

As if he had perpetrated some sort of bloody massacre -only a few hundred had died after all. A thousand at most and that was no more than any other stormed town in a red war suffered, and rightly, for resistance. Hardly the lake of blood the Scots painted the affair with

…

Raised voices shook him from his revery and he found the Earl Marshal arguing with Surrey; it had reached the leaning and pointing stage, but they subsided, glaring and panting, as Edward clumped up, his prick-spurs rasping the muddied grass.

‘My lord king,’ said the pouch-eyed stare of Bigod, the Earl Marshal of England. Beside him, sullen as thwarted babes, Hereford and Lincoln dripped poisonous stares and coloured finery.

‘What?’ demanded Edward savagely and had the satisfaction of seeing them wince and shuffle like boys.

‘I thought to allow the men to take some sustenance before we attack,’ growled Bigod and saw the droop-eyed scowl that made his belly curl.

‘Foolish,’ De Warenne interrupted, drawing on his full dignity as Earl of Surrey, his white arrow of beard quivering above the steel gorget. ‘A thin stream barriers us from the rebels – what if they come down on us while we sit on our arses chewing?’

Edward felt the press on his temples, as if the gold circlet was tightening on the maille coif. Christ’s Holy Arse – was he the only one with any sense here?

‘It is a Holy Day,’ he said to Bigod, soft as silk, and those who knew him braced themselves. ‘So mayhap the Virgin will summon up the miracle of a loaf and some fishes – otherwise, my lord Marshal, what God’s Anointed sustenance are you suggesting the men take?’

The Earl Marshal opened and closed his mouth a few times, but Edward had already started to savage the triumphantly smiling De Warenne.

‘As for you – you need not grin like a mule’s cunny pissing in a heat-wave,’ he snarled. ‘It is a great pity you did not have this caution the first time you encountered this Wallace, else we would not be in this mess.’

The Earl of Surrey glowered, his face turning dark with suffused blood, which brought a savage leap of exultation in Edward’s heart; he twisted the knife harder.

‘He will not, of course, come down on us here, for we are not hemmed in on three sides as you contrived at Stirling.’

‘We will attack at once,’ the Earl of Lincoln said swiftly, with a neat little bow from the neck. Edward saw the smoothly transmitted warning from De Lacy and reined himself in; it would not do to antagonise every great lord of his realm on the morning of battle.

‘Of course you bloody will,’ Edward growled, waving to his arming squire to bring up Bayard. ‘Over there is the ogre we have spent weeks on empty bellies to find. Now slay the beast, in the name of God and all His Saints, and let us be done with this business once and for all.’

‘Amen,’ said Lincoln and reined round.

The army shifted, like a huge stone trembling at the top of a mountain.

Addaf felt it, even in a belly as clappit as his, where his belt buckle rattled against his spine. Buttered capons and golden, crusted pastries rich with mushroom and onion, soups luxurious with eggs and milk – if you are dreaming of food it is always better to dream large, rather than of rye bread and pease brose.

‘Captain Heydin.’

The voice bellowed out from a splendid figure, all red and gold on a barded horse. His banners and accoutrements were all marked with a golden flower and a studding of little gold daggers on a bright red background; as Heydin Captain said, he would not be missed at a thousand paces, would the Lord FitzAlan of Bedale.

In the retinue of Bishop Bek, he had been appointed millinar, the command of the foot and took the task seriously.

‘Captain Heydin,’ he said in careful English, his helm tucked under one arm, the other fighting to control the warhorse, which wanted to be away with all the others riding ahead. ‘Watch your station and do not get between the horse and the enemy. Mark me, now.’

‘Yer honour,’ Heydin Captain replied and put a fist across his chest in salute as the knight rode away, then turned to the other Welsh archers, a wry smile plastered on his face.

‘The mannie wants us to stay out of the way of those caperers on their fat ponies,’ he boomed in Welsh. ‘Let the proud folk have their fun and then we will win the day for them. Nyd hyder ond bwa.’

There is no dependence but on the bow. The Welshmen all growled and grinned at that, while Addaf checked his flights. It had taken him a long while to make new arrows with fine peacock flights to replace the ones he had thrown away at Stirling – the memory of that floundering panic of a day, when he had hauled himself out on the safe side of the river like a half-drowned dog, made him shiver.

He had lost his bowbag and arrows, his shoes and a good gambeson that day, a hard loss for a man with little enough; he touched the new leather shoes – hung round his neck like an amulet, for you never risked their loss on a field cut with sucking streams and churned mud. He would not lose this time. This time, he would gain.

The knight of Bedale forced a way through the throng of spears and bows, repeating his message to those he had found spoke English, though he was not sure whether some were cozening him with that or not. The Welsh nodded and saluted and watched him ride off; he was not a bad commander for an Englishman, but he was still an Englishman, who had asked Heydin Captain why his name was round the wrong way.

It was not, he was told. For over there was Heydin ap Daffyd and there was Heydin, nicknamed Gwrnerth Ergydlym, or Powerful Sharpshot since he was the worst archer of them all, barely putting six out of ten in a palm’s width at a hundred paces. Then he had to explain to the bemused lord that it was a jest, just as Rhodri was called Gam – Squint-Eyed – because he was the best shot of all, even to putting it round corners and killing a bear with a straw arrow, it was rumoured.

In the end, just as Heydin was patiently explaining that Gwynned ap Mydr was nicknamed One Eye though he actually had two – he could not close his aiming eye and had to have a black patch placed over it for shooting – the Lord of Bedale had held up one hand.

‘He is the best shot of all, look you, my lord,’ Heydin Captain tried to add as the knight rode away, still unsure whether he was being made a fool of. ‘He can shoot the wren through his claw, from Caenog, in the Vale of Clwyd, to Esgair Vervel in Ireland…’

Now the Lord of Bedale put his great bucket helm on the saddle bow and leaned on it, looking wistfully after the knights of Bishop Bek’s command, the Second Battle all riding ahead to join the heavy horse of the king himself, the combined Battles forming the hard right hook of the army. He wanted to be there rather than the millinar of foot, trying to herd the great body of spearmen and archers, gabbling in their own foul language and ploughing harsh furrows over Redding Muir down to the Westquarter Burn.