Robert Low - The Lion Wakes

Addaf did not care what the Lord of Bedale felt, only what he belly felt. Away to his left, he saw a magnificent galloper, bright in horizontal stripes, tippets flying from the dome of his sugarloaf heaume; he and other archers who saw him growled deep in their throats, for this was De Valence, who had charged down good Welshmen not long before – eighty were dead of it.

One or two of the archers aimed their unstrung bows at him in future promise, then hurried on when a knot of bright riders surged up past them, thick with banners and purpose. The king himself…

One arrow, Addaf thought. One good peacock-fletched shaft with a bodkin point at the back of that red jupon with the three gold pards and Llewellyn is avenged, Ylfron Bridge’s ghosts laid to rest, Maes Moydog and Madog ap Llewellyn paid for. Yet no-one shot more than surly looks, just kept their heads down and slogged on.

Edward saw them, all the same, and both parties would have been surprised to find they were thinking of Maes Moydog, though for differing reasons.

Like the Welsh then, Edward thought, the Scots are trying great bands of spearmen to resist the knights. Well, we shot them down with Gascon crossbows at Maes Moydog and we will do so again here – there will be no repeat of the idiocy at Stirling. The idea cheered him – even if Maes Moydog had been the victory of the Earl of Warwick – and he raised a hand to wave to delighted youngsters, who had never been in great battle before and were bright with the thrill of it all.

‘Dieu vous garde!

‘Felicitas.’

‘Dieu vivas.’

They threw greetings like gaudy tokens to lovers and Edward watched them, wondering where his own fire for this had gone, thinking savagely to himself that they would find the truth of it all when the spear points tumbled them and their expensive horse to the mud and the shite rolled fearfully out of them as they scrabbled to be away. In the end, he knew, the Gascon crossbows would decide it. And the Welsh bowmen if they stuck to the task of it.

Maes Moydog…

He saw Sir Giles D’Argentan ride up, splendid and grim and was cheered by the sight of the second-best knight in Christendom, admitting in his inner heart that, since the foremost knight was himself in his better days, the laurels had shifted a little to a much younger man.

Alongside D’Argentan was an even younger squire, riding easy and lithe and splendid, his hair like fine gold mist wisping from under the coif and his helmet tucked under one arm so that he could drink in all that was happening around him. With a shock, Edward saw that this was a boy, no older than his own son.

D’Argentan reined in and bowed his inhuman, barrel-heaumed head, then removed it to reveal his beaming, scarred face. He saw the king was looking elsewhere and turned to the squire.

‘Do you not know your king, boy?’ he said. The squire bowed at once. No scowl or resentment, Edward thought; this boy knows the dignity of knights and how to behave as one, which starts with obedience. My own son is as tall and as strong and rides the lists as well – but this one knows the style of his profession, as surely as little Edward fails to grasp the dignity of the Crown he must one day wear. Thatching and ditch-digging; the thought made him scowl.

‘If your grace permits,’ D’Argentan declared, ‘may I present Piers Gaveston, esquire. I have been given him for the instructioning.’

‘Gaveston,’ Edward repeated slowly. Son of Sir Arnaud, he recalled suddenly, the Gascon I used as hostage with the French twice. He remembered welcoming Arnaud into his household after the man had fled France.

The boy had a smooth, beardless face, innocent as prayer and capped with an angel’s gold hair. Like mine once was, the king thought wistfully.

‘How old are you, boy?’ he demanded.

‘Fourteen years and two months, if it please your grace.’

The answer was steady and not in the least overawed by the stern old ogre king, Edward thought. This lad is good material and of ages with my own son.

‘Keep him safe,’ he said to the smiling D’Argentan. ‘I may have uses for this lad.’

He watched them ride off, pleased to see the straight back of the boy and the easy way he controlled a destrier. Perhaps an example like this, he thought, would turn Edward to kingly matters. Thatching and digging ditches, by God’s Arse. Mimers and mummers and naked swimming in rivers…

‘Quod non vertat iniquita dies, said a sonorous voice and Edward knew it was the Bishop of Durham before he had even turned his head.

And so it comes, the wicked day – typical of the round-faced little cant, Edward thought sourly. Yet Bek was another of those necessary evils of ruling, a churchman of power, armed, armoured and resplendent in red with his ermined cross and his pudding-bowl tonsure.

‘Regis regum rectissimi prope est Dies Domini, he rasped back. The day of the Lord, the rightful King of Kings, is close at hand – let him chew that one over, Edward thought with savage humour. ‘Virtutis fortuna comes,

Fortune favours courage was what folk took it to mean – but the comes in it originally referred to the elite Roman horsemen and Bek knew the king had made a clever wordplay on the knights of his own army. Since the king’s jests were few, Bek never faltered or frowned, offering a small, admiring smile instead.

‘Very good, my liege,’ he said, then glanced up the long roll of slope and dips to where the faint line marked the enemy. ‘Do you think they fear us yet, sire?’

Wallace felt the fear behind him, washing like stink from a shambles as the coloured skeins of armoured horsemen advanced over the meadow, careless and bright as trailing ribbons. A Battle, forming the left of the English line, it was a dazzle of fluttering pennons and banners that Wallace knew well and he smiled grimly to himself. De Warenne again…

The Van, pushing forward to the right of De Warenne, were singing, the voices faint and eldritch on a fickle wind: Quant Rollant veit que la bataille serat, plus se fait fiers que leon ne leupart.

When Roland sees that now must be combat, more fierce he’s found than lion or leopard – Wallace knew that chanson de geste to Roland well enough and screwed half round in his saddle, into the drawn, pinched grimness behind him.

‘Have we no voices, my lords?’ he demanded in halting French.

A high, clear voice started it and Wallace thanked God for his kin – Simon, his cousin. The other two, Adam and Richard, joined in almost at once, for they had been known as the Unholy Trinity since they had started to tear around together, causing mischief. You would not know that now from their angel voices and the thought made him smile, even as other throats, gruff, out of tune, trembling, rose to join in.

Hostem repellas longius, pacemque dones protinus; Ductore sic te praevio, Vitemus omne noxium

Drive far away our wily foe, and Thine abiding peace bestow; If Thou be our protecting Guide, no evil can our steps betide.

In the tight ring of dry-mouthed spearmen, men unflexed a hand from the shaft and crossed themselves. Even if they did not understand the Latin of it, they knew it was a call to God to hold His Hand over them as the coloured talons scarred towards them, paused, then started to coalesce into fat, tight blocks of silver-tipped dazzle.

Deep in the forest of spears, someone was sick.

Peering through the leaves like an animal, Hal saw the horse of the Van gather like wolves, the great bedsheet banners of Lincoln and Hereford smothering the host of lesser pennons of their retinues. They were planning to fall on the centre and Hal grinned through the sweat as he saw the sudden flutter in them; the Selkirk archers had released.

The horsemen bunched; commanders galloped back and forth and, in the still, fly-pocked swelter of the woods, men who knew the muscled sign of it grunted expectantly as the huge blocks started forward at a determined, knee-to-knee walk.