Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

“How long, think you, have we?”

“Not long-if it was I who commanded. Only days. But with Edward of Carnarvon—who knows? Th English must be desperate for food. Because of the speed of their advance, and the land burned before them. Waiting in Edinburgh will serve them nothing. Unless they have more ships coming north, with provision and fodder. Their strategy is to attack us quickly, while they are strong and we are not. So we must use what forces we have-and thank God for every day He grants us for more aid to come up. I sent commands to Galloway, Annandale and Carrick, to muster, as we came up. Many thousands will come from these-but not within a week.”

“Walter Stewart has ridden on, Sire. To Dunfermline. To be with the Queen and the Court. To have all ready to flee northwards.

We did not know how long Your Grace would be …”

“That is well. But we will not have them to flee yet awhile, let us hope. This English army is great in numbers. But I cannot think that it is great in much else! It has been too swiftly put together.

Insufficiently ordered. And I cannot believe it better led than that which failed at Bannockburn -for it has even less able commanders.

Edward and young Despenser are babes in warfare! Had Harcla been in command, I would have been more fearful.”

“The Despensers do not love Harcla, it is said. And King Edward does not trust him.”

“For that the good Lord be praised! But-enough of this. I ride for Culross. My lord Chamberlain-I want messengers sent to every life burgh and provost, every village in South and East life.

All shipping, boats and fishing-craft to be sent up-Forth to Culross.

And fires to be lit everywhere along the shore. Inland also. Great fires, with much smoke. Burn straw, thatch, brushwood-what they will. So that from Edinburgh and the Lothian coast it will seem as though all life is being burned, as Lothian has been. That there will be no food for the hungry English there! It may discourage Edward from his sailing. Aye-but tell the Fifers to be ready to fire the food and forage in truth, if and when the enemy sails. But meantime, let the smoke serve …”

August 1322 was wet and cold and windy. In it, East Scotland smoked, while still King Edward sat in Holyrood Abbey, at Edinburgh, and did not move. Every chill, rain-soaked day of it the Scots forces grew in numbers and preparedness, at Stirling and Culross. Probing English sallies were made south and west, into Ettrick Forest’s outskirts and North Clydesdale, in especial-but these were in search of cattle, sheep, even deer, and grain and hay, sustenance for 100,000 hungry men, and rather fewer hungry horses, since the latter were now being eaten. The Scots’ grim joke was that the invaders were settled down to wait for this year’s harvest.

It was no secret in Edinburgh-and therefore to Bruce’s innumerable spies therein-that Edward was in fact waiting for a provisioning fleet to sail up from the Humber. A wiser commander would surely have organised this somewhat earlier.

When Bruce heard the reason for the English delay, he sent immediate word to his Lord High Admiral, Angus Og, now recruiting legions of Islesmen, amongst the Hebrides, to send to the aid of his friend. The King’s request-he never sent commands to the Lord of the Isles-was that he cease these activities forthwith, and drive with his galleys, with all their famed speed, up and round the north coasts of Scotland, through the Pentland Firth, and so down the eastern seaboard, to intercept Edward’s victualling fleet if at all possible. How many days it would take these wolves of the sea to make the difficult 500-mile circuit depended on the winds and tides, as well as on strong men’s sinews. But the MacGregor himself an expert on galleys, come limping from Loch Lomondside with his Children of the Mist, declared that he could do it in five days and nights of even winter seas. Though MacDonalds, of course, were not MacGregors …!”

Be that as it may, on the 10th of August a single long, low galley

came racing up Forth from the open sea, its great square sail painted with the black Galley of the Isles, its double-banked oars raising a curtain of spray on either side. On board was young John of Islay, Angus’s son and heir, little more than a boy, but splendid in antique Viking-style winged-helm and golden chain-mail. He announced that his father’s full strength, in ships, now lay in the Tay estuary, hidden, with scouting craft as far south as Berwick and the Fames. There had been no sign of any English fleet-save what they had glimpsed, in passing, in Leith harbour. Did the Lord Robert want that routed out, and sunk?

Laughing, in his relief and satisfaction, Bruce declined this particular service meantime, and knighted the young man there and then.

By the third week in August there was still no sign of the victualling fleet. The cold, wet and unseasonable northerly winds continued, and the Islesmen’s protracted vigil must have been a sore one.

Presumably it was the said contrary winds which delayed the English ships-or else treachery at home, from whence rumours of new revolts of rebellious barons came daily. King Edward ventured neither upon the Forth nor along its Lothian shores, westwards.

The tales from famine-stricken Edinburgh were harrowing.

Bruce had now some 25,000 men assembled, the majority at Culross, some 8,000 at Stirling. He had even sent a couple of thousand Highlanders south to reinforce Douglas in the Forest, from which that stalwart was assailing the English lines of communication and preventing food-trains and cattle-herds from winning northwards through the hills.

On the 2nd of September, Holyrood Abbey went up in flames, and a valedictory slaughter took place in unhappy Edinburgh. It was the equally unhappy Plantagenet’s leave-taking. He turned his petulant and haggard face to the south, and led-if that is the word-his now semi-mutinous host homewards. Knowing too well the burned and smoking desert of East Lothian and the Merse, they took the hill road this time, by Soutra and Lauderdale and the eastern skirts of the Forestbut found neither food nor comfort there, for now Douglas gave them no rest. Out-of-hand, unruly, the English were easy prey for that hardened scourge of their kind. He and his slew and slew, but seemed to make only little impact on the vast, sprawling, starving thousands. There was nothing like a battle, nor even a standing fight. The nearest to anything of the sort was when Douglas came rushing to the rescue of Melrose Abbey, that lovely fane where Leader joined Tweedbut not before most of the rose-red buildings were ablaze and Abbot William Peebles and many of his monks crucified or otherwise shamefully slaughtered.

It was a disorganised and demoralised rabble, of barely half the numbers that had gone north, which crossed the Border on the 5th and 6th of September, the King and the Despensers spurring far ahead. Northumberland thereafter wilted and cringed under the infamous influx.

Douglas followed on, direly busy.

It did not seem so long since Elizabeth de Burgh had been concocting activities to keep her husband’s mind off himself. Now, despite her pleas that he hold back, rest awhile, himself was not to be considered. The words sickness and leprosy had not passed his lips in months. He saw opportunity wide before him, and was not the man to fail to take it. He had an un blooded army standing impatient, and an enemy in hopeless rout and confusion, their land defenceless. He sent some mounted reinforcements for the busy Douglas; besought Angus Og to continue down the English east coast with his ships; and, saying good-bye to his protesting Queen, left Lamberton, Lennox and Abbot Bernard in charge of his kingdom and set off with Moray and Walter Stewart for England once more, with a picked force of 20,000 light cavalry and Highlanders.