Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

Less, it may be.”

“Good. Richmond, then, sits up on the ridge facing us, with this Scawton gap on his left. If an attack was mounted up the smaller valley, the corrie, directly on to his escarpment-what would be the result?”

“Massacre, I’d say, for the attackers!” Walter Stewart put in from behind, grimly.

“Only if the attack was pressed home. To the end.”

“Ah! A diversion only?” Douglas said.

“More than that. A true attack. But in stages. And for special purpose. What result, I say? If Richmond believed it the main, the only attack?”

“I* faith-I see! He would withdraw his men out of the Scawton gap, to aid him and protect his flanks. I see it…”

“Only if he believed his flanks threatened,” Moray interposed.

“And if he was sure that there would be no secondary assault, through the gap. By a larger force.”

“As you say, Thomas. But if he does not know that there is a larger force-my force-in this vale? And Douglas, whom he knows of, attacks with his full strength up this corrie? And nimble Highlandmen climb both flanks of the corrie, north and south?

And are seen so to do. What then?”

“It might serve …”

“There looks to be much woodland over there. If my main force was hidden in those woods. With scouts out to watch the Scawton gap. Then, if Richmond withdraws his people from it, I rush down and through with my cavalry, we are into the Rye valley behind him, cutting him off from the king. And Rievaulx is at our mercy.”

“Sweet Mary-Mother- a joy! A delight!” Douglas slapped his thigh.

“Scarce a joy for you, in that shallow valley, under Richmond’s nose! Acting bait for this trap. And only possible if Richmond does not know Your Grace is here,” the cautious Moray pointed out.

“How can we cross an army to the shelter of those woods, over the open plain, without being seen? Which would ruin all.”

“Jamie has already shown us. His smoke. Even now it obscures the view. It is a west wind. If there was greatly more smoke, if Jamie set his torch men to fire everything that would burn down there, all along the vale-hay, straw, reeds, thatch, brush, scrub-then this would roll towards Richmond’s escarpment, to the east, and he would see nothing of what went on below. If done skilfully.”

“He would guess that an attack was being mounted …”

“To be sure. But it would be Douglas’s attack. And when Douglas appeared indeed in this corrie below him, it would all fit well enough. He would have no reason to fear that another and much larger host was still lying below, in the woodland.”

Moray had to admit that this was so.

“Now, then.” Time is our enemy,” Bruce declared.

“Only four or five short hours, to do so much. But tomorrow it will be too late. I fear we will be fighting in the dark, this night. You have it, Jamie?

Yours is the heavy weight of this task. You can have so many more men as you need. Richmond may charge down on you. It may be sore fighting, there in the bed of the corrie-although then, the Highlandmen on the heights could come down on his flanks. Are you content?”

“Content,” Douglas nodded.

”It is a ploy after my own heart. Save that it will not be I who

rides to capture King Edward! That I would wish to see.”

“That we none of us may see. Now-to work. The fires first…”

“Sire-you do not need me, in this,” Moray said.

“Your permission, I pray, to ride with Sir James?”

The King looked quizzically at his nephew.

“You consider his to be the dangerous part, and needs must share it?”

The other shrugged.

“I am like to see more fighting with him than with Your Grace, I

think!”

Wryly Bruce grimaced.

“How true, Thomas-if scarce your most courtly speech! Go, lad-go,

both of you. With my blessing. I will see you, I hope, at Rievaulx”

Two hours later Bruce stood within the shelter of the last of the

trees, and gazed eastwards, upwards, blinking away tears from

smoke-reddened eyes. Visibility was still not good-although the billowing smoke-clouds had thinned greatly now-and the smarting did not help. All around him men were sniffing and coughing, and horses snorting and blowing through inflamed nostrils.

The viewpoint was as good as any they would get; yet it was markedly inadequate to see what went on up in the upper corrie of that southern spur of the Hambleton Hills. Indeed the King could see only the tail-end of Douglas’s force disappearing, for this hanging valley of the escarpment mounted in steps, and from his lowly position in the wide skirts of it, he could not see into the upper section. Though above and beyond it, the ridge itself was clear enough-or as clear as the smoke-haze allowed. Wide as it was down here, half a mile at least, up there it tailed away into a fairly narrow but shallowing gut, flanked by lofty and prominent green shoulders. At least he could see what went on up on these, where swarms of Highland clansmen climbed quite openly, their drawn broadswords glinting in the westering sunlight.

But that was the least of the glinting. Along the escarpment edge itself, just about a mile away, the afternoon was ablaze with flashing steel, reflecting from armour, helmets, lances, swords, maces, battle-axes. The Earl of Richmond’s splendid southron host was drawn up there, in full view on the skyline, stretching as far as eye could see, from here, under a forest of banners, pennons and spears. It made a magnificent and daunting sight. Yet it was with satisfaction that Bruce eyed this part of the picture-for this was what he had visualised and planned for. What did make him anxious was not all that glinting steel and martial chivalry, but how many archers Richmond might have, and where, and what he might do with them. Archers were the great imponderable. Used to pick off those Highlandmen on the open shoulders, they could be enormously damaging to the entire strategy. And if the English chose to use such on Douglas’s packed host in the corrie below, once they came within effective range, there could be a terrible slaughter. Bruce was gambling that this they would not do not out of chivalry but out of a different kind of knightly pride. It was apt to be only up-jumped men like Harcla who would allow baseborn archers to steal the day when high-born knights stood by. In near-defeat or serious crisis it would be different. But this should look like neither.

Bruce had his thousands of light cavalry hidden in the scattered woodland which clothed all these hill foot skirts. Two miles to the south, still in the foothills, a small detachment under Walter Stewart were as well hidden on a wooded knoll at the western end of the road through the pass-like gap in the hill, which led over the Scawton Moor to Helmsley. From here they could see if and when the forces holding the gap were withdrawn.

The King rather envied Douglas and Moray. He too would have preferred to be riding up that corrie, even though in full view of the enemy and with the risk of unanswerable archery attack from above. It would at least be action, better than waiting here, a prey to the misgivings of the commander who plans a battle and then must leave its carrying out to others-and who may see all his visions and forecasts made nonsense of by events. Not that he feared greatly for his friends; he had sent them into a dangerous situation, admittedly-but they were as well able to look after themselves therein as any men living. And, because he knew John, Earl of Richmond, he did not believe that the worst would happen.

John of Brittany had been Edward the First’s nephew, and onetime Lieutenant of Scotland, in 1305, the year of Wallace’s death.

Even then he was a sombre, gloomy man, prematurely grey. Seventeen years later he was not likely to have become any more fiery or apt to take risks. No fool, but over-cautious, conservative, he was the sort of man who could be relied on to do the obvious, conventional thing; and if he erred in doing so, it would be on the side of delay, of prudence, of circumspection. Nor would he allow in others the rashness he himself abhorred-for he was inordinately conscious of his rank.