‘The sun, my lords,’ he yelled out, his coroneted helmet flashing with the first rays of it. ‘Come to look on our glorious victory.’
There were cheers, soon fading, and they rode on with their shadows stretched thin and leading them on.
Addaf watched them go; it was clear that the foot were being left to their own for now and he was not sorry for it. He saw his own shadow, turned and stared, narrow-eyed into the first rays of dawn.
Right in the Scots’ eyes, look you, with them lit up plain as day for any one-eyed squinter to hit – well, once the horse had pinned them, the bowmen would finish them. Not those silly little slow-firing Genoese crossbows either, nor the plunking Cheshire men, but the steady volleyed mass shafts of his veteran Welshmen – and if hatred of the pig English made his men tardy, then the thought of plundering Scotch would put wings on their heels.
He felt the sun soak warm glory into his stiffness and almost smiled.
Nyd hyder ond bwa – there is no dependence but on the bow.
ISABEL
There were fires all last night beyond the walls of the castle and town, the old way of celebrating Midsummer’s Eve. Even in the town they lit wakefires and danced and drank – I could hear them and smell the stink of the bones they threw in to ward off evil spirits. All it did for me was bring a harsh memory of the poor girl they burned. The night never got truly dark and early in the morning Constance brought boughs of greenery, for every house and shopfront is decorated with garlands and birch branches. Tonight, she told me with hugging delight, there will be a parade of men, with weapons and torches and mummers – and naked boys painted black to look like Saracens. And services and Mass, she added, remembering God just in time. If you wish to be shriven, she told me, I can fetch a priest.
I do not need to be shriven. I need freedom, O Lord. Your Son, blessed Jesus Christ, restored Lazarus to life after four days. You Yourself preserved Jonah in the belly of a whale, drew out Daniel from the lion’s den. Why then, O Lord, can You not liberate me, a miserable wretch, from this prison?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bannockburn
Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314
They formed up at the edge of the woods, a great, fat line muted but not silent, a soft noise like a stirring beast, composed of the muttered drone of prayer and orders, the jingle and clatter of arms and armour, the creak of leather, the crack and rustle of branch and undergrowth.
Dog Boy, cloistered in the deep ranks of Jamie’s command, itself part of the massive block commanded by the King himself, saw only the rust and filth-streaked gambesons of the men in front. He squinted between their shoulders, into the sun, seeing a forest of silhouetted spearshafts and a sparkle of firefly lights in the distance.
It took him a long time to realize, with a cold-water shock, that the sparkling was the sun bouncing from gleaming spear point and helmet to burnished armour. The Enemy.
There were a lot of them, a great glowing sea that curdled his bowels, made him look right and left to find Parcy Dodd, Troubadour, Sweetmilk, Horse Pyntle and the others, a cage of shoulders and tight grins, grimed calloused hands flexing on the sweat-polished shafts of their weapons.
A great block of such men was no accidental mob, Dog Boy knew. It started with a Grip of five men, called so because it was likened to five fingers curled like a fist on a spearshaft. Two such, lined up one behind the other, was called a Charge, because when you charged your spear, you gripped with both fists. Two Charges made a Vinten, twenty men ordered about by a vintenar, who was Sweetmilk in that part where Dog Boy stood. Vintens were ordered into ten times ten, called Centans, though the reality was the ‘long hundred’, which actually came to 120 or thereabouts – and were commanded by centenars. Dog Boy was centenar for this part and all the men under him were from Jamie Douglas’s own mesnie.
After that, the Centans were grouped in tens, so that a Battle could have 1,200 men or any number up to twice that – rarely more, since it grew unwieldy. The one Dog Boy stood in was the King’s Battle, with 2,000 men. Since the King would be busy commanding the whole army, half of his Battle was ordered by Jamie and the other half by Gilbert de la Haye, Scotland’s Constable.