Hal watched him go, even gave the lie of a cheerful wave. There never was an end to it, he thought, never a happy after. For all their loving life together, he and Isabel had lived in the shadow of a vengeful Earl of Buchan and Badenoch and red war.
Now, just as it seemed they could walk to a wedding in a sunlit meadow with no shadows at all, there was the old thundercloud, black and fresh with menace, rimmed with uneasy crowns and bloated with a war that did not seem sated with slaughter and dubious victory at Stirling.
Under it was a king, whose every act to preserve the Kingdom could be no sin, and the faithful dark-hearted hound he sent to commit it was the dog Hal now had to trust to keep them safe in a world where only the sword and the tower could be truly relied on.
‘O Lord, Heavenly Father,’ Isabel murmured into the seeping cold from the open door, ‘let Your angels watch over Your servants that they may reach their destination in safety, that no enemy may attack them on the road, nor evil overcome them. Protect them from fast rivers, thieves, wild beasts – and troubled kings.’
‘Amen,’ Hal answered vehemently, sure that her prayer was not simply one for Kirkpatrick and Rauf’s safe journey.
The cold swept in the yett; Hal put his arm round Isabel like a fortress and led her into the thickness of Herdmanston’s walls.
‘Parcy,’ he called out over his shoulder. ‘Double bar the door.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The problems of Scotland in 1297 are not strangers to most of the Scots of the twenty-first century, not to the ones who voted in the SNP for five more years in 2011, nor those who may well vote us out of the Union some time within that span.
Certainly not to all those with an enormous chip on their shoulder, born out of a strong sense of grievance and a casual, institutionalized racism on both sides.
But that has always been the problem with Scots – dominated by England, Scotland has resented, struggled, died, bristled impotently at being so treated and retained a legacy of striving for freedom, however nebulous the chance or the reality.
The memories run deep. On one glorious day in the year this book is set, the Scots won a great victory against all the odds, cocked two fingers at English ambitions – and, of course, only managed to annoy its more powerful neighbour, who recovered sufficiently to make the Kingdom suffer for it for the next several hundred years.
For all that Scots love to believe it, Bannockburn was not the end of matters. It achieved everything – and nothing. It consolidated Bruce on the throne, sent Edward II’s relationship with his rebellious barons into a downward spiral from which, ultimately, it never recovered, but it did not end the cycle of invasion, slaughter and harrying.
It did not even keep a Balliol from the throne; supported by Edward III in 1332, Toom Tabard’s son, Edward Balliol – and there is wealth of revelation in that first name – took the throne from Bruce’s young son, David. Ousted almost at once, he was promptly reinstated by English might, only to be ousted once more. Returned to power a third time by the English, he was finally thrown out in 1336 and this time he took the hint.
From this, you can see that war between Scotland and England rasped along, right through the Rough Wooing of Henry VIII (another abortive attempt to force the Scots to bow the knee), and only ended most of the brutal bloodshed with the Union of the Crowns in 1603. It finally grumbled to a grudging halt with the Acts of Union in 1707, flared briefly in 1715 and ’45 and then died forever at Culloden.
Bannockburn, resplendent in the panoply of great battles, was simply one more in the bloody tapestry of Scotland’s history. Together with Culloden, they mark both the highest and lowest point of the Scottish martial bid for freedom.
For all that, Edward II was not his father, against whom Bruce never took a yard of ground. Edward I, in his turn, was never so bloody or brutal as his grandson, ‘the perfect king’ Edward III. From an English perspective, Edward I and his grandson are golden monuments to chivalry; the Scots, of course, have a different view.
Bannockburn, for all its impact on history, is one more battle of which we actually know very little. Numbers, actual site and progression are all best guesses and I have used numerous sources, taking the bits I think fit best as a historical novelist creating one more fiction around the event. In an age of military shock and awe, it is worth remembering that the entire of Edward II’s army, a monstrous host for the time, could have fitted into Edinburgh’s Meadowbank Stadium, capacity 16,000. Bruce’s spearmen could have crammed in, shoulder to shoulder, on a football pitch.