LIST OF CHARACTERS
ADDAF the Welshman
Typical soldier of the period, raised from the lands only recently conquered by Edward I. By this time, however, Addaf is a contract captain – leader of a band of mercenary Welsh archers, well armed, mounted and time served in the wars in France. The Welsh prowess with the bow and spear was already noted, but the true power of the former, the Crécy and Agincourt massed ranks, was a strategy still forming during the early Scottish Wars. Like all of the Welsh, Addaf’s loyalty to the English is tenuous and, as a captain of mercenaries, he is aware that some of his own men have a loyalty to him which is just as threadbare.
ARGENTAN, Sir Giles d’
Shadowy character save for his appearances, like a bright flame, beside the pale light of Edward II. He was one of the many knights present at the famous Feast of the Swans, when Edward I knighted his son and many other gilded youth in an attempt to bind them to the young prince. D’Argentan chased Bruce at the Battle of Methven and, if his horse had not foundered, history might well have seen an epic struggle: he was considered the third-best knight in Christendom, the second being Robert the Bruce and the first being Heinrich, Holy Roman Emperor. Not long after, d’Argentan is mentioned as one of the knights a furious Edward I ordered arrested for leaving his son’s army during campaign in Scotland to attend a tourney in France. In 1314 Edward II, in the middle of his acute financial constraints, found time and money to ransom d’Argentan from prison in Salonika – he had gone to Rhodes to join the Knights Hospitaller and fight the Saracens. Knights of his calibre and chivalric fame were clearly needed by Edward II, if only for the morale value – certainly d’Argentan’s heroic, if typically rash, death at Bannockburn brought him considerable renown.
BADENOCH, Lord of
Here, it is the son of the Red Comyn murdered in Greyfriars. John IV, lord of Badenoch, was a youth when his father met his death and thereafter was firmly in the English camp – his mother was Joan de Valence, sister of Aymer de Valence (see below). He was killed at Bannockburn, though the actual circumstances of it are unknown.
BALGOWNIE, Pegy
Fictional character, commander of the cog which takes Hal and Kirkpatrick to Spain on behalf of the King. Pegy is a nickname; it is the small, topmost portion of the mast used to fly a pennant from. I have made him an ex-privateer, one of the captains of the very real Red Rover, a French pirate called de Longueville who assisted Wallace back and forth to France. Also real is Jack Crabbe and when de Longueville gave up piracy in favour of a privileged life ashore, his captains made their own way. Pegy Balgownie, the fictional one, joined Bruce. Jack Crabbe continued on his own and, captured by the English in later life, became a firm adherent of Edward III for whom he used his expertise with the new-fangled ‘gonne’ to direct the ordnance in the 1333 siege of Berwick – which eventually fell.
BEAUMONT, Henry de
One of the most experienced warriors in Edward II’s retinue, he was also Earl of Buchan by his marriage to Alice Comyn, niece of the Earl married to Isabel MacDuff. The title of Countess of Buchan, clearly removed from Isabel, passed to Alice – though de Beaumont had the title ‘in parchment only’. He campaigned in Flanders, and then fought against Wallace at Falkirk, where he had a horse killed under him and was lucky to escape with his life. He returned to Scotland in 1302 and 1304, where he was at the English siege of the Scots-held Stirling Castle. His near-death experience and rescue by Sir Thomas Gray (see below) happened as described here, as did his quarrel with Gray at Bannockburn. De Beaumont accompanied Edward from the field and thereafter became an implacable supporter of the Disinherited, those English-supporting lords whose lands and titles in Scotland were confiscated by Robert the Bruce. From 1314 until his death in 1340, de Beaumont led assault after assault, both military and political, on Scotland – to no avail. He died never having achieved the Buchan lands and, when his wife, Alice Comyn, died in 1349, the title finally reverted to the Crown until bestowed on Alexander Stewart in 1382. He was known as the Wolf of Badenoch for his rapacity and cruelty.
BELLEJAMBE, Malise
Fictional character, the Earl of Buchan’s sinister henchman and arch-rival of Kirkpatrick. For years he has been the official gaoler of Isabel MacDuff in her tower cage in Berwick, first for the Earl of Buchan and then for the lord of Badenoch. His relationship with her is becoming increasingly psychotic, violent and sinister.