Eventually, Thweng lost interest in the King’s refusal to see that sense, managed to move off unnoticed, a little way into the dark – then found d’Umfraville and Badenoch at either elbow and became aware of their grim looks.
Mark me, he thought, they have been grim for an age now; they probably only managed to smile when the King announced this campaign – they had forfeited vast estates in Scotland to Bruce’s insurrection and were never done carping about the loss to anyone who would listen.
Yet this was a darker brother of what they usually exuded, a chilled sea-haar which made Thweng look from one to the other, raising the white lintel of his eyebrows.
‘We are missing one for our feast,’ d’Umfraville growled out eventually and, for a moment, Thweng thought this was a strangely couched invitation to join all the lords who called themselves the Dispossessed and wore the title like a tourney favour. The English termed them ‘the Scotch lords’ but most of them were as English as anyone else here, save that they had huge lands in Scotland that they wanted back.
Badenoch, his sandy lashes blinking furiously as if to hold back tears, put him right on the matter of it.
‘Seton is missing.’
‘Neither with us nor anywhere else. His mesnie has also gone,’ d’Umfraville added morosely.
Thweng’s insides gave a lurch, even though the news was not such a surprise to him; Alexander Seton had had a father gralloched by the old King Edward. His mother was imprisoned in a convent far to the south because she was sister to the Bruce who sat opposite them with an army. Which made Seton the nephew to King Robert Bruce.
‘He swore to serve King Edward,’ Badenoch rasped with disgust. ‘Now we must tell the King that he is foresworn. It reflects badly on all of us Dispossessed.’
A blind man could have seen this coming, Thweng thought, but the Scotch Lords consider the restoration of their lands take precedent over any ties of blood. It was interesting – and disturbing – that at least one of them thought differently, that he considered he had a better chance of having his lands returned from the hands of a Scotch king than an English one.
‘I would not take on so,’ Thweng offered laconically. ‘Seton has served King Edward for six years – yet he once swore an oath to protect the Bruce. Until his dying day, if I recall it.’
‘Aye,’ sneered d’Umfraville. ‘We will see about his oaths when this matter is done. They say every man ends up like his father.’
‘Will you take the news to the King?’ Badenoch asked and Thweng realized that that was why they were here. He recalled the young squire earlier, charged with carrying the King’s orders to Hereford and Gloucester – he had been told to speak to me first, he thought irritatedly. Why am I the stalking horse of this host?
He stroked his mourn of moustaches and smiled thinly back at them. Let them do it this time and reap the reward all heralds with bad news garner. He said as much and watched them wince and huff.
‘It may help to tell His Grace the King that we are still ahead in this game,’ Thweng added dryly, moving away. ‘Atholl for Seton – an earl for a baron. A fair sacrifice in this game of kings …’
They moved off, arguing with each other and leaving Thweng with little option but to return to the King’s table. There was argument and counter-argument here, too, as the King and his advising lords tried to make sense of where they were and what to do. Gloucester – sensibly, in Thweng’s opinion – continued to speak out against fighting at all in the morning; the army was exhausted and the foot were still straggling in, so it would be better to wait a day.
Hereford curled a lip, but wisely bit it at openly scorning Gloucester. The King, of course, would not be halted.
‘If the Scotch are willing to fight in the morning, my lord,’ he growled, ‘then we must do so. They will not wait upon our leisure.’
Which was also sensible, Thweng thought, for if Bruce actually steeled himself for a fight, a day mulling it over in the presence of a force three times his size would leach the resolve from him and he would vanish. Besides, Edward’s own army was powerful and large, but the eagerness and resolve in it was brittle since the events of today. Any new setback might throw it over and a day spent under the noses of the Scots might bring exactly that.
There was a shifting of bread and the harrigles of the meal. A curling wetness of wine became the Pelstream, a crooked series of greased chicken bones became the heavy horse, a line of expensive emperor salt represented archers. Gradually, a plan was formulated, argued, scorned and, finally, adopted.
‘The horse will form to the fore, then, gentilhommes,’ the King declared. ‘In full expectation of having to pursue the Scots removing themselves at dawn or before it. I want them pinned to the spot and destroyed, my lords.’