‘Yer honour,’ Heydin Captain replied and put a fist across his chest in salute as the knight rode away, then turned to the other Welsh archers, a wry smile plastered on his face.
‘The mannie wants us to stay out of the way of those caperers on their fat ponies,’ he boomed in Welsh. ‘Let the proud folk have their fun and then we will win the day for them. Nyd hyder ond bwa.’
There is no dependence but on the bow. The Welshmen all growled and grinned at that, while Addaf checked his flights. It had taken him a long while to make new arrows with fine peacock flights to replace the ones he had thrown away at Stirling – the memory of that floundering panic of a day, when he had hauled himself out on the safe side of the river like a half-drowned dog, made him shiver.
He had lost his bowbag and arrows, his shoes and a good gambeson that day, a hard loss for a man with little enough; he touched the new leather shoes – hung round his neck like an amulet, for you never risked their loss on a field cut with sucking streams and churned mud. He would not lose this time. This time, he would gain.
The knight of Bedale forced a way through the throng of spears and bows, repeating his message to those he had found spoke English, though he was not sure whether some were cozening him with that or not. The Welsh nodded and saluted and watched him ride off; he was not a bad commander for an Englishman, but he was still an Englishman, who had asked Heydin Captain why his name was round the wrong way.
It was not, he was told. For over there was Heydin ap Daffyd and there was Heydin, nicknamed Gwrnerth Ergydlym, or Powerful Sharpshot since he was the worst archer of them all, barely putting six out of ten in a palm’s width at a hundred paces. Then he had to explain to the bemused lord that it was a jest, just as Rhodri was called Gam – Squint-Eyed – because he was the best shot of all, even to putting it round corners and killing a bear with a straw arrow, it was rumoured.
In the end, just as Heydin was patiently explaining that Gwynned ap Mydr was nicknamed One Eye though he actually had two – he could not close his aiming eye and had to have a black patch placed over it for shooting – the Lord of Bedale had held up one hand.
‘He is the best shot of all, look you, my lord,’ Heydin Captain tried to add as the knight rode away, still unsure whether he was being made a fool of. ‘He can shoot the wren through his claw, from Caenog, in the Vale of Clwyd, to Esgair Vervel in Ireland . . .’
Now the Lord of Bedale put his great bucket helm on the saddle bow and leaned on it, looking wistfully after the knights of Bishop Bek’s command, the Second Battle all riding ahead to join the heavy horse of the king himself, the combined Battles forming the hard right hook of the army. He wanted to be there rather than the millinar of foot, trying to herd the great body of spearmen and archers, gabbling in their own foul language and ploughing harsh furrows over Redding Muir down to the Westquarter Burn.
Addaf did not care what the Lord of Bedale felt, only what he belly felt. Away to his left, he saw a magnificent galloper, bright in horizontal stripes, tippets flying from the dome of his sugarloaf heaume; he and other archers who saw him growled deep in their throats, for this was De Valence, who had charged down good Welshmen not long before – eighty were dead of it.
One or two of the archers aimed their unstrung bows at him in future promise, then hurried on when a knot of bright riders surged up past them, thick with banners and purpose. The king himself . . .
One arrow, Addaf thought. One good peacock-fletched shaft with a bodkin point at the back of that red jupon with the three gold pards and Llewellyn is avenged, Ylfron Bridge’s ghosts laid to rest, Maes Moydog and Madog ap Llewellyn paid for. Yet no-one shot more than surly looks, just kept their heads down and slogged on.
Edward saw them, all the same, and both parties would have been surprised to find they were thinking of Maes Moydog, though for differing reasons.
Like the Welsh then, Edward thought, the Scots are trying great bands of spearmen to resist the knights. Well, we shot them down with Gascon crossbows at Maes Moydog and we will do so again here – there will be no repeat of the idiocy at Stirling. The idea cheered him – even if Maes Moydog had been the victory of the Earl of Warwick – and he raised a hand to wave to delighted youngsters, who had never been in great battle before and were bright with the thrill of it all.
‘Dieu vous garde!
‘Felicitas.’
‘Dieu vivas.’
They threw greetings like gaudy tokens to lovers and Edward watched them, wondering where his own fire for this had gone, thinking savagely to himself that they would find the truth of it all when the spear points tumbled them and their expensive horse to the mud and the shite rolled fearfully out of them as they scrabbled to be away. In the end, he knew, the Gascon crossbows would decide it. And the Welsh bowmen if they stuck to the task of it.