‘No’ chantin’ noo, ye sou’s arse,’ howled one, leaping like a spider on a black and silver figure, crawling wearily on hands and knees away from the kicking shriek of his dying horse. The thin-bladed knife went in the visor and blood flooded out the breathing holes – then the spider was back beneath the shelter of the spears, breathing hard and smiling at Hal like a fox fresh on a kill.
He wiped the dagger on his filthy, ripped braies and Hal saw it was Fergus the Beetle, black-carapaced in his boiled leather and grinning with blood on his teeth. He winked, as if he had just spotted Hal across a crowded alehouse.
‘Aye til the fore, my lord.’
Hal blinked. Still alive. Beyond the safety of the spear rings, the Scots archers were being ridden down and killed in a running slaughter and he wondered what had happened to Sim.
The Bishop’s horse limped and his surcoat was torn open under one arm, so that it flapped like the wounded wing of a red kite. Behind him stumbled a knight on foot, helmet and bascinet both gone and his maille coif shredded; there was blood on his face and a great spill of it down a once-cream surcoat, almost obliterating the two ravens blazoned on it.
Addaf did not need to hear Bek to know his anger, for it was plain in the wild, red-faced hand-waving he did at the knight in red and gold stripes, who sat sullenly on his expensive warhorse. It was draped in pristine white barding scattered with little red-and-gold-striped shields, each one ermined in the top left quarter; Basset of Drayton, Addaf had been told after the first angry encounter between the knight and the Bishop.
That was when Bek had tried to check the knights of his command and wait for the king before attacking, but this Basset of Drayton had arrogantly pointed his sword at Bek and told him to go and celebrate Mass if he wished, for the knights would do the fighting. Bek’s retinue heard it and took off in a mad gallop, a great metal flail that splintered itself to ruin on the nearest Scots ring of spears while the Bishop beat his saddle with futile anger.
Now the survivors of it, their horses dead, staggered away – and Addaf knew that Bek was scathing Basset because neither he nor any of his two bachelor knights nor nine sergeants had ridden anywhere near the Scots.
‘This horse is worth fifty marks,’ Basset argued, scowling as Addaf and the other archers came level with the arguing pair.
‘Then point it and spur – it should charge home,’ Bek snarled back, ‘even if the rider does not care to.’
‘By Christ’s Wounds,’ Basset bellowed, his beard bristling. ‘I will not take that from the likes of a tonsured byblow . . .’
‘Neither will you charge home,’ bellowed a new voice and everyone turned as Edward and his retinue came cantering up. Eyes went down; no-one wanted to look at the furious, droop-lidded lisping rage that stormed out of the king’s face.
Especially not Basset, who went as white as his horse barding and started to stammer.
‘Quiet,’ Edward ordered, then surveyed the wreckage of staggering, unhorsed knights, trailing back like drunks from an alehouse. A groaning knight in green, torn and spattered with mud and blood, was helped by two others; his left hand was hanging from a bloody mess by a few last fragments of tendon and flesh and someone had tied his baldric round the forearm to stop him bleeding to death.
‘My Lord of Otley,’ Edward said, nodding to the green knight as if they had met in cloistered court. The green knight moaned and another limped out behind him, bare-headed and leaking blood; he paused, looked up at his king and bowed.
Edward returned it.
‘My good lord,’ he said blandly. ‘You have lost your horse.’
Voiced as commiseration, it had a vicious twist to it – Eustace de Hacche had refused to sell his splendid charger to the king and now the beautiful bay with one white sock was lying, screaming in a tureen of its own entrails.
De Hacche turned away, nursing his ribs and more bitter about the horse than the spear which had burst him open; he did not want to have to remove his maille and gambeson for fear of what might tumble to the ground. I will look like my horse, he thought.
Esward watched him stumble off, his face a dog’s dinner of anger, then turned his droop-eyed fury on Bek and Basset.
‘Neither of ye have the sense of an egg,’ he growled and watched them bristle, mildly curious to see if they would spill it over to argument. They winked on the brim of it – then puffed it away and Edward sat deeper in his saddle, slightly disappointed but not surprised.
Christ blind me, he thought, good men have died because this Basset fool has a head fit only for carrying a metal helmet and as empty. Not that he is alone in it, he added bitterly, else I would not have to be here, completing the task I set for the Earl of Surrey and others.
‘If you have finished squandering the chivalry of England,’ Edward growled at the pair, ‘perhaps we can return to completing this affray?’