Vagabond

‘They did, my lord. Genoese crossbowmen.’

‘So tell me all that happened.’

Lord Outhwaite had received a letter from his eldest son that told of the battle in Picardy, but he was desperate to hear of the fight from someone who had stood on that long green slope between the villages of Wadicourt and Crécy, and Thomas now told how the enemy had attacked late in the afternoon and how the arrows had flown down the hill to cut the King of France’s great army into heaps of screaming men and horses, and how some of the enemy had still come through the line of newly dug pits and past the arrows to hack at the English men-at-arms, and how, by the battle’s end, there were no arrows left, just archers with bleeding fingers and a long hill of dying men and animals. The very sky had seemed rinsed with blood.

The telling of the tale took Thomas down off the ridge and out of sight of Durham. Eleanor and Father Hobbe walked behind, leading the mare and sometimes interjecting with their own comments, while a score of Lord Outhwaite’s retainers rode on either side to listen to the battle’s tale. Thomas told it well and it was plain Lord Outhwaite liked him; Thomas of Hookton had always possessed a charm that had protected and recommended him, even though it sometimes made men like Sir Geoffrey Carr jealous. Sir Geoffrey had ridden ahead and, when Thomas reached the water meadows where the English force gathered, the knight pointed at him as if he were launching a curse and Thomas countered by making the sign of the cross. Sir Geoffrey spat.

Lord Outhwaite scowled at the Scarecrow. ‘I have not forgotten the letter your priest showed me’ – he spoke to Thomas in French now – ‘but I trust you will not leave us to deliver it to Durham yourself? Not while we have enemies to fight?’

‘Can I stand with your lordship’s archers?’ Thomas asked.

Eleanor hissed her disapproval, but both men ignored her. Lord Outhwaite nodded his acceptance of Thomas’s offer, then gestured that the younger man should climb down from the horse. ‘One thing does puzzle me, though,’ he went on, ‘and that is why our lord the King should entrust such an errand to one so young.’

‘And so base born?’ Thomas asked with a smile, knowing that was the real question Lord Outhwaite had been too fastidious to ask.

His lordship laughed to be found out. ‘You speak French, young man, but carry a bow. What are you? Base or well born?’

‘Well enough, my lord, but out of wedlock.’

‘Ah!’

‘And the answer to your question, my lord, is that our lord the King sent me with one of his chaplains and a household knight, but both caught a sickness in London and that is where they remain. I came on with my companions.’

‘Because you were eager to speak with this old monk?’

‘If he lives, yes, because he can tell me about my father’s family. My family.’

‘And he can tell you about this treasure, this thesaurus. You know of it?’

‘I know something of it, my lord,’ Thomas said cautiously.

‘Which is why the King sent you, eh?’ Lord Outhwaite queried, but did not give Thomas time to answer the question. He gathered his reins. ‘Fight with my archers, young man, but take care to stay alive, eh? I would like to know more of your thesaurus. Is the treasure really as great as the letter says?’

Thomas turned away from the ragged-haired Lord Outhwaite and stared up the ridge where there was nothing to be seen now except the bright-leaved trees and a thinning plume of smoke from the burned-out hovels. ‘If it exists, my lord’ – he spoke in French – ‘then it is the kind of treasure that is guarded by angels and sought by demons.’

‘And you seek it?’ Lord Outhwaite asked with a smile.

Thomas returned the smile. ‘I merely seek the Prior of Durham, my lord, to give him the bishop’s letter.’

‘You want Prior Fossor, eh?’ Lord Outhwaite nodded towards a group of monks. ‘That’s him over there. The one in the saddle.’ He had indicated a tall, white-haired monk who was astride a grey mare and surrounded by a score of other monks, all on foot, one of whom carried a strange banner that was nothing but a white scrap of cloth hanging from a painted pole. ‘Talk to him,’ Lord Outhwaite said, ‘then seek my flag. God be with you!’ He said the last four words in English.

‘And with your lordship,’ Thomas and Father Hobbe answered together.

Thomas walked towards the Prior, threading his way through archers who clustered about three wagons to receive spare sheaves of arrows. The small English army had been marching towards Durham on two separate roads and now the men straggled across fields to come together in case the Scots descended from the high ground. Men-at-arms hauled mail coats over their heads and the richer among them buckled on whatever pieces of plate armour they owned. The army’s leaders must have had a swift conference for the first standards were being carried northwards, showing that the English wanted to confront the Scots on the higher ground of the ridge rather than be attacked in the water meadows or try to reach Durham by a circuitous route. Thomas had become accustomed to the English banners in Brittany, Normandy and Picardy, but these flags were all strange to him: a silver crescent, a brown cow, a blue lion, the Scarecrow’s black axe, a red boar’s head, Lord Outhwaite’s scallop-emblazoned cross and, gaudiest of all, a great scarlet flag showing a pair of crossed keys thickly embroidered in gold and silver threads. The prior’s flag looked shabby and cheap compared to all those other banners for it was nothing but a small square of frayed cloth beneath which the prior was working himself into a frenzy. ‘Go and do God’s work,’ he shouted at some nearby archers, ‘for the Scots are animals! Animals! Cut them down! Kill them all! God will reward each death! Go and smite them! Kill them!’ He saw Thomas approaching. ‘You want a blessing, my son? Then God give strength to your bow and add bite to your arrows! May your arm never tire and your eye never dim. God and the saints bless you while you kill!’

Thomas crossed himself then held out the letter. ‘I came to give you this, sir,’ he said.

The prior seemed astonished that an archer should address him so familiarly, let alone have a letter for him and at first he did not take the parchment, but one of his monks snatched it from Thomas and, seeing the broken seal, raised his eyebrows. ‘My lord the bishop writes to you,’ he said.

‘They are animals!’ the prior repeated, still caught up in his peroration, then he realized what the monk had said. ‘My lord bishop writes?’

‘To you, brother,’ the monk said.

The prior seized the painted pole and dragged the makeshift banner down so it hung near to Thomas’s face. ‘You may kiss it,’ he said grandly.

‘Kiss it?’ Thomas was quite taken aback. The ragged cloth, now it was close by his nose, smelt musty.

‘It is St Cuthbert’s corporax cloth,’ the prior said excitedly, ‘taken from his tomb, my son! The blessed St Cuthbert will fight for us! The very angels of heaven will follow him into the battle.’

Thomas, faced with the saint’s relic, went to his knees and drew the cloth to his lips. It was linen, he thought, and now he could see it was embroidered about its edge with an intricate pattern in faded blue thread. In the centre of the cloth, which was used during Mass to hold the wafers, was an elaborate cross, embroidered in silver threads that scarcely showed against the frayed white linen. ‘It is really St Cuthbert’s cloth?’ he asked.

‘His alone!’ the prior exclaimed. ‘We opened his tomb in the cathedral this very morning, and we prayed to him and he will fight for us today!’ The prior jerked the flag up and waved it towards some men-at-arms who spurred their horses northwards. ‘Perform God’s work! Kill them all! Dung the fields with their noxious flesh, water it with their treacherous blood!’

‘The bishop wants this young man to speak with Brother Hugh Collimore,’ the monk who had read the letter now told the prior, ‘and the King wishes it too. His lordship says there is a treasure to be found.’

‘The King wishes it?’ the prior looked in astonishment at Thomas. ‘The King wishes it?’ he asked again and then he came to his senses and realized there was great advantage in royal patronage and so he snatched the letter and read it himself, only to find even more advantage than he had anticipated. ‘You come in search of a great thesaurus?’ he asked Thomas suspiciously.

‘So the bishop believes, sir,’ Thomas responded.

‘What treasure?’ the prior snapped and all the monks gaped at him as the notion of a treasure momentarily made them forget the proximity of the Scottish army.

‘The treasure, sir’ – Thomas avoided giving a truthful answer – ‘is known to Brother Collimore.’

‘But why send you?’ the prior asked, and it was a fair question for Thomas looked young and possessed no apparent rank.

‘Because I have some knowledge of the matter too,’ Thomas said, wondering if he had said too much.

The prior folded the letter, inadvertently tearing off the seal as he did so, and thrust it into a pouch that hung from his knotted belt. ‘We shall talk after the battle,’ he said, ‘and then, and only then, I shall decide whether you may see Brother Collimore. He is sick, you know? Ailing, poor soul. Maybe he is dying. It may not be seemly for you to disturb him. We shall see, we shall see.’ He plainly wanted to talk to the old monk himself and so be the sole possessor of whatever knowledge Collimore might have. ‘God bless you, my son,’ the prior dismissed Thomas, then hoisted his sacred banner and hurried north. Most of the English army was already climbing the ridge, leaving only their wagons and a crowd of women, children and those men too sick to walk. The monks, making a procession behind their corporax cloth, began to sing as they followed the soldiers.

Thomas ran to a cart and took a sheaf of arrows, which he thrust into his belt. He could see that Lord Outhwaite’s men-at-arms were riding towards the ridge, followed by a large group of archers. ‘Maybe the two of you should stay here,’ he said to Father Hobbe.

‘No!’ Eleanor said. ‘And you should not be fighting.’

‘Not fight?’ Thomas asked.

‘It is not your battle!’ Eleanor insisted. ‘We should go to the city! We should find the monk.’

Thomas paused. He was thinking of the priest who, in the swirl of fog and smoke, had killed the Scotsman and then spoken to him in French. I am a messenger, the priest had said. ‘Je suis un avant-coureur,’ had been his exact words and an avant-coureur was more than a mere messenger. A herald, perhaps? An angel even? Thomas could not drive away the image of that silent fight, the men so ill matched, a soldier against a priest, yet the priest had won and then had turned his gaunt, bloodied face on Thomas and announced himself: ‘Je suis un avant-coureur.’ It was a sign, Thomas thought, and he did not want to believe in signs and visions, he wanted to believe in his bow. He thought perhaps Eleanor was right and that the conflict with its unexpected victor was a sign from heaven that he should follow the avant-coureur into the city, but there were also enemies up on the hill and he was an archer and archers did not walk away from a battle. ‘We’ll go to the city,’ he said, ‘after the fight.’

‘Why?’ she demanded fiercely.

But Thomas would not explain. He just started walking, climbing a hill where larks and finches flitted through the hedges and fieldfares, brown and grey, called from the empty pastures. The fog was all gone and a drying wind blew across the Wear.

And then, from where the Scots waited on the higher ground, the drums began to beat.

Sir William Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, prepared himself for battle. He pulled on leather breeches thick enough to thwart a sword cut and over his linen shirt he hung a crucifix that had been blessed by a priest in Santiago de Compostela where St James was buried. Sir William Douglas was not a particularly religious man, but he paid a priest to look after his soul and the priest had assured Sir William that wearing the crucifix of St James, the son of thunder, would ensure he received the last rites safe in his own bed. About his waist he tied a strip of red silk that had been torn from one of the banners captured from the English at Bannockburn. The silk had been dipped in the holy water of the font in the chapel of Sir William’s castle at Hermitage and Sir William had been persuaded that the scrap of silk would ensure victory over the old and much hated enemy.

He wore a haubergeon taken from an Englishman killed in one of Sir William’s many raids south of the border. Sir William remembered that killing well. He had seen the quality of the Englishman’s haubergeon at the very beginning of the fight and he had bellowed at his men to leave the fellow alone, then he had cut the man down by striking at his ankles and the Englishman, on his knees, had made a mewing sound that had made Sir William’s men laugh. The man had surrendered, but Sir William had cut his throat anyway because he thought any man who made a mewing sound was not a real warrior. It had taken the servants at Hermitage two weeks to wash the blood out of the fine mesh of the mail. Most of the Scottish leaders were dressed in hauberks, which covered a man’s body from neck to calves, while the haubergeon was much shorter and left the legs unprotected, but Sir William intended to fight on foot and he knew that a hauberk’s weight wearied a man quickly and tired men were easily killed. Over the haubergeon he wore a full-length surcoat that showed his badge of the red heart. His helmet was a sallet, lacking any visor or face protection, but in battle Sir William liked to see what his enemies to the left and right were doing. A man in a full helm or in one of the fashionable pig-snouted visors could see nothing except what the slit right in front of his eyes let him see, which was why men in visored helmets spent the battle jerking their heads left and right, left and right, like a chicken among foxes, and they twitched until their necks were sore and even then they rarely saw the blow that crushed their skulls. Sir William, in battle, looked for men whose heads were jerking like hens, back and forth, for he knew they were nervous men who could afford a fine helmet and thus pay a finer ransom. He carried his big shield. It was really too heavy for a man on foot, but he expected the English to loose their archery storm and the shield was thick enough to absorb the crashing impact of yard-long, steel-pointed arrows. He could rest the foot of the shield on the ground and crouch safe behind it and, when the English ran out of arrows, he could always discard it. He carried a spear in case the English horsemen charged, and a sword, which was his favourite killing weapon. The sword’s hilt encased a scrap of hair cut from the corpse of St Andrew, or at least that was what the pardoner who had sold Sir William the scrap had claimed.

Robbie Douglas, Sir William’s nephew, wore mail and a sallet, and carried a sword and shield. It had been Robbie who had brought Sir William the news that Jamie Douglas, Robbie’s older brother, had been killed, presumably by the Dominican priest’s servant. Or perhaps Father de Taillebourg had done the killing? Certainly he must have ordered it. Robbie Douglas, twenty years old, had wept for his brother. ‘How could a priest do it?’ Robbie had demanded of his uncle.

‘You have a strange idea of priests, Robbie,’ Sir William had said. ‘Most priests are weak men given God’s authority and that makes them dangerous. I thank God no Douglas has ever put on a priest’s robe. We’re all too honest.’

‘When this day’s done, uncle,’ Robbie Douglas said, ‘you’ll let me go after that priest.’

Sir William smiled. He might not be an overtly religious man, but he did hold one creed sacred and that was that any family member’s murder must be avenged and Robbie, he reckoned, would do vengeance well. He was a good young man, hard and handsome, tall and straightforward, and Sir William was proud of his youngest sister’s son. ‘We’ll talk at day’s end,’ Sir William promised him, ‘but till then, Robbie, stay close to me.’

‘I will, uncle.’

‘We’ll kill a good few Englishmen, God willing,’ Sir William said, then led his nephew to meet the King and to receive the blessing of the royal chaplains.

Sir William, like most of the Scottish knights and chieftains, was in mail, but the King wore French-made plate, a thing so rare north of the border that men from the wild tribes came to stare at this sun-reflecting creature made of moving metal. The young King seemed just as impressed for he took off his surcoat and walked up and down admiring himself and being admired as his lords came for a blessing and to offer advice. The Earl of Moray, whom Sir William believed was a fool, wanted to fight on horseback and the King was tempted to agree. His father, the great Robert the Bruce, had beaten the English at the Bannockburn on horseback, and not just beaten them, but humiliated them. The flower of Scotland had ridden down the nobility of England and David, King now of his father’s country, wanted to do the same. He wanted blood beneath his hooves and glory attached to his name; he wanted his reputation to spread through Christendom and so he turned and gazed longingly at his red and yellow painted lance propped against the bough of an elm.

Sir William Douglas saw where the King was looking. ‘Archers,’ he said laconically.

‘There were archers at the Bannockburn,’ the Earl of Moray insisted.

‘Aye, and the fools didn’t know how to use them,’ Sir William said, ‘but you can’t depend on the English being fools for ever.’

‘And how many archers can they have?’ the Earl asked. ‘There are said to be thousands of bowmen in France, hundreds more in Brittany and as many again in Gascony, so how many can they have here?’

‘They have enough,’ Sir William growled curtly, not bothering to hide the contempt he felt for John Randolph, third Earl of Moray. The Earl was just as experienced in war as Sir William, but he had spent too long as a prisoner of the English and the consequent hatred made him impetuous.

The King, young and inexperienced, wanted to side with the Earl whose friend he was, but he saw that his other lords were agreeing with Sir William who, though he held no great title nor position of state, was more battle-hardened than any man in Scotland. The Earl of Moray sensed that he was losing the argument and he urged haste. ‘Charge now, sir,’ he suggested, ‘before they can make a battleline.’ He pointed southwards to where the first English troops were appearing in the pastures. ‘Cut the bastards down before they’re ready.’

‘That,’ the Earl of Menteith put in quietly, ‘was the advice given to Philip of Valois in Picardy. It didn’t serve there and it won’t serve here.’

‘Besides which,’ Sir William Douglas remarked caustically, ‘we have to contend with stone walls.’ He pointed to the walls which bounded the pastures where the English were beginning to form their line. ‘Maybe Moray can tell us how armoured knights get past stone walls?’ he suggested.

The Earl of Moray bridled. ‘You take me for a fool, Douglas?’

‘I take you as you show yourself, John Randolph,’ Sir William answered.

‘Gentlemen!’ the King snapped. He had not noticed the stone walls when he formed his battleline beside the burning cottages and the fallen cross. He had only seen the empty green pastures and the wide road and his even wider dream of glory. Now he watched the enemy straggle from the far trees. There were plenty of archers coming, and he had heard how those bowmen could fill the sky with their arrows and how their steel arrow heads drove deep into horses and how the horses then went mad with pain. And he dared not lose this battle. He had promised his nobles that they would celebrate the feast of Christmas in the hall of the English King in London and if he lost then he would lose their respect and encourage some to rebellion. He had to win and, being impatient, he wanted to win quickly. ‘If we charge fast enough,’ he suggested tentatively, ‘before they all reach their lines—’

‘Then, you’ll break your horse’s legs on the stone walls,’ Sir William said with scant respect for his royal master. ‘If your majesty’s horse even gets that far. You can’t protect a horse from arrows, sir, but you can weather the storm on foot. Put your pikes up front, but mix them with men-at-arms who can use their shields to protect the pike-holders. Shields up, heads down and hold hard, that’s how we win this.’

The King tugged at the espalier which covered his right shoulder and had an annoying habit of riding up on the top edge of the breastplate. Traditionally the defence of Scottish armies was in the hands of pikemen who used their monstrously long weapons to hold off the enemy knights, but pikemen needed both hands to hold their unwieldy blades and so became easy targets for English bowmen who liked to boast that they carried the lives of Scottish pikemen in their arrow bags. So protect the pikemen with the shields of the men-at-arms and let the enemy waste their arrows. It made sense, but it still irked David Bruce that he could not lead his horsemen in an earth-shaking assault while the trumpets screamed at the heavens.

Sir William saw his King’s hesitation and pressed his argument. ‘We have to stand, sir, and we have to wait, and we have to let our shields take the arrows, but in the end, sir, they’ll tire of wasting shafts and they’ll come to the attack and that’s when we’ll chop them down like dogs.’

A growl of assent greeted this. The Scottish lords, hard men all, armed and armoured, bearded and grim, were confident that they could win this fight because they so outnumbered the enemy, but they also knew there was no short cut to victory, not when archers opposed them, and so they would have to do what Sir William said: endure the arrows, goad the enemy, then give them slaughter.

The King heard his lords agree with Sir William and so, reluctantly, he abandoned his dream of breaking the enemy with mounted knights. That was a disappointment, but he looked about his lords and thought that with such men beside him he could not possibly lose. ‘We shall fight on foot,’ he decreed, ‘and chop them down like dogs. We shall slaughter them like whipped puppies!’ And afterwards, he thought, when the survivors were fleeing southwards, the Scottish cavalry could finish the slaughter.

But for now it would be footman against footman and so the war banners of Scotland were carried forward and planted across the ridge. The burning cottages were mere embers now that cradled three shrunken bodies, black and small as children, and the King planted his flags close to those dead. He had his own standard, red saltire on yellow field, and the banner of Scotland’s saint, white saltire on blue, in the line’s centre and to left and right the flags of the lesser lords flew. The lion of Stewart brandished its blade, the Randolph falcon spread its wings while to east and west the stars and axes and crosses snapped in the wind. The army was arrayed in three divisions, called sheltrons, and the three sheltrons were so large that the men on the far flanks jostled in towards the centre to keep themselves on the flatter ground of the ridge’s summit.

The rearmost ranks of the sheltrons were composed of the tribesmen from the islands and the north, men who fought bare-legged, without metal armour, wielding vast swords that could club a man to death as easily as cut him down. They were fearsome fighters, but their lack of armour made them horribly vulnerable to arrows and so they were placed at the rear and the leading ranks of the three sheltrons were filled by men-at-arms and pikemen. The men-at-arms carried swords, axes, maces or war-hammers and, most important, the shields that could protect the pikemen whose weapons were tipped with a spike, a hook and an axehead. The spike could hold an enemy at bay, the hook could haul an armoured man out of the saddle or off his feet, and the axe could smash through his mail or plate. The line bristled with the pikes that made a steel hedge to greet the English and priests walked along the hedge consecrating the weapons and the men who held them. Soldiers knelt to receive their blessings. A few of the lords, like the King himself, were mounted, but only so that they could see over the heads of their army, and those men stared south to see the last of the English troops come into view. So few of them! Such a small army to beat! To the left of the Scots was Durham, its towers and ramparts thick with folk watching the battle, and in front was this small army of Englishmen who did not possess the sense to retreat south towards York. They would fight on the ridge instead and the Scots had the advantage of position and numbers. ‘If you hate them!’ Sir William Douglas shouted at his men on the right of the Scottish battleline, ‘then let them hear you!’