Vagabond

The Scots bellowed their hatred. They clashed swords and spears against their shields, they shrieked to the sky and, in the line’s centre, where the King’s sheltron waited under the banners of the cross, a troop of drummers began to beat huge goatskin drums. Each drum was a big ring of oak over which were stretched two goat skins that were tightened with ropes until an acorn, dropped onto a skin, would bounce as high as the hand that had let it go and the drums, beaten with withies, made a sharp, almost metallic sound that filled the sky. They made an assault of pure noise.

‘If you hate the English, let them know!’ the Earl of March shouted from the left of the Scottish line that lay closest to the city. ‘If you hate the English, let them know!’ and the roar became louder, the clash of spear stave on shield was stronger, and the noise of Scotland’s hate spread across the ridge so that nine thousand men were howling at the three thousand who were foolish enough to confront them.

‘We shall cut them down like stalks of barley,’ a priest promised, ‘we shall soak the fields with their stinking blood and fill all hell with their English souls.’

‘Their women are yours!’ Sir William told his men. ‘Their wives and their daughters will be your toys tonight!’ He grinned at his nephew Robbie. ‘You’ll have your pick of Durham’s women, Robbie.’

‘And London’s women,’ Robbie said, ‘before Christmas.’

‘Aye, them too,’ Sir William promised.

‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ the King’s senior chaplain shouted, ‘send them all to hell! Each and every foul one of them to hell! For every Englishman you kill today means a thousand less weeks in purgatory!’

‘If you hate the English,’ Lord Robert Stewart, Steward of Scotland and heir to the throne, called, ‘let them hear!’ And the noise of that hate was like a thunder that filled the deep valley of the Wear, and the thunder reverberated from the crag where Durham stood and still the noise swelled to tell the whole north country that the Scots had come south.

And David, King of those Scots, was glad that he had come to this place where the dragon cross had fallen and the burning houses smoked and the English waited to be killed. For this day he would bring glory to St Andrew, to the great house of Bruce, and to Scotland.

Thomas, Father Hobbe and Eleanor followed the prior and his monks who were still chanting, though the brothers’ voices were now ragged for they were breathless from hurrying. St Cuthbert’s corporax cloth swayed to and fro and the banner attracted a straggling procession of women and children who, not wanting to wait out of sight of their men, carried spare sheaves of arrows up the hill. Thomas wanted to go faster, to get past the monks and find Lord Outhwaite’s men, but Eleanor deliberately hung back until he turned on her angrily. ‘You can walk faster,’ he protested in French.

‘I can walk faster,’ she said, ‘and you can ignore a battle!’ Father Hobbe, leading the horse, understood the tone even though he did not comprehend the words. He sighed, thus earning himself a savage look from Eleanor. ‘You do not need to fight!’ she went on.

‘I’m an archer,’ Thomas said stubbornly, ‘and there’s an enemy up there.’

‘Your King sent you to find the Grail!’ Eleanor insisted. ‘Not to die! Not to leave me alone! Me and a baby!’ She had stopped now, hands clutching her belly and with tears in her eyes. ‘I am to be alone here? In England?’

‘I won’t die here,’ Thomas said scathingly.

‘You know that?’ Eleanor was even more scathing. ‘God spoke to you, perhaps? You know what other men do not? You know the day of your dying?’

Thomas was taken aback by the outburst. Eleanor was a strong girl, not given to tantrums, but she was distraught and weeping now. ‘Those men,’ Thomas said, ‘the Scarecrow and Beggar, they won’t touch you. I’ll be here.’

‘It isn’t them!’ Eleanor wailed. ‘I had a dream last night. A dream.’

Thomas put his hands on her shoulders. His hands were huge and strengthened by hauling on the hempen string of the big bow. ‘I dreamed of the Grail last night,’ he said, knowing that was not quite true. He had not dreamed of the Grail, rather he had woken to a vision which had turned out to be a deception, but he could not tell Eleanor that. ‘It was golden and beautiful,’ he said, ‘like a cup of fire.’

‘In my dream,’ Eleanor said, gazing up at him, ‘you were dead and your body was all black and swollen.’

‘What is she saying?’ Father Hobbe asked.

‘She had a bad dream,’ Thomas said in English, ‘a nightmare.’

‘The devil sends us nightmares,’ the priest asserted. ‘It is well known. Tell her that.’

Thomas translated that for her, then he stroked a wisp of golden hair away from her forehead and tucked it under her knitted cap. He loved her face, so earnest and narrow, so cat-like, but with big eyes and an expressive mouth. ‘It was just a nightmare,’ he reassured her, ‘un cauchemar.’

‘The Scarecrow,’ Eleanor said with a shudder, ‘he is the cauchemar.’

Thomas drew her into an embrace. ‘He won’t come near you,’ he promised her. He could hear a distant chanting, but nothing like the monks’ solemn prayers. This was a jeering, insistent chant, heavy as the drumbeat that gave it rhythm. He could not hear the words, but he did not need to. ‘The enemy,’ he said to Eleanor, ‘are waiting for us.’

‘They are not my enemy,’ she said fiercely.

‘If they get into Durham,’ Thomas retorted, ‘then they will not know that. They will take you anyway.’

‘Everyone hates the English. Do you know that? The French hate you, the Bretons hate you, the Scots hate you, every man in Christendom hates you! And why? Because you love fighting! You do! Everyone knows that about the English. And you? You have no need to fight today, it is not your quarrel, but you can’t wait to be there, to kill again!’

Thomas did not know what to say, for there was truth in what Eleanor had said. He shrugged and picked up his heavy bow. ‘I fight for my King, and there’s an army of enemies on the hill here. They outnumber us. Do you know what will happen if they get into Durham?’

‘I know,’ Eleanor said firmly, and she did know for she had been in Caen when the English archers, disobeying their King, had swarmed across the bridge and laid the town waste.

‘If we don’t fight them and stop them here,’ Thomas said, ‘then their horsemen will hunt us all down. One after the other.’

‘You said you would marry me,’ Eleanor declared, crying again. ‘I don’t want my baby to be fatherless, I don’t want it to be like me.’ She meant illegitimate.

‘I will marry you, I promise. When the battle is done we shall be married in Durham. In the cathedral, yes?’ He smiled at her. ‘We can be married in the cathedral.’

Eleanor was pleased with the promise, but too furious to show her pleasure. ‘We should go to the cathedral now,’ she snapped. ‘We would be safe there. We should pray at the high altar.’

‘You can go to the city,’ Thomas said. ‘Let me fight my King’s enemies and you go to the city, you and Father Hobbe, and you find the old monk and you can both talk to him, and afterwards you can go to the cathedral and wait for me there.’ He unstrapped one of the big sacks on the mare’s back and took out his haubergeon, which he hauled over his head. The leather lining felt stiff and cold, and smelt of mould. He forced his hands down the sleeves, then strapped the sword belt about his waist and hung the weapon on his right side. ‘Go to the city,’ he told Eleanor, ‘and talk to the monk.’

Eleanor was crying. ‘You are going to die,’ she said, ‘I dreamed it.’

‘I can’t go to the city,’ Father Hobbe protested.

‘You’re a priest,’ Thomas barked, ‘not a soldier! Take Eleanor to Durham. Find Brother Collimore and talk to him.’ The prior had insisted that Thomas wait and suddenly it seemed very sensible to send Father Hobbe to talk to the old monk before the prior poisoned his memories. ‘Both of you,’ Thomas insisted, ‘talk to Brother Collimore. You know what to ask him. And I shall see you there this evening, in the cathedral.’ He took his sallet, with its broad rim to deflect the downward stroke of a blade, and tied it onto his head. He was angry with Eleanor because he sensed she was right. The imminent battle was not his concern except that fighting was his trade and England his country. ‘I will not die,’ he told Eleanor with an obstinate irrationality, ‘and you will see me tonight.’ He tossed the horse’s reins to Father Hobbe. ‘Keep Eleanor safe,’ he told the priest. ‘The Scarecrow won’t risk anything inside the monastery or in the cathedral.’

He wanted to kiss Eleanor goodbye, but she was angry with him and he was angry with her and so he took his bow and his arrow bag and walked away. She said nothing for, like Thomas, she was too proud to back away from the quarrel. Besides, she knew she was right. This clash with the Scots was not Thomas’s fight, whereas the Grail was his duty. Father Hobbe, caught between their obstinacy, walked in silence, but did note that Eleanor turned more than once, evidently hoping to catch Thomas looking back, but all she saw was her lover climbing the path with the great bow across his shoulder.

It was a huge bow, taller than most men and as thick about its belly as an archer’s wrist. It was made from yew; Thomas was fairly sure it was Italian yew though he could never be certain because the raw stave had drifted ashore from a wrecked ship. He had shaped the stave, leaving the centre thick, and he had steamed the tips to curve them against the way the bow would bend when it was drawn. He had painted the bow black, using wax, oil and soot, then tipped the two ends of the stave with pieces of nocked antler horn to hold the cord. The stave had been cut so that at the belly of the bow, where it faced Thomas when he drew the hempen string, there was hard heartwood which was compressed when the arrow was hauled back while the outer belly was springy sapwood and when he released the cord the heartwood snapped out of its compression and the sapwood pulled it back into shape and between them they sent the arrow hissing with savage force. The belly of the bow, where his left hand gripped the yew, was whipped with hemp and above the hemp, which had been stiffened with hoof glue, he had nailed a scrap of silver cut from a crushed Mass vessel that his father had used in Hookton church, and the piece of silver cup showed the yale with the Grail in its clawed grip. The yale came from Thomas’s family’s coat of arms, though he had not known that when he grew up for his father had never told him the tale. He had never told Thomas he was a Vexille from a family that had been lords of the Cathar heretics, a family that had been burned out of their home in southern France and which had fled to hide themselves in the darkest corners of Christendom.

Thomas knew little of the Cathar heresy. He knew his bow and he knew how to select an arrow of slender ash or birch or hornbeam, and he knew how to fledge the shaft with goose feathers and how to tip it with steel. He knew all that, yet he did not know how to drive that arrow through shield, mail and flesh. That was instinct, something he had practised since childhood; practised till his string fingers were bleeding; practised until he no longer thought when he drew the string back to his ear; practised until, like all archers, he was broad across the chest and hugely muscled in his arms. He did not need to know how to use a bow, it was just an instinct like breathing or waking or fighting.

He turned when he reached a stand of hornbeams that guarded the upper path like a rampart. Eleanor was walking stubbornly away and Thomas had an urge to shout to her, but knew she was already too far off and would not hear him. He had quarrelled with her before; men and women, it seemed to Thomas, spent half their lives fighting and half loving and the intensity of the first fed the passion of the second, and he almost smiled for he recognized Eleanor’s stubbornness and he even liked it; and then he turned and walked through the trampled drifts of fallen hornbeam leaves along the path between stone-walled pastures where hundreds of saddled stallions were grazing. These were the warhorses of the English knights and men-at-arms and their presence in the pastures told Thomas that the English expected the Scots to attack because a knight was far better able to defend himself on foot. The horses were kept saddled so that the mailed men-at-arms could either retreat swiftly or else mount up and pursue a beaten enemy.

Thomas could still not see the Scottish army, but he could hear their chanting, which was given force by the hellish beat of the big drums. The sound was making some of the pastured stallions nervous and three of them, pursued by pageboys, galloped beside the stone wall with their eyes showing white. More pages were exercising destriers just behind the English line, which was divided into three battles. Each battle had a knot of horsemen at the centre of its rear rank, the mounted men being the commanders beneath their bright banners, while in front of them were four or five rows of men-at-arms carrying swords, axes, spears and shields, and ahead of the men-at-arms, and crowded thick in the spaces between the three battles, were the archers.

The Scots, two arrow shots away from the English, were on slightly higher ground and also divided into three divisions which, like the English battles, were arrayed beneath their clusters of commanders’ banners. The tallest flag, the red and yellow royal standard, was in the centre. The Scottish knights and men-at-arms, like the English, were on foot, but each of their sheltrons was much larger than its opposing English battle, three or four times larger, but Thomas, tall enough to look over the English line, could see there were not many archers in the enemy ranks. Here and there along the Scottish line he could see some long bowstaves and there were a few crossbows visible among the thicket of pikes, but there were not nearly so many bowmen as were in the English array, though the English, in turn, were hugely outnumbered by the Scottish army. So the battle, if it ever started, would be between arrows and Scottish pikes and men-at-arms, and if there were not enough arrows then the ridge must become an English graveyard.

Lord Outhwaite’s banner of the cross and scallop shell was in the left-hand battle and Thomas crossed to it. The prior, dismounted now, was in the space between the left and centre divisions where one of his monks swung a censer and another brandished the Mass cloth on its painted pole. The prior himself was shouting, though Thomas could not tell whether he called insults at the enemy or prayers to God for the Scottish chanting was so loud. Thomas could not distinguish the enemy’s words either, but the sentiment was plain enough and it was sped on its way by the massive drums.

Thomas could see the huge drums now and observe the passion with which the drummers beat the great skins to make a noise as sharp as snapping bone. Loud, rhythmic and reverberating, an assault of ear-piercing thunder, and in front of the drums at the centre of the enemy line some bearded men whirled in a wild dance. They came darting from the rear of the Scottish line and they wore no mail or iron, but were draped in thick folds of cloth and brandished long-bladed swords about their heads and had small round leather shields, scarce larger than serving platters, strapped to their left forearms. Behind them the Scottish men-at-arms beat the flats of their sword blades against their shields while the pikemen thumped the ground with the butts of their long weapons to add to the noise of the huge drums. The sound was so great that the prior’s monks had abandoned their chanting and now just gazed at the enemy.

‘What they do’ – Lord Outhwaite, on foot like his men, had to raise his voice to make himself heard – ‘is try to scare us with noise before they kill us.’ His lordship limped, whether through age or some old wound, Thomas did not like to ask; it was plain he wanted somewhere he could pace about and kick the turf and so he had come to talk with the monks, though now he turned his friendly face on Thomas. ‘And you want to be most careful of those scoundrels,’ he said, pointing at the dancing men, ‘because they’re wilder than scalded cats. It’s said they skin their captives alive.’ Lord Outhwaite made the sign of the cross. ‘You don’t often see them this far south.’

‘Them?’ Thomas asked.

‘They’re tribesmen from the farthest north,’ one of the monks explained. He was a tall man with a fringe of grey hair, a scarred face and only one eye. ‘Scoundrels, they are,’ the monk went on, ‘scoundrels! They bow down to idols!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I’ve never journeyed that far north, but I hear their land is shrouded in perpetual fog and that if a man dies with a wound to his back then his woman eats her own young and throws herself off the cliffs for the shame of it.’

‘Truly?’ Thomas asked.

‘It’s what I’ve heard,’ the monk said, making the sign of the cross.

‘They live on birds’ nests, seaweed and raw fish.’ Lord Outhwaite took up the tale, then smiled. ‘Mind you, some of my people in Witcar do that, but at least they pray to God as well. At least I think they do.’

‘But your folk don’t have cloven hooves,’ the monk said, staring at the enemy.

‘The Scots do?’ a much younger monk with a face left horribly scarred by smallpox asked anxiously.

‘The clansmen do,’ Lord Outhwaite said. ‘They’re scarcely human!’ He shook his head then held out a hand to the older monk. ‘It’s Brother Michael, isn’t it?’

‘Your lordship flatters to remember me,’ the monk answered, pleased.

‘He was once a man-at-arms to my Lord Percy,’ Lord Outhwaite explained to Thomas, ‘and a good one!’

‘Before I lost this to the Scots,’ Brother Michael said, raising his right arm so that the sleeve of his robe fell to reveal a stump at his wrist, ‘and this,’ he pointed to his empty eye socket, ‘so now I pray instead of fight.’ He turned and gazed at the Scottish line. ‘They are noisy today,’ he grumbled.

‘They’re confident,’ Lord Outhwaite said placidly, ‘and so they should be. When was the last time a Scottish army outnumbered us?’

‘They might outnumber us,’ Brother Michael said, ‘but they’ve picked a strange place to do it. They should have gone to the southern end of the ridge.’

‘And so they should, brother,’ Lord Outhwaite agreed, ‘but let us be grateful for small mercies.’ What Brother Michael meant was the Scots were sacrificing their advantage of numbers by fighting on the narrow ridge top where the English line, though thinner and with far fewer men, could not be overlapped. If the Scots had gone further south, where the ridge widened as it fell away to the water meadows, they could have outflanked their enemy. Their choice of ground might have been a mistake that helped the English, but that was small consolation when Thomas tried to estimate the size of the enemy army. Other men were doing the same and their guesses ranged from six to sixteen thousand, though Lord Outhwaite reckoned there were no more than eight thousand Scots. ‘Which is only three or four times our number,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and not enough of them are archers. God be thanked for English archers.’

‘Amen,’ Brother Michael said.

The smallpox-scarred younger monk was staring in fascination at the thick Scottish line. ‘I’ve heard that the Scots paint their faces blue. I can’t see any though.’

Lord Outhwaite looked astonished. ‘You heard what?’

‘That they paint their faces blue, my lord,’ the monk said, embarrassed now, ‘or maybe they only paint half the face. To scare us.’

‘To scare us?’ His lordship was amused. ‘To make us laugh, more like. I’ve never seen it.’

‘Nor I,’ Brother Michael put in.

‘It’s just what I’ve heard,’ the young monk said.

‘They’re frightening enough without paint,’ Lord Outhwaite pointed to a banner opposite his own part of the line. ‘I see Sir William’s here.’

‘Sir William?’ Thomas asked.

‘Willie Douglas,’ Lord Outhwaite said. ‘I was a prisoner of his for two years and I’m still paying the bankers because of it.’ He meant that his family had borrowed money to pay the ransom. ‘I liked him, though. He’s a rogue. And he’s fighting with Moray?’

‘Moray?’ Brother Michael asked.

‘John Randolph, Earl of Moray.’ Lord Outhwaite nodded at another banner close to the red-heart flag of Douglas. ‘They hate each other. God knows why they’re together in the line.’ He stared again at the Scottish drummers who leaned far back to balance the big instruments against their bellies. ‘I hate those drums,’ he said mildly. ‘Paint their faces blue! I never heard such nonsense!’ he chuckled.

The prior was haranguing the nearest troops now, telling them that the Scots had destroyed the great religious house at Hexham. ‘They defiled God’s holy church! They killed the brethren! They have stolen from Christ Himself and put tears onto the cheeks of God! Wreak His vengeance! Show no mercy!’ The nearest archers flexed their fingers, licked lips and stared at the enemy who were showing no sign of advancing. ‘You will kill them,’ the prior shrieked, ‘and God will bless you for it! He will shower blessings on you!’

‘They want us to attack them,’ Brother Michael remarked drily. He seemed embarrassed by his prior’s passion.

‘Aye,’ Lord Outhwaite said, ‘and they think we’ll attack on horseback. See the pikes?’

‘They’re good against men on foot too, my lord,’ Brother Michael said.

‘That they are, that they are,’ Lord Outhwaite agreed. ‘Nasty things, pikes.’ He fidgeted with some of the loose rings of his mail coat and looked surprised when one of them came away in his fingers. ‘I do like Willie Douglas,’ he said. ‘We used to hunt together when I was his prisoner. We caught some very fine boar in Liddesdale, I remember.’ He frowned. ‘Such noisy drums.’

‘Will we attack them?’ the young monk summoned up the courage to enquire.

‘Dear me no, I do hope not,’ Lord Outhwaite said. ‘We’re outnumbered! Much better to hold our ground and let them come to us.’

‘And if they don’t come?’ Thomas asked.

‘Then they’ll slink off home with empty pockets,’ Lord Outhwaite said, ‘and they won’t like that, they won’t like it at all. They’re only here for plunder! That’s why they dislike us so much.’

‘Dislike us? Because they’re here for plunder?’ Thomas had not understood his lordship’s thinking.

‘They’re envious, young man! Plain envious. We have riches, they don’t, and there are few things more calculated to provoke hatred than such an imbalance. I had a neighbour in Witcar who seemed a reasonable fellow, but then he and his men tried to take advantage of my absence when I was Douglas’s prisoner. They tried to ambush the coin for my ransom, if you can believe it! It was just envy, it seems, for he was poor.’

‘And now he’s dead, my lord?’ Thomas asked, amused.

‘Dear me, no,’ his lordship said reprovingly, ‘he’s in a very deep hole in the bottom of my keep. Deep down with the rats. I throw him coins every now and then to remind him why he’s there.’ He stood on tiptoe and gazed westwards where the hills were higher. He was looking for Scottish men-at-arms riding to make an assault from the south, but he saw none. ‘His father,’ he said, meaning Robert the Bruce, ‘wouldn’t be waiting there. He’d have men riding around our flanks to put the fear of God up our arses, but this young pup doesn’t know his trade, does he? He’s in the wrong place altogether!’

‘He’s put his faith in numbers,’ Brother Michael said.

‘And perhaps their numbers will suffice,’ Lord Outhwaite replied gloomily and made the sign of the cross.

Thomas, now that he had a chance to see the ground between the armies, could understand why Lord Outhwaite was so scornful of the Scottish King who had drawn up his army just south of the burned cottages where the dragon cross had fallen. It was not just that the narrowness of the ridge confined the Scots, denying them a chance to outflank the numerically inferior English, but that the ill-chosen battlefield was obstructed by thick blackthorn hedges and at least one stone wall. No army could advance across those obstacles and hope to hold its line intact, but the Scottish King seemed confident that the English would attack him for he did not move. His men shouted insults in the hope of provoking an attack, but the English stayed stubbornly in their ranks.