by Robyn Young
A cry went up. Retreat! Retreat!
King Henry and his royal knights led the flight, the king’s banner trailing red behind him as he urged his destrier down from the high ground, back towards Lewes. Retreat turned into stampede. The Lord of Annandale found himself swept up and carried from the hillside in the blind tumult. One man went down in front of him, his horse smashing to the ground in a cloud of dust. Bruce kicked his charger and vaulted up and over, iron-shod hooves striking the chalk as it came down hard on the other side. His banneret was to the side of him. Some of his men were close behind. He could just glimpse them through the slits of his helm. All else was confusion, the king’s infantry scattering across the hillside before the knights.
All around the town of Lewes, torches were burning. The flames billowed in the evening, giving off a haze of acrid smoke that drifted over the rooftops. Around one building, some distance from the castle and set in its own grounds, the torches formed a dense constellation in the gathering shadows.
In a cell in Lewes Priory, four men were waiting. One sat on the room’s single pallet, his head in his hands, another leaned against the wall by the door, eyes closed, and one was on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest. The fourth stood by the window, staring out across the dark silhouettes of the priory’s outbuildings to the flickering points of fire that lit a mass of men.
On the air, Bruce could hear screams as horses, too badly injured in the battle to be saved, were despatched. Above the pitiful noises rose the sound of raucous laughter and song. Montfort’s men had not been slow to celebrate their victory. Bruce could see them through the cobweb-strung window of the cell. He glanced round, hearing a sniff. John Comyn, over by the door, still had his eyes closed and Balliol his head in his hands. Bruce guessed the sound had come from the third figure, huddled on the floor. The squire couldn’t have been more than eighteen; not much younger than his eldest son, back in Scotland. His eyes were pools in the gloom. Bruce grunted, glancing at Balliol, the squire’s master, who hadn’t looked up. After a moment, he turned back to the window, unwilling to offer words of reassurance to someone else’s man. Besides, he had none to offer, for what comfort was there in the face of capture and defeat?
Hours earlier, after the battle on the Downs turned into a rout, King Henry’s forces had fled to the safety of the monks’ precinct, which had formed the king’s camp since his arrival in Lewes. Other cavalry made it into the town, but had holed up elsewhere. The infantry wouldn’t have been so fortunate. Unable to match the swift retreat of the knights, they would have been easy targets for Montfort’s pursuing forces. Their passing, although brutal, would at least have been quick. The humiliation of imprisonment, waiting for another man to decide his future, seemed, to Bruce, a worse fate. In battle a man had choices, in how he fought and how he died. He was still free. Here, all choice was suspended. He hated the death of his own control, fearing it more than the death of the flesh.
It wasn’t long after the king and his men barricaded themselves in the priory that Montfort’s forces stormed the town. The priory was surrounded and Montfort paraded some of the captives from the battlefield, including the Earl of Cornwall, outside. Montfort clearly took pleasure in shouting to Henry that his cowardly brother had fled the battle and hidden in a windmill. He then threatened to execute the earl in front of the priory, if the king refused to agree to his terms of surrender. Such a threat seemed impossible, for no earl had been executed in England for almost two centuries and it went against every code of war. But Montfort wasn’t engaged in any normal battle: he was waging war on his king and trying to take control of the realm. Henry, Montfort demanded, would deliver himself into his mercy and agree to allow a council of barons to rule in his stead. He would remain king in name alone, almost all of his authority stripped from him and handed to this council.
Bruce had been in the refectory with his knights when five figures had burst in. One was grievously injured and was being held up by two comrades. All were coated in blood and filth, the reek that followed them appalling. At their head was Lord Edward. Bruce listened with the others as the young man recounted to one of the king’s barons how he had destroyed Montfort’s fleeing infantry, pursuing them for miles, but had returned only to find the battle was over. His company had been attacked trying to enter the town. He managed to escape and, guessing his father had retreated to the priory, crawled through a drainage ditch out of sight of Montfort’s forces.
Shortly after, the king entered, pushing through the crowded hall. The concern and relief that flooded Henry’s face quickly turned to anger, his cheeks mottling as he harangued his son, demanding to know why he had abandoned the battlefield. Edward stood his ground, towering over the king. He said, his voice imperious, that he thought his father would be able to defend his own flank. Silence followed, Henry seeming to slump, his fury draining along with his resolve as he told his son they had no choice but to surrender. Edward argued against this, saying they had supplies, they could hold Montfort off for weeks. But now it was the king’s turn to stand firm. Montfort had threatened to execute his brother. It was over.
‘You sealed our fate when you left the field of battle,’ Henry finished. ‘You will bear the bitterness of surrender.’ He had turned to the silent crowd of men. ‘All of you. I have made my decision.’
Negotiations between the royal forces and the rebels outside continued, but only formalities remained. The men inside the priory were split up on Montfort’s orders, according to rank and region, their arms relinquished. The priory, their sanctuary, became their prison, where they would wait until Montfort decided their fates. Edward was to become a hostage, while Henry would be returned to London, where he would be allowed no more freedom of action than his captive son.
Bruce’s jaw tightened as another sniff came from the squire. Arguably, out of the four of them in the cell, the young man was the most likely to come out of this unscathed. He wasn’t a lowly foot soldier and so unless Montfort really was willing to execute the nobility he wouldn’t be killed and any payment for his freedom would be negligible. To the Lord of Annandale, the prospect of ransom was an ugly apparition. He was a high official under King Henry and a powerful lord in Scotland. Montfort would not let him go lightly. This could ruin his family for generations. He closed his eyes, the wrath of St Malachy burning down the decades towards him, blackening his line, from his forefathers to his sons.
The rattle of a latch made all four look up. Balliol struggled to his feet with a wince, his old face furrowing with dogged determination. The door opened and a man appeared, holding a torch. Bruce recognised him. He had seen him before in Edinburgh. It was William Comyn, head of the Comyns of Kilbride.
John Comyn broke the silence. ‘It appears you chose the right side for once, cousin.’
William Comyn smiled grimly. ‘The Red Comyns have had their time in power, ruling our family with an iron fist. Now, perhaps, it is our turn.’
‘If you have come here to gloat you can save your breath,’ growled John. ‘Whatever Montfort does to me, the Red Comyns will continue. My son and heir will make certain of that.’ There was a threat veiled behind the words.
William Comyn’s smile faded. ‘On the contrary, cousin, I have come to release you.’
Balliol scoffed at this, although his squire had risen hopefully. ‘I didn’t realise the Earl of Leicester was taking orders from a Scot.’
‘Sir Simon rewards those loyal to him. I petitioned for the release of my kinsman and he granted me three prisoners in return for my service.’
‘Why would you do this?’ murmured John.
‘We may not always see eye to eye, cousin, but we are all Comyns beneath the shroud of our personal ambitions. It would not serve me, or the Comyns of Kilbride, to see you ruined by a ransom fee. What I want in return for your release is a greater share of the influence wielded by our family. A position in the royal court.’
Still, John seemed unconvinced. ‘My fee alone would make Mo
ntfort a rich man. Why would he release three men?’
‘Montfort has enough noble prisoners, including Lord Edward, to fill his treasury four times over and, besides, money isn’t his motivation. He understands you were just doing your duty by the king. He would prefer you free, as cooperative allies,’ added William, looking at Bruce and Balliol, ‘rather than prisoners.’
Balliol nodded. ‘Well, he can be assured of that. As can the Comyns of Kilbride. The Balliol family stands in your debt, Sir William.’
‘Sir?’ questioned the young squire fearfully, as Balliol went towards the open door.
Balliol glanced back at him. ‘Your ransom will be met,’ he said dismissively.
‘Sir, I beg you,’ implored the squire.
‘Come,’ said William Comyn, impatiently to the Lord of Annandale.
As Bruce went forward, John Comyn moved in front of the doorway. ‘Not him,’ he said, meeting the Lord of Annandale’s eyes, his own dark and glittery in the torch flames.
‘Cousin?’
John Comyn didn’t take his gaze off Bruce. ‘The Bruce stays.’
‘Sir Simon de Montfort granted me the release of three men.’
‘Did he stipulate which three?’
‘No, but—’
‘Then he is the third,’ said John, gesturing to the squire, whose face flooded with relief.
‘A squire’s ransom will be next to nothing, cousin. It isn’t worth it.’
‘It is to me,’ replied John Comyn. The corner of his mouth curled, puckering his face, but the smile was anything but humorous. ‘Do you recall, Sir Robert, when my family came to you, asking for your support against our enemies when Alexander succeeded the throne so young? You must, of course, for it was a desperate time and none felt it more keenly than my family, the fortune and influence we had achieved through decades of hard work and loyal service to the crown threatening to slip through our fingers. You were the one man who could have aided us, who could have kept the balance of power during the king’s minority, negating the need for the action we were later forced to take in our bid for survival.’
‘Bid for survival?’ spat Bruce, stepping forward. ‘You held our king against his will!’
‘But do you also recall your response?’ John Comyn cut across him. ‘That you would sooner serve the devil than the lowborn sons of clerks? I told you then that one day I would repay you for the ruin my family faced following your decision. This is that day.’
As William Comyn stepped aside and Balliol and the squire followed him out, John Comyn closed the cell door. The last thing the Lord of Annandale saw was Comyn’s face, shining in the torchlight.
17
The city of Lincoln was drowned in rain. Clouds clotted the sky, seeping an endless deluge on the heads of the throng gathered outside the cathedral. Mothers and infants, guildsmen and farmers, innkeepers and paupers, the pious and the curious all huddled together in the downpour, waiting to catch another glimpse of the royal procession that had filed into the arched darkness of the cathedral an hour earlier. Above, the bell continued to toll, the sound reverberating over the heads of the silent multitude, across the waterlogged market square, out into the empty streets beyond.
In the cathedral’s cavernous interior a sombre congregation stood bowed in prayer, filling the aisles to the Angel Choir. Lords and ladies, barons and knights, maids and royal officials, all were clad in black, their faces covered with hoods and veils. The knights bore shields shrouded with cloth that hid colours and devices, rendering the men anonymous, uniform in grief. The cathedral too was dressed for mourning with lengths of gossamer black silk draped from the arches. A wan light bled through the trefoils and quatrefoils on the middle storey, illuminating ghostly swirls of incense and wisps of candle smoke. Rain smeared the great eastern window and beat a tattoo on the stained glass that could be heard between the slow tolls of the bell.
To Edward, standing in front of the high altar, baleful in ink-black velvet, that bell was a hollow heartbeat. Behind him was the rood screen, beyond which the thickly moulded arches stretched away, curving over and over down the nave in a grotesque suggestion of a ribcage, the Purbeck marble veined and sinewy. Before the king, placed on a hearse and surrounded by a halo of candlelight, was a coffin. It had been covered with a pall of Venetian silk, embroidered with hundreds of tiny gold flowers, so that only its shape was visible: a black, angular outline, the size of a human. Inside that coffin was his wife.
Edward had been left stunned by how quickly his life had been shattered by the fist of death. Barely days after he had learned the devastating tidings that Margaret of Norway, his son’s bride-to-be, had died on the way to Scotland, Eleanor had fallen ill. She had suffered with a sickness in Gascony that left her weak and the physician suspected that this had led to the fever that had taken hold so swiftly and so voraciously. Edward had Eleanor moved to Lincoln to be close to the shrine of St Hugh of Avalon, but nothing, not prayer, medicine or miracle had been able to save her.
Eleanor, his Spanish queen, had been with him for thirty-six years. On the day of their marriage in the kingdom of Castile he had been fifteen, Eleanor just twelve. In all that time she had rarely left his side, joining him on crusade in the Holy Land, supporting him through the campaigns in Wales and the bloody rebellion of Simon de Montfort. She had been with him in illness and defeat, in exile and in triumph, through the births of sixteen children and the deaths of eleven. She had been his reason and reflection, his compassion and his wisdom. Now, she was a corpse in a wooden box, her organs removed for enshrinement in Lincoln, her body to be conveyed to London with all the ceremony of state Edward could marshal. He had already paid for bedesmen to be sent out across the kingdom to proclaim the obit and, soon, all the towns of England would sound with the clang of the mourning bell, from Winchester and Exeter, to Warwick and York.
As the bishop intoned a psalm from the Breviary, the king heard weeping behind him. He glanced round to see his son, Edward of Caernarfon, standing with his four older sisters. The little boy was crying into his hands, his shoulders shaking. The king turned back without a word. His own grief was knitted inside him, woven into his muscles and sinews, bound up in his gut and chest. To release it would be to fall apart, to come undone. He had no intention of doing any such thing. He might have lost his love. But he had not lost his purpose.
When the last words of the Requiem Mass were uttered by the bishop the congregation began to shift. As the acolytes sprinkled the coffin with holy water dripped from sprigs of hyssop, the lords and bishops in the choir surged forward, intent on paying their respects to his dead wife and to him. Edward did not want their sympathy or their pity, which, from some, would be nothing more than show. Several of his more recalcitrant barons had been unhappy with his long absence in France and had made their frustrations known earlier in the month at parliament. To Edward, their sad expressions were nothing more than masks and he could no more stand to look upon their wooden visages than he could that shapeless coffin. Motioning curtly to John de Warenne in the front row, the king strode to a door in the north transept and entered the passage that led to the cloisters. The Earl of Surrey followed a moment later.
Edward reached the cloisters, where rain was dripping steadily on to the square of grass in the centre of the arched walkways. He closed his eyes, drawing a breath of frigid November air that revived him after the cloying smell of incense. He looked round as John de Warenne came to stand beside him. The aged earl, who was several inches shorter than him, had recently gained a paunch. The slabs of muscle, developed over years of training and fighting, were softening to fat and swelling the earl’s already bulky frame. The king was struck by the change in his ablest commander’s physique and wondered if it was somehow a metaphor for his reign. Was he, too, softening? Becoming flaccid? Was this why his plans had gone so awry? His jaw tightened at the thought. ‘Tell me again what the Bishop of St Andrews said in his message.’
John de Warenne paused, seemin
g to consider his answer.
‘Well?’ said Edward.
The earl cleared his throat. ‘Forgive me, my lord, but is this the time for such a discussion? Would you not rather wait and—’
‘On the contrary,’ said Edward coldly, ‘I want to begin planning my next move before the Scots close ranks and we are shut out. Answer my question.’
‘The bishop said Sir John Balliol declared himself king in the wake of Margaret’s death, but that Sir Robert Bruce of Annandale has since countered the claim. The men of the realm are divided between the two and the bishop fears this division will erupt into war. He implores you to come north and help restore the peace. He believes the magnates of Scotland will listen to you. He wants you to be involved in choosing the successor.’
Edward stared out over the sodden lawn, watching the rain cascade from the arches. ‘Is this not the same situation as that faced by my father when Alexander first took the throne?’
John de Warenne grunted. ‘There are similarities, but I wouldn’t say it was the same, my lord.’
‘But the Scots requested my father’s intervention after Alexander succeeded to the throne as a child,’ said Edward impatiently. ‘And through this intervention my father was able to arrange the marriage of my sister to the king.’
The earl nodded. ‘Yes, although the marriage gave your father little in the way of control over the throne of Scotland. His grip on the realm remained tenuous at best.’
‘My father never knew how to turn a situation to his advantage,’ responded Edward. ‘What of Balliol and Bruce? What would each be like as a king, do you believe?’
‘Well, as the man is wedded to my daughter, I know Sir John better than I do the Bruce.’ Warenne shifted his broad shoulders. ‘Balliol is a malleable man, I would say. Not a natural leader. More comfortable receiving orders than giving them. The Bruce on the other hand is shrewd and strong-willed, although he has always been a loyal ally of yours and the lands he holds in England make him as subject to you as he ever was to Alexander.’
