He said the words as easily as any saint preparing for the Second Coming. Said it as one who understands God’s wishes and never doubts the impossibility of his task. But in that certainty, he seemed somehow removed from the present, like he was already looking back on what had not yet happened. It unsettled me, not because I thought him deranged, but because I could not muster the faith in myself, given what I had witnessed. “We have had... time to prepare. I agree. But what do I tell men like John, Iver and Gram there when they ask how many bloody English are going to be marching toward them along this road we’re now standing on as we have this very profound conversation about God and fate?”
He winked at me. “Tell them there are a lot of them. Most of them can’t count past ten, so showering them with vast numbers won’t mean a thing, except there are more of them than us, and I reckon they all expect that. Tell them that the English argue, straggle, and suffer from the heat and terrain. That sickness plagues them and they’ve run low on food. Don’t mention any cavalry and if they ask, plead ignorance.” Robert drew me in close, his hands pinching either side of my face. “They are ready for this, James. Ready. Don’t do or say anything to dissuade them from believing that victory is possible. Because, dear God in heaven, it is. It is.”
His eyes were mere inches from mine. Even through the hot air, I could feel his breath on my face, feel the sweat thick upon his calloused palms, feel his blood pounding through the veins in his fingers... and I believed him.
I touched him on both shoulders to draw strength from him, then pulled away to go back to my men and ready for the day to come.
As Keith handed me the reins of my horse, Robert, who was heading back toward the pots, called out.
“Ah, I do remember now. Too many things crowding my head these days. Some young man and his brother from Ross... no, Rothesay.” He clucked at his pony. It lifted its shaggy head to follow him at a leisurely pace, stopping on occasion to pull at a clump of grass. “They went on over to Walter Stewart’s tent to wait for you. I wouldn’t mark either as archers, though. The mute one had broad shoulders and was already fondling a spear. Put him in one of the schiltrons. The other is barely weaned, but Walter will find a place for him. He seemed to know them already.”
“Rothesay?” Keith said to me as Robert wandered away. “Stewart’s men?”
“My brothers,” I told him. “Hugh and Archibald.”
“Brothers?” He slipped his foot into his stirrup and swung himself up. “Didn’t know you had any.”
“I wasn’t sure if I still did, until now.”
“Is Walter Stewart within?” I asked the soldier loitering at the entry to Stewart’s tent. His face was unfamiliar to me, but he looked the part in his leather-trussed hose and over-sized hauberk. After leaving Robert down by the pots along the Roman road, I had gone with Keith back to the encampment at the edge of the Torwood. There we had given our horses over to squires for tending, then parted ways to manage the hundred details apiece that had to be looked over in too little a time before the inevitable finally came to pass.
The soldier blinked at me and narrowed his eyes. “Who calls?”
For months now we had made our camp in the Torwood, two miles south and uphill of the tiny village of Bannock, the inhabitants of which had departed soon after our arrival dragging their life’s belongings in rickety carts or in empty grain sacks tossed over hunched backs. In that time we had hewn tall spears from the saplings and practiced with them in the clearings. We had fashioned thick barricades across every path that led through the Torwood for miles, to destroy any plans the English might have of avoiding us by that route and relieving Stirling. I had wielded my axe alongside my men, not burrowed inside my tent and emerged merely to spew orders. I had suffered from the raw pain of oozing blisters and my fingers were lumpy with calluses. I had bedded down each night weary to the bone and arisen stiff and barely able to walk or raise my arms above my head.
By now, any man who had been at camp for more than a few days would have known me. This one had no idea of my identity and I wondered if he might truly be my brother or was just another upstart, lately come. I studied the young man. In years, he was probably not yet twenty and because of his sinewy limbs and clear skin could have passed for less. The sword hanging from his belt appeared so awkwardly heavy in comparison to his frame that it threatened to topple him over. He had let the downy fuzz on his chin and upper lip go unshaven, but it did little to age him. The eyes, surrounded by thick, dark lashes, were honest and innocent and their constant shifting to take in every face and going-on revealed he had not seen much of the world before coming here. His hair was golden-brown, but loosely curled like mine.
“I am the Stewart’s cousin – James Douglas,” I said.
He took his time answering, scrutinizing me every inch as if he were yet doubtful of my identity. “They said you had the king’s confidence – that you were important.” Tentatively, he put out his hand. His palms were smooth and pink. The only callous he had was on the inside of his middle finger, where a quill had rested. Crescents of ink stain showed beneath the ends of his nails. “Archibald.”
“Archibald!” I crushed him in my arms and as I thrust him back to look at him again he stiffened, uncomfortable with such an endearing gesture. “I would never have known you. A bairn when I left. Ah, but look at you now. Look. You have Eleanor’s eyes and chin, true. Father’s mess of hair, though. Where is Hugh?”
He pointed down the length of the corridor between the two rows of commanders’ pavilions. There crouched Hugh, dipping his dented bascinet into a bucket of water intended for horses and pouring it over his head to cool off. When I called out his name, he turned his wet head and seeing Archibald curve an arm in beckon he dutifully rose and loped toward us with his bascinet tucked under his arm. He paused only long enough to scoop up a long spear, dragging its end along the ground, stirring up a trail of dust on the way.
He stopped and stood looking blankly at Archibald, ignoring me until I said his name again.
“Hugh? It’s me, James. Your brother. Do you remember?”
Staring at me beneath that large forehead and bulging brow, a smile as wide as the Forth parted his lips. His shoulders were indeed broad and his bulk accentuated by the lack of neck and shorter limbs for his mass. But for the tangled loops in his hair, he looked nothing like Archibald or me.
“You remember who I am?” I asked of him. “I don’t look the same, I know. Neither do you.”
“H-U-G-H,” he replied. He squeezed the too-small bascinet onto the top of his head, so that it more or less just sat there, and planted his spear proudly in front of him. “I fight. Good?”
“Aye, good. We’ll make a fine soldier of you, Hugh.” Unlike Archibald, whose hauberk sleeves dangled down below his elbows, Hugh wore no mail – only a padded jacket, covered in studded leather and with bared arms that showed his enormous, tree-trunk muscles. Hugh, I realized, had been preparing for this since we were lads out slinging stones across Douglas Water in the summer twilight when we should have been in bed. But when I glanced at my youngest brother, I saw that he cringed at the thought of going into battle, of metal tearing flesh and men killing men. Having inherited Eleanor’s love for letters, he was not cut for the soldier’s mold. “Archibald, you didn’t have to come. You’re too young yet for –”
“No, you were my age when you joined King Robert. Is that not so?”
I nodded, wishing now after having seen him that I had not sent for him at all. I could have waited until this was all over to find him, but in truth when I wrote to him I did not know if any of us would live past the day. Despite his words, I was not convinced he wanted to be here. I had known too many like him who had said the words because they thought that alone would make them brave and when they were up against the first hail of arrows, that false courage stared them hard in the face and made liars of them. I would speak to my cousin Walter later and find a place for Archibald, far from the first wave of
battle. “Aye, well, you could not let Hugh come alone, could you? He would have lost his way before he ever got off Bute.”
Offended somehow, Archibald looked away. He watched half a dozen men, who were carrying the tall spears that would stand against the English cavalry, make their way down the corridor among the tents in silence. Entranced, Hugh strolled after them a ways.
“Hugh’s done well enough on his own while I’ve been gone –” Archibald said, “not that you would know. As long as there is someone to tell him what to do, he manages. I reckon he’ll fit in well enough here. As for me, I’m not so certain now. I was content where I was... but you wrote, so I came.”
The truth after all. “Aside from me asking you to, why?”
He shifted on his feet, clutched the pommel of his sword and raised his eyes to gaze at me through those long, boyish eyelashes. “Because I’d heard about you, James, the Black Douglas, for years now. Sometimes you were so close to Rothesay I could have ridden less than a day to seek you out. But I no longer knew you. Didn’t even remember you. Eventually, I went to Glasgow, then on to Inchafray – more to escape boredom than to study. I heard more talk of you. About the Bruce and Randolph. Unbelievable tales. So I came, James. To see if it was true. I came because you asked and I was curious. And now you say I’m too young and maybe I should have stayed away? I thought it was more than an escort for Hugh that you wanted. It was quite a bit out of my way to go back to Rothesay and retrieve him before coming here, you realize? But I did it, because you bloody asked me to and I’m here now. Wouldn’t you have done the same at my age, come here, if you could have? You contradict yourself a bit, I think.”
The small, ragged group of spearmen descended the gentle slope in the slanted light of evening, then turned up the Roman road toward St. Ninian’s Kirk where Randolph’s men would be stationed later. More men were going that way. Walter Stewart hurried toward us, leading a clutch of nobles, among them Angus Og, Thomas Randolph and the obdurate Edward Bruce.
“There’s a place for you, Archibald, if you’ll not think it too trivial a duty for one of your birth.” At his age I was squire to a bishop, which meant I fiddled my time away running mundane errands on church business I neither knew nor cared about. He would get little better until he had proven himself. “There are a mess of folk up on Gillies Hill.” I pointed to the place up above the humble church of St. Ninian’s, just west of the road there, where the camp followers milled about – latecomers and tradesmen, as well as the womenfolk, some of them wives and others belonging to no one, or to anyone for a penny or a loaf of bread. “Some untrained, most without proper weapons, but all willing to fight, if needed. Go there. Ask for Sim Leadhouse. He’ll put you where needed. As for Hugh, I’ll entrust him to Thomas of Moray. A few days from now, God willing, we’ll talk again when you have your own tales to tell.”
Archibald took a knife from his belt and held it out to me. The leather binding on the handle was cracked and the blade itself, although recently whetted, was pocked and nicked in several places. It was no more than a huntsman’s knife, and a poor one at that which would have served better melted down than as it was. Failing to understand, I returned it into Archibald’s palm.
“Keep it. You may have need of it.”
“You don’t understand,” he said with a frown. “It was Father’s. You left it behind when you went away to Paris.”
Obligingly, I took it from him and fingered the worn binding of the handle. I remembered the day Father gave it to me. I was only ten. The day Longshanks stormed Berwick. The screams. The smoke. The smell of blood... I shook away the memories and tucked the knife beneath my belt.
“Archibald!” Walter Stewart called out as he passed by Hugh, who was still watching after the spearmen fading far off into the distance. Walter drew up to us and clapped Archibald sharply on the upper arm. “You’ve found your brother, I see. I feared there wouldn’t be time before the battle. I have lacked for a good conversation ever since you went off. Have those monks converted you yet? My friend Annice nearly wasted away from starvation when you abandoned her.”
“Not completely,” Archibald replied.
“Ah, but forget about her. Better to let her rot. She started rumors that you were... how does one say it kindly? Unnatural.” He put his lips closer to Archibald’s ear, although he barely lowered his voice. “I did not tell her that the miller’s daughter knows different. She named the bairn after you. Sadly, the wee one took a fever his first winter. He did not make it.”
So, Archibald’s youthful embrace of the restrained life inside an abbey had less to do with devotion and more to do with seeking penance.
“James, how long has it been?” Walter turned to me and nodded in acknowledgment. Near to the same age as Archibald, duty had been thrust upon him very early on as his father had waned after suffering from apoplexy. Being the hereditary steward, he had harkened to the calling naturally and although sometimes plagued by a weakness of the lungs, he had a bright and eager mind that had earned the attention of Robert. Since he was not yet of age though, Robert had seen fit to nestle him under my wing for this undertaking, although I full well knew that part of that doing was because many of the men of nobler birth did not readily accept me as their commander, being the son of a mere knight and not an earl. Walter was my cousin as well. My mother and his father had been brother and sister, but since my mother Elizabeth had died when I was young, I had not ever seen much of my uncle James, for whom I was named.
“The king has called for us all to take up our positions,” Walter said. “Can it be, so soon? I had hoped they would not come after all. I wished in vain.”
Edward Bruce said nothing. He had sworn, believed, they would not come, but now they were almost here. But like the rest of us, he had accepted the inevitable and despise him though we all did, he would hold his ground when the time arrived... or die doing it.
Randolph said, “The English will be in Falkirk, or close there, by nightfall.”
“Bannockburn tomorrow,” Angus Og said. “We’ll get to see the bastards eye to eye, then.”
Enough of this waiting and making ready. Enough of sleeping on rocks in the stabbing rain and the bone-cracking cold, of sucking the juice from blackberries for sustenance and drinking brackish water, of creeping upon packs of strayed Englishmen and putting arrows through their ribs and knives in their overfed bellies. One more battle and let it be done. Once more. Once and for all.
As they began to disperse, I turned to Archibald. “The Abbot of Inchafray will perform Mass at daybreak, Archibald. We’ve all a need to purge ourselves before tomorrow’s done. In the morning. A good night’s rest to you.”
I hadn’t intended it as judgmental, having a number of sins to perfunctorily clear my own soul of, but he lowered his chin in disgrace and refused to meet my eyes. I had failed his expectations in my welcome somehow, but mending that rift would need to wait. Archibald’s fleeting romp with a willing lass was an insignificant matter. In the face of Scotland’s survival, it meant nothing to me or anyone else except Archibald. I doubted the abbot would even pause over such a confession, having heard our own noble king’s share of improprieties. If the sins of all humanity were piled up to make a mountain, Archibald’s would not have amounted to a grain of sand. But being milk-faced like that, proud and meek at the same time, the whole world was what lay within his sight and all of history was the length of his own life.
By sunset, I had my men stationed midway between the divisions of Randolph and Edward Bruce in a triangle of land that stretched from the point of St. Ninian’s to the Bannock Burn. Thin clouds of red cut across the sky in omen, likes streaks of blood trailing from wounded flesh. The day’s final light bathed the wooded slopes of Gillie’s Hill in deep purple. There Archibald would be, waiting nervously with his pocked knife and cumbersome sword, morbidly contemplating the vast weight of his sins while the English horde poured onto the carse with their shining spears and silver-white armor. I looked towar
d the feeble peaked roof of St. Ninian’s, by where Hugh was – Hugh, who I doubted either feared or hoped or felt any guilt. Hugh who would fight, because I asked him to, because he had always wanted to.
How strange that our lives had wandered in this way. I might curse Longshanks for casting my brothers and me apart, but I had his incompetent son to thank for bringing us together again.
Ch. 33
James Douglas – Bannockburn, 23rd of June, 1304
Maurice, the Abbot of Inchafray, progressed along a meandering line of Scotsmen who bowed their heads to him as they knelt on soiled knees. His fringed head glistened with fine beads of perspiration and his plump cheeks were as red as ripened apples from weeks in the sun. In one hand, he clutched a gospel, its binding frayed and its pages slightly splayed from having absorbed too much dampness over the years. A tattered ribbon marked a passage that he read aloud from time to time. Translated, it said:
“Greater love hath no man than he would lay down his life for his friends.”
A crucifix dangled from a fine silver chain wound about his knuckles. In the other hand he held a small, plain wooden casket, purported to contain the knuckle bones of St. Fillan. At intervals he broke from his Latin droning, as someone stretched out their hands to touch the box and utter a prayer. Occasionally, a soldier poured out a brief confession and the abbot placed the palm of his hand upon the man’s forehead and absolved him of sins past.
Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) Page 28
