by Robyn Young
“Do we know numbers?”
“The scouts reckon seven thousand horse, with large contingents led by Bek and de Warenne.”
“The earl’s no doubt trying to make up for his cowardice at Stirling,” said Adam scornfully.
“And more than twenty thousand foot,” finished Wallace.
“Dear God,” murmured Will.
Gray nodded. “The bastard means to teach us a lesson.”
“We’ve also had word,” continued Wallace, looking at Will, “that the Templars are to allow the army to rest at their preceptory at Liston. Knights from England, under the command of Brian le Jay, are coming north with him.”
Will felt a heaviness enter him.
“The loyalty of the bishop of Durham and the earl of Surrey is unquestionable. But you told me when we first met that the Templars were compelled by Edward to aid his invasion. Will they fight for him willingly in this campaign?”
Will nodded reluctantly. “If the grand master has commanded Brian le Jay then, yes, the Templars will fight.”
“More heavy cavalry than we can shake our sticks at,” muttered Adam. “And we’ve fewer than a thousand horse.”
Wallace’s blue eyes went to him. “We knew this day would come. What do you think we have spent the past year raising troops and training our spearmen for? None of this changes anything. We keep to the plan.” Wallace turned to Will. “I want you with Gray to supervise the razing of the lands south and east. Most of the inhabitants of the towns there have made it into the forest. We gave them enough warning. Those who linger will soon make haste when you lay waste to their fields and homes.” Wallace’s jaw was set. “I want every grain of corn burned, every drop of water poisoned, every beast of the fields herded into the woods. I want the very earth where Edward leads his army to be scorched and dead. When you are done, ride north. We will be camped near Stirling.”
“Are you sure Edward will lead his army that way?” asked Gray.
Will answered before Wallace. “The Temple’s preceptory at Liston lies on the route north. If Edward means to camp there it is almost certain Stirling is his goal. Not only is it strategically vital, it is the site of his worst defeat. He will want to avenge himself.”
“We will let hunger and thirst do their work in this heat,” murmured Wallace, staring into the leaden blue sky. “When his army is weakened and demoralized, we will strike.”
“And then let the rest of our kingdom’s nobility fall at your feet in gratitude,” said Gray fiercely.
Wallace didn’t answer.
Will, watching him, wasn’t sure whether he would welcome this. Wallace seemed uncomfortable with his reputation, which had grown so great after Stirling that even the powerful magnates of Scotland were forced to acknowledge his success, and to reward him for it, in the form of a knighthood.
Robert Bruce, the earl of Carrick, performed the ceremony. This young man had defied his father, who held Carlisle for Edward, and changed sides to fight for the Scottish cause. A number of lords and bishops, following Bruce’s example, proclaimed Wallace as guardian of the realm, but even with his newfound rank he remained in Selkirk Forest, living rough with his men. When Will asked him why, Wallace said the trappings of nobility were a dangerous thing, for it was this love of wealth and possessions that had led the nobles of Scotland to forsake their country, and he would not make the same mistake. His righteous defiance did not endear him to all the nobility. Many of them, it was widely known, resented his rise to their ranks and feared his power and the growing army of men under his command.
“We had better get going if we’re to outrun the English,” Gray said.
Will hung back as Wallace called to him.
“Are you going to be able to fight your Templar brothers?”
Will paused, surprised by the question and the sternness with which it was spoken. “Are you questioning my loyalty?”
“I know you are loyal to me, Campbell. You have proven that more than once this past year. But you were a Templar far longer than you have been a man in my army. I would understand if warring against men you swore your life to would cause you to waver.”
Will thought of the battlefield to come. But all he could see was Edward’s arrogant face. All he could feel was a rising sense of anticipation, eagerness even, to meet him on that field. He shook his head. “I know where my allegiance lies.”
TEMPLE LISTON, SCOTLAND, JULY 21, 1298 AD
Edward closed his eyes and tried to rest. Sweat trickled in lines down his back and his silk robes clung to his skin. The air coming through the window was oven hot. Beyond the preceptory wall, sounds of men and beasts were a constant drone. Closer, the jangling notes of a harp climbed and fell. The music was supposed to soothe him, but he found it intrusive. After a moment, Edward rose from the bed. “Enough.”
The music stopped.
“A drink, my lord?” A page came forward with a goblet of wine.
Edward grimaced as he sipped. “This is hot.”
“I’m sorry, my lord. The casks were in the sun too long.”
Edward flung the goblet aside, splattering the wall and another page in red wine. “The royal menagerie would have been more use to me! Get out of my sight!”
Needing little encouragement, the pages hastened out, leaving Edward pacing the stifling chamber. His mind was tormented. Worries crowded in on top of one another, clogging his thoughts. He didn’t understand how events could have taken such a turn. Only a month ago, he had been marching at the head of a vast army, filled with fervent conviction.
Edward had pulled the support of his entire kingdom behind him for this war; almost a holy war with the zeal his clerics and criers had stirred up. While he conscripted foot soldiers and archers from Wales and Ireland, called horsemen and crossbowmen from Gascony and summoned his vassals, they whipped his subjects into a frenzy of hatred. The clerics sent word to every corner of the realm, telling of the evil of Wallace and his men. The Scots were ogres. They ate babies, molested nuns, butchered priests. By the time Edward and his army were on the move, the prayers of all England were with them. They would crush the hated Scots, avenge the atrocities of Northumberland and Cumbria. Kill the monster Wallace and his devil followers.
Once over the border, they advanced toward Edinburgh, one of only a handful of castles that had withstood the Scots’ insurrection. But instead of terrified populations to slake their vengeance on and towns to loot for plunder, the king and his men found an empty, desolate land. At first it surprised them. Then, as the days dragged beneath the scorching sun, with the aching drudgery of long marches, it came to disturb and then to madden them.
From Roxburgh to Temple Liston, every village the host passed through was abandoned. Little wattle-and-daub houses stood empty, doors open on silent interiors. English soldiers barged in, kicking over furniture, upending barrels, opening chests. Finding nothing of value and nothing to eat, they moved on through barren fields where poppies bloomed like blood, mailed boots scuffing up dust. Men sweated and toiled under the metal-blue sky. Armor chafed, lips cracked and bled, blisters bubbled up on feet. Rations ran low, then ran out. Sometimes they passed smoking remains of farmsteads, the cornfields scorched and black. Archers shot crows circling the rotting corpses of a few cattle and the bitter meat was divided surreptitiously between a few lucky companies. But for most men, each exhausting march ended with a hollow belly and increasingly fitful dreams of food.
None of them knew where the enemy was, for there were no people to offer information on Wallace’s location. Scouts were sent out and returned without news. Many men spent sleepless nights, staring into the darkness beyond the campfires, waiting for the glint of steel in the starlight. Two days before they reached Edinburgh, thunderheads built in the north and a searing wind whipped grit in their faces. That evening they watched as lightning ripped across the sky, mirrored in the distant sea. Edward had organized a fleet of vessels to follow them up the east coast, due to meet them at Leith to deli
ver much needed supplies. But when the army reached Edinburgh, instead of ships filled with grain and meat, they found the docks deserted. Word filtered through that the storm had forced them to turn back and starvation loomed like a specter. The next day, three cogs limped into the port, but other than a few sacks of grain, which went straight to the royal guards and commanders, their holds were just filled with casks of wine. As the troops moved on to Temple Liston, men began to sicken. The Welsh and Irish, who had been surviving on the barest of rations even before these ran out, were forced to eat grass and bark from trees. The king had sent Anthony Bek to besiege two nearby castles that threatened their flank, but that was almost a week ago and he had heard no word from the bishop.
Edward stopped pacing and sank onto his bed, transported from his headquarters at York and erected inside the Templars’ manor. Everyone had been stunned by the defeat at Stirling last year; no one had expected that. But it was barely months later that events at Flanders had unfolded like a nightmare before his eyes.
On arriving in Ghent the previous autumn, Edward had met with Guy de Dampierre to form the alliance against the French. When King Philippe’s soldiers were reported to be marching on Flanders, this Anglo-Flemish force had set out to meet them at Vyve-Saint-Bavon. In less than an hour they had been utterly routed by the French. Shortly afterward, with survivors still limping back into Ghent, Edward learned of the battle at Stirling. Leaving Guy de Dampierre to face the victorious French alone, the wedding proposal terminated, he returned to England to avenge his loss. But he was painfully aware how incompetent he was beginning to look. The barons had rallied around him for this campaign, but he feared, unless he could offer them a decisive victory, their earlier murmurs of discontent would swiftly grow louder.
The prospect of civil war entered Edward’s mind like a poison, seeping, weakening. He had told his generals several months ago, in an imperious speech during a council in York, that when he died the inscription on his tomb would read Scottorum Malleus. The Hammer of the Scots.
Now his army starving and mutinous outside, those words came back to mock him.
“My lord king?” The door opened and the earl of Surrey entered.
The loss at Stirling had aged John de Warenne beyond his years. He looked haggard and gray, and walked with a stiff-legged limp, tormented by gout. Behind him came Brian le Jay. The Templar master’s face was burned by the sun, his nose beginning to peel. Neither man had endeared himself to Edward. All he saw when he looked at de Warenne was defeat and le Jay had been more of a hindrance than a help, following orders reluctantly and questioning almost all his decisions.
“The Templars have distributed the last of their grain, my lord,” said de Warenne, in his rasping tones. “There is no more.”
“And their personal stores? What about them?” Edward stared at le Jay.
“We must keep enough provisions for ourselves, my lord,” responded the Templar master firmly. “Else we will be no use to you on the field of battle.”
“What field?” snapped Edward. “What battle? Is there no news?”
John de Warenne shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Then you can tell the scouts if they have nothing to report they may as well not bother returning at all!”
“My lord,” murmured de Warenne, “the men are restless. We cannot keep this up. They will start deserting unless we fill their bellies and give them a visible target to fight. We may need to consider turning back, just to Edinburgh. We’ve more chance of finding food there.”
“No,” said Edward abruptly. “We stay until Bek returns. If successful, he will bring supplies from the castles.” He paused, his eyes alighting on a wine cask. There were more outside the preceptory walls, many more, loaded on wagons. “In the meantime, have the wine we took from the cogs delivered to the troops. It will hearten their spirits.”
De Warenne nodded, but le Jay spoke up. “Wine, my lord? Most of the men haven’t eaten properly in days. Combined with this heat it will—”
“Do not challenge me on this, le Jay,” responded Edward. “Or I swear I shall turn my army toward your preceptory. The promise of meat and ale within should make them sufficiently motivated.”
Brian le Jay’s eyes filled with angry surprise. But biting back a response, he nodded stiffly and strode from the room.
An hour later, weary cheers rose as the casks of rich Gascony wine were taken out around the camp. Men, half-delirious from sun and exhaustion, drank it by the bowlful. Some pushed comrades aside to get at the sweet liquid that stung their parched throats and stained their mouths. Brian le Jay and the Templar master of Scotland watched in grim silence from behind the gates of their preceptory as soldiers reeled and staggered in the fields, some vomiting almost immediately with the effects of the wine on their empty stomachs. Cheers and drunken laughter quickly turned to shouts and arguments. A large company of Welsh foot soldiers, angered by their meager rations, tried to storm the supply wagons of the royal guard. English soldiers barred the way and a brawl began. A group of priests tried to stop it, getting in between the companies to beg them to see sense. But in the confusion several were killed.
As the drunken brawl descended into a riot, barons sent their knights to quell the fighting, but the appearance of armored men on horseback did nothing to subdue the struggle. The Welsh came to the aid of their beleaguered comrades and the English to theirs, until half the infantry were at war with one another. The English had far greater numbers, however, and soon the Welsh were routed from the camp. They fled to a nearby wood, leaving almost one hundred of their fellows dead on the grass, now littered with empty casks.
Edward looked out upon the devastation from the gates of the preceptory. Evening was drawing in, the sun throwing red light across everything. A pit had been dug and the dead were being hauled into it. De Warenne had come to inform him that the Welsh had sent a message threatening to go over to the Scots. Edward blustered at this, proclaiming that his enemies could do what they wished, for he would crush them all on the same field soon enough. But despair had begun to creep in, chilling him in the evening’s warmth. For one foolish decision, he could lose the last of his failing authority.
It was then that Anthony Bek returned, riding down the road toward the preceptory with the warriors of St. Cuthbert’s Land, backlit by the flaming sun.
Edward started forward, seeing carts being drawn behind the company, loaded with crates and barrels. His hope turned to elation as the bishop of Durham met him at the Temple’s gates and informed him of his victory over the two castles. He had also received word from Edinburgh that the supply ships had made it into Leith and the food shipments would be with them shortly. But, most promising of all, the enemy had been sighted by Bek’s scouts. Wallace and his men were only thirteen miles away, just south of Stirling, near a town called Falkirk.
FALKIRK, SCOTLAND, JULY 22, 1298 AD
The air was dead, without even a whisper of breeze, as the English Army formed up in front of a narrow stream. Beyond, on the slopes of a moor, Wallace was deploying his troops. It was past ten in the morning and the sun was full in the faces of the soldiers, the sky flat and white, leached of color by the blaze.
Lines of infantry were jogging out of the woods that crowned the moor, clutching twelve-foot-long spears. Following the orders of Wallace and his generals, they trickled down the hillside to pool in four huge circles. The outer ring of soldiers in each immediately knelt, one knee on the scrubby grass, the other wedging their spears in place, the butt on the ground and the shaft slanting outward. The men behind stayed standing, their spears also pointing out, until these shield rings, known as schiltrons, bristled on the hillside. Between each, companies of archers stood ready and behind this forest of spikes and arrows the Scottish cavalry formed up. Alongside Wallace and his men were earls and lords, companies of knights gathered around them, but the nobles were still a small force in comparison to the army of commoners who made up the schiltrons.
Th
e soldiers were nervous, watching the enemy at the foot of the moor, but they stood firm to a man. Most of Scotland was back in their hands. Here, now, they had so much more to lose than they had on that summer day a year earlier on the slopes of the Ochil Hills, and so much to gain. If they could defeat the English one more time, before the very eyes of their tyrant king, it could be the last blow needed.
Wallace rode before them, his voice booming across their ranks. He fortified them, filled them with strength and conviction. Then, at the last, with a fierce grin, he goaded them. “I have brought you to the ring! Now let us see if you can dance! ”
A resounding cheer answered him.
Edward looked around as the roar from the Scots cascaded down the hillside. His jaw pulsed, but he made no comment as he ordered his generals to take their positions. The English, eyeing the stream and the rising slope beyond with caution, had moved into their companies. Wallace had chosen the battlefield well; he would fight on higher ground with the cover of a wood behind. They would attack uphill with water at their backs. But, despite this, Edward’s men were eager for battle. Along with the massive force of infantry, there were four main cavalry regiments, under the earls of Lincoln, Norfolk and Hereford, and the bishop of Durham. These were augmented by the knights with John de Warenne and English Templars under Brian le Jay. There was also a corps of horsemen from Gascony and a large number of smaller companies, led by barons and lords, called to do their feudal duty. Edward himself had almost a thousand royal guards at his command, all clad in scarlet surcoats, matching his banner.
After Bek brought the news of the Scots’ location the previous night, all dissension in the English ranks vanished. The Welsh drifted back into camp, grumbling, but lured by the promise of food. With their target found and fixed upon, the army left Temple Liston as evening drew in. It was past midsummer, but the nights remained light and the army made it all the way to Linlithgow before Edward called for camp to be made, the men bedding down on the warm grass. With the anticipation of battle, a hush descended as the soldiers prepared themselves: tightening armor, checking blades and bows, reciting prayers. Just before dawn, they set out once more. As they neared the town of Falkirk, a line of spears was spotted on a nearby hill. Knowing the position of the enemy, Edward called a halt for Mass to be said. Afterward, he wanted the last of their supplies divided among the troops, but the generals were so keen for the fight that they refused to break their fast and, despite their growling hunger, insisted on riding on.
