by Glen Craney
Edward Bruce, determined to be his brother’s enforcer of discipline, rode up and circled the mutineer. “You’ll do as ordered, or you’ll hang!”
The obstinate Islesman looked for support from his comrades, who had been sent by Angus Og MacDonald from the hinterlands of Kintyre, Skye, and Gamoran. These sailors were more accustomed to the hit-and-run of galley raids than the tedious repetition of ground maneuvers, but none showed the stomach to stand up to the Bruces. The Islesman was thus forced to be satisfied with hissing at Edward’s horse and growling, “If I’m still welshing livestock a week hence, I’m shanking it back to Jura.”
From the corner of his eye, Robert saw his brother waiting for him to punish the insubordination. Yet he waved off the confrontation as futile. No Scotsman could be forced to fight if his heart was not in the cause. He had tried to forge this motley collection of feuding clansmen and firth ruffians into an army, warning them that they would suffer the same fate as Wallace if they did not abandon their petty animosities, but his exhortations had met with little success. Randolph’s northern men from Moray and Inverness would not even share a camp with Edward’s levies from the eastern provinces. With a heavy sigh, he ordered Keith, “Bring up the Annandale lads. God willing, they’ll shame the others to—”
“Douglas comes!” shouted a hundred voices.
Interrupted by the roar of excitement, Robert broke a rare grin. Blessed with the arrival of the one man who could raise his spirits, he nodded permission for his volunteers to run down the slope and greet the rider galloping up on the famous sleek black Yorkshire horse captured at Roxburgh. He cantered through the cheering throngs and reached for the hand that he had waited for months to clasp. “We feared you’d found the end of Clifford’s rope.”
James heaved to catch his breath from his forced ride through the Torwood. “That’s one worry you needn’t lose sleep over. There’s nary a tree left in the Borders to hang a good Bruce man these days.”
Despite the jest, Robert sensed an uncharacteristic gravity in his old friend’s manner. He edged closer and lowered his voice, “What news from the South?”
James held back his report for discretion’s sake, but that only caused the men on foot to press closer and balk the horses. He had agonized for weeks over whether to reveal his clandestine meeting with the Dominican at Melrose Abbey, until the offer for Belle’s release was rendered moot when the earls of Warwick and Lancaster captured Gaveston and executed him on Blacklow Hill. He now deemed it best to say nothing of the matter, lest Robert forever regard him with suspicion. Jostled by the soldiers eager to hear, he found Randolph holding back on the periphery. He shouted at his friendly rival, “Tom, is this what now passes for discipline in the King’s army?”
Shamed at being called out, Randolph rode through the scrum and tried to flog the men back to their stations with the tails of his reins. “Did you not hear Douglas? This is not a fete!”
Robert shook his head at the fractious scene. He knew any attempt to keep the reconnaissance secret would only make matters worse, for the news would just spread through the camp anyway, skewed and inflated by rumor. With a wan look of trepidation, he nodded for James to give the report.
As the men fell silent, James revealed, “Caernervon has reached Falkirk. The first elements of the English army will be here before sundown.”
Robert’s face flushed. His scouts had last placed the invasion force in York, leading him to believe that he had another week to prepare. Worse, the disappointment in James’s eyes confirmed what he already knew: This wapinshaw army of sixty-days farmers and fishermen was in no condition to fight veteran English knights. He braced against the pommel to steady and asked the question on all their minds: “How many?”
“The English train stretches to Coldstream ford,” James said. “Thirty thousand foot and two batailles of archers. Three thousand knights lead them.” Hearing the men around him murmur that the invaders were bringing thrice their own number, he added to their consternation. “Clifford and Gloucester are in the van, with Cam Comyn and his turncoats.”
Randolph tried to put up a brave front for his uncle. “If that is all they—”
“D’Argentin has also joined them,” James added, leaving even Randolph speechless.
Those names had come hurling at Robert like body blows, none more stinging than the last. “Caernervon has opened his coffers for the best knight in France?”
“Aye, and …” James hesitated, his voice trailing off.
“Out with it!” Robert demanded.
James angled his horse to shield this next bit of news from the crowding men. “Elizabeth’s father is at Caernervon’s side … with the Bohuns.”
Robert sat staring at him blankly, as if not quite believing what he just heard.
James did not need to spell out what all of this meant: Caernervon and the English lords had ceased their bickering and were now united in their determination to subjugate Scotland. Robert’s father-in-law, the Earl of Ulster, was bent on wresting Elizabeth back from a treasonous marriage, and Gloucester had likely been given the choice of taking up arms or suffering the same fate as those lords who had been executed after their unsuccessful coup attempt for the throne. D’Argentin, unemployed since the English treaty with the French, had no doubt been seduced into the English service by the Dominicans with a promise that the campaign would be a holy crusade. Yet what galled Robert most, he suspected, was the arrival of the Earl of Hereford, Humphrey de Bohun, and his freshly knighted nephew, Henry. The pompous elder Bohun had once been engaged to Elizabeth, and when she broke off that arrangement, the cad had besmirched her honor by claiming that she had become embroiled in a scandalous dalliance.
Edward Bruce edged his pony closer to roust Robert from his vexed thoughts. “We have no heavy horse.”
Robert whirled on his brother in hot anger. “What in the Devil’s womb would I do without you always revealing the obvious to me?”
“To Hell with you, then!”
His fiery temper flinted, Robert quarreled at full voice with Edward, giving no regard to the effect it would have on the already disheartened men who milled around him. “Had you not agreed to that fool-headed pact with Mowbray to lift the siege on Stirling, Caernervon would never have gained the support of the English barons!”
“Bridle yourselves,” James warned the two brothers, glancing at the ranks to remind them both about the fragile morale of the volunteers.
Robert required a moment to recoup his steely composure. Finally, he turned a cold shoulder on Edward and whispered to James, “This army has one battle in it. If we fight here and fail, we are done.”
Like his father, James had been born with the gift of sensing the critical points of a battlefield. He felt certain that Caernervon’s first objective would be not to form up for battle, but to relieve the besieged garrison at Stirling Castle, which stood a league to the north and offered an ideal springboard for an invasion of Fife and the Highlands. More to the point, the pampered Caernervon despised sleeping in tents. That June had been the hottest in memory, and the stifling humidity and stagnant water had spawned a plague of midges that attacked exposed flesh at night. He was confident that the impatient English king would first try to force an entry into Stirling and gain its dry comforts without delay.
He remembered once, as a boy, having crossed this soggy terrain around the croft huts of Bannock village. The forest of New Park merged with the meandering stream here to form a natural funnel that had a deceptive, changeling nature. The overgrown shocks of cotton grass appeared to offer firm footing, but below their thin layer of peat trickled hundreds of rivulets that became gorged with rain. The only stretch suitable for heavy cavalry was a ridge called the Dryfield, a sloping terrace adjacent to the Carse where the marshland rose gently east of the Roman road. He looked to the west and saw that the horizon had turned the color of aged pewter. The air was unnaturally still. If the skies opened up during the night, the Carse would become a qu
agmire. He turned back to Robert and counseled, “I say we force them to fight us here.”
That suggestion nearly catapulted Edward Bruce from his saddle. “You’re the one always telling us to fall back, Douglas!”
James kept his insistent gaze fixed on Robert. “They’ve got us in fists. But we’ve got them in wits.”
Robert gave up a jittered half-laugh at hearing the words he had quipped years ago when the Comyns surrounded them as lads.
Before Robert could think up a hundred reasons why defending the road to Stirling could not succeed, James rode up to a swell along the ground and shouted at the troops, “I stand with our king on this field! Will you stand with us for Scotland’s freedom?”
The cattle-hating Islesman spat at the hooves of James’s horse, making clear that he had heard his fill of Southerners boasting about the exploits of this Black Douglas of Lanarkshire. “I don’t see you doing any standing. Freedom is a word that rolls slippery from the lips of a man on a horse. You can hightail it when the fighting gets hot. Wallace couldn’t stop the Angles. What makes you think you can?”
James rose in his stirrups to be heard by all. “What gave you galley rats the notion that I intend to just stop the English? Haven’t we always been satisfied to just stop them? And haven’t they always come back like vermin? Hell, I’m going to drive them to London and wipe my boots on their asses in the Tower where they murdered my father!” He glared down at the disgruntled seaman from Bute and added, “Any man who doesn’t want a part of that can go home and empty his salmon lines to feed his new English overlords!”
The Lanark men stomped in approval and threw taunting elbows at the mouthy Isleman, who finally begrudged a nod of admiration. At last, he and his fellow Northerners had found a man who, unlike these English-bred Bruces, talked their language.
With a sly smile, James leaned to Robert and whispered Sweenie’s favorite benediction, “Welcome to your gory bed, or to victory.”
Robert gave the impression of a coiled spring as he turned to and fro in his saddle, playing out the potential battle in his mind and weighing the consequences of a retreat.
James was aware that Robert had never been able to shake the memory of those Welsh archers decimating Wallace’s schiltrons at Falkirk. He could almost hear the doubts rattling in his head. None of them had ever commanded a full-pitched battle. Loudon Hill had been no more than a skirmish against the incompetent Pembroke, and most of these lads had never been locked in anything fiercer than a wrestling match. They whooped and bellowed for a fight now, but what would they do when they faced Flanders warhorses? There were three months of campaigning left until the harvest season. Robert might try to stare down Caernervon long enough to convince the English to turn back. He might also order Keith and his light cavalry to protect the escape route to the West, and if hard-pressed, run for the Isles during the night.
Robert turned on him with a questioning glare, as if sensing the invasion of his thoughts. Met with an arched brow to goad his decision, he took a deep breath of resignation and ordered his brother, “Bury the spikes.”
Edward lurched forward in the saddle. “You cannot mean to hold this ground!”
“It will do no harm to listen to what Jamie proposes.”
After failing to convince his brother to change his mind, Edward angrily waved his sappers into the grassland between Coxet Hill and the Torwood. The diggers began excavating hundreds of potholes and filling them with four-pointed wooden caltrop jacks designed to pierce the hooves of the sturdiest horses. Others followed behind them, camouflaging the spikes by covering the holes with the thin first layers of the uprooted sod.
WHILE THE TORWOOD ENTRY WAS being mined, James led Robert and the other officers on a gallop toward St. Ninian’s kirk, an ancient Culdee chapel that sat on the road to Stirling. Arriving, James dismounted and walked through the surrounding graveyard that was filled with leaning stone crosses, many marking the remains of Wallace’s veterans killed at Stirling Bridge. He entered the kirk and upended a pew. Finding a nub of charcoal, he drew a map on the back of the sitting boards.
His blood still up, Edward Bruce was on James’s heels. “That was a bonnie speech, Douglas! Now tell us on how you intend to prevent three thousand English knights from sconing our infantry.”
“Clifford will bring his heavy horse up the Falkirk road,” James predicted. “We’ll keep them from forming lines longer than ours by funneling them between New Park and the burn.”
The other officers traded skeptical glances, unable to fathom how their poorly armed and outnumbered troops could stop Caernervon’s advance, even on such a circumscribed field.
Randolph shook his head. “To reach New Park, our left flank would have to be stretched to the breaking. We don’t have enough men to form two ranks.”
“We won’t strengthen the left,” James said. “We’ll weaken it.”
Aghast, Edward came nose to nose with him. “This is war, not chicken thievery. Leave the tactics to those of us who have been trained in them.”
James shoved Edward aside and traced a serpentine line across his map to represent the flow of the Bannock stream through the low valley that led up to the castle. “Caernervon will see the weakness on our left. He’ll try to cross the burn to the east and circle our rear.”
Edward elbowed back to the fore. “Here’s a bit of military wisdom that has apparently escaped you, Douglas. We don’t want the English in our rear.”
“No, but we want Caernervon to try for it.” James turned to Robert and pointed to the spot on the map where the stream turned back and formed a bulge of marshland with a narrowing neck. “When he does, he’ll meet his watery grave right here.”
Robert studied the etched map. “Your plan assumes that Caernervon does not mass his infantry on the Dryfield and turn to fight us.”
“He won’t lead with his foot levies,” James promised. “He’ll expect us to run at the first sight of his armoured horse, just as we always have. Half his army is still a day’s march from Falkirk. He doesn’t have the patience to wait. If we fall back to New Park tonight, he’ll think we’ve decided to retreat. When he sends in his knights to gain the castle without foot support, we’ll slice the head of the snake before the tail knows what hit it.”
As they waited for Robert’s decision, the only sound to be heard in the kirk was the clatter of a trapped curlew in the rafters. James knew his proposed strategy was fraught with risk, for Robert’s caveat had exposed the weakest link in the chain of events that would have to happen to cause it to succeed.
Edward broke the tense silence. “Rob, this is madness. If they wheel west and draw up for battle, we’ll be crushed.”
“Aye, I am a madman,” James said. “I’m about to fight the largest army ever mustered on this Isle with men who hate each other more than the English. And if that’s not the Devil’s work enough, I have to put up with a bawheid with haggis for brains like you leading one of our divisions.”
Randolph had to restrain Edward from charging at James.
While his officers bickered over the best course of action, Robert walked to the cruciform window and gazed at the rising mists below the Bannock burn.
James prayed that, for once, Robert would be unconventional in his strategy. Longshanks would never have fallen for such a trap, but Caernervon was a notorious creature of habit, devoid of creative thinking, impatient of subordinates, ever suspicious of those who displayed brilliance and dimmed his own haphazard light. Gloucester and Clifford would be on guard for such tricks, true. Yet Gloucester suffered from the taint of suspected treason, and Clifford had never been knighted. Caernervon would take his counsel from the Bohuns and the other court schemers who were eager to load their booty wagons.
Robert slapped his thigh, bringing them to attention. “Tom, set your schiltrons below this kirk. Eddie and I will guard the approach up the Falkirk road.”
James waited to hear his name in the battle plan, but Robert retired to the altar
and knelt for prayer without even looking at him. Coldly rebuffed, James dropped his head in defeat, burned by Edward’s infuriating smirk. Robert was preparing a retreat by keeping his Southern men in the rear to lead the escape west while Edward and Randolph fought a rear-guard action. Despondent, James walked toward the door while searching for the words to explain the shameful decision to his troops.
Robert, kneeling at the altar, asked, “Jamie, can your lads hold the center?”
At the door, James turned, uncertain what he meant.
Robert arose from the kneeler. “You will command the third division.”
Edward’s condescending grin gave way to a dropped jaw. “Douglas has never led more than raiding party! You cannot place our fate in the hands of—”
“Enough!” Robert shouted.
Having silenced his brother, the king walked to the map and aimed his dagger at the spot called the Way, a drover’s path between the high ground and the marshes along the Bannock stream. Looking at James pointedly, he ordered, “Leave a gap between your schiltrons and the burn.” He drove the cutting edge of his dagger into the ancient pew to demonstrate what he prayed would be the result. “Just wide enough for the head of a snake to slither in.”
CLIFFORD RODE AHEAD OF THE lumbering English army to scout the narrow cart track through the Torwood. He despised this damp, endless forest and its threatening silence broken only by the occasional upshoot of leaves or flap of wings. His entire career had been wasted putting down raids in this wilderness; he had chased Douglas so many years that he could now feel the scoundrel’s proximity in the prickliness of his skin. His repeated failures to capture the felon had turned him into an object of derision in London. Had he delivered up Douglas’s head, by now he would have been stationed in the king’s court, perhaps even elevated to an estate. Instead, he was relegated to these Marches for the rest of his days, denied even the privilege of a knighthood.
A sharp crackling of branches chased the black grouse from the treetops. He reined off the path and hid behind the brush. The dull sucking of ironclad hooves against the mud became louder, and he drew his blade, certain that Douglas was shadowing his advance. When the oncoming riders closed within range, he cut across their approach. Gloucester and Cam Comyn reined up, causing their spooked horses to whinny and rear to their hinds.
