The Path of the Hero King bt-2

by Nigel Tranter

  “I heard. He is moving south, with a sizeable force1,000, they say-to drive me into Pembroke’s arms. If he can!”

  “He was, Sire-he was. No longer is.”

  Bruce paused in the ascent of the stairway.

  “By this, Sire, he may well be back at Stirling-since, to my sorrow I could not win at him, slay him. But he has few of his thousand with him, that I promise you!”

  “You clashed with them, Jamie? You did?”

  “If you, with 300, could rout 3,000 at Glen Trool -then I, with the same number, was not to shy from 1,000, on my own Douglas moors?”

  “Not 3,000. Half that.” The other stroked his chin.

  “Go on.”

  “It was last night. We were on our way here, by the Douglas Rig pass over Cairntable, when herds of mine brought us word that Moubray had come up from Bothwell and was camped in Kennox Water, making for the Shire Stone pass over to Cum mock-only a few miles east of our route. It seems that he did not know that Douglas was back in Douglasdale! I waited for full darkness, then crossed the heather of Dryrigs and Kennoxhead, and attacked him from two sides, in his valley, without warning. While still he slept.

  As… as Your Grace taught me!”

  “Aye.” Grimly the King inclined his head.

  “That is the style of us, this year of grace! And you had them?”

  “We had them. Some escaped, with Moubray..But not many.”

  Bruce touched the younger man’s arm.

  “God forgive me that I must teach my friends in such school as this,” he said.

  “I, who knighted you!”

  Douglas raised a laugh, if a harsh one.

  “I did better than that at Douglas Castle!” he said.

  “You did?” The King glanced back at Gilbert Hay and Neil Campbell, who, listening, were following them up the stairs.

  “Perhaps you should tell us here, Jamie. I have a visitor in the hall.

  A priest Is your tale one for priestly ears? I would not have this one esteem us too ill!”

  “Does any whey-faced clerk’s esteem concern us, in this pass?”

  Campbell asked.

  “I think it might do, yes. This once.”

  So, there in the narrow, dark stairway, Douglas told them stiffly, jerkily.

  “When I left you that day, I came secretly to Douglasdale, by night. To find evil. Beyond telling. King Edward had given my lands and house to Clifford. My people were ground down.

  Harried, slaughtered, raped. What he and his creatures had done to fair Douglasdale! I counted thirty bodies, women and bairns amongst them, hanging in one wood. My people.”

  None spoke, as he paused.

  “I understood then, Sire, what you had meant. When you spoke me that night at Tumberry. I saw how much honour meant, and the knightly code! In war. I vowed vengeance. For my poor folk.

  And took it.”

  The King gazed down at his feet.

  “It is need, sheer necessity, and expediency, that I preach, Jamie-not vengeance,” he said.

  The other might not have heard him.

  “Despite their savagery, these English were godly men, it seemed! Of a Sunday, they filled the Kirk of Saint Bride, at Douglas, it was said. Two days after I reached Douglas it was Palm Sunday. Tom Dickson, my steward, said he would attend Mass that day. With others. If there was room for them, with all the English. I said that I was less nice, and would wait outside. The garrison marched out, from the castle-a notable sight. A few of us watched them, from hiding. In the midst of the service, Dickson and his good fellows rose, and drew their steel, hidden till then. We rushed the door from without. We … we let none escape. Of the English. Save only their priest.”

  Bruce nodded.

  “I had a notion that this might not suit priestly ears!”

  “Dickson died there. And others,” Douglas went on, flat-voiced.

  “We went back to the castle. They had left it but little guarded.

  Even the drawbridge was down. With loads of hay for their beasts, we gained entrance, none suspecting. Said the captain had commanded it. Then we turned on them. It was easy enough. They had left a feast preparing. For Palm Sunday. For all the garrison. Such of my folk as were left in Douglas were near to starvation. I summoned all to the castle. To partake, with us. Before they left. For all must go. None could remain in Douglasdale after that. I took them away, into the Lower Hills, to distant villages and shielings.

  They would have had me stay, to be sure. To hold the castle. But my

  place is with you, Sire, I told them. Aye, and I told them that I had

  rather hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak. This you had taught me also-that holding castles is not for us.”

  “So you left your house again, Jamie? That must have hurt sorely. Even in your father’s best armour!”

  “I left my house, yes. My people took all they might carry that would not delay them. Then all else we took and piled high. In the Great Hall and the Lesser Hall, in the Armoury, the kitchens, in every room. In the gatehouse and every tower and watch-chamber.

  In the inner and outer baileys. The English had stocked Douglas well stolen from better men. We took it all, meat and meal, fish and fowl, fodder and bedding. Every stick and stitch of plenishing and furnishing. Every beast that the folk might not take, in their haste, we slew and piled atop-cattle, sheep, swine, even some horses. And atop of these we put the Englishmen, Clifford’s captain highest, with his cook. And fired all. Oil and fat there was in plenty, to aid the flames. Douglas burned well. For three hours we could see the smoke of my house, as we led the folk eastwards into the hills. Douglas’s larder, they named it!”

  For long moments after he had finished, none found words.

  “Am I not, Sire, your most apt pupil?” the youngest of them grated at length.

  The King reached out to grip his steel-clad shoulder, and then turned to renew the ascent of those stairs.

  James Douglas did not avail himself of die Holy Sacrament, after his monarch, that night.

  Bruce sat his horse, fretting-die same fine stallion which had been Clifford’s and which Douglas had insisted his liege lord must use, along with die magnificent armour from Douglas Castle. He had schooled himself to patience and waiting, in his long struggle;

  but hitherto it had been waiting for battle to commence, then action. But this May morning it was a greater, sorer test-to sit, inactive, watching, while battle actually raged, battle on a scale unseen in Scotland since Methven, or Falkirk.

  That was die point. This was battle, not raid, skirmish, ambush and die like. And he playing general today, not swordsman, warrior, even captain. As he had planned this, his place was here, on die high ground of Loudoun Hill, watching, a spectator. Not even directing-for it was past that stage. There might be work for him, and the small body of men who sat their horses behind him and Hay, some four-score moss troopers as fretful as himself; but not now.

  It was foolish to compare this with Falkirk in especial, where King Edward had had so many scores of thousands that he could not bring them all to bear. Here there were only some 5,000 men involved altogether for it was but the van of Pembroke’s great army that was engaged, admittedly the cream of English chivalry, but no more than 3,000 in number, it was thought. And 800 or so flanking infantry, running at either side-MacDougall of Lorn’s Highlanders, sent south in haste. His own force, though die greatest he had commanded since Methven, was but 1,200 all told.

  Nevertheless, this was set battle, something that Bruce had set his face against, until now. And still would have avoided. But Pembroke, galled and frustrated by pin-prick defeats and his master’s wrath, had issued a public challenge. He challenged the so-called King of Scots to stand, to act the man, the soldier, the knight, not die cut-throat brigand, to meet him in fair fight, and see how puissant he was then. All over the land this challenge had been trumpeted.

  Bruce was fighting a battle for his people’s minds, as well as this physical warfare of flesh and steel. For that long-term and more abstract advantage, he
felt that he must accept this English gesture, for once at least. And had chosen this Loudoun Hill, carefully, for his battle-ground, where Pembroke must pass.

  All night they had worked, busy indeed, digging, cutting, carrying, die King labouring with the others. So that now, with battle joined, he could sit there, high above it all, with the morning sun streaming at his back, playing general, the King-and hating it.

  Not that the battle was quite joined yet. Pembroke, the sun in his eyes, and riding slightly uphill at that, had formed his 3,000 into two great lines, with MacDougall’s Lornmen racing along on the flanks. The van, with de Valence’s own banner, blue and white with red mart lets flying beside the Leopards of England in the centre, charging forward shoulder to shoulder, at an earthshaking canter, die fastest pace such heavily-armoured cavalry could achieve, in a blaze of colour and brilliance. Behind them, a quarter-mile back, die second line followed, meantime at a quiet trot, below Percy’s standard. Gloucester, with the main English infantry, should have been behind that again-but Bruce, by a series of feints and stratagems, had delayed the great body of foot coming through the hill passes, and they were still miles off.

  Facing Pembroke’s charging threat, below in die level grassy ground

  that flanked die road-die main road, by die Irvine’s valley, from Ayr

  to the east and north600 Ayrshire spearmen were drawn up, waiting in

  three schiltroms, or boxes, their friezes of pikes projecting like

  hedgehogs’ quills. However sure and disciplined they appeared, their

  inadequacy in numbers was direly apparent. Jamie’s silken Douglas

  banner flew over die central formation. Boyd and Fleming commanded on

  either side of him.

  The rest of Bruce’s people, apart from his own group standing there on the hill, were disposed in no such tidy or military formations on the two flanks. They looked something of a rabble indeed, all foot-for these flanks were no place for horses, even moss troopers garrons. Edward commanded on the right with 300;

  Campbell with 200 on the left, the cateran Islesmen amongst them.

  Their ragged ranks seethed and were never still-for the best of reasons. Few of them stood on ground firm enough to hold them up for more than a few seconds.

  Bruce, an Ayrshire man himself, had selected this battlefield after much thought. Pembroke, from Ayr Castle, had challenged the Scots to meet him, if they dared, at or on his way to Bothwell, in Lanarkshire, where he was to hold a conference of English local governors and sheriffs-no doubt to deal with the rising loyalist tide. The vale of the River Irvine, through which his route threaded, tailed out into the side of this Loudoun Hill, and thereafter the road climbed to cross high open barren moorland for many miles. Heedfully he had chosen. The ground below him was flat for some distance, open, and covered with fine sheep-cropped turf, ideal for cavalry. And broad, fully 800 yards of it, from the western approach on either side of the road. But this pleasing stretch was set between two peat-bogs of black and green treachery and great extent, plain for all to see. What was not so plain, at least from the lower ground, the west, was that the firm ground in fact narrowed, not dramatically but steadily eastwards; so that, where the three schiltroms were sited, there was not 800 but barely 500 yards between the quaking margins. And there was still more to the site than that-blistered hands and aching backs testified to it, that morning. Stretching from side to side across it, at hundred yard intervals, deep and wide trenches had been dug-and then covered over lightly with scrub and branches thatched with turf. At a distance of more than a few yards these were practically indiscernible.

  That front line of charging knightly might was a sight both to stir and strike terror.

  Its ruin and disintegration was a shocking thing to watch, even for those it menaced. At first, only the keenest and most experienced eye could have perceived that something was amiss, as the extreme ends of the long line began to be forced inwards. In a charge of heavy cavalry, already close-packed, any major constriction can swiftly lead to trouble. The fine level front began to buckle and bend. At that pace and impetus it was not easy for the tight-knit ranks to give, to find room for their colleagues being pressed in on them. As a result, many on the flanks could neither draw up nor in, and were forced to hurtle on into the soft peat moss -with immediate disaster. And along the line generally the enforced huddling together at speed began to tell, and there was some collision, horses and riders overthrown, with others crashing over them. And steadily the firm ground narrowed.

  De Valence of course did not fail to see the danger, and the remedy. His trumpets sounded and his captains waved back the flanks desperately, to turn the advance from a straight line into a wide wedge, a great spearhead. At a thundering charge this, though simple in theory, was no easy manoeuvre to accomplish, with 1,500 men involved; but these were superbly trained and disciplined cavalry, perhaps the finest in Christendom, and the difficult adjustment began to take shape, although not without losses.

  It was just as this transformation was taking place that the centre of the line reached the first of the covered trenches. Perhaps Pembroke and his leaders, had they been less preoccupied with changing their formation, might have perceived the slightly artificial appearance of the ground immediately ahead, carefully as the Scots had sought to camouflage it. As it was, they crashed into the trap headlong, and into utter chaos. The ground gave way beneath the heavy chargers’ hooves, and down in hurtling ruin the flower of English chivalry fell, in a storm of flailing and breaking limbs, clashing armour and the screams of men and beasts.

  Those ditches were a score of feet wide and a dozen feet deep.

  There was no jumping them or avoiding them, and with the impetus of the advance and the weight behind, no drawing back.

  Had it not been for the bodies piling in and filling up the gap, thus forming bridges, few would have got across.

  As it was, probably more than half the van did win over that grim obstacle, in some fashion and in dire disorder. But it was the major leadership that had taken the brunt of it, and so lay lowest.

  Only the lesser knights and captains found themselves left to take command. That they led the survivors in only slightly abated attack, said much for their nerve and spirit. But it was a ragged charge now.

  In only a hundred yards, of course, and in inevitable impairment as a fighting force, they hit the second trench. Complete confusion reigned, and all forward movement ceased.

  Throughout, MacDougall’s Highlanders had been leaping and bounding,

  light-footed, amongst the bogs and mosses on either side, Edward’s and

  Campbell’s motley companies awaiting them. At sight of the ruin

  befalling their main host, they faltered somewhat. But they were

  fearless fighters, and pressed on, if with less assurance.

  In the slaistering mire of green slime and black peat broth, they clashed with their own fellow-countrymen in fierce hand-to-hand fighting.

  “Now, Sire-now!” Gilbert Hay cried, at Bruce’s side.

  “Down on them now, and we shall have them before their rear comes up.”

  “No,” the King said shortly.

  “Our horses would be of no more avail down there than are their own. Amongst the trenches or the bogs. Wait. The others know their tasks.”

  It was evident that none of the van was in fact going to get as far as the third trench, and therefore the schiltroms. For now, between the ditches, Edward’s and Campbell’s men were breaking off their contests with the MacDougalls and streaming in amongst the milling and disorganised cavalry and dismounted riders. James Douglas was breaking up the central schiltrom and sending its 200 men off round the flanks to assist in dealing with the MacDougalls.

  They cast away their pikes in favour of swords and dirks as they ran. The other two formations stood unmoving meantime, like their monarch above.

  Possibly that steady waiting contributed something to the battle, nevertheless. The sight of it may have bee
n the last straw, the final influence to convince the enemy, the van at least, that the day was without profit. At any rate, the tide turned-and once turned became a flood. In only a few moments, all who could escape were surging back. Many were unable to cross the horror of that first ditch, and fell to the Scots swords there. But the majority went streaming westwards.

  And because the bogs restricted them to the firm ground, the horde of fleeing men and beasts could not do other than come into headlong confusion with the still advancing second line, under the Lord Percy. Perhaps with another leader the day might yet have been saved-for this reserve host still outnumbered the Scots. But Henry Percy was a cautious man, more of a schemer and administrator than a soldier. The sight of the disaster ahead, the still un blooded Scots schiltroms beyond those ghastly trenches, and the panic effect of the fleeing men on his own ranks and consequent disorder, decided him. His trumpets sounded the retiral.

  After that it was devil take the hindmost. The Lornmen on the flanks saw themselves deserted, and broke away, to escape if they might through the morass. There was only the fighting of individuals, selling their lives dearly. Flight and pursuit were the order of the day. Bruce and his four-score remained unemployed, unnecessary.

  “God’s mercy-a victory, Sire! A victory!” Hay exclaimed.

  “Of a sort!” He sounded less than elated.

  “And we have not struck a blow!”

  The King drew a great breath.

  “A victory, yes. A victory, not of arms and skill and courage, but of low cunning. Another brigand’s victory, Gibbie. My answer to Pembroke’s challenge. But … I thank God for it, nevertheless. One day, perhaps, we will fight these English in the field, man to man, and beat them fairly. But that day is not yet-not for long. Come-we will go down and see if we can find de Valence. At least I have wiped out the shame of Methven. When he struck us by night…”

  They did not find the earl amongst the slain. Someone said that he had been seen clambering out of that first trench, known by the blue-and-white of his handsome surcoat and helmet plumes, limp in his heavy armour to find a riderless horse, and ride back and away. Some notable men were amongst the dead, and more would be deep under the bodies in that ditch. None appeared to be amongst those with whom Bruce had personal accounts to settle. A report did spoil the muted triumph of the victory-the fact that more than one had seen his own nephew, Sir Thomas Randolph, his mother’s grandson by her first husband, prominent in the English van, easily identified by his great height, as well as his arms and colours. He had been taken prisoner at Methven, and ransomed, one of the very few spared by King Edward. Now it was to be seen why.