by H A CULLEY
Robert’s eyes had lit up at the offer that William had made and Henry turned his horse and rode off in a rage, just as William had intended.
‘Divide and rule,’ he said to de Bellême with a laugh as they rode back to their camp.
-X-
When Simon and Godric, who were riding side by side behind their respective masters, saw the camp outside Prudhoe Castle their mouth dropped open in amazement. The two squires had never seen an army encampment before and, although this one only contained five thousand men, it looked enormous to them.
De Vesci and Morel had managed to raise another two hundred men on the way south and so their contingent added another five hundred to the archbishop’s army. The Scots were reputed to have crossed the Tweed with ten or twelve thousand men but, as was always the way with the Scots some of them had already made their way back north with their ill-gotten plunder and the slaves they had captured on the way south.
Hugo was tasked with scouting forward to assess the numbers left besieging Newcastle. De Mobray was thought to have over a hundred men – knights, serjeants and men-at-arms – in the castle and the population of the town could probably provide another four hundred armed men. The Scots had few knights and so, although they probably outnumbered the combined total of those inside the town and the relief force, they would probably be defeated if it came to a battle. The archbishop was the nominal leader of the English army but he wasn’t a fighting man and the decision on tactics was down to d’Umfraville, de Vesci, Morel and the barons from Yorkshire.
Hugo took Wulfric, Sweyn, their three squires and ten serjeants with him, half armed with crossbows. Too many men would have difficulty in moving secretly in territory swarming with Scots foragers and raiders and too few wouldn’t enable them to extract themselves if they ran into trouble.
The Scots were thought to be only north of the Tyne so Hugo stayed south of the river. As they neared the small town of Gateshead on the south side opposite Newcastle they entered a forest. He had sent Simon and one of the serjeants ahead to scout the narrow path through the trees. They heard voices ahead and dismounted before cautiously approaching the clearing, but it was only three charcoal burners talking together as they worked. They looked alarmed as the two came out of the trees leading their horses but the serjeant was a local man from Alnwick who had been recruited by Tristan and his voice reassured them.
They confirmed that they hadn’t seen any Scots that side of the river and that de Mowbray had destroyed the wooden bridge over the Tyne to prevent them doing so; or at least he’d made it much more difficult for them.
When they reached Gateshead they found that the gates were shut and the palisade around the small town was manned. As they drew near a warning arrow landed near them. Hugo held up his hand and then rode forward alone.
‘Who are you and what do you want here?’ a belligerent voice yelled down at him in Norman French.
‘Sir Hugo de Cuille, lord of the Cheviot. I have been sent by Archbishop Thomas to try and find out what the Scots are up to.’
‘You’d better come in then, Sir Hugo. But ask your men to stay where they are.’
Hugo dismounted just inside the gate and the man, who turned out to be the bailiff, came down to meet him.
‘I don’t think Canmore knows what to do,’ he told Hugo with an amused twinkle in his eye. ‘He has no siege engines and his men have tried several times to assault the town using scaling ladders and by trying to batter down the gates. The attacks were repulsed with great loss of life on the Scots part and the battering ram was destroyed after the inhabitants poured oil over it and set it alight; mind you they scorched their own gates a bit too!’
‘Well, he can’t be thinking of starving them out; I gather that they are being resupplied by sea,’ Hugo mused.
‘No, and every day more and more Scots head home with what they’ve plundered.’
‘Perhaps the appearance of our army will encourage the rest to do the same. Do you have any idea how many Scots are left?’
‘We try to estimate their numbers every day. Yesterday we thought that there were no more than five thousand left.’
Hugo nodded, thanked the bailiff and went back to report to Thomas and the others.
‘Hopefully we can trap Malcolm Canmore against the walls of Newcastle,’ d’Umfraville ventured, rubbing his hands at the prospect of an easy victory.
‘I doubt it,’ Hugo countered. ‘He’ll be off back to where he came from with his spoils as soon as he knows we are on our way to relieve Newcastle.’
D’Umfraville gave him a dirty look but said nothing more but Roger de Muschamp gave voice to his concerns.
‘My priority is to release the people he has taken captive. Some of them are my villeins and bondmen and I need them back; Glendale is sparsely populated as it is. We need to recapture all that livestock too.’
‘Why don’t we frighten him off by sending a relief force but also send part of our army north to ambush the Scots and try and deprive them of their slaves and the livestock. If we can get them to flee for their lives then they’ll leave anything that slows them down behind,’ Hugo suggested quietly.
Odinel d’Umfraville spoke against the idea but the others were in favour. Eventually it was decided that the archbishop and Odinel would move to relieve Newcastle with three thousand men and a lot of noise and display of banners whilst Sheriff Morel, Hugo, Roger de Muschamp and some of the Yorkshire barons headed north under Yves de Vesci’s command.
With only two and a half thousand men the ambush would need to be carefully planned. The likely route the fleeing Scots would take was up the way they had come to cross back at Norham. The English set out to find a good place for the ambush but, to everyone surprise, as soon as Canmore became aware of the approach of the English army, the majority of Scots headed for the more minor route via Belsay and Wallington. With a start Hugo realised that that route would take them through Otterburn and Redesdale and he immediately sent a messenger to Harbottle to warn Tristan. Having been caught out, de Vesci and his small army were left to pursue the retreating Scots as best they might.
-X-
The messenger arrived at Harbottle only to find that Sir Tristan had gone over to Otterburn to see how the construction of the castle there was progressing. The messenger had practically killed his horse to get to Harbottle and he was exhausted, but he changed his mount and headed off to ride the fourteen miles to Otterburn without pausing. He left instructions for the steward, Herbert, to muster as many men as he could and make for Otterburn with all speed. He wasn’t certain how far ahead of the Scots he was but he was fairly certain that, encumbered by livestock, prisoners, carts and men on foot, that he should have some time yet before the first of them reached the entrance to Redesdale.
He was practically falling out of the saddle with fatigue when he got to Otterburn, but Sir Tristan wasn’t there either. The bailiff told him that he had gone over to Bellingham to visit the lord of the manor there, who was also lord of Kielder and whose lands lay between the de Cuille estates and Kershope Forest in Cumbria. The man who was charged to hold the border with the Scots to his north and to the west was Fulk le Feroce; a man who had earned his nickname of the ferocious by the brutal way he dealt with his enemies.
However, he had a daughter who was anything but fierce. Her name was Hièrru and she took after her mother in looks as well as temperament. Tristan had been besotted with her the first time he had seen her when he was still a nineteen year old squire at Alnwick and she had visited aged twelve with her parents. Their fourteen year old brother had been brought over by them to be engaged as a squire to de Vesci’s son, the newly knighted Sir Ivo.
Hièrru had seemed to be as equally taken with Tristan as he was with her, to judge by the calf eyes she kept making at him, but there was little opportunity for them to meet, or even exchange a word or two then. Now he was twenty two and she was fifteen and they were neighbours.
Fulk was suspicious of any man
who even looked at his daughter but luckily her mother was all in favour of the relationship. Her husband was the lord of a mere two manors, even if they were quite extensive in area, whilst Tristan’s father had a total of ten manors. Matters were complicated by the fact that it wasn’t clear how his inheritance would be shared with his twin, but she still saw it as an excellent match and was happy to invite the young man over for a day’s hawking with her and her daughter.
It wasn’t something that Fulk indulged in - a boar hunt was more to his taste - but he had reluctantly come along with two serjeants as their escort. Tristan was thoroughly enjoying the vibrant company of Hièrru, whilst trying to ignore her parents, one displaying almost indecent encouragement and the other brooding disapproval, when his day was ruined. The messenger was too exhausted to continue by the time he had reached Otterburn so the knight commanding the small Otterburn garrison had brought on his father’s message to Tristan.
The annoyed frown had cleared from his brow, to be replaced by one of worried alarm, as he read through the message.
‘Sir Fulk,’ he called across. ‘Thousands of Scots are heading our way, trying to make it back over Carter Bar chased by de Vesci, my father and an army of two and half thousand but they have failed to get ahead of the majority. He asks that we delay them so that he can bring them to battle.’
Fulk’s face changed from its normal morose frown to one of almost evil glee.
‘Right you are, lad. I’ll go and muster my men and meet you at Otterburn.’
Hièrru gave Tristan a worried look, then leaned across and kissed his cheek.
‘Take care my love. Come back to me.’
It wasn’t the moment to ask her if she would wed him but he knew the answer anyway. He rode back to Otterburn elated and dreaming of his love, followed by the knight, though he was scarcely aware of his presence.
Once there, he was all business. Sending out messengers to call in the men of Redesdale with their weapons and warning the rest of the inhabitants to take their livestock up into the hills. Things had changed in the past year or so and now every man under forty and boys over fourteen had a spear and shield, bow or, in the case of the younger boys, a slingshot. All told Redesdale and Otterburn could produce a hundred men including the small garrison. Over the next two days the contingents from Harbottle and Hugo’s other manors started to arrive and, with Fulk’s men from Bellingham and Kielder there were now nearly three hundred of them, but only thirty five were knights, serjeants or trained men-at-arms.
That evening Fulk and Tristan discussed tactics with their respective senior knights.
‘They’ll be driving a lot of livestock. If we can turn them and drive them back into the Scots following on they’ll be disrupted and delayed,’ Fulk proposed.
Tristan nodded. It was a good plan but he had other ideas as well.
‘The sides of the valley further up are wooded almost down to the road. If we hide in there we can sally forth, kill the drovers and those guarding them and then fade back into the woods. We can keep that up all the way along Redesdale.’
‘Good. All we have to do is to delay them until they’re forced to turn and face our army, then it’s up to them.’
-X-
Tristan watched from the trees as the first of the Scots made their way past him. They weren’t fools; they had send a party of perhaps two hundred mounted Scots ahead of the first herd of cattle. However, the one thing Tristan had learned from his own scouts was that the Scots weren’t travelling as one body but in groups of varying sizes, each with their own plunder. The one in the lead consisted of these men mounted on garrons then the cattle, sheep, captives and carts carrying their other plunder and finally a mass of men on foot with a few mounted men in armour. All told there were probably no more than six hundred men and boys. The next group was larger but they were several hours behind them.
Once the vanguard had passed him Tristan gave the signal and his squire, Godric, blew on a hunting horn as hard as he could. The air filled with the whirr of stones and lead shot, the whoosh of arrows and the thwack of crossbow quarrels. Twenty of the men and boys herding the cattle fell from their saddles and five of their garrons were killed, pitching their riders into the dirt. Only a few drovers were left and they fled when fifty riders erupted from the trees and started to drive the cattle back the way they had come.
Those at the rear of the vanguard realised what was happening fairly quickly and turned to charge at the English horsemen, yelling to warn the rest. They ran into another volley of missiles from the trees and many of them tuned to charge their unseen tormentors. It was a foolish thing to do.
As they rode into the trees the Englishmen lying in wait leaped up and pulled them from their horses, stabbing them on the ground or slitting their throats before they could fight back. Tristan’s men then drove the ponies back into the open valley. The sight of ninety riderless horses trotting back into sight unnerved the rest and they gave up their charge against the men driving the cattle south and fled back toward the border at Carter Bar. Less than fifty escaped.
Wulfric was one of those driving the cattle. He was riding on the flank when he saw a vast flock of sheep filling the valley. At a rough estimate he thought that there must be nearly a thousand of them. The hundreds of cattle were stampeding now and there was nowhere for them to go except through the middle of the sheep. The latter ran everywhere in panic, knocking over their drovers in the process so that they and their ponies were trampled underfoot by sheep and cattle alike.
Wulfric and his men drew back from the chaos before they could be endangered and waited to see what would happen. His vision was impaired by the vast cloud of dust being kicked up but eventually it cleared enough to see that the carts which had been following the livestock hadn’t been able to escape the turmoil and several had been overturned or smashed and all the oxen pulling them had either broken free or had been killed.
The man in charge had ridden forward with his bodyguard to try and sort out the mess but they were having little success. Eventually some order was restored but Wulfric reckoned that it would take half a day to sort everything out and now the next group of returning Scots could be seen kin the distance. It was time to report back to Sir Tristan.
-X-
Hugo was feeling frustrated. He was leading the vanguard of the pursuing English army but every time he caught up with the rearmost of the Scots they would melt away into the hills and then re-appear to attack his flanks before disappearing again. True, they lost men every time they did that, but so did Hugo. So far three serjeants had been killed and one knight had been badly wounded, fortunately for him they weren’t his men, but those from Yorkshire.
Eventually, despite the Scots delaying tactics, Hugo caught up with a large number of Scotsmen encumbered with livestock and carts. There were probably five hundred massed against him, most on foot but perhaps a hundred mounted on garrons and another twenty on war horses. They had blocked the route ahead ten or a dozen deep and stretched all the way across the grassland between the woods on either side.
Hugo called a hasty conference with his other three conroy commanders, Roger de Muschamp and two barons from Yorkshire. A few minutes later the English vanguard advanced in line, knights in the front rank and serjeants in the next two. Hugo had taken his lance from Simon and the young knight who had been carrying the de Cuille banner handed it to his squire in exchange for his lance. This wouldn’t be an occasion for brave chivalrous pomp but hard fighting. Hugo rode in the middle of his knights, his knees inches away from the knights on either side.
They advanced at a walk, lances held vertically, then changed to a vigorous trot. The pace increased to a canter when they were five hundred yards away from the front ranks of the enemy and the knights lowered their lances to the couched position before changing to a gallop when the distance shortened to two hundred yards. That way the horses were still relatively fresh when they hit the enemy with maximum momentum.
Hugo aim
ed his lance at another knight – a Scot whose plain black kite-shaped shield displayed no device. The knight was young and inexperienced; Hugo was neither and the point of his lance struck the other’s shield on the inner edge, twisting it so that the point glanced off and was deflected into the young man’s chest.
There was a tremendous amount of force behind the lance point and it parted the rings of the knight’s chain mail hauberk as if they were made of stale bread. The lance entered his body and exited again, breaking several bones in the process. Hugo let go of his lance as the Scots knight shot over the rump of his horse. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Hugo didn’t have time to draw his sword so he took hold of the mace hanging from his saddle horn. This was no flanged skull crusher, such as bishops used to avoid spilling blood, but a ball of iron on a stout haft to which several wicked spikes had been fixed. This didn’t just crush skulls, though its weight was sufficient to do just that, but the points were intended to pierce the brain first, even if it had to punch through the steel of a helmet first.
The next rider he came across was armed with a spear which he thrust at Hugo’s face. He knocked it aside with his shield and swung the heavy mace round onto the man’s body. One of the spikes drove through the padded gambeson he was wearing and pierced his stomach whilst the weight drove the air from his lungs. The wounded man fell off his garron in pain and gasping for air.
Next Hugo found himself facing infantry, most of who took one look at the war horse and its mailed rider with his wicked looking mace and decided to leave him alone. However, one braver than the rest leapt into the air and, grasping Hugo around the shoulders tried to pull him off his horse. What he didn’t know was that destriers were specifically trained for war and this one was more vicious than most. It lowered its head and twisted its neck so that it could sink its teeth into the knee of the man hanging onto Hugo. The destrier bit down sharply, cutting into the flesh quite deeply and crushing the unfortunate man’s patella. The Scot yelled and let go.
