Kingdom (60 page)

Robert saw that Kerald was with her, with others he recognised from his months out in the Western Isles.

‘My brothers bid you well, my lord. They send these gifts.’ Turning, Christiana motioned to Kerald.

The man’s Gaelic rang through the trees as he called the men leading the mules to come forward. Removing the sacks from the animals, they laid them on the ground. As one was opened, Robert saw it was filled with short swords, most of them cleaver-like falchions, the blade of each bound in cloth to stop them scything through the sack. Edward Bruce and Neil Campbell moved closer to inspect them.

‘Arms and armour,’ Christiana told them. ‘English made.’

Robert nodded his gratitude. It was, he knew, as much as he could hope for from Lachlan MacRuarie. Unless it suited him personally, the captain would rarely join a fight on land.

‘This is from me.’ Taking an object from Kerald, Christiana handed it to him.

Unwrapping the cloth, Robert exposed a short-handled axe. It was a beautiful weapon, its crescent blade of gleaming steel inscribed with the runes he had seen carved on Viking graves on Barra. The wooden shaft was bone-smooth. It looked old, but well-cared for.

‘My father’s,’ Christiana explained. ‘It was a gift from the King of Norway.’ She motioned to the runes. ‘It is called the Blade of the Isles.’

‘Thank you.’ Robert met her gaze. ‘You have given me so much else already.’ He hoped she knew the depth of his words.

Christiana kept her green eyes on him for a long moment, seeming to understand. But then her smile faded. ‘My lord, I bear something else from my brother – a word of warning from the waters. The fleet under command of John MacDougall of Argyll has been ferrying large numbers of men from Dublin to England since the spring. Lachlan has learned that Irish chieftains in the west have even received missives, summoning them to join King Edward’s army.’

Robert ignored the voices of concern among his men at the news. Cormac, he saw, had stepped forward. ‘What was their response?’

‘As a lady, I cannot repeat it. Suffice to say, the Irish will not serve the English king.’

A few gruff laughs sounded. Robert didn’t share his men’s amusement. ‘What of Sir Richard de Burgh?’

‘I am sorry to say the galleys of Ulster have been seen among the fleet.’

Robert let this sink in. He had hoped, fervently, that the letters he had sent to his father-in-law would have prevented such action. The formidable earl could bring a substantial number of men to the fight, as well as the necessary supplies of grain with which to provision King Edward’s army. Gilbert and the others were cutting in now, asking more questions of Angus and Christiana, turning to one another to discuss the implications of these tidings.

Robert had presided over many such counsels these past days, but now he felt the need to walk and think. He passed the axe to Nes, who took it carefully. ‘See our guests are given whatever they need.’ He clasped Angus’s hand. ‘We will talk later, my friend.’ Turning to Christiana, Robert motioned through the trees. ‘Walk with me, my lady?’

Moving out of the glade, he led her through the vast camp that had sprung up in the forest these past weeks. The Torwood, through which the Roman road from Edinburgh cut its arrow-straight path to Stirling, was the point of muster for his army. Sentries murmured greetings as he passed. He had scores of them stationed all around the edges of the camp and along the road itself.

It was mid-May and the evenings were light and mild, but beneath the dense canopy the gloom of night was thick. Campfires flickered off through the trees, will-o’-the-wisps of flame, against which the figures of men were silhouettes. Smells of leaves and earth mingled with the sharp odour of wood-smoke and the pungency of food and dung. Latrine pits had been dug and screened with hanging cloths. Carcasses of venison and bunches of skinned coneys hung from branches, the flesh drying brown. Horses were pastured in leafy clearings, bags of oats and bundles of hay stacked close by. There were five hundred of the animals, a mixture of palfreys, coursers, hobbies and rounceys under the command of the marshal, Sir Robert Keith, who had joined Robert’s company several years ago and had been recommended to him by James Stewart. There were a few tents, here and there, but most of the shelters were of latticed twigs covered with leaves. A number of women moved among the shelters – mistresses and wives, maids and laundresses – but for the most part the camp was filled with men.

There were young fishermen and cowherds, as thin as saplings, who had not yet seen battle, but were eager to prove themselves. There were muscled carters, ploughmen and sure-legged drovers, butchers and blacksmiths, burgesses and squires – men who had been crushed by the fist of Edward Longshanks, only to struggle through the bitter war that followed, pitting Scot against Scot. There were archers from Selkirk Forest, who had fought under William Wallace; men with fire in their bellies. There were men from Ireland and Wales who had come to fulfil the promise of the prophecy and to fight under him, their new Arthur, his legend reclaimed from a covetous English king. There were earls and knights: scarred veterans of the war that had begun eighteen years earlier.

The fiery cross, sent out in the spring, had called them all to this place and, by the thousand, they had come – all the strata of his realm, from the highest to the lowest. Robert had kept Affraig’s counsel close to his heart these past years and now he stood among his people; a man who had fought and lost with them. He wasn’t a distant ruler, shut up in a glittering tower. Truly, he was one of them – King of all Scots.

‘How many men do you have?’ Christiana asked, halting on the edge of a glade, which had become a makeshift armoury. Men sat knitting links of mail and fixing flights to arrows. More were busy fitting iron spear tips to twelve-foot shafts. There was a huge pile of these weapons nearby.

‘With Lord Angus? Over six thousand foot. Five hundred light horse.’

Her eyes narrowed in question as she looked at him. ‘So, you plan to fight?’

Robert led her away, out of earshot of the men working on the weapons. He paused by an outcrop of mossy rocks, through which a burn bubbled. ‘My brother, Thomas and James, Neil, others – all wish it.’ She waited for him to continue. ‘I do not doubt the courage of my men – that has been proven beyond measure – or their skill, for I’ve trained them mercilessly these past months. But infantry cannot stand for long against heavy cavalry, no matter how brave their hearts and the strength of their arms. King Edward’s army will be far greater than mine. If I had any doubt of that before, your tidings that Ulster will join him put paid to it.’ He shook his head.

‘You told me William Wallace only had foot soldiers when he fought them beneath Stirling Castle and you bested Aymer de Valence at Loudoun Hill without a horse among your army.’

‘But against those two victories I can set a dozen defeats. None worse than Falkirk.’ Robert leaned against one of the rocks, the damp stone cooling his back. ‘Ten thousand men lost their lives only a few miles from where we now stand. That battle broke Wallace. After that loss, he couldn’t command the respect of the realm. I have spent eight years fighting for just that. I cannot throw it away, all to satisfy the reckless word of my brother.’

‘What will you do? They are coming for you regardless.’

‘I will lure them to an ambush; use my forces to pick off as many of their number as I can, then withdraw. The English will find themselves deep in my lands with Stirling their only base. I have razed every other castle they could take and my people have scorched the land and driven cattle into the mountains. The enemy will soon be forced back south to find food. When they are gone, I will lay siege to Stirling until it yields. This time, there will be no pact.’

As he spoke the words, Robert realised the conviction of his decision. James Stewart may have counselled him to throw caution to the wind, but that did not mean he should throw sense there too. He would not undo all his careful strategy in one heroic, doomed clash of arms. Reaching out, he took Christiana’s hands in his. ‘But I am done with talk tonight.’

He drew her to him and kissed her, gratefully losing himself in the soft wetness of her mouth and the warmth of her body, pressed to his. They stayed entwined like this for some time, before he drew back and kissed her brow. Closing his eyes, Robert exhaled and rested his forehead on her shoulder.

Christiana moved in against him, holding him.

Edinburgh, Scotland, 1314 AD

Humphrey came awake to see his squire clutching his shoulder. He sat, wincing at the pain that flared through his body. ‘What is it, Hugh?’

‘Sir Gilbert is leaving, sir.’

‘What?’ Humphrey pushed himself to his feet, bent under the low dome of the tent. ‘How late is the hour?’

‘It is dawn, sir.’

‘Halt him.’

With a nod, Hugh ducked out through the tent flaps.

Humphrey thrust his hands roughly through his sweat-slick hair, gathering himself. He’d only had a few hours’ rest, having spent most of the night in a war council with the king. Yesterday, he had shaved and washed for the first time in weeks, but his mouth felt gritty with road dust and his skin was sore, burned by the late June sun. It was two days from midsummer – two days from the deadline and still more than thirty miles between them and Stirling. Crouching to grab his cloak from the pile of his armour, Humphrey disturbed a scrap of blue silk. Elizabeth had tied it around his arm as they said goodbye in the courtyard of Pleshey Castle. He reached out and touched the favour, before rising, his jaw tight. Heading out of the tent, he swung the cloak over his undershirt and hose.

Dawn was breaking across Edinburgh. The sky, which had barely got dark, was a cloudless turquoise and augured another gruelling march in the heat of the coming day. The first rays of sun gleamed on the crags of the rock on which the castle perched. The fortress, high above him, was a ruin, its towers and walls broken and blackened by fire. Crows crowded the fractured battlements, picking over what was left of the bodies of those who had fallen in the Scots’ attack. It was yet another totem of destruction.

The English had seen many such sights on their way north, marching through lands blighted by Bruce’s raids. In Northumberland they found whole settlements deserted, but for a few starving desperates who begged aid from the great train of men and wagons rumbling through, some falling to their knees at the sight of the baggage train, carrying cages of poultry, casks of wine, sacks of oats, wheat and barley, along with tents and rugs, armour and lances. A few joined the army: skinny boys looking for pay as infantrymen, women selling their bodies to road-weary soldiers, pardoners and healers offering up more dubious services. These followers now clustered around the edges of the vast English camp, like scavengers hoping for scraps.

Humphrey strode through the camp, spread out on meadows around the royal burgh, cast in the gauzy light of the rising sun. Wagons, horses and men, punctuated here and there by the tents of the barons and shrouded with a fog of smoke, stretched as far as the eye could see, almost to the docks at Leith, where the masts of many ships were just visible. While the king had marched up the Great North Road from Westminster, these vessels had followed by sea, carrying more supplies.

Across the camp, hundreds of standards displayed the arms of the nobles who had come to fight. A swathe of blue and white stripes marked the retinue of Aymer de Valence, who had recently been reappointed Lieutenant of Scotland. Black lions were dotted about the enclave of Richard de Burgh, the Earl of Ulster, joined by a large contingent from his lands in Ireland. There were also a number of Scottish banners here, bearing the devices of Ingram de Umfraville, a former guardian of Scotland, the Earl of Angus and young John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, son of the man murdered by Robert Bruce.

The like of this army, formed of three thousand cavalry and over fifteen thousand infantry, hadn’t been seen in Scotland for years, but by all accounts it needed to be, for reports from those Scots still loyal to King Edward informed them that Robert Bruce had been gathering large numbers of men in the woods south of Stirling. Edward hadn’t come just to answer the challenge of the Scots and save the castle: he had come to destroy the enemy and their rebel leader once and for all. The king needed this victory. Despite the peace made with his barons at the autumn parliament, the rifts in his realm remained, starkly evident in the absence of many of his earls from the field. Thomas of Lancaster, Guy de Beauchamp and Henry Percy, along with Arundel, Surrey and Oxford, had sent the obligatory number of men, but no more. They themselves had not come.

Humphrey, with Aymer de Valence, Robert Clifford and Ralph de Monthermer, was one of the few involved in the conspiracy against Gaveston who had joined this campaign. Despite everything that had happened – despite the lies Longshanks had told him and the weakness of his son – he felt duty-bound to serve. He had devoted his life to the crown and his father had died honourably in service to it. For him, the call to arms had been one he hadn’t been able to ignore. Even so, he had still borne the brunt of the king’s anger.

The king’s lack of faith in him – or perhaps venom towards him – had been made clear in his decision to appoint Gilbert de Clare commander of the vanguard and, worse, joint constable of the army, a role that was Humphrey’s hereditary right, passed down from his father. Swallowing his pride, he had tried his best to work with the king’s nephew, but the arrogant young earl was making that task increasingly difficult.