The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (126 page)

The combination of Pope and French King was too strong for Edward to oppose and he had been forced to relinquish the Templars he held into the grip of the Church. Now matters had changed and Edward was warmed by a secret smile he never allowed to get to his lips: Clement was dead and the cardinals couldn't agree. There was no Pope.
Sede vacante
.

That will teach the Church to preach to me …

‘Do you preach so, Father Arnaud?' he persisted, fired by the wine and moment. ‘As your late master did regarding heretics?'

‘The Holy See and the Inquisition have saved the lands of the west from heresies, my lord king,' the Dominican replied. ‘I humbly offer that I have had a small part in this great work.'

‘You give yourself too little credit,' Edward answered. ‘If you mean by “saved” that you have reduced the tax-paying tenants of France, you are correct. Though a little late for some, it seems, if you believe Grand Master de Molay was in league with the Devil.'

‘He was,' Arnaud said, his voice rising. ‘And your lands are as palsied with such. Must be cleansed. God wills it.'

‘God forbid it,' Edward snapped back, thinking what a sadistic child this new Inquisition was, a vicious dangerous toddler, petulant and prideful. Then he twisted his mouth in vicious smile. ‘I would concentrate on France, priest, where it seems a heretic's curse can bring down king and Pope both.'

‘Of course,' interrupted the smooth blandness of Sandale, sensing the banked fires rising in the Dominican, ‘His Grace the King is always cognizant of the decisions of the Pope regarding such matters. Even kings avow the necessity of bringing God's Kingdom to fruition on earth.'

‘As your father acknowledged,' Arnaud added to the King, smiling sweet as rot, ‘when he oathed himself to another Crusade. The holy places of Outremer must be returned to us.'

The implication of Edward taking on the role was clear and the King's eye was jaundiced when he stared at Sandale; the Bishop wished the Dominican had taken a vow of silence.

‘Death absolves all oaths,' the King replied eventually.

‘I am sure such matters will be more roundly discussed,' the Bishop of Ely offered, ‘once the excommunicate Scotch are brought into the Grace of God and the Holy Father … when we have a Holy Father,' he added slyly and Edward barked a mirthless laugh.

‘Aye – until then, Father Arnaud,' he said, ‘there are only unholy Scotch. That land is full of heretics.'

He leaned forward, hawklike and stooping, it seemed to the Bishop of Ely.

‘But that land, pretend king or not, is part of my kingdom, which is not under abjuration and where we have no torture. Be aware of it, Dominican – especially since you have no Holy Father to appeal to.'

Arnaud said nothing, though the hatred hazed off him like sweat from a running horse. No, there was no torture permitted in England, he sneered quietly to himself, not when cold, starvation, chains and the odd over-zealous beating would suffice. You would not find a rack, a thumbscrew or a hot iron anywhere in Edward's realm – yet men died being put to the Question, all the same.

Edward, losing interest in the argument, called for a song and his troubadour, Lutz, appeared from where he had been perched in some clean rushes. There were groans and a few mutters; Edward knew they were sneering at how the King surrounded himself with ‘Genoese fiddlers' and even those he favoured said so.

They know nothing, Edward thought, gnawing his discontent like a bone. They sneer in secret at their king for having the ways of a simple country knight – and again for having the sensibilities to enjoy fine music, well played. None of them, of course, knew an Occitan master of music from a Genoese street performer. Or a lute from a lark's tongue.

Lutz was a lark's tongue with a lute, Edward thought and was pleased with the poetry of that, repeating it in his mind and working out ways to voice it for general approval. Then, like everyone else, he was captured by song.

The troubadour from Carcassone sang a few swift verses of the Fall of Troy, another couple of stanzas of the Quest for the Grail. Then he began the Song of Roland and, gradually, the place fell silent as his voice, sweet and silk-smooth, rose up and coiled round the expert fingering.

‘With Durandal I'll lay on thick and stout,

In blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I'll drown.

Felon pagans to th' pass shall not come down;

I pledge you now, to death they all are bound.'

Thweng marvelled, then, at how it changed, how all those knights grew silent, how eyes misted. All in a moment, they were altered to something close to what they strove for and, when it was done, they embraced it with quiet, respectful pats on the table.

Even the lines that spoke of hardship in the service of a lord, of having to endure great heat and great cold.

Even of being parted, flesh from blood …

 

 

 

ISABEL

O for your spirit, holy John, to chasten lips sin-polluted, to loosen fettered tongues; so by your children might your deeds of wonder meetly be chanted. In honour of the eve and the day, the nun called Constance brought me St John's wort and sat and combed my hair, a blessing in itself. Better yet was hearing the unseen street player, scaling out the monk's chant on his instrument – Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La – to offer his own prayer to the blessed St John.

Ut queant laxis

Resonare fibris

Mira gestorum

Famuli tuorum,

Solve polluti

Labii reatum

Sancte Ioannes

I sang the words with him then: So that these your servants may, with all their voice, resound your marvellous exploits, clean the guilt from our stained lips, O St John.

As the blessed St John heralded the coming of Our Lord, so this feast heralds the coming of mine. Keep the hearts of Thy faithful fixed on the way that leads to salvation.

Bannockburn

Vigil of the Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314

The sun was tipping past noon, a glaring orb searing grass to gold, the half-dried velvet of the great hill sweltering beyond. It glittered the leaves of trees, darkening the long shadows to a tempting coolness – but no one wanted the balming relief of the Torwald's shade; it was safer out here under the fist of a sun which hammered on their maille and leather, wilted the fine plumes and turned jupon and gambeson and haketon to ovens.

Addaf had ordered his men off their horses, because they were mounted foot when all was said and done and that made sense to the commanders of the Van. Now, while they lolled or squatted in the shade of shelters made from their unstrung bows and the corner of a cloak, the proud knights and men-at-arms stayed mounted, their only saving grace being that they were not on their warhorses.

Sir Marmaduke, the sweat coursing down him, noted that the finer of the
nobiles
were not even fully armoured and so had that curse yet to come – yet, if it came to plunging into the dark greening lurk of the Torwald, they would pile all the new-fangled plate-armour bits they could on and wish for more against the evils they imagined waiting for them there.

Evil was there, certes, Thweng thought, though all they saw of it was a handful of Scots riders led by Sir Robert Keith, who had brought the seneschal of Stirling to King Edward, as was right and proper under the terms of siege and relief. When de Mowbray was done informing the King that, by all the accepted terms – coming within three leagues of the besieged fortress – he had effectively fulfilled the terms of the agreement, he would return under the same escort.

What Mowbray thought it might mean remained a mystery, Thweng thought. Did he seriously imagine everyone – Scot and English – would simply nod, smile, turn round and ride off, writ fulfilled? Yet the ritual dance had to be gone through, step by step. By all means, Thweng thought grimly to himself, let us observe the niceties; later we can rip the gizzard from a man in a chivalric and honourable fashion.

He watched the Welsh enviously, wishing someone had the sense to order the rest of the Van to emulate them, but Hereford and Gloucester were hazed with as much hatred as heat; the de Bohuns and de Clares clustered in clearly defined knots apart from each other and were not about to agree on anything.

Thweng, too, had his knot of riders, not only his own
mesnie
of four men-at-arms but the coterie of young knights who had come, as they always did, to beg to ride with him. They had formed – again as they always did – little ad-hoc groupings of brotherhood, sworn to great deeds or death. This one, Thweng remembered, was called the Knights of the Shadow – from the psalm, the lord of Badenoch had informed Sir Marmaduke; the one about singing in the shadow of His Wings. It was clear he did not know any more than that, nor wanted to.

Sir Marmaduke had studied the Comyn lord for a long moment, taking in the red-gold dust of hair, the sandy lashes and brows, the snub nose. He looked like a lean, truculent piglet, Thweng decided, but the Yorkshireman had some sympathy with the young Scot – seeing your father murdered by the man who went on to be hailed as king would have an effect. Standing with only seventeen years on you and your boots in the tarn of your da's blood, watching the killers argue about whether to murder you, too, would make you swear vengeance as a Knight of the Shadow.

‘“You have been my help and in the shadow of Your Wings I rejoice,”' Thweng had quoted to the astonished Badenoch. Sir Marmaduke had left him astonished, but did not tell him it was not the first time the name had been so used.

He had heard every permutation of such names from scripture and psalm; the last time I fought at Stirling, he recalled with a shiver, the bold oathsworn knights had been called the Wise Angels, after the Lord Jesus' admonition to St Peter at the time of His arrest.

Most of those knightly angels had unwisely stayed on the wrong side of the brig, to die under the blades of Wallace's men; most of them were angels for true now, sitting at the Feet of God and wondering how they had got there.

There was a stir and the ranks parted as Mowbray arrived back, red-faced and with a constipated strain about him; he made straight for Hereford while a youth broke from the pack and rode over to Thweng.

He was no more than fifteen, dark hair plastered to his sweating skull and a frantic anxiety about him; Thweng recognized him as a squire to one of Sir Maurice Berkeley's young sons and hestitated a name.

‘Alexander de Plant.'

‘My lord,' the squire replied, brightening with relief that he was, at least, known. ‘My lord the King has sent me with instructions for the commanders of the Van,' the boy went on, spilling it out as fast as the words would tumble. ‘My lord of Pembroke told me to bring them to you and that you would know why and what to do.'

Thweng grunted and cursed de Valence. Of course he knew why – because whomever the squire went to with the King's orders for the Van would incur the wrath of the other earl and it was better that a respected veteran such as Thweng do it. That way the wrath would be tempered and the instructions at least considered.

The orders were simple enough: the Van was to proceed straight on while the trusted Sir Robert Clifford took his Battle round to the right, with the intent of cutting the Scots off from retreat. The left, it seemed, was cut about with traps and pits, which Mowbray knew about.

When Thweng approached, Mowbray had already revealed most of what he had learned in his passionate, sweating plea to Hereford and Gloucester not to proceed through the Torwald.

‘They are prepared for it, my lords,' he declared, waving his arms. ‘Betimes – there is no need. The castle is relieved …'

Gloucester, his darkly handsome young face greasy with joy as much as sweat, gave a sharp bark of laughter.

‘Did you think we came all this way for the pleasant ride in it?' he demanded and even Hereford had to agree with him, dismissing Mowbray with an armoured wave.

‘Return to Stirling and wait, sir. If the King orders the Van to proceed, proceed it will.'

Thweng delivered the King's orders, and then sat silently as the entire place suddenly erupted into a frantic flurry. As Philip de Mowbray rode back under his white banner to where the Scots waited in the Torwald he nodded curtly to Thweng, who answered it as briefly. If all went the way it should they would toast each other and victory in the great hall of Stirling three days from now, at most.

If all went the way it should …

Squires hurried off with palfreys, brought up the powerful destriers
,
most of them fractious with the heat and the imminence of action. Others fetched pauldron, rerebrace and vambrace for the great who could afford this new fashion; there was a clattering and clanking as they began fitting this extra armour to arms and shoulders.

Thweng found his squire at his elbow, leading Garm by the rein. Garm was solid as a barn and old enough not to be champing froth at the possibility that this was more than his master at practice. He was black and gleaming, the polish of him thrown up by a light sheen of sweat and the white trapper bearing the three green popinjays of the Thwengs.

Sir Marmaduke climbed on and settled himself, took the shield and the lance from young John, who then climbed on to his own horse and tried not to tremble. He was no older than Alexander de Plant, Thweng thought, moodily studying the Torwald's tight nap of trees with a jaundiced eye, and I promised his mother I would keep him from harm.

I brought him because I owed the King four men and he qualifies as one, but barely. It was a carping childish rebellion on my part, for all the other good men I have supplied to the Edwards, father and son. Now my petulance has put this lad in danger …

He turned.

‘Remain here with the rounceys,' he growled. ‘No sense in risking them before we know what lies ahead.'