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‘They’re frightening enough without paint,’ Lord Outhwaite pointed to a banner opposite his own part of the line. ‘I see Sir William’s here.’
‘Sir William?’ Thomas asked.
‘Willie Douglas,’ Lord Outhwaite said. ‘I was a prisoner of his for two years and I’m still paying the bankers because of it.’ He meant that his family had borrowed money to pay the ransom. ‘I liked him, though. He’s a rogue. And he’s fighting with Moray?’
‘Moray?’ Brother Michael asked.
‘John Randolph, Earl of Moray.’ Lord Outhwaite nodded at another banner close to the red-heart flag of Douglas. ‘They hate each other. God knows why they’re together in the line.’ He stared again at the Scottish drummers who leaned far back to balance the big instruments against their bellies. ‘I hate those drums,’ he said mildly. ‘Paint their faces blue! I never heard such nonsense!’ he chuckled.
The prior was haranguing the nearest troops now, telling them that the Scots had destroyed the great religious house at Hexham. ‘They defiled God’s holy church! They killed the brethren! They have stolen from Christ Himself and put tears onto the cheeks of God! Wreak His vengeance! Show no mercy!’ The nearest archers flexed their fingers, licked lips and stared at the enemy who were showing no sign of advancing. ‘You will kill them,’ the prior shrieked, ‘and God will bless you for it! He will shower blessings on you!’
‘They want us to attack them,’ Brother Michael remarked drily. He seemed embarrassed by his prior’s passion.
‘Aye,’ Lord Outhwaite said, ‘and they think we’ll attack on horseback. See the pikes?’
‘They’re good against men on foot too, my lord,’ Brother Michael said.
‘That they are, that they are,’ Lord Outhwaite agreed. ‘Nasty things, pikes.’ He fidgeted with some of the loose rings of his mail coat and looked surprised when one of them came away in his fingers. ‘I do like Willie Douglas,’ he said. ‘We used to hunt together when I was his prisoner. We caught some very fine boar in Liddesdale, I remember.’ He frowned. ‘Such noisy drums.’
‘Will we attack them?’ the young monk summoned up the courage to enquire.
‘Dear me no, I do hope not,’ Lord Outhwaite said. ‘We’re outnumbered! Much better to hold our ground and let them come to us.’
‘And if they don’t come?’ Thomas asked.
‘Then they’ll slink off home with empty pockets,’ Lord Outhwaite said, ‘and they won’t like that, they won’t like it at all. They’re only here for plunder! That’s why they dislike us so much.’
‘Dislike us? Because they’re here for plunder?’ Thomas had not understood his lordship’s thinking.
‘They’re envious, young man! Plain envious. We have riches, they don’t, and there are few things more calculated to provoke hatred than such an imbalance. I had a neighbour in Witcar who seemed a reasonable fellow, but then he and his men tried to take advantage of my absence when I was Douglas’s prisoner. They tried to ambush the coin for my ransom, if you can believe it! It was just envy, it seems, for he was poor.’
‘And now he’s dead, my lord?’ Thomas asked, amused.
‘Dear me, no,’ his lordship said reprovingly, ‘he’s in a very deep hole in the bottom of my keep. Deep down with the rats. I throw him coins every now and then to remind him why he’s there.’ He stood on tiptoe and gazed westwards where the hills were higher. He was looking for Scottish men-at-arms riding to make an assault from the south, but he saw none. ‘His father,’ he said, meaning Robert the Bruce, ‘wouldn’t be waiting there. He’d have men riding around our flanks to put the fear of God up our arses, but this young pup doesn’t know his trade, does he? He’s in the wrong place altogether!’
‘He’s put his faith in numbers,’ Brother Michael said.
‘And perhaps their numbers will suffice,’ Lord Outhwaite replied gloomily and made the sign of the cross.
Thomas, now that he had a chance to see the ground between the armies, could understand why Lord Outhwaite was so scornful of the Scottish King who had drawn up his army just south of the burned cottages where the dragon cross had fallen. It was not just that the narrowness of the ridge confined the Scots, denying them a chance to outflank the numerically inferior English, but that the ill-chosen battlefield was obstructed by thick blackthorn hedges and at least one stone wall. No army could advance across those obstacles and hope to hold its line intact, but the Scottish King seemed confident that the English would attack him for he did not move. His men shouted insults in the hope of provoking an attack, but the English stayed stubbornly in their ranks.
The Scots jeered even louder when a tall man on a great horse rode out from the centre of the English line. His stallion had purple ribbons twisted into its black mane and a purple trapper embroidered with golden keys that was so long that it swept the ground behind the horse’s rear hooves. The stallion’s head was protected by a leather faceplate on which was mounted a silver horn, twisted like a unicorn’s weapon. The rider wore plate armour that was polished bright and had a sleeveless surcoat of purple and gold, the same colours displayed by his page, standard-bearer and the dozen knights who followed him. The tall rider had no sword, but instead was armed with a great spiked morningstar like the one Beggar carried. The Scottish drummers redoubled their efforts, the Scots soldiers shouted insults and the English cheered until the tall man raised a mailed hand for silence.
‘We’re to get a homily from his grace,’ Lord Outhwaite said gloomily. ‘Very fond of the sound of his own voice is his grace.’
The tall man was evidently the Archbishop of York and, when the English ranks were silent, he again raised his mailed right hand high above his purple plumed helmet and made an extravagant sign of the cross. ‘Dominus vobiscum,’ he called. ‘Dominus vobiscum.’ He rode down the line, repeating the invocation. ‘You will kill God’s enemy today,’ he called after each promise that God would be with the English. He had to shout to make himself heard over the din of the enemy. ‘God is with you, and you will do His work by making many widows and orphans. You will fill Scotland with grief as a just punishment for their godless impiety. The Lord of Hosts is with you; God’s vengeance is your task!’ The Archbishop’s horse stepped high, its head tossing up and down as his grace carried his encouragement out to the flanks of his army. The last wisps of mist had long burned away and, though there was still a chill in the air, the sun had warmth and its light glinted off thousands of Scottish blades. A pair of one-horse wagons had come from the city and a dozen women were distributing dried herrings, bread and skins of ale.
Lord Outhwaite’s squire brought an empty herring barrel so his lordship could sit. A man played a reed pipe nearby and Brother Michael sang an old country song about the badger and the pardoner and Lord Outhwaite laughed at the words, then nodded his head towards the ground between the armies where two horsemen, one from each army, were meeting. ‘I see we’re being courteous today,’ he remarked. An English herald in a gaudy tabard had ridden towards the Scots and a priest, hastily appointed as Scotland’s herald, had come to greet him. The two men bowed from their saddles, talked a while, then returned to their respective armies. The Englishman, coming near the line, spread his hands in a gesture that said the Scots were being stubborn.
‘They come this far south and won’t fight?’ the prior demanded angrily.
‘They want us to start the battle,’ Lord Outhwaite said mildly, ‘and we want them to do the same.’ The heralds had met to discuss how the battle should be fought and each had plainly demanded that the other side begin by making an assault, and both sides had refused the invi-tation, so now the Scots tried again to provoke the English by insult. Some of the enemy advanced to within bowshot and shouted that the English were pigs and their mothers were sows, and when an archer raised his bow to reward the insults an English captain shouted at him. ‘Don’t waste arrows on words,’ he called.
‘Cowards!’ A Scotsman dared to come even closer to the English line, well within half a bowshot. ‘You bastard cowards! Your mothers are whores who suckled you on goat piss! Your wives are sows! Whores and sows! You hear me? You bastards! English bastards! You’re the devil’s turds!’ The fury of his hatred made him shake. He had a bristling beard, a ragged jupon and a coat of mail with a great rent in its backside so that when he turned round and bent over he presented his naked arse to the English. It was meant as an insult, but was greeted by a roar of laughter.
‘They’ll have to attack us sooner or later,’ Lord Outhwaite stated calmly. ‘Either that or go home with nothing, and I can’t see them doing that. You don’t raise an army of that size without hope of profit.’
‘They sacked Hexham,’ the prior observed gloomily.
‘And got nothing but baubles,’ Lord Outhwaite said dismissively. ‘The real treasures of Hexham were taken away for safekeeping long ago. I hear Carlisle paid them well enough to be left alone, but well enough to make eight or nine thousand men rich?’ He shook his head. ‘Those soldiers don’t get paid,’ he told Thomas, ‘they’re not like our men. The King of Scotland doesn’t have the cash to pay his soldiers. No, they want to take some rich prisoners today, then sack Durham and York, and if they’re not to go home poor and empty-handed then they’d best hitch up their shields and come at us.’
But still the Scots would not move and the English were too few to make an attack, though a straggle of men were constantly arriving to reinforce the Archbishop’s army. They were mostly local men and few had any armour or any weapons other than farm implements like axes and mattocks. It was close to midday now and the sun had chased the chill off the land so that Thomas was sweating under his leather and mail. Two of the prior’s lay servants had arrived with a horse-drawn cart loaded with casks of small beer, sacks of bread, a box of apples and a great cheese, and a dozen of the younger monks carried the provisions along the English line. Most of the army was sitting now, some were even sleeping and many of the Scots were doing the same. Even their drummers had given up, laying their great instruments on the pasture. A dozen ravens circled overhead and Thomas, thinking their presence presaged death, made the sign of the cross, then was relieved when the dark birds flew north across the Scottish troops.
A group of archers had come from the city and were cramming arrows into their quivers, a sure sign that they had never fought with the bow for a quiver was a poor instrument in battle. Quivers were likely to spill arrows when a man ran, and few held more than a score of points. Archers like Thomas preferred a big bag made of linen stretched about a withy frame in which the arrows stood upright, their feathers kept from being crushed by the frame and their steel heads projecting through the bag’s neck, which was secured by a lace. Thomas had selected his arrows carefully, rejecting any with warped shafts or kinked feathers. In France, where many of the enemy knights possessed expensive plate armour, the English would use bodkin arrows with long, narrow and heavy heads that lacked barbs and so were more likely to pierce breastplates or helmets, but here they were still using the hunting arrows with their wicked barbs that made them impossible to pull out of a wound. They were called flesh arrows, but even a flesh arrow could pierce mail at two hundred paces.
Thomas slept for a time in the early afternoon, only waking when Lord Outhwaite’s horse almost stepped on him. His lordship, along with the other English commanders, had been summoned to the Archbishop and so he had called for his horse and, accompanied by his squire, rode to the army’s centre. One of the Archbishop’s chaplains carried a silver crucifix along the line. The crucifix had a leather bag hanging just below the feet of Christ and in the bag, the chaplain claimed, were the knuckle bones of the martyred St Oswald. ‘Kiss the bag and God will preserve you,’ the chaplain promised, and archers and men-at-arms jostled for a chance to obey. Thomas could not get close enough to kiss the bag, but he did manage to reach out and touch it. Many men had amulets or strips of cloth given them by their wives, lovers or daughters when they left their farms or houses to march against the invaders. They touched those talismans now as the Scots, sensing that something was about to happen at last, climbed to their feet. One of their great drums began its awful noise.
Thomas glanced to his right where he could just see the tops of the cathedral’s twin towers and the banner flying from the castle’s ramparts. Eleanor and Father Hobbe should be in the city by now and Thomas felt a pang of regret that he had parted from his woman in such anger, then he gripped his bow so that the touch of its wood might keep her from evil. He consoled himself with the knowledge that Eleanor would be safe in the city and tonight, when the battle was won, they could make up their quarrel. Then, he supposed, they would marry. He was not sure he really wanted to marry, it seemed too early in his life to have a wife even if it was Eleanor, whom he was sure he loved, but he was equally sure she would want him to abandon the yew bow and settle in a house and that was the very last thing Thomas wanted. What he wanted was to be a leader of archers, to be a man like Will Skeat. He wanted to have his own band of bowmen that he could hire out to great lords. There was no shortage of opportunity. Rumour said that the Italian states would pay a fortune for English archers and Thomas wanted a part of it, but Eleanor must be looked after and he did not want their child to be a bastard. There were enough bastards in the world without adding another.
The English lords talked for a while. There were a dozen of them and they glanced constantly at the enemy and Thomas was close enough to see the anxiety on their faces. Was it worry that the enemy was too many? Or that the Scots were refusing battle and, in the next morning’s mist, might vanish northwards?
Brother Michael came and rested his old bones on the herring barrel that had served Lord Outhwaite as a seat. ‘They’ll send you archers forward. That’s what I’d do. Send you archers forward to provoke the bastards. Either that or drive them off, but you don’t drive Scotsmen off that easily. They’re brave bastards.’
‘Brave? Then why aren’t they attacking?’
‘Because they’re not fools. They can see these.’ Brother Michael touched the black stave of Thomas’s bow. ‘They’ve learned what archers can do. You’ve heard of Halidon Hill?’ He raised his eyebrows in surprise when Thomas shook his head. ‘Of course, you’re from the south. Christ could come again in the north and you southerners would never hear about it, or believe it if you did. But it was thirteen years ago now and they attacked us by Berwick and we cut them down in droves. Or our archers did, and they won’t be enthusiastic about suffering the same fate here.’ Brother Michael frowned as a small click sounded. ‘What was that?’
Something had touched Thomas’s helmet and he turned to see the Scarecrow, Sir Geoffrey Carr, who had cracked his whip, just glancing the metal claw at its tip off the crest of Thomas’s sallet. Sir Geoffrey coiled his whip as he jeered at Thomas. ‘Sheltering behind monks’ skirts, are we?’
Brother Michael restrained Thomas. ‘Go, Sir Geoffrey,’ the monk ordered, ‘before I call down a curse onto your black soul.’
Sir Geoffrey put a finger into a nostril and pulled out something slimy that he flicked towards the monk. ‘You think you frighten me, you one-eyed bastard? You who lost your balls when your hand was chopped off?’ He laughed, then looked back to Thomas. ‘You picked a fight with me, boy, and you didn’t give me a chance to finish it.’
‘Not now!’ Brother Michael snapped.
Sir Geoffrey ignored the monk. ‘Fighting your betters, boy? You can hang for that. No’ – he shuddered, then pointed a long bony finger at Thomas – ‘you will hang for that! You hear me? You will hang for it.’ He spat at Thomas, then turned his roan horse and spurred it back down the line.
‘How come you know the Scarecrow?’ Brother Michael asked.
‘We just met.’
‘An evil creature,’ Brother Michael said, making the sign of the cross, ‘born under a waning moon when a storm was blowing.’ He was still watching the Scarecrow. ‘Men say that Sir Geoffrey owes money to the devil himself. He had to pay a ransom to Douglas of Liddesdale and he borrowed deep from the bankers to do it. His manor, his fields, everything he owns is in danger if he can’t pay, and even if he makes a fortune today he’ll just throw it away at dice. The Scarecrow’s a fool, but a dangerous one.’ He turned his one eye on Thomas. ‘Did you really pick a fight with him?’
‘He wanted to rape my woman.’
‘Aye, that’s our Scarecrow. So be careful, young man, because he doesn’t forget slights and he never forgives them.’
The English lords must have come to some agreement for they reached out their mailed fists and touched metal knuckle on metal knuckle, then Lord Outhwaite turned his horse back towards his men. ‘John! John!’ he called to the captain of his archers. ‘We’ll not wait for them to make up their minds,’ he said as he dismounted, ‘but be provocative.’ It seemed Brother Michael’s prognostication was right; the archers would be sent forward to annoy the Scots. The plan was to enrage them with arrows and so spur them into a hasty attack.
A squire rode Lord Outhwaite’s horse back to the walled pasture as the Archbishop of York rode his destrier out in front of the army. ‘God will help you!’ he called to the men of the central division that he commanded. ‘The Scots fear us!’ he shouted. ‘They know that with God’s help we will make many children fatherless in their blighted land! They stand and watch us because they fear us. So we must go to them.’ That sentiment brought a cheer. The Archbishop raised a hand to silence his men. ‘I want the archers to go forward,’ he called, ‘only the archers! Sting them! Kill them! And God bless you all. God bless you mightily!’
So the archers would begin the battle. The Scots were stubbornly refusing to move in hope that the English would make the attack, for it was much easier to defend ground than assault a formed enemy, but now the English archers would go forward to goad, sting and harass the enemy until they either ran away or, more likely, advanced to take revenge.
Thomas had already selected his best arrow. It was new, so new that the green-tinted glue that was pasted about the thread holding the feathers in place was still tacky, but it had a breasted shaft, one that was slightly wider behind the head and then tapered away towards the feathers. Such a shaft would hit hard and it was a lovely straight piece of ash, a third as long again as Thomas’s arm, and Thomas would not waste it even though his opening shot would be at very long range.
It would be a long shot for the Scottish King was at the rear of the big central sheltron of his army, but it would not be an impossible shot for the black bow was huge and Thomas was young, strong and accurate.
‘God be with you,’ Brother Michael said.
‘Aim true!’ Lord Outhwaite called.
‘God speed your arrows!’ the Archbishop of York shouted.
The drummers beat louder, the Scots jeered and the archers of England advanced.
Bernard de Taillebourg already knew much of what the old monk told him, but now that the story was flowing he did not interrupt. It was the tale of a family that had been lords of an obscure county in southern France. The county was called Astarac and it lay close to the Cathar lands and, in time, became infected with the heresy. ‘The false teaching spread,’ Brother Collimore had said, ‘like a murrain. From the inland sea to the ocean, and northwards into Burgundy.’ Father de Taillebourg knew all this, but he had said nothing, just let the old man go on describing how, when the Cathars were burned out of the land and the fires of their deaths had sent the smoke pouring to heaven to tell God and His angels that the true religion had been restored to the lands between France and Aragon, the Vexilles, among the last of the nobility to be contaminated by the Cathar evil, had fled to the farthest corners of Christendom. ‘But before they left,’ Brother Collimore said, gazing up at the white painted arch of the ceiling, ‘they took the treasures of the heretics for safekeeping.’
‘And the Grail was among them?’
‘So they said, but who knows?’ Brother Collimore turned his head and frowned at the Dominican. ‘If they possessed the Grail, why did it not help them? I have never understood that.’ He closed his eyes. Sometimes, when the old man was pausing to draw breath and almost seemed asleep, de Taillebourg would look through the window to see the two armies on the far hill. They did not move, though the noise they made was like the crackling and roaring of a great fire. The roaring was the noise of men’s voices and the crackling was the drums and the twin sounds rose and fell with the vagaries of the wind gusting in the rocky defile above the River Wear. Father de Taillebourg’s servant still stood in the doorway where he was half hidden by one of many piles of undressed stone that were stacked in the open space between the castle and the cathedral. Scaffolding hid the cathedral’s nearest tower and small boys, eager to get a glimpse of the fighting, were scrambling up the web of lashed poles. The masons had abandoned their work to watch the two armies.
Now, after questioning why the Grail had not helped the Vexilles, Brother Collimore did fall into a brief sleep and de Taillebourg crossed to his black-dressed servant. ‘Do you believe him?’
The servant shrugged and said nothing.
‘Has anything surprised you?’ de Taillebourg asked.
‘That Father Ralph has a son,’ the servant answered. ‘That was new to me.’
‘We must speak with that son,’ the Dominican said grimly, then turned back because the old monk had woken.
‘Where was I?’ Brother Collimore asked. A small trickle of spittle ran from a corner of his lips.
‘You were wondering why the Grail did not help the Vexilles,’ Bernard de Taillebourg reminded him.
‘It should have done,’ the old monk said. ‘If they possessed the Grail why did they not become powerful?’
Father de Taillebourg smiled. ‘Suppose,’ he said to the old monk, ‘that the infidel Muslims were to gain possession of the Grail, do you think God would grant them its power? The Grail is a great treasure, brother, the greatest of all the treasures upon the earth, but it is not greater than God.’
‘No,’ Brother Collimore agreed.
‘And if God does not approve of the Grail-keeper then the Grail will be powerless.’
‘Yes,’ Brother Collimore acknowledged.
‘You say the Vexilles fled?’
‘They fled the Inquisitors,’ Brother Collimore said with a sly glance at de Taillebourg, ‘and one branch of the family came here to England where they did some service to the King. Not our present King, of course,’ the old monk made clear, ‘but his great-grandfather, the last Henry.’
‘What service?’ de Taillebourg asked.
‘They gave the King a hoof from St George’s horse.’ The monk spoke as though such things were commonplace. ‘A hoof set in gold and capable of working miracles. At least the King believed it did for his son was cured of a fever by being touched with the hoof. I am told the hoof is still in Westminster Abbey.’
The family had been rewarded with land in Cheshire, Collimore went on, and if they were heretics they did not show it, but lived like any other noble family. Their downfall, he said, had come at the beginning of the present reign when the young King’s mother, aided by the Mortimer family, had tried to keep her son from taking power. The Vexilles had sided with the Queen and when she lost they had fled back to the continent. ‘All of them except one son,’ Brother Collimore said, ‘the eldest son, and that was Ralph, of course. Poor Ralph.’
‘But if his family had fled back to France, why did you treat him?’ de Taillebourg asked, puzzlement marring the face that had blood scabs on the abrasions where he had beaten himself against the stone that morning. ‘Why not just execute him as a traitor?’
‘He had taken holy orders,’ Collimore protested, ‘he could not be executed! Besides, it was known he hated his father and he had declared himself for the King.’
‘So he was not all mad,’ de Taillebourg put in drily.
‘He also possessed money,’ Collimore went on, ‘he was noble and he claimed to know the secret of the Vexilles.’
‘The Cathar treasures?’
‘But the demon was in him even then! He declared himself a bishop and preached wild sermons in the London streets. He said he would lead a new crusade to drive the infidel from Jerusalem and promised that the Grail would ensure success.’
‘So you locked him up?’
‘He was sent to me,’ Brother Collimore said reprovingly, ‘because it was known that I could defeat the demons.’ He paused, remembering. ‘In my time I scourged hundreds of them! Hundreds!’
‘But you did not fully cure Ralph Vexille?’
The monk shook his head. ‘He was like a man spurred and whipped by God so that he wept and screamed and beat himself till the blood ran.’ Brother Collimore, unaware that he could have been describing de Taillebourg, shuddered. ‘And he was haunted by women too. I think we never cured him of that, but if we did not drive the demons clean out of him we did manage to make them hide so deep that they rarely dared show themselves.’
‘Was the Grail a dream given to him by demons?’ the Dominican asked.
‘That was what we wanted to know,’ Brother Collimore replied.
‘And what answer did you find?’
‘I told my masters that Father Ralph lied. That he had invented the Grail. That there was no truth in his madness. And then, when his demons no longer made him a nuisance, he was sent to a parish in the far south where he could preach to the gulls and to the seals. He no longer called himself a lord, he was simply Father Ralph, and we sent him away to be forgotten.’
‘To be forgotten?’ de Taillebourg repeated. ‘Yet you had news of him. You discovered he had a son.’
The old monk nodded. ‘We had a brother house near Dorchester and they sent me news. They told me that Father Ralph had found himself a woman, a housekeeper, but what country priest doesn’t? And he had a son and he hung an old spear in his church and said it was St George’s lance.’
De Taillebourg peered at the western hill for the noise had become much louder. It looked as though the English, who were by far the smaller army, were advancing and that meant they would lose the battle and that meant Father de Taillebourg had to be out of this monastery, indeed out of this city, before Sir William Douglas arrived seeking vengeance. ‘You told your masters that Father Ralph lied. Did he?’
The old monk paused and to de Taillebourg it seemed as if the firmament itself held its breath. ‘I don’t think he lied,’ Collimore whispered.
‘So why did you tell them he did?’
‘Because I liked him,’ Brother Collimore said, ‘and I did not think we could whip the truth out of him, or starve it from him, or pull it out by trying to drown him in cold water. I thought he was harmless and should be left to God.’
De Taillebourg gazed through the window. The Grail, he thought, the Grail. The hounds of God were on the scent. He would find it! ‘One of the family came back from France,’ the Dominican said, ‘and stole the lance and killed Father Ralph.’
‘I heard.’
