Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) (34 page)

“And many supplies have yet to reach us,” Pembroke added. “Without them we will have neither the means to feed our host nor the arms to equip them entirely.”

Temporarily defeated, I dropped back into my chair. “How much longer then? A day? A week?”

Pembroke shrugged. “Two weeks. Maybe three. There are ships due at Leith which will fill much of the void.”

“We cannot tarry here,” Clifford grumbled as he cracked his knuckles, “while time erodes. The date has been set in stone. Fail to meet it and Mowbray tosses his meat scrap to the Scottish wolves.”

“This is an enormous undertaking, my lord,” Pembroke said. “We have over two-hundred horse and oxen carts to move. Fifteen thousand foot soldiers.”

Clifford interrupted, “Which do nothing but stumble and crawl and pule like slobbering infants who have shit themselves. I told all of you that it was more infantry than we needed. I have gone up against the Scots more than any of you and you’re fools, all, if you don’t think they’re any match for us man for man. They were bloody born to fight. Beat them with what they don’t have. Archers and cavalry will get the job done and right.”

“And if during all these skirmishes,” Pembroke said, “you had figured the Scots out so well, you’d have beaten them back to the Shetlands by now. Of heavy cavalry there are nearly –”

I rolled my head. “I thank you, earl, for reminding us of those counts yet one more time. I doubt you are one to advise any of us, since he thrashed you soundly at both Glen Trool and Loudon Hill.” Weary of doing battle with nagging and unwavering barons, I slumped back in my chair, dangled my arms over its sides and swung my feet up onto the table. I laid my hand across my eyes to shut out the light. “We shall march when supplies are in order. As for the knights seeking easy glory, for them we will not wait. Impatience overrules me. Ah, damn it! Someone call on Jankin to bring me a drink of poppy and peony root. This ceaseless prattle will cause my head to explode. If anyone breathes the names of Thomas of Lancaster or Robert the Bruce again this day I will have his tongue hacked out and tossed in the pig slop. Damn it. Jankin!”

Leith, 1314

An easterly wind rattled the riggings of the fleet of supply ships at Leith’s port on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Goods were being ferried to shore from some of the larger ships by brown, bare-chested men stroking the oars of their sluggish little boats through the rippling water of the firth. Gulls floated and jeered above in a terrible clamor, trained to follow sea vessels in hopes of freshly caught fish, and occasionally landed on the decks to harass the sailors. The smell of brine scoured my throat and scraped at the pit of my stomach. North, the Firth of Forth divided the land, gaping broader and broader as it ran eastward until it mingled indistinguishably with the sea. Four days ago we had left Berwick – an entire week later than planned. Today was the 21
^st
of June. Our pace would have to be doubled to reach Stirling in time. It could be done. Calculations had proven it. But with each hour, my barons became more irascible, the troops more troublesome and I more impatient.

Mounted on my bay and followed by a legion of nobles on horses with gay trappings, I passed through a swarm of grumbling footsoldiers. They parted with downcast heads as they saw me. In their midst, a captain lashed at the bleeding back of a soldier whose hands were roped to the back side of a supply wagon. The soldier wailed in agony as the whip seared across his flesh. The captain, taking perverse delight in his work, cast back his arm again.

“Hold there.” I leaned forward upon my saddle. “What offense has this man committed?”

Lowering the whip, the captain dragged a scarred arm across his half-toothless mouth. His chest heaved with exertion. He let himself down on one knee, bowed his head of sweat-matted hair and said in a voice choked with dust, “Said his feet were too sore to go on, m’lord.”

I studied the soldier’s feet. His leggings hung in shreds about his knees. The sole of one shoe was entirely gone from one and half from the other, so that the bottoms of his feet oozed with blood and pus. Where his toes were not likewise raw, they were completely bruised green and purple.

“His duty is to serve his king,” I said, “and his king commands him to march to Stirling.” I straightened in my saddle and signaled my horse onward. “Carry on, captain.”

As we proceeded to the port, the sharp crack of the whip rang out again and again. Usually, other soldiers mocked and shouted derisions at offenders. This time, they did not. Perhaps they had all wanted to voice the same complaint, but the rest had been wise enough to hold their tongues. The footsoldiers would have to tolerate their blistered feet and wearied legs. Surely they knew there was no element of comfort in their calling? In their ignorance, they probably expected riches from this expedition.

We came to the rocky strip of shoreline which began the eastern border of the harbor. I looked behind me and squinted against a blaze of June sun. Edinburgh Castle rose up ominously at our backs – a great, black rock dominating the horizon and shadowing a long reach of land at its base wherein huddled a town no longer protected by its power. Months ago Thomas Randolph had taken the castle. I both marveled and fumed at the feat. “Without sorcery I would say it was impossible. How did they manage?”

“The Scots are like goats, sire.” Hugh Despenser swished the flies from his horse’s ears with the ends of his reins. “Done at night. Randolph and his men climbed the rock face. The devil must have had some hand in it.”

“You can see to the other side of the Forth from there,” Clifford observed.

“They are not watching us from there now, Sir Robert,” Pembroke said. “A skeleton garrison. Victualed to the highest stone. With orders, no doubt, to starve themselves, rather than surrender.”

 I wadded the cloth of my surcoat at the shoulder and wiped the sweat from my brow. “So Bruce would rather rule over a country of byres and burnt fields. What of Linlithgow? Roxburgh?” Lightheaded, I gripped the edge of my saddle. I had not stopped thirsting since the day we rode out from Berwick. The constant weight of my armor had wearied me. The fiery knot between my shoulder blades burned like the first singe of a branding iron.

Pembroke freed his hands of his leather gauntlets and wiped the sweat from his tanned brow. “Linlithgow fell by deceit. A farmer named William Bunnock brought a cart full of hay to the gate as he had done for months before that. But on one particular day the hay had hidden within it a handful of Scotsmen. They forced open the gate and more poured in. Roxburgh, on the other hand, indeed had the devil playing for it. The Black Douglas employed an old ruse – dressed his men up as wandering cows. When the garrison came out to raid, they were set upon and slaughtered.”

Deceitful bastards. Have they no chivalry?

The ships, two days overdue, were finally being emptied and provisions and arms loaded onto their bursting carts. I coughed dryly as another cart, this one heaped with sheaves of arrows, rumbled by in a cloud of dust to take its place in line. It had not rained a drop since we stepped foot in Scotland. The low hills around Edinburgh were as brown as cow dung. The ground had begun to crack. Soon the cracks would grow into a chasm wide enough to swallow a column of footsoldiers.

“If we push out tomorrow, Lord Pembroke, can we make it there in time?”

“If nothing stood in our way, sire, yes. The men are weary, but if we drive hard tomorrow, it will be less far to go the next day to Stirling. My estimation, however, is that Bruce will have blocked the most direct path.”

Clifford’s eyes narrowed in thought. But he kept what was on his mind to himself for the moment. There was a constant tacit struggle between the two men. I should have liked to fling Pembroke and Clifford into a pit and watch them fight to the death like dogs with spiked collars and be done with it. Their quarrels were the cause for many a headache of mine.

“Good then,” I said, casting a terse warning glance at Clifford to hold his tongue. Not quite noon and already a sharp pain was splitting my skull into two halves. “It will finally come to outright battle. That is why we came – to get this over with. Dear God, I am sick unto death of this place. A stinking, burnt out, God-forsaken hellhole. If I never come back again it will not be soon enough.” I plucked up my reins and turned my mount toward the southwest where my quarters were. As I rode out between the writhing, grunting lines of soldiers, rolled in dust, unloading the supplies, I said to Hugh beside me, “How many times have I said that before? This country is my curse, I think.”

“Perhaps, sire,” Hugh said, “it is your opportunity at greatness.”

Clever fellow. I enjoyed his flattery.

Come, come, Bruce. The final day of reckoning is well past due. I have an army that Alexander the Great would have envied. And you? What have you? A herd of brutish hill men waving their pitchforks and fishing knives as they charge suicidal at the greatest army in Christendom. Come. Fight. I will finish the work my sire began. What an even greater revenge that will be for all the times he mocked me for being weak.

Make room in your grave, great sire. Robert the Bruce is soon to join you.

As Pembroke drifted off to inspect and direct supplies, Clifford rode toward Hugh and me.

Clifford glanced furtively about us, not wanting to be overheard, and said lowly, “If Bruce guards the entry to Stirling along the Roman road, as we all know he shall, our army cannot pass through without first fighting them. We have lost precious time. Let me bypass them and relieve the castle. Is that not our first objective?”

Hugh and I exchanged glances. His eyebrows lifted and drew down as if in a nod of agreement.

“Indeed, it is,” I acknowledged to Clifford. “You know the land. Go by the shortest route. Just get it done. Smashing Bruce into historical oblivion is secondary. But I should like that pleasure to myself.”

Clifford’s whiskered cheeks bunched into a smile. “Gladly, sire.”

Ch. 32

James Douglas – Leith, 1314

A sea of polished silver glimmered in the first hazy beams of morning sun. Spearheads glinted like the fins of fishes breaking the surface. Surely, my eyes deceived me. Yet time and again, I counted and calculated the mass of English cavalry and footmen. The number was staggering. Their encampment clogged the area along the Forth between the castle and port, where two dozen ships bobbed empty-bellied at anchor. A train of wagons stretched out to the east, each one heaped with boxes, barrels, or bundles. Some of those bundles, I knew, contained arrows by the thousands: broad-heads with their flared barbs for shredding flesh and sharply pointed piles for driving through mail. I remembered the pale-haired boy at Berwick during Longshanks’ assault when I was ten, caught in the shower of arrows, his brain torn open by a single shaft.

Out of habit, I ran my fingers over the string of my own bow, slung over my back. Its length was much shorter than that of the English bows, but the strength required to pull it was much less and because of that I could turn out more archers quicker. For our closer work, lurking in the woods then springing to attack, it suited our purpose. But the army before us would not be an object of unsuspecting ambush. They would line up before us in the open and from a distance would send those arrows and blacken the very sky with them. The bow that had so faithfully served me on Arran, at Perth and Roxburgh seemed an insignificant tool in light of what lay before me.

“How many, would you say?” Sir Robert Keith, whom the king had appointed as Marischal of Scotland, crouched beside me. His question brought my heart to a halt. Keith was more than twice my age. He had known my father and known him well. The years had not soured him as happens to some older men, who become cynical, languid or stubborn. On the contrary, he was open-minded, pensive at times and, although less fleet, as strong as many of my archers not past their twenties. Being of noble lineage, he was to command the cavalry. As a horseman, he was the most excellent I had ever known. His horses were not only his servants, but also his guarded treasures. He looked to the nails in their shoes himself, kept his farrier always at his side and his horse groom just a step more behind. Our horses were tethered fifty feet away on the southern side of a long, wooded ridgeline where we had huddled the night, waiting for the sun to chase away the half-darkness of midsummer so that we could take inventory of our opposition and their strength in numbers.

On my other side, Gil de la Haye sniffed. “Two thousand mounted knights. Maybe more. Ten times that in archers and footsoldiers.”

I nodded in affirmation. Keith scooted along the ground and sank down behind a tree. He drew a hand over his face and pulled down on his beard so that his mouth hung open.

“What a slaughter of man and beast we will see,” he prophesied. Finally, his hand slipped down to his throat and he looked up at the canopy of leaves overhead, undisturbed by wind. “Heaven help us all.”

“I would not leave it to heaven,” I said, “but to King Robert. And he would say that we shall have to help ourselves.” I continued to watch the English army as they stirred from their places to gather into lumpy columns. Their commanders shouted tersely, angrily. It took a long time for them to seek out their marching positions and assemble into columns, something which, by now, should have come as naturally to them as a blind man moving about his own home.

Edward of England believed in the power of numbers. But when it came to fighting, numbers were also a burden. The giant Goliath had been no match for David with his little stones. The English army was so cumbersome that they had lost the ability to move with speed. They were late getting here. Weary to the bone. Short on time. Their bellies were empty, their throats were dry and they hated the land they walked upon. I wagered they would not have dallied there at the port if they had not been in dire need of those supplies. They could not go on without them. Edward of Caernarvon had bitten off more than he could swallow in bringing such a vast horde so impossibly far. His ambition had exacted its toll. We had suffered for wanting our land back and Edward of Caernarvon should suffer for trying to wrangle it once again from us.