The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (130 page)

‘Who do we pay rent to?' my da demanded and there it was, perfect as coloured wax; the priory owned us and the rent, though I had never known this before, included service as a man-at-arms. My da had gone before, back in '07 and again in '10 and was lucky to escape with his life both times.

I was nine when he first went, Will thought, and understood nothing. Now I am sixteen and since Da is too old, it is me chosen – so here I am, dripping as if rained on, in Da's rusting rimmed iron hat, patched old gambeson, rattle-hilted sword and a long pike-spear given me by the King.

Yet the hands that hold that spear are mine, the cunning of bone and joint and broken nails was made to answer my order and no one else's, just as were the sweating, stinking feet in the battered shoes and the legs atop them.

He was Will the chandler's boy and he was sixteen and lived in himself, somewhere under the ribs or inside his skull, thinking thoughts that had never been thought, feeling things that were so big and full no one had ever experienced them.

Will the chandler's boy, melting like wax and waiting to be smeared like old grease. No chance now to make a name as great as Master Overhill, who had invented the candle clock. No chance to find some cleverness to combat the creeping horror of steel cogs and wheels that was the fancy Frenchified horologe, no chance to raise himself from dipping wick in tallow to make nothing better than poor light the rest of his life.

No place for candles this, he thought, hearing the booming roar of the vintenars
to keep close – charge your pikes. Behind him, in the thinned centre of the ring, barely enough room for him alone, he knew the lord Randolph stood. How he stayed upright in this heat, with maille and plate and padding all over him, was something approaching magic, part of the mystery of the
nobiles
and what they did.

Yet he was not only upright, but roaring defiance and demands that they hold to the ring; out beyond the shoulders of the man in front, Will saw two riders and tried to dash the sweat out of his eyes with a fist swathed in thick leather gauntlet. It made his spear sway and clatter off the helmet of the man in front, but he only grunted, did not turn round.

The riders came on. Just three – someone laughed in disbelief but the men around Will suddenly seemed to stop breathing and Will saw that the riders were coming straight at his part of the ring; if they kept going they would crash into it.

‘Hold to the ring!'

Surely no sane man or beast would plunge straight in a hedge of points … Will did not even realize he had said it aloud until the man next to him growled out a reply.

‘They are no' sane, beast nor man,' he declared and Will turned to look briefly at the grizzled face. It smiled at him.

‘Dinna fash, lad. Hold to the ring, keep your pike charged as you trained and it will be fine enough.'

‘You have done this afore?'

Will heard the tremble in his voice and was ashamed of it, but the man did not seem to notice and merely grinned brownly.

‘Och, this is auld cloots an' gruel to the likes o' us,' he said and men to his front and side laughed agreement. Will could not understand why anyone would want to do this more than once. Then the grizzled man looked to his front and shifted as if to plant himself.

‘Fuck,' he said and Will saw the horsemen, big as giants and growing larger, the huge legs of the beasts pounding the ground to dust as they came on them at a full gallop.

Gray's fury thundered with every hoofbeat, a blood pulse that sent him shrieking at the ring of spears, cursing Bruno's slowness and raking him until he squealed. Even the sight of the spear points, wavering as they drew together to point at him, provided only the briefest spasm of apprehension, no more.

That was driven away by the sight of Sir William Deyncourt spurring past him, sitting forward and almost lunging with his lance – bad posture that, he thought, for you are off balance when you hit and will go straight through the gatehouse, out between the ears like a slung stone …

Deyncourt rode Bruno's stablemate, a big Frisian cross called Morningstar. The pair of them had been trained together, at the straw men in ranks, at the weak withy hurdles so that they believed there was no barrier they were put to which was stronger than their own muscle and bone. All it took was a madly determined rider and they would try to punch a hole in a castle wall – or a deadly shrike's nest of points.

Gray sat back, legs stuck almost up by the arched neck of Bruno, the last furious gallop into the ring a great roar that rang inside his helm and deafened the splintering crash.

Will saw the leading horseman as a flicker to the left of him, heard the grating crash and felt the slam of bodies rippling away from the impact point. Staggering, frantic, he was peering to see when the second knight erupted out of the golden haze, a massive monster with bared yellow teeth topped with a featureless creature of metal.

There was a brief confusion of red and white, a glimpse of a silver lion on a shield and then the horse struck the front rank as if it did not exist; there was the sound like a great tree falling and Will saw the man in front of him flung into the air to disappear with a shriek. He ducked instinctively at the great whirl of splintered wood from broken spears, saw the snapped-off points lanced into the horse's chest and head – straight through the flaring nostril and out of the other eye.

Then there was a moment when the world seemed to stop, when the man on the dying horse's back took his lance to within a foot of Will and skewered the astonished grizzle of the veteran through the neck; he seemed to float up in the air, higher and higher so that Will started to follow him with a tilt of his gape-mouthed stare.

The dying horse, legs flailing still, screaming a high-pitched shrill, ploughed on and skittled the ranks of men. Time sucked back to Will, just as the horse capsized, the last mad shriek and kick arriving into the sunlight of Will's world like a huge black cloud.

He felt the blow, felt himself hurled backward into other men and wanted to apologize. He saw himself as if he stood outside the blackness that had cloaked him, with his fine sprout of red-gold beard like stubble on a sparse field, big-handed, big-footed and awkward. Proved and not a coward, all the same, he thought, even if I am in the dark and afraid of it.

I need a candle.

Gray knew Sir William was already dead when Bruno hit the spearwall and died in an instant. He barely had time for the regret of such a loss before he was shot upward as if launched from a trebuchet, sprung up but not cleanly; one foot was briefly caught in the stirrup and he felt his leg wrench. Then it was free and he was flying in a whirl of arms and legs, like the tumblers he had seen at a fair day once. There was a brief flicker through his helmet slit, an eyeblink vision of a boy with his mouth open.

He crashed down in a great heap, the air driven from him. He thought he had been pinned like a sheep's eye on a crow beak, but felt himself dragged and kicked, felt his mind narrowing to a last small point of light. I am too young, he thought frantically. I have achieved nothing … he felt the savage wrenching of his neck, then light flared as his helm was torn off; blind, stunned, he blinked into a growl of shadows.

God preserve my soul …

This was chaos and Randolph flailed in the centre of it, bawling for the bodies to be cleared away, the dead spat out like gristle, for the ring to hold, for it to crab away from the dead horses. Someone flung a body at his feet and he stared down into the glassed daze of the knight, his red surcote torn, the silver lion streaked with gore.

‘Yield, my lord?' he asked, out of politeness' sake, and Sir Thomas Gray, his senses rushing back into the dubious blessing of a world of pain, could only nod.

A few feet away, Davey the Cooper fought the splintered length of lance from the neck of Bannock and rolled him away – helpful feet kept him going, feeding him out of the ring as it drew back. Peel o' the Bannock, Davey thought, the hero of Linlithgow who had driven the haywain under the cullis and stopped it dropping long enough for men to spring through and take the place. It is a weeping shame to be leaving him in his own blood for the birds to peck, him who had sworn to defend his own birthplace. Him and a dozen others, he saw, torn and savaged to death by only three knights.

He examined the boy at his feet, hearing him softly moaning out of his smashed face.

‘Swef, swef,' he soothed, though he knew the lad – Will, he thought the name was – had been sore hurt. Christ's Bones, you could see the half-moon circle where the iron-shod hoof had caught him full in the face, the bloody furrows where the raised shoenails had gouged him.

‘Candle,' he heard the boy mush out of his ruined mouth; somewhere, men shouted out a warning and Davey had no more time to think about it, drew his knife and slit the boy's throat, the blood scalding on his hands.

No candle would bring light to the poor boy, he thought, wiping his fingers down the front of his tunic. Not when his eyes have been torn from his head and his face so monstered his own ma would not recognize him. Better this way …

He helped the press to roll the boy out and rose up, shouldered into a space and braced for the rest of the English to arrive.

Clifford was near weeping with frustration and had torn his helmet off, flinging it away with a bawled curse so pungent it would strip the gilding off a saint's statue. Beaumont, horrified at what had happened, saw that the entire Battle was in disarray.

There were knights flung to the ground trying to fight their horses for control, others who had failed were streaming away in all directions on mad bolters and a good long hundred or so had compromised with their mounts and were rolling forward against the spear ring but at a steady foam-mouthed canter and all strung out.

‘Form. Form,' Clifford roared and those remaining fought their plunging mounts into some semblance of tight knee-to-knee order – but the act of this, familiar and tantalizing, simply fanned the flames as the warhorses fought for their heads, squealing and blowing like whales.

‘Advance,' Clifford called in desperation and, like a bolt from a springald, the relax of reins sent the whole pack raggedly forward in a fast canter. Throwing up his iron fists, Clifford gave in and followed, his own mount held in a steel grip that Beaumont could only admire, smiling and nodding his praise.

Clifford scowled back at him.

‘This is your fault, my lord,' he said as he swept past and Beaumont, floundering for a reply, could only fume in his wake.

In the end, they could only circle the ring, kept at bay by stabbing spears, reduced to hurling their lances and maces. Beaumont cantered round once, threw his lance, thought about hurling his helmet into the sea of wet, open-mouthed scum, but considered the pointless expense and kept it.

His excellent mount, at a trot, picked a delicate step over the flung bodies, snorting at the dust and blood as Beaumont searched for Sir Thomas.

If God had been just, he thought, he would have discovered Gray alive and bloodied, been able to climb off his expensive warhorse and present it to the man and so expunge his odious obligation. But there was no sign of Gray, only the battered and bloodied remains of his horse, something that might have been Sir William Deyncourt – and, to Beaumont's added horror, young Reginald Deyncourt as well, who had clearly decided to avenge his elder brother and paid the price for it.

He swung round as Clifford, red-faced and hoarse with shouting, galloped up to him, flinging one hand behind him. Lifting the fancy visor of his new bascinet, Beaumont squinted; there were more men coming out of the woods, spears up and hedged.

Bruce sat and watched the three riders crash to ruin; Jamie Douglas gave an admiring shout as they did so, even as he shook his head at the futility of it. He had uncowled himself from maille and bascinet so that his tousled dark hair stood up in sweat-spikes and his face was bright with joy.

He loves all this, Bruce thought as he massaged the ache of his right hand, pulling off gauntlet and maille mitt to study it; he carefully wiggled his fingers and noted the signs of blue bruising, mottled and ugly. Count the blessings of Heaven, he thought wryly, at least you can still feel all your fingers. And toes.

‘Do you wish me to go to the Earl of Moray's aid?'

The tone was bland but the question was as loaded as any latchbow; when Bruce turned, Jamie Douglas had a face and smile as innocent as a nun's headscarf.

‘Let my nephew bide a wee,' Bruce answered laconically. ‘He seems to have matters in hand.'

And if you go to his aid, Jamie Douglas, he thought, it will only be to preen and wave the rescue of it at Randolph for the rest of his life, so that he will not forgive either you or me.

They watched while the horsemen rode up in ragged skeins and then balked and circled. One dashed in and the horse went down – men cheered as the rider was clearly pounced on by the dirkmen and sent, as Patrick announced cheerfully, ‘all the way tae his ain Hell'.

Other horses were downed, but the riders weaved and staggered away, half walking, half falling. Eventually, as if tiring of the entertainment, Bruce turned back to Jamie Douglas.

‘Move your men to the line of the wood. No farther, Sir James, upon your honour.'

Jamie pouted, but then grinned, for he knew what his king was up to and he turned to the waiting men, winking at Dog Boy.

‘Rank up, lads. Make some noise, too, just to let the bloody English ken who we are.'

They marched out, shouting and singing as if it was a parade of apprentices on the spree – but, as Bruce had planned, the English saw reinforcements arriving. There was a flurry among them, the distant faintness of shouting and then a horn blew.

Bruce sat deeper in his saddle, suddenly aware of the tension leaking out of him like grain from a burst bag; his arm and hand pulsed with a vicious heartbeat. He heard horsemen and turned to see his brother ride up, grinning like a shark out of his broad face and waving vaguely at the sky.