In the Time of Kings (27 page)

For a moment, I thought he was going to yank me into his arms and give me a bear hug, but suddenly he turned away and was lost in the press of preparations.

On the opposite slope, the Welsh and English archers nestle arrows to their strings. They raise their bows. The Scots hoist their shields above their heads and forge onward. Black slashes cut across the sky, arcing high. Moments later I realize it isn’t a flock of birds, but feathered arrows, seeking their targets.

Men crumple beneath the onslaught. Wherever one man goes down, another pushes forward to fill the gap. My stomach twists. I grip the reins of my horse, shut my eyes tight. Somewhere out there are my father, Duncan, Archibald, earls, knights, and nameless hundreds who I’ve marched beside, shared meals with, slept beside under the stars, laughed with. It’s hard to imagine their lives being snatched away in an instant. Harder still to imagine being one of those marching on, while wounded and dead fall beside you, yet having to push on.

When I open my eyes again, I can barely fathom the horror unfolding before me. The Scots continue across the boggy expanse, then slog uphill, arrows raining all around. The right division, sorely depleted, is the first to collide with the English. The fight is fleeting. Like a tear through wet paper, the Scottish lines falter, then break. Whether Moray called on them to fall back or they simply lost heart, I can’t tell. Men begin pushing back through the ranks, then fleeing downhill.

The center division continues to advance, but the left, led by Archibald, has already turned back. What began as an organized attack is quickly becoming a chaotic retreat.

The distance from the top of Witches Knowle on which I stand to the top of Halidon Hill is maybe half a mile, yet thousands and thousands of men are racing in our direction, desperate for safety, slowed only by the litter of bodies.

As the Scottish army collapses in on itself, the Earl of Ross, who commands the waiting rearguard at the top of the slope, makes the call for his Highlanders to stand their ground. I expect them to ignore his command — there can be only one outcome — but they don’t. As men from the retreating divisions reach us, running for their lives, the Highlanders remain firm.

It’s all unfolding too quickly. I can’t watch any more. If I stay, I’ll die, too. If I run, I have a chance — to live.

I whirl around, expecting to see Christian, but he’s nowhere in sight. Gone. My first fear is that he’s been trampled underfoot, but if that were the case, he’d be easy to find. No, he’s gone to fight, even though he can barely stand on his own. If I can get to him, help him on my horse, I can get him out of here in time. So many soldiers are shoving past me, though, that I can’t move forward. Only back. Away from the battle.

“Christian!” I yell. But there is no answer. Only the deafening roar of defeat.

My horse pulls his head back sharply. His black eyes are pressed wide, his nostrils flared. Gently, I try to reel him in, so I can steady him and mount. He resists, steps backward, then finally yields. Just as I slip my fingers in his halter, another panicked horse slams into his flank. My horse rears. The leather burns as he yanks away. I duck instinctively, fall to my knees. Feet pound around me. Behind me. Over me.

Through the crush of men fighting and fleeing, I glimpse Alan on his horse. He hooks his sword downward, his blade biting into the bare neck of a helmetless English solider. The man’s head flops sideways; he sinks to his knees, then falls face down in a gurgle of bloody spittle ten feet from me.

Alan’s eyes lock onto mine for the longest of moments. Then he spurs his horse sharply and gallops away.

A shield lands beside me with a thunderous thud. I grab its edge, pull it to me and huddle beneath it, waiting for my end.

This is it. This
is
the day after all.

I will die. But I have no fear. For I will live again.

Just, please God, hurry up. Be quick about it. I’m not good with pain.

A verse from Oscar Wilde flits through my scattered thoughts:

LONG, LONG AGO

Berwick, Scotland — 1333

I
swim in darkness. Cold nothingness. All suffering — gone.

I’m content. Glad to be free of my torment.

Torment?

The memory of a face appears through the mist of my dreams: translucent skin, eyes as green as the first unfurling leaves of springtime, hair like molten gold aflame. Her flesh beneath mine, warm, supple, my fingertips tingling. Her nearness stirring my blood.

Mariota.

I fight to wake. To climb from the airless void that entombs me and claim my own breath again. I gulp air, sputter and wheeze. My ribs scream in pain. The deathly clang of battle, broken by intermittent grunts, rings in my head. I cough, taste blood on my tongue. Or is it that I smell it in the air?

No. I don’t want to go back. Not there. Not Halidon Hill.

I don’t want to return to the future, either.

Just let me be dead, for God’s sake.

The tang of damp iron curls inside my nostrils, overlain by an indescribably warm sweetness and the aroma of crushed grass.

Again — the ring of metal. Helpless dread gnaws at the pit of my stomach and seeps into my guts, filling me with panic, intensifying with each hammer of my heart. I try to sit up, to open my eyes, but I flail where I lay, enveloped by darkness.

One glimpse tells me all I need to know. It’s over. We’ve lost.

I inhale again, long and deep, letting air fill my lungs, an assurance that I’m alive. For the moment, at least. Turning over, my right shoulder throbs with a habitual ache.

I tried to tell you, Archibald. Tried to tell you this would end badly. Tried to save you and the whole fricking army of Scotland. But you were too Goddamn stubborn to listen. And now you’re dead, along with thousands of others.

Yet if it hadn’t been Archibald and all the soldiers, the citizens of Berwick would have met a terrible fate, just like they had in Longshanks’ time.

In the end, does it matter how the end comes? Fate is fate. There is no cheating it.

A sob convulses me, sorrow suffusing every inch of my soul like a black miasma. I don’t want to live, knowing I’ve failed, knowing that these deaths hang on me.

If souls are allowed seven lives, like the Cathars believe, why can’t I escape this one?

Overcome with exhaustion, I close my eyes again. Each breath becomes shallower, each heartbeat fainter.

Please, please let me die. Let me go.

If I could slit my wrists, hurry my passing, I would. If only I had a knife ... My fingers twitch to reach for my belt, but I’m too weak. Can’t move.

In the murky darkness of my dreams, I see Alan’s face. See the way he had watched, triumphant, as the English soldier fell before me. The determined smile that had possessed him as he sped from the hill. North, undoubtedly. Toward Blacklaw Castle. Where Mariota is waiting — for me. He’ll tell her I died. And then he’ll ... he’ll ...

Mariota!

Alert now, I gulp air in great shuddering heaves. It’s long past nightfall, but even in the grayness, I can make out the scattered bodies, the heaps of dead in the distance.

I rake my fingers through the damp grass, trying to grab anchor so I can pull myself to my hands and knees. If I can’t run from here, I’ll crawl. Anything to escape this nightmare. To return to Mariota. And God help Alan if he does anything to her. I’ll kill the bastard.

“Roslin?” someone croaks in a whisper. “God’s bollocks, is that you?”

I look over my shoulder to see a man crouching some twenty feet away, a short sword held loosely across his knees. He looks around, then scoots toward me. As he comes nearer, I recognize the broken teeth, the scraggly beard of white.

“Duncan?” I push myself up on my good elbow. “Tell me — are you an angel, or the same old crusty turd you always were?”

“If I’m an angel, heaven’s no better than hell.” In front of me now, Duncan hunkers lower, looks me up and down. “Well you look a bloody fine sight. Ugly as ever. Whole ... except for that crack in your skull where your brains are leaking out.” He jabs rough fingers at my temple and I wince. A trace of warm blood seeps from beneath a fresh scab there. More gently then, he traces the edges of the wound. The skin is still there, mostly, the gash no more than an inch.

Sitting now, I clench his wrist. The blood drains from my head and I grip him tighter, trying to keep myself upright. “I need to get back to Blacklaw, Duncan. Will you help me?”

He twists his face in thought, turning his head from side to side as he peers into the darkness. “Can you ride?”

I nod, even though I’m far from certain I can. “If I fall ...”

“If you fall, I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you there like a sack of grain.”

And he would.

“Good then.” He lifts me up, but my legs are weak. I lean on him, for support as much as for courage. “Help me find a horse. Mine’s dead and it looks as though you’ve lost yours.”

––––––––

H
ow Duncan even found me is nothing short of a miracle. Thousands of ravaged bodies choke the marshy ground beyond Halidon Hill, sometimes stacked haphazardly in piles four or five deep. Even more than a mile from the worst of the massacre, there are bodies strewn about. The first few corpses we stumble past, I stop, turn them over and peer down into their faces to see if it’s someone I know, or if perhaps, like me, someone else has lived and been left for dead. But they’re all dead, many with limbs or ears missing, or big flaps of flesh torn loose to expose sinew and bone.

I slip on someone’s entrails, or maybe it’s brains, or both. Duncan latches onto my elbow, then puts my good arm over his shoulder.

“We don’t have time for that.” He yanks me forward. “’Twould be a pity for us to have survived this long, only to be gored by an English spear because you had to gawk.”

Here and there I can make out shapes moving among the bodies: scavengers searching for valuables among the dead. Then I see a form stir, try to crawl away from one of the scavengers. A blade flashes in the darkness. A cry of mortal pain rings out, then fades to a dying moan. Had the wounded man been a noble, he might have been taken prisoner and ransomed, so that he would one day return to his family. But common soldiers aren’t granted such graces.

Moon and stars are obscured by a broad veil of clouds. Our further salvation comes as a mist descends over the land, first spilling into the low places between the hills and then reaching its milky fingers toward higher ground.

I struggle to stay awake as much as I do to stay on my feet. It’s tempting to just stop, fold to the ground and sleep. If the enemy came upon us, I couldn’t have fought them anyway. But Duncan drags me onward, babbling on about how he’ll get me to Blacklaw and from there we’ll go to Edinburgh, then something about how we have to save King David and ... At some point I can’t make sense of his words anymore.

My foot catches on something and I tumble forward. Onto a body. A body missing its head.

“Shit!” Adrenalin blasts through me. I scrabble across the ground on my knees, hauling myself forward with my left arm.

Duncan growls, kicking me in the side of the leg. He shoves me down and squats before me, one hand twisting a hank of my hair to turn my head. “Our unfortunate friend left a horse behind, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

I bat his hand away and look. The horse is standing next to the headless man, its head hanging low, blood splattered on its white hide. In my fog of exhaustion, I didn’t see the animal, so still it was. The beast was loyal to the end. The colors of its trappings match the knight’s surcoat, although I don’t recognize the emblem on his chest. He could have been either English or Scottish or a foreign mercenary, for all I know.

Tentative, Duncan stands, staggers toward the animal. It raises its head, snorts a warning. As he reaches toward it, the horse’s ears perk, but it stays where it is. Duncan takes hold of the reins, slowly reeling the animal in as he speaks lowly to it.

A few minutes later, he climbs into the saddle, then slips his foot from the stirrup and offers me a hand.

I stare at his open palm. “I don’t know if I can, Duncan. I’m so tired. So damn tired.”

“Throw your arse up here, and live ... or stand there like a simpering fool and die.”

A dry laugh rattles in the back of my throat. “You said you’d carry me.”

Muttering a curse, Duncan rolls his eyes. “If I did that right now, we’d
both
end up dead. First, we need to get away from this mess.”

English voices drift through the fog. At first they seem to be fading in the opposite direction, but then another voice, closer to us, calls out and the others answer that they’re coming.

Grabbing the cantle of the saddle, I wedge my foot in the stirrup and struggle to pull myself up. With a grumble, Duncan seizes my surcoat and hauls me behind him. I reach around him to slip an arm beneath the leather strap crossing his chest.

Carefully, he guides the horse around the fallen. Out in the open, he urges it to a trot. At that point, it isn’t the threat of death from Englishmen on the hunt that keeps me alert, but the pain in my shoulder that shoots through my body with every stride of the horse.

LONG, LONG AGO

Blacklaw Castle, Scotland — 1333

B
lacklaw Castle is little more than half a day’s ride from Berwick. Under normal circumstances. It has taken us twice that long to reach it.

The castle beckons in the distance at the edge of the sea cliff, its stones flecked with the green and gold of moss and lichen. Not a large fortress, especially when compared to a place like Bamburgh in Northumberland, it’s still imposing due to its height above the shore.

Duncan urges our lagging horse to a trot. Wearied by the pace he had demanded of it the last few miles, its gait is unsteady, but its obedience never wavers. The road dips low behind a hill and the castle disappears from view. I cling to Duncan’s chest, my arm burning from the effort. I want to let go, to ask him to stop and rest, but I can’t. Not now, not with Mariota so close.