“Their military experience. And that is what I meant when I spoke of the way they have fought for centuries. It comes to me that they have learned nothing through all those centuries and have no time to learn anything new now. They have great confidence in their own abilities, God knows, but how valid is it?” He held up one hand to prevent anyone interrupting. “I bring it up only because I’ve been worrying over it since you left to hunt for Buchan. I do not like what I have been thinking, my lord Bishop, but this matter has sunk into my head and would not leave me alone until I came to grips with it. I am a verderer—a forester and not a soldier, as you know. But even so, I can see what is there to be seen and I find that I cannot ignore it, no matter how many others can. And the first thing that I see is numbers. The English outnumber us by ten to one, at least. For every hundred men we can march to battle, they can field a thousand, and if they lose a thousand men, they can make good that thousand losses where we may not, and they can do it ten times over.” He grunted again, his jaw working. “Now, it’s fine to say they’re naught but Englishmen and any Scot is worth a score of them, but that is hardly credible when blows are to be traded. We all bleed the same red blood and we all feed the same black earth.
“But the simplest, plainest truth, the thing that frightens me and dominates my thoughts at all times now, is that the English are in solid fighting trim and we are not. They are focused and tight, disciplined and battle hardened. Their forces are keenly edged and toughened after years of sustained warfare in France, in Gascony, and in Wales. Their morale is high, with ample reason, whereas our swaggering has nothing to back it up or sustain it. The Welsh and English archers are well trained and well equipped, furnished with arrows by the hundreds of thousands, produced incessantly by fletching manufactories set up throughout England to keep the country’s bowmen armed and ready to fight instantly and anywhere. Their infantry is equally well equipped, and tempered by years of fighting in scores of battles. And their cavalry is something which we simply cannot match. We lack the enormous horses that the English breed, and because our horses are smaller, our armour must be lighter, so we have no knights who can withstand the might of England’s chivalry.
“But even were we able, by some divine magic, to erase those differences, we would still be facing disaster, for we have not fought—I mean really fought, hard battles in the field—for more than thirty years. No Scots army has taken the field since the fight to throw out the Norwegians, at Largs, more than thirty years ago. And even that was no real battle by any standards. Since then, the closest our leaders have come to formal battlefield experience, the closest in decades, is on short raids into neighbouring territories against their own kind. That does not fill me with hope about the outcome of this new war.”
“Let us pray you are wrong, Will.”
“Pray all you wish, my lord, but prayer will not alter the fact that we are outweighed and outdistanced on every front. Pray hard, and have your people pray hard, too, for we’ll have need of every prayer they can muster. As for myself, I intend to fight, but I will do it here, where I can serve best by protecting the rear of our forces against incursions from the south. The English host will doubtless invade across the flats of Solway, striking into Annandale and Galloway, but there will be a constant progress of supplies and reinforcements coming north by way of Berwick and by the roads through Coldstream and Jedburgh. My men will keep those roads secure and bar all interference by those routes. You have my word on that.”
2
The Bishop and his chancellor left us to return to the cathedral in Glasgow on the morning of the fifteenth of March, the day the ancients called the Ides. I remember warning them to travel with care that day, which had not been a propitious one for Julius Caesar. I recall clearly, too, that it seemed to take a long time for them to reach the end of the long avenue and veer from sight. It was the last thing I can remember that happened slowly from that day forward.
“I like that man Lamberton,” Will said as we walked back towards his hut. “He has a good head and a stout heart and he loves this land of ours. I would follow him, were he a fighter.”
“He is a fighter, Cuz, but he’s a warrior of God. He’ll fight savagely for those things he believes in, but he will do it with nerve and sinew, and his only weapons will be his mind, which is formidable, and his will. He would never spill blood, though, unless it be his own, in sacrifice. He has the makings of a fine bishop, and I have not the slightest doubt he will be one someday.”