The Forest Laird(185)

Mirren paid him no attention in her dash towards the litter, and she and the huge warhorse collided directly in front of me with a sound that appalled me. The animal struck her with its shoulder and sent her flying, mother and child spinning like an ungainly top until she crashed to the ground, and only then could I collect myself sufficiently to move. I shouted something, too late either to warn or to protest, and began running to where she and the baby lay in a welter of women’s clothing, and as I ran I saw blood trickling from her nose and mouth. Little Willie was screaming, eyes screwed shut and mouth wide open, though I could scarcely hear him over the other noises. Men everywhere were shouting now, but I paid none of them any attention. I threw myself to the ground on my knees beside Mirren, and as I bent forward to cover her and the boy, someone kicked me in the head.

I know I was kicked only because I was told about it afterwards, for the blow broke my jawbone and knocked me senseless. I was kicked elsewhere, too, thoroughly and methodically, for when I regained awareness I was bruised all over and had several broken bones. I ought to have been killed, I suppose, but my priestly apparel may have saved my life.

Ewan and Andrew managed to escape. As archers, they both knew they needed distance between them and the enemy, and so as soon as Ewan saw what was happening—and he saw it far sooner than I did—he seized his bow case and quiver, called out to Andrew, then leapt down from the wagon and ran, using the vehicle’s bulk to shield him from English arrows.

There were no English arrows, though, because Robertson and his five men had already stalked and killed the ten bowmen Redvers had brought with him, so as soon as the two marksmen had gained sufficient distance to allow them to shoot clearly, they turned back towards the enemy and set about killing Englishmen. Redvers the knight attempted to send his footmen against them, but from less than a hundred paces Ewan’s arrows and Andrew’s crossbow bolts could punch right through their inferior chain mail, so they retreated, having no stomach for a frontal assault across open ground against marksmen now being reinforced by others as Robertson and his men came running from the woods and joined the fight. Only Redvers himself and his two mounted men-at-arms were strongly enough armoured to face the Scots fire, and in attempting to close with them, they proved that only Redvers was immune to the Scots arrows. Ewan, with his great bow of yew, brought down both men-at-arms with armour-piercing bodkins, and a direct hit on Redvers’s breastplate from twenty paces, though the missile glanced off and away, almost unhorsed the knight, who lost his sword while fighting to stay in the saddle and then turned and lumbered away to rejoin his men.

Moments later, the rearguard of Redvers’s column came charging to the rescue of their lord and master. They were crossbowmen, a dozen strong, and they had, it appeared, been lounging far behind the rear of the column, bored and distracted by having had nothing to occupy them since the beginning of their sweep. They might have been effective when they finally arrived, Ewan said, had Redvers known how to deploy them, but they were at a disadvantage from the outset, with Ewan and three of Robertson’s men armed with yew longbows harassing them with accurate, long-range fire before they could come close enough to organize themselves into any kind of useful formation. Four of the twelve went down in the opening exchange, and the remaining eight were sufficiently rattled by the unexpected accuracy of the Scots’ shooting to start falling back immediately. None of them, clearly, had any wish to die beside their first four comrades. They withdrew behind the wagons Ewan and Andrew had abandoned. They then had the advantage over Ewan’s group, who could not move forward without risk.

It was now a situation in which neither side could hope to make progress, and in a very short time, the English reorganized themselves, set up defensive formations, and made ready to leave, watched by the eight Scots archers who had bested them at odds of five to one.

Even in defeat, though, the English won, for Ewan saw two of them snatch Mirren up from where she lay beside me and throw her unceremoniously across the back of a horse belonging to one of Redvers’s two dead companions. He could have shot them dead from where he stood, but they would simply have been replaced by others, and he was afraid of hitting Mirren, the boy, or me by mischance. Besides, as he told me later, he only had two arrows left in his quiver.

They loaded her and her son hurriedly into the larger of our two wagons, and then they led the wagon to the litter and quickly loaded Mirren’s mother onto it as well. Keeping an eye on the distant Scots, they smashed the smaller wagon’s wheels and killed its team of horses. They then moved out and away, taking the road to Lanark and leaving their dead behind them, though no one had any doubt that they would return in strength within the hour to bury their own and hang any Scot foolish enough to be within reach.