Kemp, page 10
Kemp and his companions rode across the saddle linking the hill to the shoulder of the highest one in the ridge to their right, which was not much more than fifty or sixty feet higher than where they were now. Kemp sought out places where he, Ieuan and Haygarth might ambush their pursuers with their bows, but the heather offered little appropriate cover: a man might easily hide himself by lying amidst it, but he could not shoot swiftly while getting up and lying down between shots.
The view from up here revealed nothing but miles and miles of moorland stretching out in all directions, as if to underline just how far from civilisation they were. Kemp had thought from up here they might be able to see as far as Hermitage Castle, which by his reckoning could not be much more than three or four miles to the north, but there was no sign of it. He glanced back the way they had come: their pursuers were already riding across the saddle.
To the east, the heather sloped down relatively gently into what Kemp supposed must be Liddesdale, while to the north-west it fell away steeply in several ravines that all fed into a single valley curving around beyond where the ridge they now stood on terminated in a slightly lower hilltop half a league to the north.
The track followed the spine of the ridge down towards that final hill, until after a few hundred yards it suddenly curved around the head of one of the ravines and dropped down, steeply traversing the slope down to the banks of the burn splashing through the bottom. Steep-sided through the ravine was, whoever had worn out this section of the track – generations of sheep grazing the heather, most likely – had instinctively found the shallowest descent, and Kemp and his companions were able to ride down all the way. The ravine led west, then curved around to the north, where it met the other ravines incising the slopes of the ridge, opening out into a wide glen with green meadows in the bottom land, and a reed-thatched croft with a sheepfold enclosed by a drystone wall.
The place was abandoned, judging from the poor condition of the thatching, and probably had been since the Pestilence had swept across Christendom six years earlier. If the crofters had not fallen victim to the foul disease themselves, with so many dead and labour in such high demand afterwards, they must have realised they could make a better life for themselves in Langholm or Newcastleton than ever they could in a dreary wilderness like this.
Kemp glanced over his shoulder at the ridge they had just descended from. He could not see their pursuers silhouetted against the sky, but that did not surprise him: he had been looking about for cover since before they had started their descent, and had not noticed the croft before now.
He turned to Haygarth. ‘Do you know how to ply that piece of yew-wood slung across your back, or do you only carry it for show?’
‘I was praised for my shooting at Neville’s Cross,’ growled the summoner.
Kemp glanced to where Tomkin shared his mother’s horse. He had seen the boy playing with a toy bow when he had arrived at Lochmaben Castle the day before last, and he guessed Tomkin would have seen Haygarth practising archery at the butts during his stay at the castle; if the summoner did not practise at least several times a week, then he was no kind of archer and of no use to Kemp. ‘What say you, lad? Is he a good shot?’
The boy shrugged. ‘He’s fair.’
It was scarcely a ringing endorsement, but it was not as if Kemp had a whole troop of bowmen to choose from: he would have to make do. ‘Ieuan, Symund, you two come with me. The rest of you ride on.’
Balliol reined in his horse. ‘What do you intend?’
‘I mean to do summat about these whoresons dogging our footsteps. This is work for archers, Sir Roger. Ride on; you can do no good here. We’ll catch up with you before you reach Hermitage Castle. And Sir Roger?’
‘Aye?’
‘I’d be obliged if you and Roake would keep an eye on the bourc while we’re gone, and see to it he doesn’t escape.’
‘I do not think he will try to escape, Master Kemp. He has given you his parole, has he not?’
‘He gave me his word he’d pay me a ransom of twelve hundred scudoes three years ago, and still I’m waiting…’ Kemp made no attempt to keep his voice down and Nompar, overhearing him, flushed.
While the others continued along the path along the bank of the stream, Kemp, Ieuan and Haygarth dismounted behind the croft and put their horses inside the byre, where they would be out of sight. Then they stripped the bags off their bows and strung them. Kemp peered around the corner of the byre, gazing back up the ravine. All was silent, and if the amount of noise their horses had made on the stones of the path during their descent was any indication, they would have plenty of warning of their pursuers drawing nigh. Gesturing for Ieuan and Haygarth to follow, he vaulted over the wall of the sheepfold and ran across to the opposite side, where the wall was closest to the track. The three of them sat down with their backs to the stones, their bows across their knees, waiting, out of sight from the road. Each of them took an arrow from the sheaf under his belt to have it ready to hand.
‘Do we wait till we hear them approach, then rise and shoot at them?’ asked Haygarth.
‘On my word,’ said Kemp.
The three of them waited, listening to the wind soughing across the eaves of the croft. What if I’ve made a mistake? wondered Kemp. What if there’s another road down from the ridge, and our pursuers take that instead? How long do we wait here?
Ieuan had another question preying on his mind. ‘Why become a summoner?’ he asked Haygarth.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s a horrible office. Strutting around, summoning folk to the archdeacon’s court on pain of being cursed, for sins as harmless as sodomy. It’s not as though there’s a shortage of proper outlaws you could be hounding.’
‘God’s law must be enforced as well as man’s. It is written in the Book of Leviticus: “If a man lie with the mankind after the manner as with womankind, they have both committed an abomination and shall die for it. Their blood be upon their heads.”’
‘But we don’t kill them, do we?’ said Ieuan. ‘We just excommunicate them, and only fools take that seriously. It’d be a cruel world if we went around hanging folk for nothing worse than a little sodomy. What about the verses in the Bible that say you mustn’t eat pork, or wear linen with wool? You don’t summon men to appear before the archdeacon for tucking into some bacon or wearing a linen tunic under a woollen cote-hardie. Maybe primitive folk believed that sort of nonsense in the olden days, but this is the year of Our Lord thirteen hundred and fifty-five; we’re more civilised now.’
Hearing hoof beats, Kemp waved them both to silence. He raised his head cautiously above the level of the wall just in time to see seven horsemen emerging from the ravine. Three of them had bows slung across their backs: not unstrung and sheathed in bow bags, but slung by the cords and ready for use. None of them seemed to be wearing red livery, as he would have expected from Balliol’s description of the Lindsay blazon. If anything, their white aketons with red-and-blue trim looked more like the livery of Douglas’s men. Kemp wondered if they had followed them all the way from Galloway, or if they had picked up their trail more recently than that.
He ducked down again with a curse. He should have anticipated Douglas would send bowmen out after a man known to have archers in his retinue.
‘Who is it?’ hissed Ieuan.
‘Douglas’s men. Including three archers. Wait till they’ve ridden past, then shoot the archers in the back. Then pick off the hobelars. But no one shoots till I give the word.’
The hoof beats clattered past only a few yards from where Kemp, Ieuan and Haygarth crouched. Kemp waited until he was sure the clatter was fading before rising to his feet. The seven horsemen were already trotting away from them, heading down the valley. Kemp and Haygarth loosed together; Ieuan seemed to be having trouble rising to his feet. The bowman at the very rear of the file – the one the Welshman should have shot – saw his companions fall with arrows in their backs and reined in his horse, yelling a warning to the four hobelars. Kemp nocked a second arrow and let fly. At no more than thirty yards, it was an easy shot and the last Scottish bowman went down even as the hobelars wheeled their hobbies. Haygarth loosed his second arrow at the same time Ieuan loosed his first. As luck would have it, both shot at the same man and he fell with two arrows jutting out of his torso.
Seeing all three of his bowmen down, one of the hobelars shouted a warning to his companions and put his heels back. The other three galloped after him. Kemp and Ieuan both loosed an arrow each: Kemp’s shot narrowly missed the leader, Ieuan’s brought down one of the other hobelars. The remaining three galloped out of range before Kemp could nock another arrow.
‘Come on!’ he yelled to Ieuan and Haygarth, sprinting back across the sheepfold. He could not imagine what would happen when the three hobelars overhauled Balliol and the others from behind… Roake would put up a good fight, but Balliol himself was too old for that sort of thing, and if Nompar was the honourable man he claimed to be, he would take no part in any fighting; though Kemp had yet to be convinced of that. Either way, he could not imagine the encounter having a happy conclusion.
They slung their bows across their backs by their cords as they sprinted across the sheepfold. ‘Why did you tarry ere you loosed your first shot?’ Kemp asked Ieuan, who seemed to be lagging him and Haygarth.
‘Right sorry I am… my knees…’
Kemp and Haygarth vaulted over the wall at the over side of the sheepfold. Ieuan almost cleared it, then there was a look of panic on his face, and he fell back onto the grass.
Kemp ran back to the wall to help him over. ‘I’ve got too many winters under my belt for such leapings,’ grumbled the Welshman.
They led their horses out of the byre. ‘Need me to help you into the saddle also?’ Kemp asked Ieuan. The Welshman scowled at him.
All three of them mounted up and at once galloped down the road after the others. The three hobelars who had escaped their ambush were already out of sight. Less than a mile down the road, the glen opened into the valley that curved around the far side of the hill at the north end of the ridge of hills between Tarrasdale and Liddesdale, and the road joined with another leading from the west. All the fresh tracks leading out of the glen turned to the east. They rounded a corner and the road ran as straight as a die for three furlongs, with green pastures rising on both sides of them and a burn cutting through the grass a short distance to their right, white stones showing where the water had undercut the banks.
The valley ran straight enough for Kemp to see at least half a mile of road ahead. There was still no sign of the three hobelars they were chasing, or of Balliol and the rest of their party. He was wondering if he had taken a wrong turn when something rushed under his horse at tremendous speed, as if a swift had ducked under its neck. The rouncy stumbled and fell. Landing heavily in the road, he instinctively rolled clear of the horse. Something else swished through the air, and Haygarth yelled incoherently. An arrow whipped past… Kemp saw another buried in his rouncy’s breast, blood on its pelt, the beast whinnying in agony and fear as it rolled on its back, thrashing its hoofs in the air.
Seven
More arrows whipped out of an oak wood about a hundred yards ahead. One landed in the grass close enough to where Kemp lay in the road, playing dead, to convince him he had been the intended target. He glanced over his shoulder: Haygarth’s rouncy was also down, with two arrows sticking out of it, the summoner lying flat behind it. Ieuan had dismounted before he was shot off his steed, and taken refuge in a shallow ravine where a rill ran down the hillside on their left into the burn running through the bottom of the valley. The ravine was so small, Kemp had scarcely noticed it when his rouncy – no jumper – had cleared it in a single bound. One of the bowmen in the wood shot the Welshman’s rouncy, either to prevent his escape or purely out of meanness.
Another arrow thudded into the grass less than a foot from where Kemp hugged the ground. Realising Ieuan and Haygarth both had the right idea, he scrambled back to join the Welshman in the ravine.
Ieuan had already unslung his bow and nocked an arrow, but their ambushers – Kemp reckoned it at no more than two or three bowmen – were no more than shadows in the shade beneath the trees.
‘Who is it, d’you think?’ asked Ieuan.
‘I know not. Some of Douglas’s men? Whoever commands them, he sent those first seven to chase us up Tarrasdale, while the rest of his men cut up Liddesdale to lay an ambuscade for us here.’
‘Then what’s become of Balliol and the others?’
Kemp shook his head: he knew no more than the Welshman. Whoever was shooting at them from the trees, he could not imagine they would have let Balliol get past.
Ieuan nudged him and indicated where the ravine continued up the slope to their left. ‘D’you think we could get around their flank up there?’
Kemp frowned. ‘No more cover up there than there is down here.’ He called to where the summoner lay behind his horse. ‘Haygarth!’
‘What?’
‘Whoever’s shooting at us, can you draw their attention while Ieuan and me outflank them on the left?’
‘Draw their attention how?’
‘Try shooting arrows at them.’
‘You’d have me stand up?’
‘You don’t have to stand up to shoot,’ said Ieuan. ‘Have you never shot lying on your back, with your legs towards the butt and the soles of your feet braced against the bowstave?’ It was a popular trick amongst archers: they could shoot much further that way, though with no great accuracy. But accuracy was neither here nor there, when Haygarth could not even see who he was shooting at.
‘How any arrows have you left?’ asked Kemp.
There was silence for a few heartbeats while the summoner counted the shafts left in his sheaf. ‘Ten.’
‘Space them well apart, then. And when you’ve shot your last, get them talking. Owt to keep their eyes down here.’
‘Happen you’d like me to show them my arse so they’ve got summat to shoot at!’ grumbled Haygarth, rolling onto his back and swivelling around so he could brace his bow against the soles of his shoes.
‘That’s the general idea,’ Kemp said as he began to crawl up the ravine. It was vital to stay low: the men in the wood only needed to catch a glimpse of one of them further up the ravine, and they would realise they were about to be outflanked and reposition themselves accordingly.
The ascent up the gully was heavy going. In some places it was so shallow, they had to crawl up it on their bellies to be sure they were not spotted from the trees, and Kemp was glad it was November: a few weeks earlier in the year and the ravine would likely have been crowded with nettles.
The first two dozen yards were the worst; further up, the gully entered a wider ravine that allowed Kemp and Ieuan to climb out and walk upright without being seen from the wood. Unfortunately, it also angled away from the trees: the further up they went, the more open ground they would have to cross to reach the upper end of the wood.
Haygarth had already run out of arrows: they could hear him shouting across to someone in the trees – and someone shouting back – though the words were indistinct. Kemp and Ieuan crept up the slope on the right-hand side of the wider ravine, bending double as they drew close to cresting the brow of the slope, then dropping to crawl on their stomachs, cautiously raising their heads. A hundred yards of open pasture lay between them and the upper end of the wood. Kemp glanced to his left to see if there was any cover up there they could make use of if they continued a little further up the ravine, but the slope just continued up for what looked like the best part of half a mile, and he knew Haygarth could not keep their attackers talking forever.
‘You go first,’ he told Ieuan.
‘Losing your nerve, boy?’
‘Just trying to give you a chance to redeem yourself for your slowness at the sheepfold. Get a move on, before the summoner runs out of things to say.’
‘A shame we do not have Wolwardington,’ said Ieuan. ‘His greatest prowess is in endless blather.’ He scrambled over the crest of the slope and dashed across the open pasture to the wood, running bent double. It seemed to take him forever, but perhaps that was just Kemp’s anxiety on the Welshman’s behalf. At last Ieuan reached the cover of the trees and turned to gesture for Kemp to follow.
Kemp did not waste time thinking about it: if someone had spotted Ieuan crossing the pasture, the longer Kemp waited, the more time that gave their ambushers to get someone into position to shoot at him. He did not bother running bent double, either, just going full pelt for the trees.
He slammed against the bole of an oak a few yards from where Ieuan waited and leaned against it for a moment until he had caught his breath. The Welshman had already unslung his bow and nocked an arrow. Kemp did the same and the two of them descended through the trees, a few yards apart. They moved stealthily, neither speaking, using hand signals to communicate, like huntsmen stalking deer, an activity they had often pursued in the forests of Brittany.
Kemp reckoned they had covered more than half the length of the wood and was beginning to think they had made their dash across the pasture without catching anyone’s eye when an arrow whipping through the trees proved him wrong. Only the bowman making the mistake of shooting at distance saved him: at that sort of range, an archer had to aim high to reach his target, and this one had failed to take into account the boughs above head-height, or at least wrongly counted on none lying in his arrow’s path. Kemp heard the familiar thunk of the arrow smacking into a bough. He could not see it, though it had come close enough for him to hear it, which meant it was unlikely the bowman was shooting blind. He at once moved through the trees, Ieuan moving off on a diverging course.
