En route to Durham, England
A galloping messenger brought news. Far from disappearing over the border, the Scots army, accounted some twenty thousand strong and under the fierce Black Douglas, had struck south far into the desolate moors and fells of the centre of England, even beyond Newcastle and Carlisle, and was now laying waste to the remote villages and poor farmland there.
There was no question now of disbanding – the threat had to be met.
Camp was struck in two days and the long winding cavalcade of an army on the march with its baggage train stretching for miles began heading north.
‘Why the north?’ Daw asked from the comfort of the rear of a cart.
Godefroy prided himself that he knew everything going on behind the drawn flaps of the noble tents. ‘This is because there’s been an argument, Mortimer agin Edward.’ He paused for effect. ‘Our fair King thinks to stretch north at a pace and hook in, cutting off the Scottish line of retreat. Should bring about a right mauling fight. Seems a good idea, but Mortimer’s finding every reason under God’s heavens why not.’
‘So …?’
‘We’re marching to Durham. Level to where the Scots must be, and I dare to say we’ll have our answer there.’
It took over a week before the louring outline of the castle emerged from the mists after a slow sixty-mile march.
A sprawling encampment of tents, and numberless men, wet and sullen for being forbidden the sweets of the city, grew outside the walls.
‘They’s at it again,’ sniffed Godefroy, poking at the fire. ‘Never heard such high words. Give you this, our Edward’s a good ’un. Lets Mortimer know his place even if he won’t move on it.’
There was no joy in the camp for it was clear the Scots were far from fools. In their lunge south they had seen to it that every foot soldier was equipped as a hobelar, mounted on a horse for movement and dismounting for battle. It gave them princely manoeuvrability, striking and away well before the lumbering mass of the usual kind of army could come up with them.
Where they were now was a complete mystery.
Outriders had been sent into the lonely uplands. Some had returned with nothing to show for their flogging through moorland and mountain in wretched weather, others had come back with reports of smoking ruins, evidence of a Scottish visitation recently past, and still more were never heard of again.
The Black Douglas was playing it well. The English host was bigger and had better weapons – but would it be sent into the rugged heath and moors, where its speed would be cut still further in hopeless pursuit of a more agile quarry? If it was, then it would be a merry chase that he could not lose, and if on the other hand there were no move against him, then he would be free to descend out of the hills on any one of the substantial towns in the lowlands.
The next move lay with the English.
Edward did not flinch in his duty. His army would throw themselves across the path of the retreating Scots and bring them to battle when they emerged from the uplands.
He set the army on a forced march to the valley of the Tyne, the river that had cut a passage through the highlands, and across which the Scots had passed on their path of ruination south.
The pitiless weather beat at the army as it stumbled over fells and marsh-ridden glens. And when they approached the crossing point they were ordered to don full armour and stand to.
For days they ate and slept in battle array, the merciless rain swelling the river and turning life into an idle misery.
And still the Scots failed to appear.