North Weardale, England
‘He’s got to make a conclusion,’ Godefroy muttered one grey daybreak. He and Daw were sitting together under a cart, sheltered from the rain but not from the runnels of water coming down the slope.
‘Scottish, they’s not human. Lives on cattle they takes, boils ’em in their own skins then throws in oatmeal they carries in a bag and hangs it all from their saddles. No baggage, provisions, they lives for war. Never happier as when hewing away at some poor Englishman with them sodding great two-handed swords.’
He was interrupted by the thin fanfare of trumpets somewhere towards where the dripping tents of the commanders stood.
The call to action! Stung by their helplessness the English commanders had resolved to give up waiting for the Scottish to come to them – now they were going to plunge directly into the highland fastness and find them, whatever it took.
For the first time in the encampment there were signs of heart and spirit. But the ferocious sally into the steep hills would be at a cost. To even up the odds Edward’s army was going to advance without a baggage train – no impedimenta, no provisions other than what each man could carry with him. Everything would be sent back to Durham to avoid tying down the fast-moving columns.
From the Tyne in the north to the Wear in the south was a bare twenty-five miles – but this was over a bone-wearying succession of hills and crags with always the prospect of Black Douglas and his wild Scots over the next rise. Therefore, when the army moved off it was in a battle formation of three divisions: the tramping foot soldiers in the centre and men a-horse out on both flanks.
Halfway along their march they reached the Derwent river and then the tiny hamlet of Blanchland with its bluff, four-square priory, now just a burnt ruin.
Angry, tired and hungry the soldiers heard how the Scots had been through days before, stripping it of food and plunder. And now they could be anywhere at all – ahead of them lying in wait, or on their way back to Scotland behind them.
Mortimer sulked, Edward stormed at the fate that was leading them ever further into ruin and starvation – then without warning he caused the trumpets to sound the assembly.
His young voice cracked with emotion as he proclaimed, ‘Any man here before me who dares ride in search of the Scots and can tell me where they are to be discovered, he I will honour with a knighthood that very hour – and one hundred pounds a year for the term of his life!’
Fifteen esquires took horse to try their fortune.
Four days later, after a harrowing wait, one Thomas de Rokeby galloped into the bedraggled camp and threw himself at the feet of his King. He had news of the Scots.
‘I put you upon oath to tell me. How certain are you of your intelligence?’ King Edward demanded with a terrible intensity.
It was humiliation – of a kind. Rokeby had not only seen the Scots but he’d been captured by them. Fearing the worst of fates as a spy he’d been brought before Black Douglas who questioned him closely. When he admitted what drove his quest the great warrior had bellowed with laughter and bid him go on his way to claim his honour – and swore to remain where he was to meet the English King.
The Scottish battalions were waiting near Stanhope on the banks of the Wear river, no more than eight miles further down the mossy dale of the meandering Rookhope Burn.