O day of wrath, o day of mourning! A common feeling amongst men as the end of the century approached. They talked and gossiped about how, in the year 1299, something terrible would happen to mark the changing of the century. Men pointed to the inclement weather, the failure of crops and the outbreak of war as signs on the dark-edge of the world that the Anti-christ had been born. In the cities and villages Satan and all his imperial army had been seen singing their diabolical matins in the wet dank woods. Men believed Satan walked. His time had come and no more so than in Scotland, where King Edward I of England had led a huge army of foot and horse to bring his rebellious subjects to their knees.

If the devil did walk and if he did lurk in the darkness then surely he must have taken up his throne in the dark, wooded slopes overlooking the English camp outside Berwick. There, wrapped in a brown woollen cloak, seated on a trunk in his purple silk war pavilion, Edward of England was bitterly regretting the evil he had done that day. He poured himself a large brimming cup of blood-red Gascon wine, and sipping it while he half listened to the sounds of his camp, the calls of guards, the faint neigh of. horses, the crunch of mailed feet on the crushed bracken. He was cold. A wind had swept in from the grey, cruel North Sea and, despite all his attempts to keep warm, Edward of England shivered. He wanted to go down on his knees and confess to his creator his terrible sin. Cain's sin, the sin of anger, of murder; and yet he meant well. He had spent twenty-four years of his reign attempting to bring order to these islands, crushing the Irish, bringing the Welsh to heel and, at last, conquering the Scots. Had he not intervened and given them a king, their own noble, John Balliol? Yet what had happened? Edward felt like squeezing the cup in his hands. Balliol, conspiring with his enemies abroad, Philip of France and the King of Norway, had risen in rebellion.