The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  “How could you have? When you knew Lionel, I was but a newly ordained young priest. Older than both of you, but junior to you both in service.”

  “But how …? You say he told you these things? I thought he was back in France. It must be five years since I’ve seen or heard of him.”

  “More than that, Father James. He returned to France in 1291 and lived there for three years. But then, in the summer of ninety-four he was sent to England, ostensibly, perhaps even genuinely, as an interlocutor for a man called Bertrand de Got, who was vicar-general at that time to his brother, the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon, with whose name you must now be familiar.”

  “I have never heard of Bertrand de Got.”

  “Yes, you have. But you would not have recognized him by name. Pope Boniface recently named him Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux in recognition of the valuable work he had done during the years when Lionel worked with him fighting King Philip’s determination to impose taxation on the Church in France.”

  “Oh!”

  “That means nothing to you?”

  “I knew nothing about it.”

  “No matter. But Lionel was in the cathedral chapter of Lyon when he came to the vicar-general’s attention as an English priest. In very short time thereafter, Lionel had become a member of the vicar-general’s personal staff and was subsequently delegated to act as the Archbishop of Lyon’s official liaison with his brother in Christ in England, the Archbishop of Canterbury. You may remember the archbishop’s opinions were being widely scrutinized at that time by everyone concerned about the potential taxation of Holy Mother Church, not only in France but in England.”

  He paused, but when I gave no sign of being aware of this, he merely nodded, accepting my ignorance, and continued: “In fact, his voice had become the foremost in Christendom protesting King Edward’s declared intention of taxing the Church in England. And so he was being widely watched and heeded, since all Christendom knew that if the Church were forced to pay taxes in both France and England, it would soon be paying taxes everywhere.”

  I nodded then, remembering. “It never came to pass, though.”

  “No, it did not. Mainly because, in the following year, Philip Capet of France enacted a law forbidding the transfer of money or goods from France to Rome. He cut off the Church’s funds from France entirely and forced Pope Boniface to back down and permit a limited degree of taxation of the Church in times of national emergency. By that time, though, de Got had distinguished himself for service to the papacy in the dispute.

  “His detractors—and he has no lack of such—claim he is naught but a glorified clerk with delusions of greatness, but the fact remains that he is now the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux and therefore one of the most powerful clerics in all of France, a friend and intimate of the Pope himself.”

  He paused, and then went on in a softer, musing tone. “Not all men are awed by the power of the papacy, though. And Edward of England ranks high among those who believe themselves stronger than any mere Pope. He saw the advantages of having influence over a weak pontiff, and he set out to assert his own inimitable will and, using Philip of France’s methods, to apply taxation measures of his own against the Church in England. Of course, in the meantime everything has changed. England is now at war with France, and Philip won his right to tax the Church in France. In return, he made peace with the Pope and enlisted his aid and support, as an arbitrator, in his war against Edward and England. So now Edward is negotiating with the Church and Boniface, but from a position of weakness, and the matter of taxing the Church in England is yet unresolved.”

  “He’ll never win there. Despite what happened in France, no Pope could accept such a proposal. To tax God’s work? The thought is ludicrous.”

  “Not to Edward. He sees the Church’s revenues and wants a part of them—a large part. But you are right. Boniface will never again submit to that.”

  “And so Thomas remained in England, with the Archbishop of Canterbury?”

  “He did. But Archbishop Winchelsea has been divorced from royal favour for a long time now, and though Thomas was left high and dry by the changed circumstances of his principal, he remained effectively in the employ of his master, the new Archbishop of Burgundy. And as such, he was transferred to the Diocese of Winchester, because the bishop there, John of Pontoise, is Frenchborn. Thomas has been there ever since, as some undefined form of papal ambassador.”

  “But he’s a Scot! And he’s a rabid, anti-English one.”

  “Aye, and so is the young Earl of Carrick, I’ve been told. But that did not disbar him from Edward’s service or from his royal patronage.”

  “What has Bruce to do with this?”

  Lamberton dipped his head. “He is an earl of Scotland, and he has chosen to defy Edward of England. I would say that puts him on a par with your cousin and Andrew Murray.”

  “Perhaps.” I was unconvinced of the canon’s accuracy and unimpressed with the earl himself, for I had heard nothing worthy of note about Bruce since the brief time I had spent with him months earlier, and I had seen more than a few lips curl, either up or down, at the mere mention of his name since then. “But how has he defied Edward? I heard he was involved in the negotiations at Irvine, but I have heard no mention of heroic deeds on Scotland’s behalf.”

  Lamberton was frowning slightly. “But he led the army of his earldom, all the men of Carrick, to the support of the realm in time of great need.”

  “Not all his men,” I said quickly, and his eyebrows arched.

  “All of them. I said Carrick, Father James, not Annandale. The men of Annandale are loyal to the elder Bruce, and he remains loyal to Edward as his liege lord.”

  “Aye, Edward’s loyal servant, the former governor of Carlisle. That’s the same old loyalty problem that Will is always talking about. Scots lords with English loyalties.”

  “May I continue?”

  “Of course.”

  “My thanks. I was saying he brought his earldom’s army to the defence of the realm. In doing so, he demonstrated his commitment to the community of the realm.”

  “How so, if I may ask?”

  “By taking a stance that few seem willing to adopt today. He joined the other leaders of the rising to complete the three rankings of guardianship required by ancient Scots law to constitute a legitimate council of leadership in the absence of a king—a bishop, Bishop Wishart; an earl, himself; and a baron, the Lord High Steward—and in doing so he aligned himself clearly against England.”

  “And where is he now?”

  For the first time, Lamberton looked uncertain. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Why wasn’t he arrested with the others after the Irvine affair?”

  “I don’t know that, either. He managed to remain free, somehow, along with the Steward. Lord James, I presume, offered the English some form of guarantee of his good behaviour and obedience, and it seems reasonable to me that the Earl of Carrick did the same. His Grace of Glasgow, I fear, was arrested for reasons of church politics, more attributable to the insistence of the Archbishop of York than to the displeasure of the English King.”

  “Aye, mayhap, but Bruce’s vanishment perturbs me more than Bishop Wishart’s banishment.” I must have sounded more bitter than I really felt, for the canon frowned again, quickly this time.

  “What is wrong, Father James? You had no difficulty in thinking well of Robert Bruce the last time we spoke of him.”

  “I know,” I said. “But that was before he became invisible again.”

  “Bruce was never invisible and never could be. It is not in his nature. I may not know where he is at this moment, but I have no doubt he will show up soon and will still be true to the decision he made before he came here. You do know how he came to be here in the first place, do you not?”

  “Of course I know. He came in the hope of enlisting his father’s men in Annandale on Edward’s behalf, and when he could not do that, he crossed into Carrick and raised the men
there.”

  “And what of the oath-taking?”

  I felt my eyes narrowing to squint at him as I absorbed that question. “What oath-taking? He made them take an oath, his own men?”

  “No, the English made him take an oath.”

  I stared at him.

  “Bear with me, Father James, and imagine this, if you will: a young man, born and bred of one of this realm’s oldest and most distinguished families, is suddenly uprooted and dispossessed, effectively banished to live in exile in another country, his patrimony confiscated and redistributed among his enemies as recompense for merely being who and what he is, the scion of a noble house whose enemies perceive him and his as political threats. He transfers all his loyalties to a new King, who receives him and his family with honours and privileges, and he eventually becomes that King’s favourite young knight, enjoying royal patronage and high esteem. His family prospers, too, and his father is appointed to the prestige-filled post of governor of Carlisle, one of the land’s most important towns. And then one day, without apparent reason, the young man forsakes all that and casts his lot, deliberately and without forethought, it would seem, with the very people who have wronged him and dispossessed his family.” He stopped short, watching me with his head cocked. “Does that strike you as logical? Or even natural? Or might you suspect there could be other things at work herein, other unseen, unenvisioned things?”

  “Like what? What happened?” I had lost all awareness of speaking to a cathedral canon or an acting bishop; I was speaking as one ordinary man enthralled by the tale being spun by another.

  “He lost his wife, whom he loved dearly. She died in childbed, though the child, a girl, survived. And then the King he admired treated him poorly thereafter—for what reasons, no one knows, but there are indications that the King’s true displeasure was with the father, and the son merely suffered by association. Be that as it may, word spread quickly that he had lost the King’s esteem, and the resentful and envious predators who always note such things were quick to react.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They acted by being themselves in England as they would had they been Scots in Scotland. Such people swarm in every society, maggots thriving on the unseen, corrupt aspects of the life around them. Edward gave young Bruce a task to perform, and before he set about it, he went to Carlisle, to visit his father. While he was there, though, he somehow fell afoul of the Bishop of Carlisle, John de Halton. Do you know the man?”

  I shook my head.

  “He was here in Scotland for the conclusion of Edward’s court of auditors when Balliol was named King, and later he returned and stayed for three years—until the war broke out last year, in fact— charged with collecting the Pope’s crusading tax. He went back to Carlisle and he’s been there ever since. I’ve met him several times. Strange man, not one of my favourite people. Anyway, it is plain that he did not like young Bruce. He even wrote to the King about his distrust, and generally treated young Bruce with disdain and suspicion until—” He cut himself off, but then went on.

  “Mind you, we do not know if this was his own idea or if it was ordered by the King, but the Bishop of Carlisle eventually arrested Bruce and threatened him with imprisonment unless he swore an oath of allegiance, of personal allegiance, to Edward. Now that must have been intolerable for Bruce because he had publicly sworn precisely such an oath less than two years before that, at his wedding in Westminster Abbey, and then another last year, when Edward rubbed the noses of all the Scots nobility in their own mess by forcing them to swear personal allegiance to him at the gathering he convened after winning the war, the humiliating ritual they call the Ragman’s Roll.”

  “My God,” I whispered.

  “Aye, it seems scarce believable that any Englishman, particularly a bishop, should require any such oath after two such public declarations. But Bruce swallowed the insult, took the oath, and rode off to perform the task Edward had set him, which was the arrest and abduction of Lady Douglas of Douglasdale.”

  “But he set her free instead. I’ve heard the tale. But I have no idea what caused him to do such a thing. Given the realities of his former situation, it makes no sense at all.”

  Lamberton nodded, his face grave. “I agree with you. It makes no sense at all. But you left out a very important word: apparent. It makes no sense at all, given the apparent realities of his former situation. What happened was that when Bruce arrived in Douglasdale, he discovered, very quickly, that his presence there was an elaborate pretense. He realized that instead of being in charge of the expedition to arrest Lady Douglas, he was there solely in order to be seen there, as a Scots lord dealing English justice to a Scots rebel. His English troops, his so-called subordinates from Berwick, were really there to ensure he behaved himself properly, and they held royal authority to carry out the King’s wishes should they deem Bruce to be incapable or unwilling. He knew he had been duped, used for political effect and nothing more.

  “That realization completed the young man’s education on the loyalty and friendship of kings and princes. And so, mindful at last of his grandfather’s teachings, he went home to Annandale, to his family’s seat, and spoke to the men who had followed the old nobleman. He told them that his experience in Douglasdale, coupled with the insult of the Carlisle oath-taking, had forced him to examine his own beliefs in the light of his grandfather’s, and he deemed it unacceptable that he, or anyone else, should be forced to swear an oath. An oath rendered under duress is no oath at all, he said—and he is correct—and his oath, with all others like it, is thereby rendered invalid and untenable. He swore, too, on his grandfather’s memory, that he believed no man should ever be forced to turn against his own folk. He is a Scot, he declared to them, his birthright above and beyond the political disposition of others, and Scotland is his home and his patrimony. That is why he turned on his English watchdogs, rescued the Lady Douglas, whom he did not know, from beneath their noses, and went to join the bishop and the Steward. And Edward of England will one day come to rue his own headstrong malice in bringing that about.”

  “I knew nothing of most of that,” I said. But then another thought occurred to me. “Think you he has his eyes on the Crown?”

  Lamberton pondered the question, then shrugged. “I would be greatly surprised if the idea has never entered his mind,” he said. “He is a Bruce, after all, and his family has a valid claim, as Edward himself made clear with his court of auditors.” He sipped delicately at his wine. “But then you have to consider his intellectual position. Bruce is no fool, and he is well aware of the situation as it exists today. The decision of the court of auditors demonstrated quite efficiently that the Balliol claimant had the stronger claim over Bruce of Annandale. Most people in Scotland were happy with that verdict at the time, glad to see what they perceived to be an end to doubt and indecision and a return to order and the rule of law under a duly crowned king.

  “Of course, much has changed since then,” he went on, “and people look less kindly on Edward and King John than they did. But one fact is unaltered and unalterable: John Balliol remains our lawful, anointed King. And the Earl of Carrick is well aware of that. If he has designs upon the throne, as you suggest he might, I believe him clever enough, and sufficiently patient, to rest content for the time being and await an opportunity to press his claim legally at some future time. If he is to emulate his grandfather, he has sixty years and more ahead of him. He would be a very foolish young man to betray any signs of such ambition prematurely.”

  “Aye, but if he has the thought in mind, it would provide a reason for his defiance of Edward and his return to Scotland.”

  “It would, and it might well be that he has returned precisely to establish himself in residence here again, with an eye to the future … And come to think of it, we might not be the only folk thinking along those lines. Part of the terms imposed upon him by Percy and young Clifford after the Irvine affair was that he must hand over his infant daughter, M
arjorie, as hostage for his good behaviour thenceforth. I had all but dismissed that as being unimportant—a minor nuisance imposed as part of the overall penalty— but now it appears as something utterly different, far too subtle and complex for those two young firebrands to have thought of by themselves. That stipulation must have come from Edward himself—a threat to the daughter’s safety as a curb on Carrick from now on.”

  “So the English now hold the child as hostage? That is infamous. She can’t yet be two years old.”

  “No, not so. I mean it would be infamous, of course, beyond dispute, but they do not yet have the child. And there, I would suggest, is the real reason for Bruce’s disappearance after Irvine. He consented to the terms, to ensure he would remain free, and then he took the child and went into hiding.”

  “You mean he broke an oath.”

  “Aye, presumably. Another oath.” The canon’s face remained expressionless, but his voice nonetheless conveyed his weariness. “I fear the world in which we live today takes little note of oaths and oath-taking. Instead of being what it truly is—a personal promise to God in the cause of achieving salvation—the sacred oath has been debased in recent years. Oaths are now become a tool of politics and policy makers. The King of England has much to do with that, being among the greatest offenders in what amounts, when all is said and done, to the subversion of God’s will to the earthly benefit of his own.” He shook his head. “It pains me to say that, remembering the paragon that he once was, but it is true. The man administers oaths with the abandon of a drunkard, all of them under duress and all of them invalid therefore. So who among us can condemn the men who swear the oaths because they have no choice, then disregard them afterwards? It is the way of this world today, and as such it is damnable, in the true sense of damnation.”

  “But in the meantime, Edward appears to be convinced that Bruce represents a future threat to his well-being—sufficiently convinced to try to take the child away from him. No wonder Bruce is defying him yet again. Suffice that he did so once, over the Carlisle oath-taking, but this threat of losing the child must have been beyond bearing to force him into taking the stance he has taken.”