by H A CULLEY
The Scots, both horse and foot, hearing that their leader dead, lost heart and began to flee. At first a few slipped away and then it became a flood. The knights under the leadership of Sir John Soulis fought a desperate rear guard action to allow most of their fellow Scots to escape but Sir John and thirty other knights paid for their heroism with their lives.
Apart from the knights, incredibly only eighty other Scots had died on the battlefield . Some were killed during the flight back to the safety of Carrickfurgus but, considering what a disaster the battle had been, Scots casualties were remarkably light. It was therefore deeply unfortunate that two of the dead were Alexander MacRuari and the commander of the other Schiltron, Alexander MacDonald, a cousin of Angus Og.
When O’Neill saw the fleeing Scots running towards him, he realised that the Irish rebellion was over and he and his fellow Irishmen slipped away, back to their homes.
Sir John de Bermingham cut off Edward Bruce’s limbs and sent one to each of the provinces of Ireland: Ulster, Connaught, Leinster and Munster. His head was placed in a basket and sent to King Edward in London and his torso was left to rot, together with the bodies of the other Scots who had been killed. So died the last High King of Ireland.
Edward the Second was elated when the rotting head of Edward Bruce was presented to him. He waved it away, however, as it stank and ordered that it be placed on a spike on London Bridge. The conflict in Ireland had drained his resources and he was relieved that the war on two fronts was over. Now he could concentrate on the last of the five Bruce brothers – Robert – and he began to plan his campaign, starting with the recapture of Berwick.
John de Bermingham’s star was rising. He had achieved what his father-in-law, Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster had failed to do and King Edward rewarded him by making him Earl of Louth and appointing him Viceroy of Ireland. The new earl spent the next few years dealing with the petty kings and chieftains who had joined Edward Bruce to ensure that there were no further insurrections, at least not whilst he was viceroy.
~#~
King Robert sat in the great hall of Stirling Castle drinking with Thomas Randolph and Jamie Douglas. He had taken the news of his brother’s death badly.
‘Oh, I know Edward was ever impetuous and ambitious but he was the last of my four brothers and I miss him dearly.’
James, who knew that part of the reason for the Irish campaign was to put Edward at a distance, tried to look sympathetic. After Bannockburn, Edward had become jealous of Robert and was desperate to carve out his own kingdom. Although it did serve Robert’s purpose to open up a second front against Edward of England, it also meant that he didn’t have to suffer his brother’s carping and petty insults any longer.
‘I hate to raise it at this sad time but it does bring the question off the succession back to the forefront of our concerns,’ Thomas Randolph pointed out. ‘Edward was the last of your close male relatives and the choice now lies between your daughter, the Lady Margaret, and your grandson, the two year old Robert Stewart.’
Robert sighed. He had never been close to the daughter of his first marriage to Isabella of Mar as Marjorie had spent most of her childhood as a prisoner in England. When she was exchanged after Bannockburn she had married the High Steward, Walter Stewart, very soon afterwards and then died in childbirth the following year.
Suddenly the king smiled, to the surprise of both of his companions.
‘Of course, you don’t know. The queen told me last night that she suspects that she is pregnant again. Hopefully, this time it will be a boy.’
‘That’s great news, Sire,’ Randolph said, looking relieved. ‘When’s the baby due?’
‘In the summer, or so Elizabeth thinks.’
‘Let’s hope it’s not another bloody girl,’ Douglas said, looking as if he was sure it would be.
James himself had never married but he had one bastard son, William, who was now seven. He knew that, whilst William could succeed him as Lord of Douglasdale, the nobles of Scotland would never accept any of Robert’s three bastard sons as their king.
‘If it is, we have yet time for me to sire a boy,’ Robert replied a trifle coldly.
‘The other matter we need to consider is the interdict the Pope has placed on Scotland following the breaking of the truce and the capture of Berwick; also your own excommunication.’
‘Again,’ added Douglas, grinning.
‘The clergy of Scotland have agreed to ignore it, as the Pope doesn’t recognise Scotland as an independent country. In essence they won’t recognise his decrees until he recognises me.’
‘Perhaps it is time they wrote him a letter, signed by all bishops and abbots, declaring you as their legitimate king and declaring the independence of Scotland?’
‘That’s a good idea, Thomas, thank you. I’ll call a parliament for the spring to discuss the idea.’
‘What are we going to do about this fleet that Edward is assembling to attack Berwick? Now that Donald has taken his galleys back to the west coast to support his cousin against the attacks on the isles by John of Lorne, we only have the fleet of cogs left and no-one to command them.’
‘I thought that Donald had divided them into two fleets with a commander each?’
‘He did; one has since died and the other, Edgar de Powburn, is only seventeen.’
‘What about his brother? Sir Simon did well as admiral in the summer. Has he fully recovered yet?’
‘I don’t know but I’ll find out.’
Chapter Seven – The Defence of Berwick
November 1318 - September 1319
Simon and Bridget were married in early November 1318. He still walked with a limp but he tried not to let it show at the ceremony. The only sadness was that Bridget’s father wasn’t there. Sir John Forbes had caught a chill the previous month and was still bedridden. Her mother had wanted to postpone the wedding but her father had insisted that they go ahead, with her brother Niall standing in for him.
William Keith and Edgar had also attended but Simon’s other friends were at Stirling with the king. Bridget’s mother was her normal dour self but Edgar saw that she had tried to hide a tear or two when the couple kissed after the declaration that they were wed. One of the local lairds who had been invited was an elderly man called Sir Andrew Forbes, a cousin of Bridget’s father who held the adjoining manor of Ayton. He brought with him his only surviving child, a pretty girl of eleven called Catriona. The girl’s youth didn’t stop Edgar’s eyes straying her way more than was seemly and Simon had to whisper to him before her father got too agitated. The girl herself seemed pleased by the attention, smiling coyly at the ground and flicking her eyes at Edgar every now and then.
‘You can’t be interested Edgar, she’s only eleven,’ his brother admonished him at the wedding feast.
‘Six years younger than me, the same age gap as there is between Bridget and you.’
‘The difference is that Bridget is of an age when she can be bedded and Catriona isn’t.’
‘I only want to meet her. If we get on then I’m only thinking of betrothal, not getting her pregnant.’
Simon sighed. ‘Come on; I’ll introduce you to her father.’
He returned to his bride’s side after making the introductions and watched Edgar’s efforts to include the shy girl in the conversation. Why Edgar, who he suspected was far more sexually experienced than he was, should be interested in a pre-pubescent girl who had probably not been more than ten miles from the place she had been born in was beyond him; though there was no denying that she had a very pretty face.
Simon led Bridget to the high table and she sat on his right with her mother on his left. William Keith sat next to Bridget with Catriona beside him and her father at the end. Niall sat next to his mother with William Keith’s wife next to him. Edgar sat on Lady Keith’s other side at the end but evidently couldn’t concentrate on making conversation with her. He kept looking along the table, trying to catch Catriona’s eye. Eventually Lad
y Keith gave up and punished Edgar’s rudeness by ignoring him and concentrating on her husband’s tongue-tied squire, hard work though that was.
Edgar caught the annoyed eye of Catriona’s father more often than he did the girl’s. When she did cast him a furtive glance , she giggled and looked down at the table. Good heavens, Simon said to himself, I never thought that Edgar would end up being enslaved by a young girl. Most of his previous conquests had been older than he was. He must have been away at sea for too long.
The wedding feast ended in the traditional way, with William, Edgar and Niall carting Simon away half-heartedly protesting whilst Catriona and several other young girls escorted Bridget to the solar. The new hall house, built of stone with the hall and solar on the upper level and storerooms and kitchen below, had only just been finished in time for the wedding. Simon had got a local joiner to make him a new bed with hangings imported from Flanders. He couldn’t afford the new fashion for tapestries to hang in the hall to take the chill off the bare stone walls but he had bought a small one for the solar. The room also had its own small fireplace, in which logs were merrily blazing.
Once a naked Bridget was placed under the covers, the giggling girls withdrew as the boys dragged Simon in and stripped him of his clothes. Pushing him into bed beside his bride, Edgar slapped his brother’s bare bottom and, with instructions to go to it like a battering ram, the young couple were left alone at last.
She ran her fingers over the scar on his right bicep and then reached down and did the same along the scar on his calf.
‘Do they hurt you still, my love?’ she asked in a husky voice.
‘Not when your run your fingers over them like that,’ he smiled. ‘In fact, apart from a slight limp, I believe that I am fully recovered. Shall we put it to the test?’ he asked, running his own fingers over her pert breasts before pinching her nipples lightly.
The two were still in bed, enjoying their first coupling of the new day, when the messenger arrived. Rollo came to fetch him and Simon dragged himself away unwillingly. Throwing a robe around his naked body, he limped into the hall grumbling to himself. He soon stopped when he read the message.
‘What is it, my love.’ Bridget asked as she appeared with tousled hair in a shift and bare feet.
‘It seems that our time together is all too short.’
The eager, alive look on her face disappeared, replaced by one of worry and concern.
‘What it is? Have the English invaded?’ They were only two well aware that their home lay a few short miles from the border and on the direct route from Berwick to Edinburgh.
‘No but it seems that they intend to try and retake Berwick. I am to command the fleet to oppose them.’
‘It’s a great honour,’ she said doubtfully, ‘but will it be dangerous?’
‘No more so than living in these times generally is.’ He tried to smile reassuringly. ‘I must leave straight away; there’s a lot to do. ‘
You’re leaving me?’
He was about to say yes, when he had a thought.
‘No, come with me. I’ll ask William Keith if you can stay in the castle. At least that way we’ll be able to spend time together when I’m ashore.’
He strode over to where his brother lay face down on his cloak beside the fireplace. Edgar was just wearing an under tunic and his braies, so Simon pulled the tunic up and smacked the top of his brother’s thighs, mainly in retaliation for Edgar’s impudence the previous evening.
‘Come on Edgar, your admiral needs you.’
~#~
In the time that he had been away many of the fighting cogs had lost seamen, mainly to the merchantmen, so Simon and Edgar had to start recruiting again. As many of the replacements weren’t sailors they had to start training them all from scratch. The weather in the winter was seldom ideal but, as agents in England told King Robert that the muster was called for May, he expected the attack on Berwick in June. Simon assured the king that this would give him time to get the fleet ready. He might not have been so certain if he’d known how large a fleet King Edward was assembling.
However, there was no sign of a muster starting by early June and the rumour was that it had been delayed until August. In May the queen gave birth to another girl and Robert began to despair of ever siring a son. Simon also became a father in August, when Bridget gave birth to a boy in Berwick Castle. They called the boy John, after Bridget’s father.
Edgar had also been active in his courtship of Catriona. Although he was at sea much of the time, whenever he had a day or two ashore, he set off for Ayton and in July, when she became twelve, the two were betrothed. Her father was worried that Edgar wasn’t noble and didn’t have land or money but he was well aware that the king, Lord Douglas and Sir William Keith held him in high regard, so he eventually agreed. The happy couple planned to marry the following year, in 1320, when Catriona became thirteen.
With no sign as yet of the English fleet, Simon started to give more thought to his manor. He hadn’t yet replaced the bailiff. It wasn’t an immediate problem as his father-in-law’s bailiff looked after both his estate and that of Foulden but Catriona’s father was still in poor health so more and more responsibility fell onto the bailiff’s shoulders.
Then, in July, a solution presented itself from an unexpected source. Edgar’s ship had lost a spar during a sudden squall and had put into the sheltered bay on the south side of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, near the priory. There were a number of monks on the beach who appeared to be gathering shellfish of some sort. Although Lindisfarne was part of the Durham Enclave and therefore in England, Edgar knew that there was no garrison and therefore posed no threat.
Suddenly there was a commotion and a great deal of shouting, so he shaded his eyes to try and make out what was happening on the beach. It appeared that one of the monks had shed his habit and sandals and was running towards the sea tearing off his under tunic as he went. The other monks raced after him but he plunged into the sea before they could reach him and stood on the shore shouting at the swimmer as he made for Edgar’s cog.
The ship wasn’t more than two hundred yards offshore and a few minutes later one of the sailors threw him a rope and several of them pulled the monk up onto the deck. Edgar could see that he was little more than a boy, presumably a novice. He looked to be about fourteen, although Edgar later found out that he was older.
‘What do you think you were doing? Trying to drown yourself?’ he asked the boy once the latter had got his breath back and someone had given him a cloak to hide his near nakedness.
‘Better that than remain in that den of iniquity,’ the shivering boy replied.
‘Alun, you’re about the same size, loan this monk, or whatever he is, some clothes and then bring him down to my cabin.’ The ship’s boy grinned and dashed below decks to do as he was bid.
‘Well, let’s have it. Why did you swim out to my ship?’ Edgar asked the boy when he was dressed and they were alone in his cabin, apart from the ship’s captain.
‘I’m a novice monk, my lord, and have been ever since my father died when I was ten. He left his house and his money to the priory with the stipulation that they accept me as a novice and that they said a mass for his soul once a week. Well, if they did, they must have done so in silence because I never heard one.’
‘I’m not a lord, my name is Edgar de Powburn and I command part of the Scottish fleet.’
The boy’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘I’ve heard of you, and your brother Simon, of course. I just expected you to be older. My name is Geoffrey of Wooler.’
‘Now we have got the formalities out of the way, do you mind telling me why you were so desperate to escape from the priory?’
‘Well, things were fine until the new prior arrived. He brought his brother with him as sub-prior and he gave him care of the novices.’ The boy began to shake with emotion. ‘He is a vile man, forcing the novices, especially the youngest, to sleep with him and do unmentionable things.’
> ‘Do they not complain?’
‘Who to? The prior won’t listen to a word against his brother; he just thinks that the boys are trying to get their own back because he disciplines them. The abbot is in Durham and never visits.’
‘Did he try to molest you?’
The boy nodded and looked at the deck in shame but didn’t say anything.
‘How old are you, Geoffrey?’
‘Sixteen. I know I look younger but I’ve always been small for my age and my voice didn’t break until I was fifteen.’
Edgar was thinking of keeping him as a ship’s boy but he was really too puny to help work a ship. Then he had another thought.
‘I suppose you can read and write? Do you also know your figures?’
‘Oh yes, I was the bursar’s assistant and, as he was old and quite often ill, I had to keep the priory’s accounts quite a lot of the time.’
‘I take it that you aren’t keen to go back to monastic life?’
The boy shuddered. ‘No, I just want to get away but I haven’t given much thought to what I would do now. The priory has been my home and always looked after me.’
‘Would you like to be the bailiff of a manor?’
The boy was taken aback. ‘I’m not sure what that entails. I know that they keep the manor’s account books, of course, and pay necessary payments but what else?’
‘Yes, it’s a similar role in a manor to that of bursar in a monastery, except that you have to deal with the reeve, who is the foreman of the villeins, and with the sheriff’s tax collector. It may be a bit much to ask of a boy,’ Edgar said doubtfully, thinking that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea.
Geoffrey was recovering from the shock and realised what an opportunity he was being offered. When he spoke next he sounded far more confident.
‘I occasionally had to deal with the officials from Durham who came to collect the tithes due to the mother house and with the bailiffs of the manors that the priory owns. Some were a bit difficult and tried to bully me but I stood up to them. I knew that the prior would back me, if necessary, of course.’
