by H A CULLEY
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Whilst they had been in France, there had been developments in Scotland. At the end of June Thomas Randolph came to see the king at his new house at Cardross near Dumbarton. Robert had built it a year ago and it was his favourite residence. It was a large house, rather than a castle or a fortified manor, and it was built for comfort, not defence, with big glazed windows to let in the light. The other advantage was that there wasn’t room for all the court officers and hangers on that normally plagued his life.
‘Sire, it’s good to see you looking better.’
‘Thomas, I think you can call me Robert when we are alone; Jamie Douglas does it all the time and you are as good a friend now as he is’
‘But I wasn’t with you from the beginning, as he was, if you recall.’
‘It’s a very long time since you supported Edward Longshanks against me, Thomas. I wouldn’t have created you Earl of Moray and made you guardian of my son if I didn’t have implicit faith in you.’
‘Talking of which, I’ve brought him with me.’ He turned and beckoned to the four year old boy standing shyly in the doorway. ‘David, come and greet your father.’
Robert realised with a pang that he didn’t really know his son at all. He hadn’t seen him more than half a dozen times, and then only briefly. The last time he had cuddled him had been when he was a baby; he longed to do so now but it would probably alarm the boy.
‘David, are you enjoying life?’ He had been about to say ‘have you been a good boy’ but realised at the last moment how trite that sounded.
‘Yes, father; very much. Lord Thomas has bought me a pony and I’m learning to ride. My riding master says that I have a good seat but I’m not quite sure what that means.’
As the boy chattered on about his life, what he liked and didn’t like and what he did all day, Robert realised that he had asked the right question by accident. As they talked the king patted the bench beside him and his son came and sat next to him, never pausing in his chatter for a moment. Then suddenly he stopped and asked his father a question.
‘Are you enjoying life, father?’
Robert laughed. Then he asked if David was looking forward to his marriage the following month to Princess Joan. The little boy burst into tears. When he eventually managed to calm his son down he asked him what the matter was.
‘Will she expect me to bed her? I’m afraid I don’t know how and I’m worried she will think me a baby.’
‘Oh, David. No, of course not. She is only two years older than you and knows as little about that side of marriage as you do. Try and think of her as a new playmate. You’ve years ahead of you before you have to start worrying about that sort of thing.’
The marriage ceremony took place in the chapel of Berwick Castle on the seventeenth of July that year. So many nobles wanted to witness the historic union of the Scottish Crown with the House of Plantagenet that there wasn’t room for all of them in the small chapel and an unseemly jostling for places inside ensued. It threatened to deteriorate into a brawl until the Earl of Norfolk and Sir James Keith, the Earl Marshal of England and the acting High Steward of Scotland respectively, managed to clear the chapel and make it clear that only earls, countesses and members of both king’s immediate families were to be admitted. The rest would have to wait until the wedding feast started in the great hall to see the royal couple. As this excluded James Douglas, who was the second most influential peer in Scotland, after Moray, this threated another confrontation until Sir James had the wit to make an exception in his case.
Most of the barons and their ladies then rushed over to the great hall to secure the best places for the wedding feast. When the representatives of the two kings arrived with the bride and groom they were a little surprised to find the service so sparsely attended. Neither Edward nor Robert attended in person: Robert because he was ill again and Edward because he refused to set foot in Berwick whilst it was a Scottish town. The marriage ceremony went smoothly, though both children had to be prompted to say their lines, and then they made a brief appearance at the feast before being whisked away to their separate bedrooms.
The next morning they started the long journey to Turnberry Castle, which now belonged to Prince David as Earl of Carrick. Both he and Joan had their own households but Robert had installed Elizabeth’s loyal maid and companion, Cara, as his son’s nurse.
Having said a somewhat terse farewell to King Edward, Robert travelled back to Cardross a few days later. Much to his chagrin, he was forced to travel by litter as he had experienced some sort of attack in the night which had left him without the use of his left arm and which had given his face a slightly lopsided appearance. A few days later he gradually regained the full use of his arm and his face lost the peculiar look. No-one seemed to know what had been wrong but Robert was glad that, whatever it was, he now seemed to have recovered.
Chapter Eighteen – The Heart of a Hero
June 1329 to September 1330
In the middle of June the day dawned grey and overcast; a suitably sombre day for a mournful event, the burial of the King of Scots. Robert had died at his favourite home, Cardross, on the seventh of June 1329. His body was then taken in a carriage to Dunfermline Abbey, where a physician sawed his sternum in half so he could extract the heart, and the body was then embalmed. James Douglas placed the heart in a small silver box and hung it on a chain round his neck. Bruce had promised the Pope that he would go on crusade if the interdict and his own excommunication were lifted. That being impossible, his dying wish had been that James should take his heart with him on crusade, so that he could feel that he had kept his pledge to the Pope.
After the funeral ceremony in the abbey his body was buried beside that of his queen in the centre of the abbey to await the tomb, which was being made in Paris. It was erected over the graves the following year.
Simon and Edgar travelled over to Dunfermline for the funeral. They felt sorry for Bruce’s son, now King David the Second. The five year old boy stood clutching the hand of his diminutive queen on one side and that of the regent, Thomas Randolph, on the other but he looked sad and lost.
After it was all over the two brothers were surprised to be approached by James Douglas.
‘You two will have heard that King Robert had vowed to go on crusade to the Holy Land once peace with England had been achieved? Well, there is no crusade at the moment so he asked me to take his heart on pilgrimage to Jerusalem so that it could lie in the Holy Sepulchre in order to fulfil his vow as best he could. I intend to set out as soon as I am able with a small company of knights to escort the heart. Sir William Keith has volunteered to accompany me and, as former squires of ours, we thought that you might like to join us?’
‘Of course, my lord, we would be honoured,’ Simon replied after a quick glance at Edgar, who nodded.
Later Edgar said that he had been hesitant about agreeing but, in view of the fact that Douglas himself had invited him, he felt that he couldn’t very well refuse. Catriona wasn’t at all happy about it. She had hoped that, with a peace treaty with England in place, she and Edgar might spend the rest of their days in peace at Ayton. However, Edgar told her he had given his word and that was an end of the matter. Simon was left in no doubt that she blamed him for Edgar’s involvement of what she described as a madcap scheme. To her mind Bruce was dead and to take his heart anywhere was the height of folly.
James Douglas had chosen nine other knights and their squires to accompany him and they embarked on one of Simon’s ships at Berwick in February 1330, the delay being caused by the need to obtain the necessary safe conducts from the Kings of England and France.
During the intervening months Patrick Graham had reached the age of twenty one and became a man in the eyes of the law. Edgar asked his namesake, Patrick, Earl of Dunbar to knight him and Edgar stood as his sponsor. Once knighted, Patrick Graham became the one and only member of Edgar’s mesnie. He was to remain at Ayton as captain of his small contingent of serjeants
and men-at-arms. Simon had wondered which of his two knights to appoint as captain at Lamberton but Bridget told him not to bother; she was perfectly capable of bossing both of them about!
Edgar was left with the problem of finding himself a squire and, of course, Patrick would need one at Ayton as well.
Sir William Keith solved the problem for him. He was going with them and his two sons were now twelve and thirteen. He had intended to place Martin, the elder, the following year and Piers the year after. As he would be away for 1330, and perhaps 1331 as well, he was anxious to place both boys now. At present they were both pages with Thomas Randolph’s countess but he didn’t foresee a problem if he asked her to release them. To further complicate matters a new governor of Berwick upon Tweed would be arriving before he left and his wife and younger children would be moving to one of his manors in Aberdeenshire. William decided to escort them there himself and then return in time to join Douglas’ expedition. He would visit the countess in Moray on his way back in order to collect his sons and he invited Edgar to accompany him.
Martin Keith turned out to be a shy and slightly nervous boy and Edgar wondered if he wasn’t more suited to be a cleric rather than a warrior. However, the eighteen year old Ian Logan, Simon’s squire took Martin under his wing as soon as they met and protected him from the ribbing of the other squires, all of whom were at least two years older than Martin. The boy soon lost his nervousness as he got to know the others and settled in to the routine of being a squire quite quickly. Edgar still had some reservations but he liked the boy and he was prepared to give him time to grow into his new role. His younger brother would remain behind to serve Sir Patrick Graham.
Apart from a lively few days off the coast of Kent when a moderate gale sprang up, the journey to France was uneventful. Nevertheless, most were glad that the next leg of their travels would be on dry land, or so they expected.
When they landed at Ouistreham intending to travel overland to Italy and take ship from there to the Holy Land, they learned that King Alfonso the Eleventh of Castile was mounting a campaign against the Moorish emirate of Granada. The Pope had blessed it as a crusade and that appealed to James Douglas much more than a simple pilgrimage. After all, Bruce’s original wish had been to go on crusade. Following a brief discussion amongst the senior knights, they re-embarked.
This time the Bay of Biscay was not as kind as when Edgar had last traversed it with Thomas Randolph and they had to endure gales or near-gales for five days. At first those squires who hadn’t succumbed to seasickness teased those who had but soon all were ill, except for Martin Keith. The boy seemed to be invigorated by the power of the gale force winds and the mountainous seas as the ship climbed up the side of one enormous wave after another, before sliding down the far side and crashing into the trough at the bottom. All the knights except for James Douglas and another called Sir Walter Logan, a cousin of Ian’s, suffered along with the squires. They eventually entered the mouth of the River Guadalquivir and landed upstream at Seville in Castile, disembarking there in May.
It took a week for them to recover and to be able to continue their journey. Several of their horses had broken legs and had to be killed during the storm and others had died from various causes. James had to use most of the silver he had brought with him to purchase replacements. Martin’s jennet had been one of those who had failed to survive but Edgar managed to purchase a magnificent looking horse from a Spanish trader to replace it. It proved to be faster than any of the other squire’s horses and the boy was inordinately proud of his fleet new mount.
Ten days later Douglas and his men eventually reached the camp of the King of Castile and Leon. Alfonso the Eleventh was attempting to drive the Moors out of the Emirate of Grenada, one of the last parts of Christian Spain still in Moslem hands, and had laid siege to the fortress of Teba. He welcomed the Scots to his crusade with open arms and made much of the notorious Black Douglas, much to the annoyance of the English contingent with his army.
For two months the Scottish knights had little to do but mount patrols and watch as Alfonso’s siege engines tried to batter the fortress into submission. Then news arrived that a relief army commanded by Emir Uthman was approaching with six thousand cavalry and an unknown number of infantry. This didn’t particularly worry Alfonso as he was confident that he outnumbered the Moorish army. However, Uthman started to attack the water collection parties on which the besieging army depended. It was during one of these skirmishes at the beginning of August that Sir William Keith had been thrown from his horse. His arm had been broken and, for now, he was unable to fight.
After two weeks of these tactics, which did little to give either side an advantage, Uthman decided to attack in force. Under cover of darkness, three thousand Moorish cavalry made a diversionary attack across the River Guadalteba while Uthman took another three thousand and his infantry upstream to make a flank attack on Alfonso's camp.
By dawn, the first contingent occupied the watering grounds but Alfonso had been warned by his scouts of the enemy's movements and kept the main part of his army in camp while he sent troops to check what was happening at the river. The king gave Douglas command of a conroi consisting of all the foreign knights, including quite a few English ones, as part of this force and they attacked the Moors at the river.
Seeing the Christians engaged with his diversionary force, Uthman believed that his ruse was working and attacked the Christian camp from the west. When he reached the col overlooking the camp he saw that it was still full of Alfonso's men. Looking in the direction of the river he also saw that the diversionary force there was beginning to fall back. He didn’t understand how Alfonso had enough men to achieve this when it was obvious that most of Alfonso’s army was still in camp.
Uthman decided to abandon the attack on the camp and rode back to support the contingent at the river. However, by the time he and the rest of his army arrived there his other men had fled and he was forced to join them. The surprise attack had turned into a rout but it was not without its cost for the Christian army.
When James Douglas had led the vanguard to the river and saw three thousand Moorish light cavalry milling about on his side of the river he realised that he could trap them with the water at their back, much as Robert Bruce had done with the English army at Bannockburn. He led the fifty men in the vanguard but there was another five hundred in the main body and they were all knights. He was confident that heavy cavalry could smash the light Moorish cavalry now that they had them more or less trapped. He swiftly explained his plan to the commander of the Spanish knights and they lined up five ranks deep with Douglas and his conroi in the centre of the first rank.
The moors didn’t seem that concerned at first but they did organise themselves into a loose formation perhaps twenty ranks deep facing the Spanish and their allies. Simon took up position on Edgar’s right with Walter Logan on his brother’s left. Douglas was on Simon’s right. He touched the silver casket containing Bruce’s heart, which hung around his neck, and muttered a prayer. Then the order was given and the knights charged as one.
Simon lowered his lance and picked on a Moor on a magnificent white stallion. The man was wearing a tunic on which metal plates had been sewn. By the way that they reflected the light of the sun, he thought that the metal might even be gold. He wore a pointed helmet and carried a sword and a round shield, which he pulled in front of his chest when he saw Simon aiming for him.
Just before Simon’s lance was about to strike the shield, he pulled his agile horse to the left but Simon was expecting him to move either left or right and transferred his point of aim to the bearded face under the pointed helmet. The man was lifted off his horse when the point of the lance entered his mouth and exited the back of his head. Simon let go of his lance and pulled his sword from its scabbard. He wasn’t to know but he had just killed the Moorish commander.
Edgar’s lance had missed its target but had skewered the body of a Moor in the second rank. He fended o
ff the sword thrust of the man who had eluded him with his shield and dragged his sword out just in time to parry the next blow. Knee to knee the knights continued to push through the ranks of the enemy but they were losing momentum.
The Moors had been pushed back and those at the rear had ended up in the river. It was only three feet deep but it severely hindered movement and so those at the rear began to panic and turned to make for the far bank. Once some had started to do that, others followed and the Moorish lines began to thin out.
Seeing that, Douglas took the casket from around his neck and flung it as far as he could, yelling ‘follow the Bruce.’ The Scots dug their spurs into their destriers and sprung forward, pushing through the last few ranks of Moors. However, the English and the other foreign knights hung back. Scooping up the chain attached to the casket with the point of his sword, James plunged into the river in pursuit of the fleeing Moors. Simon, Edgar and the rest followed.
Meanwhile the Spanish were slowly driving the Moors back into the river and beyond but James Douglas and his men had become separated from them. It was a fatal mistake on James’ part. Seeing only eleven knights on their side of the river, some of the Moors turned round and charged back at the Scotsmen. Others who had just crossed the river joined them and Douglas found himself surrounded. They were outnumbered ten to one or more but they fought on. Simon saw Edgar go down out of the corner of his eye with a spear in his neck. He knew it was hopeless but he fought his way to where he had seen him fall. As he reached him and saw Edgar’s lifeless body the will to fight on left him and Simon did nothing to stop the sword that cut his head from his shoulders.
By this time James Douglas himself was dead, a sword through his heart and his chainmail cut in several places. He had so many wounds before the fatal blow that any other man would have been incapacitated long since but not James Douglas. Once all the Scots were dead, the Moors turned and joined the general rout. They left over fifty of their fellow Moors dead or dying amongst the eleven Scots.
