Robert the Bruce--A Tale of the Guardians

by Jack Whyte

  “Mam?” He could hear the panic in the single word. “Mam, what’s wrong?” The pressure of her grasp increased and her mouth twisted into a rictus. Already his grandfather was at the door, calling loudly for Brother Ethelric, and he bent forward, scooting as close to her as he could on his knees, wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his embrace. She was feather-light, it seemed to him, and he could feel the fierce heat of her skin through the thin stuff of her nightgown. He clutched her close, willing her to be free of this sudden agony, as the door swung open hard and the monk Ethelric swept into the room.

  “Out!” the monk said to him, and there was no mistaking the urgency of his voice. “Up and out! In God’s name, make way.”

  * * *

  Rob remembered the rain that blew into his face that second morning of October in the year 1292. It chilled him to the bone befittingly as he stood among his family while they buried the Countess of Carrick. He remembered, too, that his father’s eyes were swollen from weeping, and that the rain streaming down Earl Robert’s face seemed like an extension of the man’s grief. He also remembered the ghostly wailing of the bagpipes before and after the service, the music offered as tribute to the Countess Marjorie of Carrick by a tall, cadaverous Gael whose long plaid fluttered from his shoulders like a flag in the wind. He was from Arran, Rob was told long afterwards, related to the countess on her father’s side. He had been in Maybole town when he heard of her sudden death and had come to pay his respects. He remembered, too, being surprised at the number of people, many of them strangers to him, who assembled at the graveside, more than a hundred of them, old and young, gathered from farmsteads and villages both local and distant, though no formal word had gone out and his mother had been dead for less than three days.

  But he remembered little else—nothing of the service itself, not the words that were spoken or the priest who spoke them—and in truth only the storm that morning stayed firm in his mind, a feral thing slashing in from the icy western sea to howl around the forlorn, open grave on the shelf above the tiny beach in front of the castle. His mother had loved that spot all her life, for the view it offered in all weathers and most particularly when the great winter storms sent mighty waves hurtling on the rocks along the shore, often crashing up towards her in their final throes as though attempting to reach her. Knowing of her love for the place—for they had all shared it with her on countless occasions—it seemed fitting to everyone that it should be her resting place forever.

  He stood alone, after the others had returned to the castle, watching Murdo’s men filling in the grave, their hair and clothing buffeted by the blustering, icy wind as they bent and straightened relentlessly, replacing the dirt they had shovelled out the day before. He remembered the wind, buffeting him and snatching at his breath, but he had no recollection of feeling cold, for nothing could penetrate the vast emptiness that filled him. He remembered thinking that he was barely eighteen and was motherless, and that nothing the future held could possibly outdo the awful, crippling bereavement of that day. He remembered watching the men pile the cairn of stones over his mother’s grave and waiting to place the last of them himself.

  He remembered arriving back at the castle hours after that and finding Lord Robert in the entrance hall, muffled in his great black hooded cloak of thickly waxed wool.

  “Robert! There you are. I wondered where you’d got to.”

  “I’ve been at the graveside. But where are you going?”

  “Home, lad, to Lochmaben, as quick as may be. I mislike being away from Annandale and I’ve been gone too long. I was hoping I’d see you before I left.”

  “But surely you’ll eat first? It’s bitter cold out there and no time to be on the road with an empty stomach.”

  Lord Robert shook his head. “I’ve food enough. Allie knew I’d be away right after the funeral and she had food and drink ready packed for me and all my folk. We’ll eat on the road. Alan should be here directly wi’ my horse. But I need to speak wi’ you.” He glanced over his shoulder as a pair of men came into the hallway through a far door, and then he took Rob by the arm. “Come outside. Too many ears in here.”

  They went out, closing the main doors behind them, and Lord Robert looked to where his travelling companions were assembling, safely beyond hearing, before he turned back to his grandson, eyeing him keenly. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  Rob shrugged. How should he be feeling? was the question in his mind. He had just buried his mother and her absence would be a blight on his life forever.

  “Well enough, considering the day,” he answered quietly. “Don’t worry about me, Gransser. I’ll be fine.” The childhood name fell easily from his lips, and he realized again what that showed of his comfort around the patriarch now.

  “I know you will, lad, and I’m not worrying about you. It’s your father I’m concerned about. You’ll need to keep an eye on him this next while.”

  “On my father?” The disbelief in his voice was obvious even to him and so he hurried on. “Why so?”

  “Because he’s lost, that’s why. And because he’s your father, which means there’s much of him—the real man, Robert Bruce, the Earl of Carrick—about which you know nothing, simply because you are his son. Sons seldom see their fathers as real people, and that’s the tragic truth. You and I have spoken of this before, when we discussed my regrets about him. D’you remember that?” Rob nodded. “Aye. And when I was young I had my own difficulties with my father in his time. Sons only see in their fathers what they have learnt and been taught to see. They see no more than the stern paterfamilias who rules and regulates their life, and they seldom have cause to consider the living, human man who lived and dreamed and hoped as a young man himself before he married and cares forced him to become that unforgiving figure.”

  He cleared his throat, and his eyes narrowed. “You feel betrayed and bereft because you’ve lost the mother that you loved, and that is right and proper, Grandson. The countess was your mother and a wondrously gifted woman in that respect, and now she’s gone and you will mourn her with all the rest of us. But I want you to try to imagine how my son must be feeling now. Your mother was all the world to your father—his lifelong love, the woman he worshipped, his closest companion and most trusted friend. She was his inspiration and his salvation in this world. Her love formed the very core of his life as a proud and noble man. And now she’s gone. He will never see her again or hear her voice or be able to seek her advice. His household now has no binding force to guide it other than himself, and he feels helpless. He is faced now with the sole responsibility for tending and guiding the family she reared so effortlessly, and he will see no way of living up to that trust, now that he is bereft of her counsel and wisdom, her guidance and her strength. In his own eyes at this moment, your father’s life is over, his future, if he can see one, filled with emptiness and lacking a focus. He will get over it in time, as all men do, but the grief of it will be overwhelming to him for the next while. And that is why you need to keep an eye on him. I canna do it, nor would I even seek to try. There is too big a gulf between him and me still.”

  He fell silent again, and into that silence came a whistle and a loud voice calling his name. He snapped his head up and waved away the summons in annoyance.

  “I have to go,” he growled, “but I am not yet done, so listen. Take care of your father in the weeks ahead. He’ll be like a rudderless boat in a heavy sea. And that means you’ll have to look to your brothers, too, forbye your sisters. You’ll have help with the lasses—Allie and the other women will see to that—but you will need to play the father with the boys. You need to be the man of the house these next few months.” He cocked his head, raising an eyebrow. “Can you do that?”

  Rob shook his head, his eyes wide. “I don’t know, Grandfather.” His voice was almost a whisper. “I don’t know, but I’ll try.”

  “That’s all I need to hear, that you’re willing to try. But you’ll have help
. Your mother’s uncle Nicol will be there to guide you, and you can feel free to talk to him. He is a wise and canny man, Nicol MacDuncan. And forbye, your mother’s people here are all solid folk. I’ll be at Lochmaben should you have need of me. But I doubt you will. Everyone in your charge now has been raised by your mother, God rest her soul, and her teachings will bear fruit, you mark my words. I have no doubt that you can do this, Robert. You’re a Bruce, and a fine one. And when this time has passed, I will knight you with my own hand, as is within my right as Lord of Annandale and a magnate of this realm. That is a promise. Come now and embrace me, for I have to be away.”

  Rob stood alone outside the castle gates in the pouring rain and watched his grandfather ride off with his escort into the lowering gloom of the bleakest afternoon of his young life.

  * * *

  Turnberry seemed an alien place without its castellan. Even Allie and Murdo, the two family retainers, were mute and listless in the weeks that followed the funeral, when the visiting mourners had all departed and left the big house strangely echoing and lifeless. They still carried out their routine tasks from day to day, supervising the workers who kept the house and the estate functioning, but as the days progressed and Rob began to notice things again, he became aware that the faithful couple had lost something of their own in the death of their beloved mistress.

  The Bruce household had changed in many ways. For one, gone was the long-established ritual of the evening meal, presided over by the countess and governed by laws that had seemed immutable to Rob and his siblings. When there were guests in the castle, the children—those of them deemed old enough to behave themselves in front of company—dined in the great hall with everyone else, where they were seated apart from the adults and closely chaperoned by one of the countess’s women. At all other times, though, the daily family supper was served in a lesser dining room, known for some long-forgotten reason as the Lodge, and no one was permitted to be absent unless they were too ill to leave their sickbed. Countess Marjorie was adamant about the need for everyone to be there, for it was the sole and jealously guarded time of day when the family would meet and share food and conversation together. Other meals in the day could be eaten wherever and whenever food and time might be available, but the family supper was sacrosanct, and lateness, or far worse the occasional failure to attend, was punishable by a wide range of penances, from drudge duties in the scullery to dire loss of privileges.

  Within a week of Countess Marjorie’s death that family ritual had begun to unravel, for Earl Robert had chosen the same means of mourning the loss of his wife that Edward of England had espoused two years earlier: he avoided all human contact and remained shut up in the quarters he had shared with his wife for more than twenty years. Rob found himself reluctantly, and resentfully, supervising the evening meals served in the Lodge, and it became clear to him very quickly that he lacked any authority to sustain his new status. The first few days after the funeral were naturally doleful. The children gathered in the Lodge each night, but for three entire days no one spoke at the table, and more than once the silence was broken by the sounds of sobs.

  They were ten siblings—five girls and five boys—an astounding number of healthy children for one family, and they ranged in age from four to twenty. Christina, the eldest, was already married to Gartnait, the future Earl of Mar in the far northeast, and she had remained in Turnberry after the funeral to see her siblings over the worst of their mourning period. Rob’s sister Isabel was almost exactly a year younger than him, at seventeen. After Isabel came the four younger brothers, Nigel, almost sixteen, then Edward, Thomas, and Alec, newly turned eleven. Behind them came Mary, Margaret, and Matilda, aged nine, seven, and four. Watching the three little girls in those first few days, Rob wondered how much they understood what had happened. Mary certainly knew her mother was gone, but Rob doubted whether she understood the permanence of it. Little Matilda cried constantly, but probably only because she saw the grief among her siblings.

  His brothers, though, were a different matter. They were old enough to understand that their mother was gone, but not yet mature enough to deal with the tragedy as adults, and their obscure, confused feelings, allied with the absence from the table of their father, quickly resulted in bickering.

  It was little Matilda who started an uproar towards the end of the first week by throwing a tantrum, screaming for her mother and refusing to be pacified. Her outburst upset her young sisters, who burst into tears, infuriating Edward, always the least patient of the brothers. Nigel shouted at him to shut up, and one word led rapidly to the next, so that in moments everyone except Christina was adding to the tumult, each of them trying to shout above the others.

  Rob rose in a rage, snatching up the clay water jug and hammering it hard on the table as he bellowed for quiet. The jug shattered, water splashing everyone around the table and one whirling shard catching Isabel on the cheek, instantly drawing blood. For a few moments everyone froze, the only sound the loud splashing of water pouring from the table to the floor. Then Isabel sprang to her feet, one hand pressed to her injured face, wet with splashed water mixed with blood, and ran sobbing from the room, closely followed by Christina, who glared at Rob as she followed her sister. The three youngest girls started screaming again, and the harried nursemaid, pale faced and wide-eyed, snatched up little Matilda and shepherded Mary and Margaret out of the room, leaving Rob alone with his four younger brothers, the handle of the shattered jug still clutched in his hand.

  Edward was white faced with fury, glaring at Rob as he flexed his fists.

  “Don’t even think of it,” Rob warned, and then looked at the others. “Sit down, all of you.”

  “Where?” Edward’s voice was a hiss. “Everything’s soaked. Even our food. And you could have put Bella’s eye out.” He walked away towards the door.

  “Come back here,” Rob told him, but he was gone in a few strides.

  “We’re going, too,” Nigel said, his voice barely recognizable.

  “No, you’re not,” Rob said. “I need you to stay here.”

  Nigel looked him straight in the eye. “Edward needs us not to even more,” he said, then glanced at the others. “Come on.”

  They followed him, and Rob stood watching them, his face twitching with anger. He looked at the wreckage of the table, wondering how things had come to such a pass and thinking that his brothers had become strangers. He came closer to weeping in frustration at that moment than he had in years. But then the truth hit him, and he had to clutch at the table for support. It was he who was the stranger here, not them. This was their home, their world, and it had been pulled down on their heads in the space of mere days, all their familiar anchors severed, leaving them without leadership or support. He, on the other hand, had been gone for two full years while they’d remained at home and grown closer to one another than he could possibly be to them by now. Nigel was their leader now, in age and rank, and he had just demonstrated his leadership by defying his man-sized elder brother. It had been Edward, though, always the mercurial one, who had been the first to rebel against the stranger who had been attempting to bully all of them.

  Rob stood in the quiet of the Lodge, mulling those thoughts and listening to the random drops of water still falling to the floor, and then he snatched in a deep sigh and went looking for his uncle Nicol.

  He was cold in the October chill by the time he finally found Nicol in the stables, grooming his horse by the light of a single lantern.

  His uncle took one look at him and grunted. “Sit,” he said, nodding towards a stool by the gate to the stall. “I’ll be done in a minute.”

  He finished his task with a few more strokes, then led his horse back into its stall and piled some fresh hay into its crib. He came back out to close the gate and leaned against it, eyeing his nephew.

  “You look like a jilted lover,” he said. “What happened?”

  Rob told him all about the fracas in the Lodge, and Nicol stood and l
istened.

  “Hmm,” he said. “It occurs to me that yon might have been a good place not to be. Thank God I was safe here, talking to my horse. The boys defied you, you said? And how did you respond?”

  Rob shook his head. “I didn’t. I had already done and said too much.”

  “Hmm. And the girls, Christina and Isabel, where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. To see to Bella’s face, I suppose…”

  “You didn’t check? How badly was she cut?”

  “Bad enough. I saw blood.”

  “And you didn’t think fit to go and see how she was?”

  “No. I was shamed.”

  “Where are the others now?”

  “The young ones went with their nurse. I don’t know where the boys went.”

  “Right. Well, we need to go and see to Isabel. After that, it seems to me the next question should involve what you have to do next. Did you speak to your father?”

  Rob’s eyes went wide with surprise. “No. He made his wishes plain two days ago. He said he wanted to be alone without being bothered by any petty squabbles. I never even thought to go to him. I came to you instead.”

  “Aye, probably just as well … So, what d’you intend to do to make matters right?”

  “About Isabel, you mean?”

  “No, Isabel’s cut and can’t be uncut. We can only hope it’s not too bad and she won’t be disfigured. I meant what do you mean to do about the others, the whole thing?”

  Rob straightened on his stool and shook his head. “I don’t know, Uncle Nicol. I don’t know what to do about anything anymore. That’s why I’m here … I hoped you might be able to tell me. Besides, I did nothing to make it wrong in the first place.”

  “That is true,” Nicol agreed, nodding his head slowly. “But wrong it is, nevertheless, would you not agree?” The soft sibilance of his Gaelic speech was comforting to Rob.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “It’s very wrong. Our mother will be weeping in Heaven.”