Robert the Bruce--A Tale of the Guardians

by Jack Whyte

  “Robert,” she said, shy now as he stepped wide-eyed towards her. “I … I had a surprise for you.”

  “By God you did, lass.” His voice was thick and guttural, his windpipe choked by a swelling lump. “The best surprise a man could have. Come here.”

  She sprang forward into his arms, and as he swept her up, his senses spinning with the well-remembered, long-desired smell of her, he thought his legs might betray him and send them both crashing to the stone flags of the floor. But they held, and they bore him and his cherished burden effortlessly in long strides towards the open bedchamber door. He carried her inside, kicking the door shut behind them, and kissed her as he had dreamed of kissing her for months, aware of the yielding, pliant weight of her filling his arms and the feel of her fingers hooking into his hair as though she would never let him go. His heart hammering, he bore her straight to the bed and lowered her there, following her downward into a wonderland of groping, clutching hands and insensate hunger as they sought all they could find of each other.

  Suddenly he thrust himself away and froze.

  His wife pushed herself up from the bed on one elbow, a strange look on her face. “Robert? What ails you? What is it, my love?”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said quietly, his voice filled with bewilderment.

  “Hurt me? How could you possibly hurt me?” Her voice faltered. “Unless by rejecting me? Is that what’s wrong? Do you not want me? Do I disgust you?”

  “Disgust me? Christ Jesus, Izzy, I’ve dreamed of nothing but this for months, of holding you and feeling you around me. But … I don’t want to hurt the baby.”

  “The baby?” Her face cleared suddenly and she laughed, the sound a mixture of relief and joy. But then she raised herself up strongly, hooking an arm around his neck and making hushing, crooning sounds as she pulled him gently down to where she could cover his face with fluttering, down-light kisses. “We cannot hurt the baby, my love,” she whispered into his ear as her kisses became nibbles and moist licks. “Not by loving each other. Not now, nor in the months to come. There’s ample room for both of you together inside me, and I can think of nothing I want more than that. So come now, take off all those smelly clothes and fill me up and show me how you love me.”

  He rose hesitantly to his knees, looking at her askance. “Are you sure? How can you know that?”

  She laughed again, gazing up at him with adoration in her eyes. “Because it’s true, my love. Every woman knows it. Quick now!” She reached for his belt but he evaded her hand.

  “That sounds like old wives’ nonsense. How can we be sure? There’s…” He waved a hand at her belly. “There can be little room in there.”

  Her smile was surer now. “There’s more room than we need, Robert Bruce, believe me. And besides, it’s true! No old wives’ nonsense about it, though old wives are better placed to know such things than any man. Think you every man goes without love throughout the time it takes his wife to bear a child? That’s silly, my love. Besides, I talked of it with Allie, and she knows everything about such things. Come here.” She reached for him again and again he deflected her grasp.

  “But what if I hit it with … What if I injure it, or you?”

  “It’s not an it, my love. It’s a him, perhaps a her, and you can’t injure either one, I swear.” Her eyes were alight with mischief now. “And you know in your heart and head that nothing you can do to me like that will injure me … Though you can hurt me by denying me what I need and want. I want to feel you moving in me, loving me. I want to feel your need and draw it out of you.”

  “But—”

  “No.” She pushed herself upright and placed her fingers on his lips. “No buts.”

  * * *

  Afterwards, between the soaring need of their first coupling and the subsequent stirrings of slowly renewed desire, as she lay cradling his shrunken maleness in her hand, he thought he heard her giggle—a gentle, muffled snort that she could not quite conceal—and he peered at her sleepily.

  “What?” he murmured. “You find your goodman laughable?”

  “No, my love, I find you adorable … It but struck me as strange that a knight champion, an earl of the realm and a leader of men who carries the sword of a famed ancestor—such a heavy, massy thing with a long blade of shiny, lethal steel—” She snorted again.

  “Damn it, woman, you are laughing at me.”

  She snuggled closer, kissing his shoulder, her fingers squeezing gently. “No, truly, my lord of Carrick, I am not…” Her fingers moved again, knowingly but almost absently. “I would never laugh at you, my love. But it amuses me that such a puissant knight, with such a great, long, steely sword, should be afraid to stab with such a gentle dagger as this in my hand, for fear of doing damage.”

  He lay still, enjoying for a while the play of her fingers.

  “It was … inexperience and ignorance caused my fear,” he said finally. “Bear in mind, woman, that this knight champion, as you alone deem him, has never killed a man. Nor has that weighty blade he bears spilt blood since the death of its former owner, William the Marshal. In all such things I am a neophyte, as virgin as were you on our wedding night.”

  She rose up over him, leaning again on one elbow as she looked down into his face and stooped to kiss his eyes. “I know, my lord,” she whispered, “and I revere you for that. Killing is not in you.” He grunted, enjoying her lips on his closed lids, and she drew back to look at him again. “What are you sounding so gruff about? Would you have it otherwise? Do you regret that innocence?”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her gravely. “No, Izzy, I don’t, but it’s not like to last. We are at war with Scotland. Did you know?”

  She stiffened, but then he felt the reaction pass and she lowered her head to his chest again. “Aye,” she said, almost inaudibly. “Thomas Beg told me weeks ago, when first the word arrived from Westminster. The armies had already left to march north by then.” She lay silent, but by glancing down with lowered eye Bruce could see her gnawing at her knuckle.

  “Your father will be safe,” he said softly. “Edward knows who he is and is obliged to him, not least for having sent you here.”

  “It’s not my father … It’s the whole thing. War … I fear for Scotland.”

  He rolled away from her and swung his legs to sit on the edge of the bed. “Scotland can look to itself,” he growled. “The magnates prepared for war and called out the army. They brought this folly on themselves. By making treaty with the French behind his back they thought to disarm Edward, render him impotent. Fools that they are, they’ll rue it. Edward Plantagenet is no man’s dupe, and their madness, underestimating him, has given him the one thing he had needed most to strengthen his position. In defying him like this they have united the barons of England in his cause. Few of them would support a war in France, but a war in Scotland, with land and titles to be won and no great way to travel? They’ll fall on the magnates like swarms of angry wasps. It won’t last long, you’ll see.”

  Isabella was staring at him now, her face as troubled as his own. “Are you saying Scotland cannot win?”

  “Against Edward’s might and righteousness? They have no chance.”

  He was thinking of his grandfather again, remembering the old man’s scornful dismissal of the true strength of Scotland’s armies, and he repeated Lord Robert’s words without thinking of the effect they might have on his wife. “Scotland has not fought a war in more than thirty years, not since the fight at Largs, against the Norwegian King Haakon. And that was more a skirmish than a battle. The Norwegians were ready to leave by then and put up little fight. Since then the Scots have fought no one, not even themselves. They haven’t fought a real war since the days of King David, more than sixty years ago, and since then they’ve forgotten anything they ever knew of warfare. Except in their own minds. They remember glories past fondly enough, but they’ve done nothing to prepare for fights to come.”

  “But they will fight,” I
sabella said. “My father sent me word. The host was to meet at Caddonlee, this month.”

  He sprang to his feet and began to pace, unaware of his nakedness. “Aye, and so it would. And they will fight, but with what, and for what? They have no cavalry to match the English heavy horse, no fighting leadership, no battle commanders with experience. England has ten times the men Scotland can raise, and fighting men to lead them. Its armies are fat and strong with victories in France and Wales and think themselves unbeatable. And they are, as far as Scotland is concerned. This war is madness.”

  “There will be slaughter done, then.” He heard the tone of her voice and turned quickly to look at her, only then seeing her tears, and he moved quickly back to the bed to comfort her, holding her close and kissing her eyes.

  “Sweet Christ, lass, there, there…” He rocked her in his arms, speaking to her gently, as if she were a child. “Edward is no monster. There might be one big battle—almost surely must be—but it will be swiftly won, and after that the magnates will lose heart and beg for peace. You’ll see. Edward is feudal overlord. Most of the magnates are his legal vassals, in feudal and in canon law. They are in rebellion, surely, but for what they mistakenly believe to be just cause. Their loyalties have faltered because of Balliol’s damnable lack of backbone. But misled though they are, they can’t have lost all their sanity, and it would be to Edward’s great disadvantage to be too harsh on them. You wait and see. They’ll sue for terms as soon as they realize they cannot win, and Edward will take them back into his peace. He’ll punish them, for they deserve punishment, but he’ll forgive them once they swear their fealty to him again.

  “Aye.” Her voice was a whisper. “The magnates will survive. But what about the folk?”

  He hugged her even tighter. “Aye, some of them will die in battle, certainly, for that’s the way of war. But the real folk of Scotland—ordinary people like Thomas Beg and Allie and their ilk everywhere—will overcome their troubles and continue as before, Izzy. They care little for the caperings of the magnates, just so be it they are left alone to live their lives as they always have in the past. They’ll disperse when the truce is called and return to their homes. You’ll see.”

  “I pray you are right, Robert…” She still sounded distant and unsure. “So you believe Edward will be merciful? Truly?”

  “Why should he not, my love? He has nothing to gain, else. He doesn’t seek Scotland’s Crown for his own realm. He but seeks to bring the magnates to heel and settle matters for the good of his own peace. Once that’s achieved to his satisfaction, he’ll relent. He has too many other matters on his mind, in France, to waste his time in Scotland.” He kissed her again, this time on the forehead. “Trust me,” he whispered. “I know my King.”

  * * *

  Spring warmed the air and melted into summer before any word reached Writtle of the war in the north, and when it did start to trickle in, the details were more rumour than fact, patchy, piecemeal, and incomplete. There had been a battle and a great victory, it seemed, at some place called Dummar, where hundreds of Scots knights and nobles had been captured and were being held for ransom. Bruce doubted the little he heard about it, mistrusting popular enthusiasm, though the place might have been Dunbar, he thought. There was a Scottish stronghold there, one of the strongest in the country, it was said, but even then, such an explanation made no sense to him, for no pitched battle could involve a fortress. A siege, yes, that was a different thing. But sieges were slow and complex affairs—campaigns rather than battles—and insufficient time had passed for the mounting of a successful siege.

  Within the following week, though, tidings arrived of yet another confrontation, this one far more likely, involving an assault on Berwick, on the border. Berwick was the gateway to southern Scotland, a coastal town with a mercantile trade, extensive docks, and impregnable defences centred upon a strongly built castle. It was arguably Scotland’s strongest and most thriving burgh, the maritime centre where cargoes of wool were assembled from all of southern Scotland before being shipped off to the manufactories of the countries across the North Sea. The source of this report was the eyewitness testimony of a crew of seamen from the English ship The Fair Lass, who had been lying off Berwick on the thirtieth of March and had witnessed the English capture of the town. Later they had been caught in a storm in the North Sea and blown far off course. Their stricken vessel had struggled into the port of Maldon, less than ten miles from Writtle, for repairs.

  Bruce heard the story from Thomas Beg, who had ridden into Maldon to trade a wagonload of grain for ropes and cordage and overheard the story being told in a tavern there. The next day Bruce himself rode to Maldon to discover what he could for himself.

  He found The Fair Lass easily, high and dry and under repair by an army of shipwrights and carpenters, but her captain was not there and Bruce had to seek him in a nearby tavern, where the seaman was meeting with the man in charge of the repairs to his ship. Both men looked up impatiently when Bruce appeared beside their table, but a single glance at his clothing served to stifle any protest they might have made, and when Bruce asked which of them was captain of The Fair Lass they exchanged glances and one stood up to leave, saying he would return later. The other, a thickset fellow in his thirties with a deeply weathered face, made no move to stand but nodded pleasantly enough to Bruce and indicated the chair the first man had vacated. Bruce nodded back, equally pleasantly, and sat down across from him as the tavern keeper came bustling over to look after the well-dressed newcomer. Bruce ordered ale for both of them, but the seaman waved a hand over his tankard to indicate that he needed no more. As the tavern keeper hurried away he cocked a bushy eyebrow at Bruce.

  “How can I help you, sir? Or should I say my lord?”

  Bruce’s mouth quirked. “Sir will do well enough for now. I’m here for information and prepared to pay for it.”

  The cocked eyebrow levelled out. “Then you have questions. Ask away, but I can’t promise to be able to answer them, not having any notion of what you’re looking for…”

  Bruce waited until a foaming tankard was set in front of him by the officious tavern keeper. He flipped the man a silver coin he had been holding since he entered and then watched the fellow scuttle away before he lifted his flagon. “Is this worth drinking?”

  The seaman shrugged. “It’s said to be the best in Maldon. But that’s not saying much.”

  Bruce sipped, then drank, enjoying the cool bite of the ale. “Good enough,” he said, setting the mug down. “A man of mine was in town yesterday, in one of the taverns. He told me he had heard some member of your crew talking about King Edward’s attack on the Scots town of Berwick at the end of March. That’s all he heard, or all that he could trust, so I decided to come and find you for myself in the hope that you might tell me more.”

  “Hmm. Why? Who are you?” He watched Bruce’s eyes and his eyebrow rose again. “You’ll pardon me, I hope, but there’s a war going on and I have no need, and no wish, to go spouting off opinions that could be taken amiss. I’m a loyal English seafarer, not a soldier or a plotter.”

  Bruce shrugged. “I am Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick. And you?”

  “Samuel Cromwell, mariner, as you know … Carrick? That’s in Scotland, is it not? And I know the name of Bruce. Are you not a Scot yourself?”

  “I am by birth, though outlawed by the King of Scots for holding loyal to King Edward. In all else I am English.”

  The brown face remained impassive save for a tiny wrinkling of the skin about the eyes, and Bruce found himself warming to this cautious but forthright man.

  “Then why are you not in Scotland with the King? He’d want his earls about him, I should think.”

  “I would be, but he himself set me a task before he left for Scotland and I’ve been working on it ever since. I’ve been repossessing the Scots King’s English holdings in King Edward’s name.”

  The inquisitive eyebrow flickered again. “Then what can I tell you, Lord Br
uce?”

  “Was the report my man heard true? Were you in Berwick when the attack occurred?”

  “Not in it, but I was close offshore. Our army had been sighted to the south the day before and the entire town reacted. We were barely half-laden, with a cargo of wool for Norway. Everything went mad from the moment the first alarm went up and I lost more than half my loaders. They all ran to the walls to see the English army for themselves. If you know Berwick, you’ll know the quays are on the northeastern shore, inside the arc of the walls and supposedly out of sight—and reach of attack—from the south.”

  “Supposedly, you say. Were the Scots afraid? Did you sense that?”

  “No, they were … jubilant was the word that occurred to me at the time. They thought they were safe behind their walls. Me, I was angry. I’d been hoping to be laden early and to make the tide. Took me three hours longer than it ought to have to finish taking on cargo and I had to use some of my own crew to get it done. All to no end. We missed the tide and I was stuck out in the shallows, a quarter of a mile offshore with the supply fleet that came up in support of our army.

  “And what happened? What did you see?”

  Cromwell inhaled deeply. “More than I wanted to. Our forces took the town before the day was out.”

  “They stormed the walls in a single day?”

  “They didn’t need to. They went around the side, to where the endmost walls along the shore were wooden palisades that hadn’t been maintained. The townspeople were up on the stone walls facing the main army, but the flanking forces went around unobserved to the weak point. They pulled a section down within an hour and that was that—it was all over. Our people fought their way inside from there and it was as though they had an open gate. Hell, it was an open gate. And once they were inside, the inhabitants gave up without a fight. Someone opened the main gates and let the army in.” His mouth twisted in a humourless grin. “For a place that was supposed to be untakeable, it didn’t last long.”