by Robyn Young
There is no throne.
That fact was as stark as a beacon, blazing before him. Wherever he looked, he could always see it. That day – the day of Katherine’s betrayal – Alexander had told him he needed to start believing he could be king. The lord had thought she was the one holding him back and maybe, in some way, that was true: maybe he had thought a soiled maid was all he was worth. But the truth, the real reason he walked towards the throne with doubt blazing in his eyes, was because of what he had done that day at Scone, in the shadow of the hill where he had once sensed the ghosts of his history.
So caught up in his thoughts was he that Robert didn’t see the six figures approaching up the track, until he was almost upon them. Four of them were knights from Carrick. Between them they roughly escorted two figures, both of whom stumbled along, blinded by the hoods that had been thrown over their heads, through which came muffled sounds of protest.
Robert halted, Edward, Alexander and the others stopping with him at the sight.
‘Sir Robert,’ called one of the knights, as thunder cracked above. ‘We found these men trying to enter your lodgings. They said they knew you, but refused to give their names.’
At these words, the captives began struggling.
Robert caught his name in their stifled voices. ‘Remove those hoods.’
As the knights obliged, dragging off the blindfolds, the flushed, angry faces of two young men were revealed. They were clad in tunics and mantles of blue linen, soiled with rain and grime, but clearly of good quality. Both wore sword belts, but without weapons, no doubt taken by the knights. One, who looked a few years older than the other, was short and stocky with a square face framed by a reddish beard and curly blond hair. The younger of the two was tall and sinewy with shoulder-length black hair and a youthful face. Both gazed at Robert, their anger vanishing in wonder.
For a moment, Robert stared at them in puzzlement, then, beside him, he heard Edward shout, his voice raised not in concern, but joy. And all at once he knew them.
The Carrick knights stepped hesitantly away from their prisoners as Robert and Edward went to them and the four young men embraced one another, laughing and exclaiming, their eyes bright with rain and elation. Alexander Seton met Christopher’s questioning gaze and shook his head, as perplexed as his cousin, while John of Atholl and Gartnait of Mar watched on in surprise with Neil Campbell and the others.
Robert pulled back from the black-haired youth, looking him up and down in amazement. ‘By Christ, Niall, you’re almost as tall as I am!’ He stared over at Thomas, who withdrew from Edward’s fierce embrace laughing at the ferocity of the welcome. Robert hadn’t seen his younger brothers in years, for they had remained in fosterage in the Bruce lands in Antrim all through the war at their father’s behest. He looked at them in turn, struck by how handsome Niall had become; the dark good looks of their mother built into his strong cheekbones and deep-set eyes, full of gentle good humour. Thomas had filled out and looked rather more like their father, broad in face and body.
Robert turned to the men behind him, grinning. ‘Come, meet my brothers!’
John of Atholl came forward, shaking his head as he looked at Niall. ‘You must have been a lad of no more than eight or nine when I saw you last, Master Niall. How old are you now? Sixteen? Seventeen?’
‘Eighteen,’ answered Niall, with the pride of a youth on the verge of manhood.
The Setons and Neil Campbell greeted the two men courteously.
When the introductions were done, Robert gestured down the track. ‘Let’s continue this reunion somewhere dry.’ He addressed the four knights, who had led his brothers here. ‘See that food is prepared for my honoured guests.’ The knights headed off quickly down the track, the company following in behind.
As they walked, Robert kept glancing at Niall, amazed by the change in his brother and overcome with joy. He wanted to sling an arm around the younger man’s shoulders, but some awkwardness stopped him, the many years spent apart and all that had happened wedged between them. He had a thousand questions, but one, the easiest, came to mind first. ‘Why on earth didn’t you give your name to my men? If you had explained who you were, you wouldn’t have been treated so roughly.’
‘We didn’t know who we could trust,’ answered Niall, glancing at Thomas, who walked between Robert and Edward. ‘We have heard so many rumours these past few years it has been hard to tell who is fighting who.’ He looked briefly at Robert, a question in his eyes.
Robert suspected his brothers would have many things to ask him. Some of the answers would be hard to give. ‘How did you know we would be in Peebles?’
‘When our vessel landed we went first to Turnberry,’ replied Thomas, his voice deep and brusque. ‘Sir Andrew Boyd recognised us. He told us you were in the Forest, fighting the English. The closer we came the easier it was to pick up your trail.’
Still speaking, the company headed through the bailey. Robert and his men had been barracked in an inn just outside the castle’s palisade. He steered them towards the building as they passed through the gate. ‘I cannot believe you are both here.’
‘I cannot believe that you are a guardian of Scotland,’ said Niall. ‘Why didn’t you send us a message?’
As they reached the timber-beamed inn, Robert paused to allow one of his knights, standing sentry outside, to open the door. ‘Much has happened this past year. I haven’t had the men to spare.’
‘Have you heard from our father?’ asked Thomas, following as Robert entered the building. ‘Where is he? And what of Alexander? Is he still in Cambridge?’
‘Enough!’ protested Edward good-naturedly, before Robert could answer. ‘I insist you tell us your tidings first.’
Entering the large chamber where he was lodging with his men, Robert gave Edward a nod, grateful for the diversion. Shrugging off his sodden cloak, he handed it to Nes, who had risen from his stool by the fire at their entrance. ‘Why have you come?’ he asked them. As Niall looked at Thomas, Robert saw something grave pass between them.
‘The manor of our foster-father has been destroyed,’ said Niall, his handsome face grim. ‘Razed to the ground by knights of Sir Richard de Burgh.’
‘The Earl of Ulster?’ The tidings set an image in Robert’s mind of a stone manor house beside a river, surrounded by green fields, jewelled with rain. Across the room, he saw Edward’s face had darkened and guessed he shared a similar memory of the home of the Irish lord, who had fostered them both. ‘Why would the earl do this?’
‘Men under Sir Richard’s command have been scouring the north of Ireland for the past year,’ replied Thomas, ‘although it was only in recent months, when they began searching Antrim, that we learned this. When they came to us our lord refused them entry, but they forced their way in. We were compelled to leave on pain of death while they hunted through the castle. Finding nothing, they put it to the torch.’
‘So they would know where they had searched already, they said,’ murmured Niall, his face tight.
‘What were they looking for?’ Edward wanted to know.
‘A relic, so we were told, that the King of England desires.’
Robert felt a jolt in his chest. ‘What was this relic?’
Niall answered after a pause. ‘They called it the Staff of Malachy.’
It was growing dark as Robert made his way up the track. The storm had dissipated through the afternoon, but the clouds were low and racing, skimming the castle buildings. The puddles that covered the ground shivered in the squally half-light. For the past two hours, he had sat in council with his men, listening to his brothers speak of the events in Ireland, his thoughts alive with possibilities. Now, as he walked the track, his decision made, he felt feverish, as charged as the lightning that still flickered across the distant skyline. No more politics. No more waiting. If everything had its season, then this would be his.
The ruddy shimmer of torches lit the hulk of the domed, circular hall, the timber walls of which wer
e streaked with rain. Knights wearing the colours of the high steward stood outside keeping watch, their faces burnished by the flames. A few of them nodded to Robert as he approached. The wind whipped his black hair around his face and snatched at his mantle and surcoat, adorned with the red chevron of Carrick. As one of the knights opened the door for him, Robert entered.
The hall was flushed and warm, torches on the walls flaring in the gusts that followed him in. As the door thudded shut, Robert’s gaze alighted on three men seated around the long trestle and boards at one end of the cavernous chamber. Their conversation ceased as he crossed to them, his footsteps hollow on the wooden floor.
‘I take it your brother has withdrawn his teeth?’ enquired Wishart roughly. The bishop shook his head, his face adamant. ‘Things cannot go on this way, Sir Robert. They simply cannot! Edward should have been flogged for attacking MacDouall like that. As Comyn should have been for his actions against you.’
‘Robert,’ greeted James Stewart, half rising and giving Wishart a pacifying look. He gestured to the table, where a jug of wine and several goblets stood. ‘Please, join us.’
Robert shook his head. ‘Thank you, but no.’
‘We have been discussing the possibility of Bishop Lamberton standing as a third guardian,’ said Wishart curtly, not seeming to notice James frown at Robert’s rejection. ‘To mediate between the two of you.’
Robert glanced at William Lamberton, seated beside the Bishop of Glasgow. The young clergyman was studying him with his strange eyes. ‘I think it is a wise choice, your grace,’ he answered. ‘But I myself will be standing down.’
James straightened fully at the statement. ‘Standing down?’ His expression was caught between surprise and anger. ‘Why? Because of John Comyn?’ He fixed Robert with his intense gaze. ‘I implore you to reconsider. Think of the future, Robert. Think of what you risk by this action.’
‘He isn’t the reason I am standing down.’ Robert paused. ‘John Comyn was right about one thing – my connection to King Edward. It is a connection I believe I can use to our advantage. You may have heard by now, but my brothers arrived this evening from our lands in Antrim. They bear tidings that have given me hope. I am to return to Ireland with them, as soon as I am able.’
‘Ireland?’ questioned Wishart. ‘What in God’s name will you find to Scotland’s advantage there?’
‘Something that the King of England greatly desires.’ Nodding respectfully to the high steward and the two bishops, Robert turned and crossed the hall.
As he pushed open the doors, he thought of Fionn mac Cumhaill and his band of warriors, whose heroic deeds he learned by heart in the hall of his foster-father. Disillusioned by the reality of war in Wales and plagued by uncertainties of his place in the Knights of the Dragon, he had banished those boyhood tales from memory, believing them to be a false hope of youth. Now, what had been offered to him but a quest for a treasure that might determine the fate of a kingdom and a way for him to make amends? As he stepped out on to the wild dark of the track, Robert smiled.
Affraig walked into the bright morning, her watery eyes blinking at the sun’s radiance. The storms that had swept in from the east several days ago, causing rain to run in rivers from the hills, had dissipated late last night. The howling wind had since died down to a whisper, the clouds fading into a clear blue dawn as the tempest’s tattered remnants pushed west towards Arran.
The ground, sparkling with dew, was covered in twigs and thatch from her roof, ripped away by the gale, although the hill that squatted over her dwelling had sheltered her from the worst of its violence. Murmuring her thanks to the gods of the air, she stooped to pick up the pail she had left outside to catch the rain. As she did so, her eyes caught sight of something lying on the ground under the oak, half hidden by the debris of the storm. It was a destiny, fallen in the night, fulfilled.
Straightening, Affraig headed across the wet grass, the brittle leaves prickling her bare feet. She crouched, her old bones creaking and protesting. Carefully, she brushed away the russet leaves to reveal a lattice of bone-white twigs. The moss-stained rope within was knotted like a noose – the root of St Malachy’s curse. Her fingers stretched out to touch the weather-worn wood, her breath quickening as she fixed on the length of frayed twine that had held on to the old lord’s destiny so stubbornly for so long. Her eyes moved up through the fluttering leaves and she saw a scrap of twine drifting aimlessly among the higher boughs. Close by, other webs of twigs swayed gently in the breeze. Affraig’s gaze alighted on one, the limbs of which were brown and strong. Inside, a crown of heather and broom swung to and fro in the golden light, hanging by a thread.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In June 2007 I was in Scotland on a research trip for Requiem, the last novel of my first trilogy, based on the downfall of the Knights Templar. My main character was Scottish and I’d always intended for him to return from the crusades to be embroiled in the Wars of Independence. The struggles of William Wallace and his rebel army made a powerful parallel with the Templars’ fight for survival during the trial against them, both conflicts culminating in 1314 with the Battle of Bannockburn and the burning at the stake of the last Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay. I’d been in Paris the month before, working on the knights’ side of the story and the Scottish excursion was supposed to help me fill in the other half of the narrative. I spent three weeks on the road, travelling from battlegrounds that were now housing estates to crumbling abbeys and ivy-clad ruins. Day by day, out of the pages of history and the wild landscape, one figure came striding, larger, clearer than all the others – Robert the Bruce. He swept me off my feet and carried me into a story that went way beyond the English invasion of 1296 and the subsequent insurrection led by Wallace, right into the heart of bitter family feuds, two civil wars and the struggle for a crown. By the end of the trip, I was so caught up in Robert’s world I’d almost forgotten about the Templars – the protagonists of Requiem. Back home, I realised there was no way this character could play a cameo role in another man’s story. His tale was just too sprawling, too intricate and too good to be cut down and boxed to fit. I had to let him go and focus on the dramatic, but much simpler story of Wallace which worked well alongside my Templar narrative. Robert refused to go quietly, however, and several weeks later, unable to silence his voice, I phoned my agent, who had been asking me to get a proposal together for my next set of novels. I now knew what they would be.
As a historical novelist you are forever walking a fine line between fact and fiction. It is the facts that inspire our stories and enable readers to enter these vanished worlds, but those same facts can sometimes be detrimental to a novel. The sources, both historical and contemporary, can be highly contradictory and often things are left unexplained – we might know what someone did when, but have no way of knowing why they did it. A historian can say this happened and these are the facts to support it and we believe this, but a novelist has to create the motivations that lie behind the actions of characters in order to make readers believe. For example, we have no concrete explanation as to why Robert deserted his father and King Edward that day outside Douglas’s castle and joined the Scottish rebellion. He had so much to lose and so little to gain. Even the simplest theory: that it was an act fired by patriotism, doesn’t totally hold water when you look at the broader picture. So, I made it more individualistic – not just a national cause, but a personal one, driven by Robert’s frustration and the antagonism between him and his father. Of course, such personal instances are what most great events are born out of. We make split decisions, we do things in the moment, we hardly ever see that broad picture until we’re looking back on it. History turns on a knife-edge.
The first big licence I took with history is the murder of Alexander III. Chroniclers of the time and modern historians regard his death on the road to Kinghorn as an accident and there is no reason to suspect otherwise. But as a novelist with a suspicious mind the rapidity with which Edward I se
cured permission from the pope for his infant son to marry the Maid of Norway, coupled with the fact that Alexander was thought to have mooted the possibility of such a union two years earlier in a letter to Edward and that when he married Yolande any offspring they produced would have rendered this proposition meaningless for Edward and his son, led me quickly down the what if route. Similarly, there is no evidence to suspect that the Maid’s subsequent death was anything other than a tragic double-twist of fate. Her murderers, the Comyns, are tarnished with the black brush of fiction here, for the princess was thought to have died eating rotten food on the voyage rather than through any nefarious design, although it’s true that the Comyns abducted Alexander during his minority in an attempt to gain control over the kingdom.
I have simplified the proceedings of what would much later be termed the ‘Great Cause’. The hearing set up by Edward I to choose a successor to Scotland’s throne was a protracted affair that, while interesting in terms of history, doesn’t work well in a novel, essentially being a series of political discussions and lengthy periods of waiting. The chapter at Norham therefore is an amalgamation of many meetings that would have taken place over a longer period and in various locations.
Robert’s grandfather did claim to have been named heir presumptive by Alexander II, although I have made more of it here than was made at the time. The assigning of the earldom of Carrick to Robert shortly after John Balliol was named king is real, but the transfer of the claim to the throne is fiction. At this point, the claim was passed from the grandfather to the father, with the assertion that it was for him and his heirs. But in light of Robert’s dramatic shift in allegiance and the fact that even as early as the parley at Irvine he was accused of aiming at the throne, I chose to have it passed on here, rather than dilute the power of the moment and muddy the waters later on.
