Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  Robert sighed, stood and cupped me lightly on my good arm. “Mend fast. We will head out in a couple of days.”

  “My lord... Robert? Marjorie... and the queen – where is Nigel taking them?” I had a fondness for both Robert’s wife and his daughter. Elizabeth had given me a fine horse and a cloak when Bishop Lamberton sent me off to join Robert. And Marjorie, so spirited and curious… I don’t know what I felt for her. The protectiveness of an older brother, perhaps?

  The question forced his chin down. “To Kildrummy, if it’s safe. If not, north to Orkney, then aboard ship to Ulster.” The heel of his hand resting on the axe tucked into his belt, he shook his head in doubt. “Ah, James, how utterly selfish I am. Foolish, too. They would have been better off if I had sent them to Ireland in the first place.”

  “They’ll be there, waiting for you,” I assured him. “You’ll see.”

  “If they’ll have us in Ireland, otherwise we’ll spend the winter adrift. Like rats on a piece of driftwood.” An unconvincing smile flitted across his mouth. “Well then – eat. Get some rest.”

  “Thank you... for what you did.” I meant to say his name again, but even the first time it had stumbled across my tongue.

  “Pluck berries? Bit of a hike to gather them, but your gratitude is too much.”

  “Gil told me it was you who went back for me when I fell from my horse. I owe you my life for that.”

  “Ah, well, it would have been inconsiderate of me to leave you behind.” He began to go, then stopped and added, “That was brave work at Dalry. Ten more like you, good James, and I should have the kingdom won back before next Michaelmas.”

  More like a thousand of me, maybe. But him... it would take only one of him.

  Ch. 3

  James Douglas – Loch Lomond, 1306

  We laid our dead out in rows in the cave, their arms crossed solemnly over their breasts, and piled the heaviest stones we could manage across the entrance. Nigh on starving, we left the secret cave of the glen near Balquhidder and crawled southward. We had only a few horses remaining that were not lame, and so our wounded rode those; the others we abandoned. Soon, Robert told me, we would have to cross a loch or a wide river and if we ever made it to the coast, we could not take them to Ireland anyway. While we trudged through dense forests and over burnished heather, I learned from Gil how to recognize wild thyme and mint to chew on, which flowers to pluck the petals from in the summer to eat, how to tell a nut tree from a distance and which plants to dig for their roots. I taught the rest where to look for the holes of mountain hares and how to snare a stoat or marten for its fur. Useless with my bow, I watched admiringly as Edward sent an arrow in a sure arc two hundred paces and brought down a young red stag in full stride. We ate only a small hunk of meat each. There was not nearly enough to go around.

  It must have been late September when we saw Ben Lomond, its summit shoved up against a glowering sky that threatened to sink down on us as the rain began. There in its shadow, we found another cave that overlooked the loch, this one bigger and drier than the last we had inhabited. In the center, Boyd fed the fire with kindling that we had gathered along the way. Outside, the rumbling sky was dark as coal dust. A cold wind blustered in and the flames wavered before they burst defiantly back to life again.

  Robert crouched on his muscular haunches before the sputtering fire. “If we stay here, we risk John of Lorne finding us. Or the English.”

  Should the Argyll warriors catch up with us again, they would kill us in a craze of bloodlust. The English, if they found us, would make prisoners of our leaders, as they had my father. There were many ways I wished to be like him, but living out my last days in the Tower of London was not one of them.

  The broad, long loch below, called Loch Lomond after the mountain that guarded over it, was a daunting stretch of water and I, not being one with a love of water, would have preferred the longer journey around it. Once, when I was nine, my brother Hugh and I had stolen a little rowing boat. We only wished to row about on an adventure, but had sorely underestimated the strength of the waves created by a rough wind chopping at the surface. The little boat overturned before we were but a stone’s throw from shore. Even though the water was only chest high, I was trapped beneath the weight of the boat. Hugh’s frantic thrashing had only pushed the water higher inside my little dark, diminishing cavern of air. When he finally heaved the boat upright, it gave me a thump in the head hard enough to knock me out. Later, I found myself on the shore looking up at a blurry sky, coughing up water, with an awful ache in my skull and a lump that remained on my forehead for a week. Hugh, simple though he was, had saved me. Ever since then, the rocking of a boat upon the waves hurled me into a state of silent panic.

  “If we can make it across the loch,” Robert said, looking from face to sinking face, “we can go west, to the coast. I’ve sent Neil Campbell ahead. He’ll be waiting for us with galleys. To take us to Ireland.”

  Edward had just come in from outside. Rivulets of rain trickled from his shoulders to pool at his feet. He sauntered closer and pushed his fingers back through slick hair. “Across?” he said with more than a trace of skepticism. “If you mean for us to swim, half of us will be drowned before we reach the other bank.”

  The sudden roar of rain filled the air. We all stared into the amber light of the fire, mulling over his words, wondering just how it could be done.

  “A boat,” Torquil proposed sleepily. He was sitting on the floor of the cave with his back against the wall, eyes half closed. Gil had given him some sort of infusion made from the crushed petals of a white flower and willow bark. Torquil let out a huge yawn. “Boats... I know. I sail.”

  Edward snorted. “Well, we don’t have any, do we? And boat or no, it’s a long way yet to Kintyre at this pace.”

  “We’ve made it this far,” Robert reminded him tersely. “We’ll make it even further.”

  The next day, after the rain had stopped, Torquil and I slid down the hillside, over the next rise and along a muddy, winding trail among the trees. Torquil veered from the path and, with his small axe, he cut free two straight and lean saplings, hacked off their branches and tossed them over his shoulder. We wandered along the banks until we found a promising spot. With his knife, Torquil stripped the bark from the first one, then tossed it to me, pointing to the tapering end of the pole. I shaved the end to a sharp point, left-handed no less, until he ceased to grimace at my imperfect work. While he lay belly down on a rock and dangled there, I stripped and sharpened the next spear. Soon, he had skewered the first fish and tossed it onto shore. More followed. Torquil was patient enough to make his throws worthwhile, but swift enough to hit his mark with deadly accuracy. My mouth watered every time a tailfin swished at the surface. I was so famished I could have eaten them raw: heads, bones and all. I gathered the catch into my cloak. My hands smelled of fish. My cloak – the half of it that was left – was going to reek of it for a long time.

  Wind rippled the water, pulsing waves over the lip of the bank. Water splashed at my leggings and my feet were soon soaked. My chest tightening with unease, I moved up away from the loch’s edge to dry them as I waited to see Torquil take another jab into the water. He cursed in his own language at a pike too cunning for his methods.

  My sights wandered in and out the length of the loch. Four days on horse to ride all the way around it, Gil had said. As battered as we were, it would take us eight. In a little cove to the south on the far bank, poked the roofs of a small fishing village. Four houses, maybe five. Hard to tell from this distance. On our side, directly opposite it, was a sandy beach broken by stands of reeds. A sandpiper wandered through the reeds, standing at times on one slender, blue-gray leg. Every so often, it dipped its long, pointed bill in the water, rooting about, then moved on, bobbing up and down. I lost sight of the bird as it moved behind something large and solid. After a time it appeared on the other side. Slowly, I realized that the ‘something’ was a fishing boat. Later, I thought, we c
ould maybe take the boat out away from the shore and if I could somehow trail a hook there would be even more fish to eat. For now though, Torquil was doing well enough.

  Far away to the north, the rock dropped abruptly into the water in places. There, the loch narrowed where it began as a river sprung from the mountains. Gil had told me that to the south the loch spread apart wide, pushing the earth miles and miles apart. A small army of islands floated there, he said, like a herd of whales skimming the surface. Behind us, the trees still wore their green summer cloaks, but some were now tinged with traces of gold or scarlet. Their leaves fluttered gently at the teasing of a steady breeze.

  I wiggled my fingers and freed my arm of its sling. I turned it ever so slightly outward and tested my strength by plucking up small stones and squeezing them feebly in my palm. It would be some time before I could grip the hilt of my sword with ease. Longer yet, before I could pull a bowstring. Sinking back against a lush cushion of grass, the handle of my knife poked at my hip and I pulled it free. The sky was as blue as any summer day. In the branches above, a lark trilled incessantly.

  Eyes drifting shut, I shifted the longknife to my weakened right hand and rubbed my thumb against the familiar worn cording of the handle. Water lapped rhythmically against the shore, lulling me to sleep.

  I dreamt of home. Of riding along the Douglas Water and running over the hills with my simple-minded brother Hugh trailing behind. Of foxes loping through the meadows and a hare with its black-tipped ears peeking above a tussock of grass. I dreamt of my stepmother Eleanor rocking my wee brother Archibald in the ivory cradle of her arms as she sang to him and my father sitting on a bench before the hearth with a cup of ale in his hands, his thoughts consumed within the dancing flames. Of the Englishman, Neville, shoving Eleanor onto a table and yanking her skirts up, as she wept tears of shame. My knife, arcing through the air to cut him. Longshanks’ boot slamming against my jaw to dislodge a tooth.

  Then I dreamt long of two great armies staring at each other across an open plain, of a voyage in a leaky ship filled with rats the size of dogs and a journey into a strange land over a muddy field. Of Paris, cramped and reeking, and Master Andrae telling me to grab my ankles and bend forward as he tested his willow switch on the floorboards before laying it over my back. My father lying dead in a Tower dungeon. I dreamt of Bishop Lamberton reciting Mass from behind glittering relics and William Wallace walking away on a long, dusty road, never turning around, never showing his face, only the great sword strapped against his broad back.

  And then, in the drifting mist of my dreams, Robert, tall astride his horse, twisted at the waist and beckoned to me. His embroidered cloak swung regally from his shoulders. Upon one of his fingers was a ring bearing a seal. Upon his brow sat a circlet of gold.

  “James? Come along, James,” he called, a soft, half-smile playing over his mouth.

  As he began to go, I tried to follow, but something held me back. I willed my feet to move, but they could not. Further and further he went, saying my name, but never stopping to wait for me or looking back.

  “Look ‘ere,” a gruff voice said. “A Scottish dog, good as dead.”

  The dull fog of sleep lifted suddenly like a blanket thrown off. It was not Wallace’s voice, nor Robert’s. Neither was it Torquil’s.

  Through barely parted lashes, I glimpsed a man with a bulging paunch standing over me. He grinned and flicked his tongue over lips pocked with sores. Drooping jowls rough with black stubble melted into a thick neck. The man had not suffered for lack of food, or from the guilt of gluttony. He reached beneath his oversized leather jerkin and scratched at his crotch. Then he lifted a nicked and rusty sword. Its point pricked the soft of my belly.

  My heart thumped in a wild cadence. I curled my fingers around empty air. My blade lay tangled in the grass, only a few feet away. If I reached for it, I was dead. If I didn’t – I was dead then, too.

  His mouth spread into a macabre smile of jagged yellow teeth and irregular gaps. A guttural laugh shook his flabby gut and gurgled out of his throat, making him sound like a braying donkey. “Scared, are you? Don’t worry, I’ll keep you alive long enough to get some sport out of you.”

  I opened my eyes fully, gauging his quickness against mine. No contest. I would have skewered him in a heartbeat in an honest fight. Gutted him like the fat pig he was. That was when he pressed the point deeper into my belly, reminding me who had the advantage.

  “Will, over ‘ere!” he bellowed. “Look what I found me!”

  With every shallow breath I drew, the sword point bit harder, almost burning. I held my breath. Fear, or fate, whatever it was, held me entranced to observe the slow approach of my own death.

  God’s teeth, I had always thought I would die in a furious blaze of glory, not like this. Not in such a pathetic, helpless way.

  Behind him, twigs cracked. Footsteps plodded, then stopped.

  He chuckled, this time scratching at his buttocks. “What do you say we should do with him, Will? Strap him belly flat to a tree and fuck his Scottish arse till he screams with pleasure? Chop off his fingers, one knuckle bone at a time? Gouge out his eyeballs, maybe? I like that one, I do. Won’t be pretty no more, then, will ‘e?” He guffawed, amused by his own cleverness.

  “Let him go.”

  The pig-bellied Englishman stopped laughing. He cocked his head sideways, not daring to take his eyes off me. “What did you – ?”

  A thwack cut off his words. He stumbled forward, as if someone had shoved him from behind. But there was no one there. A line – wet, burning – trickled warm across my abdomen to pool in my navel. The sword had pricked my flesh. It slipped from his grasp and thudded to the ground.

  His tongue popped from his mouth, red foam bubbling around it. He lowered his eyes to gawp at his chest, where the tip of a wooden spear point protruded. Bright blood clotted in the Englishman’s stubbly beard, spurted from the hole in his breast. Empty-eyed, he stared at me, making little croaking sounds – and fell.

  I rolled away. My arm, not yet healed, flared with a bolt of pain. The spear point ripped my sleeve at the shoulder as he crashed against me, knocking the breath from me. Gulping in air, I shoved him aside with a strained heave. The man was dead, for certain, but smelling of his own shit.

  “You could’ve killed me,” I grumbled at Torquil as he stalked toward me.

  With a yank, he pulled the spear out, stifling a curse when the haft split in two. He knelt down and whispered into my ear, “They come.”

  I started to sit up to look around, but he pushed me back down and pointed up the hillside to where a narrow bridle path led through the stand of trees from which he had been cutting spears. Rising on my good elbow, I peered at the rim of the small rise above us.

  “English.” I sank back down. “Ten, maybe twelve. They’ll be looking for this one soon.”

  Torquil’s fingers fluttered on his spear. I retrieved my knife from where it lay. It would be a quick fight if they found us – and not in our favor. I pointed to a thicket of bushes that crowded the nearby bank. Backs hunched to stay low, we dragged the dead man between us and rolled him under a young pine. We crawled deep inside the thicket, thorns lashing at our faces and snagging our shirts. Although their voices drifted clearly down to us, I could understand only snatches of their thick speech. They went by very slowly, pausing once directly above us a hundred feet up the mud-slickened slope.

  As they at last passed to the south, Torquil turned to me. The wind tossed long strands of straw-pale hair from his ruddy face. “They find our horses. Follow us here.”

  While the sun slipped lazily into the west, they scoured the hillside, twice coming within a spear’s throw. My fingers twitched on my knife, but Torquil kept his weapons idle beside him as they wandered off. Although I took joy in killing Englishmen – for I had never forgotten the terror of Berwick – neither of us was fool enough to deny the odds on this occasion.

  When they had been gone for some time and daylig
ht began to yield to dusk, Torquil and I crept down to the water. The boat that Torquil and I had found was big enough for only a few men. There was a leak somewhere in the stern, but Torquil deemed it slow enough that the boat could easily be bailed out before it took on too much water. Darkness falling, we returned to the cave and told Robert of the scouting party.

  That night, under a moonless sky, we rowed across to the opposite side of the loch in batches. The worst of the wounded – which was only a few by now, the rest having died – were set ashore first. After that went Robert, Gil and I, with Boyd returning the boat to the other side. I was eminently thankful there was no breeze that night and so, but for the sweep and surge of the oars, the boat glided across the surface, parting the mist that mantled the glassy loch. All the same, getting in and then out was motion enough to churn my stomach into a sour brew. While we waited for the others, Robert told the tale of Tristan and Isolde in French, the words drifting away into a twisting murmur as I slipped in and out of a fitful slumber. Every time I opened my eyes to look for the boat and who had made it, Robert was standing vigilant on the shore, his hands braced on his sword belt and his shortened cloak flared out over his elbows. A few at a time, our men were set safely upon the western shore of the loch.

  Boyd had just left on the last trip, this one to fetch Edward and Torquil. Minds benumbed from sleeplessness and bodies drained by hunger, we peered into the mist as it broke, then rolled again over the silvery loch. In the east, above the blanket of fog, dawn crowned the mountaintops in a watery orange haze.

  A scream shattered the silence. Metal clanged on metal, thudded on hide-covered shields to echo in the long, narrow basin of the loch against embracing mountains. Shouts. Another scream. The clink of blades striking metal bosses. A dying groan. The crash... of something hitting water. Then, quiet. Heavy, heart-stopping quiet.