Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  “I expected a more lengthy welcome, Angus,” I teased. “Always memorable when we meet, but far too brief.”

  Brief it was. Less than two full days in Dunaverty and my men and I were on our galleys again headed off into the channel. The weather held with us this time and we landed on Rathlin off the northeast coast of Ireland. A mile long and six times as wide – this, my kingdom. Ahead of us lay Ulster. Behind us Kintyre. Half a year since the crown had rested on my head at Scone and it had all but toppled from there.

  Thrice I sent word to Elizabeth’s kin in Ulster, asking, and then pleading for refuge. The first time I received no answer. The second time the reply was that they could not at that moment accommodate us. The last was a blunt suggestion that we go back to Scotland. That gave me small faith that Elizabeth and Nigel had arrived there and been able to argue my case. For now, I could but wonder and worry about the world beyond.

  Ch. 5

  Robert the Bruce – Dunaverty/Castle Tirrim, Garmoran, 1306

  There are some who tire of fighting. Some who might plunge into a hole, who remember only the fall and the pain of landing hard. I could only look up to the light and ask myself how to reach it.

  To do that, I needed two things: money and men. An abundance of one without the other was useless. But how to acquire them, and in large enough amounts, was a rather troublesome matter.

  Boyd was sent to Carrick to collect rents due. Alexander was dispatched to the north of Ireland to muster recruits. Thomas and Edward wanted to go with him, but I ordered them to stay on Rathlin. Since the place was stone-dry of drink by then and had a thousandfold more birds than women on it, I reckoned there was not much harm they could do. All the same, if there was trouble to be found, they would find it, and so I encouraged Neil to watch over them.

  With Torquil as my guide over the waters and twelve other men to man the galley, we sailed past Islay and Mull. The lordship of Garmoran clung like a forgotten growth to the western limits of the Highlands. Oars straining against the current, we traveled up the long arm of the sea loch. Deep green pines slashed by the silver-white of birches were reflected in the black water. As we went, the clouds sank down on us, as if they, too, were sluggish with grief, until at last they wept an icy rain. Sleet stung at our eyes, forcing our heads down.

  Winter’s misery bit deep into every sinew of my being. I tried to unclench my fists, but they were frozen, aching in every knuckle and joint. All sensation was lost in my toes. Lengths of land slid by in a gray, foggy blur. Moments stretched into hours, with nothing but the pulsating jerk and splash of the oars to break the drawn-out hiss of rain upon the water. The rowers sucked brittle air between chattering teeth, shoulders drawn deep into sodden cloaks. No one moaned of their misfortune, but it was plain to see they were all as wretched as I was. Time to put ashore. To rest, if that was even possible. Although if we slept, we might not awaken.

  Merciful Lord, what I would not give to sit by a fire and thaw my bones.

  I looked up to see a squat, gray castle hunched above a low cliff on an islet ahead: Castle Tirrim.

  The tide being low, we beached the galley on the shingle-littered shore opposite the castle and trudged across a muddy bridge of land to the base of the cliff encircling the islet. Sleet had faded to a spitting mist. Arms wrapped about himself, Torquil led us to a breach in the cliff wall. Stiff with cold, we ascended after him, taking care not to slip on the moss-slickened stones. When Torquil scrambled over the top, he dropped to his knees, small stones crunching with the impact.

  Before him stood a noblewoman in a hooded cloak, gloved palms open in welcome, and at her shoulder a glowering lord, his feet braced wide and one hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

  Bending at the waist, the lady spread her arms wide, so that her cloak of crimson parted to reveal a green gown embroidered with golden knotwork. As she straightened, a rope of loosely plaited red hair swung from her shoulder, the end of it hanging to the inviting curve of her hip. Tall and imposing in presence, I was one of few men above whom she did not tower. She tilted her head and smiled pleasantly at me, ignoring Torquil and the dozen men huddled close and shivering at the lip of the cliff.

  “A thousand welcomes to Tirrim, my lord king,” Lady Christiana greeted. “I have watched for you from my window for weeks now.”

  “You couldn’t have known I was coming, my lady.” I took her hand, cold-wet with rain, and kissed her fingers just below the glittering facets of her emerald ring. “I sent no word. I dared not. Scotland is as thick with my enemies as there are pines in the forest. I must keep my comings and goings a secret, as much as I can.”

  She laid her other hand over mine. “There are some things a woman knows, even without being told.” With a gentle tug she drew me close, her lips grazing my cheek with a kiss, her breath cupping my ear like a puff of steam as she whispered my name, “Robert.”

  With every breath she drew, her bosom swelled against my chest. Fine droplets of rain on my face warmed, like a perspiration that has sprung to the brow with gentle exertion.

  “Has it been ten years, truly? Not a day gone, judging by your beauty, I vow.” I bestowed a brief kiss in return. “And you’ve still not found another husband? How can that be?”

  When Christiana had barely been of marriageable age, her father, Alan Macruarie, had betrothed her to Duncan of Mar. Perpetually drunk and quarrelsome, she could hardly tolerate him and leapt at any distraction. I had been one of them. It did not matter to her that it was her wedding I had come to attend. But barely in my first full beard then, I was mad for Duncan’s sister, Isabella.

  “I’ll not have just any.” She poked a finger at my chest playfully. “You don’t know how despondent I was when I heard you had married again. Did you not think of me? Cruel of you, it was. My heart has yet to mend.”

  The black-bearded lord cleared his throat. As I cast a glance at him, he raised his jaw. Finally, he dipped his head in acknowledgment.

  “Reginald Crawford of Kyle... my lord.” His hand drifted downward from his sword, indicating he would unsheathe it in a breath if given cause.

  Christiana snaked a hand beneath my cloak and up my arm to cling seductively to me. “Come, my lord. Let me show you to a warm bed. But first, a fire, a full meal and a flagon of wine to bring you back to life, aye?”

  As she led us over the rock-strewn path to the gate, her hip swayed against mine. I had come duly armed with my honor, but already it was proving a challenge. It would have been easier to leave altogether, than to stay and deny such an enchantress.

  Years of soot had blackened the knotty beams overhead. Along the walls, sconces blazed to throw a dancing yellow glow across Tirrim’s broad hall. In the room’s center, a great fire roared, heating the flesh, and the tempers, of the over-drunk. Platters of beef and mutton were emptied, bones flung to the floor where lank, grizzled hounds gnawed at them, growling. The skirl of pipes reeled through the boisterous throng to stomping feet and clapping hands. In the furthest corner, a girl of fifteen or sixteen with honey-colored hair danced atop a table, her slender body swaying rhythmically to the song, her hands caressing the air in wide sweeps and gentle dips, as if they were following the contours of her lover’s body. At her feet, a young man reached out and ran his hand from her slim ankle to the curve of her calf. A dreamy smile spread across her lips and she sank to her knees to kneel above him. For a moment, her mouth hovered teasingly close to his. Impatient, he curved a hand around her waist and pulled her down into his lap. She swung a leg around to straddle him, his mouth devouring hers in a feast of passionate kisses. Cheers of encouragement and bawdy jests exploded around them.

  Without warning, the crack of an axe splintered wood. The music tumbled into a maelstrom of discordant notes, until only a single, shrill keening stretched across the fractured air. Near them, a giant rose to his feet, shoulders hunched forward. His hair, with two long plaits framing his weathered face, was the same golden color as hers, but streaked with silver. H
e yanked the axe free, and with one sweep of it sent cups and bowls rolling to the floor in a great clatter. With his free hand, he hooked an arm around the girl and dragged her from the youth.

  Except for an older man opposite them, cloaked in furs, the table emptied. The older man scraped the bench back over the planks and climbed on top of the table. “I’ll not give on it, Macruarie. I told you what I want.”

  Macruarie shoved the girl behind him. Her bare feet tangled in her skirts and she crumpled to the floor, throwing an arm over her face. It was not until she peeked beneath her quivering forearm that Macruarie spoke to her over his shoulder, a scowl firmly pressed into the deeply creviced lines around his mouth.

  “Remember, I have agreed to nothing yet,” he said to her, “so save your wantonness for the man you’ll wed, not some beggarly MacLeod who’ll barely keep y’clothed.” Then he climbed onto the table to face the older MacLeod. Timbers groaned with the strain of his massive weight. An arm’s distance, they stared at each other: one clutching an axe, the other a short sword that gleamed in the wan light.

  In moments, a riot-hungry crowd ringed them. A man in a tattered black tunic tossed down his coin and placed a wager on Macruarie.

  I slid closer on the bench to Christiana until my thigh touched hers. “They look like a pair of cocks about to spar. Will it come to a fight, you think?”

  Two places down, Crawford glanced at us as he called for a serving woman. She scurried forth, lifted a jug of ale from her hip and began to fill his cup. Her attention wandered to the two men eyeing each other. Ale spilled over the rim of the cup. Crawford cursed at her, even as she pulled a rag from the cord slung about her waist and mopped the table dry.

  Bemused, Christiana smiled. “Those two? Sioltaich Macruarie is my cousin. He speaks affectionately of Tormod MacLeod. Always has. They’ve been dear friends for twenty years and have yet to kill each other. This morning Sioltaich betrothed his daughter to Tormod’s son. This...” – she flapped her hand dismissively – “this posturing is nothing but a quibble over details, I assure you. Something about the number of cattle to be included in the girl’s wedding price.” With a wink, she slid her wine goblet to me in offer. “But I do think the entertainment will be, shall I say, ‘lively’ this evening. I suggest you slink shyly away if you don’t like blood.”

  “I bathe in it regularly.” I lifted the goblet, nodding my head in thanks, and drank from it. Clove-spiced sweetness tingled on my tongue. I swallowed and took another drink, deeper, letting its warmth slide down my throat, flood my innards and flow into my limbs. Sleeping as roughly as I had these last months – cloaked in salt-spray in a galley’s belly, beneath the leaky roof a fisherman’s hut and out in the brittle-cold open on rocky ground – had settled a rheum in my bones. The comfort of a proper bed beckoned, stuffed full with goose feathers and scattered with pillows atop smooth sheets. What heaven that would be!

  Christiana’s fingers stroked my arm. I slumped against her to keep from swaying, barely aware now of the brewing quarrel. Her head drifted to my shoulder, the scent of lavender oil wafting to my nose. I reached over and wound my finger in a rebellious curl at her temple.

  “Shall I put a stop to it,” I asked, even though I could barely have stood solidly, let alone stopped a fight, “before they actually do kill each other this time?”

  “Who?” She lifted her head to look at me, blinking quizzically. Her gaze swept the hall until it found the brawling pair surrounded by whooping onlookers. “Oh, them? Don’t bother with them. They’ve fought before.”

  “I thought you said they were old friends? That their son and daughter were betrothed?” My words were slurring, I could tell, but her nearness coaxed them freely from me. I traced my finger over her cheekbone, around the curve of her ear.

  “Must friends always agree? Do allies not differ, lovers not quarrel?” She turned her gaze on me and I thought, for a moment, that in the depths of her pupils I could see the softness of the woman behind the strong façade.

  I took her hand then, turned it over, and brought it to my lips to lay a kiss, light as a whisper, in her palm. “You’ll show me your lands, tomorrow? Alone? I’ve a proposition for you.”

  On the other side of the hall, MacLeod jabbed his sword tauntingly at Macruarie. The mob pressed closer, hooting and stomping.

  “You wish to go someplace quieter? More... private?” She brought her mouth close to mine, her breath tickling my chin. “Now?”

  Crawford slammed his cup down.

  Air hissed between Christiana’s teeth. She drew herself up rod-straight, glaring sideways at him. “Lord Crawford, you will expel those two from the hall this moment – from the grounds entirely if they refuse to make peace. They still owe me for damages from the last time.”

  Fists clenched bloodless, jaw twitching, Crawford rose. Angrily, he whirled away and strode to the far end of the hall. He grabbed Macruarie by the forearm and yanked him to the floor. Macruarie landed with splayed legs, his sword skittering over the planks and clanging against the leg of a bench.

  “Causing trouble again, Macruarie?” Crawford twisted a hand in the back of his shirt and dragged him kicking across the floor. “Best leave now or I’ll cleave your bollocks from between your stumpy legs with your own axe.”

  When Crawford reached the outer door, two servants flung it open. With one brutal heave, he hurled Sioltaich Macruarie down the steps. The man’s screams of fury were squelched by the slamming door.

  I pushed my empty cup away. “I’ve no wish to intrude if Crawford and you are –”

  “No,” she said tersely, “we’re nothing. We never were.”

  But her fingernails curled deeply into my arm told me that wasn’t so. Jealousy between lovers is a vile thing and I had no wish to become the object of Crawford’s spite. I realized, however, that she had thought that by ‘proposition’ I meant something more.

  And I had not corrected her.

  The sun concealed behind high clouds, we set out on horse late the next morning, just the two of us, although Crawford had led her palfrey from the stables for her and made sure the cinch was tight before he helped her up into the saddle, neither of them saying a word.

  Over undulating moors, we rode side by side. The horses’ hooves crunched softly over dry, yellowed grass and occasionally clacked on lichen-covered rock. Our breaths blew billows of steam into the crisp air. Snow, freshly fallen, rippled in low drifts between sparse clumps of winter-dead heather. Not wholly impervious to the December cold, Christiana wore a long, woolen cloak edged in fox fur, but with her hood swept back so that her flame-red hair fanned outward from her face.

  She led us to a promontory, overlooking the endless water. Below, seabirds huddled against the cliff-face on tiny ledges. Only the tireless among them dared to battle the wind and glide above the white-capped waves. I slid from my saddle and locked my hands about her waist to help her down.

  “Out there,” I said, indicating a point of rock that thrust up from the water far out, “that is your island?”

  “Hmm, yes, that one and the one beyond it. Those three specks to the left. The hills beyond Tirrim. Great swaths of forest and moor to the east and north. The dirt beneath your boots. Everything you see – and much that you don’t.” Chin lofted proudly, Christiana gathered her cloak across her to ward off the cold fingers of the wind. As she walked along the cliff edge, her mare followed her, its reins trailing in the snow. It nuzzled her.

  She stopped to stroke its velvety nose and turned around to face me. “Am I different from her – your queen?”

  In one heavy thump of my heart, the serenity of the past day was smashed by old, familiar sorrows. A pang of guilt followed quickly, as I realized I had not even thought of Elizabeth since arriving at Tirrim. Christiana’s charms had ensnared me, allowed me to exist in the moment: carefree, comfortable, complacent even – until now. Now, I ached. Ached for some fleeting pleasure to displace my loss, make me forget...

  Christian
a moved within my reach, her cloak clutched tight to full breasts. I looked her over. There was nothing subtle about her. She flaunted her sensuality, invited playful courtship and teased unfortunate suitors to madness. If Elizabeth was the delicate flower sprung from melting snows, Christiana was the sprawling oak, deeply rooted and broadly crowned, unbroken by frost or flood. I opened my arms, inviting her into my embrace. “As the sun differs from the moon.”

  “And which am I?” she asked, fitting herself to me. As she lifted her face to mine, wind pulled at her hair, tossing it over her bewitching eyes. “Sun... or moon?”

  “Sun.”

  She smiled. “Warm, bright?”

  “Hot, blinding. Overpowering, perhaps.”

  “I could give you so much, Robert: a fleet of galleys, fighting men, arms, supplies.” Her deerskin gloved fingers slid up my arms, went round my neck and locked together. “Give me what I crave – and I will give you anything you need. Anything.”

  “And you crave... what?”

  “You, Robert. As I always have. As Eve must have craved Adam’s touch. Guinevere – Lancelot. And Delilah – Sampson. So I desire you. Madly. From the first time I saw you. It was my wedding day and it was you I wanted to be with. I have never stopped wanting that.” She laid her head on my shoulder, pouting lips brushing the crook of my neck. Her hands drifted downward, wandered beneath my cloak, fingertips making loose swirls over my shirt. “If you leave this time without coming to my bed, Robert, I vow I shall throw myself into the sea from this very place as you sail away.”

  Mother of God, she was tempting. What man, but one already cold in his grave, could have looked at her and not wanted her? I was no exception, but this threat – to kill herself – was preposterous.

  “You will do no such thing.” I caught her hand as it brushed across my chest. She gasped, stiffening in my arms. “Rather, you’ll console your unrequited lust on some other man from your hall, like Crawford whose protection you seem to need... or some eager, trembling, fuzz-faced lad who creeps beneath your sheets by night, pleases you to perfection and is gone at first light. Aye, you are clever, Christiana. Clever and undeniably beautiful. You play all those men against each other, telling each one in turn that you love him and no other. Your gifts serve you now, but one day when what remains of your youth fades away, they will fail you.”