Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  “Aye... but no more than that.”

  “Then I shall tell you, though I wish to heaven I did not have to be the bearer of this news. They were seized near Tain at St. Duthac’s shrine while seeking sanctuary and were immediately sent to the king in London. At Westminster, the Earl of Atholl was hung from a high gallows. His head rests on a pike on London Bridge. Your wife, Eliz –”

  Robert held up his hand, shaking his head emphatically. His voice cracked. “No, no more news. Say nothing, Aithne, nothing. I cannot bear more.”

  “But they live, my lord. They live.” She clasped his face in her hands. “In a sad, awful and lonely way, but they live.”

  “How so?” Edward interjected.

  “King Edward ordered your sister Mary to be placed in a cage. It hangs from Roxburgh Castle.”

  In the murmuring press of the crowd, Neil Campbell groaned and hung his head. “The bastard,” he muttered, and shoved his way free. “Bloody bastard!”

  Neil’s voice echoed across the valley and when it finally died away, everyone turned again to hear Aithne’s news – for we all knew there was more.

  “Marjorie was sentenced to the same fate – dangling from the Tower of London. Some say the king took pity on her because of her tender years, for she has since been removed. By rumor, she is at Walton, I hear. Christina... some other nunnery, but I do not know where. And Elizabeth, her father being an earl, was spared the humiliation. She was for a time in London, but is now under heavy guard at Burstwick-on-Holderness.”

  Like some ancient stone that would weather yet another storm, Robert stood unwavering. But only so for a moment. His brow furrowed, his chin drifted downward and his hands began to tremble slightly.

  “There’s more. Better you hear it all at once, so you know.” Aithne lifted up his fingers in her own and squeezed them gently. She drew a deep breath, hesitating long before she began again, her voice quaking. “Thomas, Alexander and Sir Reginald Crawford were attacked as they landed in Galloway. Crawford was murdered on the shore. Thomas and Alexander met their fate, the same as Nigel’s, in Carlisle.”

  Robert tore from her and shoved his way past the onlookers. In moments, he disappeared through the trees. Aithne collapsed, spent with the burden she had just unloaded. Edward knelt and put his arms around her. The two of them huddled there within the hovering circle of men – Aithne with her face hidden in her hands and Edward holding her against him. After a while, Edward lifted Aithne up and took little Niall by the hand and led them away.

  The rest of us drifted apart and went back to our blankets, spread upon the ground beneath the trees or in the cave. Cooking fires were struck up as night came on. Robert was not to be seen. I left the fire I was sharing with Gil and Torquil and wandered through a nearby stand of woods toward a little stream cutting between two hills.

  I found Robert sitting on the damp hillside, gazing up at the stars. His knees were pulled up to his chest, his arms locked tight around them. He glanced, red-eyed, at me, then laid his forehead on his knees.

  “Her son is seven, she said.”

  I sank down a few feet away. “Her husband must have been proud.”

  He looked at me over the ridge of his forearm. “She never loved him.”

  “Ah.” I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know more, but he was going to tell me anyway.

  “Aithne and I... we knew each other then. We have known each other for a long time. She was the first woman I was ever with. I wanted to marry her. My father always thought her beneath me. Her own father loathed my family. Called us ‘pretenders’, false princes... me, a worthless rebel. When I met Elizabeth I never thought about Aithne again. Not until I saw her four years later – in Edward’s bed. It was not their first time. That much I could tell. Nor was it to be their last. How very like him to take what he wants without thought or care.”

  My admiration of Edward Bruce did not extend beyond the battlefield. He thought himself the center of the world and the sole reason for God creating it. To him, women were merely another conquest. “The boy, do you know who... who...”

  “Who his father is? I don’t know if I should ask. I don’t know if I want to know. Except that Elizabeth and I... we have not been able to have any children so far. If Niall... No, I don’t want to know. It’s better this way. It was better when I didn’t know of him at all. He is indeed fine to look upon. Let Edward believe as he will. The boy is likely his, anyway.” He raked his fingers through the sides of his hair. “In the morning, I’ll send Aithne back to her home. Send her money, when I can. She doesn’t need to be within Edward’s reach.”

  An early summer wind caressed the tall grass of the Carrick hills. The hour was well past midnight, the whole world in slumber, but Robert was far from sleep. The matter of the boy’s patronage was merely a diversion – something to be resolved some other day, if at all. All of heaven must have pressed down on him that night, the weight of it delivered in Aithne’s sad words.

  “What now?” I asked.

  He sighed and raised his face to the endless night sky. “This morning, I thought I knew. Now?” His shoulders plunged lower yet and he thrashed his head around, digging fingernails deep into his scalp. “I’m a selfish bastard... and thrice the fool for what I have long dreamed of.”

  I let the wind answer him. The pines whispered and their branches rustled against one another. What could I have said or done to put such things right? We sat there, not speaking, for a very long time. I had come to know him not as a king, but as a man and a friend, and between friends the familiarity of silence is at times a comfort.

  “It is not for men to know God’s reason,” I finally offered.

  He scoffed lightly. “So they always tell us when things go terribly wrong.”

  “That is what my mother, my real mother, not the Lady Eleanor, used to say.”

  “Your mother – what do you remember of her?”

  I thought for a moment and in my mind an image appeared: “The lilt of her voice as she sang me to sleep, the warmth of her touch, the color of her hair – dark like the night. Just like it is now.” As I looked up at the stars and the darkness surrounding them, an old sadness overcame me. I was a small boy again, witnessing an event the portent of which I could not then comprehend. “On the day that Hugh was born, I crept into her chamber. For nearly two days she had labored. Then, all fell quiet. Knowing something was amiss, I had gone to see. There stood the midwife and a handmaiden, one on each side of the bed. The midwife took a knife and cut open my mother’s belly. She was lying there, her guts open, the blood everywhere – on her, on the sheets, spilling onto the floor. A huge, dark puddle of blood. I screamed at them to stop. I thought they were killing her. I didn’t know that women died sometimes, giving birth.”

  There I paused, recalling that Robert had lost his first wife, Isabella, in childbirth. I could see in the glow of starlight every painful memory clearly on his face. But I went on, even though I had never spoken of it before, because he understood. “The midwife shook me hard until I stopped screaming and told me I had a brother... told me to fetch my father. But I could only stare. The bairn... Hugh, he barely cried. He could not breathe well at first. He was blue. Deep, purple-blue. Ah, Hugh was never right. He is slow to understand, shy as a deer. My father... I think he blamed Hugh for her dying.”

  “Hardly Hugh’s fault,” Robert said.

  “And it is hardly yours for what happened to your brothers. Or Lady Elizabeth or Marjorie. Longshanks is to blame. Longshanks, do y’hear? Do not, for a moment, blame yourself.”

  “Easily said,” Robert muttered.

  “Aye, but hard to remember sometimes.”

  “Leave me, James. I have had enough of words today.”

  “We all have pain, Robert. Any man without it hasn’t really lived, has he?”

  He gave me a damning look that cut deep into my soul. “Do you think that revelation lessens what I feel right now, James? In one day, I have lost three brothers and in the wor
st of ways. Three. In one day. Fair, errant Thomas, who could not find his way, even though the path was well laid out before him. Nigel, who could have shamed the saints. And Alexander... oh, beloved, luminous Alexander. I would have given my own life in return for his. And of the women I love, all are held captive by my greatest enemy. Nothing you say could make any difference at all right now. Now, I told you to leave. So go.”

  Having said all I could, I headed back toward the cave, the wind nudging me down the hill.

  “Is this what it is to live?!” Robert shouted after me.

  I turned and looked up at him, now standing with his arms spread outward. Ten thousand stars glittered behind him in a silver-black dome.

  “Is this...” he raised his hands to the firmament, “this what it is to live?”

  He slid down the hill and halted before me, the whites of his eyes shining bright with anger. “Cold and hunger. Fighting and death. When is the last time you fell asleep without your hands on the hilt of a weapon? Can you even remember what it is like to sleep deeply and not bolt at every little sound? I’ll tell you what it is to live, James. To live is to hold your child, your own flesh, your very blood, in your arms. To see her smile and wrap five tiny fingers around just one of yours. To live is to hold your wife close to you as you lie in bed and listen to her breathe – to fall asleep, one against the other, fitted as if you were made for each other, and then awaken in the dawn when she turns to you and whispers your name. To live is to walk your land, knowing every tree and footpath and foxhole, and come home to the smell of a pot of stew, boiling over the fire. Home, wife, children. That is what it is to live.”

  He gripped my arms fiercely. “Have you ever ached for a woman? Loved her so much, that you thought that every time you lay with her, that if ever she was gone from you, you would die not to have her again? I have, more than once, and...” Suddenly, he let go. His hands slid over his face.

  “Ah, James... how can I go on when I cannot live like this?”

  I touched his forearm, but it did not seem like enough. So I put my arms around him. His head fell against my shoulder.

  “You‘ll wake up tomorrow,” I told him, “like the rest of us, and go on. Someday, the answer will come to you. But I cannot say when, Robert. Only... have faith in God’s plan.”

  “Faith?” He took a deep breath, wiping away tears as he pulled back. “Aye, faith. I swear to you James, on my life, I’ll bring them home.”

  “I know you will.” I draped an arm about his shoulder, guiding him down the grassy slope, slick with the first drops of dew. “And we’ll pummel those damned English so hard that they’ll never come back to take our families and homes again.”

  Ch. 10

  Robert the Bruce – Ayrshire, 1307

  The road to Cumnock stretched emptily. Sun and clouds flirted above. Below, the grass lay parched and sparse amid rock-strewn hills. Scattered behind the ridge that ran along the road, some of my men dozed in the warm, heady air.

  Gil alerted us to the first sign of a light column of English, drawn out in a line just four across and straggling out lazily a quarter mile along the road. The Earl of Pembroke’s pennons flopped in the breezeless air. Pembroke sat his horse at the fore with his nose held high. I crept along the ridge to gain a better view and crouched down beside Gil.

  “How many on foot?” I asked, pushing away a bead of sweat from between my brows.

  Gil squinted. He flexed his mailed glove. His lips moved as he counted the rows to himself. “Between a hundred seventy and a hundred eighty. Twenty... no, twenty-four horses.”

  I looked around. My men were drawn up tightly on the far side of the ridge where the English could not see them. We had left our horses behind, choosing the sloping, wooded ground as our advantage.

  “Shall we attack when they draw abreast, just below?” Gil said.

  “No. Wait until they swing around the bend to the west. That other hill there butts up against the road. The narrower the better. They’ll knock each other flat trying to get to us.”

  He nodded and sank back down. “I’ll tell the others.”

  Gil slunk off and spoke to Edward, then Boyd. The English slogged tediously along. Longshanks would have driven them along far more rapidly. Pembroke, however, was cautious and calculating. At length, the English began to round the bend below. I gestured to Boyd to wake two men near him who were sleeping. Gil gave the signal for our handful of archers to fit their arrows to the strings of their short bows. There was no sound but the tromping of English feet and the sharp breathing of my own men.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw James sprinting as nimbly as a cat over the rocks and between the trees. He vaulted over a fallen log and dived to his knees beside me.

  “It’s a trap,” he forced out, his chest heaving.

  I yanked him in close and whispered, “What? How?”

  “A lure. A diversion. The column on the road is a diversion. John of Lorne is to the north, just over the next line of hills, bearing hard and fast on our rear. Pembroke means to draw us down into the glen along the road while Lorne comes up from behind. We stand no chance. Our routes are constricted to the east and west by several bogs – we could cut through them, but just as well could Lorne and his men.”

  Damn. I had not wagered on Lorne teaming with Pembroke so soon. “How many?”

  “More than at Dalry.”

  Think quickly, quickly. It is the measure of a shrewd commander and your men will judge you by such.

  “Somehow,” James began, his voice low so that no one else could hear, “they have received word of our position.”

  We were fewer in numbers. Fewer in arms. Trapped. Fight... or flee? Ah, how would we ever evict the English from Scotland if we were forever running from them?

  “Robert? What do I tell them?”

  The English cannot beat you if they do not meet you. Fight by your own rules, on your own ground.

  My thumb stroked the binding on the hilt of my sword. “That we will not fight, James. The odds are poor – deplorable, actually. And I’ve no wish to serve as a martyr today.”

  We had only minutes to spare. I split the men into three groups. Edward took off with the largest number to the southeast, to draw Pembroke after him. James and the fastest on foot shot straight northward to taunt Lorne into pursuing them. I picked up my bow, took the ten nearest to me and we slipped away to the east, up into the hills, thickly nestled with trees and broken terrain littered with boulders and hard by the river, where we knew the places to cross, should the need arise.

  We clung to the high ground, running a trail etched roughly over the jagged hills. But the further we went, the fewer the trees were, the harder the ground to navigate, the more and more tired we became. The rocky ground slowed us. Twice I stumbled, fell and cut my hands. As I reached the pinnacle of a bare crag, I paused to wait for my men. I looked to the ground behind us. There, a mob of English soldiers trickled over a far ridge. But worse than the sight of them was the sound that came before them – the baying of a hound, hard on a scent.

  “Dogs,” Neil said, as the rest caught up and reclaimed their breath.

  I squinted into the sun and there at their front, maybe less than half a mile from us but following the very same steps as ours, I could see a single hound pulling on a lead, his nose to the ground. Every so often came the deep, joyous bellow from his throat signaling his quarry ahead.

  “Not dogs,” I said. “A dog. My dog.”

  Torquil twirled his spear in one hand. I grabbed his arm.

  “Come with me, Torquil. The rest of you, split in two: one group to the south, one to the east. Torquil and I will follow the river. I dare not think it, but I fear it is I alone that the hound follows. The river is our only chance of throwing him.”

  Neil nodded and they went their different ways. Torquil and I ran as fast as our legs would allow. Stones flew from under our feet and skittered downhill. My lungs burned. My heart was near bursting. I picked the harde
st ground I could find, plunging into a small ravine and then up a loosely soiled slope. As long as we were just beyond eyeshot they would have to follow the dog.

  Torquil’s legs were long and sinewy, making him a good match for my uncommon speed. I had picked him to accompany me, because I knew that he would lay down his life even as death itself bore screaming down on him. I had seen it in him on the sea as cold rain sliced at us and on land when our foes’ arrows clouded the sky like a flock of jackdaws blotting out the sun as they swooped above fields of corn at harvest-time.

  We ran... and ran. But still, we heard the dog – its long throaty bawl as it paused in confusion where we had turned or crossed over our own tracks or cut across rocky ground. The yip of exultation as it took up our scent again. The tenor of its cry sent a knife through my heart. I knew it as I knew my own voice in my ears. Coll, my own dog – taken from Kildrummy when Nigel was captured, no doubt. As the wind gathered strength, my hope waned. Coll would follow us more quickly now. He would leave the warm scent of our steps on the earth and cast his unfailing nose to the air. Somehow, we must get downwind of him or by God’s eyes he would trail us to exhaustion and sure death. My loyal dog would find his way to me even if the very flames of hell rose up before him.

  Ch. 11

  Robert the Bruce – Ayrshire, 1307

  To the east, the ground plunged away to a river, so shallow that a man or dog could walk across it, so narrow that our scent would have easily carried over. The forest, where we might have had some chance of throwing Coll off our trail, was far to the west of us now. Torquil searched my face as I stood there in mounting panic. Impatient, he pulled at my sleeve and together we slid down the hillside, our legs churning. Loose soil and rock clattered down into the ravine where the meandering river coursed through it. We leapt up to our calves into the cold water and with knees thrust high we ran upstream for what seemed like a long distance. Sharp rocks jabbed at the soles of my boots. My limbs twisted and tangled as I struggled to keep balance.