Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  I looked to the sky where the sun labored to climb. A lion-sized hunger growled inside my empty belly. Priests floated by, tearing off crumbs from loaves of coarse bread and offering sips of water from a community bowl. My greaves pressed painfully into my shinbones as I knelt. Down the lines, snatches of prayer drifted heavenward. Men took a pinch of earth and placed it beneath their tongues. Here and there a cough broke the silence, a horse snorted, a weapon scraped against a shield. My horse’s sour breath warmed my neck, then his lips brushed against my coif and shoulder plates. He nudged me forward. I caught myself with my left hand, still grasping the hilt of my sword in my right as the tip of its blade dug into the earth.

  “Damn you,” I muttered, as I twisted around to scold an absent squire for not minding my mischievous horse better.

  “If it’s the English you’re referring to,” Abbot Maurice said, “Our Lord will do the damning, not you.”

  “I was not.” I scraped my dirty palm on a tuft of grass, then wrapped it around the hilt of my sword, interlocking my fingers and touching my forehead to the crossguard. “Your blessing, Father.”

  “First, a confession, Master James?”

  “God knows my sins and to Him I will answer. Must I need repeat them aloud before everyone here?”

  Indignant, the abbot snapped his Holy Gospel shut and snorted at me with the peculiar familiarity of a barnyard pig. “Given the circumstances, I would say a private confession is out of the question. Now, I haven’t time to barter with you over conveniences and matters of trivial privacy. Have you anything to confess?”

  “Nothing I care to admit.”

  “May God have abundant mercy on your soul, James Douglas. Given all your deeds thus far, you need it as much as any man here.”

  I peered at him over the iron wings of the crossguard of my sword. “Is that an admonishment... or a compliment, dear Father?”

  Shocked at my glibness, he tucked his chin into the loose folds of his neck and rattled his egg-shaped head at me. I dropped my eyes as his fat fingers pressed into my scalp. He rumbled in Latin, parts of it yet familiar to my faded memory, and quickly moved on to the next man beside me – Boyd, who had tenfold the number of sins to his score, but had figured long ago that you could commit as many as you pleased so long as some holy man purged you of them, as if none then ever counted against him. Boyd had also learned that you did not argue with Abbot Maurice unless you wanted your own private sermon and a staff cracked across your knees.

  When the Abbott had moved further down the line, Boyd cleared his throat, spat at the ground and elbowed me in the side. “Tell them what they want to hear. They’ll leave you the bloody hell alone then.”

  I cracked a smile, but it turned to a grimace as I stood. Pain sliced through my calf where the cow had stomped on my leg at Roxburgh – a pain I would never be rid of. Beneath my left mail sleeve was a deep indentation where the arrow had pierced my arm when we had scaled the walls at Perth on a frigid winter night. I glanced down at my knuckles, riddled with lines of pink, the outer two fingers on my left hand gnarled when they had broken a fall from my horse more than once. I had not so much the want to look after my soul this day, as I did to preserve my body through to tomorrow. If I made it that far... I would re-examine the matter of salvation then. “Priests are mere men, Boyd. They stumble like everyone else, then throw on their robes and tell us all to repent. Pious, filthy liars, most of them.”

  Boyd gathered his shield from the ground and stood. “You’re in a righteous and uplifting mood today, Master Douglas.”

  “I’m in a mood for killing Englishman, Boyd. That’s what I am. Join me?”

  “Well, I didn’t come here to be blessed over some dead monk’s bones or doused with holy water from Ireland.”

  “Her name was Saint Skeoch and the water comes from a well in St. Ninian’s. She was Irish, though what brought her here or the cause for her sainthood I don’t know. As for St. Fillan’s bones, Robert would not begin this battle without them. They give the men faith that God is with them in this. If that’s what they need, I say give it to them.” I gathered the reins of my horse. “Will you go back to your wife when it’s all over? How long since you’ve seen her?”

  “Five years. But she died two years ago... tertian fever, or some such thing, so one of my sons told me.”

  “You never said.”

  “Thought I did. I had a lot to drink that night, so maybe it just didn’t make sense when I said it.”

  “You’re drunk every other time I see you, Boyd.”

  “Ah? Well, it was one of those times that I learned about it. She was a strong woman. A good mother. And a fist like a smith’s hammer. Fought me every time I took her, but we both liked it that way. I won’t marry again, though. Got myself a woman, down in Lanark, when I can get there.”

  “I’m happy for you, Boyd.”

  “And you? Do you have a woman?”

  “Had women, aye. But not ‘a’ woman. No, I don’t have one all to myself now.” The implication was that I had been with many. The true count, in all my life, totaled two. One had been a prostitute in Paris, when I was a student there, that I nearly knocked over while running from a merchant whose bag of coin I’d stolen. She offered me a hiding place and her sexual favors in return for a few of those coins. Half curious, half afraid to go out in the street again for fear of being discovered, I took her up on her offer. The whole affair lasted not five minutes and in the diversion, an accomplice of hers in turn stole the money from me. The second time had been with a camp follower while encamped in Selkirk Forest two years past, who, it turned out, already had a husband. For that I suffered guilt, because the man was one of my own soldiers, who I suspect, never knew of his wife’s infidelity. Since then, I’d been too preoccupied to make any effort to impress a woman.

  “I seem to have a reputation that precedes me,” I said. “Scares them.” That was a scalding lie and Boyd knew it. Exceedingly shy with women, I compensated for my lack of courage there in battle. Put pretty before me and I was tongue-tied and a bumbling fool.

  “Pity, James. You’ve a fine face and an honest manner. Perhaps a wee bit less manners would serve you better?” He tugged at his beard, extracting a thought from beneath that big, red mat of hair. “I’ve a daughter, seventeen – ripe for marriage.”

  “Who said I was looking for a wife? If I had a wife, just where would I keep her?” I pulled myself up into the comfort of my saddle. The smells of leather, horse hide and newly oiled metal revived fresh memories of hard-won fights and times spent haunting English armies from the shadows of the woods and hills. I could hardly recall my life before such times.

  “What about Lady de Fiennes? She’s a widow now, aye?”

  “I have no home, Boyd, and that would be a sore point for any respectable woman. Besides, she’s English.”

  “I hear your father took your mother captive and held her until she agreed to marry him. She was English, wasn’t she?”

  “They were in love, Boyd. Her father wouldn’t allow the marriage – at least not until she became pregnant with me.”

  “You could always –”

  “What? Take off for England? I haven’t time right now and I doubt she’d be willing. That’s not my way, Boyd.” It was true I’d never be as bold as my father – stealing a women with the intent to put a child in her – but I had thought often of Lady de Fiennes. Never before had a woman’s beauty so haunted me.

  I searched passing faces for Archibald, Thomas Randolph, and Gil de la Haye... but saw no sign of them. Old Alexander Lindsay strode by, his sword at his hip and his eyes as keen as ever. Close behind him, Neil Campbell moved wordlessly among a grumbling clutch of spearmen. I looked toward the carse, broken by coarse tufts of marsh grass and bordered by the deeply cut, looping burn. Across it wound the bridle path, now empty. Between our scattering lines on the slopes of New Park and the mixed expanse of the carse, the Scottish divisions were gathering up in expectation. A year’s wort
h of anticipation... and dread. Centuries’ worth of struggle. All of us waiting to offer blood in exchange for hope.

  Boyd squeezed his rebellious head of hair beneath his helmet. Idly, he swung his axe upside down at his side. “Fine day for a battle, aye?”

  “If there is such a thing, aye.” I tugged the reins of my horse to turn, then pulled back on them. “Boyd? If you see Gil or Randolph before... before it begins, tell them something for me, will you?”

  He shrugged at me, curious.

  “Greater love has no man than he would lay down his life for his friends.”

  “Och!” He spit at the ground and scowled. “Priest’s dribble. Speak for yourself, James Douglas. If it should come to preserving you or me, then I can’t say I love you that bloody much.”

  “You’re a goddamn liar, Boyd. Tell them, will you?”

  I clucked at my mount and went to my place beside my cousin, Walter Stewart. Admirably, the manhood of Scotland bore out the tedium of the day, maintaining their lines, weapons at hand, as they passed flasks of water. King Robert, who had shaped this quarreling mob into a cohesive and skilled machine of war in an impossibly short span, was perhaps the most anxious of all. If any of us pondered upon the possibility of losing our lives this day or the next, it was all menial when compared to what he gambled.

  The reflection of a late afternoon sun sparked off the plain, golden circlet adorning his helmet as he sat on his pony between his own division, guarding the north side of the Roman road, and mine. He had wiled the day riding along the road so that all his soldiers could see him, lending courage in the bare essence of his presence – his own eye watchful of the carse beyond the ghostly village and the road from Edinburgh to Stirling that shot through a densely wooded archway before leading out to the more sparsely wooded slopes of New Park.

  “How many were there?” Walter asked me. “More than at Falkirk or Stirling, would you say?”

  “I was not at either place, Walter. I would not dare to guess.”

  “But can we beat them, James? Beat the English here, on our own ground?” His words were more trepidation than anticipation. He would wear himself out with worry before the English came into sight.

  “Robert believes we can,” I told him... and said nothing more, for as I looked toward the road by where Robert stood vigil on his sturdy gray pony, there... a knight rode at a full gallop from the place where the road just north of the burn yielded itself to New Park.

  An English knight, his lance held high, riding toward our king. And Robert, who had all the time in the world to retreat to his own lines, waited there to meet him.

  Ch. 34

  Edward II – Bannockburn, 23rd of June, 1314

  Sir Philip Mowbray knelt on the road before me wearing a coat of dust. He cradled his helmet on his knee between gloved hands.

  “I trust you came bearing good news, Mowbray,” I said, “or else it would have been better of you not to come at all. You appear much wearier than the last time I laid eyes on you.”

  “I do not think I have been in your presence for many years, sire. This past year has been worrisome. It has taken its toll on everyone.”

  “The Bruce as well, I trust?”

  He raised his eyes, bloodshot from the fine grit kicked up by pounding hooves on the road. “I would not know.”

  Above the trees, a lacework of clouds in a pale, blue sky was broken by the rugged, dark rock of Stirling’s base. At its peak, the fortress stood guard over the broad valley of the Forth, beckoning me like a purpose unto which I was born. To either side of me, Gilbert de Clare and Pembroke were mounted. Directly behind me, young Hugh Despenser. We were but miles from our destination and as we had approached a small stream that fed into the Forth, the whole English army was grinding to a halt while we gathered to receive our messenger and determine a precise course of action.

  “So, Mowbray,” I said, “where is Scotland’s honor? Crouched in the wood with slings and rocks in their usual cowardly manner?”

  His eyebrows lifted well onto his deeply lined forehead. “I came here by a very wide route west of New Park, sire. The roads through there are impassable for an army of this magnitude. The Scots have done good work of damming even the slightest deer-path.”

  Pembroke spoke. “So if not huddled there, where do we find them?”

  “Not celebrating at Stirling?” I added with a flare of shock, imagining the worst.

  “No, sire,” Mowbray said. “Bruce is utterly a man of his word. You have met the terms that Edward Bruce and I agreed to by arriving this day within the assigned limits for relieving the castle. One day more and –”

  “One more day and your head would be somewhere else than upon your shoulders.” I glared at my counselors in consternation. “But you failed to answer the question. Where precisely do we find the Scots?”

  “Arrayed on the slope falling between the woods of New Park and the Bannock Burn, sire. They will not let you pass without a fight, I regret to say.”

  “Regret why?”

  “You do not owe them a battle, sire. I urge you to send forth an envoy, reminding them of the terms, but not until after you have taken your army far west and to Stirling.”

  “But you yourself have said we would have to go a long way about. This army is a large one, Mowbray. We would lose days by that fashion. Furthermore, we have not dragged ourselves from the virtual paradise of England into the steaming bowels of hell known as Scotland only to skulk behind the arses of our enemies as if we lived in fear of them. This is the army of England. My army. Even the might of the continent cannot stand against it. We have no hesitation of sweeping aside Highland rabble to claim what now belongs to us. Why is it that you think they will not flee when they lay eyes on this?” I swept a hand behind me at the lumbering column, stretching miles yet down the road along which we had come by way of Edinburgh, Berwick, London...

  “They very well might, sire,” Hugh contemplated. “And yet, they might not.”

  Everyone turned to look at Hugh, who was wearing a bemused grin. As if his remark were an insignificant thought, considered and passed over, Hugh swung his leg down and slipped the other foot from his stirrup, landing nimbly in his armor upon the baked dirt of the road.

  Behind him, Hereford jammed his helmet onto his head and clenched his reins in both hands. “Send me with the cavalry along the road. Let us give Bruce a test of his mettle.”

  “You’re too eager, Hereford,” Gilbert berated. “Stirling is relieved. Our footsoldiers are weary and our horses parched. We require a day of rest.”

  “To what end, Gilbert?” I pressed. “We’re all ready to fight and yet you would prefer to rest?”

  “What end?” Gilbert echoed. “To renew ourselves. You can’t possibly ask them to face the Scots now. Twenty-two miles yesterday, you whipped them along. Another ten today and now you want to throw them at the feet of several thousand fresh and exhilarated foes, hungering for their blood? Edward, pause a moment and consider it, damn it. Hold back one day. Sweet Jesus in heaven – one day! You have naught to lose, Edward.”

  “My pride, Gilbert. I would lose my pride if we dallied here one more day. Already it has been chafed raw. It is not enough that we are within sight of Stirling. By tomorrow we shall ride through its gatehouse. And if Robert of Scotland cares to throw himself across our path, then he will be trampled for his folly. So take the cavalry, on that road and across that stream, and beat the bloody bastards back into the woods.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Surely, Gilbert, my eyes will never see the likes of that. Not from you.” That my constant companion since boyhood would turn against me sat with impossible unease upon my conscience. He was weary, irritable. We all were. Yet it remained that I was his king, the overlord of every man on the isle of Britain, and I had long ago wearied of being defied. I held his gaze and laid down the gauntlet. “But if you do, then take your disloyal, insubordinate face, alone, back down that road on which we just came –
all the way back to blessed England.”

  Hereford spurred his horse so that it lurched forward, nearly trampling the still-kneeling Mowbray who scurried aside, and pranced before Gilbert. “It is my right to lead the vanguard! Mine, I say!” He flailed his boulder-like fist at Gilbert. “I am High Constable of England and by tradition I should lead this army onto the battlefield. It’s bloodless men that balk at a fight. Let me ride out and I vow I will shatter them in the first blow!”

  Gilbert’s face reddened in resentment. “Oh, great, bloody Christ! What will you do if they don’t run at the sight of your ugly face or fall like flies in the wake of your rotten odor? What if they fight and fight well?”

  Hereford held his breath. His eyes bulged. His hand plunged across the lower part of his torso and yanked his restless sword from its scabbard.

  Anticipating Hereford’s actions, Pembroke maneuvered his mount between them. He thrust open palms at both men. “A brief moment, lords.” He held his arms aloft until both men showed signs of settling. “We cannot take the Scots from behind in New Park, as Mowbray has advised, nor bypass them by that route as our king has so sagely pointed out. The Scots will either flee or hold their ground. What we need to do is test them. If they flee, the road to Stirling is clear. If they stand, we will have time to array ourselves before the morrow’s dawn.”

  “So you,” Gilbert delved, his countenance set as hard as granite, “would send our cavalry forward today? Without reconnaissance? Make good your reasoning, Lord Pembroke, because I am hard pressed to see the hurry in all this.”

  “We have all the reconnaissance we require from Sir Philip Mowbray.” Pembroke eased back against the cantle of his saddle. “Besides, we have come this far without them taking so much as a swat at us... and when has Robert the Bruce ever not run from a fair fight, earl?”