by Robyn Young
Piers’s hand dropped away. There was silence. Edward steeled himself to it, refusing to relent. After a moment he heard a creak of boots.
‘Forgive me.’
Hearing the voice come from the floor, Edward realised Piers had dropped to his knees. He turned.
Piers’s head was bowed, strands of his black hair falling in front of his face. ‘All I want is to serve you, my lord. If, by my actions, I have given any other impression it was done in ignorance and I beg your pardon for it.’ He glanced up at the prince. ‘I thought, with more authority – more influence in court – I could better support you.’ Piers continued, his voice sharpening. ‘I have seen how Thomas of Lancaster, your own cousin, belittles you and how Humphrey and others in your father’s circle treat you as if you were a wayward child in need of disciplining rather than the king you will soon become. The reason I hoped you would petition your father on my behalf is so that I may stand as a loyal ally in the face of those who do not have your best interests at heart. Now I am a knight of your household, with little power except that which you have generously bestowed upon me. You have let me be your champion on the tournament ground. Let me be the same at court.’
Edward softened. Reaching down, he took Piers’s hands and pulled the knight to his feet. ‘I want that too.’ His brow furrowed. ‘But I fear my father’s response.’
‘As I have told you, the king will respect you if you stand before him as a man and tell him what you want. You’ve said yourself how much he abhors weakness.’
‘I will go to him,’ Edward said quietly.
Piers smiled. He put a gloved finger under Edward’s chin and lifted it. ‘Look him in the eye when you ask him.’
‘Again, my lord king, I beg your forgiveness for not speaking out sooner.’
King Edward watched Thomas of Lancaster rise from bended knee and leave the chamber. When the doorward closed the door behind his nephew, the king sat back in his chair, the strength of his feelings flooding his weakened body with new life. He gripped the chair’s carved arms, feeling an intense need to crush something. Thomas’s words buzzed in his mind like angry bees, stinging him with poisonous images. The worst of it was that although he felt fury, revulsion and betrayal, he did not feel surprise. He had known this. Deep down, he had known it for years.
The war in Scotland, this war without end, had distracted him from all else. It wasn’t just England that had suffered in his absence, bridges and roads falling into disrepair, towns taken over by thieves and racketeers, his people starving. His son, too, had fallen to ruin. He had thought, by sending him on campaign as a leader of men, that the damage could be reversed; that his son would be moulded by battle and bloodshed into the man who would continue his legacy when he was gone.
Edward closed his eyes, thinking of the children he had fathered – nineteen in total – and all those he had buried. He thought of serious little John, who had reached five years, and sweet smiling Henry who made it to six. Then there was Alfonso, dark like his beautiful Castilian mother, tall like him, a fine and fearless rider with a clear head on his young shoulders. Certain the boy would be his heir, he had poured all his ambition and expectation into him. Edward had been at Caernarfon, celebrating his conquest of Wales, when messengers had come from Westminster to tell him Alfonso was dead. His hopes had therefore turned to his one surviving son, his namesake, then a squalling infant in his nurse’s arms.
The king opened his eyes and stared into the flames leaping in the brazier beside him. Was it that his seed had been weakened, diluted over the years? Animals, after all, produced runts at the end of a litter. But his son had never been a weakling, indeed he was the very image of him: long-limbed, athletic and handsome. What had caused such a hideous defect in his character? Piers. He had to be the cause – the root of the infection. Edward gripped the chair. God strike him down, he had invited the young man into his household, had raised him as his own.
There was a rap on the door. As the doorward pulled it open, the king saw his son filling the frame. The prince entered. Edward felt his heart begin to thump, images invoked by Thomas’s revelation rising in his mind to torment him. His son, who looked as though he had just got off his horse, came forward, tracking mud across the rug.
‘My lord king,’ he murmured, bowing his head.
Edward realised his hands, white-knuckled on the chair’s arms, were shaking, such was the intensity of his emotion. His son seemed not to notice.
‘Dunaverty Castle fell to me, my lord, but I’m afraid I must tell you Robert Bruce was not to be found among the garrison.’ The prince spoke in a rapid monotone, which the king recognised as one he slipped into when afraid. ‘I sent word to John MacDougall to continue the search for him along the coast and—’
‘Sir Humphrey gave me his report.’
The prince pressed his lips together. For a moment, he looked as though he might turn and walk from the room, then he blurted, ‘My lord, I ask that you grant me permission to give the County of Ponthieu to Piers.’
For a long moment, the king did not speak. A log burst in the brazier, making the prince flinch.
Then, Edward was pushing himself from the chair and rushing at his son. Before the young man could move the king had seized him by the hair. Wrenching the prince’s head down with both hands, Edward felt one of his nails break against his son’s scalp. ‘You bastard son of a bitch!’
‘Father!’
‘You would give your lands away? You who never gained any? You would give them to him! God damn you! I’ll die before I see you give away a single acre!’
‘Father! Please!’
‘Shut your mouth, you disgusting little worm. Crawl on your belly, you bastard!’ Spittle flew from the king’s mouth as he dragged his son down by his hair, forcing him to double over. ‘Crawl like the worm you are!’
The prince grasped his father’s wrists, trying to pull him off, but it only made Edward tighten his grip.
‘I should have drowned you at birth, you shit!’ As the king roared this, the full force of his fury came bursting up out of him, raw and relentless, causing him to pull at his son’s hair in a frenzy, ripping hanks of it from his head.
At the prince’s screams, the door flew open. Neither man saw the doorward framed there, stock-still with shock, before he turned and raced down the stairs.
‘I know what you did!’ Edward raged. ‘Your cousin saw you in the woods with that whoreson! All these years with the devil in you! By God, I’ll beat him out!’ With that, the king brought his knee smashing up into his son’s down-turned face.
There was a crack as the prince’s nose broke. Blood flowed, splattering the rug and the king’s robes. His son was yelling incoherently, but Edward refused to relinquish his hold, digging his fingers deeper into his scalp, breaking skin.
Pounding footsteps sounded on the stairs. The doorward reappeared with Humphrey de Bohun.
‘My lord!’
The king didn’t heed the earl’s shout. He kicked his son above the knee, causing him to collapse. Now Edward let go, strands of blond hair falling from between his fingers as he swung his fist into his son’s face. His jewelled ring ripped through the prince’s lip as it struck. Pain lanced through the king’s arm with the impact, but it only served to fuel his rage. He hadn’t felt so alive, so strong, in an age. All these months lying impotent, racked with pain, close enough to Scotland to see its hills, yet unable even to rise from his bed. He punched out again, his fist slamming into his son’s jaw. All these months praying that his men would return with Robert Bruce in irons and his conquest would at last be complete. Once again, they had failed him. Another vicious punch sent his son reeling to the floor. The young man wrapped his hands around his head to protect his face.
The king drew back his foot for a kick. His eyes caught the silver brooch on his son’s travel-stained cloak, flashing in the firelight. Eleanor had given their son that brooch, years ago. He remembered her smile as she pinned it on him and the
flush of love in the young boy’s face. Looking down on the prince, bleeding, curled like an infant, Edward staggered back.
Humphrey de Bohun caught him. ‘My lord.’ He guided the king back to his chair.
Edward slumped in it. ‘Get word to my cousin in France,’ he breathed. ‘My son is ready to wed Isabella.’ The king wiped the sweat from his brow with a shaking hand. ‘And I want Piers Gaveston banished from my kingdom.’
Chapter 20
The Outer Hebrides, Scotland, 1307 AD
Lightning danced in the east as the storms continued to batter the distant isles of Muck, Canna and Rhum, but out here the air was still and the ocean rolled, huge and slow, under a lifeless sky. Ahead, a chain of islands threaded like a broken string of jewels.
Robert sat at the prow, the hood of the woollen cloak grazing his cheek. He smelled the sea trapped in the weave and something sweet: heather, or grass. He couldn’t recall how he came to be wearing it. As he watched the Outer Isles grow larger with every sweep of the oars, he recalled the belief of some that these islands stood at the bounds of the world. As a youth he’d heard a different tale in his grandfather’s hall – men speaking of the Norsemen who had found distant lands far beyond these isles. There were other stories, too, of the black empire of Gog and Magog that encircled the known borders of the earth; Satan’s army, walled up behind gates of iron, ready to be loosed upon the world. The thought took him, as many had these past hours, straight to his daughter, who, years ago in Writtle, had been told by his drunken father that Gog and Magog would be coming for her as she hadn’t eaten her meat. That night the terrified child had refused to sleep anywhere but in Robert and Elizabeth’s bed.
The memory brought a fresh wave of torment twisting up through Robert’s gut. It clogged his throat, a knotted lump of fury, horror and helplessness. He turned suddenly, wanting to order these men to steer the galley around and bear it south towards England. He would sail it himself if he had to, up the Thames, all the way to the Tower, where he would scale the white walls and free his daughter from the cage that vile bastard had locked her in.
Dear God, was it true? What the woman had told him?
Robert searched the deck, his eyes passing over the oarsmen on the benches and his comrades who sat apart from them in silence, as still as statues amid the activity of the crew. The woman stood tall among the men, easily marked by her hair, the colour of autumn leaves and winter hearths. She wore it bound up with plaited threads of golden silk, but the wind and rain had dragged much of it free. The shorter strands curled at her temples, stiff with salt. Her brown dress, girdled with a belt of gold rings, was thin and seeing her cheeks chapped pink with cold Robert wondered numbly why she wasn’t wearing a cloak. Feeling the weight of the garment around his shoulders, he now remembered her placing it there.
The woman looked round, locking eyes with him briefly, before turning back to her crew. Those eyes were the first thing he’d seen when her men had hauled him from the sea, frozen to the marrow and retching salt water. Pale green, almost liquid in the lantern light, they had widened when the woman caught sight of the red lion on his surcoat.
‘It is the king,’ he had heard her say, her Gaelic broad and pure. ‘It is my brother.’
After that everything was just scattered images and sounds. He remembered other men being pulled from the sea, their broken birlinn adrift on a wave lit by the flare of lightning, the MacDougalls’ triple galley retreating, outnumbered, the faint cries of those lost in the rushing dark and the shouts of the crew of the six vessels who had come to their aid, caught in the howling maw of the storm. Soon, the chill in his body had seeped into his mind, taking him down into an icy well of blackness, from which he had only emerged many hours later.
Part of him wished he had stayed in that place of nothingness. No thoughts. No dreaming. No knowledge. If he had known what he would wake to find he never would have surfaced.
It was his brother he had seen first when he opened his eyes. Edward had been sitting beside him on the damp deck, cast in a pallid dawn. As he stirred, his brother turned to him. Robert had never seen such an expression on his face. It was a look of utter despair. Struggling to sit, disorientated, he had seen Angus MacDonald talking to a tall woman with auburn hair and the memory of their wrecked ship had returned.
Seeing him awake, the woman had crossed the crowded deck, moving gracefully with the motion. Bowing her head briefly, she had crouched beside him and introduced herself as Christiana MacRuarie, Lady of Garmoran. The name had been a surprise. Although he’d not met her before, Robert knew the woman was his sister-in-law by his first marriage to Isobel, daughter of the Earl of Mar. Christiana, the only legitimate child of the Lord of Garmoran, had been wed to one of Mar’s sons, but more than this he did not know, the woman being only a name to him; a name synonymous with the brutal reputation of her half-brothers, Lachlan and Ruarie.
‘Are you hurt, my lord?’ Her voice had been all brisk authority.
Her tone had taken him aback before the question itself and the knowledge of who she was had sparked an anger that burned away the last of his confusion. ‘Hurt?’ He had gestured at Angus MacDonald and Malcolm of Lennox, both of whom had men missing. ‘Will you ask the same of those who drowned, my lady?’
She had narrowed her green eyes, unsure of his meaning.
‘If not for your brother my men and I would not have been out here.’ Robert had raised his voice, not caring that the crew, MacRuarie’s men no doubt, were looking over. ‘Demanding I double his fee or he’ll sell his fleet to the English? By his insolence and greed I lost good men last night. We would have all been lost if not for . . .’ If not for her, he had meant, but did not say.
Christiana had studied him in silence for a pause. ‘I’ve been on the mainland, my lord, at my castle, Tioram. Until Lord Angus told me, I knew nothing of my brother’s demands. I will speak to him of this. You can be sure.’
Robert had wanted to know how a mere woman, even a lady of standing, could possibly alter the ambitions of a predator like Lachlan, but he had fallen silent, seeing a look pass between Christiana and Edward. It was a look full of unspoken meaning. ‘What is it? What aren’t you telling me?’ He had stared at his brother, searching his bleak expression, fear snaking a cold tendril around his heart. ‘Edward?’
Christiana had begun to speak then, her Gaelic soft and low. She told him that she had been running supplies from her lands on the north-west coast out to the Isles. She had also been ferrying people, a steady stream of whom had been coming north over the past months, looking to escape the occupations of Carrick and Ayr, and the men of Argyll and Lorn who had sided with the English. Some of these people, she told him, had brought with them tidings. King Edward, they said, was once again in control of Scotland. Robert was gone, presumed dead by many. The rebellion was over and all those involved were being hunted down. Already, many had been captured by Aymer de Valence and others of the king’s men. At the look that passed again between Christiana and Edward the tendril of fear around Robert’s heart had become a gripping hand.
‘My family?’ he had managed to say.
John of Atholl, Christopher Seton, Isabel of Buchan, Margaret Randolph, Niall, Mary, Matilda, Elizabeth, Marjorie – these names and the horrors attached to them had come in a quiet stream from the woman, who had spoken unflinchingly, still meeting his eyes.
For some moments, Robert had not been able to take any of it in. He had looked over at his men, hoping to prove the insanity of her words, but in their desolate faces and David of Atholl’s red-rimmed eyes he saw only truth. Yet, still, he had not been able to understand it. The news from Malcolm of Lennox on the banks of Loch Lomond – the arrest of Robert Wishart and William Lamberton, the imprisonment of his nephew, Thomas Randolph, the hanging of Simon Fraser – had been dire indeed, but it hadn’t surprised him. But this? This made no sense. John and Christopher executed? Niall strung up for a mob in Berwick? Mary in a cage? His wife locked away?
At the thought of Marjorie, his child, caged like an animal in the Tower, a quake had begun deep in Robert’s body, shuddering up through his chest. Then he knew it – the price of his ambition, his desire to be king. Then he knew it. The wheel had made its last turn, crushing him beneath its grinding weight. Unfastening her cloak, Christiana had shrugged it from her shoulders and placed it around his. Leaving him alone, she had instructed her crew and those of the five accompanying galleys to head for Barra, then just a dark line on the horizon.
Now, the island’s rocky shores rose before them and the air was filled with the cries of gannets that plunged the waves like great white arrows. With Christiana’s galley taking the lead, the oarsmen pulled the six birlinns through a narrow channel between Barra and a smaller adjacent island, where the beaches were as pale as sugar and the waters milky blue in the February dusk. Inching round to the west coast of the island, timbers creaking as the boats were lifted once more on the ocean’s swell, they headed for a curve of sand, above which stood a chapel.
The light was fading fast by the time they made land, the crew leaping into the shallows to haul the vessels ashore, alongside several others. Robert smelled fish and the briny odour of rotting seaweed. Calls echoed as men appeared, heading down through the grasses of the machair to greet them. Some held torches, the flames pluming brightly against the darkening sky. Beyond, the swell of a great hill disappeared in shadow.
Taking the proffered hands of two crewmen, Christiana jumped lightly to the sand. Robert followed her, his muscles stiff with cold and inertia. Nes came next, clutching Robert’s broadsword, saved from the sea. He stayed close to his lord, eyes fixed warily on the approaching men. Edward, Angus and Malcolm followed with David, who stood apart with his four surviving knights. The young man hadn’t spoken a word since he learned of the execution of his father. His eyes were haunted.
