The Honor Due a King (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  Just like her mother, Marjorie had brought a child into the world and left before it could even gaze upon her face or know her touch. While I should have found solace in her son’s birth, it was hard ... my God, so hard to do, for now I had no legitimate children of my own. None to watch grow, to teach the ways of the world, to one day take my place.

  Even before my grandson could sit himself upright, it was easy to see the curve in his back. The way he strongly favored rolling to one side. The crook in his neck. He would never be the soldier his forbears had been. Robbie was bright and beyond loved, but I prayed that when and if his time ever came to take the throne, there would be peace over the land and that the rigorous tutoring I had planned out for him would prove of benefit.

  Sadly, Marjorie and I had never completely reconciled after I happened upon her and James at Melrose Abbey as they exchanged fond gestures. There was bad blood between James and Walter now. A friendship past repair, the injury inflicted by my own obstinacy.

  I often wondered if Walter would have taken any offense had I deemed to forego that long ago, hastily sworn oath to his father and allowed Marjorie to choose her heart. But oh, how meaningless to ponder on it. Marjorie’s bones now lay beneath the earth and her soul, God willing, was far beyond the quarrels of a jilted suitor and her jealous husband.

  Wedded bliss was far from being mine, as well. Eight years lost. Eight years longing for Elizabeth’s return. Those first months alone, I had longed for my wife’s gentle spirit, her lively talk, the fit of her small, supple back curled against my chest. Needed those simple things like I needed a soft place to lie down after a hard, body-bruising battle. But a life in the wilderness scrapping for existence has a way of eroding earthly desires and trifling sentimentalities. I had to learn to live day to day – without her.

  Even though she had returned to me, I was more alone now than when she had been but a memory and a hope all those years. Why had she shunned me? Something had happened during our time apart. But what? Torture? She bore no scars. Besides, that was a tactic more akin to Longshanks than his feeble-willed offspring. Violated? Women do not speak of such things when they happen. It is a stain upon their virtue. A shame they bear inwardly. I seethed to think of it. If anyone had harmed her ...

  While I pondered it one day, I delayed all meetings and rode alone in the woods beyond Holyrood with a pair of my favorite hounds loping playfully behind. At the long fading rays of a late summer sunset, I returned to the palace and took dinner in my chambers, again alone. Afterwards, I sent a message to Elizabeth that I wished to meet with her within the hour. How odd that I had to announce to my own wife that I was going to make the short journey down a single flight of stairs to speak with her.

  I laid my hand upon the latch of her door, pressed on the blackened iron and was surprised to feel it give. When I opened the door, Elizabeth was sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, her spine as rigid as a spear haft, half a dozen maids scattered around her, laying out her nightclothes with ritualistic precision.

  A younger, freckle-faced lass with nimble fingers untwisted the plaits of Elizabeth’s shining auburn hair as it tumbled to her waist and lifted a bone comb to it. In form, my queen was still among the most beautiful in all Scotland, but the blitheness had long since vanished, making her more like some fragile trinket to be guarded from breaking than a woman of flesh and spirit to be desired and embraced.

  Elizabeth raised her eyes briefly. “Good even, my lord.”

  Mortal enemies had delivered warmer welcomes.

  “And to you,” I returned. The women bowed as they went about their work, but they kept a watchful eye on me and yielded no ground as I drew closer. Patiently I waited, as the lass kneeling upon the floor deftly pulled the comb through Elizabeth’s abundant tresses. Every lock glimmered radiantly and I imagined it smelling of sweet woodruff. I stayed the girl’s hand with my own, took the comb from her and laid it aside. In my other hand I clutched a small, plain box hewn from a walnut tree with the letter ‘E’ carved on its lid. Leaning over, I whispered into Elizabeth’s ear. “Tell them to go.”

  “I’ve need of them.”

  “And I a word with you. Tell them to go. You’ll call on them later.”

  She turned her head in my direction, but did not look at me. “An hour then?”

  I sighed. Glances passed between her women.

  “Go. All of you,” I told them myself. They hesitated, looked to my wife. She dropped her chin in abject compliance. I chased them away with a commanding glare, but the oldest, the woman named Gruoch, who had been there at Melrose nursing her back to health and who still accompanied my wife to chapel several times daily to pray, lingered, rearranging the sleeves of Elizabeth’s night robe where it lay draped across the bed.

  Gruoch tossed back her gray head, leered at me sternly, and shuffled toward the door, pausing when she reached it. “Shall I wait without, my lady?”

  “Go on, Gruoch,” I urged. “All will be well until morning.”

  Elizabeth’s breath caught with a sharpness that pricked my heart. Gruoch grasped the doorframe with gnarled fingers.

  “Away, before I toss you out.”

  As Gruoch lumbered away, Elizabeth’s lips twitched like a bitch guarding her pup from a stranger. “Must you be so unkind?”

  I closed the door softly, leaned upon it. “You prefer her company to mine? Am I truly such an ogre, Elizabeth? If my nearness so frightens you, tell me why. If I don’t know how it is that I’ve offended you, how can I ever remedy it?” I turned to her. With all the ungainliness of an adolescent courting his first maiden, I thrust my gift at her.

  Her chin still down, she rose from her stool, came and took the box from me. Flipping the lid open, she gazed expressionless at the set of ornate silver hairpins lying on a pillow of red silk, then snapped it shut. An obligatory word of thanks passed her lips as she placed the box inside the chest at the foot of her bed. From it, she took out a hand mirror. Several cracks marred its shining surface. She gazed at herself blankly. A frown pulled at the corners of her mouth. “I was ill when I returned. It took all my strength. Have you forgotten?”

  “No, Elizabeth. I remember. I was there, holding your hand for hours as the candles spent themselves, recalling every fond memory we shared out loud, offering you water when I saw the first crack between your eyelids. I was there more than you remember. But that was over a year ago. In the past few months, I have seen you riding your palfrey over the moors in the gloaming, rising at dawn and walking the gardens with your women clustered about you, laughing cheerfully. You are well enough now, Elizabeth. In body, at least. But something, some blight is upon your heart.”

  She shielded her breast with a hand. “You see what is not there.”

  “Then why keep from me? Why the lock on your door? The silence?” Vexed, I strode to the bed and sat on its edge, sweeping her robe to the floor in an angry gesture. “What harm have I ever done you? Day after day you thrust me away. Turn from me. Avoid speaking to me. Fourteen years your husband in the eyes of God and man and I am treated as a stranger? Such cold cruelty is deserving of an explanation, don’t you think?” I held my hand out to her, beckoning. “Will you not come and sit with me? Speak from your heart and let me speak mine. My dear God, Elizabeth, I ached for years when you were gone from me. I ache even more now not to be able to touch you.”

  She stared at my outstretched hand as if in repulsion. “Touch me? Then take me to your bed? Is that what you wished for all those years? To lie with me. Make a child. Create your legacy? Perhaps your own army of princes to do your battles for you in your old age?”

  “Elizabeth, for God’s sake.” I rose, braved those few steps between us as though I were leaping across a deep ravine, and lightly touched her arm. “I love you. And aye, I want those things, but not merely for the sake of an heir. I loved you long before that was ever a thing to be thought upon.”

  She clutched the mirror to her breast. “And now? Can you say yo
u love me now? I am growing old, Robert – my hair thinning, the circles growing dark beneath my eyes. Look. See how the skin sags here?” She pinched a small pocket of flesh beneath her jaw.

  “Come now. Self-pity is a sin in one whose beauty is known afar. You hardly look the part of Methuselah, I do swear. As for years slipping away – well, they have not escaped me, in case your eyes have not uncovered that blinding truth. And you, you were a flower in the bud when I met you. The bloom is yet there.” My hand fell from her arm. I pulled at the roots of my hair as I circled the room.

  Why in the name of Heaven must Our Maker fashion women to be so bloody complicated?

  I halted in my tracks. “Very well, if this is to be a parley of truth, then hear. I loved who you were, once. I thought when you came back, you would be every bit the same. It didn’t take but a day to understand that the years we have lived through have changed both of us. Both for better and for worse. And I believed somewhere, somehow, I would find a part of you I used to know. That one day or night, we would hold each other and rediscover it. A man and a woman, yearning to be close. Husband and wife, united by the Church and blessed to –”

  “Blessed? No.” Her eyes dampened. She placed the mirror on top of the chest feebly, went to stand before the hearth and stared into the amber flames. “Can you not see that we have been cursed from the very start, Robert? Cursed, plainly. My father refused you. King Edward denied you my hand for years. And then we were flung apart for an eternity while you battled ... and I withered. Even in the happy times, we were never blessed, Robert. God did not see fit to give us children. Perhaps I was never meant to have any.”

  “Then if that is so,” I said, joining her on the other side of the hearth with only its dwindling warmth between us, “we’ll bear that sorrow together. But don’t let it destroy the joy we once had. Let it live again. Let me be near to you, Elizabeth. Tell me all that troubles you. Everything.” I splayed my fingers upon the warm stones of the hearth, wanting, waiting for her to place her hand over mine. Instead, she stood apart, swallowing back tears, as if I could offer her no comfort. Damn her for putting up these walls.

  “Everything,” I whispered, going to her. On my fingertip, I caught the first trickle spilling from her eye. “I’ll not leave you alone until you tell me. By God, I have scaled higher walls than this.”

  The tiny chin quivered. “You truly want to know?” She closed her eyes to dam back the tears. “Remember ... at Tyndrum, that morning?”

  “Aye, you gave James a letter. It was from his brother. What a jealous fool I was to think it might have been something else. How swiftly everything changed in the span of a few hours, didn’t it? I thought we would all make it safely to Ireland. All of us.”

  “I was going to tell you something.”

  “Ah, aye. What was it then?”

  Her eyes opened. “That I was with child.”

  Sorrow choked my throat and I swallowed, hunting for words of solace. “My God ... I’m sorry. So sorry. I didn’t ...” But there had never been a child. Conceived, but not carried. Our child. Mine. “What happened?”

  “I lost it – the child. At St. Duthac’s. That is why we never made it to the Orkneys. The Earl of Atholl sought refuge for us there because I could not go on. I was suffering great pains. Couldn’t eat or sleep to gain strength, nor walk or ride to go on. He carried me up the steps of the chapel and laid me before the shrine. There I bled a pool from between my legs, gripped with a pain more cruel than any I have ever known. Finally, I expelled a contorted, monstrous clot. A wee, misshapen lump of flesh. A boy. That much you could tell. But I lost him. Like all the others. Oh, I never told you of those, Robert. I spared you. Never wished to put the pain on you when you had so much else to bear. I lost them all. Only, that one made it longer. But not long enough. He was months and months away from his time.”

  Her eyes never left mine. But there was no hint of eased pain, only a void, a distance, a placid acceptance of something I did not yet fathom.

  “You see, it was never meant to be, Robert. God gave you one dream, a great one: a kingdom. But he kept the simplest of things from you: a child. While other men, men like your brother Edward, litter the world with their get but refuse to marry, you have a barren wife ... and that is your curse. Me.

  “There was a time when I thought you could keep me safe from all harm. Then I discovered it wasn’t true. I had no one to protect me, no one to care for. No one but myself. All alone with nothing but my thoughts and my prayers. You – at least you had your freedom.”

  She had never said anything about losing any babes before. Never mentioned it in all those blissful years we shared together. Never gave up her merriment to darken a single of my days with her.

  “Ask me again,” she continued, pushing away from the hearth, less piteously and more harshly, “to lie with you and conceive your child when you have known the sorrow of carrying a babe inside you, only to have it die and nearly lose your own life in the process. I beg of you, if indeed you love me as you say, touch me not. Accept how things are, Robert. Spare me the pain, now that I have made it yours.”

  Once, aye, once I had loved her more than anything. Given up my dreams to be with her, my pride even, until I uncovered a way to have it all. Now, I did not know whether I pitied or resented her. Pitied her for the sorrow she had chosen to bear alone. Or resented that she had taken it upon herself to serve as a vessel for my progeny at the expense of her own health and life and kept this secret from me all that time. If there was any blessing in this divine irony, it was that I should cherish my grandson even more. Yet even that did not ease the twisting in my groin, knowing that my own wife shirked my nearness, recoiled at my touch, and blamed me for the sorrow abiding in her soul.

  “You could,” she began, “annul our union. Take another wife. One who can give you sons. I’d not hold it against you, Robert. I decided that long ago, during the years in England. I wanted to come back, if only to let you know and yet ... once here, I could not say it. I should have, before now. Let me go.”

  I could only shake my head. But I could not look at her.

  “Then please yourself as you will. Have whatever woman you want. Don’t even bother to think of me. I’m sure you forgot about me a time or two while I was gone.”

  Words more wounding than any sword blow ever struck. Because they were true.

  Vaguely, I was aware of Elizabeth leaving me, the door standing open, the fire slowly dying ... the rustle of someone standing in the doorway, the sound of my name.

  “Robert? Uncle? Are you well?”

  My eyes straining, I squinted into the half-light. “Thomas? What are you doing back here? Bloody far from Ireland, aren’t you? I don’t know whether to embrace you or shield my heart ere you speak.”

  Thomas Randolph stepped into the room, looking gauchely about, as if he did not belong there. “Your pardon, Uncle. Fresh from Ulster. With news.”

  I cleared my throat. “Go on. No one else here. My brother Edward?”

  His hair was tousled from the wind, his cheeks striped with the sun. “Lives yet. Took Carrickfergus and is ready for you to join him with ample forces to take the rest of Ireland. And, as he so puts it, to accept with your aid what he has so long deserved: his own crown. Seems he believes you owe him for doing what the rest of us consider our duty.”

  “Arrogant bastard hasn’t changed.”

  “Coming then?”

  I plucked up Elizabeth’s robe from the floor and tossed it on her bed. “Aye. Nothing here to hold me.”

  ***

  Carrick, 1316

  Walter and James were to serve as regents in my stead. The proper documents were secured naming young Robbie as my heir.

  With several hundred fresh men and far better provisioned than we had ever been in those days of being hunted by the English, Randolph and I rode over the Lothian hills and across Carrick, passing near Loch Doon where my first love Aithne lived with her son Niall. I nearly called a shor
t reprieve there before going on, but we were expected by Edward before the onset of winter. So on we rode, through the heart of wild Galloway to the shores of glittering Loch Ryan.

  As we were boarding our galleys for the voyage, a messenger arrived. When he dismounted from his lathered horse, his steps lagged with sorrow. He bent his knee before me and bowed his head. Such an approach never bore out well.

  “Sire, our beloved Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, left this earth peacefully in his sleep three days past at his home in Glasgow.”

  At my side, Randolph lowered his chin. “May the Lord bless and keep his soul.”

  “Scotland has lost a great champion ...” I said, “and I an even greater friend. Without him, I would never even have taken the first step.”

  I thanked the messenger for his trouble and paid him handsomely in coin, for it is never an easy or welcome task to be the bearer of such news, even for the passing of an old man like Bishop Wishart, who late in life had endured two lengthy terms of imprisonment at English disfavor. Only his frock had spared him a traitor’s fate upon the gallows. If I was glad for one thing, it was that he had come home to Scotland and died here, not in an English dungeon.

  How hard it was to see Scotland’s shoreline fade into the gray, spitting mist of the sea. Hard to receive the news of Bishop Wishart’s death and know that one more friend was gone from me. Harder yet to leave my wife, who I had longed to be reunited with for so many wretched years, when in my heart I questioned where I had gone wrong and if all our troubles could be put right.

  Always there was the ghost of the Elizabeth I had once loved body and soul, loved beyond life, loved her because she needed me, admired me, reveled in me and I in her. I left home, not so much because Edward needed me, but because I did not know what to do or say or how to act around Elizabeth. When she had needed me to keep her safe, I had failed.