The Honor Due a King (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  “You like it?” I asked.

  He lowered his hand from the pendant, looking at me long before speaking. “It belonged to him, didn’t it?”

  “Piers, you mean?”

  “Perhaps I should not –”

  I scoffed. “What? You think there is some curse attached to it? I assure you not. The cause for Piers’ death is soon to die himself. In all my life, I have only ever valued one soul worthy of it. Keep it. It is a measure of my ...” – I could not say the word I meant to, even though it teetered on the tip of my tongue – “my regard of you.”

  The sluggish pulse of drums struck up. I returned my attention to the distant hill. Sipping my wine, I watched as Lancaster was led to the block, hands bound behind him. Kneeling, he gave his last confession to a black-robed priest. The priest guided his head down, turning it to the left so Lancaster could look north and see that Robert the Bruce had abandoned him at his darkest hour.

  The crescent axe blade glinted in the scarlet rays of a setting sun. It swung downward. Went up again. Down. Lancaster’s head, at last, rolled from his corpulent torso. Even from this distance, I could see the blood spurting from his neck, staining the block. I had requested the blade be dull so that he might know the same torment my fond Brother Perrot had endured.

  Hugh moved away from the window and settled into a chair, taking several long drinks from his cup before speaking. “What next? Scotland? We’ve so much less in our way now.”

  I pulled up another chair and took his hand, twining my fingers in his. “For now, let us forget revenge and revel in this moment of triumph. Let us be but here, now. You and I. No armies. No parliaments. No world beyond this room. Indulge me that?”

  His eyes twinkled with mirth. “Your sole company and a flagon of wine?” He tipped his goblet up and drained every last drop. “I oft dream of it.”

  “And what more, dear Hugh, does this dream entail? A lingering gaze? A touch?” I brushed my knuckles across his cheek, ran my fingertips around the warm rim of his ear and slowly down his neck, over the vein where his pulse throbbed. “Do you dream of sharing a kiss, Hugh?”

  The goblet dropped from his grasp and clattered across the floor. He leaned toward me, eyelids fluttering, lips parted. With both hands, I held his head, tendrils of silken hair entangled in my fingers, and drew him closer. He slid from the chair to kneel before me.

  Our lips grazed. His mouth trembled, yielded. Supple, craving. My breath became his breath. His heartbeat, mine.

  “How long I have waited for this,” I breathed. “For you, Hugh.”

  Ch. 21

  Robert the Bruce – Melrose Abbey, 1322

  Smoke whipped across the sky like a black ribbon being pulled by the wind. Behind me, horses chomped anxiously at their bits, nostrils flaring wide. Men drew their swords free and strapped on their shields. But these were only familiar reactions to the unmistakable smell of blood and death that floated on the air to them from the distance. A nauseating smell, like offal left to rot behind a butcher’s shop. A terrifying, enraging excitement that fired a man’s blood in his very veins.

  No enemy lingered in the valley below. They had come and gone, leaving behind nothing but the remnants of their hatred, transforming a place of tranquil holiness into a litter of rubble and hewn bodies strewn over a field of scarlet.

  Gil came abreast of me on his horse. We gazed at the ruins of Melrose Abbey in sickened stupor, witnesses to the aftermath of a massacre. Helpless in our knowledge that no measure of revenge could atone for this. Only the Almighty could make the transgressors of this abomination answer for their sins.

  Gil de la Haye shaded his brow with a long-fingered hand. “Randolph and Douglas are here already.”

  “Too late as well.” My mount lurched forward, his ears flicking back and forth. The grass beside the road was heavily trampled in a broad swath, the ruts of wagon wheels still deeply imprinted. King Edward’s army had been here not long ago and in numbers enormous. Starvation had forced them on. If they could not win victories on the battlefield or plunder riches, then they had determined to make their mark and leave behind a spoiled land. As we came closer, the stench grew overpowering. Queasy, I swallowed back bile and looked toward the abbey. I prayed that lives were spared, but I was wholly unprepared for the profane sight that met my eyes.

  Randolph, as grim of face as I had ever seen him, was there in the churchyard to hold my stirrup as I dismounted. Scottish soldiers were going to and fro, carrying away the bodies of dead monks for burial, clearing the rubble, lugging buckets of water to douse lingering sparks, searching for survivors beneath the smoldering timbers of the abbey buildings.

  Randolph’s forehead dripped with perspiration. Soot was streaked across his face and clothing. “The locals say they rode through two days ago, looted the place of every relic and hunk of bread, murdered every holy man they came across and set everything aflame before clearing out.”

  “Where is James?”

  “There.” He pointed toward the abbey steps. “But be fairly warned, Uncle. Your eyes will behold the outcome of acts beyond hideous. Arm our bodies against spears and arrows we may, but our hearts are another matter entire.”

  With Gil behind me, I made way through the litter and milling soldiers toward the front steps of the church. I had not even set foot to the first course, when I froze there. The double doors of the abbey were still on their hinges. But between them, the body of William Peebles, the abbot, was strung up like Christ at the Crucifixion: arms outspread, hands and feet pierced through with rusty nails, his head flopped to one side. Arrows had been shot full through his chest to leave his vestments dyed dark with blood. Neil Campbell pried at the nail heads with his axe. James and Boyd were reaching up, holding the abbot’s arms, waiting to free the gentle martyr from the evidence of his horrific death.

  I sank down on one knee and made the sign of the cross. “Father in Heaven ... is nothing sacred?”

  For minutes I remained like that, sickened with disgust, one knee grinding against the stones, my fingers clenched bloodless in prayer. A hand came to rest lightly on my shoulder. I looked up to see Angus Og, Lord of Islay. His fingernails were blackened with the crescent moons of crusted blood. Sweat matted the red hair in dark clumps around his freckled face. Through all the grime he forced a smile, then gave his hand to raise me up.

  “We got here only a few hours ago, my lord,” he said, the corners of his mouth plunging beneath the fringe of a moustache that twitched when he spoke. “We wouldn’t have taken so long to retrieve the abbot’s body, but ... survivors first.”

  “Did you find many?”

  “A few. The only unscathed monks we came across had been down by the river, unaware until they saw the smoke rising. Of those that were here at the abbey – little good to tell. There were two badly burned still hiding in barrels in the kitchen, another trapped in a pile of stones when the second floor of the dormitory collapsed. He will live. The other two – they will have a hard time of it. They haven’t much of their skins left. It would be merciful if God would spare them the suffering and let them go to their graves with their brothers.”

  I gazed at the desecration and shook my head, rife with shock. When the truce expired, Edward had wasted no time. His treatment of Lancaster had been swift and full of revenge for Piers de Gaveston’s murder. He then lunged northward into Scotland by way of Durham. In answer, I had dispatched James and Randolph to burn everything in the path of the oncoming English and had sped with my own forces into Lancashire to lay waste there, hoping to lure Edward away from the heart of my kingdom. But my ploy had failed miserably. This was a different Edward – a man bitter with revenge and imbued with more than a drop of his father’s wicked blood, not the irresolute commander who had hobbled home from Bannockburn.

  Loath to look upon Abbot William though I was, I forced myself to ascend the steps. With great sorrow and pity, I gazed at the abbot’s mutilated form as they laid him down. Gil began to extract the ar
rows from Abbot William’s chest, but the barbs were hooked deep beneath his ribs, so in the end all Gil could do was snap some of them off as far down the shaft as he could. Then Neil placed the abbot’s arms across his body and began to wipe the brown, dried blood from his face.

  “How far north did King Edward get?” I asked.

  “Edinburgh, before he turned back,” James answered. “Burned the abbey at Holyrood nearly to the ground. Thanks are due to Angus Og and his galleys for blockading the coast and stealing away three English supply ships at Black Rock before the king’s very eyes.”

  Angus grinned. “We’re well fed now, thanks to the English king’s generosity.”

  “While his galleys did their work,” James continued, “we waited on the other side of the Forth at Culross, as you had ordered, reckoning it better to avoid pitched battle just then. It was only a short time before the English decided Edinburgh was too empty for them and abandoned it. As soon as we got word of their retreat, we swung around the Forth and joined up with Angus. We pressed hard on their trail, as fast we could. I’m sorry, Robert. If we could have –”

  “No, James, even I would not have guessed this of him. Besides, you had not enough men to provoke blows with him. I thought to lure him away and thought wrong. The blame’s on me, if anyone. He can’t have gotten far. He’s crawling along with a massive army, short on forage, plagued by illness and pestered by rain. He’ll quit when he feels safe enough to rest, thinking we’ll let him go as long as he’s retired from our land. But we won’t. We’ll leave enough men here to properly take care of this mess and follow him. As far as London if we need to.”

  I myself turned the shovel that opened up the ground to receive the dead of Melrose Abbey: Cistercian monks with their white habits shredded into blood-soaked rags on their bodies, some maimed grotesquely, others burned beyond recognition. Men who had never sought any grace but God’s blessing.

  Peace in this life is a fleeting illusion: never eternal, never entire. Why then have I expended so much of my life pursuing it, even at the price of my own sweat and tears and blood?

  Because, this is what it is to live. This is what it is to strive for something better. This is the price you pay for your children and grandchildren and on down through the ages, with but a thin hope that they will not have to suffer the same.

  But the price, the price ... how high?

  Faith, Robert. Faith. Never relent. Never abandon hope. Say it and you’ll believe it.

  ***

  Byland Moor, 1322

  Vengeance gave us wings. Our numbers swollen by a frenzied contingent of Highlanders under Neil Campbell, we forded the Solway, slipped past Carlisle and dipped down through the Eden Valley in pursuit of our quarry. Meanwhile, I had dispatched Angus back to sea to fly down the coast and be ready for King Edward there, should he make it so far. Every day the scent grew warmer and the trail fresher. Edward had slackened his pace, while we intensified ours. The English locals by then had learned to run clear of a Scots army and man their town gates against us, for whatever meek comfort it afforded them. But we passed them by without a glance, bent for retribution.

  By the 13th of October, we had made it as far as Northallerton, a smoking ruin after we shook its inhabitants from the planks and rafters of the town and set spark to it. It was there in the north of Yorkshire that a scout informed us King Edward was taking respite at Rievaulx Abbey, a mere fifteen miles away. Striking distance.

  I stroked my beard within the pliant, leather palm of my gauntlet. My commanders were clustered around me at the fore of my army: James, Walter, Neil, Boyd, Gil and Randolph. “If we quicken our pace, can we bring him within our grasp by morning?”

  “We’re short on hours,” Boyd said, squinting into the dreary western sky where clouds of autumn occluded the sun, “and opportunities.”

  Randolph stepped forward. “I’ve not delved this far into England for years, but if memory serves, the quickest route is directly south toward Sutton Bank and then a swift turn eastward toward the abbey. Any other way east from here to ford the rivers that run southward from the Hampton Hills and we lose dear time. Half a day’s warning and he’s to York and safely beyond our reach.”

  Gil and Walter nodded their agreement. James remained stoic, willing to do whatever I bid. Boyd wore a devilish grin.

  “You’re up for it, Boyd?”

  He cracked the flat of one palm against the other. “Never more, sire.”

  ***

  Forging on through a mist as thick as porridge, we marched nightlong, resting but a few hours and then rising before daybreak to go on. As we crept southward, the mist began to break and lift with first light, lending a better view before us.

  To the east ran a steep hill-line, faced at various points with cliffs as sheer as any castle wall. Beyond the cliffs, an ancient cairn, half-toppled, projected jaggedly against the pink morning sky. Past the cairn, the ridge ran further southward, dotted with clumps of trees and patches of farmland at its base. From this crowded and obscured scene, the fires of several encampments curled upward.

  Damn. Edward of England may have been indolent enough to take respite before holing himself securely up at York, but he had not been remiss in covering his backside. His soldiers were weary and wasted, mine pulling at the lead like hounds on the hunt. Our task now was to weigh our odds. I dispatched scouts and waited with agonizing impatience for their report. The chief standard, they relayed, was that of John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond. I called Randolph, James and Walter to me.

  “Sutton Bank is the summit there, I believe,” Randolph said. He cleared away a patch of dirt with the toe of his boot, plucked up a nearby stick and began to trace the layout of the land, marking X’s to indicate the English bivouacs. “Roulston Scar here. Scawton Moor’s beyond and a straight shot to Rievaulx ... over here.”

  “Any way around? It’s King Edward I want.”

  Randolph bit his lip in thought, studying the map. “Better than a day lost if we retrace our steps north. And south – impossible without being discovered. Richmond has himself firmly planted in the pass there.”

  “They’ll find us out shortly anyway,” Walter said. “Did we sight Harclay’s standard?”

  Walter was becoming keener about his adversaries, but his confidence was still hampered by a tinge of doubt.

  Randolph shook his head. “No, he skulked off to Carlisle, if rumors are true. Some deep rift there. Surprising – Harclay was Edward’s champion after Boroughbridge. But what doesn’t surprise me is that Edward would argue with those wiser than him.”

  I viewed the rudimentary map from a different angle and still I came to the same conclusion. I drew my sword, pulled its point sharply through Randolph’s etching and then stuck it deep into the spot that was Rievaulx. “No other way but through then. Let’s signal our arrival, shall we?”

  Soldiers quickly set to work building pyres along a long line west of the English and setting them alight. The wood was damp from a long season of rain and slow to start, but once the fires began to blaze, clouds of thick smoke drifted lazily and then sank low over the windless valley. As the smoke swirled and settled, James positioned the bulk of the army nearer to the steep pass which lay just south of Richmond’s camp. Randolph was at his side, as ever.

  They struck directly up the pass – steep and rocky and dangerously narrow. Schiltrons in the van, shields raised overhead to meet the scatter of arrows that pelted them from the heights. The outcroppings to either side provided cover from above. Countless English arrows shattered on boulders. Some flew wide. Some short.

  The first wave of English cavalry, compressed elbow to elbow, crashed against the prickly wall of Scottish spears and broke. Shafts hissed and then struck like random hailstones. Men grunted and roared, fighting for one more foot. The rattle and clang of metal biting metal filled the narrow valley.

  In time, a faintly warm autumn sun had parted the curtain of smoky clouds from the nearby fires and ascended to its ze
nith. We were not only holding our ground, but gaining. I sent Neil up and around with his sure-footed Highlanders to engage the English on their flanks.

  Walter sat astride his mount, his mail mittens lying ready across his lap. He had been silent, waiting his turn, both eager and apprehensive. The remainder of our forces were well hidden in a steep-sided, wooded gully behind us.

  “I do think ...” I squinted against the glare. Once I was certain of what I saw, I took to my saddle and put my hand out to my squire for my helmet. “They’ve broken through, Walter. Your chance. Ride on to Rievaulx. Hurry! Take the king.”

  Walter tugged his helmet on, then carefully strapped it under his chin before nodding to me. “I’ll give him a good scare, at the least.”

  “Do better, Walter. He won’t learn anything from it otherwise. With the King of England as our prisoner, we can set everything right. We can end this war once and for all – today.”

  As if I had asked the impossible, he said as he was going away, “Let us pray it will all come as easy as that.”

  I watched him go, he and his men cutting their way deftly through the openings in the breaking lines of English. As the smoke of our quickly built fires rolled across the woodland on a rising breeze, I hailed Gil and gave the signal. With the rest of our footsoldiers and hobelars, we cut through the smoke-shrouded forest, up the slope to punch through the space between Roulston Scar and Sutton Bank, angling toward Richmond’s camp. As we gained the ridge, I shouted at Gil, “Richmond’s standard – there!”

  Just as he raised his hand in acknowledgment, his horse shot up on its hind legs. Its muddied brown hooves flailed in the air, then twisted around. It tossed its head back. An arrow had pierced its brain, just below the forelock. Gil was not fast enough to free himself before the thrashing beast crumpled beneath its own weight. He disappeared in a sea of raised swords.

  Before I could turn back to search for him, a blast of English trumpets sounded. James had Richmond backed helplessly against the cliffs of the corrie near the pass. By the time I turned again to look for Gil, he was already on a fresh horse, calling out orders and swinging his blade with clean precision.