The Path of the Hero King bt-2

by Nigel Tranter

  Possibly that fall saved him, for a stabbing thrust can be quickly extended and realigned. He fell away just in time from that darting point-and his opponent thereupon tripped headlong over the same obstacle and crashed to the ground likewise. Bruce was able to rise first, and though his sword had been jerked from his hand, he was able to whip out his more useful dirk. Still only on his knees, before the other got that far, the King drove his dagger between the bent shoulders.

  This was his only contribution to the engagement, though, retrieving his blade, he went in search of further involvement. The fight was so scattered and fluid that he could find nobody he could usefully engage. And he was distracted by coming upon James Douglas standing leaning on his sword, dizzy from a knock on the head received from some sort of club-whose late owner lay near by. By the time that Bruce had ascertained that his young friend was not grievously injured, the battle was, if not over, at least in its final stages, with Highlandmen everywhere pursuing their fleeing foes.

  Concerned lest his force become so scattered as to be out of his control, the King sounded the recall, on the fine curling horn of a Moidart bull which Christina had presented to him-even though this must be heard in the castle. It was that castle’s probable reactions that worried him now. Lights were showing from many of its lit windows, but no fighting or uproar was as yet apparent, from that direction.

  When at least the majority of his force was reassembled -though with quite a number missing, either casualties or still chasing the fugitives-the King hurried them on towards the cliff-top castle itself. Halfway there they were met by one of Lennox’s men, sent to discover progress and to report that the castle was roused, but that so far its occupants had not attempted to sally forth.

  Bruce pressed on, with the sea-wind, laced with sleet, in his face now. Presently he reached the narrows of a promontory crowned by the great soaring fortress which had been his birthplace. The cliffs here were not high, but the castle walls rose tall and sheer, occupying every inch of the mound’s summit. The only landward access was by the narrow neck of the promontory, across which the usual deep and wide ditch had been cut. Massed across this neck of land, just out of arrow-shot from the gatehouse tower, Lennox and Campbell waited, shivering, with their hundred men.

  “Here’s a devilish cold vigil, Sire,” Lennox complained.

  “They have made no move, no attempt to issue out, as yet. The drawbridge is part-lowered, in readiness. We can hear their horses’ hooves ringing in the courtyard. So they could ride out swiftly and are prepared. But all they have done is shoot a few arrows at us…”

  “Percy will not know, in the dark, how many we are,” Campbell put in.

  “He is a cautious man.”

  “Have you men down on the shore?” the King demanded.

  “There is a small jetty there. Boats. And a postern gate, with stairway down.” At the others’ silence, he frowned.

  “You have not?

  Damnation-then they may have already sent out men. By boat.

  To gain information. To seek help.”

  “I am sorry, Sire. We did not know …”

  “The fault is mine, friends. I should have told you. It may be too late now…”

  He directed a picket to make its way down to the beach, nevertheless.

  And presently a man came hurrying back, with the word that they had been just in time to glimpse a boat pulling away from the little landing-stage under the cliff. Too late to halt it.

  “A curse! So we are too late! Percy may be cautious, but he is no fool. He has got his messengers away.”

  “What matters it?” Edward demanded.

  “They will but learn, for him, that he has lost his men. All of them fur th of the castle, little joy in that, I say.”

  ”And I say that is the least of it. Think you that is all Percy will

  have ordered? He will have sent for aid. Ayr is but a dozen miles, with its garrison. Irvine and Cumnock have garrisons likewise.

  Even Maybole, five miles away. And there are a dozen castles, English-held, no farther. He could have a thousand men here soon after daylight-mounted, armoured men. What use our cater ans and their dirks, then?”

  None offered an answer to that “I fear our shaft is shot. For this night,” Bruce decided.

  “We cannot take this strength. And if I know Percy, he will not come out. He will wait there, secure, for reinforcement. And for daylight To see our strength. And that we can by no means afford.”

  “We go, then?”

  “Yes, we go. It must serve. We have struck a blow that all Scotland will hear of. My folk will know that their King is back!”

  “We retire on the galleys, Sire?” Lennox asked.

  “Back to Arran…?”

  “Of a mercy-not that!” Edward protested.

  “Not after this.

  When we have made our landing, and struck the first blow.”

  “No, not back to Arran,” his brother agreed.

  “Or, not myself, nor most of you. You, my lord of Lennox, will take the boats, and a small company, to Arran. There to assemble and send on to me the more men that Angus Og and the Lady Christina will provide. The rest of us will make for our Ayrshire hills, around Loch Doon. Base ourselves there, near to Galloway. Make contact with my brothers.

  Raid from there. And build up our strength.”

  “Thank God for that, at least!” Edward commented.

  “Let us be on our way, then.”

  “First, a word or two might not be wasted, here,” Bruce said. He nodded towards the castle. He handed his horn to Hay.

  “Blow it loud and long, Gilbert,” he directed, and strode forward, near to the ditch’s edge.

  When the curious moaning notes of the horn died away, the King raised his voice.

  “Ho-the castle!” he shouted.

  “Do all sleep sound in Tumberry this night?”

  A voice answered him from the gatehouse parapet promptly enough.

  “Who is there? Who dares come knocking at my lord of Northumberland’s door, at this hour?”

  “One who has a better right to that door than Henry Percy! Get him, man. I would speak with him.”

  “Fool! Watch your words. Do you not know that this is the seat of His Majesty’s Governor here? Sheriff of Ayr?”

  “You have your Majesties awry, fellow! Tell your lord that Robert Bruce, King of Scots, whose territory he defiles, whose castle he usurps, demands his ear; And quickly.”

  TOO

  There was silence from the gatehouse. But quite soon another and thinner voice spoke-proof that the Percy had been in fact standing by.

  “Henry Percy speaks, my lord of Carrick,” it said.

  “What folly is this? Where have you come from?”

  “Costly folly for you and your like, Percy. As you will find out.

  And the Earl of Carrick is now my brother, here. Mind it. Also, he is Sheriff of Ayr. I require your surrender of my castle of Tumberry forthwith. Yield it, and you shall go unharmed. Carrying my message to your master at Lanercost. That I require my kingdom at his bloodstained hands. And my wife also! Before every Englishman in Scotland dies the death of yours!”

  They could almost hear Percy choking.

  “Are you out of your wits, Bruce?” he demanded, with difficulty.

  “Have your hurts, your defeats, turned your head? By morning, my men will have you cut to pieces …”

  “Your men are all dead, Percy. Every one. They will not come to your aid. At the Castleton. The Kirkton. The stables. The brewery.

  Maidens Mill. And the rest. All dead. Cleansed. As all Scotland will be, one day. That message you will take to Edward Plantagenet.”

  There was no response from the castle now.

  “Will you yield, then? And save your life?”

  “No.” Though that was hoarse, it was definite enough.

  “Very well. You will regret it. I will find another messenger for Edward. Hide you there in my castle, Percy. I do not choose to destroy my own house, where I was born. But … your days are numbered. If I
were you, my lord-which God forbid! — I would slip out of that postern, to the beach, while the dark is still kind to you. And take boat across Solway to your English shore. For they say you are a cautious man.”

  No word answered that.

  Ordering Hay to sound a derisory blast on the horn to indicate that the King of Scots had spoken the last word, Bruce turned to Lennox.

  “Keep your men here, in view from the castle, until I send for them.

  Then take forty, and back to the boats. Sail for Arran.

  Meantime, we go collect our booty. Horses. Food. Armour. Dead men’s weapons. An hour should be sufficient. Then we head for the hills of Doon and Minnoch.” He grasped the earl’s hand.

  “Bring me more Islesmen and Irish, Malcolm, so soon as you may. I shall need every one. And God go with you.”

  ”And with Your Grace Chapter Seven

  Robert Bruce surveyed this his handiwork, at least, with some satisfaction-however otherwise his general frame of mind. The stag was a noble one, of ten points, and for the end of a long winter, moderately plump-which was not unimportant, with a score of men waiting to feed on it. And they were unlikely to get another that day. His arrow had taken it through the throat-even though he had aimed for the heart; but then, he was unused to these English long-bows and their cloth-yard shafts, purloined from the brewery at Tumberry. The Scots used much shorter and handier bows, if with correspondingly shorter range and less hitting-power.

  Still, none need know that he had aimed at the heart and hit a good eight inches to the left, since the stag was as dead one way as the other. At least he had done better than Gibbie Hay, who had missed his mark altogether.

  Kneeling, he drew his dirk to blood the beast by cutting the jugular vein. They would have to cut it all up, as well as gralloch it, for the brute would weigh fourteen or fifteen stone at least, he calculated, requiring three men to carry it the couple of miles back to their cave. He might as well play the butcher now, while he waited for the others to come up.

  Bruce had killed, eventually, in the narrows of a small side glen at the foot of Loch Doon, in the wild mountain country where Ayrshire rose to the Galloway border, under mighty Merrick, Where they had spent the two weeks since Turnberry. Using his remaining score of Islesmen almost as hounds, he and Gilbert Hay had managed to have the three deer they had spied manoeuvred through the close country of steep hillsides, waterfalls, bogs and hanging woods, towards this trap of a narrow glen, the cater ans spread out in a great semi-circle to windward, closing in to give the beasts just enough of their scent to make them uneasy and moving in the other direction, without alarming them so that they bolted off at speed. This was a tactic which Bruce had learned in Christina’s Moidart, and very different from the traditional southern method of hunting deer on horseback. The two marksmen had waited in the throat of the glen for the stags to drift within bowshot.

  The two younger beasts had in fact bolted off at a tangent, uphill, long before they were in range; but this heavier animal had come on, by fits and starts, into the trap, disdaining to be flushed and flurried. Bruce had seen Hay, from a somewhat higher position than his own, across the glen, shoot and obviously miss. His own shaft, of a minute later, at fully ninety paces, was, all things considered, commendable enough.

  He was bending over to make the first belly cut of the gralloch when, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed movement. Across the glen, and up. It was Hay, standing and waving. And not the congratulatory waving of one hunter to another; an urgent beckoning, rather.

  The King straightened up. Hay was no excitable enthusiast, to gesture to his monarch like that, without due cause. As the other continued to beckon, Bruce wiped his red blade on the stag’s shaggy mane, sheathed it, and rose.

  “Company, Sire,” Hay called softly, at his approach, and pointed.

  From this position it was possible to see down the main valley of the Doon below the loch-foot. And coming up the riverside track, less than a mile away, was a mounted party of about forty, arms and armour gleaming in the last rays of the sinking wintry sun.

  Bruce rubbed his bearded chin.

  “Men-at-arms,” he said.

  “I

  cannot think that they come to this remote wilderness looking for other than ourselves. Yet too small a company to be English sent to take us, surely. I believe they must be our first supporters, Gibbie!”

  “And not before time, Sire!” Hay observed grimly.

  That was hardly an unfair comment. Despite the stirring activities of the night at Turnberry two weeks before, no upsurge of support had materialised for the King of Scots, whatever might be the glee at Percy’s discomfiture. No rallying to Bruce’s standard had developed, even amongst his own feudal vassals of Carrick and Kyle. After waiting for ten days in these hills, he had been forced to the recognition that more positive recruiting was necessary, and had sent out his lieutenants, each with about four-score Islesmen, to try to raise fighting men. Edward had gone south, to the great Bruce lordship of Annandale; Campbell southwest into Galloway, to try to link up with the other two Bruce brothers; Douglas northeast to Douglasdale and the Moray lordship of Bothwell.

  This temporary dispersal of force was accepted only reluctantly;

  but apart from the urgent need for reinforcements, the food situation for even 300 men, in these empty fastnesses, had rapidly become a major problem, and the booty from Tumberry fast consumed.

  Hence the daily hunting on the part of the score who remained.

  Bruce and Hay slipped discreetly down through the woodland thickets,

  making for a point where the newcomers must pass close and could be

  surveyed secretly. The Islesmen could be trusted to remain out of evidence until called for.

  Unobserved they reached their vantage-point only a little while before the mounted party came jingling up. And quickly they perceived that there was in fact no need for secrecy. Riding at the head of the visitors’ column was a youngish woman, and at her side Sir Robert Boyd.

  The King stepped out into the track before them, holding up a hand.

  “Welcome, my friends,” he cried.

  “Chris-you make a fair, sight! Sir Robert-we feared you dead. Or at the least, captured.”

  There was a great to-do of exclamation, greeting, dismounting and hand-kissing. The woman was a cousin of Bruce’s own, the Lady Christian of Carrick, of the old Celtic line; and the forty well-equipped men-at-arms her own contribution to his force. It seemed that it was on the women of Scotland that its monarch must rely.

  Bruce embraced his kinswoman, with some emotion.

  “God bless you, Chris!” he said.

  “You are the first The first of all the Lowlands to rally to my cause.”

  “Aye-we are become a race of mice, not men!” she declared vehemently, clasping him to her and bestowing great smacking kisses.

  “Fearful of every English shadow! Time indeed that you returned and shamed us into valiant deeds again. Would I could have brought you more than two-score, Robert my liege lord-but as you know, I have but small lands.”

  “You have brought me more than just two-score fine fellows, woman-you have brought me hope and faith again. When I needed them.”

  Boyd coughed.

  “Your Grace will need all the faith and hope you may muster, I fear,” he said significantly.

  “Aye. No doubt, Sir Robert. The more I have to thank the Lady Christian, then. But, man-where have you been? And how knew you that I was here? At Loch Doon?”

  “I heard that you had landed, that night. At Tumberry. All the land has heard that! Despite that I had sent no signal. Deeming conditions to be unpropitious for a landing. In Carrick, at least But I did not learn your whereabouts. Until I encountered Douglas, two days past, on his way to his own country. He gave me the news of Your Grace. And the error of the fire. Knowing that the Lady Christian had these men for you-she alone of all I approached-I went to her. So we have come here, secretly.”

  “Aye. That was right. There
is little fervour for my cause, then?”

  The other shook his head.

  “Men are leal enough. I think. And the common folk would rise for you. But the quality, the lords and lairds and knights, are sore afraid to move. They have suffered too much in ten long years of war, lost too much. Lost heart, most of all, I fear, Sire, that you have a sore hill to climb, ahead of you.”

  “Have I not always known it, man!” The King spoke shortly, “But, come-here is no way to treat a lady, who has journeyed long miles to see me. We are camped at a cave behind those crags.

  Up that small side glen. A mile. But you will have to walk your, horses, to reach it…”

  As they picked their way by deer-paths and difficult climbing tracks, leading the horses, Boyd contrived to draw a little way ahead, alone with the King. Picking his words, he spoke slowly.

  “Back there, I said that Your Grace would have need of all the faith and hope you might muster. To my sorrow I did not say that lightly.”

  Bruce looked at him quickly.

  “You have more news for me than you have told?”

  “I have, Sire-God forgive me! Grievous news. Once before, I brought you the like. The Galloway venture has failed. It is disaster.

  All there is lost.”

  “Christ’s mercy-no! Not… not…?”

  “Aye, Sire-the worst. Sir Dugald MacDouall and the MacCanns, Comyn vassals, fell on them the day after the landing at Loch Ryan. Unawares, it seems. How it was done I have not heard, Whose the blame. But it was a rout. And thereafter, massacre.”

  Fiercely Bruce gripped the other’s arm.

  “My brothers?” he demanded.

  Boyd moistened his lips.

  “MacDouall took them, alive. With Sir Reginald Crawford. And Malcolm MacQuillan, of Antrim, who led the Irish gallowglasses. Him he slew. But your brothers, and Crawford, he sent to King Edward, at Lanercost.

  Edward … Edward hanged and then beheaded them all.”

  For long moments there were no words, no sounds other than their passage through the dead brackens. Then a moan of sheerest desolation broke from the King’s tight lips.

  “Alex!” he whispered.