Insurrection: Renegade [02]

by Robyn Young

  Chapter 20

  Near Turnberry, Scotland, 1302 AD

  The figures drew closer, wrapped in patterned woollen hukes. The older of the two was struggling through the slush, while the younger carried two pails. Affraig stepped down to meet them, blinking in the wind that caused the boughs of the oak to creak and sigh. The branches, adorned with their slow-turning webs, were as bare as antlers. She noticed the older man glance up as he passed beneath and make the sign of the cross. There was a time when she would have challenged him, sneering at his ritual when his faith was clearly so feeble he felt the need to come to her. She had always revelled in the power she had over the village folk, desperate or resentful when pleas to their God went unanswered. Now, she let it pass. A prayer was a prayer.

  ‘Angus,’ she greeted gruffly. ‘What do you have for me?’

  ‘Milk and eggs,’ wheezed Angus, his face chapped by the wind. ‘And Ade skinned you three coneys, if you’ll do us another charm for little Mary.’ There was a beseeching look in his watery eyes. ‘She’s come down with a fever again. Worse than last.’

  Affraig felt a spark of anger, although she didn’t know why. ‘Put them by the door,’ she said testily to the lanky youth holding the pails. When he crossed to the house, she pulled out a pouch looped through her belt and handed it to Angus. ‘Your wife’s herbs.’ As he took it, she added, ‘Take your family back to the village. Your daughter needs the warm and dry. Charms can only do so much. The body must be cared for as much as the soul.’

  Angus was already shaking his head. ‘They’re fools, them who’ve gone back there. Where’s the use rebuilding homes or sowing the ground with seed, only for the English dogs to burn it all again? No,’ he said firmly, his eyes on his skinny son who returned to his side. ‘We’ll be safer in the woods with the others. We’ve built shelters to keep off the worst of the wet and we’re sharing the livestock we saved. There’s talk of going north into the mountains when the thaw comes, where the knights and their warhorses can’t follow. There’s a truce now, but it won’t last. The English will return in spring, sure as the tide.’

  As Affraig’s anger deepened she realised it was directed at herself. She could cure a headache or purify an abscess, deliver a child into the world and cause a woman to conceive. But these men and women now asked the impossible. Make my seeds grow in the scorched earth. Fill my empty larder. Help us have victory over the English. Bring back my son. The gods seemed crueller these days, less agreeable to her supplications. Destinies dropped from her tree unfulfilled. One man came last year, stormy with threats and cries. His destiny had been to wed his love, but she had been killed when the English stormed the village. It had made Affraig doubt herself.

  ‘You fool,’ she said sourly to Angus, plucking her cloak tighter. ‘You do not know the English will return. Will you risk your daughter’s life on rumour? Earl Robert will hear of the ruin of Turnberry. He’ll come with an army to rebuild his fortress and defend his—’

  ‘Have you not heard?’ Angus cut across her. ‘Bruce has submitted to the English king. He crossed the border two months ago and went to London. The whole village has been alive with it. We’ll find no help from him.’ He trailed off at her changing expression. ‘I’m to be getting back.’ He frowned hopefully. ‘The charm?’

  ‘Come tomorrow.’ Affraig didn’t look at him. Her eyes were on a web in the tree above her, in the centre of which hung a crown of heather and broom, withered by weather and time. Her gaze remained on it as the two men walked away. Then, with a hot rush through her veins and a snarl on her lips she turned and struck out through the muddy snow towards the house. The wind caught her cloak and tore it from her shoulders. She let it fall. Against the side of the house was propped a long, forked stick. Snatching it up, her cheeks mottled, Affraig returned to the oak. Grasping the stick in both hands she stood beneath the branches, eyes on the crown. Her heart pounded out the rhythm of the words in her mind.

  Tear it down.

  With a thrust, she pushed the forked stick up through the branches. A woman’s shout stopped her. Affraig looked round, breathing hard, the pronged end of the stick hovering inches from the web. In the doorway stood her niece, her young daughter balanced on one hip.

  ‘It’s raw, Brigid,’ called Affraig, her voice hoarse. ‘Take Elena inside.’ She turned back to the task, but her arms were burning with the effort of holding the stick above her head and she had to lower them.

  Brigid crossed the ground towards her, her dress whipping around her lean figure, her hip and collarbones protruding through the thin material. Crow-dark tendrils of hair streamed behind her. She was only in her mid-twenties, but looked older, her face careworn, her eyes like haunted pools. Still, there was strength in her voice. ‘What are you doing, Aunt?’

  ‘Angus says Robert Bruce surrendered to the English king. He has abandoned us.’ Affraig’s eyes flicked to the web. ‘I will tear his destiny down!’ As she spat these words her mind filled with an image of Robert sitting by her fire five years ago, watching as she wove the broom, heather and wormwood into a circle. The fierce light of ambition in his blue eyes had reminded her of his grandfather. The image changed, twisting into the face of Robert’s father, scornful, hateful. He had come to her once, as his father before him and his son after, desiring her arts. He had been hot with temper and drink, but she had taken his coins and worked him his spell.

  Later, when one of his men assaulted her, she had gone to the earl to beg for justice, the bruises still livid on her throat and thighs. The bastard had laughed in her face; said his man was worth a thousand witches. This – after she had woven his destiny and saved his son and heir at birth. Next day she had ripped apart his fate and left it in pieces outside the walls of Turnberry Castle. For this act, he banished her from the village.

  Both father and son had wanted the same thing: to be King of Scotland. History repeated itself. Maybe, in destroying the first destiny, she had cursed the son without knowing it; the son she had brought screaming and bloody into the world when Mars was red in the heavens, the son who had so far followed in the deep ruts of his father’s footsteps.

  Brigid’s voice cut through her thoughts.

  ‘You would destroy what you made in faith before the goddess, on the word of a frightened peasant?’

  ‘The gods mock me, girl. I cannot make a man a king. Cannot cure Elena’s scars, or bring back your husband and son.’

  Grief surfaced on Brigid’s face at the pain of memory, like a stain soaking through cloth. Her husband had been killed in the English raid on Ayr, knocked down and trampled by the destriers of knights as he had raced home, her son hacked apart by English blades when he’d run to help him. Brigid had seen it from the window of their house. When she rushed out to gather her dying son in her arms the knights had ridden right past her, intent on throwing their burning brands on to the thatched roofs. By the time she staggered back to her house, drenched in the blood of her loved ones, she had found the place ablaze. She managed to save her daughter, but the child bore the scars. On one side, Elena’s face was smooth and soft. On the other it was a horror of scar-tissue, ridges and coils of skin bubbled up like pig flesh when cooked over a hot fire.

  Affraig had tried every poultice, every charm to diminish the child’s disfigurement. None had worked.

  Elena hid her face in her mother’s neck as Affraig stared at her. ‘My power is failing,’ she murmured. ‘Failing with this land. I fear we will lose our kingdom. It will be swallowed up by the great serpent that is England.’

  ‘There is no one I have ever met who knows more the lore of trees and herbs,’ Brigid said. ‘But you do not know the ways of politics and men. What does your heart tell you of Robert Bruce?’

  Affraig stared into the blank sky. ‘I do not know,’ she said wearily. ‘There is a veil across my eyes.’ As she stood there a flock of geese passed overhead, flying in a phalanx towards Turnberry. There was something determined in their flight; something straight an
d true. Affraig tossed the stick down in the mud.

  Chapter 21

  Writtle, England, 1302 AD

  ‘They’re here.’

  Robert, seated on the edge of the bed, looked up from pulling on his boots. Elizabeth was standing in the window, her back to him. The shutters were open and the sky was aflame with bands of scarlet, rose and amber. The spring evening was still and crisp. The bleating of lambs echoed from the surrounding pastures and crows cawed in the fields where wheat and rye were growing. On the hush rose the distant drum of hooves.

  As he came to stand behind her, Robert caught the scent of almond oil and lilies. He didn’t recognise his wife’s perfume. Wife. That word still snared and tripped him, despite the fact he’d had months to get used to the idea. Elizabeth was wearing one of the gowns she had brought from Ireland, with a matching veil and circlet. The hems of the surcoat she wore over the tight-fitting kirtle were decorated with black lions from her father’s coat of arms. Robert’s tailor had made new dresses for her, embroidered with the arms of Carrick, but they hung unworn on the clothes perch in the corner of the room. He felt a prickle of anger, but said nothing. There was no time for her to change now anyway.

  The window of the bedchamber looked out over the moat that girdled the lodge, with its chapel, hall, stables and outbuildings. Beyond the drawbridge, a track, scattered with puddles that reflected the crimson sky, stretched towards the village of Writtle, where it turned into the road that led south to London. Writtle’s timber-framed houses were clustered around a green and the square-towered church where he and Elizabeth had married six weeks earlier. Robert fixed on the riders approaching along the track, the hooves of their caparisoned horses splashing through the mud. A banner was hoisted above the company, sky blue with a white band. Robert couldn’t see the detail at this distance, but knew there would be six golden lions on it.

  His jaw tightened. From the depth of hostility he’d seen in Humphrey de Bohun’s eyes the day he submitted to King Edward, he’d have said Humphrey would like nothing more than to see him wiped from the face of the earth. The memory made him question again why the earl had requested this meeting. The only word Robert had heard from Westminster in recent weeks was talk of a massacre in Flanders where the townsmen of Bruges had risen against French occupying forces. Other than this, things had been quiet since his surrender, but he knew this couldn’t last. Edward clearly expected him to prove himself in his service. Did Humphrey bear a royal order – some way for him to earn the king’s trust?

  Whatever the reason for the meeting, Robert wondered if it might present an opportunity to seek the answers he’d so far been kept from, the move to Writtle and his wedding taking up every spare moment. The head of the crossbow bolt sat cold against his skin, hidden beneath his surcoat.

  ‘Shall we greet them?’

  Robert glanced at Elizabeth as she spoke and saw she was twisting her wedding ring. She was always fiddling with it, as if she couldn’t get it to sit right on her finger. Maybe the band didn’t fit properly, or perhaps it was some show of protest at the union she had been forced into. Either way, it needled him. Elizabeth wasn’t the only one trapped by this alliance. He had gone to Ireland with the hope of liberating his kingdom and gaining the throne, and had ended up surrendering to his enemy and locked in a marriage of convenience with the daughter of one of the king’s most powerful allies. He felt like a fly, trussed up tight by the threads of two spiders.

  ‘No,’ he told her. ‘Edwin will show our guests in. We’ll meet them in the hall.’

  Down in the great hall servants were busy putting the finishing touches to the tables, decorating them with sprays of flowering hawthorn. As Robert and Elizabeth entered, she left his side and crossed the rush-strewn tiles to speak to Lora, one of the three maids who had travelled with her from Ireland, along with a laundress, grooms and porters. The hall was filling up with knights and ladies, summoned from the Writtle and Hatfield estates by Robert’s father. They were being ushered in by pages under the watchful eye of the Bruce’s steward, Edwin. Nes and the other squires who had accompanied Robert from Scotland were also there. Far above their heads, oak beams, pitted with age, criss-crossed the ceiling.

  The hall and the buildings that surrounded it had been built almost a century earlier. Formerly a royal hunting lodge, it had come into the Bruce family’s possession sixty years ago through Robert’s grandmother. He had never met the illustrious Isobel de Clare, who died before he was born, but his grandfather had spoken of her as a noble Englishwoman who had given him much pleasure, as well as rich estates. Writtle was one of several manors Robert stood to inherit, now he had surrendered to Edward.

  His father was seated at the top table nursing a goblet of wine, accepting greetings from the guests. His corpulent frame was swaddled in a heavy mantle despite the warmth of the candle-filled hall. The old Bruce had lived at Writtle ever since the king dismissed him as Governor of Carlisle, after Robert joined Wallace’s rebellion. To either side of the lord sat two men. One was Edward Bruce, nonchalantly handsome in a linen shirt and hose, eyes idly following the servants as they hurried around the trestles dealing out goblets. The other was dressed in plain brown robes, his black hair framing a solemn face. Alexander, the brother Robert hadn’t seen in years, had arrived at the manor four days ago from Cambridge, where he was studying for a Masters in Divinity.

  At first, Robert had been heartened to see him, realising how much he had missed his family, scattered first by their mother’s passing, then by the war. Their father had recently received word from Kildrummy Castle, where Robert’s sister, Christian, wife of Earl Gartnait of Mar, had given birth to a son. Robert had been pleased to hear his younger sisters, Mary and Matilda, were with her and safe, but his gladness at the reunion with his brother had been short-lived, for Alexander had barely said two words to him.

  Joining them, Robert noticed with a sinking feeling that the pewter jug of wine in front of his father was already almost empty.

  Alexander glanced at him as he sat. ‘Lady Elizabeth seems to have settled in well,’ he observed, after a stilted pause.

  ‘Indeed,’ growled their father, before Robert could respond. ‘My son should bless his good fortune.’ His gaze turned on Robert. ‘Given your conduct these past years, you could hardly have expected such an auspicious union. And yet you look as though you’re at your own funeral!’ The old Bruce snapped his fingers at the page and gestured to his goblet. He watched intently as the page filled the vessel to the brim. ‘You must do everything in your power tonight, Robert, to prove yourself worthy. It is only by the king’s mercy that you are a free man.’ As he drank, wine dribbled from his mouth. ‘By God, you should be on your knees in thanks for his forgiveness of your crimes!’

  ‘I am quite sure, Father, that you have prostrated yourself low enough for both of us these past years.’

  As Robert spoke the doors were opened by the doorward, who loudly announced the arrival of the evening’s guests. The disruption covered Robert’s words from his father, but not from Alexander, who glared at him. Edwin went to meet the grand company now filing into the hall.

  Robert drained his drink, a strong wine from Bordeaux, and motioned for the page to refill it, his gaze on Humphrey, who entered at the head. At his side, almost as tall as he was, walked Lady Bess. They made a striking couple, he broad in the chest and shoulders with a hale, ruddy complexion, she slim and long-limbed with milky skin. They wore matching surcoats and mantles embroidered with the de Bohun arms, his pulled in at the waist by a sword belt, hers girdled with a silver chain.

  Elizabeth greeted the newly wed couple, dropping to kiss their hands, before Bess grasped her arms and raised her with a smile. In the short time Robert and Elizabeth had spent at Westminster, before Richard de Burgh returned to Ireland, she and Bess had formed an immediate bond of friendship. It was through their insistence that the meeting tonight had become a feast. Handing his sword belt to his squire, Humphrey said someth
ing that caused the women to laugh. Robert curled his fingers around his goblet.

  Escorted by the steward, Humphrey approached the top table. He greeted the elder Bruce with a geniality that surprised Robert. As they clasped hands, he wondered how often the two of them had met in his absence. They were neighbours after all, one of Humphrey’s castles lying only ten miles away. Robert felt a sting of regret. He and his father had never been close. The lord had clearly been envious of the affection between his own father and Robert. But the man was his blood and he had offered him nothing but cold silence these past years. Could he blame him for his contempt?

  ‘Sir Robert.’

  Robert looked up from his wine to see Humphrey standing before him. He rose to greet him. ‘Sir Humphrey.’

  As Edwin showed Humphrey to his place at the top table beside Robert, Bess followed. She allowed Robert to give her hand a fleeting kiss, before moving to sit between her husband and Elizabeth.

  When all the guests were seated, the old Bruce thumped down his goblet, spilling wine on the tablecloth. ‘It is with honour that I welcome Sir Humphrey de Bohun and his wife, Lady Elizabeth, to my home. Not since the days of King Henry has this hall been blessed with such illustrious company.’

  The lord continued to the tune of a clatter of dishes as servants brought out platters of roasted swan and goose, steaming trout cooked in apples and saffron, and an enormous rabbit pie. The dishes were followed by bowls of creamy butter and custards spiced with clove and ginger. On each table was placed a silver basin of water for the guests to wash their hands in.

  ‘My last great pleasure,’ finished the Bruce, his voice slurred, ‘is reserved for my dear son, who has returned home to me.’ Robert stared at him. His surprise curdled when the old man grasped Alexander’s shoulder. ‘From Cambridge. He will say grace.’