The Crown in the Heather (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  “John Comyn, the Earl of Buchan’s son, attacked Carlisle barely one week past. The day after dozens of your nobles freely offered their oaths of fealty to me at Wark. If not for the loyalty of the Bruces who knows in whose filthy hands that stronghold might now rest? You should have followed the Earl of Carrick’s example. You yourself could have saved the bloodshed of thousands. You! But instead you chose to defy me. Pray tell, governor, what false thinking led you thus?”

  Father clenched his fingers around an imaginary hilt, a gesture unseen by the king. “I followed the command of my liege, King John.”

  Longshanks laughed hollowly. “John Balliol is a country squire. I stripped him of his crown for all his deception and impertinence not half as fast as I will strip the skin from your very bones. What blatant ignorance to believe he could pay lip service to me as overlord while courting the King of France. A union between his son and Philip’s niece? The absurdity of it is beyond gall. You are my vassal now, William Douglas. Mine alone. You and your ilk are not fit to govern yourselves. You cannot breed a proper king; therefore, I will serve that end. And I will take the quarrel from you if I have to plunge my own hand into the chest of each and every Scotsman and squeeze it from his beating heart.”

  Father bristled beneath his shirt of mail. He closed his eyes momentarily and swallowed back the bellicose words that must have pushed at his tongue. He nodded as his chin dropped.

  “Forgive us our pride...” Father muttered into his chest, “and our savagery. At times, we must be reminded of our place.”

  Had I not known my father half as well I would have thought him a base, unsavory coward for prostrating himself thus. He had never given weight to what others thought of him, never censored his words to soften their blow, never kept secret which side of an argument he was on. But as we shared a fleeting glance, I read there in his pupils the words he did not speak: that a day would come when he would make Longshanks pay.

  Longshanks’ fingers shot out and grabbed a handful of Father’s black hair, matted by wind and rain. He jerked Father’s head back and stared down at him as his other hand clenched the hilt of his long sword. “What are the lives of your wife and sons worth, Douglas? Are you prepared to swear to me? If you are false... help me, but I will not show mercy. Not only will I bury your head and your body in separate graves, but your boys will inherit nothing but their own pile of dung.”

  “Free my hands and I will swear, upon my life, whatever you wish.”

  A smile opened up the king’s narrow face. He let go of Father’s hair. With a snap of his fingers, one of the king’s men sawed away the ropes that bound Father’s hands.

  Grimacing, Father rubbed them together to return the blood. Then, he touched his hands to his forehead briefly and extended them, palms pressed flat together, to rest between the king’s outstretched fingers. The oath of fealty passed his lips, but what was in his heart was surely otherwise.

  As soon as father had sworn himself as Edward’s man, his hands were bound again and he was whisked away to the dungeons. The next morning we were given brusque escort to the edge of town and sent on our way on a cart drawn by a plow horse with not a year left to its natural life. Two of our garrison served as our guard on the long, bloody road to Douglas Castle. Thousands upon thousands of dead bodies lay strewn from every doorway of the smoking town out to the strangely tranquil, stubbled fields of the Tweed valley. Eleanor kept her head down, stroking Archibald’s hair as he wailed from hunger still. Her face was blanched from loss of blood. The shove Neville had given her… it killed the babe within her. She grieved alone, in gray silence. Father did not know and my younger brothers – they couldn’t understand how a child not yet born can die.

  Mute, Hugh gazed around him, almost looking intrigued, as our cart rumbled over a stream where the bloated and bruised body of a young woman, violated in unspeakable ways, floated face-up. Her bulging eyes stared up at a cloudless sky while a golden sun blazed furiously overhead, drawing out the first flies of the season to feast on the rotting offal of Berwick’s citizens.

  Ch. 5

  James Douglas – Douglas Castle, 1297

  Eleanor, my brothers and I returned to Douglas Castle, overlooking the indolent Douglas Water – more a home to me than Berwick had ever been. My dog, Fingal, greeted me on the road half a mile from the castle. He seemed less the giant than I remembered, but far more grizzled around the mouth. I wondered whether he had waited for me every day since our parting a year earlier, or if he had somehow sensed I would return on that particular day. As I ran the last stretch home alongside the wagon, his tail thrashed against my knees.

  When autumn’s turning leaves gilded the hills of Lanarkshire, Father came home. Longshanks, certain the insolent Scots had been subdued, went to Gascony to settle matters there and so he had finally set my father free. I was never happier to see him, but he had little time and less concern than ever for my brothers and me. Lady Eleanor, whom he had wooed so abruptly and resolutely, became naught but a nursemaid to his issue.

  Men of every sort came and went, as did Father. We were never quite sure when or if he would come back. Some of those who came to Douglas were young, with hardly a whisker; some were old and wizened, their jowls loose and flapping beneath snow-white beards. Some were familiar, some strangers. There were noblemen of high rank, with their many-colored coats; wind-burnt Islanders who spoke in strange tongues; faceless townspeople, wealthy merchants, carpenters and masons; bearish Highlanders lugging spears; and farmers with bronzed skin and bulging arms. They came alone and in small clutches of three or four, never in larger groups, arriving at dusk and parting before dawn. Our courtyard rang with the clatter of hoof beats and the rhythmic chink of metal bits. Ale and wine flowed in our hall like rain in springtime. All wore the look of perpetual suspicion and spoke little of ordinary things. They whispered and they hurried and each walked with his hand close to the hilt of his weapon.

  Father still bore the purple scars on his wrists and ankles where they had shackled him. Once, as he changed shirts, I glimpsed the festering welt marks on his back. Eleanor applied a hot poultice, which made him grimace. I wondered how many lashings he had suffered and what he had finally said to make them stop. His black mood infected us all – but whether that darkness was due to the wounding of his pride or because of what had happened to Eleanor... I often wondered if she had ever even told him that she carried his child, let alone that she had lost it.

  Throughout winter, a restive wind howled from the deep, dark forests of wild Galloway, like a host of banshees awaiting their claim. Archibald was ill until spring with a cough that would not be banished. Lady Eleanor tended to her ailing bairn day and night and grew terse with father for every wee thing.

  When the clouds were few, which was seldom during the course of that bleak Scottish spring plagued by sleet and ice, I took Hugh on my pony and we rode toward the southern hills. There, we watched the wind ripple the grass over the land and the buzzards glide above, if only because there was no pleasure in being home. In the short gray hours of day, I taught Hugh how to throw a spear and use a sling. I brought down a swan in midair with a stone from my sling. With its feathers, I fletched my first arrows under the patient tutelage of my father’s man, Ranulf. The shafts were made of ash and the heads of finest steel. Father gave us each a bow, short enough to shoot with from horseback and easy enough for a young boy to flex his muscles on as we learned to pull it. I had all but given up on teaching Hugh to read, preferring to leave that futile task to our tutor. If he was not keen of mind, he was at least strong of arm and that, I prayed, would someday be his salvation. So we kept at our spears and bows, playing in the today, but practicing for the tomorrows ahead.

  But the peace forced upon us was unsteady and short-lived. The following year a man named William Wallace, whom until then few among us had heard anything of, killed the Sheriff of Lanark. His growing insurrection drew not only the commonfolk to him, but also one of higher station –
a man whose scars would not let him forget the rage of seeing thousands helplessly slaughtered and then the heat of humiliation for being wrongly blamed. By late spring, my father joined Wallace at Perth. Together, they chased the king’s justiciar, William Ormesby, from Scone. He fled in such haste that he had only enough time to gather his documents and so abandoned his valuables.

  My father, a richer man than when last he left, returned along the road from Dumfries while the thistle was in its first splendor. I dropped from the sunny window where, like a fledgling eagle, I had kept vigil for weeks, eternity to a lad of my vigor. Down the stairs I raced, into the courtyard, through the gates and along the rocky road to greet him. For a quarter mile, I pumped my arms, running hard until my legs burned and my lungs blazed. I did not halt until I came close enough to see my father’s face clearly. I stood there in the roadway, my chest heaving, my hands upon my knees.

  Beside Father rode a gruff, golden-maned man, whom I guessed to be Wallace. Indeed, he was the very giant tales had portrayed him to be: the tallest man I had ever seen, with shoulders as broad as a mountain and bulging arms that could have heaved a stout timber end over end. They said he could hew a man in half – sideways or lengthwise – with one flail of his sword. I believed it.

  Close behind them were ten others: rugged creatures with bare legs and wolfish scowls, and clutching long spears.

  Father acknowledged me with a glance, but he did not stop to scoop me up and let me ride on the back of his fleet horse as he had always done when he returned home. The band of riders parted around me as though I were a rock in a stream and continued on to the castle.

  I turned around and gazed at them through a cloud of dust. The round shields slung over their backs grew smaller and smaller. Then, wheezing, I drew the deepest breath I could and raced after them.

  When I caught up, they had dismounted and were waiting for my father’s instructions. The smells of sweat and leather were overpowering. The grit of dust in my mouth was nothing in comparison. Their mumbling fell away as I stepped through them and tugged at my father’s shirttail.

  With a frayed sleeve, Father wiped at the grime of road dust and sweat covering his face. Then he reached up, untied a clanking sack from his saddle and yanked it down.

  “Water, James. The horses need tending.”

  My smile slipped away and my shoulders sank. I hesitated, hoping he would reach inside the sack and toss me a gift, but then he hoisted it over his shoulder and headed inside. I watched his back and waited for him to turn back to me. Only Wallace lingered.

  “Do as your father bids, lad. It will build your strength. After that there are field stones to move and logs to be hauled to the top of that hill you just came from.” Wallace cuffed me on the upper arm and ruffled my hair.

  A curious gesture, I thought, for a man as savage as him. Then he winked and grinned. An easy, huge grin. His lightheartedness, however, rankled me. I had been slighted by my own father, treated like a stable boy and not his heir, and was in no mood for jesting.

  Wallace turned to follow the other men into the hall. As soon as his back was to me – that great long sword slung over his back – I launched both feet at the back of his knees. He stumbled, only slightly, and spun around. My ill-planned attack had landed me on my rump... my arse soaking in a puddle, no less.

  Blue eyes sparkling with mirth, Wallace laughed.

  I stayed where I was, muddy water seeping into my breeches, until the doors closed behind Wallace. My tongue found the hole in my teeth – a perpetual reminder that I had yet much to learn. Hugh strolled out from the shadows where he had been watching and held out a hand to help me up. He did not care for strangers and never spoke in their presence.

  “Hurt?” Hugh asked. The over-sized shirt he wore hung to one side, baring a shoulder, but as ever, he took no notice. His leggings bagged so enormously at the crotch that it looked as if he might lose them at any moment.

  I struggled up, shaking my head, even as I rubbed at the place where the bruise would later appear. We fetched the water in stiff silence. While I stopped to rest and knead my sore back, Hugh continued to lug the sloshing buckets without complaint. Afterwards, we brought the horses hay and grain. Banished from the hall and whatever talk went on there, we were sent to our room for supper.

  That night as I lay in bed, I ached every inch – more from the tumble I had taken than the task I had been commanded to do. I turned on my side to see Hugh fast asleep beside me, as blissful in his ignorance as he was in slumber. The faint light of lingering twilight shone yellow upon his face. Hugh did not understand the closed doors, the shifting eyes, the sharpening of weapons. But I was disturbingly preoccupied with it. I was too old to be oblivious to it all, yet too young to be privy to great secrets.

  For days I was told to keep away and consigned to the drudgery of lessons. Today, sent on a menial errand to fetch my father’s spurs, I felt I had finally been elevated in the order of things. I turned the two silver pennies over in my clammy palm, then tucked them into the purse beneath my shirt. Fingal whined and sniffed at my fingers. I stroked the coarse fur along his spine, his back the same height as my lowest rib. Father had given me the money that morning and dispatched me on a mission. My chest had swelled with a feeling of importance. But as I stood at the door to the smith’s shop, the sign creaking overhead, the gaping silence within put me ill at ease. The streets of the town were quiet, for it was not market day, but even so the alleys gaped vacantly. The weaver’s and the potter’s shops were shut up tight. Across the street, the nailmaker’s shop was busy enough, but it was the fat wife whose voice I heard and not her husband’s. The talk sounded more like gossip than trade. I tethered my pony to a broken wagon just outside the shop, for he was prone to wander, and ventured inside. Fingal, never in a great hurry except when he was chasing hare, loped behind.

  The coals in the furnace were cold, the bellows propped idly in a corner, the ingots of iron neatly stacked, and the anvil clean of any sign of work. As I investigated, Ralph, the smith’s apprentice, ambled into the front of the shop, wiping his hands upon his smudged apron. He startled at the initial sight of my huge, furry companion, then reached up onto a high shelf, digging his fingers into a bowl from which he produced a long shank bone that he tossed to Fingal.

  “Been saving that for a week,” Ralph informed me. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Around.” Thoroughly absorbed with his treasure, my dog’s teeth were grinding against the bone as he lay beneath one of the worktables.

  “Doing what?”

  “I’ve come for my father’s new spurs.” I probed the lump beneath my shirt.

  “Och, a bit too soon, aren’t you? He only asked for them yesterday.” Ralph, a very worn fourteen years, snatched up a bucket of water and dumped it into the trough. “Besides, they won’t be done until Eachann gets back.”

  “Back... from where?” I bunched my eyebrows, perplexed. A laborer as skilled and in demand as Eachann the blacksmith did not leave his duties undone.

  “You haven’t heard? They’ve all gone north. To Irvine.”

  My heart hastened in its rhythm. “Why?”

  “A meeting of some kind.”

  “With whom?”

  Ralph shrugged. “Didn’t say. And I don’t care to know.”

  I could not run home fast enough. I found what I expected, but had hoped would not be. Father and Wallace had gone... to Irvine. The task I had been entrusted with was merely a diversion, meant to keep me from loitering underfoot while my father prepared to leave.

  I barricaded myself in my room, leaving Fingal in the corridor to scratch and whine until I could bear his insistence no more and let him in. With reckless fury, I beat at my pillow until the feathers exploded around my head and plowed my fist into the wall. Then I wept in bitter pain as my fingers plumped up like a sausage. Fingal licked the salty tears from my cheeks. I clamped my arms around his massive frame and buried my face in his fur to muffle the sobs of a young bo
y hungering for adventure, but left forgotten.

  My fingers throbbed with every sullen heartbeat. I refused my supper and Lady Eleanor at last gave up her attempts to console me. When the lavender light of gloaming yielded to overwhelming blackness, a soft rap came at my door. I opened it quick enough to allow Hugh in. In rehearsed silence, he took off his shirt and leggings and pulled his nightshirt over his head, then crawled into bed. Fingal did not even stir from his post on the floor next to my side of the bed. Hugh fell asleep as fast as his eyelids closed. The peace of sleep that night to me was like some elusive bird – a thing I could not hold or own, no matter how I might covet or need it.

  An hour later, still seething, I went and leaned from my high window. The lights of the village flickered lazily from opened shutters in the expanse just beyond Douglas Castle, just as they had done night after night, year after year. I closed my eyes for a time and imagined myself a soldier of great stealth, fighting bravely beside my father, smiting my enemies with a single fierce blow. I hoped beyond hope that I would hear the distant clatter of hooves and my father would come back for me. The night breeze whispered coolly in my ears. The old smell of peat fires filled my nose. The scattered and distant sounds of nighttime grew stronger and more frequent. The scent that wafted on the air – stranger... sharper.

  I opened my eyes to my nightmare. Upon the thatched roof of a home on the edge of town, amber sparks of fire danced elfishly. Riders, torches held aloft, wove in streams of smoking yellow through the streets, but they were not my father’s men. Soon, another roof erupted in flames. And then another. Dark forms scattered from the town in chaos, their screams edged with hysteria. Shouts went up from the skeleton garrison my father had left behind. In the castle, soldiers bolted from dead sleep and scurried to their posts.