The Crown in the Heather (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  Unable to escape, I felt my windpipe being crushed. I battled to draw air. His grip tightened. The edges of my vision went gray and blurred.

  It took five men to pry his fingers away and yank him from me. They dragged him away as Stewart rose to his feet and strode the length of the meeting table to stand as a barrier between us. I gulped in air, my ribs aching with each rattling breath. Comyn, cursing, strained violently against the men who held him back.

  Stewart raised a long finger at me. “Robert, do not force me to do this, but... you will harness your anger or... or go from here.”

  Slowly, I gathered myself and staggered to my feet. I rubbed tenderly at a sore neck and hacked raggedly in between hard-won breaths. “I will not... idle while others... hurl false inventions at honest men. Have you all heard nothing? Has honor so fallen from regard you retreat from rising in defense of it?” I shook my head at all of them, at their quibbling and complacency. Heaven help us, they were all either deaf or daft. I searched the faces there and wondered where lay Scotland’s hope.

  “Command John Comyn to harness his wagging tongue,” I warned, “or I will cure the problem in brutal fashion.”

  Stewart gave Comyn a lingering glance of warning.

  Comyn scowled at the men still holding him. “Let go of me.” His shoulders relaxed and with a curt nod from Stewart they released him. He tugged the hem of his shirt down and wiped the sweat from his brow. “A temper, Bruce. You’ve your grandfather’s vices and not a whit of his virtues.”

  In a more secluded place I would have, in turn, robbed the vile breath from him.

  Ignoring Comyn’s jeer, Stewart moved closer to me. He inclined his head, his voice now low and calm. “I remind you, we have not convened here to levy harm upon one anoth –”

  “Share that sentiment with the Comyns, Stewart, not me,” I interrupted. “I have exhausted more of my time and men in trying to keep him and his kin from marauding my lands in Carrick than I ever have of turning back English intruders. That is the bloody truth!”

  Stewart turned, took a few steps away and faced me again. “Weighty accusations, Lord Robert.”

  I held out my hand toward Lamberton. He stood and drew from beneath his robes a letter, the seal broken. He handed it to Stewart, who then read it carefully. When he was finished, Stewart slid the letter into the middle of the table. A dozen men gathered round, those who could read well, and soon others pressed against their shoulders to listen as the Earl of Atholl read it aloud.

  “John Comyn,” Stewart began, shaking his silvered head in exasperation, “your own brother Sir Alexander has recently burned and plundered lands not his, Scottish lands, in Annandale.” His gray eyebrows knitted together as he glanced about the room. “We will lay it at your door to correct the matter and to make certain that if he has profited by this action he will make due recompense. Any crime he may own shall be called upon as well. See to it.”

  Comyn threw his arms wide. “Am I to be my brother’s jailor then?”

  “You are to uphold the laws of this land,” Lamberton said.

  “And what laws does a traitor answer to?” Comyn spat.

  Lamberton kept his arms stiff at his sides, his jaw held firm in that ever-saintly tranquility he possessed. “The laws of this land as well of those of Our Lord God are clear. We do not inflict suffering on mankind, least of all our own.”

  Comyn strode toward the table and spat squarely in the middle of Lamberton’s brocaded collar. “Your piety galls me. How can any of us come near to it? You do as you please and say it is for Scotland alone that you act. I cannot serve as Guardian with one as almighty as you... or with one as arrogant as the Bruce.”

  “Then let me unburden you of half your troubles,” I said. “I resign as a Guardian of the Realm.”

  Lamberton’s eyes flew wide, a look of shocked abandonment imprinted on his countenance.

  “Your grace,” I said to Lamberton, my chin sinking to my chest with regret, “you will endure better than I in matters of…” – I glanced sideways at Comyn, then down at the floor – “diplomacy. For now, I am needed more at home than here.”

  As I went from the room, the silence was so great that my every footfall was amplified. Even though I was the son of a traitor, I had been entrusted by my peers with a station of high honor. But I could no longer bear the strife of it. Best to go, then and there, before the want for retribution overtook me.

  “Lord Robert,” Stewart called out.

  I paused before the door.

  “We have yet to discuss plans to prepare against Longshanks,” he said. “The king of England has issued writs to summon his levies at Carlisle by midsummer. You cannot walk from here. Not now.”

  “With regret, I do.” Slowly, I turned to face him. “Was it not you who proposed I should go from here? I turn my back not on Scotland, my lords, but on disorder. One devil at a time is all any of us can manage.”

  The problem, I reckoned, was figuring out who the devil was.

  That night I nursed my burgeoning sorrows over wine. How I had failed in every way. My temper, as always, had prevailed over my senses. Had I any chance at redemption? My grandfather would have turned from me had he witnessed what I had done. I would have given my every tooth to beseech his guidance that day.

  They were misguided, errant. They could not comprehend beyond the here and now or outside their own welfare. How could I make the blind see? I had tried. God knows how hard I had tried.

  Ch. 10

  Edward, Prince of Wales – Lichfield, 1300

  Wherever Piers de Gaveston stood, he cast no shadow. He was the sun. Brilliant. Glorious. Above all others in wit, exceeding them in feats of arms. Piers, or Brother Perrot as I endearingly called him, had arrived in England as a boy on the dusty heels of his penniless father, Arnold de Gaveston, who had escaped from a French prison. My sire the king, moved by pity for his former Gascon retainer, took his son Piers on as a squire.

  None ever had a face more fair or eyes as bright as Piers’. His hair was straight and tawny and in every light it shone like shafts of sunlight reaching down through broken clouds. Always, he was attired in the finest cloth from Flanders, Venice or the East. He bathed in a bathwater of olive oil sprinkled with lavender and sandalwood and chewed on coriander seeds to sweeten his breath. In all these rituals, there was not so much frivolity, but more of an attention to detail. He was impressive in every manner and for this I was in undeniable awe of him from first sight.

  One damp spring morning when I was but sixteen and he two years more, we rode from Kenilworth and through Longforest. We had been up and on our merry way well before dawn. Gilbert de Clare, the Earl of Gloucester and son of my older sister Joanna, yawned incessantly. We stopped in a clearing to make water. Wat, my flute player, caught Gilbert as he swayed sideways on his horse, having fallen asleep. Together with Robin, who had his lute tightly strapped to his back in anticipation of a spontaneous burst of musical inspiration, they propped the groggy Gilbert against the trunk of an ash tree.

  I made my way through the mist toward a more private spot, spear in hand to serve as a walking stick. But before I could relieve myself, I heard the telltale crack of a twig. A small, young doe bounded from the newly-leafed underbrush. Her red hide shimmered with dew. Deftly, I shifted my grasp on my spear and brought my arm back. Her eyes, pools of endless innocence, caught with mine. She twitched her ears but did not move otherwise, as if offering me the choice. I lowered my spear and kicked up fallen twigs to startle her to action, then watched her sprint away into the gray tangle of forest.

  “Why didn’t you take her?” Piers panted at my shoulder as he ripped his bow from over his back and fumbled to nock the arrow.

  “A roe deer. Hardly more than a fawn. Not worth the trouble, really. Besides, she was a few strides too far for my spear aim. If I had my bow ready... maybe then.”

  “Are these the king’s lands?” Piers asked. The quarry now out of sight, he plucked at the bowstring and
squinted into the drifting mists.

  I glanced behind me to see my nephew, Gilbert, rubbing at his eyes as he tiptoed through the nodding daffodils toward us, his own bow forgotten. “Bishop Langton of Lichfield’s,” I said, stroking my spear with my thumb, “and thriving with every manner of fur and feather you can imagine. He never touches it.”

  “Then it wouldn’t bother him to share it with us, eh?” Gilbert leaned against the nearest tree, slid down and drew back the hood of his cloak for a moment to glance about, then pulled it back over his eyes and wrapped himself more tightly as if to bed down for the duration. A year younger than me, Gilbert enjoyed gambling and music and was known for slurping from the forgotten tankards of others after he finished off his own. Little wonder that after last night, given the two casks of ale he’d downed, he wasn’t puking up his breakfast.

  “Unwise, Gilbert,” I warned. “He is parsimonious beyond belief. Keeps his collection box nailed shut.”

  “Edward.” Resting the bottom of his bowstave on the muddy ground, Piers clucked his tongue and planted a fist on his cocked hip. “Afraid of a holy man? What is he going to do? Cudgel you with a gilded altar cup?” Flipping away his bow, he raised his two clutched hands above him, as if lofting an imaginary cup. Then he feigned an angry grimace and flung it at me. A waft of air stirred my hair and I flinched instinctively. Wat and Robin joined us.

  “Oh, what have I done? Heaven forgive,” Piers jested in an old man’s crackling voice, hobbling to me and clasping my head in his hands. “You bleed, you bleed. Oh, I meant it not. My prince, my prince, please... take all you want. What’s mine is yours, for I have no need of it. I am a man of God and need live on faith alone.”

  A mocking frown tugged his lip downward. Cradling his face in his hands, he pretended to sob and plunged to his knees. “I beg your forgiveness, merciful lord. I have committed the carnal sins of avarice, gluttony and fornication with unwilling virgins. What is one deer? Take them all, my fair and gracious prince. Take them... all.” He flung himself at my feet and kissed them profusely.

  “Spare his head,” Wat said, elbowing Robin in the ribs. “I fancy his clothes and if’n you would hang him instead, avoid a bloody mess and all, I could have ‘em for m’self.”

  I laughed as I slapped Piers on top of his head. My sire frowned upon the company I kept, but they were vastly more amusing than a council chamber stuffed full of barons and bishops, clawing at one’s tolerance.

  “Indeed.” I lifted Piers by the puffed sleeves of his upper arms. “You’re soiling your hose. And...” I patted him twice on his flushed cheek, “you’re too pretty to be a cleric, Brother Perrot. Temptation would overwhelm you like a fly in a field full of cow shit.”

  “Proper rot, Edward.” He winked at me. “But so true. Now, what say we bring down a stag or two? Langton will never know he’s missing any.”

  How could I ever resist Piers’ charm? I walked over to Gilbert and kicked him in the gut.

  “Jeeeesus!” he wailed into a muddy pile of leaves as he rolled over. “What are you doing?”

  “Arise, nephew.” I loped to my horse and sprang into the saddle. “The day is wasting and the forest is teeming with game. So up, Gilbert. Up and away! Ready your knife, your spear and bow. Wat, Robin, keen your ears. And gentle Brother Perrot, lead the chase. You’ve the best eyes of all of us. Wherever you go, I and the whole world will follow.”

  Windsor, 1300

  I entered the room where my father, King of all England and more, was taking his supper at a small round table. Bishop Langton sat across from him. I cringed inwardly, but kept a level chin and square shoulders. I knew, without being told, why I had been summoned to Windsor. Behind them, the chill air of a dimming sunset poured in through an open window, so they were but dark silhouettes before it. Black-robed judges ready to levy their sentence on me, with or without a trial.

  Ignoring me as one would a menial servant, the king finished off his meal to the very last pea and chased it down with half a cup of wine from a jeweled goblet. The bishop’s stern eyes never left me. He leered at me like a nagging mother who stares down a disobedient boy before she can get across the room to tweak him by the ear and drag him outside for a beating. I so wanted to prance over to him, knock the bloody miter right off his fat, bald head and then strike him senseless with the gold crucifix that swung from his short, little neck. By Babylon, it must have been heavy enough to anchor a ship. I glared back at him, rolled my eyes and sighed with annoyance.

  When your time comes, your grace, God will judge you, too, by your legion of vices. I hear your steward’s niece birthed your bastard not a year ago and her belly is already swelling again.

  “What is it,” my father began, as he dabbed at his hands on a square of white linen, “about the word ‘property’ that you fail to understand?” With a flip of his slim fingers, he tossed a chicken bone to the floor. His lazing brindle greyhound snatched it up, growled as it passed me with its tail tight between its legs and then lay down across the doorway, as if to block my escape.

  “Mea culpa,” I muttered, bowing low in Langton’s direction. “It will not happen again.”

  “Indeed, it will not.” My sire dipped his fingers in a bowl of rose water and then wiped them dry on his lap. “You behave infra dignitatem, perhaps because of those you surround yourself with. You are confined to Windsor for six months. Your ‘friends’ may not come within sight of you during that time. That should provide you with ample time for reflection.” Beneath cold, gray eyes, he smiled smugly.

  My heart froze in its rhythm. Six months? Six months? “But, sire... Brother Perrot? You placed him in my household at King’s Langley. You cannot send him away because of one little escapade. What harm was done that cannot be undone?”

  “Much. You both suffer from poor judgment. You knew you were on Bishop Langton’s lands and yet you failed to seek his permission. You killed more deer than you could bring back and left a dozen carcasses in the forest to rot, spread disease, breed flies and stink whenever the wind blows. You have been a nuisance, a wastrel and a common thief. The bishop here urged me to be more lenient with you, but I think I have been far too lax until now. Punishment is overdue. It is time to alter your ways. You are a man now and should begin to act like one.”

  With a sweep of his hand he dismissed me from his royal presence. I lowered my eyes and backed away, turning sharply about as I reached the door. The greyhound let out a yelp, jumped up and snapped at my shins. I had stepped on its tail – not by accident.

  Turnberry, 1301

  I endured that summer in dull solitude, fed by smuggled letters, and when autumn came Piers and I embraced as if six years, not months, had divided us. My mirth, however, was short-lived. The next spring my sire commanded me to join him on a campaign against the Scots. He sent me up the western shore while he drove through the eastern parts. We were to conquer and lay waste to both coasts and then meet where the land narrowed, thereby dividing north from south.

  When I discovered that the Bruce was en route to Turnberry Castle, I pursued him there like a fox gone to ground. Sooner or later, he would have to emerge from his hole.

  But with each passing day, anticipation slowly turned to frustration.

  Gilbert, who had arrived only that morning straight from Gloucester, plucked up a flat stone at his feet and flung it in the direction of Turnberry Castle. It arced across a luminous summer sky, hurtling end over end, before it fell from view and clattered downward over the sea cliffs. He searched the trampled grass for another stone. “Did you attempt to gain access by the sea cave yet?”

  I waited until he looked at me before I imparted a sneer. “We’ve been here nearly twenty days, Gilbert. What do you think we have been doing? Hunting grouse with slings and stones to pass the time? Of course we have.”

  “And?” His hands empty, he straightened.

  “That devil-spawn killed twenty of my men.”

  He scratched at his head, ambled toward the c
liff’s edge and peered down at the sea gate, its opening obstructed by the massive iron portcullis. “Don’t you think that was too obvious? Sending twenty at once?”

  Had I not known Gilbert for his naïve honesty, I would have accused him of mocking me in my father’s stead. “Twice we tried. But there’s no way to it, not without being seen and murdered in our tracks. No, I haven’t enough men to overwhelm the castle on both fronts. Not nearly enough. Even the land route is too narrow for an assault.”

  Gilbert’s mouth gaped in a drawn-out yawn. “So where’s the king now?”

  I shrugged and glanced at my army, encamped further inland. “Hammering Lothian to a pulp. He’s set upon Bothwell Castle, I hear. We’re to join up in Linlithgow by mid September.”

  “And what there?”

  “I presume he’ll gloat, what else? Only now do I see why he sent me here. Bloody Christ – he knew all along. Knew how this would go for me.” I gripped the hilt of the long knife at my waist, wishing for something to slash at in my mounting fury, but there was nothing around us except sun-gilded swells of grass underlain with sand. “Bruce is firmly ensconced on his rock and I haven’t the siege machinery to topple him from it. Meanwhile, his pack-mate Soulis gnashes at our calves from behind every time the sun goes down. Cowards!” I shouted at the castle as I drew my knife and flashed it before me. A rising wind swallowed my words. Spinning on my heel to face Gilbert, I slammed my knife back into its sheath and paced past him. “They refuse to come out into the open to do battle. Instead, they lurk in the hollows and woods of this God-forgotten wasteland, then attack while our backs are turned. What my sire thinks to gain by squandering his resources in this stinking latrine of humanity, I fail to understand. It would be better to forget the savages altogether and leave them to cross swords against each other.”