“They do that sometimes already, don’t they?”
“Not nearly enough.”
Sinking to his haunches, Gilbert dug a rock from the gritty earth and thumbed its smooth surface. “Edward, do you know for certain Bruce is in there? In the castle?”
“Do I know for certain?” I stopped before him to stare at Turnberry’s elusive towers. In one of those, the Bruce slept soundly every night, confident he would outlast me. His avoidance, though, was merely a delay of the inevitable. “Before you arrived yesterday, he came out onto the parapets himself, just to insult me personally. I swear I’ll bring that bastard low one day. Not this time, perhaps. But one day…”
When I rejoined the king at Linlithgow, the reception was a tepid occasion. He could say little in chastisement, though, for success had eluded him equally. The formidable warrior had been foiled. Instead of returning home to the comforts of London, my sire forced me to remain in desolate Linlithgow over winter. He took cruel delight in tormenting me. The gloomy loch reflected my melancholy at again being parted from jovial companions – most of all Piers. For that fellowship, I was to suffer persecution at every step.
Just as the sun must give way to night and even at times to clouds of gray, so did Brother Perrot come and go to banish or bow to the darkness in my wretched life. When I was with Brother Perrot, there was always joy. When I was not, misery consumed me. In the high days of our youth, when we kept company at King’s Langley, I would often delight him with my fiddle-playing. As the last note danced from my bow he would clap and shower me with praise and beg for more. My music, he said, was like a wine to the soul that would have roused the jealousy of Bacchus himself. Indeed though, it was Piers who roused the jealousy of others for courting perfection. Envy breeds such insatiable evil in men.
Ch. 11
Robert the Bruce – Isle of Bute, 1300
From Ayr, Gerald and I sailed up the coast into the Firth of Clyde, chased by a darkening storm. As arrows of sleet from steel December skies drove through us, we landed on the wind-assaulted Isle of Bute.
The reins of our ponies clenched between stiff fingers, we traveled on in wretched silence over crooked streets, brown with mud and filth, and then through the squat gate of Rothesay Castle. A thickset, gray curtain wall encircled the inner ward and embedded within the wall were four round towers equidistant from one another. Barely able to straighten our legs, we dismounted and, shivering, waited beneath the narrow pentice connecting the kitchen and great hall, while a garrison soldier with a hacking cough went to fetch a groom for our horses. Soon, a lad scurried forth from the stables. Behind him, a hooded figure approached us, his dark surcoat slapping heavily against his shins with each lengthy stride.
James Stewart swept back his hood and squinted against the sleet. “Welcome to Rothesay, Lord Robert.” Then he motioned for us to follow. We dragged our rigid bodies across the ward and through a double door.
Icicles dripped from the hem of my cloak. I stood temporarily frozen in place, despite the blazing hearth that beckoned on the far side of the hall. Twenty or so folk clustered next to it, quaffing ale and making merry. Their laughter tinkled like fairies’ talk in a distant glen. Had I been in a more presentable state, I would have called for drink and joined them, but I wished only to climb out of my wet clothes and into a dry bed. The doors swung shut behind us, banishing the winter draft that had invaded on our tails. Every face turned to survey us.
“Father! Father!” my Marjorie squealed. Gay as a wren on fluttering wings, she skipped and twirled across the floor on tiny feet. Yellow curls bounced at her shoulders. She leapt into my arms and I caught her, mindless of my drenched clothes.
“You’re wet!” Her pale brow puckered. Then twice as quick, she smiled and pecked me on the cheek. “I’m so happy to see you.”
I forgot the fire in the hearth. My heart had been warmed from the core. “And I you.” I squeezed her tight and then set her down to admire her.
She held onto my hands and danced gaily. I had left her in the Stewart household for safekeeping. Had I thought for a moment she was ever in danger... Oh, banish the thought to purgatory. She was hale and hearty. Her mother’s perfect image. Four years old now. And she still remembered me, though six months had fled by since I last held her in my arms, kissed her ivory forehead and wished her pleasant dreams.
“James and Egidia have kept you healthy as well. You’re half a foot taller and look there...” – I brushed her ruddy cheeks – “roses.”
She giggled with delight, then tugged at my hand and yanked me across the floor.
“Elizabeth teaches me how to sew.” She pointed somewhere to the middle of the crowd gathered about the hearth. “And how to read and dance and so many things.”
The minstrel had set aside his harp. A bemused hush was followed by murmurs of excitement. Bodies bent at the waist to me. There must have been ten ladies or more clustered around the hearth. I strained to recognize any of them. Truthfully, I was so weary it was difficult to keep my eyes open long enough to focus on any single face. I saw only a flock of skirts in varying colors, smooth faces framed by stiff veils, the occasional gleam of a gold clasp, hands that fluttered about laughing mouths...
Slowly, my head began to clear. Near them were as many men: James Stewart, Bishop Lamberton and – aye, it was – Bishop Wishart, liberated at last from Longshanks’ dungeons.
“Is that indeed you, young Rob?” Wishart squinted at me with one beady eye and waddled across the floor. He enfolded me in his arms and pounded me severely between the shoulder blades. Then he thrust me back, his face ebullient. “How good it is to see you! You are none the worse for your rebel ways, I see.”
“And you in good spirits, in spite of all. How long a time was it, your grace?”
“Almost three years,” he said with an uneven frown. “One would have expected a willing hostage to receive far better treatment. My wine – it was vinegar. Ach, putrid. My window – too high up to see anything but gray sky. How gloomy. My bedfellows were fleas and the rats, they had names by the time I departed. I called one Mungo, after our beloved saint.”
“That bad, truly? But tell me, are you well?”
“As well as a man of my... my vast experience can be, my dear Robert.” He rubbed at his bald, shining head and winked with mirth. Wishart was well over seventy years, but what he lacked in youth’s vigor, he compensated for in spirit and humor. He lifted his palms to mere inches from his nose and lowered his voice. “But my eyes... not as good as they once were. This is how close I have to hold a book to read.”
“Surely by now you have the scriptures memorized?”
“I can recite them backward, lad. But official documents – writs and records, sealed letters – those, they are a different matter. At least I was free of politics while I rotted in my Tower cell. Now there’s an overdue blessing. William, come, come,” he said as he raised a hand and beckoned to Bishop William Lamberton. “Do greet Robert properly.”
Where I easily tossed aside formality in regards to my old family friend Bishop Wishart, for he himself thought them ridiculous, I would never have adopted the same slack manners with the Bishop of St. Andrews. Lamberton, with his crimson silk girdle and gold-embroidered collar, was as much diplomat as prelate, shaping the disjointed, intricate affairs of state with one jeweled hand while he shepherded his roving priests, often depraved, with his crosier clasped in the other. Wishart, I cherished. Lamberton... I revered.
I knelt before him and kissed his ring.
“Rise, Lord Robert. You’ve need of dry clothes.”
James Stewart’s wife, Egidia, flitted forward and bubbled with a mother’s doting concern. Everything about her was matronly: from her broad hips, to her plump cheeks, to her full bosom, which heaved above a tightly belted waistline as she drew breath. Though she equaled her husband in decades, she did not show it in the still smooth skin of her face.
“No fever,” she declared, both palms pressed firmly again
st my cold cheeks. “Let my woman, Oonagh, escort you to your quarters.” She took cursory inventory of Gerald’s condition. A puddle had collected at his feet. He shivered visibly and sneezed, emphasizing his misery. Egidia clucked her tongue, frowning in sympathy. “We’ll have you both properly dressed and stuffed to your collars in no time at all. Now off with you. Time for idle talk later.”
“M’lady,” Gerald bewailed through chattering teeth, “I would be content with a sack cloth as my tunic and a wool blanket for a cloak. Anything at all, as long as it’s dry and warm. I ask nothing more.”
“Rubbish,” I said aside. “You’ll beg for a heel of bread and then eat the place empty.”
“You’ll drink it dry,” he muttered back.
“With your help.” I clapped him on the back as we followed Egidia’s handmaiden, the limping Oonagh, to our rooms.
We were quickly fitted with clean clothes and escorted back to the bustling hall. Warm and dry at last, I could not satisfy my bottomless stomach. My manners forgotten, I reached across Bishop Lamberton’s trencher to steal a fat, dripping goose leg from an abandoned serving tray. If this fare was merely a prelude to Christmas dinner, I could not even imagine the gluttony ahead.
“Egidia,” – I sucked the grease from my fingers in between words – “tell your cook... he is the finest in Scotland. And is that your son Walter... next to you there? I vow he favors you. He did not get those good looks from his father.”
She smiled at me through a wavering glow of rushlight. Music whirled around my head dizzily. The boy next to her, only a couple years older than my Marjorie, slumped over his food with disinterest. Blanched as a bank of snow, he had his mother’s large, dark eyes and thick, auburn hair, but the lanky, gaunt frame was that of his father. He sniffed and rubbed at a raw, red nose.
A heady riot of pipe and tabor music swirled around the hall. I tapped my foot on the floor to the intoxicating rhythm. The cupbearer drifted past my shoulder and I soon found myself staring into another brimming cup of ale of the first water. Strong stuff and something I didn’t get much of when I was living off the back of my horse, wondering what I’d have for supper that night... or even if I’d have supper at all. Another serving or two and I would fall asleep with my face in my custard tart. I drank my cup down halfway, then braced my elbow on the table and leaned my swimming head on my fist.
Marjorie wriggled under my arm and squirmed onto my lap.
“Dance, father,” she commanded. Her small teeth glimmered like pearls.
“Och.” I rubbed at my forehead. “A bit too weary, myself... and getting well past your bedtime anyway, sweet lass.”
“Not with me, silly goose.” She pinched my nose playfully, then pointed. “With Elizabeth.”
My eyes followed her finger. A circle of dancers had formed in the middle of the hall. With hands clasped, they wove in a serpentine beneath the arched handholds of the other dancers, skirts flying and laughter high. The music became more frenzied, the drumbeat quicker, challenging the dancers to keep pace.
“And which one is Elizabeth?” I asked.
“There, there. The pretty one. In the blue.”
Bodies whirled past in a flare of color, but one young woman stood out. Pretty indeed, I thought to myself as I caught sight of her. Long of neck and slender of waist, Elizabeth de Burgh was hardly more than nineteen, I reckoned. Aside from the river of auburn hair flowing over her shoulders, which indicated she was not yet married, she shared little of the looks of her more sturdily built Aunt Egidia or her broad-framed father, the Earl of Ulster. When the music ended, she laughed and clapped. A smile flitted across her mouth as her eyes swept the room. I forgot my meal entirely then, rather imagining myself kissing those apple red lips of hers.
“Caution, Robert.” Stewart waved his knife before me to get my attention. “Her father, Ulster, is loyal to Longshanks.”
Nonchalant, I arched a brow at him and shrugged. “And yet he has allowed her to come here and live under your roof.”
“She is my niece by marriage.”
“Then it would be impolite of me not to be cordial with her, since we’re both your guests.”
He glared at me, the knife dangling, point down, from his long, thin fingers. “Nothing more, Robert.”
“Of course – nothing more.”
In a burst of joviality, Wishart leaned forward to engage Stewart in conversation. Soon, talk drifted from the abysmal weather to popes and wool taxes. Unwittingly, I found myself searching the crowd for the enchanting Elizabeth again. How was it that I did not notice Marjorie had slipped to the floor and run around the table to embrace her? My daughter cupped her hand and whispered in Elizabeth’s ear. When her eyes met mine, I blinked and looked away, as if I had been discovered pilfering forbidden fruit.
“Robert, are you listening?” Bishop Wishart laid a stubby-fingered hand on my right wrist. “William asked if you’ve had any trouble recently with the Comyns or Gallovidians.”
“Ah, no... it’s been rather quiet, in truth.”
“Spring will bring them out again,” Stewart mused.
“Sure as it rains in Scotland,” I added.
“I have wondered of late,” – Stewart turned a dried date over in his palm, then replaced it on his plate in favor of a drink – “if you might entertain the thought of a match between Walter and Marjorie? They have quite taken to each other. Your daughter is a lively spirit and catches the eye of everyone who comes here. The lad struggles at arms, but he is insatiable when it comes to his studies. He speaks French, Latin, German, English, as well as the tongue of the locals, as you do Robert. He even reads a bit of Greek.”
Greek was a dying language and of use to no one but Greeks. I eyed the boy, sucking the snot back up his nose as he evidently nursed a cold. On paper it was a fine pair, but in person Stewart’s son was hardly impressive. “Perhaps we can discuss it later.” By ‘later’, I meant years from then. I would give the boy time. He might improve. As I teased the last shred of meat off the bone of the goose leg, a thought struck me. “You are speaking of a union, my lord, yes? Marriages are pacts. I could, at some point, be swayed by an exchange of favors. My daughter in return for your support of my hereditary claims. If you agree, I will consider the proposal.”
The music was at a lull. The only noise in the hall was the prattle and wry wit flying at the side tables. Everyone nearby had attuned to our bargaining.
“I am not a man who gambles with my future,” Stewart declared, “or my son’s. My holdings are in jeopardy even now and have been ever since Irvine.”
“So you won’t, then?”
“Publicly? No, it would be suicide. But if you’re ever in need, I’ll answer you. Just remember this talk we had. Sworn?” It was his way of saying he, for now, agreed, but without making a public declaration of it.
I rolled my head back and gave it consideration. “Aye, sworn.”
The music struck up again and for a while there was more talk of a dismal harvest, the early onset of winter and seas too stormy to sail upon. From time to time, I stole quick glimpses at Elizabeth de Burgh, though she never once looked at me.
“Lord Robert,” Lamberton said, leaning forward, “the three of us – Stewart, Wishart and myself – think you should rejoin the council, take a more active part again in the laying out of policies. Help steer the ship, as it were.”
“Comyn still on there?” I asked bluntly.
Lamberton sighed. “Unfortunately, yes, along with Umfraville. Although I’m giving thought to leaving the guardianship myself.”
“Then I’m doubly not interested. I have sat in the middle of that endless circle before, my friends.”
“But Robert,” Wishart begged as he wrung my wrist, “Longshanks will be back again, come summer. Another invasion is in the works. Wallace prefers to act on his own now, raiding and lying in ambush, and you are the only one we can rely on to –”
“Told you,” I said brusquely. “Not interested.” I rose
from the table and nodded to them all as they stared back with grave disappointment. “Now, I’m going to pluck up my daughter, if you don’t mind overmuch, and tell her a story or two before I put her to bed. It’s what I came here for.”
I moved to the other end of the hall, but before I retrieved my daughter from her social rounds, I stopped before the bench where Elizabeth de Burgh sat. She did not notice me at first, despite my shuffling feet and throat clearing. Finally, the young female friend with whom she was engaged in conversation squeezed her knee, cast a glance at me and blushed.
“I wanted to... to um... my daughter, she...” Sweet Savior of mine, could I be any clumsier with my words? I shook my head and started over, trying to salvage a morsel of dignity. “Thank you, my lady.”
Elizabeth stared at me blankly through eyes the color of spring’s first tender shoots of grass. “For what, my lord?”
“Looking after my Marjorie.” I clasped my trembling hands behind my back to hide them. What did it matter what beauty I saw in her? I was a decade older than her, not to mention a runagate whose only home was wherever his horse was. “And for sending me that letter... to Irvine, although it was awhile ago. I regret I never replied.”
“I didn’t expect you to, my lord,” she returned with a polite smile. “I merely wanted to put your mind at ease. It was Aunt Egidia’s idea for me to look after your daughter. Delightful, she is. A ray of sunshine on this ever gloomy island.”
“I would hardly call it that from where I stand now.”
She looked down, her cheeks flushed scarlet. Awkward seconds later, she stood and rearranged her skirts. “I should see Marjorie to bed now. She’s frightfully tired and bound to be a beast about it. If you’ll pardon me, my lord.”
I touched her arm as she turned to go. “May I... escort you? It’s just that... I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay here. Every moment with her is sacred.”
Elizabeth tilted her head in consideration, then nodded demurely. She parted Marjorie from her playmates and draped a cloak around my daughter. I lifted Marjorie in my arms and cradled her close. With a cherubic grin, she clasped her little hands around my neck and closed her eyes, seemingly content. We crossed the courtyard through a freezing mist and entered the far tower. Once inside, Elizabeth took a lit candle from its place on the wall and led the way up the narrow, winding stairs. Her footsteps brushed lightly over the stones in a soothing rhythm.
The Crown in the Heather (The Bruce Trilogy) Page 10
