I pulled her in close – yet even as I did so, I realized I had brought this upon myself... upon us. “We’ll find a way, my love. By all that is true and sacred, we will find a way.”
I meant it, more than I even knew.
I had mourned long enough for Isabella. I wanted to live again – truly live. Not for some tomorrow that might never come, but for now.
Ch. 13
Robert the Bruce – Turnberry, 1301
“Do you have the ear of Wallace?”
“Robert, what is this about?” Bishop Lamberton descended from the grassy dune where his horse began to graze beside mine. He had sped from St. Andrews to Turnberry on faith alone. The letter I had sent him contained only a request that he come as soon as possible – not a word more. He strode toward me, the bottom of his robes sweeping over drifts of gray sand and flakes of shingle that glinted beneath a miserly autumn sun. “Why have you summoned me here?”
“Answer – do you have the ear of Wallace?”
Lamberton shrugged. “We talk often. Why?”
I stared out over a sea that was both calm and cold. “France is at peace. There are rumors... of Balliol returning with a French force.” I walked to the water’s edge, watching the long lines of foaming waves break against the shore. A gentle tide washed over my boots.
“I cannot let that happen.”
“Rumors, Robert. That is all.”
“No, I cannot let that happen. Not for me. Not for Scotland.”
I turned away and walked along the shore slowly, my head forced down by the weight of my troubles. Lamberton followed in respectful silence.
“Why else have you called me here?” he finally asked.
Beside a pile of rocks that jutted out into the water, washed smooth by an eternity of the sea’s angry lashing, I stopped, looked at him, and confessed. “I wish to marry Elizabeth de Burgh. Her father rejects me. Says he will not wed his daughter to a landless rebel. I can’t accept that either, your grace.” I had not seen Elizabeth since our parting at Rothesay and in that time she had sent only a single letter. The harsh formality of her words had pained me as she relayed her father’s blunt refusal.
“Ah, I see more clearly now. You want two distinct things and sensibility tells you that you can only have one or the other. What would you have me say to quiet your mind?” He crossed his arms. Far behind him, the steeply roofed towers of Turnberry Castle pierced a pale blue sky.
“Say what is right, proper, what is best for all. Say it in your usual, wise way with such surety I cannot doubt the reasoning behind it.”
He laid both hands on my shoulders. His eyes narrowed. “Robert, have you done something rash?”
“No... no! But...” I began to shake over my distress and he clenched my shoulders more firmly, as if to still me. I dug at the roots of my hair, stretching my scalp back.
“Robert, tell me what it is. Why do you want me to speak with Wallace? What hand could he have in all of this and what does Ulster’s daughter have to do with any of it?”
“Come with me... and I will show you.” I led him back to where I had dropped the reins of my horse. From a bag tied to my saddle, I took out two letters. I handed the first to Lamberton. “This is for William Wallace to carry.”
“Carry to whom?” He regarded the letter warily as I laid it across his open palm.
“King Philip of France.”
“Robert,” he began, sighing heavily, “I cannot dispatch this without knowing what it says. Do you understand that?”
“What it says is very simple – that I ask him to beseech the pope to uphold the papal bull against Longshanks for his incursions on Scotland and – should that find success, as I think it will – I ask him to demand that King Edward agree to a truce with Scotland.”
“A truce between England and Scotland? You do realize that Edward has arranged for his son to marry Philip’s only daughter?”
“I have not been living in a cave, your grace. Longshanks took a French bride himself and even that has not kept troubles from reaching across the sea to him.” After the death of his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, Longshanks had bargained his French possessions for the hand of Philip’s sister Marguerite, but even that diplomatic move did not remove the prickly burr of French pride. Philip was shrewd enough not to trust his new brother-in-law unconditionally. While Longshanks was trying to arrange a marriage between his heir and Philip’s only daughter, Isabella, he was also negotiating with the Flemings for a princess’s hand for his son. Philip learned of his duplicity and promptly quashed the scheme by taking the little Flemish princess and her father captive.
“And the other?” Lamberton said.
“Is to go directly to King Edward at Linlithgow.”
Lamberton stared at me with what appeared to be mounting doubt – or perhaps it was shock. He kept his other hand back, as if the second letter dripped poisonous ink. “Robert, unless you confide in me, I am loath to do this. You are mad with love for this Elizabeth and desperate to hang onto hopes for a crown. It is deathly dangerous to court two kings at once.”
“Your grace, I am neither mad nor desperate. I am determined. And I do not court kings – I court peace and progress... as well as my hereditary rights. Scotland will not return to the shameful days of a Balliol as king, not as long as I live. And I will have Elizabeth, however I can get her, but on honorable terms.”
“There is only one way to achieve that... and I pray that I am wrong in my guess. The letter to King Edward – what does it say?”
“You have figured me out, have you?” I crouched down, picked up a handful of coarse sand and watched it sift through my fingers. “It says that if I submit to his will, he will begrudge me my lands and let me live freely, that he will not disinherit me from anything rightfully mine... and in more subtle language, it is to be understood that he will allow me to pursue any rights to which I hold claim.”
The wind lifted and beat hard and cold against my back. So much of the future swung on the stroke of a pen.
“Take caution, Robert. Edward is masterful at twisting words to meet his own purpose.”
“He did not invent that game, nor is he master of it. It is a ploy meant to buy time.” I rose to my feet. “Just as Douglas did at Irvine. Edward has not been a well man, has he?”
“No, he hasn’t. He could have expired before we even began this conversation. Or... he could live for another two decades merely to aggravate us all.”
“Aye, well, be that as it may. By then Elizabeth and I will have a houseful of children and if the crown does not rest on my head, by God, I’ll be certain it is not on Balliol’s, either. Longshanks’ son, Edward of Caernarvon, is profoundly lacking in military prowess. Being weak-stomached, he’ll never have it. This summer I kept Turnberry from him and long before supplies would have run dry on us, he gave it up and crawled back sniveling to his father.”
Still unconvinced, Lamberton held back. I prodded him further.
“Faith in God, Bishop – where does it come from?”
He lifted his strong, clean jaw and looked at me with deep conviction. “It comes from many places, Robert. The Holy Gospel, the miracles He has performed, life around us.”
“But ultimately” – I tapped the gold embroidered cross on the middle of his chest – “where does faith originate from?”
“From men’s belief.”
“Then I ask, your grace, that you have faith in me. Not as a deity, but as a man who pursues a purpose which serves not himself, but a country filled with people. People who serve God and have faith in Him – faith that one day He will deliver them from injustice and tyranny and set them free. But to do that, He needs an instrument and I... am that.”
The wind flung Lamberton’s cloak back from his shoulders. He gazed at the horizon, where sky met sea a hundred miles out. “Robert, you should have been born to the Church. That sermon would have won you souls by the thousands.”
“Much as I would love to lay claim to those
words, I think I heard them in a sermon somewhere. One of yours, perhaps?”
“Wisdom, my son, is better than rubies.” He put out his other hand and took the letter.
I gave him the bag to put the letters in and held his stirrup while he mounted. “God go with you, your grace.”
“More important, Robert, may He stay with you. Something tells me you are going to need His guidance in days to come.”
“Fateful words, but I think I’ll need more than Almighty God looking over my shoulder and words of wisdom to see me through on this.”
Linlithgow, 1302
I walked a wall both narrow and high. One misstep and the fall would be far and long.
It was not for land or title that I knelt to compromise, although I knew everyone believed so. Like a spark to dry tinder, Elizabeth consumed me far more than my call to destiny. How might it all have fallen out if Elizabeth had not captured my fragile heart with her faint smiles that hinted fondness, her glances that begged me closer, her whispers that filled my head with mad longing? When Isabella died while giving me my sweet, bright-eyed Marjorie, I had closed the door to my heart and locked it to the world. Elizabeth alone held the key. It had all led me to where I now was: Longshanks had summoned me to Linlithgow to discuss my proposal.
Gerald and I sat upon our ponies on a road that wound down a hillside through the town. Curls of smoke from peat fires lifted from frosty roofs. Pale shafts of winter sunlight came and went while a stiff wind chased high, scattered clouds through a sapphire sky. At the edge of the market square, a mother and her small child, their hands and feet wrapped in strips of rags to defend against the cold, regarded me warily, unsure of what to make of a Scottish nobleman passing through their midst clad in chainmail and surcoat: friend or foe? I smiled at the mother, but it gave her no obvious comfort.
Ahead was the castle of Linlithgow, where Longshanks had taken up residence. Beyond it lay a placid, silver loch and on the distant reedy shore swans and herons gathered. Longshanks had commissioned none other than James of St. George to transform the manor house, erected during the reign of King David a hundred and fifty years earlier, into a fortified peel. The new gatehouse was made of stone and two stout towers flanked the east and west ends of the castle. Grumbling English soldiers scratched at the frozen earth with shovels and axes, toiling to dig a ditch around the castle in the bitter throes of winter.
“I do not like this, my lord,” Gerald fretted. His breath hung suspended in a fog of ice. Despite the harsh cold and a deep piling of snow, he mopped the perspiration from his brow with the edge of his cloak. “Dangerous play, this is. We could as soon end up drowning in our own piss in some forgotten dungeon.”
Not like him to be so bold with words. Clearly his nerves were frayed. “A cheerful vision, Gerald. Now come along. I’ve a meeting to attend.”
I kicked my pony in the flanks to urge it forward, gave a last beckoning glance to Gerald and rode toward the gatehouse. A hundred feet from it, in the narrow gap between the town’s edge and the makeshift bridge that spanned the widening ditch, I dismounted and handed the reins to Gerald. He stared at me close-mouthed from the back of his pony.
“What?” I said, keeping an eye on the English soldiers mustering in our direction. “No fond words of farewell? No fountain of wisdom sprung from the mouth of experience? Come now. I’m going to meet the bloody King of all England – share a glass of wine, break bread and all that ritualistic nonsense.”
“Good luck,” he muttered with a roll of his eyes.
“Accepted.” I turned and walked toward the soldiers, dropping axe and sword on the road as I went. Then I spread my arms wide in a show of peace and spoke to their captain. “I am Robert the Bruce, Earl of Carrick, here as arranged to meet with my lord, King Edward.”
The glint of metal caught my eye. At once, ten swords and five spears were aimed at my bare throat and chest. I was afforded but a moment to look back at Gerald. Swiftly, they closed in on him, too, and dragged him from his saddle.
Feet stomped behind me. I heard a grunt. The whisper of a blade parting air.
Then the sharp pain to the back of my head… and the blackness of Hades swallowed me whole.
Ch. 14
Edward, Prince of Wales – Linlithgow, 1302
The wind cut cold and sharp across my face. I sat on the ledge of an unfinished window in the west tower of Linlithgow, balancing sideways as I peered down at the scene emerging before the gatehouse. The Bruce had arrived exactly as called for – on mid-afternoon of the appointed date and with only one man. Trusting soul. It would have been easy enough for one of the king’s men to cut cleanly through his neck with a single flick of the blade.
Head bared, weapons abandoned, the Bruce walked over the ditch bridge, his arms drifting wide to show he bore no weapons. A dozen guards swarmed like angry hornets around him, swords and poleaxes aimed and ready to sting at his naked throat. Bruce’s squire was detained without protest and to my delight one of our soldiers smacked Bruce squarely in the back of his head. The blow sent him reeling to the snowy ground.
I leapt from my vantage point, raced down the winding stairs and burst into the room, where the king was bent over rolls of parchment. The fire roaring in the hearth struggled against the draft and then licked the mantle in protest. Sketches of a dozen castles lay scattered over a huge table while their genius, Master James of St. George, perused their designs for the slightest weaknesses.
“He has come,” I announced, almost breathless. “The Bruce has come.”
My sire glanced at me briefly, and then back down at the plans.
“Can you manage as well at Kildrummy?” the king said to his master mason.
Master James squinted. His eyes darted from one scribbled page to another. Finally, he twitched his mousy nose and nodded.
“Good then. Finish here first. I want this done with before next summer. You will be provided whatever resources needed. Payment shall be as we discussed before. A hundred and fifty pounds.”
“Generous as ever, sire.” At that, Master James smiled faintly, if one could call that slanted line of his mouth a smile. He then collected his architect’s tools into a box, which he tucked under his arm, and went from the room wringing his hands.
My sire quickly became reabsorbed in the drawings, shuffling them about on the table with ink-stained fingertips. Mottes, peels, palaces, towers, walls – all his life’s work. Ever the dilemma to him of how to enslave an entire race with the least effort over the long run. He reached out to pull an oil lamp closer, but before he closed his fingers around it, he jerked his hand back and touched his temple. He gritted his teeth, waiting for the pain to ebb.
“What do you want?”
I shrugged. “When they bring that vile traitor up here, should I stay or go? I rather relish seeing him humiliated.”
He began to roll up the parchments. “Stay, so you may learn a twig or two of how to rule those who care not to be ruled over.”
“As you wish, sire.”
A painfully long time passed while we waited. My father and I shared not a word. When we were forced into conversation, his words became weapons, mine shields. Better the awkward truce of silence than a battle of words.
Two urgent knocks and the doors flew open. The soldiers dragged a limp Bruce into the room by the arms. With a flip of my sire’s royal hand, they discarded him roughly on the floor. Bruce squirmed, rolled over into a ball and rubbed at the back of his head. His squire, composed but obviously concerned, was tightly surrounded by four guards.
Finally, Bruce looked up at us and made as if to stand. The tip of a sword was shoved against the throbbing vein in his neck. His brown eyes glinted in a silent plea to my father. His tongue flicked over quivering lips. Hoarsely, he began, “My liege...” Bruce closed his eyes in abandonment and went on, “I lay my life at your feet, to command... or to extinguish.”
Tempting invitation. What scheming could cause this man, who had fought against my fa
ther after serving him, to so thoughtlessly and so presumptuously stroll onto these grounds believing for one moment my father would spare him? Pure arrogance.
I invaded the space between Bruce and my sire. The insult of Turnberry still fresh on my conscience, I glowered at Bruce. “I should cut out your false tongue and feed it to the crows. You will regret your lies, Bruce. I will make certain of it.”
“Shut up, you idiot,” my sire growled at me. “You have precious much to learn before your day comes to wear a crown.”
I backed away, reeling from the sting.
“Bishop Lamberton delivered a letter from you.” The king rolled up parchments one by one and set them in neat piles. “You mulled it over long before changing your song. Have things gone amiss for you with your Scottish brothers? Or have you finally collected your senses? Perhaps we can come to understand each other more clearly now that we are face to face.”
Bruce spat out, “I have but one –”
“You were not given leave to speak.” My sire folded his arms beneath the edges of his ermine-lined velvet mantle and studied, long and hard, the man who knelt before him. He had not claimed his portable throne that dominated the far end of the room, as if he desired to be on his feet to tower as far above the lowly Scottish liar as he could. “And you will address us as ‘my lord king’ in the future.”
He circled Bruce, then stopped behind him, staring down at the glorious crown of autumn brown hair that fell in gentle waves around a sun-touched face – a face that glistened faintly with the sweat of cold fear.
“You have cost me dearly,” the king said. “Men, money, sleep... days and nights tramping through a barren wasteland of thistle to ferret out you and that vulgar Wallace. And yet you would dare plead for clemency? May prayers be said for your damnable soul if you have come for any cause other than to tender an oath of fealty unto me.”
With deliberate slowness the Bruce raised his deer-brown eyes. “Plainly I have, sire... my lord king, but not without purpose. May I beg one, simple grace of you?”
The Crown in the Heather (The Bruce Trilogy) Page 12
