“Beg all you want. It becomes you.”
“Grant me the hand of Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the Earl of Ulster.”
Turned traitor to his own for a woman, of all things? He was too easily witched by the whisperings of honeyed lips. There lay his soft underbelly. His weakness commanded him like a dog drooling over a bitch in season that had but to flag her tail. Nose to the dirt to pick up her scent, panting to have her.
The king scoffed. “What profit for England in this? You violate royal edict, fly in the face of summonses, ravage my lands, incite mutiny and yet when it behooves you to bed an earl’s daughter, who is unwilling to have you unless by honorable contract, only then do you prostrate yourself before me?”
He seized a handful of Bruce’s hair and jerked his head backward. “In Wales, Llywelyn, Rhys, Madog... all thought they could outstrip me. And what has become of them all? Look at my face, you canting beggar. Study every crease the years have carved. Is it written there anywhere that I am ignorant or easily gulled?”
Bruce sagaciously kept his tongue, but my father would finish with his berating before he let the whimpering Scot utter one more word.
The king let go of his hair. “If she indeed drives you mad with lust –”
“Holds my rampant heart in her gentle hands,” Bruce interjected in a voice that was soft and longing. He raised his face – a face so beautiful in its symmetry the gods of ancient Greece would have welcomed him to Mt. Olympus just to gaze upon it – and slyly hinted, “And by that, this may benefit us both, might it not? I desire to have her as my wife. You would profit from my fealty.”
“Pray tell, arrant knight, how that might pass? As I see, the favor you beg goes but one way. I have you in a rather compromising position.”
Bruce tilted his head thoughtfully, then lowered his eyes again to soften the blow. “Scotland has yet to be tamed. The king who was chosen to be its ruler in name was as ineffectual as he was fickle.”
“Get to the root. You bore me with the obvious.”
“Choose another to be your man in the north. One who would trouble you far less.”
“That being?”
“Me.”
“You?” The king threw back his head and laughed. “Trouble me less? I think there are scarce few who could trouble me more than you, Bruce.” He walked away and proceeded to pour himself a goblet of wine, mulling over the proposition. Then suddenly he lifted his chin and chuckled to himself. “There is the blood of kings in your veins, however thinly it courses.”
I claimed the throne my father had so far ignored and propped my jaw on my fist. It was the only seat in that barren room and tedium had overcome me. I was sickened by the route of the conversation, distrustful of every radiant syllable that trickled over Bruce’s well-formed lips, and highly disinclined to gainsay my father. But no sooner had I resigned myself to its meager, thinly cushioned comfort than I was catapulted from it by my father and cuffed sharply between the shoulder blades.
“As I said – precious much to learn,” he chastised. “The first of which is not to presume yourself worthy enough to sit there. Now, any sage words, my son?”
I hesitated. I knew my mind, but if it differed from his did it matter that I reasoned at all?
“Come now, boy of mine.” He pinched my left shoulder from behind.
“The chicken does not lie down with the fox,” I uttered, writhing beneath his hurtful grasp.
“And which are we? Fox... or fowl?” He let go of me and came around to stand before me.
“I suspect... the chicken.”
“Hmm.” He nodded, glancing at Bruce. “You would see yourself thus. No gain in this for England, then? None at all? Desperation for one man – opportunity for another, think you not?”
He flashed a sardonic smirk at me. Ever a trick in his questions. Oh, bloody hell, I should learn to stay silent. I slumped in bitter defeat.
The king returned his empty goblet to the table and said to Bruce, “We will discuss this further, Lord Robert. However, the grace I begrudge you will not come without price. Your lands will be returned, but on stringent conditions that you side with England against Balliol.”
“Done, my lord,” Bruce said – too easily in my opinion. “But if I request the assuredness of my due inheritance and my freedom, as I have put forth, what then is the price? You have not yet said.”
“I shall hold you to it in writing, so that every Scotsman may know unto whom you grovel in fealty. You will attend my court when I call for you, you will provide men and arms whenever your Scottish brethren disturb the peace... and you will remain my vassal. Understood?”
“And so long as I maintain you are my overlord, what of my claim to Scotland’s crown? For that I... might agree.”
“I would not be so hasty as to answer that today... or tomorrow even. Prove your loyalty, Scot. Swallow the arrogant pride you so easily cast out as cause and argument. Yours was the weaker case. As you recall, courts of law beyond England decided against your grandfather. Your father does not so greedily reach for that which was never his. Perhaps you should spend less of your efforts in dissension and more of it in diplomacy. However, as I said, prove you will cede to the might of England. Do that... and the sun may yet shine on your ambition.”
Proper rot, as Piers would say. Promises so easily spewed out. Words are but words, my trothless lords. Sounds evoked to conjure up images, however false or imaginary. Politics are spun by fools in search of self-glorification. On the morrow I shall hawk with friends. Lighthearted souls not half as false as the pair of you.
One day, though, one day I will make the Bruce pay for vexing me at Turnberry. And I will prove to my sire that not only has he been duped by the Scottish bastard, but he has underestimated me, as well.
Ch. 15
Edward, Prince of Wales – Warwick, 1303
I would rather have been born on the dirt floor of a peasant’s cottage, than swaddled in the silken sheets of royalty. I would rather rise with the sun every morn and feel its gilded rays caress my neck like a starved lover, than waste the night away with nobles who would woo and cajole in one breath and then spit when your back was turned.
Nineteen... a man by the standards of most and yet treated as though I had no better judgment than my yowling, infant half-brothers.
My father leaned uncomfortably close and jabbed a long finger behind us at a young auburn-haired lady. “If there were not valuable alliances to be woven abroad... that one... there in the green, she would give you children fair to look upon.”
It was Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the Earl of Ulster and now wife to the reinstated Earl of Carrick, Robert the Bruce. Muted rays of a springtime sun in evening fell around her face and shoulders like a false veil of purity. She was seated several rows up and to our right. The stands had been erected specifically for this tournament between the shaded banks of the Avon and the high walls of Warwick Castle. The entire foppish affair had been contrived to celebrate the christening of my newest half-brother Edmund, born only a year after Thomas.
“Her father enjoins Ulster,” the king said. “Genteel enough to warm the sheets of England, yes, my son? But for you, the daughter of a king. Nothing less.”
I felt his blood-hot eyes upon me and I wondered what snare lay in the twisting rope of his words. He patted the hand of Queen Marguerite, sister to that dough-brained King of France. She smiled in servile adoration at my father before she commenced gossiping with one of her handmaidens behind her. If not for her jewels and silks, Marguerite would have looked no more a queen than some country wench driving geese to market. Her skin was sallow, her nose oddly hooked and her chin too small beneath large, vacant eyes. More harlot than matron, she had not a sliver of the regality my mother, Queen Eleanor, had possessed.
When my mother died, my sire had escorted her body from Lincolnshire all the way back to Westminster Abbey. At every halt, he ordered a cross erected in her memory. He mourned her so terribly it plunged him in
to an abysmal mood – a chasm so deep and dark I thought he would never crawl from it to join the living again. When he was finally able to return to matters of state, it was then that he called the Scots to him at Norham and forced them down on their soiled knees to cower at his every utterance. And so he sought to do the same with me: to mold me into his slave, demanding I do as he said and when he said nothing, damn me for not knowing what he wanted of me. Damn me twice for being such a fool I might have to ask. A tacit, cruel game of power and I must play the pawn to be flicked about by regal fingers.
I stretched my arms before me and admired the plush purple velvet of my sleeves – a bolt of velvet had been one of my many recent acquisitions shipped from Florence at my express order. If my time was not my own to ride my horses and do whatever else I pleased, then I would make good of the funds afforded me and outshine all others in my presence. Only Piers could outdo me.
Raising my hand to my shoulder, I fluttered my fingers in salutation at Piers as he made his way from the end of the stands to his seat. He must not have noticed my gesture, for he did not return it. My sire had conveniently sent him off to Chester a few weeks earlier on business and so he had arrived too late to enter the ranks. Just as well. Piers would have flattened them all and where would have been the amusement in that? I came to these damnable tournaments not because I gave a whit as to who won, but because I reveled in the pageantry and the flourish of colorful garments. I came to see and be seen. I certainly did not come to have spousal prospects paraded before me like sows before the butcher. That awful business was currently under negotiation, to my displeasure.
“Rush into a union, kind father,” I observed, “and you make enemies as well as allies.”
A sharp masterstroke... or so I thought.
The king’s lips twitched above his meticulously combed beard. “If it’s your own blood you care to see come after you on this throne, you will value the breeding of the mate I have chosen for you and make use of her maidenhead. Let her be the row and you the plow, with every fertile season. Sons too often die. You have a brother now. Two, in fact. Do not believe yourself indispensable. And I rush nothing. Your union has been carefully searched out since before you were bred.”
I turned my face away to hide a sneer. Would he forever use my infant brothers as weapons against me? Little French bastards. Their grasp on life was a single, fine thread I could snap between two fingers. Three infant brothers of mine had died before I held on and survived. The Fates, evidently, had not seen them fit to rule. Neither would little puking Thomas or drooling Edmund. Oh, they may well live, but only to endure as my underlings. Kingship may not have been my utmost desire, but I could swiftly become accustomed to primacy before my sire was cold in his grave. May an arrow take him if his horse does not throw him first.
“My queen.” My sire squeezed Marguerite’s pale hand. Her eyebrows flittered in response. “They begin: d’Argentan and Bruce. In all my years I have not seen two knights more finely matched.”
Marguerite tilted her head, piled high with plaits of pale yellow, but her eyes roved over the crowd like a butterfly floats over meadow flowers. Pliant enough, but I would prefer a wife – again, if I was to ever have one – who would be less generous with her paint and powder. She had in her wardrobe half the cloth of Flanders. How Father spoiled her. He only showered her with gifts because having a queen half his age and getting her with child bolstered his pride.
The herald’s horn sounded. As the two knights bore down on each other across the barrier, I shoved back a stubborn yawn. D’Argentan’s horse was smartly caparisoned in black cloth woven with scrolls of gold thread. Well muscled and of the purest blood, the animal was steady in the clamor of tournament and sure-footed. Bruce’s horse was lighter in body and it had skittered before every pass that week. As the two beasts came nearer to one another, the knights lowered their lances in aim. The crowd fell deathly silent. Even I leaned forward. Hoof beats thundered on the dusty, packed earth like the rumble of ancient, angry gods. D’Argentan’s lance skipped off the shoulder of Bruce with barely a click. But Bruce’s landed squarely in the middle of his opponent’s breastplate with a terrible clang and snapped in half. D’Argentan reeled backward. The crowd gasped. It was only d’Argentan’s iron grip on the reins that held him in the saddle. He struggled to upright himself as his horse galloped on. Then he reined his mount hard around, eager to retaliate.
Bruce tossed his splintered lance to the ground and plucked up a new one from his bushy-haired squire. He bowed stiffly in the saddle to indicate he was ready. His horse pranced. When the signal was given Bruce kicked his horse hard in the flanks and flew forward. He kept his lance up, long after d’Argentan had dropped his and made aim. The long-reaching legs of the horses closed the gap. When they were four lances apart my stomach went taut. Bruce had not lowered his lance. D’Argentan eyed his target and leaned heavily toward the barrier, putting the full force of his weight behind the point of his weapon. But as his lance closed in on Bruce, Bruce pulled hard to the right and dodged it. The more nimble horse and rider had claimed an advantage.
This time, applause... not for the favored d’Argentan, the unequalled champion of countless tournaments, but for the slippery Scot. The crowd had turned. How fickle they all were. D’Argentan was better mounted and better armed by a supreme measure. Only a dolt would be blind to that.
Then, d’Argentan allowed his anger to surface. He spewed French curses at his opponent through the slit of his visor and called for a different lance, even though the one he had just wielded was in pristine condition.
My father watched the whole confrontation through narrowed eyelids. Mindlessly, he plucked a grape from a plate balanced on the left arm of his throne and plopped it into his mouth. Then he curled a finger at Sir Marmaduke Tweng, who shuffled obediently before the chairs, one shoulder sloping noticeably from the battering he had received at Stirling several years before. The old, crooked knight bent his ear close to the king’s mouth.
“Double the prize to the winner,” the king said.
Sir Marmaduke raised both hands toward the combatants. Their squires rushed forward, received the king’s new offer and raced back to their knights.
The signal. They charged. Again, Bruce hesitated to lower his lance. Then, he snapped it downward quickly. The pronged coronel of his lance slammed into the wrapper covering the neck of d’Argentan’s headpiece. D’Argentan was vaulted skyward. He slammed into the ground. A cloud of dust exploded above his motionless armored body. His horse veered away at a gallop, startled by the sudden loss of its load. It was Bruce’s squire who caught the reins of the lathered, riderless horse as d’Argentan’s man rushed to his master’s aid. The crowd leapt to its feet, murmuring as one, all eyes locked on the inert body of what, up until a few moments before, had been the most feared knight in all the land. Bruce was neither charlatan nor simpleton. Saint George save me that I should ever face him on the field, man to man.
Then I witnessed something I had never seen. Such an abrupt, inarguable victory was cause for celebration. Myself, had I been inclined to poke at others with long sticks, I would have ridden up and down the length of the stands ten time over, head bared to receive my laurels, my ears uncovered to soak up the lauds. Instead, Bruce lowered himself from his saddle, walked stiffly in his armor encasement toward d’Argentan and pulled the stunned – some I’m sure thought dead – knight to his wobbly feet. Hands on knees, d’Argentan leaned over. Bruce cupped him once lightly on the back and approached the king’s stands.
Bruce motioned for his squire to help remove his helmet. The straps undone, Bruce put a hand on either side and lifted it. A crown of thick, dark hair stuck to his sweat-soaked forehead.
“In lieu of your generous prize, my lord king,” Bruce said, “may I claim a kiss from my bride?”
My sire squeezed his wife’s hand and a flush of color fanned across her cheeks. “You Scots should always be so easily pleased.”
It
was no modest kiss Bruce placed upon his wife’s waiting lips. Many were the ladies who must have simmered with jealousy upon witness of his brazen passion for his countess. But when the stands erupted into applause I read the intention beneath the act. Chivalry was a game to Bruce. Love in lieu of money? He played for the world’s adoration and my sire was part of the audience.
Since Linlithgow, the king had kept the Bruce at his breast like a suckling infant. Bruce had not only been given blessing to wed the de Burgh maiden, but he had also been granted the wardship of the young Earl of Mar, heaping the Scottish traitor with ever more power to serve his own purpose. Thus far, his hollow oaths had preserved him. And I could but stand by mute and enraged whenever he fell short of showing any genuine loyalty.
King and queen were first to retire as the sun slipped behind the treetops, but I lingered and caught up with Piers at the foot of the old motte tower. I parted him from friends and led him by the sleeve toward the shade of the sprawling oak halfway up the hillside. He climbed the steep slope beside me with his chin forward, the lips of his fine mouth unbending. As ever, he was resplendent in his white-plumed hat with an upturned brim, an ermine trimmed gown split down the sides that swept the ground and his bicolored hose of red and gold.
“The tournament was bland as bean pottage without you in it, Brother Perrot,” I said, trying to curry favor with him. “You would have won against Bruce ten times over.”
He stopped abruptly and turned to me. “I heard the news.”
“News?”
“That you are to be plighted to Isabella of Valois. They say she is beyond beautiful.”
I laid a comforting hand upon his shoulder. “She is to be my consort. To bear me sons. A union devised purely for political convenience and posterity. Nothing more.”
Piers turned his face aside and fell silent as a small group of twittering ladies passed by.
The Crown in the Heather (The Bruce Trilogy) Page 13
