Depleted and battered, we crossed the Almond and the Tay and made for the mountains of Atholl. Half the day we rode, urging our horses on until they would go no more. When at last one of my knights swayed and fell to the ground in exhaustion, we stopped and took tally. The day before we had numbered forty-five hundred; the next we were barely a tenth as many.
With aching arms, I pulled off my hood and sank to the ground. “Where is my nephew, Thomas Randolph? Where is he? Fraser? Inchmartin? Neil Campbell?” Name after name crowded my head until it pounded with the din.
Gil dropped beside me with a grunt. “Fraser and Somerville fell on the field, side by side. I saw Campbell bringing up our rear.”
“Inchmartin fell, too,” the Earl of Atholl said. A long cut marked his forehead and blood seeped from his left forearm just above the wrist. “But your nephew – they dragged him from his horse... alive. Took him prisoner. He lasted most of the fight.”
“Roger Kirkpatrick?” I asked.
Solemnly, Atholl nodded. “Dead.”
“Christopher?”
They all looked at each other and shrugged. No one answered.
We huddled silently. The afternoon sun beat down on the tops of our skulls, baking the sweat, dust and blood into thick, leathery hides on us.
Restless, James paced about. He had not a single scratch on him.
“Eighteen,” he muttered, stopping to stare at the grass at his feet.
“Eighteen more coming?” Edward jammed his sword point into the rock-hard ground and pressed his weight upon the pommel for support.
“No,” James answered. He raised his eyes and looked plainly at Edward. “I killed eighteen men.”
“My compliments,” Edward said, both cynical and sincere. “You beat my count by four.”
I do not remember lying down, only that I felt the cool, damp grass against my cheek and the earth holding me up like a great, endless bed.
Ah, James, you were so very right about Pembroke. I cannot trust any of them. And I should keep an eye on those around me. There is a price on my head. Just like Wallace. They lied to him and lured him into a trap and then tortured him for sport.
I tried to rest, to gather my strength, but thoughts churned in my head like a water spout above a stormy sea. Around me, men moaned from their wounds. Atholl, James and Edward went around, tending to them, but without bandages or anything to cleanse the wounds there was pitiful little they could do. Vaguely, I heard Edward give orders to wait where we were for stragglers to catch up with us. Then he sent off a few of the haler men on horses to go seek out food and shelter for our wounded. I watched him through a fog, his lips moving, understanding the words slowly. He started toward me once, opened his mouth and then went off. My bones felt as though someone had scraped them clean with a knife. My head throbbed. I wanted to sleep, but I was too tired, too –
“You have lost some blood,” James remarked above me, “from this wound, here, on your leg. We should get your mail off and wash it.”
Then he knelt down and slipped the hood back from my head. “And a gash there, by your ear. Deep, but not too big.”
I could not remember being struck in those places. As hard as it was, I pushed myself up and gripped his arm. “He will go to Kildrummy.”
“Pembroke? Aye, but what can we do about it? Just look around you.”
I nodded and felt myself sinking to the ground again. I touched the tender wound by my ear and pushed the skin closed. “We must go to Aberdeen. Leave here. Go to Norway.”
Elizabeth, Marjorie... he would take them. I must get to them. Save them. Kildrummy. Aberdeen. Nor... Norway. Leave. Save... them.
Ch. 28
Edward, Prince of Wales – Carlisle, 1306
I cared naught for the place: the north or south of it, village or countryside, mountain or seaside. It was the apple spotted by blight and devoured by worms. And yet, my sire would not toss it aside. He would not let Scotland wriggle from his old, crooked fingers. When he learned of the sacrilegious murder of John Comyn of Badenoch and then Bruce’s hasty crowning in Scone, the fury of it all propelled him from his sickbed.
The king summoned every squire in the land eligible for knighthood to Westminster Abbey. There at the Feast of the Pentecost in May, he would knight me and some three hundred others. Among those who answered the call were Hugh Despenser the Younger, the son of one of my advisors by that same name, and a promising young Marcher lord named Roger Mortimer. We kept our nightlong vigil at the altar, our hands folded in prayer and our lips moving as we confessed our copious sins to Our Heavenly Father. Beside me, Piers pressed between his palms three hornbeam leaves: three for the Holy Trinity. At first light, we bathed in holy water and dressed in gowns of white for purity and cloaks of red for our blood. On our knees, we heard Mass and then the Archbishop of Canterbury blessed our swords one by one. Next, my sire conferred our spurs upon us. It drained all his strength to stand for such duration. Twice, he swooned and caught the arm of the archbishop. That night at the feast, his face was blanched, dark crescents of blue hung beneath his eyes and he often closed them, submitting to the fatigue that vexed his aging body. But he was never at any loss for oaths of bloodshed against Robert the Bruce.
The dwarfish darkling Aymer de Valence, the Earl of Pembroke, had already been expeditiously dispatched across the border to trail and drag down the perfidious Bruce and anyone who had blood ties or dealings with him. After the knighting, I led a great train northward. My ailing sire journeyed at a slug’s pace in a litter far behind us.
Cost what it may, with quick severity Gilbert de Clare, Piers and I purged the wild Scots from their lairs in Galloway and thereabouts. The smoke that rose from their villages laid a death shroud of soot and ashes over the land. We burnt their crops, slaughtered their cattle and my men took their pleasures in their women. I did nothing to restrain my army. The fewer Scots there were, the less chance I should ever be forced to come back to this pus-infested piss-hole.
As a leaf in autumn too long upon the branch that quavers and drifts to earth, Lochmaben fell into my eager hands. There were no Bruces cowering within. They had all run, scattered like mice in a hayfield. Small matter. What was a king without any subjects? A fugitive in his own country. Content with my prize, I went to Carlisle, where parliament was in session, to report to my sire of the swift justice my companions and I had dealt.
I searched the castle, but could not find him. Then Sir Hugh Despenser the Elder pointed him out to me from a window of the castle where we stood. The king had taken his supper on the banks of the river that evening, just upstream of the bridge outside the city gates. Servants had brought a table, linens and a comfortable chair for him and set it in the grass, beaten down by the commoners who often gathered there on the floodplain in the summertime. I thanked old Sir Hugh and, with Brother Perrot at my side, made my way toward the river. At the gatehouse, I stopped and turned to Piers.
“Wait here,” I insisted.
“Why?” he asked. “I thought we were going to share the news of our wonderful triumph?”
“I know, I know, but,” I touched him lightly on the shoulder, “I must fulfill a promise I once made to you and the time to do so is now. It will go more smoothly if I broach the subject directly... and alone.”
Agitated, he nodded. “Very well.”
I parted from the cool shade of the gatehouse and went out over the bridge, the sun so bright it nearly drove me back, to meet my sire.
Although the journey from Westminster had compromised the king’s health even further, I had been told, a change in physicians since arriving in Carlisle had performed miracles. The previous physician had prescribed rigorous bloodletting; the current one favored herbal concoctions and generous doses of fresh air. The king had finished his meal and departed the riverbank. I cringed upon seeing him walking with renewed vigor, however stiltedly, along the bridge over the River Caldew. My greyhound, a most loyal fawn and white bitch given to me by my oldest sister
Margaret, loped timidly at my heels as I approached him. A gaggle of counselors flocked behind him in their colored robes.
He sneered. I was accustomed to the tepid greeting. Before I could impart the news of my success, he drew a ragged, wheezing breath, then spoke, “Pembroke crushed Bruce at Methven... and what have you done?”
I took a step back and forced a smile, satisfied in my work. “We took Lochmaben from them and subdued all Galloway and Annandale. The whole southwest is in our hands now. Piers Gaveston was a courageous and astute commander – instrumental in our success. I should like to reward him with the Fife of Ponthieu, as it was my mother’s and –”
His hand shot out and grabbed my hair. With surprising force, he shoved me to my knees so hard I thought my kneecaps would shatter on the cobbles. My hound whimpered and crept toward me. My sire kicked her in the ribs and she scuttled off with a yelp.
I, too, squealed. I could not help it. He twisted my hair, pulling it from the roots. My scalp stretched until my eyes bulged. The pain, my God, the –
“You, who have not won so much as a rod of ground by your own hand or head, would give away your inheritance?”
The rage in his voice increased with each syllable until I thought every vein in his body might burst from it. His advisors and barons looked on, wordless, judgmental.
“There was no one left to defend Lochmaben when you tripped over it! Instead of defeating a Scottish army or bringing me prisoners of worth, you and your odious playmate make a mockery of your vows of chivalry and commit acts of such abomination... Coward’s work!” He gave my hair another twist. “And you ask to bestow favors on him?”
I reached up to his arm to free myself, but he yanked me up by the hair and dragged me to the wall of the bridge. He slammed my face into the stones. It felt as though a hole had been shot through my skull from cheekbone to cheekbone. Moaning, helpless, I stared down into the churning black water of the river.
“My hope for you is fast fading,” the king said. Then he let go of me.
I lay draped over the wall, the stone edge pressing sharply into my ribs. Blood dripped over my upper lip and I licked it away. “And my love for you is long gone.”
“You know nothing of love. You are possessed by a sickness and I shall cure you of it.” My sire loomed above me. The lion sizing up his prey. “I hereby banish Piers Gaveston from the whole of this island – for life. Let him learn of humility elsewhere.”
With his councilors bunched behind him, he left me there. I crumpled to the cobbles. Through the white, throbbing pain, I looked toward the gatehouse. Piers was not there. Blood poured from my nose. I raised my sleeve to sop it up.
Boots clicked on the stones before me. Piers unbelted his surcoat and lifted it over his head. Then he bent down and offered it in a wad. I took it and held it to my nose. On her belly, my greyhound crept to me and wedged her slender muzzle under my arm.
“You should not be here right now,” I muttered into the soaked cloth.
“If you say go, I will go.”
Surely, he did not mean those words? But what choice did we have? If not banishment, then a dungeon it would be. Darkness and rats. Lice and fouled meat. A long, slow, torturous death. And this for serving me with such blind devotion? The ache in my heart was ten times larger than the one in my head.
“How much longer will he curse the earth with his steps?” I wondered aloud.
My sire... he fancied himself a genius. And in the matter of laying low entire peoples, perhaps indeed he was. One man, however, had already once had him by the throat and he didn’t even know it.
At the far end of the bridge, a crowd had gathered, waiting to enter through the heavily guarded gates, even though the confrontation between my sire and me had long since ended. A little child with a dirty face peered from behind his father’s knee and pointed at me. I held out my hand and Piers pulled me gently to my feet. As I turned and began on my way with dreadful reluctance back to the castle, Piers stormed toward the onlookers.
“Be off, you pock-faced hogs! You sewer-slimed rats! Have you nothing better to do than gawk? Have you never seen a man fall? Off with you!” He shooed them all back with a flurry of his hands and then guided me carefully over the bridge and on into Carlisle Castle.
The very next day, he was escorted under guard to Berwick where he boarded a ship. They would not tell me to where. Unable to see my dear Brother Perrot one last time and share farewells, I was forced to attend parliament. The issue there was my much delayed, but now impending, marriage to the Princess Isabella of France. I had no say in it.
What had I done to incite my father’s loathing except be born into the world? He would never take pride in me, never love me as I was. Yet he says I know nothing of love? It was he who brought Piers into my life and encouraged our bond. But now that he senses it is something more, something immoral, he bombards me with contempt? As if that punishment alone might incite me to change. I am not weak; nor am I incapable.
I am who I am – and it is as God made me.
Someday, though... someday, long after my sire was dust beneath my feet, I would prove him wrong. I would do what he had failed to. I would defeat the Bruce on the battlefield... or die in the trying.
Until then: Edward of Caernarvon, Prince of Wales; master of nothing.
Ch. 29
James Douglas – Atholl, 1306
King Robert sent word to Kildrummy, urging Nigel to bring the womenfolk and meet us at our place of retreat: a rugged camp on Deeside deep within the woods, well upriver of Aberdeen. To the north and west of us stood the tallest mountains in all of Britain, guardians of the heavens glowing pink with campion at the edge of day. Along the glen were nestled red-barked pines with twisting branches and in between were patches of deergrass. The lower hills bloomed with the bright yellow of tormentil and the deep purple of heather. To our south stretched the far reaches of the Forests of Atholl.
For weeks now, Robert had waited for them to come. Day after day, rising before dawn, he climbed to the same high hill and watched from his rocky eyrie. Every evening the same again. But day after day went by and nothing. No one. He did not pace or fret or fray away with worry. He simply waited, his eyes as hard and fixed as chips of stone, gazing above the treetops, surveying along the river’s course.
Then, late one morning – they came.
He had stayed there on top of the hill longer than usual. When he came down it was at a dangerous sprint. Flakes of rock tumbled and flew beneath each footfall. He caught himself on the trunk of a pine at the base of the hill, breathless. Nervously, he tugged at the hem of his tunic and then briefly touched the scar in front of his ear. His beard nearly hid it, but not entirely.
“Edward went on up the path to meet them,” I said.
Dumbly, he shook his head and paced ten feet, running both hands through his dark, full head of hair, then back again. He stopped, sidled up to me and said very low, “Should I change my shirt?”
I squinted at him. “Into what, sire? The wardrobe has not yet caught up with the royal train.”
He laughed, or tried to. “Gerald used to remind me of such things.”
We both went silent with grief. In three short months, Gerald had taught me much about the road to knighthood. Taught me how to look after the king and watch his backside for him. What he liked and disliked and what he would say or do in any situation – like trying to make a joke when his nerves were taut. Then Robert sighed from the bottom of his lungs and took off at a quick trot along the path that ran parallel to the river.
I claimed a seat on a fallen log amongst a group of men who sat about their noonday fire smoking salmon. John, the old Earl of Atholl, sat on the ground, tearing the moldy crust from a loaf of stale bread. The cut on his head had festered and swollen considerably, leaving him temporarily disfigured until Gil had cut into his cheek with a hot knife and drained the wound, then cleaned and dressed it. Atholl had spoken hardly a word since fleeing Methven. His son, David, ha
d married into the Comyn family and the entire precipitation of events since before Robert’s crowning had left Atholl alienated from him. Many families were split asunder now. I knew nothing of my own, nor would I be likely to find out anything about them anytime soon.
Fish and fowl were plentiful now, but come winter it would be a harsh living. Bundled warm in our wadmal, Hugh and I used to go out riding in the snow, laugh as we pelted each other hard with balls of ice, and slide down the hillside on scraps of old canvas. But at home, the hills were only a portion the size of those here. And there it was never so far to the next croft or manor or village. Here, you were lucky to see any hint of mankind after days of traveling. Neil Campbell sat down beside me, a quarter of a fish cupped in his palm. He plucked flakes of meat away from the bones and stuffed them into his mouth.
“Did you hear?” I said to Neil. “They’re on the road up ahead. Almost here.”
“Who?”
“Robert’s close kin, from Kildrummy.”
He trailed a dirty sleeve across his mouth, leaving bits of fish scattered in his beard. “My Mary? My boy Colin, too?”
“Aye.”
Just as he leapt to his feet, Nigel Bruce came riding slowly along the road at the edge of camp. Neil rushed to his wife and helped her and his young son down from their horse and clutched both fiercely. From the mount behind them, Robert’s other sister, Christina, slid down wearily into Edward’s grasp. He steadied her and took her over to a log to sit. Although the sun was now high and hot, she had a lightweight blanket draped over her hunched shoulders. Nigel gave her a cup of water. She sipped sparingly, and then stared into it.
Slumped sideways, Queen Elizabeth nearly fell into Robert’s waiting arms. His embrace was as much out of obvious relief as it was simply to hold her up. She murmured a few words to him and he obligingly escorted her over to sit beside Christina. Elizabeth placed an arm around her sister-in-law and they leaned against each other, succumbing to their fatigue.
The Crown in the Heather (The Bruce Trilogy) Page 24
