“Ha! You did more than merely pledge loyalty. You and your father, and his father before him, took arms in Edward’s cause and fought against all the rest of us—against my family . . . against your own King!”
“The same might be said of your people,” retorted Bruce.
“Years ago, perhaps—but not in my generation. None has betrayed our cause as greatly as the house of Bruce. Or, should I say, the house of treason!”
Young Robert’s face flushed with fury.
“How dare you!” he cried.
“While the loyal name of Comyn has fought and shed blood against the English for ten years,” his rival went on, clearly taunting him, “you and your father and grandfather drifted back and forth to whatever side of the conflict suited your purposes. I have been fighting Edward—you have been protecting your lands. You have sacrificed nothing for Scotland!”
With great effort, Bruce attempted to quell once more the rising passion of his blood.
“Be that as it may,” he said in measured tone, “I remain the legal heir to its throne.”
“Your claim is no nearer than my own. I am directly in line from Donald Bane. I have been one of Scotland’s guardians. And I am next to follow in the Balliol line.”
“Both your claim and that of Balliol are more distant than that of the Bruce.”
“A Balliol is King. Where does that leave the Bruce?”
“Balliol’s claim was always weak. I will be Scotland’s next King.”
“And yet it is I who have support among the nobles—more than you could dream of.”
“You will never be King!” said Bruce a little more heatedly.
“We shall see,” said the redheaded man.
“I tell you, the crown belongs to me,” insisted Bruce, clenching and unclenching his fists. “And I am now asking for your support. Are you with me or against me?”
“Ha!” spat Comyn. “You are not worthy of the throne!”
“I will be Scotland’s King!”
“Betrayal of our cause is in your family’s blood!”
“Are you calling me a traitor again, Red Comyn?” shouted Bruce, stepping toward his rival, “as you did seven years ago!”
“I do not have to call you one,” replied Comyn, reaching for the sheath that hung at his side. “Your own deeds betray you and reveal you for the traitor you are!” Suddenly his hand flew toward the handle of his dirk.
What happened in the seconds that followed was over quickly. The next thing that the men gathered outside knew, Bruce had emerged from the church, dagger in hand dripping red with blood.
Realizing what had happened, Comyn’s men drew their swords. Bruce’s complied in kind.
Dust flew, horses reared and whinnied, and a brief skirmish ensued. A minute later two of Comyn’s men lay dead on the dirt, while the rest fled for their lives.
Bruce’s men, meanwhile, ran into the church. They found Red John Comyn lying crumpled and bleeding on the floor inside. Quickly they moved to finish what their master had begun, then ran quickly back outside almost the same moment as the horrified priests rushed in to discover what had happened.
It had all happened so quickly. A negotiation had become a murder—and on holy ground. It was not at all what had been intended, but it was done.
There would be no going back.
While his brothers proceeded to seize Dumfries Castle, Bruce now rode straight to Glasgow to beg absolution from Bishop Wishart—partly from his own discomfort that his rash deed had occurred on sanctified soil, but also because religious protocol must be observed if he was to have a chance of reaching his objective. In addition, it would not hurt to receive spiritual sanction for what would follow.
He obtained the absolution.
A decision of great import now faced Robert Bruce. He could flee to the hills and allow himself to become an outlaw and renegade after the fashion of Wallace. Or he could attempt a much bolder stroke.
He chose the latter.
This time there would be no councils, no committees, no discussions, no turning over decisions into the hands of an enemy king. There would be no negotiations over who held the right of kingship, no guardianships. He would discuss the matter with no one.
What he was about to do was for the good of the country. Only led by a strong King could Scotland defeat Edward of England. Only led by a strong King could Scotland win back the freedom Edward had stolen from it. He would take the kingship that belonged to him by right of blood and descent from Scotland’s past kings.
Within but a few weeks of the murder of Red John Comyn, therefore, Robert Bruce was on the way to Scone with what support he could muster.
Ten
1306
That young Robert Bruce had committed murder was only the half of it.
That he had committed murder in a church was a sacrilege against God and the church, and great was the outcry that rose up against him—in England, on the Continent, even in Scotland. Notwithstanding his own bishop’s absolution, excommunication from the pope resulted three months later. Balliol loyalists and Comyn kinsmen alike expressed outrage over the crime.
There was therefore no time for Bruce to lose. He was determined to have himself crowned King before anyone could move to stop him.
At Scone he assembled a small but not inconsequential gathering that included his four brothers, who had already been seizing castles with their men on his behalf, as well as Bishops Wishart and Moray and Lamberton and two of Scotland’s Seven Earls.
To give the hurried ceremony the sanction of legitimacy, Countess Isabel of Buchan, sister of the laird of Strathbogie Castle, was summoned. That her husband, the earl of Buchan, was nearest kinsman to the Red Comyn and a staunch Bruce adversary might be considered a strange fact. But she was of the family MacDuff, sister to the earl of Fife, now lord of Strathbogie. To her family had gone the hereditary right to crown the kings of Alba for centuries.
Whatever Countess Isabel thought personally of Robert the Bruce, in this case she evidently decided that the blood of her clan came before marital loyalty. Her brother and nephew sat in an English prison. Therefore she determined to do her part to break Edward’s tyranny. She stole her husband’s horses, sneaked away from home, and rode to Scone to do her duty to clan and race and nation.
On March 25, 1306, therefore, Robert Bruce was crowned King of Scotland.
The Stone of Destiny, stolen by Edward of England, still sat in Westminster Abbey. A substitute was quickly quarried, and Bruce took his place upon it. Edward had also taken the royal crown and scepter, ring and sword. Bruce wouldn’t worry about those just now.
In the name of the past kings of Scotland, Countess Isabel stepped forward to place a circlet of gold upon the head of Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick.
“I declare you commander of the Scottish army,” she said solemnly, “and by consent of the realm and by God’s grace, Robert I, King of the whole of the kingdom of Scotland and sole guardian of its lands and people, in the name of God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
Bruce rose, clasped the hands of the few witnesses and accepted their good wishes, then sighed with relief, as if a weight had been removed from his shoulders. He was glad this part of the struggle was over. As to a crown . . . he would see about having a new one made at the soonest possible convenience. Also a royal surcoat. He must, after all, look the part of King.
Whether or not he was legitimately King of Scotland would be argued around many hearths for some time to come.
As always, Scotland’s nobles were divided on the matter of Bruce’s kingship. Some supported him, but many swore vengeance for the blood he had shed and the enormity of his presumption in seizing the throne. Kinsmen and allies of the Comyn-Balliol faction were numerous and powerful and vowed that whatever he might call himself, the young Bruce would never reign as King. They would kill him before they would let him rule.
And so, of course, would Edward of England, if given a chance.
He had made himself King, but Robert Bruce knew his life was in danger from many sources. From Scone, therefore, he fled into hiding, adopting the former tactics of the great guardian martyr Wallace. He would continue to wage war guerrilla-style against the English occupation of the north, hoping gradually to consolidate the support of Scotland’s doubting nobles. His following would have to be built. Bruce was willing to do so slowly.
Considering all that was against the Bruce, it is perhaps surprising that support did indeed begin to come in from among Scotland’s influential landowners, including James Douglas and the earl of Atholl. But it was not yet sufficient to wrest back lands from English control nor even to quell the hostile opposition throughout Scotland from Bruce’s own countrymen. In mid-1306, after an unsuccessful attempt to capture Perth from the English, the fugitive King and his followers took refuge in the central Highlands.
Enraged at Bruce’s slap in the face against English sovereignty, a furious Edward yet again marched north with his own twenty-three-year-old son, namesake, and heir, sending out orders to his commanders ahead of him to round up Bruce’s supporters—and to show no mercy. In accordance with this order, one of Bruce’s brothers and his brother-in-law were captured and hanged. Bruce’s wife and daughter and sisters were taken from Kildrummy Castle—where Bruce had left them, he thought, in safety—and imprisoned. The Countess of Buchan, who had installed him at Scone, was confined to a small tower in Berwick Castle. Sixteen other of Bruce’s supporters were tried at Newcastle and hanged.
The future looked dark. Against such odds, the new King of the Scots went into deep hiding, disappearing into the west and island regions. He was not seen or heard from for the rest of the year.
The English King Edward himself, now almost sixty-eight years old and ill, but determined to lead the search for the traitor Bruce and personally preside over his hanging, proved unable to continue the journey. He paused to winter in Carlisle.
For years ever after the tale would be told that during his travels, while hiding on Rathlin Island, Bruce observed the persistence of a spider. Six times did the tiny creature attempt unsuccessfully to swing from one beam to another. Not until the seventh did it gain its objective.
The visual lesson, the story goes, inspired Bruce to persevere under the adversity then facing his cause.
Eleven
JANUARY–OCTOBER 1307
Bruce emerged from hiding early in the year 1307 far to the south of Scotland, then marched through his own lands of Carrick trying to muster support. He found himself, however, still hemmed in by enemies on all sides. Two more of his brothers were taken prisoner by English troops and executed. Yet again, after only a few months, Bruce took to the hills.
Early in the summer of 1307, Edward of England resumed his march north. Though still frail from his illness, he had himself helped into the saddle and led his army north out of Carlisle.
But he was too weak to continue. Only three miles from the Scottish border, on the sands of the Solway, still determined with his last ounce of strength to subdue the rebellious Highlanders of the north, Edward I of England had to be lifted from his horse and taken to shelter in the village.
Frustrated, but knowing he was dying, Edward made but one last request—that his heart be carried to the Holy Land and his bones go in his stead at the head of the army until all of Scotland and its rebels had been wholly subdued and Robert Bruce the traitor was dead.
When the final words of his adversary were conveyed to the Scottish King, Bruce could not help but smile.
“I fear the dead bones of the father more than I fear the living flesh of the son,” Bruce replied.
Those were prophetic words indeed regarding Edward II of England. A far weaker monarch than his father, he who would have been husband to the Maid of Norway was hardly a worthy successor to the Hammer of the Scots, who died on July 7, 1307.
The first decision of Edward II’s reign, in fact, gave Robert Bruce the kingdom of which Edward I had spent his life trying to deprive him. The English army was ordered to turn around and march south. Young Edward had decided to take neither his father’s bones nor the English army across the border.
Though Scotland was still largely occupied by the English, the removal of immediate threat of another invasion meant that Bruce could turn his attention to the consolidation of his own power against the remaining Comyn-Balliol relatives and loyalists among the Scottish nobility.
Bruce therefore marched immediately from his lands in the southwest into northern Scotland, with three thousand men under his command, to face another John Comyn, this one the earl of Buchan. The years of running and fighting and hiding, however, had exacted their toll. Bruce was by this time so worn down by the prolonged strain of travel and battle that he fell sick and could scarcely command.
Buchan, alerted to the threat, raised his own army . . . and waited.
In early November the army of Bruce, plagued by desertion and near starvation, halted at Slioch just west of the valley of the Bogie.
When the news reached Buchan, the report was clear.
“Bruce himself is sick, my lord,” said the scout. “He sits on a litter from morning till night, hardly able to eat.”
Comyn nodded with interest. If Bruce should die, or if he could attack and manage to kill the usurper, it was entirely probable that he himself, as heir to the Comyn legacy, could emerge as the new King of Scotland.
This was indeed a fortuitous turn of events.
“And the disposition of his troops?” the earl asked.
“His men are said to be starving,” the man replied, “and are deserting in droves. His force shrinks daily.”
More good news, thought Buchan. He required only another moment’s deliberation.
“Then the time has come for us to attack,” said the earl enthusiastically. “We will put an end to this imposter of a King once and for all!”
Buchan advanced with his army of fifteen hundred men. Of Bruce’s force, but a thousand or less remained. The future of a kingdom hung in the balance—and fewer than three thousand soldiers were present to decide it.
Buchan’s army marched to within sight of Bruce’s encampment, where Buchan ordered his own camp be made. An early snow had begun to fall and continued sporadically through the night. Men on both sides were cold and dispirited. Buchan’s force continued to grow, and as he made final plans he took hope in Bruce’s rumored illness.
Comyn went out to survey his adversary the following morning. Suddenly there appeared Robert Bruce across the fields, sitting boldly on horseback at the front of his army.
“What is Bruce doing there?” Comyn called to his commander.
“I do not know, my lord. Shall I order the attack?”
Buchan sat astride his mount perplexed. Suddenly he was filled with doubts as to the success of a strike. For several long minutes he sat while his commander waited, peering at the tall figure of the self-crowned King across the white field of snow.
“It . . . it is some ploy,” he murmured at length, still debating within himself.
If the report of sickness had been false, Buchan thought, what of the reports of desertion? What if all the reports were spurious—ploys to lure him into battle?
He sat pondering but a few minutes more, then decided. He would not fall for the ruse and be drawn into Bruce’s trap. He would wait.
He turned his horse. “Give orders to postpone the attack,” he said, then rode back toward his tent.
Meanwhile, out of the sight of Buchan, Bruce’s brother Edward helped the King, in a near state of collapse, out of the saddle. The gambit had sapped every ounce of strength he possessed.
“We must rush him to shelter, where he can recover,” said Edward Bruce. “If he dies now, the kingdom is lost.”
“Where will he be safest, my lord?” asked the attendants and commanders.
“Prepare the litter as comfortably as possible,” replied Bruce’s brother. “Make the King warm with what plaids you c
an gather from the men. We will make for the Peel of Strathbogie. It’s not far. Earl John has been one of our loyal supporters. Even though he is himself in prison, his people will give us shelter.”
Twelve
DECEMBER 11, 1307
Is the King better, Papa?” asked an eager voice the instant the tired ironmonger entered the cottage.
“Ay, he’s said t’ be recoverin,’ Donal lad,” replied Fergus.
“A murderer—no King,” muttered the mother.
“He’s o’ the blood o’ auld King David I, guidwife, an’ auld Malcolm and Margaret afore him,” said Fergus. “And crowned at Scone by the Lady Isabel. That makes him oor King, whate’er else he’ll be.”
She returned him no comment, and Donal’s father continued in a somber tone.
“If yer words be true, wife,” he said, “he’s not the only murderer sittin’ on a throne, as all Scots have kenned weel enough this mony a year.”
She looked toward him with concern and seemed to know his meaning even before he spoke it. Fergus met her inquisitive gaze with a nod.
“Oor ain John’s been executed in prison by that blackguard King o’ England,” he said. “I jist heard the ill news.”
“Och, no!” she moaned, eyes filling with tears. “Oor ain puir laird! But why?”
“On account o’ Isabel’s hand in crownin’ the Bruce at Scone, the way they tell it. She’s John’s ain sister, an’ the man had t’ exact his vengeance.”
“Will it ne’er end—the killin,’ the killin’?”
“Not till the matter o’ Scotland’s freedom be settled once an’ fer all,” rejoined her husband prophetically.
Thirteen
DECEMBER 22, 1307
It was a week before Christmas of the year 1307. Robert Bruce had been recuperating for five weeks at the castle of the earl of Strathbogie, whose descendents had been given the lands by William the Lion.
As his brother had predicted, Robert Bruce recovered sufficiently at Huntly to again take his position at the front of his men. But his constitution remained weak, and he could only sit on horseback for brief periods. His army remained encamped where the sick-litter had left it in November a few miles from Huntly.
An Ancient Strife Page 51
