The Path to the Throne

by H A CULLEY

  Alexander had therefore married Yolande de Dreux the previous month and, by all accounts, the King of Scots was enamoured of his young French bride. Edward decided that he needed to help fate along before she produced a son and heir for Scotland. He had already started the negotiations with King Eric to betroth his baby son, Edward of Carnarvon, to the Maid of Norway. Although he had to promise that Scotland would remain an independent kingdom when the princess inherited from Alexander, he didn’t see this as much of an obstacle to his plans. In practice his son, Edward of Carnarvon, would rule as her husband. However, a son born to Alexander and Yolande would destroy his plans.

  Robert Burnell had served Longshanks since the days when he was Prince Edward. When Henry III died Burnell acted as regent until Edward could return from Crusade. Edward had appointed him as Lord Chancellor immediately after his coronation and the following year the king had made him Bishop of Bath and Wells as a reward for his faithful service. As soon as he entered the small chamber where the Curia Regis - Edward’s inner council - met, Edward beckoned him over to sit beside him.

  ‘You’ve heard that Alexander is besotted with Yolande of Dreux, I suppose.’ Burnell nodded, not quite sure where this was going.

  ‘If the bitch produces a boy then my son’s marriage to the Maid of Norway is pointless.’

  ‘It will still cement our alliance with King Eric, Sire,’ Burnell pointed out.

  ‘Pah! I’m not interested in some benighted land of snow and mountains. I want Scotland to complete my rule of this island. We need Alexander to meet with an untimely death before he can sire a child again.’ He looked at Burnell with his ice blue eyes. ‘You must know of someone who can ensure that Alexander meets with an unfortunate accident without arousing any suspicion.’

  Burnell pursed his thin lips, lost in thought. Then he smiled at the king. ‘I think I have just the man, Sire.’

  ‘Is he discreet or will you need to kill him afterwards?’

  ‘Oh, he’s discreet enough normally, but this will be too tempting a secret for him to keep. I think it would be prudent if he, and any accomplices he hires, perish before they can talk.’

  ‘Good, I’ll leave it to you. Make sure you don’t let me down and, of course, this conversation never happened.’

  ~#~

  Andrew Seaton was down on his luck. As the younger son of a laird he had little enough to start with: just knighthood, a purse of silver, his armour and a courser. Unfortunately he had gambled all of it away within six months of being knighted. His squire had left him within a few weeks as Andrew had given him neither dagger nor a horse to ride, both traditional gifts to a newly appointed squire.

  Andrew was therefore reduced to taking what he was pleased to call commissions to earn enough to live on and to continue to feed his gambling habit. He was now reduced to living in the stews of Edinburgh and robbing unwary men of their purses. Sometimes he could get away with cutting the leather straps that secured the purse to a belt but, on other occasions, he was forced to kill the man in some dark alley in order to steal what he had.

  Seaton fitted Burnell’s purposes admirably. The Lord Chancellor’s agent in Edinburgh was John FitzGilbert, one of the Earl of Angus’ bastards. He met Seaton at one of the many taverns that line the street that led from the castle down to the Abbey of the Holy Rood. As soon as he had identified Seaton, John FitzGilbert sat down at his table in a dark corner of the cavern and pushed a purse of silver coins across the table, which Seaton made disappear in a flash before nervously looking around.

  ‘You don’t want to show how much coinage you have in here if you want to leave alive,’ he hissed at FitzGilbert.

  ‘I’d like to see anyone try to rob me,’ the other man sneered. ‘In any case, it’s you who has the purse. Now listen to me if you want to earn ten times what’s in there.’

  ‘What do you want done?’ So FitzGilbert explained quietly and at some length.

  Ten days later Seaton arrived at Edinburgh Castle accompanied by two burly serjeants. He wouldn’t have been recognised by the people he used to associate with in the stews of the city. He had been sent by d’Umfraville to fulfil part of his obligations for knights’ service for the estates he held from King Alexander. As such, he aroused no suspicion and he joined the rest of the knights on duty guarding the king.

  The two serjeants joined others doing guard duty on the walls of the castle but one or other made sure that their horses were always ready for use at a moment’s notice. For a month the three endured the tedium of guard duty until the eighteenth of March 1296 when the king decided to leave Edinburgh and visit his new young wife at Kinghorn in Fife. James Stewart, the High Steward of Scotland tried to dissuade him from setting out as black clouds were scudding across the sky and a storm threatened, but Alexander would have none of it.

  He had been with his wife until a week ago when he had come into Edinburgh to deal with the normal business of his kingdom, but Yolande suspected that she was pregnant and he couldn’t wait to return to her. Taking an escort of half a dozen knights, he set off along the coast to Queensferry to take a boat across the Firth of Forth to North Queensferry. However, when he got there the larger boat was already in use and so he opted to take the smaller ferry. In fact the larger one had just taken Andrew Seaton and his men across the firth. Seaton had heard the argument between the king and the high steward and had slipped away from his duty in the great hall so that he and his serjeants could lie in wait for the king along the Fife coast road.

  The smaller ferry could only take two horses and riders across at any one time and the king was too impatient to wait. The rain had started to lash down in sheets and the wind was getting up as they crossed. By the time he reached the far side the ferryman took one look at the storm lashed waters of the firth and decided to stay in North Queensferry for the night. The larger ferry was still there and so it looked as if his fellow ferryman had decided the same.

  Alexander kicked his spurred heels into his palfrey and the horse shot off along the road to Kinghorn. His one remaining companion, a squire mounted on a rouncey, was soon left behind as the king rode through the rain and wind. The storm was now so bad that he couldn’t really see properly and so he came up to the three men sitting on their horses barring the road before he was aware that they were there.

  Seaton brought his iron mace down on the king’s unprotected head, smashing the skull. Alexander toppled from his horse and, before it could bolt, one of the serjeants grabbed the reins. Seaton dismounted and threw the king’s body across the palfrey’s back and then led it down onto the sandy beach. Here they waited until the squire had ridden past, desperately trying to catch his master up, before smashing the skull of the horse and breaking its leg.

  They left horse and rider there, having dragged them into position so that it looked as if the king had lost the road and been thrown from his horse when it broke its leg on a rocky outcrop. The storm would probably hide the hoofmarks and footprints in the sand but, just to make sure, one of the serjeants brushed the marks clear and just left the prints of one horse. Pleased with a job well done, Seaton rode away with the two serjeants thinking of little but the heavy bag of coin he had been promised. It was a pity he hadn’t remembered that his companions were d’Umfraville’s men.

  A hour later the two serjeants finished burying Seaton in the wild moorland three miles inland from the coast and, satisfied that he would never be found, they mounted their horses and, leading the third, they set off for Angus.

  Chapter One – Small Beginnings - 1286

  Robert raced his friend, Gavin Stewart, across the moor to the south of Lochmaben Castle. He turned in the saddle to grin at his eight year-old cousin, who was making valiant efforts to keep up with him, despite the smaller pony the younger boy was riding. In truth, Robert could have won easily but it was much more fun to let Gavin think he had a chance of beating him. They were followed by their riding instructor, a grizzled old serjeant named Callum, who cantered his
rouncey fifty yards behind them, smiling at the rivalry between the two boys.

  Robert de Brus had just turned twelve. He and Gavin shared a grandmother, Margaret Stewart, though she had died before either of them was born. The two were very close, despite the four years between them and, at their ages, four years was a lot. However Gavin had been picked on by the older boys when he first arrived at the castle as a page a few months ago and Robert had taken him under his wing. In return the younger boy hero-worshipped his cousin and Robert rather liked the feeling this gave him. One of his failings was his liking for flattery; he was even more susceptible to adulation.

  Robert de Brus, Lord of Annandale, whose main castle was Lochmaben, was Robert’s grandfather. His father, another Robert de Brus, had sent him there as a page when he was nine. He hated leaving his siblings but he was slightly relieved to get away from his mother, the formidable Marjorie, Countess of Carrick. It was popularly believed that she had taken a fancy to the young Robert de Brus when he came to tell her of the death of her first husband, Neil, Earl of Carrick, in the Holy Land. She had then kept the young knight prisoner in Turnberry Castle until he agreed to marry her, according to gossip, and it had been several weeks before he had acquiesced. Robert wasn’t sure whether to believe the tale and he was too in awe of his parents to ask. If it was true, they seemed to get on well enough now and had nine children to prove it.

  As they rode towards the castle they could see the loch, imaginatively called Castle Loch, that surrounded the castle on three sides. The triangular spit of land on which it stood lay on the southern shore and a moat had been dug across the only approach by land to add to the formidable defences of the inner bailey. The outer bailey stood to the south of this surrounded by a high stone wall with an imposing gateway with both a stout gate and a portcullis. The two boys and their instructor trotted in through this gate and headed over to the stables before dismounting. They unsaddled and were rubbing down their sweating mounts when they heard a commotion outside. Robert and Gavin watched as several horsemen rode into the bailey, one bearing a banner of yellow with a red saltire surmounted by a red rectangle in chief. With a start Robert realised that the man leading the cavalcade was his father, whom he hadn’t seen for three years.

  Robert had a somewhat distant relationship with his father. As Earl of Carrick, he had often been away from his main home at Turnberry Castle during the first nine years of his eldest son’s life, visiting his estates in Essex, Middlesex and County Durham as well as in Scotland. The real influence in his early life had been his mother, though he found her intimidating, and, whilst admiring his father, he had never had the opportunity to bond with him.

  At nine he had left Turnberry for Lochmaben to be a page to his grandfather’s second wife, Christina de Ireby. Robert the elder was Christina’s third husband so it was a political marriage and one which brought Robert the Lordship of Jesmond and several manors elsewhere in England. However, Christina was fond of young Robert and he found it easy to please his mistress. He was also quite close to his grandfather; much closer than he was to either of his parents. If he was honest, he would admit that he had been much happier at Lochmaben over the past three years than he had ever been at Turnberry as a young boy.

  It was therefore with mixed feelings that he watched the arrival of his father. As the earl rode into the inner bailey and his escort dismounted, Gavin came and put a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. It was the sort of affectionate gesture that Robert’s parents would have disapproved of as weak and pathetic.

  ‘Is that the first time you’ve seen him since leaving home.’

  Robert nodded then spat out ‘Turnberry isn’t my home, this is,’ with more vehemence than he had intended.

  He turned away and went back to caring for his horse, trying to blink away the tears that threatened to run down his face. Gavin gazed after him sadly before going to take care of his pony. He knew that Robert’s parents hadn’t even seen him off when he had left Turnberry, contenting themselves with saying a brief farewell the previous evening, followed by plenty of admonishments on how to behave. It had been the same when Isabel, Robert’s eldest sister, had left two years before that to marry King Olaf and become Queen of Norway at the tender age of nine.

  Robert and Gavin walked over the drawbridge and through the gate into the inner bailey once they had finished. They made their way up to the small room on the third floor of the keep where they lived cheek by jowl with the other four pages at Lochmaben. One, Richard, was older than Robert but the rest were younger. Gavin was the youngest. Robert was envious of Richard, partly because his father, a tenant of his grandfather who held a manor in County Durham, had visited him twice in the past year, but mainly because he was thirteen and therefore would soon become a squire.

  Pages did some basic military training and learned to ride properly but most of their time when on duty was spent in the solar waiting to run errands or carry messages. At mealtimes they waited at table on the ladies whilst the squires kept the men’s goblets topped up. Then they had to fight the servants for the leftovers after the squires had taken what they wanted. Fare at the Lord of Annandale’s table was plain and meagre so the pages were often hungry. This didn’t worry Robert and Gavin overmuch as the older boy was adept at stealing cheese, bread and cold meats from the spence. He had only been caught once and he reckoned the whipping his bare posterior had received from the spencer had been well worth it.

  Robert hated his turn of duty in the solar, idling away his time until he could go riding or practice with wooden swords and shields. He also loved archery and was becoming quite competent with the light hunting bow. Gavin was too young as yet to have started learning to use weapons and so the only time the two cousins could enjoy together, out of the watchful eye of the page master or Lady Christina, was when they could go out riding. However, that was infrequently as most of their time on horseback was spent learning to improve their riding in a small roped-off paddock with the other pages. Gavin had learnt to ride almost as soon as he could walk and consequently it was the one area he was better at than the others, except for Robert and Richard.

  Richard and one of the nine-year olds were on duty in the solar. The other nine-year old had been cheeky to a squire so as punishment he was helping the squire clean his knight’s armour as a preferable alternative to a sound thrashing for impudence. The only boy in the pages’ room when they got there was therefore Roger, the one boy that Robert couldn’t stand. Roger was a distant cousin, the son of Sir Andrew Comyn, brother of the Lord of Badenoch. He was nine months younger than Robert and was snide, untrustworthy and vindictive. Robert couldn’t understand why his grandfather had decided to take him in; the Bruces and the Comyns were enemies, despite both families being descended from King David. Roger tried to get Gavin into trouble as much as possible, mainly because he knew it would upset Robert. He had tried to ask his grandfather once why he had a Comyn as a page but all he got in reply was a heavy clout about the head and an instruction to mind his own bloody business.

  Roger stood up when the other two pages came in and, noticing the redness of Robert’s eyes, asked nastily: ‘oh dear, has Robert been upset, crying because someone had been nasty to dear little Gavin?’ Normally Robert would have ignored him, but he was so wound up today that, without saying a word, he punched the younger boy on the nose with all the force he could muster. Roger went flying backwards and hit the stone wall behind him before sliding down it into a sitting position with blood streaming from his broken nose.

  He was so stunned that for a moment he sat there, his eyes unfocused. Then he let out a wail and clutched his face with his hands before struggling to his feet and running out of the room. ‘You’re dead, de Brus, dead, do you hear!’

  Gavin didn’t know what to do. He glanced at the door, wondering whether to chase after Roger Comyn and explain why Robert was so bad-tempered, or stay and comfort his cousin, who was now sitting on one the infested straw mattresses that served as th
eir beds and sobbing uncontrollably. He wisely decided that there was nothing that he could say to Comyn that would make things any better and, more probably, it would only make it worse. So he sat down on the mattress beside Robert and put a comforting arm around his shoulder. This was the state that one of the other pages on duty in the solar found them in.

  ‘Robert, are you alright? Your grandfather has sent for you to go up to the great hall immediately but, by the look of your face, you had better dunk your head in the water butt first. By the way, what happened to Roger? He looked as if he ran into a wall.’

  ‘No, just my fist.’ Robert held up the skinned and bloody knuckles of his right hand to illustrate the truth of what he had said. He got up and followed the other boy out of the room. ‘I suppose I had better go and get whipped for hitting him.’ He grinned back at Gavin. ‘But it was worth it.’

  The great hall at Lochmaben was a large square room that took up the whole of the first floor of the keep. There was no fireplace; instead a large brazier stood in each corner with a hole in the masonry leading upwards at an angle to vent the smoke. It was moderately successful at this, depending on the direction and intensity of the wind, but most days some of the smoke drifted up to hang in the rafters. Consequently the hall always smelt strongly of stale smoke.

  Trestle tables and benches were put out for meals but always cleared away afterwards. The one exception was the solid oak high table with its eight chairs, six with their backs to the wall facing into the hall and one at each end. This was where the steward normally sat and worked with his assistants, looking after the business affairs of Robert’s grandfather and managing his estates. At meal times his ledgers and scrolls were locked away in a large coffer and the table became the dining table for the de Brus family and high-ranking guests.