David the Prince - Scotland 03 (23 page)

"Ye-e-es. Will that be sufficient? No writings?"

"No writings. He is a Saxon. He will do what he is told." That was scornful.

"My mother was a Saxon, Bishop Flambard. I would wish this Eadric to come to no hurt thereafter. You will mind it?"

"He will be well enough."

"Then we are agreed. One last matter. Send you priests to me, at Caer-luel. I shall sec that they find parishes in Cumbria. And are paid. Then I shall dissemble the less!"

They eyed each other.

* * *

Flambard was right in one respect, at least. Prior Eadric of Tynemouth, when they returned and announced that his bishop had given permission for the exhumation, made no objection, demanded no written warrant.

It
was a harrowing and unchancy business, unpleasant to a degree. The Prior provided two burly lay-brothers, who went to work with spade and mattock, beneath the upright monolith bearing the roughly-inscribed legend MALCOLM. The King had been buried just as he was when dragged out of the river, in campaigning garb and chain-mail shirt, and had lain so for eighteen years. David had purchased from Flambard some blankets and a large and handsome cloth-of-gold bedcover to wrap the body in; also two pack-horses to carry a litter.

Fortunately the soil was sandy, near the beach, and this helped, both in the disinterring process and because of its dryness, in preserving the corpse from putrescence and, at this stage, liquefaction. Even so, when the remains were reached, part covered in the relics of a cloak, it was a gruesome sight, mainly skeletal but with semi-mummified flesh and sinew adhering, the more incongruous for the rusty chain-mail over the empty rib-cage and the leather accoutrements. At least there was no strong smell, as they had feared. Nor was there any doubt about identification; the great skull, with patches of grey hair still clinging, could be only that of Malcolm Canmore, Big Head. The huge cavernous eye-sockets seemed to stare at them accusingly.

Muttering a prayer, David hurriedly had the remains wrapped up in the covers he had brought, hiding all under cloth-of-gold. In the horse-litter it looked less dire.

Nevertheless, on the long ride northwards thereafter, slowed as they were by the pack-horses, the young men never ceased to be aware of the burden they escorted. The success of their mission could not make it other than a gloomy journey.

It t
ook them five days to reach Stirling - only to discover that A
lexander had gone to Invergowrie
, on the verge of Angus. When he had been Earl of Gowrie this had been his favourite house; and it remained so even though he made Stirling, with its mighty fortress above the first bridgeable reach of Forth, his capital.

Reluctant to make a further lengthy journey with the corpse, and then to have to take it back to Dunfermline - he had a notion that the remains were indeed beginning to smell - David sent Cospatrick on, at his fastest, to Invergowrie, whilst he and the others next day proceeded on eastwards, at a slower pace, along the north side of the Forth estuary, through Fothrif, to his father's capital and his old home at Dunfermline. He thankfully deposited his strange burden before the high altar of the great minster on the hilltop there.

They had less long wait than he had feared. Alexander was no laggard when his interest was aroused. He arrived, with a weary Cospatrick, the very next evening, having been ferried over Tay and ridden hard across Fife.

"Davie - you have done it!" he cried, coming to embrace his brother, a deal more warmly than the last time. "You have the body upraised and here, man? This 'fore God, I had never expected. It is a wonder! I looked only for a paper, a written warrant to exhume. How did you achieve it? Cospatrick has told me some of it, but . . ."

David explained as they walked to the minster from the little palace on the rock, informing that he had pledged the Colding-ham revenues.

They stood beside their father's body, still in its cloth-of-gold shroud, silent. David had advised his brother not to look beneath. Nearby was a slab of Iona marble in the flagstones of the floor, just in front of the altar, beneath which lay the body of Queen Margaret, with on her right that of her eldest son, Edward, and on her left the late Edgar.

"Together again, at last," Alexander said, at length. "I shall have a leaden coffin wrought." He paused. "There is but one difficulty. As you see, the building is scarce finished. I had thought that it could be months yet before we obtained the body. I planned that there would be a great celebration, to mark the completion of our mother's dream, the first great stone minster in Scotland. And to inter her husband at her side. Many present. It is a dream I have had. But now . . . ? This, this cannot be delayed. Burial . . ."

"No. But it need not be spoiled. Your dream, Alex. A temporary burial here, now. Simple. Just a priest and ourselves. Then, when you have the coffin made and the building finished, your great ceremony. One more uplifting will make no difference. Then the final c
ommittal. Until, until Resurrecti
on Day!"

"Yes. Yes - that is it. The best way. We shall do as you say

So the next forenoon, before the two brothers and a handful of others, Malcolm's remains were placed by the Prior of Dunfermline in a space scooped out beneath the flagstones near the others, in the briefest of services. When it was over, Alexander announced that he would in fact build a stone-lined crypt under the chancel here, instead of these graves, where all the family, their dynasty, could be buried.

For so young a man - he was only twenty-eight years - his mind seemed to be greatly concerned with death and burial.

Before David and his friends left for Caer-luel, the King announced that he confirmed Fergus of Carrick as Lord of Galloway. Not only that, but that David should hereafter be entitled to exercise rule and sway, subject to the King's control, over Strathclyde and the parts of Scotland south of Forth and the Scotwater. He was not making him Prince of Strathclyde, nor yet governor - which would be unsuitable in a joint-subject of the King of England. But he could act in vice-regal fashion, with the title of an earl of Scotland.

It was curiously vague and not entirely satisfactory position - but clearly it represented a considerable gesture on Alexander's part. David, uncertain what might be implied, decided to take it meantime as a compliment of sorts.

9

D
avid had no
call to act for his brother, vice-regally or otherwise, before, unexpectedly, he saw him again. The following May, two messengers reached Caer-luel, each from a king. Henry announced that his patience with the Welsh princes and their revolts was finally exhausted and that he was going to lead a great army against them. David was commanded to muster and bring as many men as he could, to join the Marcher Earl of Chester, to threaten the Welsh north flank. This by the Feast of St. Barnabas at the latest. The word from Alexander was in the same vein, that Henry had besought him, for kin and friendship's sake, to send a Scots force to aid against the rebellious Welsh, so that their incessant risings might be put down once and for all. Alexander would have thought twice of acceding. But he was having difficulty with his new Bishop Turgot of St. Andrews, who was inclined
to look to his old master, the
Archbishop of York, as his ecclesiastical superior - which the King of Scots would nowise admit. He wanted Henry's sympathetic aid in this matter, to bring pressure to bear on York, through Canterbury, to relinquish ideas of hegemony over Scotland. He therefore felt that some such gesture as this might be valuable — and at the same time, any warlike adventure, especially one which would not involve his own realm, suited his temperament. So he would comply, and come south, leading his own army. He thought it likely that his brother would also be involved. They could march together.

By now David could raise fully five thousand armed and trained men, given a week or so of notice; so that, when the Scots force of some eight thousand arrived in due course, they made quite a major army. Alexander had most of his Scots earls with him - Fife, Angus, Strathearn, Atholl and the Mearns. Mar and the North remained hostile. Eth, or Ethelred of Moray was left in charge in Scotland.

Headed by this resounding company the combined legion moved down through Cumbria.

They debated why Henry, no warrior, should have decided to go to war against the Welsh at this stage. In Cumbria they had not heard that Wales was any more restless than usual. A proud small people, the Welsh were perpetually up in arms, somewhere, against their Norman overlords - and the so-called Marcher Earls especially were apt to oppress them grievously. David felt considerable sympathy for them, in fact, and knew some discomfort at proceeding against them in arms. But he was in no position to reject Henry's command — and the first time that the King had sought the use of the new Cumbrian command. Alexander evidently felt no such qualms. It took the joint force nine days to reach Chester, only one day short of the given date, going by Kentdale and Lunedale and crossing out of Cumbria at Ribchester in Amounderness. Hugh d'Avranches, Earl of Chester, Richard the Viscount's uncle, son of Emma, the Conqueror's half-sister, was an old campaigner and clearly not prepared to put himself in any subordinate position to the royal Scots brothers. This suited David well enough; but Alexander, of course, as a monarch, could not place himself under the command of any man. So it had to be a joint command, never a satisfactory arrangement; although in fact, the veteran Norman earl would make most of the decisions. His own force of some seven thousand brought the total up almost to twenty thousand, a mighty army.

Chester told them of the strategy worked out. They would close in on the Welsh from three sides. Henry himself, with two large hosts, would approach the Welsh marches centrally, from Gloucester and Hereford, making directly for Powys, where Gruftydd ap Cynan, Prince of Gwynedd, had his headquarters, in the Upper Severn valley. They themselves would move down on a wide front on Gwynedd, the northern province of Wales. While Richard de Clare, Earl of Cornwall, would lead another mixed force, of Cornishmen and South Country Saxons, up through South Wales, where little opposition was expected -indeed it was likely that many of the southern Welsh would join him, for they were at odds with the rest of their barbarous countrymen. The aim was to compress Gruffydd and his chieftains into an ever contracting area between Powys and the sea. Large numbers were necessary for such a manoeuvre, that the Welsh forces would find no gaps or weak points to break out through - hence this great concentration of men. The tribesmen would move back into their central mountain fastnesses, of course - they always did - but very large numbers could not subsist in those barren heights for long. Henry hoped either to root them out or starve them out.

When David asked why Henry, a peaceable monarch in most respects, should elect to make this great effort, and choose this time to do so, he was told that there was more to this than Gruflfydd ap Cynan, who was more or less always in a state of rebellion. It was another move to limit the power and ambitions of the Montgomery brothers, the dangerously mighty Earls of Shrewsbury, Pembroke and Lancaster, who were the most intractable of Henry's nobles. Although Norman's themselves, they would sometimes take part in the Welsh revolts, use them for their own ends. There was even talk that Robert de Belleme, Earl of Shrewsbury, the most arrogant of the trio, saw himself as a possible King of an independent Wales. This show of strength was Henry's answer.

So they carried on southwards, in mighty strength but at a direly slow pace inevitably, Normans, Scots, Cumbrians and Saxons, to cross into Gwynedd at Trevalyn, push through Denbigh and cross Dee at Llangollen. Here they reformed, to change order of march, spreading out as it were in line abreast, to advance across country in a swathe twenty miles and more in width, using every road and track and valley through the ever-rising hill-country.

Word had awaited them at Llangollen that Henry had in fact reached the Severn at Powys and had commenced his advance towards the sea, so far without any major clash. The Cornish force was coming up fast from the south. So that they now had Gruffydd's people squeezed into an area perhaps forty miles by thirty. It but remained to tighten and tighten the ring of steel until they had them helpless. There must be no break-outs. Nothing was mentioned about the Montgomery Marcher Earls.

David for one was thankful to be separated from the main northern army. The treatment of the local populace by much of the soldiery, since they crossed into Gwynedd, sickened him, the Norman leadership showing little concern to check it, looting, assault, rape and arson. He had protested, but achieved little improvement. The Scots were not a great deal better, Alexander fairly heedless. It appeared to be accepted that this was how armies behaved on the march, and that good fighting could not be expected without its due rewards. Keeping his own Cumbrian levies under control was not easy, in the circumstances. Away from the others it was less difficult.

The Cumbrian contingent's position in the long line of the advance was left of centre, with Alexander on the left again and most of Chester's force stretching away westwards towards the sea. They were now climbing steadily through the Berwyn Mountains, south by east, difficult country in which to maintain any sort of line. They saw little of any enemy, only the occasional distant glimpse of a scouting party, evidence that they were being kept under observation. There was not any large population in these hills, and such small villages and townships as there were, in every case were abandoned before the invaders reached them, sad scenes in a peaceful upland region.