David the Prince - Scotland 03 (41 page)

However, one of Eadmer's first authoritative acts thereafter much upset David, as well as the King. He denounced the episcopate of John, Bishop of Glasgow, and claimed Papal instructions that it was invalid - clearly something engineered long before he came to Scotland. Pope Paschal had died and there was a new Pontiff, Calixtus the Second. He was a friend of Henry's, it appeared, and that monarch had already managed to detach the Papacy from the French interest to the side of Normandy; now this - so perhaps Henry Beauclerc was not so unmindful of English-Scots affairs after all, in far-away Normandy. At any rate Eadmer announced that, through Archbishop Ralph, Calixtus had ordered him to declare John's episcopate of Glasgow as invalid, on the grounds that he had been consecrated a bishop of England, not of Scotland. He must cease all functions in Scotland immediately.

This enraged Alexander as much as it worried David - for of course it made doubtful the position of Cormac, Bishop of Dunkeld, whom John had consecrated. The King demanded retraction from Eadmer, and an announcement that Cormac's ordination was valid. When neither were forthcoming, a complete rift developed between monarch and prelate. Alexander refused to see or speak with Eadmer, and that Saxon announced that he would return to Canterbury for solace and instruction - to which the King, and most other Scots, declared Amen, so be it, or words less dignified. So, having been in Scotland less than one year, Eadmer departed.

Something of a relief as this might be, at first sight, it left behind serious gaps and problems. Eadmer was still Bishop of St. Andrews, so Scotland had no head of its Romish Church, and no
Ard Episcop
.
And of its t
wo other bishops, one was under
Papal interdict and the second, in consequence, might be also. The supporters of the old Celtic Church - to which the main mass of the people belonged, of course - might have been forgiven if they chuckled and said I-told-you-so.

Less stern Romanists and reformers than the Margaretsons might well, at this stage, have given up their long and frustrating campaign to turn Scotland to Rome, and returned to the ancient spiritual allegiance of Columba, however tired it was in Romish eyes, decadent and in error. Scotland was never nearer reverting to Iona. But that was not how the Blessed Margaret had brought up her family. Alexander and David reacted differently. Typically defiant, the King founded and endowed a new see of Moray, and ordered Cormac to consecrate as its bishop Gregory, a monk of Scone. David, typically also perhaps, sent Bishop John off on a pilgrimage to Rome, via Tiron, where he was to see Abbot Ralph, now head of the Tironensian Order, to solicit his influential aid with Calixtus. At the Holy See John was to explain the true position in Scotland to the Pope, and the dire danger to the Romish faith from the present unhappy situation.

In the midst of all this, Matilda was brought to bed with her sixth child. She had no easy time of it. She was now forty-two years, and had never had a really troublesome birth with any of the other five. David decided that this girl must be the last. They called her Hodierna, a traditional name in the Waltheof family, shortened almost immediately to Erna. Young Henry was now nearly six and Claricia three. Waltheof, now fourteen, and a grave child religiously-inclined, was ever asking to be allowed to go to Shiel Kirk to be enrolled as a novice; they let him go to the new Jedworth Priory on a part-time basis, to see how he got on. Of his elder brother Simon, in far Aumale, they heard nothing, to Matilda's distress, although she wrote to him frequently. David had sought Henry Beauclerc's aid to have the lad returned, but to no effect. Undoubtedly the future Earl of Northampton was more or less a hostage, even if originally a willing one.

David's own thirty-sixth birthday reminded him of something which he seldom remembered - that he was no longer a young man, however slender and almost boyish his appearance.

19

D
avid and
M
atilda
were attending the wedding celebrations of Robert de Brus - who very sensibly was marrying the daughter of the Celtic Lord of Annadale, over whose lands he had oversight, and so settling comfortably into the local landscape-this at the town of Annan, in August, the ceremony over and suitable feasting commencing, when a special courier arrived from the North. Weary and dishevelled, for he had travelled long and at speed, via both Rook's Burgh and Caer-luel, he louted low to David - lower than usual. Yet he was his own nephew, Malcolm, the late Eth's third son.

"My lord," he panted. "My lord David. My lord Prince -who knows, it may be my lord King!"

"Eh. . . ? Malcolm-what is this? What do you mean, man?"

"The King, my lord. It is the King. Ale
xander. He is amis
sing. We, we fear that he is drowned. The Earl Madach of Atholl sent me to you . . ."

"Alexander? Drowned!" David stared from the young man to the wine-cup in his own hand. He raised it to his lips, then bethought him that the other probably had greater need, and thrust the cup at his nephew. "Drink, man. Then sit. You are wearied. Tell us these tidings. However evil."

"Yes, evil, Uncle." Malcolm emptied the beaker at a draught. "It was three days back- four, now. The King was out fishing in the Firth of Forth. Out from Culross Abbey. You know how he is fond of fishing. In a boat with three others. A great storm of wind arose. And rain. The boat was lost to sight. It did not come back to Culross that night. Next day the body of one of the boatmen was washed up on the shore. There is no word of the King."

"Merciful Lord!" David breathed. "Alex!"

"Oh, my love!" Matilda took his arm. "It may not be
...
it
need
not be . . ."

"No. It may not. Pray God! Malcolm - there has been a search? No sign of the boat? No wreckage?"

"The sea was still very rough. Strong west winds . . ."

"From Culross, you say? That is quite far up Forth, from the Queen's Ferries. It should not have been so rough there."

"I know not, my lord. I was not there. I was at Stirling. But it was wild, wild. Of a sudden . . ."

There was silence amongst the wedding-guests.

"The Earl Madach of Atholl was at Stirling," Malcolm mac Eth went on, out of a full mouth. "He waited for two days. Then, then he sent me to tell you. If Alexander is indeed drowned, you are now the King, my lord. He asks that~you come. At onc
e. Before, before all learn . .
."

"Yes. Yes, to be sure. I must go. Without delay. But — I will not accept that Alexander is dead! I will not . . . !

It was a sorry interruption of a wedding-feast. Making hasty apologies to their host and to the bride and groom, and leaving Matilda to represent him, David took Hugo and Hervey with only one or two others, and in their finery as they were, took horse for the Forth and Stirling.

Although they rode well into that May night, it was evening of the next day before they looked down from the Gargunnock Hills on to the fort-crowned rock of Stirling rising starkly from the flood-plain of the Forth. At the castle, Hugo's uncle Eustace, the Great Constable, now an ageing man, greeted him uncertainly, not knowing whether to go down on one knee to him as monarch - but being left in no doubt that he should not. There was still no word of Alexander. The Earl Madach was away in Fothrif superintending the search.

It was too late to do anything worthwhile that night. Tired and dispirited, David sought a couch.

They were on their way to Culross, along the north shore of the Forth, when they met a party from Madach spurring in the other direction. These announced that the King had been found. He was alive, although weak and in a poor state. They had no details save that Alexander was lying at Culross Abbey. They were sent to inform the Constable and Chancellor at Stirling.

Thankfully David rode on".

Culross Abbey of St. Serf lay on the Fothrif coast of the Firth midway between Stirling and Dunfermline. It was an ancient establishment, very different from any Romish monastery, lacki
ng any edifice of stone-and-lime
and consisting of many clay and timber buildings, with thatched roofs, within a large stockaded enclosure. But it was a pleasant place amongst gardens and orchards, with its own boat-haven, quite famous in the Columban Church as where the renowned St. Serf had reared the still more renowned St. Mungo or Kentigern.

Madach greeted his cousin thankfully, a worried man still.

The King was very ill, he reported, coughing blood. Abbot Murdoch, skilled in such matters, said that he had crushed ribs and one or more had punctured the lung. He was sleeping just now, after tossing and coughing all night. One of his companions was in little better state, but the third had come out of the ordeal fairly well and had been able to give an account of what had happened.

It seemed that the King's fishing-boat, caught in the sudden squall of a week before, had been overturned, tossing its four occupants into the water. One of the boatmen had been swept away at once - he whose body had been recovered on the shore nearby. But the boat had not actually sunk, floating on keel-up, and the three survivors had managed to get back to it and to cling thereto. Then had commenced a grim and prolonged ordeal as, at the mercy of strong winds, high waves and an ebbing tide, they had drifted seawards. There was nothing that they could do to guide or affect the course. Hour after hour they had clung on desperately, chilled and losing hope. In time they had passed right out between the headlands where Queen Margaret's Ferry crossed, and on into the widening Scottish Sea. By then it was growing dark, and all three had said their last prayers and committed their souls to God and His saints, not believing that it was possible than they could survive even another hour. Anyway, what hope was there for them in the broad Scotwater, in these high seas and darkness?

None knew when it was that, still clinging although barely conscious, they had become aware of change, the sea suddenly seeming to grow even rougher and the noise greater. Then they were smashing and grinding amongst rocks and spray. Helpless, they were smashed and battered and tossed clear of the splintering boat. The man reporting had lost consciousness at this stage, presumably stunned against a rock.

When he had come to, he and his two companions were lying in a small hut made of drift-wood and turf, being tended by a wild-looking hairy man in rags and skins, who proved to be an anchorite of the Columban Church, a holy man living alone on the small island of Inch Colm, on which they had been cast up, with a single cow for sustenance. Although the man looked a mere skeleton, he had dragged all three of them up from the rocky shore to his cabin, treated their hurts as best he could and was cherishing them on milk and cheese and shell-fish and edible weeds - although the King, who was sorest hurt, was unable to eat anything. The hermit had no boat, and they were in his care, storm-bound, for five days before the seas abated and their saviour's three fires, lit as signals, could be seen from the mainland, and a boat had duly come out from Aberdour to their rescue. The search for them, of course, had not extended nearly as far east as this, fifteen miles and more from Culross.

His listeners could only wonder and give thanks to God, St. Columba and the hermit.

It was some hours before the King awakened and David saw his brother. Alexander, who so prided himself on his physical fitness, hardly seemed the same man. He was gaunt and drawn and grey, hollow-eyed and still coughing blood despite Abbot Murdoch's remedies. Nevertheless he was clearly glad to see David, more so than the latter could recollect, since their childhood, in a strange state of mind, gripping David's arm and talking fast, almost incoherently, between his coughings and blood-splutterings. Evidently his dire experiences had affected him almost as greatly emotionally as physically.

"I have looked on death, cast within the very jaws of doom, Davie!" he exclaimed. "Fore God, I as good as died! For I lost all consciousness on those rocks, and would have slipped away into the shades without further knowing. Had not this blessed eremite Malbride rescued me. He delivered me, took me out of the power of the enemy! God put him on that island to save me, I tell you! It was a miracle! God must have work for me to do, yet, Davie. It must be so . . ."

"Of course He has, Alex. You are but forty years old. You have much good work ahead of you. But - I thank God indeed that you are safe. That our prayers were answered."

"I shall build an abbey on that island, Davie. As I lay there in that hut, I vowed a vow that I would, if God permitted my rescue." A great bout of coughing brought up much scarlet froth into a basin which the Abbot held out, shaking his grey-head, and for a while the King could not speak. Indeed the Abbot signed to David that he should withdraw, murmuring that His Grace was better not to talk. But Alexander found his voice again, however brokenly.

"An abbey, I say . . . instead of that hut! A true abbey, of stone, with a noble church. I shall dedicate it to St. Columba himself, since it is his isle. But it will not be a Columban abbey but a Roman, see you. This I swear! And that eremite shall have my protection all his days. This I swear also
.
I
,
I
.
.
." The rest was lost in a red flood.