Insurrection: Renegade [02] (38 page)

In the nave of Dunfermline’s church, where grand circular pillars carved with bold motifs flanked the aisles, the captains of the English army gathered before their king. A clear November sky filled the arched windows of the upper storey, blue and brittle. The men wore fur-trimmed cloaks to ward off the chill, surcoats mended, swords cleaned of the blood and rust of the campaign.

Robert stood among them, his gaze on King Edward, who was seated on a cushioned chair in front of the altar in a scarlet mantle trimmed with gold. Behind the king was his dragon banner, first raised on the tournament fields of France when he was a prince in exile, later hoisted in his wars; a symbol that there was to be no mercy. The great standard was patched in places and frayed around the edges, but the winged serpent at its centre was still vivid, wreathed in fire. As Robert watched, Clifford was called before the king.

The royal knight crossed the floor and went down on one knee. Edward’s voice rang imperiously through the nave as he granted him estates in Roxburghshire, adding to the knight’s already considerable awards of Caerlaverock Castle and the lands of Sir William Douglas, who fought alongside Wallace early in the rebellion. When Clifford rose, the men of the Round Table applauded, Guy de Beauchamp and Thomas of Lancaster smiling and grasping his shoulder as he returned to their ranks.

‘Sir Robert Bruce.’

As Robert walked forward, his footsteps loud in the falling quiet, he caught the gazes of Humphrey de Bohun and Ralph de Monthermer. Both were nodding their approval. After the victory in Cumberland the frost in some of these men had begun to thaw. They had seen him throw himself into the battle; seen him kill his countrymen without compunction and celebrate when it was done. Clifford, in particular, had spread word of Robert’s part in the slaughter and capture of Scots to the others.

Behind King Edward, a carved rood screen separated the nave from the monks’ choir. Beyond were the shrines of King Malcolm Canmore and his wife Queen Margaret, who founded the abbey two hundred and thirty years ago. The nearness of the bones of his ancestor set a fire inside Robert. Dunfermline was the royal necropolis where many of Scotland’s kings lay entombed, among them Alexander III, who had plunged to his death not fifteen miles from here. Now, the man Robert suspected may have been responsible sat above his corpse; a conqueror, on a throne of adamant.

Robert thought of his grandfather who had spoken of the Bruce line as a mighty tree, with roots stretching back to the Normans and the ancient kings of Ireland, and he, Robert, a new shoot sprung from those great boughs. The blood of dead kings ran like sap in his veins. He could feel their will working within him, demanding that he fulfil the promise of his line: that he drive out this tyrant and claim his destiny, by any means. No more waiting. No more.

Coming before Edward, Robert forced himself to one knee and lowered his head.

‘Sir Robert,’ said the king. ‘For your part in the defeat of the rebels in Cumberland, I confer upon you a new position. Henceforth, you will be Sheriff of Lanark and Ayr.’

Robert remained motionless staring at the flagstones, but his mind was racing. Edward’s shrewdness in his choice of gifts was not lost on him. Word was out that William Wallace had returned to lead the rebellion – the court had been humming with the news since Aymer de Valence delivered it – and the king was clearly disturbed. Before the war, Wallace’s uncle had been Sheriff of Ayr and it had been the rebel leader’s home. Later, after the occupation, the English Sheriff of Lanark had been responsible for the death of Wallace’s wife and daughter. By putting him in these positions, Robert knew Edward was setting him against the outlaw, physically and symbolically.

‘Your brother, Sir Edward Bruce, will have the honour of serving my son and heir in his household, and to Alexander Bruce I grant the deanship of Glasgow.’

Robert barely listened as the king continued. William Wallace filled his thoughts, as he had often these past weeks, since the bloodbath in the town. He had thought Scotland’s fate sealed with this campaign, the resistance too weak to withstand Edward beyond another summer of war. He had feared his own fate would be sealed with it, trapped in Edward’s court – his only hope to change his fortune the faint chance he would yet find that elusive proof. Now, he wondered.

The threat of Balliol’s return was finally over and William Wallace had come home at the eleventh hour to lead the rebellion. This changed everything. Second son of a minor knight who had risen to become guardian of Scotland, Wallace had gathered the greatest force of men the kingdom had seen in centuries and had bested an English army at Stirling. He was a general with a celebrated reputation, who had drawn thousands of men – peasants and earls alike – to his banner. Robert knew Edward’s weaknesses; knew where to hit him hardest: the supply depots at York, the diminished garrisons at Edinburgh, Dumfries and Lochmaben. Together, their strength combined, might he and Wallace have a chance to turn the tide?

‘Arise, Sir Robert.’

Robert looked up as Edward finished. ‘Thank you, my lord, for the great honour you do me.’ Standing, he met the king’s pale gaze. ‘I am, as always, your loyal servant.’

Chapter 31

Dunfermline, Scotland, 1304 AD

The prisoner cowered against the wall when they came for him, daylight flooding the stables where they had kept him and the others for weeks. He cried out in protest, his dry lips cracking blood into his mouth, as they seized him.

‘Silence, turd!’

While two guards held him upright, the one who had spoken punched him in the stomach, knocking the cries from him. With the prisoner doubled over, the guards dragged him from the stables, where the moans and pleas of other captives echoed in the stinking gloom.

As they hauled him through the snow across a deserted yard, the man raised his face to the grey sky and opened his mouth, desperate to catch the mist of drizzle in the air. The breath of the guards steamed as they bore his weight between them, their boots crunching through the drifts. The snow had come late, only falling in earnest a fortnight ago, shortly after the Christ Mass. The roof and towers of Dunfermline church were slabbed with white. The prisoner squinted up at the abbey, mouthing a prayer.

The guard who had punched him glanced back and saw. His mouth curled. ‘Talking to God again, Scot?’ The smirk vanished. ‘Only I am listening today, understand? You’ll talk to me.’

As the man the others called Crow turned away, the prisoner hawked a wad of bloody phlegm into the snow and gritted his teeth, but as he saw the ruined barn looming black at the end of the yard his courage failed him. It was a place of pain and nightmare that haunted his dreams and waking delirium. He threw back his head and howled at the sight of it, though the disused barn and stables were well out of the way of the other buildings in the precinct and even if someone heard him who would come to his aid? The English king and his army had taken over the abbey for their winter quarters, ousting the monks. It didn’t stop the man roaring himself hoarse as Crow pushed open the barn doors.

Inside the shadowy space were various farming implements and equipment: harnesses, ropes and whips, buckets and nails. All ordinarily innocuous, to the prisoner they had become instruments of torment. There was a trestle in the centre stained with fresh blood. Its coppery smell sharpened the air. He arched back as the two guards marched him towards it, over patches of snow that had fallen through the barn’s broken roof. But it seemed they weren’t using the trestle today for they passed it without stopping. The prisoner, breathing hard, looked wildly around, searching for a sign of what they would do. They had already gone past the trough where they had all but drowned him on occasion. The dark water had a sheet of ice over it. He could taste it just looking at it.

‘Here,’ said Crow, motioning to a hook that dangled from one of the rafters.

The prisoner winced as the guards hoisted his arms and looped the rope that bound his wrists over the hook. They stepped away, leaving him dangling like a piece of meat.

The whip, he thought to himself. They will use the whip today. It surprised him. They had used the whip early on, stripping the tunic from him and baring his back to its sting. The pain had been ungodly, but other things they had done to him since had been worse. The whip, at least, was unlikely to kill him.

Crow stood before him, studying him with an unpleasant, knowing expression. It was different to his usual look and disturbed the prisoner.

‘The time has come, Scot, for you to tell me where that son of a whore William Wallace is hiding.’

The prisoner shook his head weakly. ‘I cannot tell you what I don’t know.’ His voice was raw. ‘Why won’t you listen?’

Crow smiled. ‘You’ve known all along that’s not the truth. Now, we both know.’ He drew a dagger from his belt, sheathed beside his sword. ‘One of your friends, some Galloway scum we scraped off the field in Cumberland, told me this morning. You were the man to talk to, he said, about Wallace’s base in Selkirk.’

‘I know nothing of the camp. I only joined Wallace’s company in Annandale just weeks before we crossed into England. He was lying.’

‘I recognise the truth when it comes from a dying man’s lips. It was the last thing he told me, before he bled out.’ Crow cocked his head to the bloodstained trestle. ‘Right there.’

The prisoner knew this wasn’t pretence. In the weeks since they had been taken, after the disaster at the town, several captives hauled away for Crow’s interrogations had not returned to the stables. He knew their deaths didn’t matter to these men, or the master they served. They were all peasants, or lowly tradesmen like him, a tanner’s apprentice, not worth any ransom, unprotected by the rules of chivalry.

As Crow came towards him, the prisoner found himself fixated by the dagger. The blade was thin and keen.

‘Now I know not to waste my time with the others. That you’re the one to concentrate my efforts on.’

‘No,’ breathed the prisoner, twisting away as far as his bonds would allow.

‘I’m going to keep you here, alive and in torment, until you talk. Do you understand, Scot? Until you talk.’ Crow nodded to his comrades. ‘Hold him.’

The prisoner shouted and pulled away, but the guards held him firm between them, crushing his head with their hands. He could smell their breath. Ale for breakfast.

Crow stepped up, dagger in hand. He placed the tip at the corner of the prisoner’s eye. ‘First, I’m going to put out your eyes.’ He scraped the tip down the side of his right cheek. ‘Then your ears. Fingers. Toes. By the time I’m done, you’ll be half the man you are now, but I promise you will still be alive.’

The prisoner was panting, spittle flecking from his mouth. He yelled as the blade returned to his eye. This time, Crow jammed his thumb into the corner and pushed up the skin, so the white was fully exposed. Then, slowly, he began to push the tip in. There was a tiny spurt of blood and fluid as it punctured the first layer of jelly. The prisoner’s yell became a tortured scream. ‘
I’ll tell you! Dear God, I’ll tell!
’

Crow removed the blade. Blood trickled a red tear down the Scot’s cheek. He was gasping, hanging limp from his bonds. ‘I know where the camp is.’

‘Where?’

‘I cannot say.
Wait!
’ shouted the prisoner, as the dagger rose. ‘I cannot say, but . . .’ He faltered, hanging his head. In the end, fear was stronger than shame. ‘I can make you a map.’

King Edward stood in the window, staring at the vista that stretched from Dunfermline’s walls. The land, white with snow, folded down to the Firth of Forth, the wide waters dark under the sullen sky. In the distance, across the estuary, he could make out the black cliffs that flanked the city of Edinburgh.

Edward felt the chill of that frozen landscape in his bones. He was more affected by the winter these days, his joints sore when he rose in the mornings, his chest tight. On the outside, despite his frost-white hair and the creases in his skin, he still cut an impressive figure, his frame taut and muscular from years of training and war. But, inside, he could feel himself weakening.

At a burst of laughter, he turned to see his three-year-old son Thomas come racing into the chamber closely followed by his toddling brother, Edmund. They ran to their mother, who was reading by the hearth. Shortly before the Christ Mass, Queen Marguerite and the rest of the womenfolk had travelled up from York with an escort of knights. Scotland was almost conquered and Edward wanted his family with him when he crushed the cause of eight years’ woe beneath his heel. He watched Marguerite plant a soft kiss on the boys’ tousled blond heads, before their nurse came hurrying in.

‘Begging your pardon, my lady. My lord,’ she breathed, bobbing her head to Edward. ‘They are too quick for me.’ She shooed the boys out of the room, closing the chamber door and muting the sound of their laughter.

Edward’s gaze lingered on his wife as she settled back with her book. Sister of King Philippe, she had been seventeen when he married her in Canterbury. They had called her the Pearl of France, a shy, delicately beautiful girl with milky skin. Now, at twenty-one, after the birth of two children, her fragile features had filled out into supple curves. Her youth made Edward feel older still; more aware of time passing, more aware of what he wanted to achieve before his body failed him and the earth rose to claim him.