Kingdom (28 page)

Edward’s gaze lingered on the queen. Despite the fact Marguerite was the same age as himself he had always found her motherly and protective. Gentle in manner, she had often acted as a balm to the king’s temper. He pondered speaking to her first to gauge his father’s mood, perhaps even asking her to petition the king on his behalf? The moment he thought it he felt like a coward and berated himself bitterly.

The door opened, making him start. Piers entered. The knight had already changed out of his travelling clothes and had somehow found time to sit with his barber, for his handsome face was clean-shaven, his black hair swept back with scented oil. Edward caught a waft of the sweet fragrance as Piers closed the door. At once he felt terribly shabby, his cloak soiled with horse sweat, boots mud-caked and his chin coarse with stubble.

Piers threw a disparaging glance around the chamber, which was located in part of the monks’ quarters. Chests and bags brought up by the porters were stacked against the walls. There was a narrow bed in one corner. ‘These are your lodgings? My prince, you should have asked your father for his pavilion, since he is not using it.’ When Edward didn’t answer, Piers’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘You haven’t seen him yet, have you?’

Edward turned back to the window. He felt Piers move up behind him.

‘You’re having second thoughts?’

‘No,’ Edward said sharply. ‘I’m . . .’ He trailed off, not wanting to tell Piers the real reason for his reluctance. ‘Sir Humphrey has been to see him already.’

‘All the more reason you should go to him now. You must give him your version of events.’ Piers put a hand on Edward’s shoulder, turning the prince to face him. ‘Don’t let Humphrey and the others take the credit for the fall of Dunaverty, then blame you for Bruce’s disappearance. You know that is their way.’

Edward said nothing, but inwardly he disagreed. Whatever else he might say about Humphrey, the constable had always been a fair and honest man. Indeed, it was his honesty that was the issue for he was worried the earl would have told his father about his behaviour on campaign. Humphrey had spoken to him, gravely and at length, after the hunt at Lochmaben, which delayed their arrival at Lanercost. The earl told him it was time to stop acting like an errant youth and start behaving as the king he was destined to become. Frivolous pursuits, Humphrey advised, must wait until he had reported to his father on the state of the war. The earl had no idea he had organised the hunt to avoid doing just that. Not only did Edward want to delay the admission to his father that he had failed to capture Robert Bruce, he also wanted to avoid, as long as possible, the promise he had made to Piers.

That evening, their last in Lochmaben, smarting from Humphrey’s chastisement, Edward had drunk too much wine and neglected to rein in Piers, who told the silent barons only those who had joined the hunt could eat the flesh of the boar he had caught. Thomas of Lancaster had risen, tossing aside his plate and telling the men present he would rather eat air than linger any longer in the company of degenerates. The following morning the barons and the prince’s household rode down to the border in separate companies, the atmosphere between them as frigid as the weather.

‘In Lochmaben you promised you would petition your father.’ Piers held Edward with his gaze. ‘You gave me your word.’

Edward shrugged from his touch, his gaze fixing on the timber building across the priory’s grounds. His mind filled with a memory of the grand feast after his knighting at Westminster, at which his father made him and all the young bloods present swear an oath over two golden swans, never to sleep in the same place twice, like Perceval on his Grail quest, until Robert Bruce and the Scots were defeated. ‘God damn it, why do you all want so much of me! Will you never be satisfied?’

Piers’s hand dropped away. There was silence. Edward steeled himself to it, refusing to relent. After a moment he heard a creak of boots.

‘Forgive me.’

Hearing the voice come from the floor, Edward realised Piers had dropped to his knees. He turned.

Piers’s head was bowed, strands of his black hair falling in front of his face. ‘All I want is to serve you, my lord. If, by my actions, I have given any other impression it was done in ignorance and I beg your pardon for it.’ He glanced up at the prince. ‘I thought, with more authority – more influence in court – I could better support you.’ Piers continued, his voice sharpening. ‘I have seen how Thomas of Lancaster, your own cousin, belittles you and how Humphrey and others in your father’s circle treat you as if you were a wayward child in need of disciplining rather than the king you will soon become. The reason I hoped you would petition your father on my behalf is so that I may stand as a loyal ally in the face of those who do not have your best interests at heart. Now I am a knight of your household, with little power except that which you have generously bestowed upon me. You have let me be your champion on the tournament ground. Let me be the same at court.’

Edward softened. Reaching down, he took Piers’s hands and pulled the knight to his feet. ‘I want that too.’ His brow furrowed. ‘But I fear my father’s response.’

‘As I have told you, the king will respect you if you stand before him as a man and tell him what you want. You’ve said yourself how much he abhors weakness.’

‘I will go to him,’ Edward said quietly.

Piers smiled. He put a gloved finger under Edward’s chin and lifted it. ‘Look him in the eye when you ask him.’

‘Again, my lord king, I beg your forgiveness for not speaking out sooner.’

King Edward watched Thomas of Lancaster rise from bended knee and leave the chamber. When the doorward closed the door behind his nephew, the king sat back in his chair, the strength of his feelings flooding his weakened body with new life. He gripped the chair’s carved arms, feeling an intense need to crush something. Thomas’s words buzzed in his mind like angry bees, stinging him with poisonous images. The worst of it was that although he felt fury, revulsion and betrayal, he did not feel surprise. He had known this. Deep down, he had known it for years.

The war in Scotland, this war without end, had distracted him from all else. It wasn’t just England that had suffered in his absence, bridges and roads falling into disrepair, towns taken over by thieves and racketeers, his people starving. His son, too, had fallen to ruin. He had thought, by sending him on campaign as a leader of men, that the damage could be reversed; that his son would be moulded by battle and bloodshed into the man who would continue his legacy when he was gone.

Edward closed his eyes, thinking of the children he had fathered – nineteen in total – and all those he had buried. He thought of serious little John, who had reached five years, and sweet smiling Henry who made it to six. Then there was Alfonso, dark like his beautiful Castilian mother, tall like him, a fine and fearless rider with a clear head on his young shoulders. Certain the boy would be his heir, he had poured all his ambition and expectation into him. Edward had been at Caernarfon, celebrating his conquest of Wales, when messengers had come from Westminster to tell him Alfonso was dead. His hopes had therefore turned to his one surviving son, his namesake, then a squalling infant in his nurse’s arms.

The king opened his eyes and stared into the flames leaping in the brazier beside him. Was it that his seed had been weakened, diluted over the years? Animals, after all, produced runts at the end of a litter. But his son had never been a weakling, indeed he was the very image of him: long-limbed, athletic and handsome. What had caused such a hideous defect in his character? Piers. He had to be the cause – the root of the infection. Edward gripped the chair. God strike him down, he had invited the young man into his household, had raised him as his own.

There was a rap on the door. As the doorward pulled it open, the king saw his son filling the frame. The prince entered. Edward felt his heart begin to thump, images invoked by Thomas’s revelation rising in his mind to torment him. His son, who looked as though he had just got off his horse, came forward, tracking mud across the rug.

‘My lord king,’ he murmured, bowing his head.

Edward realised his hands, white-knuckled on the chair’s arms, were shaking, such was the intensity of his emotion. His son seemed not to notice.

‘Dunaverty Castle fell to me, my lord, but I’m afraid I must tell you Robert Bruce was not to be found among the garrison.’ The prince spoke in a rapid monotone, which the king recognised as one he slipped into when afraid. ‘I sent word to John MacDougall to continue the search for him along the coast and—’

‘Sir Humphrey gave me his report.’

The prince pressed his lips together. For a moment, he looked as though he might turn and walk from the room, then he blurted, ‘My lord, I ask that you grant me permission to give the County of Ponthieu to Piers.’

For a long moment, the king did not speak. A log burst in the brazier, making the prince flinch.

Then, Edward was pushing himself from the chair and rushing at his son. Before the young man could move the king had seized him by the hair. Wrenching the prince’s head down with both hands, Edward felt one of his nails break against his son’s scalp. ‘
You bastard son of a bitch!
’

‘
Father!
’

‘You would give your lands away? You who never gained any? You would give them to
him
! God damn you! I’ll die before I see you give away a single acre!’

‘
Father!
Please!
’

‘Shut your mouth, you disgusting little worm. Crawl on your belly, you bastard!’ Spittle flew from the king’s mouth as he dragged his son down by his hair, forcing him to double over. ‘Crawl like the worm you are!’

The prince grasped his father’s wrists, trying to pull him off, but it only made Edward tighten his grip.

‘
I should have drowned you at birth, you shit!
’ As the king roared this, the full force of his fury came bursting up out of him, raw and relentless, causing him to pull at his son’s hair in a frenzy, ripping hanks of it from his head.

At the prince’s screams, the door flew open. Neither man saw the doorward framed there, stock-still with shock, before he turned and raced down the stairs.

‘I know what you did!’ Edward raged. ‘Your cousin saw you in the woods with that whoreson! All these years with the devil in you!
By God,
I’ll beat him out!
’ With that, the king brought his knee smashing up into his son’s down-turned face.

There was a crack as the prince’s nose broke. Blood flowed, splattering the rug and the king’s robes. His son was yelling incoherently, but Edward refused to relinquish his hold, digging his fingers deeper into his scalp, breaking skin.

Pounding footsteps sounded on the stairs. The doorward reappeared with Humphrey de Bohun.

‘My lord!’

The king didn’t heed the earl’s shout. He kicked his son above the knee, causing him to collapse. Now Edward let go, strands of blond hair falling from between his fingers as he swung his fist into his son’s face. His jewelled ring ripped through the prince’s lip as it struck. Pain lanced through the king’s arm with the impact, but it only served to fuel his rage. He hadn’t felt so alive, so
strong
, in an age. All these months lying impotent, racked with pain, close enough to Scotland to see its hills, yet unable even to rise from his bed. He punched out again, his fist slamming into his son’s jaw. All these months praying that his men would return with Robert Bruce in irons and his conquest would at last be complete. Once again, they had failed him. Another vicious punch sent his son reeling to the floor. The young man wrapped his hands around his head to protect his face.

The king drew back his foot for a kick. His eyes caught the silver brooch on his son’s travel-stained cloak, flashing in the firelight. Eleanor had given their son that brooch, years ago. He remembered her smile as she pinned it on him and the flush of love in the young boy’s face. Looking down on the prince, bleeding, curled like an infant, Edward staggered back.

Humphrey de Bohun caught him. ‘My lord.’ He guided the king back to his chair.

Edward slumped in it. ‘Get word to my cousin in France,’ he breathed. ‘My son is ready to wed Isabella.’ The king wiped the sweat from his brow with a shaking hand. ‘And I want Piers Gaveston banished from my kingdom.’

Chapter 20

The Outer Hebrides, Scotland, 1307 AD

Lightning danced in the east as the storms continued to batter the distant isles of Muck, Canna and Rhum, but out here the air was still and the ocean rolled, huge and slow, under a lifeless sky. Ahead, a chain of islands threaded like a broken string of jewels.

Robert sat at the prow, the hood of the woollen cloak grazing his cheek. He smelled the sea trapped in the weave and something sweet: heather, or grass. He couldn’t recall how he came to be wearing it. As he watched the Outer Isles grow larger with every sweep of the oars, he recalled the belief of some that these islands stood at the bounds of the world. As a youth he’d heard a different tale in his grandfather’s hall – men speaking of the Norsemen who had found distant lands far beyond these isles. There were other stories, too, of the black empire of Gog and Magog that encircled the known borders of the earth; Satan’s army, walled up behind gates of iron, ready to be loosed upon the world. The thought took him, as many had these past hours, straight to his daughter, who, years ago in Writtle, had been told by his drunken father that Gog and Magog would be coming for her as she hadn’t eaten her meat. That night the terrified child had refused to sleep anywhere but in Robert and Elizabeth’s bed.