Kingdom (29 page)

The memory brought a fresh wave of torment twisting up through Robert’s gut. It clogged his throat, a knotted lump of fury, horror and helplessness. He turned suddenly, wanting to order these men to steer the galley around and bear it south towards England. He would sail it himself if he had to, up the Thames, all the way to the Tower, where he would scale the white walls and free his daughter from the cage that vile bastard had locked her in.

Dear God, was it true? What the woman had told him?

Robert searched the deck, his eyes passing over the oarsmen on the benches and his comrades who sat apart from them in silence, as still as statues amid the activity of the crew. The woman stood tall among the men, easily marked by her hair, the colour of autumn leaves and winter hearths. She wore it bound up with plaited threads of golden silk, but the wind and rain had dragged much of it free. The shorter strands curled at her temples, stiff with salt. Her brown dress, girdled with a belt of gold rings, was thin and seeing her cheeks chapped pink with cold Robert wondered numbly why she wasn’t wearing a cloak. Feeling the weight of the garment around his shoulders, he now remembered her placing it there.

The woman looked round, locking eyes with him briefly, before turning back to her crew. Those eyes were the first thing he’d seen when her men had hauled him from the sea, frozen to the marrow and retching salt water. Pale green, almost liquid in the lantern light, they had widened when the woman caught sight of the red lion on his surcoat.

‘It is the king,’ he had heard her say, her Gaelic broad and pure. ‘It is my brother.’

After that everything was just scattered images and sounds. He remembered other men being pulled from the sea, their broken birlinn adrift on a wave lit by the flare of lightning, the MacDougalls’ triple galley retreating, outnumbered, the faint cries of those lost in the rushing dark and the shouts of the crew of the six vessels who had come to their aid, caught in the howling maw of the storm. Soon, the chill in his body had seeped into his mind, taking him down into an icy well of blackness, from which he had only emerged many hours later.

Part of him wished he had stayed in that place of nothingness. No thoughts. No dreaming. No knowledge. If he had known what he would wake to find he never would have surfaced.

It was his brother he had seen first when he opened his eyes. Edward had been sitting beside him on the damp deck, cast in a pallid dawn. As he stirred, his brother turned to him. Robert had never seen such an expression on his face. It was a look of utter despair. Struggling to sit, disorientated, he had seen Angus MacDonald talking to a tall woman with auburn hair and the memory of their wrecked ship had returned.

Seeing him awake, the woman had crossed the crowded deck, moving gracefully with the motion. Bowing her head briefly, she had crouched beside him and introduced herself as Christiana MacRuarie, Lady of Garmoran. The name had been a surprise. Although he’d not met her before, Robert knew the woman was his sister-in-law by his first marriage to Isobel, daughter of the Earl of Mar. Christiana, the only legitimate child of the Lord of Garmoran, had been wed to one of Mar’s sons, but more than this he did not know, the woman being only a name to him; a name synonymous with the brutal reputation of her half-brothers, Lachlan and Ruarie.

‘Are you hurt, my lord?’ Her voice had been all brisk authority.

Her tone had taken him aback before the question itself and the knowledge of who she was had sparked an anger that burned away the last of his confusion. ‘Hurt?’ He had gestured at Angus MacDonald and Malcolm of Lennox, both of whom had men missing. ‘Will you ask the same of those who drowned, my lady?’

She had narrowed her green eyes, unsure of his meaning.

‘If not for your brother my men and I would not have been out here.’ Robert had raised his voice, not caring that the crew, MacRuarie’s men no doubt, were looking over. ‘Demanding I double his fee or he’ll sell his fleet to the English? By his insolence and greed I lost good men last night. We would have all been lost if not for . . .’ If not for her, he had meant, but did not say.

Christiana had studied him in silence for a pause. ‘I’ve been on the mainland, my lord, at my castle, Tioram. Until Lord Angus told me, I knew nothing of my brother’s demands. I will speak to him of this. You can be sure.’

Robert had wanted to know how a mere woman, even a lady of standing, could possibly alter the ambitions of a predator like Lachlan, but he had fallen silent, seeing a look pass between Christiana and Edward. It was a look full of unspoken meaning. ‘What is it? What aren’t you telling me?’ He had stared at his brother, searching his bleak expression, fear snaking a cold tendril around his heart. ‘Edward?’

Christiana had begun to speak then, her Gaelic soft and low. She told him that she had been running supplies from her lands on the north-west coast out to the Isles. She had also been ferrying people, a steady stream of whom had been coming north over the past months, looking to escape the occupations of Carrick and Ayr, and the men of Argyll and Lorn who had sided with the English. Some of these people, she told him, had brought with them tidings. King Edward, they said, was once again in control of Scotland. Robert was gone, presumed dead by many. The rebellion was over and all those involved were being hunted down. Already, many had been captured by Aymer de Valence and others of the king’s men. At the look that passed again between Christiana and Edward the tendril of fear around Robert’s heart had become a gripping hand.

‘My family?’ he had managed to say.

John of Atholl, Christopher Seton, Isabel of Buchan, Margaret Randolph, Niall, Mary, Matilda, Elizabeth, Marjorie
– these names and the horrors attached to them had come in a quiet stream from the woman, who had spoken unflinchingly, still meeting his eyes.

For some moments, Robert had not been able to take any of it in. He had looked over at his men, hoping to prove the insanity of her words, but in their desolate faces and David of Atholl’s red-rimmed eyes he saw only truth. Yet, still, he had not been able to understand it. The news from Malcolm of Lennox on the banks of Loch Lomond – the arrest of Robert Wishart and William Lamberton, the imprisonment of his nephew, Thomas Randolph, the hanging of Simon Fraser – had been dire indeed, but it hadn’t surprised him. But this? This made no sense. John and Christopher executed? Niall strung up for a mob in Berwick? Mary in a cage? His wife locked away?

My daughter . . . ?

At the thought of Marjorie, his child, caged like an animal in the Tower, a quake had begun deep in Robert’s body, shuddering up through his chest. Then he knew it – the price of his ambition, his desire to be king. Then he knew it. The wheel had made its last turn, crushing him beneath its grinding weight. Unfastening her cloak, Christiana had shrugged it from her shoulders and placed it around his. Leaving him alone, she had instructed her crew and those of the five accompanying galleys to head for Barra, then just a dark line on the horizon.

Now, the island’s rocky shores rose before them and the air was filled with the cries of gannets that plunged the waves like great white arrows. With Christiana’s galley taking the lead, the oarsmen pulled the six birlinns through a narrow channel between Barra and a smaller adjacent island, where the beaches were as pale as sugar and the waters milky blue in the February dusk. Inching round to the west coast of the island, timbers creaking as the boats were lifted once more on the ocean’s swell, they headed for a curve of sand, above which stood a chapel.

The light was fading fast by the time they made land, the crew leaping into the shallows to haul the vessels ashore, alongside several others. Robert smelled fish and the briny odour of rotting seaweed. Calls echoed as men appeared, heading down through the grasses of the machair to greet them. Some held torches, the flames pluming brightly against the darkening sky. Beyond, the swell of a great hill disappeared in shadow.

Taking the proffered hands of two crewmen, Christiana jumped lightly to the sand. Robert followed her, his muscles stiff with cold and inertia. Nes came next, clutching Robert’s broadsword, saved from the sea. He stayed close to his lord, eyes fixed warily on the approaching men. Edward, Angus and Malcolm followed with David, who stood apart with his four surviving knights. The young man hadn’t spoken a word since he learned of the execution of his father. His eyes were haunted.

Leaving her men to unload barrels of meat, sacks of grain and the few exhausted-looking refugees from the other galleys, Christiana strode up the seaweed- and debris-strewn shore to meet the men.

One at the head bowed. ‘Welcome, my lady.’

‘Thank you, Kerald.’ Christiana glanced over the man’s shoulder to the path he had come down by. ‘Did the storm do much damage?’

‘Nothing that cannot be mended.’ Kerald nodded to Robert and the others. ‘More come seeking sanctuary?’

Christiana’s gaze fell on Robert. ‘No, Kerald, he is our king.’

As the eyes of the company of men turned on him, Robert saw surprise, suspicion and hostility, but certainly nothing akin to respect or awe. He realised he looked scarcely like a king; standing there without weapon or armour, in soiled clothes and with Christiana’s cloak still draped about his shoulders. Pride flashed through his grief and he came forward to meet them, shrugging off the cloak to reveal the red lion on his torn surcoat. His men came with him, Edward gripping his sword, Angus bristling at the frosty reception. After a pause, Kerald gave a slight nod.

Christiana broke the taut silence. ‘Come, my lords,’ she said, leading the way up the beach towards the dunes. ‘My village isn’t far.’

Robert fell into step beside her, his men close behind him, followed by Kerald and the others, their torches spilling light across a sandy track that wound through the machair. A monolithic shadow loomed up. Robert thought it was a giant figure, until the flames revealed a weathered standing stone.

‘A Viking’s grave,’ Christiana said at his side.

Glancing at her he saw for the first time how tall she was; almost face to face with him. He realised, too, that he was still holding her cloak and her hands, hitching up her skirts, were tinged blue with cold. ‘My lady,’ he said, passing her the garment.

She smiled and swung it round her shoulders, sighing gratefully as the warmth of the wool enveloped her.

Ahead a few stunted trees appeared, tracking the course of a burn that trickled down from a narrow glen in the shelter of the great hill. There was wood-smoke on the wind. Following the line of the burn, they came to a settlement, dominated by low stone houses interspersed with smaller dwellings, most of which were of timber with turf roofs. Several fire pits cast the buildings in a ruddy light.

There were scores of people here, sitting around the fires eating, or busy with errands: young women hauling buckets of water from the burn, children feeding goats in a paddock, men laying the last few sheaves of broom, weighted down with stone-strung nets, over gaps in roofs damaged by the storm. Many of them called a welcome to Christiana as she entered the settlement. Others appeared in doorways, peering curiously at the king and his companions. Surprised by the crowd, Robert thought of the refugees Christiana had been ferrying here from the mainland. He wondered at her generosity in feeding and sheltering so many strangers, given this rocky island in the middle of the Northern Ocean was clearly anything but a land of riches.

‘Christiana.’

At the harsh voice, Robert saw a tall, wiry man emerge from one of the larger stone buildings. He wore a sky-blue cloak and was pale-skinned with long black hair. As he advanced, scanning the company, Robert realised the man had the same green eyes as Christiana, only his were darker and less welcoming. His expression was hard, his unsmiling mouth twisted by a scar. He was followed by several strapping men, a few of whom clutched goblets and bowls, evidently caught in the middle of a meal. One was short and stocky, his bald head criss-crossed with scars and an empty socket where one of his eyes should have been.

‘Brothers,’ greeted Christiana, her tone sharp.

The tall man’s gaze fell on Robert, fixing on his surcoat. There was a flicker of surprise, then a glint of triumph, but before Robert could speak, Angus MacDonald pushed his way past, drawing his sword.

‘Lachlan! I should strike you down where you stand!’

The men with Lachlan MacRuarie moved protectively in front of their captain. One tossed aside his goblet and drew a dirk from his belt. A couple of the watching women shooed children into the safety of their houses. The realisation that the man before him was the one he’d come here seeking made little impact on Robert. The war he had been so determined to resume now felt like a distant dream, surreal and intangible. He knew Lord Donough’s galleys would be on their way to Galloway and that Neil Campbell and Gilbert de la Hay would have reached Arran, but he couldn’t imagine having the strength to lead men into battle. All his power had been leached from him by Christiana’s words.

Angus kept his sword trained on Lachlan, his blue eyes alight with fury. ‘I lost three men last night! Their blood is on your hands.’

Lachlan pushed through the protective circle of his men to face the Lord of Islay. ‘You know as well as me the perils of the sea. I do not rule her appetite.’

‘It wasn’t the storm, God damn you, it was the MacDougalls!’

Lachlan took this in with little reaction. ‘Then you understand full well why I have raised my fee. My scouts tell me the western shores, from Galloway to Argyll, are crawling with ships. All looking for you, my lord.’ His eyes flicked to Robert. ‘To aid you has become a hazardous business. One for which a man must be properly compensated.’