The Honor Due a King (35 page)

Elizabeth perked. The tenderness she’d always had for James was evident in the intense narrowing of her eyebrows. “The same one? The English woman?”

“The same: Lady Rosalind de Fiennes. A fine woman, but she has no wish to go back to England and he has none to send her away.”

“And has he spoken of marriage to her?”

“To my knowledge, no. But you know James – he’d sooner cut off his own hand to give you than share a private thought.”

She fell silent a moment, contemplating. A servant reached over her shoulder and took away her trencher. “A pity, then. If a man and a woman truly love one another, they
should
be married ... and have children. A house full of them.”

We shared a smile across the table and I laid my hand over hers to give it a squeeze. The love we once shared had returned to us in a different form: that of the love for our children. A bittersweet exchange, but I regretted it not. All things change. All things pass.

“There is something ...” Randolph began, his eyes suddenly dropping to inspect his fingernails. Then he curled his fingers over the table’s edge and went on, his words tinged with sorrow. “Something I must tell you. I wanted to wait until the children were asleep, to let you both know first.”

“What is it, Thomas?” Elizabeth slid her hand from mine.

“Walter died just over a week past. Spoiled meat, they say. One night he sat down to dinner, ate heartily, went to bed with a stomachache, began vomiting in the night ... gone by sunset the next day. Several others took ill from the meal as well, none with such grave results as Walter.” Finally, he met my gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to say anything with Robbie present. If you want me to, I can tell him tomorrow.”

I pushed away the goblet of wine in front of me, absorbing the news. Robbie was fully an orphan now, although Elizabeth and I had filled the role of his parents essentially from birth. Despite his tendency to doubt any outcome, Walter had served well as governor – a position few men would have imperiled themselves in. To hold Berwick against the whole of the English army had been no small feat.

Elizabeth rose then. Her mouth was drawn down sadly. She kissed me along my graying temple. “I’m going to see the children to bed. We can tell Robbie in the morning together.”

After she went from the hall, Randolph and I sat silently for several minutes – me staring at my half-empty goblet of wine and him running his fingertips along the edge of the table.

“We’ll talk, tomorrow,” I said, “about who to set in his place. It’s a precarious post. I trust you’ve given it some thought already?”

He shook his head. “Actually, no. I was too –”

A curdling scream ripped from someone’s throat upstairs. In a second, I was on my feet and sprinting up the stairs three at a time, my heart ten steps ahead of me, my breath ten behind.

As I entered the room the two girls shared with John, I saw Elizabeth standing with her back to me, crushing her infant son in her arms as she cried out again. It was a sound I had heard before – of mothers and wives who have searched the battlefields and come upon the mangled, lifeless bodies of their fallen menfolk. The keening of the aggrieved. The cry of death.

I reached for her, but she ripped herself away, clutching at her child as she collapsed to the floor in a quaking heap. I moved around her, knelt down, looked upon John’s small body – blue as an icy loch in wintertime. He was not breathing.

“No, no,” she repeated lowly. Trembling, Elizabeth peeled away the blanket that partially covered his head. “No, it cannot be. It
cannot
be.”

Then she raised her face to heaven and opened her mouth in a silent plea as tears cascaded down her cheeks. I wrapped my arms around her, John’s small, cold body cradled between us.

Mathilda raised her head sheepishly from her pillow, then tunneled beneath her blankets, terrified by her mother’s grief. Margaret slipped from the bed and stood before us.

Her tiny red lips quivered. “I sang to him. He went to sleep and I covered him up. What’s wrong with Johnny, mama? Mama? Did I do something wrong? Mama!” She burst forth in tears, her fists mopping at her eyes.

I placed a hand on her shoulder. “You did nothing wrong, dear heart. Nothing. ’Tis not your doing.”

Robbie appeared behind her. Gently, he guided her away. Then he coaxed Mathilda from the bed and took both girls by the hand.

“Come along,” he said, as they went out the door. “David and I have a big bed. You can stay with us tonight. I’ll protect you, Margaret. Mathilda, don’t be afraid. Come on, now. Come with me.”

How to tell him of his father after this? How? The lad is growing up before his time. He will bear an even greater weight all too soon, I fear.

I looked down at John’s face – so peaceful – and held Elizabeth tight.

***

D
ays short of his first birthday, my son John was buried on a hill overlooking the sea near Cardross. I could have carried his coffin under one arm, so small it was. The greatest grief of all is that of a parent for his child, the hollow pain for a life not yet lived in full.

Summer fled away in the blast of winter’s first winds, as if there were to be no subtle change of autumn that year to ease us into winter’s icy hold. Elizabeth’s grief devoured her. The day John died, she withdrew not only from those around her, but from the world entirely. She left the children in the care of nurses, no longer personally attending to their studies with rigorous diligence as she once had, or reading to them or teaching them any of life’s many small secrets.

Robbie took the news of his father’s passing stoically. He was more despondent over John’s death than his father’s, not having known or seen much of Walter in the last few years.

James arrived at Cardross with Gilbert de la Haye straight from Berwick, where they had attended Walter’s wake. I received them that evening in my private quarters, alone. Elizabeth, since the day of John’s death, had moved to her own chamber, leaving me copious time to wallow in my own sorrow. Other times I would have been glad to see the two men. Now their presence was an intrusion upon my self-induced solitude. A man needed time to reflect when his life was slipping thread by thread from his grasp.

“How are you faring these days?” James gave a slight bow, then pulled up a stool and sat on it before me. Gil hovered at his shoulder, perusing me keenly in that ever-observant way of his.

At my foot slept a hound, a descendent of my loyal Coll. I nudged the dog with my toe and he opened one eye, rolled over and went back to sleep. I gazed forlornly into the cracking embers of my hearth, flopped to one side of my chair and propped my jaw wearily on my fist. “How do I look, my good James? Quite a mess, I imagine.”

“My condolences on both John and Walter. Walter will be missed as both cousin and compatriot to me. And John – he was far too young.” He grabbed the poker from beside the hearth, nudged the logs about, and then added another. “How is the queen?”

“Gone, here.” I thumped the thumb-side of my fist against my chest, then tapped at my head with a fingertip. “And losing it here, too, I fear. She goes to Johnny’s cradle every night to look for him, certain it was all a nightmare. She is angry, bitter, deeply in woe one moment, then the next chatting as if nothing were wrong and talking of how John had slept without a sound the night before. So odd. When I talk to her, it’s as if I can see right through her. Like there’s no one there.” The new log began to burn, casting a stronger light, drawing me in with its amber glow. “We spoke over the summer, did you know, about a betrothal between David and King Edward’s daughter, Joanna of the Tower. Elizabeth won’t hear of it now, of course. Won’t let her children leave this place, even though she’ll have little to do with them. But I
have
to move things along quickly. More than you or anyone knows. It is more important than ever that I secure peace between Scotland and England. There is no other way. And if England will not give David a bride – France will.”

Gil stepped forward, took my chin in his hand and tilted my head to peer into my eyes. “So bloodshot, my lord. Have you slept? And these blotches upon your flesh – have they been long?”

“I am an aging man, Gil. Aye, I am weary and my skin has not the rosy blush of youth to it any longer, but spots and veins and scars too many to remember.”

“Hmm, no. I don’t like the looks of it.” He crossed his arms like a mother hen. “I’ve seen the likes of it before – in the sailors that come to Leith after long journeys. Too much salted meat and stale bread in their diets, it is said. Let me go and have a stew made up for you.”

He left with a purpose, but I could see that James shared his concern. In minutes, Gil returned and placed a bowl of watery stew on the table before me. “Leeks and cabbage. I’ve instructed the cook to make you something similar twice a day and to restrict the amount of meat, bread and ale available to you.”

The smell alone was enough to make me retch. “And how long must I endure this unpalatable remedy? You know me, Gil. I’ll eat venison fresh off the carcass before I’ll stuff myself with turnips and the like.”

“Give it a month, sire. If that does not improve your state, then tell me I was wrong to suggest this. Until then, your health is worth displeasing your tongue, is it not?”

I grumbled at him, cupped the bowl between my aching hands and sipped from it. “Well, James, if the English are amassing a force you should go back home. Watch over things.”

James turned a critical eye on me. “The border will be quiet through winter. That much I can assure you. England has too many problems of its own to pester us.”

“Go back home, James. You’re more needed there. There’s nothing you can do here. You too, Gil.”

When they left, I let the stew go cold and placed it on the floor. Even the dog refused it.

***

A
ye, England had its own problems. Many. But my own sorrows were not over with. They were to come in threes, always it seemed. Once it was the loss of my brothers Thomas, Alexander and then Nigel. Now this. John and Walter. What else, I wondered.

Elizabeth began to miss meals. I sent them to her room. She refused them. By Christmas she had taken terribly ill. By spring she was recovering. Then the sickness came again and would not go away. Had she kept up her strength, she might have fought it. I sent the children to her often to try to lift her spirits, give her reason for hope, but in my heart I knew what the end would be.

On the 26
^th
day of October, in the year 1327, Elizabeth went from me ... forever. It did not seem right that I, so much older than her, should be left to go on without her. It seemed even less right that she had left three young children behind.

When we are young, we live for all our tomorrows: hopeful, vigorous, tireless. As we grow old, we yearn for the past: regretful, dispassionate, weary.

Many were the regrets in my life, but loving her was never one. Alas, our time with those we love is never long enough.

God in Heaven knew that our love was not perfect. I had done so much to ruin it. Yet time and time again, she had forgiven me, stood by me, given so much of herself. What would I have ever been without her? I dared not think.

Like the grief that pervaded my soul, my affliction was worsening. There were not enough bolts of cloth in all the kingdom to hide the red bumps and purple bruises on my skin. My gums bled, my teeth loosened and my eyes were a bloody sight to behold. I had the mirrors removed from my chambers at Cardross. I kept to myself there when it was at its worst and made myself public at Edinburgh on my best days, but those were becoming ever fewer and the rides far too painful to endure much longer.

Often, I wandered the gardens that Elizabeth had laboriously planned. Although the trees were yet small, the orchards were bearing their first fruits upon willowy branches bent low by the weight. Since I could not manage the riggings myself, I lounged in my boat, giving direction, while Robbie took in the tack of the sails or put the full force of his chest and arms into the rudder.

My days were thus slowly spent, like the hound that no longer hunts or the plow horse that is no longer fitted to the harness.

Edward II – London, 1326

A
ymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, had the slightest rasp in his throat and a runny nose when he sailed for France. He had been charged to retrieve my consort and heir from King Charles’ court. The voyage was rough, the weather beyond miserable. Waves spilled over the deck and a cold, stinging sleet assailed them all the way. By the time his feet touched shore, Pembroke was possessed by fever. One day’s journey from Paris, he died.

My noblest of nobles, smote down by Providence. Even the Creator saw fit to contravene the simplest of my designs.

England lay in peril. My heir was being played as a pawn by his own mother. I had no time to mourn for Pembroke. I had to act. But how to do so was not so easily arrived at.

Hugh and his father were persistent in telling me to raise an army and punish those who did not comply. But everything I said or did or ordered others to do was completely ignored. Even my closest advisors yawned and nodded at my commands, then turned away and did nothing. Parliament conspired to uproot and topple me by doing nothing, leaving me completely ineffectual. Crowned, throned and sceptered, but as impotent as a halfwit on a milking stool brandishing a willow wand. A cuckold for a king.

My court is overrun with rats and they will gnaw away at the very foundation of my house. I must be the cat – stealthy, silent. I need not sink my teeth and taste of blood to be rid of them. A flick of the tail, a hiss, and they will retreat into their holes.

When Bishop Walter Stapledon of Exeter returned from France and stood before me in the Tower, it did not bode well for the success of his assignment.

Stapledon had not quite recovered from his channel crossing when he stooped, green-faced and wobbly, before me in my great chamber in the Tower of London. He had come straight from the French court, he muttered, and I could read the ill news in his sagging countenance.