The Honor Due a King (42 page)

I can hear the first crash as King Alfonso’s column meets the frontline of the Moors. I am too intent on my quarry to check back. Sinclair is beside me, riding fast, fearless.

We are far out ahead of the rest of my division now. The Moors are slowing, turning back at us. This is not right. I cast a glance at Sinclair.

“Hold, hold!” I say.

Baffled, Sinclair shakes his head at me. Then he sees them. There are more, riding out from the gap. Others, spilling out from behind an outcropping. Cutting us off.

I look back. My vanguard is still riding furiously, hoping to save us.

But it is too late. We are being encircled.

I make the sign of the cross. Then I lift the casket from my neck and throw it on the dusty ground before me. Sinclair and I drop our lances as they begin to come at us from all sides. We draw our swords.

“In the name of God and King Robert!” I cry.

As I raise my sword and ready for the first blow, I am thinking of Rosalind. Of the boys. Of Robbie. And how I must survive this one more battle, one more day ...

When I am home again, I will hold them in my arms. And I will not let go. When I am home ... in Lintalee. Where the pines sway and whisper in the summer breeze and the deer roam unafraid. Where Rosalind waits for me and my sons thrive and grow.

Home ... home. Where I long to be
.

W
hile trying to save the young knight Sinclair, as they were surrounded by the Moors of Granada, James Douglas was killed at the Battle of Teba. The Scottish and Spanish forces did, however, win the battle that day.

Douglas’ body and the heart of Robert the Bruce were recovered and returned to Scotland. James Douglas was buried at St. Bride’s Church in Douglasdale. He had two sons, Archibald and William. The name of ‘Douglas’ has since appeared time and again throughout Scottish history.

Multiple times during the English occupation, James Douglas captured and razed Douglas Castle. It became a known curse to accept the governorship of that fortress, but a few Englishmen did so out of either denial or daring and paid with their lives at the hands of James Douglas. Douglas was known both as James ‘the Good’ Douglas and also the Black Douglas. The former was most likely assigned to him by his Scottish admirers, for he was reputed to be a soft-spoken, well-mannered and devoted adherent to King Robert. The latter designation was given to him for both his dark looks and his furtive and merciless actions toward his foes.

One of the many folklores surrounding this period in time is that of James Douglas happening upon a young mother singing the frightful lullaby of the ‘Black Douglas’ to her crying infant during a Scottish attack on an English-held castle. It was for convenience that I introduced the character of Lady Rosalind de Fiennes in connection with this tale. It is recorded that James Douglas did have at least two illegitimate sons who later inherited the Douglas estates. Who their mother is, is not known.

Both Robert and Edward Bruce had numerous affairs and illegitimate children. A woman named Christian of Carrick was undoubtedly an early part of Robert’s life and did inform him of the capture of his wife and daughter. In this trilogy, she is named Aithne of Carrick to avoid confusion, as there were also Robert’s sister Christina and the lady Christiana of the Isles, another of Robert’s love interests.

Whether loathed or pitied, Edward of Caernarvon is worthy of his own story. Few historians are gracious enough to lend him credit of any sort. His lack of successes on the battlefield were in marked contrast to his ruthless father, Longshanks, known for his subjugation of Wales and Scotland, and the militant son that followed him, Edward III. The depth of Edward II’s affection for two particular men, Piers de Gaveston and Hugh Despenser, was perhaps his fatal flaw. So devoted he was to these two, that he was ignorant to their ambitions and greed. Deprived of his mother at a young age, publicly belittled by his father, and undermined by his cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, Edward II’s circumstances were further exacerbated by the betrayal of his consort, Queen Isabella. Her openly flaunted affair with Sir Roger Mortimer and subsequent rebellion would have been spectacular fodder for our contemporary tabloids. As much a victim of the intentions of those surrounding him as he was a cause for his own misery, Edward II’s life was indeed a tragedy, punctuated by his defeat at Bannockburn and further born out in the clandestine manner of his death.

The Scottish people were then and still are fiercely proud and, as evidenced by his fellow compatriots, Robert the Bruce was not wholly unique in either his courage or his tenacity. He certainly could not have accomplished what he did in his lifetime if it were not for the likes of James Douglas, Thomas Randolph, Gilbert de la Haye, Robert Boyd, Robert Keith, Angus Og, Neil Campbell and the thousands of brave men who fought at Bannockburn and elsewhere. And yet most undoubtedly, Scotland could not have rested on the laurels of victory if it had not had Robert the Bruce to lead the way. He understood that to strengthen Scotland he first had to do so from within. Separation from England, international recognition and acceptance by the Church were all needed to complete his complex plan.

The casket containing King Robert’s heart was buried at Melrose Abbey and over the years its whereabouts were forgotten. In 1921, it was discovered during an archeological excavation and then later in 1998 was reburied in a private ceremony beneath the floor of the Charter House at Melrose. Many historians proclaim that Robert the Bruce died of leprosy; others say it was scurvy. But whatever afflicted him in those final years and caused his death matters not.

What matters is how he lived and what he lived to fight for:

Freedom
.

N
. Gemini Sasson holds a M.S. in Biology from Wright State University where she ran cross country on athletic scholarship. She has worked as an aquatic toxicologist, an environmental engineer, a teacher and a cross country coach. A longtime breeder of Australian Shepherds, her articles on bobtail genetics have been translated into seven languages. She lives in rural Ohio with her husband, two nearly grown children and an ever-changing number of sheep and dogs.

Long after writing about Robert the Bruce and Queen Isabella, Sasson learned she is a descendant of both historical figures.

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In the Time of Kings

Uneasy Lies the Crown:

A Novel of Owain Glyndwr

The Crown in the Heather

(The Bruce Trilogy: Book I)

Worth Dying For

(The Bruce Trilogy: Book II)

The Honor Due a King

(The Bruce Trilogy: Book III)

Isabeau: A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer

The King Must Die
(The sequel to Isabeau)