The Renegade: A Tale of Robert the Bruce (5 page)

“Good beast!” the boy on its back cried in Gaelic, clapping his hand on its neck appreciatively. The animal arched its neck and snorted, stamping its feet again as its rider turned to grin at the man who had been waiting for him on the hilltop.

The man dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment. “It took you long enough. I thought for a minute there I was going to have to come looking for you.” The liquid, rippling Gaelic rolled off his tongue, its lilt perfectly capturing the raillery implied in the comment.

“I’m here, am I not?”

“Aye, you are. And you did well, that last wee bit. You could have taken the easy way.”

“Why would I do that? You didn’t,” the boy answered. “I saw where you came up.”

“Aye … ” His companion’s voice faded away, and he sat straight-backed, his narrowed eyes moving constantly as he scanned the bleak landscape of the moor that stretched around them on all sides. “But then I’m a man grown. You’re just a wee boy.”

“I am not.” There was just the slightest tinge of protest in the boy’s voice. “I’ll be ten tomorrow. That’s more than halfway to being a man grown.”

The beginnings of a smile flickered at the edges of the other’s mouth. “Right enough, I suppose. But you still have a way to go along that path. Still, you show promise. Faint, mind you, faint, but there none the less.”

“Where are we going, anyway, Uncle Nicol?”

The man turned in his saddle, his smile widening until it made his eyes crinkle. “Well now, I was hoping you could tell
me
that, seeing that you’re nearly a man and all. Where do you think we’re going?”

The boy sat straighter, his face turning thoughtful. He twisted to one side and then the other, looking back the way he had come and then gazing at the hills of the western horizon. “To the coast, I know,” he said, almost to himself. Then, in a louder, more confident tone, “We left Dalmellington at daybreak and we’ve been riding ever since. That’s more than four hours, so we’ve come nigh on twenty miles, heading west the whole way. Maybole’s to the north, so we must have passed that already and … ” He hesitated. “And we’re heading southwest now, so we can’t be going to Turnberry. We’re going to Girvan.”

“There,” his uncle grunted. “I knew you would tell me. And you’re nearly right. We’re going
close
to Girvan, to the north of it, to a place I know.”

“What for?” No answer was forthcoming, so the boy persisted. “Uncle Nicol? Why are we going to this place that you know?”

“To meet a man, a friend of mine, though in truth he was a friend of my brother, your grandfather, God rest his soul.” Nicol’s grin had vanished, his face now wearing his normal expression of calm thoughtfulness, and even the tone of his voice changed, as the tenor of his Gaelic words became more reverent. “His name is MacDonald, Angus Mohr MacDonald, and he calls himself the Lord of Islay.”

“Is he old, then?”

“Old enough, I suppose, but don’t ever let him think you think that. He’s far from being a doddering old fool. His lineage stretches back forever and he wields great power in the west, especially since Haakon, the King o’ Norway, quit the Western Isles after the sea fight at Largs thirty years ago and withdrew to Orkney. There have been great changes in the Isles ever since then, with the Scots from the mainland takin’ over more and more from the few Norsemen still there. Old Somerled, who ruled Skye a hundred and more years ago, was Norse, and one of his line married John, chief of Clan Donald, who called himself the first Lord of Islay and was Angus Mohr’s father. And now Angus rules there.” Nicol smiled, his voice changing again. “And as far as I know, he has never met a Bruce in all his life. Nor any other Englishman, for that matter. It will be interesting to see how he reacts to you.”

The boy’s eyes went wide with outrage. “I am no Englishman! I’m a Scot, born and bred right here in Carrick.”

“Aye, but Angus is a
Gael
, and his folk have been here since before the Romans came. And mayhap you are a Scot, as you claim, but there’s more accident than intent in that. Your mother has the blood, God knows, but your father and all his folk are English by descent, though they will argue that their ancestors were Norman and French, with not a Saxon Englishman among them. To Gaels like myself and Angus Mohr, though, they are all alike. Ill-bred foreigners to a man, stumbling and mumbling in their awkward, illsounding tongues. And those of them who do have the grace to speak the Gaelic have been fortunate to be born here and thereby be gifted with the Tongue.” He scanned the horizon again. “Anyway, as I said, it will be interesting to see how Angus reacts to meeting you.
I will introduce you as my kin, of course—my great-nephew, son of my brother Niall’s daughter—but he will see you immediately for what you are. I might name you, for the folly of it, plain Rob MacDuncan, but Angus Mohr will not heed that for a moment when it’s clear to his eyes that you are an incomer, young Robert Bruce of the House of de Brus.”

He cocked his head, waiting for a response, but when it came, it was not what he had expected.

“I know who Angus Mohr is, and you make him sound like an ogre,” the boy said. “But he can’t be that bad, because my mam likes him.”

“He is an ogre, boy, and don’t you ever think otherwise. No man comes to be as powerful as Angus Mohr is by being kind and gentle. Besides, your mother can find a good word for anyone. That is why she’s my favourite kinswoman.”

“Not everyone, not by a mile. My father has friends she won’t let in the house, so she’s not that tolerant.”

“Friends? Or do you mean people who work for him? I’ve seen some of them myself and I wouldn’t let them into my house, either.”

“Aye, but she has always liked Angus Mohr, ever since she was a babby. So he can’t be as black as you would stain him.”

Nicol turned his head away to hide a smile and spoke towards the distant western hills. “Perhaps she may be right. We’ll see. But one way or the other, once we have the great man safely in hand, along with whoever might find honour in being with him, we will make our way up to Turnberry, where you will be a Bruce again—for a while at least, until they pass you back to me. It’s just a few miles north of where we are headed, and your mother will be waiting for you. Tomorrow is your tenth birthday after all, as you said, and ten years is a whole decade—worthy of celebration—so we’re taking you home to be with your family. You will remember the day you turned ten, though. You will recall it forever after as the day you met the King.”

“The King? King
Alexander
?”

“Aye. Is there another that you know of? Alexander the Third, of the House of Canmore, King of Scots. You will not have met him before, I suspect, eh?”

“No.” The boy was wide-eyed with wonder. “And he’s coming to Turnberry?”

“Aye, he is. And he’ll be there for your birthday.” His grin grew wider and then he shrugged. “Mind you, he’s coming to meet with Angus Mohr as well. The two of them have matters to discuss. But he will know your face, from tomorrow on.”

Rob was stunned, for he had never met anyone his own age who had met the King. Alexander had been King of Scots for more than twenty years, he knew, but few of his common subjects were ever fortunate enough to meet him, especially here in the wild southwest. And now King Alexander himself would be in
Turnberry
, there for his birthday …

Rob had known he would be returning home for his birthday, because he did so every year. This year, though, he had not been altogether sure he wanted to go back, and he had been feeling guilty about that, uncomfortable with what he suspected were stirrings of disloyalty. Now, though, he felt a great wave of relief sweep over him, banishing his earlier feelings and filling him instead with eager anticipation. Notwithstanding the King’s visit and the excitement it would engender, he found himself thrilling to the thought of seeing his mother again, and even his father, Earl Robert, though the man seldom recognized Rob’s existence other than to growl a warning at him from time to time when his patience grew thin. And it would be good to see his brothers and sisters again, though most of them were too young to be of any real interest. His elder sister, Christina, he knew, would be happy to see him, and so would his closest younger sibling, Isabel. Even Nigel, the sturdy, smiling, sunny-natured child whose name was really Niall, after their maternal grandsire, would make him welcome. Isabel was eight now, and Nigel must be six and a half, but below them in line, spaced roughly a year apart, came three more boys, Edward, Thomas, and the recently born Alexander. All three of those, in young Robert’s eyes, were little more than
sources of never-ending noise, ranging from screams of rage to whines and bleats of complaint, separated by unintelligible outbursts of squabbling.

No wonder, he thought for the first time, that his father was so impatient and short-tempered all the time. Robert Bruce of Carrick was a conscientious, studious man who took his duties as the earl seriously and was consequently seldom at home. Whenever he did come home, though, the constant noise of brawling, squabbling children must have driven him mad. Realizing that he shared that much in common at least with his father, Rob decided, then and there, that meet the King or no, he would far rather spend more time with his uncle Nicol, in his home at Dalmellington, than among his own clamouring brood in Turnberry Castle, and he was surprised, for a moment, by how happy the decision made him feel. He turned his eyes slightly to glance at his uncle and was relieved to find that Nicol was deep in his own thoughts, his narrowed eyes gazing off towards the west as though they could pierce the hills and show him the distant sea.

Rob Bruce could not remember when he had decided that his uncle Nicol was his favourite person in the world, but for as far back as he could recall, no one else had come close to claiming his esteem in the way Nicol MacDuncan had. He had done it effortlessly, too, simply by being the only adult male in the boy’s life who treated him as a person, rather than as a simpering, unformed, half-witted child. Nicol had never spoken down to his nephew and never belittled him. He had always treated him as a real person—not as an equal, certainly, for Rob knew he was no such thing, too young even to lay claim to such consideration. Yet none the less Nicol had always treated him as a thinking being, someone whom he expected to have an opinion on any subject, no matter how ill informed that opinion might be. And not only did he assume that Rob
had
opinions, he insisted upon hearing them and discussing them. He never scoffed at what he heard, never sneered, never belittled anything his young charge said. Instead, he would fill in the gaps in the boy’s knowledge, enlarge upon the pros and contras of each element of
Rob’s opinion and frequently end up leaving several more options in his nephew’s mind for further consideration. Looking at him now, Rob felt a flush of warmth and affection for the man.

Nicol was really his mother’s uncle, her father’s youngest brother by almost twenty years, which meant, in truth, that he could never have really known his eldest brother, Niall, the former Earl of Carrick, at all, and he had never known the father, Nicol MacDuncan, whose name he bore. That Nicol had been the son of Duncan, the first Earl of Carrick, and had not lived long enough to see the boy child of his old age birthed. In fact, Nicol was no more than a year or two older than his favourite niece, Marjorie, Earl Niall’s formidable daughter, and he had taken an active, avuncular interest in the welfare of her eldest son since the first day he saw the boy, when young Robert was only four weeks old and Nicol decided the child looked like the son he had always wanted. Nicol had married young, to a woman who died childless a few years later, and then he had wed a widow with three daughters, but he and she had never had any children of their own, and since the widow had clearly demonstrated her own fertility beforehand, it soon became clear that Nicol, and not his wife, must be at fault. No one thought any the less of him for that; it was simply accepted and ignored.

Nicol’s initial interest in his niece’s firstborn son had never abated, and for the past three years it had resulted in the boy’s being given over into his young great-uncle’s care for several months, from early spring until midsummer, before being returned to the family fold in time for his birthday on the eleventh of July. Those months, from the beginning of March all the way through until mid-July, had become Robert’s favourite and most jealously guarded time of the year, when he would learn more about everything around him than the rest of his brothers and sisters combined would absorb in an entire twelvemonth. He grunted quietly, deep down in his chest, then kneed his horse forward gently until he sat beside Nicol, staring out with him over the wild landscape below.

To say that the lands of the earldom of Carrick were hilly would be a deceptive description;
rocky
and
bleak
and
inhospitable
were
far more accurate words. The name Carrick sprang from
carraig
, the Gaelic word for a rock or a rocky place. The Carrick lands were almost completely lacking in arable areas that might offer sustenance for farmers, but they offered fine grazing for the hardy local sheep, and because of that the people of the Carrick region were mainly wool producers—just like everyone else the length and breadth of Scotland. Young Rob, the seventh consecutive Robert Bruce of his line, had been born here, in his mother’s ancestral home of Turnberry Castle, overlooking the Firth of Clyde and the Isle of Arran and the distant Mull of Kintyre. To the north lay the town of Ayr, and to the east, the earldom’s main town of Maybole. Rob loved Carrick, and he was always excited to be reminded from time to time that it would one day be his. These were his own lands, his inheritance, and the knowledge of that never failed to thrill him. For the time being, though, the lands were his mother’s. Rob’s father, though he held the title Earl of Carrick, held it solely by virtue of his marriage to the countess.

“Are you ready, then?”

Rob glanced at his uncle and nodded, then kicked his mount forward to follow Nicol down from the summit and into the trackless reaches of the moors. There were no roads across the moorlands. In truth there were few real roads in all of Scotland. The boy thought about that as he allowed his horse to make its own way at the heels of Nicol’s mount, for the matter of roads—or rather the lack of them—had been brought to his attention only a few weeks earlier—by his uncle, of course. Roads were something he had never had cause to think about. His people went everywhere on foot, and could travel five miles in a single hour over trackless land. When greater distances had to be travelled, those who had horses used them, but even so they were all inured to dismounting and leading their animals slowly through the treacherous, boggy, and wildly uneven terrain of the moors, where a single misplaced hoof could result in a broken leg and a lost mount.