The Renegade: A Tale of Robert the Bruce (63 page)

“On your life. Drop it. Take it out slowly and drop it where you stand.”

Comyn took a step backward, his face deathly pale, and Bruce pursued him, holding the polished steel sword tip against his neck as he spoke through stiff lips.

“Step back again, Comyn. You’re close to the wall. After that, you’re like to have a throat full of my blade.
Drop
it!”

The concealed hand came free of the tabard and the weapon it had held clanged solidly on the oaken floor. It was a Highland dirk, a heavy, ornate, single-edged weapon with a blade too long to clear its sheath in the confined space beneath the tabard. Bruce did not even glance down at it.

“An assassin’s blade. A fitting weapon for a Comyn fool. Was that part of your orders from your father? To kill me if I would not come with you?”

So fast had been the sequence of events that no other person in the room had moved, but now they began to shift, their eyes taking in the fallen weapon even as their minds caught up with what had taken place. There was no doubting the crime that had occurred, even among the Scots of Comyn’s escort. The breach of protocol
was flagrant, the violation of the simple but immutable laws of hospitality self-evident.

Comyn’s face was a study in rage and humiliation, but he could do nothing with the sword tip pressing against his throat, and none of his companions showed the slightest sign of moving to support him. Bruce removed his left hand from the hilt and lowered his sword slowly, keeping his arm extended, the weapon’s point now resting on the floor. His eyes remained fixed on Comyn, narrowed to slits, and not a man there doubted that he would spill blood without a thought if he were provoked further.

“Now,” he said softly, “curb your ill tongue and get your Highland arse out of my sight and out of my house. Take your servants with you and go with as much dignity as you can muster. But open your mouth again within my hearing and I swear by the living Christ I’ll cleave you where you stand. Go.
No!
Leave that where it is.”

Comyn had made a half-hearted move to collect his dirk, but the sudden shout and the sweeping slither of Bruce’s blade across the floor stopped him at once.

“I’ll go. But this is far from done. One day I will have my due of you, I swear.”

“So be it, Comyn. But on that day you’ll die. Now, out!”

Rigidly, John Comyn swung away and stalked to the door, his minions following like sheep. Bruce followed him out through the main hallway and into the courtyard, where Comyn’s horse had already been brought forward.

“Thomas Beg,” he called. “Our guests are leaving now. Forthwith. See that they do not tarry.”

He cast a quick glance up to the tower roof, where he found the captain of his archers looking down at him. Bruce nodded at him, managing, in that one swift exchange, to convey the urgency of the need for continued vigilance. The veteran bowman nodded back, then hefted his own bow and looked towards the Scots escort beyond the gates.

Bruce had no doubt of the reception his rejection of Balliol’s summons would receive in Scotland. There had never been any question of that. The simple confiscation of his lands and title, in effect a minatory rap on the knuckles rather than a punitive condemnation, would now become solid forfeiture. He would be legally stripped of rank and holdings and placed among the ranks of outlaws, alienated from royal favour and from any hope of restitution until such time as he prostrated himself before the Scots King and swore abject allegiance, denying the allegiance he had already sworn to Edward Plantagenet. His earldom and his people would be given to someone else, one of the current royal favourites or perhaps even to Comyn of Badenoch, though it would doubtless go to the elderly father rather than to the hotheaded son whom everyone was calling Red John nowadays.

Bruce knew he would be resentful of such injustice, but another part of him recognized a certain relief that this crisis had been resolved. He had already lost his rents and revenues from Scotland; this latest fiasco merely made the loss final, and he found he could accept that philosophically. His father, he presumed, would have received the same peremptory summons and would have reacted similarly; perhaps more temperately, he suspected, since Lord Bruce lacked the fiery temperament that appeared to have passed directly over him from his father to his son. Notwithstanding that, though, Bruce had no doubt that Balliol’s other messenger would have journeyed home from Carlisle with a similar response to the one carried from Writtle. Lord Bruce was even more closely bound to Edward by ties of duty and responsibility than was his son, and thinking of that, his son resolved to ride northward soon with his wife to visit his father’s new domain in Carlisle. And thus he resolved to waste no more time thinking about the anti-Bruce faction in Scotland.

Within the week, he received word from his father, warning him to be on guard for the arrival of a Scottish envoy bearing unacceptable demands. The letter, written some two weeks earlier, summarized Lord Bruce’s refusal and rejection—precisely what the younger Bruce had expected it to be. His closing sentence, though,
marked what was new between them:
I trust you are well, my son, and that my delightful good-daughter Isabella is by now soundly pregnant.

She was not, but Bruce smiled at the thought that it was not from the lack of trying, and when he told her of his father’s enquiry he laughed aloud at her reaction and permitted her to drag him early to their bed.

Soon after came a letter from Domhnall of Mar, a single piece of heavy parchment folded and sealed with wax bearing his personal stamp of a Scots thistle and covered in a tiny, meticulous script that Bruce knew was written by a priestly hand, for Domhnall was quite incapable of writing anything that small. The old man was there in the letter, though, his voice unmistakable.

Robert:

Ill doings here these past few weeks. That council of which we spoke is now in place. Twelve magnates, Church and nobility from north and south of Forth, to assist the King’s grace in the governing of the realm. The King himself, they say, is in a rage and bent on satisfaction. They say, too, though, that you—and not the council— are the cause of his vexation. You know, I jalouse, that they are those who will not speak to me directly, so I am left to hear their words through the ears and mouths of others. I heard that Comyn went to you straight from the King and that you spurned him; refused the King’s command and abused Comyn forbye, turning him out of your house. I felt no great surprise to hear it. But the upshot of it all is you have been legally proscribed, your lands and goods seized in forfeit. That is not new, I know; has not been so for years. But the Comyn brood have been given full possession of your rights, as a reward for faithful service to the Crown. It makes me sick to have to send the word to you, but there it is. You are landless in Scotland now. But far from friendless.

Take care of my child, and should you ever need me, I will be here, at your service.

Mar

Autumn had come later than usual, but its fruitful bounty stretched so far and so slowly towards winter that it sometimes seemed as though no winter would appear at all that year, and Robert Bruce was more content than he had ever been before, utterly besotted with his young and beautiful wife and blissfully grateful for the frequent and always happily willing urgency with which she responded to his satyr-like demands upon her body and her love, throwing off her clothes with an eagerness to match his own once they had reached the safety of their bedchamber. And sometimes, quite frequently, their pleasure was enhanced when they failed to reach the bedchamber or even to disrobe at all, overtaken by their all-consuming need to enjoy each other. He was twenty-one years old, blissfully wed and without a care in the world, and he assumed, with the natural arrogance of youth, that that condition would last forever.

And like every man before him, he was wrong.

CHAPTER TWENTY - TWO

A BRIEF AND DISTANT WAR

O
n a late-November day like no other he could remember, Robert Bruce sat lounging between the embrasures at one corner of the low wall that topped the tower of his house in Writtle. He was facing the sun, which was climbing towards its zenith in the southeast, and one long leg dangled over the rooftops of the outbuildings below him as he basked in the unseasonable warmth and fretted over his own inadequacy. Isabella had awakened that morning with her monthly courses flowing and had plunged headlong into grief that would brook no comforting from her husband. Four months they had been wed, she had cried; four months of faithful perseverance and wholehearted striving and fervent prayer—and nothing! No quickening; no pregnancy; no sign of ever being blessed with a child to bear her husband’s name. She was a failure as a wife and would never be a mother.

Bruce had tried to soothe her, but every attempt he made succeeded only in increasing her despair. No matter what he said, the words had barely left his mouth before he knew they were precisely the wrong ones, and eventually, like all men, he came to accept that there were times when the best refuge for a simple man lay in plain flight. And so he had found himself on the tower roof, the only place in the house where he might find solitude.

He had no idea how long he had been sitting there mulling, but the day was gentle, the sunlight warm and pleasant, and the air about him was silent, not even a skylark’s song breaking the stillness. He
pushed himself up from his seat and turned to look behind him, seeing how the low-hanging sun set the late-autumn colours of the woods there in a blaze, and as he stared in admiration a distant flash of light in the open country beyond the trees caught his attention. He straightened, attentive now, and waited for the gleam to be repeated, knowing it had been reflected from metal—from a weapon or a piece of armour or harness. He folded his arms on the top of the parapet in front of him, eyes narrowed as he scanned the distant fields.

A quarter of an hour passed before he saw a far-off dot that soon resolved itself into three tiny specks. Three mounted men, coming from the southwest, along the road from London and Westminster. He checked an impulse to alert his people below, since there was nothing they could do but hurry to make ready and then wait thereafter; besides, there was nothing to fear from three men, armed though they were. The single flash that had alerted him was now repeated constantly from all three sources, undoubted evidence that the approaching men were not merely armed but armoured, which indicated in turn that their business must be official. Whoever they were, they were wasting no time, approaching now at a gallop.

He lost sight of them as the woods between them blocked his vision, but he knew now how far away they were. He crossed the flat roof to the other side of the building, overlooking the gates, where he leaned over the battlements and shouted to the guard below, warning him that people were approaching, then strode towards the stairs and went down quickly to his chambers.

Isabella was there alone, white faced and subdued but no longer weeping, and she rushed towards him as he entered, starting to tell him she was sorry, but he laid a finger on her mouth to silence her, kissed her fleetingly on the brow, and told her what was happening, bidding her make ready. He changed his simple tunic for a more elaborate one and shrugged into a supple leather jerkin, belting it about his waist. He ran his hands flat over his crown to straighten his hair, then made his way downstairs to meet the newcomers.

They had arrived and dismounted by the time he reached the inner yard and went out to meet them. All three were armoured officers-at-arms. Two wore the bronze emblems of corporals on their cuirasses and helmets, and their leader, a rock-faced veteran with the unmistakable bearing of a man who had commanded other men for many years, wore the insignia of a senior sergeant of King Edward’s personal guard.

The leader snapped to attention and brought his clenched fist to his left breast in salute. “Lord Bruce,” he said in a voice as hard as his expression. “The King requires your presence in Westminster without delay.”

Bruce nodded. “Then he shall have it, Sergeant. A moment to alert my wife and we will join you.” He turned to Thomas Beg, who had materialized by his side. “Thomas, Lady Isabella’s carriage, quick as you like. You heard the sergeant.”

Thomas nodded, but before he could turn away the sergeant stopped him with an upraised hand, though he spoke directly to Bruce. “Your pardon, milord. Your lady wife was not included. Without delay means what it says. We will be riding hard and we don’t have sufficient men to guard your lady. His Majesty made himself clear. Not milady Bruce. Just you, with no delay.”

Bruce frowned, but nodded again, tersely. “Very well. But I must still explain, and change my clothes.”

“No, my lord, begging your pardon. You may explain your summons, certainly, but you are to come just as you are. At once, sir. There is much urgency.”

The frown deepened. “That’s plain enough,” Bruce growled. “I will be quick, but even so you will have time to snatch a bite of food while I am gone. Thomas will take you to the kitchens before he brings my horse. I will be ready to leave within the quarter-hour.”

The sergeant saluted again, then, leading his horse, he went with Thomas Beg, the two corporals behind him.

Isabella’s dismay at the tidings was distressing for Bruce to see, for this was the first time the call of duty had intruded upon their peace, but she recovered quickly and helped him stoically as he
threw some additional small clothes into a saddlebag. He pulled on a pair of thick-soled, well-worn riding boots, exchanged his light jerkin for a more substantial, fleece-lined one, then slung his sword over his shoulder to hang at his back. No shield, no armour, nothing much of anything, but at least he would have his sword and dagger. He kissed Isabella one more time, fiercely, and then snatched a heavy riding cloak from its peg on the wall as he swept out, calling farewell to her over his shoulder.

He had a few minutes alone in the yard, for his horse was not yet there and the sergeant and his men had not emerged from the kitchens, and he used the time to think about this summons. Its urgency was self-evident, but he was unlikely to know anything of the reasons for it until he reached Westminster. Normally, his summoner to an audience—if any such summons could be considered normal—would be a knight, and there would be nowhere near this urgency. And a knight, in common courtesy, would have been able to give him some inkling about what might be involved. The sergeant and his two corporals were royal guards with seniority, which meant they were both competent and trusted by the King; Bruce could trust them to escort him safely and quickly to Westminster, but he had little hope of conversation along the way.