Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) (13 page)

Once more, I glanced at Torquil... and at Coll. And I went – although I did not know to where.

I could not feel the ground beneath my feet, nor did I see the miles pass. The echo of voices haunted me, all mingling in a discordant keening: Torquil’s, Alexander’s, Nigel’s... Elizabeth’s. I stumbled, staggered, sometimes crawled. But I went on and on, until darkness fell and I could go no more.

My legs had stopped moving. My arms were cut and bruised. The earth chilly and damp against my face. I closed my eyes and breathed in. Somewhere a peat fire burned...

The pungent smell of smoke grew stronger, nearer. Heat prickled my flesh. As I stretched, coarse wool brushed against my chest. Surely I was dead... or dreaming. Content, I lay like that a long time. My muscles were heavy. I slipped off to sleep again.

A wooden spoon thunked against the inside of a pot. I smelled a stew. I
was
dreaming. Of home.

“A long way in a short time,” said a croaking voice.

I cracked my eyelids. It was dark, wherever I was. Shapes swam fuzzily around me. I could barely turn my head, my neck was so stiff. Smoke from a cooking fire curled lazily toward a small hole in the roof. I focused on the wavering, yellow-orange flames and rubbed sore eyes. My bed was no more than a plank and some straw. I was in a cramped shepherd’s hut – and it reeked of manure.

“English, you think?” came a deeper voice. “Fine mail. Too fancy for a Scot.”

I blinked at the voice. “No, I’m...”

Too much effort to speak. I wanted to go back to sleep. I heard something slopping, something scraping. A hand, bony and calloused, propped up my head. A steaming bowl was waved under my nose.

“Eat,” said the man. “You’ll fetch more alive than dead.”

Ill luck to have survived so much, only to be ransomed to the English. Death was now a certainty. What then would become of Elizabeth and Marjorie? And what of Scotland? There was so much that I had not yet done.

I turned my head away, even though it hurt to do so. There before me stood an old woman, her gray hair hanging in sparse strings about a craggy, warty face and her spine crooked. Beside her was a man of middle years, his face dirty, but with shoulders hugely broad and splayed, rough hands that had seen hard work.

“Who are you?” I asked forthright.

“Nobody that matters,” said a second man, standing by the door. Similar in looks to the other, he had a black-faced lamb slung over his shoulders. It bleated incessantly, but he took no mind of it.

A third stepped from the shadows, shorter, younger. “Aye, he’s the one they’re looking for. I wager they’ll be back.”

“Eat,” urged the old woman once more.

But I was too tired to be hungry. I closed my eyes and slept.

Light. It was light now. I opened my eyes to the pale glow of morning. Quietly, slowly, I rolled over. The old lady and the younger man were asleep on the dirt floor. The lamb wandered about, nibbling at an empty sack of grain. It looked at me with its great black eyes, quivered its wet nose and went back to foraging through nothing.

“They’ll be coming.”

I gazed foggily across the empty table in the middle of the dank, smelly hut. The man who had been carrying the lamb yesterday sat cross-legged on the floor with his back against the door. He held a crook across his lap and was sopping up the last of the stew in his bowl with a hunk of bread. Calmly, I ignored him and looked about the room, searching for my weapons.

“Know what you’re lookin’ for,” he said smugly. His mouth cracked in a slanted smile to reveal irregular gaps. He tipped his bowl up and drained the last of it. Belching, he dragged a hairy forearm across his chin.

“They here, Murdoch?” said the younger, lifting his head from where he lay on the floor.

“No’ yet. Back to sleep, McKie. We’ve a long trek later to round up th’orphans. We’ll leave soon as they get here and are gone again.”

Did they know who I was? Should I claim to be someone else? Would they believe me if I did? No, I should keep silent. Slip away, if I could.

Uneasy, I burrowed back beneath my blankets. They had removed my shirt and washed it. It hung from a peg on the wall next to the door. Beneath it sat my boots. My mail was slung haphazardly over the back of the only chair in the place. My squire Gerald would have boiled to a fury to see it so carelessly arranged. My sword and axe were nowhere to be seen. They could well have sold them to buy that meat in the pot. The lamb hobbled over to a pile of straw, folded his knobby knees and plopped down.

Another hour went by. Murdoch did not budge from his vigil. Every time I glanced at him he was watching me intently, dark eyes tucked beneath a prominent brow, his broad face leathered by the sun. It was unnerving. Once I tried to sit up, but he swooped across the room and shoved me back down with one huge hand planted in the middle of my chest.

“Rest yourself,” he ordered.

And so I did. I was too weak to fight him barehanded. He was fresh, fed and several stones heavier than me. He stared at me still and I closed my eyes and thought that for awhile I slept again, although fitfully.

Horses. I heard horses. I bolted upright and onto my feet. My knees folded. I barely caught myself by clinging to the edge of my bed. The old lady and other man, McKie, were gone.

Murdoch leered at me, standing. “Going somewhere?”

He swung the door open. Light poured in. A shadow moved across the brightness. I sank back against the wattle and daub wall at my back. A cold sweat washed over me. I was nothing without my weapons. I would rather have died out there in the wild, fighting bravely, as I had lived – not here, not in a dungeon and certainly not as a spectacle of mockery on the gallows.

“Robert?”

James stooped beneath the sagging lintel and into the hut. My heart nearly burst at the sight of him. He threw his arms open and pulled me in.

“We eluded them easily,” he said. “You had a harder time of it, I see.”

“Hard enough.” I clapped him on the shoulders, then stepped back. “But I’m alive, aye?”

“Barely.”

Murdoch flushed the lamb from its cozy bed and clutched up my sword and axe from underneath the golden straw. He thrust them awkwardly at me.

“Yours, m’lord. Name’s Murdoch – at your service. My brothers McKie and MacLurg, as well... if you’ve need of us.”

“That I shall.” I motioned for him to put them on the table as I sank to the chair, breathing in relief. “Torquil, did you –”

Edward brushed in through the tight doorway, gave a single nod and stepped back outside without saying a word, as if nothing had happened. Murdoch followed him.

“Aye.” James hung his head low. “We buried him and the dog on a hill above the river.”

Teeth clenched, I closed my eyes. So many dead. Because I would not bow to an English king. But in the years to come, how many
more
would die if I did?

James touched me on the shoulder. “Let’s get you dressed and fed. The rest are outside.”

He took my shirt from the peg and handed it to me. I bunched it in my hands, digging my fingers into it as if I could wring the answers from a piece of cloth. “Next time, James, we will be ready. We will fight. And we will win.”

Ch. 12

Edward, Prince of Wales – Lanercrost, 1307

Gilbert de Clare and I sat on our horses just outside the priory at Lanercost, where my less than divine sire had collapsed and taken to his sickbed. Although Lanercost was very close to Carlisle, with all its comforts and security, my sire instead preferred to convalesce among monks. It seemed he felt his soul in need of more redemption than his honor.

The Bruce had again challenged that honor. Several weeks ago, reports had reached London of various skirmishes won by the Scots. The stripling scoundrel, James Douglas, had even sacked and burnt Douglas Castle, once his home, slaughtering the garrison and poisoning the well for added measure. More proof that they were naught but bloodthirsty heathens. And so the king, once more, had marched on his ruinous way to Scotland, intent on ending their rebellious ways for good. The levies were assembled and waiting in Carlisle. Today, he had ordered a litter to be prepared to carry him northward, since he had not the strength to ride. The king was going to lead us on. Or at least that was his delusion.

Let him have it. He will not have it long. He cannot even rise from his bed. If Fate calls his name, he might never.

“Pray tell, how did they manage it?” Gilbert, my nephew and dear friend, leaned forward in his saddle. A bothersome, hot July sun painted his sandy locks in hues of glittering gold. Reins draped across his lap, he uncorked his flask, washed the dust from his mouth with wine and spit it onto the ground. “How in God’s kingdom do three hundred shabby Scots send five-fold that many English knights running? Court has been a dreadful yawn of late. Too little amusement in watching an old man wither and rot. I should have liked to have been there at Glen Trool to watch.”

I scowled at the images he had conjured: a band of half-clothed Scots rattling their spears and routing the flower of English chivalry.

“A disgrace,” I muttered in contempt. “Not two days after the Earl of Pembroke put Bruce’s own hound on the trail after him, the Bruce decimated a detachment as they slept in a village by the River Dee. And at Glen Trool our haughty Pembroke sent a common woman as a spy into Bruce’s camp. Ah, my dear Gilbert, never entrust a woman with a task better suited to a man. The weaker sex has no resolve, scarce courage, and less than little loyalty. Is it any shock that the self-anointed king had but to appear before her in all his wild glory and she swooned and told all – that Pembroke’s forces were hidden in the woods beyond? The Jezebel would have bore his child, had he imposed himself on her. Hah. Women are worthless for anything but.”

“And may your soon-to-be, comely French bride bear you ten hale sons, my lord.”

“One would be sufficient. Ten would make me tens times as mad.” It perturbed me that for one child, or however many times it took to produce a healthy son, I would have to stay hobbled to one woman until I died – or she died, whatever the case. I had heard from envoys to the French court so many times how beautiful this Isabella, the daughter of King Charles of France, was that I no longer believed them. It was as if they meant to convince me of it by repetition. The reminders only served to turn my thoughts to my beloved Perrot – Piers Gaveston. Eternity had already passed since I had last laid eyes on him. Sweet Mother Mary, how I wanted to be
with
him again. To gaze upon his Adonis face, to caress his sun-kissed cheek, feel the warmth of his skin next to mine…

Curse my sire for sending him away. The day would come when I would flout his condemnation of Piers and do as I damn well pleased. Soon.

I drummed my thumb against my thigh, impatient to get on with this blustering campaign. It was nearing noon. Half the day gone.

“Bruce himself, I heard,” Gilbert began, “shot an arrow straight into one of Pembroke’s best knights as he led the charge on the Scots’ camp. Remember him at the tourneys? Best at lances, at swords… and an excellent marksman at the butts. Few could –”

“You forget” – I shot him a warning glare – “your company. You’re a blathering sot, Gilbert. Quiet your tongue or I’ll have a sausage made of it.”

“Ah, I am humbled and submit, my lord.” Gilbert threw a tight fist on his hip and thrust his jaw out. “But what of Loudon Hill? Was it as bad?”

“Worse,” I grumbled. “Pembroke’s knights tumbled headfirst into the Scots’ trenches before they ever saw them. One on top the other, like a landslide, they said. Those that had a chance to rein to a halt and turn back collided with the second wave. Pembroke turned tail and cowered at Bothwell. Three days later, as your stepfather went to relieve the earl, Pembroke’s forces were routed by that omnipresent devil and chased all the way to Ayr. A plague on both Pembroke and Ralph de Monthermer. Their flagrant incompetence has not only cursed our endeavors, it has leant impulse to the Bruce’s.”

“Lenience, I beg, my lord.” Gilbert pouted like a chastised boy. “Ralph does as well as he is able. But I confess, I think his glory days of soldiering are long since past. His joints are stiff, his armor burdensome. I doubt he can see clearly beyond a spear’s length.”

“Save your worries, de Clare. The soothsayers will portend no block for your kinsman. And you shall earn your reward and station if you’ve any patience left to your name. First, let me test your ability to guard a secret.”

He cocked one pale eyebrow at me.

“I shall recall Piers de Gaveston at the first opportunity.”

“But not until –”

“Indeed. Not until. And when it is done, he shall be betrothed to your sister, Margaret – unless you can pose some reasonable objection…” I waited a moment, but his expression did not change. “Now say no more about it.”

“But this will not happen too soon, I hope? Give matters time to settle. Appease those who –”

“Save it. If I want a sermon I shall open my ears at Mass.”

Gilbert looked away, pretending to watch the door. “I meant about Margaret. She’s not yet fourteen.”

“Which is more than old enough. If I can wed Piers to my niece, it will make it that much harder for them to cast him off again. The sooner the better. They’ll be less likely to quibble over such a seeming triviality when the kingship is in transition. If it ever will be – the Methuselah.”

My patience had been tried to its tedious end on this journey. Every day I awoke and every day they told me my sire yet lived. It would have been more mercy than sin to add a drop of poison to his tisane.

A flurry of activity erupted near the priory gates and soon the King of England was borne pitifully out on a litter slung between two puissant steeds. How remote from regal he appeared, all wan and sunken back into his red and green silk cushions. He looked at me… or through me, and flipped his bony hand to signal the march onward.

Even greatness must yield to the fetters of age. Nothing lasts forever. Leather wears. Wood breaks. And iron eventually rusts.