Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) (36 page)

He stopped and stood looking blankly at Archibald, ignoring me until I said his name again.

“Hugh? It’s me, James. Your brother. Do you remember?”

Staring at me beneath that large forehead and bulging brow, a smile as wide as the Forth parted his lips. His shoulders were indeed broad and his bulk accentuated by the lack of neck and shorter limbs for his mass. But for the tangled loops in his hair, he looked nothing like Archibald or me.

“You remember who I am?” I asked of him. “I don’t look the same, I know. Neither do you.”

“H-U-G-H,” he replied. He squeezed the too-small bascinet onto the top of his head, so that it more or less just sat there, and planted his spear proudly in front of him. “I fight. Good?”

“Aye, good. We’ll make a fine soldier of you, Hugh.” Unlike Archibald, whose hauberk sleeves dangled down below his elbows, Hugh wore no mail – only a padded jacket, covered in studded leather and with bared arms that showed his enormous, tree-trunk muscles. Hugh, I realized, had been preparing for this since we were lads out slinging stones across Douglas Water in the summer twilight when we should have been in bed. But when I glanced at my youngest brother, I saw that he cringed at the thought of going into battle, of metal tearing flesh and men killing men. Having inherited Eleanor’s love for letters, he was not cut for the soldier’s mold. “Archibald, you didn’t have to come. You’re too young yet for –”

“No, you were my age when you joined King Robert. Is that not so?”

I nodded, wishing now after having seen him that I had not sent for him at all. I could have waited until this was all over to find him, but in truth when I wrote to him I did not know if any of us would live past the day. Despite his words, I was not convinced he wanted to be here. I had known too many like him who had said the words because they thought that alone would make them brave and when they were up against the first hail of arrows, that false courage stared them hard in the face and made liars of them. I would speak to my cousin Walter later and find a place for Archibald, far from the first wave of battle. “Aye, well, you could not let Hugh come alone, could you? He would have lost his way before he ever got off Bute.”

Offended somehow, Archibald looked away. He watched half a dozen men, who were carrying the tall spears that would stand against the English cavalry, make their way down the corridor among the tents in silence. Entranced, Hugh strolled after them a ways.

“Hugh’s done well enough on his own while I’ve been gone –” Archibald said, “not that you would know. As long as there is someone to tell him what to do, he manages. I reckon he’ll fit in well enough here. As for me, I’m not so certain now. I was content where I was... but you wrote, so I came.”

The truth after all. “Aside from me asking you to, why?”

He shifted on his feet, clutched the pommel of his sword and raised his eyes to gaze at me through those long, boyish eyelashes. “Because I’d heard about you, James, the Black Douglas, for years now. Sometimes you were so close to Rothesay I could have ridden less than a day to seek you out. But I no longer knew you. Didn’t even remember you. Eventually, I went to Glasgow, then on to Inchafray – more to escape boredom than to study. I heard more talk of you. About the Bruce and Randolph. Unbelievable tales. So I came, James. To see if it was true. I came because you asked and I was curious. And now you say I’m too young and maybe I should have stayed away? I thought it was more than an escort for Hugh that you wanted. It was quite a bit out of my way to go back to Rothesay and retrieve him before coming here, you realize? But I did it, because you bloody asked me to and I’m here now. Wouldn’t you have done the same at my age, come here, if you could have? You contradict yourself a bit, I think.”

The small, ragged group of spearmen descended the gentle slope in the slanted light of evening, then turned up the Roman road toward St. Ninian’s Kirk where Randolph’s men would be stationed later. More men were going that way. Walter Stewart hurried toward us, leading a clutch of nobles, among them Angus Og, Thomas Randolph and the obdurate Edward Bruce.

“There’s a place for you, Archibald, if you’ll not think it too trivial a duty for one of your birth.” At his age I was squire to a bishop, which meant I fiddled my time away running mundane errands on church business I neither knew nor cared about. He would get little better until he had proven himself. “There are a mess of folk up on Gillies Hill.” I pointed to the place up above the humble church of St. Ninian’s, just west of the road there, where the camp followers milled about – latecomers and tradesmen, as well as the womenfolk, some of them wives and others belonging to no one, or to anyone for a penny or a loaf of bread. “Some untrained, most without proper weapons, but all willing to fight, if needed. Go there. Ask for Sim Leadhouse. He’ll put you where needed. As for Hugh, I’ll entrust him to Thomas of Moray. A few days from now, God willing, we’ll talk again when you have your own tales to tell.”

Archibald took a knife from his belt and held it out to me. The leather binding on the handle was cracked and the blade itself, although recently whetted, was pocked and nicked in several places. It was no more than a huntsman’s knife, and a poor one at that which would have served better melted down than as it was. Failing to understand, I returned it into Archibald’s palm.

“Keep it. You may have need of it.”

“You don’t understand,” he said with a frown. “It was Father’s. You left it behind when you went away to Paris.”

Obligingly, I took it from him and fingered the worn binding of the handle. I remembered the day Father gave it to me. I was only ten. The day Longshanks stormed Berwick. The screams. The smoke. The smell of blood... I shook away the memories and tucked the knife beneath my belt.

“Archibald!” Walter Stewart called out as he passed by Hugh, who was still watching after the spearmen fading far off into the distance. Walter drew up to us and clapped Archibald sharply on the upper arm. “You’ve found your brother, I see. I feared there wouldn’t be time before the battle. I have lacked for a good conversation ever since you went off. Have those monks converted you yet? My friend Annice nearly wasted away from starvation when you abandoned her.”

“Not completely,” Archibald replied.

“Ah, but forget about her. Better to let her rot. She started rumors that you were... how does one say it kindly?
Un
natural.” He put his lips closer to Archibald’s ear, although he barely lowered his voice. “I did not tell her that the miller’s daughter knows different. She named the bairn after you. Sadly, the wee one took a fever his first winter. He did not make it.”

So, Archibald’s youthful embrace of the restrained life inside an abbey had less to do with devotion and more to do with seeking penance.

“James, how long has it been?” Walter turned to me and nodded in acknowledgment. Near to the same age as Archibald, duty had been thrust upon him very early on as his father had waned after suffering from apoplexy. Being the hereditary steward, he had harkened to the calling naturally and although sometimes plagued by a weakness of the lungs, he had a bright and eager mind that had earned the attention of Robert. Since he was not yet of age though, Robert had seen fit to nestle him under my wing for this undertaking, although I full well knew that part of that doing was because many of the men of nobler birth did not readily accept me as their commander, being the son of a mere knight and not an earl. Walter was my cousin as well. My mother and his father had been brother and sister, but since my mother Elizabeth had died when I was young, I had not ever seen much of my uncle James, for whom I was named.

“The king has called for us all to take up our positions,” Walter said. “Can it be, so soon? I had hoped they would not come after all. I wished in vain.”

Edward Bruce said nothing. He had sworn, believed, they would not come, but now they were almost here. But like the rest of us, he had accepted the inevitable and despise him though we all did, he would hold his ground when the time arrived... or die doing it.

Randolph said, “The English will be in Falkirk, or close there, by nightfall.”

“Bannockburn tomorrow,” Angus Og said. “We’ll get to see the bastards eye to eye, then.”

Enough of this waiting and making ready. Enough of sleeping on rocks in the stabbing rain and the bone-cracking cold, of sucking the juice from blackberries for sustenance and drinking brackish water, of creeping upon packs of strayed Englishmen and putting arrows through their ribs and knives in their overfed bellies. One more battle and let it be done. Once more. Once and for all.

As they began to disperse, I turned to Archibald. “The Abbot of Inchafray will perform Mass at daybreak, Archibald. We’ve all a need to purge ourselves before tomorrow’s done. In the morning. A good night’s rest to you.”

I hadn’t intended it as judgmental, having a number of sins to perfunctorily clear my own soul of, but he lowered his chin in disgrace and refused to meet my eyes. I had failed his expectations in my welcome somehow, but mending that rift would need to wait. Archibald’s fleeting romp with a willing lass was an insignificant matter. In the face of Scotland’s survival, it meant nothing to me or anyone else except Archibald. I doubted the abbot would even pause over such a confession, having heard our own noble king’s share of improprieties. If the sins of all humanity were piled up to make a mountain, Archibald’s would not have amounted to a grain of sand. But being milk-faced like that, proud and meek at the same time, the whole world was what lay within his sight and all of history was the length of his own life.

By sunset, I had my men stationed midway between the divisions of Randolph and Edward Bruce in a triangle of land that stretched from the point of St. Ninian’s to the Bannock Burn. Thin clouds of red cut across the sky in omen, likes streaks of blood trailing from wounded flesh. The day’s final light bathed the wooded slopes of Gillie’s Hill in deep purple. There Archibald would be, waiting nervously with his pocked knife and cumbersome sword, morbidly contemplating the vast weight of his sins while the English horde poured onto the carse with their shining spears and silver-white armor. I looked toward the feeble peaked roof of St. Ninian’s, by where Hugh was – Hugh, who I doubted either feared or hoped or felt any guilt. Hugh who would fight, because I asked him to, because he had always wanted to.

How strange that our lives had wandered in this way. I might curse Longshanks for casting my brothers and me apart, but I had his incompetent son to thank for bringing us together again.

Ch. 33

James Douglas – Bannockburn, 23rd of June, 1304

Maurice, the Abbot of Inchafray, progressed along a meandering line of Scotsmen who bowed their heads to him as they knelt on soiled knees. His fringed head glistened with fine beads of perspiration and his plump cheeks were as red as ripened apples from weeks in the sun. In one hand, he clutched a gospel, its binding frayed and its pages slightly splayed from having absorbed too much dampness over the years. A tattered ribbon marked a passage that he read aloud from time to time. Translated, it said:

“Greater love hath no man than he would lay down his life for his friends.”

 A crucifix dangled from a fine silver chain wound about his knuckles. In the other hand he held a small, plain wooden casket, purported to contain the knuckle bones of St. Fillan. At intervals he broke from his Latin droning, as someone stretched out their hands to touch the box and utter a prayer. Occasionally, a soldier poured out a brief confession and the abbot placed the palm of his hand upon the man’s forehead and absolved him of sins past.

I looked to the sky where the sun labored to climb. A lion-sized hunger growled inside my empty belly. Priests floated by, tearing off crumbs from loaves of coarse bread and offering sips of water from a community bowl. My greaves pressed painfully into my shinbones as I knelt. Down the lines, snatches of prayer drifted heavenward. Men took a pinch of earth and placed it beneath their tongues. Here and there a cough broke the silence, a horse snorted, a weapon scraped against a shield. My horse’s sour breath warmed my neck, then his lips brushed against my coif and shoulder plates. He nudged me forward. I caught myself with my left hand, still grasping the hilt of my sword in my right as the tip of its blade dug into the earth.

“Damn you,” I muttered, as I twisted around to scold an absent squire for not minding my mischievous horse better.

“If it’s the English you’re referring to,” Abbot Maurice said, “Our Lord will do the damning, not you.”

“I was not.” I scraped my dirty palm on a tuft of grass, then wrapped it around the hilt of my sword, interlocking my fingers and touching my forehead to the crossguard. “Your blessing, Father.”

“First, a confession, Master James?”

“God knows my sins and to Him I will answer. Must I need repeat them aloud before everyone here?”

Indignant, the abbot snapped his Holy Gospel shut and snorted at me with the peculiar familiarity of a barnyard pig. “Given the circumstances, I would say a private confession is out of the question. Now, I haven’t time to barter with you over conveniences and matters of trivial privacy. Have you anything to confess?”

“Nothing I care to admit.”

“May God have abundant mercy on your soul, James Douglas. Given all your deeds thus far, you need it as much as any man here.”

I peered at him over the iron wings of the crossguard of my sword. “Is that an admonishment... or a compliment, dear Father?”

Shocked at my glibness, he tucked his chin into the loose folds of his neck and rattled his egg-shaped head at me. I dropped my eyes as his fat fingers pressed into my scalp. He rumbled in Latin, parts of it yet familiar to my faded memory, and quickly moved on to the next man beside me – Boyd, who had tenfold the number of sins to his score, but had figured long ago that you could commit as many as you pleased so long as some holy man purged you of them, as if none then ever counted against him. Boyd had also learned that you did not argue with Abbot Maurice unless you wanted your own private sermon and a staff cracked across your knees.