by H A CULLEY
‘I might just have well stayed in England,’ she told Coira, ‘for all the attention my husband pays me now I’m back.’
Coira thought for a moment. She didn’t think that the king would take kindly to advice from her but he might listen to one of his close advisors. She decided not to say anything to Elizabeth in case she was offended by interference in her private affairs but she bided her time and then approached James Douglas.
James wasn’t particularly interested in acting as cupid but he was keen on seeing Robert secure on his throne and he knew that meant that the king needed to produce a legitimate male heir as soon as possible; after all Robert wasn’t getting any younger. He was nearly forty-two years old at a time when average life expectancy was in the mid-thirties and, even for the aristocracy most of those who died of natural causes did so before they reached sixty. Robert’s face and body was scarred by war and he was lucky not to have died on the battlefield before this. James knew that, even if he produced a son now, the boy was unlikely to reach maturity before Robert died.
Douglas knew that there was a very real possibility that Scotland could once again be plunged into chaos as rival claimants either fought over a vacant throne or over the regency of a minor. Of course, there was the Lady Marjorie Bruce but that would effectively mean that her husband, the High Steward, would become king and he didn’t particularly trust the man. Edward Bruce, Earl of Carrick and the king’s brother was another possibility but, unlike Robert, Edward was headstrong, volatile and a poor administrator.
No, he concluded, it would be far better for Robert to get Elizabeth with child before he left for Ireland and then he would pray that the king lived long enough to see his son secure on the throne. The problem, he mused, was how to convince Robert of this before he sailed for Ulster.
‘Robert, I am flattered that you have left the kingdom in my charge whilst you are away in Ireland with Edward but I don’t know what your instructions are should you be unlucky enough to fall in battle.’
Subtlety was not one of James Douglas’ strong points and he had decided that the direct approach would be best. Robert looked at him quizzically.
‘Marjorie is my only legitimate child and so I would have thought that the answer was obvious, Jamie.’ He thought for a moment. ‘She would, of course, need guidance but she has you, my brother Edward and her husband, Walter Stewart for that. I’m afraid that I don’t see what the problem is.’
‘Come on Robert, Walter is only nineteen and he’s a pompous prick. I can’t stand him, neither can Edward. We would be at each other’s throats before you were cold in your grave.’
‘You seem to be taking the possibility of my imminent death very calmly, Jamie.’
‘Tush man; all of us live life on the edge. We are well aware how fickle the grim reaper is; anyone of us could die tomorrow. And how many of your nobles and clan chiefs would accept rule by a woman.’
‘They were ready to swear allegiance to the Maid of Norway and she was little more than a babe in arms.’
‘Only because the alternative was to be absorbed into Longshank’s empire.’
Robert ran his hand through his thinning hair, which was now beginning to turn grey.
‘Very well, I suppose I have been neglecting the queen of late. To tell the truth, I have been avoiding her because Edward and I are about to ravage her father’s lands and I didn’t want to be hectored about it. But thank you for making me see sense, Jamie. You’re a good friend. Not many would have had the nerve.’
The two men smiled comfortably at each other before Douglas gave Robert Bruce a brief nod – his substitute for the formal bow everyone else made before taking their leave of the king – and strode from the room.
That night Elizabeth was pleased that Robert not only slept with her but made passionate love to her on no less than three occasions. When she told Coira that she needed to stay abed for most of the morning, her maid smiled slyly to herself and just prayed that her mistress’ womb quickened before the king left in two weeks’ time.
It was Elizabeth’s normal time of the month a week before Robert sailed but she was late; an unusual event for her. As the days passed and she still didn’t menstruate, she began to quietly hope that she might be pregnant but she didn’t say anything to Robert. It was early days as yet; however, she was optimistic.
~#~
Edward Bruce stood beside his brother on the deck of Angus Og’s personal galley as the expeditionary force neared Larne, the major trading port on the Irish mainland, ten miles north of Carrickfergus. The garrison in the castle there was loyal to Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, known as the Red Earl, but Edward had decided that he needed to take the castle and make it his base for the conquest of the island.
The force of a thousand knights, serjeants and hobelars, together with their horses, squires and the baggage train, landed without opposition, even though it took several hours to get everyone and everything ashore. By this time several local chieftains had arrived with their men and Edward was able to lead a force of some four thousand men towards the town of Carrickfergus the following morning. King Robert accompanied him but he was only there to help his brother’s campaign to get established before he returned to Scotland.
As usual the problem was the lack of siege equipment with which to assault the castle, so the only option seemed to be to starve the garrison into submission, unless he could use the king’s second squire, Simon de Powburn, to scale the castle walls at night and put a rope ladder in place for the assault party. However, a quick examination of the castle walls revealed the fact that, unlike the Scottish castles that Simon had helped capture in the past using this tactic, the walls of Carrickfergus Castle had been constructed using dressed stones, which were smooth and offered the squire no hand or footholds. The lime mortar was even and filled the joints between the stones. Simon considered raking it out as he climbed but it would be slow, laborious and the sound of him scraping away at the mortar was bound to be heard in the still night air. Edward decided that he would need to leave enough of a force to blockade the castle and press on with the campaign whilst he waited for the Red Earl’s men to capitulate.
Robert’s first move was to send emissaries throughout Ireland with a letters addressed to the Irish Celtic petty kings and chieftains, the senior Irish clergy and the town councils. This played on the fact that the people of Scotland and Ireland shared a common Celtic heritage and called upon them to rise up against their foreign Norman overlords. Of course, he ignored the fact that he came from Norman stock himself. In the final paragraph of his message he recommended his brother, Edward of Carrick, to them as a suitable candidate for the post of High King of All Ireland; and the man who could lead them in a war to drive the English overlords from the country.
‘Do you think it will work?’
Edward didn’t wholly share his brother’s optimism that the Irish only lacked a good leader to unite the disparate groups that made up the native population. It was the very disunity and petty jealousies of the locals that had allowed Henry the Second of England and his successors to subdue the country in the first place.
‘It will suffice at any rate to divert Edward of Caernarvon’s attention away from Scotland and further undermine his grip on power in England.’
‘So you don’t expect me to become High King of Ireland then?’ Edward Bruce asked his brother angrily.
‘Oh, yes. I am pretty sure that we can get you crowned at Tara before the Anglo-Irish nobility can get organised, but establishing your rule here will be even more difficult than our struggle for supremacy in Scotland.’
‘If you can rule Scotland, then I can rule Ireland.’ Edward said with some heat.
Robert suddenly realised, no without a pang of regret for the loss of their former close relationship, that Edward was jealous of him and his achievements. He correctly surmised that Edward was now driven by a need to prove himself as the equal of his elder brother.
‘In that case, broth
er, I had better leave you to it, now that the campaign has started so well, and return to Scotland. Jamie Douglas is a good lieutenant but I daren’t be away for too long. Besides,’ he grinned in pleasant anticipation, ‘I need to produce a son to carry on my line.’
It was not a tactful thing to say. Although Marjorie was his legitimate offspring and could inherit the throne, many would probably prefer Edward to be the heir as a proven commander and leader of men. At any rate, he hadn’t given up the possibility of it happening but the birth of a son to Robert and Elizabeth would resolve the succession issue and he would never be more than Earl of Carrick in Scotland.
Edward grunted and said nothing further. The next morning Robert took his leave and, accompanied by his two squires, Iain Ross and Simon de Powburn, and a small escort he embarked on one of Angus Og’s galleys to return to Scotland.
He had only been away for a month but it had been long enough for Elizabeth to be certain that she was indeed expecting their child. Naturally, Robert was overjoyed at the news and prayed regularly that the child would be a boy.
Seven months later Elizabeth gave birth and both mother and baby were fine. However, much to the king’s disappointment, the baby was a girl. Robert showed little interest in her from the start, saying that he already had a daughter and didn’t need another. Elizabeth was upset by his attitude and felt that somehow she had let him down, though she knew that it wasn’t her fault. She named the baby Margaret after her mother.
~#~
Simon had been disappointed to leave Ireland before the fighting began but an even greater disappointment lay in store. The king had subjugated the kingdom but he still had enemies who worked against him secretly. Whilst the Earl of Ross was now a dependable ally in the North, he strongly suspected that Kenneth de Moravia, Earl of Sutherland, whose power base extended over most of the northern tip of the mainland, was plotting with the Norwegians to ally himself with them in order to gain independence from Scotland. Robert’s solution was to hold Kenneth’s eldest son, William, hostage against his father’s future good behaviour.
The only way he could think of doing this was to invite Kenneth to send William to him as his second squire. The boy was thirteen and so probably hadn’t yet been assigned to another noble as a squire as yet. However, this would mean dispensing with Simon’ services; not something that Robert was keen on doing but he needed to create the vacancy.
He realised how much he owed the boy. He had been instrumental in the re-capture of a number of major strongholds previously held by the English and their Scottish allies and he had helped Iain Ross to nurse him back to health when he had so nearly died at Jedburgh. His solution was to look for a senior noble who he could approach to take on the boy as his senior, or only, squire. That way it could be presented to Simon as a sideways move, or even a step up.
The problem was that there were no suitable lords whose present squires were old enough to knight, and so create the necessary vacancy. Then Robert had a stroke of luck, though it is doubtful that anyone else would have seen it as such. James Douglas returned from yet another raid on northern England, which had penetrated as far as Richmond in Yorkshire. It had been, like the others, a great success but the Scots had been attacked on their way back up Swaledale. The attack was beaten off but not without a few losses. Amongst these was James’ eighteen year old squire, who had foolishly charged three English serjeants and paid for his recklessness with his life.
He knew that Jamie Douglas had always chosen boys from amongst his own extended family before, so he wasn’t certain that he would be willing to take Simon on as the foolhardy young Douglas’ replacement.
‘Jamie, welcome back and congratulations on bringing back so much plunder. However, I was sorry to hear of the death of your squire, especially as he was your second cousin.’
Douglas shrugged. ‘He was family but he was an idiot, and idiots don’t tend to live very long.’
‘What will you do about a replacement?’
The other man groaned. ‘I suppose I’ll have to break in another fourteen year old who hasn’t got a clue what he’s meant to be doing.’
‘Ah! I may be able to help you there.’
‘Oh? How?’
‘I need to bind Kenneth de Moravia to me to avoid him taking Sutherland and Caithness over to the King of Norway. I propose to invite his eldest, William, to become my second squire, but I can’t have three squires, even as the king.’
‘Yes, I understand. Good idea but how does that affect me and my need for a new squire, unless you want me to take de Moravia’s boy on?’
‘No, forgive me but I don’t think would bind the earl closely enough to me. No, I need William de Moravia to replace Simon. The lad is an excellent squire and I am beholden to him, so I can’t just abandon him. Besides I promised him the accolade when he is twenty one so he needs to remain a squire for another four years or so.’
‘So you are offering him to me?’
Robert just nodded and James Douglas smiled.
‘Neat solution, Robert. Will you tell him?’
‘Yes, I owe him that much.’
~#~
Edward Bruce was frustrated by the failure of the constable of Carrickfergus Castle to do the decent thing and surrender. The only progress that he had made was to increase his army of Irish galloglasses and kerns to ten thousand. Then he heard that, at last, the Red Earl was moving to relieve the castle. He left two thousand men to continue the siege and headed south towards the advancing Anglo-Irish army.
His scouts told him that the Red Earl’s army numbered twelve thousand to Bruce’s eight thousand. He sent them out again to try and find a location for an ambush but, when they returned, they had great news. Domnall O’Neill, King of Tyrone, had run into the Anglo-Irish army at Connor in Antrim as they were on their way to join Edward Bruce. The outcome had been inconclusive but Richard de Burgh had been forced to withdrawn to lick his wounds. Then even better news arrived. Felim Ó Conchúir, a local petty king, had led a rebellion in Connacht, where de Burgh had extensive estates, and this, combined with Edward Bruce’s invasion, threatened to destroy his power base, so he had rushed south to Connaught to deal with Felim.
The summer of 1315 had been exceptionally wet and by the autumn of that year it was obvious that the harvest had been poor in the extreme. The east coast had been an exporter of corn and barley to England but that supply had dried up as famine began to spread throughout Ireland. This added to the serious lack of food in England, where the harvest had also been poor, and unrest against King Edward of England began to spread.
The situation wasn’t helped by Edward of Carrick’s campaign down the east coast of Ireland, looting supplies from manors owned by the Anglo-Irish and destroying what they couldn’t carry. Dundalk was captured and burned to the ground and the Irish constable of Greencastle in County Down surrendered to Bruce. The latter then began the systematic destruction of Louth.
As the year wore on much of the countryside became a morass of mud, littered with the emaciated bodies of men, women and children who had starved to death. There was even talk that some had resorted to cannibalism. Edward Bruce managed to scrape together enough supplies for his men, mainly by importing food from Scotland, but even they were on half-rations much of the time. Nevertheless, men flocked to his banner in desperation but many were so malnourished that they had to be rejected as they were incapable of fighting, or even marching anywhere.
By early November Edward Bruce had reached Kells, where one of the most important abbeys in Ireland lay, when he was apprised of the approach of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, with a large Anglo-Irish army. Just before the two armies met, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, arrived from Scotland with another thousand professional soldiers, including twenty knights.
Mortimer had eight thousand troops against the ten thousand that Edward had recruited but Mortimer’s army included over a hundred knights and many more serjeants and archers than Edward could field. Kells was
surrounded by fairly flat countryside and several bogs. Edward chose the area of Girly to draw up his army. With marshy ground in front of him, Mortimer’s cavalry wouldn’t be able to make a direct charge into the ranks of his infantry. Learning from the tactics his brother had used at Bannockburn, he positioned his own horsemen to the rear with orders to charge into the enemy archers as soon as they took up position in advance of the main Anglo-Irish army.
His men weren’t trained to fight in schiltrons: the circular mass of pikemen rather like a hedgehog that the Scots infantry had used to such great effect at Bannockburn, but his foot outnumbered that of the enemy and he was confident that his men could defeat them if only he could negate Mortimer’s horsemen and archers. The best he could do was to organise them into three divisions: one commanded by Domnall O’Neill, King of Tyrone, one by another Irish kinglet and one by himself.
Whilst Edward commanded the massed galloglasses and kerns, Thomas Randolph was given command of the Scottish cavalry. He knew that his problem would be containing the enthusiasm of his footmen until the time came to launch their attack. A premature charge before the archers were routed could lose him the battle.
As Edward had expected, the archers moved forward to weaken his infantry prior to the cavalry charge, however the marshy ground between the two armies prevented them from getting within range, so Roger Mortimer foolishly ordered them to the right flank where the ground appeared to be firmer. However, by doing so they had moved away from their infantry and the easy escape route back into their protective ranks, should they be threatened. As soon as they had taken up their new position, Thomas Randolph led his horsemen in a charge into their ranks.