by Jack Whyte
Rob felt the change in his horse’s gait as it stepped onto the yielding surface of the pebbled beach, and he tightened his reins, remaining slightly behind Nicol until his uncle reined in and slid from his mount’s back, stepping forward with hands outstretched to welcome his guests, the elder of whom was now smiling broadly. By the time the boy dismounted and followed him, their greetings had been made and Nicol was waiting for him, half turned to him with a beckoning arm. The tall man stood glowering down at him.
“Angus, may I present my great-nephew Robert de Brus. He is firstborn son to my niece Marjorie, whom you know well, and he has been spending time with me these past few months. Robert, this is Angus Mohr MacDonald, Lord of Islay, and beside him is Lachlan MacRuaridh of Garmoran, goodman to Lord Angus’s daughter Morag.”
Both men nodded soberly at the boy, and Lord Angus’s eyebrow twitched. “You would be what,” he drawled, “the seventh Robert de Brus?”
Rob nodded, too young to be surprised by such knowledge in a foreign potentate. “Aye, sir,” he said. “My father is the sixth of our name.”
“As his father is the fifth. Aye, I know the man. Your grandsire, I mean. But you are born here in Scotland, are you not?”
“Aye, sir. In Turnberry.”
“Aye, indeed. And not in England. Your father was born in England, if I remember rightly. In Writtle, is that not so?”
Rob had no idea if that were so or no, but he knew that his grandfather held lands at Writtle in Essex, and so he merely nodded, noncommittally. The Highland chief, watching the boy keenly, almost smiled, then shifted his gaze to Nicol, who had been watching the interplay.
“So, Nicol MacDuncan, are we to stay here all day or are you to take us to Turnberry to meet this King of Scots?”
“We are for Turnberry. We can leave as soon as you are ready.”
The third horse scrambled ashore at that moment and was led to join the others while the last one aboard was moved into place to be fitted with the sling, and the three men began discussing other things that were of no interest to Rob. Knowing they had lost awareness of him, he looked about him curiously, and his eyes were drawn back to the boy holding the horses nearby. He was unsurprised to find the other gazing back at him levelly, his face expressionless. Rob glanced at his uncle, then, leading his mount, walked over to where the stranger stood clutching the reins of the newly landed horses.
“Hello,” he said when he was close enough to be heard.
The other boy simply stared at Rob, his eyes empty of all emotion, then turned and led the horses away. He did not go far, though, barely more than a score of paces, before he stopped again and stood staring down at the pebbles at his feet. Rob watched him, unsure whether to ignore his bad manners and follow him or to take offence, turn his own back and walk away, too, leaving the lout to curdle in his own ungraciousness. He decided to follow and see what happened, telling himself he had nothing better to do. He drew level with the other boy again and found himself greeted with that same empty look, but this time the other’s eyes slid away over Rob’s shoulder towards the men talking behind them, and he spoke without moving his lips or looking again at Rob.
“I’m no’ supposed to talk to ye,” he said in Scots. “I havena been permitted.”
Rob felt his eyebrows rise. “Permitted?” he said. “Ye mean ye’re no’ allowed to talk?”
The other boy continued to avoid his eyes, watching the distant trio of men. “No, I’m supposed to be workin’. And until they tell me to stop I canna do anything but work.”
“Are ye some kind o’ slave, then? A bonded servant?”
A smile, remote and bitter, flickered over the other boy’s face. “No, but I might be better off as either one. I’m but my father’s son. And my task is to see to his wishes at all times, until he gies me leave to stop.”
“And who is your father, some kind of king? A tyrant?”
The half smile flickered again. “Sometimes he is. But at other times he’s well enough. That’s him, talking to the man you came wi’.”
“Angus Mohr? That’s your father?”
“Aye. Angus the Old since I was born. I’m called Angus Og—Angus the Young. Who are you?”
“Rob Bruce.”
The other boy turned to look at Rob, his eyes suddenly full of curiosity, and he spoke unthinkingly in Gaelic. “Bruce? You mean like the Englishman who married into Carrick?”
“The Earl of Carrick, you mean,” Rob responded in the same tongue. “Aye. He’s my father. The countess is my mother, and that’s where we’re going. To Turnberry Castle. That’s where I live.”
Angus Og was wide-eyed. “You speak the Gaelic?”
Rob grinned. “I should. I was born here. Will you be coming to Turnberry with us?”
Angus Og’s glance flitted from Rob to his father, whose back was to them. “I … I don’t think so. I’ll have to stay here with the boat.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I have no choice. I’m in training.”
“For what?”
The look that drew was almost pitying. “For life…”
“We’re all at that. Would you like to come? To Turnberry? D’you want to?”
“Aye, of course I’d like to come, but I know better than to ask.”
“Then don’t. I’ll ask for you, and I’ll ask my uncle Nicol, not your father. You’re about the same age as me and there’s nobody else around who’s my age, and besides, tomorrow’s my birthday. Nicol will say yes, I know, and your father will be hard put to say no after that.”
“No,” the other said quickly. “Don’t ask my da. He’d never let me. Tell your uncle to ask Ewan, the captain, over there by the water’s edge—the big fellow in the red jerkin. I’m ship’s boy in his crew, but he’ll let me go with you.”
“Good, then I’ll go and ask.” He hesitated. “Ship’s boy, you say. Can you ride?”
“Aye, but only a pony, smaller than these.” He indicated the horses he was holding. “Nothing near as big as that thing of yours.”
Rob grinned and patted his own horse’s neck. It was a strong and well-built gelded bay, a biscuit-coloured crossbreed almost as large again as the stocky garron that had foaled it. “This fellow’s not so big,” he said. “You should see the horses the English knights use. Now those are big. Destriers, they call them. Giant warhorses, twice as big as this and more than three times the weight.”
“Get away!” the young Islesman said.
“No, I swear by the Holy Virgin, it’s the truth.”
His listener was unconvinced. “No horse could be that big. Have you seen one? It could be an English lie, to keep us all in awe.”
“They’re real—I’ve seen some. Two years ago, when we visited Lord Bruce in Lochmaben. Four English knights rode in while we were there, and they were mounted on destriers.”
Now Angus Og frowned in puzzlement. “Lord Bruce? You call your da Lord Bruce?”
“No, I told you, my father is the Earl of Carrick. Lord Bruce is his father, my grandsire.” Only then did it occur to him that he never thought of his grandfather by any other name than Lord Bruce, but he saw nothing strange in that. “He lives in Lochmaben,” he went on. “D’you know it? It’s a fortress near the border with England.”
Angus squinted into the sun, tilting his head. “What age will you be tomorrow?”
“Ten.”
“I’m eleven, nearly twelve. Your uncle would let me come, think you?”
Rob smiled. “Aye, he would, and will. But will your Captain Ewan? Wait here.”
Less than half an hour later the two boys, double-mounted on Rob’s big bay, sat off to one side as the rest of their party left the beach and struck out along the coast for Turnberry Castle. They would be there by mid-afternoon, and the talking among adults would begin almost as soon as they arrived, depending on who was there to meet them. Rob knew his mother’s time would be completely consumed by her duties as hostess and castellan, so she would have no time for
him, but she would be happy to see him home and he knew she would make his new friend feel welcome. What excited him most, though, was that the affairs of the adults would leave him with plenty of time to show Angus everything he wanted him to see in and around the castle.
They waited for the mounted members of the party to pass by, Angus Mohr and his good-son MacRuaridh of Garmoran riding with Nicol, and two other men whom Angus Og named to Rob as MacDonald chieftains following close behind, and then Rob kicked his stocky bay forward to ride behind them and ahead of the score of heavily armed clansmen who formed Angus Mohr’s guard. Turnberry lay less than five miles to the north, and the summer afternoon was perfect.
CHAPTER THREE
THE KINGS
From where she stood on the roof of the castle keep, Marjorie of Carrick could clearly see the royal party approaching from the northeast, the late-afternoon sunlight glinting off metal and reflecting back at her in shimmering waves of colour and movement. They were still too far away for her to make out individuals, but she had no doubt that her husband was among them, riding at the head with the two kings.
“They’ll be here within the hour,” she said quietly.
Beside her, Murdo cleared his throat. “There’s more o’ them than we thought.”
“Aye, it looks that way, though ye’ve better eyes than me if ye can count them frae here. Still, we’ll be able to take all of them. Ye’ve done well, Murdo.”
“I hope so. It’s lucky we were to have thae big tents—we’d hae been hard put to find room for them a’. An’ thanks be to God the big fellow down there’s the only one likely to need furnishings for his place. I think we can be sure the other three have their own comforts wi’ them.” He nodded to where a number of men were carrying basic furnishings from the castle into the pavilion that would house Angus Mohr of Islay for the next few days, and his mistress turned with him to look down at the four massive tents that now dominated the broad, grassy plain in front of the castle gates.
Angus Mohr’s personal standard had been anchored firmly in front of his temporary abode where no one could fail to see it: a white banner showing a black galley under sail, suspended from a cross-brace and mounted upon a high pole. The Islesman had chosen the pavilion himself on his arrival, indicating bluntly, after a quick glance around him, that this one would be his, and it seemed to the countess that there was more than a little subtlety involved in the choice. With no advantage to be gained from choosing first among four seemingly equal pavilions, Angus faced no possibility of being asked to move later, in order to give precedence to someone else. But two of the pavilions were, of necessity, closer to the castle and its gates. In choosing the pavilion farthest from the entrance, Angus Mohr had made sure that the two kings would take the rear two, leaving Richard de Burgh in the one to Angus’s left as they walked from the castle to the pavilions. And rank, as Angus Mohr well knew, declined from right to left in matters of protocol.
Marjorie smiled as she saw Angus Mohr himself walking with her uncle Nicol, both of them strolling head down, their hands clasped behind them, and she wondered what they were discussing; wondered, too, if she were giving the Lord of Islay too much credit for his suspected subtlety.
There was no sign of the two boys, she noted, for young Robert had taken his new friend to explore the seaside caves in the high cliffs a mile to the north. Her eyes moved onward, scanning the space beyond the men and taking in the arrangements that had been made there, where a formally outlined military encampment, complete with horse lines, cooking pits, and piles of fuel, now stretched along the gently sloping meadow that led down to the river about a quarter of a mile away from where she stood, just before the riverbed began its final curl westward towards the sea.
Murdo and his crew of workmen had achieved a miracle within the day and a half that had elapsed since he’d told her of finding her father’s forgotten trove in the oar bothy. The enormous tents had been carried outside and spread out over the stout, wide frames on the beaches where the fishermen dried and repaired their nets, then left to air in the July sun while the men set about making sense of the mountainous coils of rope—more than fifty of them in varying lengths and thicknesses—and the bound stacks of sturdy poles that had been stored with them, some of them more like tree trunks than poles, six paces long and a foot thick at the base. It was a daunting task, and the men might never have succeeded in making sense of the profusion at all had Murdo not had the presence of mind to invite the oldest man in the Turnberry community to come and offer his guidance. Thorgard One-Arm, as he was called, had come to Arran from Norway seven decades earlier as a babe in arms, and in his youth had worked in Turnberry as a sailmaker for Earl Niall. He had also been the man responsible for turning the massive, carefully stored sails into tents almost forty years earlier. Too old now to share in the work himself, Thorgard was puffed up with renewed pride to find his skills and knowledge in demand again. Under his super-vision the masses of poles and supports were quickly sorted into the correct order, and soon the first postholes were being dug.
Watching the pavilions being hauled laboriously into place by teams of sweating, cursing men, old Thorgard had sniffed disapprovingly at their stained condition and suggested that they should be treated with a coat of weatherproofing. And though far from happy with the delay, Murdo, a pragmatist above all else, had set his people to yet another task to which they were unaccustomed: preparing a mixture of diluted glue and whitewash as dictated by the old sailmaker, and brushing it over the coarse woollen fabric of the tents. It had been almost dark by the time the last of the peaked and now sodden pavilion roofs was hauled into place atop its poles, but when the morning sun rose the following day, its beams reflected warmly from the four magnificent pavilions in the meadow beyond the castle gates.
“Right,” Marjorie murmured, more to herself than to her factor, “there doesna seem much else we could do. The pavilions are ready and everything that’s to go in them will come wi’ our visitors. The kitchens are stocked, the cooks are set to go, and the hall’s set, wi’ the tables in place and the floor freshly rushed. From now on, whatever happens will be out o’ our hands. Our lives are going to be dictated for the next while by kings and bishops.”
She met Murdo’s eye when he turned to look at her curiously. Murdo, she knew, had no interest in the protocols governing visiting dignitaries. To him, kings were merely men of a different rank, and left to his own devices, he would, in his dour Scots manner, treat them as almost equals. That thought brought a tic of a smile to her lips as she envisioned Edward Plantagenet’s reaction to being spoken to bluntly by her factor. Alexander, a Scot himself, might deal easily enough with it, accustomed as he was to the Scots lack of deference, but Edward’s majesty would be severely challenged were he addressed truculently by a menial.
“Ye’d better go down and assemble the folk, Murdo. Make sure they’re clean and presentable to welcome our guests, then line them up in front o’ the gates. I’ll go and tidy mysel’ up while ye’re at that, and then I’ll come down and wait wi’ ye.”
“Aye…” Murdo’s hesitation was almost unnoticeable. “Angus Mohr has two pipers wi’ him. D’ye think it might be fitting to hae them playin’ as the King arrives?”
Marjorie of Carrick grinned mischievously. “A Gaelic welcome for the King of Scots? And why no’? It was Alexander’s idea to invite Angus Mohr to the mainland, and I know he likes the sound o’ the pipes, for I’ve heard them played in his own great hall in Dunfermline. So be it the pipers are willing, then let them blow away. But be sure ye ask them properly. We canna let them think we expect it o’ them. It must be their choice.”
As soon as Murdo had hurried away she turned back towards the approaching cavalcade and narrowed her eyes. The party was close enough by then that she could see the flashing colours carried by the standard-bearers, and the distant sound of a trumpet indicated that the approaching party considered themselves close enough to Turnberry to be heard. She became aware
of the size of the group and noted its composition, with kings and armoured courtiers in the forefront, bishops and priests in upholstered carriages behind them, and the mounted men-at-arms of the King’s Guard preceding the motley array of baggage carts and wagons and extra horses that brought up the rear.
She drew in a sharp breath. Time was flying past her. She turned away and hurried down the narrow spiral staircase to her own quarters in the corner tower. Quickly as she moved, though, she was unable to stop her mind from pursuing a perplexing train of thought.
Edward Plantagenet had introduced an entirely new element into the situation she had been thinking about for weeks. The two original principals, King Alexander and Angus Mohr, might have been governable enough, sufficiently intent upon their own interests to overcome any strangeness between them. But the unforeseen addition of the English King had added a very different element. Edward spoke no Gaelic. Angus Mohr spoke neither English nor French. Every word that passed between them, then, would have to be translated by an interpreter. Her own husband spoke but little Gaelic, having come to learn the language as an adult and finding that it was not an easy tongue to master. Thus Robert might speak to either King easily, and with difficulty to Angus Mohr. Angus Mohr, in his turn, would speak easily with Alexander, and Alexander effortlessly to his brother-in-law Edward. But the gulf between the Gaelic Lord of Islay and the King of England might be unbridgeable, since neither one knew the other at all, engendering a fundamental lack of trust aggravated by Angus Mohr’s well-known disdain for all things English. She wondered if the Ulster earl spoke Gaelic—it seemed likely that he might, and if he did, she thought, he might serve as a translator between the two.