Robert the Bruce--A Tale of the Guardians

by Jack Whyte

  “Sir William Hazelrig,” he began, in the same flat tone he had used earlier. “I, Henry Percy, Baron of Alnwick and knight of this realm, should have no need to remind you that he who strikes down any loyal soldier of King Edward is guilty of offence against the King himself, an act of treason against the King’s majesty. Here, though, the need is clear, and this reminder therefore takes the form of an official warning. You are a knight in my command and this is not the first time I have been made aware of the tendency you have to be … overzealous, let us say, in your treatment of the men with whose welfare you have been entrusted. I remind you now that they are my men and, by extension of the rules of command, the men of Lord Guillaume de Valence and of the King himself. None of them, I would suggest, would dare to treat you as you so evidently feel free to treat them, and you have set yourself perilously close to the point beyond which training, as you term it, becomes abuse and unlawful assault. Be warned accordingly. And be warned further, in this. Sir Robert Bruce is here in this camp as my guest, by my goodwill and at my invitation. He is also an earl, the Earl of Carrick, a rank that carries far more privilege than yours, as a mere knight bachelor. He has also come among us unarmoured and weaponless, save for a dirk, so I can scarce believe that the scene I found here when I arrived was really as violent as it appeared to be. That is correct, is it not? The appearance was misleading?”

  Hazelrig looked as though he were fighting to swallow powdered glass, and the glare he directed at Bruce was one of smouldering fury, but he had the good sense to nod in agreement, one brief jerk of his head, and mumble, “It was,” through wooden lips.

  “So be it, then. You may return to your quarters, Sir William. Directly, I would suggest.”

  Hazelrig jerked his head again, his face flaming with rage, and turned stiffly and stalked away without a backward glance. The other four knights watched him go until the crowd had swallowed him up, and then Percy looked around the surrounding throng to see if anyone was watching them. None appeared to be, and he finally exhaled and relaxed visibly, the tension flowing out of his shoulders.

  “Bruce,” he said quietly, speaking half over his shoulder, “you might think yourself fortunate we came along when we did. That one is an ill man to cross.”

  Bruce grunted. “I had no thought of crossing him, Harry. But he would have maimed the man.”

  Percy sucked in air with a tutting, sibilant sound. “Aye, he’s done the like before, although he’s never yet been challenged for it. Nor has he ever been so open about it.” He glanced at Bigod and de Bohun, who were listening and watching, and grimaced as though at a bad taste. “Ah well,” he said. “Enough of this. Roast piglet. Evermore delightful than mere piggery. Dinner should be awaiting us by now, so let us see if we can find it.”

  * * *

  “Tell me about Wales, Percy.”

  A good two hours had passed in banter and raillery, and the roast pig was now only a memory, save in the eyes of the servants who had cooked it and were now feasting on the remnants. The others who had shared the feast had all drifted away, leaving Bruce, Percy, and de Bohun alone by the fire. De Bohun was still gnawing at some bones, and Bigod had gone off somewhere, saying he would be back.

  “Wales?” Percy asked, looking at Bruce with a frown. “What about it?”

  “You said earlier that you hated being there. What made it so bad?”

  The frown turned to a scowl as the faint breeze wafted a cloud of smoke from the campfire into Percy’s face. “Bad?” He fanned the smoke away with one hand. “It wasn’t merely bad, Bruce. It was hellish. I was there for almost five months, and they were…” He shook his head, still scowling as he searched for words. “They were the most futile, dangerous, and bowel-loosening months of my life. Never a moment to enjoy anything. Unrelenting tension all the time, waiting to be attacked or shot down from any direction, and no time, ever, to be truly at ease. It was impossible to tell friends from enemies among the locals. At least it was at first, until we learned that there were no friends among them. All of them, we learned to our cost, were enemies. You could trust no one but your own comrades. Everyone else, down to the women and children who waited on you and served you, was as likely as not to stab you in the vitals as soon as you turned your back. The only time I felt confident there was when we finally brought them to battle in Powys, in March, because then it was straightforward—them and us, kill or be killed. We smashed them, but their leader, Madog, escaped and no one has laid eyes on him since. Believe me, Bruce, it was a foul experience, and it will take a miracle or a direct royal command to send Harry Percy back to Wales again. You were fortunate to be busy in Ulster.”

  He twisted to look around him, and Bruce said nothing, content to wait for more. The encampment was finally beginning to grow quieter as close to three hundred men and their mounts, now fed and watered, settled in for the night. Bigod had told him that the veteran Earl of Pembroke, Guillaume de Valence—Gwillie, as he was irreverently known—had barely taken the time to acknowledge his subordinate commanders on his arrival. He had gone straight to his own pavilion, where he had dined alone as he usually did, catered to by his personal retainers. He was known to be disdainful and high-handed at the best of times, though, and his knights and officers accepted his truculence gladly, grateful to be spared the dubious privilege of his recognition or company.

  “I never thought to encounter such hatred in my own country,” Percy went on, still addressing Bruce but sounding now as though he were musing aloud. “I mean, I’m not describing mere dislike, Bruce. Who cares if they like us or not? But this was palpable loathing. Those people detest us with a passion that goes beyond anything I’ve ever encountered. Being among them, being in Wales at all, is … unnerving after a while.”

  Bruce straightened slightly, leaning towards the fire but looking at Percy as he did so, aware of de Bohun listening on his other side. “In sweet Jesu’s name, Harry,” he said quietly, “are you surprised? Truly surprised? Of course they detest you, and with good reason, at least in their own eyes. Think about what you just said—you never thought to encounter such hatred in your own country. Well, you didn’t. You weren’t in your own country—you were in their country. Wales is theirs and always has been. To them, you were an invader. They have been free since before the Romans came to Britain, until Edward decided to add their red dragon to his English Crown. Edward has no care for what the Welsh folk think of him. He wanted Wales and he took it, by provoking the Welsh into rebellion, but the Welsh folk were a mere nuisance, a distraction, between his decision and its achievement. And now that he has the place, he’ll hold it fast. The castles he is building over there will see to that.”

  “By the Christ!” de Bohun had risen to his feet and now he uttered an inchoate sound of pure disgust and hurled the bones angrily into the fire, which collapsed upon itself, throwing an inferno of sparks high into the evening sky. “That’s treasonous talk, Bruce, and I won’t listen to it. Provoking the Welsh into rebellion, in Christ’s name! Since when have the Welsh needed to be provoked? What kind of arrant shit is that? They rose up against the King of their own free will, led by Llewelyn and his troublemaking brood, and since they did, twelve years and more ago, they’ve run amok and sent many a good Englishman to meet his God unready. They’re rebellious whoresons, one and all, and as a King’s man I’d gladly send them all to roast in Hell.”

  He was almost spluttering in his rage, his bearded chin slick with grease from the pig he had been eating and his left hand brandishing the wooden platter that had held his meal. “And what of you? You’re said to be a King’s man, but from your words here I might doubt that. Have you listened to yourself, spewing shit like that? You would be well advised to keep such mouthings muted, Bruce, lest you find yourself and your loyalties taken to task. By the Christ, I’ve never heard such shit from the mouth of any King’s knight. I’ll bid you a good night, sir, for I have no wish to listen further.”

  Bruce had leaned backward, looking u
p mildly at de Bohun from beneath raised brows, his weight braced on straight arms against a second log at his back, and now he smiled and shook his head from side to side. “Humphrey, Humphrey,” he said. “Hotheaded as ever and wrong again to boot. I had no thought of being disloyal to our King, my friend. Nor was I.” He held up a hand quickly before de Bohun could speak again, and as the burly English knight stopped, open-mouthed, he continued. “I merely stated the truth, as I perceive it, about the way the Welsh see things.”

  De Bohun blinked in perplexity. Bruce waved a hand towards the log from which the other had sprung up. “Sit down, man,” he said gently. “Truly, you misread my meaning. I am Edward’s man as surely as you are and as Percy is. I left my homeland to serve him as my liege lord and I owe him more than I can ever repay. How, then, could I be disloyal to him? My duty is to him and my life is his to command. He may not be my King by birth, since I was born in Scotland, but I have chosen to serve him willingly, ahead of Scotland’s King, and you have known me long enough to know I do not deal in lies.” He turned to Percy. “Harry, what say you? Will you not tell the man to sit back down? Or do you, too, think me treasonous?”

  Percy, who had been gazing narrow-eyed at Bruce as he listened, grunted and waved a languid hand at the big, glowering knight standing over them. “Sit down, Humphrey, in God’s name. And remember to whom you’re listening. Bruce is Bruce and ever was. He says ungodly things from time to time, but he’s a heathen Scot when all’s said and done, and none of us has ever had cause to doubt him. Besides, he has the right of it in this. Now be a good fellow and sit down before I strain my neck from looking up at you.”

  De Bohun hesitated, his face a picture of scowling indecision, then slowly lowered himself back to sit on his log. “No matter,” the big man muttered darkly. “Still don’t like hearing things like that. Makes us sound like thieves and brigands and makes the King sound like some foreign tyrant. He’s the King of England, Bruce. That means in England he can do what he likes, and it’s our duty to make sure o’ that.”

  Bruce merely raised his eyebrows, and it was Percy, again, who answered de Bohun’s grumbling. “No one’s contesting that, Humphrey. Bruce was but talking among friends, expressing an opinion with no thought of sedition in his head. Isn’t that so, Bruce?”

  Bruce nodded slowly. “Aye, it’s so.”

  “There, you see?” Percy said, as though explaining something to a backward child. “So now let’s talk of other matters.” He paused then, eyeing Bruce. “Mind you, Humphrey does have a point. I can think of others who might be equally offended at hearing what you said, others less inclined to listen in friendship. We are all King’s men here, but some beyond this fire would take those comments of yours ill, my lord earl. It’s not the kind of thing that should be shouted out aloud. It could be bad for discipline.”

  “By causing other men to think in ways they’re not supposed to see? Aye, you’re right. It could. Mea culpa. I retract my words.” Bruce rose to his feet and went to a nearby pile of fuel where he spent some time selecting a quartet of thick, well-dried logs that he carried to the fire, one by one, and threw onto the embers.

  “That’s a fine way to ruin an expensive doublet,” John Bigod said, approaching the fire just as Bruce was brushing the dust and debris from his clothing. He peered at Bruce’s garment again, then reached out and fingered one of its sleeves, dipping his head and pursing his lips appreciatively before subsiding, with a wry glance at Percy, to sit on one of the logs scattered around the rim of the fire pit. “Gwillie’s in a fine old snit,” he said. “Stopped me as I was passing by his tent and chewed on me for not keeping one or two of our bandits alive. As if they might have had aught to say that was worth hearing.” He looked down at Percy. “Says he wants to talk to you.”

  “Shit. When, now?”

  “No, no. When he sees you. So were I you, I’d keep away from him. There’s nothing he can do now. They’re all dead and there’s an end of it, so all he can do is carp. Seems to think it would have been good for him had he taken back some guilty felons to show to the crowd in Westminster. It never hurts to keep the King happy, he thinks, though he didn’t say it aloud. He’s right, too, though Christ knows it’s growing more difficult from day to day.”

  Bruce’s ears pricked at that. “How so?” he asked. “Is the King distempered?”

  “Don’t even ask,” Bigod answered him, his voice heavy with disgust. “Believe me, you’ve done well to be so far removed from things this past year, beyond the sea, in the Ulster wilderness.” He waved a hand to indicate his two companions. “We, on the other hand, have had to suffer through all of it.”

  Bruce was frowning. “All of what, John?”

  “He means all of the things that have happened to displease the King this past year,” Percy explained. “Rattling like hailstones on a helmet. France set it off, back in May or June of last year—” He hesitated, then asked de Bohun, “When was it, Humphrey? When did Philip of France cut off our good King’s beard?”

  “May nineteenth. I remember it because it was the same day my grandmother died, God rest her soul. But that was ten years ago … when she died, I mean.”

  Percy rolled his eyes and kept on talking to Bruce. “That’s it. May nineteenth last year, it was. Of course, we heard nothing of it until weeks later, but on that day Philip of France had his lawyers declare Edward’s stewardship of Aquitaine invalid because Edward refused to do him homage, or some such nonsense. Anyway, Philip marched his armies into Aquitaine and seized it, and Edward declared war as soon as he heard of it. That put us at war with France and the rebels in Gascony, both at the same time, and that set some of our own barons howling about the costs of it all. Then in July, your Scots parliament stepped on Edward’s toes in earnest when he required a supporting levy of Scots knights and liegemen to accompany us to France. They told him to his face that your King John had no power, even had he willed it, to commit Scots knights to support an English war in France without their authority as parliament.”

  Bruce blinked in astonishment. “They told him that in person? Who dared do that?”

  Percy waved the question away brusquely. “Well, they didn’t tell him, exactly. They sent a letter, much beribboned and festooned with seals. It was sheer defiance, but cloaked with churchly decorum. Edward was livid, believe me. No one dared mention Scotland or Scots within his hearing for months.”

  “Balliol is not my King John, since you mention it,” Bruce murmured. “Never was and never will be, which is the point of my family’s presence here in England. But I did know something of that debate and its upshot. My grandfather said that parliament had behaved correctly. No Scots King has ever had the power to send an army beyond the seas without first consulting with all the magnates of the realm, and none of those would ever go, lacking some massive urgency. The costs are ruinous and the land is far less populous than yours. Scotland simply cannot spare the men. Not surprising, then, that they spoke as they did, but I can see why Edward would be displeased.”

  “Displeased!” Percy made a sound between a snort and a scornful guffaw. “Aye, ‘displeased’ might be a good word for it. About as apt as dismayed would be in describing a well-born maiden who finds herself confronted by a blood-mad pirate bent on tupping her. There was nothing he could do about it, though, short of going to war with Scotland atop all else. And then, as we finally made ready to embark for Gascony with an army in September, the mad Welsh dog Madog made a costly error. Costly for everyone. Someone had told him that the main part of our armies had long since shipped safely away to France and there was nothing but a holding force left behind to raise more Welsh bowmen. So up he jumped in rebellion, mouthing the same tripe: that Welshmen could not be conscripted by an English King—” He broke off, staring at Bruce with a strange expression. “But you must have heard all this, surely, here, if not in Ulster.”

  Bruce nodded. “A bit here, a bit there, and little of it about Wales. De Burgh had his own priorities
to deal with in Ulster, though, and little time to sit around and talk about what might be happening elsewhere. And we heard nothing from the King himself. There were rumours, of course, particularly about the French treachery last year, but I’ve never heard the full litany listed quite like this.”

  “That’s not the full litany. Merely the start of it,” Bigod added. “And none of it grows better in the telling.” He wrinkled his nose. “The Scots in general are a contentious issue. Never at rest, those people, and always arguing. They’re like ants—there’s order there, of a kind, but no mere man can say how it works or what controls it. Now they have a King who shifts about like a flag in an errant wind and whose temper can never be depended on for any length of time, and all of us wonder how he can ever hope to keep control of the savages he is supposed to govern. Which reminds me, d’you know a knight called Douglas? Sir William Douglas?”

  Bruce dipped his head. “Of Douglasdale, aye, I’ve heard tell of him. Never met the man, but from what I hear he’s a wild one, ungovernable, foul-tempered and … What was that word you used? ‘Contentious’? Aye, that would fit what I’ve heard. How do you know him, John?”

  “I don’t.” Bigod’s denial was curt. “But I’ve met him, once, on May Day past. Now there is an arrogant whoreson. I detested him on sight. The King is well aware of the fellow, though. Calls himself William le Hardi, Lord of Douglas, and behaves as though he were King of all Scotland—and England, too, for that matter. Considers himself answerable to no one. He abducted an English woman some years ago—back in eighty-eight it was—a widowed woman of noble birth whom the King himself had dowered. She was living in the north at the time, under the protection of Lord Alan la Zouche, Baron of Ashby, and this lout Douglas laid siege to the baron’s castle for some imagined grievance and captured the woman. Eleanor Something-or-other. Same first name as my wife and the late Queen. Carried her off to his castle, and before a ransom could be arranged, the silly woman married him and refused to be ransomed.”