Robert the Bruce--A Tale of the Guardians

by Jack Whyte

  In the neighbouring village and the surrounding lands, peace and prosperity were all-pervading, the people showing their contentment and ease on market days, when visiting merchants made sure to include the village on their rounds and the stalls were laden with a bewildering array of goods and produce that sold quickly and profitably.

  In all that time, only two matters arose to ruffle the placid surface of life in Writtle. Bruce of Annandale had renewed his oath of fealty to King Edward at the time of his son’s wedding in Westminster, as indeed had the Earl of Carrick himself, and the official proclamation of the elder Bruce’s appointment to the governorship of Carlisle had come soon after that, at the beginning of August. Lord Bruce was gone within days of the announcement, riding at the head of a specially raised contingent of reinforcements for the Carlisle garrison and accompanied by Isabella’s father, with his own escorting bodyguard, who rode with him as far as his new posting before continuing across the border and returning to his home in Mar.

  Then, towards the end of that same month, Sir John de Bigod stopped briefly at Writtle on his way north to Suffolk and Norfolk, carrying messages from the King to the barons there. His visit lasted no more than an hour, sufficient time for him to feed his men and rest their horses, but his tidings caused Bruce some concern, because the royal summons he was carrying was a call to arms, the signal to begin assembling a fresh army to reinforce the faltering, poorly led one already in France. Edward would lead this expedition in person, to settle the question of the mutinous Gascon Duchy once and for all. The message being what it was, Bigod had no compunction in discussing it with Bruce, since it would soon be common knowledge, but it was a sharp reminder to the Scots earl of his recently renewed oath of fealty to Edward and the obligations it entailed. He might be called upon to join the armies, and the thought of leaving Isabella so soon after their wedding distressed him. He did not really believe Edward would call upon him for military service—the following he might levy from his few English holdings would be tiny—but the possibility was there and it nagged at him, though the threat of it grew dimmer as the time passed by without a personal summons.

  The latter part of September and the first two weeks of October brought a flurry of communications, the most important of which was delivered in person by a special courier come all the way from Scotland. John Comyn, the young Lord of Badenoch, son of the Earl of Buchan, the senior Guardian of the new Scots council, arrived unannounced at Bruce’s gates in late September. He came dressed as a royal herald, in a thickly padded, extravagantly decorated tabard bearing the royal arms of Scotland stiffly embroidered in silver and gold wire. He had been charged with conveying a formal summons from Scotland’s King to Robert Bruce VII, living in England. The heavy parchment scroll was encased in a polished cylinder of thick bull hide stamped with the royal crest, and the missive itself was encrusted and festooned with seals and ribbons. Cumbersome to open, it was none the less quickly read, once stripped of its fulsomely convoluted flourishes: Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, was commanded forthwith, upon pain of forfeiture of all he held in Scotland, to conscript all the fighting men at his disposal as aforesaid earl and present them, with himself, for duty in the assembled host of his royal grace, John I, God’s anointed King of Scotland.

  Bruce stood silent after he had read the thing, bowed head-down over the table on which he had spread it with its corners heavily weighted. Across from him, tapping his foot, Comyn waited for a reaction, but Bruce allowed no trace of emotion to show on his face; nor did he raise his eyes to meet the condescending sneer that had not left the Comyn’s face since the moment he arrived. There were others present, member’s of Comyn’s escort and a few of Bruce’s own retainers, but both principals were aware only of each other.

  Beyond the gates, Bruce knew, the men of Comyn’s escort yet sat their horses, eyeing the heavily armed and armoured household guard that Thomas Beg had turned out as soon as the newcomers were seen in the distance. They were less than thirty strong and tired after a long ride, and the Bruce guards outnumbered them even without the vigilant cadre of longbow archers who watched them suspiciously from the tower roof, arrows already nocked.

  Bruce understood all too well the motive underlying this delivery—what had prompted it and what it was meant to achieve. His father would already have received a similar dispatch, in Carlisle, and would respond appropriately, Bruce knew. His own sole cause of hesitation was the contempt he felt towards the messenger, and even that, he knew, had been predesigned, the Comyn selected purely on the grounds of that dislike. His mind made up, he stepped back from the table and looked Comyn straight in the eye.

  “This is … unexpected,” he drawled, careful to keep his voice flat. “It is also impossible. There can be no sane response to such an insult, and well you know it. Now you have done your duty as charged. Return to your King with this answer. I am Earl of Carrick in name only since he himself confiscated my lands and holdings. As such, I hold no sway among my former people and I command no men eligible to fight in Scotland’s armies. The men I command here are all English, duty bound to England’s King as am I myself, by oath, by free will, and by natural loyalty. I swore no such oath to Balliol or Scotland and for that I stand dispossessed.” He flicked a hand dismissively towards the ornate scroll. “This is a nonsense, buffoonery trumped up for the sake of appearance and the needs of the moment. I reject it as invalid and unjust. And that is all my answer. Tell it to your King.”

  “You will write in response, as befitting to the dignity of the King’s grace. Write it. I will await your answer.”

  Bruce had to turn away to conceal the fury that swept over him at the loutish arrogance of the words, more intolerable even than the disdainful look on the speaker’s face, but with his back squarely presented to his would-be tormentor he controlled his anger quickly, gazing at his sheathed sword leaning in a corner formed by the wall and a finely carved, head-high armoire of burnished oak that held his papers and writing materials. He unclenched his fists and turned back.

  “My lord of Comyn,” he said quietly, half turning again to point at the armoire at his back. “Look you at this cupboard. I find it soothing to look at it. It is made of English oak. So, too, is the floor upon which you stand, and every wooden item within sight here.”

  “I care nothing for your furnishings, Bruce.”

  “I know that. I was but pointing out that they are all of English construction. So is everything about you. This house itself is English and the laws that prevail within it and outside it are all English, too. You are in England, man. And you are in my house. What kind of fool would think to command Bruce in his own house, even in Scotland? Do I make myself clear? You have no status here. I need do nothing at your self-presumed command. Nor will I suffer your ill manners or your ill temper herein. You are here on sufferance—my sufferance—and on my goodwill, and both have expired. Your duty here is done and you have my answer to you and to your King. Go you now and deliver it like a faithful messenger.”

  “Christ God! I’ll have—” Comyn’s eyes glared in fury and his hand swept into the gap of the heavy tabard, exposing the briefest glimpse of a dagger hilt there.

  Bruce sprang away, but even as he moved the blade was drawn, though its withdrawal was hampered by the stiff bulk of the tabard itself. He continued his spin, snatched the sword from the corner at his back and pivoted again, whipping the sheathed weapon around towards Comyn. Such was the controlled fury of his two-handed swing that the scabbard dislodged itself and flew across the room with a metallic hiss before the point of Bruce’s long blade came to a sudden halt, then pushed forward to press against the base of Comyn’s throat, the Scots lord still tugging to free his weapon beneath his tabard.

  “On your life. Drop it. Take it out slowly and drop it where you stand.”

  Comyn took a step backward, his face deathly pale, and Bruce pursued him, holding the polished steel sword tip against his neck as he spoke through stiff lips.

&n
bsp; “Step back again, Comyn. You’re close to the wall. After that, you’re like to have a throat full of my blade. Drop it!”

  The concealed hand came free of the tabard and the weapon it had held clanged solidly on the oaken floor. It was a Highland dirk, a heavy, ornate, single-edged weapon with a blade too long to clear its sheath in the confined space beneath the tabard. Bruce did not even glance down at it.

  “An assassin’s blade. A fitting weapon for a Comyn fool. Was that part of your orders from your father? To kill me if I would not come with you?”

  So fast had been the sequence of events that no other person in the room had moved, but now they began to shift, their eyes taking in the fallen weapon even as their minds caught up with what had taken place. There was no doubting the crime that had occurred, even among the Scots of Comyn’s escort. The breach of protocol was flagrant, the violation of the simple but immutable laws of hospitality self-evident.

  Comyn’s face was a study in rage and humiliation, but he could do nothing with the sword tip pressing against his throat, and none of his companions showed the slightest sign of moving to support him. Bruce removed his left hand from the hilt and lowered his sword slowly, keeping his arm extended, the weapon’s point now resting on the floor. His eyes remained fixed on Comyn, narrowed to slits, and not a man there doubted that he would spill blood without a thought if he were provoked further.

  “Now,” he said softly, “curb your ill tongue and get your Highland arse out of my sight and out of my house. Take your servants with you and go with as much dignity as you can muster. But open your mouth again within my hearing and I swear by the living Christ I’ll cleave you where you stand. Go. No! Leave that where it is.”

  Comyn had made a halfhearted move to collect his dirk, but the sudden shout and the sweeping slither of Bruce’s blade across the floor stopped him at once.

  “I’ll go. But this is far from done. One day I will have my due of you, I swear.”

  “So be it, Comyn. But on that day you’ll die. Now, out!”

  Rigidly, John Comyn swung away and stalked to the door, his minions following like sheep. Bruce followed him out through the main hallway and into the courtyard, where Comyn’s horse had already been brought forward.

  “Thomas Beg,” he called. “Our guests are leaving now. Forthwith. See that they do not tarry.”

  He cast a quick glance up to the tower roof, where he found the captain of his archers looking down at him. Bruce nodded at him, managing, in that one swift exchange, to convey the urgency of the need for continued vigilance. The veteran bowman nodded back, then hefted his own bow and looked towards the Scots escort beyond the gates.

  * * *

  Bruce had no doubt of the reception his rejection of Balliol’s summons would receive in Scotland. There had never been any question of that. The simple confiscation of his lands and title, in effect a minatory rap on the knuckles rather than a punitive condemnation, would now become solid forfeiture. He would be legally stripped of rank and holdings and placed among the ranks of outlaws, alienated from royal favour and from any hope of restitution until such time as he prostrated himself before the Scots King and swore abject allegiance, denying the allegiance he had already sworn to Edward Plantagenet. His earldom and his people would be given to someone else, one of the current royal favourites or perhaps even to Comyn of Badenoch, though it would doubtless go to the elderly father rather than to the hotheaded son whom everyone was calling Red John nowadays.

  Bruce knew he would be resentful of such injustice, but another part of him recognized a certain relief that this crisis had been resolved. He had already lost his rents and revenues from Scotland; this latest fiasco merely made the loss final, and he found he could accept that philosophically. His father, he presumed, would have received the same peremptory summons and would have reacted similarly; perhaps more temperately, he suspected, since Lord Bruce lacked the fiery temperament that appeared to have passed directly over him from his father to his son. Notwithstanding that, though, Bruce had no doubt that Balliol’s other messenger would have journeyed home from Carlisle with a similar response to the one carried from Writtle. Lord Bruce was even more closely bound to Edward by ties of duty and responsibility than was his son, and thinking of that, his son resolved to ride northward soon with his wife to visit his father’s new domain in Carlisle. And thus he resolved to waste no more time thinking about the anti-Bruce faction in Scotland.

  Within the week, he received word from his father, warning him to be on guard for the arrival of a Scottish envoy bearing unacceptable demands. The letter, written some two weeks earlier, summarized Lord Bruce’s refusal and rejection—precisely what the younger Bruce had expected it to be. His closing sentence, though, marked what was new between them: I trust you are well, my son, and that my delightful good-daughter Isabella is by now soundly pregnant.

  She was not, but Bruce smiled at the thought that it was not from the lack of trying, and when he told her of his father’s enquiry he laughed aloud at her reaction and permitted her to drag him early to their bed.

  Soon after came a letter from Domhnall of Mar, a single piece of heavy parchment folded and sealed with wax bearing his personal stamp of a Scots thistle and covered in a tiny, meticulous script that Bruce knew was written by a priestly hand, for Domhnall was quite incapable of writing anything that small. The old man was there in the letter, though, his voice unmistakable.

  Robert:

  Ill doings here these past few weeks. That council of which we spoke is now in place. Twelve magnates, Church and nobility from north and south of Forth, to assist the King’s grace in the governing of the realm. The King himself, they say, is in a rage and bent on satisfaction. They say, too, though, that you—and not the council—are the cause of his vexation. You know, I jalouse, that they are those who will not speak to me directly, so I am left to hear their words through the ears and mouths of others. I heard that Comyn went to you straight from the King and that you spurned him; refused the King’s command and abused Comyn forbye, turning him out of your house. I felt no great surprise to hear it. But the upshot of it all is you have been legally proscribed, your lands and goods seized in forfeit. That is not new, I know; has not been so for years. But the Comyn brood have been given full possession of your rights, as a reward for faithful service to the Crown. It makes me sick to have to send the word to you, but there it is. You are landless in Scotland now. But far from friendless.

  Take care of my child, and should you ever need me, I will be here, at your service.

  Mar

  Autumn had come later than usual, but its fruitful bounty stretched so far and so slowly towards winter that it sometimes seemed as though no winter would appear at all that year, and Robert Bruce was more content than he had ever been before, utterly besotted with his young and beautiful wife and blissfully grateful for the frequent and always happily willing urgency with which she responded to his satyr-like demands upon her body and her love, throwing off her clothes with an eagerness to match his own once they had reached the safety of their bedchamber. And sometimes, quite frequently, their pleasure was enhanced when they failed to reach the bedchamber or even to disrobe at all, overtaken by their all-consuming need to enjoy each other. He was twenty-one years old, blissfully wed and without a care in the world, and he assumed, with the natural arrogance of youth, that that condition would last forever.

  And like every man before him, he was wrong.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A BRIEF AND DISTANT WAR

  On a late-November day like no other he could remember, Robert Bruce sat lounging between the embrasures at one corner of the low wall that topped the tower of his house in Writtle. He was facing the sun, which was climbing towards its zenith in the southeast, and one long leg dangled over the rooftops of the outbuildings below him as he basked in the unseasonable warmth and fretted over his own inadequacy. Isabella had awakened that morning with her monthly courses flowing and had plunged
headlong into grief that would brook no comforting from her husband. Four months they had been wed, she had cried; four months of faithful perseverance and wholehearted striving and fervent prayer—and nothing! No quickening; no pregnancy; no sign of ever being blessed with a child to bear her husband’s name. She was a failure as a wife and would never be a mother.

  Bruce had tried to soothe her, but every attempt he made succeeded only in increasing her despair. No matter what he said, the words had barely left his mouth before he knew they were precisely the wrong ones, and eventually, like all men, he came to accept that there were times when the best refuge for a simple man lay in plain flight. And so he had found himself on the tower roof, the only place in the house where he might find solitude.

  He had no idea how long he had been sitting there mulling, but the day was gentle, the sunlight warm and pleasant, and the air about him was silent, not even a skylark’s song breaking the stillness. He pushed himself up from his seat and turned to look behind him, seeing how the low-hanging sun set the late-autumn colours of the woods there in a blaze, and as he stared in admiration a distant flash of light in the open country beyond the trees caught his attention. He straightened, attentive now, and waited for the gleam to be repeated, knowing it had been reflected from metal—from a weapon or a piece of armour or harness. He folded his arms on the top of the parapet in front of him, eyes narrowed as he scanned the distant fields.

  A quarter of an hour passed before he saw a far-off dot that soon resolved itself into three tiny specks. Three mounted men, coming from the southwest, along the road from London and Westminster. He checked an impulse to alert his people below, since there was nothing they could do but hurry to make ready and then wait thereafter; besides, there was nothing to fear from three men, armed though they were. The single flash that had alerted him was now repeated constantly from all three sources, undoubted evidence that the approaching men were not merely armed but armoured, which indicated in turn that their business must be official. Whoever they were, they were wasting no time, approaching now at a gallop.