Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  This time, I would not allow Lancaster or anyone to drive my Brother Perrot from England. Enough of their defiance and intimidation. If it took a battle to claim my rights back, then a battle it would be.

  But I hadn’t the men to defend myself just now if they came upon us. I had to get to York, had to know that Piers was there and safe. York’s walls would keep Lancaster out.

  If Piers’ child insisted on coming into the world out here, now – in this barren, frozen and forgotten land – let it come. I marched back toward the carriage, lifted my hand to pull back the curtain when it parted and Bromtoft’s face appeared.

  “There is time yet,” he announced. “But we have no more than a day, two at most.”

  “A day is all we need.”

  By the time we arrived in York, Margaret’s pains had pitched to an agony that signaled birth was imminent. I had not even made it to my chamber at the King’s Tower, when the constable chased me down in the stairway and pressed a letter into my hands. I descended several steps to stand nearer to the rushlight there. Tentative, I opened it. Blotches of ink and smears marred the letters thereon. The words were crowded, chaotic strokes, written by a hurried hand, but I knew the hand that had formed them well. Piers was in Knaresborough, waiting for word that it was safe to enter York.

  “Shall I send someone for him, my lord?” the constable asked, wringing his hands to warm them. “Or would you prefer to compose a letter? I can call for a clerk, if you wish.”

  “No, no need.” I rolled the letter back up and returned it to him. “Saddle fresh horses and assemble my guard. There is yet daylight left. We ride for Knaresborough.”

  I left that very day to retrieve him myself. I could not wait one hour more for Margaret to expel the infant from her womb. Piers was waiting...

  Oh, that seeing him again, pressing his cheek to mine, could make me feel such joy as it once had. Yet we greeted each other with a shared weariness of spirit – him looking as wide-eyed and frantic as a hare pursued by hounds and me wracked by the haunting fear that they would come, find him, and take him forever from me. I loved him beyond reason, but even that, I knew, might not be enough to save him. To preserve us, as it were.

  There was a time when I believed that eternity existed. No longer. But there are moments when time ceases to move forward, when the world beyond our sight does not exist and when all that troubles us, for awhile, dissolves into nothing. So it was for Piers when we returned to York and they brought forth a fat-cheeked, bright-eyed babe. A log in the hearth hissed and crackled. Piers glanced toward the door to the adjacent chamber, where Margaret was. They would not yet let him enter, saying she was recovering from the birth, but well.

  The midwife held out the bundled infant and smiled. “A girl. As healthy and content as any I have ever brought into the world.”

  Piers stood speechless, his arms dangling useless at his sides as he stared at the squirming lump.

  “A daughter, Piers.” I stepped up to his shoulder and nudged him forward. “She favors her mother. Are you quite sure –”

  “She is mine.” He snatched the babe from the midwife’s arms a little too abruptly, but the child was undisturbed. With surprising care, he cradled her to his chest. Somehow, she had wriggled a hand free of the swaddling. Her tiny fingers flexed, reaching. Piers slid his forefinger into her grasp and her fingers curled tightly around it, her mouth curving into a gummy smile.

  In that moment, I envied him his scrap of immortality, that little bundle gurgling in his arms.

  They named her Joan, after Margaret’s mother. Margaret recovered splendidly and the child thrived. Isabella arrived in time for Margaret’s churching at the Franciscan friary. She was so busy coddling her new grand-niece that Piers and I were afforded some time alone to meander about the winter-bare gardens of the castle.

  “I tell you, Flanders’ people are as dull as its sky is gray,” Piers reflected. “I could hardly remain there, dear Edward. The boredom alone would have killed me. Their court was so backwardly pious that they didn’t even know the rules for dice, let alone have the interest in laying bets on races or cock fights. Their sense of fashion was abominable, their food bland and their language impossible to learn. After two months there, I had wasted away to a sack of bones. In an empty church in Utrecht – or was it Ghent – I found myself talking to the hideous carved figures hanging from the arches. A bloody sure sign it was time to leave. In Gascony the bastards would not allow me to disembark at any of the ports. Ireland lacks both comfort and civility, so that was out of the question. As for the alleged ‘safe conduct’ through France granted to me by King Philip – what good did that do me without a place to go to? So, I came back. To see my child born – and to be with you.” He smoothed a wrinkle on the front of his blue brocaded garnache and hung his head. “I thought it would be as before – that they would have gone on and forgotten. But the queen says the Ordainers have already assembled in London. No doubt they will come for me soon. I should go then, back to Brabant. I’ll take Margaret and the babe with –”

  I grabbed his arm and swung him around to face me. “You will not leave England. Never again.”

  “But Edward, how can I stay? God knows it will ravage my heart to go from you again, but –”

  “I said ‘no’! Now cease with this gloom. They will cow neither you nor me again. The writs have already been written. Soon, it will be proclaimed: You are recalled, your lands returned. It is done.”

  He shrugged off my hand, shaking his head slowly. “You would willingly invite their wrath?”

  “What I will not willingly do is give you up again. Nor will I allow them to take command of my kingdom while I yet live.”

  “Ah, the kingdom, the kingdom. Yes, yes.” Piers stooped and plucked up a long-dead branch. He crumpled its brown leaves in the cup of his palm with his fingertips and scattered the flakes over the muddy ground around him as he began back toward the castle. “Well, how to win your kingdom back, then, eh? Piss on the Lords Ordainers. If you have the people behind you, Edward, you have all the army you need.”

  I far from had the people behind me now. As it was, I feared to so much as go out among them, let alone ask for their help. Why could they not love me as they loved Isabella, even with her French blood?

  As I caught up with him, he halted momentarily and rubbed at his neck. “What an ache I have in my bones.”

  I pulled my hand from my glove and touched his cheek. “You’re burning.”

  “Phhh... your fingers are frozen. Let us idle before the fire and have them bring wine by the tun. Call upon that lute player of yours. What is his name?”

  “Robin Hobson... or Dobson, maybe. Does it matter? He comes when I call.”

  “I fancy his pluck. A far better musician than mine – although I haven’t his service anymore. I haven’t anything.”

  I slung an arm about his shoulder. “You have me, Brother Perrot. Is that not enough?” As I leaned upon him, we strolled through the door and into the great hall to escape a blasting wind that threatened a string of rainy days on its tail.

  The door creaked on its hinges and I rolled over, expecting to see my page scuttle in to tend to the fire one last time.

  Instead, Isabella stood at my door, her pale hair coiled and set in a net woven with pearls. Even wearing her nightclothes, she looked as fresh and vibrant as a field rose in full bloom. She shut the door behind her and moved toward the bed, a nimbus of moonlight illuminating her nymph-like form.

  I struggled to pull my head higher onto the pillows. “What brings you at this hour, my queen?”

  Her hands adroitly freed her hair of nets and pins, so that a long braided rope of gold tumbled down her back. She pulled her fingers languidly through the plait to separate the strands. “You have heard that the Lords Ordainers met in London?”

  “And did they call for my head?”

  “Lord Pembroke dissuaded them from outright confrontation, but” – she glanced away, unwilling to
meet my eyes – “there are rumors that Lancaster will come after Lord Gaveston.”

  “Which is why we are here and not there.” Thunder pounded behind my eyeballs. I swung my feet over the edge of the canopied bed. Too little energy to do more, I propped my elbows upon my knees and cradled my head in my hands. The brush of her footsteps made me look up.

  She knelt and laid her head in my lap. “You’ve been so distraught of late. I’ve worried for you.”

  “Yes, well, there is much to worry over. Piers has been excommunicated. And if it’s not enough that they’ve condemned him to burn in purgatory eternally, they want to punish him in this life.” Something compelled me to touch her hair. Seldom had I seen it hang loose to fan out over her back and shoulders in a veil of shimmering gold. It flowed like silk beneath my fingertips. As my fingers grazed her cheek, I felt her skin flush with fire. “But they’ll do more than send him away or toss him into a dungeon to rot. No, those punishments would not be permanent enough.”

  One of her hands curled around my calf. She turned her head to look up at me, resting her small, oval chin upon my knee. “You forgive him so much, too much sometimes.”

  I stood, resting a hand upon the bed until the blood steadied in my head, and went to the table, where Jankin had left a pitcher of water. Ignoring the goblet beside it, I drank until I had emptied half of it, then leaned heavily with both hands upon the table.

  “I would do anything for him. Even give my life for him.” I said it not so much to her, but as a truth I could not hide. After the roiling haze had cleared from my thoughts, I looked at her, sitting upon the floor with her feet tucked beneath her.

  She rose and took both my hands in hers. “Lancaster and his lords are wrong in what they do. Wrong by the laws of both man and God for rearing up against their liege.”

  Soon, if not already, Lancaster would be marching northward. And still I had no army. Only York’s garrison. It would only take one traitor among them to throw open the gates and the enemy would be upon us. My spies had already uncovered some of Lancaster’s sympathizers. Yesterday, three were hung in the market square. Today, two more.

  “But without an army to oppose him,” I said, “what could you or I ever do to exact a fitting revenge?”

  Her mouth, plump and cherry red, twisted in thought. “Live in harmony. Bliss, even. I can bear you son after son – tall and strong, like you.”

  “Not like my father, I pray. I am not like him at all. I trust you’ve figured that out by now?” I drew my hands away. Sitting at the table, I leaned my head upon my fist. “I almost dread awakening every day, for it is one more day I must face the impossible. Tomorrow is just another bottomless pit in which to tumble.”

  She came to stand before me, arms crossed over her breasts. Moonlight etched a halo of silver above her. Her fingers slid between her garment and the skin at her shoulders. She peeled her dark blue robe down to her waist to reveal a thin chemise beneath. A firm bosom pressed against the sheer, white cloth. The frightened child that once resembled a reed was now a fully endowed woman. She lowered her linen chemise and stepped free, leaving her clothing in a rumpled heap on the floor to stand naked before me.

  She extended her hand. “I will give you a son, Edward. A great son. A king among kings to conquer them all.”

  How do infants do battle, good wife? With wooden spoons? Cry until my enemies go mad with deafness? At least when I am old, I can send my sons to fight in Scotland in my stead.

  She pulled me up. Her hands, though, they trembled.

  “One condition,” I told her, as she leaned back upon the downy bed that swallowed her smallness. “Tell your meddling father to leave Scotland to me and cease his courting of the Bruce. Tell him if he has any favor with the Pope to use it against the Bruce and relent of Piers.

  “And tell him,” I added, climbing upon the bed, “that you are content now and too enamored of your husband to write to him as often anymore.”

  I knelt between her legs and dropped my hose only as far as would be needed. Sensing a pressure in my loins, I cupped a hand beneath my stones and, to my surprise, discovered the first stirrings of arousal.

  Like the effigy on a stone tomb, she stared unblinking up at the beams of the ceiling. I looked down on her ivory face, half shadowed, and lowered my body onto hers. Determined to have this over with, I drove between her legs several times, seeking entry, my organ swelling rapidly. Her breaths became quicker, shallower. But she was as tight as a goatskin drum. Her legs drew together in resistance and with each prod the blood rushed hotter to my loins. If she did not submit soon, I would waste my valuable seed all over the sheets. As I reached down to slip my fingers into her folds and guide myself into her, she dug her elbows into the mattress and scrambled backward. Her head thunked against the headboard, trapping her. Damn her.

  I hauled her back down toward me. Clamping her jaw in one of my hands, I craned her face toward mine. “Do I so revile you that you will not have me – me, your husband?”

  “No, no.” She shook her head, the glint of a tear in her eye. “It’s only that... I have heard that it hurts – the first time.”

  “That is what they tell young girls to keep them virgins,” I said, half-laughing at her childish fears. So, she had thought herself prepared for this moment and when it was upon her, she became the diffident little girl again. Time to make a woman of her. Put a child in her and give her a purpose. Create my own perpetuity.

  “Then...” – she dabbed at the corner of her eye with a fingertip, sniffling – “there is no pain?”

  “If there is, it will pass quickly.” I let go of her jaw, drew a finger down her neck, further down until I lightly circled the areola of her breast. The nipple tautened. I put my mouth to it, my tongue lapping at the firm nub, my teeth nipping soft flesh. She turned her head away and exhaled. Once more, she drew her legs apart, though not wide. My hand wandered to her hips, the joining of her thighs, the downy pile of hair modestly concealing her maidenhead. “Besides, if there was no pleasure in coupling, why would it be such a temptation to so many?”

  She flinched as I penetrated her. Slowly, I moved deeper, then withdrew and waited before thrusting again. Her eyes closed, she bit at her lip so hard I expected blood to stream from her mouth. My thrusts quickened, her constriction hastening my rhythm. As I did my work, she lay beneath me like a rock at the bottom of the ocean.

  The wave of my release was so swift and disappointing, that I rolled onto my back and tied the cord of my hose before the last of my fluids had been expelled. Some time passed before I noticed that Isabella was shivering.

  “You’re cold,” I said.

  “I’m unclothed,” she mumbled, pulling the blanket over her body. Her arms and hands disappeared beneath the covers and, legs clamped tight, she turned over onto her side, away from me.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked, trying to show some concern.

  She responded with an unconvincing shake of her head.

  “Did you hate it so much then – with me?”

  Shoulders hunched forward, she sighed. Her words, although muffled in the pillow, cut to my soul. “Perhaps if you were not so ready to assume everyone hated you, Edward, it would not be so. Our child will love you, if you let him. I could.”

  Could you truly love me, Isabella my queen, even as I am? Could anyone?

  I rolled over, far enough away that our backs did not touch. The moon had barely moved from its position as it stabbed its shaft through the glazed window to fall upon the same spot where she had stood in disinclined nakedness, offering her body as fulfillment of her duty. Our act had consumed little time. Pray she was fertile and we would not have to repeat it often.

  The next evening, not having seen Piers about all day, I stopped at his bedchamber.

  “Wait here, Jankin.” I took the lantern from him, knocked once and hearing no answer nudged the door open. It was dark within. It stank so strongly that I drew back a moment before forging ahead.

&nb
sp; “Brother Perrot?”

  Hearing no reply at first, I entered the chamber and raised the lantern to throw light across the room. Normally, Piers was obsessively orderly, but there were clothes strewn about, plates of half-eaten food on the floor and an untouched goblet of wine on the bedside table.

  “Here.”

  I turned toward the sound of a thin, leaking voice. Piers was slumped in a chair, his winter cloak still wrapped about him. He shivered. I stepped closer. His hair was soaked. I swept aside some articles of clothing and put the lantern on top of the Spanish chest I had given him as a gift many years ago. He had taken it everywhere with him. To Brabant, even.

  “You are ill.” I wiped his face with the nearest clean-looking garment I could find.

  A long, thin sigh escaped from his barely moving lips. “Yes, I think I am. Maybe this will be the death of me and all your troubles will vanish the moment they turn up the first shovel-full of earth for my grave.”

  I did not leave his side for five days, until he was recovered. But even worse than watching Piers suffer was the news that Lancaster was at last heading north. Time was running out. What escape was there for us now? What hope?

  Humbled by despair, I wrote to my enemy: Robert the Bruce.

  Ch. 24

  Robert the Bruce – Forest of Selkirk, 1312

  England was in upheaval. Whether fate or fortune, we took full advantage of it.

  The Northumbrians, who were short of defenses and shorter yet of funds, agreed to a truce to last the winter. No sooner had it expired, than we attacked Norham. They hastily and wisely paid another indemnity. Reparations for reprieve, perhaps, but little difference to what had been done to us in the past. Not only could I now feed my men, but I could pay them as well.