by Robert Low
If I remain, you cannot get started.
In the end, it did not matter which black heart had done it, for he knew that his time was done and that all he had fought and bled for – aye, and all the bodies he had stepped over, on both sides, to achieve what he did – was come to nothing.
Freedom was as far from the Kingdom as it now was from himself and he knelt in the sodden dark and felt the black years of it leak from him in a series of hacking sobs, a brief collapse into pity for poor Will Wallace, abandoned and alone and facing sure death.
Just as quickly, he reeled back from it. A last few sobs, a snort of snot into the back of his throat and he hoiked out his fear and loss in a disdainful spit. That life was gone and what was broken could not be mended. All he could do now was die well, so as to leave some flame for others to follow.
He knew they would – and if they had to do it over his body, then it was no more than he had done over others. It does not matter if I fall as long as someone else picks up my sword and keeps fighting.
He climbed unsteadily to his feet, though there was no-one to see. Better to die standing than live on your knees.
London
The Vigil of St Bartholomew, August, 1305
The great pillared aisles sweated with those craning to see, genuinely curious even if many had only come because the King wished it. They watched him, sitting in state, in ermine and gold circlet, one hand stroking his curled silver beard, the drooping eye like a sly, winsome invite to the giant who stood alone and overloaded with chains on the top step of Westminster.
The great and the good, crusted with finery and stiff in their curule chairs, stared back at Wallace with fish eyes while le Blound, Mayor of London, cleared his throat and read the indictment, uncurling the considerable roll of it as he did so.
‘… trial at Westminster before Johannes de Segrave, P. Maluree, R. de Sandwich, Johannes de Bakewell, and Jean le Blound, Mayor of the Royal City of London, on the vigil of St Bartholomew, in the thirty-third year of the reign of King Edward, son of Henry …’
Bruce watched Segrave, who had brought Wallace to London in an overloading of chains and would take away the pieces of him afterwards – and be handed a purse of silver for his expenses.
Bruce wondered if there were thirty pieces in it, which would be in keeping with the mummery of the affair – he looked at the figure on the steps, sagging with exhaustion, dripping with shackles and crowned with a wreath. Oak, to signify that he was king of brigands and had dared try and usurp the rule of Scotland from King Edward.
A poor decision, he thought to himself. Edward has made a mistake and one which will rebound on me, too, for that oak wreath gave Will the air of Christ himself, bound and scourged and crowned with thorns – and this day might be dedicated to St Bartholomew, but it was also the Feast of St Longinus, the defiant soldier who had thrust a spear into Christ’s side for mercy and was later martyred as a Christian.
A Christ-like Wallace did not bode well and Bruce, even as he marvelled at the strength still left in Will, frowned at the thought of him as a martyr in the name of King John Balliol.
Treason, murder, robbery, incendiarism, the felonious slaying of William de Heselrig, Sheriff of Lanark … the long litany of it rolled on, interrupted only once, when Will raised the bruise of his face.
‘Treason?’ he thundered back, taking everyone by surprise with the power in his voice. ‘I never swore to you, Longshanks. John Balliol is my king. Treason there never was.’
Mayhap – the wee legals could argue the finer points of it until Judgement Day. Yet there is enough, Bruce thought, in all the rest.
‘… and after this, joining to himself as great a number of armed men as he could, he attacked the houses, towns and castles of that land, and caused his writs to run through the whole of Scotland as if they were the edicts of the overlord of that land … and he invaded the Kingdom of England and especially the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, and all whom he found there loyal to the King of England he feloniously slew in different ways … and he spared no-one who spoke the English tongue, but slew all in ways too terrible to be imagined, old and young, brides and widows, babes and their mothers …’
Edward, brooding as a raven waiting for a sheep to die, listened to the meticulous detail of it all, thinking only of the one felony which remained unmentioned and never would be, though the single eye of that ruby Apostle glinted balefully in front of the King every day.
By God’s Holy Arse, this Wallace had contrived to reach out from the north and rob him in his own treasury – the sly, ingenuous term ‘brought unease to the King’ was a shouted laugh of understatement.
Wallace said nothing more in answer to any of the charges, which brought a deal of cold satisfaction to Edward. Did he think a legal wriggling off the hook of treason would save him?
Bruce sat and looked at the stone face of Wallace, his thought racing like wild horses. He once vowed to march on London, Bruce recalled, so this was a sour jest by God on the man – the best view of Edward’s capital, elevated above all of London, was hanging where the crows circle the gate spikes.
‘So resolved that the above-mentioned William Wallace should be dragged from the Palace of Westminster to the Tower of London and from the Tower of London and thus through the middle of the city to the Elms at Smoothfield and as a punishment for the robberies, murders, and felonies which he has committed should there be hung and afterwards decollated. And because he had been outlawed and had not been afterwards restored to the King’s peace he should be beheaded. And afterwards as a punishment for the great wickedness which he had practised towards God and His holy church by burning churches, vessels and reliquaries, his heart, liver, lungs, and all internal organs should be thrown into the fire and burned …’
Segrave read the verdict loudly, smugly, revelling in his moment in the light, with his king approving at his back and his son, Stephen, admiring on one side. Bruce, even though he had been expecting such a verdict, winced at little, so that Monthermer glanced sideways, feeling the jerk.
‘Harsh,’ he murmured, ‘but fair enough. This should set the seal on matters. There will be no rebellion in the north again and that land might raise some sensible chief to advise the governor, Sir John de Brittany. Good – now that this Passion Play is ended, we can go and find some wine.’
Bruce offered the man a smile. He liked Monthermer – counted him a friend – but he was Edward’s man, which tie limited how far Bruce’s friendship went.
‘I will join you presently,’ he said, received a shrug and a stare in response as he went out in the throng, nodding here and there, acknowledging a bow, feeling his hooded face numbed in a fixed smile.
He thought to go alone, just another hooded figure in a crowd following the sorry mess that was Wallace dragged on an oxhide by four horses all the way to Smoothfield, through the gawpers who had gathered to jeer and those who just wanted to get out of the path of it, not realizing who was dying in Cow Lane.
Even those ones fell in with the mob, for Wallace was now a grim-faced freak that they wanted to hear scream, would applaud like an audience at a performance of mummers. It was the last look Wallace would get of his fellow man, a thousand black-rotted mouths spitting and jeering, shrieking at the hangman to get to the next act, the handful of privates held high and dripping.
Bruce, elbowed sideways and jostled, scowled at the man next to him and the man disappeared, replaced by Kirkpatrick.
‘Ye are at risk in all this,’ he said and Bruce, his thoughts fevered, realized he was easy prey for a secret blade in the crowd. He did not care, felt that it did not matter much and his head echoed with Wallace’s words at Happrew, delivered with the lopsided cynical grin, as if he had known all along how matters would turn out.
If I remain, you cannot get started.
Kirkpatrick saw it in Bruce’s eyes as the executioners began their work on their victim, turning God’s brilliant creation into offal
, unwrapping the secret, the mystery whose viewing changed everyone who saw it, the cloak of skin drawn back to let the light walk where it had no right to step.
Wallace threshed and kicked and gurgled on the gallows. Not quite dead when they cut him down, he was not dead enough when the executioners, expert surgeons in their way, sliced his cock and balls off, holding the bloody mass up for the gawpers to shout at in triumph.
He was certainly not dead when they opened his belly and drew out his tripes and, with horrific marvel, they heard him protest only once, when the assistants drew back his arms so that the ribcage was raised enough for the executioner to reach in through the gaping belly wound and up to grasp the heart.
‘Ye are gripping my arms too hurtful,’ he said and neither Kirkpatrick nor Bruce could speak for the choke of listening to a man complaining of his elbows as another’s hand clawed at his still beating core.
Bruce did not know why he was there. He had had half an idea to catch the last look of Wallace, to stare the man in the face at least, to share the final pain. Now he did not want to be seen by him while they gralloched him like a stag and the blood grew sticky and deep enough to suck the shoes off one of the executioners.
His mind, flashing like a kingfisher wing in sunlight, spun him back years, to a night by a campfire with the men from Herdmanston, one of whom – a ragged wee lad, no more – had questioned him about the vows of knighthood.
He recalled it vaguely, for he had been drunk – but he remembered the bitter bile of realizing how many of those vows he had broken even then, even as he listed them solemnly, dropping them like water on to the upturned petal of a dirt-grained face that thirsted for something finer.
Dog Boy, he recalled suddenly. The lad had been called Dog Boy. Didn’t even own a real name, yet had made me feel less than he.
He felt the same way now and, in the end, stumbled away, the thick metal stink and the flies in his mouth, so that he spat and had to stop himself from gagging. Then, eventually, he straightened, looked ahead and walked away from the baying and the blood, only half aware of Kirkpatrick at his back.
Who would know Hector, he litanied to himself all the way back to safety, if Troy had been happy?
CHAPTER NINE
Winchester Castle
Feast of St James the Almsgiver, January, 1306
Feeding the Hungry. Clothing the Naked. Burying the Dead. The bright hangings wafting gently in the thin breeze of the cathedral glowed with a piety that could not balm the anger of the droop-lidded king of England.
‘Is he likely to say more?’ Edward demanded and Monthermer looked apologetic.
‘He has been put to the Question at length,’ he answered carefully, ‘but all we know is that he is called Guillaume of Shaws and was a notary in the service of Bishop Wishart. If he had not gotten himself stinking drunk in Berwick and babbled, we would not even know that much, your Excellent Grace.’
‘A notary,’ Edward muttered, sitting in the wool-swathed chair of Lancelot, both hands flat on the table. Somewhere, drifting on the iced wind, the slow, rolling chant of the monks celebrating the feast day clashed with the clamouring masses begging for the alms that had brought them in ragged flocks.
Edward wished they would shut up, but did not voice it aloud; he was already aware that his reputation for magnanimity, piety and regal magnificence had been badly damaged by Wallace. He had been matched up against a rebel outlaw from the wild land of Scotland and ended up looking mean and petty; the thought burned him, an ember irritation in his bowels which even the thought of this great Round Table he’d had made could not balm.
A splendid thing, the table. For a tourney in celebration of Arthur and the Grail, though Edward could not remember when that had been. When he had been enthused for tourneys and the ideals of Arthur, he supposed, which had all dissipated after Eleanor died.
‘With respect, father, surely all we know is that this man spoke rebellion in his cups. Why is he considered as more?’
Edward looked at his son, taking in the violet silk of him. Before this one, he thought. I had this table made before he was born, when I was young and strong and the best knight in Christendom, when I thought of all the powerful sons I would make to glorify the Kingdom I would create here.
Now there is this one, the only one God saw fit to leave standing, so no doubt He has a plan for him. I cannot see it, he added to himself and sighed, taking on the wearisome burden of educating the boy in the staringly obvious.
‘A notary of Wishart? Young, well-educated with a neat, perjink beard, a knowledge of letters and Latin and with ambitions thwarted and a deal of resentment. He did not growl rebellion, he babbled of plots, involving folk of high degree.’
His voice, rising as he spoke, was finally brought under control, but with difficulty, so that his son took a step back, then recovered himself.
‘Gaveston says …’
‘Gaveston says, Gaveston says.’
It had been a mistake and the younger Edward knew it as the spittle flew from his father’s lips.
‘Gaveston can kiss my arse,’ Edward thundered. ‘As I hear he has been doing to your own.’
‘The prince,’ Monthermer interjected smoothly, ‘simply means, I am sure, that we have no firm proof that this man plots anything other than vague vengeance against Bishop Wishart, who dismissed him, it seems, for repeated drunkenness. The man actually laughed when he was accused of plotting with the Comyn against Your Grace.’
‘Laughed?’
Monthermer inwardly winced; wrong revelation for the time, he thought and began feverishly to summon a way out of it.
‘Laughed,’ Edward repeated ominously. ‘If you cannot even put a man to the Question but that he finds humour in it, it is hardly surprising we have no evidence. I suggest you wipe the smile from the man’s face – take his damned notary beard with it if needs must.’
‘He is dead,’ Monthermer blurted out. ‘Such was the questioning we put him to that he decided to stand before God rather than admit anything, my liege. We certainly have no firm evidence we can use as justification for dismissing the Earl of Carrick from Your Grace’s pleasure.’
He allowed his voice to tail off, knowing the King would pounce on this, as a string dangled to a cat; Monthermer looked pointedly at the young prince, who nodded brief thanks and stepped away from the conversation.
‘Bruce,’ Edward said, staring at nothing. He liked the Earl of Carrick, but did not trust him in anything other than to oppose the Comyn.
‘The Comyn,’ he said aloud.
‘Indeed, my liege,’ Monthermer agreed. ‘It seems uncommonly like it is that family who are still bent on causing trouble. But it is hard to tell – the Bruce and Comyn are at each other’s throats.’
‘They are all plotting,’ Edward rasped. ‘I can hear them, like mice in the rushes.’
Monthermer spread his hands and offered nothing better than an insincere blandness of smile.
Edward glanced up at the smooth, urbane Earl of Gloucester and did not trust him one whit more than any of the others, even those who professed unstinting loyalty. He trusted Monthermer at all because he held the title Earl of Gloucester only during the lifetime of his wife, Joan de Clare; it would revert to her son when she died and Monthermer’s only hope of advancement then was for the King’s benifice. Edward trusted in ambition and greed.
The Earl’s advice was sound, all the same. Nevertheless, the thought of rebellion soured Edward; he was sixty-six years and eight months old, the oldest king England had ever had. His many territories were at peace, his authority was supreme and, for all his age, he was fit and healthy. God, he thought, has seen to it that I am preserved. For a higher purpose, surely.
The long-held urge for Crusade still fired his veins, held back by war and the rumour of war – by Christ’s Wounds it would not erupt again like some festering ulcer and keep him from God’s purpose.
He rose, stoop-shouldered and draped in a fur which failed to ke
ep the cold from him, then scraped the heavy Lancelot chair back from the table. It came to him that the only time he had ever been warm in this place was when he and the Queen had almost died in the fire that ravaged it three – no, four – years since.
He’d pondered on it having been deliberately started, but eventually concluded that, like all plots, no-one would dare connive against his throne while he was alive. The idea sprang up like a soldier sown from Cadmus’ dragon teeth.
‘The mark of a man,’ he declared suddenly, his smile fox-feral, ‘is what he would do if he knew he could get away with it.’
‘Indeed,’ Monthermer answered, wary and none the wiser.
‘I am due in Dumfries soon,’ the King declared suddenly.
‘A sheriff court,’ Monthermer agreed. ‘A mean affair, but a statement of matters so that all the great and good Scots lords will attend, to prove their devotion to your liege.’
‘And the not so good,’ Caernarvon interjected, though he was ignored save for a warning glance from Monthermer.
‘I will not attend,’ Edward declared, drawing the fur round him. ‘I feel a chill in my bones. I feel close to death’s door, so that relics must be fetched for their efficacy and relief.’
Monthermer, puzzled, hovered uncertainly, then the light broke on him and he smiled admiringly.
‘Indeed,’ Edward declared like a lip-licking cat. ‘Let us see what mice scurry out when they think this old puss is too done up to hunt them. Meanwhile – gather up every name this notary gave out. Put them all to the Question and see if they find laughter in it.’
Greyfriars Kirk, Dumfries
Feast of St Scholastica, February, 1306
His breath smoked, blue-grey in the frosted chill of the kirk and Dog Boy wondered why it was that holy places were never heated, as if it was a sin to be warm. In truth, Dog Boy was trying hard not to think of the wee Lincluden nun with the sweet smile and big eyes, the one who had giggled at him before being hurried off by an outraged matron with a face like a winter apple.