by Robyn Young
He told the old woman, who had brought him into this world, everything. Things even his brother, Edward, didn’t know. Secrets he had kept from everyone. It was a relief, this unravelling of the years, unburdening himself of the weights he had carried, as well as a blessing to be talking about anything but the fates of his family. Affraig didn’t speak. Only her whistling breaths acknowledged the admission of his part in the theft of the Stone of Destiny and that he had gone to Dumfries to meet John Comyn with murder in his mind.
Now, with the dawn light bleeding through the door, Robert searched her age-ravaged face for some reaction to his long confession.
Affraig continued to meet his gaze. At last, she spoke, her voice a rasp. ‘When Brigid found me after the English razed Turnberry, she said she spoke to you at your coronation – that you said you sought my help. I have wondered what for.’
Robert toyed with the fragment of crossbow bolt around his neck. ‘The box,’ he said finally. ‘It was the only proof that there was no ancient prophecy, only the king’s translation, which I believe was invented to manipulate the things he wanted and to predict events he knew would happen. I hoped I could somehow show the king’s men they had been loyal, all these years, to nothing more than an elaborate lie. I thought it might weaken their support for his war. Without them he could not fight it.’
‘They would say you destroyed the prophecy,’ Affraig told him. ‘An empty box proves nothing.’
Robert hesitated. It had been a nebulous idea, but one that had fuelled his wish to keep that box safe. Now it seemed ridiculous; a fool’s hope. He raised a helpless hand. ‘You deal in men’s destinies, Affraig. I thought you could write me a prophecy of my own. I thought I could use Edward’s lie against him – say this new prophecy was what I had found in the box.’
‘Your enemies would say you had written it.’
‘Perhaps. But Sir James Stewart once told me a lie is easier to swallow if embedded in truth. Edward would not be able to prove my prophecy false, any more than I could prove his. Maybe some in his circle would begin to doubt?’ Robert met her cynical gaze. ‘It does not matter now. I gave the box to Niall. They would have found it when they . . .’ He closed his eyes. ‘Do you believe in the Wheel of Fortune?’
‘Yes.’
‘The course I have steered.’ Robert shook his head. ‘My taking of the Stone. That night in Greyfriars Church. Methven Wood. Abandoning my family.’ He stared down at his hands. ‘Now, I am crushed beneath it.’
Affraig shifted, leaning forward to force his eyes back to hers. Her skin was as creased and translucent as old parchment. ‘What does the wheel do? It turns. It will raise you up again.’
‘I have lost too much.’
Moving her arm from beneath the blankets, she crooked a finger towards the corner of the hut. ‘There.’
Robert saw a leather bag sagged against the wall. Seeing she meant for him to get it, he rose. He was weak with exhaustion, his body protesting with every movement. His right side felt bruised where Christiana’s men had hauled him into the boat. Bending, he picked up the bag. The contents shifted and knocked against one another. A memory was stirred of the first time he met Affraig, emerging out of the woods with her black dogs, a gnarled stick in one hand and a sack gripped in the other, inside which things slithered and writhed. He handed the bag to her.
Opening it, Affraig reached in. Carefully, she withdrew a lattice of twigs, woven together to form a cage. In the centre, held by a thread, was a circle of heather, broom and wormwood. It was his destiny, fashioned by her hands the night he pledged to be king.
‘When I saw the smoke from Turnberry, I took Elena and fled. This is what I saved – what I carried with me all the months and miles since.’
Robert took it when she offered it to him. He felt the suppleness of the web of twigs, worn as smooth as bones by wind and rain. ‘It never fell?’ He watched her shake her head. ‘You told me they fell when the person’s destiny was fulfilled.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why did it not when I became king?’
‘Are you king?’
His anger at the question dissipated when he glanced down at himself; ragged as a beggar. He gave a wry laugh, which faded quickly. ‘Did I curse my reign by taking the Stone for Edward? By not being crowned upon it?’
‘The man makes the king. Not the Stone.’
He frowned, remembering his grandfather saying something similar.
‘Yours was the only destiny I saved from the oak,’ Affraig continued, ‘the only one worth saving. The others, they all came for themselves, hearts set on wealth, love or revenge.’
‘I came for myself,’ he reminded her, ‘came because I wanted to be king.’
‘Why?’
The creases in his brow deepened. ‘Duty, I think – duty to make good on the oath I swore to my grandfather. That and my right.’ He met her eyes. ‘I was told, from the moment King Alexander died, that my family were the rightful heirs to the throne. In my mind, I think it was always mine. After I joined Wallace’s rebellion and saw the damage Edward and his men were doing to our kingdom I wanted to stop them, to take it from them.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m no longer sure I want it,’ he said quietly. ‘This crown has cost me everything.’
Affraig nodded, her eyes hard and bright. ‘Now you can begin,’ she murmured. ‘Now you can be the king your grandfather and I saw in you, years ago.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Through these years of war your people have lost homes and livelihoods, sons and daughters. Do you know how they feel, my lord?’
He didn’t speak, but she knew his answer.
‘Then you can stand with them – for them. Be their voice.’
Robert felt something flicker to life inside him at her words. It was a fragile flame, but the moment it was ignited he knew what it was. Hope. He looked at the web of twigs in his hand; the crown at its centre.
‘Can you recover what we have lost?’ she asked him, her voice low, but compelling. ‘Can you reclaim what is ours? Take back our kingdom?’
Before he could answer, there was a knock on the door. As it opened, flooding the hut with sunlight, Robert shielded his eyes.
Christiana MacRuarie stood there, her hair flaming in the golden dawn. ‘My lord, will you walk with me? I have something to show you.’
Stranraer, Scotland, 1307 AD
Cormac pressed himself up against the barn, breathing through his teeth at the pain in his side. His mail and the straw-filled gambeson beneath had saved his life when the sword struck, but he guessed the blow had broken several ribs. He was still bleeding from a gash in his neck, but most of the other cuts had clotted, the freezing mud of the marshes helping to seal the wounds. His helm had come off in the ferocity of the battle and his hair was plastered with slime. Rank odours of mud, animal dung and human faeces clogged his nose.
The voices were louder. Cormac chanced a look around the edge of the barn. From here he had a good view of Stranraer’s main street with the well in the centre. The blood-spattered ground was littered with fallen helms, broken arrows and the dead. Several score men with the white lion of Galloway on their tunics were working in lines, dragging bodies down to the shore. In the gap between two houses, Cormac saw corpses piled up on the beach, limbs sticking out at angles from the heap. There were more bodies at the loch’s edge, drifting back and forth in the waters. He guessed many of his countrymen had attempted to flee to the boats. Counting the galleys, he realised two were gone. The rest were still moored in the shallows, being picked over for spoils by the men of Galloway.
The battle was over, gone in a shuddering rush of motion, pain and panic. Cormac had tried and failed to reach his father. Almost cut in half by a sword, he’d been knocked aside by a charging horse, losing his axe, before being tackled by a mad-eyed man, who pounced on him with a dagger. He had twisted from the attack, feeling a hot sting as his neck was grazed by the blade, the
n wrenching free his food knife had stuck it as hard as he could into the man’s groin. Screaming shrilly, his attacker had peeled away, swept up in the flood of men and horses. Seeing his countrymen being overwhelmed, instinct had sent Cormac scrabbling, injured and weaponless, into the house he’d emerged from. He had struggled out through the window, dropped into a midden heap, and crawled away into the marshes, the sounds of slaughter tearing the air behind him.
Cormac had no idea how long he had lain in the mud, eventually passing out from the agony in his ribs, but the stars were now gone and the sky was washed with sullen dawn. His eyes focused on the group gathered in the street beyond the piles of dead. One man stood slightly apart from the others. Dressed in a blue surcoat adorned with a white lion, he was facing a row of men, all of whom were on their knees, hands bound behind their backs. As he walked the blood-soaked ground before them, Cormac realised the man’s left hand was missing. He held a broadsword in his right. Among the kneeling men were Lord Donough, Thomas and Alexander Bruce. Thomas was badly wounded, struggling to remain upright, his face blanched, his fair hair streaked with blood. Seeing his father humbled and defeated, shame coursed hot through Cormac. He should be at his side. Instead, he had fled the battle and was now watching from a distance like a coward.
‘Where is your brother?’ the pacing man demanded. ‘Where is Robert Bruce?’
‘If we knew,’ answered Thomas, his voice strained, ‘you would not hear it from the lips of any man here. Do with us as you will, MacDouall.’
At the name, Cormac realised this was Dungal MacDouall, former captain of the army of Galloway, loyal supporter of John Balliol and John Comyn, and leader of the Disinherited.
MacDouall turned on Thomas. ‘Oh, I shall, you son of a whore. I’ve waited years to take my revenge on those who murdered my father.’
‘Our father is dead,’ said Alexander, his eyes on the captain. ‘You will not now attain vengeance for the attack on Buittle Castle.’
‘Not from the man himself,’ said MacDouall coldly. ‘But I can take it out of his sons.’
As MacDouall raised his sword, Alexander flinched and Thomas gave a hoarse shout, but it was one of the captain’s own men who stayed his hand.
‘Sir! These men will be more valuable to us alive. Such a prize might persuade King Edward to give us what we want. Our lands returned to us?’
As MacDouall began to lower his sword, Cormac let out a breath.
‘You’re right. The brothers of the king may prove useful. But not the Irish scum.’ Before anyone could stop him, Dungal MacDouall brought his sword swinging round towards Lord Donough’s neck.
Barra, Scotland, 1307 AD
Huge white clouds scudded across the dawn sky, blown by the glacial February wind. The air was so sharp it was hard to breathe and Robert’s eyes smarted as he walked beside Christiana down the track towards the beach. Nes followed at a discreet distance, having handed Robert his broadsword. On leaving Affraig’s hut, seeing the knight sitting by a fire outside, Robert realised he had been keeping guard through the night. The rest of his comrades and Angus MacDonald were asleep in the lodgings they had been given, with the exception of David of Atholl, sitting hunched by the fire. The young man hadn’t even acknowledged him.
Christiana glanced at Robert as they neared the shore. ‘When she first arrived here Affraig told me she knew you. She helped deliver you at Turnberry, yes?’
Robert was discomforted by the intimacy of the question. He shifted the subject. ‘I’m surprised by your charity, my lady, welcoming those dispossessed by the war to your lands. It must be a task to feed and house them all?’
Her green eyes sharpened at his tone, but she smiled cordially. ‘We offer them safe passage to a new life. They offer us skills and labour in return.’
Robert drew the heavy black mantle, trimmed with rabbit fur, closer around his shoulders. Christiana had handed it to him outside the hut, saying it belonged to her late husband. Robert had accepted the garment awkwardly, unaware that the Earl of Mar’s son had passed, leaving her a widow. She was wearing her blue patterned cloak and her flame-coloured hair was as dishevelled as it had been the day before. She looked tired, he thought, as if she too had been up all night.
Ahead, the sea appeared, a dazzling sheet, brocaded with sunlight. Waves broke hard against the sand, spray gauzing the air. Robert saw two more boats had arrived in the night. There was a group of men around them, hauling out deer carcasses.
‘From Rhum,’ Christiana told him, raising a hand to the men. ‘My family have long used the island as a hunting park. It is not so hard to feed many mouths out here. Our crops may be poor, but meat and fish we have fit for a king’s table.’
Feeling someone rushing up behind him, Robert reached automatically for his sword. He stayed his hand as a young girl raced past them.
She sprinted down to the beach, bare feet kicking up sand. ‘Father!’
Robert saw one of the men, hands bloody from the carcasses, turn. Bending with a grin, the man swept her into his arms. Robert felt a wrench in his chest. He thought of the moment he first held his daughter; placed in his arms by the midwife, while his wife lay unmoving in a soup of bloody sheets, and smoke billowed above Carlisle. Marjorie. Born into a war she had now become a victim of. He thought of Affraig’s words, but the faint hope that had been kindled already felt as if it were fading, too frail to push back the shadows in his heart.
Christiana was looking at his hand, curled around the sword hilt. ‘You are safe here, my lord. You have my word.’
‘Even from your brothers?’
‘These are my lands. They have been for ten years, since the passing of my father. Lachlan and Ruarie will do as I say.’
Hearing his name called, Robert turned to see Edward approaching. He was tugging a woollen cloak over his surcoat, the arms of Annandale partially hidden by filth.
Edward looked between him and Christiana. ‘I didn’t realise you were awake, brother.’
‘I wanted to show Lord Robert something,’ Christiana told him. ‘You are welcome to join us.’
Robert nodded his agreement and Edward fell into step beside them as Christiana led the way across the dunes, to where another track wound through the machair above the shoreline. Moving inland, past a reed-fringed loch in the shadow of the hill, whose green flanks were scattered with boulders, they passed a couple of fishermen, nets slung over their shoulders. The men greeted Christiana courteously, but cocked their heads suspiciously at Robert and Edward.
Robert frowned at their backs. His cloak was open at the front, displaying the red lion. ‘They do not know the arms of their king?’
‘They do.’ Christiana laughed. ‘I doubt, by now, there is a man, woman or child on this island who doesn’t know that you are here, my lord. Word moves faster than the tides on Barra.’
He didn’t share her mirth. ‘I am their king, my lady.’
Her smile faded. ‘You must understand, for many years the kings of Scotland have seemed’ – she struggled for the words – ‘foreign to us. A distant power that tried to impose its will by force, without respecting our rights and customs. We were Norse-led for a long time before we were ruled by Edinburgh. My uncle was chosen as King of the Isles by Hakon of Norway. On his death, my father succeeded him. It is difficult to go from king to king’s man.’
Robert nodded after a pause. Although the Western Isles were part of his kingdom, he hadn’t fully understood how intricate their politics and history were. Shifting on the sands of Norse and Scottish rule for centuries, Somerled had been the cement that bound them together for a time, until the islands were broken up among his sons, then sold to Scotland on the parchment of a Norse treaty.
The track began to rise, sloping over the headland. Redwings and golden plovers cast from the carpet of rock-strewn grass, wings flickering. The sun disappeared behind a cloud, throwing them into chilly shade. Hearing the shrill cries of gulls, Robert looked towards the sea, realising that they ha
d climbed a fair way up a steep promontory. The sun appeared again, gilding the waters.
‘My God.’
At Edward’s murmur, Robert looked back round to see they had crested the rise. He stopped in his tracks. Spread out before him was a bay, sheltered by two encircling arms of headland that created a huge, natural harbour. In the wide mouth between the rocky bluffs, he could see the surge of the green ocean, but in the harbour the waters were as calm as a mill pond. In the centre was a small island, from which rose a stout castle. But it was what lay between the island and the shore that had caught his attention. There, where the waters turned jewel blue as they neared the sands, were scores of galleys. Forty, he guessed, at first count. A few were fishing craft and there were a couple of round, merchant cogs, but most were slender birlinns – the war galleys of the Isles. His heart quickened.
Christiana turned to him. ‘I spoke at length to Lachlan last night, my lord. My brother will keep his pledge. You will have twenty ships at your command, equipped with fighting men, all for the promised price.’
Robert, noting again the shadows around her eyes, wondered what this had cost her. ‘I do not have the revenue to pay him yet,’ he warned. ‘I won’t until I’ve collected the rents from my lands in Carrick.’
‘He will wait. I persuaded him of the benefits we might one day enjoy for loyal service to our king, especially if our galleys help turn the tide of the war.’
Christiana’s smile was light, but Robert caught a shrewd glint in her eyes. He thought of the refugees she had so generously conveyed here and wondered how many of the men and boys might be destined for service as mercenaries aboard MacRuarie war galleys. His sense of her shifted to the guarded respect he might feel towards a worthy rival. This was, he thought, not a woman to take lightly.