The Honor Due a King (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  “For spying on the Scots? That alone would be too easy.” He tugged the cloth square from beneath the sack and wrung it in his hands, twisting it from end to end until it resembled a short length of rope. “It is rumored that the Earl of Lancaster is secretly negotiating with the Bruce to spare his lands from raids. I have secured a position for you at Pontefract. The earl will think you are there to carry messages from him, to Scotland, and back again. You will, of course, also share this information with us. All of it. Quite simple, yes?” He knotted the twist of cloth and pressed it into one of her hands.

  Lady Rosalind curled her fingers around it, knuckles whitening as she squeezed. “If I refuse?”

  “You already know the answer to that, don’t you?” He patted her shoulder as one would patronize an unruly child who has been cowed to obedience. “Come,” he said, hooking a hand beneath her arm and guiding her to the door, “my men will escort you as far as Lanercrost. There you will receive new clothes, exchange escorts and be given further details about how to find Douglas. You need do nothing this time but deliver the letters and return to Pontefract. When I need you again, you will hear from me.”

  Hugh yanked the door open and the last light of day poured in. She turned and looked at me fully for the first time. Her lips parted, but before she could speak Hugh nudged her outside and called for the two soldiers who had brought her.

  When they had ridden away, Hugh closed the door, leaned his back against it and sighed.

  “You should have made her swear an oath, Hugh,” I said.

  Complacent, he smiled. “I need no oath. She thinks I have her daughter.”

  “Thinks?”

  “Her daughter contracted the same fever that took Lady Eleanor Douglas. The child was barely ill when I had her retrieved from the nunnery. She died on the way to York. Little matter, since I had the girl’s belongings.” He pushed away from the door and came toward me, flourishing a hand in the air. “This ruse, you see, can play out indefinitely. By the time Lady Rosalind learns the truth, we will have all the information we need to undo both Lancaster and the Bruce.”

  I turned my head aside and laughed. Laughed until my stomach ached. “Ailred?” Gasping for air, I clasped his arms and pulled him close. “Ah, Hugh, Hugh ... What can I ever do to repay you?”

  “There is much within a king’s power. Reward those who serve you; punish those who do not.”

  “Ah, but you more than serve, Hugh. Of all the men in my kingdom, you possess more genius than any. More than the entire, ungrateful lot put together. I will forever cherish you. Forever.” I cupped a palm against his cheek, meaning to pat his face in a gesture of affirmation, but my hand, so perfectly fitted to the contours of his face, froze there. Suddenly, I was aware of the warmth of his flesh beneath my fingertips, the pulse of the vein in his temple, the stirring of his breath upon my wrist.

  He wrapped his hand around mine, lowered it, let go – his mouth downturned. Stepping back, he gazed up at the hole in the roof. “A waxing moon. We’ll find our way back easily.”

  I meant to say something ... something that would make him stay with me awhile. Away from prying eyes and ears. If only he –

  He opened the lantern door and snuffed the candle flame between two fingers. Without another word, he brushed past me, striding out into the moonlight.

  We skirted Lincoln at a brisk clip and rode back to Somerton in a silence so complete my soul ached.

  Ch. 10

  James Douglas – Berwick, 1316

  Marjorie was buried on a spring day that paled in beauty when compared to her. In those first promising few days of flushed warmth, the grass turned ten shades a deeper green and the birds trilled their mating songs, yet I saw and heard very little.

  Dazed, I walked close behind Walter, who wept openly. Outwardly stoic, Robert supported a feeble and grieving Elizabeth on his arm. In all the words he did not say, the tears he did not shed, I sensed the void that Marjorie’s death had inflicted on him, for I too felt the same nothingness. Because of the secrets I would guard until earth’s blanket embraced my bones, I could not mourn outwardly, but for Robert her loss was different. He blamed himself, he later told me – not for her death, but for the wasting of her youth during all those years that she was held captive in England.

  The funeral procession wound through bleak Edinburgh as the church bells struck discordantly. Mass was said for her soul, but what hollow ceremony.

  Outside in the streets, a dirge of pipes keened sickly in mourning and a drum throbbed sluggishly. But I recalled those things only later. In the present, I was aware only of the memories in my mind, clear and real: Marjorie, half child, half woman, as we rode through the wooded mountains of Atholl, chattering gaily in bits of French with her on the back of my saddle and her small arms wrapped around my chest; Marjorie kneeling at the altar in Melrose, whispers of prayers on her lips, the glow of daylight filtered through rose-colored glass, the sight of her filling me with a holy reverence for the simple beauty of one woman; Marjorie lying in the grassy meadow, her flaxen strands strewn over a pillow of clover, hands reaching up to me ...

  If anyone had taken notice of my abysmal melancholy, they did not say. Walter and Robert, too absorbed in their own grief, paid me no heed.

  I headed home toward Lintalee. Home. What a strange, unfamiliar word that was.

  I had not been in residence a fortnight when trouble stirred from over the border. It was the season and to be expected. I called Archibald back to me from Rothesay and sent out word to others whom I trusted and wanted near.

  “You should take a wife,” I said to Archibald one night after supper. “You’re more than old enough.”

  He flipped a bone across the floor and a pair of pups skirmished over it. The smaller of the two flashed her fangs and triumphed, then came slithering on her belly toward Archibald. He scratched her ears and grinned. “And how many years are you now, James?”

  “Enough. And too busy.”

  He cast a glance around at the main hall of the lodge – empty but for the two of us and one old manservant clearing our table. “I see. Very busy, you are.”

  “I am. The others are coming in the next few days. We’ll set out then.”

  “Who was she?”

  “She?” I said, not sure if my tone sounded convincing enough.

  “Aye, she. You’ve never been one to batter others with conversation, but now, it seems you don’t even listen. That you’re not here at all. And I’ve loved and lost enough women in my short years to shame the good Douglas name. I know how it makes a man sick in the heart. So tell. Someone who wouldn’t have you? Belonged to someone else? Both maybe. Too young, too beneath you? Did you admire her from afar, or know her well? Would I know her name?”

  Even though I ached to speak of her, I never would. Couldn’t. We sat long in silence, our eyelids hanging heavy. Even the dogs were stretched out and yawning.

  More than an awkward silence, it was a telling one. He could pry until the first of us died, I would not say and he knew as much. The only tactic available was a swift change of subject. “Will you take me to Eleanor,” I said, “when this is over?”

  He perked a moment at the sound of his mother’s name, then cringed visibly. “If you like. But you’re better off spending your time in prayer for her, James. She won’t know you – if she’ll see you at all. The abbess tells me she’ll not set eyes upon a man or pass in one’s presence, if she can help it. I have not been to see her in years myself. Sometimes I write letters to her, but then the abbess writes back on her behalf and asks if she can read them to her.”

  “Is it so bad? Has she lost her sight through some sickness?”

  He shrugged. Deep melancholy washed over his young face, adding years. Archibald seemed sadly unable to keep women in his life and this one, his mother, was the sorest point of all. “She keeps tally of the abbey’s stores, does that tell you not her sight is well enough? Och, there is something more to it. Some ugly scourge upon
her heart that wills her to leave her past dead and buried deep behind her.

  “After father died and you were gone to Paris, she was there alone at Douglas but for Hugh and me. She would not leave her home, even though she had offers from kin that would have kept her well and safe. There was an Englishman came by once. I was six, maybe seven then. He barged in, on king’s orders, he said. Intruded into her chambers before she had risen for the day. Something happened. Something I did not understand until I was older. He barred the door behind him. I heard her scream ...” Archibald met my eyes. “She was never the same afterwards. She later sent us off to Rothesay and left for the abbey at Emmanuel without ever saying why she was going or if she would ever come back. She didn’t.”

  “This English knight,” I probed, the knot in my abdomen pulling tighter, “do you know who he was?”

  His eyebrows drew close. “I didn’t then. Then one day someone said his name. She flew to her chambers and locked the door. Wept for a day. When she came out she was pale as a ghost, trembling.”

  “His name?”

  “Neville.”

  Neville. I had not heard the name for a long time. Contemplative, brewing, I licked the cheese from my knife and set it down on the table. “He’s seldom far over the border.”

  “Aye, sometimes in Berwick, I hear.”

  “Perhaps I should call on him?”

  Archibald grinned. “Perhaps you should.”

  ***

  Jedburgh, 1316

  When word came of English riding out from Berwick through Jedburgh, Archibald was the first to grab a sword. The wayward, surly youth had discovered in himself a need for being in the thick of the action. Robert Boyd joined us. He had a new wife, but she did not fight with him like the old one and so he soon bored of her. Gil came, too, more out of a yearning for the past than anything. Close to Roxburgh, Gil learned from a local the name of the English leader who was challenging me to come out and fight him: Sir Neville of Raby.

  Like old, we rode hard by moonlight, kept to the woods by day.

  “You’ll kill us before we ever find him,” Archibald complained, as he knelt to gather a handful of water and rinse road dust from his face.

  We had stopped to water the horses at a stream that flowed down from the Lammermuir Hills. My youngest brother, not accustomed to such a pace, had grumbled from dawn until dusk.

  “Lad’s right,” Boyd concurred. “Let the bastard come to us.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at Boyd and took a long drink myself before speaking. “Soft with age, are you, Boyd? You used to ride on through the night with me to fight at dawn.”

  Boyd dug through the pack hanging from his saddle for a hunk of stale bread and ripped at it with his broken teeth. Crumbs falling from his mouth, he muttered, “I can still cut you in half with one swipe.”

  I chose not to argue. His girth was only slightly larger now, but the road-hardened soldier had weakened in brawn with a year of rolling in bed with a young, docile wife. With us I had brought thirty men, most having been at Bannockburn, a few, like Archibald, younger and less experienced. They were all hopeful we would camp here for the night, but by then they all knew me well enough not to settle down too much.

  Downstream, Gil rested on a rock, amused by fish leaping from the water. My eyes followed the stream as it coursed madly down the hillside, winding here and there before plunging into the Tweed further down in the valley. The light of day was fading, but something stirred amongst a stand of trees hugging the main road which followed the river below. I scooped up more water, splashed my face and sprang to my feet.

  Boyd recognized my sharp gaze and at once peered in the same direction.

  “Bloody about time,” he remarked with a chuckle. “Fifty would you say?”

  “About that.”

  “Neville, you think?” Archibald whispered, as if his words would sink all the way down into the valley and give us away.

  I issued orders for all to move slowly. We were out in the open on a hilltop, no woods to conceal us, but if we could buy ourselves a minute or two before being spied, it was to our advantage. Someone among the English had keen eyes, though. They had been looking for us. Waiting, perhaps. They were ready before we had even started down the hill.

  “There he is, Archibald. That feather stuck in his helmet is as good as a bull’s eye painted on his chest. Bloody fool.” I mounted my horse, took up shield and sword and the others followed suit without hesitation.

  Archibald’s dark eyes flashed like flints giving off sparks. “Now?”

  “Aye, now.” Sword upraised, I cried into the night, “Douglas! A Douglas!”

  In the grim half-light, leaning back and clamping my knees to my horse’s ribs, I yielded to trust and let him deliver me down the crumbling slope. A storm of hooves and whoops avalanched around me. As the ground leveled out, a shadowy mob of Englishmen broke from the trees at us.

  The very moment I saw him, I knew the rakehell. I marked him and he me. Neville dipped his lance. My horse’s long legs swallowed up the distance. I locked my sights on the lopsided sneer pulling at his mouth and thought of my stepmother Eleanor.

  I watched his eyes, kept the tip of his lance in view, gripped the straps of my targe. A lance was most useful only in the first pass. I let my reins dangle over my mount’s neck and guided him with my knees and spurs. If I could defend the initial blow, then rein my mount around and meet him swiftly again ...

  Neville kept his shaft steady, straight. Leaned into it. Raised ever so slightly in his stirrups and bobbed his armored torso to the left. I answered with my round shield, but the move exposed my left shoulder more plainly.

  As I brought my sword up sharply to ward off the lance from beneath, he swung it sideways, so that the whole of its length struck against the upper part of my chest. My body snapped backward. My horse flew out from under me. A moment suspended in the air. A moment no longer than a blink. The whoosh of my own breath as the air was knocked from my lungs. My body sprawled across the ground. A ringing in my head.

  I looked up and saw above me – sky. The first stars swirling in a sea of blue-black. Took the first painful pull of air back into my lungs. Felt my heart hammering inside my ribs. The rumble of hooves to my left and right. Smelled the aroma of crushed grass. Heard hooves. Thundering. Banging. Oaths and curses. The grunt and clatter of close battle. Everywhere. And closing in upon me – the plod of boots upon a cushion of grass as Neville leapt from his saddle.

  Through barely parted eyelids, I saw the black figure looming closer, closer, and in the outline of its silhouette a long, curving feather above the helmet’s crest. I curled my fingers slowly. My sword was there. My shield ... aye, still strapped tight. I slowed my breathing. Kept still.

  He dropped his lance. Came closer, cautious, the weight of his mail resounding in every footfall. Only his cackle forewarned me as he lunged in triumph.

  I swiped my blade low, digging into his ankle. He let loose a howl of pain. Stumbling backward, he spat at me, went down on one knee, then pushed himself back up, provoked by having so easy a victory snatched away.

  I rolled away, rammed the point of my sword into the ground for leverage and gained my feet. We faced each other, each searching for a weakness. His mail covered his body from head to foot. Small plates and discs protected the vulnerable points that I normally would have struck for – the knees, the armpits. Only his face was bared. I could not see the scar I had imprinted on his face as a wrathful lad at Berwick – knew not if it was even there. I saw only the gleam of his teeth and the shine off his polished helmet. Snug against his right hip was an axe, meant for close work. He wore a long surcoat of scarlet, slit between the legs to allow movement.

  Yet no armor was entirely impenetrable. Links can break at the pressure of a sword point. For all his false security, I was the more nimble and less encumbered. Man to man, he would be slower. He would tire long before me. Then he would falter, and stumble, and fail to keep his guard up. Surely, h
e must know that between us, his would be the losing cause.

  But it was he who moved first. Barely in control of his balance, Neville blustered at me. I remained firm. As his sword parted the air, I met his ill-timed blow and heaved back. The jolt sent him reeling sideways.

  I followed him and rained blow after blow. Hard, heavy. Throwing the brunt of my vengefulness into every move. Beating him backward with each quick strike as he could but defend himself and had not enough time to take the offensive. His flurry of energy expended, he melted step by step back toward his own ranks.

  I paused to take breath. Looked around. The fighting between Scots and English had stopped but for a few struggling pairs on the fringes of the woods. Most had stepped aside to see how it would go between Neville and me. I saw clearly, not the flashing white of his smile, but the whites of his eyes and the masked fear behind them. In that instant, he felt and knew the inevitability of his own mortality. Sensing the moment, I plowed in and knocked his blade from his trembling hands as easily as plucking a twig from a child.

  “I was a lad when first we met. Do you remember it? It was a long time ago. Let me help your memory, for it may be feeble now. Berwick, twenty years past. Longshanks stormed the walls. The town fell. The castle held a few days more. You and your men broke down the door of the room where my brothers and I, mere lads then, were with my stepmother, Lady Eleanor Douglas. You tried to rape her. Tried. I leapt at you and cut you. Your lord and king chastised you publicly. Perhaps that part you remember? You’ve grown old, Neville. I, in my prime now. You, past yours. Isn’t this the moment when you beg for mercy?”

  He scoffed and lifted the axe shakily from his belt. “You know full well I have no such mercy for you, bastard that you are. There’ll be no prisoners this day. This fight’s a long cry from being over with. I stand, and I’ll still be standing when the ravens are bathing in the vile blood around your shredded body.”

  “Then if you won’t go down on your knees and beg forgiveness for your acts, cast your eyes to Heaven and make your peace. There is but one end to this meeting. You raped her – and you will die for it today.”