The Honor Due a King (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  A thin laugh trickled from his crooked mouth. He lifted his helmet and mail hood and tossed them to the ground. In the moonlight, then, I saw the crescent scar on his face.

  “Your mother begged me into her bed and made sport of the fight simply for show.”

  He was a sick man, beyond help or pity or understanding. I let my arms drift wide in invitation. “Is that how you remember it, Sir Neville?”

  His axe wheeled through the air at the end of an unnaturally long arm. The bright colors of his surcoat flashed behind it in a collision of scarlet, azure and green. I thrust my sword arm to block the blow, as I had done a thousand times before, and moved to unarm my foe with a quick upward jerk.

  But somehow I misjudged. Somehow ... by a moment, a breath, a hair ...

  The bottom point of his taper axe snagged my forearm. I felt neither piercing nor cutting, only the pressure of metal against the resistance of my muscle as I tried to jerk my arm away.

  I was on my knees then without knowing how I had been put there. The axe blade was buried in my arm, hooked on my bone it might have been ... and yet I could not feel it. Nor could I feel my fingers or the sword hilt that slipped from them and fell to the earth.

  Never before or since in the course of all my turbid, contemptuous years had I been without plan or action. But just then, a few brutal moments blurred past when an unfamiliar truth bared itself to me – that I might die, then and there, suddenly maybe, or cruelly slow. My head was as frozen cold as my right arm – unresponsive, numb, apart from the rest of me. I observed a weapon, tempered and lifeless, embedded in human flesh, life weeping in streams and splatters of carmine blood around. It was my flesh, my body ... his blade buried there ... and yet it could not be. Could not.

  I fought, not with my head or my skill, but with a desperate strength that blinded me to my wounds. With my left arm, I plowed my round shield into his belly. The jolt sent him tottering backward, pulling me with him by the connection of his weapon buried in my arm. I wrenched away and in the same motion let loose my shield and then scooped up my sword with my left hand, its weight awkward there. A stranger in my grasp. But its purpose would speak more clearly. I found my feet beneath me, the earth like a platform holding me up.

  I saw then the tear in my flesh – the skin flapping on my forearm like a rent piece of clothing and feeling no more a part of me than such. In that moment of realization, there was no time for needed breath or reckless prayer. Only time to strike out and defend, as I had so very long ago at Berwick in defense of Eleanor against this same man, as I had against Frederick the spoiled nobleman’s son at the College of Cardinal Lemoine in Paris, as I had at Bannockburn against the vast might of England. Aye, those moments defined me, set me apart from other men, made me a creature of the devil’s bowels – feared by honest men and forsaken by the gentler sex. If God indeed had a purpose for me, then he possessed a wicked streak and that was a trait I shared with him, cherished or not. I would avenge Eleanor, who had suffered by this man’s evil touch.

  My blade divided the air and drove into his neck, a scant finger’s width below his ear. Blood rained as I pulled my sword back and struck three times more while he staggered, gurgling, his eyes fluttering heavenward. As I poised for one more blow of retribution, his head rolled onto his left shoulder like a shaken rag doll and he crumpled to the forest floor. His body jerked rigidly as he took his last gasp, then went limp.

  I blinked away the blood stinging at my eyes. Neville’s men kept their weapons at hand, regarding me warily. I snatched up the red, shimmering axe in my right hand, barely enough strength in my fingers to grasp the haft, and raised it to the height of my drooping shoulder. I shuddered with the rage of combat.

  “Next!” I shouted at their blank English faces, all blanched like witnesses to some apparition of the infernal world. “Come now! My master won’t be pleased with this trifling rot!”

  They ran. Ran as though the devil himself were on their heels, fain for souls to devour whole, then spit out the bones to pick his teeth with. I would have pursued them each and all and dealt out the same unpleasant fate their vain and feckless lord had suffered. One fallen peacock. One slim, garish feather in my cap. I could stuff a featherbed with the lot of them. But my legs were leaden, my head as light as air.

  An angel’s voice beckoned, called out my name softly on the gentlest breeze. “James, follow me. Fast now. Come. They won’t find us.”

  My lips shaped her name. “Marjorie.”

  Ah, Marjorie . . . let me hold you once more.

  ***

  Melrose Abbey, 1316

  I slept in a world adrift with alternating memories: some sweetly pleasant, some stark and frightening. A world of pleasures in sunlight and uplifting gladness. A world of clouds and darkness, of slow, seeping terror and sudden panic. I fought to stay ... and to go.

  I wandered in that world of half-dark, half-light, hearing Marjorie’s voice – sometimes as a child spilling over with laughter, sometimes as a woman flushed with desire, calling to me – and yet, I could not find her there. Not in the meadows or woods, nor in the twisting alleys or winding corridors. Nowhere. Only her voice, at first loud above the chanting, and gradually, the longer I searched and searched, fading away to nothing.

  At last, I came to a room ... the chapel of Melrose. But there was no door through which I could leave. No window to look out upon the world. Only walls of stone, rough and damp to the touch, an altar draped with a cloth of red, and a crucifix hanging askance on the wall behind it. I had the vaguest recollection I had been here before ...

  A presence filled me, seized my heart and gave it strength. Yet, I felt no fatigue in my body, no weight to my limbs. I knelt, brought my palms together, touched my fingertips to my lips and closed my eyes. What else was I to do? I was put here to wait, I was certain, for some meeting, some judgment that would allow me either to ascend to heaven or hurtle me down to hell.

  As a lad, I prayed when I was prodded, attended Mass when I was made to and doled out respect to the priests by way of blind obedience. When I returned from school in France, I honored Bishop Lamberton as my master without question. But I can never say that truly in my heart did I believe.

  When I knelt at Mass, Latin utterances ringing above bowed heads, I tried, tried, tried to understand, to open my soul, to imagine the light cast by God’s face or his hand instructing the affairs of men. But it never came to me. Never made any sense but to give the poor, hopeless peasantry some semblance of order to their aimless lives and that I thought was reason enough for churches and monks and bishops.

  So how was it, after the life I had led, that God should allow me salvation?

  “You fought well, James,” came God’s voice, thin and distant.

  Odd. I could hear the chanting of monks in my dreams. I tried to open my eyes, to look upon Him. A shape, white and floating, appeared before me, but I could not make out the face.

  Fool. Man is not meant to look upon God.

  “You’re fortunate to be alive,” said the voice, this time closer, more clearly.

  I blinked. I was lying down now ... but how? “Alive? Alive?” I kept repeating it in confusion. I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be with Marjorie.

  A starpoint of white hovered above me. The face came near. Smiled quaintly. I blinked again. The point of light became a candle flame, but the face ...

  Another figure stooped over me. This voice was deeper, gruffer. Familiar.

  “Aye. Those English must’ve thought you possessed by the devil. Ran like flaming hell to get away from you. Lost a lot of blood, you did. Nasty wound there. Turned fifteen shades of purple and green before Gil cleaned it up. Should I tell you how? Or would you rather not know? Let’s just say it had to do with wee, slimy beasts. Och, look there. You won’t be out of bed for a while, much less heave a sword.”

  Outlines sharpened. The light around the room brightened. Candles wavered – on a small table by the bed, in sconces by the door. With my
returning sight, sensation began to return.

  “Boyd?” I whispered. “Where are we?”

  “Melrose.” He chuckled, then handed Gil a piece of cloth. “But we’ll have you back at Lintalee in no time.”

  “You must have thought to bury me, if you brought me here.” I feigned a smile, but do not think I managed, so weak I was. I couldn’t stay here. There were too many memories of her here.

  Gil dipped the rag in water, then began to dab at the wound on my forearm. The water burned. White pain fanned upward, from my arm, to my shoulder, through my chest. I felt weak, as though I was slipping away again.

  “Aye. We fetched the mason to cut you a headstone.” Boyd guffawed. “Fools, all those folk who say you’ve a pact with the devil. Too damn stubborn to die, that’s what you are. Any ordinary man would not have lasted a day in your condition.”

  Boyd, Gil ... you should have let me die. I could have been with her again.

  ***

  When I was well enough to ride again, Gil and Boyd escorted Archibald and me back to Lintalee. Many times before I had been wounded, but never so grievously. The wound itself was not life-threatening, but the loss of blood had been great. If I could have chosen, I would not have returned to the world, but there was always something within my soul that would not succumb. My work, whatever it was anymore, was not done. No matter that I no longer cared to discover that calling. I only wanted back what I could not have: a chance to live over those few short months with Marjorie in which I had tread so errantly astray.

  One dismal November day as my brother and I sat about the hall in Lintalee with our two favorite hounds sprawled under the tables, I was, as usual, deeply sunk in melancholy, pondering the same thoughts senselessly over and over. I had a sheaf of arrows arrayed on the table. One by one, I picked them up, inspecting the goose feathers for gaps or imperfections, eyeing the shafts for straightness, testing for weight and balance, lying them back down again, reaching for another.

  When again would I be able to pull my bowstring? My arm was yet partly numb below the elbow and I had far from regained good use of it. Eating left-handed was something of an embarrassment, and so my waist had dwindled to spare my pride. I barely noticed when the bitch at my feet lifted her head, stood on her gangly, bristly legs and looked to the outer door.

  “Have you heard anything I’ve said, James?” Archibald tapped his knife on the table. “King Robert asks, if you’re well enough, if you’ll be in Edinburgh for Christmas?”

  The bitch hound twitched her ears and tilted her gray-streaked head. As I reached to stroke her neck, she trotted away toward the door, turned and looked expectantly at me.

  “No hunt today, girl. Not for some time,” I told her.

  “You didn’t answer me,” Archibald whined.

  “The Lindsays will be in Edinburgh, certainly. Have you answered them about their sister?”

  His cheeks flushed crimson. He fidgeted in his chair. “Come with me, James. Tell me if you think Beatrice is fit to marry.”

  “Me? ’Tis you who’ll have to share her bed, not me. I’m far from qualified in meting out advice in the department of marriage.”

  “Ah, but you used to prod me constantly on it. Told me I ought to marry. Even offered Douglas Castle to me. I’ll say if I dare, but it frightens me to think of ... of spending all my life with one woman. What if she’s a shrew? Near thirty, she is, older than me, and never once married.”

  “There were offers. All fell through for sound reasons. I understand one of her betrotheds died in battle less than a month before they were to be wed.”

  He slid from his seat, paced uneasily. “Come, won’t you?”

  “You know the way as well as I.”

  He stopped abruptly, his back to me. Crossing his arms, he turned to gaze at me with the look of a child from whom the truth can no longer be hidden. “You said her name when you were down with the fever, did you know?”

  Did he guess merely by observation, or had I, in my delirium, said too much? “Whose name did I say, then?”

  “Her name. The reason you don’t want to go back to Edinburgh and face Walter.”

  There was nothing malevolent in his manifestation and yet all the same it left me feeling helplessly exposed. As it had been since boyhood for me, words failed to form. Had I thought he harbored me any ill will, I might have struck him. That seemed to be the only way I knew. But circumstances had softened me. Made me look more inward than out for the things that caused me hurt.

  “How do I give answer to that accusation?” I asked pointedly.

  But he had no opportunity to respond or query further. The dogs scrabbled to their feet and pitched into a frenzy as the outer doors swung open. With his head bowed, my young horsegroom, Donald, held the door for a lady. As she swept past, Donald gazed at her beneath his dirty locks, then tugged the door shut and disappeared outside.

  Archibald rose and managed a quick bow, but he looked blankly at the visitor, not knowing at all who she was. I knew, though, and was more than passing curious as to what had brought her here.

  “Lady Rosalind de Fiennes?” Tentative, I went forward, took her cool hand and brushed my lips over it. “This is my brother, Archibald. What brings you? I would not have thought we’d meet again – less that you would ever seek me out.”

  She brushed back the hood of her damp mantle. It had been misting daylong and by her sodden outer garments, it was clear she had ridden many miles, days perhaps. Her chin drifted down to her chest. “I regret to tell you, my lords, that Lady Eleanor Douglas died this past spring of a rampant fever. She fought it fiercely. The nuns of Emmanuel even bathed her in the River Avon to cool the fever. But it was not meant that she should remain of this earth.”

  Archibald staggered to the table and leaned upon it, shaking his head slowly.

  “Your mother, Sir Archibald, she befriended me. We talked often. She spoke of her sons incessantly with enormous pride.”

  “I wrote her. Wrote and wrote and in the last two years – and not one in return from her. I went to the nunnery to inquire of her. The abbess turned me away.”

  “Judge her not harshly, my lord. Your mother had taken the veil. Almost daily she set out to attend to the poor and infirm and was not even at the nunnery. It was her own selflessness that exposed her to the pestilence in nearby Dalmeny. As for your letters, when we were sorting through her belongings, we found these.” She drew from beneath the shelter of her mantle a leather bag and offered it to Archibald. “The pages were worn, some of the words blurred from her tears. She read them often. I pray they will grant you some comfort in your loss.”

  As Archibald stepped shakily forward and took the bag from her, I saw Rosalind’s brave countenance deepen with the shadow of her own lamentations. She would not, however, allow her own sufferings or fear to deter her from her purpose. At Roxburgh, she had shown such fortitude. Even so, there was the slightest sinking of her mouth and her eyes were darkened beneath with private tears and lost sleep.

  “Lady Rosalind, please,” I said, “if you will stay a night or two ... rest from your journey. You have family, surely, to return to?”

  I was ill-prepared for the cutting glare she cast upon me, so quickly did her façade change.

  “I have been widowed these two years, you may recall.”

  I glanced away to escape the inculpation in her words. But my eyes settled squarely on the row of arrows spread upon the table. No, no. She could not have known that it was my own hand that took her husband’s life at Roxburgh. She could not.

  “You have a daughter, I recall.”

  Again, a shadow passed over her face. “I do. She was with me at the Nunnery of Emmanuel – until recently.”

  I feared the worst, but asked anyway. “Where is she now?”

  A muscle in her jaw twitched almost imperceptibly. “In England, with family. She is safer there.”

  “Then if you will not accept my hospitality, good lady,” I said, “allow me to pro
vide an escort. I shall ride with you myself back to Linlithgow. Or to the border, if you prefer.”

  Something of a laugh bubbled from her mouth. Just as sudden, her voice was steady and sure. “I see by my own eyes, Lord Douglas, you barely look fit to ride, let alone defend me, after your latest scuffle. Kindly, I decline. I hired a groom who has served me well enough. A fresh pair of mounts would do, however, if you can spare them for now.”

  “I’ll have them brought out and saddled for you. But I beg, stay, eat with us, at least.”

  “I assure you, we are fine. We’ve a fair amount of day left to travel and shall leave anon for Berwick. My aunt there will take me in and so long as it’s in English hands ...” she paused noticeably in her speech, “I can reside safely there. Farewell, my lords.”

  I saw nothing but the swirl of her skirts and the flare of her mantle as she strode from the hall. At the table, Archibald was drawing the letters from the bag and opening them one by one. I left him alone with them.

  Not an hour had passed before, while I sat in my study looking over household records, he came running in and slapped one of the letters down before me.

  “James,” he began, breathless from his sudden burst up the steep flight of stairs. “The Lady Rosalind ...”

  I leaned back on my creaking stool, waiting.

  He brought his face close to mine. “Mother, in one of her letters ... speaks of her. Lady Rosalind is the ... was the daughter of ...”

  “Who?” She was English, but more than that I hadn’t the slightest notion.

  “The daughter of Sir Neville of Raby.”

  Ch. 11

  Robert the Bruce – Edinburgh, 1316

  An heir. A kingdom. Dreams turned to dust in my fingers as I struggled to hold onto them.

  Spring turned idly into summer. Summer faded to autumn, each day’s demise marked by sunsets of crimson. My memories of my daughter were as sharp as a newly whetted blade – which made them all the more cutting to my soul. So many moments carved into my heart. I prayed they would not fade with time – that I would never forget how the sight of her filled me with such love and joy.