The Honor Due a King (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  It was in 1325, that another son was born to us. Unlike his brother, John cried from daybreak to evening and on through the night. Never willing to pass the care of her children entirely to nursemaids, Elizabeth suffered for loss of sleep, trying to soothe young John.

  The following summer I remained in Cardross, rather than return to Edinburgh, leaving the business of the kingdom in the competent hands of Thomas Randolph. When he could, he came to me at Cardross to seek my guidance.

  So he did that summer. Being too good a day to waste, my nephew and I strolled from the house down the path that led to the shore, where the three oldest children were playing. Elizabeth, holding Mathilda in her arms even as the lass kicked and cried to be let down, waved to us from the crest of a dune and came to join us.

  I had never seen my Elizabeth so content as that summer at Cardross. Bathed in the golden rays of summer, she would stroll along the Clyde every day, hand-in-hand with the girls, watching keenly over Robbie and David as they played in the water. The two lads would splash each other, laughing raucously as they wiled away the days, no cares to the future, no pasts yet to trouble them. Too aching and weary, I could but watch from the shore, sometimes with Margaret and Mathilda clambering on the rocks around me, but more often alone.

  Elizabeth smiled broadly as Randolph kissed her on the cheek.

  “You look well, Thomas.”

  “And you never better. Truly. Why, if you were not my uncle’s wife ...” he teased.

  “Ah, but you have a wife of your own, I recall. How would we ever do away with them both?” As Mathilda began to fuss, she bounced her on her hip.

  “That is a problem.” Then Randolph bestowed a little kiss on Mathilda’s rosy cheek. “My wee cousin is in a fit of unhappiness, I see. Wanting to run and play, are you?”

  “Aye, but last I set her down near the water she was up to her chin in it before I could blink. Not again. I try to amuse her with searching for shells, but it never lasts long enough.”

  “And how is the newest prince?” he asked. “Asleep in his cradle as we speak?”

  At that, Elizabeth’s smile faded to a frown. The sun beating down on her face clearly showed the deep lines that fanned out from the corners of her eyes. “Cried all night, he did. They say it is the colic and he’ll outgrow it in time. I only hope they’re right. The other children were so different. I don’t know at all what to do with him. It tears at my heart and when I hold him he only cries that much more.” She sighed. “Sometimes I think that if he had been born my first, he would also have been my last.”

  “Last what, mama?” Margaret had scrambled over a small hill of sand behind us and stood with a treasure of shells collected in the apron of her skirt.

  Elizabeth looked down, then quickly gathered her composure. “Never mind. Up to the house with you. Mathilda here is past due for her supper. And put those mussels back where you found them. You smell of seaweed, Margaret. Go on, then. Don’t stand there staring at me as if you don’t understand. Off with you.”

  Margaret frowned. “Can I sing to wee Johnny, mama? He likes it when I sing to him.”

  “Of course you may. Now go on.” She set Mathilda down and shooed them away. Margaret took her little sister by the hand and they went along the path that wandered past the sand dunes, up the rocky hillside and on toward the house. Before setting off after them, Elizabeth said, “Will you gather up the lads when you’re done?”

  I laid my hands upon the gentle curve of her shoulders and gave her a kiss. “It won’t be long. Let Margaret sing her brother a lullaby.”

  She waved good-bye and left. At water’s edge, Robbie teased David with a crab, its pincers snapping furiously. David squealed and flailed at the crab, knocking it into the water, at which Robbie only laughed. Ten now, Robbie was eight years the senior of his own uncle, little David, and he accepted the duty of looking after him with a mixture of begrudging disdain and simple amusement. David, the timid follower, was half-enamored of Robbie and half-terrified. An interesting relationship. I often wondered how it would develop in years to come. It was imperative that I set things aright for my son and allow him a secure kingdom to inherit – especially if it happened before he was ready for the duty.

  I thank the Lord that I have James and Randolph to oversee things, to do what I can no longer do for myself. Without them ... without them I would have no peace.

  “A fine pair of lads,” Randolph said.

  “The best. David will do well with Robbie to lead the way for him.”

  “Do you think it goes that way – Robbie as the leader?”

  “I think, nephew, it’s too early to tell or ponder on. But my family has grown a lot in a little while, hasn’t it? There were so many times when I thought I would never see this day, and now that I have it ... Ah, when I asked God for all this all those years ago, I bloody forgot to tell him to hurry up.” I stopped myself before I could go on anymore. Age had made a cynic of me. “So, you’ve been to see the pope, have you? What says our venerable pontiff? Have I his blessing to go to the Holy Land? Although I don’t see where I should have to ask him first before I do God’s work, but that, I suppose, is how it’s done.”

  Randolph shook his flaxen head subtly. “He’ll call you ‘king’ and welcomes your aid against the infidels, but with one stipulation.”

  “Ah ... Berwick.”

  “Aye, Berwick. He wants you to give it back to the English. King Edward harps on it incessantly.”

  “Hah! England’s king has good cause to be in a whining mood. His queen will have none of him. But what a bloody bunch of rubbish ... If we returned Berwick, next they would be asking for Stirling and Edinburgh. After that Perth and Dunbar. No, you know as well as I – and the pope knows it, too – we keep Berwick. It’s ours. Always has been. The excommunication?”

  “Still on you. He would not lift it.”

  “Then if the price for Berwick is my soul, so be it.” We had walked along the shore a ways, enough to tire me, and so I sat down on top of a small overturned rowing boat and stretched my legs. “And France? Do they agree to renewing the alliance with us?”

  “For the time it seems so and aye, they do agree. But not publicly. Queen Isabella has overseen the signing of a peace treaty between France and England, I understand.”

  I mopped at the sweat on my brow and pushed up my sleeves. “Wickedly warm for September, don’t you think?”

  But Randolph didn’t answer the question. He stared at my forearms, then suddenly poked a finger at my left arm.

  “What are these bruises?” His brow furrowed intensely. “So many. Heaven, it looks as though you’ve been given regular beatings.”

  “A rash, ’tis all. Rambling through the nettles. I should keep closer to home in my old age.”

  He towered before me like some elder scolding a stripling. “That’s no rash, Uncle.”

  “Whatever it is,” I said, rising to my feet so I could look down on him, being taller yet in stature than he, “it’s nothing to be concerned over. You’ll see for yourself soon enough. Seems like you are young and strong forever and then one day, you’re just more tired than you used to be, your bones ache when it rains, your cuts don’t heal as fast. You don’t believe me now, but you’ll see, Thomas. You’ll see.”

  But what I said to him I meant more than I could say. I no longer sailed or hunted away the days. I couldn’t. Every joint ached – more than I would ever reveal to Elizabeth or anyone. Lying down at night was a welcome event. Rising in the morning a toil. Always, I hid the discomforts, not wishing to burden anyone. First came the small pains: in the knees while climbing the stairs or mounting my horse, in the hands when I reached for a quill or grasped a spoon, in my shoulders and elbows when I tried to lift my own children. Then the bruises with every bump – deep purple turning green, then yellow – and the tiny speckles of red on my arms and back. I learned to keep my marks well hidden, but as time progressed, even that became impossible.

  More than m
y attempts to deny my own gradual decay, I was struck hard by the irony that my father had suffered a like affliction. How little I had understood of him then, seeing nothing but my own life awaiting me, possessed even then by the ambition that had defined me to this very day. But as my father shrank from the world in grim solitude, I desperately tried to cling to it and deny what was happening to me, praying it would pass of its own or at the least get no worse. Inside, though, I knew there was something wrong, something that would gradually eat away at me and steal the life from me.

  As I called to Robbie to bring David along and follow us home, the effort snatched the breath from me. Climbing back up the hill toward the house was a task and if not for the wind at our backs I might not have made it without pausing to rest.

  My God ... I would rather have died looking into the eyes of my foe as he thrust a blade into my gut, than slowly decaying like this.

  As much as I made light of it, the pope’s blessing was more important than ever. Something was happening to me, some slowly growing sickness nibbling away at me from within. Time was like sand sifting through my fingers, and more than grain by grain.

  ***

  Once I sat down in my chair to wait for supper in the great hall of Cardross, I did not move for hours. My knees throbbed as if they had been hammered and my feet were on fire from the pounding of the short walk.

  Randolph appeared never in better health. At Elizabeth’s polite prodding, he spoke of his wife and children with rare pride, for Randolph, always humble and pious, never boasted.

  Elizabeth idled over her meal of fresh venison. John’s colic, which had begun rather abruptly four months past, had robbed her of having her usual patience with the children. That Margaret was old enough to hold her little brother in her lap and sing to him was the only reprieve from his constant caterwauling that Elizabeth had.

  She sipped at her wine, a gift from the French king. “What of James? Does he ever leave the forest anymore?”

  Randolph leaned back in his chair, his overstuffed belly giving him an ache that revealed itself in the grimace on his face. “Only when he needs to chase the English away, which lately is not often. No, he is content there in Lintalee with his woman.”

  Elizabeth perked. The tenderness she’d always had for James was evident in the intense narrowing of her eyebrows. “The same one? The English woman?”

  “The same: Lady Rosalind de Fiennes. A fine woman, but she has no wish to go back to England and he has none to send her away.”

  “And has he spoken of marriage to her?”

  “To my knowledge, no. But you know James – he’d sooner cut off his own hand to give you than share a private thought.”

  She fell silent a moment, contemplating. A servant reached over her shoulder and took away her trencher. “A pity, then. If a man and a woman truly love one another, they should be married ... and have children. A house full of them.”

  We shared a smile across the table and I laid my hand over hers to give it a squeeze. The love we once shared had returned to us in a different form: that of the love for our children. A bittersweet exchange, but I regretted it not. All things change. All things pass.

  “There is something ...” Randolph began, his eyes suddenly dropping to inspect his fingernails. Then he curled his fingers over the table’s edge and went on, his words tinged with sorrow. “Something I must tell you. I wanted to wait until the children were asleep, to let you both know first.”

  “What is it, Thomas?” Elizabeth slid her hand from mine.

  “Walter died just over a week past. Spoiled meat, they say. One night he sat down to dinner, ate heartily, went to bed with a stomachache, began vomiting in the night ... gone by sunset the next day. Several others took ill from the meal as well, none with such grave results as Walter.” Finally, he met my gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to say anything with Robbie present. If you want me to, I can tell him tomorrow.”

  I pushed away the goblet of wine in front of me, absorbing the news. Robbie was fully an orphan now, although Elizabeth and I had filled the role of his parents essentially from birth. Despite his tendency to doubt any outcome, Walter had served well as governor – a position few men would have imperiled themselves in. To hold Berwick against the whole of the English army had been no small feat.

  Elizabeth rose then. Her mouth was drawn down sadly. She kissed me along my graying temple. “I’m going to see the children to bed. We can tell Robbie in the morning together.”

  After she went from the hall, Randolph and I sat silently for several minutes – me staring at my half-empty goblet of wine and him running his fingertips along the edge of the table.

  “We’ll talk, tomorrow,” I said, “about who to set in his place. It’s a precarious post. I trust you’ve given it some thought already?”

  He shook his head. “Actually, no. I was too –”

  A curdling scream ripped from someone’s throat upstairs. In a second, I was on my feet and sprinting up the stairs three at a time, my heart ten steps ahead of me, my breath ten behind.

  As I entered the room the two girls shared with John, I saw Elizabeth standing with her back to me, crushing her infant son in her arms as she cried out again. It was a sound I had heard before – of mothers and wives who have searched the battlefields and come upon the mangled, lifeless bodies of their fallen menfolk. The keening of the aggrieved. The cry of death.

  I reached for her, but she ripped herself away, clutching at her child as she collapsed to the floor in a quaking heap. I moved around her, knelt down, looked upon John’s small body – blue as an icy loch in wintertime. He was not breathing.

  “No, no,” she repeated lowly. Trembling, Elizabeth peeled away the blanket that partially covered his head. “No, it cannot be. It cannot be.”

  Then she raised her face to heaven and opened her mouth in a silent plea as tears cascaded down her cheeks. I wrapped my arms around her, John’s small, cold body cradled between us.

  Mathilda raised her head sheepishly from her pillow, then tunneled beneath her blankets, terrified by her mother’s grief. Margaret slipped from the bed and stood before us.

  Her tiny red lips quivered. “I sang to him. He went to sleep and I covered him up. What’s wrong with Johnny, mama? Mama? Did I do something wrong? Mama!” She burst forth in tears, her fists mopping at her eyes.

  I placed a hand on her shoulder. “You did nothing wrong, dear heart. Nothing. ’Tis not your doing.”

  Robbie appeared behind her. Gently, he guided her away. Then he coaxed Mathilda from the bed and took both girls by the hand.

  “Come along,” he said, as they went out the door. “David and I have a big bed. You can stay with us tonight. I’ll protect you, Margaret. Mathilda, don’t be afraid. Come on, now. Come with me.”

  How to tell him of his father after this? How? The lad is growing up before his time. He will bear an even greater weight all too soon, I fear.

  I looked down at John’s face – so peaceful – and held Elizabeth tight.

  ***

  Days short of his first birthday, my son John was buried on a hill overlooking the sea near Cardross. I could have carried his coffin under one arm, so small it was. The greatest grief of all is that of a parent for his child, the hollow pain for a life not yet lived in full.

  Summer fled away in the blast of winter’s first winds, as if there were to be no subtle change of autumn that year to ease us into winter’s icy hold. Elizabeth’s grief devoured her. The day John died, she withdrew not only from those around her, but from the world entirely. She left the children in the care of nurses, no longer personally attending to their studies with rigorous diligence as she once had, or reading to them or teaching them any of life’s many small secrets.

  Robbie took the news of his father’s passing stoically. He was more despondent over John’s death than his father’s, not having known or seen much of Walter in the last few years.

  James arrived at Cardross with Gilbert de la
Haye straight from Berwick, where they had attended Walter’s wake. I received them that evening in my private quarters, alone. Elizabeth, since the day of John’s death, had moved to her own chamber, leaving me copious time to wallow in my own sorrow. Other times I would have been glad to see the two men. Now their presence was an intrusion upon my self-induced solitude. A man needed time to reflect when his life was slipping thread by thread from his grasp.

  “How are you faring these days?” James gave a slight bow, then pulled up a stool and sat on it before me. Gil hovered at his shoulder, perusing me keenly in that ever-observant way of his.

  At my foot slept a hound, a descendent of my loyal Coll. I nudged the dog with my toe and he opened one eye, rolled over and went back to sleep. I gazed forlornly into the cracking embers of my hearth, flopped to one side of my chair and propped my jaw wearily on my fist. “How do I look, my good James? Quite a mess, I imagine.”

  “My condolences on both John and Walter. Walter will be missed as both cousin and compatriot to me. And John – he was far too young.” He grabbed the poker from beside the hearth, nudged the logs about, and then added another. “How is the queen?”

  “Gone, here.” I thumped the thumb-side of my fist against my chest, then tapped at my head with a fingertip. “And losing it here, too, I fear. She goes to Johnny’s cradle every night to look for him, certain it was all a nightmare. She is angry, bitter, deeply in woe one moment, then the next chatting as if nothing were wrong and talking of how John had slept without a sound the night before. So odd. When I talk to her, it’s as if I can see right through her. Like there’s no one there.” The new log began to burn, casting a stronger light, drawing me in with its amber glow. “We spoke over the summer, did you know, about a betrothal between David and King Edward’s daughter, Joanna of the Tower. Elizabeth won’t hear of it now, of course. Won’t let her children leave this place, even though she’ll have little to do with them. But I have to move things along quickly. More than you or anyone knows. It is more important than ever that I secure peace between Scotland and England. There is no other way. And if England will not give David a bride – France will.”