The Honor Due a King (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  Gil stepped forward, took my chin in his hand and tilted my head to peer into my eyes. “So bloodshot, my lord. Have you slept? And these blotches upon your flesh – have they been long?”

  “I am an aging man, Gil. Aye, I am weary and my skin has not the rosy blush of youth to it any longer, but spots and veins and scars too many to remember.”

  “Hmm, no. I don’t like the looks of it.” He crossed his arms like a mother hen. “I’ve seen the likes of it before – in the sailors that come to Leith after long journeys. Too much salted meat and stale bread in their diets, it is said. Let me go and have a stew made up for you.”

  He left with a purpose, but I could see that James shared his concern. In minutes, Gil returned and placed a bowl of watery stew on the table before me. “Leeks and cabbage. I’ve instructed the cook to make you something similar twice a day and to restrict the amount of meat, bread and ale available to you.”

  The smell alone was enough to make me retch. “And how long must I endure this unpalatable remedy? You know me, Gil. I’ll eat venison fresh off the carcass before I’ll stuff myself with turnips and the like.”

  “Give it a month, sire. If that does not improve your state, then tell me I was wrong to suggest this. Until then, your health is worth displeasing your tongue, is it not?”

  I grumbled at him, cupped the bowl between my aching hands and sipped from it. “Well, James, if the English are amassing a force you should go back home. Watch over things.”

  James turned a critical eye on me. “The border will be quiet through winter. That much I can assure you. England has too many problems of its own to pester us.”

  “Go back home, James. You’re more needed there. There’s nothing you can do here. You too, Gil.”

  When they left, I let the stew go cold and placed it on the floor. Even the dog refused it.

  ***

  Aye, England had its own problems. Many. But my own sorrows were not over with. They were to come in threes, always it seemed. Once it was the loss of my brothers Thomas, Alexander and then Nigel. Now this. John and Walter. What else, I wondered.

  Elizabeth began to miss meals. I sent them to her room. She refused them. By Christmas she had taken terribly ill. By spring she was recovering. Then the sickness came again and would not go away. Had she kept up her strength, she might have fought it. I sent the children to her often to try to lift her spirits, give her reason for hope, but in my heart I knew what the end would be.

  On the 26th day of October, in the year 1327, Elizabeth went from me ... forever. It did not seem right that I, so much older than her, should be left to go on without her. It seemed even less right that she had left three young children behind.

  When we are young, we live for all our tomorrows: hopeful, vigorous, tireless. As we grow old, we yearn for the past: regretful, dispassionate, weary.

  Many were the regrets in my life, but loving her was never one. Alas, our time with those we love is never long enough.

  God in Heaven knew that our love was not perfect. I had done so much to ruin it. Yet time and time again, she had forgiven me, stood by me, given so much of herself. What would I have ever been without her? I dared not think.

  Like the grief that pervaded my soul, my affliction was worsening. There were not enough bolts of cloth in all the kingdom to hide the red bumps and purple bruises on my skin. My gums bled, my teeth loosened and my eyes were a bloody sight to behold. I had the mirrors removed from my chambers at Cardross. I kept to myself there when it was at its worst and made myself public at Edinburgh on my best days, but those were becoming ever fewer and the rides far too painful to endure much longer.

  Often, I wandered the gardens that Elizabeth had laboriously planned. Although the trees were yet small, the orchards were bearing their first fruits upon willowy branches bent low by the weight. Since I could not manage the riggings myself, I lounged in my boat, giving direction, while Robbie took in the tack of the sails or put the full force of his chest and arms into the rudder.

  My days were thus slowly spent, like the hound that no longer hunts or the plow horse that is no longer fitted to the harness.

  Ch. 24

  Edward II – London, 1326

  Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, had the slightest rasp in his throat and a runny nose when he sailed for France. He had been charged to retrieve my consort and heir from King Charles’ court. The voyage was rough, the weather beyond miserable. Waves spilled over the deck and a cold, stinging sleet assailed them all the way. By the time his feet touched shore, Pembroke was possessed by fever. One day’s journey from Paris, he died.

  My noblest of nobles, smote down by Providence. Even the Creator saw fit to contravene the simplest of my designs.

  England lay in peril. My heir was being played as a pawn by his own mother. I had no time to mourn for Pembroke. I had to act. But how to do so was not so easily arrived at.

  Hugh and his father were persistent in telling me to raise an army and punish those who did not comply. But everything I said or did or ordered others to do was completely ignored. Even my closest advisors yawned and nodded at my commands, then turned away and did nothing. Parliament conspired to uproot and topple me by doing nothing, leaving me completely ineffectual. Crowned, throned and sceptered, but as impotent as a halfwit on a milking stool brandishing a willow wand. A cuckold for a king.

  My court is overrun with rats and they will gnaw away at the very foundation of my house. I must be the cat – stealthy, silent. I need not sink my teeth and taste of blood to be rid of them. A flick of the tail, a hiss, and they will retreat into their holes.

  When Bishop Walter Stapledon of Exeter returned from France and stood before me in the Tower, it did not bode well for the success of his assignment.

  Stapledon had not quite recovered from his channel crossing when he stooped, green-faced and wobbly, before me in my great chamber in the Tower of London. He had come straight from the French court, he muttered, and I could read the ill news in his sagging countenance.

  “News from France, your grace?” I pressed my ink-smeared fingertips upon a page of my book to keep the hot breeze that was blowing in from the open window from flipping the pages over.

  Stapledon glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the sound of footsteps. Hugh Despenser hovered in the doorway. I gestured for him to enter. He closed the door softly behind him, but respectfully stayed his distance. There if I needed him.

  The bishop drew a breath, closed his eyes and pressed two fingers to his right temple. “You must understand ... how hard it is that I tried. Counseled her. Quoted scripture. Begged of all near to her. Yet my words fell on deaf ears. I bring you not news from Paris, sire, but ... Hainault.”

  I chased away a fly with the tail of the ribbon that marked my place in the book, then laid it thoughtlessly between the pages and snapped the book shut. “Enlighten me, if you will. Was the queen not in Paris when you were with her? Your duty was to speak convincingly with her. She was to come home, leave her brother’s court. The pope wrote back to me that he was demanding Charles send her away.”

  “Even kings bow to popes, my lord. He did as told, asked her to leave. And she went. To Count William of Hainault’s court in Valenciennes.”

  “Hainault?” Hugh echoed, stepping forward.

  “By invitation of Sir John of Hainault,” Stapledon clarified, nodding his head. He pulled his hands within his long sleeves, shoulders hunched. “It would seem that Sir John is deeply enamored of the queen. I begged with her to forsake Mortimer, my lord. To return with your son to England. But she declined ... nay, ordered me away.”

  “Why so?” I slid the book away from me, pushed back my chair to stand, but my knees were weak, knowing part of what was to come. “I swear, had Pembroke not stumbled into his grave it would be the queen now groveling before me and not you and your pathetic tongue devising excuses.”

  I had dispatched him in Isabella’s company because he was one man I could trust to watch her
every move. He had been my spy all along. I imagine she knew of it, but never cared, flaunting her lover Mortimer ever more openly as the days and weeks went by.

  “An answer, Bishop Stapledon. Why did she refuse?”

  His left eye twitched. He swallowed hard. “Because you would not banish Lord Despenser.”

  A sharp, white pain cleaved my skull. “That she would so persist ... Should I cower at the haranguing of a woman whose jealousy rules her every action? Lord Despenser has been naught but loyal. She has been anything but. And my brother Edmund – did he return with you?”

  “He, too, is in Hainault.”

  “I ... don’t understand. Is he spying then? Ah, yes. How clever of Edmund. Brilliant, brilliant. Has he returned reports of her activities? Come, your grace, what does Edmund say?”

  “He sends no word, sire. Nothing at all.”

  Edmund in Hainault? Trailing after her with his nose aquiver, as if she were a bitch in heat. Ah, Edmund, Edmund. Are you, as well, under the spell of her witchcraft? Did she bestow on you one of those shy, seductive glances she now uses so freely, touch you in an alluring way, confide in you?

  Hugh came to my side. “Then why is the queen in Hainault, your grace?”

  “To find her son a wife.”

  “What?” I threw my chair back as I leapt to my feet. Gripped the table so hard that a splinter pricked beneath my fingernail. “She can’t possibly ... I have already entered into negotiations with the King of Aragon for his daughter. No, it is not her place to decide such a thing. Impudence! Flagrant impudence! The disobedient bitch. Had I no care for her children, I would slit her open from her belly to her lying mouth and let the buzzards have at her liver. Oh, her heart is the wellspring of corruption. I should have seen the evil in her there at Boulogne, disguised as an innocent, and left her weltering at the altar in the cathedral as they doused her with holy water and burned the flesh from her bones. That deceitful, devil-whoring bitch!”

  My entire body jerked with an uncontrollable spasm. Hugh kneaded at my shoulder to soothe me. I cursed and ranted for minutes before his gentle touch had chiseled away at my granite wall of anger. Ever calm, his voice carried no murderous edge to it, no intimation that he had lost any control. “Count William has three ... four daughters, does he not?” Hugh explored. “None yet betrothed?”

  “Yes,” Stapledon said.

  “And an army, well equipped.”

  Stapledon shook his head.

  Hugh took my arm and eased me back into my chair before my knees completely failed me. He sank to his haunches beside me. “This is more grave, my lord, than a disagreement over mates for your heir. This is about your very life. Your crown is in jeopardy. You must –”

  “In jeopardy,” Stapledon broke in, “because my lord has succumbed to ill influences and committed iniquities so –”

  “Get out of here!” I bellowed, hammering my fist on the table. The heel of my hand cut into the table’s edge. I winced. Tears sprang to my eyes, not from the pain of my flesh, but for the roiling troubles of my realm sucking me downward like a whirlpool while the heavens rained down on my head. A farce of a marriage. A son who would betray me.

  “But sire,” Stapledon objected, stiffening his jaw, “I implore you, heed me in –”

  “Out! Out!” I pulled a throbbing hand to my chest. “Every blessed day of my existence, badgering clerics and overweening advisors have scraped out my ears with their pointed tongues. In the course of my life, I can count on one hand the number of men who granted me the respect and honor due a king.” I spread out my quivering fingers before me, then tucked my thumb against my palm. “You are no longer one of them. Away with you! You have more than failed in your task. You have made a laughingstock of me.”

  He took one step back, faltered, then blurted out, “Sire, I –”

  “Away! Out of my sight. Do not show yourself to me or speak to me again, you sanctimonious shit-mouth. Go back to godforsaken France. Out!”

  Step by step, Stapledon retreated, until he reached the door and tugged slowly on the latch. “Even the word of Our Savior Jesus Christ could not be heard by those who covered their ears and would not listen.”

  I lurched across the table, grabbed a spiked candlestick empty of its candle and flailed it after him. The door banged shut just as the candlestick smacked against the iron hinge of the door.

  Hugh’s hand slid gently from my shoulder to my forearm. “Shall I have a guard sent after him, sire? He should be made to pay for those words. A few weeks in the dungeon? A hefty fine?”

  I slumped in my chair, my head filled with a fog of rage. Slowly, the blood returned to numb limbs. My thoughts gathered clarity. “Bring me ink and parchment, dear Hugh. I must write a letter.”

  “You have written dozens upon dozens of letters, Edward. What good is one more? What good were any of them?”

  “The pope is on my side, Hugh. He is. He knows ... about Isabella and Mortimer. About their adultery and treason. And Charles fears for his own soul so much that he threw her out. The letters – they did some good, did they not?”

  “But not enough. Not nearly enough.” He knelt beside me and drew my head against his shoulder, letting me give way to the tears I could not keep in. How long I wept, I have no recollection. I felt as though I were beginning to drown beneath a sheet of ice and could not break through to fight for breath.

  “Oh, Hugh. I told that she-wolf I would take her back. That she had only to abandon that troublemaking Marcher Lord and desist in her demands to rid you of me. So simple. And yet, Lord God, I never envisioned this – that she would take my son away and put him before an army against me. What do I do? I don’t know anymore. Tell me what to do.”

  “Gather your own army. Issue a summons.”

  “No. No more fighting, Hugh.” I tried to take heart in his counsel, to place faith in his eternal loyalty, to believe that somehow I would overcome those who rose against me. “She will not do it, Hugh. She will lose heart. She’ll come home with my son. Come crawling to me. Begging forgiveness. She will. And all will be right. You’ll see. There won’t be any war. I won’t fight my own son. I can’t. Won’t.”

  “Then present your belly, Edward. Give your queen the power she craves.”

  I pulled away. “No, not that. I –”

  “If you make it so easy, one day soon it will be Roger Mortimer commanding the kingdom. And as he beds your willing wife, he’ll whisper his wish into her ear: that he wants you ... dead.”

  ***

  Forest of Dean, Wales, 1326

  Berries were dotting the buckthorns when they landed on the Suffolk coast in late September. Queen Isabella and the fawning Sir John of Hainault rode with my son at the head of a band of mercenaries onto English soil – hired killers from Brabant to as far as Bohemia – and yet no one barred their way.

  Mortimer rode well back in the ranks. He was, to his credit, sly enough to give ground when so much depended on the queen being able to garner sympathy for her cause. One would have thought the English people would be smart enough to see both Isabella and Mortimer for what they truly were: adulterous traitors.

  My summonses went unanswered. A plague of apathy had infected the land. They all sat on their hands while foreigners pilfered from them and marched their merry way to London. If I met with Isabella without an army at my back, larger and better equipped than hers, I was as dead as a duckling in a fox den.

  I had to go. Find refuge until allies could be mustered. It would only be a matter of time before England would sour on the queen and her bedfellow.

  Needing to move swiftly, I fled from London. I left my son John with Hugh’s wife, Eleanor, in the Tower. The girls I sent with all haste to Bristol in the guardianship of Hugh’s father – the elder Hugh Despenser.

  Fields of ripened grain embraced the hills of England and spilled into the dales. Our company was small, numbering only a dozen in whole: a handful of guards, a few of my household staff including Jankin, and my two
last loyal supporters, Hugh and Chancellor Baldock. We followed the narrowing Thames westward and then swung sharply north.

  The road to Wales had no end. To guard the secret of our passing, we kept to the countryside and forests. At Bristol, Hugh took as much coin as he could carry and so we feared thievery. Whenever we passed by a small village, Jankin or a couple of my guards would go into the nearest village to buy meat, bread and ale. I cursed the bitterly cold October nights and dreaded each dawn for the toil it held as we were forced to flee further and further west into the wilderness.

  In Gloucester, again, I found nothing but a brotherhood of indifference and disdain. And then, a few leagues beyond the city, we came across a Benedictine monk passing from Glastonbury on his way to Leominster. I took him aside and shared some bread with him as we chatted idly at first about the bounty of the year’s harvest. Unaware of my identity, he delivered to me a stream of terrible news. I gave the holy man a shilling and asked him to say a Mass for my mother’s soul.

  Aimless, we continued vaguely westward, until we came to the Forest of Dean. We claimed a little embowered place cut into a hillside among the beeches and threw down our blankets with weary relief. As the rest of my party settled for the evening, I climbed a slope a hundred feet away and sat down on a large rock beneath a yellowing larch to ponder on my shrinking kingdom.

  The sun sank behind the furthest hill. I pulled my face down within the tattered pile of fur bordering the neckline of my soiled cloak, shivering so violently my teeth clacked like a stick slapping over the spokes of a turning wheel. Hugh approached. His head was covered with a liripipe, its long tail arranged meticulously in a swoop from one shoulder to the other. As he neared me, I could discern the distinct, damp, wooly smell of his serge cloth cloak.