“You have no authority here either to condone or to condemn.” Daddy Bruce’s chin came up. “You are King David’s pet, not my liege lord.”
“Lord Bruce—” Even Kirby knew this was going too far. To call a man a ‘pet’ was one of the most insulting things you could say in the Middle Ages. It outranked even ‘bastard’. Given that Kirby had neglected to mention that Callum was the Earl of Shrewsbury to Falkes, he probably hadn’t informed Daddy Bruce of it either, but ‘pet’ was still an insult. Suddenly, Callum didn’t feel bad about calling him ‘Daddy Bruce’ in his head.
“So that means—what?” Callum said. “Do you rebel against the Guardians just as MacDougall does? Do you seek a war with England?”
“King David should have no say in Scotland. The Guardians should never have gone to him,” Daddy Bruce said.
Callum found it interesting that Kirby stood by and let Daddy Bruce express this dissent openly without making even a token protest. As a governing body, the Guardians of Scotland were the king, which had been Callum’s whole point. It didn’t matter which individuals were involved. Kirby had accused the Black Comyn of conspiring with Balliol and MacDougall, but Comyn was still a Guardian. As a body, they would move heaven and earth to rescue one of their own.
“King David did not interject himself until the Guardians asked for his help,” Callum said. “It is well that you pursue those who murdered the king’s men. King David would have no quarrel with that. But if your real aim is to destroy Balliol’s claim to the throne of Scotland, with that he would have issue.”
“Besides, what is your resentment against King David?” Cassie said. “Everyone in Mugdock thinks that he has already decided the throne in your father’s favor. That’s why the MacDougalls ambushed the company in the first place.”
Callum had to suppress a laugh at the surprised look on Bruce’s face.
“You hadn’t heard those rumors?” Cassie said.
What surprised Callum was that Cassie hadn’t interjected herself into the conversation more. She wore a dress, as a sop to Lord Patrick’s sensibilities, but that was about as far as her patience with the role of women in the Middle Ages went.
Meg, Anna, and Bronwen had worked hard to fit into the Middle Ages. They’d compromised their independence because the alternative was to call attention to themselves and the way they had arrived here. David had done the same, so it wasn’t just because they were women. As far as Callum could tell, Cassie had bought into none of it.
Daddy Bruce peered at Cassie. “Who are you?”
“Her point is valid,” Callum said, seeking to distract him. “Call off this fight with Lord Patrick and seek the prisoners elsewhere.”
Daddy Bruce had been leaning on his hands on the table and now straightened. “Are you giving me an order?”
Callum didn’t back down. He’d had enough of Daddy Bruce’s attitude. “I will if I have to. You may view it as a suggestion if you prefer, if only because James Stewart was alive this morning. King David would prefer he stay that way.”
At least Daddy Bruce didn’t argue with Callum’s ability to speak for King David. It was how things were done here. It wasn’t like Callum could pick up his cell phone and call him to confirm a given course of action.
Daddy Bruce took in a deep breath and let it out. His brow furrowed as he gazed down at the table and then he nodded. “I will put up the white flag and see if Lord Patrick says the same as you.” Daddy Bruce glared past Callum to the world outside the tent. “I’d prefer to know if Lord Stewart is still alive before I burn either Mugdock or Dunstaffnage to the ground. I wouldn’t want him killed by mistake.”
Callum nodded and stepped to one side with Cassie to allow Daddy Bruce, Kirby, and Robbie to leave the tent. As he passed Callum, Daddy Bruce didn’t look at him and his color remained high. In the end, it had been Daddy Bruce who had backed down a moment ago. Callum hoped he wouldn’t pay for it later.
Daddy Bruce ducked through the doorway and was immediately distracted by one of his men, who gave him a rundown of the current state of the assault on Mugdock.
Callum took the opportunity to head out of the tent and over to one side, out of the firelight. Cassie came with him. “We have to get out of here,” she said.
“I know.”
Side by side, they hustled back to the healer’s tent. Not for the first time since he’d come to this world, Callum was struck by the power a single man could wield. Kirby’s influence arose from his status as a bishop and the leader of the English delegation to Scotland. He answered only to King David, and because the king was far away, effectively that meant Kirby answered to no one. Daddy Bruce, as far as Callum could tell, believed himself to be above the law and that he could do whatever he wanted as long as he thought it was right. Callum, as David’s representative, had power too, though without a company of soldiers behind him, that meant considerably less than it had three days ago. Still, he’d had enough to influence Daddy Bruce.
Liam had been sitting on a low stool as they entered the tent, but at their approach, he stood.
“How are you?” Callum said.
“Well enough.” Liam nodded at the other man in the tent, who was folding bandages into piles. “He saw no reason to add to what Donella had already done.”
Callum turned to the healer. “Excuse us, please.”
The man looked from Liam to Callum, bowed at the waist, and departed. Here, and everywhere, there were worse things than being an earl. Liam had color in his face again and seemed sturdier than before.
“Can you walk?” Callum said.
“Are we going somewhere?” Liam said.
“Anywhere but here, I think,” Cassie said.
Liam’s expression lightened. “I was just trying to figure out how I was going to convince you that it wasn’t safe to stay.”
“I’m glad you agree,” Callum said. “What made you decide we had to leave? Your uncle is here—”
“My uncle was singularly unhappy to see me. I haven’t seen that look on his face since he came to visit my mother, to offer to bring me up in his household. He’d hoped that my father would be overcome by his generosity.”
Cassie smiled. “I gather he wasn’t?”
“My father didn’t exactly throw Kirby out of the house, but he did tell him that if he crossed our threshold before ten years had passed, he would have his head. It was only at that point that I would be old enough to make my own decision about my future.”
“And yet ten years later you decided to go with Kirby,” Cassie said. “Why?”
Liam lifted one shoulder. “My father had died, we’d had a few bad growing seasons, and my older brother didn’t manage the lands as well as my father had. It seemed the expedient thing to do.”
“What I want to know is how Kirby teamed up with Bruce,” Callum said.
“How well do you know your uncle, Liam?” Cassie said.
“Obviously, not well enough,” Liam said.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Callum said. “I don’t understand the play either side is making here, not at all.”
“Alexander MacDougall is a hothead,” Cassie said. “When he gets fired up, his warriors will do anything for him.”
“That I understand,” Callum said, “but is he really working for John Balliol?”
“And if so, to what end?” Cassie said. “Surely Balliol wouldn’t condone the capture, or murder, of the King of England?”
“It does seem to be a mare’s nest of intrigue,” Callum said. “Balliol supporters think King David has decided in Bruce’s favor, and Bruce seems to think that King David had already decided in favor of Balliol. Neither side is going to stand for losing. It’s as if they both want a war.”
“We already know the real fear is that King David wants the crown for himself,” Cassie said. “That’s the information you need to include for this to add up. Nobody truly believes the king means what he says.”
“So each side is making a preemptive strik
e for the throne?” Callum said.
“My father thinks that since MacDougall failed to capture or kill King David, he will use James Stewart to negotiate himself out of punishment, or to put Balliol on the throne.”
Cassie and Callum turned at the voice. Robbie Bruce had ducked through a door in the rear corner of the tent.
“We think so too,” Callum said, “but MacDougall has to know Scotland can’t choose a king this way. There are more families in Scotland than the Bruces and the Balliols. Fourteen men claim the throne.”
Robbie shrugged. “Either way, you need to leave. Now.”
Cassie took a step closer to him. “So we were just saying. What is it you fear?”
“I don’t know. It’s just …” Robbie shrugged again. “When my horse fled the battle, I went to my father’s lands at Kilmarnock, south of Glasgow, for help.”
“I know of the place,” Callum said.
Robbie’s voice dropped lower, as if he was afraid to speak his next words out loud, even when nobody but Cassie, Liam, and Callum were listening. “My father and his men were already prepared for battle because Bishop Kirby had arrived ahead of me.”
“How is that possible?” Callum said.
“I-I-I don’t know,” Robbie said.
“Or maybe you don’t want to know,” Callum said.
Cassie shot Callum a quelling look and put a hand on Robbie’s arm. “You think Kirby knew about the ambush in advance and left the company before the MacDougalls attacked? That’s the only way he could have reached your father before you did.”
Robbie swallowed hard. “Maybe.”
Cassie moved with Callum to one side and spoke in modern English. “What I don’t understand is if Kirby knew about the ambush in advance—enough to arrange for a decoy for the MacDougalls to murder instead of him—how could he not have warned Robbie’s father that the king was absent and Robbie present?”
“He wanted Daddy Bruce filled with righteous anger so that he would do exactly as he did,” Callum said, “which was to go on the offensive.”
Cassie stared at Callum. “What did you just call him?”
Callum tsked through his teeth. “It was Bronwen’s way of keeping the three Bruces straight: Grampa Bruce, who is striving for the throne; Daddy Bruce, his son and Robbie’s father; and Baby Bruce—our Robbie—who becomes the Robert the Bruce later in history.”
Cassie turned on her heel and spoke to Robbie in Gaelic. “What about you? You’re your father’s heir and yet in conspiring with Kirby, your father left your survival or death at the hands of the MacDougalls up to fate?”
“No! No!” Robbie said. “He didn’t know that I was in the company, or about the ambush, until Kirby told him of it. He mourned my death and his joy at my resurrection was real.”
“Unlike Kirby’s reaction to seeing Liam alive,” Callum said.
Robbie nodded. “I know my father well. He was very angry, first to have lost me, and then at how close he’d come to losing me.”
“No wonder he seeks vengeance,” Liam said.
“I need to tell you one more thing so you understand how urgent it is that you leave,” Robbie said. “My father hates the Black Comyn and was adamantly opposed to him being appointed as one of Scotland’s Guardians.”
“So I gathered,” Callum said.
Robbie looked down at his feet. “Kirby told my father that he saw Andrew Moray and Red Comyn among the raiders. Andrew Moray’s stepmother is the Black Comyn’s sister, and of course, Red Comyn is the Black Comyn’s son.”
Cassie lifted her chin and gazed at a point above Robbie’s right shoulder. She held that pose for ten seconds and then shook her head.
“You don’t remember seeing either of them?” Callum said.
“I’ve never encountered Andrew Moray. I’ve seen Red Comyn only once, and not close up,” she said. “I didn’t notice him among the assailants but that’s not to say he wasn’t there. If what Kirby says is true, then the Guardians are corrupted too.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why you have to leave,” Robbie said. “Because of Kirby’s information, my father’s forces attacked the Comyns’ Castle at Kilbride before riding on Mugdock.”
This was getting worse and worse with each minute that passed. “Another few days and all of Scotland will be at war, and nobody will know the why of it,” Callum said.
“You are taking a great risk telling us all this,” Cassie said, “especially if your father is implicated in wrongdoing.”
“James Stewart is my friend and master,” Robbie said. “I would do anything for him.”
“I didn’t know him long, but I would call him a friend,” Callum said. “We need horses. And a way out.”
Robbie nodded. “I can arrange for both for you. That’s why I came to find you. Come with me.” It was only then that Callum noticed that Robbie had a bag slung over his shoulder. “I brought you some supplies.”
Cassie, Callum, and Liam hurried out of the tent after Robbie. “Where is your father now?” Callum said.
“He is arranging to speak with Lord Graham, as you suggested,” Robbie said.
“Will he miss you?” Cassie said.
“No.”
The finality in his voice stopped Callum from asking any more of him, or pressing as to why he was helping them. Families were complicated at the best of times. It could only be made worse when a kingdom was involved. “If anyone asks, you didn’t see us,” Callum said.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” Robbie said.
From the healer’s tent, they scuttled around the northern perimeter of the camp, heading east through the no man’s land between the firelight and the men posted to watch Daddy Bruce’s flank. The pickets surrounded the camp in a human wall, but the space between the watchers allowed Callum and the others to slip through without raising an alarm. The further they went from the main activity centered on Daddy Bruce’s tent, the more permeable the perimeter became. Daddy Bruce was giving lip service to the idea that another enemy could come behind him, but he wasn’t worried about it.
Robbie pulled up at the end of a long fence that enclosed over a hundred horses, picketed in a field adjacent to the camp.
“Go,” Callum said to Robbie. “Your father may not miss you, but one of his men might. Kirby might.”
“I’ll say I was at the latrine,” Robbie said. “No one will gainsay me.”
Callum held out his hand to Robbie and they grasped forearms, man to man. “Thank you,” Callum said.
“I’m not helping you because I don’t believe my grandfather should be the king of Scotland,” Robbie said.
“It may still happen,” Callum said.
“I intend to be king of Scotland myself one day,” Robbie said, “but I don’t believe in this. I don’t want our rule to come about this way or for people to say we murdered our way to the throne like Macbeth. I won’t take the throne over your dead body. Or James’s. I will fight the MacDougalls, and the Comyns, and Balliol, but I don’t believe that King David means us ill.”
Callum held his arm a second longer. “Why don’t you?”
“Because you don’t.” Robbie released Callum, sketched a wave, and ran off into the darkness, leaving Callum looking after him, speechless.
“I never saw myself as a horse thief,” Liam said as he climbed over the split rail fence into the field.
Cassie ducked between the top and bottom rails. “I’ve done worse.”
Callum believed her, if only because there was so much about her he didn’t yet know. But he thought he understood more about her than she knew. The two of them shared a past and an old world. If Callum had arrived here as she had, he might have done worse too.
When Callum had first come to the Middle Ages, the shock of it had left him reeling for weeks. Slowly, he’d come to himself and resolved to make the best of the life that was left to him. At the same time, with nothing to tie him in one place and no way to get home, it was as
if he’d died and been reborn. Callum saw that same attitude in Cassie. Without a past other than what was in her own head, the freedom from it had turned to recklessness, as if she didn’t care whether she lived or died. Callum had seen that before too, in Afghanistan.
Cassie moved among the horses, patting a nose here and there. Callum didn’t know what she was looking for, but when she found it, she waved him over. “This one is for you,” she said as Callum reached her. “Some of the others are too much like ponies. You’re too big for them to carry as far as we might need to go.”
The horse was black against a black night and wore a blanket, saddle, and bridle, though it carried no saddle bags. About a third of the horses were still kitted out with their gear. As Callum took the reins, he glanced around, looking for the boys whose job it was to watch the horses. He didn’t see them.
Liam wasn’t as large as Callum, so Cassie had less trouble finding a mount for him. Then she picked out one for herself. “You’ve ridden a lot, have you?” Callum said.
“I grew up in Eastern Oregon,” she said. At his quizzical look, she added, “I realize that means nothing to you, but suffice to say, it’s cowboy country.”
Callum almost laughed, not at what she’d said, but at her choice of words: suffice to say coupled with cowboy. She was speaking American and her vocabulary told him yet again that if she was a cowgirl, she was an educated one. “Cowboys—as in cattle ranches?” Callum said. “Like the wild west?”
“Exactly like the wild west.” Cassie smiled. “Although with fewer saloons and brothels these days.”
“I thought Oregon was all rain and trees,” Callum said.
“That’s only on the west side of the state,” Cassie said.
She led her horse towards a far gate and Liam and Callum followed. The horse boys had finally appeared. They blocked the gap in the fence as Cassie approached.
Liam spoke in a low voice from just behind Callum. “How are we doing this?”
“Just follow my lead,” Callum said, with every intention of bluffing his way out of the paddock, but it was Cassie who had it well in hand.
Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) Page 12