The Price of the King's Peace bt-3

by Nigel Tranter

  scene-but there was pain as well as pride and love and satisfaction in

  the woman’s smile. For the man who held the children hands walked

  with a clumsiness that was far different from his accustomed sure stride, and held himself with a stiffness that was almost the posture of age-although he was in fact but fifty-three. These last years his legs had been tending to swell; and although she had not said anything, Elizabeth feared the dropsy.

  The long years of stress, privation, hardlying and irregular eating, were telling on Robert Bruce.

  But it was not only the sight of the man that affected her. The two boys, uncle and nephew as they were, brought a lump to her throat at times. The good God only knew what trials lay in store for those two. Their two-year-old David was the child of ageing parents, like to be a king long before man’s estate-no desirable fate. And Robert was an orphan now, Walter Stewart having died suddenly, unaccountably, five months before, at the age of thirty three, leaving this ten-year-old boy High Steward of Scotland.

  Bernard de Linton, at the Queen’s side on the grassy terrace before the house, did not see the trio quite as did she.

  “A fair picture, Your Grace,” he commented.

  “The King and his heirs.

  The succession assured. Concerned with the things of peace, not war.

  These ships. It is well.”

  “Well, yes.” Elizabeth agreed, whatever her personal reservations.

  “I do not know who wins most delight from this shipbuilding-the princes or His Grace! Or, indeed, my lord of the Isles!

  They are all children together, in this, I do declare. I hear nothing but talk of ships and shipping, of keels and bulwarks and draughts, of beams and timbering and cordage, from mom till night. Cardross, I vow, is no place for a woman, my lord Abbot-unless she be a Hebridean woman perhaps!” She said that with a smile.

  The Chancellor coughed, wondering whether the Queen was indeed referring to the Lady Christina MacRuarie of Garmoran.

  He did not concede, as he might have done, that Cardross was no place

  from which to rule Scotland, either; and that he, the Chancellor, had

  to spend an unconscionable part of his time traipsing between

  Dunfermline and here, or Arboath and here, or Scone and here-less than

  suitable employment for a mitred abbot and chief minister of the

  kingdom. His unannounced arrival, this sunny afternoon, from

  Dunfermline, was only one of many such occasions when events demanded that he should see the monarch personally rather than just send messengers and clerks, with papers for scrutiny, signing and affixment of the Privy Seal. Abbot Bernard was a patient and shrewd man, if inclining towards pomposity in a small way with the years.

  ”Your Grace this likes this new house?” he asked. “No I like it very

  well. As a house. It is more comfortable than all the great stone castles. But I have scarce my Liege lord’s passion for the sea, these islands and mountains. Nor indeed for his Highlandmen!

  They are well enough-but I cannot think that they conceive women to have any place in God’s world, and theirs!

  Other than in their beds, to be sure!”

  The Chancellor coughed again, rather disapprovingly for so stalwart a fighter. Where women were concerned, de Linton was slightly prim-and Elizabeth seldom failed to tease him, although mildly.

  The two royal daughters, Matilda and Margaret, came running, laughing and shouting aloud, from the braes of Carman Hill behind the house, where they were tending to run wild, these days, with the herd-boys and milkmaids-unsuitable upbringing for princesses, but in tune with the King’s frame of mind. After the tragedy of Marjory, Bruce had vowed that no other child for whom he had responsibility should have his or her youth spoiled, and young freedom denied, for any trammels of state and trappings of royal position. About this he was adamant. All too soon the demands and coils of their high estate would entangle his offspring.

  Meanwhile, let them have their fill of freedom, and learn to know their fellows, of all ranks and classes-especially these Highlanders.

  It rejoiced the King’s heart that both girls, and Robert, already spoke the Highland Gaelic as well as they did French.

  Elizabeth was less sure that this was the way to train princesses -but her own strength was not what it had been, for she had never fully recovered from David’s birth, and she tended to assert herself less.

  “We need cakes. Cakes. And wine,” Matilda cried, now aged ten, and an eager tomboy, all arms and legs.

  “It is a wedding-feast A great feast. Up in the sheep-stall yonder. I am marrying Seumas. Am I not lucky? He is the best! We are going to have seven children. All boys. Seumas says we will not have any girls.

  Seumas says we must have cakes and wine. He would rather have uisgebe

  atha but… wine will do. I said we would not get uisgebeatha”

  “You did not! I said it,” Margaret, a year younger, and slighter,

  prettier, objected.

  “I said we would not get wine either. Only milk …”

  “Milk is of no good for a wedding, silly! Only wine will serve, Seumas says …”

  “I am marrying Ranald,” Margaret revealed, but with less pride than her sister’s announcement. Seumas Colquhoun was the head shepherd’s son, while Ranald was Angus of the Isles’ second.

  “Ranald is not so strong as Seumas …”

  “Hush you, hush you, shameless ones!” the Queen told them.

  “Can you not perceive that you outrage my lord Abbot? Make your reverences to him-and then be gone. Or your sire will hear you. Here he comes. Tell Mistress Kate in the kitchens that you may have oat en cakes, and a little watered wine. Watered, mind you! Now-off with you …”

  “Ha, Bernard-I never know whether to rejoice to see you, for your own sake, or to fear for what brings you!” the King exclaimed, as he came up. His voice was strong as ever, at least.

  “Welcome to Cardross, whatever. These ones have been down with me inspecting the new trading galliot we build. They declare that she is too heavy and will surely sink. How think you?”

  “I know not a galliot from a gallimash, Sire. I prefer God’s good firm land …”

  “Like Her Grace. I grieve for you both! Well-where have you ridden from today, my friend? Dunfermline?”

  “Aye, Sire. With news. Grave news. Yet-perhaps none so ill.

  For us. For Your Grace. Concerning … concerning His Grace of England.” The Abbot glanced down at the small boys, warningly.

  “Edward, heh? I have never heard good news from that quarter, alack!

  Rob-take Davie. Go with the girls, there.”

  “I would rather stay with you, Sire,” the Lord High Steward of Scotland objected.

  “The girls care only for that sheep leader Seumas Colquhoun!”

  “Tush, man-you will not be outdone by a Colquhoun! Away with you both. And do not let the bold Seumas blood your nose again!”

  The Chancellor looked after the small and reluctantly departing

  backs.

  “King Edward is dead, Sire. And … evilly!”

  Bruce caught and held his breath, his eyes narrowing. He did not speak.

  “Dead, Abbot Bernard? The King?” Elizabeth whispered.

  “Edward of Carnarvon dead! You are sure?”

  “Yes, Madam-dead. Slain. And beyond all evilly. And the Despensers, father and son, likewise. All dead. England has a new king-Edward the Third. And a new ruler-the man Roger Mortimer!”

  “Mortimer? That puppy! The Frenchwoman’s paramour!”

  Bruce frowned.

  “Edward Plantagenet was a fool, and grievous thorn in my flesh. I

  cannot weep for him. But … may he rest in God peace, now. Like his

  dire father. How came he to die, Bernard?”

  It was the Queen’s turn to be glanced at by the hesitant Chancellor.

  “I think perhaps, Sire-alone?” he suggested.

  “It makes ill telling …”

  “I am no bl
ushing maid, my lord Abbot. And Ulster’s daughter!”

  Elizabeth reminded.

  “Say on.”

  De Linton inclined his head.

  “Queen Isabella returned from France. Where she has dwelt these last years, away from the King.

  She brought a French force, under the man Mortimer. And the Count of Hainault. Henry, the new Earl of Lancaster, and the Earl of Norfolk, the Marshal, and others, joined her. The standard of revolt was raised against the King. And swiftly all was over. He did not fight any better against his wife and Mortimer than against ourselves, Sire! He fled to Wales, making for Ireland. He surrendered to their army, and was immediately deposed. And Edward the Third, aged fourteen years, declared in his stead.”

  “But was not killed? Deposed? Yet you say he is dead?”

  “Aye. Murdered. Thereafter. Most terribly. By Mortimer’s creatures.

  They … they thrust a red-hot iron up into his vitals. By the back

  passage. That he should die without evident wound. Secretly.

  But one boasted of it. And then confessed …” The Abbot’s voice tailed away.

  “Sweet Christ Jesu!” Shaken indeed, Bruce looked at his wife.

  “That men … should be … so vile!

  “Fore God-Edward! Their King! To die so! He was young, yet…?”

  “But forty-three, Sire. But old in folly and misadventure …”

  There was an interruption. Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, an elderly man now, put in an appearance. He came over from nearby Dumbarton almost every day to see his friend and liege. Always a hater of violence, told the grim tidings, he was greatly upset.

  “What is it that is in these English?” he demanded.

  “This savagery, butchery? That they break into. To speak with, they are like ourselves. More careful, indeed. But scratch their fine skins, and they are thus beneath!” Pure Celt himself, he paused, a little alarmed at what he had said, remembering that Bruce, at least on his father’s side, was of the same basic stock as most of the English nobility; and Elizabeth was wholly so.

  “Mortimer is from the Welsh marches, is he not?” The King shrugged.

  “I know not, Malcolm, what makes them so. We Scott have sins enough.

  But…”

  “It is conviction, straight from God, that they are superior!” the

  Queen said quietly.

  “Always, they are assured that they are superior, right. There is no question. Therefore others must be wrong. And if wrong, inferior. All men are inferior to the English.

  They do not require to say it, even think it-they know it! And inferior creatures are lesser men, scarcely men at all! They cannot conceive themselves in place of such-and so can inflict these terrible savageries on others. For they cannot feel it in themselves, being otherwise. Being a different creation, superior, English!”

  The men looked somewhat askance at the sudden unexpected vehemence of that outpouring. It was not often that Elizabeth de Burgh revealed something of the hurt and battened-down hatred which long years of imprisonment and scorning had bred in her.

  Her husband changed the subject.

  “So what now?” he asked.

  “How shall these tidings affect us in Scotland? The new King is little more than a child. He will not refuse to sit at a peace-table with me, I think! But those who control him? His mother is a vixen, an evil woman. And this Mortimer an insolent popinjay.

  There will be a regency. Is there word of its members, Bernard?”

  “Only that Henry, Earl of Lancaster, is chief est Sire.”

  “A weak man. Weaker than his brother Thomas, whom God rest. I’ faith they could have done with Harcla, now! So much the better for us. The old Lancaster was always of a mind to talk with us. He was kin to me, far out. His brother may think the same.

  We may yet win our peace treaty.”

  “Pray that it is better kept than the thirteen-year truce, then!”

  Lennox exclaimed.

  “I swear that meant little enough to Edward.

  First he brought young Edward Baliol to his Court, to set up as a puppet-king for Scotland! Within months of signing the truce! He seized our ships on the sea. Commanded the warding in prison of all Scots in England …”

  “Aye-it has been a travesty of peace,” the King agreed.

  “Two years of pin-pricks …”

  “Yet it has given you breathing-space,” Elizabeth insisted.

  “Time to think of other things than war. Trade, see you-and shipbuilding! There has been no invasion, no major raiding. I say that it was worth the signing. As says Thomas-my lord of Moray.

  And he has the wisest head in this land, I think.”

  “It may be so,” Bruce allowed.

  “But what now? The truce was made with Edward the Second. It does not bind his successor. It is now at an end. I want no more truces, but a true peace. An embassage to the new regents …?”

  “I think not, Sire-not first,” the Chancellor advised.

  “It would smack of too great eagerness, perhaps. On the part of

  rebels! Bettersome less open move first, lest we be rejected, to our

  hurt. Do as Your Grace did with the Frenchman, de Sully. Send an embassage travelling to France. Or to the Pope. If to the Pope then such cannot be denied a safe-conduct by the English. Then, in passage, it could sound out Lancaster and the others privily…”

  “Aye-that would be wiser, Bernard. You are right. Moreover, a treaty with France would be easier to forge than with England!

  But since the King of France’s sister now controls the King of England, the one could well aid the other! Since the Pope now recognises me as king-since our great letter, and Moray’s visit to him-if he could be prevailed upon to urge on the King of France, and the new King of England, to recognise my kingship, the thing might be achieved. An embassage therefore, first to the Pope, and then to France. Moray again?”

  “Assuredly, Sire. Send my lord of Moray-since it seems the Pope liked him well. But we require more than this peace treaty.

  We require that his offence against the Church in Scotland be lifted by His Holiness. It still remains, and is a grave inconvenience, if naught else! For it means, as you know, that new appointments within the Church, new bishops and abbots and the like, cannot be approved from Rome. And so do not carry full weight. Send a churchman also, therefore, to convince His Holiness of our true obedience and duty.”

  “M’mmm. Obedience and duty! Words I like not, my lord Abbot!”

  “Yet in matters ecclesiastical we must use them, Your Grace,” the other declared.

  “Since only in obedience to the Pontiff do we gain full authority for our offices in the Church.”

  “Very well, Bernard. Whom shall we send? Yourself?”

  “No, Sire-not me. I am still in His Holiness’s disfavour. As is my lord of St. Andrews. It must be one who did not defy him. In 1318.”

  “But you all did, man. All the bishops and senior clergy.”

  “Then it must be a younger man. Yet in high office. Send my lord’s Archdeacon, Sire. James Bene. Archdeacon of St. Andrew!

  He is young, but sound, and no fool. The best of the new men. My lord’s right hand …”

  “Very well. So be it Moray and Master Bene shall go. To the Pope, and then to King Charles of France. But by London. Send for a safe-conduct for them, from the new King Edward. We shall sound out this new rule in England …”

  “You are not the only one to make a vow, Robert,” the Queen said, one day the following spring when the King, confined to the house of Cardross with badly swollen legs, was bewailing many things but in especial that he was never likely now to lead that Crusade which the Pope was so anxious to sponsor, and which he had vowed to make that time in the Galloway cave when the spider had inspired him to his duty.

  “I also made a vow, once. And And of late I have been minded to fulfill it.”

  “You? A vow? A woman, on a Crusade? That I’ll not believe!”

  “Not a Crusade, no. But still a vow. And a pilgrimage. Is it so strange? Cannot a wom
an, in her extremity, also call upon God and His saints for especial aid? And promise to make some reparation should her call be heard, her requirement granted?”

  “No doubt but you are right, lass. It is but that vows seem scarce a woman’s part. But then, Elizabeth de Burgh is no common woman! When did you make this vow? And on what terms? What pilgrimage do you speak of?”

  “I made it all those years ago, at St. Duthac’s sanctuary, at Tain.

  Before the altar. When William, Earl of Ross betrayed us to the

  English. When all was at its blackest, after the defeats of Methven

  and Strathfillan, the fall of Kildrummy, you a hunted fugitive and

  Nigel captured-then I vowed that if God, hearing perhaps the

  intercessions of your Celtic Saint Duthac, would one day grant me a safe return to my husband’s arms and make me the mother of his children, then I would make a pilgrimage of thankfulness to this far northern shrine. It has been on my conscience that I have never done it-and I grow neither younger nor stronger for journeying. I think the time has come to fulfill my vow, Robert-if you will give me leave?” She did not add that, since Duthac had proved effective once, she might well seek to enlist his aid a second time, for the same husband, whose physical state was now much concerning her. She had never taken his leprosy fears too much to heart; but this trouble with his leg-swellings and breathlessness worried her greatly.

  Not a little touched by her revelation, Bruce put an arm around his wife’s shoulders.

  “My dear-you never told me. We would have gone together.”

  “When have you had time, opportunity-or latterly the strength-to

  spare for such lengthy pilgrimage into the Highland North? With the

  saving and governance of this kingdom on your shoulders? Moreover,

  this was for myself alone. I would not, will not be taken on such

  errand by you, Robert. You understand?”

  “Aye, lass. As you will. And you think to go now?”

  “Soon. Now that I may leave little David. And you all. The snows are melting in the passes. With May blooming, and the cuckoos calling, I shall go. A woman’s oblation.”