The Steps to the Empty Throne bt-1

by Nigel Tranter

  Some few of the watching throng bowed as the first chained man hobbled past, but most certainly did not. Many indeed laughed, some hooted, one spat. Robert Bruce of Carrick stared expressionless. Or nearly so, for his lip curled just a little; his was an expressive face, and it was schooled less perfectly than was intended.

  The knightled, scullion-finished group clanked and shuffled its way up to the chancel steps, and it was strange how, despite all the humiliation, the light seemed to go with it, drawn to and beamed form by all the colour, the jewels and gems and gleaming gold. At the steps they were halted, with exaggerated abruptness, by the knight. At last the gorgeously-apparelled man looked up-and he had to raise his head high indeed to seek the face of him who sat the great warhorse champed and sidled forth.

  “My lord King,” he said, quietly, uncertainly. He had sensitive, finely-wrought features and deep, dark eyes under a lofty brow—but there was a slackness of the mourn and delicacy of the chin which spoke worlds.

  The big man on the horse looked down at him, and in the silence of the moment all could hear that he was humming some tune to himself—and doing it flatly, for he had no music in him.

  He did not speak, or in anyway acknowledge the other’s greeting as the moments passed. Then he glanced up, to consider all in that church, unhurriedly, and yawned hugely, before his gaze returned to travel indifferently over the man waiting before him and to settle on the stocky, pugnacious-jawed individual with the tonsured head who stood at his stirrup.

  “My lord Bishop of Durham—see you to it,” he said shortly.

  “Do what is necessary.” He snorted.

  “And in God’s name be not long about it, Tony!”

  Something like a corporate sigh went up from all who watched and waited and listened.

  Anthony Beck, Prince-Bishop of Durham and captain-general of Saint Cuthbert’s Host, perhaps the toughest unit of all Edward’s army, stepped forward.

  “Sire,” he said, bowing.

  “As you will.” Then he turned to the shackled man, and thrust the round bullet-head forward, jaw leading.

  “John de Baliol, traitor!” he rasped.

  “Miscreant! Fool! Hear this. I charge you, in the name of the high and mighty Prince Edward, King of England and of France, of Wales and Ireland, Duke of Normandy and of Guyenne, and suzerain and Lord Paramount of this Scotland. I charge you are forsworn and utterly condemned. You have shamefully renounced your allegiance to your liege lord Edward and risen against him in arms. You have betrayed your solemn vows.

  You have treated with His Majesty’s enemies, and sought the aid and counsel of wicked men. You have in all things failed and rent your realm of Scotland. Have you any word to say why you should not forthwith be removed from being its king?”

  The other drew a long quivering breath, straightening up, to gaze over the Bishop’s head. He did not speak.

  “You hear me? Have you nothing to say?”

  “Nothing that I could say would serve now,” the King of Scots muttered, low-voiced, husky.

  “You will speak, nevertheless, I promise you!” Anthony Beck looked up at his master.

  Edward Plantagenet did not so much as glance at either of them.

  “What would you have me to say, Sire?” King John asked.

  The other monarch patted his charger’s neck.

  Angrily Bishop Beck thrust out a thick forefinger at his victim.

  “You will speak. You will repeat these words. Before all. After me.

  By the King’s royal command …”

  He was interrupted.

  “If His Grace will not speak, I will!” It was John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, from behind.

  “Neither you, sir, nor your king, have any authority so to command him. His Grace is King of Scots, duly crowned and consecrated. He owes allegiance to no man. Only to God Himself.”

  Frowning, Edward flicked a hand at the Bishop, who strode forward, past the Scots monarch and the escort who still clasped his shoulders, and raising a mailed arm, smote Buchan viciously across the face.

  “Silence, fool!” he cried.

  “How dare you raise your voice in the presence of the King’s Majesty!”

  Blood running from his mouth, the bandaged Earl answered back “Base-born clerk I I am Constable of Scotland, and have fullest right to speak in this realm, in any man’s presence.”

  A second and still more savage blow sent the older man reeling, and shackled as he was, he would have fallen had his guards not held him up. As it was, the crown and sceptre were flung from the cushion he held before him, and fell with a clatter to the floor.

  Cursing, Beck was stooping to pick them up, difficult for a man in full armour. He thought better of it, and was ordering the guards to do so, when Edward Longshanks spoke.

  “Let them lie,” he said briefly.

  “His Grace of Scotland will pick them up!”

  The unsteady Buchan made choking exclamation, and sought to bend down for the fallen regalia, but his guards jerked him back. King John turned to sign to him, with a shake of the head and a sigh. Stooping, he recovered the symbols of his kingship.

  He stood, holding the crown in his right hand, the sceptre in his left.

  At a nod from Edward, Bishop Beck went on.

  “You will speak now, sirrah. Say after me these words. Before His Majesty, and all these witnesses. Say “I, John de Baliol, King of Scots by the grace, permission and appointment of my liege lord Edward of England”” For long moments there was silence broken only by the stirring of the horse. Then, head bent again, and in a voice that was scarcely to be heard, the other repeated.

  “I, John de Baliol, King or Scots, by grace, permission, appointment of my liege lord Edward…”

  “Speak up, man I We’ll have no craven mumbling. Say “I do hereby and before all men, admit my grievous fault and my shameful treasons.”

  “… admit my grievous fault. And … and my shameful treasons.”

  ‘”Do renounce and reject the treaty I made against my said Lord Edward, with his enemy the King of France.”” “… renounce and reject… the treaty with France.”

  ‘”And do renounce and reject, and yield again to my Lord Edward, my kingdom and crown.”” A choking sob, and then the broken words, “… renounce my kingdom. My crown.”

  “

  “And do throw myself and my whole realm humbly at the feet of and upon the mercy of the said noble Prince Edward, King of England and Lord Paramount of Scotland.”” “No I Never that!” a voice cried, from the back of the church.

  Other voices rose also, to be overwhelmed in the roars of anger and the clash of steel and the thuds of blows, as James Stewart, fifth High Steward of Scotland, and others near him, were rushed and bundled out of the building by ungentle men-at-arms.

  Scowling, though King Edward appeared faintly amused, the Prince-Bishop waited until approximate quiet was restored.

  “More of such insolence, folly and disrespect, and heads will fall!” he shouted.

  “You have my oath on it!” He jerked that thick finger again at John Baliol.

  “I am waiting. My lord the King waits. Speak, man.”

  “Do not say it, Sire,” Buchan burst out from behind him.

  “Not this. Of the realm. Not Lord Paramount. There is none such.

  Save you, Sire. It is a lie…!”

  He got no further. This time the guards, even the scullion at his back, did not wait for Beck. With one accord they set upon the Earl and beat him down under a hail of blows. He fell to the stone floor, there at the chancel steps, and so lay.

  High above, Edward Plantagenet watched from hooded eyes, a smile about his lips.

  yours are the King’s prisoners; your lives, as traitors and felons,

  are his to take and do with as he will. In the name of Edward, King of England.” He turned, and handed up the crown to his master, Edward seemed almost as though he would reject it. Then, shrugging great shoulders, he took it, turned it this way and that in his hands, casually inspecting it. But he seemed little interested.

>   yours. Perhaps it will serve to pay your good fellows. The Jews may give you something for it.”

  Something between a sob and a groan arose in that church’—to be swiftly lost in a menacing growl.

  The Bishop of Durham, when he had assured that King Edward did not intend to say more, resumed—not at first with words. Stepping close to the taller prisoner, he reached out and took hold of the splendid jewelled and embroidered tabard with the proud red Lion Rampant, grabbing it at the neck. With savage jerks of a short but powerful arm he wrenched and tore at it. To the sound of rending fabric, its wearer staggered, and as the glorious garment fell in ruin to the floor, something of the light and colour seemed to go out of that place.

  The Bishop now took the sceptre away, and handed it to the scullion, who stood grinning astride the prostrate person of Buchan the Constable. He took in return the white rod of penitence and humiliation this man had carried, and thrust it at Baliol.

  “this is yours, now,” he said. “all you have, or will get! Save perhaps the rope. Now—down on your knees.”

  The other took the rod, head shaking. But he remained standing.

  “Fool!

  Are you deaf? You heard me—kneel. Or do you not value your wretched life? Your traitor’s skin?”

  “I no longer value my life, my lord. Or I would not have come to submit to His Majesty, But how could I be traitor? How could the King of Scots be traitor to the King of England? I submit me—but I do not…”

  John Baliol was too late by far with any such reasoning. Fierce and vehement hands forced him to his knees, beside the groaning figure of the Constable.

  “Speak-for your life,” the Bishop commanded.

  “You are now nothing, man. Not even a man. Dirt beneath His Majesty’s feet, no more He could, and should, take you out and hang you.

  Draw, quarter and disembowel you. As you deserve. And not only you.

  All your treacherous, beggarly Scots lords. Rebels against his peace. All should die. As the scurvy rebels of Berwick town died, who also spurned King Edward’s peace.” Only a month or so before, after the frontier town of Berwickon-Tweed had resisted the English advance, Edward had ordered the slaughter of no fewer than 17,000 men, women and children in the streets, and the burning of every house, in this the richest town and seaport of Scotland. The Bishop’s threats were scarcely idle, therefore.

  Baliol sank his greying head.

  “So be it,” he said.

  “I seek His Majesty’s clemency. For the lives of all who have followed and supported me. Mistakenly. I humbly seek mercy.”

  “And for your own life also?”

  The kneeling man looked up, from Bishop to King, and for a moment a sort of nobility showed strongly in the weak and unhappy features.

  “Very well,” he acceded.

  “If that is necessary.

  If that is your requirement. I ask for your mercy on myself and mine, also.” He paused.

  “That the cup be filled.”

  Beck looked a little put out. He frowned, then shrugged mail clad shoulders. He turned to the Plantagenet.

  “Sire,” he said.

  “All is done. In your royal hands is placed this felon’s life. And the lives of all his people. Of his own will. To do with according to your mighty pleasure. There is no longer a King of Scots. Nor a realm of Scotland. All is yours.” Bowing, he stepped back, duty done.

  Edward even now seemed the bored and disinterested onlooker.

  He glanced round all the waiting company, as though, like them, he had been a mere spectator of a mildly distasteful scene. He appeared to shake himself out of a brown study.

  “My lords,” he said.

  “My noble friends. And … others. Have you had enough? I vow that I have. Let us be out of here. This place stinks in my nostrils. Come, Tony.” And without so much as a look at the figure still kneeling there, he urged his heavy destrier forward.

  Almost he rode down both Baliol and Buchan, even their escort; only the slow cumbersome movement of the warhorse permitted all to get out of the way of its great hooves. And everywhere the cream of two nations bowed low, as Edward of England passed on.

  Or not perhaps quite the cream of two nations. For practically

  everyone in the church of Stracathro that July day of 1296, save some

  of the humble men-at-arms, was of one stock-Norman French. Edward himself might be an Angevin, Baliol a Picard, Beck, or de Bee, and Comyn were Flemings and Bruce sprung from the Cotentin; but all were basically Normans. Of the true English stock there were none present, though there had of course been some intermarriage. Of the indigenous Celtic Scots, none likewise. Possibly the young Robert Bruce was the nearest to a Scot, for his mother had been the daughter and heiress of the last Celtic Earl of Carrick, of the old stock, whose earldom he had inherited. A Norman-French military aristocracy had for two centuries been taking over both kingdoms, indeed much of northern Europe—but only at the great landowning and government level. Every word spoken in that church had been in French.

  The cream of this aristocracy, therefore, both victors and vanquished, bowed as their master rode down towards the door-leaving a somewhat doubtful soldier-knight distinctly uncertain what to do with his utterly ignored and rejected prisoners. A round dozen earls were there, and more than a score of great lords-and some of those with Scots titles bowed lower than the English, not in abject vanquishment but in loyal fealty, for many of them, in unhappy and divided Scotland, considered that they had borne no allegiance to King John, looking on him as usurper, and worse, nonentity, not a few holding almost as large lands in England as here. For such men loyalty and patriotic duty were hypothetical and variable terms.

  Edward was half way to the door when a man stepped forward, one of those not in armour.

  “Sire,” he said.

  “A petition.

  Hear me, I pray you.”

  Across the church, the young Earl of Carrick, frowning suddenly, made as though to move, to speak, but thought better of it. His hand gestured towards the petitioner, however, eloquently.

  But ineffectually.

  The King pulled up.

  “My lord of Annandale,” he said, blank faced.

  “I conceived you to be in Carlisle.”

  “You summoned all leal Scots to attend you here, Sire.”

  “Your lealty I do not doubt, man. But I appointed you governor of Carlisle. To keep the West Border. And Galloway.

  Here is a strange way of keeping it!”

  The other bowed. He was a handsome man, of Edward’s own age, quietly but tastefully dressed, with the long face of a scholar or pedant rather than that of a warrior, despite his governor’s position. It might have been a noble face, the noblest in all that company, save for a certain petulant stubbornness.

  “The West March is safe, Sire. I have three strong sons holding it secure for Your Majesty. With Galloway. I came to see this good day’s work.”

  “Aye—you never loved Baliol, my lord! Nor loved me the more that I made him King of Scots, hey?” That was cracked out like a whip-lash.

  “So you came to see the cat my choice? To crow, Bruce? To crow!”

  “Not so, Sire. I am your true man. And have proved it. From the first.” That was true, at least. For this man, who bore the lesser tide of Lord of Annandale, should have been the Earl of Carrick since he it was who had married the heiress-Countess;

  but he had deliberately resigned the earldom three years before, to his eldest son there across the church, rather than have to kneel and take the oath of homage for it to John Baliol as King. Robert Bruce, the father, was that sort of man.

  “I came to see Your Majesty’s justice done on this empty vessel! A good day’s work, as I said. But it could be bettered.”

  “You say so, my lord?” Edward looked at him, sharply.

  “Aye, Sire. You have undone what you did three years ago.

  Unchosen your choice. You can make good now what was wrong done then.

  There was another choice. That you, in your wisdo
m rejected—for this. The Bruce claim. You can make me King of Scots, Sire. And complete your work.”

  Edward Plantagenet’s florid face had been growing purple.

  Now he burst out.

  “Lord God in His Heaven! You tell me what I should dot Me, Edward. You. You came from Carlisle, a hundred leagues, to tell me this! Make you king? By the Blood of Christ—have I nothing else to do but win kingdoms for such as you I Out of my way, sirrah!”

  Expressionless, Bruce inclined his grey head, as the furious monarch kicked huge jagged spurs into his charger’s flanks.

  But Edward reined up again in only a few yards, and turned in his saddle to look back over his heavy shoulder.

  “Mind this,” he shouted, as everywhere men cringed.

  “You, Bruce. All of you.

  Scots curs. There is no King of Scots. Nor will be again. There is no kingdom of Scotland. It is now and henceforth part of my realm of England. A wretched, discredited province-but part.

  Your king I have deposed. Your Great Seal I have broken in four

  pieces. Your charters and records I have commanded to be sent from

  Edinburgh to London. Your Black Rood of St. Margaret is sent to my

  Archbishop. Your Stone of Scotland I shall take from Scone to Westminster. Your crown and sceptre are there—playthings for my men. There is nothing—nothing left for any man to play king over. And hereafter, all men shall take the oath of fealty to me, as King, for every inch of land in this Scotland. For every office. On bended knee. On pain of treason. Hear—and heed well.”

  He moved on.

  But at the very door, again he drew up, and turned his head once more, this time over his other, his left shoulder—and his manner had undergone one of its drastic transformations.

  “Where is the whelp?” he demanded, almost jovially.

  “My friend the younger Robert? Ha, yes—there you are, my lordling of Carrick I See you, I counsel you, my young friend, to look to your father. If you would remain my friend! Look well. Your old grandsire, The Competitor, was trouble enough. He is well dead.

  I am a peaceable man, God knows—and want no more trouble.

  With Bruce. Or other. See you to it, boy—if you would have me to pay any more of your debts! Pay for all the fine velvet you are wearing! See that my lord of Annandale, your father, is escorted back to his charge at Carlisle—henceforth not to leave it lacking my express command. And you, then, join me at Berwick town, where we will consider your latest list of creditors!” Edward hooted a laugh.