The Steps to the Empty Throne bt-1

by Nigel Tranter

  Not any longer! God alone knew how many still lived. Cressingham was dead. The Scots were said to have flayed him, and cut up the skin to send round the country. A hundred and more knights were slain—most without having opportunity to fight as knights should …

  “And Surrey? And Fitz-Alan?”

  Surrey was in full flight for Berwick. Fitz-Alan—none knew where he was. Everywhere men were fleeing, as best they could.

  Wallace’s hordes pursuing, cutting down. And everywhere the common Scots folk were waylaying, slaughtering, from every wood and copse, devils behind every bush. Men and women both.

  The whole plain of Forth was a shambles. And there was Edinburgh to get through. Before the Border and Berwick. That was why they had come this way, hoping to win through to the West.

  Before news of the victory turned every hand against them. All over this accursed land the people would be rising.

  Hurriedly, distractedly, the leaders of Percy’s force conferred.

  Once their five thousand foot came up, they were a strong force.

  If they had been but a day or two earlier, they might have saved all. Or, perhaps, been swept away with the rest! If sixty thousand could be so broken, would an extra eight thousand have made the difference? How many, in God’s name, had this Wallace managed to muster?

  But their foot would take days to catch up with them. They were probably not at Selkirk yet. And had they days to spare? To wait? All Scotland would be rising around them, drunk with the smell of victory, thirsting for bloody vengeance. Wallace would have time to gather together his forces again. It would be sheerest folly to wait. Even Clifford conceded it.

  What, then? Would three thousand cavalry, tight-knit and driving forward, turn the tables? While the Scots were yet disorganised?

  Rallying what was left of Surrey’s host. Men eyed each other, and eyed the Bruces, and read doubt in each other’s eyes-and knew without saying it that there would be no such thing.

  Retire, then? Back, whence they had come? Or to Berwick, to join Surrey? Or west, to Ayr, to hold the SouthWest, for which Percy was responsible as Sheriff and Governor?

  There was some argument about this, complicated by the fact that their foot contingent would still be back amongst the Borderland hills. Eventually it was decided to rejoin the infantry, and then to head east through the hills for Berwick.

  Robert Bruce took no part in this discussion, having ample to think about on his own, since the news changed all. Presently he had a few brief words with his brothers, who were hiding their excitement less than successfully. As he was doing so, his glance caught that of Elizabeth de Burgh, who, with Lady Percy, sat her horse a little way apart. It was an eloquent and significant glance.

  During these past long days of riding, and nights spent in remote

  English-held castles, Bruce and the girl had inevitably seen a lot of

  each other. They had come to a sort of acceptance, a tolerance, of

  each other’s attitude, which could not be called an understanding but

  which at least enabled them to maintain civility. Awareness had been pronounced between them from the first, however unsympathetic in its outward reactions; now there was a mutual playing down of the friction which seemed to generate spontaneously.

  When the hasty and disjointed conference around Percy and the two newcomers had reached a conclusion, and an about-turn was announced, Bruce raised his voice.

  “My lord of Northumberland,” he said, stiffly formal.

  “You and yours may make for Berwick. I, and mine, do not.”

  There was a sudden silence from the leaders’ group.

  “What do you mean?” Percy asked tensely, after a moment or two.

  “I mean that I have not come so far into my own land, to turn back now.”

  “We have decided otherwise. That King Edward’s cause will best be served by turning back to Berwick, for this time.”

  “It may be so. But I go on. And my host with me.”

  “Go where, sir? And for what purpose?”

  “For good and sufficient purpose.”

  “There speaks a forsworn traitor and rogue!” Clifford cried.

  “Have I not always said as much? That he could not be trusted a lance’s length?”

  “Sir Robert Clifford,” Bruce declared quietly, “for these words you shall answer, one day. At lance’s length! But … here and now, I think, is not the time.”

  “No,” Percy agreed coldly.

  “More is at stake now. More is required than such barren talk. My lord of Carrick-your men are mustered in King Edward’s name. You are here in his service.

  And under my command. I’d mind you of it.”

  “And may I mind you of something, my English friends? You are deep in this Scotland. Part of a beaten, broken army. With a long way to go before you may rest your heads secure. Moreover, half of these men behind you are my father’s. Scots. Who, think you, will they obey, in this? Do you wish to put it to the test?”

  So it was out, at last, gloves off, the mask down. With a jerk of his head Bruce sent his two brothers spurring back to the main body, their errand clear, obvious.

  Even Percy had no words now.

  Clifford had.

  “He came with this intention. To desert us. The treacherous turncoat I He planned it all. Back in Carlisle. I said we should leave him. Should bring his men, but not Bruce himself.

  They are all the same, these Scots. I’d trust an adder before any of them! This is treason, by God! Bruce is traitor, for all to see!

  “These are hard words, sir. Perhaps I spoke too soon? That this was not the time to break that lance!” Bruce raised a hand to point at Clifford.

  “Perhaps Sir Robert had better answer for his words now. After all.

  Honour demands it…”

  “Honour! Your honour I In flagrant treason, you talk of honour?”

  “Has it not entered your head, man, that what would be treason to the English is not treason to the Scots? That we cannot commit treason against a conqueror, a usurper? If the Scots commit treason, it must be against their own realm and king. Only an unthinking fool would say other. And that I name you, Sir Robert-an unthinking fool! Is that sufficient for your honour?

  So-shall we form our respective hosts into lists, my lords? Make a tourney-ground? While Sir Robert and I fight it out, in l’ outrance. It will be my pleasure …”

  “No, I say!” Percy intervened, in pale-faced anger.

  “I forbid any such childish folly! This is war-not tourney-ground posturing.

  Enough of this.”

  “If you prefer war to jousting, my lord-let us have it. We are not unevenly matched. We shall have our own battle, here on this hillside, if you will? Scots against English. What could be fairer?

  Put all to the test. Of war …”

  “No, by the Mass! It shall not be.” Percy’s thin voice rose alarmingly.

  “Think you I do not know what you are at? To keep us here. To delay our retiral. In hope that our presence is discovered.

  That Wallace’s hordes come up with us …” His words were lost in the murmuring and muttering of his companions, the two knights from Stirling’s debacle loud amongst them. All eyes were turning northwards, as something of the fear of these communicated itself to the others.

  “Very well,” Bruce said, and had to repeat it, loudly.

  “Then here we part company, my lord.”

  “You shall pay dearly for this-that I swear, Bruce!” Clifford shouted, in frustrated fury, and was the first to rein round and ride back towards the host.

  As the others followed suit, Bruce waved his hand to his brothers. As

  they gave their orders for the Annandale men to draw apart and ride

  on, he urged his mount over to where the two women sat their horses, silent spectators of the scene. He did not speak, but searched Elizabeth’s face.

  “So you change sides once more, my lord!” she said.

  He knew that was what she must say—but had hoped, somehow, that she would not.<
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  “You think it? You think that is what it is?” he demanded.

  “What else? That, or you have been acting a lie for long.”

  He spread his hands.

  “A lie? What is the lie, and what is the truth? I have not changed in my own mind. I have done what I must. In a storm, a man does not speak of lies and truth, but seeks to keep his bark afloat! To reach its haven.”

  “And you have a haven in mind?”

  “Aye. I have a haven in mind.”

  Percy had ridden up, frowning.

  “Come,” he commanded the women brusquely.

  His wife, a tired-faced and anxious woman with fine eyes, sighed.

  “This is men’s business, my dear,” she said.

  “Leave it to them. Since we can effect nothing.” She reached out a hand to the girl’s wrist.

  “Come, yes.”

  Something of the way she had said that caused Bruce to look keenly from her to Elizabeth, wondering.

  The younger woman seemed to ignore them all.

  “You intended this?” she put to Bruce.

  “From the beginning? To use this march, these men, for your own ends? Before ever there was the word of this victory. When we talked, at Carlisle night.

  Even then, you had conceived it all? And let me name you …

  what I did!”

  Wordless at her sudden intensity, he nodded.

  “You did not trust me, then?” She seemed to be unaware of the Percies at her side.

  Still he did not speak.

  “If Wallace had not won his victory—what then?” she persisted.

  “What would you have done?”

  He glanced at Percy.

  “This. The same. Though with bloodshed, perhaps. If we had been withstood.”

  She let out a long sigh.

  “Then I am glad,” she said simply, and the intensity seemed to go out with her breath.

  Percy was looking angry, apprehensive and bewildered, in one.

  He grasped Elizabeth’s bridle, and pulled her beast round after his own.

  She did not resist him now. But she turned in her saddle.

  “Tell my uncle, the Steward, I wish him well. He and his. And … and may God go with you.”

  Biting his lip, Bruce watched her ride away.

  And so the host divided, there on Torphichen heights, in silence, without blows or any other leave-taking. The Scots sat their horses and watched as the English turned and trotted off, file upon file, whence they had come, southwards for the Pentland Hills and the long secret road to the border.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Eight

  Scotland rejoiced. Abbey and church bells rang day after day, bonfires blazed on the heights for nights on end, folk danced in the streets of towns and on village greens. The English were gone—all save the garrisons of a few impregnable but isolated fortresses, Lochmaben, Roxburgh, Edinburgh and Stirling itself, where the gallant Sir Marmaduke Tweng, who almost alone on the English side had come out of the disaster with untarnished reputation, still held out. But these could achieve nothing, and did little to dampen the enthusiasm, relief and joy of the people.

  The name of William Wallace was on every lip, prayed for in every kirk, honoured in every burgh and village and hamlet. The Scots, never hero-worshippers until now, acknowledged their saviour, and delighted the more in that he was one of themselves, of the old race, a knight’s son admittedly, but of the people.

  Everywhere the acclaim rang out.

  Or, not quite everywhere perhaps. In many a castle and manor of the land there were reservations—even in not a few whose owners had won them back, out of English occupation, thanks to Wallace. The nobles saw a little further than the common folk.

  They saw the established order endangered. Their men, their own vassals, were everywhere flooding to join this Wallace, quite ignoring their feudal duties and service to their lords, the system on which the entire community was built. Land, enduring, indestructible, viable, calculable land, was the unit on which a realm must be based; not persons, who were ephemeral, unreliable, removable, and who could and did pass away. The land did not die, and the great families who managed the land were not going to pass away either. Yet Wallace held only a miserable few acres of this land, and claimed the people as all-important. And he was not even a Norman, his mother-tongue not French but the Erse gibberish.

  Few, of course, even of the most proud, lofty and influential of the lords, denigrated the scale, brilliance or the effect of Wallace’s Stirling Bridge victory. Moreover, although only in a minor capacity and in the later stages, he had been supported in his victory by some of the great ones-the Steward himself, Lennox, Crawford, Macduff, son of the Earl of life; and, of course, the Graham. Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell had been his principal lieutenant, and had indeed fallen, mortally wounded it was said.

  So Wallace could no longer be called outlaw, brigand, claimed as something like a Highland cateran and guerilla fighter. Even men with legitimate doubts had to recognise realities.

  Robert Bruce was one of the doubters, of course, although his concern was rather different from the others-not so much for the land, nor yet the people, but for the kingdom. Wallace’s blow had been struck for the people; but it was a blow for the kingdom also, and so must be acclaimed, supported. But Wallace himself did not represent the kingdom’s cause; Wallace might indeed endanger the kingdom. He had fought in John Baliol’s name.

  Bruce, that vital September, did not in fact encounter Wallace.

  When he arrived at battle-torn Stirling, with his Annandale men, it was to find the Steward and many of the lords assembled there, but Wallace himself gone, pursuing the fleeing English with all his mounted strength. All was falling before him, and he was maintaining the impetus to such an extent he was said to be actually making for Berwick itself. There was even a suggestion that he intended to drive on, down into England.

  This would be folly, all the Scots lords agreed, Bruce included.

  They sent couriers after Wallace, advising him strongly against any such course. Nothing would be more likely, Bruce pointed out, to reunite the English, at present at sixes and sevens, than an actual invasion of their land.

  There was much to do at Stirling, with a whole land, suddenly freed from a fierce and authoritative grip, to be brought under control. The lords and bishops applied themselves to this, under the frowning regard of Stirling’s great fortress, still English-held, but impotent, not really besieged even yet, but contained. Buchan, the Constable, had come south with his cousin, John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch; so that there were two great officers of state to represent the highest authority in the land and take charge of the attempts at administration. Again, in the name of King John Baliol.

  Bruce protested about this, declaring that Baliol had abdicated and

  renounced the throne. His deposition and humiliation by Edward could

  be overlooked perhaps; but not his renunciation and fleeing the country. He was no longer King, in any sense. To act, here, in his name, was not only wrong but folly.

  The matter was complicated. In the past, when the Kingdom of Scotland had been without an effective monarch, for one reason or another, a Guardian had always been appointed to act on behalf of the Crown and bear the supreme authority. Obviously such a Guardian should be appointed now. But who should be the Guardian?

  Normally it would be one of the great nobles, who should also be a military leader, with powerful forces at his back—since he had to wield the sword of state. The Steward would have been suitable, as to rank and position, but he was no military leader, no leader of any sort, in fact, and his slobbering speech no aid to high dignity. The Earl of Buchan, High Constable, as an earl, could claim seniority in rank, and was indeed a veteran soldier, with large following; but he had played an equivocal part in this rising, had indeed, at Surrey’s command, taken the field against Moray’s rebels in the north, though half-heartedly and ineffectually. His reputation had suffered, and the common folk of Stirling booed him in the
streets, the more so as Moray himself lay dying.

  There was another candidate for Guardian, however, Buchan’s cousin, the same Sir John Comyn the Red, Lord of Badenoch, who with Bruce had formed part of that unhappy queue to sign the Ragman’s Roll at Berwick a year before. He was ambitious, vigorous and an effective soldier—and the Comyns were undoubtedly the most powerful family in the land. Moreover, his mother was John Baliol’s sister.

  Bruce might have claimed the Guardianship for himself—and undoubtedly would have done had he been less of a realist. For he recognised that he was little more popular with the Scots people than was Buchan. Everyone knew that he had been Edward’s man. The Red Comyn even referred to him as Bruce the Englishman.

  He had taken no actual part in the recent fighting; alt had been over when he arrived at Stirling with his little host. His youth was no insuperable difficulty—but he could not claim to be a military leader; though he had been knighted, he had won his spurs at joustings in the tilt-yard. He could not command the confidence necessary for a Guardian, he knew.

  But of one thing he was determined—the Red Comyn should not be Guardian. It was not only that he hated the man’s arrogant mocking style. John Comyn said openly that if John Baliol had indeed vacated the throne by leaving the country, and taking his young son Edward with him, then he, as his nephew, was next in line to be King.

  A more immediate and practical problem than the Guardianship and civil administration, however, quickly made itself evident to the assembled lords-simply that of food. Food for man and beast. The harvest had not been in gathered over much of the land-indeed, because of the English occupation and its harshness, and the removal of wool and grain to England, there had been but little sown, little to reap. Everywhere barns, stack yards and storehouses were empty, and the grim shadow of famine began to grow in war-torn Scotland. No doubt in the more remote parts there was still a sufficiency; but in the areas over which the armies had operated, hunger was growing as the days shortened.

  By the nature of things, Stirling district was worst hit. The lords could no longer feed their men-at-arms. A general break-up became inevitable.