by J. R. Tomlin
The king smiled affably. "I have no way to be sure of that, Sir Abbot. If they were addressed to the King of the Scots, I would be sure they were meant for me. As it is, I am forced to refuse them."
"My lord, if the Pope addressed you as king, he’d be taking sides between his children. You must see he could not do that." The man patted sweat off his cheeks with the edge of a sleeve as Abbot Bernard thrust the offending letters out to him.
"Depriving me of my title is taking sides." For a moment, the king let his smile drop beneath a hard gaze. "Had you brought such letters to another king, you would have received a more savage reply."
When Abbot Bernard thrust out the letters again, Master Adam took them with a trembling hand. "Surely, my lord, in the interest of peace, you will accept the two year truce without receiving the letters."
The Bruce hesitated before he worked his face into another bland smile. "I will bring the matter before my parliament. Only they can make such a decision, but they will not meet for some months. You may wait for their decision if you like." He rose to his feet. "For the nonce, I have plans to make. The English still hold my town of Berwick. I intend to regain it."
Master Adam stuttered, "My lord… my lord…" to the king’s back as the king strode through the door behind the dais. A guard closed the door with a bang. The man was panting as he turned in a slow circle, his eyes darting. "My lords." His voice shook as he nerved himself. "The Pope demands you respect this truce. You have no choice."
The murmur was quickly rising to angry shouts. Robbie Boyd marched from the front of the hall to confront the friar. "Guards, see Master Adam from the hall," he shouted. "He may find his own way home."
The guard at the door leaned his pike against the wall and grabbed Master Adam’s meaty arm. "Come peaceably. Or I’ll drag you."
In the shadowy corner where he stood, James covered his mouth with his hand.
The friar sputtered, "How dare you lay hands on me?" But he didn’t struggle as he was thrust into the bailey yard.
Robbie Boyd shouted, "Be grateful you’re not in a dungeon as you deserve." The room roared with shouts and threats as the door closed, but James chuckled softly.
After a few moments, he pushed open the doors and followed the cleric out into the bailey yard. Across the yard, the friar was climbing into the saddle of a beautiful roan palfrey beside his two friar companions were already on mules. Richert ran over when James motioned to him.
James turned his back to the clerics, who were clattering out of the bailey. "You and David will accompany me."
"Only two of us?" Richert’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline.
"Hurry. We haven’t much time. We need mounts―garrons forthe three of us." He narrowed his eyes as he thought. "And the coarsest tunics and mantles you can find."
James paced as he waited. Robbie paused but James shook his head and kept pacing. The others streamed grimly out. A damp, spring wind blew, sending a scatter of leaves flying. But the sun shone like a polished coin in a clear, high sky. After two years of heavy, cold rains that had drowned crops in the fields and another when famine still hovered close, the sight of the sun and of fields being plowed was welcome. The prospect of crops and mayhap taking backBerwick―the city his father had left wearing chains.
One of the garrons whickered as Richert led it up as he held up a rough bag. "I have them, my lord."
"Good." James took the reins Richert handed him and swung into the saddle. "I don’t want to fall too far behind our quarry. We’re on a little hunt. For pigeons."
"Whereabouts might these pigeons be?" asked David, a squat bald man with shoulders like a blacksmith.
James turned his horse’s head and set it to a fast walk with a nudge. "Making for the Old Roman Road and Berwick."
Richert and David fell in beside him on the road as it snaked beside the River Forth where sunlight flashed on silver ripples and passed a spring meadow full of bright purple heather and yellow gorse and stands of broom in green and gold. They turned south at the bridge of Stirling, hooves clomping on the boards as the water gurgled over the rocks beneath. A cormorant circled on great black wings.
They passed a farmer taking a load of early neeps and onions to market. He nodded and pointed behind him when James asked if he’d seen a party of friars. "Asked for alms, the fine one did." The man spit. "Sounded Sassenach to me. Still I offered him a good neep, and he turned up his fat nose."
When the friars were within sight, plodding along the old road, James called a halt. "We’ll wait for our pigeons to nest for the night." He led his horse from the road, and they pulled the rough tunics and mantles from the bag tied to Richert’s saddle. James knelt and dug through the grass to the damp ground beneath. He grinned and tossed a handful at Richert. "You’re too clean for a proper rogue."
Richert scraped off the couple of clods of dirt as he eyed James. "You’re fine for a rogue yourself, your lordship." He tossed clods back.
James dodged and laughed. "Aye, there’s no denying it. Royal court does that to a man." He dug out a handful of black loam and smeared it onto his mantle then ground dirt into his hands and cheeks. His men followed his example, snickering.
They tied their horses and crept through the trees until they could see a faint orange glow. The friars had built their fire off the road in a depression beside some rocks that would shelter them from the chill night wind. James and his men crawled on their bellies to within a few feet of the men they were following.
Adam de Newton was asleep in a lumpy mass under a heap of blankets next to the fire. The second sat feeding bits of twigs and wood to the flames as he whined about the damp wind. The third was the watch, staring into the darkness. James touched David’s hand and pointed to the one at watch. He pointed Richert toward Master Adam, asleep.
James drew his dirk and leapt down on his man. He had to admit the friar had courage, grabbing a flaming branch from the fire and swinging it at James’s face. James dodged to the side as he backhanded the friar hard across the face and knocked him sprawling to the ground. "Stay down," he growled and tossed the branch back into the fire. Richert was kicking the Abbot awake. The man yelped and thrashed in his blankets.
James knelt, his dirk to his man’s throat. "Keep quiet and you’ll stay alive." He strode to the Abbot and jerked him to his feet. "Strip." He glanced at David. "Those two as well."
Master Adam was shaking, his jowls trembling in the firelight. "You can’t. We’re friars. We have nothing."
James put his dirk to the man’s jowls. A drop of blood ran down his fat neck. "I can cut them off you."
The man’s sausage fingers shook as he knelt and fumbled at his blankets and then began to untie the cord around his waist. He looked up. "We have nothing valuable. Just take our mounts. They’re all we have."
"Are they?" James kicked the blankets away. A packet of parchment dumped to the ground. He bent and picked them up, grinning. "These will be good for kindling for tonight’s fire. Or mayhap some lord will pay us for them."
When he turned, the other monks were already stripped to their smallclothes, and Richert was leading up the horse and two mules. James stuck the packet of letters with their papal seal into his belt. "We’re good Christian thieves. We won’t kill you if you don’t force us." He scooped up the head friar’s robes and then took those of the other monks. David picked up a bag from beside the fire. "Our food!" one of the men yelped.
"That one won’t starve to death any time soon." With a nod and a wave, James led his men and their takings back into the night.
When James swung from the saddle before the doors of the Abbey, he sucked in a breath of the sweet morning air. He was tired and hungry and dreaming of a long soak and fresh bread with bacon burned black, but first he must see the king. He ripped off the filthy mantle from his shoulders and bundled it up to thrust into Richert’s hands. "Well done, lads," he said, striding through the doors a guard opened for him.
James entered the council c
hamber, bone-tired and filthy, to find the king and Thomas Randolph bent over a map spread on the table. The king raised his eyebrows. "Holy Rood, Jamie. What happened to you?"
Thomas stared at him and brushed a hand down his velvet surcoat as though James’s dirt might have infected him.
James sighed and shook his head dolefully. "I fear that I must throw myself upon the royal mercy, Your Grace. I’ve taken to thievery." He tossed the thick packet of letters and papal documents on top of the map. He couldn’t help the twitch of his lips.
Thomas’s eyes widened. "You robbed the holy friar?"
"S’truth, my lord. That is exactly what I did."
Robert de Bruce picked up the letters, sinking slowly into the chair at the head of the table. He sat staring at the packet.
Thomas’s jaw worked for a moment, and he burst out, "God in Heaven, Douglas. Are you mad? If the Pope is ever to receive us back into his grace, we can’t do such things."
"Then he should not send letters addressed so to the king."
"Fool!" Thomas slapped his hand on the table like a thunderclap. "We need to make peace with the Pope. We must. And you endanger that for a packet of letters."
"Peace?" James said. "There will be no peace when we aren’t allowed even to plead our case. Pope Clement is from the English fief of Guienne. He hears only the English."
"Thievery won’t gain his ear. Fool, I say."
"I suggest you not say so again, my lord earl," James said softly.
"Silence." The king glowered from one to the other. "Both of you. Master Adam cannot say who took his letters, I take it, James."
Thomas gave James a cold look. "He will guess."
"What matters a guess?" James crossed his arms across his chest and smiled when the king pulled his dirk from his belt and slit the seal on the letters. He shot Thomas a triumphant look and received a glare in return. "He did not know me, Your Grace. I give you my oath on it."
The Bruce flattened the parchment, reading the words under his breath. "I never received this," the king said at last. He held up a parchment affixed with the ornate Papal seal. "I am excommunicated."
James snorted. "Again?"
"A truce now would leave Berwick in English hands and yet gain us nothing. Here, the Papal bull demands we restrain from any attack upon the English, all English prisoners and hostages to be freed, upon pain of the entire nation, including both of you by name, being excommunicated. Jamie is right we need to know as much as we can of the English schemes, and I have no doubt…"
A rap on the door silenced him. A guard peered in and said, "Pardon, Your Grace."
Robert de Keith, James’s good-father, pushed past the man. "An urgent matter, sire." He looked over his shoulder at the young knight behind him. "You tell the king about the letter, William. It came to you." The young knight looked at the king with eager blue eyes. He pushed shaggy, sweat-soaked hair, as red as fire, from his eyes.
"Sire, I received a letter in secret carried by a farmer who’d sold—" He bit his lip, looking shamefaced. "He’d been to Berwick and sold food in the market. They pay so much for food, aye?"
James grunted. He'd have a word with his men about food making its way through his blockade.
The king nodded for the Keith’s son to go on. "We have a cousin in Berwick married to an Englishman, Syme of Spalding. He's in charge of part of the city wall." He pulled a much folded and sweat-stained letter out of from his sleeve and held it out. "He paid the man well to sneak the letter out and bring it to me. I rode as fast as I could from Galston to bring it to my lord father."
The king held out his hand. "Here, Sir William, let me see it. This is an entertaining day for letters." The king unfolded it, and his eyebrows rose as he read. "You did well to bring it to me, Sir William. If you’d taken it to my lord of Douglas, Randolph would never have forgiven you." The king gave a wry chuckle. "And if you’d taken it to Randolph, Douglas would have been wroth."
"Your grace!" Thomas Randolph exclaimed. "You wrong me."
James laughed. "I fear that it's true, sire." He held out his hand to Thomas. "Peace, cousin."
Thomas eyed his hand and then clasped it. "I still say you were wrong―but…" He grimaced. "…you are the only man I know who would have so much grit in his belly."
James twitched a shrug. He supposed that many might have done the same for the king if they’d thought of it.
"Now about this letter." The king handed it to Thomas to read. "Keith, do you know this Syme of Spalding?" he asked the Lord Marischal.
"No, Your Grace. And his wife, I’ve not seen her since she was a lass. A distant cousin, the daughter of my father’s cousin."
Thomas looked up from the letter. "So as far as we know this could be a trap. Though if it is the truth…"
"What does he say?" James demanded.
"He says he will help us enter the town over the section of wall that he guards," Sir William said. "I―I don’t think it’s a trap,Your Grace."
"I can’t send an army on one man’s word, one none of us knows. It’s too great a risk."
"Can we afford to miss such a chance?" James said. "Nothing else has worked to take Berwick, but this might. The man would want a reward. Let me meet with him… I'll know if he speaks the truth."
"That would be as great a risk as sending an army," Thomas said. "If you were captured, Douglas, what would be the cost?"
James raised an eyebrow. "Winning requires risks. I don’t begrudge them."
Later the Same Day
A high, clear voice warbled a tune.
As I was walking all alone,
I heard twa corbies makin a moan;
The one unto the other say,
"Where shall we go and dine the-day?"
The voice stopped, as well it should. That was not a song for the king’s court, but a child’s squeal followed and a piping demand, "Sing more."
James snapped his fingers at his shaggy-coated deerhound that had stopped to nose the scent on the wall. "Mac Ailpín, come." He rounded the corner of the tall, thorny hedge into the palace’s pleasure garden. The air was redolent with summer roses and violets, and a clump of rue gave up a spicy scent. William again demanded, "Sing more," hanging on Marioun of Ramsey’s arm as Princess Maud sat pulled the blossoms from a wallflower and dropped them into the grass where a maidservant sat nearby.
Marioun. A perfect rose in the midst of the garden, and he had never before seen it. Golden-haired Marioun. Wide-eyed Marioun. She was slender, straight as a blade, with a radiant face. No longer a child, she wore a wife’s sheer veil bound by a golden circlet and a silken gown that shimmered in the sun. He stared at her as she laughed down at his son. There was joy in her face.
"Lad, you mustn’t pull so on a lady," James said.
The lad turned loose and looked up. "Father!" And then his eyes widened. "A dog…" he said in a rapt voice.
Marioun sent James a look that barely hid a smile. "Greet your lord father properly, William."
William gave a good try at a bow. He slid a look at Marioun from the corner of his eye and frowned fiercely. "My lord father," he said.
James squatted and held his arms. "Come. Let me see if you’ve grown whilst I was away."
William ran to fling himself onto his father’s chest, wrapping his arms around his neck. "I’m very big now. Did you bring me something? I want to play with the dog? Is it yours? May I have one?"
"It depends on what I hear of you." But a clear-eyed examination from his son showed the lad remembered James never came without a toy. Ruffling the lad’s hair, James couldn’t help beaming. How did he grow so fast? Had that much time truly passed? In two years, he’d be of an age to take a place as a page. And James had to wonder how he had gotten so old. He hoisted the boy up as he stood. "Has he been practicing his courtesies with you, Lady Marioun?"
She wrinkled her brow as she pretended to frown. "He talks a great deal, my lord. Even sometimes when he should be silent." James looked into her wide, b
lue eyes, and it was as though she could see right through his eyes into his depths. But her frown dissolved into a smile.
William’s lower lip was trembling as he looked at Marioun as though she’d betrayed him.
"But he behaves not too ill," she gave in. James sank onto the stone bench beside her and sat the lad on his feet. He patted William’s bottom. "Play with Mac Ailpín and mayhap I have something for you before I go."
The hound settled with a resigned sigh at James’s feet as William eagerly tugged on its ears. "Come look," he commanded the Princess who’d apparently tired of destroying flowers and wandered over to try to catch the dog’s feathered tail.
"Prince Robert isn’t with them." The health of Marjorie’s son was a delicate subject. "Is he unwell?"
"He…" She lowered her voice. "He tries so hard to keep up with the others. But he still limps and yesterday he fell. He hurt his leg, so he’s abed." Marioun twined her long fingers together. She ducked her head and swallowed.
James rested his hand on hers to stop the twisting. "It can’t be serious. Sir Walter would have said something if his son were badly injured."
"No, but it’s hard to see him try and try. And the other children aren’t always kind."
He glanced at his son. No, he might not be kind to the lame lad, and young Robert would face such things for all of his life. When William was older, he’d talk to him about protecting his cousin. "But the child is healthy except for a limp? Or so his father says."
She chuckled. "He’s healthy. And determined to outstrip the others, hence his falls."
"The king dotes upon him." When she nodded, James said, "As does his father, but when we depart tomorrow Sir Walter rides with the king."
"Robert will miss his father. He’s been much with us of late."
One day when he was a page, William would be much with him, James decided. If he could, he’d take the child into his own household. William had straddled the big deerhound like a horse. The dog rose with a surge, sending him tumbling into the grass. He looked up and scowled at the indignity. James reached into his purse and brought out a top painted in stripes of bright blue and red. "I don’t suppose anyone might want this?" he asked.