by Young, Robyn
‘We weren’t safe there.’ Robert’s mind filled with an image of James Stewart going down, surrounded by a seething press of men. Steeling himself, he asked the question. ‘The steward? Do you know if he lives?’
‘I saw him ride from the field – that I can say.’
‘Truly?’ Joy swept through Robert at these tidings. He felt an acute need to see the high steward, all his animosity towards the man now gone. ‘What about the others?’
Malcolm’s face remained grave. ‘I heard your nephew, Thomas Randolph, was captured, as was Simon Fraser. I cannot speak as to Thomas’s fate, but I know Fraser was hanged.’
A few of the men exclaimed at this, but Robert nodded grimly. Simon Fraser, along with William Wallace, had been a thorn in the English side for a long time and was one of the few nobles who had consistently refused to surrender to Edward. His life had been claimed forfeit for years. The news about his nephew, although unwelcome, was also not unexpected. Robert remembered passing Thomas fleeing on foot through the woods – the fear in his face.
‘I’m afraid there is more,’ Malcolm warned. ‘Robert Wishart and William Lamberton have been taken.’
Robert closed his eyes, the last joy at meeting his friend and ally dissipating. How many men’s lives now hung in the balance for his star-crossed cause?
‘Where is Sir John?’ asked Malcolm, taking in the men around Robert.
Robert shook off the weight of Lennox’s black news. He couldn’t dwell on the fates of those beyond his influence. Not now. He had to worry about those still with him. ‘We parted company three days ago. Elizabeth and my daughter, all the women, were with us. We were attempting to reach Islay, hoping to find shelter with the MacDonalds. John has taken the women to Kildrummy. They should be safe there for the time being. We went south to draw MacDougalls’ men from them.’
Malcolm shook his head as the gravity of Robert’s words sank in. ‘What do you plan to do?’
‘I still intend to reach Islay. I’m surrounded here. I need to evade the nets my enemies are throwing up around me.’
‘How can I help?’
‘Do you have galleys?’
‘One of twelve oars two miles up-water and another moored at Inchmurrin. They are yours.’
Edward and Gilbert exchanged gratified looks at the good fortune.
Robert gripped Malcolm’s shoulder. ‘Thank you.’ He gestured to the woods. ‘We should go. I do not know how far behind MacDougalls’ men may be.’
As he turned to go, Malcolm caught his arm. ‘There is one last thing, Robert.’ He paused, seeming hesitant to speak.
‘Tell me.’
‘Word has come from France. Pope Clement has excommunicated you for the murder of John Comyn.’
Chapter 13
Kildrummy Castle, Scotland, 1306 AD
Niall Bruce sat up, throwing back the blankets. It was early September, but the night was unseasonably warm. He was exhausted yet sleep had eluded him again, his mind refusing to lie still like his body. Leaning back against the curtains that draped the head of the bed, he stared at the sheets, yellowed with his sweat after a month of restless nights.
He felt like an intruder in this grand chamber, which once housed his sister, Christian, and her first husband, Gartnait, the former Earl of Mar. It reminded him of when he was young, roused by dark dreams that sent him creeping into his parents’ bedchamber. His mother would awaken quickly, parting the covers to let him slip into the warmth beside her, but he would never stay long, afraid to be caught there by his father, who would not be so forgiving of his fears. On arriving at Kildrummy, Niall assumed Christian would take up residence here, but his sister, in torment over Christopher’s disappearance, had taken refuge with her sisters. They had all left with John of Atholl, over a fortnight ago, leaving him alone; master of the great north-eastern castle.
Niall rubbed at his face, grinding his palms into his bloodshot eyes in an effort to revive himself. If he was awake, he might as well do the rounds. Forcing himself to his feet, he crossed the room, avoiding the hole where a rope dangled into darkness, floor after floor, to a well from which water could be drawn up to each level. As he took his gambeson from a clothes perch and shrugged it on over his shirt a fine white dust misted the air. The stuff was everywhere – caught in hair and clothing, layering furniture and gritting up food.
After pushing his feet into his boots, Niall took up the leather bag and slung it over his shoulder. Robert, on thrusting it at him in the woods, had made him vow not to let it leave his sight. Niall understood little of the broken box inside, except that his brother had risked his life to seize it and hoped to use it somehow against King Edward. It seemed a trifling thing to base any hope on at all. But, still, he had kept his word. Snapping up the latch, he opened the door and moved into a narrow passage, where arrow slits let in shafts of coppery light. As he made his way up a steep spiral of steps, the smoke-tinged night air blew down at him, cooling the sweat on his face.
When he emerged on the battlements in the shadow of the Snow Tower, those on watch greeted him with nods. In the torchlight their beards were grey with more of the dust, created by the smashing of the engines’ stones against the smooth ashlar of the curtain walls. A short distance along the battlements part of the wall was gone and rubble littered the walkway. A wooden screen had been hastily erected in its place, but the enemy kept battering it down into the courtyard with shot from their engines, cheering when they succeeded as if it were a game. Two days ago it had taken one of the archers with it, sending him screaming to the flagstones.
‘All quiet?’
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Roland, one of Kildrummy’s garrison. He ducked from his spot, allowing Niall to take his place.
A breeze whisked up the mortar dust, stinging Niall’s eyes. Earlier that day, the castle’s constable had likened the brutal pounding of the walls to grain being milled to powder. The magnificent castle, which backed on to a ravine and was shaped like a shield with four corner towers and a twin-towered gatehouse, was redoubtable, but no fortress was impregnable. The fractures that now scarred its flanks were testament to that.
Through the thin aperture of the arrow slit, Niall stared out over the encampment that ringed the castle in a crescent of tents, dug-out latrines, horses, mules and wagons. The flames of campfires highlighted the garish colours of the banners that thrust up out of the crowded site, the largest of which was a scarlet standard, emblazoned with three golden lions. At three points, trebuchets had been erected on platforms over the castle’s ditch, each protected by screens. The dread machines loomed against the fire-bruised sky; skeletal beasts with ropes for sinews to bind their limbs. Their massive heads were bowed and still, but tomorrow, some time after matins, they would begin to rise, throw back their long necks and, from the jaws of those great baskets, spit their loads at Kildrummy’s walls.
Niall pressed his cheek to the stone, squinting to the front of the castle where the greatest concentration of men was camped. Four days ago, they had bridged the ditch with a sow. The long platform, mounted on wheels and covered with a timber roof to protect them from archers, led right up to the gatehouse. Yesterday morning he and the rest of the garrison had watched in silence as a felled pine was hauled by oxen from the surrounding woods. Hacked of branches and looped with chains it had since become a ram. He imagined it thumping like a giant fist into the doors of the gatehouse. Kildrummy’s constable had ordered oil brought from the stores, ready to be boiled up and tossed, molten, over the heads of the enemy, but unless they could set fire to the roof of the sow, Niall didn’t see how they could halt an all-out attack on the gates. There were almost one hundred men in the castle with him, but he had never felt more alone.
Through much of the war with England, Niall had been in fosterage in Antrim, training for knighthood, as Robert and Edward before him. Even when he became swept up in the conflict, as the youngest brother he had always felt protected from the burdens of responsibility and pressures
of strategy. Now, with an English army encircling Kildrummy, the war had landed on his doorstep and it was his task to keep it here, for the longer the enemy were occupied in this place the more chance it gave his family to get to safety. For the first time, Niall understood something of the enormity of the weight Robert must feel every day.
Focusing on the red standard at the head of the camp, planted next to a blue and white striped banner, he reminded himself that despite his own predicament Prince Edward’s arrival last week was a good sign. That the prince had joined forces with Aymer de Valence and Henry Percy left the west clearer for Robert. Furthermore, since they were concentrating all their efforts here, the English must surely believe the king’s family were still inside, which is exactly what he and John of Atholl had intended.
None of them knew how Valence had got word of their arrival at Kildrummy, but it was apparent their enemies were everywhere. It was as if the kingdom itself were turning against them; hills and valleys that once sheltered and fed them now full of danger and watching eyes. When the news reached them from some of Atholl’s people fleeing north from Valence’s advance, Niall and John made their decision. God willing, John would have seen the women safely to the north coast by now and they would be on a boat to Norway, where Isabel Bruce was queen. Niall just hoped he had done right by his brother; that Robert would not be angered by the fact he had sent his wife and daughter abroad.
Allowing Roland to return to his place at the arrow slit, Niall started off on his nightly route along the walls, stepping over piles of rubble, broken arrows and buckets of sand. He had climbed to the top of the second tower and was talking to the guards there, when he noticed firelight shimmering in the windows of the great hall. Niall turned from the men and crossed to the edge of the battlements, staring towards the building, which projected into the courtyard. The timber-beamed hall had been used as a grain store since the start of the siege, but even when in use there were no fireplaces. Besides, the pulsing glow was too bright for any hearth fire.
‘Christ!’ hissed one of the guards. ‘That’s all our food in there!’ He made towards the bell positioned on the tower top.
Niall caught his arm. ‘No! I don’t want to alert the English. Keep to your post.’
Hastening to the archway in the battlements, he charged down the spiralled steps, the bag that contained the precious box bouncing against his back. His ankle turned on an uneven stair, pitching him forward. He threw himself sideways, slamming into the wall, only just managing to halt his fall. Righting himself he plunged on, pushing out on to the walkway, back the way he’d come. The fire seemed brighter, dancing in the windows. White smoke was curling from under the hall’s doors. Other men around the compound had seen it now, their shouts rising. Guards rushed from the gatehouse carrying buckets of sand and water. Somewhere a bell began to clang, the sound terribly loud in the stillness. Niall cursed. If the English attacked while they were all occupied with a fire? The thought stopped him in his tracks.
He scanned the courtyard, his gaze moving over the men dashing towards the hall, briefly catching on the constable, who had emerged from the Warden’s Tower and was directing others to bring more buckets. Niall fixed on a lone figure, moving towards the gatehouse, keeping close to the line of the wall. When the figure paused and looked towards the hall, Niall recognised him as the castle’s blacksmith, a bad-tempered bull of a man called Osbourne. The blacksmith continued, quickly now. Niall felt cold doubt turn to sickening certainty. As he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled the man’s name, Osbourne whipped round, his face tilting towards the battlements. He was too far for Niall to see his expression, but his intent was clear as he turned and ran for the gatehouse.
Niall began to sprint, yelling at the guards in the courtyard as he went, gesturing wildly towards the running man, but his cries were lost in the commotion of the fire and the mad clanging of the bells. The hall’s doors had been flung open and smoke billowed thickly around the men, all tossing in sand and water in an attempt to quell the blaze. Leaping the pile of rubble by the broken section of wall, Niall fixed on the sentries by the Snow Tower.
‘Roland!’ he roared. ‘Archers!’
The guard was at the battlements, his attention caught by something else. Through an arrow slit, Niall glimpsed a host of men massing at the English siege lines, all cast in the copper light of the campfires. There were horsemen at the head, funnelling across the makeshift bridge of the sow. Racing on, he reached the sentries and grabbed one of them, an archer, by the scruff of his cloak.
‘Shoot that man!’ Niall forced the archer round to face the gatehouse, where Osbourne was charging into the mouth of the passage between the twin towers. ‘Shoot him now, or we all die!’
The archer swung his bow from his shoulder and snatched an arrow from the basket on his belt. Fixing it in place with one rapid movement, he drew back the string, aimed, and shot. The arrow flew straight and true into the darkness where Osbourne had disappeared. Niall held his breath, listening for a scream. Instead, he heard the drum of hooves and the unmistakable rattle and clank of Kildrummy’s portcullis.
St Duthac’s Shrine, Scotland, 1306 AD
Elizabeth sat in the window, staring out over the firth, beyond which mountains rose black against the blanched dawn. The wide water was dew-pond calm, filled with vertiginous reflections of the surrounding crags. To the others, coming down out of the hills, the sight of the channel leading into the open sea beyond Tain had been a blessed relief. To her it whispered only death. She closed her eyes, fingering the ivory cross around her neck, her mind caught in the rushing dark of a different body of water, long since left, but not forgotten.
Mother Mary, give me strength.
Hearing a rustle of blankets and the slap of bare feet on stone, she looked round to see Christian disappearing behind the wicker screen that shielded a latrine from the chamber. A moment later came sounds of vomiting. Elizabeth’s gaze drifted over the sleeping forms of the other women, curled up under blankets. They covered the floor of the draughty lodgings the priest had offered them, huddled together for warmth. Fionn was lying beside Marjorie, his shaggy head resting between his paws, eyes half open, glinting and watchful. The other dogs and all the horses were in the stables or out in the pastures, but the hound had refused to leave the girl’s side since they had left St Fillan’s. Close by, Donald shifted beside his wet nurse, whimpered, then silenced. His mother emerged from behind the screen, wiping her mouth with a trembling hand. Christian started, seeing Elizabeth sitting there in the gloom. She came to the window seat, stepping carefully over the bodies of Marjorie and Lady Isabel Comyn.
‘The priest told me one of his chaplains is a skilled healer,’ Elizabeth said quietly, shifting her legs to allow Christian to sit beside her on the stone seat. The frayed hem of her dress caught on a cobweb, snapping the strands. ‘I think you should allow him to examine you if you keep getting sick.’
‘I’m not sick, my lady.’ Christian’s eyes filled with pale dawn light as she looked out across the firth beyond the grounds of St Duthac’s Chapel. ‘I’m with child.’
Elizabeth felt her breath catch in her throat. Instinctively, before her customary reserve could stop her, she reached out and took Christian’s hand. Her sister-in-law looked at her, surprised by the contact, then smiled sadly and squeezed her hand in return.
‘You are certain?’
‘I haven’t bled since St Fillan’s and it feels the same as it did with Donald.’ Christian pressed her arm against her breasts, nodding to confirm it. She let her hand fall into her lap. ‘Christopher would be so happy.’
‘He will be,’ Elizabeth assured her. ‘And when we return he will be able to tell you so himself.’
Christian stared out of the window, her brow furrowing. ‘John has been gone three days now.’
Elizabeth followed her gaze to where a stone cross loomed above a spit of sand on the shore of the estuary. It was one of four that marked the boundaries of
the Girth of Tain, which cradled St Duthac’s Chapel. The shrine was a holy sanctuary that could not be breached, but nonetheless their tension had risen since John of Atholl left with most of the men to seek out a worthy vessel and captain. The earl planned to rejoin Robert’s company, but the women were to be sent to Norway. The others, though distraught at leaving their husbands, had mostly resigned themselves to their fate with its promise of safety for them and their children. But to Elizabeth it still seemed an intolerably drastic measure, even beyond her own implacable fear of the journey through endless miles of deep water.
She found it unreal that less than six months ago she had been crowned queen and now she was fleeing her kingdom with a rag-tag band of noblewomen, bound for a country she knew nothing of, besides stories of dragon-prowed ships and men who had once preyed on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. She fought another urge to touch the cross at her throat as she thought of her father and the hope that refused to be crushed that he would surely shelter them. Earl John, however, had been adamant: Norway was the only safe place for them, until Robert secured his kingdom.
‘Sir John said we could make Orkney in just a few days with a good wind. From there it is not much further to Norway and my sister’s court.’
At Christian’s soft tone Elizabeth knew her sister-in-law was trying to comfort her about the sea voyage, but another feeling had started to push its way up through her fear. ‘I cannot help . . .’ She paused, wanting to speak her mind, but cautious of offending Christian. Her relationships with these Scots women were still forming. Some, especially Mary Bruce, had quick tempers that caught her off guard. Elizabeth had siblings of her own, but they had been much older and she’d never been close to any of them. Her first friendship had been with Humphrey’s wife, Bess, but the English princess was two years buried. Now, she was alone, responsible for these new sisters and a daughter who wasn’t her blood. Seeing Christian looking at her expectantly, she let her anger well to the surface. ‘I cannot help but blame Robert for all this’ – she motioned to the women spread out on the floor – ‘all our misfortune. If he hadn’t spilled John Comyn’s blood and revolted against the king, we wouldn’t be here, fleeing for our lives.’