The Crown in the Heather (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  Whenever Robert fell back in the column to talk with his men, Edward Bruce was quick to take the lead. Edward believed, by all appearances, that to lead all you had to do was burst to the fore. Robert understood otherwise – that you led from within. Nigel and Thomas had been stationed at Kildrummy, which Robert intended to make his base in the northeast. Shortly after the coronation at Scone, Alexander had been dispatched to Lochmaben to secure matters there.

  We were well past the Spey and bearing down on the River Don, just upstream of Kildrummy, when lowering clouds pushed their way across a clear sky. Thunder rolled over the land – faint, at first, then strong enough to shake the ground. A blast of cold wind tossed my hair over my eyes. As I reached up to rake it away, lightning stabbed through the clouds and cracked like a whip on the earth a hundred feet away. My flesh tingled. Morel’s ears flattened. Her head dipped sharply. The shock of her forelegs locking slammed through my thighs. My torso shifted hard to the right. I grappled for her mane, but my fingers slipped over, grabbing nothing. Patches of pink and gold whirled across my vision and then I struck the ground – my fall broken only by a prickly tuft of heather. Muttering curses, I rolled over, a lichen-covered stone scraping my cheek.

  Drops stung at my face. Through the deafening roar, I heard Boyd’s coarse laughter as he clambered down from his saddle and stuck his hand out. I flashed a sneer at him and shoved my fingers down into oozing mud, then rose to my feet. My hip ached with a fresh bruise. I called to Morel. Rain pounded against my chest and shoulders, pushing me back a step. Another rumble of thunder moved the earth and she skittered sideways. I called to her softly and crept closer, hands at my sides. For a moment, I thought she would bolt into the bleary grayness, but she remained still. Calmly, I reached out and took her reins. Over and over I said her name until her quivering hide calmed beneath my fingertips.

  Once my bearings returned, I guided her toward a shallow gully to the right of our procession to escape the threat of lightning, but then thought better of it. Rainwater was collecting there as quickly as it had begun to pour down. Robert shouted to Boyd and Gerald to shepherd all the men toward sloping, lower ground. There were no caves or groves in which to hide. No village or croft within sight. It was all waterlogged land and rumbling sky. And us like mice quivering in our sodden rags, caught in the open, waiting for the end.

  Cold rain slashed at my face. My fingers cramped as I held onto Morel’s reins. I hugged her broad neck. When once the lightning struck close again and I flinched, Boyd smiled like a madman at me, raindrops dancing off his jumbled teeth.

  He laughed. “That was nothing. Ever seen a boulder tossed from a trebuchet? It can take down a whole wall. Terrible noise – especially when you hear bones cracking under the weight of mortar.”

  More than you know. I looked elsewhere. Instead of bunching amongst the others or close to his horse, Robert was off from the group fifty paces, leaning against a solitary upright boulder, peering into the west. Water poured from his cloak like a waterfall. I patted Morel and guided her through the huddle of bodies and over the open expanse of soggy ground.

  “Almost over, my lord?” I asked of Robert.

  “It will pass, James. All storms do.” He sank down on his haunches to hide from the lash of wind. “Men are born and die. Kingdoms soar and crumble. Yet still the sun rises and sets. Few things are sure, but that there will always be a tomorrow and everything that has a beginning, also has an end.”

  He closed the front of his cloak, as if it were any protection from the elements, hugged his knees and chuckled to himself. “I only hope this is not my end. Would not make much of a tale, would it? Robert the Bruce was crowned in March of that year. In June, he drowned in a thunderstorm atop a hill.”

  The daggers of rain that had assaulted us were now but gentle splatters. The rumbling had begun to fall away. “I think your tale will rival Ulysses’.”

  “A tragic hero, young James. I would prefer to drown on this spot, than suffer his years of wandering.”

  Morel nickered in my ear. She perked, looked at the road as she blinked through her long, curling eyelashes, and then nudged at my shoulder with her soft muzzle.

  “I should give you back your cloak and horse,” I said.

  “Consider it payment toward your future services. I think I shall have need of them sooner and more often than I would like to call upon.” Robert wiped the rain from his face and beard and rose to his feet. “That was fast done. I expected more after all the show.”

  Then his forehead creased. “Now who might that be?”

  I looked to the east, where the road ahead of us led over a ridgeline. A lone rider sped over the muddy road, across a swale that was now a knee-high river and toward the little cluster of dips and gullies where we were huddled. The men by now were up on their feet.

  “Friend, I assume. And someone who was expecting you,” I surmised. “No foe would fly into our midst like that.”

  Suddenly, Robert’s face lit up and he broke through the line of men in the front as they raised their spears.

  “Alexander!” He threw his arms wide.

  “Hail, brother.” Alexander plunged from his horse. He plucked up the hem of his cloak and snapped the rain from it. “But I wish I could say we are well met.”

  “What news? Say naught but good, or I’ll return you to your dusty books and windowless rooms – though knowing your nature you would probably choose that over food, even if you were but one swallow from starvation.”

  Alexander touched his head briefly to Robert’s shoulder as they clasped each other tight. “Not a time for jests, Robert. English. They…”

  Robert stepped back, his hands firm upon Alexander’s shoulders. “What?”

  A long moment passed. Alexander raised weary eyes and sighed. “They have already crossed the Forth.”

  “Who? Who is ‘they’?”

  “Valence, the Earl of Pembroke. He moves swiftly. He took Dumfries shortly after you left Scone. Elizabeth was judicious enough to abandon Lochmaben and flee north. She awaits you in Kildrummy.”

  A mantle of forest green drawn around her, Elizabeth stood behind a crenel of the western most tower of Kildrummy Castle. By the time we neared the gate, she had descended from her eyrie and come out over the drawbridge. Robert spurred his horse ahead into a gallop. She lifted up the hem of her skirts in both hands to run out over the muddy road. Her damp hair clung to her neck and her cloak was dark-wet with rain. As he reached her, Robert sprang from his horse and wrapped her in the circle of his strong arms like a giant cupping a dove between the palms of his hands – gently and fiercely all in one.

  As his knights rode by, Robert kissed her full on the mouth and long. Uncommon conduct for a king and his queen. Having met Longshanks face to face, I could hardly imagine him doing more than giving his French bride a cold kiss on the knuckles. But that was the difference with Robert. You never forgot he was a man as much as anyone, never doubted that he hoped, grieved, toiled with despair or loved with a passion as vast as the ocean.

  I stopped behind Gerald, both of us still on our horses, while we waited to receive orders.

  Robert helped Elizabeth onto the saddle of his horse. Their hands caught and lingered as they stared into each others’ eyes.

  “Knights in the hall for the night, sire?” Gerald prodded. He glanced at me and rolled his eyes.

  Robert placed his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up behind his wife. Next to him she was like a child. Delicate and small of frame, she had the pink bloom of youth on her cheeks and the bright, innocent eyes of first love. He was heavily muscled, a head taller than most men, including myself, and had the first fine lines of maturity etched at the corners of his eyes. When he held her, there was a trace of melancholy behind his pupils, as one who had loved and lost before. Gerald had told me of Robert’s first wife, how she had died in childbed, and the terrible sorrow Robert had suffered.

  “Aye, Gerald, the hall and a big fire in the hear
th.” Robert slid an arm around Elizabeth’s waist. “The rest wherever you can hang them out to dry. And plenty of ale to go around... but ration Boyd and my brother Thomas on it, else there’ll be none left for anyone else.”

  He pressed his whiskered face against Elizabeth’s cheek, her back close against his chest, and they rode slowly on over the bridge and through the gate.

  The clouds over Kildrummy laced through the sky. Above, a kestrel glided effortlessly on the summer breeze. Then she tilted her wings and went away southward. My clothes by then were nearly dry, the sun overhead growing warmer, but still I shivered.

  We were all ravenous by the time supper was brought to the tables in the great hall of Kildrummy. With a swish of his hand and a lusty command, Edward Bruce gave word that we were to begin eating without the king, who was resting in his chambers. I sat at the very end of the high table with the king’s rambling squire Gerald to my left. Even though the fare was not near as refined as in the bishop’s house, the plates and pitchers were full and in a fleeting few minutes I shoveled away half my weight in meat alone. My lack of manners did nothing to impress the young ladies present. Rather, they were a source of elbows prodding at others’ ribs followed by whispers and giggles. I had felt in more welcoming company huddled with gruff and drunken Scottish soldiers around a sputtering campfire.

  Most of the men were over-full of ale and some already asleep with their heads on the table. Some snored beneath the tables. A few were still singing slurred and bawdy songs to embarrass the few womenfolk there – Robert’s sisters and some serving women, the latter of which unfortunately for them could not escape an occasional playful slap on the rump. Boyd led the rounds with a sloshing tankard held aloft in one hand and a plump kitchen maid on his other arm. Gerald saturated me with stories about Robert, Robert’s father and grandfather, his brothers, his queen, daughter, first wife... I suppose it was my own fault for asking a few questions of him here and there and then going silent as if in invitation of a monologue.

  When at last the king entered the hall, Robert paused before Boyd, gave him a look of reproach, to no avail, and then sauntered past. Slumping down in his chair, he jabbed at the food on his trencher with the point of his knife.

  To Robert’s left, the Earl of Atholl, John of Strathbogie, who had arrived midway through the meal, raised his drink in tribute, but the king merely nodded and dropped his eyes to his plate again. Beside Atholl, Gil de la Haye, a seasoned knight of many battles, and Sir Neil Campbell, husband of Mary Bruce, one of Robert’s sisters, shrugged at each other and thrust their cups at the rafters.

  “Elizabeth doing well?” Edward leaned against the table in front of his brother.

  The king watched without comment as Edward sampled from his trencher. Edward had eaten little from his own serving, instead making the rounds from table to table, guest to guest, as if the gathering were on his behalf. Finally, Robert picked up his goblet, looked inside absently and set it back down. “Well as one might expect. She understands the Earl of Pembroke is a shrewd commander – Longshanks’ best – and that I cannot ignore his presence so far north. Lives are at stake with each passing day.”

  Edward’s jaws ground at a piece of venison. He licked his fingers clean and wiped them on the sleeve of his shirt. “Fragile and easily worried, poor Elizabeth.”

  Beside me, Gerald stiffened. He had made it more than clear to me he did not care overmuch for Edward. Further down the table, Nigel and Alexander glanced at each other and then at Robert.

  “She cares for others,” Robert said. “More than can be said of you.”

  Seemingly impervious to the barb behind his brother’s words, Edward grinned. “Still seething about Aithne, are you? I have no claim on her. Once had, never the same. We shall not speak of your lady then, Robert. That would be near blasphemous. One can only imagine what wiles lie beneath that dainty exterior, what with the way you rush to her and abandon the world for hours at length.”

  “You should not drink so heavily, Edward,” Nigel chastised. “The ale speaks for you.”

  Edward smiled crookedly. “Indeed not, my reverent monk. I have not had a drop of the stuff. And unlike you, when I awaken in the morning it will not be with my blanket clutched to my chest, but something warmer, sweeter and vastly more pleasing.” He flipped a strand of errant hair from his forehead and took two quick, prancing steps over to his youngest brother Thomas’s chair. Lowly and with implication plain in his craving smile, he said, “See that lass just come into the hall? Her name is Seόnaid... I fancy a sampling. She has a friend you might favor. Not so much pretty, really, as... wickedly willing.”

  Draping himself across the table, Edward whispered rapidly into his brother’s ear. With a heave then, he pushed himself back and strode across the room. Once on the other side of the hall, he tossed his head toward a flirtatious serving girl with flaming hair and her plainer, but equally bold friend.

  Thomas threw his ale back, sprang over the table with amazing agility and joined his brother, arm in arm.

  “He shall have at least one disciple in this lifetime,” Alexander mused as he dabbed a hunk of his bread in butter.

  “And a hundred bastards,” Nigel added. “I hear the count is three already. Possibly four.”

  The king leaned forward and raised his voice just enough to reach me. “James,” he began, “what is your impression of our brother, Edward?”

  “I believe he thinks himself bigger than he is,” I said in brave honesty.

  A tide of laughter rippled down the length of the table. At first I could not understand what was so humorous. Then it ocurred to me just how they had all construed my words and I let it be. At the college in Paris and in Bishop Lamberton’s household, such bawdy sarcasm had been frowned upon. Here it was not.

  Then the king’s knife clattered to the table and he shoved his chair back. The laughter tumbled away. Dressed in a gown of green velvet, the Queen of Scotland stood at the far end of the hall. A collar of fine needlework in a Gaelic pattern as old as the tombs of the Pictish kings encircled the broad neckline baring her ivory shoulders. A sash of amber silk cut high across her tiny waist. The simple headdress that hid her hair only accentuated the clear beauty of her countenance. If I thought her well-favored in the wee hours clad only in her nightgown or a plain, rain-soaked kirtle, now she appeared worthy of worship. At first I was so astounded, I barely noticed the willowy, yellow-haired girl, King Robert’s daughter Marjorie, at her sleeve.

  Robert rushed to them and snatched up the girl’s fingers as he kissed her forehead. With his other hand on the small of Elizabeth’s back, he led them both to the head of the table. Coll the hound loped alongside, licking at Marjorie’s fingers. The three took their seats at the table’s head and servants scurried forth with warm food. The dog squeezed beneath the table, his bony back brushing the underside, and then curled up at Robert’s feet, tail thumping away. With renewed spirit, Robert greedily stuffed himself.

  “How long before you go again, Father?” Marjorie asked.

  “Marjorie,” Elizabeth intervened, almost too quickly, “your father is a king now. You should not bother him with such small questions. He will go as needed. He’ll return when he can.”

  Robert’s hand went still. If everyone else presumed the two had spent their hours in arduous rapture, I could see beneath his clouded brow it had not been entirely so. A man’s eyes, at times, say far more than a book’s worth of words. Their meeting had likely been bittersweet; their passion dampened by Robert’s preoccupation with the news of an English force. If any man ever wished himself king, he had but to look at Robert the Bruce just then to see what enormous burden a crown carried beneath its glittering gold and jewels.

  Talk at the head table evaporated for a short while, although Gerald made heroic attempts to revive it by asking Alexander about Cambridge and life there. I looked around at the knights and soldiers who had traveled from Galloway and Annandale to Scone and onto Moray and now back to Ma
r. Living out of a sack and off the land, appearances and manners were apparently the first things to suffer neglect. They cursed and boasted and tossed about idle threats to each other. Their clothes went unmended and beards untrimmed. They belched and shouted and drank until they fell over. Boyd, encouraged by the gale of laughter, accounted for most of the noise. But perhaps this is what it meant to leave the sheltered confines of school life or the piety of a bishop’s household and join the world of men. Absorbed with curiosity, I did not at first see the letter a servant had slid in front of me.

  I read it not once, but ten times over. Finally, Gerald shook me hard by the shoulder.

  “From a lass?” He winked.

  “Ah, no. I have no lass.” I ran my finger over the beaten edge of the letter and glanced down the length of the table at Elizabeth. She smiled at me, then returned her attention to her meal.

  She had kept her promise – sent word to my family. My debt to her was ever-increasing.

  “From my brother – Archibald. The youngest one. He and Hugh are safe at Rothesay, though he says Hugh has not spoken a word since I left for Paris. My stepmother, Lady Eleanor... she has taken the veil at an abbey. He will not say where for now.” My eyes dropped to the blur of ink. I knew what had sent Eleanor to seek sanctuary from the world and I prayed she would know peace until the end of her days. Someday, I would go to Archibald and find out where she was and go to her. Gerald did not ask me more.

  “Thomas Randolph? Is that really you?” Edward boomed. He abandoned his swooning maiden and bounded toward the doorway.