by Jack Whyte
“Well, young Ewan MacDuncan,” he said. “We’ll take a walk over and meet Sir Christopher Guiscard. And we’ll do it slowly, since I’m in no rush to die this day. Have you noticed yet that there are men approaching from the English rear?” The young man nodded. “Good. They’re ours, so take one last good look at them and then ignore them. The English will be watching us approach them. Don’t let them see you looking at anything beyond them. Right, let’s go.”
He kicked his horse into motion and then held it to a tight-reined walk as they crossed the two-hundred-yard distance to where the English knights and their men-at-arms sat waiting for them, and as they went Bruce kept talking to the younger man. “Mind you,” he said, “I doubt they’d be concerned even if they saw our fellows coming up behind them. These are the victorious Englishry who mere months ago routed the entire Scots army and won a war within three weeks. They’ll have little fear of another rabble of Scots peasantry. Now, before we reach them—I’ll tell you when to do it—I want you to sway the standard you’re carrying from side to side. Don’t brandish it like a blazon. Let it sway, as I say, and gently, no more than that, as though you’re having difficulty keeping it upright. Do it twice. Nicol will be watching you, so that will be enough. Do you have that? Good lad.”
They reached the halfway point of their approach, no more than a hundred yards from the English, and Jardine’s men were clearly visible now, moving towards them through the long grass at the rear of the English horsemen. Sir James Jardine rode in the centre of the advancing line, flanked by two other riders Bruce presumed to be his sons, and they drew rein less than two hundred yards behind the mounted force. The Annandale bowmen were already within killing range and now they began to spread outward in a wide arc to cover the English rear.
“The standard. Do it now,” Bruce said, then kicked his mount to a canter over the few remaining yards to where Guiscard and his fellows waited. He pulled his horse to a halt in front of them and sat quietly, waiting for some kind of greeting. When none was forthcoming and he was quite sure that no one would speak to him, he turned his head to glance towards the gallows, where a man was throwing long ropes up to another who straddled the crossbar. Then he looked back at Sir Christopher Guiscard.
“You brought it with you, all the way from Berwick—or was it all the way from England? I thought at first this morning that the priest had threatened you, to bend you to his will, but I see now I was wrong. This plan was settled from the outset, and all your reluctance was sheer mummery. You gulled me, Guiscard. You used me, led me by the nose, and the more fool me for permitting it. And so here I am, outwitted and condemned by my own folly in trusting an Englishman’s word on the matter of anything Scots.”
He saw stirring among the ranks of the men-at-arms before him and saw from their frowns that they were watching Nicol’s Carrick men forming up at his back, but he kept his eyes on Guiscard, smiling now and surprised that he could do so.
“I do not see his oiliness, your slimy priest, but I doubt he’s far away. He would be loath, I’m sure, to miss the chance of seeing children swinging from a rope. Give him a message when next you see him, from me, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick. Bid him stay well away from Scotland, for when I see him again, he will hang that same day, on my oath as an earl of Scotland.” He raised his voice slightly. “I see you counting the men at my back. They are but two and a half hundred, mostly bowmen. A small number for a mounted force as puissant as yours, but they will empty a lot of saddles before your men can close with them, I promise. You have a hundred men-at-arms and what, sixteen knights? But I believe you are a clever man, Guiscard. Too clever by far to commit your force without looking behind you. You’ll see three hundred men back there, too, with arrows drawn, if you but look.”
It was highly gratifying to see the reaction his words invoked, for Guiscard uttered a startled curse and swung his mount around, pulling it up onto its hind legs as he sought to look over the heads of the men at his back, but he saw enough to bring him wheeling back to face Bruce, his face reddening in outrage.
Bruce could not disguise his smile. In truth there were more than three hundred at their backs—far more, Bruce saw, now that he had time to look more carefully. Jardine had brought fully the four hundred he had promised in the first place, and they were now pouring forward, bows at the ready, to encircle the hapless English who were milling in confusion like a herd of sheep.
“Have you gone mad, Bruce?” Guiscard’s voice was a disbelieving roar. “This is rebellion! This is perfidy!”
“Hah! Perfidy?” Bruce shouted back, curbing his mount. “You speak to me of perfidy? This is not rebellion, Guiscard, nor is it perfidy.” His voice rose to a roar that matched Guiscard’s. “This is Scotland, you dissembling whoreson, and your kind are not welcome here.”
Guiscard kneed his horse forward so that he had no further need to shout. “Not welcome here?” he hissed. “And what of you? Think you these Scots folk will flock to you? You who are Edward’s favourite dancing boy?”
Bruce nodded. “I was Edward’s favourite, once, I suppose. But now I see I am a Scot before all else. You taught me that, Guiscard. You should not have come to hang children. I would have taken anything else but that. But to watch my own folk hanged because an Englishman thinks he can control me thereby? That is the line I will not cross.” He raised his voice to a shout again, smothering any response Guiscard might have made. “Listen now! Here is what you will do, to appease me and protect my honour.”
He waited, watching the other man’s eyes for the blink he knew would be forthcoming, and when he saw it he spoke again, more quietly this time.
“You will take your men and ride away from here, back to Berwick. There you can report me to whomever you please—say what you must say. Call me rebel, traitor, what you will. But what I am this day, you made me—you and your lying, treacherous, arrogant ilk. So take your men and your sappers and go and do not look back. If you resist, I’ll wipe you out, here in this place, and I swear by the living, breathing Christ not one of you will survive. Make your choice now. No more talk. Go, or die.”
“I could have you killed now.”
“I don’t care, Englishman. My wife is dead and I have no great wish to live. Your King—the King to whom I gave my fealty—has used me shamefully, and I have betrayed my own people enough to welcome death for that alone. So have me killed. Then die with your men. Else be gone within the quarter-hour. And leave the engines here. We’ll burn them before we move on.”
“And what about the woman?”
“She’ll come with us, north, to join her rebel husband. You’re wasting time.”
“Edward will have your head for this, you fool.”
“Then let him come and get it. He has better and more needful things to do, in France. And I meant what I said about Benstead. When I set eyes on him again I will hang him, for he is an insult and a shame to Holy Church.”
He swung his horse around and spurred away, expecting at any moment to be challenged and attacked, but nothing happened, and eventually he reined in and turned back to watch as Guiscard’s little army reformed itself and marched away to the east.
Three days later, outside the town of Ayr, just north of his own earldom of Carrick, Robert Bruce sat on a low wall and watched as Sir William Douglas ran to greet his wife and his young son, James, newly and surprisingly delivered to him through the good graces of the pampered, foppish favourite of Edward Plantagenet. Being reputedly a churlish, fearsome creature at the best of times, Douglas paid no slightest attention to their rescuer, but Bruce was not offended and was more than glad to be quit of Lady Douglas, who had treated him with glowering suspicion and disdain since he presented himself at her gates and explained what he had done, then offered to transport her north in safety to her husband. She had acquiesced, for she had little choice, but she had made no effort to be pleasant to her saviour. The child, James Douglas, had not spoken a word to Bruce since the day of their rescue, but B
ruce had been aware, much of the time, that the boy, whom he gauged to be eight or nine years old, stared at him constantly.
Douglas finally took his family off to wherever he was living, hugging each of them under one arm, and Bruce watched them go. His own men—the forty he had retained as an escort after his return to Carrick—had already scattered, released by Nicol, and only as he began to notice the growing stillness around him did Bruce realize that he had nowhere to stay that night, though he presumed there must be an inn or a hostelry somewhere close by. He rose to his feet and arched his back as well as he could beneath the armour plate he was wearing, pushing his thumbs into the soft spot under his rear ribs beneath his corselet.
“So you would be the great English traitor Robert Bruce, the best-dressed dandy in King Edward’s court. Is that right?”
There was no trace of truculence in the voice, and he turned slowly and found himself facing a man who dwarfed him without being taller than he was; a bearded giant, massive with muscle, with enormous shoulders, solid thighs, and a great, deep chest.
“It might be,” he said easily. “I would hope to seem better dressed than the others at Edward’s court, for they’re a dreary, uninspiring crew. But as for being a great traitor … Are you saying I am a traitor to England because I came to Scotland, or a traitor to Scotland because I went to England?”
The big man smiled back, a warm, humorous grin, and Bruce felt, oddly, that he had seen it before. “Either way, it’s too deep for me. I’m but a simple verderer. But I’m glad to see you’ve learned to walk, at least, without tripping over your spurs.” He ignored Bruce’s shocked expression and held out a big hand. “I’m William Wallace. We met once before, at your grandsire’s estate.”
“I remember.” Bruce’s own smile was wide and sincere. “At Lochmaben, on the day I was knighted. That seems a lifetime ago.”
“Aye, doesn’t it.” The great head cocked sideways. “So, Sir Robert, are ye a magnate in truth, or will ye deign to drink a cup o’ ale wi’ a mere woodsman?”
“Right now I’m thirsty and I’m an unwelcome stranger here, it seems. So I’ll be glad to drink with you, William Wallace—plain Will, if I remember aright—and you can tell me about what life is like in Scotland nowadays. I’ll be a magnate on another day.”
On the point of moving, though, the man Wallace stopped at those words and looked curiously at his new acquaintance. “No,” he said quietly in Latin. “It’s not that simple. You cannot have the luxury of choice. Either you are a magnate or you are one of us, the plain folk. And your name alone precludes you from being that. You are a magnate, I fear.”
“Why would you fear it?”
“I distrust magnates.”
Bruce blinked at him. “Do you, now? Why then are you here with Douglas and the others, Stewart and Atholl and even Wishart? They’re all magnates.”
Wallace was unapologetic. “Aye, but they’re among the few that have proved themselves worthy of trust.”
“Ah … And you would deny me a chance to do the same, merely because I’m Bruce and I’ve been in England?”
The other shrugged. “Those seem like two good reasons to me,” he said mildly.
Bruce nodded tersely. “Fine,” he said. “So will we drink together or no? And will we talk reasonably together or no?” He eyed Wallace’s massive shoulders and added, “I might argue with you, Will Wallace, but I’m not stupid enough to fight with you.”
Wallace barked an unexpected laugh and turned away, extending his arm in an invitation for Bruce to walk with him. “So be it,” the big archer said. “We’ll talk of Scotland, for I fear you know little of it, and you and I will decide how to save it from the English. The howff is up the hill here.”
The two men walked up the sloping roadway side by side, already feeling comfortable with each other, and not a living soul took notice of their going.
GLOSSARY
aey: always; ever (pronounced “igh” as in night)
ayont: beyond
corbies: crows
douce: gentle, sweet-natured
fashing: worrying, fretting over; being concerned about
fell: dire; implacable; resolute
forbye: besides, in addition to; except
gey: quite
gin: if
gowp: throb
haverings: ravings; maunderings; nonsense outbursts
hirpling: limping; doddering; lurching
hoaching: swarming; infested
kine: cattle
mind: recall; remember
mormaer: magnate; Celtic landholder and clan chief
swither: dither; be inconclusive, indecisive
thae: those
thole: tolerate; bear; put up with
tulzie: fight; struggle
wheen: a number; several
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Author’s Note
Prologue
Book One: Encounters 1284
Chapter One: The Countess
Chapter Two: The Boy
Chapter Three: The Kings
Chapter Four: Meetings
Book Two: The Noble Robert 1290
Chapter Five: A Laying on of Hands
Chapter Six: The Lairds of Lochmaben
Chapter Seven: The Patriarch
Chapter Eight: A Ride to Perth
Chapter Nine: Family Ties
Chapter Ten: Alarums
Book Three: Siblings 1292
Chapter Eleven: A Surfeit of Roberts
Chapter Twelve: Silver Spurs
Chapter Thirteen: The Dangers of Ideas
Book Four: The English Lordling 1295–1297
Chapter Fourteen: The Politics of Love
Chapter Fifteen: The Politics of Friendship
Chapter Sixteen: Natural Wrath
Chapter Seventeen: The French Physician
Chapter Eighteen: Enchantments and Intrigues
Chapter Nineteen: Confessions
Chapter Twenty: The Earl of Carrick’s Idyll
Chapter Twenty - One: Kings ’ Pleasures
Chapter Twenty - Two: A Brief and Distant War
Chapter Twenty - Three: Lochmaben Revisited
Chapter Twenty - Four: Death and Resurrection
Chapter Twenty - Five: Lessons in Loyalty
Epilogue
Glossary