Insurrection (51 page)

Another name now became audible in the roar of the mob.

‘
Wallace! Wallace!
’

46

As the company rode in through the gates of Carlisle Castle the men on sentry moved aside to let them pass, heaving the massive barriers shut behind them. Robert, at the head of the eight knights, noticed there were more guards now than there had been four days ago when he had left. Their faces, damp in the early morning drizzle, were tense.

Reaching the inner courtyard, Robert and the knights dismounted, rain dripping from their hoods. The place was busy, servants carrying baskets of vegetables and logs to the kitchens. As Robert passed Hunter’s reins to a groom who hastened from the stables, he was met by one of his father’s men.

The knight inclined his head courteously as he approached, but remained unsmiling. ‘Sir, the governor wanted to see you immediately upon your return.’

Robert was soaked to the skin and weary, but it was easier these days simply to obey. The sooner he saw his father, the sooner he could retire to his lodgings and sleep, before he was sent out on another errand. Nodding to his men, he followed the knight across the yard, up the steps to the hall.

After hammering upon the hall’s doors to announce him, the knight left him to enter alone. Robert removed his riding gloves, flexing his stiff hands as he walked the chamber’s length, beneath the beams. It was late May, but spring seemed reluctant to ripen into summer this year and both hearths were ablaze. His father was hunched over the table that spanned the dais, the surface of which was chaotic with documents. Unconventionally, the lord preferred to conduct his business here rather than in his personal solar on the floor above, to which Robert was rarely invited. The cavernous hall, strung with a banner decorated with the arms of Annandale, seemed, to Robert, the attempt of a man determined for all visitors to recognise him as greater than he was. As he crossed the floor, littered with straw where the castle garrison slept, Robert thought of his grandfather, a man so commanding he could have held council in a barn and all present would have hung on his every word.

The Lord of Annandale glanced up as Robert approached, but didn’t greet his son until he ascended the steps and stood before him, the table’s breadth between them. ‘Do you have anything to report?’

Robert steeled himself before answering. It was how he was able to bear these meetings. Pushing all his hostility deep down inside, he would respond with nothing more than words. ‘All is quiet in the district, Father, as far as I could ascertain.’

His father’s blue eyes bored into his. ‘How far north did you travel?’

‘To the border, as you ordered.’

‘And you saw nothing? No sign of trouble?’

‘Nothing.’

After a taut silence, the lord nodded. ‘Good. We may have survived the last attack on this city. But if one comes again I want ample warning.’

‘I thought the unrest was concentrated in the Highlands?’ said Robert. His father didn’t respond, but bent forward to rifle through the rolls on the table. Robert caught the sour odour of wine on his breath and glanced at a goblet and jug, protruding like two silver islands from the wild sea of parchment. He wondered how much his father had had since dawn as his gaze moved over the wine-stained documents, one of which bore a great seal, decorated with the royal arms of England. Robert fixed on it, his interest pricked. He himself had heard no word from the king’s court since Edward and his army crossed the border in September, the Stone of Destiny carried with them out of Scotland, along with John Balliol and the rest of the Scottish prisoners. ‘You have been contacted by the king?’ he asked his father, surprised and a little resentful.

The lord was staring at a map of the Borders, spread out beneath his hands. ‘While King Edward has ordered me to maintain the defence of Carlisle he is nonetheless confident the rebels disturbing his peace will be dealt with decisively. I am inclined to agree. The leader of these churls is a man of neither consequence nor standing, a younger son of one of the high steward’s vassals.’ The lord’s dismissive tone changed. ‘But though this brigand, William Wallace, may be of no grave threat to the king’s rule, some of his supporters could be.’

Robert remained silent. The rebel, Wallace, might be a man of little consequence, but his rising against King Edward’s administration had been as a stone tossed into a pool, the ripples of which had spread far and wide. Robert didn’t know much about him, except that he had remained defiant throughout the English occupation, refusing to swear fealty to the king. Wallace, the son of a knight, had clashed with the king’s men in the town of Lanark and had been outlawed. Tales of his aggressions against English-held settlements had been filtering across the border ever since, along with tidings of further violence erupting across Scotland.

‘What is troubling the king,’ continued his father, ‘is the treachery of Sir William Douglas. No sooner was he freed from Berwick than he joined Wallace. The uprising of a few brigands is one thing, but the defection of a nobleman such as the Douglas quite another. Edward fears his change of heart could inspire others. Wallace will be dealt with in due course. Douglas is the priority. What with the recent death of his brother Edmund in Gascony, King Edward is occupied by the war against France. He cannot spare the time to attend to this matter personally and has asked me to deal with it. While Douglas is abroad with the main body of his knights, his castle is being defended by his wife and a small garrison. I am to seize his wife and son. They will be taken into English custody and used to persuade Douglas to see sense.’

‘When will you leave?’ Robert asked, his father’s words sinking heavily inside him.

The lord met Robert’s gaze, his eyes filling with contempt. ‘I have enough to contend with here, as should be obvious. You will do this.’ Without waiting for a response, he spoke on. ‘You will leave first thing tomorrow, ride to Lochmaben and raise the men of Annandale. Douglas’s castle may only be defended by a small garrison, but it will need strength to break it. Bring Douglas’s wife and son to me.’ When Robert didn’t move, the lord’s brow puckered. ‘Well?’

Robert’s emotions found a vent and, like a blast of steam, erupted, scalding and sudden. ‘And if you drop this woman and child at Edward’s feet, Father, how will he reward your obedience? With a throne, do you think? Or just a pat on the head?’

The Bruce straightened, his face draining. His hand jerked, jolting the king’s order from the table top. It struck the wooden boards of the dais, the great wax seal cracking down the centre. ‘You will do your duty,’ said the lord, his voice strained, ‘or you will lose your lands.’ Reaching for the goblet, he seized it. ‘Either way, you will get from my sight.’

The breeze cooled Robert’s skin as he looked out upon the stone-blue dawn. He was bathed in pale moonlight, sweat glistening in the ridges and hollows of his ribs and torso. In just over a month he would celebrate the day of his birth. Those twenty-three years were showing in his body, grown tall like his grandfather’s, shaped and honed by more than a decade of training. His broad shoulders tapered into a long back, moulded with muscle, and his arms were corded with veins. Fine dark hair had started to sprout on his chest this past year, running in a faint line to his navel, then on to thicken again. Here and there scars marbled his skin, many of them injuries sustained in training, others from battle. It was a man’s body, not a boy’s any longer. And yet, for all this strength, he felt more powerless than ever.

Below, the motte of Lochmaben Castle sloped down to the jumble of buildings in the bailey. Beyond the palisade, trees, cloud-like in the moonlight, stretched to the Kirk Loch, which glimmered like a mirror. Memories of this place in other times flooded through him in a rising tide. He had come here a boy of thirteen summers, freed from his father’s glowering presence. It was here in Lochmaben that he learned to hunt and sat in council with the men of the realm; here that he first lay with a woman, here where his family mourned the loss of the throne and where his grandfather bestowed upon him the right to claim it back. It was here, in the heart of Annandale, that the sword of the Earl of Mar had made him a knight. Here, where he married Isobel and conceived his daughter.

But despite the web of history that bound him to this place, Robert felt like a stranger. The landscape didn’t recognise him any more, nor did the spirits of the past. It had been this way since he had helped seize the Stone of Destiny from the altar at Scone Abbey. His grandfather, once so clear in his mind, had grown faded, as if even his memories were abandoning him, slipping away from the awful truth. It had been a relief to spend the winter in Carlisle. Returning to Scotland to raise his father’s vassals for the assault on Douglas’s castle had been as a stone in his heart.

Hearing the creak of the bed behind him, Robert turned from the window. The chamber that had once been his grandfather’s was in shadow, the fire in the hearth emitting a dull copper glow. The round room on the first floor of the keep was bare, despite the best efforts of the servants to make it comfortable for its new inhabitant. The ancient bed, repaired after the damage sustained in the Comyns’ occupation, had been draped with linen sheets and woollen blankets. The few chests containing his belongings – clothing, armour, weapons – had been stacked against one wall beneath a familiar threadbare tapestry that showed knights on black coursers hunting a white stag. Pillows scattered the floor and the bedcovers were rumpled. From between the sheets, a lithe leg had slipped its way out. The woollen blanket had rucked up over the thigh, where it piled haphazardly, then fell away to reveal the curve of a back and the smooth blades of shoulders, half hidden by a mass of dark hair. An arm, which had stretched up and folded under a pillow, revealed the swell of a breast, pressed into the mattress. In stirring, Katherine had turned her face to him, but her eyes remained closed. After a moment, her breaths evened out.

Not wanting to leave his daughter in Carlisle, Robert had brought his wife’s former maid and the wet nurse, Judith, with him to Annandale, along with an escort of knights and squires. Three nights ago, after a feast he had arranged for some of his father’s vassals, through which he had sat in silence and drank, Robert had called Katherine to his chamber. The maid hadn’t resisted when, his fingers fumbling from too much wine, his breath hot, he had taken her to his bed, desperate for some release, for something into which he could pour his frustrations. The next night she had returned of her own accord.

Robert stared at Katherine’s sleeping form, then crossed barefoot to his clothes, heaped on the floor. He pulled on his braies, hose and shirt quietly, not wanting to wake her. She had given him all he needed tonight. Taking up his hide boots, his cloak and sword, he opened the door and made his way through the darkened tower.

At the bottom, he was met by the lanky, fair-haired figure of Christopher Seton, whose turn it had been to guard the keep through the night watch. Christopher was one of the men who had accompanied Robert on this assignment, the notable exception being his brother, who remained to assist in Carlisle’s defence. Edward had wanted to stay in Annandale at the end of the war and had not settled well in the city. Sullen and angry, he had taken to staying out most nights in the taverns, wasting money on cock fights and starting brawls. When he could, he avoided Robert and their father, blaming them for his exile in England.

‘Good day, sir,’ said Christopher, opening the door for him.

Robert nodded a greeting to the squire. Not wanting to be drawn into conversation, he headed on down the steep track that wound around the motte, buckling his sword belt. The weapon’s weight was a familiar one, for he wore it everywhere now. Heading past the kennels, he heard a whine and saw Uathach slinking from her wooden hut to greet him through the staked fence. He clicked his tongue softly at her, but continued on to the gate in the palisade, which led to the town. He had no destination in mind, only a need for the solitude of the dawn. The castle would wake soon, busy with another day, more vassals arriving for the fight. He wanted the clarity that came with the quiet. Tomorrow he was to leave and march on Douglasdale at the head of his father’s men to abduct a woman and child. He needed to hush the voices of the past before then.

Out of the gates he walked, out into the streets. Despite the early hour there were a few people awake already. He passed a figure in a hooded cloak, hunched outside a blacksmith’s, an old black dog sprawled on the ground close by. Further down, he saw a man and a woman locked in an embrace in the shadows of a doorway. The rumble of cartwheels came from somewhere up ahead. In the market square the church cast a squat shadow in the moonlight. Robert paused in the empty space, assailed by hazy memories of days golden with sun and promise. He remembered riding through these streets after a hunt, the horses dusty and tired, the men calling jubilantly to his grandfather. He remembered the pride he felt hearing the respect in their voices.

Robert continued on across the square. The simple act of walking was pleasing and he found himself calmed by the momentum of it. Once or twice he thought he heard footsteps behind him, but when he turned he saw no one. Soon, the rhythm of his own stride was all he perceived and when he came to the limits of the town he didn’t stop, but carried on into the woods, which echoed with birdsong. Walking the well-worn tracks of men and animals, he came to the edge of the loch, his thoughts consumed by his grandfather.

A man who breaks his oath isn’t worth his breath.