Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) (8 page)

My men were more pleased to see me back than I was to be among them, at least on this godforsaken island of forced asceticism, where a man could do nothing but pray and wait for winter’s end. Depleted, I dragged my aching bones up an ancient sheep path that wound through a breach in the escarpment. There, an abandoned church served as my quarters. Wind howled through the ever-widening cracks between its stones and, glancing up at the roof to where the winter’s gray light filtered down in patches, I could see no one had heeded my orders to repair the handful of buildings while I was away. I collapsed on a musty pallet next to the altar, sleep carrying me off to dreams of greater comforts before I had even pulled my cloak over me.

I awoke shivering. A puddle of rainwater had collected on the floor close to me. As it spread, my straw pallet had begun to wick the frozen water up. I rolled over, onto damp flagstones that left me colder still. Hinges creaked and I looked to the door, only to feel the frigid blast of a cold wind stinging at my eyes.

“M’lord?” Torquil stretched out his hand to rouse me. He gasped for air in between words. “On the water... coming...”

As I pushed myself into a sitting position, he pulled his hand back. Confusion fogged my mind. I rubbed at a neck so stiff I could barely look up. Torquil stooped over me, his pale lips buzzing with words that made no sense. Knees drawn up to my face, I cupped my head in my hands, grumbling at him in irritation.

“Wood and flint,” I muttered into my forearms. “Any colder in here and I will damn well freeze to death.”

“Later, you must... down to the shore... don’t know who –”

“The shore?” I slid my arms down my shins to peer at him, letting his words slowly sort themselves in my muddled mind. “What’s down there?”

“Who.”

“Fine – who?”

He shrugged. “Two galleys in the bay. One taking on water.”

Boyd had taken two galleys when he left for the mainland.

Into the darkening night I raced, down the treacherous cliff path and out to water’s edge. Boyd’s curses roared above the slap of rain turning to sleet. His boat crept into the little bay and lagged as they bailed the freezing water from it furiously. A vigorous wind pushed seawater over the gunwales and the boat pitched sideways, tossing two men over. Arms flailed above the surface. Someone grabbed a hand and pulled one of the men aboard. The other bobbed up and down, his body drifting further and further from the boat, even as he tried to swim back to it. A wave swelled up behind him, its crest rising in a ragged line of white like a lion’s gaping jaws. Then, the wave surged and broke, the sea swallowing him whole.

Torquil and a few others were already pushing one of the landed galleys out into the water to go to Boyd’s rescue. The two boats touched and Boyd and his men tumbled one by one into Torquil’s vessel.

James stood at my side, the sleet cutting at our faces as we squinted into the dark, cold wetness.

Finally, swearing and stumbling, Boyd straggled ashore with a sack of money flung over his back. He slammed it at my feet and pitched forward. James caught him by the wrist and slipped beneath his arm to support him.

Boyd shivered violently. “Your rents,” he muttered between chattering teeth.

“A bit bedraggled you are, but alive.” I reached toward him. “Come. We’ll sit you by the fire and dry you out. Alexander has just returned from Antrim with the Irishman Malcolm MacQuillan and a fierce host. He brought ale with him, half a galley-full I swear.”

“No, no. You’ll want to hear this first.” Boyd took several ragged breaths, then raised his chin. He spoke from blue lips in an airy voice, like some ghost risen from the grave. “The English laid siege to Kildrummy. Nigel was there. He held it a long time... bravely. The English, near to giving up, promised gold to anyone inside who would give them access.” He drooped. His knees almost gave way. James tightened an arm about his waist to hold him up. “Then, the blacksmith Osborne, who had tired of the hardship, set the stores of corn on fire. Everything burned. Even the castle gate. When they finally took the castle –”

He broke off as Alexander darted through the stabbing rain and skidded to a halt beside me, kicking flakes of shingle out into the water.

“They melted the gold and poured it down Osborne’s throat.” Boyd slumped against James, his eyelids flapping shut and then open, as though he struggled to remain conscience. “They took Nigel to Berwick, where he... was hanged and beheaded.”

I dropped to my knees. My heart had turned to ice. “Elizabeth? Marjorie? What of them?”

Boyd leaned into James and shook his head. “I don’t know. Only that the womenfolk left with the Earl of Atholl shortly before the English came. They never made it to Orkney.”

“You don’t know? How can you not know?” I leapt to my feet and grabbed the front of his shirt, yelling into his face, “My wife and my daughter were with him! How can you not
know
what happened to them?”

“Robert.” Alexander hooked my arm to drag me toward the nearest house. He gestured for James to follow. “Boyd wasn’t there. I’m sure he doesn’t know any more than what he told you. Let him rest for now. You need to get some sleep, too. We’ll go to Carrick soon. Find out what we can.”

But how does a man find sleep when his brother is dead? When he sends his wife away and has no idea where she has gone to? Whether she is dead or alive or suffering in terror as they rape and torture her?

Ah, merciful Lord... even as I try and try to weave this rag back together it frays between my fingers
.

Ch. 7

Edward, Prince of Wales – Tower of London, 1307

Metal creaked against metal, rising steadily to a groan as the wind nudged at the heavy cage, tipping it slightly. The contrivance hung from an iron hook, which extended from the wall of Wakefield Tower in the outer bailey of the Tower of London. Bone-thin fingers gripped the wooden bars. The girl peered down at me, her curling tresses twisted and snarled about a bloodless face. Even from the ground, I could see her lashes, as black as a crow’s feather, fluttering over eyes of gold-green. Shoulders heaving, she sniffed and rubbed a bare hand across her nose, then pulled the tattered hem of her gown around slippered feet.

My sire’s heels clacked unevenly over the cobbles, slowing as he neared me. He tried to smooth the hitch in his stride, but his grimace betrayed the pain. The long, muscular legs which had earned him the name ‘Longshanks’ had withered to twigs of late. He had just returned from Lanercrost Priory near Carlisle, where he sometimes went when his health deteriorated. But instead of relief from his ailments, he had returned with an unlikely prize: the Bruce women and the Earl of Atholl’s head, now adorning a pike above London Bridge.

“I sent you to Dunaverty,” he said accusingly. “Was he not there?”

“Shortly after I left Berwick, I received word from Menteith that he had already fallen upon Dunaverty. Unfortunately, Bruce was not there, nor any of his brothers.”

“So you accomplished nothing?”

Why did he always seek to find fault with me? Even though I expected such upbraidings, I could never shield my heart from them. Worst of all was how he had persecuted me for my friendship with Piers Gaveston. His banishment had nearly undone me. If I wished to hurry my sire’s demise, it was not because I wanted his throne. Far from it. I only wished... no,
craved
to have Piers back at my side. Mother Mary, what torture it had been without him.

“The Bruce appears to have fled Scotland altogether,” I said, hoping that would placate him, and added for further measure, “And you have, of course, heard of Pembroke’s success in taking Kildrummy? I myself saw the crows picking at Nigel Bruce’s head atop Berwick’s wall.”

“It would please me more if you brought me Robert’s head.” A cough tore at my sire’s throat. He raised his fist to muffle it. The hacking startled a flock of ravens, sending them skyward in a whir of beating wings and petulant caws.

Like the arrogant, doddering fool he was, my sire denied that frequent illnesses had taken their toll on him. Too often, he was outside on days like this when frost rimed the rooftops, just as his once glorious golden hair had whitened. With every outing his joints stiffened so severely he could hardly walk for days afterwards sometimes. His French wife Queen Marguerite, who was my stepmother, trailed behind him with a gaggle of damsels. We exchanged perfunctory bows: a rehearsed ritual of mutual tolerance. I had it on the solemn word of her laundress
that he still bedded her, hoping to get her with yet one more child, as if my two barely weaned half-brothers, Thomas and Edmund, were not testament enough of his enduring virility. King now for more than half of his sixty-eight years, one would think my sire – whose portentous name I had been burdened with – would have given up youthful illusions years ago, but not so. Those who believe themselves born to fulfill greatness admit nothing of their own infirmities.

“Fitting, don’t you think?” he said hoarsely. Glancing overhead, he pulled off his gloves and smacked them against his palm. “The Bruce’s own daughter – Marjorie. My captive now. A tiny wren, her world no bigger than the stretch of her clipped wings. Poor, flightless creature.”

The waif wormed her way closer to the edge of the cage, closer to me. Mouth downturned, she wedged her dirtied cheeks between the bars. One of her feet slipped beneath a crossbar, dislodging a shoe. It swung from her toes but a moment, before tumbling earthward. I snatched it up and tossed it at a raven strutting across the frost-crisped grass, missing by an arm’s length. “Must we look upon her wretched face every day? The sight of her only reminds me that her perjuring father yet has his freedom.”

His glove smarted against the side of my head. I sprang away, glaring at him.

“Why do you think I put her there, you daff?” A smile of wicked glee creased his mouth. “Bruce’s sister Mary is dangling in an iron nest from the battlements at Roxburgh. Thrice a day she’s allowed the use of the privy inside. This one’s young; we’ll grant her four such excursions. I’ve forbidden anyone but the constable to speak to her. Dare not take the chance that someone will take pity on her, bastard-spawn though she may be. The other sister – oh, what is she called? Damn, I cannot think in this cold... Ah, yes! Christina, the one whose husband, Christopher Seton, lost his head after that routing at Methven. Sick with grief. Shut her up in a nunnery. No comforts for her but her prayers.”

My hand cupped a still-stinging ear. “What of his wife? Wasn’t she taken, too?”

“Oh, she’s here. But daylight will not shine on her pretty head until she’s served my purpose to the fullest. I’d love nothing more than to see her suffer the same as this one, but she’s too valuable. I cannot risk her taking ill and inconveniently dying on us – imagine the leverage that would rob us of. Besides,” he said, steeling himself against a visible shiver, “her father’s the Earl of Ulster. He may preside over savages, but he’s loyal. I hear he turned down Bruce’s request for refuge. Very wise of him.” My sire stuck out an angular elbow for his wife. She slipped her hand in the crook of his arm, stroking his forearm with ringed fingers.

“Time for Mass soon, my son,” the king proclaimed. “Shall we pay a cordial visit to our guest, first?”

“Guest?”

“Lady Elizabeth Bruce. Languishing in the Lanthorn Tower – at least until I can think of someplace more suitable. She hasn’t had much to say yet, but I thought I might give her the chance.”

He gimped away, leaning noticeably against his queen’s arm.

I glanced once more at Marjorie Bruce, dangling exposed for all to see. She reached a hand downward, the palm reddened with rust where she had toyed with the lock, and pointed to her slipper.

My sire paused before the door through the inner wall nearest the Lanthorn Tower and said something to Marguerite. She swept her damsels on through the door first with a brush of her hand. Then, my sire bent his head and kissed her on the lips longer than I could bear. I looked away, although I could still hear the smack of their mouths. Dear God, had they no decency?

When I looked again, they were gone.

I glanced about the bailey and, finding it empty but for a couple of inattentive sentries – one propped against a merlon of the outer wall, the other making slow circles atop the Salt Tower – I sauntered over to where the shoe lay and picked it up. A ragged hole marked the place where her big toe would have stuck through. The shoe, I observed, was too large to have truly been hers and the leather soles so cracked and worn that I would not have allowed my own servants to go about clad thus.

“Pleeease,” she begged, in a voice stripped raw by the wind.

Tapping the shoe against the buttoned front of my peliçon, I ambled closer as I cast one more glance about. Convinced no one was looking, I hurled the flimsy shoe at the cage. It smacked against the outside of a bar, but with cat-like reflexes she trapped it in her hands and pulled it inside.

“May God bless you, m’lord,” she said.

I almost uttered an oath against her father, but the king’s order that no one should speak to her reverberated in my mind. Better to simply carry out my revenge on the Bruce when the day arrived, than taunt a helpless girl for sport.

Elizabeth Bruce lay curled in her bed like a fading infant, face to the far wall. My sire and stepmother stood at the foot of the bed. I walked around them to the other side, but Lady Elizabeth did not even blink when I entered her sight.

The chamber had more comforts than most of those in the Tower: a rag-stuffed mattress covered with clean bedding; a small table flanked by two stools; a hearth with a well-tended fire and a glass window, through which to view the outer world.

“Is she... unwell?” I asked. Aside from obvious signs of listlessness and her diminutive frame, nothing about her outward appearance suggested physical illness. She was dressed in a plain gray cyclas of linsey-woolsey, her russet hair pulled into a fraying plait at the back of her head. A coarse woolen blanket covered her lower legs, its tail trailing onto the floor. On the table, her supper from the previous night sat untouched: a congealed bowl of stewed beef and peas, a hardened loaf of rye bread and a cup of ale.