Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) (9 page)

“They found her,” my sire said, “lying in her own blood at St. Duthac’s shrine in Tain.”

I blinked at him, unwilling to ask more, lest he chide me for my supposed ignorance.

Marguerite spared me. “She lost a child.”

“A blessing for her that she did,” – my sire went to window and gazed momentarily out at the late winter sky, choked with slow-moving clouds, then back toward Lady Elizabeth – “given the circumstances.”

She stirred then, turned her head to meet his eyes. Although she said no words to him, her countenance conveyed everything: that she hated him and wished him dead. Just like her unborn child.

“It was the Earl of Ross, no less,” he went on, unfazed by her look of damnation, “who uncovered their whereabouts and hunted them down. Old rivalries do run deep.”

Bruce’s spurious seizure of the crown earlier last year had done nothing but resurrect old blood feuds and Ross, a steadfast supporter of the Balliol claim, had been his most outspoken opponent. “Well, then, if you are not the Scots’ undoing, my lord, they might well destroy themselves in time.”

“One might hope,” he said, appearing pleased with my observation.

Marguerite moved to the side of the bed, then eased herself onto its edge. Her mouth dipping in a frown of concern, she laid a hand gently on Lady Elizabeth’s forearm. “I will send a physician for you.”

Again, the Bruce’s woman gave no answer. Moments dragged by. Wind wailed through the cracks around the window. The flames in the hearth wavered and dimmed. I shifted on my feet, feeling the tedium set in and wondering what the purpose of our being here was, other than to gloat.

There was a light knock at the door. Marguerite looked to my sire.

“Enter,” he bade.

Two servants – one bearing quill and parchment and the other a pouch of sawdust and an inkhorn – scurried in, bowing cursorily at the king. They arranged the implements on the table, resting the inkhorn in a slot in the table’s center, and left.

My sire smoothed the parchment and pulled a stool back. Clasping his hands behind him, he strolled toward her. “Lady Elizabeth, you may send your husband a message. I suggest that you plead with him to give himself up. For if not, it will be a long time before you’re together again. Say that and I will see to it that the earl receives it.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. Slowly, she raised herself up and swung her feet to the floor. Slumping, she drew several breaths, then stood. What little color there was in her face drained abruptly. Somehow, she staggered the short distance to the table. But she did not sit. Nor finger the quill. Instead, she lifted the inkhorn from its slot and turned it sideways. Black ink streamed onto the parchment and splattered across the table. The inkhorn fell from her grasp, clattering as it bounced over the floor.

“My husband,” she said, staring forlornly at the pool of ink as it spread across the table and dripped onto the floor, “is no mere ‘earl’, but the rightful King of Scots.”

Hands pressed across the flat of her abdomen, she stumbled back to the bed and stretched herself upon its empty length.

Stubborn woman. At least the Bruce had picked a mate with an intractability to match his own – however shortsighted.

Ch. 8

James Douglas – Rathlin/Arran, 1307

When many of us would just as well have walked into the cold, merciless sea and drown than go on, Robert refused to give up. He coordinated repairs of the church, saw that the galleys were properly caulked and formulated plans with Alexander and Gil for a return to the mainland. His vigor – however subdued his spirits may have been – spread like a contagion. Even Thomas, bored to excess, ceased to complain. Hands mended sails and stitched tattered clothing. Weapons were honed and polished. Men sparred with swords and shields upon the shore and practiced at makeshift butts with what few arrows we had.

English ships, we learned, were scouring the islands in search of us. As soon as could be managed, Thomas and Alexander left for Galloway in eighteen fully manned galleys. Over the winter, our supplies had run dismally low and if we did not replenish them soon, then there would be quarrels and thievery amongst our own. Even the fish, it seemed, had made themselves scarce. So while Robert waited on Rathlin for more galleys, I sailed off with a small raiding force. We hugged the coast of Kintyre, then pulled ashore across the sound from Brodrick Castle on the Isle of Arran. When night fell, we crossed the water and hid the galleys in an alcove beneath the cliffs to wait for our prey.

The silver outline of three English ships took form, sails at rest, provisions stacked and waiting upon the decks. Dawn’s long fingers stretched across Brodrick Bay to flash argent upon scattered waves. As the sun broke boldly above the horizon, thirty Englishmen trickled out of the castle and rowed out to unload the ships: sacks of grain and casks of wine, clothing and arms.

My men waited for my signal.

Peering against the sun’s light, I nocked my arrow and pulled the string taut, the feather tickling my cheek. At water’s edge, a fat Englishman heaved a sack of corn from inside one of the rowboats and slung it over his shoulder. The bowstring flicked across my fingertips. An arrow sang through the silver dawn. It struck him in the back of the neck. The force jolted him forward to land, dead, in the water.

A circle of red seeped out around him as he floated face down, arms outspread like a fallen angel’s. Those around him scrambled from the shallow water of the bay, grappling for weapons. Panic rippled through them, becoming chaos as we rushed at them in a frenzy of blades and shields. One after one, they fell dead upon the shore.

We took all three ships in the bloody mayhem and set them ablaze. Smoke drew the castle garrison down from their roosts. Halfway down the hill, the governor ordered his men back. We pursued them, catching some and taking down a few who stumbled or defied their commander out of obstinacy or pure arrogance. We did not cease in our slaughter until the gate banged shut and a few arrows warned us away.

With shouts of triumph we stormed back to the bay, where we crammed our galleys full. Later, as we rowed away, the castle above the bay blurred in a smoky haze.

Secure in their English arrogance, they had never expected us. A mistake they would surely repeat over and over.

Turnberry, 1307

“And they fled, just like that?” Robert sat close beside me on the thwart of our galley. He laced his fingers together and peered through the drifting February fog. After our raid, we had met Robert back on Rathlin. The awaited galleys had arrived and so we set off again. My stomach lurched. If I did not stand on dry land soon and stay there awhile, I would vomit up my bowels into a bloody puddle at my feet.

“At the mere mention of my name: The Black Douglas.” In truth, no one had ever called me that before. I had chosen the name myself, though it sounded more sinister than I believed myself to be.

“I say you’ve earned a reputation. An infamous one.” Robert’s cheeks spread in a broad smile, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Someday the nurses will tell little children tales of the Black Douglas and how the English dropped dead at the sight of him.”

Beyond dark waters rippled with froth, stretched the ragged, purple outline of Arran’s mountains, crowned by clouds of silver-white. An eagle soared above the shingled shore, its broad wings spread to catch the sea wind.

“A bit far-fetched yet, maybe,” I said, pondering the thought, “but after I purge Douglas Castle of the English weasels who now sleep in my bed, harvest my fields and drink from my well, they may be saying that after all.”

The oars plopped into the water once more, then pulled up. We had finally reached the southern head of Arran, where we would make camp. Torquil, the mooring rope slung over his shoulder, leapt from the prow to tow the boat ashore. Robert hopped over the side and splashed through the water. “Cuthbert! Cuthbert!” he called, searching each weary face as the other galleys came to shore.

A little man with a long torso and short, bowed legs flopped into the water and trotted up to the king. I had always rather imagined spies as being swarthy, lithe, cat-like men who hid in the shadows of obscure inns downing tankards of ale. This Cuthbert looked like nothing more than some simpleton with his hairy, tree-trunk arms and slick, bald head.

“Sire!” he jerked clumsily at the waist. Then he straightened and began to wring his clothes out.

“James, Cuthbert... Edward, over here.” Robert sauntered eastward along the shore, tiny stones crunching beneath his feet. Early into evening now, the fog was just beginning to settle over the water in the windless air. “Thomas and Alexander should have landed at Loch Ryan by now. They’ll be going into Galloway, then turning north toward Turnberry. Cuthbert, you understand your task?”

Cuthbert was now wringing his hands, rather than his clothes. His head bobbed at Robert’s every word. “Sire, aye. What do y’wish to know about?”

“Who is with us. Who is against us. Go with caution, Cuthbert. I don’t want anyone to know, just yet, that I am coming. They will figure that out when I get there. I also want you to send word to Alexander that we are waiting for his signal. A fire on the hill beyond the castle. He’ll know.”

Robert stopped and clapped him on the shoulder. “Godspeed.”

Cuthbert nodded several times more, spun around and shuffled back toward the emptying galleys.

Arms folded, Edward’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Your faith is blind, dear brother.”

“For once I agree with you.”

For eleven nights nothingness stared back at us from across the water. Turnberry was somewhere there on the shoreline, between a starlit sky and dark water, scattered with moonlight. Fat and content from the spoils of our recent raid, we watched and waited. A soldier’s life is mostly one of boredom, broken only on occasion by fights to the death. A wonder we tolerated either, but it was all for some end that we dreamed was a better life than this vagrant one we were leading.

On the twelfth night, I left my blankets and climbed with chilled, bare hands up onto a prominent rock pointing toward the coast of Carrick. Sharp edges scraped at my palms. At the top, I wiped bloody hands on my shirt. Watched. Nothing.

Hours later I groped my way back down and the next day at noon reclaimed my post. Snow began to fall. I stared long and hard up and down the mainland. Something glinted there and I looked away a moment to rest my eyes, then looked back. Through the wandering flakes of white, I saw a flicker, a tiny, amber flicker of light – a beacon growing stronger, pulsing, rising toward the cloud-glutted sky. I moved halfway down the rock and watched longer. It was still there.

Steadily, I worked my way down and picked through the milling bodies of our camp until I came upon Robert’s small tent.

“Sire,” I whispered, poking my head inside. “Come look.”

A candle flickered weakly. Between his hands he held a single woman’s hairpin, its looping end beaded with threads of gold and a lone pearl.

He stared at it forlornly. “Elizabeth’s. I found it in the hem of my cloak after we crossed Loch Lomond. I don’t even know how it got there.”

“Maybe she put it there for you to find?”

He shrugged and put aside the hairpin, then threw on his cloak and came out after me. As we stood on the shore below the rock, he peered across the water to where I pointed.

“Alexander’s signal.” He nodded. “It’s time. Get them ready to leave at once.”

At first nightfall, we pushed away in our boats and slid over the open sea toward Turnberry. Fingers clenching the gunwale, Robert never took his eyes from the pinpoint of light atop the hill. He never blinked, never spoke.

Finally, as dawn’s first light shone behind the low eastern hills, we neared land. Along the shore, a squat figure loped. It was Cuthbert. He waved his arms at us, signaling a place to beach the boats. Frantically, he ran toward King Robert, tripping over his own feet.

“Sire, sire, sire!” Cuthbert pulled at his stubby fingers and glanced at the spiral of smoke curling toward red-fringed clouds to the east. “No, no! It’s not them –
not
my lords, Alexander and Thomas.”

Among the first ashore, Robert halted abruptly. “What do you mean ‘
not them
’?” He jabbed a finger at the fire, still glowing on the hilltop. “That is the place. That is the signal.”

“I saw it, too.” Cuthbert glanced behind him, then shook his head. “Only a house gone up in flames from an ill-tended cooking fire.”

The rest of the men were by then pooling behind us, awaiting orders and more than ready. Boyd and Gil stood shoulder to shoulder: the old, hulking warrior riddled with scars and the lean, tight-skinned one with his pinched nose and small, intent eyes like wet pebbles.

“Then where are Alexander and Thomas?” Robert questioned. “Isn’t that why I sent you here – to find out?”

Cuthbert’s head swung from side to side. He clamped his face between his hands to stop its motion. “Couldn’t find them. Tried. I did. Honest. Asked everyone I could trust and some I didn’t. Someone said there was a fight, with the... oooh, now, who was it? MacDonalds, Macdougalls...” He smacked himself on the forehead. “MacDowells, aye, that’s it. A fight with the MacDowells at the loch.”

“Bootlickers of Longshanks,” Edward commented. “I’ve killed enough MacDowells over the years for raiding our lands that I’d have thought them extinct by now.”

Robert pulled a hand down over his eyes as if to collect his thoughts. “Then if Thomas and Alexander are not here... Mercy, this does not bode well – for them or us. They had almost twenty galleys full of men.
Full
of men. It is peril and foolishness for us to throw ourselves upon Turnberry without them. We’re going back to sea. Back to Rathlin.”

As he turned back toward the boats, the men parted from him in a wave of disappointment.

Edward grabbed his brother’s shoulder. “No, we won’t. I won’t. I’m not going back. No more waiting on that frozen, wind-battered rock in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but grow old and mindless. We’ve had enough of being tossed about the sea in winter storms like a piece of driftwood. We’re here, Robert. We need to take our chances, good or bad, but take them. We’re back in Carrick now.” He rattled his fist at Turnberry Castle, a gray lump against the broad night sky. “Take it.”