The Renegade: A Tale of Robert the Bruce (2 page)

“Fires are a’ oot an’ everythin’s arse deep in mud, so there nae hot toddy for ye this mornin’.” Thomas Beg’s rumbling voice came from the darkness beyond the foot of the narrow cot and was followed by a muffled clank of metal from the firebox. “Shite! It’s nearly out. Haud still now and let me get a light.”

Bruce lay unmoving in the darkness and thought about rolling out of bed, then relaxed and forced himself to ignore the noise of the rain, listening instead to the underlying sounds of his manservant tinkering with the firebox, and picturing the huge man blowing on the embers as he fed them gently with wisps of dried peat moss, coaxing them into flame.

“There! That’s got the bugger.”

A tiny halo of light sprang up in the pitch-blackness and grew steadily stronger. The metal door of the firebox clanked softly as Thomas Beg set the device carefully on the ground by his knees, grunting in concentration as he worked. Bruce waited, visualizing the care with which the big man would be extending a candle towards the tiny flame inside the box, then seeing the result immediately as the wick caught fire and sprang into life.

“God-cursed, pishin’ rain.” The big man rose quietly to his feet, one hand holding the candle while the other cupped the flame
protectively, then moved cautiously to where a second candle stood on the small table beside Bruce’s bed. Moments later the light from both wicks flooded the small tent, and Bruce pushed himself up on one elbow.

“Early,” he mumbled, scrubbing at his eyes with his free hand.

“Early’s what ye wanted, was it no’?” Thomas Beg was looming above him, looking down with a frown.

“Aye, it was, and I thank you. How long have you been up?”

“Long enough to see it’s been a whore o’ a night and it’s gaun to be a whore o’ a day, forbye. There’s no’ a fire left burnin’ in the whole camp. If I hadna thought to bank the fire in the box afore I went to bed, we’d be stumblin’ aboot like blind men. And rain? I’ve never heard the like o’ it. Woke me up, it was comin’ doon that hard. An’ ye know I dinna wake up easy or often. But ye’d best be up yersel’, gin ye want to be ready afore that whore o’ an Englishman comes out o’ his tent. Mind yer feet, noo.”

“Hmm. I’m up.” Bruce threw back his blanket and swung his legs over the edge of the cot, then flinched and hissed, lifting his feet hurriedly at the shock of the chill groundwater that instantly soaked into his thick stockings.

“I warned ye.” Thomas Beg shook his head and handed him his heavy boots, then stood watching as his earl struggled into them, forcing his wet stockings into place and then lacing the boots up tightly before he lurched to his feet, shivering as he tugged at the long, quilted undercoat and drawers he had worn to bed.

“I need the latrine,” Bruce murmured.

“Wait till ye go ootside, then, and wear your cloak,” his companion said as the earl went to the tent flaps and held them open for a moment before shrugging into a foul-weather wool cloak that hung from a peg there.

Thomas Beg watched as Bruce stepped outside, and listened to the soggy sounds of the earl’s boots in the grass until they faded into the rain-soaked night. He quickly set about folding and rolling Bruce’s bedding. It was a task he could do in his sleep and he did it mindlessly, rolling and tucking and strapping until he had made a
tightly compact bundle, then folding the trestle legs of the light, sturdy campaign cot and setting it on its side for collection by the camp crew. He poured water from the jug into the washbowl and laid a rough towel ready on the bedside table. Then stepped to the T-shaped wooden frame that held Bruce’s armour and took down a belted pair of mailed leggings.

He was holding the leggings spread and ready when the earl stepped back inside, his head bent as he fumbled with the lacings at his crotch before he raised his arms to allow Thomas to feed the belt of the leggings around his waist. The earl buckled and cinched it tight and turned his back to allow his man to fasten the straps that held the leggings tightly in place from mid-thigh to ankles, then wriggled until he felt the heavy garment settle comfortably. When he was satisfied with the feel of it, he bent over the bowl on the table and rinsed his face and eyes, scooping water over his short-cropped hair and rubbing it into his scalp and the back of his neck before reaching for the towel. He wiped his eyes first and then held both ends as he scrubbed the nape of his neck from side to side vigorously with the rough cloth before dragging it down over his wet crown and drying his face and hands.

“There,” he said. “Better. Never fails. No matter how cold and miserable you are, a cold douse and a rough towel on the back of your neck will warm you up.”

“Aye, so I’ve heard ye say … Every mornin’.”

Bruce managed his first smile of the day as he turned to face his man, who was now holding out the chain-mail hauberk he would wear over the thick under-tunic he had slept in.

“Let’s get ye into this and then we’ll eat,” the big man growled.

“Eat? Eat what, in this weather? Wet grass?”

“Sheep like it. Come awa now.”

They worked together in silence, both of them frowning in concentration as Bruce shrugged awkwardly into the bulky, confining garment, thrusting his head through the neck opening, then struggling to insert his arms before pulling and hauling until the ironheavy body and mailed skirts fell into place. A man could dress
himself in a mailed hauberk unaided, but it was a sullen, thankless task, and most preferred to work at it in pairs, sharing the difficulty. Thomas Beg, over years of working with Bruce, had developed a knack of settling the job quickly, and Bruce was grateful for his skill. Thomas himself preferred to have his huge arms free of encumbrance when he swung the heavy axe that was his primary weapon, and wore only a short-sleeved mail shirt beneath his leather jerkin. His only concession to armouring himself below the waist was a thick set of bull-hide thigh coverings, strapped to cover front and rear and reinforced with riveted, overlapping strips of steel. The boots he wore were similar to Bruce’s own, made by the same boot maker but reinforced, like his thigh greaves, with more of the steel strips that were strong enough to repel a swung blade.

Bruce waited patiently while Thomas deftly snugged the straps that held the hauberk fastened at his back—the most difficult of all to fasten alone. The long, chain-link coat, reeking with the familiar mixed odours of human and equine sweat, raw metal, and the thin coating of oil that kept the links from rusting, was split to the waist at front and rear, permitting its wearer to sit astride a horse, and Thomas Beg stepped back, examining the hang of it critically. He nodded, satisfied, and turned away to bend over the metal firebox that still sat in a corner of the tent, where he picked up a clothwrapped bundle that had lain there on top of it, unseen by Bruce. He unfolded the cloth to reveal a steaming treasure that made Bruce grin with pleasure: a juice-rich slice of meat compressed between two inch-thick slabs of bread and cut into twin portions.

“Glory be to God,” Bruce said reverently, feeling the saliva squirt beneath his tongue. “Where did you get that?”

Thomas Beg sniffed. “Where d’ye think? I saw ye arguin’ wi’ that damned Englishman last night, afore ye walked awa wi’oot eatin’ a thing, an’ I knew ye’d be sorry. So I wrapped up some o’ what was left an’ took it wi’ me. But I never saw ye after that. Ye must hae came straight to bed.”

“Aye, I did. Damn the man, he drove the thought of eating out of my mind. Sweet Jesus, the fellow is insufferable. I had to walk away
or I’d have felled him. Upstart bastard. Aye, well, anyway, I’m obliged to you, Tam … Again.”

Neither man spoke after that until they had finished their food, and then, still in silence, they completed the task of armouring the earl, seating the tight-fitting, leather-lined coif of mail comfortably on his head with its skirts covering his neck and shoulders, and lacing it beneath the chin before adding the heavy casing of steel that protected Bruce’s back and chest.

Thomas Beg was hauling at the last of the buckled straps at Bruce’s waist when the roaring drum rattle overhead abruptly died away, leaving only the sluicing sound of running water being shed from the sloping roof.

“Well,” Thomas growled, “thank the Christ for that. We’ll still be arse deep in mud out there but at least we winna get soaked on top. Unless it starts up again.” He stepped away and opened the tent flaps, and stood peering out for a while and listening to the splashing sounds of unseen people moving around in the darkness. A loud clatter of falling pikes and a bark of profanity announced that someone had blundered into a pile of stacked weapons in the dark, and he turned back to Bruce. “Darker than it should be,” he said, “but there’s no use in carryin’ a torch, even if we had one. The clouds must be awfu’ thick. Are ye set?”

“As close as I’ll ever be,” Bruce answered, tugging at his sheathed sword until it hung comfortably. “Let’s see if we can find that clerkly, whining bastard Benstead, then, and make a start to this
auspicious
day.”

Thomas Beg looked askance at him, ignoring the heavy irony in Bruce’s emphasis. “Benstead?” he asked instead. “I thought ye put him in his place yesterday, for good. Why would ye seek him now?”

Bruce grunted, the sound heavy with distaste. “Because of what his true place is. He’s Edward’s official representative. I can’t change that, nor can I ignore it, much as I’d like to. So we’ll go and find him before we set anything in motion, see if he has anything to say. I doubt I’m going to like whatever comes out of his mouth, for the man’s a venomous reptile. But this is a matter of duty, and I owe it not to him but to his master. Come on, now, lead the way.”

Book One

Encounters

1284

CHAPTER ONE

THE COUNTESS

“O
w! Ye wee brute!” Marjorie Bruce, Countess of Carrick, arched her back and pulled away from the infant suckling at her breast, but her youngest was teething and was not at all inclined to relinquish his hold on the nipple. The baby’s nursemaid sprang forward, her face twisting in sympathy as she took the baby out of its mother’s hands.

“Take him away, the wee cannibal,” the countess said, adjusting her bodice to cover her breast. “He’s finished, anyway, so he’ll sleep all afternoon, and I have to start getting ready. Mother of God, what a morning. Make sure you break his wind, or he’ll howl like a wolf. And send Allie in when ye leave. I’ll need her to help me, for Earl Robert should have been here by now and I hae no wish to greet him looking as though I’ve spent the night in the byre wi’ the kine. The King himself will be here come tomorrow and our Nicol should be bringing young Robert and Angus Mohr this afternoon, and God knows there’s much to be done ere any of them arrives, so hurry you up, and be sure the rest o’ the bairns are fed and clean.”

The nursemaid bobbed her head and hurried away, clutching the baby tenderly in her arms, and her mistress stood up with both hands on her hips and flexed her spine, back and forth. She was pregnant again, and though it had not yet begun to show, she was starting to feel it, aware of the familiar changes in her body. This child would be her eighth, God willing, and there were times when she was tempted to wonder, slightly ruefully, if there had ever been a time in her adult life when she had not been heavy with child. She would never complain about that, though, for Marjorie of Carrick believed,
with all her being, that she had been put on God’s earth to mother a large and happy brood in a time when many women despaired of ever birthing and rearing a single child successfully. In that, she believed herself blessed. She had spent too long a time, earlier in her life, fearing that she might never mother a child. Now, thinking about that, she lowered herself into a firmly upholstered chair by the big stone fireplace and looked around the comfortably furnished family room on the second floor of the castle keep, making a mental list of all that needed to be done to make the place clean, presentable, and welcoming for her husband’s return. A discarded garment caught her eye, and she bent and scooped it up, a tiny knitted woollen cap, still retaining a trace of warmth from the baby’s head. She sat staring down at it, kneading it with her fingers and smiling to herself, wondering about the ways of God and the futility of trying to discover what He had in store.

As the sole heir to Carrick, her widowed father’s only child, Marjorie had been married, at the age of eleven, to a man fifteen years her senior, and had then been abandoned before she reached the age of puberty, when her headstrong husband rode off with Prince Edward of England to join the Christian armies bound for the Holy Land in the ill-fated Ninth Crusade. He had died at a place called Acre, killed in some pointless skirmish against the Mameluke Sultan Baibars—a name still incomprehensible to Marjorie— leaving her both virgin and widow at the age of fourteen.

Devastated by the news of her husband’s death, she had come close to despair over her situation, isolated and alone as she was, miles from anywhere in her father’s remote seaside fastness of Turnberry with little prospect of ever meeting anyone else who might take her to wife. Her father the earl was a fine man, but he seldom ventured far from home, and Turnberry, with its ancient and massive sod-built walls and austere, almost inaccessible location, received few visitors of any kind, and almost none were marriageable, eligible males.

Marjorie’s very real fear of a manless, childless future began to seem justified over the three years that followed, for her mother’s
only remaining sister, a thin-lipped and humourless man-hater called Matilda, had been a nun since girlhood, and she took it upon herself to ensure that the young widow would find solace in becoming a bride of Christ.

Thanks be to God, Earl Niall disagreed with his good-sister. He had no sons, but he took great pride in his boisterous, hard-working, and irrepressible daughter, who was, he liked to claim, his natural heir and the equal of any man around her, blessed with strength of mind and body and the determination that was needed to look after her lands and her people and to make her way in the world. And all of that, he would add fondly, in spite of the undeserved misfortune thrust upon her by the tragic loss of her husband while she was yet scarcely old enough to understand what had befallen her.