The Renegade: A Tale of Robert the Bruce (66 page)

It was another hour before he could find two of the Cistercian clerics and dictate his tidings to King Edward. He signed both copies, noting that neither monk had betrayed the slightest interest in what was being written, then sent for Mortimer and Montmorency. He gave them their orders and told them to be on the road by dawn, knowing that each of them would do his utmost to reach Westminster ahead of the other and deliver the letter personally to the King.

He would not discover, until he reached Westminster again in mid-March to find the King long since departed, that word of what Edward called the foul Scotch perfidy had already reached the
monarch ahead of Bruce’s letters and had incensed him to a towering fury the likes of which no one could recall. He had immediately cancelled his plans to leave for France and reassigned his armies, the strongest in Christendom after years of war in France and victory in Wales. He would lead them to Scotland himself and, faced with the threat of this new alliance, his barons would support him to a man. The Scottish host would have gathered at Caddonlee by the eleventh of March, but Edward’s armies had been at Newcastle, poised to attack, on March the first.

When they left Westminster, Bruce led his little army to Montmorency’s castle, which lay between London and Writtle, and disbanded it there on a sunny, blustery day in the last week of March. Before he dismissed the men he thanked them for their support and commiserated with them that they had missed seeing the King at Westminster, for he had led them there to do precisely that, hoping that Edward would deign to recognize their service over the past three months. Captain Beltane and his guardsmen had remained behind at the palace, already preparing to march north to join the King, whose armies must have marched past them unseen on their way to Scotland, and it was left to Bruce to thank the eleven knights in whose company he had spent so much time. They were all as eager to return to their homes as he was, so the farewells were brief. Then, left alone with his own men, he gave the signal and spurred his horse towards Writtle and Isabella.

He spent the final two miles in a fever of expectation and fighting against the urge to whip his horse into a gallop and simply leave his men to follow at their own pace. But that, he decided, would be both disloyal and demeaning; he was not the only one impatient for the sight of a loving face after so long a journey, and he owed it to them, at the very least, to share their last hour of anticipation and anxiety.

He sensed the moment when they were first seen from the house, and soon he heard the warning horn blaring from the walls, announcing their arrival. And then at last they were approaching the gates and he was looking for Isabella among the bustling throng
ahead of him. It was only when he saw she was not there and the pain began to well up in him that he thought to look up at the roof of the tower, and there she was, waving to him.

Thomas Beg stepped forward, smiling up at him. “Welcome home, my lord. Her ladyship’s waitin’ for ye. I’ll see the men dismissed. Away ye go.”

Bruce swung his leg over the front of his saddle and dropped easily to the ground. He handed Tam the reins and punched him on the shoulder. “Good to see you, Thomas,” he growled, then made his way directly to the house, noticing that Isabella had already left the roof.

The words were churning around in his head as he ran up the stairs, but he forgot them all as soon as he saw her smiling at him from the landing by their rooms. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered, and she was laughing and reaching for him and … By God, she was pregnant! He stopped dead, gaping at her, at the difference three months had wrought in her, her belly rounded and prominent and her face radiantly happy.

“Robert,” she said, shy now as he stepped wide-eyed towards her. “I … I had a surprise for you.”

“By God you did, lass.” His voice was thick and guttural, his windpipe choked by a swelling lump. “The best surprise a man could have. Come here.”

She sprang forward into his arms, and as he swept her up, his senses spinning with the well-remembered, long-desired smell of her, he thought his legs might betray him and send them both crashing to the stone flags of the floor. But they held, and they bore him and his cherished burden effortlessly in long strides towards the open bedchamber door. He carried her inside, kicking the door shut behind them, and kissed her as he had dreamed of kissing her for months, aware of the yielding, pliant weight of her filling his arms and the feel of her fingers hooking into his hair as though she would never let him go. His heart hammering, he bore her straight to the bed and lowered her there, following her downward into a wonder-land
of groping, clutching hands and insensate hunger as they sought all they could find of each other.

Suddenly he thrust himself away and froze.

His wife pushed herself up from the bed on one elbow, a strange look on her face. “Robert? What ails you? What is it, my love?”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said quietly, his voice filled with bewilderment.

“Hurt me? How could you possibly hurt me?” Her voice faltered. “Unless by rejecting me? Is that what’s wrong? Do you not want me? Do I disgust you?”

“Disgust me? Christ Jesus, Izzy, I’ve dreamed of nothing but this for months, of holding you and feeling you around me. But … I don’t want to hurt the baby.”

“The baby?” Her face cleared suddenly and she laughed, the sound a mixture of relief and joy. But then she raised herself up strongly, hooking an arm around his neck and making hushing, crooning sounds as she pulled him gently down to where she could cover his face with fluttering, down-light kisses. “We cannot hurt the baby, my love,” she whispered into his ear as her kisses became nibbles and moist licks. “Not by loving each other. Not now, nor in the months to come. There’s ample room for both of you together inside me, and I can think of nothing I want more than that. So come now, take off all those smelly clothes and fill me up and show me how you love me.”

He rose hesitantly to his knees, looking at her askance. “Are you sure? How can you know that?”

She laughed again, gazing up at him with adoration in her eyes. “Because it’s true, my love. Every woman knows it. Quick now!” She reached for his belt but he evaded her hand.

“That sounds like old wives’ nonsense. How can we be sure? There’s … ” He waved a hand at her belly. “There can be little room in there.”

Her smile was surer now. “There’s more room than we need, Robert Bruce, believe me. And besides, it’s true! No old wives’ nonsense about it, though old wives are better placed to know such
things than any man. Think you every man goes without love throughout the time it takes his wife to bear a child? That’s silly, my love. Besides, I talked of it with Allie, and she knows everything about such things. Come here.” She reached for him again and again he deflected her grasp.

“But what if I hit it with … What if I injure it, or you?”

“It’s not an
it
, my love. It’s a
him
, perhaps a
her
, and you can’t injure either one, I swear.” Her eyes were alight with mischief now. “And you know in your heart and head that nothing you can do to me like that will injure me … Though you can hurt me by denying me what I need and want. I want to feel you moving in me, loving me. I want to feel your need and draw it out of you.”

“But—”

“No.” She pushed herself upright and placed her fingers on his lips. “No buts.”

Afterwards, between the soaring need of their first coupling and the subsequent stirrings of slowly renewed desire, as she lay cradling his shrunken maleness in her hand, he thought he heard her giggle— a gentle, muffled snort that she could not quite conceal—and he peered at her sleepily.

“What?” he murmured. “You find your goodman laughable?”

“No, my love, I find you adorable … It but struck me as strange that a knight champion, an earl of the realm and a leader of men who carries the sword of a famed ancestor—such a heavy, massy thing with a long blade of shiny, lethal steel—” She snorted again.

“Damn it, woman, you are laughing at me.”

She snuggled closer, kissing his shoulder, her fingers squeezing gently. “No, truly, my lord of Carrick, I am not … ” Her fingers moved again, knowingly but almost absently. “I would never laugh at you, my love. But it amuses me that such a puissant knight, with such a great, long, steely sword, should be afraid to stab with such a gentle dagger as this in my hand, for fear of doing damage.”

He lay still, enjoying for a while the play of her fingers.

“It was … inexperience and ignorance caused my fear,” he said finally. “Bear in mind, woman, that this knight champion, as you alone deem him, has never killed a man. Nor has that weighty blade he bears spilt blood since the death of its former owner, William the Marshal. In all such things I am a neophyte, as virgin as were you on our wedding night.”

She rose up over him, leaning again on one elbow as she looked down into his face and stooped to kiss his eyes. “I know, my lord,” she whispered, “and I revere you for that. Killing is not in you.” He grunted, enjoying her lips on his closed lids, and she drew back to look at him again. “What are you sounding so gruff about? Would you have it otherwise? Do you regret that innocence?”

He opened his eyes and looked at her gravely. “No, Izzy, I don’t, but it’s not like to last. We are at war with Scotland. Did you know?”

She stiffened, but then he felt the reaction pass and she lowered her head to his chest again. “Aye,” she said, almost inaudibly. “Thomas Beg told me weeks ago, when first the word arrived from Westminster. The armies had already left to march north by then.” She lay silent, but by glancing down with lowered eye Bruce could see her gnawing at her knuckle.

“Your father will be safe,” he said softly. “Edward knows who he is and is obliged to him, not least for having sent you here.”

“It’s not my father … It’s the whole thing. War … I fear for Scotland.”

He rolled away from her and swung his legs to sit on the edge of the bed. “Scotland can look to itself,” he growled. “The magnates prepared for war and called out the army. They brought this folly on themselves. By making treaty with the French behind his back they thought to disarm Edward, render him impotent. Fools that they are, they’ll rue it. Edward Plantagenet is no man’s dupe, and their madness, underestimating him, has given him the one thing he had needed most to strengthen his position. In defying him like this they have united the barons of England in his cause. Few of them would support a war in France, but a war in Scotland, with land and titles
to be won and no great way to travel? They’ll fall on the magnates like swarms of angry wasps. It won’t last long, you’ll see.”

Isabella was staring at him now, her face as troubled as his own. “Are you saying Scotland cannot win?”

“Against Edward’s might and righteousness? They have no chance.”

He was thinking of his grandfather again, remembering the old man’s scornful dismissal of the true strength of Scotland’s armies, and he repeated Lord Robert’s words without thinking of the effect they might have on his wife. “Scotland has not fought a war in more than thirty years, not since the fight at Largs, against the Norwegian King Haakon. And that was more a skirmish than a battle. The Norwegians were ready to leave by then and put up little fight. Since then the Scots have fought no one, not even themselves. They haven’t fought a
real
war since the days of King David, more than sixty years ago, and since then they’ve forgotten anything they ever knew of warfare. Except in their own minds. They remember glories past fondly enough, but they’ve done nothing to prepare for fights to come.”

“But they will fight,” Isabella said. “My father sent me word. The host was to meet at Caddonlee, this month.”

He sprang to his feet and began to pace, unaware of his nakedness. “Aye, and so it would. And they will fight, but with what, and for what? They have no cavalry to match the English heavy horse, no fighting leadership, no battle commanders with experience. England has ten times the men Scotland can raise, and fighting men to lead them. Its armies are fat and strong with victories in France and Wales and think themselves unbeatable. And they are, as far as Scotland is concerned. This war is madness.”

“There will be slaughter done, then.” He heard the tone of her voice and turned quickly to look at her, only then seeing her tears, and he moved quickly back to the bed to comfort her, holding her close and kissing her eyes.

“Sweet Christ, lass, there, there … ” He rocked her in his arms, speaking to her gently, as if she were a child. “Edward is no monster.
There might be one big battle—almost surely must be—but it will be swiftly won, and after that the magnates will lose heart and beg for peace. You’ll see. Edward is feudal overlord. Most of the magnates are his legal vassals, in feudal and in canon law. They are in rebellion, surely, but for what they mistakenly believe to be just cause. Their loyalties have faltered because of Balliol’s damnable lack of backbone. But misled though they are, they can’t have lost all their sanity, and it would be to Edward’s great disadvantage to be too harsh on them. You wait and see. They’ll sue for terms as soon as they realize they cannot win, and Edward will take them back into his peace. He’ll punish them, for they deserve punishment, but he’ll forgive them once they swear their fealty to him again.

“Aye.” Her voice was a whisper. “The magnates will survive. But what about the folk?”

He hugged her even tighter. “Aye, some of them will die in battle, certainly, for that’s the way of war. But the real folk of Scotland— ordinary people like Thomas Beg and Allie and their ilk everywhere—will overcome their troubles and continue as before, Izzy. They care little for the caperings of the magnates, just so be it they are left alone to live their lives as they always have in the past. They’ll disperse when the truce is called and return to their homes. You’ll see.”

“I pray you are right, Robert … ” She still sounded distant and unsure. “So you believe Edward will be merciful? Truly?”

“Why should he not, my love? He has nothing to gain, else. He doesn’t seek Scotland’s Crown for his own realm. He but seeks to bring the magnates to heel and settle matters for the good of his own peace. Once that’s achieved to his satisfaction, he’ll relent. He has too many other matters on his mind, in France, to waste his time in Scotland.” He kissed her again, this time on the forehead. “Trust me,” he whispered. “I know my King.”