The Renegade: A Tale of Robert the Bruce (7 page)

“Good, then I’ll go and ask.” He hesitated. “Ship’s boy, you say. Can you ride?”

“Aye, but only a pony, smaller than these.” He indicated the horses he was holding. “Nothing near as big as that thing of yours.”

Rob grinned and patted his own horse’s neck. It was a strong and well-built gelded bay, a biscuit-coloured crossbreed almost as large again as the stocky garron that had foaled it. “This fellow’s not so big,” he said. “You should see the horses the English knights use. Now
those
are big. Destriers, they call them. Giant warhorses, twice as big as this and more than three times the weight.”

“Get away!” the young Islesman said.

“No, I swear by the Holy Virgin, it’s the truth.”

His listener was unconvinced. “No horse could be that big. Have you
seen
one? It could be an English lie, to keep us all in awe.”

“They’re real—I’ve seen some. Two years ago, when we visited Lord Bruce in Lochmaben. Four English knights rode in while we were there, and they were mounted on destriers.”

Now Angus Og frowned in puzzlement. “Lord Bruce? You call your da Lord Bruce?”

“No, I told you, my father is the Earl of Carrick. Lord Bruce is
his
father, my grandsire.” Only then did it occur to him that he never thought of his grandfather by any other name than Lord Bruce, but he saw nothing strange in that. “He lives in Lochmaben,” he went on. “D’you know it? It’s a fortress near the border with England.”

Angus squinted into the sun, tilting his head. “What age will you be tomorrow?”

“Ten.”

“I’m eleven, nearly twelve. Your uncle would let me come, think you?”

Rob smiled. “Aye, he would, and will. But will your Captain Ewan? Wait here.”

Less than half an hour later the two boys, double-mounted on Rob’s big bay, sat off to one side as the rest of their party left the beach and struck out along the coast for Turnberry Castle. They would be there by mid-afternoon, and the talking among adults would begin almost as soon as they arrived, depending on who was there to meet them. Rob knew his mother’s time would be completely consumed by her duties as hostess and castellan, so she would have no time for him, but she would be happy to see him home and he
knew she would make his new friend feel welcome. What excited him most, though, was that the affairs of the adults would leave him with plenty of time to show Angus everything he wanted him to see in and around the castle.

They waited for the mounted members of the party to pass by, Angus Mohr and his good-son MacRuaridh of Garmoran riding with Nicol, and two other men whom Angus Og named to Rob as MacDonald chieftains following close behind, and then Rob kicked his stocky bay forward to ride behind them and ahead of the score of heavily armed clansmen who formed Angus Mohr’s guard. Turnberry lay less than five miles to the north, and the summer afternoon was perfect.

CHAPTER THREE

THE KINGS

F
rom where she stood on the roof of the castle keep, Marjorie of Carrick could clearly see the royal party approaching from the northeast, the late-afternoon sunlight glinting off metal and reflecting back at her in shimmering waves of colour and movement. They were still too far away for her to make out individuals, but she had no doubt that her husband was among them, riding at the head with the two kings.

“They’ll be here within the hour,” she said quietly.

Beside her, Murdo cleared his throat. “There’s more o’ them than we thought.”

“Aye, it looks that way, though ye’ve better eyes than me if ye can count them frae here. Still, we’ll be able to take all of them. Ye’ve done well, Murdo.”

“I hope so. It’s lucky we were to have thae big tents—we’d hae been hard put to find room for them a’. An’ thanks be to God the big fellow down there’s the only one likely to need furnishings for his place. I think we can be sure the other three have their own comforts wi’ them.” He nodded to where a number of men were carrying basic furnishings from the castle into the pavilion that would house Angus Mohr of Islay for the next few days, and his mistress turned with him to look down at the four massive tents that now dominated the broad, grassy plain in front of the castle gates.

Angus Mohr’s personal standard had been anchored firmly in front of his temporary abode where no one could fail to see it: a white banner showing a black galley under sail, suspended from a cross-brace and mounted upon a high pole. The Islesman had chosen
the pavilion himself on his arrival, indicating bluntly, after a quick glance around him, that this one would be his, and it seemed to the countess that there was more than a little subtlety involved in the choice. With no advantage to be gained from choosing first among four seemingly equal pavilions, Angus faced no possibility of being asked to move later, in order to give precedence to someone else. But two of the pavilions were, of necessity, closer to the castle and its gates. In choosing the pavilion farthest from the entrance, Angus Mohr had made sure that the two kings would take the rear two, leaving Richard de Burgh in the one to Angus’s left as they walked from the castle to the pavilions. And rank, as Angus Mohr well knew, declined from right to left in matters of protocol.

Marjorie smiled as she saw Angus Mohr himself walking with her uncle Nicol, both of them strolling head down, their hands clasped behind them, and she wondered what they were discussing; wondered, too, if she were giving the Lord of Islay too much credit for his suspected subtlety.

There was no sign of the two boys, she noted, for young Robert had taken his new friend to explore the seaside caves in the high cliffs a mile to the north. Her eyes moved onward, scanning the space beyond the men and taking in the arrangements that had been made there, where a formally outlined military encampment, complete with horse lines, cooking pits, and piles of fuel, now stretched along the gently sloping meadow that led down to the river about a quarter of a mile away from where she stood, just before the riverbed began its final curl westward towards the sea.

Murdo and his crew of workmen had achieved a miracle within the day and a half that had elapsed since he’d told her of finding her father’s forgotten trove in the oar bothy. The enormous tents had been carried outside and spread out over the stout, wide frames on the beaches where the fishermen dried and repaired their nets, then left to air in the July sun while the men set about making sense of the mountainous coils of rope—more than fifty of them in varying lengths and thicknesses—and the bound stacks of sturdy poles that had been stored with them, some of them more like tree trunks than
poles, six paces long and a foot thick at the base. It was a daunting task, and the men might never have succeeded in making sense of the profusion at all had Murdo not had the presence of mind to invite the oldest man in the Turnberry community to come and offer his guidance. Thorgard One-Arm, as he was called, had come to Arran from Norway seven decades earlier as a babe in arms, and in his youth had worked in Turnberry as a sailmaker for Earl Niall. He had also been the man responsible for turning the massive, carefully stored sails into tents almost forty years earlier. Too old now to share in the work himself, Thorgard was puffed up with renewed pride to find his skills and knowledge in demand again. Under his supervision the masses of poles and supports were quickly sorted into the correct order, and soon the first postholes were being dug.

Watching the pavilions being hauled laboriously into place by teams of sweating, cursing men, old Thorgard had sniffed disapprovingly at their stained condition and suggested that they should be treated with a coat of weatherproofing. And though far from happy with the delay, Murdo, a pragmatist above all else, had set his people to yet another task to which they were unaccustomed: preparing a mixture of diluted glue and whitewash as dictated by the old sailmaker, and brushing it over the coarse woollen fabric of the tents. It had been almost dark by the time the last of the peaked and now sodden pavilion roofs was hauled into place atop its poles, but when the morning sun rose the following day, its beams reflected warmly from the four magnificent pavilions in the meadow beyond the castle gates.

“Right,” Marjorie murmured, more to herself than to her factor, “there doesna seem much else we could do. The pavilions are ready and everything that’s to go in them will come wi’ our visitors. The kitchens are stocked, the cooks are set to go, and the hall’s set, wi’ the tables in place and the floor freshly rushed. From now on, whatever happens will be out o’ our hands. Our lives are going to be dictated for the next while by kings and bishops.”

She met Murdo’s eye when he turned to look at her curiously. Murdo, she knew, had no interest in the protocols governing visiting
dignitaries. To him, kings were merely men of a different rank, and left to his own devices, he would, in his dour Scots manner, treat them as almost equals. That thought brought a tic of a smile to her lips as she envisioned Edward Plantagenet’s reaction to being spoken to bluntly by her factor. Alexander, a Scot himself, might deal easily enough with it, accustomed as he was to the Scots lack of deference, but Edward’s majesty would be severely challenged were he addressed truculently by a menial.

“Ye’d better go down and assemble the folk, Murdo. Make sure they’re clean and presentable to welcome our guests, then line them up in front o’ the gates. I’ll go and tidy mysel’ up while ye’re at that, and then I’ll come down and wait wi’ ye.”

“Aye … ” Murdo’s hesitation was almost unnoticeable. “Angus Mohr has two pipers wi’ him. D’ye think it might be fitting to hae them playin’ as the King arrives?”

Marjorie of Carrick grinned mischievously. “A Gaelic welcome for the King of Scots? And why no’? It was Alexander’s idea to invite Angus Mohr to the mainland, and I know he likes the sound o’ the pipes, for I’ve heard them played in his own great hall in Dunfermline. So be it the pipers are willing, then let them blow away. But be sure ye ask them properly. We canna let them think we expect it o’ them. It must be their choice.”

As soon as Murdo had hurried away she turned back towards the approaching cavalcade and narrowed her eyes. The party was close enough by then that she could see the flashing colours carried by the standard-bearers, and the distant sound of a trumpet indicated that the approaching party considered themselves close enough to Turnberry to be heard. She became aware of the size of the group and noted its composition, with kings and armoured courtiers in the forefront, bishops and priests in upholstered carriages behind them, and the mounted men-at-arms of the King’s Guard preceding the motley array of baggage carts and wagons and extra horses that brought up the rear.

She drew in a sharp breath. Time was flying past her. She turned away and hurried down the narrow spiral staircase to her own quarters
in the corner tower. Quickly as she moved, though, she was

unable to stop her mind from pursuing a perplexing train of thought.

Edward Plantagenet had introduced an entirely new element into the situation she had been thinking about for weeks. The two original principals, King Alexander and Angus Mohr, might have been governable enough, sufficiently intent upon their own interests to overcome any strangeness between them. But the unforeseen addition of the English King had added a very different element. Edward spoke no Gaelic. Angus Mohr spoke neither English nor French. Every word that passed between them, then, would have to be translated by an interpreter. Her own husband spoke but little Gaelic, having come to learn the language as an adult and finding that it was not an easy tongue to master. Thus Robert might speak to either King easily, and with difficulty to Angus Mohr. Angus Mohr, in his turn, would speak easily with Alexander, and Alexander effortlessly to his brother-in-law Edward. But the gulf between the Gaelic Lord of Islay and the King of England might be unbridgeable, since neither one knew the other at all, engendering a fundamental lack of trust aggravated by Angus Mohr’s well-known disdain for all things English. She wondered if the Ulster earl spoke Gaelic—it seemed likely that he might, and if he did, she thought, he might serve as a translator between the two.

Her thoughts were cut short when she reached her chambers and found her three women waiting for her, anxious to begin transforming her into a regal hostess. She looked wryly at them. “We have little time to transform me,” she said, “so I expect miracles from you. Let’s be about it.”

Less than an hour later, looking radiantly confident and not at all matronly, Marjorie of Carrick took advantage of a momentary lull in the buzz of conversation to cast her eyes over the brilliant assembly in the main hall of Castle Turnberry. Everyone present was engaged with someone else, and the hum of conversation was sustained and pleasant. Even the taciturn Angus Mohr was deep in conversation with Robert Wishart, who had been Bishop of Glasgow for the past
twelve years. Marjorie allowed herself a tiny sigh of relief, at ease, though still apprehensive, for the first time since the English King’s party had arrived at her gates.

They had approached the castle in formal order, a walking thunder of heavy hooves amplified by jingling, clinking metal and creaking saddlery and augmented by the rumble and squeaks of heavy baggage wagons, and no one had said a word until the sparkling, brightly coloured but dusty and weather-worn front ranks had reached where she stood waiting for them. As he drew near, her husband patently ignored the new pavilions on his threshold, failing to acknowledge them with as much as a glance, as though such princely accommodations were commonplace at Turnberry. His countess had watched as the earl dismounted along with the two Kings and stepped forward, smiling, his hand outstretched to bring her forward and reacquaint her with the monarchs, both of whom she knew from former occasions, and with Richard de Burgh the Earl of Ulster, whom she had never met. She had known King Alexander all her life, but she had also accompanied him to London, years before, with Earl Robert and a hundred other Scots lords, to attend the English King’s coronation in Westminster.

As the royal guests and the senior members of their entourage greeted their hostess, all smiles and cordiality, the churchmen behind them climbed down from their carriages and came forward in their turn to do the same. Someone at the rear then shouted orders to the baggage train and escorts to break formation and disperse, and Murdo and his team of ushers moved among them to guide the various contingents towards the areas set up for them.