Robert Low - The Lion at bay

‘Justify?’

Bruce’s chin was thrust out truculently, but the sullen petted-lip pout of old was long gone and now he looked stern, like a dominie about to chastise a pupil.

‘Ye are about to usurp a throne, my lord,’ Lamberton declared wryly. ‘It will take a cunning argument to convince Strathearn and Buchan and the Dunbar of March, among others, that you have the right to it.’

‘Usurp a throne?’ Bruce spat back and Wishart held up one hand, his voice steel.

‘King John Balliol,’ he declared and let the name perch there, a raven in the tree of their plans. Balliol, in whose name the rebellion had been raised and the reason Bruce had quit the rebels and sought his own peace with Edward two years ago.

Hal knew that was when the rumours of Balliol returning — handed over by the Pope back to Scotland — had first been mooted by a Longshanks desperately fending off the French and Scots at either ends of his kingdom. The arrival of an old king into the ambitions of Bruce was not something the Earl of Carrick could suffer — so he had accepted Longshanks’ peace and rewards, in the hope of keeping his claims to kingship alive by persuading Edward that a Bruce was a better bet than a Balliol for a peaceful Kingdom.

Yet, not long after that, in a bitter twist of events, had come the Battle of the Golden Spurs, when the Flemings had crushed the flower of French chivalry at Courtrai. Common folk in great squares of spears, Hal had heard, had tumbled so many French knights in the mud that their gilded spurs had made a considerable mound.

It had forced the stunned French to make peace with Edward and freed Longshanks to descend on the north — the result sat outside the walls of Stirling, hurling balls of fire and holding victory tourneys that the newly pardoned Scots lords had to watch in grim, polite silence.

It had also ended any plans to bring Balliol back to his old throne — yet the Kingdom had fought in his name until now. And failed; Bruce was determined to change this.

‘Balliol was stripped of his regalia,’ Bruce reminded everyone roughly, though his growl was muted. ‘By the same king who made him.’

‘The lords of this realm made him by common consent,’ Lamberton pointed out and had a dismissive wave of hand from Bruce.

‘Nevertheless,’ Lamberton persisted softly. ‘Balliol is still king of this realm in the eyes of those who have consistently fought to preserve it. Wallace among them.’

‘The community of this realm are finished with fighting,’ Bruce snapped back angrily. ‘Unless it is to be first in the queue for Edward’s peace. Wallace is finished. No matter the harsh of it, that is the truth. This is no longer a Kingdom, my lords — in all the wee documents from Westminster it is writ as “land” and nothing more. Edward rules it now and his conditions for a return to his loving embrace include charging each lord of this “land” to seek out and capture Will Wallace. That man is not so well loved that such a command will go begging for long.’

‘The matter of Balliol is simple,’ John Duns said and all heads turned to him. His yellowed face was haughty, his fine fingers laced; Wishart felt a stab of annoyance at the infuriating arrogance of the man, tempered with respect for the intellect and steel will that went with it.

Duns had not been expelled from Paris for whoring, as Hal had declared, but for defying the Pope. And he was dying of some slow wasting disease that Wishart prayed to God to make slower still, since the loss of Duns would be a tragedy. Yet he was hard to suffer, all the same…

‘We must remake the doctrine of the throne,’ Duns went on. ‘As a contract, between the King and community of the Kingdom, to the effect that the Kingdom itself reserves the right to remove an unfit king. Such an unfit king, of course, will be one who permits the freedom of this realm to be usurped by an invader, as John Balliol does, preferring gilded captivity to a struggle for freedom. Which, gentilhommes, is something no man gives up save with his life. As long as a hundred of us remain to defend it, we will do so.’

They stared at him and he sat, head tilted and preening just a little, for he knew he had slit the Gordian of it — even Kirkpatrick, blinking with the effort of understanding it, could see the breathtaking genius.

‘That last is not my own,’ Duns added lightly, ‘but Bernard of Kilwinning’s.’

Bruce cocked one warning eyebrow.

‘That is the only part that is not mere elegant sophistry,’ he countered levelly. ‘Dangerous, too. The best defence for this kingdom has been the confusion and discord of England, thanks to Edward’s own nobiles and their attempts to foist Ordinances on his power. Think ye this realm needs such curb on royal power?’

‘There is only one ordinance in such a contract,’ Duns replied calmly, ‘and that is to defend the freedom of the Kingdom. Hardly a curb of royal power, to insist that a good king do that which he would anyway.’

Bruce nodded, reluctantly. John Balliol had defended the Kingdom and suffered for it — since then, of course, he had haunted the French court and the papal skirts defending nothing at all, so Duns’ sophistry worked well enough.

Yet Bruce was English enough to see that the crown of this kingdom was not the same as any other. Kings in Scotland, he had long since discovered, differed from those anywhere else because they had long admitted that God alone did not have the final say in who ruled. The reality for a King of Scots was that his right to rule had long since been removed from God and handed, via the noble community of the realm, to the Kingdom’s every burgher and minor landowner — aye, and even the cottars and drovers who lived there; it was a wise claimant who made his peace with that.

Not King of Scotland, but King of Scots and there was a wealth of subtle meaning in the difference.

Wishart saw Bruce acquiesce, slapped his meaty hands together and beamed. John Duns was clever, Hal thought, but his kenspeckled words were not enough to convince the Comyn Earl of Buchan, or the Comyn Lord of Badenoch, whose kin John Balliol was. The Lord of Badenoch had his own claim to the kingship and, even if everyone else allowed that John Balliol was too much empty cote to be endured, it was unlikely the Comyn would step aside for Bruce.

Hal did not even have to voice it, for Lamberton did and the arguments swirled like the greasy, tainted smoke of the tallow until Bruce held up one hand and silenced them all.

‘Red John Comyn is a problem,’ he declared, ‘which we must address soon. Sooner still is the one called Wallace.’

He looked round the room of shadowed faces.

‘He must be persuaded to quit the realm,’ Bruce said. ‘For his own safety and because nothing can proceed while he rants and ravages in the name of King John Balliol. That rebellion is ended, my lords, and will never be resurrected; the next time this kingdom wars against the invader will be under my banner. A royal one, lords — and against Edward the son, not the father.’

‘If what you say is true,’ Lamberton with a wry, fox smile, ‘that might see you with grey hairs of your own. Is Longshanks not in the finest of health, with a new young queen and two wee bairns tumbling like cubs?’

‘Besides,’ Wishart added mournfully, ‘Wallace is unlikely to be moved by the argument that he stands in the way of your advancement, my lord Robert. Nor has he been much concerned over his own safety in the past.’

‘Leave Wallace and Red John Comyn to me,’ Bruce declared grimly and then shot a twisted smile at John Duns. ‘God and time will take care of King Edward.’

‘ Affectio Commodi,’ he added and John Duns acknowledged it with a tilt of his head.