Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

“Your Grace! Your Grace! Dear my lady!” he cried.

”God be thanked for this! It has been so long, so very long. Here is

joy, indeed …”

“Jamie! Dear Jamie-my good friend! My true knight still!”

Elizabeth said a little unsteadily.

“I might have known that you would come to meet me. And … and looking scarce a day older, I vow!”

“A laddie still,” the Bruce’s voice commented quietly, deeply.

“But, by his deeds, a man!”

“I have heard of the deeds of Sir James Douglas, never fear,” the Queen agreed.

“All England has! The Black Douglas has been a name to tremble at these past years.” Smiling, she released her hand from the younger man’s eager grip. But she gave his own a little stroke in the process, that brought a flush of gladness to those almost delicate boyish features which so many men feared, as she turned to Gilbert Hay.

That man, ever quiet, a little hesitant of speech, retiring save in the face of the enemy, took that hand silently. But his grey eyes, upturned to hers, were full.

“Sir Gilbert-Gibbie Hay, my friend! You also. Another paladin!

Renowned Lord High Constable of Scotland, no less! My two most fond and favoured knights. I thank you-in the name of sweet Jesu I thank you both. Not to have … forgot me!”

“Forgot!” Hay all but choked.

“Did you think…?”

“No, no, friend. But it has been so long. And you with so much else to consider than an Irishwoman captive in a far land …”

“You might well have believed yourself forgot!” Bruce interrupted, almost harshly.

“That in eight long years these paladins, your husband and your so leal knights, could not come for you!

Could not, in all their warfare and victory, lead an expedition into England to release their Queen! God knows, we thought of it, talked of it, enough! Sought to plan it. But…”

“My dear—how could you! Think you I did not know it was impossible? I am a soldier’s daughter, you will recollect” “And yet-you must have hoped, lass? I swear you did. Even I did that! Deceived myself. When we won as far south as Durham two years ago…”

“I knew! I knew it could not be. Even then. To get so far as Durham was a wonder. And a terrible hazard. How it warmed my heart to know you so near. If more than a hundred miles be near!”

“If they had not held Your Grace so far to the south,” Douglas said.

“On the Humber. All great Yorkshire in between. A populous land, of great lords, great castles, large cities. Northumberland, Cumberland, even Durham itself-these are different. But great Yorkshire to cross. We would never have won back to Scotland.”

“Do not vex yourselves,” Elizabeth pleaded.

“All this I knew. As did the English! That is why they placed me there. Just beyond your reach. Yet sufficiently near to Scotland to tempt you. So that perchance you might attempt a rescue-and be trapped. That is why I was not sent to London, to the Tower, like Marjory. Is it not so, Sir Roger?”

Northburgh, the English hostage knight, prisoner at Bannockburn and sent south by the Earl of Hereford, England’s High Constable, and the vast company of captured lords, to effect this part of the exchange, shrugged.

“His Majesty scarcely takes me into his royal confidence, Madam,” he

“This William Lamberton told us,” the King acceded.

“But even so …” He sighed.

“I was sore tempted, many times. But-I was a king. Not just a husband. With a realm, a people, to free. Not just a wife!” That was said hardly, deliberately.

“You understand?”

“I understand,” she agreed quietly, but as firmly as he.

“I heard you swear your coronation oaths, you will mind. As I swore mine.”

“Aye. Well, then-enough of this. It is fifteen miles to the Border. Thirty yet before Annan, where we lie tonight. Time we rode.” He turned.

“You, Sir Roger Northburgh -you have other duties to perform. A-many. My daughter. My sisters. The Countess of Buchan. Bishop Wishart of Glasgow. All these captives to bring to me, before your lords at Stirling go free. See you to it. And quickly.”

The Englishman bowed and took his leave, to ride on alone downhill towards Hotham’s waiting company.

To ringing cheers and acclaim the royal group rode up to the main body of the Scots, the most lovely Queen bowing and smiling.

When the remaining knights and captains had been presented and had kissed the Queen’s hand, many of them renowned veterans of savage warfare, and all of whom had sought eagerly for the honour of making up this escort, impatient to be off, the King signed to a trumpeter.

With the bugle-notes neighing, the whole company turned to face

Scotland. And biting her lips, Elizabeth de Burgh looked back over her

shoulder for a last look at the land which had held her captive for

what should have been the best years of her life and the productive

years of her marriage. In the much-battered redstone castle of Annan

that night, Robert Bruce, waiting with such patience as he could muster for the hour when he could decently announce his own and his wife’s retiral from the convivial but maddeningly protracted scene was unexpectedly involved in another reunion. The clatter of many hooves in the courtyard below intimated the arrival of another party, thus late in the evening. And a little later, two figures appeared in the doorway of the Great Hall, weary, travel-worn but glad-eyed- a man and a woman.

Had it not been for the fact that the dark, saturnine man was Sir Neil Campbell of Lochawe, chief of his clan, whom he had sent to collect her, the King would scarcely have recognised the woman as one of his own sisters. Eight years had dealt a deal more drastically with the appearance of the Lady Mary Bruce than with that of the Queen. He had last seen her, a plump, laughing tomboy of a girl of seventeen, in the woods of Strathfillan, after the rout of Dail Righ; now he saw a haggard, thin, great-eyed woman of fine but ravaged features, obviously desperately tired and leaning on her escort’s arm.

“Dear God!” her brother breathed, rising.

All others rose, likewise, in that crowded hall. But though it was the

monarch who moved towards the pair at the door, his wife out paced

“Mary!” the Queen cried, and ran to the other woman, arms

outstretched, all formalities abandoned.

The two women were embracing, murmuring in coherencies as Bruce came up. He glanced at the Highlander, brows raised.

“The accursed English!” Campbell all but snarled. He was ever a man of strong feelings and few words.

“Mary, lass!” the King said.

“What… what have they done to you!”

“Robert! Robert!” His sister turned to him, still clutching

“Praise God! I never thought… to see you … again.”

“Praise! Praise, you say?” her brother barked. And then softened his voice and forced a smile.

“Aye, praises be, lass. Welcome home, Mary.”

“Home, yes.” Her voice cracked and broke on the simple word, and with them she was in his arms, sobbing.

“Home, Robert! But where… where is Nigel? And Alex? And Tom?”

He swallowed, and found no words. Annan Castle was indeed home to Mary Bruce. Here, third daughter of the fifth Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, she had been brought up, and when, with endless invasion and terror come to Scotland, her Celtic mother having died, her rather feckless Norman-Scots father exiled to die in England, and her three older brothers away at the wars, she had kept house for her two youngers brothers, Alexander and Thomas, a gay and youthful establishment despite the constant alarms, assaults and intermittent nights to safety elsewhere. Now she was back to where she could see, just across Solway, where those two young men had been hanged and disembowelled by Edward of England, following all too exactly in the footsteps of the third brother, Nigel a year or so before.