Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

“It could be. I know it. So I have told myself many times. And yet-somehow, he has changed. He acts the governor, not the commander. For weeks I have been ill at ease. It came to me that I must tell you. I could not tell you all this in a letter. Nor by the lips of any messenger. Even my own lips falter over it. Perhaps I did wrongly to come, Sire-to leave Ireland. But…”

”No, Thomas-not wrong. You knew that I trusted you, relied on your

judgement. It was right to come to me. But this is all a matter of judgement, is it not? Of interpretation. Of one man’s mind, by another and very different man.”

“Your Grace thinks me in error, then? In my judgement. Such as it is!”

“I do not know. You have been with Edward, close, these last months.

Heard him, seen him. But I know him better than you do.

Have known him since a child, grown up with him. And he has never been devious.”

“Save before the Ayr Parliament. When he admitted to secret

correspondence with these Irish chiefs.”

“True. True. That was not very like Edward, either,” Bruce

shrugged.

“It is difficult. What would you advise that I do, nephew?”

Without hesitation the other answered, “Send me back. With more men. Enough men, under my close command, to ensure that my uncle heeds my voice! With orders, strict orders, for me to prosecute the war southwards. With all speed.”

Impulsively the older man clapped the other’s shoulder.

“I’

faith, lad-we may on occasion differ in judgement! But our minds think alike when it comes to strategy! That was my own design. You shall go back. And I shall send with you more men of substance. Lords, committed to your support. Now that we have disposed of MacDougall, men and captains are available. So be it, Thomas-you shall return to Ireland with another 2,000 men …”

They turned back.

That finished holiday-making for Robert Bruce. In two days, most of his company were on their way southwards, leaving the painted paradise of the Hebrides to its own colourful folk. There was work to do elsewhere.

Chapter Eight

Elizabeth de Burgh stood beside the great bed, rocking the tiny

red-faced morsel in her arms as it snuffled and wheezed and

whimpered.

Softly she crooned to it, her voice alive with the aching longing of the childless woman. But her eyes never left the white, grey-streaked, strained face on the pillow below.

She had stood there for half an hour now, in the tower-room of Tumberry Castle, waiting, a prey to so many and conflicting emotions. The physicians, midwives and other serving-women she had long since banished from the chamber. Only the Queen herself, her stepdaughter and the new-bora infant remained in the tapestry-hung, over-heated apartment, with the flickering firelight and the smell of sweat, blood and human extremity.

Marjory Bruce’s breathing was quick and shallow, her lips blue, her closed eyelids dark. For long she had lain so, unmoving save for the light uneven breathing. Since the afterbirth indeed. It was nearly three o’clock of a wild March night, and the waves boomed hollowly beneath Turnberry’s cliffs, seeming to shake the very castle.

The Queen’s patience was inexhaustible, her cradling and whispering continuous.

Without a flicker of warning the heavy eyelids opened and the dark eyes

stared up, deep, remote, expressionless, un winking

Elizabeth held the baby out, and so that those eyes could see it.

They changed neither in direction nor in their lack of expression.

“All is well,” the older woman said quietly.

The other closed her eyes again.

There was another long interval, silent save for the muted thunder of the waves, and the creak of the dying log-fire as the embers settled deeper in the glowing ash.

When the girl opened her eyes again, the Queen was still there, and in the same position and attitude. Once more she held out the child.

After a while, and without turning her glance on the infant, the blue lips moved, almost imperceptibly.

Elizabeth leant closer, to hear.

“It is … complete?” the faint words whispered.

“Sound? No … monster?”

“It is a fine boy. Small, but perfect. See. A boy. An heir. And

well. You have done so very well, my dear.”

There was the tiniest shake of her head.

“It is true. All is well, Marjory. Looksee for yourself.”

Still the girl did not look at the child.

“Shall I put him here? Beside you. In your arm?”

“No.” That was certain, at least. She turned her head away, and the eyelids closed again.

Elizabeth bit her lip, and sighed, but waited still.

Presently, seemingly out of great depths, the other spoke, her voice little more than a breath.

“A boy. He … will be … glad. As am I. Now … I can die … in

peace.”

The older woman gasped, with the shock “Ah, no, child-no! “she

“Do not speak so. All is well, now. You will see. You will soon be well again. And so very happy.”

There was no least response from the bed.

“Hear me, Marjory,” the Queen persisted, strangely uncertain for that assured and beautiful woman.

“You should rejoice, not talk of dying. Now that you have something to live for. A child. A man-child.” And as an afterthought, “And a husband. This fine boy-he needs his mother.”

Silence.

“He is yours. All yours. An heir, yes-but also a part of yourself.

To cherish and nurture. To watch grow into a man. To love and guard and guide. A man-child …” The older woman’s voice broke.

“Oh, God!” she said.

She might not have spoken.

The Queen began to pace up and down the room, still holding the baby. Every now and again she came to stare down at the ashen face, so still, so death-like. And each time it was with a stoun at the heart. For here was the shadow of death indeed, called for, besought, and approaching near. Elizabeth de Burgh could feel its chill hand, there in that over warm chamber.

Her fears were not all fancy, an overwrought imagination born of weariness, distress and the small hours of the morning-just as Marjory Bruce’s talk of death was not just the near-hysteria of a young woman new out of the ordeal of childbirth. For it had been a bad birth, a terrible birth, with the child six weeks premature added to a breach presentation. It had gone on for fourteen evil hours, and Marjory, never robust nor inspirited, had screamed and begged for death. Grievously torn and with internal haemorrhage, she had lost a great deal of blood-was probably still bleeding under all the physicians’ bindings, for they had been unable to staunch the flow, try as they would. Death was no figure of speech in that apartment. And the girl had no wish to live.

Bruce and Walter Stewart had been sent for immediately after Marjory’s fall from the horse which had touched off this emergency.

She ought not to have been riding, of course; but she had all her family’s stubbornness, and found a horse’s saddle one means of attaining the solitariness which she seemed to crave. If anything could be called fortunate about the entire unhappy business, it was that she had been thrown not far from the castle, and her fall seen from a cot-house; otherwise she might well have been dead by now.

The King and her husband, as it happened, were not so very far away as they might have been, since they were soldiering again—besieging Carlisle, some ninety miles away, at the request of James Douglas, who was finding its English garrison a thorn in the flesh for his campaigning over the Border. Carlisle and Berwick were now the only enemy-held fortresses north of Yorkshire.

Walter, if not the King, would almost certainly leave all and come hot-foot the moment the news reached him; but even the fastest and best-founded horses would take many hours to cover 180 miles across the Border hills and mosses. A galley would have been quicker-but not in these March equinoxial gales. Riding all through the night as they probably would, they could scarcely be at Turnberry before daylight.