Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

“You do?” The sudden rise, the hope, in his voice, was not to be disguised.

“I do, as God is my witness. And I urge that you put it from your mind. Say naught to any. Even those closest.”

“And physicians?”

“No, Robert, my friend. Not unless your sickness grows the worse. I do not believe that we may trust any man with so dire a secret.

Physicians have tongues like other men. Someone would whisper. Then there would be talk-and talk become clamour.

And once there was such clamour, the Church would be invoked.

Its laws on lepers. However firm I stood out against it, some would

demand that the Church acted as ordained. You still have our enemies

You know how this, of all ills, frightens men. Faced with leprosy, the worst in men comes out. You know what they would demand?”

“I know enough.”

“I pray that you know enough, then, to say nothing. To any. For Holy Church could be invoked to declare you lawfully dead. To conduct funeral obsequies over your empty coffin. To declare your throne vacant. Your marriage dissolved. Masses to be said throughout the realm for the benefit of your soul, as departed this life.

Your child declared orphan. You could be ejected by bell, book and candle from the haunts of men. Debarred from entering any city or town or village, save at certain seasons, and then only sounding a clapper before you, that folk might avoid you. You, Robert Bruce! Thus until your dying day. Which could be years later. Sweet Saviour-think of it, Robert! You, Scotland’s deliverer, Scotland’s hope. I would sooner that you cut out your tongue, and mine, than that you spoke of this to any!”

For long moments the King stared out across the sparkling water.

“As you will,” he said, at last.

Chapter Fifteen

Elizabeth de Burgh and William Lamberton made a notable confederacy, and they had their way with Robert Bruce. And not only in the matter of keeping secret the King’s fear of leprosy. On the subject of making a new home for the royal family, the Queen added her voice to the Primate’s. She had never been particularly attached to Tumberry and since Marjory’s death there she had frequently wished to be gone. The place spoke to her too much of alarms, fears and hurried journeys. Moreover she agreed with Lamberton that the monarch should dwell near the centre of his kingdom, not on the outskirts. And setting up a new home might well be a useful distraction for a man with a dark shadow on his mind.

Bruce, of course, was not really an enthusiast for castle or palace building. Throughout his life he had been more concerned with pulling down such places, either as enemy-held or as constituting threats to his security. He was not disposed to start erecting some new and ambitious edifice, therefore, especially in present circumstances.

But he acceded to the others’ advice that a move should be made to a more central spot-not the least of his considerations being that Turnberry was really Edward’s house now, the seat of the earldom of Carrick which he had granted to his brother-and it went against the grain to be beholden to Edward for anything.

Of the other great Bruce castles, none were any more central than this. Moreover, Lochmaben was largely in ruins, since the last English withdrawal; Annan little better, and almost in England; and Buittle, in Galloway, was also Edward’s, as Lord thereof. While Inverurie, up in Aberdeenshire, had been demolished early on by Edward Longshanks, and was as remote in the other direction as these SouthWest houses.

The obvious choice lay between Stirling and Dunfermline, royal palaces

both-for Linlithgow had been destroyed, on Brace’s own commands, as

too dangerous a place to permit near the strategic battleground of

Stirling. It was that vital strategic situation which told against

Stirling itself, in this issue. He would have gone to dwell there

readily enough; but Elizabeth was set against it. She coveted as home no fortress skied on a rock overlooking half a dozen past battlefield sand who knew how many more to come?

She wanted to wean her husband’s mind away from war and strategy, in so far as this was practicable; and Stirling, with Bannockburn spread below, was scarcely the place to achieve it. With Lamberton’s help, she influenced the King strongly in the direction of Dunfermline, therefore. After all, it had been the great Malcolm Canmore’s capital, its abbey superseding Scone as the burial-place of the Scottish kings. Here were interred Malcolm and his beatified Queen Margaret, as well as their sons. Also the Kings Donald Bain, Eadgar, Alexander the First, David the First, Malcolm the Fourth and Alexander the Third. It was, next to Iona’s remote isle, the most royal place in Scotland; moreover it was in life, the same county as Lamberton’s St. Andrews. Elizabeth pointed out that the child in her womb might well be a son, the heir to Scotland. If it was, surely it was right that he should be born in this hoary cradle of the Scots monarchy?

So, with still nearly two months to go until the birth-date, the move

was made, from Clyde to Forth, that midsummer of 1317, and the Court of

Scotland came to settle in the modest grey palace above Pittendreich

Glen, overlooking the widening Firth of Forth, with the ancient

climbing town of Dunfermline in a horseshoe behind, and the great abbey

towering close by. Edward the First had burned all on his departure

therefrom in 1304; but less thoroughly than was his wont, and the

churchmen had been busily repairing it, the abbey especially. Much

more remained to be done at the palace, but there was still more

habitable accommodation than there had been in Turnberry’s fortified

towers. The King and Queen moved into the Abbot’s quarters while their own apartments were being made ready for them; and the Court settled itself to roost where it could. It was thirty-one years since last this had been the seat of government, when Alexander the Third had ridden away that stormy evening towards St. Andrews, to fall over the fatal cliff at Kinghom.

Despite her condition, Elizabeth was in her woman’s element.

She had been married, and Queen of Scotland, for fifteen years, and at last she had a home which she might call her own. She busied herself from mom till night in supervising, planning, furnishing.

She deliberately involved her husband in the business much more than

was absolutely necessary, or considered suitable by many, Lamberton

aiding and abetting. And Bruce, after a little initial resistance,

became interested, even moderately enthusiastic, finding small

challenges, problems, decisions on a domestic scale new to him. His physical betterment was evident, undeniable, his preoccupation with himself fading.

The sudden, slightly premature accouchement and, after only four hours of comparatively light labour, birth of a second princess, was only marginally a disappointment. There was heartfelt relief too, not only in that Elizabeth, at her age, had had no difficulties of delivery; but that the child was perfect, small but entirely healthy, lovely. It had been Bruce’s second, secret dread, from the moment of learning that his wife was pregnant again, that the child would be affected in some way by his feared disease, sickly, handicapped, even a monster. That she was not so engendered so great a joy and comfort that her sex seemed scarcely a major matter.

They called her Margaret, after the sainted queen who had made Dunfermline her home two and a half centuries before.

Bruce was busy at more than domestic matters. There was so much to be done, in the rule and governance of his realm, so much that had been neglected, not only during the Irish campaign but during the long years of war. He was not a man for idling and inactivity, however much his wife might urge a period of recuperation, and he threw himself into the business of civil administration with a will, almost as though in an effort to wear himself out with work. Dunfermline buzzed like a bee’s bike disturbed, the old grey town on the ridge above the Forth fuller of folk, of clamour and colour, than it had ever been. Bernard de Linton, who perhaps had thought that the return of the monarch would lift some of the burden of administration from his shoulders, as Chancellor, instead had to find a deputy Abbot for Arbroath and come to take up residence at Dunfermline, there to labour harder than ever.