Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

“No, Sire. It was other.”

“Grave tidings? To come yourself, not send messenger?”

“Harcla, Earl of Carlisle, is dead. Tortured, half-hanged and disembowelled, after the Plantagenet fashion! There will be no revolt, Sire.”

Bruce looked at the other heavily.

“So Edward was not … agreeable!” he said.

“Harcla went to him, with the terms?”

“Yes. And King Edward esteemed it high treason. To have approached Your Grace, without his royal authority. No subject of his will have truck with rebels, he said! He dealt so with Harcla, as a warning to others.”

The King drew a hand wearily over his brow.

“How above all stubborn can be your weak and stupid man! Shall we never see peace, because of this royal fool? What of all the others, the great lords who were to support the revolt? Are these all taken also?”

“No. Harcla went alone to the King-and was requited thus.

Your Grace will wonder at how I had the news. It came from Umfraville.

Sir Ingram himself brought me word, at Roxburgh.”

“Umfraville!

So we have not heard the last of that strange man.

He ventured into Scotland again?”

“Aye, Sire. His Northumberland lands march with yours at Tynedale, as you know-none so far from the Border. He was not ill-pleased at Harcla’s death, esteeming him up-jumped traitor. But he is for a peace treaty between the realms, nevertheless. He says that he believes King Edward to be nearer to it than ever before.

That he, Umfraville, seeks to prevail with the King to conclude such”

“Ha! He would regain those great lost lands of his, in Scotland, if he might!”

“It may be so. But, whatever his reasons, he is working for a peace

treaty. And is hopeful-despite Harcla’s execution. Harcla died, he

says, not because he favoured a peace, but because he chose to

negotiate without his master’s authority. Umfraville said to tell Your

Grace that if you sent an embassage to King Edward to discuss terms, it

might be favourably received. He suggested Bishop Lamberton, since

King Edward had a liking for him once.

I told him Lamberton was too sick a man to travel…”

“Aye. It is as much as he may do to come to Dunfermline.

But-this of an embassage. Will Edward receive an embassage from rebels, as he names us? I think not. Has Umfraville forgotten this?”

“No. He says that the embassage must not seem to be that. Just

travellers on their way to another land. France, or the Low Countries,

perhaps. Who could call at London in passing. And see the King

privily. Through Umfraville himself. He has Edward’s ear, he says”

“That would be difficult. Whom could I send, that I could trust in this, whom Edward would not take and slay out-of-hand? In his stupid arrogance and hate. William Lamberton would have served, yes. But you, or Moray, or Hay-such he would never tolerate. He has put prices on all your heads. We deal with no reasonable man.”

“Some other cleric, Sire? Whom he would scarce slay …?”

Bruce looked at his sleeping wife thoughtfully.

“Umfraville believes there to be hope in this? True hope of Edward’s acceptance?”

“He says so. The King is alarmed at the enmity of his nobles. So he made example of Harcla. But he would wish the Scottish entanglement over, the better to deal with these others.”

“Aye. Then I have thought of a way. David, Bishop of Moray, has long sought to go to France. It has been his desire to found a college there. In Paris. For Scots. A cherished project. I will send him, with the Sieur de Sully, Grand Butler of France, and the other French knights taken at Byland. Time they went home.

Edward will give them safe-conduct, since they were captured fighting for him. On the way to France they will call to pay their respects to the King, in London. And carry with them such terms as I can offer.” He nodded.

“Harcla was too ambitious, too fast.

But it may be that he did not die in vain …”

The Queen stirred, and opened her eyes. Both men sat forward.

But, after another faint flicker of a smile, she closed her eyes

again.

Her breathing deepened a little.

“In that smile is your hope, Sire,” Douglas said gently.

“Her Grace is of all women both finest and fairest.”

Bruce looked at the younger man keenly.

“Of all women …I say so, yes. But you, Jamie? You have never wed, my friend. You have never given your heart to another?”

“Given long years ago, Sire. To one man-yourself. And to one woman who lies there. And smiles!” Douglas rose.

“Have I Your Grace’s permission to retire? I have travelled far and fast …”

Some eight weeks later, with the broom abloom and the first cuckoos calling hauntingly in Pittendreich Glen, and with the Queen on her feet again, although pale and frail, only a shadow of her former proud womanhood, but the new Prince David thriving lustily, Bishop David Murray of Moray sent word back to Scotland, not from London but from York, where King Edward had returned. He and de Sully had been received by the King, in Umfraville’s company. Edward would not hear any terms from him, the Bishop, whom he declared to be both rebel and excommunicate.

But he had been prepared to listen to de Sully, as a Frenchman and man of honour. Sully had announced the Scots terms.

Later, the King had summoned only Sully to his presence, and told him that he favoured peace and could accept all save two of the Scots proposals. But these two were the basic independence of Scotland; and the kingship of Robert Bruce. These he could never accept. Therefore there could be no peace treaty, since the King of England could never sit down at such table with rebels. But, for the sake of peace, he was prepared to accept a prolonged truce-with the Leader of the Scots people, not the King of Scots, of which there was and could be none. He suggested a truce of thirteen years. He was prepared to send commissioners to sign such a truce at Berwick, on intimation that the Leader of the Scots people would meet them to endorse it.

“God in His heaven!” Bruce groaned to his wife, as this was declared to them.

“The man is crazed! Run wholly mad. Will nothing teach him, nothing open his eyes? Must two whole realms remain for ever at war because of one man’s insensate vanity? His own kingdom falling about his ears, and all he can think of is to deny me the name of mine!”

“It is beyond all-in folly, yes,” Elizabeth agreed.

“But-this of a truce? Why thirteen years?”

“God knows! The man is deranged. In one half of thirteen years all could be changed. Will be changed. Neither he nor I alive, it may be! How can a man deal with such as this …?”

“His Grace of England says that he will send his commissioners to Berwick, Sire. Next month,” Bishop David’s courier went on.

“To sign the terms of the truce. With Your Grace …”

“Not with my Grace! Only with the rebel leader of rebellious Scots!

As though I would sign anything on those terms. The crass fool Small

wonder that his lords arc in near revolt, that England is riven and prostrate. With such a monarch …!”

“And yet, my heart,” is the case so ill?” the Queen put in, gently.

“Edward’s pride is all that is left to him, empty, profitless pride. So he assails yours. Withholds all, for a couple of words, king and kingdom. Yet gives all nevertheless, in fact…”

“Gives all? What do you mean? He denies all. This treaty of peace without it, I can never build up Scotland to what the realm should be, must be. All our treasure and strength is wasted in maintaining armed men, ever and again having to burn our own country in the face of invaders, living in our armour, horses saddled, our trading ships attacked on the seas. Near on thirty years of war! Scotland needs peace …”