Nigel Tranter - The Path of the Hero King

This temporary dispersal of force was accepted only reluctantly;

but apart from the urgent need for reinforcements, the food situation for even 300 men, in these empty fastnesses, had rapidly become a major problem, and the booty from Tumberry fast consumed.

Hence the daily hunting on the part of the score who remained.

Bruce and Hay slipped discreetly down through the woodland thickets,

making for a point where the newcomers must pass close and could be

surveyed secretly. The Islesmen could be trusted to remain out of evidence until called for.

Unobserved they reached their vantage-point only a little while before the mounted party came jingling up. And quickly they perceived that there was in fact no need for secrecy. Riding at the head of the visitors’ column was a youngish woman, and at her side Sir Robert Boyd.

The King stepped out into the track before them, holding up a hand.

“Welcome, my friends,” he cried.

“Chris-you make a fair, sight! Sir Robert-we feared you dead. Or at the least, captured.”

There was a great to-do of exclamation, greeting, dismounting and hand-kissing. The woman was a cousin of Bruce’s own, the Lady Christian of Carrick, of the old Celtic line; and the forty well-equipped men-at-arms her own contribution to his force. It seemed that it was on the women of Scotland that its monarch must rely.

Bruce embraced his kinswoman, with some emotion.

“God bless you, Chris!” he said.

“You are the first The first of all the Lowlands to rally to my cause.”

“Aye-we are become a race of mice, not men!” she declared vehemently, clasping him to her and bestowing great smacking kisses.

“Fearful of every English shadow! Time indeed that you returned and shamed us into valiant deeds again. Would I could have brought you more than two-score, Robert my liege lord-but as you know, I have but small lands.”

“You have brought me more than just two-score fine fellows, woman-you have brought me hope and faith again. When I needed them.”

Boyd coughed.

“Your Grace will need all the faith and hope you may muster, I fear,” he said significantly.

“Aye. No doubt, Sir Robert. The more I have to thank the Lady Christian, then. But, man-where have you been? And how knew you that I was here? At Loch Doon?”

“I heard that you had landed, that night. At Tumberry. All the land has heard that! Despite that I had sent no signal. Deeming conditions to be unpropitious for a landing. In Carrick, at least But I did not learn your whereabouts. Until I encountered Douglas, two days past, on his way to his own country. He gave me the news of Your Grace. And the error of the fire. Knowing that the Lady Christian had these men for you-she alone of all I approached-I went to her. So we have come here, secretly.”

“Aye. That was right. There is little fervour for my cause, then?”

The other shook his head.

“Men are leal enough. I think. And the common folk would rise for you. But the quality, the lords and lairds and knights, are sore afraid to move. They have suffered too much in ten long years of war, lost too much. Lost heart, most of all, I fear, Sire, that you have a sore hill to climb, ahead of you.”

“Have I not always known it, man!” The King spoke shortly, “But, come-here is no way to treat a lady, who has journeyed long miles to see me. We are camped at a cave behind those crags.

Up that small side glen. A mile. But you will have to walk your, horses, to reach it…”

As they picked their way by deer-paths and difficult climbing tracks, leading the horses, Boyd contrived to draw a little way ahead, alone with the King. Picking his words, he spoke slowly.

“Back there, I said that Your Grace would have need of all the faith and hope you might muster. To my sorrow I did not say that lightly.”

Bruce looked at him quickly.

“You have more news for me than you have told?”

“I have, Sire-God forgive me! Grievous news. Once before, I brought you the like. The Galloway venture has failed. It is disaster.

All there is lost.”

“Christ’s mercy-no! Not… not…?”

“Aye, Sire-the worst. Sir Dugald MacDouall and the MacCanns, Comyn vassals, fell on them the day after the landing at Loch Ryan. Unawares, it seems. How it was done I have not heard, Whose the blame. But it was a rout. And thereafter, massacre.”

Fiercely Bruce gripped the other’s arm.

“My brothers?” he demanded.

Boyd moistened his lips.

“MacDouall took them, alive. With Sir Reginald Crawford. And Malcolm MacQuillan, of Antrim, who led the Irish gallowglasses. Him he slew. But your brothers, and Crawford, he sent to King Edward, at Lanercost.

Edward … Edward hanged and then beheaded them all.”

For long moments there were no words, no sounds other than their passage through the dead brackens. Then a moan of sheerest desolation broke from the King’s tight lips.

“Alex!” he whispered.

“Tom! Oh, God-it is more than I can bear! First Nigel. Now Alex, Tom! Paying the price, all paying the price of my sin. The price of John Comyn’s blood!”

“The price of Edward Plantagenet’s savage hate, I say! The man is no

better than a ravening brute-beast” “Edward is … Edward. But I—I

am accursed! Lost. Excommunicate, indeed! Forsaken of God and man.Scarce that, Sire. You still have leal friends. Leal to their lair breaths…”

“Aye-to die for me also! And so to add to my guilt” The other was silent He looked sidelong at his stricken liege lord as they went.

“Sire,” he said at length, his normally strong voice uncertain.

“I have still more news.”

Bruce strode on, set-faced. He might not have heard.

“It concerns your ladies. The Queen. The Princess. Your sisters…”

The suddenly indrawn quivering breath was more eloquent than any words.

The King stopped in his tracks.

“They are not … not slain,” Boyd went on hurriedly, almost gabbling for so slow and deliberate a speaker.

“The Queen is sent, a prisoner, to a house in Holdemess on the Humber.

To be held close. Alone. The child taken from her…”

“Edward does that! To Elizabeth. His own god-daughter, whom he claims to love?”

“Yet that is the best of it, Sire. Hear me. Marjory, the child-she is sent to London. Alone. To the Tower. Not to be spoken to by anyone. There to be hung in a cage. On the outer walls of the Tower. For all to gaze at. Like an animal. In the open, A cage, of timber and iron.”

“What…!” That was a strangled cry.

“The Lady Mary, your sister, also. She to be hung in a similar cage. On the walls of Roxburgh Castle. Day and night. In cold and heat. The Countess of Buchan likewise, who crowned you-she on the walls of Berwick…” The knight’s voice tailed away.

Bruce was staring at the other unseeing, his features working strangely. Then he turned to stride on, at something near a run;

and when Boyd would have hurried with him, flung round and pushed him away, violently. He stalked on alone up that twisting climbing path, not a word spoken.

“The Lady Christian, Countess of Mar,” Sir Robert called after him desperately, as though he must at all costs be quit of the last of his terrible news.

“Your other sister. To be confined to a nunnery, for ever…”

There was no sign from the King. Boyd turned and held the others back, duty done. At least he could gain him solitude for his agony.

But presently they caught up with Bruce, at the edge of the boisterous burn whose glen this was. It was near the foot of the tall crags of naked rock which had been pointed out from a mile away, with the valley now very narrow and steep, almost a ravine. Oddly enough the burn was actually wider here than it had been through out; but here was the only place where it might be crossed, at a brief stretch of comparative shallows, perhaps thirty feet across, with a spray-spouting waterfall just above and foaming cataracts below.