Nigel Tranter - The Path of the Hero King

Glory could wait on another occasion.

Chapter Nineteen

The King wiped the rain off his reddened, weather-beaten, deeply lined

face, and cursed the blustering showers-even though it was April and

the season for such; two Aprils since his first English raid. It was

not the discomfort that concerned him, for he was now so inured to

discomfort as scarcely to notice it. What worried him was the effect

of all this wind on the sea, and therefore on the ships he was riding

to join-or, at least, on the stomachs of the men behind him who would

sail in those open galleys. Seasick warriors were any commander’s

nightmare. Lowering his head into the wet south-westerly gusts he

kicked his stumbling horse up the last soggy peat pocked, outcrop-strewn rise of the long heather ridge, muttering profanities.

The tinkle of laughter at his elbow was mocking, challenging and affectionate in one. Christina MacRuarie, as befitted a Hebridean, cared nothing for wind or rain.

“You are getting old, Robert!” she accused.

“Near to forty, and beginning to cherish your comforts. Of which, to be sure, I am one!

A chair by the ingle-I swear that is what you are dreaming of!”

“A chair anywhere, woman!” he growled.

“Anything but this saddle. I am never out of it. Dear God-I rule Scotland from the back of a horse! From over the Border to Inverness. From St.

Andrews to the Forest. From Galloway to Argyll. Year in, year out, I live in the saddle. I vow my rump is so calloused that I shall never sit aught else in comfort!”

“It does not incommode you in bed, at least!” she asserted.

“Nor, it seems, in scaling walls! And sitting on judgement-seats and in parliaments!”

“And I so old a man!”

“Never heed. Soon you will be standing on a galley’s poop, concerned only for your belly, not your bottom! If Angus Og has waited for you at Dumbarton!”

“He will be waiting. I am none so late. Four days? Five?”

“Angus is not the most patient of mortals. And would have preferred to sail for Man direct, without calling into Clyde. He told me so himself, at Inverness. He says he could, and should, reduce the Isle of Man to obedience, of himself, without the King of Scots’ aid!”

“No doubt-and so claim Man as his thereafter! As part of the Sudreys, the South Isles. No-Angus is my good friend-but he must learn who is master in Scotland. Man is part of my realm, and must remain so-not part of the Lordship of the Isles.”

At last they had reached the summit of the long lateral ridge of Rednock, last outpost of the Highlands, and were able to look out over the vast trough of the Forth, and all the wide waterlogged vacances of the Flanders Moss. Below, the isle-dotted Loch of Menteith gloomed leaden under the scudding rain clouds, and to the west the tall hills of Loch Lomond and the Lennox were part shrouded by drifting curtains. But eastwards there was a break in the overcast, and, in the slanting yellow afternoon sunlight fifteen miles away, Stirling rose proudly out of the level plain, castle crowning its soaring rock in a golden blaze.

The sight, sun notwithstanding, did nothing to sweeten Bruce’s temper. Indeed, he turned abruptly away from it, in his saddle, to look back over the long straggling columns of his host, which seemed to extend quite a lot of the way back to Perth.

“Keith!” he jerked, to the group immediately behind him.

“Sir Robert-you are Marischal of this realm, are you not? Look there!

I warrant it is time that you did some marshalling! Gall you that a royal progress? More like a flock of straying sheep! See you to it, sir!”

“Yes, Sire.” Keith, without demur, wheeled round his mount and went cantering back, others with him. When the King was in this frame of mind, such reaction was the only wise one.

Christina, of them all, chose otherwise, as often.

“Stirling!” she cried.

“Stirling Castle, there, arrogantly lording it over all. The key to Scotland! When will the King of Scots do to Stirling what he had just done to Perth?”

“God’s sake, woman-Stirling is like no other fortress in the kingdom! Even Edinburgh,” Bruce flung back, rising to her taunt “It cannot be taken by surprise, or battery, nor any device. Only starvation can take it-or treachery. Besides, it is Stirling, the place, that is the key to Scotland-not Stirling Castle. Wallace won Stirling Brig fight, while yet the English were secure in the castle. I have no time to spend on that hold.”

“Yet you spent four days in Perth. At risk of Angus Og’s patience!”

“Days! Months it would take. Five months I would require, to take Stirling Castle. I have more to do, by the Rude!”

She laughed.

“Your brother told me once that he could crack that nut quickly enough if you would let him try!”

“Edward! Edward speaks loud. He tried to take Perth -but did not!”

Christina smiled, with her woman’s guile. This would bring the King out of his black mood. Set brother against brother, and there would be no more glooming, at least.

Not that Bruce had any immediate cause for gloom. His recent capture

of the town of Perth had been a brilliant feat, and all his own. Many,

including his brother, had tried, these past years, to reduce the

Tayside city, but all had failed. The late King Edward had fortified

it as only he knew how, as the strategic centre in the Southern

Highlands. Sir Andrew Fraser had been the last to take its siege in

hand; and on his way south for his parliament in Inverness, Bruce had

come this way to see how matters moved. Matters had not been moving at

all, and on the second night the King in person had led an assault,

first by swimming the Tay in spate, and then the outer moat; then by

scaling the outer rampart by ropeladder and grappling-hooks, at this,

the least well-guarded flank, to swim the second moat and thereafter gain the parapet of the inner bailey, from whence he could storm one of the gates from the inside, open it, and let in the flood of more conventional attackers.

So, after nine long years, Perth was in Scots hands again; and only Dundee remained English-occupied north of Forth. Two more days Bruce had spent in the town thereafter, setting things to right-and hanging the Scots traitors who had aided the English and mistreated their fellow-citizens during the occupation. The English he had allowed to go to their ships in the Tay, and sail for home. It was, however, those hanging Scots, decorating the captured walls, who had sent the King on his way in this black temper-for though Robert Bruce could be ruthless and inexorable where sternness was called for, such measures always left him a prey to conscience.

Frowning still, but no longer sullen, Bruce led the way down the south-facing slopes into the Carse of Forth, to turn west along it for Gartmore and Drymen.

Next day they found the Lord of the Isles’ great galley fleet awaiting them in the Clyde at Dumbarton -though with Angus Og himself away hawking with the MacGregor on Loch Lomond side,. and his Islesmen setting a scandalised area by the ears. Embarkation had to delayed for another day. It was the King’s turn to wait patiently.

This expedition against the Isle of Man had been decided upon at the recent Inverness parliament-for two reasons other than the simple fact that it was an integral part of the Scots realm presently occupied by the English. Firstly, Edward of Carnarvon had granted it in gift to his favourite, Piers Gaveston -and Gaveston was now beheaded, a piece of judicial murder by the Earls of Lancaster and Warwick as much deplored in Scotland, where the favourite’s de moralising effect on King Edward was appreciated, as it was gleefully acclaimed by the English nobility; therefore there would for the moment be a hiatus in the control of Man. And secondly, John of Lorn, whom Edward had made his Admiral of the Western Seas, was using the island as a base, and interfering with the Scots lines of communication with Ireland, important for the supply of grain, arms, horses and other sinews of war. There was also the advantage, of course, that any such attack on Man might have the useful by-product of distracting the enemy from full-scale invasion of Scotland this coming campaigning season.