Nigel Tranter: The Steps to the Empty Throne

Nor was that all. Lamberton himself, the King had just heard, had been apprehended at his cathedral of St. Andrews, and with Bishop Wishart, in irons both, sent with every indignity to London.

As for the people, the common people, his subjects, they died in their thousands, in a reign of terror that was going to leave little for Edward himself to do when eventually he reached unhappy Scotland.

So Robert Bruce sat and called himself accursed, a man who brought death, destruction and horror upon all. He was not far from breaking-point.

It was almost with dread, then, that he presently glimpsed the flash of sunlight on steel, and the colours of banners and gaily canopied litters, approaching from the direction of Killin and Loch Tay—which he had come up here to look for. He had sent a message to Blair-in-Atholl, where Nigel had been guarding the Queen’s party, to join them here, a two-days’ march westwards.

Now he wondered how he could face Elizabeth.

That he did not go down to meet her was the measure of his depression and despair.

Eventually Nigel brought her up the hillock, but at a sign from her, left Elizabeth some little way from his brother’s position. The Queen came on alone.

“Robert!” she said, going to him, hands out.

“At last. Together again. I have prayed for this. How I have prayed!”

“Prayed? For this?”

Three words could scarcely have been more eloquent. Closely, concernedly, she eyed him, reaching to take one of his hands. Her splendid fairness was heart-breaking, this fine noonday. He looked steadily away from her.

“Prayed, my dear. That I might at least see you again. See you, touch you, hold you—and alive! Was it so ill a prayer? At least it has been granted.”

He did not answer.

“But you are hurt. Your shoulder …”

“I am hurt? Who talks such folly, when all is lost and better men die by the hundred, the thousand!”

“Such better men are not my husband,” she answered simply.

“Let me see it. Your shoulder, Robert.”

“Leave it,” he jerked.

“It is less than nothing.”

“My dear,” she said quietly, sitting down beside him.

“Tell me.”

“Tell! What is there to tell? Save evil. God’s hand turned against a lost and condemned sinner. Punishment. Retribution.

Poured out. Not on the sinner, but on those who aided and supported him. His friends. Hugh Hay. Alexander Fraser. Somerville.

Barclay. Inchmartin. Scrymgeour. And others by the score.

Dead—all dead. Tortured and shamefully slain. Thomas Randolph a prisoner. Lamberton in chains} And Wishart…” It all poured out, the pent-up pain and remorse and sorrow, to a searing, passionate flood, all the disappointment, the frustration, the disillusionment, the desperation.

She listened quietly, with no word spoken.

At length the spate wore itself out. Elizabeth touched his sweating

brow.

“It is grievous, my heart. All grievous. I am sorry,” she said.

“But why torture yourself with it? The fault is not yours.”

“Not mine? Then whose is it, before God?” he demanded.

“Did other than I slay Comyn? Did other than I declare himself King?

All stems from that.”

“Comyn deserved to die. More, he had to die. Had you not slain him, another must. And this your kingdom requires a king.”

“Not a king who leads to disaster.”

“Any king can lose a battle.”

“It was not a battle. It was a massacre. We were taken unawares.

Asleep. Because of my fault. I had challenged Pembroke to fight, that afternoon. Twice. He refused, and said that he might fight the next day. Like a fool, I took him at his word. It did not cross my mind that he would steal out on me by night, six miles, to Methven. Betrayed by Philip Moubray. We were taken by surprise. But the fault was mine.”

“In any fight, Robert, one must lose…”

“But I—I was carried off the field. To safety. While others, thousands, fell. Or, lacking leader, yielded. And were then slaughtered like dumb cattle!”

“That shame was not yours, but Edward’s. And it was right that you should be saved. Necessary. You are the King. The King lost, and all is lost.”

“Scotland, I swear, were better without this King I For he is lost, even so. Lost and damned!”

“No! No, I say!” Suddenly Elizabeth de Burgh changed. She sat up straight, her eyes blazing, and turning to him gripped his undamaged arm—but not tenderly.

“You speak like a child. A child sorrowing for itself I This is not the Robert Bruce I wed. I married a man—not a brooding, pulling hairn!”

He recoiled from her, almost as though she had struck him.

“Woman—you do not know what you say…!”

“I know full well! Hear me speak—since you, Robert speak folly! I would liefer have the man for husband who slew Comyn and defied all Edward’s fury, than… than this weakling!”

He groaned.

“You say this? You, also? God pity me …”

That was a whisper.

“Aye, God pity you, Robert Bruce I And me, wed to you I And this land, with a faint-heart for King! A broken sceptre, indeed!”

He stiffened.

“You are finished?” he asked.

“No, I am not. You took that sceptre. None thrust it upon you. You are the King, now. Crowned and anointed. There is no undoing it, no turning back. So—if you are the King, for God’s good sake be the King! A weak king is the greatest curse upon a nation.”

He stared at her, biting his lip.

“What was it that we did at Scone?” she demanded, her beauty only heightened by her passion.

“Was it only a show?

Play-acting? Or was it the truth? God’s work? Did Abbot Henry save the Stone for nothing? That oil on your brow—what was it? A priest’s mummery? Or the blessed anointing of God’s Holy Spirit upon you? You, only. Which? For if it was truth, then it gave you authority. Above all men. Whatever you have done, you are now God’s Anointed. Take that authority. Use it. Wield your sword of state. You have many loyal men still. A whole people still looks to you, in hope. Fight on. Avenge Methven. Be Robert the King!” Abruptly her voice broke, and her fiercely” upright carriage seemed to crumble.

“Oh, Robert, Robert—be Elizabeth de Burgh’s man!”

Slowly he rose to his feet, looking from her down to the camp, and then away and away.

“Say that you will do it, my dear,” she pleaded now.

“For you … I think … I would do anything. Anything!”

“Thank God! Do it for me, then. If for naught else…”

There was an interruption. A strange-looking figure was climbing the knowe towards them, one or two of the King’s people trailing rather doubtfully behind. The man was elderly, enormous but frail and stooping, bearded to the waist, and clad apparently and wholly in a great tartan plaid, stained and torn, draped about his person in voluminous folds and peculiar fashion, and belted, oddly, with a girdle of pure gold links, in a Celtic design of entwined snakes. He was aiding himself up the hill with a long staff having a hook-shaped head, like a shepherd’s crook.

Nigel Bruce had waited, some way back from the royal couple. Now he stepped forward to halt this apparition. But the old man waved him aside peremptorily—and when this had no effect, raised his staff on high and shook it threateningly, screeching a flood of Gaelic invective of such vehemence and power as to give even Nigel pause in some alarm.

The ancient gold-girdled ragbag came trudging on, right up to the monarch. He said something less fierce, in the Gaelic.

Bruce, whose mother had been a Celtic countess in her own right, knew

something of the ancient tongue; but not sufficient to understand this swift flow, liquid and hurrying as a Highland river, and strangely musical to be coming from so uncouth a character.