Nigel Tranter - The Steps to the Empty Throne

“Brave words! You did not speak them to Percy!”

“I shall. You may lick the boots of such as he. I do not.”

“I lick no boots. Nor ever shall. But I recognise facts. Power.

The reality of power.”

“You I Power? You recognise fine clothes. Jewels. Blood-horses.

Women. You recognise those who will pay for your debts! You licked Edward’s boots for gold, did you not? He paid your debts.

Is it Percy, now?”

With a great effort Bruce held in his hot temper.

“I lick no man’s boots, I tell you,” he repeated heavily. And changed the subject, stiffly.

“How do you propose, my lord, to assert yourself?

Against these commands.”

“I shall go. Leave. I do not remain here, in Carlisle, to be insulted and mistreated, by God” “Where shall you go? If they let you. “Your lands in England, in Essex and Huntingdon, will scarce offer you protection against Edward I And Annandale, of all the dales of Scotland, lies most open to the English. Its mouth, wide and open to the Border, cannot be defended. Only at its head amongst the hills. And there the English hold Lochmaben.”

“I shall not go to Annandale. Nor into England. I go to Norway.

To Isabel. I shall seek King Eric’s aid. To put me on my throne of Scotland. I shall return with a Norse army.”

His son stared, almost unbelievingly. Although, knowing his father, he perhaps should not have been so surprised. Bruce the elder had ever lacked any conspicuous sense of the practical.

“But… but this is folly!” he exclaimed.

“Eric will not aid you.

Not with men, an army. He has his own troubles. Nearer home …”

“He is my good-son. To have me King of Scots would greatly strengthen his hand. In his own wars.”

The Lord of Annandale had been potent, if not practical, and his countess-wife fertile. They had had five sons and four daughters.

And the eldest child, Isabel, had married four years earlier King Eric the Second of Norway, as his second wife. The family had not seen her since—but she was indeed Queen of Norway.

Her brother knew the uselessness of argument with his sire.

“They will not let you go,” he said.

“The English.”

“Why should they stop me? I am a free man. I have been put down as Governor—but that is not my doing. It is your fault. For your folly, at Irvine. Of turning rebel, at the wrong time! Always you were a fool, Robert! And have cost me dear.”

The young man turned away, and strode to the window to gaze out, while he mastered himself. It was a small and undistinguished tower chamber, very different from the fine Governor’s apartment which the Bishop now occupied. Without facing his father, he spoke, level-voiced.

“They will not let you go. Unless you seem to aid them. I know these English—if you do not. Though you should, ‘fore God I They are merchants. They bargain, always. If they have power, they give nothing for nothing. You can bargain for your freedom with your Annandale men.”

“Men! You say that? You, the untimely rebel! You would give the English our Annandale men—to fight against our own folk?”

“To fight, no. To assemble and ride, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

”I mean that these are your vassals. Bruce’s vassals. By the

thousand. The English wish them assembled, in arms. Very well Let them assemble. It is a thing we dared not have done, ourselves.

But on Surrey’s orders …! Then, when we ride north, we shall speak with a different voice! Who, think you, these Bruce levies will obey? Percy? Or Bruce?”

“You mean … you mean that you would take them … and then change sides? Turn your coat, man?”

“My coat is already turned, is it not? Whatever side I must needs seem to wear! In my need, I cannot afford the luxury of wearing only one side of my coat, my lord!”

“But… what of your honour, man? Have you none?”

“Honour? I have been learning what honour means! If Scotland is ever to be free, if Scotland is ever to have its own king again, Bruce or other, we will have to think again on what means honour. Does Edward know the word, I wonder? But… enough of this. These men of Annandale, my lord, are your vassals—not mine. Yet. But with your permission, and Percy’s aid, I shall make them into an army. To use against our enemies. Your enemies. Those who have so de spitefully used you.”

The older man chewed at his long upper lip in indecision.

“You have your own men. Of Carrick. Use them,” he jerked.

“I cannot. Think you Percy would allow that? Carrick, all Ayrshire, is watched, garrisoned, held. Thick with English. A few men I might raise—were I free to do so. But I am not. Here it is different. We would be acting on Surrey’s orders. Do you not see it? And do you not see that you have here much to bargain with? Say to Percy that you wish to retire in peace. That your sixty years weigh heavy on you. That you will give me authority to raise your vassals of Annandale. But that you must be allowed to go, in peace. From here. Where you will. Do not say to Norway, I counsel you!”

“Aye.” The other had started pacing the floor.

“Aye—and when I return from Norway. In the spring. You will have an army waiting for us? To gain my throne?”

His son lifted wide shoulders.

“God willing,” he said cryptically.

So, for once, father and son were agreed, or seemed to be.

Percy, when told, appeared well content. He requested Bruce to proceed forthwith to Annandale—with Sir Harry Beaumont and a contingent of two hundred cavalry to aid and escort him. Other recruiting-agents were sent through Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland. Percy himself departed across country eastwards, for a brief visit to his own Alnwick, to raise more men there. One week, and all must be back at Carlisle.

In Annandale, Bruce found all his brothers, in Annan Castle itself, on its mote dominating the straggling red-stone town amongst the green tree-dotted meadows of the deep-running river.

Edward, two years younger than Robert, was acting as his father’s deputy in this great lordship, a dark, smouldering-eyed, intense young man, despite his name, all Celt; Thomas, just twenty, quiet, slow of speech, but giving the impression of a coiled spring;

Nigel, cheerful, irrepressible, wooing half the girls of the town;

Alexander, only sixteen, but clever, studious, more diffident than the others. They made a contrasting group, with only a hot temper uniform to them all. Their unmarried sister Mary, a laughing tomboy of a girl of seventeen, acted chat elaine to an undisciplined and lively household in the great gloomy castle.

When Bruce could win free of Sir Henry Beaumont, who clung closer to him than any brother—and whom the Lady Mary was eventually deputed to distract—he took the others into his confidence, and was not long in winning their whole-hearted enthusiasm, Nigel’s in especial. All agreed to co-operate in the raising of the men, and all clamoured to accompany the eventual contingent northwards. That would have been folly, but it was agreed that Edward and Nigel should come campaigning.

Thereafter the Bruces rode far and wide through Annandale and lower Eskdale and Nithsdale, which all formed part of the lordship, summoning to the standard the young men of the rich and populous Solway lands.

Armed service with their lord was, of course, together with rent in

kind, the basis of all land tenure, and able-bodied men between sixteen

and sixty could not refuse, from lairds and substantial farmers down to

shepherds, foresters and herd-boys. The Lordship of Annandale was

particularly highly rated in this respect, being a crown fief of no

fewer than twenty five knights’ fees—that is as a condition of the

original royal grant to the first Robert de Bruis seven generations