Nigel Tranter - The Steps to the Empty Throne

As the others followed suit, Bruce waved his hand to his brothers. As

they gave their orders for the Annandale men to draw apart and ride

on, he urged his mount over to where the two women sat their horses, silent spectators of the scene. He did not speak, but searched Elizabeth’s face.

“So you change sides once more, my lord!” she said.

He knew that was what she must say—but had hoped, somehow, that she would not.

“You think it? You think that is what it is?” he demanded.

“What else? That, or you have been acting a lie for long.”

He spread his hands.

“A lie? What is the lie, and what is the truth? I have not changed in my own mind. I have done what I must. In a storm, a man does not speak of lies and truth, but seeks to keep his bark afloat! To reach its haven.”

“And you have a haven in mind?”

“Aye. I have a haven in mind.”

Percy had ridden up, frowning.

“Come,” he commanded the women brusquely.

His wife, a tired-faced and anxious woman with fine eyes, sighed.

“This is men’s business, my dear,” she said.

“Leave it to them. Since we can effect nothing.” She reached out a hand to the girl’s wrist.

“Come, yes.”

Something of the way she had said that caused Bruce to look keenly from her to Elizabeth, wondering.

The younger woman seemed to ignore them all.

“You intended this?” she put to Bruce.

“From the beginning? To use this march, these men, for your own ends? Before ever there was the word of this victory. When we talked, at Carlisle night.

Even then, you had conceived it all? And let me name you …

what I did!”

Wordless at her sudden intensity, he nodded.

“You did not trust me, then?” She seemed to be unaware of the Percies at her side.

Still he did not speak.

“If Wallace had not won his victory—what then?” she persisted.

“What would you have done?”

He glanced at Percy.

“This. The same. Though with bloodshed, perhaps. If we had been withstood.”

She let out a long sigh.

“Then I am glad,” she said simply, and the intensity seemed to go out with her breath.

Percy was looking angry, apprehensive and bewildered, in one.

He grasped Elizabeth’s bridle, and pulled her beast round after his own.

She did not resist him now. But she turned in her saddle.

“Tell my uncle, the Steward, I wish him well. He and his. And … and may God go with you.”

Biting his lip, Bruce watched her ride away.

And so the host divided, there on Torphichen heights, in silence, without blows or any other leave-taking. The Scots sat their horses and watched as the English turned and trotted off, file upon file, whence they had come, southwards for the Pentland Hills and the long secret road to the border.

PART TWO

Chapter Eight

Scotland rejoiced. Abbey and church bells rang day after day, bonfires blazed on the heights for nights on end, folk danced in the streets of towns and on village greens. The English were gone—all save the garrisons of a few impregnable but isolated fortresses, Lochmaben, Roxburgh, Edinburgh and Stirling itself, where the gallant Sir Marmaduke Tweng, who almost alone on the English side had come out of the disaster with untarnished reputation, still held out. But these could achieve nothing, and did little to dampen the enthusiasm, relief and joy of the people.

The name of William Wallace was on every lip, prayed for in every kirk, honoured in every burgh and village and hamlet. The Scots, never hero-worshippers until now, acknowledged their saviour, and delighted the more in that he was one of themselves, of the old race, a knight’s son admittedly, but of the people.

Everywhere the acclaim rang out.

Or, not quite everywhere perhaps. In many a castle and manor of the land there were reservations—even in not a few whose owners had won them back, out of English occupation, thanks to Wallace. The nobles saw a little further than the common folk.

They saw the established order endangered. Their men, their own vassals, were everywhere flooding to join this Wallace, quite ignoring their feudal duties and service to their lords, the system on which the entire community was built. Land, enduring, indestructible, viable, calculable land, was the unit on which a realm must be based; not persons, who were ephemeral, unreliable, removable, and who could and did pass away. The land did not die, and the great families who managed the land were not going to pass away either. Yet Wallace held only a miserable few acres of this land, and claimed the people as all-important. And he was not even a Norman, his mother-tongue not French but the Erse gibberish.

Few, of course, even of the most proud, lofty and influential of the lords, denigrated the scale, brilliance or the effect of Wallace’s Stirling Bridge victory. Moreover, although only in a minor capacity and in the later stages, he had been supported in his victory by some of the great ones-the Steward himself, Lennox, Crawford, Macduff, son of the Earl of life; and, of course, the Graham. Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell had been his principal lieutenant, and had indeed fallen, mortally wounded it was said.

So Wallace could no longer be called outlaw, brigand, claimed as something like a Highland cateran and guerilla fighter. Even men with legitimate doubts had to recognise realities.

Robert Bruce was one of the doubters, of course, although his concern was rather different from the others-not so much for the land, nor yet the people, but for the kingdom. Wallace’s blow had been struck for the people; but it was a blow for the kingdom also, and so must be acclaimed, supported. But Wallace himself did not represent the kingdom’s cause; Wallace might indeed endanger the kingdom. He had fought in John Baliol’s name.

Bruce, that vital September, did not in fact encounter Wallace.

When he arrived at battle-torn Stirling, with his Annandale men, it was to find the Steward and many of the lords assembled there, but Wallace himself gone, pursuing the fleeing English with all his mounted strength. All was falling before him, and he was maintaining the impetus to such an extent he was said to be actually making for Berwick itself. There was even a suggestion that he intended to drive on, down into England.

This would be folly, all the Scots lords agreed, Bruce included.

They sent couriers after Wallace, advising him strongly against any such course. Nothing would be more likely, Bruce pointed out, to reunite the English, at present at sixes and sevens, than an actual invasion of their land.

There was much to do at Stirling, with a whole land, suddenly freed from a fierce and authoritative grip, to be brought under control. The lords and bishops applied themselves to this, under the frowning regard of Stirling’s great fortress, still English-held, but impotent, not really besieged even yet, but contained. Buchan, the Constable, had come south with his cousin, John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch; so that there were two great officers of state to represent the highest authority in the land and take charge of the attempts at administration. Again, in the name of King John Baliol.

Bruce protested about this, declaring that Baliol had abdicated and

renounced the throne. His deposition and humiliation by Edward could

be overlooked perhaps; but not his renunciation and fleeing the country. He was no longer King, in any sense. To act, here, in his name, was not only wrong but folly.

The matter was complicated. In the past, when the Kingdom of Scotland had been without an effective monarch, for one reason or another, a Guardian had always been appointed to act on behalf of the Crown and bear the supreme authority. Obviously such a Guardian should be appointed now. But who should be the Guardian?