Nigel Tranter - The Steps to the Empty Throne

Bruce was surprised to find his right ankle gripped, and glanced down to see Nigel leaping along beside him, mud covered, bare-headed and lacking his sword now also, but apparently unhurt. Bruce reached down a hand and somehow his brother, after three or four attempts, managed to haul himself up behind him, lying stomach down over the beast’s broad and heaving rump.

“Steward safe … safe,” he gasped in Bruce’s ear, as he got himself upright.

“Many down?”

“Aye. Curse the bowmen!”

“Not long now. Range. Too far…”

The hail of arrows had at least one advantage; they effectively inhibited over-eagerness on the part of the English pursuers.

These advisedly left a very clear field for their archer colleagues.

Bruce was now leading almost directly uphill towards the wood but perhaps quarter of a mile further south than where they had come down. This meant, of course, that it was the rear ranks of his party which had to take the main punishment from the bowmen, with only the odd spent shaft failing forward amongst the leaders. Only a heroic dolt would have had it otherwise—and Robert Bruce was not that.

At last, in the blessed shelter of the trees, Bruce pulled up his spume-covered, panting, almost foundered horse. All around him others did likewise. Wallace gripped his saddlebow and stared blindly ahead of him, wordless. The Steward came up, spitting blood on a gar ron from which the owner had fallen. Scrymgeour and Blair came running to Wallace’s side.

Bruce looked back, downhill, on chaos and confusion. There was no longer any pattern to the scene, only a hopeless medley of men and horses, heaving and surging this way and that, darting, circling eddying—or not moving at all. The schiltroms had finally broken up, and most of the spearmen appeared to be seeking escape through the marshland, where the cavalry could not follow, or even in the loch itself, splashing through the shallows, or swimming in deeper water. Some were fleeing uphill towards these woods. Many would escape—but more would the.

Bruce was looking for more than the fleeing foot. Scattered all over the littered slopes, the remnants of his own seven hundred were striving to make their way up here, in ones and twos and small groups, avoiding contests and heroics. Most seemed to be likely to succeed, with the enemy perhaps lacking in enthusiasm for any difficult chase and the battle won; after all, Edward’s host was said to be next to starving, horses’ fodder as scarce as men’s.

Bruce was thankful to see that many of his Northerners were winning clear-for no more than one hundred and fifty had managed to follow immediately at his back.

He turned to Wallace.

“You are wounded, Sir William? Can you go on? Sit that beast? Or … shall we make a litter?”

The big man stared downwards.

“I … am … very well,” he said.

“That you are not! But can you ride …?”

“I am very well,” he repeated, heavily.

“But others … are not.

Those who looked to me …”

“Here is folly, man! A battle lost, aye—but others to be fought. And won! What good repining …?”

“So many dead. Fallen. Pate Boyd. Sim Fraser. Rob Keith.

Sir John the Graham. Young Mac Duff of life, the Earl’s son.

Sir John Stewart…”

“Aye, my brother,” the Steward broke in thickly.

“I saw him shot down. An arrow. And my son…? Where is Walter?”

“I saw him. Taken up on a horse,” someone called.

“Riding to the north …”

“Quiet!” Bruce burst out, cutting the air with his hand.

“Here is no time for this talk. Men have fallen, yes. Fighting. They came to fight-And fall, if need be. Time enough for talk, after. But what now? What to do? Edward will not wait and talk.”

”Aye-“ Obviously with a great effort, the dazed Wallace pulled himself

together.

“You are right, my lord. And I thank you. We fight on. But not here. We cannot stand south of the Forth. Even at Stirling. Not now. We must rally again in the hills to the north. And burn the land behind us. Burn Stirling. Burn Dunblane. Burn Perth, if need be. Starve them. Starve England’s war host. That is his weakness, now. No more battles, backed by nobles that I cannot trust! I was a fool, to think that I could out-fight Edward Plantagenet, his way. No more! I fight my own way, now. Wallace the outlaw! The brigand …!”

“You are still Guardian of this land, man.”

“Aye—and I shall fight Edward with the land. What he can ride over but never defeat. Would God I had used my own wits, instead of listening to others. But it is not too late. While Scotland lives, it is never too late! And Scotland will not, cannot, die.” The man’s great voice shook with a mighty emotion.

Bruce scarcely shared it.

“So it is Stirling now?” he demanded impatiently.

“Stirling, and beyond. The North?”

“Yes. Take me to Stirling, my lord. But not the North, for you. The lurking in the hills. The raids by night. The burning.

The ambuscade. The knife in the back. This is no work for great lords! So back to your West, Bruce—to your own country. And mine. You claimed to be Governor of the SouthWest, did you not? Go there, then. Hold the SouthWest. Harry the English West March, if you can. While we starve Edward. Raid into England. Nothing will harass hungry men more than the word that their homes are threatened, endangered. Go west from Stirling, my lord-and such other lords as are not fled I I shall require the West at your hands.”

Bruce eyed him levelly for a moment, and then nodded.

“Very well, Sir Guardian. Now—Stirling…”

Chapter Ten

In the selfsame hall of the castle of Ayr where Wallace had hanged Percy’s deputy sheriff, Arnulf, and where Percy himself resided during the long farcical negotiations of Irvine, Bruce paced the stone-flagged floor, three weeks after the battle of Falkirk.

Only one other man shared the great shadowy apartment with him, its walls still blackened by Wallace’s burning, the August evening light slanting in on them through the small high windows. This man sat at the great table, eating and drinking -and doing so in the determined fashion of one hungry, though tired, even if his mind was hardly on what he ate. He was dressed in travel-stained and undistinguished clothing—non-clerical clothing, too, and with dagger still at hip, and a sword laid along the table nearby, strange garb for the Primate of all Scotland. For this was William Lamberton, now duly consecrated and confirmed by the Pope as Bishop of St. Andrews and leader of the Church. A good-looking, strong-featured grave man, youthful seeming for so high an office, at thirty-five, he nevertheless looked older than his years tonight, weary, stern. But he watched Bruce at his pacing, keen-eyed, nevertheless.

“It would not serve,” the younger man declared, shaking his head.

“Not with him, of all men. I could not do it. Besides, Wallace is wrong in this. Mistaken. He should not give up the Guardianship. You must persuade him against it, my lord Bishop.”

“You do not know William Wallace, if you think I could I Once he has determined a matter in his mind, nothing will shake him. He is now so decided. He deems himself to have failed the realm, at Falkirk fight. To have forfeited the trust of the people …”

“That is folly. The folk all but worship the man! As they do no other.”

“Think you that I have not told him so? New back from Rome as I am, I have seen and tested the will of many in this. But he will not hear me. He says that though they still may trust him, he is not fit to be Guardian. That the Guardian must have the support of all the realm. And he has not. The nobles will have none of him …”

“Some, no. But who will? Show me any man who will receive the support of all!”