Nigel Tranter - The Steps to the Empty Throne

Bygones would be bygones.

The first large-scale demonstration of the new genial dispensation was not the parliament but an elaborate reception, at Dunfermline, of the surrendered Scots leadership. Edward had a fondness for defeated opponents in clanking chains, wearing sackcloth and ashes, and otherwise emphasising the evident; but on this occasion it was to be different. The victor would be magnanimous, and the vanquished made aware of how mistaken and foolish, as well as wicked, they had been.

The ceremony was held in the Abbey itself, since the English earlier had burned down the Great Hall of the palace, one of the finest buildings in the land. It was packed, for the occasion, with half the nobility of England, and all foreign ambassadors.

Bruce found himself very much part of the proceedings, to his discomfiture. The King and Queen had thrones set up within the chancel, with the Prince of Wales seated a little to one side. Bruce was commanded to come and stand directly at Edward’s left hand, with Ulster at the right, Elizabeth being required to take up a similar position beside the Queen, with her aunt, the Steward’s wife, at the right. Not only so, but the Bruce brothers, with the exception of Alexander, who was still at Cambridge, had been summoned to Dunfermline also, and were now placed behind the thrones. None looked any more happy than their elder brother; but there was no doubt that the impression given was the Bruce family was the principal support of the King as far as Scotland was concerned.

When all was in readiness, a fanfare of trumpets sounded, and the great church doors were thrown open. Then, as musicians played a funereal dirge, the Scots filed in.

Edward evidently had been concerned to make this a very different affair from the somewhat similar occasion eight years before, at Stracathro parish church, when John Baliol had made his submission. Now the iron fist was to be hidden in the velvet glove. There was no armour, little steel, and certainly no warhorses in sight. The King and his whole Court were in a glittering splendour of gold, silver and jewellery, velvets, satins and silks. The Scots had also been told to eschew all armour and warlike garb—and a sorry, ragged, threadbare crew they looked in consequence, patched and out-at-elbows. For these were men surrendered only after long and unsuccessful campaigning in the field, living rough and in the saddle. Their armour, however rusty and battered, would have had some dignity; but denied it they had come to court little better than a band of scarecrows.

They held their heads the higher therefore, of course—but it was difficult to maintain any martial carriage shuffling forward to the slow strains of a dirge.

Three gorgeously-apparelled English heralds led, setting the desperately slow pace. Then, alone, paced John Comyn, the Guardian.

Bruce, watching, was almost sorry for his enemy. Not that the man looked humbled, or other than a proud fighter forced to take part in folly; but unkempt, unshaven, shabbily-clad and obviously weary, he represented defeat, a grievous state for the Lord of Badenoch. He did not hang his head, however, but, avoiding looking at the King, stared levelly at Bruce as he walked.

Behind him came Lamberton, the Steward, Buchan the Constable and the Earls of Lennox and Strathearn. The Steward was better dressed than the others; perhaps his wife had managed to smuggle clothing to him. The Primate was not in his wandering friar’s rags, but not a great deal finer. Buchan was limping from a leg wound. Lamberton exchanged a quick glance with Bruce, and then gazed straight ahead.

There followed the main body of the Scots lords, temporal and spiritual, led by de Umfraville, the former Guardian, the Lord of Crawford, the Bishops of Glasgow and Galloway, Master William Comyn. De Soulis was still in France, Wallace’s enormous figure notably absent.

The sight of them all stirred a great wave of emotion in Bruce.

These grim years he had sought to steel himself against emotion, a weakness he could not afford. But in the face of his former associates and comrades in arms, thin, war-ravaged, humiliated, he groaned a little—though he did not know it. He saw himself as they must see him, and swallowed.

Edward, smiling genially and tossing comments and identities to his

wife loudly, waited until no more of the surrendered Scots could be

crammed into the great church. Even after a trumpet had stilled the

mournful music and a herald demanded silence for the King’s Majesty,

he chatted on, apparently casual, to the Queen, to Ulster, to Bruce—however un forthcoming the latter.

Then, as the ranks before him fidgeted, stirred, he gestured to them.

“Welcome, friends, to my peace,” he exclaimed.

“You come belatedly to my Court and presence. But now here, you are welcome.”

None attempted answer to that.

“So many faces well known to me,” the King went on, jovially.

“Some less ruddy, it may be, than when last I saw them! So many who swore fealty to me at Berwick, that day—eh, Robert my friend? You were there assisting!”

“Scarce assisting, Sire. Then. Any more than today.” That was level, almost expressionless, from stiff lips.

Edward ignored it.

“Friends of yours. Friends of my own—or so they swore! Absent friends—so long absent. Now wisely returned to my peace. But … less wise than you, Robert. Better that they had followed your lead the sooner?”

Biting his lip, Bruce forced himself to meet Comyn’s baleful stare.

Edward actually turned in his throne, to grin at the younger man.

“You are silent, lad? Does the sight of these your friends distress you? On my oath, it should not! For you greatly aided in bringing them here, did you not?”

“You credit me with too much, Sire,” Bruce got out.

“I have done nothing. Towards this.”

“Ha—you were not always so modest, Robert! How say you, my lord of Badenoch? Are not you—is not all this Scotland-beholden to my lord of Carrick for leading the way into my peace? And then labouring valiantly to establish it.”

Comyn bowed, wordless.

“Another modest man!” Edward’s smile was wearing thin.

“Yet you both set yourselves up to rule this realm of mine. In my place. And that is treason is it not, my lords?”

Into the quivering quiet which greeted the enunciation of that dread word, it was William Lamberton who spoke.

“My lord King,” he said clearly, firmly, “the Lord of Badenoch, as Guardian of Scotland, has surrendered on terms. We with him. To which terms Your Majesty has assented. We are here to claim those terms. There was not, and could not be, treason. From Scots, to the King of England. But even had there been, you annulled it. By treating. This is established usage, known by all.

Which none can contest.”

“God’s eyes-you are bold, Sir Priest! You will be the clerk, Lamberton! Whom the outlaw Wallace raised up.”

“I am William Lamberton, appointed to the see of St. Andrews by the Guardian and Council of Scotland, and consecrated Bishop thereof by His Holiness of Rome.”

“The Crown appoints to bishoprics, sirrah! And I am the Crown!”

Edward thundered.

“Hereafter keep silent. No man speaks in my presence save by my invitation.”

Bruce flashed a glance of acknowledgement at his friend, who had so evidently sought to divert the Plantagenet from his strategy of seeming to establish Bruce as largely responsible for the downfall of his fellow-countrymen, and so still more deeply dividing Scotland.

Edward turned back to Comyn.

“You, my lord—if you still have a tongue in your head! Did you or did you not swear fealty to me at Berwick, eight years ago? Do you deny your signature on that Ragman’s Roll?”

“I do not, Sire,” the other admitted.