There were those who knew it was an echo of Perceval’s declaration from the Round Table, when Arthur’s knights set out to find the Holy Grail — but that was part of it all. That and the minstrels and the food and the drink and the boasts.
One or two looked at the old king and wondered, all the same… De Lacy, for one. He had seen Edward on the day news had arrived of Bruce’s murderous treachery, seen the grey cast that seemed to turn the King’s face to stone, then the mad flush that darkened it.
‘God rot him,’ he had exploded. ‘I will chain him like a mad dog. Let him and all those with him be cursed and their accomplices in evil with them. He is now ranked with the fratricide Cain, and with Judas the traitor, and with Core, Dathan and Abiron, who entered Hell while still living for their revolt against Moses…’
There had been more, until the King fell to the floor and caused a mad scramble of alarm. He had lain in a dead faint for half a day and spent the next two weeks being carried about in a litter, so that de Lacy had thought he would never recover.
He had, almost miraculously, growling for retribution and sending off Aymer de Valence to the north to commence red war. De Lacy was relieved that de Valence been handed the task — at fifty-six the Earl of Lincoln did not want to be the one raising the dragon banner in the north, with no quarter asked or given. De Lacy was the last of the old warriors from Edward’s early days — Aymer’s father, William, was long dead, John de Warenne was dead these three years since, Roger Bigod was too ill… the list went on.
Six wars and eight years it had taken not to defeat the Scots — and here they were again, setting off with an army to burn and scourge the north.
What settled despair in Edward, like a chill winter mist, was not the expense and weariness of yet another campaign, but the realization that there seemed no end to it; he had thought the matter done, thought Bruce, at least, valued the firm hand. Yet the very day of that lord’s spurious crowning was a slap with a metalled gauntlet — Lady Day, ten years to the very day Edward himself had declared war on the Scotch.
This would be the last of it, Edward thought. I will burn and scourge them as they have never been. I will give them the breath of the dragon…
But he also knew it had to be the last of it. His contemporaries were all gone and the new breed would need to step up to the ring from now on; he sat at the round table — the echo of Arthur yet again — and stared at his son — the new breed.
He had done his best to bind him to the young firebrand nobiles, but he was not sure if the boy understood what had been done or why; even now, invited to speak to his father in his private chambers, he had contrived to bring Gaveston.
The King glanced sourly at the man his son favoured over all others, grudgingly admitting that the youth had borne the vigil well enough, looked fresh still. He had been the first one his son had knighted and was, the King knew, a fearsome tourney fighter, which did not endear him any better to those who distrusted his particular favour, disliked his arrogance and did not care to be dumped on their arse in the mud.
Edward took him in, up and down in a moody glance, remembering bitterly that he had brought this one into his son’s circle thinking he would be a good influence. Of all the mistakes I have made in my life, he thought, this was the worst. It might be possible still to be rid of the man. Replace him with someone my son also favours — like that youngster, Roger Mortimer.
Gaveston’s gilded cap of hair was bright, his tunics blue and brown — and a red silk one over all, decorated with embroidered birds in gold. His shoes, Edward noted with distaste, had been shaped particular to each foot and were, God help us all, pointed at the toe.
‘I summoned you, Caernarvon,’ he growled. ‘I do not recall anyone else on that list.’
Caernarvon. The very name was a slap to a son who wanted a father; not even a son’s name, but a title.
‘I understood the summons to be a discussion on matters pertaining to the Scotch disturbances,’ his son replied, while Gaveston wisely stayed silent. ‘My brother here is well versed in matters of battle.’
Edward met the cool, bland eyes of Gaveston, then flicked his gaze back to his son’s whey face. Jesu, he thought to himself, feeling the deep sinkhole of despair open in him, I have to leave the Kingdom to this one. God help it.
He rallied; if he was to leave it to frivolity and, Christ preserve it, pointed shoes then he would leave it in the best condition he could manage; no-one would stand over the tomb of Edward Plantagenet and mourn about the state of the realm handed over to his son.
‘Brother you may call him,’ he replied, flat and cold, ‘but I never sired it. Out.’
Gaveston hesitated for a heartbeat, enough to bring the blood flushing up to Edward’s neck. Then the youth bowed languidly from the waist, backed away two steps, turned and was gone. The King regarded his son with a look that would have turned milk.
‘A summons to this place,’ he growled wearily, ‘is a family matter. You should know this by now — Christ and all His Saints, boy, you have had it dinned into you for long enough.’
‘I thought only to please you,’ his son replied miserably. ‘It was my intent to ask permission to bestow Ponthieu on my brother, Sir Piers.’
The words sank into Edward like slow knives, so slowly in fact that his son did not realize the cut of them until he saw the King suddenly rise, the chair behind him tumbling with a clatter. Then the droop-eyed horror, face a dark bag of blood, made him recoil, remembering all the other times he had been victim of this wrath.
‘Ponthieu,’ Edward roared. ‘Ponthieu… you bastard son of a bitch. Ponthieu?’
He was suddenly there, towering over his son, who had shrunk on to a chair. Then, with utter terror, the prince felt his father’s hands batter him, like the wings of some maddened bird.
‘You would give home lands away to a turd in silk? You? Who never gained as much as a clod in your entire life?’
He gave up trying to beat with a strength he did not possess; the prince had lost his cap and his senses, could no more resist this terrible old man than he could fight the wind, so he sat, bowed and let the thunder roll on him.
Edward saw the prinked and rolled perfection of his son’s hair, saw the attempts at gilding it in a vain parody of Gaveston’s and, finally, found a way to hurt. He grabbed handfuls of it while the prince, stung by pain and fear at last, shrieked and tried to free himself. Raw knots came away; blood flew.
In another eyeblink, the prince felt the storm rush away, stared up at the panting, furious figure who looked at the bloody tufts in his fists and blinked owlishly.
‘I only wished ever to please you,’ the prince managed, a whimper that he heard in his own ears and felt shame at; Edward let the bloody horror feather from his fists and bent to pick his son up. Twenty and three, he thought, taking him close, close enough to feel the stickiness of blood on his own cheek. He patted him absently and murmured, as if in some distant dream where the boy was still only three, with all hope bright.
‘I know, boy. I know.’
Then, suddenly, the prince had the weight in his arms and could not hold it, let his father slip to the rushed floor of the chamber and called for help.
Near Cupar Castle, Fife
Feast of St Baithen, Blessed Successor to Columba, June, 1306
Kirkpatrick knew he was done, that God had finally abandoned him. He had, in truth, known in the minute he had clacked his way across the flags of Scone’s private chapel, summoned by the King and running the gauntlet of scowling envy from the accumulated court as he did so.
He had heard them in his head, whispering about the Auld Dug, the De’il’s ain imp. The young mesnie, with their curled hair and matching lips, he thought sourly and then with satisfaction of how the Bruce, new kinged, still needed him.
At least that was some balm on his mood, which was all wolfsbane; he knew why and did not like to admit it, either — that the quarrel with the Herdmanston lord had left him feeling estranged and somehow lessened, which was a feeling he did not care for.
The new court officials watched him huffily; there was now an etiquette for being presented to King Robert, involving so many steps, so many bows, waiting until summoned, leaving backwards… but none of it involved Kirkpatrick and the chamberlains and doorwards resented this.
Not that the King was enthroned for receiving — exactly the opposite. The new king of Scots lay on the tiles,
