who had been slain at the start of the year.
The chapel was a miracle of beauty, left untouched even by de Valence’s rabble. It was a beautiful kingfisher of stone, small and perfect as a jewel, whose glowing painted walls were barely smoked by time, tallow and incense.
Bruce genuflected and then knelt, placing his hands on the eternal, untarnished altar as if to force it to prevail over the memory of those he mourned. He remained kneeling while all those half-in and half-out of the dimmed cool vault of it dared not come any closer, even though some were kin. Even the King’s chaplain remained outside, hands clasped inside his sleeves and head bowed.
They looked at the disordered, bowed head, the long, scarred face and the hands laid flat on the cold stone and thought he looked the very image of a warrior king, bowing before his Maker to ask for mercy and peace for those lost and for help in returning to claim the Kingdom from the Plantagenet father and son. They lowered their own heads, for they were back in the Kingdom — and would need all of God’s help to stay.
Bruce felt them like the rustle of moths in darkness, his mind full of the sins he had committed — and the ones yet to come — while the harsh taint of burning seemed to heighten the loss of two more of his brothers; Alexander, especially, was a crushing ache, for Bruce would miss the inciteful young mind.
Then there were the others, the defectors and waverers — Randolph, his own nephew, taken at Methven and pardoned into King Edward’s good grace on condition that he fought for the English; that he had so readily agreed to it was what rankled. And young David Strathbogie, new Earl of Atholl, who had been panicked enough to run off and clamour for English mercy from the very king who had hanged his father.
He heard the sudden burst of wild laughter, angrily shushed, that marked where Jamie Douglas had arrived from yet another herschip raid; even he had wavered and sent a letter that seemed to beg King Edward’s mercy. The success at Loudon Hill had forestalled him and both he and Bruce pretended no such letter had happened at all, yet it was an ache to Bruce that even Black Sir James, who so hated the English, had been brought low enough to offer a hand to them.
But young Alexander Bruce was the worst loss, the more so because all he had wanted was to be a scholar. Now only Kirkpatrick knew the secret he and Alexander had shared and Bruce was aware of the irony of events; I am returned and my forces swell daily, but even as my kingdom grows the circle of those I can trust shrinks.
As if in response, Kirkpatrick hirpled up, pushing through the throng, even shouldering past the scowl of the last brother, Edward.
Kirkpatrick felt as he knew he must look — grey-faced and sick. Nichol’s knife had missed vitals by a fingerwidth and the recovery from it had been seven long, feverish and painful months; even now he was not fit for much — yet he was still invaluable to his king, more so now than ever.
In the dim of the chapel he waited until Bruce had raised himself up, crossed himself and turned back into the world. Then he said it, having thought of ways to present it all the limping way here and discarding them at the last.
‘Longshanks is dead,’ he said flatly. ‘Has been for a week or more, but they will not announce it yet for fear of taking the heart out of the army. They wait for the son to arrive.’
There was a long pause and Kirkpatrick knew that others had heard him say it — the sudden shouts rippled out as the news leaped from head to head.
Bruce did not need to ask if Kirkpatrick was sure. Instead, he turned away, blinded by a sudden spring of tears and Kirkpatrick looked on, amazed; the Covetous King had slaughtered three of his brothers, imprisoned his queen, his sisters and daughter — yet Bruce wept for him.
Bruce was surprised himself, yet he knew the lie of it and knew, also, that everyone had seen the same and was marvelling at it. The tale would spread, of the saintly king who could weep for the death of his worst enemy, though the truth was something Bruce would never admit — that it was simple relief and release.
Longshanks was dead. This is the moment I should have waited for, he thought, the moment to claim the throne. If he had waited until now, if he had never gone to Greyfriars, so much might have been different — Thomas and Niall and Alexander…
He threw it from him with a violent shake of his head and turned into Kirkpatrick’s worried frown, not helped by the sight of his king’s face, the livid scar above and below the left eye and the still unhealed blight of his right cheek.
Yet the King was smiling and his eyes glittered as he looked at all the expectant faces.
‘The pard is dead — now the lion can roar,’ he said and they murmured their approval. The abbot began offering thanks to God, sonorous and fervent, while folk bowed, crossed themselves and knelt.
Bruce had a sudden vision of his grandfather’s face, grim as a shroud. The Competitor had been the one who had dinned into him the justice and rights of the Bruce claims to kingship, pointedly ignoring the disapproving scowls of Bruce’s own father, who seemed to have turned his back on all of that.
Until now, Bruce had reviled his father for his lack of spine, for not having the commitment that drove The Competitor and himself. Hag-ridden, he had thought, by the Curse of Malachy.
Now he knew the truth that his father had realized long before — there was no God in the right of the Bruces to rule. Brothers, friends, marriage, the grace of golden opinion, peace of mind, the very wine of life — even eating and sleeping — had all been subsumed and sold for a throne and what went with it. Smiling lies and mouthed honour, deceptions, delusions and the accusing whispers of Judas. Scorpions of the soul. The Curse of Malachy.
Ambition, he now knew, was the Devil.
Burgh-on-Sands, Cumbria
Feast of St Swithun, July, 1307
The world had ended days ago, yet somehow people moved and spoke and acted as if it had not. The Royal clerk himself found that there were still matters to attend to, ones which always took him back to the room, laden with sweet-smelling flowers and herbs and burning incense that still failed to hide the stink.
He was here again, standing at the door of the room where the world had ended, with his head down so that all he saw were the clacking boots that arrived — green and red leather, fine heels and Cordoban workmanship, all muddied with hard travel.
‘You are?’
He raised his head into the eyes of the Lord of Caernarvon, seeing the resemblance, like a blur in water, to his beloved king. He is as tall, he thought…
‘Norbert the Notary,’ said a voice at Caernarvon’s elbow as the clerk hesitated. The Lord Monthermer, he noted, struggling to find his voice.
‘You took my father’s last words down?’ demanded Edward and Norbert nodded, fumbling for the parchment; Edward waved impatiently, then indicated the closed door.
‘In there?’
Norbert nodded again and Monthermer stepped forward and flung it open, then recoiled at the smell, cupping his nose and mouth with one hand.
‘A week dead,’ Edward said thinly, ‘in this damp heat and having died of a bloody flux of the bowel. You should have expected that, my lord — what did he say, at the end?’
Norbert, taken by surprise at the last sharply-barked question, hummed and erred, then brought out the parchment of it, though the truth was that he knew it by heart.
‘He wishes his heart removed to the minster in London,’ he croaked. ‘His body is to be boiled and the bones casked up and placed at the head of the army, for he swore to invade Scotland and so he will.’
There was silence, for a moment, then Edward stirred.
‘Did he now. Nothing else?’
Norbert cleared his throat nervously.
‘Pactum serva,’ he answered and saw the prince’s drooping eye flicker a little. Pactum Serva — hold to the vow.
‘Is there more?’
Like a father’s love, thought Marmaduke Thweng, coming up in time to hear this. You will find none of that, new little king, only your da’s reminder of what you swore at the Feast of Swans. Then he took to breathing through his mouth against the smell, noting the surreptitious attempts by all the others in the coterie to ward it off in some way.
