Insurrection: Renegade [02] (13 page)

Balliol’s chest tightened at these words, but he exhaled that clenching hope quickly, his mind refusing to believe such a bold statement. It sounded ridiculous. ‘How could he do such a thing?’ His voice was quiet, weary now, revealing something of the broken man behind the stiff façade.

‘A permanent peace between England and France has yet to be agreed. Gascony is still in my master’s possession. He could continue to withhold the duchy, unless Edward agrees to end his war against your kingdom and allows you to return to your throne.’

‘Why would Philippe do this? I do not understand.’

‘In honour of your former alliance and so that he may once again have an ally on the throne of Scotland. An ally who could help him keep the ambitions of his English cousin in check.’

Trust for Balliol had become a hard-won thing: a pearl, only moulded by time and grit. He had trusted Philippe once before. Just as he had trusted King Edward, godfather to his nineteen-year-old son, who was named after him. Edward had chosen him to be king over the Bruce and all other claimants; had watched him sit upon the Stone of Destiny, the crown set upon his head. Four years later, Edward had forced him to stand upon that platform at Montrose erected for his humiliation. Balliol could still hear the sound of cloth ripping as two of Edward’s knights tore the royal arms of Scotland from his surcoat, followed by the cheer of the mob. Toom tabard, they had called him. King Nobody.

He looked out of the window as lightning lit the landscape. Long before the Balliol family acquired rich estates in England and Scotland, they had lived here, amid the soft green of Picardy’s meadows and vineyards. It was from this northern edge of land, which looked ever towards England, that the Conqueror had first set out, Balliol’s ancestors with him. This was the birthing place of conquest. Perhaps it could be again.

Slowly, John Balliol dared to hope.

Chapter 10

Near Turnberry, Scotland, 1301 AD

In the cramped, fire-lit room the rasping words whispered over the grinding of stone on stone.

‘
In the name of Lady Moon and Brigid of the flame I adjure thee, cleave to my will.
’

The stifling air was choked with smoke from the fire, its bitter tang in contrast to the sickly odour of mould that rose from the straw covering the earth floor. Pots and pans crusted black from years of use hung down from the rafters, along with sprigs of liverwort, cloudberry, mandrake root and heather. Over by a pallet bed heaped with furs, things scurried in the shadows. A small pile of books teetered nearby, the boards and bindings loose. The words scored in the covers were faded, the edges of the pages mouse-eaten and green with damp, the names of the authors all but vanished. Pliny. Aristotle. Ptolemy. Galen.

‘
By the power of the sacred horn and the midsummer sun I adjure thee, cleave to my will.
’

As she ground the stone pestle into the mortar, Affraig felt the twinges in her wrist and arm that afflicted her often these days, the joints seeming to knot and fuse beneath her paper-thin skin until it felt as though her limbs were on fire. Inside the bowl the desiccated liver, heart and genitals of the male coney she had snared a month earlier were slowly pulverised into a pinkish grey dust with each painful movement.

‘You have the wine?’

‘Yes,’ came the breathy female voice behind her.

Affraig turned as Bethoc, the young wife of a fisherman from Turnberry, stepped keenly towards her, holding out a glazed jug, stopped up by a yellow wedge of wax. Affraig took it impatiently, intent on finishing the concoction as quickly as possible. She was glad of the business, but Bethoc’s frequent appearances had begun to grate on her nerves; last month a cure for her son’s toothache, the month before a charm for her baby daughter’s rash, which she said had been caused by a hex from a jealous neighbour who was barren. Setting the jug on the worm-rotten table by the mortar, Affraig tapped the ground organs into the wine, frowning with concentration as her hands trembled. ‘Have your husband drink this two days before the moon is full. No later. You will find his potency returned soon after. Make sure he drinks it all.’

Bethoc, usually so attentive to her every word, hadn’t responded.

Affraig looked round irritably. ‘Do you hear me, Bethoc?’

The young woman was standing at the door, which had swung open in the breeze. She was looking out, her arms hanging limp at her sides, her body stiff and unmoving. ‘What
is
that?’

Putting down the mortar, Affraig shuffled across, the hems of her shabby brown dress trailing threads of straw in her wake. Standing beside Bethoc, the summer wind breathing warmth on her face, she saw a pall of smoke rising in the distance. It gusted high above the woods that surrounded her house, painting the blue sky black. It was coming from Turnberry.

‘Is a house burning?’ Bethoc asked, looking at her for answer.

‘No,’ murmured Affraig, her skin tight and cold. The fire was far too large for that, the plumes coming from too many places at once, forming a dense cloud. It wasn’t one house. It was many. ‘The English have come.’ The impact of the words hit her a few moments after she uttered them.

For months, rumours of invasion had been spreading wild about Carrick, sowing seeds of fear and panic in the people. Affraig had heard them all from the men and women who came to her for their cures and charms. Caerlaverock Castle had fallen, they told her first, in hushed voices. Some said the English were heading north to Glasgow, others were convinced they were advancing west towards them. The people of Turnberry and other settlements along the Carrick coast seemed braced with fear, but rooted, like coneys frozen under the shadow of a hawk. Unwilling to leave homes and livestock, or let wheat wither in the fields, most had stayed put, saying the Scots under the guardians, John Comyn and William Lamberton, would turn back the English before they could get far. Now, it seemed, their faith had been misplaced.

Bethoc, who had paled at Affraig’s words, stepped outside, her eyes fixed on the dark, drifting clouds. ‘I must get to my children,’ she said, wrapping her arms about her. Sweat beaded her brow and lip, but she was shivering. ‘My babies.’

‘It is too late. You should stay here. I doubt the soldiers will come this far.’ Affraig could smell the smoke now, a faint reek of burning timber, thatch and straw.

Bethoc didn’t seem to have heard. She hastened away towards the woods, the jug of wine containing the cure for her husband’s impotence forgotten.

Affraig watched her disappear into the trees, above which a flock of seabirds came flying, their escape from the flames enviably easy. Moving back inside the house, she wished her dogs were still with her, but the last had died, old and blind, two winters ago. She paused in the doorway, her watery eyes fixing on the broad oak that towered over her dwelling, adorned with its webs of twigs. There were scores of them, the branches clouded with destinies, hopes and prayers. Most were for love, or money or health, each lattice of bound twigs containing a symbol of the person’s desire held there by a thread: a red ribbon around a lock of hair, a frayed silk purse, a sprig of vervain. Affraig’s gaze sought out one, hanging high amid the green, a crown of heather, wormwood and broom spiralling slowly in the centre.

‘Where are you, Robert?’ she murmured.

Turnberry, Scotland, 1301 AD

Smoke wreathed Turnberry in a black shroud, billowing from the homes, storehouses and workshops that clustered the shoreline between the wooded hills and the sea. Flames surged up the sides of buildings, the heat cracking open the mud-daubed walls. Over the crackle of fire came the groaning creak and crash of timbers as the roof of a barn collapsed, a shower of sparks erupting from the centre. Squeals echoed from within. As one of the doors buckled inwards, a white horse burst out of the inferno, eyes mad, mane and tail alight, flesh blistered. It galloped away down the street, a monstrous thing cloaked in smoke and flame, past burning houses and the bodies that scattered the ground.

There was a young man lying on his stomach, a knife still gripped in his fist. His head had been cleaved from his body and lay a few feet away, linked by a dark wash of blood. Nearby, two women were sprawled together over the threshold of a flaming house, their mouths and nostrils stained black with smoke, the air around them rippling with heat. Other corpses, most of them men, displayed gaping wounds made by the hack or stab of swords. Some had weapons in their hands and were on their backs, fallen in the place where they had made a stand, but many were unarmed, cut down in the act of fleeing, carrying sacks or armfuls of possessions that were now littered about them. Everywhere, the dusty ground was scuffed by the iron-shod hooves of horses.

Out in the fields, huge swathes of wheat were aflame. It had been a dry summer and the fires spread quickly, devouring the crops. Sheep and cattle in the pastures were fleeing. There was fire too on the beach, coming from a row of fishing boats that had been set alight. Beyond, the white waves continued to rush at the shore, as unheeding of the disaster unfurling before them as the sun in the blue sky or the cormorants that wheeled over the rocky mass of Ailsa Craig, far out in the bay. Above the golden crescent of sand, where cliffs climbed to a grassy headland, the walls of Turnberry Castle rose through veils of smoke. The fortress stood untouched on a precipitous promontory above the foaming sea, gates shut.

Beyond, just out of bowshot range, Humphrey de Bohun eased off his great helm, decorated with a spray of swan feathers. The padded coif he wore beneath was sodden with sweat and tinged black by smoke. He could taste its bitterness. Handing the helm to his squire, Humphrey swung down from the saddle. He accepted the skin of wine one of his pages offered to him and rolled his shoulders, strained by the burden of mail. Around him, spread out across the bluffs in front of the fortress, knights and squires were doing much the same. After the day’s ride and in this sapping summer heat, the sack of the settlement had proven thirsty work. The torches borne by many of the infantry had been thrust into the dry soil, flames swirling in the breeze that rippled through the coarse grass.

‘Sir Humphrey.’

He turned as a band of his men trotted their horses up the shallow slope towards him. He had set them to work burning the crops.

The knight at the head pulled his charger to a halt. ‘It’s done, sir.’ He smiled grimly. ‘The villagers won’t be threshing any grain this harvest.’

Humphrey nodded as he tossed the wine skin back to his page. ‘Good work, Aleyn. Have the men water their horses and stretch their legs. But stay close. We have more work to do today.’ He looked back at the castle, which thrust from the cliff-top: the birthplace of Robert Bruce. How best to crack open its stone shell? he wondered.

As he was pondering the options, Humphrey’s gaze was caught by a tall figure striding towards him. It was Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, nephew of the king and one of the most powerful barons in England. He still carried his sword, the blade of which gleamed with a smear of blood. A fearful opponent on the tournament ground, the young man, heir through marriage to the great earldoms of Leicester and Lincoln, was proving just as dangerous in war.

Thomas’s usually good-humoured expression was tight with anger. ‘Have you spoken to my cousin?’

‘Not since we entered Turnberry.’ Humphrey scanned the men, searching for Edward. ‘Why?’

‘He plans to move on to Ayr this afternoon.’

Humphrey’s brow furrowed. ‘But the castle hasn’t—’

‘He doesn’t intend to take it,’ Thomas cut across him. ‘He believes Ayr will be the better target.’ His gaze fixed on the king’s son, who Humphrey now spotted, standing in a crowd of young men.

At Edward’s side was Piers Gaveston. The Gascon youth was as dark as the king’s son was fair, his black surcoat trimmed with silver. The two were sharing a skin of wine, laughing and talking as though it were a feast day.

‘I believe it to be a poor excuse,’ continued Thomas. ‘My cousin has other targets on his mind. From what I hear, Gaveston has convinced him to hold a tournament before we take the next town. He says it will be good training for him and his friends. It appears they have become bored of burning crops and raiding villages.’

‘I will speak to him.’

As Humphrey crossed the field towards Edward, his jaw clenched. After the fall of Caerlaverock, the king split his army in two, personally leading one half north towards Bothwell Castle near Glasgow, while his son led a campaign in Galloway and Carrick. Under young Edward’s banner, this second force had marched across the south-west, torching settlements, leaving a land blackened and devastated. But, over the course of the past weeks, the king’s son seemed to have become less and less interested in his command, until Humphrey found himself planning much of their strategy and issuing orders. He had endeavoured to guide the king’s son back to the task in hand, but the newfound freedom away from his father’s eye seemed to have gone to his head. This, coupled with the influence the wilful Piers exerted over him, meant Humphrey was finding it increasingly difficult to rein him in.

‘My lord Edward.’ Humphrey’s anger sharpened at the derisive look Piers gave him as he entered the ring of men, some of whom were Knights of the Dragon, as Humphrey had once been, before he was inducted into the king’s Round Table. ‘I hear you plan to lead the men out from Turnberry today.’