The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (154 page)

BOOK: The Complete Kingdom Trilogy

8.24Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

On his deathbed, he had reason to be pleased. He left The Kingdom stronger than it had been for many years. Regular parliaments were being held, taxation was coming in and the booty taken from England filled the empty exchequer. There was peace with the barons, service due to the king was regularized and ordered â a great improvement on the past â and there was an heir, young David, aged five years old when his father died.

But, with the last breath of The Bruce came the Curse of Malachy, that saint whom the Bruces had wronged so long ago. It had already manifested itself several times over, the last being when The Bruce's last surviving brother, Edward, tried for his own crown in Ireland, and died there instead, in 1318. There had been plots among the nobles since, but the legacy of The Bruce was still powerful enough to root them out and he had James, Earl of Douglas and Randolph, Earl of Moray as his strong arms.

But the curse on his crown fell first on Jamie Douglas, charged with taking The Bruce's heart to the Holy Land. In Spain, fighting the Moors in 1330, he was killed.

Young David was crowned King David II with full honours in 1331 and was the first King of Scots to be anointed. Almost at once, the disaffected nobles hovering across the border made their move with the tacit agreement of England's king.

Then Randolph, Earl of Moray died in 1332 while preparing to meet the invasion â in less than three years since The Bruce's death, two of the most experienced nobles available to the new king were dead.

In the south, Edward III, while swearing he would keep the peace, allowed Edward Balliol (son of the exiled king) and the âDisinherited' â all those nobles who had lands forfeited in Scotland for backing the wrong side â to sail from the Humber. They were encouraged, organized and led by the English magnate Henry de Beaumont. He had married Alice Comyn, niece of the last Earl of Buchan and so gave himself that title, though he could only claim the lands if a Balliol sat on the throne of Scotland and not a Bruce.

This invasion sailed round the Scottish defence and landed at Kinghorn, marched through Fife and in August met and destroyed the Scottish army under the new guardian, the Earl of Mar, who was left dead on the field of Dupplin.

Edward Balliol was crowned at Scone â but the Scots were not finished and, shortly afterwards, he was forced from Annan in such a hurry and disarray that it was said he went âone leg booted and the other naked'.

Edward III was happy to lend his full support to the enterprise when Balliol offered up Berwick as a prize. In an attempt to relieve the town, Archibald Douglas was beaten and killed at Halidon Hill by an English army in July 1333. The next year Balliol knelt in homage to Edward III and in addition gave up the title to most of southern Scotland; the curse on Bruce's crown was unravelling all that had been won, in blood and tears, at Bannockburn.

In desperation the Scots sent David to France where Philip VI had offered refuge. He would spend the next seven years in exile, while a series of regents kept up the struggle. It seemed, to many who had lived through the earlier times, that somehow they had been transported backwards â an English Edward personally ravaged much of the north-east of Scotland, castles fell, homes burned, crops were spoiled.

In 1338 the tide turned, heralded, as so often in Scotland's history, by a woman of strength and courage. The Countess of March held Dunbar Castle triumphantly for five months, earning the nickname Black Agnes and, famously scornful, dusting the battlements clean with a headscarf when they were struck by siege weapons. More importantly, Edward took his army to Flanders to claim the French throne â he would win a crushing victory at CrÃ©cy and start a war that lasted a Hundred Years.

So, in just nine years, the kingdom so hard won by Bruce had been shattered. The Kingdom's most experienced nobles were dead, the king was in exile, and the economy which had barely begun to recover from the earlier wars was once again in tatters. The impoverished country needed peace and good government. It needed a return of The Bruce â and it got young David instead, determined to live up to the memory of his illustrious father and existing only in his shadow.

In 1346, Philip VI of France appealed for a counter invasion of England in order to relieve the stranglehold on Calais. David gladly accepted and, at Neville's Cross, he was soundly beaten by an English army. The Scots suffered crippling casualties and one was King David himself, wounded by two arrows before being captured. He was sufficiently strong, however, to knock out two teeth from the mouth of his captor â but this brief display of his father's prowess was not nearly enough. After a period of convalescence, he was imprisoned in the Tower â to be joined later by Philip VI of France. It seemed Malachy's curse had raised Edward III to unimaginable glory.

David was eventually released in 1357 for a ransom of 100,000 merks (1 merk was two-thirds of a Scottish pound) payable over ten years from a Kingdom already in a sorry state and ravaged by the first appearance of the Black Death.

The first instalment of the ransom was paid punctually. The second was late and after that no more could be paid â there was no money from France and David wasted what was collected. In 1363, he went miserably off to London and agreed that, should he die childless, the crown would pass to Edward III (his brother-in-law) with the Stone of Destiny being returned for Edward's coronation as King of Scots.

The Kingdom's nobles, outraged, rejected this arrangement and instead offered to continue paying the ransom (now increased to 100,000 pounds). When Edward III died in 1377, there were still 24,000 marks owed which were never paid.

David himself had lost his popularity and lost the respect of his nobles when he married the widow of a minor laird after the death of his English wife. He himself died in February 1371 and the crown passed to a nephew, Robert II â a Stewart. The final curse of the Malachy on the crown was laid to rest â there would be no more Bruces.

About the Author

Robert Low has been a journalist and writer since the age of seventeen. He covered the wars in Vietnam, Sarajevo, Romania and Kosovo until common sense and the concerns of his wife and daughter prevailed.

To satisfy his craving for action, having moved to an area rich in Viking tradition, he took up re-enactment, joining The Vikings. He now spends his summers fighting furiously in helmet and mail in shieldwalls all over Britain and winters training hard.

www.robert-low.com

Also by Robert Low
The Oathsworn Series

The Whale Road

The Wolf Sea

The White Raven

The Prow Beast

Crowbone

Copyright

These novels are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them, while in some cases based on historical figures, are the work of the author's imagination.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith

London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

The Lion Wakes
first published by HarperCollins
Publishers
2011

The Lion at Bay
first published by HarperCollins
Publishers
2012

The Lion Rampant
first published by HarperCollins
Publishers
2013

Robert Low asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works

Version 1

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.