The Honor Due a King (26 page)

My hobelars, by now adept at herding cattle, prodded their bewildered beasts along and kept them from wandering. The task became more difficult as we entered the forests around Jedburgh and so there we waylaid at a local manor and settled the herd, to be later divided and delivered. Then we set on the road again. By then we were only a few miles from my home. The men in the fore pressed their ponies to a canter. I hung back in the rear, gazing over the tops of naked trees at a pink sunset.

My horse pulled up suddenly as Boyd rode across my path and halted.

“Dragging a wee bit, are we?” Boyd said.

I had not noticed the snow falling until I saw it glistening in melted droplets on Boyd’s bushy red beard. I guided my pony around him and continued on. “Haven’t you a young wife to rush home to?”

“Wife, och. Fair to look at, but docile as a lamb. No fire in her belly – or below. Bored of her already. Must have been drunk the day I wed her.”

“More likely she was drunk when she wed you. Otherwise, who’d have you?”

He grumbled a profanity under his breath, then burst out in a tide of laughter. “Last I saw of her she was getting fat with a bairn. Mine, I hope. Our third.”

“Then you should go home. What does that make for you altogether now – eleven, twelve?”

“Thirteen.”

“Aren’t you a bit old to be raising bairns?”

“Why do you think I’m gone so much? No, I’ll stay a while. Bring some life to that deadly quiet hall of yours. Besides, I trust you’ve a good store of ale for us? Just rewards for all we’ve brought back, I say.”

“You’ll help yourself whether I ask you to stay or tell you to go. I know, by now, how it is with you.”

Jaded from yet another campaign and indolent from a long ride slowed by meandering cattle, I fell into a mundane state, not quite noticing how close I was to Lintalee. The road curved, narrowed, rose and fell as the trees crowded closer around us. My men had streamed on ahead of me, even Boyd, so that by the time I dismounted before my lodge there was not even a horsegroom at hand to take my pony. Too eager for food and drink, my men had abandoned their mounts without care, enticing them to remain by scattering grain and hay in the open yard before the lodge steps.

I stood there before my home, the pale glow of winter dusk etching every snowy tree limb in silver. Tired though I was, I finally led my own pony to the stables, removed his saddle and hung up his bridle, broke the ice in his bucket, and fed him well in reward. After putting down fresh straw and seeing that he was content, I went back toward the house.

A thick curl of smoke drifted from the chimney, indicating that the hearth was well-fired already. Waves of song spilled from within as I tugged at the door and opened it a crack. Had there been a way inside and up to my private chambers without wading through a sea of half-drunken Scottish soldiers, I would have taken it. Alas, I would have to suffer their jubilation for as long as it took me to cross the room. I plunged inside, heading straight for the stairway on the far side.

I kept my head down, nudged my way through, nodded to anyone who called out my name, but kept on, never speaking, never pausing. I had my foot on the first step when a slight body wedged past me and barred my path.

Rosalind had one hand braced on the wall and the other on the railing. “Could you have not sent word ahead that there would be so many?”

I glanced back over my shoulder, seeking some kind of retreat, some small corner of solitude, but the place was packed elbow to elbow. Defeated, I looked up at her, begging forgiveness. “Your pardon, Lady Rosalind. Come morning, send them on their way.”

She held her ground, studying me as I leaned against the wall. Her eyelashes fluttered. Her voice softened. “It was only ... unexpected. This is your home, my lord. How long these ... these men stay your decision as well, not mine. You are not wanting for food or drink though, if that is your concern. In your absence, I took the liberty of arranging better provisions with your steward. Enough to last the winter. Perhaps I should not have imposed, but it was an old habit of mine to stock the pantry whenever it was running low and so I –”

I held up my hand to stop her babbling. “Please, you needn’t apologize for... for looking after me. Forgive my rudeness, but I need to rest.”

Her chin dropped. She stepped aside to let me pass. When I was a few steps beyond, she asked, “May I bring you something to eat?”

“Aye, that would be good.” In truth, although my body required sustenance, I was too weary to even think of eating. I went on up the stairs. In my room I found the candles already lit, a peat brazier glowing warmly, and a jug of spiced cider on the table. The floor was swept clean and the scent of mint, crushed and sprinkled over my bed sheets, echoed of a woman’s touch. Too tired to maintain the premise of tidiness, I dropped my cloak upon the floor.

A sigh made me turn. Rosalind stood in the doorway, holding a wooden tray with an assortment of cheese and bread. She placed the tray on the table, poured a cup of cider and handed it to me. Then, she picked up my cloak and hung it on a peg by the door.

I had not noticed how cold I was until I felt the cider warming my palms. Greedily, I emptied the cup, then put it back on the table and sat down on the edge of the bed. I longed to sink back into the downy mattress, but I still had my shirt of mail on. As if reading my thoughts, Rosalind floated to me, lifted my hands above my head and freed me of the mail, then draped it over the back of a chair. She poured me another cup. As I put my left hand out to take it from her, she caught my hand, turned it over and inspected the back of it.

Her brows drew together. “You’ve been burned.”

“’Tis nothing.”

She fetched a bowl of rosewater from the table and a cloth. Kneeling before me, she began to cleanse my hands.

“You’ve been preparing for my return,” I noted.

“At Roxburgh, it was my duty to see that everything was always ready for my husband’s return. He gave me more responsibilities and freedoms than most men would permit their wives. I had my own seal, oversaw the reeve’s records, worked diligently beside the steward, learned every duty and every servant’s name ...” Her voice trailed away in a whisper. She blinked away old memories and shook her head. “Five weeks to the day you’ve been gone.”

“Has it? I never count the days. Only the battles. And the years now.”

As she worked her way up from my wrists, she pushed up my sleeves and shuddered when she saw the long scar on my right forearm.

“This one?”

“Courtesy of Sir Robert Neville, your father,” I said.

She glanced away a moment, then dabbed at my face with the damp cloth. With one gentle finger, she traced a short scar that lay hidden in the crease between the corner of my mouth and my nose. “This?”

“Dalry, I think. Robert saved my life that day.”

“And the burn on your hand?”

“A child led me from a burning building. He thought, at first, that I had come to kill him.” I closed my eyes. “A child. Why would I harm a child?”

She put the bowl aside and laid her hands over mine. “You aren’t the man tales portray you as. I know.”

“When I looked into the eyes of that little boy, I saw fear. I saw death. A hundred times over now, I should have died, Rosalind. I have eluded it. Cheated it. Run from it and fought it. And yet, it won’t have me.”

She tilted her head, accentuating an eyebrow raised in thought. “Perhaps that is for a reason?”

I scoffed at her. “Reason? I live only to fight.”

“Why
do
you fight then? Why go?”

I would have preferred to yield to the mountain of down behind me and escape to sleep, than to explain my purpose to this probing woman. It was too hard a question to give an answer that would satisfy her, but I tried.

“Because I’m called upon. It’s what I do. I do it well.” Aye, well. Raid. Pillage. Strike terror. Carry home the spoils, then return again while the tales are yet fresh. But it was what made my heart beat more wildly than anything in life. When it came to the lure of battle, I was like the wolf that had scented blood and would stalk his prey until that hunger was satisfied. Like some primeval desire deeply seeded in me, some part of me I could not separate the rest from. A lust I could not live without.

“I doubt, James Douglas, that anyone would dare challenge that – Scots or English. But is it, perhaps, more than that? Revenge, maybe? For something that happened long ago?”

Berwick. Twenty-three years past. How is it that she knows me so well?

She slipped her hands from mine and sat back on the floor, drawing her knees toward her chest. “When I was but fourteen, my own father got me with child. My mother, when I told her of it, struck me across the face and called me a liar and a strumpet. She had me sent away to bear the child and then saw to it that the child did not live to see his first month out. Suffocated in his cradle by a hired criminal. It seems my parents had some difficulty in finding me a husband and when they finally did, it was a man forty years my senior. But a blessing that was: William was good to me. At first he was more of a father to me than a husband, but he knew, somehow, that I needed that of him. I knew I could feel safe, so long as he was with me. One night I found William singing to our daughter, rocking her in his arms. But he looked so old, as fragile in his many years as she was in her few. I knew then that our time together would not last forever. One day, I would have to be strong without him.”

By then, her chin was on her knees. “I’m sorry. I’ve talked too much of things that must not interest you at all. I only came here to give you comfort after your journey.” She rose to her feet. “Do you need anything? If you want me to go, I –”

“Your daughter – what was her name?”

Her mouth was still hanging open, suspended in the middle of her last sentence. She blinked away a tear. Then the slightest smile passed over her lips. “Alice. My beautiful Alice, I called her. She truly was beautiful. I know all mothers say that, but it’s true.”

Beautiful. Like her mother.

I stood, ignored the aches in my muscles and fatigue in my bones, took her hand, felt the warm flush of her skin, leaned closer. “You still think of her often, don’t you?”

She answered with a sullen look. “I used to think of her every day. But I ... I had to let go. To live. It is hard ... when you have no one to share your grief with.”

Her words cleaved my heart deeply. In one, shattering moment, I glimpsed my own soul in the reflection in her eyes. A raven-black lock of hair tumbled across her cheek as she tilted her head at me, a question forming on her tongue.

“If you had wanted Douglas Castle back all those years,” she said, “why then did you ruin it and leave it so many times?”

“Because it was our ... Robert’s way – to raze our strongholds so that the English could not use them against us.”

“And each time you took it back,” she said, peering at me with those dark, exploring eyes, “did that ‘revenge’ make the past disappear? Did it cure your grief? Right wrongs done to you?”

Once, the entire purpose of my life had been about exacting revenge on Longshanks, of repossessing my family’s lands and home. That obsession had translated into my fealty to Robert: answering his call without question, riding out and raiding with cruel ruthlessness, feeding off the danger, my soul thriving on it. Once.

“No,” I said.

“So why do you bestow Douglas Castle upon Archibald? Why not make yourself a home there? Begin anew?”

“Because,” I began, the first crack opening up in the wall of my heart that had shut out so much and so many all these years, “because
this
is my home now.”

And because you’re here
, I yearned to say.

Something inside me more than stirred. It was like a light exploding. I wanted to run both toward it and from it at the same time. I longed to hold her, give her my heart and yet ...

She gave me her other hand as lightly as if nothing out of the ordinary had just passed between us. “You should rest, then. Before I forget though, your fletcher, Ranulf is it, delivered several sheaves of arrows day before yester. Some white feathered, special.”

“Swan.”

Abruptly, her hands slipped coldly away and drifted down to her sides. “I thought archers preferred goose feathers?”

“Prefer? They’re more readily come by, is all.”

Without another word, she went, leaving me wondering why the fletching of arrows was of any interest at all to her. I pulled off my boots and burrowed beneath my blankets. Hours passed by before I slept, though. The candles burned themselves to stubs, the brazier went cold and the sounds of song and story died a slow, miserable death in the hall below.

Robert the Bruce – Edinburgh, 1320

T
he moment James stepped down from his saddle at Holyrood, I crushed him in my embrace almost before he could steady himself.

I had just emerged from my newly constructed kennels, bits of straw still clinging to my shirtsleeves. As I thrust him back for a look, clouds of breath steamed from his smiling mouth and hung in the cold February air. Behind him, Archibald dismounted. Randolph joined in our reunion, clasping both men in turn.

“Hah!” I cried. “Randolph has been here for a fortnight – and where were you? Winter it is, but the weather has not been all so bad.” I could barely hear myself for the elated yapping of the dogs, but as the kennel keepers tossed out their bread, the noise subsided. “The tributes you collected have already been received and distributed. The scales of wealth are tipping more and more in Scotland’s favor every day. The more we scrape from England’s treasury, the less men they can put in the field against us. What of the scab in the north?”

“Devastating,” James said. “I’d not lay a hand on a sheep from Alnwick to Carlisle or beyond.”

“A blessing Walter was able to hold Berwick. You were right he’d not relent. And more right that Lancaster would turn tail when you lured him away by going after the queen in York.”

“That courtesy came from Lady Rosalind. It would seem she knows more than a bit of what Lancaster’s leanings are, as well.”