The Honor Due a King (39 page)

Father Simon, his head barely at the height of my shoulder, was usually a gay character, but on this occasion he was peevish. “All the same, my good lord, she will not look kindly upon the surprise of this all.”

“’Tis no surprise, I assure you. I simply haven’t been insistent enough. Now, if you don’t mind waiting here a bit, I see her there. Her favorite place, down by the water. Ah, she shouldn’t be alone so far from the house, not so late into her ... A moment, please.”

I treaded softly down the narrowing path as it dipped toward the stream. Rosalind, her feet dangling over the bank, twisted to look over her shoulder. Her face lit.

“James? You’re home!” She struggled to stand, thrusting her overripe belly out before her and arching her back as she pushed at the earth behind her with her hands.

“Stay, stay.” I slid down the last of the hill, plopping down beside her on the bank before she could get up. “I wish to talk with you.”

Relieved, she eased herself all the way back to lie flat upon the bank. Her feet were bare, washed clean by the water. She smiled tiredly at me. “Thank you, James. It was so dreadfully hot today, I had to come here. Do you see how my feet have swollen about the ankles? I don’t remember being this miserable when I was carrying Alice ... but I was younger then.” She turned her face to me, her dark eyes glistening. “And more beautiful.”

Lying beside her on the damp grass, I propped myself up on one elbow. I kissed her on her full lips, moist as morning dew. “I did not know you then, Rosalind, love, but to me you have never looked more beautiful than now. I have the envy of all the men in Scotland, did you know, for keeping you captive all these years?”

She blushed profusely. “Eloquent words from such a reticent man as you. What do you want, James Douglas?”

“One thing. Promise me you’ll agree. Have I ever asked anything of you?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me what it is first. The last time I agreed to do someone else’s bidding ... let us just say I’ve learned better. Go on.”

I sat up, gazed into the silvery rippling water. “At Berwick, I watched two children stand at a ceremony and speak vows for which they had no understanding. There was no love or affection there, not even familiarity. And I thought how very fortunate I was not to have been born a prince. It made me understand why it is that some noblemen so often stray from their marriage beds to find someone who ... who makes them feel what love truly is. I could never stray from you, Rosalind. Not in deed or even in thought.”

I glanced at her, but she was studying the sky where a pair of sparrowhawks glided, looking down on us.

“I loved a woman once,” I said, “deeply.”

Curious, she looked at me. “I never presumed that there had not been others before me. Why do you tell me this now?”

“Because it’s important. The woman that I loved ... she was the daughter of a dear friend of mine. It was ... complicated. You see, she was betrothed to another man – a friend. But I didn’t care ... I mean, I did, but ... In the end, I gave her up, because I felt that being with her would hurt more people than just the two of us, and
that
I could not bear. Sadly, though, it was not meant to be. She died.

“For a long time, I grieved inwardly. I swore off women. Became something of a monk. Then I met you. And that, can we say, was more than complicated? But my days grew brighter and the future closer and I found myself hurrying home to see you and be with you. Through all that time, we kept coming back together, you and I, drawn to each other somehow and yet both of us keeping our distance. So it is that I ask myself – why? What have we been waiting for? What are we unsure of? Rosalind, I’ll not commit the same mistake again – giving up the woman I love.”

Her lips parted, wordless. I waited, but Rosalind only stared up at the sky, biting her lip as if to keep from crying.

“I want you to be my wife, Rosalind. And I’ll not take ‘no’ for an answer this time.”

I put out my hand for her to take. She closed her eyes, clenched her teeth. A tear escaped her eyelids.

“It would be good, for the child to –” She drew in a sharp breath and arched her spine upward. “It will have to wait, though.”

“But why? After so long, how can you –”

“Have you never seen a woman in labor, James Douglas?”

I began to panic then, afraid for her and the child since we were so far from the house. “Should I fetch the midwife here? Or carry you back to the house?”

“I can walk. It’s not so far.” She laughed at me, her pain seeming to ebb away. “Don’t worry, we have hours yet. It has only just begun. That was the first. I think the baby was waiting for you. Then again, this might not even be the day. Sometimes small pains come like that before it is time. And yes, James, I do think it’s time we married, you and I. I wouldn’t want our child to be ashamed of his mother or robbed of his inheritance.”

“
Now
then?”

“Yes, we can go back to the house now. You don’t think I want to deliver your child in the river, do you? I’ll have my handmaiden make me a tea of chamomile and she can rub my back while it’s brewing. I can hardly tell you how much it aches right now.”

“That’s not what I meant, Rosalind. I’ve a priest, Father Simon, waiting on the near side of the hill to marry us. You’ll have to assure him this is your wish, as well as mine.”

She rolled her eyes at me, and then nodded as I helped her up. I fetched her shoes from the top of a sun-drenched rock and helped her put them on. As we walked slowly up the hill, me supporting her weight as much as I could, she stepped carefully over every twig and stone.

“Will you ever tell me,” she asked, “who she was?”

“You never knew her.”

“Would I, perhaps, have known
of
her?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know.” I plucked a bloom from a tall, spindly flower stalk and handed it to her. Even though I had intended to tell her Marjorie’s name, I couldn’t. That was all in the past and didn’t seem pertinent right now. “Ah, there’s Father Simon – looking rather dubious, isn’t he? Are you glad this is to be your wedding day?”

“Happy as any blushing bride.” She stopped, kissed me on the cheek, and brushed the bits of weeds and grass from my shirt and hair. “All those years ago, in Lancashire, when you asked for my hand ... I’m so sorry. I should have either said ‘yes’ right there or left then. But I couldn’t do either. I was still hurting, even though I never said so. I needed time – to heal. Yet in that process, your patience has only made me love you more. If I have hesitated, held back ... it’s only because I know that to love ... is to risk losing that love.”

“But Rosalind, we have loved each other longer than either of us ever admitted, aye? Why not, then, love completely? I love you, and you me. Simple? Must we complicate it further?”

She shook her head and embraced me. We went to where Father Simon waited. I placed a garland of daisies upon her head, plucked fresh from the field.

Before Father Simon and God, we stood side by side, holding hands, as nervous as if we were sixteen-year olds.

“It’s a wee bit urgent, Father Simon. Can you make quick of it?”

He glanced at Rosalind’s round stomach, one thin eyebrow arching in judgment. “Ah, I see. I didn’t realize ... No matter. We’ll save confessions for later, my children.”

“I’ll double my tithe to your parish this harvest. Now please ...”

“I have not seen you at Mass for ... years perhaps?”

“Very well. I’ll attend this Sunday if it will make you hurry.”

“It would seem to me that you had a great deal of time before today to arrange this ceremony, had you wanted. And if you wish a christening for the child, I had best see you at the kirk for more than one Mass. I believe this favor should keep you coming until Christmas. Now let’s begin then. Have you a ring, Sir James?”

***

R
osalind gave birth to a boy just before midnight. He entered the world wailing lustily. The strength of his cries reminded me of my youngest brother and so we named him Archibald. It seemed fitting.

I had a son and a wife. A new purpose. Something besides serving my liege. But while my joy was never greater, all was not well for my good King Robert.

Robert the Bruce – Cardross, 1329

“E
dward of Caernarvon was not much loved.” Tenderly, Aithne dabbed at my face with a soft cloth, blotting away the cold beads of sweat. She sat me up in my bed and helped me change my shirt. “Unlike you.”

“That would depend on who you ask,” I jested, but the words stole my breath and I sank back.

She readjusted my pillows, piled five high, then picked up a silver comb. Strand by strand, she combed my hair. At first I had found her attentions humiliating, insisting on taking care of myself, but the efforts were always so draining, my pain so intense, that I could not accomplish them on my own. Humility is a heavy stone to swallow.

When Elizabeth died, Aithne came to me. I would have thought she would leave soon afterward, given the feeble and often cantankerous state I was in, but she never went back to Carrick. She stayed. She knew I needed her. Once I had thought us nothing more than lovers. How wrong I had been – about more things than I cared to ever admit.

In the spring, I had made what was for me an arduous pilgrimage to St. Ninian’s shrine in Galloway. Aithne accompanied me. Progress was dreadfully slow, but the journey through the land of my boyhood brought back dear memories of riding with my grandfather there. At St. Ninian’s I offered my peace with God and what a litany of crimes I confessed to. I had not gone to the trouble, until then, to reflect on them. My voice must have been heard above. England consented to the Treaty of Norham, agreeing to our terms of peace. Then ... word from the Holy See: my excommunication had at last been removed.

For all that has ever been taken from me, much more has been given unto me.

“And the new King Edward?” I asked her. “How goes it for him?”

Her weight on the edge of the bed was light. She stroked the inside of my arm, her fingers never pausing at the little bumps there. “He’s a boy. In above his head. Been across the border already and chased back by our good Sir James.”

“Ah, James ... is he here yet? I’ve been waiting.”

“Not last I looked, but I’ll send him in as soon as he arrives from Lintalee. For now, rest, dear Robert. I’ve kept you awake far too long.”

“You used to keep me awake all night and I never tired of you then.”

“That was a long time ago.” She leaned over and gave me a kiss, then went.

King Edward II: dead. A wasted life. They had moved him from Llantrissant to Kenilworth and finally to Berkley. Within the course of a year he was dead. ‘Natural causes’, they said. ‘Doubtful’, said I. He had many enemies – all very close to him. His queen had abandoned him for an underhanded lover, run him from London, forced his hand and put her son on the throne. A convenience that Edward of Caernarvon could no longer throw a shadow of suspicion on his short-grieved widow, but the man was dead.

No man lives forever. Not even a king.

Bishop Lamberton of St. Andrews, too, gave up the ghost in 1328. What an enormous debt I owed to men like him, now gone – those who embraced my dream as their own: the bishops Lamberton and Wishart, one wise, one comforting; my brother-in-law Christopher Seton who was taken at Methven; my squire Gerald, who fled from certain death with me from Longshanks’ court at Windsor and then later gave his life for me; Torquil who knew the waters about the Isles better than any man ... and those I loved and caused to suffer: most of all Elizabeth, my beloved wife; sweet, beautiful Marjorie who never held her own child; and my brothers Nigel, Thomas, Alexander, Edward ... all dead now. All dead.

A man lives his whole life fearing death. But if he has lived a good life, a full life, and if he has done the work he was set upon the earth to do, then death is a part of that life. And it is welcome. It is peace. The life hereafter: God’s reward.

I glanced about the room, grayed by the half-shadows of a long evening. Familiar objects around me dimmed, blurred and began to fade from my weakening sight.

Beyond my chamber, my wardrobe contained leather shoes from Portugal and shirts of the finest cloth from Rheims. During the course of Scotland’s growing trade these last few years, I had amassed a wealth of worldly objects. Such things had pleased me once, pleased Elizabeth even more. But now all those things were merely trinkets: belongings that meant nothing to me now.

I was almost eager to let go. To lay my head down one last time, close my eyes and greet Our Savior. I wanted to. I was tired ... and I could feel the pull. Strong, heavy. Like the weight of my own body, coaxing me downward as I swung from a thread by a single finger. And beneath, the fall would be soft, comforting, warm and cool, bright and dark all at once. Only ... I did not want to leave them. Aithne. James. Thomas. The children. Would that I could take them with me. But it was not their time. Not yet.

It was mine. Time to join Marjorie. Little John. Alexander. Nigel. Thomas. My squire Gerald. My brother Edward, even. And ... my dear Elizabeth.

I drifted off to sleep, my life flowing past me in memories both sharp and blurred. Memories of times good and bad, often hard and seldom easy. Times of much love and great loss. Of suffering and dreams realized. Memories of a life lived fully.

***

W
hen I awoke the next morning, it was to the vision of Aithne, older and yet still breathtakingly beautiful. She held out a cup of water. “James and Randolph are here.”

As I drank from the cup, trying hard not to let it slip from my feeble grasp or the water dribble down my chin, Aithne left the room. Yielding to weariness, I let my eyelids close, the cup still resting on my chest.

I was vaguely aware of the rumble of my own snoring. The low muffle of voices. The brush of footfalls. Someone’s hand on my shoulder – slight at first, then grasping more strongly as it shook me into arousal.

“I got the message from Thomas.” James took the cup from me and placed it on the table beside my bed. “I came right away. How
are
you, Robert?”