The Honor Due a King (41 page)

I stripped down to my tunic and braes and joined her. She rolled onto her side and tugged lightly at the sleeve of my shirt. “Do you need this?”

“It’s October, Rosalind.” I stared into the dancing yellow of the fire. “I’m cold.”

Her hand wandered down my ribcage, traced the curve of my still slim waist, and stopped at the point of my hip. “I know that faraway look. I don’t like to see you so sad, but, James ... you must stop grieving like this. Please. He’s gone.”

“I know that.” I glanced at her, wanting to make love to her before I broke the news, but just then Archibald fussed.

Rosalind rose up on her elbows, looked her child’s way and, content that he was fine, settled back down beside me snugly, her hand upon my chest. “Then what has you in such a state of melancholy? Are you weary? Ill? Can I do anything for you?”

I laid my hand over hers. “Know that I love you.”

At that she sat up, staring at me hard.

I told her, “I have been given the honor of carrying King Robert’s heart to Jerusalem.”

“What?
When
?”

“After Christmas. As soon as the weather allows.”

“This is decided then?”

I nodded. “It is. I was chosen by those closest to the king.”

“I see.” She threw back the covers and snatched a shawl from the bedpost. “Then you would choose a dead man over your wife? Would you?”

“It is not a matter of choosing you or him, Rosalind. He was more than king to me. He was my friend. This is the one last thing I can do in remembrance of him.”

Never had I seen such fury in her. The veins in her neck stood out tautly. Her jaws were clamped together. Her indrawn breath hissed between her teeth. “Would you?!”

Even though I had rehearsed this a thousand times in my mind while traveling home, still, it tore at me to have her question where my heart lay. I got up from the bed and marched around to face her. I tried to restrain myself, to understand her disappointment, to not give in to anger myself, clenching my fists next to my thighs.

“
Would you
?” she repeated.

I exploded. “You don’t ask a man that, Rosalind! You don’t!”

“Don’t ask a man what? To stay home with his wife and his ... his ...”

Roused by our heated argument, Archibald began to sputter.

“What? His child?” I kept my feet planted firmly where they were, struggling for control, searching for reasons that would make her understand and yield to my purpose. “Archibald is barely old enough to discern one face from another, let alone be aware of whenever I have left here. The sooner I go, the sooner I can return. I’ll be back long before he can carry on a conversation.”

She wrapped her arms about her middle and turned her back to me. “Then you’ll not stay for the birth of your next child?”

My breath was the sail in the full gale of anger that had suddenly gone windless. My stomach flipped. “Next? Is this true?”

“Do you think it’s but a clever ploy to keep you at home? Yes, it’s true, James.”

“Let me ask then –
when
?”

Slowly, she turned sideways, smoothing her gown against her belly. “You did not notice I was growing plumper? Then you, my good Sir James, are either foolishly blind with love or just plain oblivious. Less than five months from now we will have another. But you’ll be gone, again. This time fighting men who have something greater to defend than their possessions: their faith. Do you truly believe you’ll be able to fight those foreigners, heathens you would call them, with the same tactics? Ah, James, I fear it will not be the same as you have known. If there was anything I could say or do to keep you here forever, God knows I would. But I also
know
you. And I know what this means to you. I would rather you were not chosen, but I also know there could not have been any other worthy in Robert’s eyes to do this. As true as that is, I still hate it. I don’t want to bear a child that will be fatherless before he is born.”

I gave her my hand and pulled her gently to me. “I’ll send word that the expedition is to be delayed.” Then I picked her up in my arms and laid her down in bed again. Stretching out beside her, I ran my hand over the slight bulge in her belly. “I’ll stay awhile, Rosalind. Long enough to see our child born. And the day I’m done I’ll come swiftly home. I’ll never leave you again, then. Never.”

Tearful, she smiled. “You’re a bloody liar, James Douglas ... and deaf. Did I not just say I
know
you?”

Aye, you do, Rosalind. Better than I know myself
.

***

T
he last scream she let out was loud enough to lift the roof off the rafters. I heard it from outside the house, standing there in my wet boots in a puddle of melted snow and looking up at the window of our room.

For a very long time I stared at the window, but no one opened it to beckon me up. I looked at the door to the hall and it too stood motionless and silent. I walked in a circle, toward the byre, then back toward the house where I stopped and gazed up at the night sky. The light of a full moon shone argent upon still bare branches.

Damp and chilled, I finally went back into the house and as I made for my favorite chair closest to the hearth in the main hall, a voice from the stairs called softly to me.

“My lord?” said the white-haired midwife, Edna. “You may come up now.”

“How is she?”

“Tired, but she and the bairn will be fine.”

When I reached the room, warmed by a roaring fire, I saw the new arrival in the arms of a young woman, whose name I knew not, only that she was the midwife’s daughter and had an older babe of her own and often served as wet nurse locally when an infant’s mother died or could not produce enough milk. She rocked the swaddled babe in her arms and smiled at me as he turned his tiny, seeking mouth toward her ample breast.

“A boy,” she said, sure that I was proud of the fact.

“He is well?”

“Aye, and strong.”

I knelt beside Rosalind. Her hair lay in matted clumps upon her pillow, with rebellious strands stuck here and there to her forehead and flushed cheeks. Gently, I swept them away with a fingertip and kissed her on the head. Her eyelids fluttered open long enough to see me. Then she closed her eyes to save her strength.

“William,” she whispered.

“Aye, we’ll call him William – after your first husband and my father both. ’Tis a fine name.” I held her hand and squeezed it softly, but she did not squeeze back. She was finding it hard not to drift off. I cast a glance at the midwife. “The birth – it was more difficult than it was for Archibald?”

Edna nodded. “He wanted to come out the wrong way. Sideways, I think. Or upside down. Wrong anyways. I had to turn him. It was not easy.”

I stayed beside Rosalind for many minutes, arranging the covers around her, wiping the sweat from her brow, but she was fast asleep and unaware of even her newborn’s cries. The young woman settled down on a stool close to the fire and began nursing the bairn. He was greedy and not at all aware that the woman caring for him was not his own mother.

I asked Edna, “Will she be all right?”

“In time. But it will take a while. Likely she’ll sleep hard for the next few days. In a week, we will know better how she is doing.”

Despite the midwife’s encouraging words, I was not so easily heartened. I delayed my departure from Leith two more weeks as I remained at Rosalind’s side. Slowly, she regained strength and began to nurse little William on her own. Even when I was in the room with both of them, she kept her attention on the child. We did not speak of my mission – only William and her health. Over and over she assured me that she was well.

“Must you hover over me like that, James?” she protested from her bed, surrounded by mountains of pillows. In the crook of her arm, little William slumbered, his small pink thumb shoved into his mouth. Rosalind took the corner of a blanket and wiped the spittle from his chin. “We’ll be fine, really. Now off with you.”

I stood above them, running my fingers along the hem of my cloak. The first bold light of spring spilled in from the window, promising a fair day for riding. Outside, the birds sang in a chorus of joy, heralding the season.

I took her hand, kissed it and then brushed the top of William’s fuzzy head with my fingertips. “Going away has never been so hard. I don’t want to ... but I ... I ...”

“Yes, James, I know you have to do this. But you’re not making it any easier by standing there longer, you know.” She bit her lip and gazed out the window through bleary eyes.

I would tell her of Robbie when I returned, ask that he come live with us. Until then, I could not tell her about him. Certainly not now. But perhaps I could broach the subject gently?

“I was thinking,” I began, a knot constricting my throat and making it hard to speak, “that when I return, I will have to go to Edinburgh a lot, or wherever the young king might be holding court, at least until he grows up a bit. I have considered resigning as co-regent, but I promised Robert I would look after him. And Robbie ... it is time he learned to be a soldier. I could teach him how to fight with a sword, how to –”

“Of course.”

“He could stay here, at times. That would make it easier.”

“Of course.”

“Well, then ...” I shook my cloak for no good reason, slung it over my shoulders and fastened it with the silver clasp Rosalind had given me that Christmas. It would be warm enough by noon to do without it though and there was not a cloud in the sky. “There’s a ship awaiting me in Leith. I’ve half a dozen men outside ready to go.”

Finally, she looked at me. “God be with you, James Douglas.”

I bent to her and kissed her full on the lips. “Know that I love you ... and that I did from the very first day I saw you.”

“You’re a terrible liar. We hated each other then. Go, now.
Go
.”

In all the years I had ridden off to battle or on state business for the king, I had never taken a step with hesitation or regret. Not until that day. I cannot even count the number of times I stopped on the road, looked back toward Lintalee and nearly told them all to go on without me.

When I saw the great black rock of Edinburgh rise gradually on the road before us, the young Sir William Sinclair eased his horse abreast of mine. “Shall I send word on to the Earl of Moray that we will be calling upon him before we set sail?”

The smell of the sea drifted faintly on the wind. My stomach lurched. “No, no, we’ll go straight on to the ship. Send word to Randolph to meet us there.”

Somewhere in the distance, from years ago, I heard Robert’s voice again:

“This life we’ve chosen, aye? Is it all truly peril and sacrifice, though? No, we’ve something to show for it. Something they all doubted possible when you were but a wet-eared squire startled by the sound of your own voice and I a free and easy blade with a flaming temper. We’re hard in the head and mayhap it’s that they said we couldn’t, that we had to prove we could
.
”

Aye, Robert. We proved ourselves well.

James Douglas – Spain, 1330

I
blink at the sweat that stings my eyes. Scotland is many months and miles behind me now. Indeed it is a world away from this dusty realm. Even in the shade of the poplars, the air is on fire. I can barely breathe. Sinclair edges his mount closer and hands me a cloth. I mop my forehead dry. The horses, too, hang their heads, beaten down by the rising heat of afternoon.

From horseback, King Alfonso surveys the plain below, where fields of parched grain stand brittle and golden beneath an azure sky. Further off, along another line of hills, a stark sun-bleached fortress overlooks the same plain. In his lap rests his crowned helmet. He leans on it as he gazes intensely into the distance, waiting for the enemy to emerge.

We are arrayed at the foothills of the sierra: a collection of Scots, English, Flemish and other knights from across the continent, including a number of the mysterious Templars. After a brief respite in Seville, word came that the Moors were preparing to march on the city. Very quickly, Alfonso had organized his troops and was leading his army out from Seville to arrest their threat here at the Castle of the Star near Teba before they could advance.

The king shifts in his saddle and shades his brow with his hand. His eyes are keen for his age. I know not his number of years, but he must be close to the same age Robert would have been. Across the way, from between two jutting sand-white mountains toward the plain, rides an army of Moors.

“He comes to take Seville,” King Alfonso says, referring to his adversary, King Osmyn of Granada, as he strokes his silvering black beard with a gloved hand, “but we will stop him here, yes?”

I nod.

“I give you the vanguard, Sir James: your Scots, the English, and Flemish knights. Ride along the hills, there. Take their left wing – from behind if you can.”

“And you, sire?” I ask him. Whatever the tactics of Moors, I know only that they do not follow the same rules as English armies.

“We take the rest.” He smiles broadly, eager to get on with the battle. He lifts his helmet up so that it reflects the sun and places it over his mail coif. Then with a noble tilt of his head, he orders me on.

I touch the breast of my blue and white surcoat, beneath which lies the casket containing Robert’s heart.

I give Sinclair the order to ready the knights, expecting protests from the English among them. But when I don my own helmet and turn to look back at them, every man is fully prepared for the charge, their eyes set resolutely on the stampeding foes swallowing up the distant plain below. Argent lance tips glint in the sunlight. Horses snort and stomp their feet. Fingers grip sword hilts and reins.

My squire hands me my shield – the one Robert gave me before he died. Its surface is without dent or scratch, the colors yet vibrant. This will be its first battle and, I pray, not its last. I wedge my arm inside the straps, raise my other hand and lead the charge.

We cut across the slope of the hill. As we come nearer, a group of Moors separates from the main body to meet us. I urge the men to continue along the slope and then, when we are to the rear of the main force, which King Alfonso himself is close to engaging, I jab my lance to the left and we veer sharply toward our attackers. We bear down on them hard, riding in a tight line. Before we reach the foot of the hill, their leader pulls up, gives a cry of retreat and begins to speed back toward the gap through which they had come.