The Renegade: A Tale of Robert the Bruce (39 page)

“Lord Robert,” he growled, his face dark. “I need to talk wi’ ye.” He glanced at the litter and the watching ostler. “For your ears alone.”

“Aye. Come.”

Bruce headed for a dense tangle of head-high bramble bushes nearby, and Thomas Beg followed him closely. When they reached the clump of brush Bruce stood with his back to it. He swept his eyes over the two litters and their few attendants, just to be sure no one was paying too much attention.

“What is it?”

“Sodgers,” the giant answered, his frown still in place. “And they’re no’ yours, though they’re on Bruce land. They’re gettin’ ready to hang some folk. Our folk, I think. I heard the noises they were makin’ an’ went to see what wis happenin’, but when I saw they wis strangers I came back here.”

“Where are they? How far away?”

“Doon that way.” Thomas Beg pointed southwestward. “About a mile frae here, just on the ither side o’ the burn.”

Bruce’s chin came up. “On the other side o’ the river?”

“Aye. I had to cross it to reach them.”

“Then that’s not Bruce land. That’s Sir John Mowbray’s territory, part of the Earl of Surrey’s estates, so they must be his men. But you said they were getting ready to hang some people?”

“Aye. They had about ten folk there, under guard, and mair bein’ brought in as I watched.”

Bruce’s mind was racing. “How many soldiers, Tom?”

The big man spread his hands. “I’m no’ sure, but I had seen mair than a score o’ them afore I lost count. They wis movin’ about too much to count, but there must be half a hunnert there by now.”

“Fifty men-at-arms? Who’s in charge of them, did you see?”

“Three knights at least. Big horses, fancy armour.”

“Damnation! How far are we from our campsite?”

“Less than a mile, but the other way, atop the ridge there. So there’s likely a mile ’tween it an’ the sodgers.”

“And all is ready there for our arrival?”

“Aye, Sir Robert. Everything’s ready.”

“Good. Mount you up then and wait for me. I’ll send the ladies on ahead to the campsite with the others and you and I will ride down there and find out what’s going on.”

Thomas Beg looked at his master askance, taking in the velvet doublet and hose and the sheathed ornamental dagger at Bruce’s waist. He nodded towards it. “Is that the only blade ye’ve got?”

“It’s all I’ll need. I am on my own land. Why should I need any blade? Mount up and wait for me.”

Less than twenty minutes later the two men were at the top of a small knoll on the far side of the river that bounded the southeastern edge of the Bruce lands of Writtle, looking down at the scene in the wooded dell a hundred yards below where a large number of wellequipped men-at-arms were assembling in order, their task evidently completed. Bruce counted forty-four of them, including three mounted knights.

“By God, they didna waste ony time. Look ower yonder.” Thomas Beg pointed to where a staggered row of four mature oaks stood out against the lighter growth behind them, and Bruce felt himself stiffening as he saw the corpses dangling from their lower limbs. Fourteen of them, he counted, all of them dressed in rags and revolving slowly despite the lack of any breeze. They had been dead
for only minutes, he realized, the slow spin of their bodies caused by the residual force of their struggles as they choked to death. He turned back, open-mouthed, towards the executioners, who had now formed themselves into two disciplined blocks, four ranks wide by five deep, then felt his throat constrict as a fourth knight, accompanied by a quartet of mounted sergeants, rode in to join the others, bearing a blazoned shield that Bruce recognized instantly.

He stood erect in his stirrups and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Below there!” he bellowed. “Bigod!”

The majority of the men swung around in concert to gaze up towards the knoll, but though they were plainly visible to him from above, the bushes surrounding him made him invisible to them. Moments later, the two outer ranks of each block of infantry peeled away to the left and right, trotting towards the flanks of the hill on which Bruce stood, while the four remaining files of men, all of whom carried crossbows, combined into a solid unit, arming their weapons and facing squarely up the hill.

“They’re coming up,” he said to Thomas Beg. “Squads of ten on either side, each led by a knight. Come with me.”

He nudged his horse with his spurs and advanced until he could be seen clearly from below, then sat patiently, arms folded across his chest, as they came into view and surrounded him and Thomas Beg. Then he turned to the knight on his right, who had arrived slightly ahead of his counterpart on Bruce’s left. The fellow was frowning fiercely, his flushed face visible beneath his raised visor, but he hesitated as he took in Bruce’s appearance.

Bruce spoke first. “Robert Bruce of Turnberry, Earl of Carrick. My lands of Writtle lie the other side of the river. I saw my friend Sir John Bigod with you and sought to make myself known. Will you take me to him?”

The knight glowered and raised his hand to his men, tacitly warning them to wait but remain vigilant. He answered civilly enough, though, nodding as he named himself. “William de Hazelrig of Louth. You should have come down to us, my lord. It ill behooves an earl to shout like a huckster.”

Bruce bit back the urge to put the newcomer firmly in his place. He merely shrugged, forcing himself to smile in spite of an instinctive dislike of the man. “Sometimes a shout is safer than an unannounced approach. You have crossbowmen down there.” He turned to the second knight and found another stranger gazing at him, though this one with a smile. “And you, sir, are … ?”

“Gilbert de Coulle, Sir Robert. I’ve heard Sir John speak of you often. He will be most pleased to see you thus unexpectedly.”

“That is my hope,” Bruce answered, thinking about the hanged men and the legality or otherwise of their deaths. Of the small coterie of friends he had made in London as a squire, Bigod had been the closest, and he had never impressed Bruce as being bloodthirsty or brutal. But Bruce had counted fourteen dangling corpses with his own eyes. “Shall we go down, then?”

As they rode clear of the obscuring brush on the hillside, Bruce could see John de Bigod, backed by four mounted sergeants-at-arms, sitting his horse at the side of the twenty crossbowmen looking up at them, and he saw the sidewise, straight-armed gesture that ordered the men to lower their weapons and stand easy as soon as it became obvious that the returning parties showed no sign of conflict. Look as he would, though, he could see no sign now of the fourth knight he had seen earlier. The two groups were too far apart for either side to distinguish individual faces, but Bruce knew that Bigod would already have seen that neither he nor Thomas Beg wore armour and that their horses—and his own wine-coloured doublet—marked them as people of some consequence.

No voices were raised as the descending group approached, and Bruce saw the sudden quickening of interest as John de Bigod sat straighter in his saddle, tightening his reins and flipping up his visor as something in Bruce’s appearance struck him as being familiar. The knight lifted one arm and called out an order, and the mounted sergeants at his back began moving, shouting to the men in their charge, who immediately broke ranks, disarmed their weapons, and formed up again in a twenty-man block, largely ignoring the newcomers now that their commander had accepted them as being
harmless. Bigod spurred his horse to a trot until he was close enough to recognize Bruce, and then he hauled back on the reins and stood upright in the stirrups.

“Bruce! Damn me, where did
you
spring from?” There was no doubting the welcome in the knight’s wide smile, and Bruce kicked his mount forward to meet him, arms spread wide, as Bigod bellowed, “Harry! Here! Look at this.”

A thick bank of bushes on Bruce’s right, less than forty paces distant and masking the row of oaks with their dangling corpses, stirred and split as the missing knight rode slowly into view, followed by a score of Welsh archers whose presence Bruce had neither seen nor suspected. The man’s shield and surcoat bore an escutcheon that Bruce did not recognize, although elements of it were disconcertingly familiar to him—the blue lion rampant on a field of gold was almost identical to the ancient arms of the House of Bruce. Otherwise the knight was armoured in plain steel, from helmed head to booted feet. But the shouted name had prompted Bruce already to guess at his identity, and as the obscuring visor rose up from a swipe of a gauntleted hand, he saw the familiar face of Henry de Percy, another of his companions from his days of squiredom. Percy was frowning, plainly wondering what was going on, but then he recognized Bruce and his face, too, broke into a grin.

As the three came together, exchanging greetings, Bigod swung around in his saddle to address the knight called Hazelrig. “Get the men ready to leave. We’re finished here. Send us word when you’re ready, but in the meantime leave us alone. We are old friends here.”

It had been three years since the three had last seen each other, the morning of the day before their knighting, when Bruce had ridden home to his mother’s sickbed, and they behaved as old friends long parted always do, exchanging jibes and reminiscences while appraising the changes that had marked them all since last meeting.

Henry Percy, Baron of Alnwick, pulled off his heavy helmet and slung it from his saddle horn before pushing back his mailed cowl, baring his head and scrubbing at his matted scalp as he eyed Bruce’s
doublet and the lace trimming at the neck of his white shirt. His gaze slid down his friend’s velvet-clad legs to the soft, brushed leather but thickly soled riding boots he wore.

“I’d heard rumours that you are become a ladies’ man, Bruce,” he said, “but I hadn’t believed them until now. Do you always ride out dressed like milady’s favourite minstrel?”

Bruce smiled. “On my own lands, and in the company of ladies, aye, I do. Much of the time, anyway. And my lands lie across the river there.” He gestured over his shoulder.

“Of course,” Percy said. “Writtle is Bruce land. It’s been so long since I was here that I’d forgotten. Our grandsires’ estates touch here.”

“Aye. It
was
my grandfather’s. But he died these three months since, may God rest his soul, and left it to me.”

“The Competitor is dead? That grieves me to hear—though now that I think of it, I had believed him dead long since. He was a legend when we were boys, though he was not the Competitor then, not until after the death of King Alexander. I’ve always thought the new name suited him. How old was he?”

Bruce shrugged. “Older than anyone I’ve ever known. Eighty, or thereabouts. He was ready to go, he told me last time I saw him. But I missed his death by days. They had sent to summon me from the north but I was already on my way here and must have passed the messenger along the way. The old man was laid out for burial by the time I arrived and I didn’t even know he had been sick. His second wife, the Lady Christina of Ireby, still lives here, under my protection.” He waved a hand towards the finery of Percy’s surcoat. “And what about you? I know the blue and gold are the colours of Warrenne, but a rampant lion azure? Where did that come from?”

Percy smiled smugly. “My wife. I was wed last year. Name’s Eleanor, daughter to the Earl of Arundel. Their crest is a rampant lion, in gold. I adopted it in honour of my lady wife and changed it to the blue of Earl Warrenne. With the approval of both earls, of course.”

Bruce nodded. “Of course, not to mention the King. And it is … striking. Makes a statement of authority.”

“I believe it does … Why do you smile?”

“Because it’s like my own.” Bruce kept his voice low. “Or rather my grandfather’s, which I have adopted. The ancient Bruce arms—a red saltire on a field of gold, surmounted by a red chief, with a blue rampant lion in the left corner.”

Percy sat still, the colour draining from his face, and then he barked, “Damnation, Bruce. You jest with me.”

Bruce shrugged and held up his hands, palms outward. “Harry, I would not do such a thing. I speak the truth. Those are the Bruce arms, though they’re seldom seen today. My grandsire preferred the plain blue lion rampant. That was his personal standard. But those are Scots arms, Harry, not English, so few Englishmen will ever see my version. No need, then, to make a fuss about it.”

“I am not
fussing
.”

Bigod glanced at Percy, attracted by the sudden tension in his voice. Bruce and Percy both schooled their faces, betraying nothing, and after a moment Bigod grinned, and his eyelid flickered in the merest wink to Percy. “Ladies, you said, Bruce, did you not?” he drawled. “I see no ladies.”

Bruce grinned again. “I sent them on ahead when I got word that there were strange doings afoot on the far side of the stream … What happened here today?”

Percy made a grimace of distaste. “What
happened
here was retribution, in the King’s name and at his command. You know about the Welsh rebellion, this past year?”

“Aye, who doesn’t?”

“But you were not involved?”

“No, I was in Ireland, acting as a liaison between Edward and de Burgh, the Earl of Ulster.”

Percy nodded thoughtfully. “I heard something of that posting. It made quite a stir, I recall. The King forgave all your debts, did he not?”

Feeling his face flush slightly, Bruce shrugged his silk-clad shoulders. “Aye, that’s true,” he said. “But they were debts incurred in his service. And in taxes that fell due when we moved to England. When we failed to attend his coronation and swear our fealty as quickly as he and his Comyn friends wished, King John of Scotland sequestered—” He thought about that for a moment, his brows furrowed. “Aye, that’s the word Edward’s lawyer used—he sequestered our holdings. Didn’t snatch them away from us completely, but withheld their revenues and rents, declared us forsworn to justify his doing so, naming us … not treasonous, exactly, but something of that ilk, designed to make our name stink in the nostrils of our countrymen.
Defectors
, that was it. He named us defectors when we came to England as Edward’s vassals. That moved Edward to publicly forgive my debts to him, in recompense, since I was newarrived and had never lived in England prior to that time, other than as a visiting knight in training.”