The Renegade: A Tale of Robert the Bruce (48 page)

Bruce ignored the reference to his betrothed, his mind already busy with other things. “Who did we lose?”

His father looked up, his eyes on someone beyond Bruce’s sight. “Thomas,” he said. “You’re better informed than I am. Tell the earl what you know.”

Thomas Beg came into view, moving around from one side of the bed to the other. Bruce tried to twist his head to see him as he came, but the pain of his singed scalp flared again and he lay still, waiting until the huge man stood towering over him.

“There’s six folk missin’ frae the head count,” Tam began without preamble, “three o’ them stablemen. Five men was in the stables when it happened, we jalouse, and a woman.”

Bruce lay stony-faced as Thomas Beg continued. “Forbye, we think at least six horses, though there might hae been more. We just canna tell. Auld Sammy the stablemaster’s one o’ the missin’ folk and he’s the only one who would hae kent how many beasts was in there at the start.”

“Is the fire out now?”

Tam shook his head. “No, no’ yet, but close enough now. It’s rainin’ again—heavy—and that should soak what’s left.”

Bruce sighed. “God rest their souls,” he said. “The folk, I mean, though God knows the beasts are worthy of pity, too … I fear you’ll have to send men in there tomorrow, Tam, or as soon as the ashes cool … to find the bodies.”

Tam’s left eyebrow flared high. “What bodies, my lord? D’ye mind tellin’ me yon story about the Viking chiefs, when they died an’ wis burnt wi’ their boats?”

Bruce stared up at him, wondering what he was talking about, though he did have vague recollections of telling him one time about a Viking funeral.

“Well,” Tam said, “this was a worse fire than any Viking ever saw. We’ll no’ find any bodies in there, Earl Robert. I doubt we’ll even find the odd bone. And gin we do, the only thing that’ll mark
them as horse or human will be the size o’ them. When that place finally went up it burnt like the fires o’ Hell—a furnace stoked wi’ straw an’ hay an’ wooden beams an’ joists an’ posts an’ floors an’ stalls, every bit o’ it dry, well-seasoned fuel—wi’ the walls actin’ like a chimney.”

The silence that followed was deep, every man there imagining what it must have been like.

Bruce drew a shallow, careful breath before asking his next question. “Is Dinwiddie safe?”

“Aye. He got out wi’ a’ his people just afore the fire exploded. He saved that horse you telt him to. There was three more under the straw, trapped there when the roof fell in on them. Two o’ them was dead an’ he had to kill the third. But him an’ his men got a’ thae bales safe out o’ there, and there was more o’ them than ye’d think. Mainly good hay feed, wi’ a scatterin’ o’ straw.”

“And no one else was killed, apart from the missing six you mentioned?”

“No’ a soul. There was a few bangs an’ bruises, that’s a’. It could hae been a lot worse.”

Bruce barely nodded, and Thomas Beg hovered for a moment, then turned to leave.

“Wait, Tam. Help me to sit up.”

“No!” The senior Bruce stepped forward quickly, waving Thomas Beg away. “No sitting for you, Robert. Not until we know there’s nothing broken inside you. Father Baldwin
thinks
you’re merely bruised, but he’s not certain of his own judgment and he’s sent for help—another physician, from Sir John Mowbray’s place a few miles from here. Until he comes, you are to stay flat on your back—tied down, if need be. We have no wish to see you die of a punctured lung from one of your own broken bones.” He glanced at Tam. “Thank you, Thomas. Away you go now.”

The big man nodded after a moment, cast a swift glance down at Bruce, and then left obediently, moving in silence for all his enormous size.

The silence lasted after his departure and grew long, broken only by the crackling of the fire in the grate. Bruce forced himself to breathe slowly and gently. The pain caused even by a too-deep breath was close to being unbearable. A snippet of memory flashed through his mind, a vague remembrance of a campfire comment made some long-past night, something about the degree of a wound’s agony being in relationship to its severity. He had no idea who had said it or where.

He became aware then of the silence and turned his head slightly to look up at his father, who was staring emptily back at him from a face that lacked any expression.

“What happens now, sir?”

His lordship blinked, his eyes visibly coming back to focus. “What? Oh … We have to get you up on your feet again, and hale, before we press on to Westminster and the King.” He almost smiled. “From the sounds of it, that ought not to take too long … ” His father’s face sobered again, and his eyes narrowed to slits. “You did well today, Robert. Your folk are speaking highly of you and they are more concerned for you than I ever remember mine being for me.” His voice sank lower. “And that’s as it should be. I’m proud of what you have achieved here in Writtle, my son.”

“Managing to let half the place burn down about our ears, you mean?” He grimaced, embarrassed by his father’s praise. “I knew that corner of the barn building was weak, Father. I saw it a year ago—the condition of the mortaring and the looseness of some of the bottom stones. I talked about it with Old Sammy and with Alan Bellow, but I did nothing about it, thinking it less urgent than other things. Old Sammy himself said that it had stood more than a hundred years and would keep until we had the time to mend it … He was wrong, and I was, too. But Sammy died because of it, and I’m still here.”

Now his father was frowning. “You can’t blame yourself for the fury of God’s weather, Robert. That storm we had today was unlike anything in living memory. Not once in a hundred years does such a thing come along.”

“That may be true, sir. But not once in a hundred years did anyone mend the corner of that wall. And now it has cost lives.”

Light and darkness stirred as Nicol MacDuncan stepped forward, followed by the third man, who had not yet uttered a sound.

“It’s as your father says, Rob,” Nicol began in his flowing, liquid Gaelic. “And you are as right as he is. But what’s done is done—the will of God. There is nothing to be gained by blaming yourself for something no one could have foreseen. Did you ever imagine a torrent strong enough to rip that wall apart and tear down the whole building? A day ago you would have said that was impossible. Well, today it’s no longer unimaginable, and never will be again. But you will rebuild your stables and they’ll last another hundred years, perhaps twice that long, because you’ll know the strength they must have to withstand such things. Life goes on, Rob. And so must yours. We all have our appointed time, and who can flout God’s right to dictate that?”

Bruce nodded, and his eyes moved to the stranger standing behind Nicol. “Your pardon, sir,” he said, addressing the man in Gaelic. “I have not yet even greeted you or made you welcome in my house. I presume you must be the Earl of Mar, good-father to my sister Christina and soon, it would appear, to me myself.”

Lord Annandale straightened up abruptly, plainly appalled that he had neglected to introduce the old man, but Domhnall of Mar was already standing above the bed, smiling down at Bruce, and when he spoke his voice was musical, reflecting the ancient Western Isles tradition in which he had been raised.

“You have no need of my pardon, Robert Bruce, or that of any other. Your father here has praised you, justly, for today’s performance of your duties, and now I would add my own voice to his. You
might
have come to greet and welcome us, bowing to our supposed importance while your stables collapsed and buried your people. But what would that have told me about the man to whom I have agreed to give my last remaining daughter’s hand?” His smile grew warmer. “No, Sir Robert, I would not change your welcome if I could. Any man who places his folk and their welfare first and
above all else in his concern, ignoring mighty men and rank and station to do what he must do, might, I believe, be relied upon to see to the welfare and protection of an old man’s favourite daughter, even were she not his wife.”

He stood gazing down pensively at Bruce, but when he grinned, the lines bracketing his mouth stood out sharply through the whiteness of his beard. “You remind me of your grandfather at your age— bandages and all. The first time I set eyes on him I was ten years old and he was twenty, and he had taken a tumble from a horse, landing in thick brambles while chasing a boar. His face and hands were cut to ribbons and he was bandaged about the head just as you are now. When I saw how he laughed at himself and his own folly, I decided, even at the age of ten, that this was a man I wanted to know. I became his squire soon after that, and then his loyal friend and follower forever after … And I had hopes of serving him as my king one day, though that was not to be.”

He began to nod his head rhythmically, his smile spreading as he switched from Gaelic to English. “I think your noble father has the right of things, though. We’ll keep my daughter away from you until you’ve lost that wild, raw look and grown some hair. Before then, you and I have much to talk about.”

Had Bruce been capable of moving at that moment he might have squirmed while he recalled the demeaning things he had said and thought about this gentle man’s daughter—a woman whom he had believed had leapt out at him, as if by magic, at the whim of others. Now, witnessing the evident fondness of the father for his daughter, he recalled the disparaging things he had said about her to Sir James Jardine and Thomas Beg, suggesting, without the slightest reason other than his own inchoate fears, that she might be humpbacked or warty or facially disfigured.

Now, faced with the kindly, unassuming humanity of his dead grandfather’s “disciple,” he found himself unable to hold the old earl’s gaze.

Earl Domhnall did not appear to notice anything and turned away to say something to Nicol MacDuncan, and while the two conferred
Sir Robert Bruce withered with shame. Self-loathing was a new experience for him, but he took to it with the zeal of a convert and shuddered at the prospect he now faced: the daunting task of facing the blameless young woman he had demeaned and reviled, with all the hypocrisy of keeping his simmering resentment and ill will hidden from her.

He was rescued from pondering his dilemma further by the arrival in his chambers of Father Baldwin and his invited colleague, Maître Reynald de Frontignac, who walked with a heavy limp. Father Baldwin, plainly in awe of his new companion, launched at once into a recitation of the man’s qualifications and experience, but the Frenchman quieted him with an upraised hand and a self- deprecating smile.

“Please,” he said, waving a hand in the direction of the bed. “I am here solely to examine the wounded man, and obviously this is he. Will you permit?”

He clearly took their agreement for granted, for he ushered Lord Annandale and the others towards the door and out, sweeping his arms upward as though herding geese.

The Frenchman was an eldritch-looking figure, emaciated, with unruly grey hair that had seldom known the touch of comb or shears save on the crown, where his tonsured pate marked him as a monk or a priest. The shoulders beneath his plain black cassock must have been broad once, Bruce thought, but now they were bowed in a pronounced stoop that emphasized the man’s advanced age, though he still towered head and shoulders over his thickset companion Father Baldwin, the local village priest. He wore a thick belt, tightly cinched about his waist, from which hung a bulky and anciently supple leather bag that covered him like an apron from waist to knees, but it was his face and hands that held Bruce’s attention. The face was arresting, dominated by large, wide eyes of the palest silver grey that gleamed out from beneath bushy brows on either side of a nose like a hatchet blade. The lower half was concealed beneath a riot of grey-white beard to match the profusion of hair on his head, yet Bruce could clearly imagine a determined jut of jaw and chiselled
chin. The man’s hands were huge, the knuckles pronounced and the fingers long and spatulate with wide, carefully tended nails. He stood wringing his hands absently, as though washing them, while his narrowed eyes roamed over Bruce from head to toe, and finally he grunted and looked the earl straight in the eye for the first time.

“You have pain,
oui
?” Bruce nodded, gently. “Of course you have. How far did you fall?” Bruce did not know, though he might have guessed around ten feet, but the Frenchman did not wait for an answer. “Onto stones,” he continued. “Sharp stones? With sharp edges?”

“No. Rounded … River stones, smooth.”

“But solid,
non
?” The beard twitched in what might have been a tiny smile. “But not sharp is good. And now we have to look.” His bushy eyebrows twitched. “My friend thinks the ribs are merely bruised but not broken. I think he might be right, but first I have to … to probe. You will not enjoy. You understand?”

Bruce gritted his teeth. “I understand.”

He felt his coverings being removed and then a long surge of fluctuating agony as the two men moved him around, working together to remove the bandages that swathed him. But that pain faded to insignificance beside the torment that followed as the Frenchman poked and prodded at Bruce’s injured ribs, at his shoulder and his hip, while his patient fought, with clenched teeth, against the ever-growing need to cry out. Eventually, the old Frenchman inhaled deeply and straightened up, his grave grey eyes returning to meet Bruce’s.

“It is as my friend thought. Nothing is broken. Cracked, perhaps, but no fractures, no splinters inside you waiting to bite. Your head is injured, too, from the fall, but also not broken. Thus, you will live and you will heal, quickly, one hopes … ”

“
But?
” Bruce looked the old man in the eye. “You did not say it, but I heard it in your voice. But what?”

This time the quirk of the mouth was undeniably a smile, and the Frenchman nodded in acknowledgment. “But, with such injuries to
the ribs, broken or bruised, the sole cure is the same. It requires time … Time and a lack of movement. A
complete
lack of movement. That is difficult for everyone, but for a young man like you, it might be close to impossible. To lie as still as is required for as long as is required would try the patience of a saint. We can … how does one say it? We can immobilize you, strap you down so that you
cannot
move—that is what we do with people who have badly broken ribs—but I doubt you would tolerate that for long. Would you?”