‘You are gripping my arms too hard.’
Bruce bowed his head. A stranger’s hand is fumbling at the very core of you and you can say that. God keep you at His right Hand, Will Wallace.
The other thought rattled the lid of the black chest, burst briefly out – until he was gone, I could not set my foot on the way to the throne. Then it was wrestled back into the dark and the lid slammed on it, leaving it to coil and writhe with all the other sins he had committed to get to here.
Here, to this tent, with these lords, he thought wryly. In a month I will be forty years old. In an hour or two I might be dead, if these men do not fight and we fail. Dead. Not captured … the thought of capture brought a lurch of terror that almost doubled him; by God, he thought, I will not suffer like Will. Not that. They can stick my head on a London spike, but I will not be paraded like an entertainment of offal.
Nor fled … victory or death. Yet there was the nag of that, like his tunic catching on a nail as he went through a door, hauling him up short. The thought of returning to flight and harrowing if he failed, ducking back to heather and hill and outlawry, was a crushing weight – but if he stood and died rather than flee, then everything was for nothing. The deaths of his brothers, all those who had loyally served him and paid for it with lives and livelihoods … all the sins which bulged that chest in his head and, though he tried hard not to believe it, breathed out their foulness so that each one showed in the wreck of his face for all to see. All suffering made worthless if he gave in to noble death at the point of sure defeat.
And Elizabeth, his wife, lost to him for ever. Not that there was love in it – Christ’s Wounds, her father’s Irishmen stood opposite with the English – but the flower of the de Burghs held the chalice of Scotland’s future.
If his disease permitted such matters as an heir by then, of course. He wondered about the others, the soft night bodies that consoled him, the Christinas and Christians and ones with no name that he could recall. They were not repelled by the rumours, he noted. More to the point, none of those women had been felled by his very breath, poison to all if he was truly a leper. And one at least had conceived him a son, a fine boy – but that had been a time ago and the lad was now old enough to be a squire. A king, he thought wryly, if I die and brother Edward with me.
The nobiles would never permit it, of course; young squire Robert Bruce was too bastard to be a king and if the worst happened here – as it might – then the Kingdom would be plunged into more chaos.
He felt the sour weight of it all, crushing him into the shape of a throne.
The crowded tent waited, shifting impatiently and wondering why they were here. They were here, Bruce thought, because I need them to fight and need to have them believe it is their own idea and not mine. I have led them to this ring, but they must dance to my tune, so that I know they will follow the steps and not jig off in entirely the wrong direction.
‘We have lost brothers, friends, relatives,’ he began and the murmuring died. ‘Others of your kin and friends are prisoners. Prelates and clergy of this kingdom are closeted in stone.’
He saw that he had their attention and told them what Seton had reported.
‘If their English hearts are cast down, the body is not worth a jot. Their glory is in heavy horse and heavier carts,’ he went on, while the air grew thick and still; outside, he heard the great, slow drone of men moving and talking.
‘Our glory is in the name of God and victory.’
He had them, could sense it swell like a fat prick. He told them he would fight and watched that chase itself across their faces. He told them they did not have to agree with him and that if they all believed it was right for them to withdraw, then he would do it, with a heavy heart.
‘If you stay to fight with me, my good lords,’ he added, ‘know that this is a just cause and so a divine favour is with us, that you will garner all the great riches the English have brought with them, while your wives and children will bless you for defending them.’
There were shouts, now. ‘God wills it.’ ‘St Andrew.’ Even a growled-out ‘Cruachan’ from Neil Campbell.
‘The enemy fight only for power,’ Bruce added. ‘Take no prisoners or spoils until all is won, my lords. Know also that all previous offences against me and mine are pricked out for those who stand with me this day and that the heirs of all those who fall will freely receive their just inheritances.’
It was, he knew, a jewel of plaint, pitched perfectly between honour and greed.