In light of the collective nouns used in this book, I should add another which is particularly apt – a roguery of historians.
Unlike the earlier Dark Ages, there is no paucity of sources for the Scottish Wars of Independence, or the lives of Wallace and Bruce – what there is instead is a contradiction of times, dates, places and people, sometimes accidental, more often deliberate, from those being paid to enhance the reputation of their subjects.
That, coupled with the general attempts to revise history in favour of the various protagonists, has polished the personae of Edward I, Wallace and Bruce almost beyond recognition, while creating the impression that the war which culminated in the battle of Bannockburn was one of the freedom-loving Scots against the tyranny of England.
Ask any Scot in a pub and they will tell you chapter and verse on Bruce and on Wallace – they may even pour scorn on Mel Gibson and Braveheart, while admitting that they thoroughly enjoyed the movie, even the pseudo-kilts, face-painting (now almost de rigueur at any Scottish event) and waggling of bare arses at opponents.
The truth is harsher and more misted. Braveheart is a dubious interpretation of already dubious history, while relative sizes and composition and exact location of the armies at Stirling Brig and Falkirk is supposition and best-guess, depending on whom you read.
There is no doubt that the major protagonists were genuine heroic figures to a large body of opinion, in their own lifetimes and since. Equally, they were regarded as the blackest of terrorists to much of the rest of the population of both Scotland and England.
The legend had made Bruce into the hero king, liberator of Scotland, and any grey areas of his life have been airbrushed. Wallace, of course, is painted in easy black and white, as the giant with an anachronistic two-handed claymore, fighting to the very end and never giving in.
The truth – or what can be seen of it now – is different, but open to interpretation. This period was Scotland’s civil war more than anything, with the powerful Comyn, Buchans and Balliols against the determined Bruces for the possession of the Kingdom of Scots. Edward, the opportunist, tried to muscle in and soon realised his expensive mistake, for both sides used him unashamedly to further their own ends.
Nor is he the out-and-out villain, the ‘proud Edward sent hame to think again’ about trying his tyranny on the Scots; to the English he was one of the best kings they ever had and they feared – rightly – his passing, knowing the son was not the father.
I have tried to give Bruce and Wallace and Edward I back their original lives, after a fashion, to show them against the backdrop of the times while also unveiling some of the people, great and small, fictional and historical, who struggled to live in that emerging Scotland.
There are those I have maligned, or used for my own ends. Isabel MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, for one. All that is known, for certain, is that she existed, was married to the Earl of Buchan and, at one crucial moment in history, deserted marriage and party to side with her husband’s enemies, by becoming the hereditary MacDuff, Crowner of Scottish kings, and helping to legitimise Bruce.
She suffered for it, being subsequently captured and imprisoned in a cage on the walls of Berwick. Her later life is debatable, the best theory being that she was huckled off to a nunnery, her husband, the earl, having died.
The rest is my intepretation and invention – even her age is a confusion of accounts; her marital status is based on the evidence of her turning her back on her husband in favour of the Bruce faction. That and her lack of children told me much about her personal relationship with Buchan. Her supposed love affair with Bruce is mentioned as a rumour in some sources, probably scurriously anti-Bruce propaganda; her love affair with Hal of Herdmanston is pure invention.
Kirkpatrick is another invention and, though I have based him on the real Sir Roger Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, I have deliberately made him a fictional figure, since the real one crops up, irritatingly, on the English side far too often to be the firm Bruce henchman I needed for the story. Until, that is, he appeared on the scene to complete the murder of the Red Comyn in Greyfriars Church. That killing persuaded me of his darkly murderous character, though he is invention, as is his counterpart, the vicious Malise Bellejambe. Another villain, Malenfaunt, is a legitimate family name, but the saturnine and dubious Sir Robert does not exist.