A Year & a Day

  Thinking of her vision, Jane asked gently, “Do you want to be his queen?”

  Jory laid the gown she had chosen across the foot of the bed and came to sit beside Jane. “I know that can never be. The Scots would never accept an English queen.”

  “Yet still you want him to become king?” “Yes! I would do anything to help him achieve his goal.”

  “Do you love him enough to make a great sacrifice?” Jane asked softly.

  “I love him enough for anything!” Jory declared passionately.

  “I know Robert Bruce has the secret pledge of a few Scottish earls, but if he had the power of Edward de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, behind him, he could gain the throne.”

  “You are right, Jane. Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful? If only the Earl of Ulster could be induced to back Robert!”

  Jane hesitated only a moment before she rushed on. “If Robert offered a betrothal, making de Burgh’s daughter, Elizabeth, his queen, it would almost certainly induce Ulster to help Robert become king.”

  Jory’s eyes widened with shock and the blood drained from her face so quickly, she looked as waxy as a corpse.

  * * *

  That evening in the hall, the talk was all about warfare. “Edward has told the governor his first priority is the immediate elimination of Wallace. He is offering rewards of money and land to any noble who aids in the fugitive’s capture.”

  “The king is an evil genius at dividing and conquering. His favorite tool is bribery, either by gifts of land or remittance of debts,” Robert declared. “I know … he’s bribed me often enough.”

  To divert them, Jane brought Lincoln Robert to the hall. She fed him some custard while the onlookers marveled at the child’s appetite.

  “He needs something more substantial than custard,” Lynx decided, handing him the crust from a loaf. When Lincoln Robert began to devour it with gusto, covering himself with sticky crumbs, the men couldn’t help laughing.

  Jane noticed that throughout the meal, Jory had been unusually pensive. In the candlelight her delicate face was shadowed with dark smudges beneath her beautiful eyes and Jane’s heart ached for her dearest friend. Then Jane’s glance was drawn to her husband, who was so like his sister in coloring. But there the similarity ended. Lynx’s physique now exuded strength. He was more robust than he had ever been and Jane fervently thanked God for his recovery.

  She watched with loving eyes as Lynx lifted his baby son onto his shoulders and galloped toward the stairs as Lincoln Robert clutched fistfuls of his father’s hair and crowed his delight. Jory was right, as usual, Jane decided. She must keep her fears to herself and pretend Lynx was omnipotent.

  * * *

  Hours later, high in the Lady Tower of Dumfries, the Bruce lay spent, cradling Jory as she lay sprawled across his muscular body. “You are fierce as a tigress tonight, sweetheart. What prompts such ferocity?”

  “Will you answer the call to battle?”

  “The thought of losing me makes you insatiable?”

  “Yes!” she told him, biting his shoulder.

  “I’m needed to patrol Galloway, Annandale, and Lanark, or Wallace’s raiding parties will have all the Lowlands blackened. Likely I won’t be called to battle.”

  “I’m not talking about losing you in battle.”

  “How else could you lose me?” he asked, unwinding a pale strand of her hair from his forearm.

  “You know as well as I, our parting is inevitable.”

  He placed strong fingers beneath her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. “You’ve never had trouble before pushing away the future and embracing the present.”

  “Robert, there is a way to speed your bid for the crown,” Jory said intensely. “If the Earl of Ulster backed you—”

  “Sweetheart, de Burgh owns half of Ireland; for all intents and purposes he is a king himself. What could I possibly offer him that he doesn’t have?”

  “You could offer to make his daughter your queen,” she whispered. “It’s an offer few fathers would refuse.”

  “Elizabeth is a child!”

  “If you’d stop looking at me, my love, you’d see that Elizabeth is on the brink of womanhood and already mad in love with you.”

  “Enough,” he said, covering her mouth with his in a long, silencing kiss.

  “Promise me you’ll think about it.” “Jory, my heart, you know me well enough that I will think of little else.”

  In the opposite tower, Jane, who had downed two goblets of wine to bolster her bravado, was in a droll mood where the least word set her off laughing.

  “You are very gay tonight and here I expected tears at the thought of my going to war again.”

  “Tush, I’m not the least bit afraid for you.” She pushed him down on the bed and ran her hands up his bare legs. “You have muscles of iron, I warrant you could crack walnuts with your thighs. God, just the thought of that makes me weak with need!”

  “You’ve been around Jory too long. You are turning into a shallow, selfish little minx who thinks only of pleasure,” he teased.

  Jane sat back on her heels, her eyes as round as an owl’s. “You’re wrong, Lynx … you’ll see … Jory is capable of being completely selfless. She’s always been generous to a fault with me and I adore her.” An unbidden tear rolled down her cheek.

  “And I adore you,” Lynx vowed, realizing immediately that Jane’s tears were there, just beneath all her laughter. “I know what you need to banish those silly tears.”

  “What?”

  “A damn good bedding.”

  The wine kicked in and Jane began to giggle.

  “What’s so amusing?”

  “Our first bedding, after the handfasting. I was so pathetically green and ignorant. And you were so formal and stiff!”

  “I bet I wasn’t this stiff,” he said, drawing her hand to his groin. Her fingers did wicked things to him and try as he might Lynx could not remember a time when he had not been rampant for her.

  “Let’s play stallion and mare,” she invited, threading her fingers through his tawny mane and nipping his ear playfully with her sharp teeth. The bedding went on for hours during which Lynx de Warenne skillfully banished all his wife’s tears.

  At Edinburgh, Edward Plantagenet held a council of war with his generals to discuss strategy. Like John de Warenne, the king was in his sixties and the years had taken their toll.

  “Numbers are not as important as weapons. How well equipped are they?”

  “The last time I fought the Scots they were bare-arsed savages,” Bigod declared.

  “Since then they’ve managed to acquire better equipment, most of it ours,” John de Warenne said dryly.

  “How?” Edward demanded.

  “Sire, they pick over battlefields like crows, robbing the dead of armor and weapons, they mount raids on armories, and Wallace is famous for spiriting away baggage trains.”

  “Whose?” Edward demanded, his piercing blue eyes searching the room for culprits.

  Percy looked sheepish; he had lost three. John de Warenne said quickly, “Sire, their main weapon is the twelve-foot spear which is lethal to our cavalry.”

  Lynx de Warenne held the opinion that the king relied on his cavalry too much when there were other viable alternatives. But since he was in charge of a large company of heavy cavalry, he risked sounding like a coward if he suggested these alternatives. Nevertheless he spoke up. “Sire, I have found my Welsh bowmen far more effective against the Scots. They sustain fewer casualties since they can fight from a distance. Their longbows discharge arrows three times the speed of crossbows; a most effective weapon against an enemy whose soldiers stuff tow in their tunics for protection.”

  Notoriously stubborn, the king argued, “I have always relied on my cavalry. It is a tried and true method of winning wars.”

  “In France, yes, but in Scotland, where moss and bog can stretch for miles, heavy cavalry can sink up to its hocks and flounder helplessly.”

  “We will
put some of the Welsh in the front ranks before the cavalry,” Edward declared.

  “Nay, Sire,” Lynx de Warenne objected, “the cavalry would trample them.” De Warenne knew the English king was not above destroying his own troops if he destroyed the Scots as well. “The Welsh must have their own flanks.”

  Edward stared at him. “I heard rumors you were killed in battle.”

  “They were exaggerated, Sire.”

  “Have you read the Bruce’s reports that the countryside has been laid waste to the north, Your Majesty?” John de Warenne inquired.

  “Let us hope those too are exaggerated. I’ve ordered supplies sent up from Carlisle in any case, so I see no reason why we cannot press forward.”

  When the king received a message from the Earl of Angus informing him that Wallace’s army was encamped near Falkirk, Edward Plantagenet gave the order to march. Edward and his generals soon realized that the Bruce’s reports were correct. The English saw nothing but blackened fields and burned towns.

  By the time they reached Linlithgow, a few miles from Falkirk, the fodder for the horses was all gone. The English made camp in the darkness, rolling themselves in blankets and lying down wherever they could find a bit of dry ground.

  Edward Plantagenet did likewise, too proud to order his campaign tent set up when his generals slept on the ground. In the middle of the night, Edward’s restive warhorse stepped on him, breaking his ribs. Panic among his leaders ensued. Some even suggested they should abort the operation and return to Edinburgh.

  The king stubbornly refused. His doctors bound him and he then donned his armor and mounted his horse, sitting stiffly in the saddle with John de Warenne at his side. He gave orders to strike camp well before daylight and the army moved forward at a snail’s pace.

  When dawn broke, Wallace’s army was spotted ahead of them on a high ridge. The Scottish leader had drawn up his men in circular schiltrons, with spearmen on the outside and reserves in the center to take the place of those who fell. Between the schiltrons were Scottish archers who carried small, outdated bows and arrows. The cavalry, led by John Comyn, was being held in reserve.

  The King of England sat his horse in agony, hating Wallace with a vengeance for occupying the high ground, knowing his own forces had an uphill battle ahead of them. To make matters worse, Lynx de Warenne’s words had been prophetic—a wide, dank moss stretched before them. The English forces had to be diverted right and left to avoid it, but the Welsh archers proved their worth. The mighty longbows launched their arrows over the high ground, and they fell like hail on the schiltrons.

  As the Scots began to die, Comyn’s cavalry fled the battlefield. The King of England, now gray in the face from pain, ordered his own cavalry to swing far wide of the boggy moss and attack the foot soldiers from the rear.

  The beaten Scots fled through the heavily wooded hillsides behind Falkirk, but not before ten thousand of them lay slaughtered on the battlefield. When it was reported to Edward that William Wallace was not among the dead, he swore his army would pursue him until the king’s enemy was taken, but wherever the English army went, they found nothing but wasted lands.

  Edward Plantagenet, now suffering ill health, and finding himself with a starving army on his hands, decided to withdraw to Carlisle on the English side of the border. Wallace was declared an outlaw and other warrants of arrest were soon issued from Carlisle, despite the king’s deteriorating condition. Among those Edward wanted were Montieth and Comyn.

  It wasn’t long before Comyn sent conciliatory messages to Edward, pointing out the part he had played in the English defeat of Wallace. After due consideration, a shrewd Edward pardoned Comyn, knowing if he was arrested and beheaded, it would leave the way clear for Robert Bruce to claim the throne of Scotland.

  The Earl of Montieth had not expected to come out on the losing side. He went into hiding, amazed at the number of Scots nobles, previously opposed to the English king, who now spoke out to blacken William Wallace’s name and ability. Montieth watched Comyn’s every move as he offered to accommodate Edward Plantagenet in return for a pardon.

  The wily Earl of Montieth, following Comyn’s example, entered into secret negotiations with Edward Plantagenet. In return for a pardon, reconfirmation of his governorship of Dumbarton, and the earldom of Lennox, the Earl of Montieth promised to deliver William Wallace into the king’s hands.

  35

  “Is it true, is the king dying?” Lynx de Warenne asked Robert Bruce, who had just returned from Carlisle Castle. “No such luck,” Robert said irreverently. “But didn’t they send for Prince Edward?” “Yes, the king had a seizure and his son came immediately. Never have I witnessed such a fucking poor excuse for a prince in my life!” Robert scorned.

  “Young Edward was always spoiled and effeminate, but I haven’t seen him for a couple of years. I hoped he would improve with age.”

  “He’s totally unsuited to kingship. He’s an immature fop who surrounds himself with male lovers. Edward must run mad every time he sets eyes on his heir.”

  “Such a feckless ruler would make things infinitely easier for you,” Lynx said quietly.

  “Aye, I would be more afraid of the bones of the father dead, than of the living son!”

  “I have the governor upstairs in bed with an ague, coughing his lungs up. He rode in yesterday to tell me of a rumor Wallace had been taken.”

  The Bruce raised his eyebrows in consternation. “So that’s what brought about Plantagenet’s rapid recovery! The king is suddenly well enough to return to London.”

  “If it is true, Wallace will be tried and condemned to death. There will be no pardon for the king’s enemy,” Lynx declared.

  “Ironic, that such a valiant and brave warrior will be condemned, while false traitors like Comyn will thrive and prosper,” Brace said bitterly.

  “Mayhap the time is ripe,” Lynx said quietly.

  Bruce’s dark brows drew together, as he brooded over his friend’s words.

  “The Scots will never accept English rule, nor will the Church of Scotland ever submit. Someone will rise up to take Wallace’s place and the battles will go on until Edward is dead. Then the son will lose all that the father has gained and the fighting and killing will all have been for naught. I am tired of war,” Lynx said bluntly.

  “If I took up arms against the king,” Robert said low, “would you oppose me?”

  Lynx shook his head. “I would return to my lands in England.”

  Brace raised his eyes to the stairs. “And the governor?”

  “His health is failing. I think I could persuade him to relinquish his office and retire to England.”

  Jory, who had been reading to her uncle, came downstairs to join them. She searched Robert’s face, wondering if he had reached a decision about the private matter they had discussed. His face was dark and closed, telling her nothing.

  Robert picked up his riding gloves. “I cannot stay. Will you ride out with me a short way, Jory?”

  “With pleasure, my lord.” Her face lit up with delight, pretending their time together would be infinite.

  In the stables, the Bruce saddled Jory’s palfrey and lifted her into the saddle. Then without a word they galloped swiftly to beyond the first dense copse of trees. They reined in, vaulted from their mounts, and fell into each other’s arms. He kissed her until her lips felt bee-stung. Finally Jory pulled away from him.

  “Did you speak with de Burgh?”

  He searched her face with desolate eyes. “Beloved, why are you urging me to this action when you feel such passion for me?”

  “Because I want you to fulfill your destiny! Let me make this noble sacrifice. Did you see de Burgh?”

  “Yes. I did not broach this matter, but I invited him to Lochmaben.”

  Jory went on tiptoe to kiss him again. “I love you so much; you are doing the right thing, Robert.”

  He wrapped his arms about her and held her enfolded against him for long minutes. “You always smel
l of freesia,” he murmured.

  “Freesia is my favorite scent.”

  His face was bereft as he reached into his doublet. “Will you give this letter to Elizabeth? It is from her father, asking her to join him at Lochmaben.”

  Jory took the letter and in return gave him a radiant smile. It prevented the scream that was building in her throat from escaping.

  Jane removed the cold brick from John de Warenne’s feet and replaced it with a hot one. Then she measured out a generous dose of syrup made from speedwell and angelica to ease his coughing.

  “You are an angel of mercy, my dear, I am so fortunate to be here at Dumfries with my family. I shudder to think what would have become of me if I’d stayed in Edinburgh.”

  Marjory came into the chamber and put into words what Jane had been thinking. “You shouldn’t go back there. You’ve served the king your entire life, to the detriment of your own health. It’s time your heavy responsibilities were shouldered by someone else.”

  “My dear Jory, I spoke at length with the king at Falkirk; both of us are feeling our advanced years. I believe he will soon appoint a board of commissioners to govern Scotland. One man cannot do it all.”

  “That is marvelous news, my lord, now try to get some rest,” Jane pleaded.

  Jory followed Jane from the chamber. “I have a letter for Elizabeth from her father. Will you come with me while I deliver it?”

  Jane’s eyes filled with speculation. Jory’s tone made it clear she needed moral support. “Of course I will.”

  Elizabeth was overjoyed to receive the letter from her noble father, Edward de Burgh, Earl of Ulster. When she read its contents, she was ecstatic. “Oh, my father is visiting the Bruces at Lochmaben in a sennight and wants me to join him there!”

  Jane saw Elizabeth’s cheeks blush a pretty pink. “Oh, I will need a new dress,” Elizabeth declared breathlessly.

  As Jane looked at Jory, their eyes met in understanding.

  “Not just one dress, Elizabeth, you must have a dozen new gowns,” Jory insisted. “Don’t forget that Robert Bruce is Scotland’s most eligible bachelor.”