The Renegade(195)

“And did they come out?”

“You tell me, for you know as much as I do now. None of us saw what happened at the end, once the sun went down. We heard the roar of the fires, and the screams, but we could see nothing from where we were.”

Bruce was unable to believe what he was hearing.

“How many—?” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Were you to guess … How many deaths think you there might have been?”

The seaman sighed. “Did you have people there?”

“No, thank God. But I know the town.”

“No, my lord, you knew it once. It was still burning when we sailed away. As to your question, with the red flag flying … ” His shake of the head was slow, ponderous. “Thousands, I would say, from what we heard that night. Perhaps the entire town. I simply don’t know, Lord Bruce. But I know I have nothing more to tell you. We left on the tide and we were glad to be gone.”

There was nothing more to say. Bruce thanked the man for his time and offered him a gold piece, but Cromwell shrugged it away. “I haven’t earned that,” he said flatly. “All I have done is speak of things that shouldn’t be mentioned. I’ve been to Berwick many times and knew the people there. They were as much like us as any other Englishman could be. It sickens me enough to think that English soldiery could act that way anywhere, but to do what they did, where they did? That makes me ashamed of my own folk.”

The eleventh of July marked Bruce’s twenty-second birthday, though the event went unacknowledged by everyone except Isabella, who presented him with a magnificent pair of riding boots, ordered months earlier from London to mark the occasion of his first birthday as her husband. He wore them daily thereafter because they were not only beautiful but practical, soft and supple despite their weight and substance, and perfectly suited to the way he walked, which could not always be said of riding boots.

Several more weeks elapsed with no word from Carlisle, though, and by that time Bruce had grown seriously worried about his father. The Lord of Annandale had never been a letter writer, but even so Bruce felt that Carlisle’s situation on the very border of the southwestern invasion route from Scotland should have merited a communication of some kind, if only a word to let his family in the south know that he was alive. He himself had intended to write to his father, but in the aftermath of returning to Writtle and finding Izzy pregnant he had let the matter slide, telling himself that Carlisle would have been relatively unaffected by the hostilities thanks to Edward’s pre-emptive strike into Scotland. Now, though, with so much time having elapsed in silence, he acknowledged guiltily to himself that he might have been less than perfectly filial in not contacting his father.

The end of July was approaching by the time he finally gave in to his uncertainties and decided to ride to Westminster in search of substantial news and information. Isabella was seven months into her carrying term by then, her tiny body made to look even smaller by the grotesque hugeness of the burden she was carrying inside her, and even though the road between Writtle and London was an excellent one and the weather appeared to hold no threats, Bruce and Allie both agreed, over Izzy’s outraged protests, that the potential hazards of a fifty-mile return journey in a poorly sprung coach were far too high to justify the risks. She finally relented and agreed to remain in Writtle when Bruce pointed out that the journey would be pointless for her even in the best of circumstances, since Edward himself was still in Scotland. Without his royal presence and with all his glittering entourage accompanying the monarch on campaign, Westminster would be an empty shell, inhabited only by those senior ministers of the Crown whose duties kept them in place, running the kingdom in the King’s absence.

Two days later, Bruce and Thomas Beg arrived in Westminster to find the place surprisingly busy, though in a way that Bruce had never seen before. The precincts surrounding the main buildings were crowded with soldiers and their officers, and scores of saddled horses were drawn up in ordered ranks in the great courtyard within the main gates. Bruce had never seen horses in the inner yard before, but judging by the dried manure scattered all over the cobblestones, this had evidently become a commonplace with the King not in residence and the constant comings and goings of mounted personnel. The guards were still in place where they always were, though, and Bruce presented himself to the guard sergeant on duty, asking to be announced to Sir Robert FitzHugh. The sergeant nodded, apparently recognizing Bruce, and sent a guardsman to accompany him to where he could wait for FitzHugh to receive him. A short time later he was shown into an anteroom where a good half score of other people were already waiting.