“Jesus! And Edward took the crown and jewels?”
“Aye. Shipped them back to London. But that’s no’ even part o’ what he took.”
Bruce looked sideways at him, frowning. “What’s worth more than Scotland’s crown and jewels?”
“The rest of the realm’s regalia and the royal plate. They emptied the treasure house. And then there’s St. Margaret’s own Black Rood, Scotland’s holiest relic, and the Stone o’ Destiny itself. The rood lifted frae Edinburgh and the other frae Scone Abbey, both to be shipped to Westminster Abbey for veneration by the English.”
Bruce had reined in his horse, his face blank with shock. “That is blasphemy, Thomas Beg.”
“Aye, it is, but don’t glower at me. I wasna there and I’m no’ responsible. But blasphemy it is, right enough, to steal one country’s holy relics for the adornment o’ another.”
Appalled was not a word that would have come to Bruce at any time, but that was how this news affected him. The Stone of Destiny was the literal seat of Scottish kings. Every Celtic king from time immemorial had been seated upon it when he was crowned. The thought of its being taken to England, and as a trophy, in that moment made nonsense of all Edward Plantagenet’s claims of judicious tolerance and strictly legal and constitutional deliberation. Scotland was now without a king, and by removing the physical trappings of kingship—crown, sceptre, robes, and treasury—and seizing the Stone of Destiny, obliterating centuries of tradition and ritual, Edward of England was plainly determined to ensure that it would remain without one.
“I heard somethin’ else in there, too, and ye’re no’ goin’ to like it.”
“Tell it to me quickly, then. What else did they take? What else could they take?”
“No.” He sensed Tam shaking his head, and as he turned to look at him the words came at him. “It’s nothin’ like that. It’s about your father.”
That brought a sudden dull ache to Bruce’s midriff, despite FitzHugh’s recent assurances. “What about him?”
“He wis in Scotland, just after the fight at Dunbar. But Edward sent him back to Carlisle wi’ a flea in his ear.”
“In Scotland … ? No, you’re wrong, Tam. You have to be. FitzHugh would surely have mentioned it.”
Thomas Beg twisted his mouth and dipped his head to one side, managing to give the impression of an elaborate shrug of doubt. “Different frae what I heard, then. But what I heard was definite, and the man that spoke o’ it didna know me and didna know I kent anythin’ about what he was sayin’. He was a northerner an’ he named your father by name—the Lord o’ Annandale, son of that Auld Bruce whit was near made king instead o’ Balliol.”
A worm of dread was beginning to roil in Bruce’s gut. It didn’t seem unfeasible on the face of things. The distance between Carlisle and Dunbar was not too great to preclude a swift sortie for Bruce— fifty miles or so across his own former lands of Annandale by Hawick and Melrose to the Lammermuir Hills and the coast; three, perhaps four days of hard riding each way. But what could have possessed his father to go there, quitting his own strategic post on the border in time of war? Bruce had a growing conviction that he did not want to hear the answer, but he kicked his horse into motion again and asked for it, clenching his guts against whatever the response might be.
“Go on, then. What did he say?”
“That even the mighty, stupit at the best o’ times, could sometimes be as prancin’ daft as a droolin’ halfwit. An’ he was laughin’ at the thought o’ it. He said Annandale chose ill on every front—ill timing, ill judgment, and an ill-phrased answer to the question o’ why he was there at a’ when he should be in England tendin’ to his duties wi’ the Scots still up in arms.”
“Jesus God! The very question I would have asked him, too. And how did my father respond?”
“Ill, as I said. As poorly as he could have, in fact. He telt Edward to his face that he had come, now that Balliol was done, to claim the kingdom that was now his by rights.”
“Oh, Jesus!” Bruce kept his face rock still, though he wanted to grind his teeth at his father’s rash foolishness, seeing now, as Lord Robert had evidently been incapable of seeing, the reality of Edward’s hardening will to keep the throne of Scotland vacant. The Scots regalia had not yet been seized at that point, but his father’s provocation might well have been a determining factor, if not in fact the sole determinant, in Edward’s decision to proceed with it. “And what was Edward’s response to that? Did your fellow know?”