The Renegade(206)

Nicol reassured Bruce that the Comyn tenancy had been a relatively lenient one, under the supervision of a cousin of the Earl of Buchan, and the affairs of the earldom had suffered little, save that the rents and revenues for the upkeep of Carrick had gone north to Buchan. Some of the household staff had inevitably been displaced to make room for Comyn counterparts, but Nicol had restored those as soon as the Comyns moved out and he himself had moved back in. Faced with the need since then to replenish the workforce in the absence of the fighting men who had been marched away by the Comyns to the war, he said, he had brought in people from the Isles, men and women of his own and Bruce’s mother’s clan; hard-working, hard-dirt farmers and fisherfolk who cared little for the wars of distant kings and to whom the mainland’s bounty seemed like Eden. These new men were all fighting men, of course, he pointed out, well able to protect and hold their own, and since their fathers had all stood behind their countess while she lived, so, too, would their sons be loyal to her son. Carrick was in good hands.

They talked late into that first night, and once they had dealt with everything pertaining to the earldom, they moved on to discuss the war itself and the effect it had had, and was still having, on Scots life in general, with particular regard to what Bruce had heard said earlier in Maybole.

“I didn’t like what I was hearing, Nicol, and I could hardly believe my ears at times, but it was plain that no one was lying. How bad is it, in truth?”

“It’s bad,” his uncle replied, “but no worse here than elsewhere, from what I’m told. It’s the same everywhere. The English victory stunned the whole of Scotland, and the destruction of the supposedly unbeatable feudal host left the folk everywhere doubting themselves and all they had been told since they were born. Those they had looked to as leaders were all imprisoned and there was no one to replace them, so the folk left here were easy prey for the English soldiery.”

“Prey?”

Nicol looked at him askance. “Is it difficult to understand? The folk didn’t have a chance against the English attitude. They had been conquered, Rob, invaded and defeated by people who plainly think they are superior to any Scot, and who behave accordingly.”

“But Edward’s word is clear on that. No mistreatment of the Scots folk—no raping, no pillage, no abuse.”

Nicol sniffed. “That may be so officially, but the English soldiery take their standards of behaviour from their knights and officers, not from the King in Westminster. And believe me when I say that these same knights and officers are more than merely slightly contemptuous of all things Scots.”

Bruce instantly remembered what his grandfather had so often said about the power of men’s perceptions: men believed what they thought they saw to be true. If the English leadership, the earls and barons, cared nothing for the welfare of the Scots people, too intent on their own selfish ambitions, then their folk would behave accordingly, and all the written orders of the English administrators were no more than a waste of ink and parchment. The English soldiery would behave as lawlessly and brutally as their leaders permitted them to behave. That was the way of soldiers everywhere—to take ruthless advantage of everything they could, for their own benefit and without being caught doing it. And if their leaders didn’t care what they did, why should they?

He decided there and then that the King of England needed to be told about this directly, although he was not at all sure how Edward would react to hearing it. Perhaps he might do something about it—take drastic steps to enforce his stated will—but he found himself forced to admit that the odds were equally good that he might not.

He spent the next eight days with Nicol, visiting every bit of the earldom and taking careful note of changes and repairs to be made. He spent much of that time speaking with his tenants, long-familiar cottagers and fisherfolk for the main part, who were genuinely pleased to welcome him back home even though the men were gone and many of the women did not know whether their sons and husbands were alive or dead.

He left the earldom in Nicol’s care and returned to Lochmaben, where, as he had promised, he summoned his father’s knights to meet with him. He spent an entire day with them, listening carefully to all they had to say and making sure the elderly cleric who had served his grandfather took careful notes on matters that Bruce judged his father would deem important. Other than that, there was not much to be done in Lochmaben, since the knights were masters of their own lands and required no outside help with their activities.

The following day, he sought an audience with Sir Miles Humphreys, the temporary custodian of the fortress, and relieved him of his responsibilities. The knight sat blinking in astonishment.