“Finished training, my liege, but not yet knighted. He dreams of riding with you.”
“Does he, by God? Then let’s encourage him. I can use all the loyalty I can find.” He spun on his heel and shouted at the retreating brothers. “Nigel! Nigel Bruce, come here.”
Nigel approached quickly, his face alight with eagerness. “Your brother tells me you are awaiting knighthood and would ride with me. Is he correct?”
Poor Nigel was incapable of speech, but he nodded rapidly, his eyes like a puppy’s.
“Well, then,” the King said, pointing. “You see that fellow over there, in the black armour with the silver crest? That’s Sir Lionel Despencer, the commander of my guard. Tell him I said he is to take you with us. You’ll stand vigil in Colchester while we are there and I’ll knight you myself the following day. After that, we’ll find you a place where your abilities will serve you well. You’re a Bruce, so you must have abilities. Run, now. There’s not much time.”
He turned back to Bruce, who was as open mouthed as Nigel, and began to walk again. Neither of them spoke until they were inside the house and sitting by the fire in Bruce’s private chambers. There the King sat mute while Bruce recounted the details of the previous months as he had learned to reconstruct them, and when the younger man finally fell silent, he grimaced and shook his head.
“There is nothing I can say to you that will ease your grief, Robert. I know that from personal experience. All any man can do in such a pass is offer his regrets and suffer feeling futile and helpless. I, too, did what you did when I lost my Eleanor, and all the realm of England went begging until I found myself again. But I still feel the pain from time to time. Memories take you unawares forever afterwards, and each time they do, the pain seems just as fresh and raw as when you first felt it. But it does grow better, I can promise you that. The gaps that separate the pangs of pain grow longer as months pass. How is the child?”
“She’s well enough. Well tended, with no lack of love.”
“You blame her for her mother’s death?”
“What? No, no such thing. It was no fault of hers, poor thing. The fault was mine alone.”
“Yours?” Edward’s eyebrows peaked upward. “How were you at fault?”
“I killed her.”
“You killed her? How so, man? You mean you murdered her? You loved her, did you not?”
“More than life itself, but I got her with child. That killed her. Which means I killed her.”
“That is horseshit, my lord of Carrick. The getting of children is the reason for our being here. To compare it to doing murder is blasphemous.”
Until that moment Bruce had forgotten to whom he was speaking, addressing Edward as an equal with no thought of titles or proprieties. Now, hearing the familiar truculence in the King’s voice, he pulled himself together.
Edward was still talking, almost grumbling to himself. “Damned nonsense, boy. You spend too much time alone out here, miles from anywhere and brooding about things you can’t change. You need something to occupy your mind, get you out of yourself.” He stopped, as if struck by a sudden thought. “And I have just the very thing to do it. A task for you—the perfect task, in fact. Are you familiar with the name of William Douglas?”
“You mean Sir William Douglas, le Hardi, as he calls himself?”
“That’s the man.”
Bruce shrugged. “I know a little of him. He was governor of Berwick when you took the place, was he not?”
“Aye, he was. And he arranged advantageous terms for himself when he surrendered the castle town to us. He was released with all his ilk in the amnesty late last year.”
“And?”
“And now he’s rebelling again, safe back in Scotland, damn the man.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Not that anything he could do will amount to much, but he’s causing dissension everywhere he goes, and he’s interfering with the work of my people in his district. Nothing too damaging, as I have said, but his nuisance value is beyond all proportion to what he does. I cannot have him running around free, defying me wherever and whenever he chooses so to do. So I have dispatched a force to arrest him.”
Bruce cocked his head. “And you wish me to join that force?”
“What? Christ, no. I have other plans for you. His castle in the Dale of Douglas lies close to your earldom, does it not?”
“Near enough, sire, but it really lies in Galloway.”
“Aye, and Galloway is Percy’s territory now. He’s the one I dispatched to take Douglas, but he won’t look for the old fox at home. Douglas is up by Glasgow, conspiring with that other wily creature, Wishart … But his wife remains in Douglas Castle. You know about Douglas’s wife?”