“The willing abductee. I do, sire. She’s English.”
“She’s a witch. I want you to go home and bring her back here. That will get Douglas’s attention. Go and collect your men from Carrick and from Annandale, and burn down Douglas Castle. But get the woman first. I want her here in London, in the Tower if need be, because if there is anything in this world of ours that might bring this Douglas wolf to heel, I believe it might be her, the she-wolf with whom he mates.”
“Very well, my liege, I’ll do that. But Douglas Castle is strongly fortified and I have no siege engines. My Carrick men will not be much use against high stone walls.”
“No, they won’t, but I have siege engines in Berwick. You rouse your men, I’ll see you well equipped. The prime intent is to bring back the woman, and that’s why I’m sending you. You’re Scots, by birth and speech at least, and you’re an earl, and you’re young and believable. Offer her whatever you think necessary, but get her to abandon that castle and surrender for her goodman’s sake, to save his life. And once she’s out, burn down the rats’ nest. Will you do that for me?”
“I will, my liege. I’ll start preparing to leave immediately.”
“Good, but don’t take too many men from here. Travel light and quickly and raise your own men up there. I want Scots involved in this, not an army of Englishmen against a single rebellious Scot.”
Half an hour later, watching the last of the royal cavalcade move off along the road to the northeast, Bruce was deep in thought and failed to hear Thomas Beg come up behind him until the big man’s voice startled him.
“That wis … unusual. Ye’ll have folk callin’ you the King’s catamite, gin this keeps up. What did he want?”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “To offer his sympathy.”
“Oh aye? Nice o’ him to wait so long.”
“He didn’t know. He was up north.”
“Fine, and what does he want you to do now? Where are we goin’?”
Bruce looked at him and grinned. “Why would you even ask me that, Thomas? It makes you sound cynical. Do you truly think the King came here apurpose, with something already set in his mind?”
The big man shrugged, his eyes on the columns of departing horsemen. “If he didna, it would be the first time ever. So where are we goin’?”
The Earl of Carrick filled his lungs with air, smelling the overpowering scent of the great body of horses that had just gone by, and punched his companion gently on the shoulder.
“Scotland, Tam,” he said. “We’re going back to Carrick, rebel hunting.”
CHAPTER TWENTY - FIVE
LESSONS IN LOYALTY
Eight days after receiving his instructions from King Edward, Bruce was again in the familiar fortress of Lochmaben. He had ridden first into his own Carrick earldom to raise his men there and advise them on what was afoot, and only then had he travelled back to Annandale. Now he was a supplicant, seeking aid. The lairds of Lochmaben and Annandale were his father’s liegemen, not his, and although he knew his father would abide by Edward’s expressed wishes to raise the Annandale men against Douglas Castle, the fact remained that his father was still bound by duty in Carlisle, and Bruce had not had time to go there and request the earl’s authorization to raise Annandale. Instead he had sent word to Sir James Jardine, asking him to summon the Annandale knights to confer with him, as his father’s representative, when he arrived. That had been several days earlier, and now the lairds were assembled. They had listened respectfully enough to what he had to say, and had then turned in unison towards the knight of Heriot, the senior among them, inviting him to answer for them.
Now John Armstrong of Heriot sat frowning, seemingly unaware that the eyes of every man in the room were fixed upon him, awaiting his opinion. Bruce forced himself to sit motionless, keeping his face blank to betray no slightest sign that he had much to lose should the old man’s stern ponderings result in what the Earl of Carrick feared they might. When he delivered his response, Bruce knew, the others, representing the Annandale tenantry of Dinwiddies, Johnstones, Jardines, Crosbies, and Elliotts, would accept his pronouncement as a verdict. Armstrong, he knew, was barely literate, but that would in no way affect the old man’s judgment; a lifetime of probity and conscientious duty in the service of the Noble Robert had given the old man an undisputable gravitas that was backed by a faultless record of dedication to the welfare of his folk.
The room in which they had gathered was the hall everyone called the Assembly, the half entrance hall and half common room inside the main doors of the central tower of the Lochmaben keep. Furnished with an open-centred arrangement of half a score of heavy oak tables where the sixteen men were seated haphazardly, it lay just outside the old lord’s former den. On Bruce’s right, separated from him by two other occupied chairs and flanked on his right by his son Andrew, Sir James Jardine sat stone faced, his lips a thin line beneath his grizzled beard.