The Bruce force may have appeared to lack discipline. Yet both were readily discernible, evident in the extreme care the Annandale marchers all took to keep themselves spread far apart and cross through their own home lands without causing any depredations that could be avoided. They advanced on an extended front, close to a mile wide where the terrain would permit, because, as his grandfather explained to Rob, fifteen hundred men with horses and wagons moving in a compact body would destroy every field and every copse it crossed. These were the men of Annandale and this was their home, so they took great pains to leave few lasting signs of their passing.
By the time they were beyond Annandale and struck northwest towards Bothwell, their muster was complete, and any newcomers they saw kept well away from them, gathering on vantage points from which they could watch, and count, the passing Bruce forces.
From Bothwell, they left the widening valley of the Clyde and struck northeast again, towards Stirling and the River Forth that split the realm of Scotland into its two ancient divisions, northern Highlands and southern Lowlands. On that part of their journey they were contacted by couriers from the Earls of Lennox and Mar and Fife and from Sir James Stewart himself, the hereditary High Steward of the realm, all of whom promised Lord Robert armed support and offered encouragement and godspeed.
Rob’s father caught up to them the day before they reached Stirling, adding a full seven score of newcomers from Carrick to their ranks. Rob was alone with Nicol when the earl arrived, and they were the first to welcome him back, and while his father made no reference to the changes in Rob’s bearing and demeanour since their last parting, Rob felt sure that he was quietly pleased with his son’s progress and he felt no need to prove anything further. His two immediate ancestors were serving their realm well, he believed, and he was determined to do no less when his turn arrived.
They arrived at Perth, less than ten miles from their final destination at Scone, and Lord Robert and some twenty of his most prominent followers rode into the town, leaving the main body of their following drawn up in the fields outside the town’s walls, not wishing to alarm the inhabitants any more than they must. They were met in the marketplace by Robert Wishart, the Bishop of Glasgow, a dyed-in-the-wool Bruce supporter and a close friend and confidant of the Stewart, within whose holdings Glasgow lay. He was also a member of the council of Guardians, wherein his Bruce sympathies were well known. Even before Lord Robert and the Earl of Carrick had time to dismount, the bishop came striding to meet them, dressed in the full episcopal regalia of his guardianship. He nodded grimly to Lord Robert and the earl and curtly summoned them to confer with him. Without waiting for a reply, he stalked away towards the pavilion that had been erected for him in the middle of the marketplace.
Earl Robert swung a leg over the cantle of his saddle and slid to the ground, watching the bishop’s retreating back. Beside him, his father dismounted with less agility, his face impassive as he handed his reins to one of his men. As Lord Robert stamped his feet, loosening his leg muscles, the earl turned to him, one eyebrow raised in a silent question. The patriarch shrugged slightly but said nothing as he turned to follow the bishop. The earl instructed Nicol to warn the others to stay in the square and form a cordon around the bishop’s pavilion, far enough from the tent to keep prying ears at bay. As he turned back to make his own way towards the tent, the earl saw that his father was walking with one hand on young Robert’s shoulder.
The earl entered the pavilion just in time to hear the bishop question the boy’s presence.
“He’s a Bruce,” Lord Robert said. “He has to learn and earn his place and I intend to see to that myself. Thus he is here and will remain.”
The bishop nodded solemnly, then waved young Rob to a chair. Rob returned the nod with equal solemnity and went to stand by his assigned seat. He and Wishart had met mere months earlier, in London, but there had been no question of status for Rob then. He had been a mere high-born boy, interviewed by a bishop who might one day have to deal with him as a man and wondered, in consequence, how much precocity the lad possessed. Today, with Rob’s grandfather’s brusque words, all of that had changed.
Dust-covered and sweat-stained from their long ride that day, the three Bruces seated themselves at the table, and several of Wishart’s acolytes brought them food and drink. Lord Robert waved them away, but the earl raised a hand.
“Water,” he said.
Lord Robert looked at him in mild surprise, but then nodded.
“Aye, bring water. Cold.”
Wishart, sitting opposite the old man, raised an eyebrow. “What, not a drop of wine, my lord?”