Insurrection (60 page)

The house was a forlorn sight. Weeds and bushes grew close to the walls and filled the interior of the empty animal pen. The timbers on the façade were rotten and the lintel over the door had warped. He half expected two black dogs to come rushing out, but the place was quiet. Approaching, Robert saw that the oak was cluttered with webs of twigs, each containing different objects, from a braided ribbon to a bundle of dried flowers, a wooden doll to a scroll-case. There were many more destinies here now, some weather-worn, others new. A tree full of prayers. As he reached the door, he stared up into the higher boughs. For a moment he thought it wasn’t there, then he saw it: a lattice of bone-white twigs, bound together around a length of mossy rope, knotted in a noose. The twine looped around the branch above was frayed, holding the web suspended by a thread.

As he reached for the peeling door the voice of his father sounded in his mind, harsh with scorn. Forcing it away, Robert curled his hand into a fist to knock. His grandfather had believed in the old woman’s magic and that was all that mattered. This would be an honouring of the old man and a chance for him to swear again the oath he had broken. A chance to make amends.

Lochmaben, Scotland

1292 AD

The cold raised gooseflesh on Robert’s skin as he stood before the altar, the flagstones numbing his feet. The candles were struggling to stay alight in the draught that blew in beneath the doors. He could hear the wind moaning between the buildings of the bailey. The dogs in the kennels were barking and the gates of the palisade banged in the gusts. All through the long night he had listened to the growling storm and the hail dashing the chapel’s windows, his hair drying cold against his scalp after the ritual bath. Dawn had broken two hours earlier, but the sky was as black as midnight.

The priest at the altar read a psalm from his breviary, the words of God raised against the tempest. Apart from the priest and Robert there were only five men present for a ceremony that should have been a much grander affair. His grandfather towered over the others, his mane of silver hair wisping about his face in the air. With the lord were three of his vassals and the elderly Earl Donald of Mar, whose daughter Robert had kissed by the loch the week before, on the night they learned John Balliol would be king. The absence of Robert’s father was palpable, a phantom all of them pretended not to see. Robert had been told he had set his seal to the agreement resigning the earldom of Carrick, along with the right to claim the throne. Shortly afterwards he had left.

As the priest finished the psalm, one of the lord’s vassals came towards Robert, holding a surcoat, tunic and a pair of boots. A blast of wind blew open the chapel doors, slamming them against the wall. Several candles guttered and winked out. One of the other knights hastened down the aisle, while Robert dressed. Over his plain tunic went the surcoat that had once belonged to his father, decorated with the arms of Carrick. It was stained and too big around the gut and shoulders. Robert hadn’t wanted to begin his knighthood in another man’s clothing, least of all his father’s, but there had been no chance to have a new one made. It would be one of the first things he did.

Now it was the turn of the old Earl of Mar to step forward, bearing a broadsword. All through Robert’s vigil the sword had lain on the altar. The pommel was a bronze ball and the grip was bound with leather. He couldn’t see the blade, for it was inside a scabbard, but he could tell it was long, several inches longer than any he’d owned. A man’s weapon. A knight’s weapon. Placing it on the altar last night, his grandfather told him it had come from the Holy Land. Made of Damascus steel, it had spilled the blood of the infidel upon the sands where Lord Jesus Christ had walked. The scabbard was attached to a belt that was coiled in Earl Donald’s hands.

Robert met the old earl’s gaze as he looped the belt around his waist and fastened it. As he stepped back, he adjusted the broadsword so it hung down from his hip at a slight angle, the hilt just across his body so he could draw it. After a set of spurs was fixed to his boots, he was invested and ready to swear the oath of knighthood.

At a nod from his grandfather Robert knelt, the blade stiff beside him as the earl drew his own sword.

‘Do you swear to defend your kingdom?’ Earl Donald questioned, his voice struggling against the roar of the wind. ‘Do you swear to serve God? And do you swear to protect the lands bestowed upon you, carrying out any duties to which you are obligated by your fief?’

‘I swear it,’ said Robert, bowing his head as the earl raised his blade and brought it down upon his right shoulder, where it lay heavily for a moment, before being lifted away.

Robert expected the earl to tell him to rise, but Donald stepped back and the Lord of Annandale moved into his place. Robert looked up into his grandfather’s craggy face. Those fierce black eyes, glittering in the half-light, bored right through him.

‘I want you to swear, Robert, as one born of the line of Malcolm Canmore, as a Bruce and as my grandson, that you will defend our family’s claim to the throne of this kingdom, no matter who sits upon it in defiance of our right.’ His voice was commanding. ‘Swear this to me before these witnesses, in this house of the Lord.’

Robert paused before answering. ‘I swear it.’

For a moment, his grandfather’s gaze continued to pierce him, then the lord’s hard face broke into a rare smile and he nodded to Earl Donald to conclude the ceremony.

‘Then arise, Sir Robert, for by this oath and by the girding of the sword, you are made a knight.’

As Robert stood, his grandfather’s eyes shone. ‘Come,’ he said to the others, ‘let us break our fast and warm our hearts with wine in my chambers. We have much to give thanks for.’ He looked back at Robert. ‘For God has granted me a fine new son.’

When the others moved to the doors, Robert hung back, his mind filled with a question that had been troubling him since yesterday, when his grandfather told him he would be knighted.

‘What is it?’ asked the old man, frowning at his hesitation.

The wind rushed in as the knights opened the chapel doors, blowing out the rest of the candles and sending dead leaves scattering across the stone floor.

‘Forgive me, Grandfather,’ Robert said quietly, ‘but how am I to defend our claim? The moment John Balliol is seated upon the Stone of Destiny he will become king and all his heirs after him. I do not see how I can prevent that from happening.’

His grandfather put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I am not asking you to prevent it. Robert, the Stone of Destiny does not make a king any more than a well-bred horse or a fine sword makes a knight. Balliol may sit on the stone, he may be called king, but it doesn’t change the fact that his blood is thinner than mine. It may take a year, it make take a hundred, but so long as the claim is kept alive, I believe time will show that ours is the truer line.’

Reaching out, Robert knocked on the dwelling’s peeling door. After a moment he heard the snap of a latch. The door swung open and Affraig appeared. Her expression of surprise shifted quickly into suspicion, but rather than speak, she opened the door wider and moved aside, allowing him to enter. He did so after a pause, realising, as he was forced to duck under the warped lintel, how much he had grown since he had come here last. The cramped interior, where bundles of herbs were strung from the cobwebbed rafters, offered little more room. The place stank. Robert caught the astringency of sweat and urine beneath the bitter smell of the plants.

There was a fire burning in the centre of the room beneath the vent in the roof. On her dishevelled bed a black dog was stretched out. Robert looked round as Affraig closed the door and moved past him to a stool where she sat, her brown dress drooping around her. Taking up a bowl filled with some dark liquid, she pressed it to her lips and drank, her wrinkled mouth slurping at the edge. Robert crouched awkwardly before the fire. There were a few logs piled there. Picking one up, he thrust it into the heart of the flames, acutely aware that she hadn’t stopped staring at him. He had expected her to ask him what he was doing here. He had an answer in his mind, but no question to reply to. The silence swelled until he could bear it no longer. ‘I need you to do something for me.’

Affraig lowered the bowl into her lap and wiped her mouth with her hand. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, stretched thinly over the bones of her cheeks and the prominent ridge of her brow. Her ash-white hair was pulled back from her face and bound with strips of leather to fall thickly down her back. There was still something striking about her, in the strong bones of her face, but it was marred by the shabby dress that hung shapeless on her stooped form, her black fingernails, the scalp flakes caught in the knots of her hair and the liver spots on her crooked hands. She evoked in Robert a strange mix of disgust and fascination, disdain and awe.

She hadn’t responded to his words.

Robert’s eyes moved back to the fire. ‘When I took my vows as a knight, my grandfather made me swear to defend our family’s claim to the throne. I couldn’t see then how I would fulfil that oath. I took it as some statement of defiance, him showing the men of Scotland that he would not bow down to Balliol. But I believe he meant it. He meant for our family to claim the throne, however long it took. That ambition had burned in him for almost sixty years, ever since he was named heir by King Alexander II. In England, in King Edward’s court, I became . . .’ Robert paused, looking down at his hands. ‘I became distracted from this pledge, drawn by promises of wealth and power, things I thought my family would want me to secure. This led me to do things. Things I cannot change.’ He stared into the flames. ‘I broke the vows I took as a knight. I failed to defend my kingdom, protect my people or fulfil my obligations as an earl and I betrayed the oath I made to my grandfather. When my father began talks with King Edward, making a bid for the throne over my right, I let him. How could I take the throne of a kingdom I had helped to destroy?’

Affraig had set the bowl on the floor. Her eyes were bright in the flames. She didn’t speak.

‘At the negotiations in Irvine, it became clear to me that there was no side I could stand on. The English despise me and my countrymen don’t trust me. Wallace and the others are rebelling in the name of Balliol. I cannot fight with them. It would be as much a betrayal of my oath as when I was fighting for England. I know what I must do. What I should have done months ago.’ Robert felt embarrassed, about to say the words. Inside, his father’s voice berated him, but he silenced it. ‘I want you to weave my destiny,’ he finished. ‘As you did for my grandfather.’

When she spoke, her voice was low. ‘And what is your destiny?’

He met her eyes now, all hesitation and embarrassment gone. ‘To be King of Scotland.’

A smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. It wasn’t a soft smile. It was hard and dangerous. ‘I will need something of yours,’ she said, rising.

Robert cursed inwardly. He had brought coins to pay her with, but nothing else. He should have remembered those objects inside the webs. He checked himself, but he had on only the clothes he was wearing: a blue tunic, a pair of hose and boots, and a dirk he had slipped into his belt, just in case. A dagger didn’t seem an appropriate symbol of kingship. ‘I have nothing.’

Affraig frowned in consideration, then crossed the chamber to a shelf littered with herbs and leaves. A stained pestle lay beside a mortar. Reaching up, she pulled a handful of dried flowers from the beam above the counter. Squinting into the gloom, she snatched down two more bundles. As she returned to the pool of firelight, Robert realised the first she had plucked was a bunch of heather. The second was broom and the third he didn’t recognise.

She seated herself on her stool, spreading the herbs on her knees. Robert shifted to sit cross-legged before the fire, watching her work. As Affraig pulled apart the tangled roots, the room filled with the sweet smell of heather. When each bushy stalk had been separated she chose three and began to plait them together. As she worked, dried flower heads crumbled from her skirts on to the floor around her. When one braid was done she picked up another three stalks and began again, her fingers deft. After a time she had nine stiff braids and now she began to join them in a circle, binding them. Into each loop, she threaded wisps of broom and strands of the third herb.

‘Wormwood,’ she murmured. ‘Crown for a king, it was called in ancient days.’

Her darting fingers were hypnotic and the smell of herbs and wood-smoke intoxicating. Robert felt his eyes grow heavy. He hadn’t slept properly since they left Irvine a week ago. His limbs were leaden.

He came to with a jolt to see her looming over him, holding a crown of green, his destiny made manifest in a circle of heather and broom. In his mind, he saw himself standing on the Moot Hill with his grandfather, the shadows gathering around them, the plinth beside them empty, expectant of a new king. He had felt the ghosts of his ancestors thronging the hillside that evening. He sensed them now in this fire-lit chamber, crowding in, hushed and eager, as Affraig bent to place the crown upon his head. As she did so, she murmured words he did not understand, an odd mix of Latin and Gaelic.

When she was done, Affraig took it to the herb-strewn shelf. Reaching into a sack bag at her feet she pulled out a bundle of weathered twigs, stripped of bark. They were supple in her hands as she curved and twisted them, binding them with twine to create a hollow, misshapen web, just big enough to contain the crown, which she inserted before the end and fixed to the lattice of twigs with a length of twine.