Insurrection: Renegade [02] (12 page)

As his comrade fell back into line, the white-haired guard’s gaze fixed on Robert. ‘You must know you cannot go anywhere, Sir Robert.’ His voice was self-assured. ‘Let Lady Elizabeth go and you will not be harmed.’

At the name, Robert realised the girl, whose heart he could feel beating fiercely against his arm, must be Richard de Burgh’s youngest daughter. Stephen had spoken of her often; the feast this evening was in honour of her betrothal. His fleeting triumph at the value of his hostage was quickly dampened by the reality of his actions. He had seized a lady, bodily, against her will. He made himself no better than a brigand. But he couldn’t let go. Not if he wanted to see his kingdom again. ‘You wouldn’t harm me.’

‘I wouldn’t, sir,’ agreed the guard. ‘But if you hurt one hair on the lady’s head, Earl Richard will rip your guts out through your mouth.’

Robert turned on Cormac. ‘Get two horses.’

Cormac backed towards the stables, his eyes on the guards.

Robert remained where he was, the girl’s shoulder blades digging into his chest, the two of them poised in a pool of shifting light from the torches that burned around the walls. Music and laughter echoed from the hall, the merry sounds strange in contrast to the scene in the courtyard. Robert guessed the noise would have masked the girl’s scream from the revellers, but it wouldn’t be long before someone happened upon their frozen tableau.

He glanced over his shoulder to see Cormac gesturing roughly at the grooms by the stables. They were young lads, clearly terrified by the armed, wild-looking Irishman. Sensing movement in his periphery, Robert looked back to see the white-haired guard advancing slowly. ‘Don’t,’ he warned, bringing the edge of his blade round to Elizabeth’s neck.

‘
Please
.’

The faint whisper came from her.

A voice in Robert’s mind – it might have been his mother’s – harangued him, but he silenced it, steeling himself to the fear in the girl’s voice, refusing to allow the barbarity of his actions to weaken his resolve. These men in his way, this terrified girl: they meant nothing when set against Scotland’s throne.

The white-haired guard had paused twenty yards away, his four comrades ranged behind him, blocking the gatehouse tunnel. Robert saw the older man’s eyes flick past him. The guard’s expression changed, something expectant rising in his face. Robert jerked round to see a brawny man in a dusty tunic moving up behind his foster brother.

All Cormac’s attention was on the lad leading out the horses. Robert yelled a warning, but before his foster-brother could turn, the man was on him, punching up under his ribs. Cormac curled over the blow. He managed to keep hold of his sword, but his attacker gave him no chance to swing it at him, bringing his knee crashing up into his down-turned face. Robert shouted fiercely as his foster-brother hit the ground and the man dropped down on top of him, wresting the sword from his grip.

Seeing the white-haired guard daring another step towards him, Robert dragged Elizabeth to a cart, one of many that crowded the courtyard. Two muscular horses were harnessed to the front. Climbing on to the back, he pulled her up roughly behind him. She weighed next to nothing. The horses shifted, walking forward expectantly. The cart was full of cushions and blankets, with a whip left lying down the side. The guards were edging closer, ringing the cart in a semicircle. ‘My brother for the lady!’ Robert shouted at the white-haired man, releasing Elizabeth to grasp the whip, but keeping the blade pointed at her as she cowered beneath him.

Cormac was struggling under the weight of the brawny man, trying to fight him off. Before the guard could answer, out of the doors of the great hall raced six more men. In their wake came Richard de Burgh, his face a mask of fury. Behind him was a balding man in his fifties, his expression incredulous as he saw Elizabeth huddled in the cart.

‘
Run, brother!
’ yelled Cormac.

Spitting a curse, Robert cracked the whip over the backs of the horses as the earl and his men charged towards him. The beasts took off, galvanised by the sting. The white-haired guard leapt desperately at the cart as it lurched past. Managing to grab hold of the side, he clung on as the tunnel loomed up, narrow and dark. Robert, pitched to his knees, lashed out with the whip, catching the man on the side of the face. The guard fell back with a cry, tumbling over in the dust of the courtyard.

‘Drop the portcullis!’ roared Ulster.

Ignoring Elizabeth, knocked off-balance in the heap of cushions, Robert threw himself into the seat at the front. Snatching up the reins, he flogged the beasts for all they were worth as the guards in the gatehouse tower responded to the earl’s shout and the spiked iron bars came slamming down. The portcullis missed the back of the cart by inches, crashing shut behind as the horses careened through the tunnel and out on to the track. Robert heard Ulster’s shouts continue, over the tumult of hooves, before the cart rocked around a bend in the track and plunged into the woods.

Robert maintained the reckless pace for as long as he dared, the cart reeling over rocks and ruts. It was dark beneath the trees, dense with summer growth. Faint in the distance, he heard a bell begin to clang. Judging he had very little time before the earl’s men came for him, far faster on their chargers, he slowed the horses. Spying a natural break in the trees, Robert steered the beasts off the track, twigs and bracken snapping and tearing beneath the cart’s wheels. When he could go no further, he pulled the horses to a stop and jumped down. Behind, through the web of trees, he could still see the road. His only hope was that it was sufficiently shadowy for the cart to remain concealed from his pursuers, at least for a while.

His fingers fumbling in haste, Robert unbuckled the harness straps. The horses were agitated, tossing their heads and snorting. Neither had saddles, but he could ride them well enough without. He glanced at the earl’s daughter as he tugged free the last strap. She was still in the cart, grasping the sides, her eyes wide and her breaths coming fast. The gold circlet she had been wearing had slipped off and her veil was dishevelled. ‘I’m sorry, my lady,’ he told her. ‘I had no choice.’ Looping the harness strap around his waist, Robert wedged the sword he had taken from Ulster’s guard through the makeshift belt. ‘Stay by the road. Your father will come for you.’

As he moved to mount one of the horses, Elizabeth pushed herself from the back of the cart. ‘Wait!’

Robert glanced round. Her expression was less one of fear, more of desperation.

‘Take me with you.’

Robert stared at the girl, for a second dumbfounded by the request, then he grasped at the horse’s mane and rump to pull himself up. From the road came a rumble of hooves.

Elizabeth’s face knotted in anguish. ‘Then I shall tell them which way you’re going.’ Her voice trembled with the threat, but she pushed through the undergrowth, making her way towards the track, one hand hitching up her skirts, the other swiping branches out of her way.

Cursing, Robert slipped from the horse and went after her, leaping the tree roots, his shirt ripping open on the thorns of a briar. The hooves were louder, the forest floor trembling with the impact of a score or more riders. Grabbing Elizabeth, Robert forced her down in the undergrowth, just as the earl’s men thundered past, illuminated by the gusting flames of the torches they held. He clamped a hand over her mouth, but he needn’t have worried. She didn’t even struggle. In a cloud of dust, the riders were gone.

Robert waited a few seconds, insects skittering over his skin in the darkness, Elizabeth’s breaths hot against his palm, before he got to his feet, pulling her up roughly.

The veil had slipped from her head and her braided black hair had snagged free of its pins. ‘You’ll go to Scotland, won’t you?’

‘You can walk to the castle from here,’ he told her, striding back towards the cart. Ulster’s men must know they would catch up to him quickly. When they didn’t they would surely double back and start searching the woods. Robert halted. The cart was where he had left it, but the horses had bolted. Fury flooded him. ‘
Damn it to hell!
’ he hissed, rounding on Elizabeth as she came up behind him.

She shrank back from his anger, but her face remained set. ‘Take me with you and I’ll send a message to my father, asking him to let the other man go unharmed. He’s your brother, isn’t he?’

Robert looked towards the road, hearing another company riding hard along it. He glanced back at Elizabeth, taking in her determined expression and desperate eyes. She was clutching a small ivory cross she wore around her neck, twisting it between her fingers. If he left her here there would be nothing to stop her shouting to alert his pursuers. Swearing, he grasped her by the wrist and slipped into the shadows of the trees. Behind them, the forest filled with the drumming of hooves.

Picardy, France, 1301 AD

Storm clouds clotted the sky, changing the gold of the evening light to bruised copper and throwing huge shadows across the meadows of the Somme valley. From the high vantage point of Bailleul Castle, raised on its massive earthworks above the pastures and villages that surrounded it, John Balliol watched the first pulse of lightning illuminate the landscape of his birth. Behind him, servants hastened about the shadowy room, throwing fresh linen across the bed, coaxing a fire to life in the hearth, pouring water into a basin so he could wash the road dirt from his face. The rest of the castle was occupied by the family and garrison of his vassal, but this room had been kept free for its long-absent lord. It had a dusty, forgotten air.

The evening was heavy with heat and, for a moment, Balliol thought about telling the servants to leave the fire, but the cheery light blooming in the dark chamber gave him a sense of homecoming that he didn’t want to extinguish.

Home.

It was a foreign word. Not since the years of his lordship in Galloway following the death of his mother had the word had true meaning to him; a careless meaning at that, one he had taken for granted. After three years in the Tower of London and two years in the papal custody of Malmaison Castle, he now understood it. Home was freedom. Freedom for a man to come and go as he pleased, to summon his vassals as he saw fit. Freedom to eat and sleep, and go hunting with his son when he wanted. He felt the word like a shudder, whether of excitement or unease he wasn’t sure.

There was a rap at the door. Balliol turned as his steward entered.

‘Sire, the men you have been expecting have arrived. Do you wish to eat first?’

‘No, Pierre, show them up. I will see them now.’

As the steward left, Balliol looked back to the window, the apprehension building inside him, crackling like the storm. He still didn’t understand why, three days ago, he had been let out of his chamber at Malmaison, without a guard for the first time in years, and led to where papal officials had been waiting to escort him to his castle in Picardy. He had been told very little except that messengers from Paris would meet him here. Maybe now he would get some answers. Freedom was his. But he wanted to know at what price.

A short time later the door opened and Pierre appeared again, leading two men dressed in blue surcoats, adorned with gold fleurs-de-lis: the royal arms of France. Ignoring the servants still bustling about the chamber, Balliol waited for the men to greet him, feeling stiffly suspicious.

‘Sir John,’ said one, inclining his head. He had a neatly forked beard and pointed features. ‘I am Sir Jean de Reims, a knight of the royal household. I bring greetings from King Philippe in Paris. He trusts you find your new lodgings more agreeable?’

The first answer to his many questions surprised Balliol. So the King of France was responsible for his freedom? The revelation brought more questions on its heels. He knew his liberation from the Tower and transfer to Malmaison had come at the pope’s behest and had been part of the negotiations between England and France, but he had not been able to fathom why his fate had been bound up in a treaty between the two countries. The French king’s intervention seemed even less understandable. ‘I thought the order for my release came from the papal curia?’

‘In part. A supporter of yours, Sir William Wallace, arrived in Paris two years ago to present the case for your release. Philippe, your friend and ally, felt moved to intervene. He recommended Sir William and his cause to the pope. His holiness made the final decision, but your release was determined by my lord, the king.’

Balliol moved to the window, where the setting sun had vanished in the face of the coming storm. Lightning tore the sky. He had turned to the French king six years ago for help against Edward; their alliance had caused the English king’s invasion of Scotland. But where was Philippe when the war had begun? Where were the soldiers the king had promised when Edward marched his army across the Tweed and slaughtered Balliol’s subjects, overran his cities and seized his castles? Where were the French when Edward led him to the Tower?

‘I am surprised King Philippe is taking such an interest in my affairs after all this time. I thought he and Edward were now friends?’ Balliol turned back to the royal knight. ‘The pope’s treaty, I’m told, specifically excluded Scotland.’

‘I understand your frustration,’ answered Jean, his tone mollifying. ‘King Philippe wishes your release could have been secured long before, but the war with England forced him to turn his attention to his own borders. Now a truce has been agreed, he can extend his hand to you once more. He intends to return you to your rightful place. On the throne of Scotland.’