Insurrection: Renegade [02] (61 page)

John Comyn’s lips peeled back in a rictus of hate. ‘I would rather—’

‘You’ll support me or I will expose your betrayal. You gave Scotland’s champion to the enemy, so he could be carved up on the executioner’s slab. Wallace still commands the respect of many. Have you not heard the cries of outrage sweeping the realm since word of his death came north? What would those same people do if they knew you were behind it? You think they would follow you? They would hang you from the nearest tree!’

‘Robert!’

He jerked round to see Christopher had come halfway down the aisle.

‘
The monks
,’ hissed the knight. ‘They’re coming!’

‘Bar the doors,’ Robert growled in response. He was only distracted for a moment, but it was all Comyn needed to shove him in the chest, sending him crashing into one of the pillars. Even as he was recovering his balance, Comyn was pushing past him. Diving behind the rood screen, he sprinted across the choir towards a side door in the opposite aisle, Robert at his heels. The candles guttered at their passing, throwing shadows across the vaulting.

Lunging, Robert grabbed hold of the back of Comyn’s red surcoat, the material ripping as he brought him to a staggering stop. He ducked as Comyn swung round, aiming a fist at his face. Losing his grip, Robert snarled and thrust forward with his sword, meaning to clout him into submission. Comyn stumbled back from the blade, looking wildly around him. He leapt for the altar, grabbing a large silver candlestick. The candle slipped free, the flame extinguishing as it struck the tiled floor. Comyn brandished the stick two-handed. It was almost as long as a blade. Suddenly, he brought it carving in at Robert like an axe.

Robert twisted out of the way. ‘Support me in my bid! Refuse, and when I’m crowned I’ll run you and all your blood out of Scotland!’

In answer, Comyn came at him with a roar. Knocking Robert’s outstretched sword to one side with a crack of the candlestick, he brought it arcing into his side. The force it struck with would have broken ribs had Robert not been wearing mail. As it was, he was sent reeling into the monks’ choir stalls, one of the benches screeching across the tiles with him half sprawled on top of it. He dropped his sword. Christopher was shouting again. Faint calls rose from outside as the monks tried to get into the church and found the door barred.

Swiping his sword from the floor, Robert pushed himself up as Comyn came at him. He stooped under the strike that was aimed at his head and lashed out with his blade, his blood fired. The tip sliced Comyn’s upper arm, tearing through his clothes and scoring the flesh beneath. Comyn bellowed, but didn’t relinquish his grip on the candlestick. Robert’s heart thumped as he circled his enemy – the rapid rhythm of the battlefield. The candlelit choir, the hammering on the doors and calls of the monks faded, along with his reasoned intentions. He had come here to threaten Comyn’s reputation and standing, not his life. But that knowledge was dim now, pale in the face of the brute desire to batter the breath out of the man before him.

He pitched forward, meaning to carve another slice of flesh from him. Comyn reacted quickly, bringing the candlestick in to counter. Silver and steel met with a ringing clash that echoed through the vault. Robert felt the break before he saw it, the concussion vanishing abruptly as his broadsword snapped. The top half of the blade went flying to clatter among the choir stalls, leaving him holding the hilt and a jagged stump of metal. He stared aghast at the sword, given to him by his grandfather the day he was knighted, before Comyn stepped in through his defences and punched the candlestick into his stomach. The mail unable to absorb the savage impact, Robert doubled over.

‘
Robert!
’

As Christopher’s shout echoed through the nave followed by pounding footsteps, Robert grasped his dirk and freed it from his belt. He straightened and thrust at John Comyn, who was coming in again. Plunging the dagger into the man’s side, he shoved it up under his ribs. Eye to eye with Comyn, Robert felt the resistance as steel grazed bone, then the release as it slid on through muscle and organs. There was a rush of something hot over his hand. Blood flowed, dark like wine in the flame light. Comyn let go of the candlestick, which clanged to the tiles. He grasped Robert’s shoulder, his face changing from rage to surprise. Robert, teeth bared, twisted the knife, relishing the agony that flared in his enemy’s eyes.

Comyn shoved him away then teetered back against the altar. He looked down at the hilt of the dagger embedded in his ribs, then grasped it. Closing his eyes, face clenched, he pulled it out with a ragged cry. The hammering on the church doors was louder. Comyn sagged against the altar, blood pulsing from his side. More was in his mouth, staining his gritted teeth. Robert, stooped over and breathing hard, started as Christopher appeared at his side.

The knight’s face was tight with shock as he stared at Comyn. ‘We’ve got to go,’ he told Robert, tearing his gaze from the wounded man. ‘Now!’

The thudding on the church door had become a rhythmic boom. The monks were trying to ram it open. Any moment, Comyn’s men would arrive, if they hadn’t already. Robert realised with cold shock that his brothers were still out there, searching the grounds. He looked back at Comyn, propped against the altar, blood spattering the floor around him. The prospect of capture cleared his senses. Dear God, what had he done?

Christopher propelled him towards the side door in the aisle, which the other knights had unbolted and were now pushing through. ‘
Go!
’

As they started towards it there was a hoarse cry. Robert jerked round to see Comyn lunging at him, eyes wild, the bloody dagger in his fist. It was Christopher who turned and raised his sword, Christopher who plunged the length of steel into Comyn’s gut. The lord convulsed on the blade, gagging blood from his mouth, before the knight wrenched the sword free. John Comyn collapsed on the church floor where he lay still, blood seeping around him in a dark slick.

The three other knights were shouting at them to come. Robert heard his brother Edward outside, voice raised. The sound snapped him to life. Shoving Christopher before him, he made for the door, the two of them plunging into the frozen darkness of the churchyard. Torchlight bobbed in the gloom as Comyn’s men came running through the grounds. Edward, Niall and the others were there, gasping for breath, swords in their hands.

‘They saw us,’ Edward panted, seeing Robert.

‘This way!’ shouted Niall, making for the church wall.

The ten of them made it to the wall some distance ahead of Comyn’s men. Pushing his broken sword into his belt, Robert hauled himself up. His brothers and men were beside him, jumping down the other side one by one. Christopher was struggling to find purchase on the stones, his face white in the moonlight. He slipped suddenly and fell back with a cry, sprawling in the snow. Comyn’s men shouted in triumph, racing towards him, their torches throwing a red glow over the gravestones. Robert, straddling the wall, threw down a hand to the knight. Scrabbling to his feet, Christopher grabbed at it. Bracing himself, Robert hauled the knight up, gasping with the effort. Christopher reached the top, then swung himself over and dropped down. As Comyn’s men ran towards the wall, the light of their torches spread across it, briefly illuminating Robert.

‘Bruce!’ came the shout, as he jumped. ‘It’s Robert Bruce!’

PART 6

1306 AD

‘Make haste, therefore, to receive what God makes no delay to give you; to subdue those who are ready to receive your yoke; and to advance us all, who for your advancement will spare neither limbs nor life. And that you may accomplish this, I myself will attend you in person with ten thousand men.’

The History of the Kings of Britain,
Geoffrey of Monmouth

Chapter 50

Dumbarton, Scotland, 1306 AD

In mid-February, when the winter snows were creeping back from the lowlands – green fields appearing, streams and rivers breaking their icy bonds and flowing free – a rumour started to spread.

It began as a murmur, carried on the lips of travellers passing through on newly cleared roads: tales of an uprising in the south. Within days, rumour had hardened into truth, settlements all along the border seething with the news that Robert Bruce had appeared in the night and roused the townsfolk of Dumfries to rebellion, storming the castle and routing King Edward’s new justices who had gathered there. This was soon followed by word that Bruce and his men had captured Dalswinton Castle, a Comyn stronghold. As the furore spread, with the fall of Tibbers, Ayr, Rothesay and Dunaverty to Bruce’s forces, English garrisons across Scotland began hauling up drawbridges and barring castle gates. Urgent messages were despatched south to King Edward. Robert Bruce, they said, had raised the standard of rebellion. And men were flocking to his banner.

For the first few weeks after the rising at Dumfries many Scots were still talking about it as something separate from them, something to discuss heatedly in the fields and churches of their villages where life continued much as normal in spite of the tumultuous events happening around them. Excited, troubled, agitated; all wondered if the storm would reach them, or whether it would simply blow itself out. Then, early in March, the distant rumbles of insurrection spread and grew louder, until everyone felt its coming.

To some it came in the iron-cold dawn, to others the afternoon or raw dark of evening, a burning brand carried from royal burgh to wooded hamlet, from bustling port to mountain-shadowed settlement. Passed from man to man, it was a living beacon that meant one thing to all who saw it. It was the fiery cross, Scotland’s ancient call to arms. Across the realm, men took up weapons; opening chests to grasp the hilts of swords left dormant since the end of the war, hefting axes from log piles to whet the blades, hammering fresh nails into the scarred heads of clubs, fitting new flights to arrows. In the west, at Ayr and Lanark, and all around Selkirk Forest, the fiery cross passed through settlements where people were still outraged by the execution of William Wallace, word of which had come in the autumn. Here, it was as a torch set to kindling, the conflagration spreading through all who saw its flame. Some were men who had fought with Wallace in the early days of the rebellion, who had celebrated after his victory at Stirling and who had seen sons and brothers die bloody on the field at Falkirk under the steel of an English army. Men who, in the years since, had lost hope, but not heart.

All through these preparations for defence and battle, stories of the uprising and Robert Bruce’s rapid victories along the west coast continued unabated. Bruce, they said, was raising the army of the realm for a new war against England and was planning to crown himself king. The revelation was met by a mixture of disbelief, anger and excitement. But it was not the only rumour. In this time, another was gaining momentum, a dark undercurrent of half-truth and hearsay, growing stronger in the Comyn heartlands of Galloway and Badenoch, Kilbride and Buchan, flowing like a riptide beneath the swelling call to arms.

Robert Bruce, they said, had murdered John Comyn.

Robert crouched down, chuckling as the boy toddled into his outstretched arms. His nephew, Donald, reached out and grasped the head of the crossbow bolt that hung around his neck. Lifting the fragment of iron in a chubby fist, he frowned curiously at it, then tried to bite it. Robert removed the pendant from his nephew’s mouth and stood, swooping the boy into the air. Donald yelled.

‘He likes you,’ said Christian, coming forward and smoothing a hand through her son’s hair, which was fair like her own. She smiled, looking up at Robert. ‘It is good for him to be around another man, with his father gone.’

Christian’s smile didn’t fade as she scooped her wriggling son into her arms, but Robert noticed a sheen appear in his sister’s pale blue eyes at the mention of her husband. Gartnait had died a year ago, leaving Christian a widow and their son the Earl of Mar. Robert watched as she carried Donald over to the trestle erected in the centre of the tent, the canvas sides of which were being buffeted by the wind. From outside came the clamour of the encampment.

Passing the boy to his wet nurse, Christian sat to finish the meal her servants had prepared. Her sisters, Mary and Matilda, had almost finished theirs.

Mary Bruce caught Robert’s eye. ‘Won’t you join us after all, brother?’ she asked, cocking her head in question. ‘In the time you’ve been standing there you could have broken two fasts.’