I will not, no. You are right in that. I will let you go to
But… I will never trust you again, Edward. Remember it.
Have you trusted me, for long? Setting your tame watchdogs on me Thomas Randolph and the Douglas! Always watching me, holding me back. You have never trusted me, Robert.
I have ever known you headstrong. Rash. And taken pre cautious. That is all. As was my duty.
Duty …!
Edward-God help Scotland when you are King!
Laughing suddenly, cheerfully, uninhibitedly, the other clapped his elder brother on the shoulder.
At least I will be a less solemn and sober monarch, man! You will see. And still laughing, he flung out of the little room.
Frowning perplexedly, Bruce stared after him.
Chapter Six
It was two months to the day later, and Ayr was the scene of a very different activity, the bustling excitement and noise of an army in embarkation. The entire town was like a disturbed ant-hill of armed men. But like the ant-hill, there was method, order, in the seething and at first glance aimless commotion. Angus Og MacDonald and his captains and clansmen were getting used to embarking armies.
His great galley fleet, one of the most significant weapons in Braces armoury, however independent its, master claimed to be, covered not only all the harbour and jetty area but also the sand and shingle beaches for half a mile-for galleys were constructed for drawing up on the open strands of their home islands and sea lochs. In their scores they lay, long lean greyhounds of the sea, high-pr owed and high-pooped, low-wasted, banking twenty, forty, sixty oars, single masts with their great angled booms rising like a forest. These were the swiftest, most savage and dangerous ships in the world-and amongst the most comfortless to sail in.
So Edward Braces 6,000 had found, nearly a month before, when they had been ferried across the Irish Sea, from Ayr to Lame, in Ulster, in unseasonable weather, with MacDougall of Lorns craft lurking hull-down to the north, afraid to attack while the Lord of the Isles was there in force. Angus had seen the invaders safely landed and consolidated, indeed win their first small battle against only moderate opposition at Carrickfergus, and then had returned here to Ayr, on the Kings business.
The royal army now assembling, despite all the activity, was in fact a modest one, by kingly standards, although handpicked.
Most of the host for the Highland expedition had been gone for two weeks, horsed, by land, around the innumerable sea-lochs and estuaries between the Lowlands and Argyll. Bruce was transporting a bare 1,000 men by sea, and with a special objective.
There had been a great splitting up of forces and captains. As well as Moray, Brace had sent Sir Robert Boyd, Sir William de Soulis, Sir Hugh Ross, Sir Philip Moubray and others, to back up Randolph as much as to support his brother. At home the Earl of Lennox, Neil Campbell and Alexander Fraser were commanding the main host marching north-west. James Douglas, Keith the Marischal, Robert Fleming and young Scrymgeour were to keep up a series of hit-and-run raids into England, and to collect the mail, or protection money therefrom, which had become an ever more important item of the Scots revenues. William Lamberton and Abbot Bernard would see to the rule and governance of the realm in the interim. While Bruce took his new son-in-law and Gilbert Hay with him in the galleys.
averse, however, to this interruption of the honeymoon period;
indeed, his father-in-law feared that he had been positively
relieved.
The bride showed no signs of distress, either.
They sailed on Midsummers Day, a stirring sight, the Queen and her ladies waving them off in fine style, into the west. The King did not go in Angus Ogs galley, as was usual, but in a command craft of his own. His thousand men were not evenly disposed over the fleet, but concentrated less than comfortably in a mere dozen vessels.
There was grumbling amongst the men at this overcrowding;
even some recognition of danger, when the fleet should reach the open sea and the notorious hazards of rounding the Mull of Kintyre.
For these galleys had very low free boards and moreover were already well filled with their own double crews, with two men to each oar and the spare team required to maintain high speeds and act as boarding crews. The largest were already carrying 250 Islesmen, without passengers-although none of Bruces dozen craft were of that size.
It was not long, however, before all concerned perceived the reason for
this crowding. Off the south tip of Arran, with a freshening breeze
and the long Atlantic swell already beginning to make the overloaded
craft pitch and roll alarmingly, the fleet split up, and into very
unequal squadrons. Angus Og himself, with about thirty ships,
continued on course for the open sea, south westwards now. While the Kings galley, with its tail of heavily-laden followers, swung off to starboard in a fully ninety-degree turn, to proceed due northwards up the narrow Kilbrandon Sound, between Arran and the eastern coast of long Kintyre.
Quickly the breakwater effect of Kintyre became apparent, and the ships gained speed and comfort both. The southwest breeze, funnelling round the Mull, now much aided them, bellying out the great single square sails, which each bore the proud un differenced device of the Black Galley of the Isles. With the long oars sweeping rhythmically, to the squeal of row locks and the gasping, unending chant of the crews, they thrashed up-Sound at a speed fast horses would have been unable to maintain, exhilarating, scarcely believable.
The smell of sweat was almost overpowering, as strong men purged their bodies with vast exertions after the over-indulgences in the taverns, alehouses and brothels of Ayr.
By evening they had left Arran behind and were into the lower reaches of Loch Fyne, one of the longest sea-lochs in all Scotland.
It probed for forty miles deep into the mountainous heart of Argyll. But the Kings squadron was not going so far; not halfway in fact, to where, a mere dozen miles up, a small side-loch opened off to the west East Loch Tarbert.
In June it is never really dark in Scotland, and the galleys drove on through the half-light confidently, even in these narrow, skerry strewn waters. Before dawn they turned into the side loch.
It was only a mile long, and at its head was a settlement where a new stone castle was being built-Braces own, the result of an understanding with Angus of the Isles, who was also Lord of Kintyre.
Below these unfinished walls the galleys moored.
But there was no rest for the crews or passengers. Immediately all were set to felling trees, in which the area was rich, choosing straight pines. Oatmeal and water, laced with strong Highland spirits, served for breakfast, eaten as men laboured.
By early forenoon all was ready. The logs, trimmed and smoothed, were in position on the shingle beach. Long ropes were run out from the first two ships, and hundreds of men attached themselves thereto, like trace-horses. Crews waded chest-deep into the water to push. Then the Kings trumpets blew a long blast that set the echoes resounding through the enclosing hills.
As more than a thousand men took up the strain, and heaved mightily, the two vessels began to move forward, up out of the water like leviathans. Under the tall thrusting prows teams pushed the round logs to act as rollers, a team to each log, positioning them, guiding them beneath the keels, catching them as they came out below the sterns, and then picking them up and hurrying to the bows again, The galleys moved up the slope, heavily, but went on moving. Bruce led the way, encouraging the long lines of haulers, taking a hand frequently at the ropes himself.