The Price of the King's Peace

would bring her to life again. And, for herself, she wanted no

strangers intruding on her grief.

She closed those glazing eyes, but otherwise did not handle the body. For a while she could not bring herself to lay down the baby, moaning over it in an extravagance of sorrow for the motherless mite, saying to it what she could not say to Marjory Bruce. But at length she placed it in the handsome cradle Stewart had had made before he went to the wars. Then she went and sat, crouched, gazing into the smouldering fire. She tried to pray for the departed, but could not. Her mind sank away into a grey vacancy of regret and fatigue.

It was thus that Robert Bruce and Walter Stewart found her when, between five and six in the morning, they came storming into that fetid chamber out of the blustering night, covered with mire and the spume of foundered horses, urgent, vehement, demanding, sweeping aside the servitors and others who cowered outside.

The hush and atmosphere of that room, with the drawn, almost blank face that the Queen turned to them, hit them like a mace stroke. Each halted, drawing quick breaths.

There was no other sound but the snuffling from the cradle.

The men reacted differently. Stewart strode straight to the cradle. Bruce, after a long look at his wife’s strained and warning face, went to the bed.

For long moments he stood staring down, fists clenching. Then a great shuddering groan racked him.

“Dead!” he cried.

“Dead! Oh, God, oh, Christ-God- dead!” And he raised those clenched fists high, up above his head, towards the ceiling, beyond, towards heaven itself, and shook them in a raging paroxysm of grief terrible to behold.

Elizabeth came to him then, to reach out a tentative hand to him. Walter Stewart came, faltering-stepped, gulping, looking askance at the bed, his normally ruddy face suddenly pale.

Bruce saw neither of them.

“I am accursed! Accursed!” he ground out, from between clenched teeth.

“All that is mine, rejected of God! Now my daughter, my only child.

Dead. Slain.

Slain by myself! Who forced her to marriage! One more. One more to pay the price of my sin. My brothers. My kin. My friends. Now, my daughter.” He gazed around him wildly, although he saw none of them.

“Why these? Why not myself? God, in Your heaven-why not myself?”

“Not your sin, Robert,” the Queen said, level-voiced.

“If this was for the sin of any, it was Edward Plantagenet’s sin. Who ruined her young life in hatred and vengeance. Vengeance on you. Here was the sin.”

“I defiled God’s altar, woman! I slew John Comyn, in passion, in the holy place. I, excommunicate, who presumed to this unhappy throne, with a murderer’s hands. I desired an heir from my own loins. I, not Edward Plantagenet. I slew my daughter as truly as I slew the Red Comyn!”

The woman shook her head, but attempted no further comfort.

Her weariness and pain were such that she drooped as she stood, the proud de Burgh.

Walter Stewart turned and strode to the window without a word. He stood blindly staring out into the darkness, his face working.

He had not so much as touched the bed.

The King’s wide shoulders seemed to sag and droop, likewise.

He sank forward on to the bed, arms outstretched over that still,

slight body.

“Marjory! Marjory!” he whispered.

“Can you forgive me? Where you are now. Can you forgive? The father who brought you to this? Can you, girl? Of your mercy!”

Silence returned to that chamber, save for the child’s little noises.

At length, heavily, Bruce rose, and looking round him as though a stranger there, paced across to his son-in-law who still stood at the window like a statue.

“I am sorry, lad,” he said. He laid a hand on the other’s shoulder.

“Sorry. It may be that I need your forgiveness also. I ask it of

you.” Though his voice quivered, all was quiet and sane again.

The High Steward of Scotland shook his fair head, helplessly.

“Have I … Your Grace’s permission … to retire?” he got out.

And without waiting for an answer, turned and hurried from the room.

Bruce looked over to his wife by the fire.

“How was it?” he asked, evenly.

“How did she die?”

Slowly, carefully, Elizabeth told him the grievous tale of it. But she spared him not a little.

He heard her out, silent. But he asked no questions. Indeed, he scarcely seemed to listen, his mind plumbing depths of solitary despair.

Finishing, she took his hand and led him over to the cradle.

“A

boy,” she told him.

“A boy, perfectly formed. A fine boy. And well.

Your … grandson.”

For long he looked down at the shrivelled, red-faced little creature.

“Aye,” he said, at length.

“This … this is all! All for this. This puny scrap is destiny! The

destiny for which I have fought and schemed and struggled. For which

countless men have died. For which a realm waits. The destiny for which my brother seeks to conquer Ireland, MacDougall languishes in Dumbarton’s dungeon, Douglas hammers Durham city and I besiege Carlisle. For this handful of wrinkled flesh!”

Elizabeth opened her lips to speak, but could not. She busied herself instead with smoothing the baby’s coverings, and sought to still her quivering mouth.

“Carlisle?” she got out, aside.

“Is it well, there? The siege? Does all go well? Sending for you was no hurt?

That you should leave …?”

“No. It mattered nothing. I was gaining nothing. This siege is a folly. Carlisle will not fall. It is too strong. Its walls and towers.

Without siege-engines we can do nothing. We sought to make a sow, to take us close to undermine the walling. But it sank into the earth made soft by these rains. Too heavy. They indeed have better machines than have we. Their governor, Harcla, can snap hit fingers at us. I should never have begun it. But I promised Douglas.

The least I could do, when he was hazarding all, deep in England To protect his rear. But I will raise it now. End it. Assail Berwick instead, where we have more chance …” His voice tailed away, and the soldier was quickly superseded by the man again.

“But what matters Carlisle! Or Berwick either. With what this room portends. Destiny is here, not in Carlisle. Here is the prize!

That!

And here the price paid!” Bitterly he said it.

She shook her head, and took his arm.

“Your grandson,” she reminded.

“And motherless. Helpless.”

“Aye.” Nodding, he stooped then, to reach out and pick up the closely bundled infant.

“So be it. This, then, is my heir. Scotland’s heir. One day this

will wear my crown!”

“Perhaps,” the Queen said, strangle-voiced.

“Perhaps not, Robert.”

“If God has any mercy for me, he will. Is it too much to hope?

You say that he is well-made? Healthy?”

She moistened her lips.

“He is a fine boy, yes. But still, he may not wear your crown. Who knows? For I … I am pregnant, Robert! At last At my age! Sweet Jesu—I am pregnant…!” Her voice broke.

For moments he could not so much as speak, lips parted. Then, “Dear God of all the saints,” the man gasped.

“Christ, Son of me Father-pregnant! You! It is true?”

Dumbly she nodded.

“You are sure? Not some false sign? Some cozening of the body …?”

“No. It is sure. Oh, Robert…!”

Hurriedly but gently, then, he laid his grandson back in the cradle, and turned to take his wife in his arms.

“My dear, my dear!”

he said.

“Here is wonder. Here is miracle. Here, here …” He wagged his head.

“Lord Jesu, woman-what are we? What are we I say? The playthings of God? Playthings, no more …!”