The Steps to the Empty Throne

It so happened the Earl of Surrey was at Berwick Castle when both tidings arrived, in the process of handing over the civilian duties or Viceroy to Fitz-Alan, Lord of Bedale, in the company of Master Hugo Cressingham, Treasurer and real administrator of Scotland, who made his headquarters at Berwick. It was a humiliating situation for the great Earl of Surrey; moreover he and Cressingham, whom he despised as an up jumped cleric, were on bad terms. Out of this, the entire situation for Scotland suddenly changed. Fitz-Alan, the new broom, wished to prove himself as Viceroy; Cressingham demanded immediate action for the relief of Dundee; and Surrey, with the word from the south a great victory in France secured, Edward would now come home to set his English house in order, panicked. He had a name and reputation to save. He was still commander-in chief in the North; and fifty thousand men still lay encamped near Berwick.

So action, crude and vigorous, took the place of dialectics.

Blood would flow, not words.

The first indication of this dramatic change reached Ayrshire by urgent courier to Sir Henry Percy, in peremptory terms. The High Steward, Crawford and certain other Scots lords, with the main body of the English forces at Ayr, were to be sent to join Surrey’s army forthwith, on its advance on Dundee by Edinburgh and Stirling. But Percy himself was to proceed at once in the other direction, south to Carlisle, taking the Earl of Carrick with him, there to assemble as large a reinforcement army as he could in short time, for the aid of his uncle. Bruce’s father, though replaced as Governor of Carlisle by the Bishop thereof, was still detained at that castle. His great lands of Annandale teemed with men, the richest territory in SouthWest Scotland. The Bruces must provide their thousands from Annandale on pain of treason.

The velvet gloves were discarded now, with a vengeance.

Percy’s cavalry descended upon the unsuspecting Scots, who found themselves under what amounted to arrest, at Irvine. There was no argument or debate now. The Steward and the rest were taken off northwards. Percy and Bruce rode south. The Capitulation of Irvine was over, and the Leopards of England showed their spots again, dark, clear and unchanged.

In the circumstances, Bruce’s reunion with his father at Carlisle was

less than happy. They had never got on well together, the father

finding the son headstrong, independent, and, in especially

extravagant; the younger saw his parent as indecisive, interfering

ineffective, and mean. The son’s expensive ways, as compared with his sire’s parsimony, had been a stumbling-block between them for long. This was why, as much as because he could not bring himself to make an earl’s fealty to his rival John Baliol, the elder Bruce had handed over the old and impoverished Celtic earldom of Carrick, which he had gained by marriage, to his son, and thereafter washed his hands of him—retaining, of course, for himself, the infinitely richer if less lofty-sounding Lordship of Annandale. There was seldom love lost when these two met.

Bruce found his father practically a prisoner in Carlisle Castle though he did not admit the fact—with the Bishop in command.

Percy did not delay in making known his uncle’s demands for a large contingent of armed and mounted men from Annandale, his hesitancy of manner now scant cloak for brusque authority and left father and son to their own company.

“How dare he I How dare that insolent puppy speak me so!”

the elder Robert Bruce cried, trembling with outrage.

“I, who should be King of Scots!”

“Yet you will bear it, Father—since you must. As must I. For you are not King of Scots. And, like me, you are Percy’s prisoner in all but name.”

“I am no prisoner, boy! By envy and malice and Edward’s spleen. I have been superseded as Governor here—that is all. As though I care for that! If Edward Plantagenet does not know his friends, and trusts instead such as Percy and Surrey, the more fool he! I shall not give them one man from Annandale. They may whistle for their men!”

“Brave words! You did not speak them to Percy!”

“I shall. You may lick the boots of such as he. I do not.”

“I lick no boots. Nor ever shall. But I recognise facts. Power.

The reality of power.”

“You I Power? You recognise fine clothes. Jewels. Blood-horses.

Women. You recognise those who will pay for your debts! You licked Edward’s boots for gold, did you not? He paid your debts.

Is it Percy, now?”

With a great effort Bruce held in his hot temper.

“I lick no man’s boots, I tell you,” he repeated heavily. And changed the subject, stiffly.

“How do you propose, my lord, to assert yourself?

Against these commands.”

“I shall go. Leave. I do not remain here, in Carlisle, to be insulted and mistreated, by God” “Where shall you go? If they let you. “Your lands in England, in Essex and Huntingdon, will scarce offer you protection against Edward I And Annandale, of all the dales of Scotland, lies most open to the English. Its mouth, wide and open to the Border, cannot be defended. Only at its head amongst the hills. And there the English hold Lochmaben.”

“I shall not go to Annandale. Nor into England. I go to Norway.

To Isabel. I shall seek King Eric’s aid. To put me on my throne of Scotland. I shall return with a Norse army.”

His son stared, almost unbelievingly. Although, knowing his father, he perhaps should not have been so surprised. Bruce the elder had ever lacked any conspicuous sense of the practical.

“But… but this is folly!” he exclaimed.

“Eric will not aid you.

Not with men, an army. He has his own troubles. Nearer home …”

“He is my good-son. To have me King of Scots would greatly strengthen his hand. In his own wars.”

The Lord of Annandale had been potent, if not practical, and his countess-wife fertile. They had had five sons and four daughters.

And the eldest child, Isabel, had married four years earlier King Eric the Second of Norway, as his second wife. The family had not seen her since—but she was indeed Queen of Norway.

Her brother knew the uselessness of argument with his sire.

“They will not let you go,” he said.

“The English.”

“Why should they stop me? I am a free man. I have been put down as Governor—but that is not my doing. It is your fault. For your folly, at Irvine. Of turning rebel, at the wrong time! Always you were a fool, Robert! And have cost me dear.”

The young man turned away, and strode to the window to gaze out, while he mastered himself. It was a small and undistinguished tower chamber, very different from the fine Governor’s apartment which the Bishop now occupied. Without facing his father, he spoke, level-voiced.

“They will not let you go. Unless you seem to aid them. I know these English—if you do not. Though you should, ‘fore God I They are merchants. They bargain, always. If they have power, they give nothing for nothing. You can bargain for your freedom with your Annandale men.”

“Men! You say that? You, the untimely rebel! You would give the English our Annandale men—to fight against our own folk?”

“To fight, no. To assemble and ride, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

”I mean that these are your vassals. Bruce’s vassals. By the

thousand. The English wish them assembled, in arms. Very well Let them assemble. It is a thing we dared not have done, ourselves.

But on Surrey’s orders …! Then, when we ride north, we shall speak with a different voice! Who, think you, these Bruce levies will obey? Percy? Or Bruce?”

“You mean … you mean that you would take them … and then change sides? Turn your coat, man?”