The Steps to the Empty Throne

That cry of triumph and the fierce pain of the damaged shoulder, convulsed Bruce. Cringing, and seeking to strike out blindly at the same time, he jerked round—and the movement and agony was too much for his precarious equilibrium. He overbalanced quite, and fell to the ground for the third time that grim midsummer morning.

Almost crazed that he might lose a prize which King Edward would reward surely with an earldom at least, Moubray leapt down to straddle his fallen victim, shouting to his colleagues to close in around him. But before they could do so, Sir Christopher Seton, with a roar of fury, thrust in, completely overturning one horse and rider in the excess of his rage, and, reaching Moubray first, towering above him, felled him with a mighty blow.

Then the big Yorkshireman performed a feat which was to be forever afterwards remembered of him. Leaping down and tossing away his sword, he picked up his half-stunned brother-in-law almost as though he had been a child, and lifted him high on to his own horse in an access of next to superhuman strength. Then, as the others spurred to protect him, he clambered up behind the King.

Without any more delay, searching for Edward Bruce or anyone else, the tight knot of the King’s closest friends set about the business of beating their way, swords flailing right and left rhythmically, monotonously, out of that shambles, eastwards. In the face of their savagely dedicated determination few remained long in their path.

So, ingloriously, the new King of Scots left his first battlefield, only semiconscious.

His escort won through the rear of the English array, and swinging away southwards in a wide arc through the marshlands of Methven Moss, were able to turn back westwards. The Highland hills, a black barrier ahead, beckoned like a blessed haven in a storm.

Chapter Twenty-three

The larks trilled joyously high in the blue, the cuckoos called hauntingly from-the lower birch-woods, and the myriad bees hummed lazy contentment from the rich purple carpet of the bell heather and the blazing gold of the whins which crackled in the early July sunshine; while the tumbling, spouting, peat-stained Dochart shouted its laughter up from its rocky bed, all in praise of as fine a noontide as that lovely land of the mountains could proffer. But the man who sat alone on the heathery knoll, chin cupped in hand, elbow on knee, and stared eastwards towards Ben Lawers and Loch Tay, heard and saw and felt none of it.

His brow was dark, his jaw set, his thoughts bitter. And it was not the pain of a broken shoulder troubled him; he scarcely felt that in his present state.

He sat alone only because he would have it so; for down in the camp by the riverside there were friends enough who felt for him, who often gazed up towards him, most of whom indeed had already shed blood for him. But the King, in his deep hurt, wanted none of them. He was sick, sick not so much of pain and the body but of the heart, the mind, the spirit; and was by no means to be comforted.

None denied that he had cause for bitterness, for hurt; but few accepted his self-censure, his burning sense of personal blame-which can be the sorest burden a man can carry.

Robert Bruce was not unduly introspective, self-centred or guilt-conscious as a rule. As a youth and younger man he had not been noted for a sense of responsibility indeed. But he had undoubtedly changed, of late. His brothers, and those closest to him, averred mat the change dated substantially from the murder of Comyn. Guilt was now seldom far from his mind. And the fact that the Pope had indeed now pronounced the dread sentence of excommunication upon him, however much it might be politic to make light of it, was like a leaden weight on his soul. He felt that the hand of God was against him—and deservedly so. Moreover, equally daunting was his awareness that so many others must pay the price for his fault.

This last assumption was hard to gainsay, at least. It was two weeks

since Methven, two weeks of flight, of skulking and hiding in the

mountains of Strathyre and Breadalbane, while survivors, refugees and

broken men joined him, singly and in little parties, bringing with them the grim details necessary to build up a true picture of what that shameful debacle had cost. A glance at the camp below, by the Dochart, revealed the broad outline. Barely 500 men were there—all that was left of the King’s army-His brother Edward was there; and Christopher Seton. But Thomas Randolph, his nephew, was captured. The tight group which had carried him off the field—and whom he now blamed for that very thing—James Douglas, Gilbert Hay, Robert Boyd and Robert Fleming, were present, though nearly all wounded to a greater or lesser degree. Also the Earl of Atholl, the Bishop of Moray and Sir Neil Campbell.

But that was all.

The long list of the dead was like a knell tolling in the King’s mind; for the vast majority of those surprised at Methven were now dead. Fortunate indeed were those who had fallen cleanly in the heat of battle for, true to his master’s orders, Pembroke had carried the dragon flag, and the wounded and captured had been slain out of hand. Only a few of the highest ranks had been taken prisoner. And these, with the exception of Thomas Randolph-saved not out of mercy, but that he might be used against his uncle—had all been summarily hanged, drawn and quartered;

Sir Alexander Fraser, Sir Simon’s brother; Sir Hugh Hay, brother to Gilbert of Erroll; Sir John Somerville, Lord of Carnwath; Sir David Barclay of Cairns; Sir David de Inchmartin; and Alexander Scrymgeour, the Standard-Bearer, dying the same death as his master Wallace. All had paid the price for supporting Bruce. The Earl of Lennox was wounded and missing, the Earl of Menteith captured and none knew whether alive or dead. Even the Earl of Strathearn, forced almost at the sword-point to the coronation at Scone, and not present at Methven, was taken and sent south in chains.

Nor was that all. Lamberton himself, the King had just heard, had been apprehended at his cathedral of St. Andrews, and with Bishop Wishart, in irons both, sent with every indignity to London.

As for the people, the common people, his subjects, they died in their thousands, in a reign of terror that was going to leave little for Edward himself to do when eventually he reached unhappy Scotland.

So Robert Bruce sat and called himself accursed, a man who brought death, destruction and horror upon all. He was not far from breaking-point.

It was almost with dread, then, that he presently glimpsed the flash of sunlight on steel, and the colours of banners and gaily canopied litters, approaching from the direction of Killin and Loch Tay—which he had come up here to look for. He had sent a message to Blair-in-Atholl, where Nigel had been guarding the Queen’s party, to join them here, a two-days’ march westwards.

Now he wondered how he could face Elizabeth.

That he did not go down to meet her was the measure of his depression and despair.

Eventually Nigel brought her up the hillock, but at a sign from her, left Elizabeth some little way from his brother’s position. The Queen came on alone.

“Robert!” she said, going to him, hands out.

“At last. Together again. I have prayed for this. How I have prayed!”

“Prayed? For this?”

Three words could scarcely have been more eloquent. Closely, concernedly, she eyed him, reaching to take one of his hands. Her splendid fairness was heart-breaking, this fine noonday. He looked steadily away from her.

“Prayed, my dear. That I might at least see you again. See you, touch you, hold you—and alive! Was it so ill a prayer? At least it has been granted.”

He did not answer.

“But you are hurt. Your shoulder …”

“I am hurt? Who talks such folly, when all is lost and better men die by the hundred, the thousand!”

“Such better men are not my husband,” she answered simply.

“Let me see it. Your shoulder, Robert.”