The Steps to the Empty Throne

“Leave it,” he jerked.

“It is less than nothing.”

“My dear,” she said quietly, sitting down beside him.

“Tell me.”

“Tell! What is there to tell? Save evil. God’s hand turned against a lost and condemned sinner. Punishment. Retribution.

Poured out. Not on the sinner, but on those who aided and supported him. His friends. Hugh Hay. Alexander Fraser. Somerville.

Barclay. Inchmartin. Scrymgeour. And others by the score.

Dead—all dead. Tortured and shamefully slain. Thomas Randolph a prisoner. Lamberton in chains} And Wishart…” It all poured out, the pent-up pain and remorse and sorrow, to a searing, passionate flood, all the disappointment, the frustration, the disillusionment, the desperation.

She listened quietly, with no word spoken.

At length the spate wore itself out. Elizabeth touched his sweating

brow.

“It is grievous, my heart. All grievous. I am sorry,” she said.

“But why torture yourself with it? The fault is not yours.”

“Not mine? Then whose is it, before God?” he demanded.

“Did other than I slay Comyn? Did other than I declare himself King?

All stems from that.”

“Comyn deserved to die. More, he had to die. Had you not slain him, another must. And this your kingdom requires a king.”

“Not a king who leads to disaster.”

“Any king can lose a battle.”

“It was not a battle. It was a massacre. We were taken unawares.

Asleep. Because of my fault. I had challenged Pembroke to fight, that afternoon. Twice. He refused, and said that he might fight the next day. Like a fool, I took him at his word. It did not cross my mind that he would steal out on me by night, six miles, to Methven. Betrayed by Philip Moubray. We were taken by surprise. But the fault was mine.”

“In any fight, Robert, one must lose…”

“But I—I was carried off the field. To safety. While others, thousands, fell. Or, lacking leader, yielded. And were then slaughtered like dumb cattle!”

“That shame was not yours, but Edward’s. And it was right that you should be saved. Necessary. You are the King. The King lost, and all is lost.”

“Scotland, I swear, were better without this King I For he is lost, even so. Lost and damned!”

“No! No, I say!” Suddenly Elizabeth de Burgh changed. She sat up straight, her eyes blazing, and turning to him gripped his undamaged arm—but not tenderly.

“You speak like a child. A child sorrowing for itself I This is not the Robert Bruce I wed. I married a man—not a brooding, pulling hairn!”

He recoiled from her, almost as though she had struck him.

“Woman—you do not know what you say…!”

“I know full well! Hear me speak—since you, Robert speak folly! I would liefer have the man for husband who slew Comyn and defied all Edward’s fury, than… than this weakling!”

He groaned.

“You say this? You, also? God pity me …”

That was a whisper.

“Aye, God pity you, Robert Bruce I And me, wed to you I And this land, with a faint-heart for King! A broken sceptre, indeed!”

He stiffened.

“You are finished?” he asked.

“No, I am not. You took that sceptre. None thrust it upon you. You are the King, now. Crowned and anointed. There is no undoing it, no turning back. So—if you are the King, for God’s good sake be the King! A weak king is the greatest curse upon a nation.”

He stared at her, biting his lip.

“What was it that we did at Scone?” she demanded, her beauty only heightened by her passion.

“Was it only a show?

Play-acting? Or was it the truth? God’s work? Did Abbot Henry save the Stone for nothing? That oil on your brow—what was it? A priest’s mummery? Or the blessed anointing of God’s Holy Spirit upon you? You, only. Which? For if it was truth, then it gave you authority. Above all men. Whatever you have done, you are now God’s Anointed. Take that authority. Use it. Wield your sword of state. You have many loyal men still. A whole people still looks to you, in hope. Fight on. Avenge Methven. Be Robert the King!” Abruptly her voice broke, and her fiercely” upright carriage seemed to crumble.

“Oh, Robert, Robert—be Elizabeth de Burgh’s man!”

Slowly he rose to his feet, looking from her down to the camp, and then away and away.

“Say that you will do it, my dear,” she pleaded now.

“For you … I think … I would do anything. Anything!”

“Thank God! Do it for me, then. If for naught else…”

There was an interruption. A strange-looking figure was climbing the knowe towards them, one or two of the King’s people trailing rather doubtfully behind. The man was elderly, enormous but frail and stooping, bearded to the waist, and clad apparently and wholly in a great tartan plaid, stained and torn, draped about his person in voluminous folds and peculiar fashion, and belted, oddly, with a girdle of pure gold links, in a Celtic design of entwined snakes. He was aiding himself up the hill with a long staff having a hook-shaped head, like a shepherd’s crook.

Nigel Bruce had waited, some way back from the royal couple. Now he stepped forward to halt this apparition. But the old man waved him aside peremptorily—and when this had no effect, raised his staff on high and shook it threateningly, screeching a flood of Gaelic invective of such vehemence and power as to give even Nigel pause in some alarm.

The ancient gold-girdled ragbag came trudging on, right up to the monarch. He said something less fierce, in the Gaelic.

Bruce, whose mother had been a Celtic countess in her own right, knew

something of the ancient tongue; but not sufficient to understand this swift flow, liquid and hurrying as a Highland river, and strangely musical to be coming from so uncouth a character.

“I am sorry, friend,” he said, when there was a pause.

“I do not know what you say.”

The other looked him up and down disapprovingly, then shrugged the bent tartan-draped shoulders.

“You are Robert son of Mariot, daughter of Niall, son of Duncan, son of Gilbert, son of Fergus, son of Fergus?” he demanded, and added, “Ard Righ,” almost grudgingly.

Bruce at least knew those last two words, which meant High King. He nodded.

“I am he.”

“And I—I am the Dewar of the Coigreach,” the other said dramatically and waved his staff.

Bruce dredged in his bemused mind for what this might signify.

And then recollected. The Coigreach, of course. It was the legendary pastoral staff of Saint Fillan, one of the most celebrated of all the ancient Celtic saints, a prince of the royal Dalriadic house, out of which the united kingdom of the Picts and Scots had come, and Abbot of the long defunct Culdee Abbey of Glendochart—and a leper, it was said. A precious relic since the eighth century, this crozier was handed down in a long line of hereditary custodians, known as Dewars or Diors, who were venerated, all over the Celtic Highlands and islands as holy men.

“I greet you, Dewar of the Coigreach,” he acknowledged.

“How can I serve you?”

The other snorted.

“I came to serve you!” he corrected.

“I have come to bless you. Who is this woman?”

“She is the Queen. My wife.”

The Dewar sniffed, and shrugged. But he raised the crozier, with its curious, elaborately-wrought bronze head, and extending it over the royal couple, launched into a stream, a flood, of Gaelic.

When he at length lowered the staff, he added factually, “You are now blessed with the Blessing of Saint Fillan.”” “I thank you,” Bruce said, level-voiced.

“But I would remind you that I have been excommunicated by the Pope.

His Holiness of Rome.”

“The Pope? Who is the Pope?” the Dewar asked haughtily.

“And where is Rome? It is not in Ireland, the Cradle of the Church.