Authors: Terri Brisbin
“How did you find out?” he asked. Only Hugh knew, and he would never have betrayed Sebastien’s secret unless Sebastien gave him leave to do so.
“I should have realized it when I saw the two of you together, and I cannot believe that canny James Douglas has missed the resemblance for this long.”
“Lady, you are trying my patience once more,” James growled from his place near the door. “I would have you beaten if you were my wife.”
“Your coloring is different, of course, but you share the same nose.” She laughed then, a sound welcome to his heart, and one he did not think to ever hear again. “And, more importantly, the same father.”
“It means nothing, Lara. If I had wanted the protection of his name I would have sought it out long ago. I have made my own way all of my life and will not hide now behind a name.”
She continued as though she’d heard none of his words. “I found the ring when I took the cross from your trunk, Sebastien. I did not recognize the insignia as the Bruce’s family mark until I saw the documents carried by Munro. I realized then that you were one of them.”
“Munro saw you to safety then?”
She nodded.
Good. His man was in the right place at the time of most serious need, as he’d planned.
“And killed Eachann,” she said, her voice trembling now, and Sebastien fought the urge to go to her side.
He nodded, pleased that Munro understood completely what had to be done and did it, although deep inside a part of him wished he had wielded the weapon causing his enemy’s death. He hoped it was not too swift a death.
“Do not try to distract me, Sebastien. I saw the same seal on the documents he carried to ease his way through the Bruce’s camps.”
“Anyone can have a ring.” He did not know why he fought to keep it a secret still. It truly did not speak to the issue of treason and the evidence against him.
“Aye, but I also read your will.”
“My will? How did you get to these things?” If she’d read his words, then she knew for certain.
“James the Canny sought them out for me.” She gestured to him with her head, and Sebastien held in his laugh. “He did not trust me in the same castle with the Bruce.”
“You know he takes his reputation and his duties very seriously, lass. I would not be insulting him. He will be your safe passage out of here once you both understand what must happen next.”
Lara walked to him and touched his cheek. “I would do anything for you, Sebastien. I will even save you when you will not save yourself.”
“There is no need for you to say anything.”
“I heard my father’s plans. I heard how he—they—used the information I gave them, not just to attack the Bruce’s forces, but to destroy you as well. Even they who have no honor recognized that you would damn
yourself before you broke your word to me. And they willingly used me, just as you warned they would do.”
“Lara, please, say no more. James will have no choice but to tell the Bruce, and I will have no way to save you.” He shook his head and tried to step away from her, but she followed him.
“Sebastien, you need to know this. They attacked one of their own men and left him for dead, telling him that you were his assailant. They put that cross in his hand, and that is how you were linked to his death. Eachann put a letter inside your tunic when he struck you to provide them with ‘proof’ that you were plotting with my father to hold Dunstaffnage for yourself.”
He leaned in close to her and said softly, “I know that their proof is false, Lara. It changes nothing. The only choice I have is to sacrifice you, and that is not an option.”
“Mayhap the king will hear my words asking for his mercy. Mayhap he will understand the weakness of a woman trying to protect her own siblings and people, as he has had to do. Mayhap he will wait until the babe is born before deciding its mother’s fate.”
“Babe? Babe?” he stuttered. They were to have a bairn of their own?
“Mayhap he has, lady?”
The voice that came from behind Lara was not James’s. She gasped as the king pulled open the cell door and entered.
“Sire,” Sebastien said, bowing to his brother.
“You are wrong about one thing, Sebastien. Not just anyone can have this ring.” Robert held out his father’s—their father’s—ring to him. “He told me he had
them made for his sons, both legitimate and natural. He may have known only of your existence when he gave this to your mother, but he would have summoned you to him if he’d had an opportunity to do so. I have only recently lost brothers, and cannot so easily allow another to die in defense of his wife.” Two of Robert’s brothers, and his half brothers, had been executed by Edward in a hideous manner after their capture.
“Sire, she was forced to help them. She was beaten, anyone here can tell you—” he began to explain.
The king held up his hand to stop him. “And everyone has told me. You have the most opinionated group of men serving you, Sebastien. And the women are no better. One, called Margaret I think, has no fear.” He looked at both of them and shook his head. “I knew that you would face challenges in your marriage to her, but this is more that I expected any of my vassals to face. I could intercede on your behalf if you wish for an end to it.”
The king turned to face James and then turned back. “I am willing to forgo any judgments or punishments until we have had a chance to talk about all of these things and about why you have not brought news of our kinship to me before this.” Robert walked to the door. “She has promised to be a good and obedient wife from now forward, Sebastien, and I will take her at her word. With your strong guidance and her remorse, I believe she can be controlled and not repeat her offenses.”
James coughed as though choking, but stepped back to allow the king passage. Shaking his head, he followed Robert out of the cell. Sebastien could hear his words, for he was certain that James made no attempt
to hide them. “She has not been yet, sire, why do you think she will be now?”
Sebastien suddenly realized they were alone, alive, and the door was open. He opened his arms to her and she stepped into them. “Obedient? You promised him you would be obedient?”
“Well,” she said, smiling at him, “other than this, I have been obedient.”
“Other than leaving against my orders, coming back against my orders and revealing what I told you not to reveal, when did your obedience begin?”
“You would have sacrificed your life for me,” she said, putting her head on his shoulder.
“I promised you that I would protect you. If you could trust me, we might have avoided much of this.”
“If I had trusted you, so much loss could have been prevented.” She leaned back and looked at him, her eyes bleak with the same thought he had. “Philippe. The other lives shed because of my words. I will regret their deaths forever, Sebastien.”
“Lara, the boy’s death was my fault. I knew that Eachann had my plans by then. You were not the only one of his spies here. I should have protected him by leaving him behind. You did warn me. You begged me not to take him. Although I did not know why, I should have listened to you.”
They were quiet then and he thought of the smiling boy whose life had been lost in his service. The king was no doubt handling matters of treachery and clearing their way above stairs, so they should follow.
“Come, Lara. We should see what the king wants of us. And you should change out of these clothes.”
“I used to wear something like this when I learned to climb the walls of the castle.”
He felt faint. Blinking, he shook his head. “Never tell me that you climbed the walls to get in here today.”
“Oh, nay. I just threatened a pox on James’s essential parts if he would not help me.”
“I do not wonder why he fears you, lady. He needs those if he wants to start his own family.”
“Come now, Sebastien,” she said, as he took her hand and led her out of the cell. “He needs those parts to pleasure a certain kitchen maid named Peggy.”
Sebastien laughed for a moment, knowing that Lara would give James no quarter in the future. “We have much to discuss and many things to do.”
The Lord and Lady of Dunstaffnage were greeted by their people as they entered the hall. The Campbells were gone, and apparently the king’s declaration that Sebastien was still in his esteem had smoothed the way quite nicely for them.
Sebastien was not happy when he discovered that Robert would stay for several more days…and use their chambers, as befitted his station as king. But he knew that the Bruce, having not visited there for some time, would not miss the strange, large chair from the bedroom.
“I
baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Father Connaughty poured the final amount of water over the bairn’s head and smiled as his outraged howls filled the chapel. Handing him back to his godfather, the king, the priest stepped away and allowed them a moment of privacy.
“A handsome boy,” Robert said, as he turned and held the babe out to her.
“Aye, sire. He has his father’s eyes.”
Lara dried Philippe’s head and soothed him back to sleep. Sebastien offered to return him to his nurse, but Lara held him. They had spoken often of the first Philippe over these last months and it seemed fitting that they should name their son after him.
“Raise him well, Sebastien. I need good warriors on my side.”
“We will, sire. If he has his mother’s daring—”
“Dear God in Heaven, save us!” James finished the
sentiment, although Lara knew it was not what Sebastien had been planning to say.
“I did not know you could enter a church safely, James. There are rumours, you know.” Lara relinquished the babe to Margaret’s willing arms.
He held up his hands in surrender and walked away.
“You will have to teach me that skill, lady. Even beating him to a pulp does not gain his surrender to me.”
“’Tis simple, Sebastien. He has a secret that I know and he fears I will reveal, so he acquiesces to me.”
“And that secret?”
“I cannot say, my lord. Mayhap one day he will tell you himself.”
“Lara, as your lawful husband, I command you to tell me,” he ordered.
She laughed. It was such an inconsequential thing, but always important to men. And she had such fun using it against James. To share it would lessen its power.
“Let us go back to our chambers and discuss this obedience you desire.”
“Oh no, Lara. I know your ways. We will go there, you will seduce me and I will never find out.”
She moved her gaze over his body until it reached the part of him that would react to her words. “And would you like to do that or not?” She licked her lips and he tensed. “The king will be using our chambers this night, but if we hurry…”
“Damn!” he said. “Very well, I will allow you to seduce me then.”
She leaned up and kissed him. “And I will allow you to seduce me the next time.”
The sparkle in his eyes spoke of his passion and told her he knew her game.
“I am always your obedient wife, my lord.”
“Or you let me think you are.”
“Oh, aye, my lord.”
He kissed her then and swept her out of the church to their chambers, where their laughter filled the keep with love.
I
based my story on a factual event, the battle of Brander Pass, which was fought on August 11, 1308, but I confess to taking “literary license” with some of the real history of the time. The Bruce did indeed defeat John of Lorne, who escaped to England and was appointed Admiral of the Western Seas by Edward I. As a hostage, John left behind his elderly father, not his children, as I used for my story. The eldest daughter of the Lord of Lorne, and head of the MacDougall clan, was given the honorary title of “Maid of Lorne.”
I fear I did not give James Douglas enough credit, for it was his battle strategies that saved the Bruce that day. James, who was later called “Good Sir James,” was Robert the Bruce’s premier fighting machine and guerrilla warfare expert, and fought in more than sixty battles during his lifetime. Robert the Bruce so trusted him that he asked James to take his heart to the Holy Land to fulfill a promise to go there on a Crusade. James died in Spain on his way to the East, and Robert’s heart was returned and buried in Melrose Abbey, while the rest of his remains are in Dunfermline Abbey in Scotland.
I think I owe the MacDougall clan an apology—their actions were no better or worse than any other noble family in this struggle that was both a civil war and a war against England. Fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, even husbands and wives, often found themselves on opposite sides. Extremes in brutality and mercy were seen throughout this war. As I mention in the story, Robert the Bruce originally fought on Edward’s side, but changed loyalties during the struggles after being inspired by the actions of William Wallace—and perhaps his own desire to be king? He was also known to forgive former enemies; Thomas Randolph and William, the Earl of Ross, are some dramatic examples of mercy he showed when it was politically correct.
Dunstaffnage Castle, home at one time to the legendary Stone of Scone, was seized after the Battle of Brander Pass, and a royal warden was appointed to hold it. It was one of very few castles that the Bruce’s forces did not destroy during his campaign to take back Scotland. Eventually, after Robert’s death, John of Lorne regained it, and later it passed into Campbell hands. As Sebastien predicted in the story, John of Lorne would never get the castle back while Robert lived—and he did not!
One final bit of history—although the first formal “parliaments” of Robert the Bruce were held in the spring of 1309, there are a few mentions of a gathering held at Ardchattan Priory, a monastery a few miles northeast of Dunstaffnage, which had been established and supported by the Lords of Lorne. No doubt Robert was pleased by the choice of the site, since it would be a smack at his enemies.
If you have any questions or comments about the history contained in my story, you can contact me at [email protected]. I like nothing more than to discuss brawny, powerful Scottish heroes and their heroines with readers!