The Honor Due a King Read Free

softly. Behind him, above the roof of the abbey, the three bald peaks of the Eildon Hills swam in the darkness of roiling storm clouds. “ How do you know? I’ve heard men say you have an extra sense that tells you when the enemy is near. Do you truly? Can you tell the same for loved ones?”
    He gave that faint, familiar grin of his to impart his steady confidence. “Because you sent Gil and Randolph to take care of it. That’s how I know. On their lives, they would never fail you.”
    Nor would you, good James. I should know better than to doubt any of you, but it is the uncertainty of fate that troubles me now – things we mere men have no guidance over.
    Months of haggling with England’s king, Edward of Caernarvon, had left me a pessimist. The wretch was still in denial, refusing to relinquish his alleged rights to Scotland, despite the pummeling he had taken. For now though, more than I wanted his blessing, I wanted Elizabeth – my wife, my queen – to come home to me.
    The Earl of Hereford, captured at Bannockburn, was my pawn. To hand him back, I had demanded a hefty ransom that would rob his heirs for eternity. Then, to quell King Edward’s protests over the amount, I promised to give back the Great Seal and Royal Shield at no further recompense, but for the return of my womenfolk and Bishop Wishart.
    So it was here at Melrose that we waited on the appointed day to receive them, whilst my nephew, Thomas Randolph, and my commander and old companion, Gil de la Haye, went to meet an English envoy at Jedburgh where the exchange was to occur. At border’s edge, Jedburgh was deemed too dangerous for me to go there. But staying behind, waiting ... ah now, that was more torturous than the threat of a fight.
    My men – their weapons rattling as they shivered against the cold – huddled beneath the naked branches of a massive yew at the far end of the graveyard. Days of rain leaching into the earth had stirred up the faintly sweet, sickening smell of decomposing flesh. As the wind drove the rain in staggering walls, Neil Campbell leaned wearily against his horse, uttering prayers for the soul of Mary – his wife, my sister – who would not be among those to come home. When she and the others were dragged from sanctuary at St. Duthac’s shrine by the Earl of Ross in 1306 and handed over to Longshanks, who was king before his namesake Edward II, she was dangled from the walls of Roxburgh Castle in a wooden cage – left there to suffer through winter cold and heavy rain. Four long years later, they removed her and tucked her away in a Carmelite nunnery. But she never recovered from a sickness that settled in her lungs. When the negotiations with King Edward began, only then did we learn she had died over a year earlier. Neil, who for a short time had been radiant with hope, was now drowning in grief.
    For hours we waited there, growing colder and hungrier, but no one would go inside the ruined buildings because I would not leave. So very cold I became in my drenched, padded leather and chain mail that my muscles cramped and the feeling drained from my fingers and toes.
    They should have arrived by noon. It was now nearly sunset – or would be, if the sun could be seen at all. “Why are they not here yet?”
    James paced over the soggy ground. “The Teviot is running deep. They may have had to travel further upstream to find a place to ford it.”
    Likely they had, but that did little to quiet my mind. As I stood in the pouring rain, with the engorged River Tweed sloshing and gurgling at my back and the desecrated abbey before me, I knew I should have been full of blissful anticipation at the occasion, no matter the misery of the weather, but instead I felt only the oppressive gloom of the clouds.
    “You’ll watch after my Marjorie? Make certain no harm comes to her? No dishonor? Swear it.”
    “On my life, Robert. You know that.” James blew a cloud of steaming breath into the chilly air. “We should go