Page 111 of Bound By Honor
The campaign will begin next spring. This time, I fight against John Comyn and the MacDougalls, which I trust does not displease you.
I hope your hunt goes well.
In November, when the truce between England and Scotland expired, King Edward delayed sending his army into Scotland. It was not until May of the following year, 1303, that Angus thought he had discerned the reason.
King Philip of France—due almost certainly to his difficulties with revolt at home and the pope—deserted the Scots and signed a peace agreement with Edward. All of Wallace’s noble efforts at the French court and in Rome had, after initial success, come to naught.
Angus did not know Wallace, the Scottish knight who Edward considered the chief of the rebels, but he admired his courage.
Edward was now free to march upon Scotland without consideration for either France or Rome. As he had planned, Edward advanced north, taking the eastern route. His son, Prince Edward, moved north along the western route. However, the prince was checked at several points by Wallace, launching skirmishes out of the forest of Selkirk.
John “the Red” Comyn led a Scottish force in the north but he could not prevail against Edward’s overwhelming numbers. The king’s army, numbering more than nine thousand, swept north, past Stirling Castle whose Scottish garrison Edward considered too small to bother with, and decimated all in his path.
Like devouring locusts, his soldiers burned everything—hamlets and towns and granges and barns, both full and empty. Angus shuddered to think of the people in Edward’s path.
Eventually, the king marched into the Red Comyn’s lands of Badenoch that, until now, had been spared Edward’s wrath.
When the Irish fleet sailed in August, it was said to be the largest naval force that had ever sailed from Ireland. Angus was proud of the Islesmen who stood at the helm of half the 173 ships and the oarsmen who labored to move the galleys across the Irish Sea.
Watching from the ramparts of Dunaverty Castle as the huge fleet passed in front of him on its way to Scotland’s coast, he remarked to Duncan and John, “I am relieved our Islesmen do not fight this time, either for Comyn or Edward, but there will come a time when they will fight and, when that time comes, I will lead them.”
“And I will be with you,” said Duncan.
“I as well,” said John.
Placing a hand on their shoulders, Angus said, “I am stronger for you both. Your counsel and your friendship mean much.”
Angus had another reason to be glad he could remain at home. Áine was again with child and he wanted to be with her when her time came. She fretted much over this next birth because she had lost the last babe.
He followed closely the war in Scotland, receiving regular messages from his contacts. Thus, Angus learned that in the southwest of Scotland, de Burgh’s Irish army had begun capturing castles. Rob, sent by Edward to meet the Irish force, was relieving Carlisle and the English garrisons in Dumfries and Galloway that had been on the verge of collapse.
Angus also received the welcome news that at the end of September, Edward had laid siege to the Red Comyn’s castle at Lochindorb in Badenoch, and, by October, the castle had fallen. Edward celebrated with a hunt on the surrounding moors before deciding to spend the winter in Dunfermline.
By February of 1304, Edward had prevailed against all save Wallace and the MacDougalls. The leading Scots had surrendered to the king, including John Comyn. The terms of surrender with the Red Comyn as a Guardian of the Realm—a position he was soon to resign as there would be no need—were negotiated by Richard de Burgh.
In late March, Áine gave birth to another child, a girl they named Finvola who, like her brother, Alexander, had her mother’s dark hair and Angus’ blue eyes. Angus was there for the birth, which was celebrated everywhere in the lordship.
“Do you mind the babe is a girl?” Áine asked Angus as they watched the babe sleeping.
“Nay. I am glad we have a lass this time. I can always give her in marriage to some wealthy lord,” he teased. “’Twould make for a rich alliance.”
“I should have known that is all her father would think of,” Áine said with a look of amusement. “But you might be surprised to find you are reluctant to give her at all.”
Angus laughed, inwardly admitting the truth of it. “Aye. She is comely and I am already charmed by her.”
It was that same spring when Edward, with his army dwindling—through desertion as much as battle—to one thousand men, turned his attention at last to Stirling Castle.
The ancient stronghold had inaccessible cliffs on three sides so that the garrison of fifty men under the command of Sir William Oliphant held out for three months against Edward’s guns and trebuchets. Starving, the garrison sought to surrender. Edward refused. Instead, he lobbed huge round boulders into the castle’s 12-foot thick walls using his giant trebuchet he dubbed “War Wolf”. Only after he destroyed the castle did the king permit the garrison to submit. But for the pleading of his English commanders, impressed by the garrison’s courage, did Edward allow them to live.
Hearing that his friend, Rob, had been in charge of the English guns that battered Stirling’s walls, Angus believed Rob was one who argued for the lives of the garrison. “It must have been hard for Rob, who loves his country, to have witnessed Edward’s cruelty to those fifty men,” he said to his brother. “After all, unlike his father, Rob is as much a Celt as a Norman.”
“Aye,” said John. “From what you have told me, his return to Edward made sense but I wonder how long he will continue to serve the English king.”
“It will not be for always,” said Angus. “And once Rob leaves Edward’s service, so will I.” The prophecy’s words, spoken long ago, had never left him. There would be “a new king” and he believed that king would be Robert Bruce.
The day after the fall of Stirling, Edward dispatched John Comyn, along with three other Scottish nobles, all of whom now served the English king, to hunt down William Wallace. The brave patriot, who still carried on the fight for Scotland’s freedom, was at large and refused to pay Edward homage.
By now, it was clear to all that John Balliol would never return to Scotland. With the country under Edward’s control, de Burgh’s Irish force returned home. As Admiral of the Western Isles, Angus’ ships participated in seeing them back to Ireland’s shores.
