The Lion at Bay. Robert Low

      PROLOGUE

       Being a chronicle of the Kingdom in the Years of Trouble, written at Greyfriars Priory on the octave of Septuagisma, in the year of Our Lord one thousand three hundred and twenty-nine, 23rd year of the reign of King Robert I, God save and keep him.

       In the year of Our Lord one thousand two hundred and ninety-nine, our goodly king, then simply Sir Robert, Earl of Carrick, found he could no longer work together with his enemy and fellow Guardian of Scotland, Red John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, who sought many and divers ways to undermine the good of the Kingdom.

       Wherefore Sir Robert resigned, in order that Bishop Lamberton of St Andrews could become Guardian in his stead, hoping that, if Red John of Badenoch could find no favour in the Earl of Carrick, then surely he would not work against God. Meanwhile, Sir William Wallace, discredited after his failure to win at Falkirk, stayed in France, both for his safety and to seek the aid of King Philip IV for the good of the Kingdom.

       The Kingdom was at war with itself and even with God – the Order of Poor Knights had incited the wrath of kings and popes by its pride and arrogance, so that they contrived in bringing it to heel. The Pope wished to join it with that other Holy Order, the Knights Hospitaller. The king of France wished, through his greed and perfidy, to bring it down entire and sent out agents to conspire to that end.

       At this same moment, Edward was persuaded to release the imprisoned John Balliol, the King in whose name Scotland still resisted, into the custody of the Pope. The Comyn and Balliol, with Wallace in France, seemed set to force King Edward of England to agree to return John Balliol to the throne.

       It was this, the imminent return of a king already deposed, unsuited to a throne he did not want and unwelcomed by much of the community he had abandoned, which spurred Sir Robert to seek his own peace with Longshanks, sure that the community of the Kingdom had set foot on the wrong path. Others were of a similar mind – though some, scurrilous and cruel, claimed that good Sir Robert had sold himself for Longshanks’ promise of the crown of Scotland and the hand of Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the powerful Red Earl of Ulster.

       For all that, the deed was done and Sir Robert, new husband and newly returned to the king’s peace, rode with King Edward the Plantagenet, the greying pard who had savaged Scotland summer after summer until the very earth groaned.

       In the year of Our Gracious Lord thirteen hundred and four, the Kingdom was weary of war, the lords who fought it and the ruin they brought because of it. It seemed that even Longshanks grew tired of the ritual though he was determined to stamp his vengeful foot on the neck of the Kingdom, once and for all.

       Uneasily, Sir Robert was forced to watch the last remnants of Scottish resistance crumble, as most of the nobility of Scotland scrambled to make their peace with Longshanks. Then, as the Kingdom’s enemies gathered to witness the fall of Stirling, last bastion of the Scottish defence, God raised both His Hands and changed the world.

       The first Hand hovered over the Lord of Annandale and Robert Bruce’s goodly father, who fell ill unto death. When God decided to take him into His Grace, it would invest the son not only with the lands and titles of all the Bruce holdings, but the claim to the Kingdom’s crown. Sir Robert, aware of this sad and momentous event, was already laying the plans to bring about his kingship even as the last echoes of rebellion seemed to be fading.

       The second of God’s Hands raised The Wallace out of France and back to Scotland, so that, just as it seemed King Edward had crushed all before him, one talon of the lion remained unsheathed.

       And was as much sharpened against Sir Robert Bruce as