Free Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) by N. Gemini Sasson Page A

there. I’m sure he doesn’t know any more than what he told you. Let him rest for now. You need to get some sleep, too. We’ll go to Carrick soon. Find out what we can.”
    But how does a man find sleep when his brother is dead? When he sends his wife away and has no idea where she has gone to? Whether she is dead or alive or suffering in terror as they rape and torture her?
    Ah, merciful Lord... even as I try and try to weave this rag back together it frays between my fingers .
     

Ch. 7
    Edward, Prince of Wales – Tower of London, 1307
    Metal creaked against metal, rising steadily to a groan as the wind nudged at the heavy cage, tipping it slightly. The contrivance hung from an iron hook, which extended from the wall of Wakefield Tower in the outer bailey of the Tower of London. Bone-thin fingers gripped the wooden bars. The girl peered down at me, her curling tresses twisted and snarled about a bloodless face. Even from the ground, I could see her lashes, as black as a crow’s feather, fluttering over eyes of gold-green. Shoulders heaving, she sniffed and rubbed a bare hand across her nose, then pulled the tattered hem of her gown around slippered feet.
    My sire’s heels clacked unevenly over the cobbles, slowing as he neared me. He tried to smooth the hitch in his stride, but his grimace betrayed the pain. The long, muscular legs which had earned him the name ‘Longshanks’ had withered to twigs of late. He had just returned from Lanercrost Priory near Carlisle, where he sometimes went when his health deteriorated. But instead of relief from his ailments, he had returned with an unlikely prize: the Bruce women and the Earl of Atholl’s head, now adorning a pike above London Bridge.
    “I sent you to Dunaverty,” he said accusingly. “Was he not there?”
    “Shortly after I left Berwick, I received word from Menteith that he had already fallen upon Dunaverty. Unfortunately, Bruce was not there, nor any of his brothers.”
    “So you accomplished nothing?”
    Why did he always seek to find fault with me? Even though I expected such upbraidings, I could never shield my heart from them. Worst of all was how he had persecuted me for my friendship with Piers Gaveston. His banishment had nearly undone me. If I wished to hurry my sire’s demise, it was not because I wanted his throne. Far from it. I only wished... no, craved to have Piers back at my side. Mother Mary, what torture it had been without him.
    “The Bruce appears to have fled Scotland altogether,” I said, hoping that would placate him, and added for further measure, “And you have, of course, heard of Pembroke’s success in taking Kildrummy? I myself saw the crows picking at Nigel Bruce’s head atop Berwick’s wall.”
    “It would please me more if you brought me Robert’s head.” A cough tore at my sire’s throat. He raised his fist to muffle it. The hacking startled a flock of ravens, sending them skyward in a whir of beating wings and petulant caws.
    Like the arrogant, doddering fool he was, my sire denied that frequent illnesses had taken their toll on him. Too often, he was outside on days like this when frost rimed the rooftops, just as his once glorious golden hair had whitened. With every outing his joints stiffened so severely he could hardly walk for days afterwards sometimes. His French wife Queen Marguerite, who was my stepmother, trailed behind him with a gaggle of damsels. We exchanged perfunctory bows: a rehearsed ritual of mutual tolerance. I had it on the solemn word of her laundressthat he still bedded her, hoping to get her with yet one more child, as if my two barely weaned half-brothers, Thomas and Edmund, were not testament enough of his enduring virility. King now for more than half of his sixty-eight years, one would think my sire – whose portentous name I had been burdened with – would have given up youthful illusions years ago, but not so. Those who believe themselves born to fulfill greatness admit nothing of