Chapter 21

The Road to Scotland

As King Edward and his troops travelled north to engage the Scots they passed through a devastated countryside that bore little physical resemblance to more peaceful times. Peel towers—smaller versions of a magnate's castle—had been erected throughout the area. At first sight of the enemy, tocsins clamored warning and unprotected families hurriedly gathered behind the peel's rock walls. Manor houses were a relic from the past, for they were too easily destroyed. Peasants were reduced to living in the woods or in hastily constructed shanties which the raiders burned during their raids. Most of the agricultural fields, so patiently carved out of the recalcitrant land, had been abandoned to nature. Before His Grace's arrival, Robert the Bruce, with his commanders Moray and Black Douglas, had spent three weeks raiding as far south as Preston near the Irish Sea. They'd put every open town to the torch, and in places such as Cartmel and Lancaster only the monastic buildings had been spared, to stand forlornly amidst the rubble.

Richard's heart was saddened by the gaunt faces of the refugees, the children who no longer cried, and the women whose atrocities shone in the blankness of their eyes. Bloated bodies were strewn along the route, stripped of clothing and valuables and left to scavenging animals. Few men walked the roads; those who had not been killed or enlisted in the campaign had been carried away as hostages. Livestock was also a rarity. The murrain of 1321 had devastated the cattle herds, and what remained were either driven into Scotland along with sheep and domestic pigs or slaughtered on the spot. Without meat or grain, the people starved and fell prey to epidemics that had annihilated ten percent of the population.

Truth to tell, King Edward's policies shared partial blame for the north's devastation. That much Richard knew, though he kept such thoughts to himself. The direct taxes His Grace had imposed during the famines of 1315-16, as well as the famines themselves, had caused such hardship that Edward complained the entire area was worthless as a source of revenue. Also, his Welsh and Irish troops often looted with as much rapacity as the Scots.

Seeing the hopeless faces in his dreams, Richard sent heavenward a thousand questions to a God who appeared oblivious to His people's pain.

"This time we will rid you of Bruce," he told a woman cradling an infant to her breast. She was flanked by two others whose shriveled faces were already stamped with death. Richard gave her his daily ration of food, knowing that it would only postpone the inevitable.

Nor did he believe that the current campaign would be successful, no matter how well Edward maintained he'd planned in advance. They were deficient in experienced cavalry. Most of Edward's battle-hardened generals had been executed, imprisoned, or were members of the outlawed contrariants.

As King Edward penetrated Scotland, Robert the Bruce prudently withdrew. Edward unsuccessfully besieged Berwick Castle and laid waste to Lothian, but the Scots refused to meet him in open combat. At Leith he was told that no more supplies would be able to reach him from the sea due to raids by Flemish pirates and storms which had destroyed fourteen English ships.

Faced with a hungry army whose ranks were increasingly decimated by desertion and epidemics, Edward decided to turn back. Crossing Alcrum Moor in Roxburghshire he arrived at the border. There he had many services offered in thanksgiving for his safe return.

The entire expedition had lasted sixteen days; six Scots had been taken prisoner.

Immediately Edward began dispersing his troops, though he spoke of spending the winter on the border "the better to discomfort our enemy."

Richard knew the falseness of such words.

We will all go back to London and forget about the starving children, the raped women and mutilated men. Edward will commission a minstrel to sing of his prowess, the brave deeds he executed, and will count himself a fine monarch.

Richard felt disgusted, as well as impotent, for what really could be done? The logical thing, aside from engaging the Scots in real battle, would be to negotiate a settlement, but unless Edward himself decided on this course, events would continue as before and more people would die.

On their last night together, Richard and Phillip bedded down near a stand of oak and birch. Richard had made plans to travel to his earldom in Sussex where he would continue marriage negotiations with emissaries of Beatrice, Countess of Lancaster. As Edward's ineptness became increasingly apparent, Richard's alliance with Lady Beatrice assumed greater importance, to Richard at least. The fewer warring factions the better.

Phillip, in turn, talked of visiting Winchcomb and Deerhurst before returning to Fordwich. Throughout the campaign, he had turned increasingly inward and Richard sensed a change in his friend, though he could not pinpoint the cause. He worried that Maria might have told him of Richard's foolish behavior, but if that were so, surely Phillip would have challenged him long ago. Perhaps, like so many, Phillip was merely disgusted with his sovereign.

The sharp night air smelled of wood smoke, fallen leaves and decaying earth. A madonna moon, tinged a bloody red, rose above the hills and forest; wispy clouds suffused the moon's light, lessening the chill of stars. It was a calm night when sound drifted unnaturally far—the neighing of a tethered horse, murmured conversations, the coughing and moans of the sick. Several of the remaining infantry had died this day from the sickness which had plagued the entire campaign. Throughout, Edward had been too fearful of Bruce to allow time for proper burial. Which meant that English dead were scattered among the broad valleys and narrow lakes of the Lake District, the heather covered moorlands and white limestone gorges of the Peak District, and the bogs, moors, caves, and waterfalls of the Yorkshire Dales.

Perhaps it was the ghosts of all those people who had died unshriven that caused Richard such disquiet. Always he had misliked the north which seemed to him an alien, hostile land.

Beside him, Phillip inhaled deeply of the cold pungent air. Placing his hands behind his head he stared at the rising moon. He loved Yorkshire, felt a kindred spirit with the bleak moors and tumbling streams, gorges, and jagged rocks, the huge tracts of untamed and unexplored land. As he'd travelled throughout this wild region, the restlessness, the longing to be free, had settled upon him with a brutal, unshakable intensity.

"The Garden of Eden, they say, lies atop a mountain near touching the moon," he said quietly. "I met a man once who claimed to have been there. He showed me a ruby he swore he had smuggled from paradise itself."

Richard leaned on his elbow, his gaze also on the moon. Within its circle a golden madonna and her babe appeared imprisoned. "Did the man say where paradise might be?"

"To the east somewhere. He did not specify. But it is out there waiting." A shooting star arced across the heavens. An evil omen? Phillip wondered. But he'd seen dozens in his time, above the sugar cake turrets of the Church of Santa della Pisa, the Doge's palace in Manila, over Jerusalem.

"There is a wall in China," he continued, "that stretches six million paces. Marco Polo walked it. Remember when he returned with his tales? He spoke of the Gobi Desert and of Kublai Khan and of sirens whose singing voices are so other-worldly that the sound alone will lure a man to his death."

"They are just tales we've heard third hand and embellished by the tellers," said Richard. "Marco Polo is most probably a liar and braggart. We are too old to believe such fantasies."

"I think I will never be too old."

Phillip was certain the world contained sights and wonders more beautiful, more stirring, more exotic than any he'd yet beheld. When he'd been in the Holy Land he'd heard stories of a place called Afghanistan, which housed the roof of the world. The Pamir Range soared so high, 'twas said, that a man could not differentiate its snow covered peaks from the clouds. Atop their summit men were known to have reached out and touched heaven itself.

What would it be like to touch the sky? Would it be hard and impenetrable or just a colored vapor?

Evil spirits also lived in the Pamir Range, and the rumble of their laughter triggered avalanches that could collapse entire mountains. Monks capable of levitation resided there in lamaseries where they worshipped dragon statues gilded in gold, with bulging eyes and ripping teeth. And beyond Afghanistan were more wonders, some that Phillip was certain no man's eyes had ever before beheld. He need not journey to the Gobi Desert to hear his own siren song.

"If I could have been born anyone, 'twould have been Marco Polo," he said aloud. "In his twenty-four years of travel he saw things that most of mankind has not seen in as many centuries."

"Marco Polo did not have a wife and son. He was a merchant, not a knight. Merchants can do as they please and no one cares." Richard sympathized with Phillip's longings, but if he'd been blessed with Maria he'd not be chasing chimeras.

Sitting up, Phillip brought his knees to his chest, and rested his head upon them. All about, the camp settled into sleep; knights and yeomen stretched upon their mantles as quietly as clouds drifting across the face of the moon. "I am thirty-five years old. Yesterday I was a child, tomorrow I'll be a doddering old man. Our time on earth is but a passing whisper, and yet never once have I had a glimmering as to what is the point of our lives."

"The point is to prepare ourselves for death, then our eternal reward or punishment. For me that is the easy part." Richard groped for the proper words. "'Tis harder to behave as though we would die tomorrow and not live forever." He thought of Maria, of the sin he committed every time he couldn't control those longings, of the other sins for which God would someday hold him accountable—lust, avarice, cruelty, impatience, pride, treachery.

"I want paradise," whispered Phillip, "Though I don't even know what it is."

Richard knew well enough what paradise would be for him. "You cannot leave your wife," he blurted, as the full impact of Phillip's words penetrated.

Removing his gaze from the moon, Phillip studied his lord's face. "The sea is ever changing while a woman's mystery, even my lady wife's, remains basically one and the same. 'Tis not enough for me."

Richard returned his gaze. What was Phillip really saying? Was he tossing Maria to him like some tarnished trinket?

"Well, my friend," he said, before turning away, "'Twould be enough for me."