True Thomas

by Nigel Tranter

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Little is known about Thomas Learmonth of Ercildoune, vassal and esquire of the Earl of Dunbar, poet and prophesier known as 'Thomas the Rhymer'. During the reign of the Scottish King Alexander III, a time when the sword ruled over all and the treachery of the powerful earls had never been greater, True Thomas became renowned for his extraordinary gift of prophecy - a gift which has echoed through the centuries. In this enthralling tale, Scottish historical novelist Nigel Tanter brings him and the wild and rugged times in which he lived to vivid and memorable life.

Release date: September 13, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 432

Sample

When the Lion of Alba trips a measure,

The foxes watching take their pleasure:

But when the Lion makes man’s estate,

Then let those watchers watch their gait!

Thomas Learmonth of Ercildoune dipped his quill into the little silver inkhorn he always carried at his belt, beside the dirk, examined the table-top to ensure that there was no spilt wine, spread his paper on a dry patch, and scratching out the word foxes, wrote jackals above it.

The young English esquire sitting on his right, leaned over to peer. “What are you?” he demanded. “A clerk apeing the honest man? Or an honest man smitten with a clerkly sickness?”

“What ails you at clerks, friend?” the Scot asked. “Because you cannot read nor write, it does not mean that those who can are inferior beings!” He had to raise his normally quiet voice to be heard above the din, the clash of cymbals and loud music, the thud of feet, the shouts and the skirled laughter.

“I make my mark with sword and lance and spur, lame man!” the other asserted loftily. “Not with a goose’s feather! But then, to be sure, I am no cripple!”

Thomas Learmonth’s grey eyes lifted from his paper to stare levelly at his neighbour at the esquires’ table — and something in that strangely piercing steady glare from one so seemingly inoffensive, caused the speaker to draw back involuntarily.

“I will meet you tomorrow with sword and lance, wherever you say, Englishman — and make you the cripple, ’fore God!” he said, his soft voice as even as his glance. “Name you but the place and time.”

“Lord — not so hot, man!” the other esquire jerked. “I meant you no hurt.”

“Then guard your fool tongue better, sirrah!”

“I would meet you tomorrow with pleasure, Scot, and teach you your lesson. But my lord of Surrey, and the King’s Grace also, would not allow it, you Scots being guests here.” The young man ostentatiously turned his shoulder to Learmonth, to talk to his less prickly neighbour on the other side.

Thomas smiled gently. He went back to his paper, crossed out the word take and substituted grasp, in his rhyme.

When he raised his eyes again, it was automatically to fix them on the big young man, perhaps a couple of years younger than himself, who was flinging himself with such enthusiasm into the dance, there in the centre of the great hall of London Tower, leaping and skipping with a superabundance of verve and energy, yet with remarkable grace considering his height and build, to the breathless alarm and disarray of his flushed and all but collapsing partner. She had been lively enough at the start but now had a glazed look about her eyes, had her feet whirled off the floor much of the time, her skirts flying immodestly. Her low-cut gown was unfit for the strain, so that one full and shapely, pink-tipped breast had escaped, to flounce about spiritedly, whilst the other looked ready to join it at any moment. The Lady Alicia de Warenne had not quite realised what she was taking on when she had agreed to partner Alexander mac Alexander mac William, King of Scots, Thomas Learmonth’s Lion of Alba. It was a Scots dance, of course, of typical vigour; and Alexander was, as it were, showing the Lion flag.

By no means for the first time that evening, Learmonth turned his glance up towards the dais-table at the head of the hall, where the lofty ones sat, wine-cups in hand — such as were not fallen in drunken sleep over the spilled contents. There were a number of gaps at that long table, mainly where Queen Eleanor and the more modest ladies had retired. Few of the English great ones thought to risk or demean themselves with dancing, especially Scots dancing. In the central chair, Henry Plantagenet, third of his name and style, was certainly not asleep. He was watching his son-in-law’s cavortings set-faced — and although not a strong face, when set it could look not so much formidable as dangerous. Most clearly he was not amused. But then, to be sure, Queen Margaret of Scotland, his daughter, lay upstairs, brought to bed belatedly the day before of a daughter, a first child; and this banquet was to celebrate the event — that, and to mark the proud father’s departure, the day following, for the Scotland from which, as he had made it abundantly evident to all, he had been absent for too long.

The lame esquire applied pen to paper again:

Henry of Aquitaine has leopards three,

Let Scots keep all in sight:

While two in front their smile you see,

The one to the rear can fight.

He shook his head over the word fight, and changed it to bite.

A hand clapped his bent shoulder. “Rhyming again, Thomas? I vow you never weary of it. What are you scratching this time?”

The young man looked up to see his own lord standing behind him, Patrick, seventh Earl of Dunbar and March. “Better scratching than being scratched, my lord! When there are claws all around.” He pointed with his quill towards their dancing monarch. “You could tell him so!”

“My royal cousin might not thank me, I think. What ails you at him, man? I would say that we should bless him for providing such bonnie sight of the Lady Alicia to gladden our eyes!”

“He has a wife and new-born babe upstair — and a glowering goodsire at yonder table, my lord.”

“Aye — well, there is maybe something in that. But, see you, a man wed to a mouse deserves a loosened rein now and again!” Undoubtedly the Earl Patrick would not have spoken so, even in mixed metaphor, had he not been just somewhat drink-taken — like so many another present. Margaret Plantagenet, Henry the Third’s daughter, was scarcely an exciting personality. She had been married for ten years and this was the first child — but most of those years she had been forbidden to cohabit with Alexander, on her father’s stern orders. They had been wed, admittedly at only the age of ten.

The wild music tailed off and the dance ended. Alexander led his dizzy, gasping partner back to her place, helpfully assisting her to tuck her heaving, overflowing bosom back approximately into its covers. Then, seeing Earl Patrick, he came strolling over, laughing cheerfully and waving to plaudits right and left. He was a good-looking young man, of features rather too squared and rugged to be handsome, with curling fair hair, very blue eyes, a short straight nose and strong jawline — not notably regal-looking to be the representative of the oldest royal line in Christendom, besides which the Plantagenets were as jumped-up-yesterday men.

Thomas Learmonth rose to his feet.

“You were not dancing, Pate,” the King cried. “Shame on you to leave it all to me! Or are you too drunk, man?”

“Not so, Sire. Only sparing my strength and agility for later. I can think of better places to jig a woman up and down than in front of half England — and your royal goodsire!”

“Ha! Have you someone in mind, Cousin? Who? You, see you, are situated otherwise than am I. Your wife is four hundred miles away!”

“And her father not sitting frowning yonder!”

Alexander looked towards the dais-table and grinned. “Henry frowns even in his sleep, I swear! Perhaps because he grows old and fat and cannot dance any more. If ever he did! His frowns will not hurt me.” The King glanced down. “And what are you at, Thomas Rhymer? Ever with that pen in your hand.” He reached out to take the paper, and read it. “Ha, the Lion of Alba trips a measure, does he! You mock your liege lord, sir! And . . . makes man’s estate? Aye — some might be wise to watch their gait, indeed! Some even who sit and watch and pen treason rhymes, eh?” But he punched the lame esquire affectionately on the shoulder. “Sit, man — sit. Lord — I need wine after all that skipping! Come, Pate.”

Somewhat apprehensively the Earl Patrick followed his royal kinsman up to the dais, towards Alexander’s seat on his father-in-law’s right hand.

“Thirsty work, dancing,” the young monarch observed, reaching for his half-full goblet. “Our Scots ones call for a deal of wine!”

“Better less wine and more discretion, Alexander,” Henry said thinly. “That was . . . unedifying.”

“I edified Alicia de Warenne, at least!” his son-in-law gave back, smiling. He looked along the table to where the lady’s father, the Earl of Surrey, sprawled asleep. “If men danced more, Sire, they might plot less!” And his glance switched to the other side of Henry, to the left, where at a remove of three seats, two of them vacant, a notably handsome and very tall man sat, young also but stern of expression, mouth down-turning, as he toyed with his wine-cup. “Eh, Edward? You should dance, man. Forbye, it is good for the liver and spleen!”

The man addressed inclined his noble-seeming head. Edward, by-named Longshanks because of his height, Earl of Chester, was Henry’s elder son and heir to the throne, Lord of Gascony and known as the First Knight of Christendom. Aged but twenty-three despite his appearance and reputation, he did not get on with his father, strong man versus weak — indeed he had only recently been accepted back at Court, after leading a revolt against Henry’s rule. Alexander of Scotland found his brother-in-law arrogant in the extreme, and was not the man to swallow it.

“Should you not go see your wife?” Henry suggested, ignoring the reference to his son. “Lest she weary.”

“She will be asleep by this.” Alexander shrugged. “But I will go . . .”

He moved over to the dais door, and out, followed by the Earl Patrick. And seeing them go, Thomas Learmonth rose and limped after them — for it was not acceptable that kings and great ones should go around unattended. He was the Earl’s esquire, not one of the King’s; but Alexander de Lindsay was involved with a young woman at the bottom of the hall, with eyes for none other meantime, and the only Scots royal page present had been asleep for an hour and more. It was that sort of banquet.

Up two flights of the winding tower-stairs the trio came to a firelit bedchamber. A lady-in-waiting rose from the fireside, to curtsy to Alexander. Putting finger to lips she nodded towards the great bed and then to the little cot beside it, and tiptoed from the room. Thomas stood aside to let her pass, but remained within the doorway, the Earl Patrick moving only a little further into the chamber.

Alexander went to look down at his queen. And, as often happened, his heart went out to her in a brief surge of emotion. It was nothing so fine as love or devotion; more pity than anything else, and a sort of rueful affection, for one who, like himself, had been caught in a trap early on, but who unlike himself had never managed to get out of it — and never would. She lay there now, plain-faced, lumpish — although admittedly less lumpish than she had been for months — hair sticking to her moist brow, lips parted and snoring just a little, her arms outside the bedclothes with fingers curling like a child’s. In fact she looked childlike altogether; but then, she always did, a rather bewildered, frightened and not very attractive child — Margaret Plantagenet, Queen of Scotland since the age often, now plunged into alarming motherhood.

Shaking his head helplessly, Alexander moved round to the cot, to peer down at the tiny creature therein. It was almost with a shock that he realised that the eyes were open wide and looking up at him in an unblinking stare, as though questioning. Equally questioning, the man stared back at this strange object, his own offspring. And Margaret’s, of course. Eyes, round, dark, utterly unabashed, a new person, one day old and somehow part of himself, a mystery — much more interesting indeed than the woman who in pain and dread had given birth to it. Was that unkind? A princess of Scotland. The pity that it was not a son, to be sure. But there was probably time enough for that.

The child gave a choking cough, and a white flood of milk came smoothly out of the diminutive mouth in the most casual fashion, whilst the stare continued wide, unconcerned.

The man drew back in distaste and alarm, prepared to call for the lady-in-waiting, the nurse, anybody in this emergency. But the choking sound had awakened the Queen, who sat up, blinking.

“Sick!” the King cried. “Ill! Spewing all over. What to do? What to do?”

“It is nothing, nothing,” Margaret said, and actually smiled, she who was no smiler. Perhaps for once she felt herself to be the sure one, the assured, not at a loss or inadequate. “Babes do that. She will be well enough.” She sank back on her pillow, and the more normal anxious note of questioning came back into her voice, as her glance darted from her husband to the two men near the door. “Is, is aught amiss? What brings you? All is well, Alex . . .?”

“Yes, yes. I but came to see how you fared. Nothing is wrong. I did not mean to wake you. It grows late. I will be for my own couch soon now. For I have decided to ride tomorrow . . .”

“Tomorrow! But . . . you were not to go until the following day. You said so.” That was all but a wail.

“Aye — but I had better be gone. Every day counts, see you. I have been away too long, as it is, God knows! So much awaits me in Scotland.”

“But one day will make no difference, Alex. You said the day following.”

“It is better so. Each day I come nearer to blows with Edward and his arrogant crew. I have had enough of them, of all here. And, and . . .” He swallowed the rest of that. “Besides, what difference does it make? You are well enough here, in your father’s house. Your mother near. They dote on you. And you will come north when you are fully well, and the child can travel. It is best so. I shall ensure with King Henry that you come within forty days.”

She bit a trembling lower lip and turned her head away.

Seeing it, he shook his fair head, frowning, then leaned forward. “See you, lass, it will not be grievous. We do not know what I shall be going back to, in Scotland. There could well be trouble. Indeed, I intend that there shall be! I have scores to settle! No place for you and the bairn meantime. Later will be time enough.”

She gulped back a sob.

“We shall start as early as we may, in the morning. But sun-up will not be before nine hours. I shall see you before we go. Sleep again, Margaret.”

“I . . . I shall not sleep now, I think.”

Lips tight, he was turning away when, on impulse, he stepped back, to stoop and briefly kiss her moist brow, before striding for the door. “A plague!” he jerked, as he passed the other two — but he did not amplify that as he headed for the stairway.

At the turnpike he paused. “Go back to the hall if you wish,” he said. “I shall not. Lest . . . I fall further from grace! I go up to my own chamber. Enough is sufficient! We eat early in the morning, mind. Rise betimes. See that all know it and are ready. A goodnight to you. Both.”

Bowing, the other two eyed the royal feet taking the turnpike steps two at a time. Then the earl turned to the esquire.

“Many to be warned of this early start tomorrow, Thomas,” he said. “I have a little matter to attend to. Elsewhere. See you to it. And — tell that fool page of mine to go to his bed. Sleep well.”

Thomas Learmonth watched his lord hurry off cheerfully downstairs — whilst he would have to spend the next hour and more finding, rousing and spoiling the sport of all the Scots party, to inform them of the King’s decision — to no increase of his own popularity, undoubtedly. One day he would pen a rhyme on the facility of the great ones to make uncomfortable decisions and then pass on the carrying-out to others.

Like penned greyhounds released, the Scots raced northwards after the weeks of cramping inaction in London whilst they had awaited the birth of the monarch’s first child. Seventy superbly mounted men, they pounded the wet and slippery roads and tracks of an English February in a splatter of mud and clods and the splash of surface-water, the quaking of mires and the spray of fords, lashing and spurring their beasts on and on. Alexander aimed to cover fifty miles a day throughout — no mean target for even the finest horseflesh and the toughest riders, in winter conditions.

Thomas Learmonth at least held none back. Spurred on by his lameness he had made himself one of the best horsemen in the kingdom. He rode with the other personal esquires immediately behind the King and the great lords and before the knights, pages and men-at-arms.

They went by the easterly route, by Cambridge and skirting the fen country, so that they could pass at least two of the nights in the far-flung domains of the great Honour of Huntingdon, so much larger than the mere shire of that name, lands spreading indeed over no less than eleven counties, the rich English earldom which the Scottish crown had inherited through the marriage of David the First, Alexander’s great-great-grandsire, with Matilda, Countess of Huntingdon in her own right, a goodly heritage although productive of much discord between the two kingdoms.

In these southern, level lands, mud and marsh and forest were the principal sources of delay; but the further north they went the more hilly grew the terrain, with river fords becoming ever the greater problem and major detours frequently necessary. Moorland often made for better riding than did woodland and cultivated land; but winter torrents were the bane of travellers, even spirited ones.

As they neared Scotland something of the high spirits and feelings of carefree release gradually faded. However anxious they were to reach home none, even the least informed could not fail to realise that this homecoming might prove less than joyful in some respects, fraught with tension. Alexander was bold, eager, but the forces he would be challenging were strong and had long been predominant.

The King’s father and predecessor, Alexander the Second, had gained no heir from his first marriage and by his second had left only the boy of seven to fill the throne. And Scotland then, as always, required a strong hand at the helm. In the subsequent power vacuum two great parties had developed, hating each other and each seeking to control the child monarch and so the realm. It was personalities rather than policies which dominated these factions, although one became known as the English party, not because it in any way favoured English domination, but because it more frequently tended to call in English Norman help to aid it. It might have been expected to represent the Norman families in the Scottish nobility and ruling class, as against the native Celtic, for many Normans had been introduced by that great reforming king, David the First, four reigns before. But this was not so, the Normans having almost without exception adopted their new nationality entirely, inter-marrying with the old race, so that they looked upon themselves almost as thoroughly Scots as anyone else; and there were just as many Celtic lords in the ‘English’ faction as in their opponents. But the English party had approved of the marriage of their child liege-lord with Henry the Third’s daughter, and having been in power at the time, had been able to see it through. Anyhow, between these two sections of the land’s powerful ones, the boy-King had suffered a grim childhood and youth, always the prisoner and chattel of one side or the other, the real rule being wielded by the ascendant faction, who appointed the Regent. On his eighteenth birthday, Alexander had become rather more than a mere cipher, able to assume a theoretical but severely limited authority. But now he was come to within a month or so of his full age — and he intended to demonstrate who now ruled in Scotland.

The hard-riding cavalcade dropped down from the Northumberland moors by Redesdale and Carter Fell to cross into Scotland down Jed Water and so to the Teviot. Where Teviot joined Tweed, on the evening of the seventh day out, they came to the royal castle of Roxburgh, where Alexander decided to spend a day or two sending out summonses to all the lords and chiefs and officers of his kingdom to assemble before him at Dunfermline in Fothrif in two weeks’ time for a Great Council, under pain of sternest royal displeasure, fast couriers to be sent out far and near. The Earl Patrick of Dunbar and March elected to ride on the seventeen miles further to his castle at the Earlstoun of Ercildoune, where was his wife and family. Thomas Learmonth, naturally, went with him.

Thomas in fact had his own little stone tower on the River Leader’s banks amongst the green Borderland hills, the small lairdship he had inherited from his father, a mere half-mile from the Earl’s castle. But there was nothing for him there save a sour old housekeeper and her brother, his steward of small acres. His real home for long had been at the castle itself, where he was something of a favourite with the Countess and her children, his ability to make rhymes, tell stories and play the lute ever popular — although the frequency with which his foretellings and presagings, even casually made, were alleged to come true, caused him to be eyed a little askance at times.

The travellers were warmly welcomed after their long absence of almost three months. The Countess was a cheerful, uncomplicated creature now in early middle years, with no pretensions to beauty but a sufficiency of energy and broad acres to make up for it. She had been the Lady Christian Bruce, sister of the present Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, daughter of the third Lord and Isabel of Huntingdon, niece of both Malcolm the Fourth and William the Lyon. She certainly gave herself no airs on account of her royal blood. Her children took after her, so that Ercildoune and Dunbar Castles were apt to resound with noise and laughter. Unlike his monarch, the Earl Patrick was well content with his marriage, however roving of eye when abroad.

There was one of the Cospatrick family however whose welcome was rather different, just as she herself was different — they were known as the Cospatricks although, in fact being descendants of the royal house of Scotland, they bore no surname, Cospatrick being the traditional Christian name of the head of the house, Earl Patrick himself having been so baptised although he chose to drop the prefix. The Lady Bethoc was different in that, at fifteen years, she was already of a glowing dark beauty, where the others were plain, quiet where they were noisy, thoughtful instead of headstrong. And she thought that Thomas Learmonth was wonderful, and showed it quite often — to that young man’s appreciation but slight embarrassment, and her family’s frank amusement. Now, after receiving a smacking kiss from the Countess and sundry hugs and salutations from the other youngsters, he was granted a much softer and more lingering embrace from the eldest daughter of the house, which left him considerably affected although he sought not to show it. Practically penniless esquires, however gifted in odd ways, had to watch their steps.

That evening, around the great fire in the private hall, it was Thomas rather than the Earl who recounted the ongoings and adventures of the King’s party in the South, improving on it all here and there perhaps, as is the way of born storytellers, for the delectation of his wide-eyed audience, especially the deep dark eyes of the Lady Bethoc — although he carefully omitted any references to his betters’ need for feminine consolations when away from home.

Two days later they were joined by the King again as he came up Lauderdale on his way to the Scotwater, Queen Margaret’s Ferry and Dunfermline.

The fact that the Council-of-State — it was that rather than a parliament, which would have required forty days’ notice — had been called for Dunfermline, in Fothrif, might have served as a warning to all concerned that a new situation was about to develop. In the past dozen years, councils and a few parliaments had been called for wherever was most convenient and secure for whoever was Regent or in power at the time, however awkward for others; and the young King had willy-nilly had to go there to give authenticity to the proceedings, however dumb he had to remain throughout — for the Great Council, which had grown out of the ancient Celtic High Council of the ri or mormaors, the lesser kings of Scotland, required the presence of the Ard Righ or High King, to be effective. Never, in all those years of Alexander’s minority, had such been held at Dunfermline, Malcolm Canmore’s small, stark palace above the Forth, which would have been laughably inadequate for the safety of the ruling caucus and the housing of the great hosts of men-at-arms the lords always brought with them. The great fortress-castles of Stirling, Edinburgh, Dumbarton and the like were the favourite venues, Dunfermline unthinkable. The present royal summons sent out from Roxburgh had stipulated that no lord, baron or bishop was to appear before the monarch bringing a train of more than a score was equally significant. Thomas, for one, decided that it would be interesting to see how the magnates reacted.

The royal party took up residence in the little castle-palace beside Queen Margaret’s great minster — Malcolm the Third had been no man for palaces before he married the sainted Margaret Atheling. It had been Alexander’s real home, for his mother, the Frenchwoman Marie de Coucy, Alexander the Second’s second queen, had it as her jointure-house and retained it when her husband died ten years after their marriage, to bring up her son there — when he and she were not in the grip of one or other of the warring lords.

In the tiny palace they waited. Alexander made no attempt to pack Dunfermline with his own or Earl Patrick’s men — he had few enough that he could call his own anyway. Nor did he seek to provide accommodation for the other visitors — let them find their own, he said. This was, hopefully, the beginning of a new chapter in the nation’s story. Let them all discover it.

As might have been expected, Alan Durward, Earl of Atholl, was the first to arrive. Equally predictable, he had ignored the decree about no more than twenty men, and came with a tail of fully ten times that number. A grizzled veteran of the ancient Celtic stock, hereditary Doorward to the High King, as his name implied, for long he had been the most powerful man in Scotland, married to one of the late monarch’s illegitimate daughters, and therefore Alexander’s brother-in-law. He was at present High Justiciar. When the King heard that he had arrived with this great train, however, he refused to see him, announcing that if his illustrious good-brother cared to send nine-tenths of his men-at-arms back to Atholl or wherever they came from, he would be glad to grant him audience; if not, he must withdraw from Dunfermline town to wherever he found convenient, not to return until the first day of the Nones of March, set for the Council, and then only with the permitted number of supporters.

This, of course, set not only Durward and Dunfermline by the ears but all around, and, with time enough to spread the tale quite far afield, to set the land ringing. Furiously Atholl marched off, vowing retribution.

That was only the start of it. William Earl of Mar arrived next, and without rivalling the Atholl contingent he did bring fully one hundred men with him. Not a Comyn himself, he was married to one of that ambitious and potent family, and firmly in their camp — the main opposition to Durward and the English faction. Formerly de Comines, they now cut the widest swathe in all Scotland. This earl was likewise refused audience, and banished to the Dunfermline hinterland. Others followed in quick succession, and only those accompanied by twenty or less of a train were admitted to the palace — and these were few indeed. In thirteenth-century Scotland men who could afford it rode abroad well protected.

In the King’s own company there was disquiet and apprehension. All this was quite outwith anyone’s experience, and they feared the worst. Earl Patrick especially was perturbed. He himself had long been a colleague of Durward’s in the English faction, his mother being another of Alexander the Second’s illegitimate daughters. He knew how fierce and obstinate his Durward uncle could be. He also well knew the power of the Comyns. His remonstrations with the King were given short shrift, however. The amiable and normally friendly Alexander appeared to have developed a new character, awkward as it was unexpected. Not that Thomas Learmonth was surprised, telling his master that he had been expecting some such confrontation, even though he had not foreseen the style and scope of it. Their liege lord had been holding in a vehement and decisive side to his nature for years. Now it seemed that the rein was to be loosened.

Even True Thomas forbore to prophesy what the result would be for them all, for Scotland.

One magnate who turned up with a mere twenty-five men, and was permitted to join the royal entourage in consequence, was Sir David Lindsay of Luffness and the Byres, in Lothian, a quietly authoritative man of middle years, who had in fact been Regent of the realm for a period just before Alexander reached the age of eighteen and the regency automatically lapsed. The young monarch had always got on well with him, better than with any other of his masters in those grim years, although Lindsay was a difficult man to know, being stiff and undemonstrative. But he had a reputation for honesty, was not ambitious like so many, and was only loosely connected with the