Worth Dying For by N. Gemini Sasson

Author:N. Gemini Sasson [Sasson, N. Gemini]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 978-0982715857
Publisher: Cader Idris Press
Published: 2014-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

Ch. 21

Edward II – Wallingford, 1310

The little virago had been scribbling a stream of letters to her doting father in France. I doubted that she was extolling the joys of wedded bliss to him. I suspected that she spoke against me. I knew it when I learned that King Philip himself had been corresponding with Robert the Bruce, petitioning the rebel to join him on Crusade to the Holy Land. Naturally, Bruce declined. Too fraught with English troubles, he said, to depart his country.

In the spring of 1309, the impudent Scots even gathered in St. Andrews to convene a parliament. They declared that Robert the Competitor had owned the rightful claim to the throne of Scotland and thus his grandson, that murdering Judas, was his due heir. Providence, they babbled, was the reason for Bruce’s deliverance of their people. How conveniently oaths are tossed away like spent rushes when they no longer serve.

When my bickering barons arranged enough money for it, I sent troops into Scotland that autumn. It rained so incessantly that the supply wagons could not go one mile without getting stuck in the mud. When Edward Bruce gave one of my lieutenants a sound thrashing in Galloway, his brother made him Lord of Galloway. The arrogance! The lords of England begged for a reprieve. With my begrudging agreement, a truce was signed to last the winter.

We may have lost ground in Scotland, but at home I had won my battle. Perhaps my barons were pacified because they had been afforded some time to return to their lands to hunt in leisure or father children by the scores instead of freezing their cocks while standing up to their knees in Scottish muck; but whatever the reason for their goodwill, they eased from their haranguing and conceded to allow Brother Perrot to return to my side.

When Piers and I met in Chester that spring, it was a glorious reunion, made all the sweeter by our troubles. Oh, the Irish air had put a bloom to his cheeks. Hours upon hours riding over the verdant countryside had streaked his hair with bands of gold. If he had suffered from the same melancholy I had, he showed no trace of it. In his arms, I again found heaven. And I knew that every argument I had engaged in, every enemy I had made in the effort, every pain I had ever suffered to bring him back was worth it.

That summer at Wallingford, all the most skilled knights in the land gathered to tourney. Piers had already advanced far in the ranks when I entered his pavilion. He stood there rigidly, with his shirt pulled up to his midriff as he waited for his squire to tie his chausses. The boy, with the first fuzz of manhood on his chin but all the innocence of an angel in his countenance, crumbled to the ground at the sight of me. I gestured for him to continue his work. His fingers fumbled at the laces, but he somehow managed the task.

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