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N. Gemini Sasson/Gemini Sasson-Brickson
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(Below is an excerpt from CARRY MY HEART, the third story in the Robert the Bruce Trilogy. James Douglas, Robert's best friend and commander, is charged with carrying his master's heart on Crusade.)
Carry My Heart
Prologue
James
Douglas – Spain, 1330
I believe, as sure as I have bled for such belief, that crowns were made for men like Robert.
Two years gone since he died. Two years I have wandered aimless as a leper from one day to the following. How much I have aged in that short, hollow span. When the storm clouds gather now, I feel a sharp ache in my right forearm where Neville’s axe grazed my bone. Each morn, when I lift my head from my pillow and stretch my fingers towards the sunlight of yet another day, I feel a brittle stiffness in my hands – too many years clenching the hilt of my sword; a pinching at the base of my spine – bent from a hundred falls; and every cramped muscle, resisting wakefulness, longing to rest yet one more blissful hour. Seventy battles I have seen, but I have wearied of fighting – the taste for blood soured on my tongue like over-ripe fruit gone rank. And yet without it, I have aged twenty years in just these two. Did I think I would stay young forever? Peace, so long in coming, has made me not refreshed, but restless of mind, a traveler without a map, no reason for being.
I should savor these years as Robert did at Cardross, even as his health gradually fled from him – hawking, hunting and sailing on the Firth of Clyde. Robert’s son is a fine lad now. My own boys are but infants. Yet I have walked from them with but a fluttering kiss because of a promise tearfully uttered to my king on his deathbed and for that purpose which has bound me so indelibly ever since the siege on Berwick when I was ten.
Lanterns sway from the rafters. Their flames flicker and dim, then spring to life again. Every plank and beam from stern to prow moan against the strain of a tempestuous sea. The boat lurches as it battles a wave and I clutch the silver casket beneath my fingers as it slides sideways. Therein lies the heart of my dear master, King Robert.