by Glen Craney
Belle now regretted her decision to make conversation. Hoping to find a graceful excuse to beg off, she blurted the only answer that came to mind. “It has two colors, but what is—”
“How is it arranged?”
“In squares. Still, I do not see what this has to do with my question?”
“Blessed me, but airen’t you the clever one!”
Angered at being the brunt of a joke that she didn’t even understand, Belle whipped her hood over her head and prepared to leave the old bat to stew in her bile.
The crone captured her hand to delay her. “Forgive me. I’ve lost all manners. It’s been months since I’ve held discourse with anyone. I tend to rail against the spirits when …” She pursed her lips, having nearly revealed some dark secret.
“Then I would then have you address me directly,” Belle insisted. “If I am to be cast into this despicable betrothal, I must know what awaits me.”
“Directness is not always the best choice. Forget ye that direct is the path of the ax upon the neck? You must learn to look sideways and speak in shrouded ways.” The crone glowered at the Comyn boys ahead, as if conjuring up a fitting spell for their demise. “Scotland is the chessboard, and each clan a square. None be the same color as that upon its borders, aye?”
Belle nodded slightly, uncertain where all of this chess talk was leading.
“If the red squares were all in the north and the black in the south, peace would be granted us.” The woman spat again through her toothless gums in a gesture of malediction. “But the Almighty in His inscrutable wisdom has determined it not to be. And we suffer for it.” Finding Belle too baffled to form a question, the woman shook her head, frustrated at her failure to communicate the critical point. “Think of the Comyns and their domains as the red squares.”
“And the black?”
“The Bruces.”
Belle had heard only passing references to that Southern clan. “The Bruces of England?”
“Of Scotland, as well. That clan holds fiefs on both sides of the border. The eldest, Bruce the Competitor, was King Alexander’s fealt comrade. He’s now even longer in the tooth than me.”
“The Competitor claims the throne against Red?”
The crone nodded. “The two are like cats in a sack.”
Belle waited to hear the significance of that observation. “Aye, and … ?”
“Edward Longshanks pulls the drawstring.”
Belle failed to see what relevance all of this political intrigue bore upon her problem. In two days, her father would depart for Fife, leaving her at the mercy of the Comyns. Would she ever see St. Andrews again? What would become of her diary? She had left it in her bedchamber under lock. Nothing would prevent her brothers from prying it open and—
The crone snapped two bony fingers to regain Belle's wandering attention. “The destiny of the branch can be read in the roots. The time of both the Competitor and the Red is fast passing. Old Bruce’s feckless son has turned recluse in Norway. It is the grandson, Robert, who was born under auspicious stars. I have scryed his future in the black glass. He will vie for the throne against Red’s pups. Only a malevolent aspect with Saturnia can keep him from his fate. Melancholy will be his crown of thorns. But the English King has seers, too, and he will try to keep young Bruce under his spell in London.”
Belle’s head was pounding from trying to follow the woman's strange manner of speech. She watched, confused, as the crone played imaginary chess moves upon the pommel of her saddle, tossing aside invisible knights and queens with building vehemence.
“The Bruces and the Comyns scheme to checkmate each other,” the crone explained in a running commentary. “For every Bruce castle, you will find a Comyn keep in the next square. To win the kingship, a Bruce must leap a Comyn and a Comyn must leap a Bruce.”
At her wits' end, Belle finally went off like a steam cork. “But what does any of this have to do with me?”
The other women riding just ahead turned at her loud burst of exasperation.
The crone recoiled into her hood, feigning lack of interest. When the women were finally disarmed of their suspicions, she turned and glared at Belle for the dangerous indiscretion. Lowering her voice in a signal for her young companion to do the same, she revealed, “Fife is the last square. And you are the final piece protecting the king. Ready to be jumped?”
Belle’s face twisted at the crude sexual innuendo.
“There are two branches of the clan. The Red is patriarch of the Badenoch line. He governs all Comyn lands. His cousin Tabhann will become the earl of Buchan and Red’s most powerful vassal. The Comyns are conniving to surround the Bruces by arranging bonds with the earls of Strathearn, Angus, Dunbar, Ross and Balliol.”
“What about Fife?”
“Only the allegiance of your father’s domains is left to be bargained off. Both the Red and the Competitor were distantly related to King Alexander. Bruce is a generation closer, so he holds the truer claim to the throne, if only by the breadth of a bald priest’s hair. But Ian MacDuff is a clever player of the game. He has held off both the Bruces and the Comyns until the stakes have risen.”
“What stakes?”
The old woman gaped her toothless gums, astonished at Belle’s ignorance of her father’s motives. “Can ye not see the nose on your own face, child? When the Comyns have you, they will have the crown in their grasp.”
The ancient clan motto—No MacDuff, no King!—rang like a judge’s sentence in Belle’s head. Only now did she understand the full extent of her father’s plotting during these past months. She quickly calculated the line of succession of the Comyn clan. After Red, Cam would be first in line, then Tabhann. If Tabhann survived Cam, she might one day be queen. And she would not put it past Tabhann to speed the matter by allowing Cam to encounter some accident. “Why does Red not betroth me to Cam?”
“He hopes Longshanks will sire another daughter.”
After an agonized silence, Belle whimpered, “What am I to do?”
The crone scoffed at her lament. “Does the rook command the player? Of course not! You’ll wait to be played like the pawn you were born to be.”
Again, the other women in the column turned on them with disapproving glances. This time, wearied of playing the imbecile to their gossip mongering, the crone twirled her middle finger at them, mocking the conjuring ritual of a witch. Horrified, the women increased their distance and crossed themselves to ward off the evil influences.
Belle couldn’t help but admire the old bag. She might be crude and queer, but her defiance was refreshing. “What may I call you?”
The crone hesitated, as if at a momentary loss. “Idonea … I’d near forgotten my own name. It’s been so long since anyone has inquired.”
“Why do the others treat you like a leper?”
Idonea set her eyes coldly on a distant memory. “I too was once meant to be a queen. Forty years ago, I was married off to the Red’s eldest brother. Three weeks after the wedding, my husband got himself hacked to death in a haggle over ten heifers.” She screwed her face into a stony indifference. “There is nothing more useless in this country than a woman who has lost her man.”
Belle tried to imagine a crown on the widow’s grey head. “Still, the Red keeps you in his household. Is that not better than a cold nunnery?”
Idonea snorted at the suggestion that the Comyn chieftain might possess a shiver of compassion. “He threw me into the tower at Dundarg to make certain I didn’t take my womb to another clan. Only when I turned fallow did he unlock the door.”
“But if you are no use to him now?”
“He thinks I gained the power to blacken fates during my time in the darkness. Else, he would have turned me out to the moors long ago. The Comyns shun me, but they daren’t harm me. Small blessing. None of them is worth the breath of a word exchanged.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what, child?”
“Gain the power to blacken fates?”
Idonea turned toward the tawny belt of dusk that hung over the distant Western Isles, where the magic of the ancients was still practiced despite Rome’s threats. With a heavy sigh, she counseled, “When one is shut away for half of one’s life, one discovers that others beyond the veil walk with you. But what truly matters, lass, what your survival will depend upon … You must make those whoresons believe that you command the spirits.”
BELLE WAS CERTAIN FROM HER father’s evasive manner that he had agreed to the terms of the marital contract and was delaying telling her of its ratification until after the secret meeting of the guardians. Earlier that morning, after locking her in a room in Kilbride’s tower, he had gone to Dumfries with the Comyns, no doubt to have the document sealed by the magistrate. Red had left orders for her brothers to keep her inside the castle. But when she complained that the lads reeked horribly, they retaliated by demanding that she wash their laundry at the river. She had put up a strenuous protest, arguing that such a menial task was not befitting a MacDuff princess. The simpletons had taken the bait, shoving her out of the castle with the loaded basket.
She treasured this rare moment of solitude, her first in nearly a week. As she walked the forested path with arrows of light shooting through the low autumn mist, she fantasized about escaping. It might take hours in this thick fog for her brothers to find her tracks. But how would she feed herself? Winter was approaching, and no village owing vassalage to the Comyns would take her in. She might seek refuge in a convent, but the nuns would likely ransom her for an endowment. Despite her troubles, she began to feel lighter, as if she might levitate even. If only Our Lord would transport her to Heaven like the Virgin and take her away from these problems.
A rustling startled her.
She stifled a shriek. Twenty paces away, a young roe had staggered into a tree. The creature rebounded, bloodied from the bark, and struck another trunk, repeating the strange ritual over and again. She saw that its hide was splotched with raw patches from neck to tail. Although winter was approaching, the animal was molting, and a bulbous mass of flesh and soft bone striated with veins had grown down from its forehead to blind its eyes. She had heard the witches who plied the craft of da-shealladh, the Second Sight, call such rare creatures “wiggers.” Abandoned by its herd, the poor thing was caked with dried blood, having been attacked and castrated by wild dogs while its antlers were in velvet.
The appearance of a wigger was deemed a dolorous omen. Yet she approached the blind roe and, capturing its battered head, offered it some of the berries that she had brought for lunch. As the roe whimpered in gratitude, she whispered to its ear, “St. Bride will heal you.” With that blessing received, the roe scampered off into the grove.
Shaken by the encounter, she walked on until she reached the river’s bank. She pulled the basket off her back and turned it over on the pounding rocks.
The basket was empty.
Bewildered, she reexamined her route and saw a saffron shirt hanging from a branch. How did that happen? Across the glen, steam ascended eerily from the cold water heated by the hidden sun. Had she stumbled into a sacred domain of the roguish Little People? She retraced her steps through the mists and found blouses and leggings dotting the trees like blossoms.
A loud splash broke the calm. She turned toward an offshoot of the Clyde and saw circles of ripples expanding. A hand broke surfaced, as if the Lady of the Lake was offering up Excalibur. She screamed—the fist held one of her intimate garments.
A dark face—with an insufferable smirk—followed the hand up from the water. “Looking for this?”
Her jaw dropped. The Douglas boy had been stalking her all this time, stealing the laundry piece by piece. Infuriated, she knelt with the stillness of a hunter and scooped a handful of rocks. When he swam closer, she demonstrated how fast a Fife maid could launch missiles. His puckish grin vanished as he dove into the water to avoid being brained. Each time he surfaced, she sent him down again.
But this time, his head did not reappear. Only a few bubbles percolated as the ripples settled.
I’ve drowned him!
She rushed into the water, splashing to find him as her skirt floated to her waist. Thwarted by its buoyancy, she ripped it off, leaving her in linen under-leggings. She drew a deep breath and dived under, but the water was too murky. She prepared to give up the attempt—
A water creature clamped on her legs. Her scream died to a gurgle as the beast's claws pulled her under. The scaly monster had devoured the Douglas boy and was now about to swallow her! She fought to the surface, but the serpent dragged her under again. Finally, struggling mightily, she managed to raise her chin above the water. Smelling blood, she closed her eyes for fear of seeing his detached limbs. The creature released its grip, and she risked a look behind her.
A mischievous grin hovered just a breath away from her nose.
Before she could retreat, the Douglas boy pressed his lips to hers. A rush of panic and pleasure swept over her. And then, the strangest of thoughts came to her: Will I ever be kissed without danger as its companion? Her first had been in full view of the clans, followed by her father’s punishing hand. This boy had thoroughly enjoyed that conquest, while she had been forced to suffer the consequences. This second kiss had been equally unacceptable.
I will be smouriched my way. She dove into his arms. Let’s see how he likes that!
She pressed her soaked bosom to his chest and demonstrated a proper Fife bussing on him—long, languorous and soft. In the midst of the lesson, she made a disconcerting discovery: he was wearing not a stitch of clothing. She pushed him away, but he swam toward her, eager for another embrace. She thrust his head into the water and paddled for the bank, kicking away his pawing hands. Dripping wet, she scampered out with her backside revealed by the clinging linens.
“Come back in!” he shouted as he took a step closer, the water dropping to his waist. “Or I’ll come out.”
“Don’t you dare! Put your things on!”
“I seem to have lost them.”
She covered her eyes and, after several groping lunges, retrieved the nearest item of scattered laundry, a nightgown. She wrapped it around a stone and threw it at him.
He slipped the frilly chemise over his head and walked out of the water resembling some mythical half-lad, half-lassie.
Her anger melted into a rolling laugh, the first she had enjoyed since leaving Fife. “You’ve got hazel nuts rattling in that skull of yours!”
While he sunned on a rock, she hopped from tree to tree to recover the laundry. She finally gave up the doomed effort and returned in mock brooding. She plopped upon the large boulder next to him and squeezed the water from her long black hair back, whipping it deftly to ensure that his face suffered a lashing. She turned to find him staring at her wet bodice.
“I’m thinking I didn’t get all of my rewards for winning the race.”
She caressed his head, bringing his eyes closer to the object of their lustful gaze—and pushed him into the water. “My father was right! You Douglases are full of yourselves.”
James bobbed up spewing. He was about to retaliate by dragging her back in with him, but suddenly he doubled over, his breath stolen by the pain from the injuries he had suffered during the race.
Alarmed, she helped him back to the boulder and examined his bruised ribs. As she tended to him, he brought her to his embrace, and she put up a weak struggle, warning, “If we get caught …”
He rested her head on his chest and stroked her long hair. “They already showed they can’t run fast enough to catch me.”
She leapt to her feet, nearly head-butting his chin. “You’re as crouse as a new washed louse! What woman would marry you?”
He tickled her sides until she relented by sliding into his embrace again. “So, you’ve been thinking about marrying me?”
Angered by his presumption and her own reckless indiscretion, she fought to escape his grasp. “You need some sisters to show you how to cou
rt.”
“You were pulling for me yesterday.”
“I certainly was not!”
“Aye, you were.”
“What if I was?” She turned serious, fending off his tickles. “There’s something you should know. … My father intends me to marry Tabhann Comyn.”
His flirting grin turned upside down. “They’ll have me to deal with first!”
“Red Comyn says I’ll be a queen.”
“That’s a fool’s hope! The Bruces hold the true right to the throne.”
Peeved by his curt dismissal of her possible royal ascent, she said, “I’m told the Bruces would sell us out to the English.”
“The Comyns have already addled your head with their lies.”
“And what do you know about it?” she demanded.
“My father is loyal to the Bruces. If Scotland is to be saved, it will be by the Bruces, not those Comyn traitors.”
She set her teeth; here was another man, just like her father and brothers, lecturing her on matters deemed too complicated for her to understand. “If you’re so clever, then tell me why Robert Bruce is held in such fondness by Edward Longshanks?” She waited for a rebuttal to that troubling point, but he could offer her none. The Bruce clan’s service to the English king, and young Robert’s schooling in London in particular, caused all Scots consternation, she knew. Yet this Douglas lad apparently labored under the delusion that his father would never become allied to a clan that might betray Scotland. She had witnessed enough treachery in her own family to question such guilelessness. She was about to tell him so when she heard distant shouts. She quickly gathered up her basket. “I have to go.”
“I’ll make you queen of Castle Douglas.”
“I don’t want to be queen of anything!”
“We’ll jump a galley to Dublin.”
“And do what? Starve? A man can make his own destiny. A woman is bound by the dictates of others.”
“I can provide for you. I’m to inherit all of this land.”
“As a Scot? Or as an English vassal of the Bruces?”
“A lassie’s head shouldn’t be filled with concerns about statecraft.” He stole another kiss. “You’re meant for other things.”
