by Glen Craney
Left alone on the summit with no answer to his inquiry, James removed his boots and stood barefoot on the altar where the soothsayers of those Sons of Light had once uttered their oracles. He bent down to kiss the etching of the boar, the ancient Scot symbol of sacrifice and courage. There was so much about the future he desperately wanted to know. When would his father return home? Would Scotland survive this war with England? If he agreed to sail with the bishop across the Channel to France, would he ever see Douglasdale again? And whom did the bishop have in mind for their new king?
Yet one question above all others burned in his heart.
He leaned to the altar and whispered the plea for a divination, “Did Belle ever love me?”
He waited for an answer, but he heard only the wind whistling through the dolmens in the glen below him.
VII
IDONEA COMYN SLIPPED UNNOTICED INTO the chapel of Dundarg castle, a dismal old keep that guarded the cliffs of Aberdour Bay on the northern border of Comyn country. Approaching the altar with trepidation, she interrupted Belle’s morning prayers. “Child, your father …”
Bell opened her eyes, her heart sinking. “Has he returned so soon?”
“He is dead.”
She felt neither shock nor grief, only a disturbing elation. By God’s grace, her father had delayed her betrothal to Tabhann that spring to rush south and join William Wallace’s army. Yet his procrastination in bartering her off to the Comyns had nothing to do with paternal compassion. Wallace’s stunning victory at Stirling Bridge had so weakened Red Comyn’s claim to the throne that some of their countrymen had called for the new rebel leader to be named Protector of Scotland. Cunning as always, her father had decided to delay the marriage until the shift of clan power played out, leaving her in the custody of the Comyns with the promise that her dowry would be paid and the bonding formalized at the end of the summer campaign.
“There was a battle at Falkirk,” Idonea said. “Wallace has been routed.”
Belle erupted from her kneeler. “And my brother?”
“His body was not found. But if he had been captured, there would be a ransom demand. I have heard talk …” The widow ground her rotted molars when, as now, she became agitated, producing a sound similar to that of rats gnawing on wood. “Longshanks personally commanded the English army. There are some who say Red held back his forces to save his own neck.”
Belle hesitated before asking her next question, fearful the widow would only scold her again for still pining for the lad from Lanarkshire. “Is there word of the Douglases?”
Idonea grinned grimly at Belle’s concern for the welfare of her clan’s enemy over her father’s demise “The Hardi has been taken to London Tower.”
Belle grasped the chancel railing for support. Knowing all too well what horrors awaited Jamie’s father in that devil’s pit, she offered up a prayer for the gallant Crusader who had come to her defense in Douglasdale.
God forbid, was Jamie among the captured or killed?
It would have been just like him to run off to join the rebels. She had heard nothing from him since that day he had tried to save her in Kilbride, and even if he were still alive, he had likely sworn off all feelings for her, convinced that she had betrayed him. She had written him letters explaining that she went with the Comyns to prevent them from murdering him, but her correspondence was always intercepted, and she had paid the price with beatings. She knew she should be distraught over her father’s death. Yet all she could now think about was Jamie. If the Comyns ever caught her speaking his name again, even in her sleep, they would flog ever ounce of blood from—
Alarums in the bailey broke the morning calm.
She shuddered with a sudden thought: If Wallace’s army was crushed and scattered, nothing now stood between the English army and Fife.
As if reading her mind, Idonea retracted the fabric screen that covered the window, offering a vantage into the valley. “Longshanks has wasted no time.”
Belle hurried to the slit and saw Red and his kinsmen, caked with the mud of battle, galloping through the gate, chased by a hail of arrows. She rushed from the chapel and climbed to the top floor. Below her, on the moors, hundreds of English besiegers were surging toward the ramparts.
Following her, Idonea shouted with diabolical glee, “Rabbits in the skillet!”
Belle was stunned to hear the widow reveling in the spectacle of disaster, apparently not the least concerned that they were also trapped. Idonea seemed to harbor such a fervent death wish that she would gladly give up her life to see the Comyns dragged to perdition with her.
“This time the Hammer won’t stop until he reaches the Isles!”
Belle abandoned the callous widow to her manic ranting and ran down the stairs of the tower. In the bailey, she found Red running about the grounds like a madman, trying to direct set his outmanned defenses.
Red saw her at the entry. “Get back inside!”
Belle stood her ground. “I know what you did to Wallace!”
The chieftain took a threatening step toward her. “I’ll rip that sassing tongue from your throat!”
“Longshanks will have yours first!” Idonea shouted down from the high tower.
Withered by the hag’s witching eye, Red took out his frustration by slapping the nearest of his soldiers toward the ramparts. As the screech of the approaching English siege gun grew louder, he paced and slashed at the ground with his broadsword, as if the very earth under his feet had betrayed him.
From the allures, Cam warned his uncle, “We can’t hold them off!”
Tabhann pulled Red aside. “We don’t want another Caeverlock. Longshanks hung every defender in that keep for the trouble they caused him.”
“But he knows we took up with Wallace.”
“We can negotiate terms,” Tabhann insisted. “Clifford will never find Wallace in the Selkirk, and Longshanks knows it. Offer to set up a meeting with Wallace. No one will suspect us.”
Red pulled at his own beard. “If the clans discovered we gave him up …”
“Wallace is finished,” Tabhann promised. “If we don’t settle a pact with the English here, Bruce will take the advantage and move against us.”
RED AND HIS KINSMEN RODE rode out from Dundarg’s gate under a flag of parlay, and Clifford led them into the English camp, passing under the shadow of a trebuchet whose arm had been cut whole from the tallest fir found in Brittany and ferried across the Channel. Escorted into the royal pavilion, the Comyns were forced to wait in silence as Longshanks bandied with the ladies of his court and tasted an array of appetizers prepared for his approval.
At last, Clifford brought an end to their humiliating penance. “My lord, the Earls of Buchan and Badendoch beg an audience.”
Longshanks turned in mock surprise. “Whom did you say?”
Clifford shoved Red forward. “These Scot defenders who put up a valiant defense for all of an hour.”
Longshanks spat a slither of lime rind and held out his flagon to an attendant for refilling. “Make haste, Comyn. I haven’t all day.”
Red tried to affect confidence. “I have come to discuss terms.”
The king flung his flagon at Red’s forehead. “You speak to me of terms?”
Red staggered on his heels, his brow wet with wine and trickling blood. Spurred on by Tabhann’s pressing hand to his back, the chieftain mumbled, “I can offer you Wallace.”
“You will provide me with that miscreant,” Longshanks ordered. “Within the month.”
“In return—”
“You and those wretched varlets you call vassals will swear fealty to me.”
Longshanks dismissed the ladies from his presence and ordered up another flagon of wine. He fingered the cup ominously while circling the trembling Scot chieftain. At his nod, Clifford pressed the Comyns to their knees.
Fearful of being cold-cocked again, Red flinched as Longshanks passed behind him. “By your grace, when this deed is done, I trust my kinsmen
and I shall retain our other castles.”
Longshanks coughed up a ball of phlegm and shot it through his puckered lips at Red’s battered face. “I’d sooner have castrated dogs guard them.”
Streaked in spittle, Red glanced with alarm at Tabhann, who had edged away, leaving the chieftain more exposed. Red pleaded with the king, “My lord does remember that I am the ranking noble in this realm?”
Longshanks snatched a letter from the grasp of a French envoy who stood in the corner. He handed the document to Red to read. “Evidently you’ve not heard the latest news from Paris. The Flemish have smacked Philip about quite roughly.” He asked Clifford, “Where was it he met his comeuppance?”
“Coutrai, my lord.”
“Undone by burghers armed with brooms!”
From the corner of his stinging eye, Red saw the Capetian diplomat seething at the king’s exultation over France’s recent misfortune. Yet the envoy was wise enough to play the part required by his circumstance, for all foreign dignitaries to the Plantagenet court knew that the monarch had once flailed his own servant so horribly in a fit of rage that Parliament had ordered royal damages paid to the victim’s family.
Longshanks came shadowing over the kneeling chieftain. “So, as even you can see, Comyn, Philip and his craven toadies have wasted little time in suing for peace. I fear your meddling friends across the Channel will no longer be supplying you with arms and funds. And, as a result, I am now freed to put down these Border uprisings once and for all. Perhaps you will wish to reconsider your terms to, shall we say, leaving your heads attached to your shoulders?”
Red realized that he had severely miscalculated in trusting Tabhann’s advice to demand terms. “My lord, we ask that you accept surrender of this castle under the protocols of war.”
“I think not.”
Red’s eyes bulged. “You refuse our surrender?”
Longshanks strode out of the tent, and his guards prodded the twittering Comyns through the flaps toward the new English trebuchet, so recently hewn that it still had the scent of the mill. The king caressed its riggings like an executioner examining the sinews of a condemned man’s neck, all the while forcing the Comyns to take the full measure of the contraption’s enormity. “I’ve named it War Wolf. I’ve been promised that it will launch a stone the size of a horse. Do you know how much it cost me?”
Red’s answer could barely be heard. “No, my lord.”
“Ten thousand pounds.”
“There is no need of it,” Red pleaded. “The castle is yours if you will—”
Longshanks thumped the chieftain’s scabrous forehead with the heel of his palm to demand silence. “I did not sail this gun down the Thames and up the coast, dismantle and drag it through two hundred miles of Scotland shit, only to haul it back without being fired!”
“You surely cannot mean—”
“Escort our esteemed combatants back to their tower,” the king ordered Clifford. “Supply them with a case of wine. I would have them enjoy a night they shan’t soon forget.”
Red could not force his legs to move—until Clifford’s forearm to the chieftain’s chin provided the motivation.
AT DUSK, THE TOLLING OF Dundarg’s bells was followed by a fireworks display worthy of London fete. Several minutes later, the sky fell silent, and the War Wolf went into action. All that night, Belle and the women cowered under pews in the chapel while Longshanks’s trebuchet launched a whistling missile every fifteen minutes through the walls and roofs, crumbling them as if threading rotten kindling.
When morning finally broke, the firing ceased.
Belle opened the chapel door and found the bailey littered with debris and the walls smashed. Red and his defenders cowered behind the piles, too frightened to raise their heads.
Clifford rode through the gate and drove the Comyn men from their holes with the flat of his blade. “The king humbly requests your presence for the taking of an oath.”
Shaken to the quick by the night’s ordeal, Red led his frazzled defenders and the women to a field below the walls. He found Longshanks ensconced atop a platform with his entourage, breakfasting on currants and pastries.
“Comyn!” the king shouted. “What think you of my new sling? If this slag dump can be brought down so soon, think of what it will do to those insolent French bastides in Normandy.” He slapped the back of the grim-faced Parisian envoy at his side. “Monsieur, do make certain to include in your report to Philip that the razing of this Scot tower took only eight hours.”
Clifford forced Red to his knees, along with Tabhann and Cam. The Scots were now grateful to have escaped the bombardment with their lives, though they would henceforth be required to do the bidding of the English crown.
Belle was the last of the Comyns to remain standing, but finally she also descended. At last, she had come face to face with the fiend who had stolen her precious Destiny Stone. She held a bitter glare on the king, silently mouthing a curse. She took heart at the lone bright prospect to this entire sorry affair: At least her father’s death had released her from the marital bond.
While the Comyn men mealy-mouthed their oaths, Longshanks strode among them, tapping a carving knife against his thigh. “Rattray, Slains, Banff, all will be delivered within the week,” he ordered. “I shall install my headquarters at Lochindorb. See to its provisioning.”
Tabhann stole a calculating glance at Belle, then he crawled toward the king and begged, “My lord, may we look to you for the administration of law in our provinces?”
The king laughed. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ve just had a sampling of it.”
Tabhann bowed his head even lower to accept the brunt of the jibe. “There is a legal matter that I would submit to your adjudication.”
Longshanks settled into his chair, his stretching legs hanging over the edge of the raised platform. “The common law is my passion. I would see it applied with all due alacrity. Is the other claimant present?”
“Aye, my lord,” Tabhann risked rising, until he was half-upright on his knees. “I am betrothed to Isabelle MacDuff, the daughter of the Earl of MacDuff.”
The king asked Clifford, “Did we not dispose of a rebel named MacDuff?”
Clifford nodded. “With no small help from these stalwart Scots. They held back their forces at Falkirk when we advanced.”
Longshanks grinned wickedly at the feckless Comyns. “I must keep that equitable action in mind when I render my decision.”
Tabhann stammered, “I ask the marital contract be enforced post mortem.”
Caught unprepared by Tabhann’s ploy, Belle looked desperately to Idonea, who tried to calm her with a cautioning glare.
The king searched the kneeling Scots. “Where is this woman?” Seeing Belle glare at Tabhann as she slowly arose from her knees, the king ordered her, “Come here. Let us have a look.”
Nodded forward by Idonea, Belle took several guarded steps toward the king. As she did, she looked around the pavilion for the coronation relic, suspecting the ogre was vain enough to travel with it.
Longshanks caught the silent exchange between the two women, He asked Belle, “Does the Earl of Buchan speak true?”
“I am betrothed against my will.”
Tabhann tried to shout over her. “MacDuff agreed to the terms!”
Longshanks silenced Tabhann with a pointed finger. “This is easily settled. Produce the contract signed by her father.”
Tabhann dodged and shifted. “The woman’s father promised that the deed would be accomplished on his return. Surely my lord sees the injustice of allowing this pact to lapse.”
The king turned his hawkish eye on her again. “What say you to this, woman?”
Belle tried to quell her shaking. “If my father is dead, am I not emancipated from his reach in the grave? No woman should be bound to a marriage arranged by one not her kinsman.”
“An agreement in principle!” Tabhann cried. “Her father’s desire was to see it enforced!”
&nbs
p; From the rear of the kneeling gaggle of Scots, Idonea shouted, “Not after you Comyns abandoned him in battle!”
Red tried to cower the widow to silence. “Give that woman no heed, my lord! She communes with the Devil!”
Longshanks swept his narrowing gaze over the prostrate brood, until his hard eyes fell upon the widowed hag. “I’ll not have witchery in my presence.”
Idonea remained unbowed. “Aye, but you’ll have lies and treachery. Would the wise King of England trust the word of scoundrels who betray their own countrymen?”
Longshanks sank into his chair, unsettled by that point.
Out of earshot of the Scots, Clifford whispered to the king, “My lord, there may be an advantage to us in the enforcement of this marriage.”
“How so?”
“If we weaken these Comyns too severely, the Bruces may turn against us and try for the throne. Is it not wise to let the cat guard the rat and the dog guard the cat?”
“How would the disposition in marriage of this filly gain us Scotland?”
“These tribes adhere to a quaint practice,” Clifford whispered. “The clan MacDuff must crown their king. When this woman’s brothers are captured and hung, she will become the head of her brood. Attach her to these Comyns, who shall remain under your thumb, and a Bruce will never wear the crown.”
Longshanks waved the officer aside and studied Belle as if testing her mettle. “You have sufficient reason to protest this marriage, my lady?”
“My heart is given to another,” Belle said.
Longshanks reacted as if he had not heard her correctly. “Are you under the impression that your heart is of concern to me?”
Belle stood steadfast, even though her blood was racing. “If my lord will not honor a lady’s devotion, I pray you will enforce God’s justice. None here has cited precedent that would require my marriage to this man.”
Longshanks tapped the armrest, deliberating while he watched Idonea. After several tense moments, he smiled at Belle and announced, “I find nothing in the law that requires this lady to marry against her will.”
Belle released a held breath. Had she misjudged this English king?
