The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas

by Glen Craney

  None of that mattered now. His absconding would be seen as clear evidence of his treason. He had failed to heed his grandfather’s warning. If he was wrong about Gloucester’s message, he had played his hand too soon.

  Hearing the distant thud of hooves, he shielded his eyes from the morning’s slant light and saw a man riding fast toward him from the north. He had passed a hundred such travelers without incident. Still, to be safe, he slid his hand to the dagger under his cloak. His heart quickened—the man’s banner bore the Comyn herald. What would a Comyn man be doing south of the Borders?

  He shouted, “Stop, I say!”

  The rider ignored the command and increased his speed.

  He flashed his dagger. “Did you not hear me?”

  The rider angled in a search for some means of avoiding the confrontation. When he tried to dash past, Robert caught up with the knave and buffeted him from his saddle. He leapt down and ripped off the man’s hood to expose his face. “I’ll have your name or your life.”

  “Brechin.”

  That revelation rang ominous to Robert’s ear. The Brechins, an Angus clan allied with the Comyns, had been one of the first Scots to rush to Longshanks’s side during the invasion of 1296. “What purpose does Brechin of Comyn service have in England?”

  “Deal basely with me, and you will answer to the king!”

  Robert pressed his blade against Brechin’s throat. “And which king would that be?”

  “The rightful king of Scotland. What business is it of yours, Englishman?”

  “I report to Edward Plantagenet,” Robert said, lying to smoke him out.

  “Then you’d do well to escort me to him without delay. I have a communication for him from Red Comyn.”

  Robert emptied the courier’s bag and found a letter pressed with the Comyn seal. He slit open the correspondence and read it:

  To His Royal Highness,

  The deed is done. Enclosed find the indenture bearing Bruce’s attestation. At this hour, I muster men to take command of the Bruce castles in Turnberry, Kildrummy, and Lochmaben. By the time you receive this, I trust you will have sent the traitor to join the Competitor in Hell.

  Your servant, Comyn the Red

  Seething at the betrayal, Robert opened his cloak to reveal a silver brooch studded with crystal.

  Brechin stared wide-eyed at the famous Bruce reliquary that contained the bone fragments of the first saints on Iona.

  Robert gave him a choice. “Your last breath, or your altered allegiance.”

  Brechin refused to be cowed. “I serve Scotland, not you.”

  Robert itched to run the traitor through, but he held back. “Two weeks ago, Red Comyn offered me the throne in exchange for my lands.”

  “I knew nothing of this.”

  “Where will I find the treacherous whoreson?”

  After a hesitation, Brechin revealed, “He litigates a case in Dumfries.”

  Robert dragged the Comyn vassal back to his horse. “Ride to St. Andrews with all speed and tell Bishop Lamberton that I am in swift need of our mutual friend. Then make haste to Dumfries and advise Comyn that you have made good your delivery to London. Fail me on this, and nary a rabbit hole north of the Tweed will offer you refuge from my wrath.”

  XIV

  TORN WITH INDECISION, ROBERT HAD been pacing for nearly an hour across the highest hill above Dumfries, the site of numerous clan skirmishes with the Comyns over the centuries. Jangled from no sleep for three nights, he was having trouble keeping his thoughts clear. His reconnaissance that morning had confirmed that Red Comyn was lodging in Greyfriars Abbey, just outside the town, and that the market craw-roads were thick with the chieftain’s armed men. Fearing his twin brothers, Nigel and Thomas, would gainsay his plan before he could prosecute it, he had delayed telling them the reason for his hasty summons of them from Lochmaben with instructions to bring vassals Christopher Seton, James Lindsay, and Roger Kirkpatrick. He shoved the nearest twin toward a waiting horse. “Tom, off with you to that ridge again.”

  “You sent me up there fifteen minutes ago,” Thomas Bruce grumbled. “Who is it you expect me to find?”

  “Jamie Douglas.”

  Thomas stared gape-jawed at him. “After you arrested him and gave up his tower? We’ll see Wallace’s ghost come join us first.”

  Robert bit off another flurry of curses at David Brechin, the Comyn turncoat he had intercepted on the rush back from London. By his calculation, Brechin should have reached St. Andrews two days ago. He wouldn’t consider the possibility that James had refused to come to his aid. If, as he suspected, Brechin had violated his oath by telling Red of their encounter in Yorkshire, the Comyns would be lying in wait. Riding into Dumfries with only six men would be a dangerous gamble. Yet putting off the confrontation would only allow Red to escape east and combine his forces with Clifford at Berwick.

  “Whatever it is you intend,” Nigel insisted, “let’s have at it. Else Tom and I are going back home.”

  Robert shook his head, stung by the bitter hand that fate had dealt him. If he could not command obedience from his own brothers, how could he expect to rule a country? Edward, next in seniority, had always been the enforcer of clan solidarity, but he had chosen an inauspicious time to be away in Hartlepool retrieving a shipment of wheat. Kicking at the dirt to vent his anger, Robert motioned the others to their horses, and then climbed to his saddle. He glanced longingly at the northern horizon one more time. Seeing no sign of James, he led his paltry troop, disguised in hoods, down into the Galloway valley.

  A HALF-HOUR LATER, THE Bruces arrived at Greyfriars Abbey, and Robert dismounted, signaling for his men to guard the approach. Walking to the monastery’s door, he pulled the cowl further over his head to obscure his face, and banged the clapper.

  A friar opened the whispering slot. “Full for the evening.”

  He thrust his arm through the aperture to prevent the friar from ignoring him. “Advise Lord Comyn that Brechin brings news from London.” He retracted his arm, and the waddling friar slammed the slot shut.

  Minutes later, the friar returned, opened the gate, and allowed Robert to enter the outer courtyard. “Comyn says you are to wait here until the Abbot finishes a private Mass for him.”

  Unable to shake the pesky Franciscan, Robert reluctantly took a seat on a bench and searched for a way to enter the chapel unnoticed. Red’s troopers, he feared, would be returning any moment now for the end of the Mass. He rubbed his stomach to feign hunger. “Might you spare some bread?”

  The friar kept his eyes fixed on his own navel. “There is a tavern down the street.”

  Robert restrained his urge to throttle the stingy oaf. Fast running out of time, he decided to try a different tact. “My liege intends to grant a benefice to honor the many rewards that God has granted him. There’s enough coin in my saddlebag to build a new church.” He leaned toward the friar, as if to whisper a confidence. “You must not tell your abbot, but the Red has narrowed it down to this abbey or Jedburgh.” He stood to depart. “Perhaps I will return later.”

  The friar, his beady eyes flaming with gold lust, grasped Robert’s arm to delay him. “Thieves lurk about in these parts. I’d best take your treasury to the chapter house for safe keeping.”

  When the tonsured oaf hurried out the abbey’s entrance to retrieve the donation, Robert slipped inside the cloisters and fell in with a cadre of ascetic brothers who were ambulating in a circle, deep in prayer. He counted three Comyn men guarding the chapel. After a second pass around the courtyard, he disappeared unnoticed into a vestibule and found a vestment frock and a chalice. Trading in his riding cloak for the vestment, he hid the chalice under his sleeves and reentered the cloisters. He merged again into the circulating herd of meditating friars whose eyes were trained inward. Approaching the chapel, he brought out the chalice and bowed his head, waiting to be allowed entry.

  The guards, thinking he was delivering the Eucharist, waved him inside. The door closed, and Ro
bert clicked the bolt behind him. Red Comyn, the only congregant present, knelt on the front pew. The abbot was about to offer the benediction when he stopped, seeing a the dim outlines of a hooded figure standing near the baptismal font.

  Alerted by the abbot’s distraction, Red turned and squinted through the haze of incense toward the door. “Brechin? I told the monk to have you wait.” He arose from the kneeler, his eyes full of hope. “The deed … it is done?”

  Robert retracted his hood and stepped into the light. “Not quite.”

  Red’s eyes bulged. He couldn’t fathom how the friar had mistaken Robert for the shorter Brechin. “Bruce … I was told you were in London.”

  Robert walked slowly down the aisle, reassured by the discovery that Brechin had not double-crossed him. “I was nearly to York before I realized that I failed to obtain your signature on our agreement.”

  “What say you? I executed it, by Christ! My own copy bears the mark.”

  Robert reached into his hauberk, pulled out a folded parchment, and laid it across the altar lintel. “Sign it, and I will leave you to your prayers.”

  Annoyed at the interruption, Red drew a quill from an inkwell near the baptismal and smoothed out the document to find the empty space for the signature. “There it is, clear as …” He reread the last line—not of their agreement, but of his secret letter to Longshanks. “Where did you get this?”

  Robert came up fast to deny him a reach for his weapon. “Lying knave!”

  The abbot fluttered his cassock sleeves in protest against the sacrilege. “This is a house of God!”

  Robert shoved Red toward the altar. “Nay, a viper’s nest!”

  “Off me, Bruce!”

  “You schemed my death!”

  Red turned to call his guards, but he fell silent when Robert opened his stolen frock to reveal a dagger at his belt. Unnerved by the crazed look in Robert’s eyes, Red raised his hands in a gesture of concession. “Take the throne! Keep your damn lands as well!”

  “In writing. And you will read it aloud in the town square.”

  Cornered, Red reluctantly began inscribing the terms of the devolution. When the quill ran dry, he dipped it into the ink well. He hovered the stylus over the parchment—and drove the quill’s point at Robert’s eyes.

  Robert swerved to parry the attack, but the quill impaled his hand and splattered ink across his face. Blinded, cried out and he clung to Red’s shoulders. Red threw Robert to the floor and ran for the sacristy door. Robert captured Red’s leg and held fast, his eyes burning so horribly that he feared he was losing his sight. He released the ankle and staggered to his feet swinging fists. Red tried to run past him, but he drove a shoulder into the chieftain’s chin and heaved him back against the altar.

  The abbot saw the dagger at Robert’s belt. “No weapons here!”

  Robert heard the cleric’s shout as a warning that Red had drawn his blade. He pulled his dagger and rammed it into Red’s chest.

  Red looked down in disbelief at the hilt buried to his sternum. Blood trickled from the chieftain’s hands onto the altar linens. He slid to his knees and struggled to extract the weapon from his gut.

  Robert furiously rubbed his bloodshot eyes to regain sight. Horrified at what he had done, he looked to the abbot for absolution. “God’s mercy! I did not mean to …”

  The abbot pointed to the crucifix above the altar as if calling on Christ for a witness. “Mortal sin! Hellfire will be your justice!”

  Red collapsed unconscious, his stomach gashed.

  Robert fled to the sacristy and ran through the cloisters. The friars walking in prayer stared at him in horror, as if confronting a black-splotched demon.

  The Comyn guards rammed open the chapel door and discovered Red lying in a pool of blood. “Bruce!” they shouted. “Take the Bruce!”

  Robert escaped the lunges of the startled Franciscans and scaled the abbey walls. He dived head over heels and landed in the alley between the monastery and the tithe barn.

  NIGEL BRUCE FOUND HIS BROTHER, bloodied and dazed, hiding on his haunches in a corner of a cattle pen. “Rob, what in God’s name has happened to you?”

  “I fear … I’ve killed him.”

  Nigel backed away a step. “Comyn? In a sanctuary?”

  Robert stared at his own bloodied hands. “I am lost.”

  The other Bruce men came running up they alley, but they were driven back by the mob pouring down the other end.

  Kirkpatrick drew his sword to slow the attackers. “Get him out of here!”

  Robert was in shock, unable to move.

  Kirkpatrick dragged him to a stabled horse. Slapping at the mount’s flanks, he sped Robert off with his brothers through the barn toward the outskirts of the village. “If Comyn lives, he’ll turn this deed to his advantage! Lindsay and I will make certain the deed is done!”

  ROBERT AND HIS BROTHERS HAD remained crouched for three hours behind a copse on the lookout hill above Dumfries. With no sign of Lindsay and Kirkpatrick, they feared the two men had been captured.

  Now, a lone horseman galloped in from the west, with the afternoon sun sinking from its apex behind him. Robert knew that the Comyn loyalists in Dumfries would be sending word of the murder to Dalswinton to marshal reinforcements. If the messenger got through, he and his brothers would be doomed. Still splattered with Red Comyn’s blood, he signaled his brothers to hide in the ravine while he climbed a tree that hovered over the road. When the rider passed under its branches, he pounced and knocked him from his saddle.

  Thomas and Nigel came running and aimed their blades at the intruder. Robert leapt to his feet with dagger drawn, ready to drive it home.

  The downed rider rolled over and shook his head in accusation. “Castle razing, and now highway banditry? Can’t you Bruces find honest employment?”

  Grinning for the first time in days, Robert raised James and embraced him. Then, he shoved his friend away in hot anger. “You took your damn time!”

  James rubbed his smarting scalp. “I wanted to see a little of the countryside first.” With biting emphasis, he added, “There’s not much scenery in a jail.”

  Robert was about to protest that indictment as undeserved when Kirkpatrick and Lindsay came galloping over the ridge. The two men reined up and fell exhausted from their saddles.

  Kirkpatrick heaved for breath. “A near thing … but done.”

  Robert stood paralyzed by his vassal’s confirmation of Red’s death. All his life he had yearned to be rid of his clan’s most hated enemy. Yet during these past hours, he had prayed for Red’s survival, fearful the clans would raise the dead Comyn chieftain up as a martyr and dismiss his traitorous letter to Longshanks as a forgery. He knew that Tabhann and Cam would now cite the murder as justification for their right to the throne.

  James glanced around. Finding himself surrounded by men slumped in silent despond, he demanded, “Is somebody going to tell me what all this head-slinking skullduggery is about?”

  Robert could not look him in the eyes. “I killed Red Comyn.” He turned away in despair. “It is the end of me.”

  James slammed his fist into his palm, celebrating his old enemy’s fitting demise. “No! A beginning, Rob! If you will seize it!”

  Deafened by his own self-pitying lament, Robert kept muttering to himself. “The murder of a Guardian under the king’s peace on holy ground.”

  James grasped Robert’s shoulders to instill him with resolve. “Where are Red’s kinsmen?”

  Robert remembered that same manic grin from the day the Comyns had surrounded them as boys in Douglasdale. “At Sweetheart Abbey, by last report. But what does—”

  “Up with you!”

  “To go where?”

  James leapt on his horse and pointed the Bruce brothers to their saddles. Grinning wild-eyed, he shouted at Robert, “To see you become a king!”

  PELTED BY A COLD RAINSTORM, James led the Bruces to the walls of Dalswinton Castle, the Comyn bolthole that sat two leagues
north of Dumfries. He called up to the tower, “The Bruce would speak with Red Comyn!”

  The sergeant of the keep peered over the rampart. “Comyn attends the bench in Dumfries.”

  “That is base hospitality!” Dripping wet, James trotted along the walls feigning outrage. “He was to meet us here! By God, we will take our counsel with the Earl of Badendoch, then!”

  “At Sweetheart. With his cousin, Lord Buchan.”

  Slipping a hidden smile at Robert to confirm their good fortune, James shouted up at the sergeant, “Well then, that means you must be in charge! The Bruce is in peace with Comyn! You have been advised, of course!” When the sergeant met that news with a look of skepticism, James barked at him, “Am I required to produce the bond while we stand out here to catch our deaths? There will be Hell to pay if my liege is forced to seek shelter at Roslin!”

  The sergeant finally ordered the gates opened. Robert lunged his horse forward, too eager to enter, until James captured his reins to prevent him from creating suspicion. Once inside, James surveyed the walls and saw that ten men defended the keep. He nodded the Bruce brothers to the left and Kirkpatrick and Lindsay to the right.

  “You are in luck!” The sergeant on the ramparts pointed toward the southern moorlands. “My liege returns.”

  Swallowing a curse, James cracked open the gate. Two hills away, Tabhann and Cam led thirty riders on a forced pace toward the castle. If the portcullis were dropped, he and the Bruces would be trapped. Yet if they allowed the keep to remain manned, the Comyns would retain a crucial base from which to harass Lochmaben. He shouted at the sergeant, “The Bruce shall ride forth to greet the Comyns! And I shall announce our arrival to those inside the tower!”

  The sergeant hesitated, debating the unconventional protocol, but finally he nodded his agreement. Robert and his brothers had no choice but to trust James’s instincts, and they cantered toward the gate.

  James sidled up aside Robert and whispered, “I’ll meet you at Stirling.”