by Glen Craney
Having gained a consensus, Robert led his officers back to waiting English and agreed to their proposed terms of engagement.
Pembroke betrayed no relief or surprise, but merely reined around to retire into the city. As he cantered past the Scot ladies, he bowed his head with an affectation of courtesy to Elizabeth Bruce. “Your father sends his regards.”
There was threat enough in that message, James knew. The Earl of Ulster was being hard pressed by Longshanks to recall his daughter from Robert’s side and recruit an army of Irishmen for the invasion of Scotland.
While Elizabeth stammered for a response, Clifford tried to place Belle’s face. “You are the Countess of Buchan, if memory serves.”
Belle calmed her garron, spooked by the proximity of the officer’s bullying horse. “Your memory serves you better than your honor.”
Clifford smiled thinly at the insult. “The Bishop of Canterbury would have you remember, woman, that your abandonment of the marital bond is yet another reason for your excommunication.”
Those Scots on foot closed ranks in support around the Lass of Scone, the name that the bards had given Belle for her courage in crowning Robert.
Remembering how Robert had become distraught over the threat of eternal damnation, Belle sidled her pony closer to the English party and answered Clifford, loud enough for all to hear, “You may advise the archbishop, sir, that I’d sooner follow a Scot king to Hell than an English king to Heaven. But I’ll lose no sleep worrying over ever confronting that choice. The odds of Edward Plantagenet passing St. Peter’s gate are as long as those for finding his son in bed with a satisfied wife.”
The Scots howled and beat their shields at her crackling put-down.
Clifford’s lips quivered. “A wicked tongue on a woman is a facile skill. You are fortunate to be spared the rectification of battle.”
Belle met him glare for glare. “No, it is you, sir, who is fortunate. If I were a man, the day to follow would be your last.”
Clifford tried to summon a reply to her impudence, but finding no words sufficient, he spurred to catch up with Pembroke, driven by catcalls.
As the Scots cheered Belle’s mettle, James saw that Robert had sunk deeper into despair. He rode to the women and faced their ponies toward their sulking king. “What say you, ladies? Will you still ride with this crown-toting devil?”
Belle was a ready conspirator. “Aye, and fight St. George’s legions for it if need be. But surely this cannot be Hell’s keeper who sits before us. I have it on good authority that the real Satan has freakish legs stretched to keep his royal baubles from being singed by the flames. I’m also told that long shanks make good cooking over a hot spit!”
The men roared and stomped about, imitating the English king’s loping gait.
Try as he might, Robert could not suppress a grin at that crack.
Simon Fraser tossed a dagger to their new Amazon, and Belle, catching the weapon, smirked at James to match that feat. He grinned back at her, his anger melted by this, her second courageous act to bolster their new king.
The old MacDuff sass had returned.
THAT NIGHT, THE SCOTS PULLED back from Perth and bivouacked in a tree-lined vale near the abandoned castle of Methven, less than a league from the next day’s designated field of battle. Robert refused to take shelter in the tower and instead placed his bedroll along side those of his men. He had intended for his brother Nigel to escort the women to Kildrummy that night, but Elizabeth had convinced him to delay their departure until a few hours before dawn.
Belle sat on the outskirts of the camp, feeling out of place, a Comyn woman among these Bruces. After turning against her brother and husband, she’d had nowhere to call home, until Elizabeth Bruce had asked her to join her court as a lady in waiting. Seeing the new queen traveling without a servant, she had gratefully accepted the offer, cheerfully taking up the tasks of attending to the royal meals and laundry despite her noble station.
Now, finding the men preoccupied with tending to their weapons, she threw a bundle of soiled clothes over her shoulder and walked alone toward a nearby stream to wash them. It was one of those clear midsummer eves when dusk cast a shimmering hue and danced with shadows. At the banks, she sat on a boulder and reached into her bundle.
The basket was empty.
She was about to bite off a choice Fife curse when she heard singing:
“On moonlit moor in November
We tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen
The true worth of passion’s pledge…
She thought the tune sounded vaguely familiar.
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts
And I not making hay.
Oh I loved too much and by such,
Is happiness thrown away. …”
She stalked the voice, but the nearer she came to it, the more it receded. Were the Little People serenading her? No mortal could conjure such unnatural glamourie, for the voice became fainter, then stronger, as if the singer was able to fly around her:
“I gave her gifts of the mind,
I gave her the secret sign,
That’s known to the one who has seen
The true gods of sound and tone.
And word and tint, I did not stint
For I gave her poems to say.
And with her own name there,
And her long dark hair
Like clouds over the fields of May.”
The singing finally faded, causing a heavy sadness to strike at her heart. Forced to return to the real world, she walked back along the stream and heard something flapping above her. One of the queen’s undergarments was hanging on a branch. Farther upstream, she saw another dangling blouse, and then another. She scurried to gather them before anyone in the camp saw them. She reached up for the last garment—and arms grabbed her waist from behind. She tried to shout a warning that English were attacking, but a hand stifled her mouth.
“You still fall for it.”
Heaving with fright, she turned and found James rollicking with laughter. He had repeated the prank he first played on her in Lanark years ago. She pushed him away, feeling the firmness of his chest, and huffed off.
“Belle, I did not mean to …”
She flushed with indignation, but her heart raced from a disturbing elation. Pulled by conflicting emotions, she stole the crude mandolin he was carrying.
Astonished by the brazen theft, James tried to retrieve the instrument.
She turned a shoulder on him to deny the attempt, and then pushed him into the stream. “And you still fall for that!”
James landed with a thudding splash, and went under.
When his head bobbed up, Belle loaded a handful of rocks and sent him back down. After she had spent her rounds, the water slowly calmed, broken only by the soft rippling of the undercurrent. Alarmed, she began stripping off her cloak to go in for him. But then, she remembered his old trick, and held back. She had wised up since those days when he declared her the most gullible lassie in Scotland.
Submerged for nearly a minute, James sprang up holding his nose, expecting to find her frantically searching for him. She was nowhere in sight. Had she run off in anger? He felt a sharp pang of regret. She was a woman now, and a married one at that. She likely thought him immature and shallow. Things could never be the same as before, he realized. Too much had happened to darken their lives. Chastened, he prepared to walk out from the stream and return to camp—
His feet were pulled down into a whirlpool.
He struggled for breath as his head went under again. He was drowning in the jaws of a loch creature, and no one would know! He fought to the surface gulping air. His head shot forward, buffeted by a sharp cuff behind the ear.
Belle had thumped him with the Aberdeen Sweetie, a thumb flick used by Highland wives on their lazy husbands.
“Are you trying to kill me before Clifford gets his chance?” he sputtered.
S
he resurfaced a few feet from his reach and, sticking out her tongue, splashed water into his face. “Oh my! If you were to give up the ghost, the Parisian courtesans would fill the Seine with their tears.”
“That was not my doing! The Bishop forced me to go!”
She backstroked away, arching her wet bosom. “And did the Bishop also force you to make puppy eyes at that French tart?”
He swam after her. “And what about you? It wasn’t me who went off and married—” He stopped himself, too late.
She hurried to the bank and wrapped herself in one of the hanging garments. “Go off?” she cried. “You don’t know anything, Jamie Douglas! Not a word from you! What was I to do? Run away? I couldn’t just board a ship and sail from my suffering like you! A woman’s love means nothing in this world.”
“You speak of love?”
She plopped onto a rock, dropping her head to her hands to hide her sobbing.
James crawled to the bank. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She tore at his collar, ripping off two buttons and extracting the cord from around his neck to display the heart-stone. “What did you think this meant? Are all men so thick-headed that they cannot understand such things?”
“I kept it, didn’t I?”
She was stunned. His coldness at Berwick, she realized, had been only a front to hide his injured heart. How foolishly blind she had been. She couldn’t look at him for fear of suffering his judgment.
He gently captured her shoulders, but she drew away. How could he want her after she had been with Tabhann?
He pulled her to the dewy grass, hiding her from view of the camp on the far banks, and wiped tears from her cheeks. Their lips met, and they kissed savagely. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Slowly, threateningly, he caressed the flaps of her necking while examining the mayhem that she had inflicted upon his saffron shirt. With a grin of anticipation, he ripped apart the fastenings on her blouse in retaliation.
A rush of air swept down the valley of her exposed chest. She pushed him on his back and waited for him to finish disrobing her.
He lay transfixed by the ripped blouse that tenuously held her breasts in check. She reached behind her neck, untied the blouse for him, and slid it from her shoulders. She rested her hands at the sides of his head and hovered inches from his gaze. Mocking him with an exaggerated French accent, she purred seductively, “Mon dieu! Have you never seen the Highlands, monsieur?”
He rolled her onto her back and pinned her arms behind her head. “Bonnie as Ben Bulben they are, that I cannot deny.” His tongue trailed down her neck and made the slow pilgrimage toward her navel. “Stirling Bridge, the gate to all worth having.” As he moved deeper down into the borderlands, he blessed each landmark on her ravishing dark body with a kiss. “The Highlands are fine, mademoiselle, but I’m partial to the lush vales of the south.”
Shuddering, she was about to cry out when he silenced her with another hard kiss. He fumbled to remove his leggings, and she assisted him until he was freed and atop her. She surrendered to him with tears of bitter joy. After all those nights under Tabhann, she feared she could never feel this way. She wanted to lose herself in this moment, never let it end—
“No!”
Startled by his shout, she opened her eyes.
He sat trembling, gazing up into the darkness.
“Jamie, what’s wrong?”
He had not heard her question. A raven sat perched on a nearby limb. After staring down at him for several moments, the black harbinger blinked and fluttered away, causing him to shudder. Eight years had passed since the goddess Morgainne had demanded two souls for his survival. Until this moment, he had forgotten about the pact made during his boyhood race. He could not possibly tell Belle of the bargain forced on him that day. She would never believe him, or worse, think him deranged.
“Am I not pleasing to you?” she asked.
James rolled aside her and drew his knees to his chin. “Too much so.”
She wrapped herself in his cloak and knelt waiting for an explanation, but he could not look at her. She gathered him into her arms and stroked his chest. Somewhere in the darkness, the raven cawed like a mother protecting its nest. That eerie sound caused her to think of the stories told by the old women in Fife about the raven Valkeries that flew over the camps on the night before a battle to choose their next victims. She had always wondered why only the female ravens were held to be omens of death. Probably because men blamed women for all of their troubles.
The playful voice of a girl roused Belle from the memories. Across the stream, she saw Robert sitting near a fire with Elizabeth and his ten-year-old daughter, Marjorie, who was trying to engage her parents in a game of dice. Belle sighed, empathizing with the poor girl who had no sisters with whom to frolic. “Robert seems changed since Scone.”
“We’ve all changed.”
“Not you.” She wrung her soaked blouse over his head as evidence.
Instead of rising to her bait as he used to do, James turned reflective. “Maybe a king can’t have a friend. There’s a distance between us now. He has a family. That will change a man.”
“Do you think about children?” She regretted that question as soon as she spoke it. Yet, seeing that he did not flinch from it, she risked snuggling closer. “How many?”
“Ten would fill a castle, no?”
“Does Castle Douglas still stand?”
“Last time I saw it, the walls were near collapsing.”
She rested her head on his chest and gazed up at the clear sky. “Remember the night we spent looking for your star?”
He pointed out their favourite constellation. “There it is.”
“Tell me the story again.”
“I told you stories?” James was driven to the tale by a sharp elbow to his ribs. “St. Columba, like all Irishmen, loved words. Especially those spoken from his own mouth.”
“Are you sure you’re not Irish?”
“Will you hear the tale or not?” Only when she surrendered a nod of contrition did he agree to continue. “Many centuries ago, there existed just one copy of the Holy Gospels in all Ireland. Ulstermen are a strange breed, believing as they do that a book carries magical powers. So, St. Finian, the owner of this precious tome, forbade all from looking upon its pages lest their thaumaturgy be stolen. One night, Columba hid inside Finian’s abbey and copied the gospels. The next morning, Finian sensed with his vision powers that the book’s magic had disappeared.” Suspecting her of enjoying his embrace more than the story, he paused to test her attention.
“Well? What did Finian do?”
“A bard has to be paid.” Compensated with another kiss, he revealed, “Finian offered a prize to any who could recite the twelve Apostles in order.”
“Columba didn’t fall for that, did he?”
“Aye, he did. Columba admitted the theft, and he was set off to sea in a hollowed trunk and ordered not to set foot on land until Ireland disappeared from his sight.” He angled her head toward the west. “While the saint rowed, he kept watch on that star until he landed at Iona.”
“On our Scotland.”
He nodded. “And every night for the rest of his life, Columba would gaze upon that star. He knew it’d be the closest he’d ever again come to seeing home.” Seeing that the story had cast Belle into a melancholic silence, he stroked her long dark hair, tangled and frazzled by the night air. “You needn’t worry, Belle. You’ve found your home now. And you’ll never be forced to leave again.”
“Tabhann will come for me.”
“Coming and getting are two different things. I’ll not leave you again. And you must promise you’ll never leave me.” He moved in for another kiss, but she turned aside, trying to swallow the knot of emotion in her throat.
“Have you forgotten that I’m a married woman?”
“You’re not married in God’s eyes.”
“So now you see what God sees, do you?”
“No loving God would perp
etually tie you to that rank excuse of a man.”
A chilling call broke their embrace. … The raven had returned.
James threw a stone to chase off the death goddess. He tightened his arms around Belle in defiance of the raven’s warning. “I intend to wed you, Isabelle MacDuff. And you best be preparing yourself for those ten children.”
Her eyes flooded. In moments of foolish revelry, she had dreamed of hearing those very words. Yet she could not allow herself to believe that such a thing was possible. “No priest would ever join a bonded woman and an unchurched rebel.”
The raven cawed again, as if to mock that hope.
James looked up at Columba’s star. Did the Almighty revel in the perverse sufferings of mortals? Why would He take Belle and marry her off to Tabhann, only to bring her to him again for this fleeting hour? In what cracked world would such a cruelty be abided? He leapt to his feet and threw on his leggings. “I’ll wager you a life of washing my laundry that I can find a priest who will.”
“Wash your own—”
He nearly yanked her arm from its socket as he dragged her through the woods toward the camp, giving her barely enough time to fix her clothing. He sloshed with her hand-in-hand across the stream and rushed her to the ridge where the others in the camp were congregated. He roused Robert from his blanket and, bending to catch his breath, said, “I’d ask a boon of you.”
Robert was perplexed by his agitation. “You’ve earned a hundred.”
The other men, awakened by the commotion, arose from their bivouacs and drew around James to learn the reason for the excitement.
“The hand of this lady in matrimony,” James told Robert. “You’re the king now, regnum father to us all. And my anam friend.”
Robert was about to laugh, until he saw that James was serious in the request. He signaled for old Fraser to wake the snoring bishop.
Escorted to the king like a groggy condemned man, Lamberton grumbled, “There’d best be a bonnie good reason for this rough summons.”
