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

by Glen Craney

  Denied, she glanced helplessly at Isabella, who closed her eyes in defeat.

  Steadying against a bedpost, Longshanks nodded to the door watchman.

  The Comyn cousins were escorted into the room.

  Tabhann had to be restrained from rushing at Belle. “Faithless cur!”

  “Now, then, is that forgiveness?” Longshanks chided between hacking coughs. “She is of the weaker sex, a victim of temptation. We must allow her to redeem her soul.” The king looked to the Dominican Lagny for confirmation. “Is this not the Christian way, Abbot?”

  The inquisitor inspected Belle with a long-snouted sneer. “This harlot takes orders from the Devil’s henchman, the Bishop of St. Andrews. Scotland must be cleansed anew of heresy and brought again under Rome’s authority. Cut off the head of the dragon, and the body will die.”

  Longshanks placed an unsteady hand on the inquisitor’s bony shoulder for balance. “Fear not, friar. That Fife warlock now conducts his black Masses in Winchester dungeon for a congregation of rats.” The king glared at Belle as if plumbing her resolve. “Being a godly ruler, I am inclined to give this fallen woman another chance for redemption.” He grasped her arm and led her to a large wooden chest that sat below the windowsill. “Place your hand on this stone and renounce the coronation of Bruce. Confess that you were coerced and agree to return to your husband. Do this, and I will be merciful.”

  Belle stared at the ugly lump of limestone that had been transported from London for viewing in York cathedral. The block still held the scars that the English king had inflicted on it during the signing of the Ragman Rolls. What harm would be caused by speaking the oath over it? After all, this was not the true Stone of Destiny, even if Longshanks believed otherwise. She could plead ignorance of the import of Robert’s coronation and claim that she had acted out of passion. Yet if she complied with the demand, Tabhann would contend that Robert had been crowned illegally, and the few clans that still remained loyal to the rebellion would turn their allegiance. If that happened, the sacrifices that she and James had accepted to bring Robert to the throne would be in vain.

  Elizabeth, shaking uncontrollably, looked up from her knees at her, trying to divine what she intended to do.

  One of them would suffer the king’s wrath, Belle knew. Elizabeth’s womb held Scotland’s only hope; the queen had only a few childbearing years left, and if she were left to die in England or, God forbid, be executed, Robert’s dream of uniting the clans under a new line of succession would fail, dooming their country to English dominion forever. She prayed to St. Bride for courage; then, taking a step forward before she could lose resolve, she challenged Longshanks, “Bring me the true Stone, and I will name the true king.”

  The king’s patchy brows narrowed. “This is your Stone.”

  She pressed his hand to the rock. “Why then does it not scream?”

  Longshanks repulsed her grasp and shoved her to the floor. “Throw her in a Welsh nunnery! She can listen to her own screams!”

  The soldiers were about to drag Belle away when Caernervon delayed them. “Father, Robert Bruce is too cowardly to care what happens to his women. But his fellow conspirator has always labored under a foolish code of chivalry.

  “Speak plainly, damn you!”

  The prince shot an evil glance at Belle. “By all accounts, James Douglas alone has kept Bruce alive.”

  The king glowered at his son. “I need no lessons in surveillance from you.”

  Undeterred by the dismissal of his competence, Caernervon persisted in spinning out his proposed scheme. “Bruce will let his wife rot first before he shows his face to us.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  Caernervon removed the gold chain from around his neck and swung it in front of Belle. “Douglas is a different cut of cloth. If his wench here will not lead us to the rebel, why not let her lead the rebel to us?”

  Princess Isabella, alarmed, stepped forth from the shadows. “Sire, these ladies have no choice but to follow the orders of their lords.”

  Longshanks patted his daughter-in-law’s hand with mock compassion. “Then I would have you, my young French swallow, follow my order by holding your insufferable tongue!” He released her hand with a rough snap of his wrist.

  Shaken, Isabella retreated with her head bowed.

  Longshanks pulled Elizabeth from her knees and into his vulturous embrace. “A propitious change of fortune, darling. I have decided that you, not your treasonous accomplice here, will be housed with the nuns of St. Catherine. Holderness should be far enough from the Borders, don’t you think?”

  Elizabeth looked rattled, uncertain if she should be grateful or distraught. “My stepdaughter and attendants. I beg you show them equal mercy.”

  “Your treacherous husband’s brood will be held in secure confines.” The king turned on Belle, forcing her to wait to hear her fate. He slithered his fleshless arm across Caernervon’s shoulder to acknowledge a nascent maturity developing in his son. “You speak true about this one, Eddie. She deserves special treatment. Was it not in Berwick where we dealt old man Douglas his defeat?”

  “I was there with you,” Caernervon reminded him with an unctuous grin.

  “That city must hold fond memories for the son. Perhaps we should give young Douglas a reason to visit it again.” The king then posed to Tabhann a question that was more of a threat, “You don’t mind if I borrow your wife?”

  Tabhann glared revenge at Belle. “Do with her what you will.”

  “How generous of you.” With a smirk, the king circled Belle while thinking. Then, he turned to his officers and ordered, “Lodge our crown-toting traitoress here in an open cage from Berwick tower. Raise it high enough so her countrymen can see the reason for the chastisement they are about to suffer.”

  Belle stood numbed, unable to comprehend the sentence.

  Horrified, Elizabeth reached for her, but the guards pulled them apart.

  Longshanks lapsed into another fit of coughing. When he recovered his breath enough to speak, he taunted Belle, “Berwick offers a splendid view of the Tweed valley. You’ll be first to see Douglas coming for you.”

  Suddenly she remembered what Idonea Comyn had told her on the day they had first met: To survive, you must make the whoresons believe you possess the power to conjure the spirits. Consumed with a fury, she escaped the guards and stole a candle from its holder. Before she could be wrestled back, she dripped wax on the king’s chest, evoking an old Highland sorcerer’s ritual used to predict who next would die among all persons present in a room.

  The royal councilors merely looked at each other in bafflement, but the Earl of Ross retreated a step in alarm, having seen crazed Scot widows perform this pagan soothsaying incantation for troops on nights before battle.

  A dozen hands clutched at Belle, pummeling her to the floor. Wrestled away from the king, she shouted at him, “Burgh upon the sand!”

  His chest hairs singed, Longshanks lurched back in confusion.

  The guards threw Belle to the floor again. She rose clawing to her knees and screamed the rest of her death fey at the monarch, “I will outlive you! I will see Scotland freed of your tyranny! You will take your last breath in the burgh upon the sand! At that hour, God shall reveal on whose side He fights!”

  Longshanks staggered until he found his balance. He looked to his councilors for an explanation of the incoherent curse, but none dared offer one.

  Finally, the inquisitor Lagny broke the disconcerting silence. “The burgh upon on the sand, Majesty, can be none other than Jerusalem. The witch has just predicted that you will one day again take up the Cross in the Holy Land. Let us rejoice that you will live many more years.”

  Reassured by that exegesis, Longshanks laughed and raised his goblet in a toast to the women being dragged from his presence. “I vow that I will bring these heathen Scots to justice before I kneel at the Tomb of Our Lord.”

  THE WARDEN OF WINCHESTER DUNGEON rattled the bars of the cel
l. “Up with you, Scot. Priests to hear your confession.”

  Bishop Lamberton tried to stand and come forward, but the manacles on his legs restrained his movement. Through the haze, he saw the grille swing open and two hooded Augustinians enter the cell.

  The tallest monk handed a document to the warden who was lingering at the entry. “The confession is to be private, by order of Canterbury.”

  The warden slinked off in a huff, denied the chance to collect surveillance and hawk it for a few pence.

  Lamberton rattled his chains to chase them. “I’ll give my confession to the Devil before spilling to Longshanks’s spies!”

  The taller monk lowered his hood slightly.

  Lamberton blinked hard, not trusting his sight in the dim light.

  Peter d’Aumont, the Templar he had argued with in Paris, raised a finger to his lips and nodded toward the door where Jeanne de Rouen, the female student of Giles d’Argentin, stood watch. They stared at the bishop, stunned by his wasted condition.

  D’Aumont clasped the bishop’s feeble hand and, kneeling aside him, whispered, “Philip has ordered the arrest of every Templar in France. The Jerusalem and Paris Masters have been imprisoned in Chinon.”

  “Clement does not defend you?”

  “The pope is in cohorts with the French king. He affirmed the arrest order ex cathedra in Avignon. The commandery treasuries are being confiscated, and many of my brothers now endure unspeakable tortures.”

  Lamberton was surprised only because it had taken Philip this long to make his move on the Temple with the aid of nefarious influences in the Curia. “The Dominicans have finally played their hand.”

  D’Aumont checked the grille as he hung a purple stole around his neck to act out the confessional sacrament. While setting out the oils of the sacrament from his pouch, he revealed under his breath, “A few of us escaped.”

  Lamberton bowed to bring his ear closer to the report. “How many?”

  “Fifty from France,” d’Aumont whispered. “Another thirty from Tomar in Portugal. We pray as many from Spain.”

  “Has the edict been issued in London?”

  Jeanne hissed a warning as the warden walked past the cell.

  D’Aumont signed Lamberton’s forehead with the Cross. Assured that the grille was clear again, he continued his report. “The inquisitor Lagny has infiltrated the Plantagenet court. He presses for our arrests. London Temple has been placed under guard with royal troops.”

  “Longshanks may test you, but he won’t enforce the warrants. He despises Philip too much to do the French bidding. He also owes the Temple for past support.” Lamberton glanced at the grille. “But the Prince of Wales comes from a different kettle of fish. If the old man dies, you will be in grave danger.”

  D’Aumont eyes hooded with shame. “I was too blinded by pride to heed your warning in Paris. I ask your forgiveness … and beg your help.”

  The bishop displayed his chains. “What assistance could I offer you?”

  “Those brothers who escaped Phillip’s snares have set sail from La Rochelle. The French royal galleys are in hot pursuit. I must find refuge for them soon, or they will be captured. We have come to seek your blessing.”

  “Blessing?”

  “To hide in Scotland.”

  “There is no more Scotland. The English have the run of our castles. And I have heard nothing from Robert Bruce in over a year.”

  Jeanne abandoned her watch and hurried to the bishop’s side. “Perhaps we can serve as your eyes and ears. Our spies in London tell us that your king was last seen with the chieftain MacDonald near Arran.” She glanced at d’Aumont, uncertain if she should convey the next piece of news. “Your queen and the Countess of Buchan have been taken prisoner. Longshanks has ordered the countess displayed for ridicule in a cage above Berwick tower.”

  Shaken by that news, Lamberton whispered a prayer that the MacDuff lass would find the strength to survive her ordeal. He knew James and Robert had to be in dire straits if they had abandoned the women on their retreat to the Isles.

  The warden’s footsteps echoed down the stairwell again.

  D’Aumont and Jeanne waited for the bishop’s answer.

  Lamberton feared that if he conspired with these Templar emissaries to protect what remained of their Order, Philip would abstain from offering assistance from France, and the papal edict of excommunication that so tormented Robert would remain in force. He shook his head to indicate the futility of their hope. “The Bruce will never grant your request.”

  D’Aumont grasped the bishop’s hands to convey the depths of their desperation. “We ask only for time to plead our case. If your king is a fair man, he will see that we have been wronged by the pope, just as he has been wronged.”

  Lamberton studied the monk, marking the fervency in his sleep-denied eyes. He had long suspected these Templars of possessing evidence that the papacy wanted quashed, just as Rome had suppressed the Culdee testimonies of Christ’s presence in Britain. They were haughty in their ways, for certain, but if his dream of a nation honoring freedom of conscience was ever to take flight, then these monks deserved Scotland’s protection. Though not convinced about the wisdom of such a dangerous course, he finally nodded his assent to their sanctuary request, taking on the responsibility of trying to convince Robert Bruce of its justification if he ever gained his release.

  Eyes welling up in gratitude, D’Aumont pressed a kiss to the finger where the bishop’s ecclesial ring would have resided.

  Lamberton brought him back upright. “Avoid the Temple’s preceptory at Ballentradoch. Clifford will expect you to try for Sinclair’s lair. Kintyre is good country for laying low. There are hundreds of inlets and hidden harbors there.” He pinched the cross pattée on the Templar’s mantle. “And you should rid yourselves of these red crosses for a time.”

  “God be with you.”

  The two French imposters draped their heads with their cowls and slipped out through the grille. Making fast for the stairwell, Jeanne turned back on the first step. “Your scribe in Paris … did he ever learn to use the sword?”

  Smothering a smile, Lamberton shook his head, affecting regret and disappointment in his adopted son. “The lad had no skills for the military life. Should you ever encounter him again, it would profit you to coax him into a rematch.”

  PART TWO

  The Ax Descends

  1307—1314 A.D.

  James of Douglas, always bent on plots.

  — Vita Edwardi Secundi

  XXII

  ROBERT CARRIED TWO FLAGONS OF steaming ale to the rocky shore below Castle Tioram and offered one to James. “You needn’t keep a lookout.”

  Waving off the drink, James continued pacing the dunes surrounding Christiana Gamoran’s secluded islet. As he had done every morning for the past three months, he searched the watery horizon for the masts of Angus Og MacDonald’s galleys. Each passing day he spent trapped here made him more despondent. Buffeted by storms, Clifford had given up the chase across the Firth of Lorn and had thrown up a cordon of patrols around this narrow channel into Loch Moidart. As a result, the haggard survivors of Robert’s army, unable to forage sufficient provisions for the winter, had been forced to disperse across the Isles to survive on their own until spring, when the Bruce brothers would scour Ireland for more volunteers.

  “Chris’s scouts assure me that the English are anchored at Tobermory.”

  Plied again with the offer of drink, James refused it and turned his back on Robert in disgust. “I’m not worried about the English.”

  “What so vexes you, then?”

  “You’ve read the Iliad?”

  “One of my favorites.”

  “Then you know the misfortune a woman can cause a fighting man.”

  Robert followed James’s gaze of accusation toward Tioram’s tower, where Christiana, still in her night robes, stood watching them in the window. Finally taking the import of this line of questioning, Robert set his jaw and re
minded him, “We wouldn’t be alive without her.”

  “Do you forget you still have a wife?”

  Robert slung the second ale cup at him. “I’ll not be lectured on the sanctity of marriage! Not by one who asked me to break them for that MacDuff lass!”

  James kicked the empty flagon back at him. “Aye, you’re already damned to Hell by the pope. Why not make the best of it?”

  Robert leapt from the bluff and flattened James in the wet sand. They scuffled and traded punches as the waves crashed over them. Pressing his forearm against James’s chest, he demanded, “What would you have me do, damn you?”

  James heaved him aside and came back to his feet with fists clenched. “I’d have you remember how many men are dying while you sit here idling away in that soothsayer’s arms!”

  “I have no army!”

  “You have me! But not much longer!”

  Robert kicked sand at him. “Go then! What good have you been to me anyway? It is a king you address! Do you forget that?”

  “Aye, a king who rules from the bed of a mistress while his realm is being ransacked!”

  Robert was fast on his heels. “Abandon me, then! That’s what you’ve been planning all along! You accuse me of being blinded by a woman? Look at you! That MacDuff lass is all you talk about! Chris has maids. Take one to your bed.”

  James turned away to hide the hurt in his eyes. Ten lasses in his bed wouldn’t make him forget Belle—nor the fact that Robert had made him break his promise never again to abandon her. Whirling back to face him, he hit him in his most vulnerable spot, his insecurity. “Do you know why only five hundred men joined us at Methven?”

  Robert glanced aside, as if not believing the defense he was about to offer. “The summons was too hasty.”

  “Nay, it was because few trusted you to stay the course.”

  Robert reacted as if cut to the quick. “Stay the course? I have stayed the course! And the course you led me upon has brought me to this! A prisoner in my own kingdom!” He drew a deep breath to calm himself, allowing the heat between them to cool. “We must bide our time until we get more recruits. Clifford patrols every foot of Carrick and Galloway.”