by Glen Craney
Dearest John,
I have not slept a night since your proposal. My father does not look with favor upon our arrangement. He holds you wanting in the qualities essential for a soldier and believes you best suited for the clergy in temperament and resources. I protested this harsh indictment, but he has relented only in degree by agreeing to a probationary period, with a condition that I fear will prove too costly for the reward. I have just learned that, as a test of your fortitude, he has arranged for you to serve under Robert Clifford, a man whose reputation here is less than honorable. The assignment is to hold a certain keep in the Scot borders for one year. If you succeed in that task, my father has promised to grant his permission for our marriage. My confidantes in the court warn that this is tantamount to a denial at best and a death sentence at worst. The tower was captured from a Scotsman named Douglas who, by all accounts, is a savage bent on bloody revenge. I beg you not to accept this challenge, for I would sooner have you alive in another’s arms than dead because of me.
Yours in love, Rosylann
James stared at the letter, astonished that his Galloway raids had spawned such a reputation for him all the way to—
The zing of a blade startled him.
He turned to find an English knight standing at the door. He cursed his failure to check the courtyard again. When the intruder did not make a move to attack, he warned him, “You are in my home.”
The Englishman only then identified the Scotsman he now confronted. He tried to maintain a defiant stance, but his trembling hand betrayed his fear. “It may be your home, but it has been put in my charge.” He saw the letter in James’s hand. “Is it your practice to plunder private correspondence?”
James reread the name “Webton” on the address. “I do when the recipient serves a king who seeks to destroy my country.”
Webton glanced toward the window, but saw no sign of Clifford returning. Ashen-faced, he admitted, “I have no hope of taking you, but I must try.”
James kept the man in the corner of his eye while he studied the signature on the letter. “Tell me of your lass.”
Webton blinked with affront. “What is that to you?”
“She claims to know me. Enough, at least, to slander me.”
Webton was denied in his attempt to retrieve the letter. “She is the Earl of Sussex’s daughter. That is more than you are entitled to know.”
James paced the room, watching for a threatening lunge. “How long?”
“Until what?”
“Your year is attained.”
Humiliated, Webton cast his eyes down. “On the morrow.”
James dragged up a chair, causing the skittish officer to flinch from the screech of its legs. He sat at the writing table. Gripping his ax with his left hand, he dipped a quill into the inkstand while keeping Webton in his periphery. When he had finished writing on the back of the letter, he refolded it and kicked another chair toward his opponent.
Bewildered, Webton asked him, “Am I your prisoner?”
“Sit with me awhile.”
Webton warily took the chair across the table.
They sat together in tense silence while James watched the window for Clifford’s return. As the minutes passed, every happy moment that he had spent in this tower came back to him. The first time he had laid eyes on Belle in the vale below, she had lifted him to his feet and had spurred him on during the race. Would he have won this ax if not for her help? Would she be suffering in that cage now if he had not stalked her along that burn out there? A man caught in this cracked world, it seemed, was nothing but a stone tumbling down a glen, striking others in its path until all were cast into the abyss. Once lost, a stone never returns to the top of the mountain.
Were the best times of his life now behind him?
AT MIDNIGHT, THE BELLS OF St. Bride’s kirk rang out from the village in the vale. James stood and, without offering a word of his intention, walked into the great hall. He retrieved a torch from the wall sconce and threw it on the pile of smashed furniture. The panels quickly erupted in flames. When the fire was sufficiently seeded, he retreated down the staircase, too overcome to look back.
Webton followed him out to the bailey, uncertain what was happening.
James mounted the Englishman’s horse. “In return for your life, will you grant me a small favor?”
Webton hesitated, suspicious. “I’ll not betray my oath to my king.”
James handed him his lady’s letter. “See to it that this is sent to London.” Followed by the two mastiffs, he rode off before the Englishman could protest the unseemly arrangement.
Left alone inside the castle, Webton opened the letter and read what James had written on its reverse side:
To the Earl of Sussex,
On this day, 30 April in the year of our Lord 1307, Sir John Webton subdued me and held me prisoner in the defense of Castle Douglas. In compliance with his command, I have rendered this account of the incident. I beseeched him not to fire the tower, but he chose to destroy it rather than leave it to the capture of my men, as would I have done had the circumstances been reversed. My only solace in this unhappy affair is the knowledge that England sends incompetent men such as Robert Clifford to command their armies instead of stalwart officers such as Lord Webton.
James of Douglas
A HUNDRED MILES EAST OF Douglasdale, the citizens of Berwick crowded along the banks of the Tweed to witness the unthinkable scene. In the river’s swirling currents, their new king swam naked and cavorted with Piers Gaveston, who only a week earlier had rushed across the Channel from Brittany. For the two men to indulge their passion for swimming in private was scandalous enough; skill in floating, after all, was a vice inspired by the Devil. But to engage in such behavior under the very public gaze of the Dominican inquisitor Lagny could only be explained as the wanton fruit of sinful pride.
On the Northumbrian side of the river, the most powerful earl in England, Thomas Lancaster, sat mounted in ceremonial garb, accompanied by a hundred knights. He had been forced to wait for more than an hour, a snub that even the lowliest peasant understood. The last of the high lords to recognize Caernervon’s succession had finally come north to give homage, a condition for reclaiming his forfeited lands of Lincoln, Salisbury, and Leicester. Yet Lancaster refused to be brought completely prostrate. As the leader of those barons who had schemed to weaken the monarchy, he drew the line at bending knee on ground stolen by the Plantagenets with illegal royal levies. For this reason, the earl would not cross into once-Scottish Berwick, and instead had insisted that Caernervon travel the paltry distance of the river’s breadth to meet him.
In the river, Gaveston, who had convinced the king to make Lancaster wait in penance for his initial recalcitrance, splashed playfully and pulled his royal lover’s feet underwater to steal a kiss.
Edward surfaced in a panic. “Have you taken leave of your wits?” He looked toward the horizon to see if Lancaster had witnessed the indiscretion. “I should never have allowed you to talk me into this.”
Gaveston whipped his long black hair behind his head and waved contemptuously at the haughty baron he so despised. “Black Dog of Arden!” he screamed at the morose-tempered Lancaster. “Your king commands you to bark!”
Edward saw Lancaster staring down his long nose at them, pecking and bobbing like a snorting basilisk. “Look at him! He gives me the Evil Eye!”
Gaveston loved to mimic the earl’s quirky mannerism; this enraged reaction was precisely what he had hoped to elicit with his taunts. He shouted even louder so that all of Lancaster’s courtiers could hear. “I’m looking forward to our next tournament! How many months has it been since I wiped Nottingham field with your hairy ass?”
“Don’t stir his bile!” Edward begged. “I must deal with him on the treasury.”
Gaveston flipped onto his back in imitation of Lancaster’s fall during their last jousting match. “What can he do to you?”
“He conspires with Gloucester an
d Warwick to force the ordinances on me!”
“What ordinances?”
Caernervon swam farther down river, hoping to escape Lancaster’s spiteful gaze. “The barons are scheming to take control of my purse.”
“Cretins!” Gaveston shouted. “Blood-sucking beasts!”
“Piers … do you truly believe I am king?”
Gaveston swam closer to embrace him. “Not that again.”
“The rumors persist that I am not my father’s son.”
“Lancaster pays his broadsheet hacks to spread those lies.”
“They all find me repugnant. The commoners won’t even touch me for the scrofula cure. I am told the monks at Canterbury have discovered precious oil in the crypts there. The Virgin appeared to Becket and offered it to him to be used for miracles. I have petitioned the Holy Father to allow me to be consecrated again with the oil. Perhaps then the people will accept me.”
“That papist puppet in Avignon will demand a pretty compensation for that crock of magic piss,” Gaveston predicted. “Clement favors France in the present diplomacy.”
Beset by a host of worries, Caernervon climbed to the bank and retrieved his robe. Drying himself, he looked toward the tower in the distance where Belle’s cage swayed in the wind. “That witch is the cause of my misfortune! She cursed my father! Now she has blackened me! I should send her to the stake!”
Gaveston climbed out of the river and waved off that idea. “Death would only strengthen her powers.”
Caernervon pulled at his own hair, powerless to enhance his standing with both the commoners and the lords, “To the Devil’s dungeon with them all!”
Gaveston rested against a tree and watched a line of wood mites march from a rotten root toward the river. When Caernervon came closer to see what had caught his attention, the Gascon drew a circle that intersected the path of the mites. To Caernervon’s astonishment, the insects inside the circle refused to cross the imaginary border. Gaveston enjoyed the king's reaction to the magic and, with an evil smile, directed his lover’s gaze toward Berwick tower. “If that Scotswoman truly is a witch, perhaps you should learn from her and adopt the methods she used to bring down your father.”
“You mean …” Caernervon turned a glance of alarm toward the inquisitor conferring with Lancaster beyond the river. “Conspire with demons?”
Gaveston gathered two flat stones and a burnt twig at the river’s edge. On one stone, he sketched a caricature of Lancaster, and on the other he drew the image of an ax. Mumbling an incantation, he smashed the stones together and looked toward Lancaster. “He’ll meet the edge of a blade soon enough.”
Caernervon was stunned. “You’ve learned to cast the glamour?”
“My mother taught me the art when I was a lad.” Gaveston became uncharacteristically solemn, darkened by the memory. “She was an Albigensee. The Dominicans”—he shot a sneer at the observant inquisitor—“forced me to stand at the pyre and watch her burn.”
“What other sorcery do you know?”
Gaveston led the king away from the banks and to a wooded spot near a bend in the river. There they knelt together on a smooth boulder above a still pool. The Gascon stared at the water for nearly a minute. Suddenly, he pointed at the king’s reflection. “Keep your eyes on your spirit!”
Caernervon meditated on his image floating in the water. After several moments of his intense concentration, his face faded from sight. He erupted to his feet, blinking, astonished by the magic. “I’ve disappeared!”
Gaveston chose not to reveal to the gullible king that one’s eyes lose their focus after staring on an object too long. “The angels have erased your past. You are free to create your future. Scry the mirror of the world for what you wish.”
Caernervon whispered aloud his heart’s desires. “Lancaster ascends the scaffold. Warwick and Gloucester follow him. I see us together always in London court. But how can that be?”
“What prevents it?”
“That damnable French she-cur that my father forced on me as queen. She will accuse me of avoiding her bed to provoke Parliament to humiliate me.”
Gaveston stared at the currents for so long that Caernervon feared he had fallen into a trance. Suddenly, the Gascon grasped his lover’s head to aim his gaze. “Do you not see it?”
Caernervon frantically searched the water. “See what?”
“Isabella is on a ship to France. Look! She holds a document and is crying.”
“A divorce! I am to have a divorce! But how?”
Gaveston cocked his ear to better hear the spirits speak to him. “You must petition the Holy Father.”
“But Clement is under Philip’s thrall. What could I possibly offer the Church for release from my vows?”
Closing his eyes, Gaveston reached a hand into the swirling water and pulled out a reddish stone shaped like a splayed cross. “It must be a sign.”
Caernervon caressed the stone as if it were a precious relic. “The Templars.”
“That’s it! They are telling you to arrest the scheming monks!”
“But the Temple has always supported our cause.”
Gaveston stroked the king’s chest. “Philip has confiscated their commanderies in France. If the French king is also allowed to gain the monies in the London Temple, he will strengthen his armies, and you will suffer an odious defeat. Do you not see the divine answer? This solves all of your problems. The Holy Father will look kindly upon your petition for divorce. The Temple’s funds will free you from domination by the barons. And we shall forever be together, without the shadowing presence of that Frenchwoman.”
Caressing the stone, Caernervon suddenly made up his mind. “Yes, send the order to London.”
Gaveston rewarded him with a kiss. But then, the Gascon turned away, his eyes hooded in sadness.
Overjoyed at the prospects of finally being rid of Isabella, Caernervon could not understand why Gaveston had suddenly become downcast. “Tell me, Poppie. What is wrong?”
Gaveston choked back tears. “Lancaster and the other lords despise me so. I can no longer bear their shaming. Mayhaps they are right. I am not worthy to be with you.”
“I am king! And I say who is worthy and who is not!”
Gaveston stifled sobs. “If only I were equal to them in rank. I wish they could not treat me so basely.”
The king grasped him by the shoulders. “I was waiting to tell you this eve when we supped. I have decided to name you Earl of Cornwall!”
Ecstatic, Gaveston embraced the king. As they hugged, the Gascon looked across the river and, making certain that Edward did not see his gesture, nodded furtively to the inquisitor Lagny on the far bank.
XXVI
THE SURLY STARES OF FORMER comrades accosted Thomas Randolph as he galloped into the northern Bruce encampment below Inverurie. After being captured during the Methven ambush two years ago, he had been forced by the English to choose between execution and swearing allegiance to the Plantagenet. Yet none of these Scots now surrounding him were moved by his plight, for most still mourned kinsmen who had accepted death rather than break fealty to the cause of independence. Despite this hostile greeting, he held his head high and insisted, “I must speak with the king.”
Edward Bruce dragged his nephew from the horse. “Say your piece to me.”
“I gave an oath. I must present myself to your brother.”
“An oath to whom?”
“Jamie Douglas. He captured me in Lanarkshire. As a condition for my release, he ordered me to come north and accept the king’s judgment.”
The men gathered around Randolph, heartened to hear that James was not only alive but thriving well enough to take prisoners.
Neil Campbell asked him, “How goes it for Douglas?”
“By the looks of it, better than it goes for you,” Randolph said. “He harries Lanark at will. He even burned down his own home rather than let Clifford to use it for raids.”
Campbell was shocked. “He left Castle Dougl
as in ruins?”
“Aye, and that’s the least of his mischief. He fed Clifford the flesh of his own guards. Cooked it up himself in his own stepmother’s kitchen.”
The men whistled at the first good news heard from the South in months.
Lennox shouted over them, “I hope he sent a tasty sampling from the Douglas Larder to Caernervon! By God, our Jamie’s making a name for himself!”
“A name cursed on every crossroads from Yorkshire to Bristol,” Randolph added. “The English are now calling him the Black Douglas.”
Boyd slammed a fist into his palm in delight. “Did you hear that, lads? The Black Douglas! We could use some of Jamie’s black art up here, eh!”
In the midst of this celebration that seemed fueled by desperation, Randolph saw that Edward Bruce, alone of all the men, was not buoyed by the report of Douglas’s success. The hotheaded Edward had never hid his suspicion that Douglas was scheming to carve out his own kingdom in the South.
Pulled away from the others, Randolph listened with growing alarm as Edward described the calamity that had just befallen this army. At the height of their assault on the Comyn stronghold of Invurerie, Robert had been struck down by a mysterious illness that locked his limbs in a catatonic trembling. The sight of him being carried frothing and unconscious from the field had so unnerved the volunteers that Edward had been forced to lift the two-week siege. The Comyns, whose defenses were only hours from collapse, had been gifted with a miraculous reprieve.
Yet what Randolph heard next stunned him even more. Many of the men, Edward admitted, blamed this reversal on divine retribution for Robert’s failure to honor his promise to hold off on the Comyns until Douglas could come north and join the attack. All Scots knew that Douglas had a score to settle with Tabhann. The Bruces had been freed to cut a swath of vengeance through the western Highlands only because Douglas had kept Clifford pinned down in the Borders. During these past months, Robert had marched his army over the snow-capped peaks of the Great Glen and had captured John of Lorne, the MacDougall chieftain who had handed over their brothers for execution, and the Earl of Ross, the traitor who had sold out the women at Tain to the English. The last obstacle to Robert’s consolidation of Fife and Buchan now stood behind those walls in the distance. If the Bruces could take Inverurie, they would at last be free to march south and confront the English.
