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

by Glen Craney

  “Piers Gaveston is in league with the Dominicans,” Jeanne de Rouen said. “The friars have turned Caernervon against us. Your Bishop of St. Andrews languishes in Winchester dungeon. He told us to head west to Kintyre and the Isles.”

  “Lies!” Ledhouse shouted. “Lamberton would never aid these popish swine!”

  Sweenie circled the Templars while debating their claim. “Even if what they say is true, the Bruce will not sanction this. If he is discovered harboring heretics, the Church will never release him from excommunication.”

  “And if we let them live,” Ledhouse warned, “they’ll lead Clifford to us.”

  James twirled his dagger under d’Aumont’s nose. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to gut the arrogant Frenchman. He was about to dispatch him when a raven’s shriek shook the treetops—Christiana Gamoran’s enigmatic warning in the Arran cave came to his memory.

  Look to the blood crosses.

  He stared at the Templar mantles. Could these red insignias be the blood crosses that the clairvoyant Isleswoman had promised would one day show him the way to victory? He shook off the idea as ludicrous. How could these outlawed monks, notorious for being loyal only to what benefited their order, possibly help Scotland? His father had told stories of their treachery in the Holy Land. The Temple Master there had accepted bribes from the Saracens to raise the siege of Damascus and leave other Christians to die.

  No, he would not fall for their trickery. If Lamberton had sent them into the Borders with his blessing, he would have supplied them with a sign to confirm his patronage. On his signal, his men threw ropes over the limbs to string up the Templars.

  Jeanne stepped forward to be the first to die.

  James admired how his former tourney-field opponent had flowered into a ravishing woman, no longer able to hide her curves under her mantle. “I thought only men were allowed to join the Temple.”

  D’Aumont answered for her. “She is a Cistercienne. Attached to our commandery to assist in the education of the brothers.”

  James scoffed at that claim. “She educated you, all right. With the business end of a steel blade, just as she did me once.”

  Jeanne blanched in sudden recognition, only then making the connection between her former opponent in Paris and the legendary Scot raider she had heard tales about. “You are the Black Douglas?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  “I never expected to find you in the company of soldiers.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “Your bishop said you had turned out more suited for the monastery.”

  Regaled by laughter, James begrudged a sheepish smile. “Did he now?”

  Their raucous reaction to her observation confused Jeanne. “When I asked if you had continued with your martial study, the bishop said you had proven not cut out for the warring life. He also suggested that it would be to my advantage to challenge you again.”

  James chortled, nodding at what he knew was a confirmation of their claim; that clever quip carried the bishop’s imprimatur, for certain. Eager for a rematch, he cut the bindings on Jeanne’s wrists and threw a sword to her.

  Jeanne reddened, informed that she had been the brunt of a jest at the bishop’s behest. She returned the blade. “I was also told that the offer of shelter was an ancient tradition in your land. If you cannot see it in your heart to give us refuge, I will not fight you for it to provide amusement.” She stepped in front of d’Aumont and brought James’s dagger to her slender throat, daring him to follow through with his threat.

  James maintained his threatening glower, but she did not waver. Then, another warning from the past rang in his ear: The women of your land must prove stronger than the men of your enemy. This French lass possessed more courage than any of these monks who rode with her. He severed the bindings on the wrists of her fellow Templars, then cut a swath from his own surcoat and gave her the shred of cloth embroidered with his clan’s crest. “Show this to any who threaten you with harm.”

  His raiders shook their heads in disgust, forced to stand down. The Templars, stunned by the reprieve, mounted quickly and headed north.

  Galloping with them, Jeanne halted several lengths away. She split off from her comrades and doubled back to James. After a hesitation, she whispered, “The lady held in Berwick … I have heard it said that she is your woman.”

  “Aye.”

  She cantered a few steps off to lead him farther away from his men. “Our spies in London tell us that Edward plans to visit Roxburgh on the fortnight. The queen and his favourite will accompany him. He has ordered the towers festooned to his meet his taste in fashion.”

  “Thank you for the surveillance about Caernervon’s weakness for fine furnishings,” James said sarcastically, giving little care to the fact that prissy monarch would be visiting yet another of the strongly defended Borders castles.

  Jeanne looked fiercely into his eyes to drive home the import of her report. “Half of Roxburgh’s garrison is to be redeployed in neighboring towns to make room for Edward’s bloated entourage. It is also rumored …” She hesitated again, as if debating whether she should finish.

  James was suddenly more interested. “Go on.”

  “The king intends to bring your countess in her cage to Roxburgh. To further humiliate you and the Bruce.”

  James nodded to her in gratitude, realizing that he had been too hasty in dismissing the information. When she reined up to leave, he made a strike for her sword, but she deftly parried his thrust. He grinned, remembering that quick maneuver. “I’m not certain I could have taken you.”

  “I’ve had little time for practice.”

  “You still owe me a rematch.”

  “I pray we both live long to see that wish granted.”

  He had expected to be answered by the same old brashness that he had witnessed from her on the tourney field in Paris, but he found only despair in her face. He squeezed her hand to instill her with hope. “When you reach Kintyre, ask for Christiana of the Isles. She is not particularly fond of me, but she has a compassionate heart. She’ll not turn you away.”

  “Do you know what they’re saying about you in London?”

  “Whatever it is,” he said with a smirk, “I suspect it’s not fit for a lady’s ears.”

  “Mothers sing lullabies warning their children that the Black Douglas will come take them if they misbehave. You have all of England in a fret. Wagering parlors on Market Street are even taking coin on when you will raid York.”

  “What odds are they offering?”

  “Two to one, within the year.”

  “Maybe you should have laid some of your Templar gold on the table.”

  “If I placed a bet, it would be on Roxburgh, not York.”

  James grinned at her confidence that he could carry off the seemingly impossible task of rescuing Belle. He sent her on her way with a slap to her horse’s flanks. After lingering on her as she rode off, he turned to find his men confronting him with frowns. “You lads have a grievance with me?”

  Ledhouse stepped forward. “Some of us think you’ve gone soft. Every time a lass shows up, we seem to get the worst of it.”

  James locked onto the blacksmith in a match of glares. “Speak what’s on your mind.”

  Ledhouse spat a phlegm wad at James’s feet. “We could be setting Northumbria and Yorkshire aflame, but instead you keep us holed up in this forest for months while you scheme to save Buchan’s wife. Now you let these Templars ride off in with their French whore to report our position to Clifford.”

  The Trinity brothers drew their swords and came standing aside James, prepared to defend him.

  James shoved the mutinous blacksmith back from breathing down his neck. “You and me, Ledhouse. Leave the others out of it.”

  Ledhouse ran his fingers down the buttons of James’s jerkin in an old Highland challenge. “I don’t give a damn if you are the king’s drinking mate.” He swung his Lochaber ax and narrowly missed James�
�s shoulder. “When I’m finished with you, I’m going after those feckin’ monks who killed my brother.”

  On the ridge, Jeanne and the Templars had turned on hearing the shouts. They delayed their departure to watch the fight between the two Scots.

  XXVIII

  FORCED TO KEEP MOVING TO avoid freezing, Belle crawled to the far corner of the cage and turned her back against the night’s shifting wind. As she had done each night for the past four years, she pulled herself to standing and offered a prayer of gratitude to St. Bride for allowing her to survive another day. This time, however, she knifed back to her knees, too weak to sing the defiant ballad that she always offered up to bless the setting sun.

  The English townsfolk attributed her survival in such harsh conditions to witchery. But in truth, Caernervon had become so determined to keep her alive as a hostage that he had secretly ordered two concessions made to her confinement: She had been given an extra woolen blanket, and once a week, veiled nuns were allowed to enter the cage to bathe her. The townspeople had become so accustomed to her hovering presence that now they mostly ignored her.

  This eve, the guard arrived tardy as usual with her gruel. “Special treat, wench. A bit of Bruce’s flesh in it.” He slung the slop at her feet.

  She sniffed the wretched pulp and fired it back at him. “You English don’t know lion flank from hen meat. It tastes like Caernervon’s breast. Perfumed and tenderized from too much handling.”

  The guard rattled the prongs of her cage with his pike. “You may be wasted to the bone, but you still wag a fat tongue. I’m guessing by your sass you ain’t heard what happened to your Scot rooster.”

  She crawled closer. “You have news of James Douglas?”

  The guard grinned at her desperation. “He’s dead as that rat in your stew.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  The guard was amused by her plunge into despair. Only when she turned away, unwilling to be the object of his torment, did he finish his report. “One of our spies saw your fancy get into a scrap. He was gutted like a perch by another Scottie named Ledhouse. There’s a fine end for him. Won’t be long before your King Hob gets the same treatment.”

  Ledhouse.

  She raked her memory. Hadn’t she heard the English fishermen curse that name? The report rang horribly true. She looked west for some sign from the heavens to negate Jamie’s death, but her eyes had so weakened that she could no longer make out even the ships coming up the Tweed. Of all the maladies she suffered, this was the cruelest. The first three years had been tolerable only because she could watch the horizon for Jamie. But now, all that appeared to her distant field of vision was a blur of greens and browns. She looked up at the ceiling for solace from her only friend.

  The spider’s web was empty.

  She frantically searched the cage. The spider had miraculously survived three winters with her, appearing again each spring to spin another home in the corner of the cage. She had always sensed that its return held a mystical connection with Jamie. Below her, the market din in the city had quieted with the onset of night, and she could hear the townspeople reveling in a celebration near the sparks of a bonfire in the square. She cocked her ear toward a woman’s voice that sang out from one of the corbelled houses on the bluffs:

  “Hush ye, hush ye,

  little child ye,

  do not fret ye,

  no more can

  the Black Douglas

  come and get ye.”

  Hope for Jamie’s arrival was all that had sustained her. Now, even that had been wrenched away. She curled her legs into her chest, too distraught to maintain the façade of courage. On the tower above her, she heard the guards placing bets on what hour they would find her dead.

  SEATED AT THE FAR END OF the royal table in Roxburgh’s great hall, Queen Isabella made a silent wager on how long it would take for her temperamental husband to erupt with his usual explosion of childish rage. She guessed it would be within the minute, given how Tabhann Comyn was now edging up next to the king, nudging him like a wet-nosed hound and demanding an answer to the same question that he had been blathering the entire night.

  “You are certain Douglas was killed?”

  Caernervon ignored the annoying Scot and applauded the next course of his birthday feast being carried in. “Cockentrice!” He squeezed Gaveston’s hand with excitement. “What a marvelous surprise, Piers!”

  Isabella turned aside to hide the flush in her cheeks. She dared not reveal her grief at the news of James’s death, not even to Gloucester. Although there was no reason to doubt the Templar informant’s account, Caernervon had ordered him racked to confirm his veracity. Under torture, the monk had insisted that he saw the Black Douglas fall under the ax of another man in his troop.

  She fought back a tear for James as she looked down the table. Tabhann, forced to endure yet another of Caernervon’s drunken theatrical fetes, was tapping his fingers with simmering impatience. After his Inverurie defeat two years ago, the Comyn chieftain had taken asylum here with the English court to press for renewal of the Scotland campaign while his cousin Cam remained in the North, trying to rally their scattered allies. The Bruces were burning every Comyn castle and barn in Fife, and Tabhann warbled on incessantly that if he did not return soon with English reinforcements, there would be nothing left of his domains to salvage. But her husband, she knew, would not move without Gaveston, and the royal favourite, recently installed as the Earl of Cornwall, saw no reason now to endure the hardships of the Scot frontier.

  She scooted her chair to gain a better vantage of Thomas Lancaster and the other barons who had been commanded to attend to this feast, ostensibly to honor the king’s birthday, but in truth to put their loyalty to the test. On this night, she sensed a heightened tension in the hall. Clifford seemed more edgy than usual as he patrolled the outer walkway surrounding the tower. The sentinels had been doubled, a precaution against the danger created by the removal of half the garrison to Jedburgh to make room for the festivities. She noticed that with each pass, Clifford peered through the window at Lancaster, who in turn met the officer’s eyes coldly.

  This time on the officer’s circuit, the scullion serving the king also returned Clifford’s furtive glance. Clifford nodded to the server and then swiveled his gaze toward Lancaster, who seemed to answer him with a half smile.

  Throughout these enigmatic exchanges, Tabhann, oblivious, continued to prattle on. “My lord, your own officer told me he harbors doubts about—”

  Caernervon threw a ladle of gravy at the Comyn chieftain to shut him up. “If I am required to suffer your presence, Scotsman, do me the privilege of leaving off with the incessant nagging! I am finally rid of this Douglas miscreant! And I intend to celebrate!”

  After calming Caernervon with a peck on the cheek, Gaveston aimed his carving knife at Tabhann. “Persist in perturbing the king, Comyn, and we will feed your boiled tongue to your wife.” The Gascon made a motion with his head toward the ramparts. “Shouldn’t you be out there comforting her? I can arrange for you to spend the night in her lodgings.”

  Tabhann was too stupefied to wipe the gravy from his shirt.

  With the pesky Scot finally silenced, Isabella turned her attention back to the kitchen entry and the scullion who had just dished the king’s victuals. The man careened clumsily, nearly dropping the empty tray while displaying all the grace and refinement of a chimneysweep. For surveillance purposes, she had made it her practice to know every member of the royal staff, and she found it odd that an inexperienced newcomer would be added to the kitchen retinue for such an important occasion. She locked onto the ham-handed cretin and saw him shoot another nervous glance at Clifford who, standing outside, looked through the passageway window as Gaveston was dished a slice from the roasted pig.

  “I’ve not tasted such divinity since Paris!” Gaveston purred, nuzzling Edward’s cheek. “Did you change your cookery staff as I asked, Poppie?”

  The king nodded whi
le he stuffed his mouth with creamed dates.

  Isabella saw Lancaster wave the wine steward aside for a better view of the chattering Gascon. The choleric earl, ascetic in personal tastes, rarely touched spirits or wine, but on this night he was indulging freely. How strange, she thought. The baron had made no secret of his hatred for the king’s favourite. And yet now Lancaster was calm and good-humored, as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He even seemed to be enjoying the wisecracks that Gaveston hurled at every hapless person who came within his sight.

  The new scullion returned again from the kitchen, this time with a platter of basted deer steak. When it was presented to the royal table, Caernervon ignored the offering and instead stuck his nose into Gaveston’s serving. “You’ve convinced me, Piers. I must have some of your spiced piglet.” The king dug his knife into Gaveston’s plate and extracted a steaming slither of pork.

  The waiting scullion turned toward Lancaster with a look of alarm.

  The earl lost his expectant smile as Caernervon brought the loaded knife to his drooling mouth. Lancaster signaled the servant with a sharp thrust of his chin—and the scullion dropped his tray into the king’s lap.

  JAMES CROUCHED AT THE FOOT of Roxburgh’s walls and counted the lit tapers on the crenellations above him. He had gained a stealthy approach with his time-tested tactic of walking in the middle of a herd of cattle. The castle appeared less heavily garrisoned than usual, just as the French lass with the Templars had predicted. He nodded for McClurg to pass the word to the other men.

  They would make the attempt.

  His plan to rescue Belle depended upon the success of two tasks. The first had already been accomplished. Months earlier, he had contrived a ruse to be acted out whenever they encountered the English on raids: Ledhouse would incite a fight and feign killing him. He and his raiders had even choreographed the blows to make their struggle appear more realistic. During their ambush of the Templars, he had sensed that one of the monks was disloyal to d’Aumont. The traitorous Templar, taking the bait, had reported his contrived death to Caernervon in the hope of being given sanctuary.