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

by Glen Craney

  As Sweenie crawled alone beyond the smoke to survey the valley, the men stared at the little monk, wondering if he had lost his wits under the strain. Below him, the English archbishop was leading his canons and burghers across the bridge as if on a Good Friday procession. Come on, sweet cherubs. Your heavenly reward awaits you. He waited until the last of the English militia had followed the canons to the near side of the river, and then he stood up in the high grass and shouted, “Who’s the holiest saint that ever walked this isle?”

  The archbishop fixed a banishing eye on the black-streaked demon. When the incubus would not dissolve back into the smoke, the cleric held up his towering crucifix for protection and answered the impudent challenge, “St. Michael!”

  Sweenie rejected that suggestion by turning a back flip and demanding again, “Nay! Who’s the holiest saint ever walked this isle?”

  The archbishop was not accustomed to having his theological authority questioned, particularly by an evil sprite in front of his canons. He tried again: “St. George, may he protect us!”

  Sweenie leapt into the air again and smacked his feet together. “Nay!”

  Now in a tempestuous snit, the archbishop marched toward the blaspheming cretin. “Damn you to Hell! Who then?”

  Sweenie ran at the oncoming clerics and screamed, “St. Finian!”

  Hearing the prearranged signal for the attack, McKie, McClurg and the other Scots shot forward through the smoke and fog. Half naked and painted like savage Picts, they emerged from the burning brush shouting at the top of their lungs. When they reached the clearing, they found only priests arrayed against them.

  The two bizarre armies stopped, confused, and stood staring at each other.

  Sweenie broke the brittle silence by resuming his sprint toward the archbishop and shouting, “St. Finian was a Scot! And it’s a Scot saint come to take you to Judgment this day!” He glanced over his shoulder and laughed as his volunteers charged down the hill and cut down the first ranks of canons.

  The archbishop suddenly lost faith in the certainty of God’s protection. He dropped his crucifix and fought a path back through his frightened charges in a frantic dash back to the bridge. Left without their spiritual leader, his canons abandoned their weapons and followed him in the retreat, careening into the burghers who were just then trying to cross the swale. Those in the rear of the hightailing mob had to jump into the river to avoid being slaughtered. The currents became filled with so many floating monk robes that the river resembled a rushing stream of lily pads.

  WHILE JAMES WAITED FOR THE last of his mounted troop to ford the river, he heard the distant screams of battle through the fog. He was about to offer up a prayer for Sweenie and his martyred volunteers in the rear guard when he spied a white robe floating downstream.

  Randolph circled back. “We’d best head north with all speed. Sweenie and the lads won’t hold them off for long.”

  More robes came bobbing past, and it occurred to James that he had never seen Caernervon’s troops wearing white burrel mantles. He dismounted and waded in to retrieve one of the robes. Below it, he found the body of a tonsured priest. He leapt on his horse and raced back toward Myton Bridge. As the fog and smoke lifted, painted savages came running at him dragging bundles filled with gold plates and chalices. A black-faced gargoyle prodded up a prisoner with an archbishop’s staff. Across the river, the surviving canons ran toward York clad only in their undergarments.

  The backtracking Scot raiders howled with joy at discovering Sweenie’s victory. They leapt down from their mounts and raised the little monk on their shoulders to parade him across the smoking field.

  Randolph brought the monk eye to eye with James, and observed with a smirk, “I’d say you owe the Wee-Kneed a ballad.”

  James recognized their prisoner. “You’ve hooked a rare fish, Sweenie! This is William Ayreminne! Caernervon’s Keeper of the Rolls!”

  The English captive grimaced at hearing his identity revealed.

  James lifted the man’s lowered chin with his blade. “Where is your queen, Roll Keeper?” Refused an answer, James nodded for McKie to noose the Englishman’s neck and lift him by leveraging the rope across a saddle pommel.

  The gagging prisoner squealed, “The river!”

  James ordered him dropped. “Your next flight will be to your Maker.”

  Clutching at the rope under his chin, the prisoner gasped, “The archbishop sent her by barge to York!”

  James rushed his raiders south along the banks of the Swale, desperate to catch Isabella before she could be sailed to safety. Dusk was falling when he climbed the last hill and caught glimpse of York’s impressive ramparts. A barge lit by torches was being rowed feverishly toward the city’s river gate. He counted no more than ten men defending the tower. Just as he had predicted, Caernervon had siphoned off the garrison to be used in the attack on Berwick.

  He galloped along the banks in search of a ford, calculating that the precious cargo would reach the portcullis within the hour. Then, he saw a lady emerge from a pavilion on the barge. Surrounded by armed guards, she turned toward him with a look of desperation. He squinted to increase his sight. It had been ten years since he had last seen her. Could that woman truly be Isabella? She appeared fuller in figure than he remembered, but her azure blue eyes still burned bright in her face. He began removing his boots.

  Randolph tried to restrain him. “Even if you could swim it, we’re already a day behind. If we don’t turn north now, we’ll not make it back.”

  Shaking off his hand, James leapt from his saddle and dived into the water.

  THE GALLOWS ATOP YORK'S KEEP had been set high enough for the draw and quartering to be seen from afar. On this morning, after attending a celebratory Mass in the minster, Caernervon led the finest procession held in England since the celebration of his father’s victory in Wales. Behind him, his prize prisoner was dragged from the tower and marched down the street in chains while the crowds roared and threw garlands of black roses in mocking tribute.

  Caernervon finally reached the execution site and took his viewing seat. Isabella, at his side, turned away, unwilling to watch the grisly ordeal. As the throngs chanted “Edward” and offered up grateful hosannas to him for capturing the Black Douglas, the executioner waited for his signal to commence.

  Smiling, he milked the grand moment, for he knew that these recalcitrant barons below him would now be required to give back all the rights that he had been forced to relinquish in their damnable Ordinances. When the cheers reached their crescendo, he stood from his throne to accept the accolades. One flick of his hand and the man who had so plagued him—

  “My lord! A force approaches!”

  In the saddle, Caernervon roused from his drowsy revelry. He looked toward the blackened Northumbrian valley and saw a fast-moving band of horsemen coming at him amid a cloud of dust.

  Was that not the three-starred shield of robin’s egg blue on the herald?

  “Douglas!” the king shouted. “At once, upon him before he escapes!”

  As his knights galloped hell-bent toward the trapped Scots, Caernervon joined them in the lead, glancing back at Despenser with a toothy grin of anticipation. All was falling into place, just as he had planned. When Douglas and his raiders had been reported rushing north from York, he had convinced Lancaster to abandon the Berwick siege and move west to cut the Scots off before they reached the border. Of course, some credit went to his vapid French wife, who had unwittingly forwarded a piece of invaluable intelligence. Her last letter mentioned that a captured spy had revealed under torture that Douglas intended to return along the coast to the Solway Firth. Armed with that timely gift, he had sent Lancaster to encircle Douglas and drive him into their pincers.

  At last, the stain of Bannockburn would be erased.

  The cloud of dust came closer, and Caernervon, drawing his sword, spurred to the glorious confrontation. The dust settled and the banners became more distinct. Those were not silver stars,
but red roses. Baffled, he slowed to a halt as the two converging forces came into sight of each other.

  The lead knight in the oncoming van removed his helmet. “Well?”

  Lancaster?

  Caernervon lurched up in the saddle. “Where is Douglas?”

  Thomas Lancaster searched the grassy fields around them. “You were to chase him to me.”

  “No, you were to chase him to me!” Caernervon cried. “Tell me you have not lost him.”

  Lancaster narrowed his beady eyes. “I never had him!”

  An officer in the king’s guard pointed toward the far scarp of the Pennines, nearly a league away. There a line of horsemen rode rapidly along the horizon, heading north. Above the fleeing column flew a banner with a blue shield and three silver stars.

  Caernervon circled his mount around Lancaster in an apoplectic fit. “Treasonous scapegrace! You have allowed Douglas to escape!”

  Lancaster’s face pinched with suppressed rage. “Had you heeded my counsel, we would have Berwick fully defended and impregnable by now!”

  A courier galloped up from the south. “My lord! The queen!”

  Caernervon stood in his stirrups, frantically scanning the distant column of escaping Scots. “My God! Has she been captured?”

  “She is safe behind York’s walls, my lord,” the courier assured him.

  Caernervon closed his eyes in relief. Although he would gladly be rid of Isabella, a Scot ransom for her return would have ruined him.

  “She sent me to find you, Sire,” the courier explained.

  “What in Hell’s name does she want now?”

  “She begs you weigh with due skepticism the surveillance that she mentioned in her previous correspondence. She fears that the Scot prisoner may have been lying to throw you off Douglas’s true route back to the Borders.”

  Caernervon sat stupefied. “She tells me this … now?”

  As the last of the Scots disappeared over the horizon, Lancaster turned a glare of unchecked disgust on the purported son of Edward Longshanks.

  XXXV

  THE LAIRDS RUSHED FROM THEIR high-backed choir seats in Newbattle Abbey and welcomed James and Randolph home with thunderous applause and hearty backslaps. Although the two raiders had failed, by mere minutes, to capture the English queen, their plunge deep into Yorkshire had so shaken the Plantagenet court in London that Caernervon had sent envoys to Dunfermline to negotiate a two-year truce to the war, the first in twenty-four years.

  Hobbled by his injuries suffered in prison, Bishop Lamberton carved a path through his colleagues with his cane and escorted the two heroes to the dais, where Robert stood waiting. The bishop had another reason to feel heartened this eve. He had arranged this celebration as a pretext to call the Privy Council into session, during which he intended to put forth a profound proposal that he had long nurtured in secret.

  Robert met his two favorite officers with a smirk, delighted that his decision to harness them had worked so splendidly. His nephew was forever striving to match exploits with James, who in turn was constantly irritated by Randolph’s acerbic tongue and dashing verve. The two rivals were so similar in features and temperament that neither could long abide the other without falling into some argument or a contest of wits. Nothing entertained Robert more than the steady stream of correspondence from James complaining of Randolph’s insubordination. Robert longed to be rid of his own administrative responsibilities and return to the field to arbitrate their disputes while at the same time needling them on, as he had in the old days. Their return had even reinvigorated his health; the mysterious lesions had receded, and the passing of time had even eased his grief over the Ireland disaster and his brother Edward’s death.

  Robert winked mischievously at Lamberton, setting in motion a prearranged surprise. The bishop retracted the curtain covering the sacristy, and Sweenie, armed with the English archbishop’s staff captured at Myton, came bounding out from stage left onto the dais.

  Robert spun James by the shoulders to face the monk. “I’m told you owe the Wee-Kneed a song.”

  The barons roared with laughter as Sweenie tapped his new episcopal staff against the boards to speed a payment of the debt.

  Nodding with a grin of concession, James accepted a mandolin from an attendant and, strumming a chord, sang:

  “On the misty plains of York,

  Scotland’s own wee David marched

  Across the Bridge of Death

  To fight the bishop Arched.

  He conjured up Hell’s fires

  To fright King Edward’s priest.

  And painted his face darkly

  To mock an evil beast.

  When the white-robed monks turned tail,

  The Wee-Kneed fell to fightin’

  And the River Swale gobbled up

  The Chapter of the Myton.”

  Sweenie held a protracted bow, milking the acclamation as the barons whistled and stomped.

  Lamberton waved the little monk off the dais. “Now begone with you, Wee-kneed, before I defrock you for wallowing in the sin of pride.”

  When those of lesser rank had finally cleared the nave, the bishop commanded the doors be bolted and, bringing the chamber to order, waved the privy councilors back to their seats. He brought forth from his parchments folio a document sealed with the Holy See’s waxed imprint. After a hesitation, he delivered the correspondence to Robert with a chilling announcement: “The new pope has reaffirmed your excommunication, my lord.”

  Robert’s good cheer vanished. He hung his head and retreated to his chair, slumping in bitter disappointment.

  To ease the blow, Lamberton had delayed revealing the ecclesiastical decision until James returned from Yorkshire. He had hoped that Clement’s death would bring an impartial successor to St. Peter’s throne, but the craven cardinals had elected Jacques Diese to become Pope John XXII. The seventy-year-old former confidante of Clement had been born in Guenne, an English fiefdom, and this, his latest nuncio, made clear that he intended to continue the Curia’s pro-English policy in the expectation that Caernervon would reciprocate by financing a new crusade to Palestine.

  Several of the barons traded uneasy glances, most notably the Seneschal of the Realm, William Soules, and his allies, Robert Mowbray and David Brechin, all former Comyn supporters who had come grudgingly to Robert’s cause after Bannockburn.

  Lamberton closely monitored their reaction, particularly the uneasy shifting of Brechin, the young knight who years ago had been discovered carrying the letter with Red Comyn’s plan to steal the crown. Handsome and dashing, Brechin only recently had returned from the Holy Land, where he had gained fame with the appellation, “The Flower of Knighthood.” Over the years, Robert had made no attempt to hide his jealousy of Brechin’s crusading deeds, accomplished while he and James had been at home fighting England.

  After a troubled contemplation, Robert raised his distraught eyes and asked the bishop, “Do you see in this nuncio an invitation to negotiate?”

  “I do not, Sire. The document is addressed to your council only. The new pope has refused to recognize you as our rightful king.”

  Robert dropped his chin to his chest again. These past sixteen years spent under the edict of excommunication had weighed heavily on both him and the kingdom. Most of the priests in the abbeys and kirks still refused to say Mass or dispense the sacraments to his subjects. The commoners understood neither the nuances of the theological debate nor the power struggles between the Holy See and the royal courts, only that they were being condemned to Hell because he was their king. After a heavy sigh, he ordered the bishop, “You must sail to Avignon at once and renew our petition in person. You were clever enough to goad me into taking this crown. I expect you to apply those skills of persuasion to sway the Holy Father to our cause.”

  Lamberton hesitated, waiting for the murmurs across the nave to dissipate. Then, he took his bold gamble. “I would propose another course.”

  “A new monastery, perhaps
?” Robert suggested hopefully. “Dedicated to the Holy Father’s patron saint?”

  Lamberton answered so softly that the barons were required to crane their necks to hear him. “The Curia’s decision to reaffirm your excommunication, Majesty, was instigated by the Dominican inquisitors. We have repeatedly offered sops and obsequies to the papacy, only to be spat upon. I pray you send a declaration instead. An ultimatum signed by all nobles warning that we shall no longer suffer the Church to dictate our fate.”

  Robert erupted to his feet. “I’ll not allow your bickering with the Black Friars to threaten the my kingdom! I cannot rule without holy sanction!”

  Lamberton maintained a serene demeanor, hoping to hold Robert’s temper in check. With head still lowered, the cleric said, “This new pope abuses his authority for crass political advantage. No nation should be required to relinquish its rightful sovereignty under the threat of God’s retribution.”

  Robert reddened. “I forbid you to speak heresy in my presence.”

  “Do you believe the war we wage is just?” Lamberton asked him.

  “Of course.”

  “Then either you are the heretic, or the pope is.”

  The chamber stirred uneasily at hearing that self-evident truth spoken so directly. Yet Lamberton did not flinch at the shocked reaction. He had warned Robert during the earliest days of the war that they would not prevail against England until they first won this standoff with the papacy. This two-year truce proposed by Caernervon offered a rare, and perhaps last, opportunity to capitalize on Robert’s victories in the field. The Dominicans in Avignon were testing Scotland, and if they perceived Robert weak and indecisive, they would continue to advise the pope to withhold recognition of his legitimacy and wait for Caernervon to renew the war, when they would come north with the English army and bring Scotland to heel under their spiritual reign of terror, just as they had done to the Occitan nobles in southern France.