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

by Glen Craney

  Piers rammed his phallus into him, nearly caused him to faint. A voice came to his ear. “I watched him bleed to death on the gallows.”

  Who is Piers playing now? He tried to turn, but two sets of hands held him down. “Piers! I do not find this—”

  The same voice whispered from the darkness, “Lancaster was still alive when they castrated him and burned their butchery before his eyes. You will now learn what it means to bear such agony.”

  “Damn you! Who are you?” He struggled to escape, but the weight of two men now pressed against his back. This was not Piers in the spirit, but intruders all too real. A sharp sizzle was followed by the acrid stench of smoke.

  An excruciating bolt of heat shot through his bowels, incapacitating his legs. “God’s mercy!”

  “You’ll have a lavish funeral.”

  “Christ save me!”

  “Thousands will file by your corpse and offer prayers in gratitude that you were blessed with such a peaceful crossing. Not a scratch upon you. The Almighty commanded your removal from the throne. Why? Because you were taken to your Day of Judgment so soon after being deposed. A divine affirmation of your son’s rightful accession.”

  “I am dying!”

  “Yes, you are dying. And even a sodomite bent for Hell is entitled to know the method by which he is to leave this world. Yours will be apt in irony.”

  “Cut my throat! I beg you!”

  “This ass that once disgraced the throne is now home to the hollowed femur,” the assassin whispered. “About the size you fancy, I should think. The change in temperature is a scalded iron weaving through the bone.”

  Caernervon gagged on his own vomit. “Kill me! God, make haste!”

  “Nay, we would not have you excelled by Lancaster in the pace of your martyrdom. Did they tell you his last words? He vowed to escort you to Hell to join Gaveston and Despenser.”

  Caernervon screamed until his throat gave out.

  He fell to the floor, dead.

  XXXVIII

  ANOTHER EDWARD.

  When news of the Westminster coronation reached Lintalee, James had groused that the Plantagenets were no more imaginative in choosing christening names than they were in adapting their military tactics. Now, as he led his veteran hobelars through the Kiedler Pass into Northumbria, he felt the ache of every wound he had suffered during the past forty-five years. Robert had ordered him to invade England again, this time to instruct the new babe-king in London on the consequences of abandoning a truce. He had lost count of how many times he had passed through this narrow Borders cleft that funneled between the two forks of the Tyne River. On this morning, however, unlike during raids past, the warm June sun did not brighten his spirits.

  Sweenie rode alongside him, gnawing on a green apple to loosen his balky bowels. Age had shrunk the elfin monk to an even more diminutive stature, but his mind was as sharp as on that first day he had joined up with the Scot rebels at Glen Dochart. He had served as the army’s chaplain for so long that he had developed the keen skill of reading his commander’s thoughts and fashioning just the right jibe to provoke him to action. He found the art of the jestering akin to spiritual ministering; the Almighty, after all, surely possessed a skewed sense of humor, else why would He have brought this motley collection of ill-tempered Scots together if not for the sheer amusement? He threw the core at the hinds of James’s horse and observed, “Randolph will have crossed Carter Bar by now. If he reaches Durham before us, we’ll suffer his boasts without cease.”

  James measured the distance his hand would have to travel to thump Sweenie’s gourd-sized head. “He has a ten league head start with a thousand less men.”

  Sweenie nodded in mock agreement. “Aye, and he’s not as long in the tooth.”

  “I should have left you to roast on the spit at Myton.”

  “I was just making a point,” Sweenie said.

  “And what point might that be?”

  “From what I hear, that fifteen-year-old lad on the English crib throne intends to run you about like an old hare until you drop from exhaustion.”

  “Does he now?”

  “It’s not too late to turn back to Lintalee and spend the rest of your dotage tending your garden. Randolph could take the command. He reminds me of you in the old days.”

  Instead of rising to the challenge, James sought refuge in dark silence.

  Sweenie was concerned about his refusal to engage in the banter. Robert had always been the one to suffer the bouts of melancholy, not him. Turning serious, the monk kicked his hobbin closer and asked, “What troubles you?”

  James spurred ahead to be alone. The knot in his stomach warned that this campaign would not be like the others. Could Isabella not control her own son? The boy king was raising an army rumored to be twice the size of the force his father brought north in 1314. Reportedly, young Edward had also employed crack mercenaries from the Continent and was releasing hundreds of felons from jails with the promise of a pardon as bounty in exchange for ten dead Scots. If Isabella’s wee troublemaker so desperately wished a taste of war, he would be accommodated—not in Scotland, but deep in the heart of his own kingdom, where the fat Yorkshire burghers who replenished the brat’s treasury could watch their own towns go up in flames for a change.

  In such low moments, he actually longed for those desperate days when he and Robert scurried across the Highlands on foot, starving but firm in the conviction of their cause. Half of the men who fought with them at Bannockburn were now dead or crippled. In these past few years, he had communicated with the royal court at Cardross only by courier. He still nursed the insults suffered over Brechin’s execution and Robert’s demand that he take a wife. Robert’s dementia had worsened after Elizabeth’s death from injuries suffered in a fall down the stairs at Cullen Castle, and the entire kingdom now feared that the clans would renew their feuds before three-year-old David reached his majority.

  He also missed Jeanne’s calming touch. He hadn’t heard from her in over a year, not since her terse message advising that she would be staying north to attend to the king’s household and nurse his senile stepmother, who had passed away a few months later. Lintalee had grown cold with the French lass’s absence. He had treated her poorly, that he could not deny. He had hoped he might grow to love her over time, but his longing for Belle had only increased with the years. He understood why she could no longer endure his companionship. Perhaps he should allow his memory of Belle to fade into oblivion. No one else remembered her sacrifice, and it had brought Scotland no closer to peace. He hung his head and muttered, “What use all this?”

  Sweenie risked suffering a harangue by riding closer. “The great Irish chieftain Culchullan also suffered from heartsickness. So forlorn was he with the memory of a banshee from the netherworld that he could not force his limbs to move. It is the bane of all warriors of our race.”

  “Did he ever gain release from his cares?”

  “Aye,” Sweenie said, “but at a steep price.”

  “What healed him?”

  “His charioteer rode to Anglesey and asked the Druids for a cure. The holy men sent the charioteer back to his master with the Elixir of Forgetfulness.”

  “The potion worked?”

  Sweenie nodded. “But to seal the magic, Culchullan was required to forget all he had experienced in his life. All glories and deeds, even his comrades.”

  James pondered the strange tale. “Culchullan’s lass must have been responsible for his acts of valor. Why else would he have been required to forget them to chase her memory?”

  Sweenie shrugged. “I have never been in the thrall of a woman, so I possess no knowledge of such things.”

  A commotion to the rear disrupted their column, suddenly lifting James’s spirits. McClurg and McKie drove up a band of fifty Welsh archers shackled at the wrists. James grinned at the haul; a wagon laden with captured gold would have been less precious, for longbowmen were such a bane to his troop that a Welshman’s quive
r was said to carry twenty-four Scot souls.

  “We found them wandering near Hartbottle,” McKie reported.

  James marveled at the prodigious height of the captives and their thick fingers calloused from years of drawing the bowstrings. Many in this fearsome Welsh troop were much older than he had expected, but all had sunburnt faces and quick eyes. They had known no other employment since childhood, having been drafted into the royal service after demonstrating their skills on local archery fields following Sunday Mass. He rode through their ranks and demanded, “Where is your swaddled king?”

  None of the Welsh would answer him, until a frightened young squire blurted out: “North of Durham. Looking for you.”

  “How many men does he bring?” James asked the boy.

  The captured squire felt his comrades tried to silence him with scowls, but his nerves finally got the better of his honor. “Twenty thousand.”

  James turned aside to hide his dismay. Young Edward’s boast of running him to death like an old hare now seemed more credible. With such an advantage in odds, the English could come at him from every direction. He and Randolph would need to move fast to combine forces with the Earl of Mar, who commanded a third Scot column moving farther south. He turned back to the two Trinity brothers and ordered, “Find Randolph and tell him to meet us south of Hexam on the quick.”

  “What about the Welsh?” McKie asked.

  James studied the captives. “Hang them.”

  The condemned archers fell to their knees, praying in despair—all but their officer, who stepped forward with an air of noble resignation. “Do what you will with me. But I ask Christ’s mercy for my men.”

  James was impressed by the officer’s selfless courage. “If I spared any, it would be you.”

  “We are conscripts. We despise the English more than you do.”

  “You showed little of that hatred at Falkirk. I cannot risk your return to Edward’s army. Fifty of you could turn a battle.”

  “These men have families.”

  He had no time to debate the merits of leniency. So many prisoners on foot would severely hinder his speed, and he could not spare the troops required to escort them to the border. The English scouts would be searching for their lost herce of archers, and if he and his Scots were discovered, they would lose the advantage of surprise. He led the Welsh officer a few steps away from the others. “You and your men wish to live at any cost?”

  The officer silently interrogated his homesick conscripts. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he nodded grimly.

  THE YOUNG ENGLISH KING HAD been counseled to pack away his battle gear to keep it from rusting, but despite having ridden nonstop for three days in a cold downpour, he insisted on remaining in the ponderous armour crafted for him by London’s finest silver workers. Freed at last from the chafing control of his mother, he was determined to imitate the stories he had heard of his famous grandfather living in the saddle.

  John of Hainault, the military advisor retained by Isabella, sighed wearily as he wiped the water from his visor and surveyed their undisciplined, squabbling mash of untested knights and conscripts. Nothing about them remotely resembled Longshanks’s old army of conquerors. This headstrong boy seemed unconcerned that half of his baggage wagons had been abandoned to the mud and that he had somehow lost an entire bataille of archers. Riots were breaking out between the Welsh and Yorkshiremen over gambling disputes. Worst of all, Edward had no clue where he was, let alone the Scots he was chasing.

  Fearful that the inexperienced king was losing control of the army, Hainault tried a more forceful persuasion. “My lord, the horses must be rested, or we shall all soon be waist-deep in mud.”

  Edward stretched up in stirrups that had been fashioned to fit his short legs. He pointed toward the black smoke that billowed up over the distant horizon. “They are just over that ridge! We are within reach of them!”

  “We have been within reach of them for two weeks. This Douglas—”

  “I forbade you to speak that name!”

  Unaccustomed to being addressed in such a churlish manner, by a teething cub no less, Hainault was beginning to question the wisdom of having placed his mercenaries at the command of Isabella’s headstrong son. Yet now, trapped in the middle of this slogging nightmare, he could not transport them back across the Channel without first being paid. With muted voice, so as not to rile the boy any more than necessary, the officer observed, “The Scotsman appears to be leading us in circles.”

  “He is running from us!”

  “If he were running from us, would he not be running home?”

  Edward’s face twisted in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “We have been chasing him south. If he feels endangered, why does he not retreat north?”

  Edward felt the judging glares of his junior officers. To mask his insecurity, he barked at Hainault, “Speak plainly, damn you!”

  Hainault racked his brain for an example to simplify his point. “If you cornered a rat in your room, would you leave the door open?”

  “Of course not! You think me a fool?”

  “No, my lord. You are a master strategist. But what would you do to rid yourself of the rat?” Hainault knew very well what the boy would say, having heard him repeatedly vow that he would never commit the mistakes of his dimwitted father, who had allowed the Scots to seduce him through a corridor of destruction to the humiliating defeat at Bannockburn.

  “I’d close the door,” Edward said, “and let the vermin starve!”

  “Then I suggest you close the door.”

  Hainault watched with hope as Edward, inspired anew, looked north across the vast stretch of Northumbria that had been denuded of trees. Here there was no Ettrick Forest to protect Douglas and his Scots, only barren lengths of windswept plateaux crisscrossed by stone fences and hedgerows. If the boy took this army north to Haydon Bridge, he would have Douglas trapped below—

  Anguished screams came from the rear.

  The Welsh rushed from the column to greet what appeared to be a band of beggars staggering down the ridge.

  Edward was furious. “I gave no order to break ranks!”

  Ignoring the young king, the Welsh conscripts ran to embrace their lost countrymen and found their right hands wrapped with bloodied bandages. The officer leading these returned archers uncovered a stump on his right arm and held it up for Edward’s observation. The others in his charge followed his example and displayed their drawing hands—all missing the thumb and first two fingers.

  Edward brought a sleeve to his mouth. “Who did this?”

  The mutilated officer pulled three blackened fingers from his belt pouch and threw them to the ground in an indictment of the young king’s incompetence in allowing them to be captured. “It was our choice.”

  “Your choice?” Edward screamed. “An entire herce ruined! Do you know how much of my treasury I spent to equip you Welsh ingrates?”

  “Douglas offered us our lives. That is more than your grandfather offered my kinsmen. We are no longer of use to you. I am taking my men home to their families.”

  Edward sat stupefied as the disabled archers walked off, heading south.

  Hainault captured the king’s reins and led him away from the troops, afraid they would lose even more confidence in him if they witnessed another of his raging fits. “Keep your wits about you. We must cross the Tyne and wait for Douglas to turn north.”

  Despite his inexperience, Edward possessed the remarkable ability to swiftly alter his emotions. Retreating into the steely mien that he had so often practiced, he shook off Hainault’s paternal hold on his arm. “Call a council of my knights.”

  “For what purpose?”

  Edward studied the black smoke swirling above the distant villages burned by the Scots. “Why should I wait for the rat to starve when I can send in the dogs?”

  JAMES KEPT HIS GAZE FIXED on the bleak purple horizon that seemed to roll on without end. Eight days had passed since his s
couts last saw the English army, and he feared young Edward had finally tired of their game of hide-and-seek. He had driven his Scot raiders deeper into the heart of Northumbria and had crossed the Tyne and Wear rivers to wreak havoc in the Gaunless valley, dangerously stretching their escape route back to the Borders. So long as he had held the English in his sights, he had been confident he could outrun them.

  But Isabella’s babe-king had somehow managed to vanish.

  Now, with the sun falling fast, James hurried his small army back up the Weardale, keeping south of the river. The local villages were abandoned, and the few farmers they had ferreted out from the cellars had known they were coming. For the first time on this campaign, he was worried. “Where is the wee bastard, Tom?”

  Randolph tried to put up an insouciant front. “The lad isn’t clever enough to go north.”

  “Hainault is at his side.”

  Randolph kept looking over his shoulder. “Should we try for the Tyne?”

  Undecided, James rode ahead to reconnoiter the slanting moors. This vale north of the River Wear was wider than its southern counterpart, but still narrow enough to force the English army to crowd together in discomfort. South of the river arose a jagged ridge of sharp rocks and outcroppings. That spot offered as good a defensive position as any he had seen within a day’s ride. Yet if he took shelter up there, the river would deny him a quick retreat back to Scotland. The horses were exhausted, and he had burned every burgh within reach. He had no choice but to make camp and wait for wee Edward the Slow to find him.

  JAMES AND HIS RAIDERS SAT mired in the rain for another week. Although their supplies and fodder had become dangerously low, he took heart in the knowledge that they had survived worse privations. He had trained them to carry iron grilles, a provision that allowed them to stop at any time on their raids, cook oatcakes, and be back in the saddle within the hour, and when they came upon cattle or venison, they would roast steaks inside skinned hides while remaining on the run. Unaccustomed to eating meat, they found that the oats offered the additional advantage of settling their stomachs, and thus, unlike the English, they were never tied to a commissary train or held to the mercy of local burghers.