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

by Glen Craney

  Randolph pleaded, “My lord, you must calm yourself.”

  Robert fought against the restraints, his manic eyes darting at imaginary enemies. “Clifford masses! Where is Jamie?”

  Randolph pressed a compress to the king’s scabbed face. “Sire, Lord Douglas is not—”

  “Douglas is on the field,” said a voice at the door.

  The men turned in shock.

  Randolph rushed to grasp James’s hand in gratitude for coming.

  Robert, hearing the report to duty, cried, “Jamie! Your schiltrons to the fore, else we are turned!”

  As the barons and clerics filed out to leave James alone with the dying king, the wind slammed the door shut, and the windows rattled with a report as loud as the first clash of pikes at Bannockburn.

  Robert thrashed at blows being landed on him in battle.

  James untied his wrists and jangled a sword near his old friend’s ear to mimic the receding clash of arms. “The English break.”

  Robert eased his agitation. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I am here, my lord.”

  Robert dragged the compress from his suddenly lucid eyes. “Lord? Must it be that, Jamie? Am I nothing but a king to you now?” He reached for his wrist to bring him nearer. “As always, you arrive at the battle’s climax.”

  “And, as always, you have positioned me there.”

  Robert sank into the bed, reassured. He swallowed hard to muster the strength to speak. This rare gift of sanity, he knew, would not last long. “The Templars must be afforded perpetual refuge. Order them to keep the Stone hidden until David is rid of his regency.”

  “The monks are safe in the Isles. Sinclair commands them under the guise of a new guild. The Dominicans will not lay hands on them.”

  “This lad on England’s throne will come at you when I’m gone.”

  “Let him come.” James pressed a hand against Robert’s chest to aid his breathing. Could this faint beat truly be driven by the lion’s heart that had led them through so many travails?

  “Do you remember our vow?”

  “Aye, but that matters nothing-—”

  “Last night, I had a dream.” Robert heaved with shallowing pants. “We were riding together again… in a foreign land… Columba’s star led us to Our Lord’s tomb… Jamie, will you …” He turned away, unable to finish the request.

  “I will take you, Rob.”

  Robert lay staring into the distance as if locked upon the star.

  James tested Robert’s wrist for a pulse, and found the hand was cold. He pressed a finger to close the king’s lips in death and stood to go report his death to the waiting councilors.

  “Roland.”

  At the door, James turned. Had his imagination conjured that whispered name? But it was true—Robert was still breathing, and his half-lidded eyes angled toward the bed table. On it sat the volume of chansons recounting the adventures of their favorite French knights, Roland and Oliver. He had long ago forgotten both the book and their promise to save the last chapter for their final victory. He turned to the first page and studied the inscription that Belle had written during their last moments together. “Where did you find this?”

  Even in his weakened state, Robert managed a slight smile.

  “You stole it again?”

  “Read.”

  James pulled up a chair and thumbed through the fragile pages. Each chapter had marked a turning point in their conjoined destinies, inspiring them to carry on when all had seemed hopeless. The book had been with them on their miraculous crossing at Loch Lomond, in the cave on Arran, at their near-disastrous invasion at Turnberry, on the heights of Loudon Hill, and at their glorious victory at Bannockburn. Now, it had miraculously reappeared again.

  “Where did we stop?” Robert asked, his voice but a faint whisper.

  James coughed to clear the clutch from his throat. “The Saracens had the Franks surrounded in Spain.”

  “Aye, the Vale of Thorns. Roland is searching for Oliver.”

  James found the place he had marked with a fir needle. “No, Roland has already found him.”

  “Found him?” Robert protested. “That is not as I remember it.”

  “Would you have me tell it, or not?”

  Robert smiled through tears; even in this final hour, they could not avoid a quarrel.

  Mollified with that concession, James returned to the story. “Oliver is mortally wounded in the eyes. But he fights on, blinded. He strikes Roland upon the head by mistake.”

  Robert begged, barely audible, “Not Roland.”

  James hesitated as he turned to the last page; it was stained with the mud of Bannockburn. Now it all came flooding back to him. In a fit of despairing rage, he had cast the book aside on the night that he had learned of Belle’s death. Robert must have recovered it in Cambuskenneth Abbey and saved it for him.

  He looked down at Robert. “You did not read ahead?”

  Robert’s eyes remained closed. “I waited … for you.”

  James opened the buttons on Robert’s sweat-drenched shirt. There, on his chest, was the scar from Clifford’s sword at Methven. And on his forearm, the gnarled fracture from the blow at Moss Raploch. Beneath his proud, intractable bearing had walked a broken body. Why had he allowed their last years to be wasted? They should have been spent together, enjoying their victories over a warm fire and good drink. It all seemed faded now, the nursed wounds and perceived slights. He had failed to heed Belle’s dying request, and had let down the two persons he most loved in the world. Now, all that was left to finish was this foolish tale. He drew a reluctant breath and began:

  “‘Roland looks at Oliver’s face

  Which is pale, discoloured and grayish;

  Blood runs down his body, clots

  Form on the ground. Roland says: ‘God!

  I do not know what I shall do,

  Old comrade, if I must lose you.’

  Roland looks at Oliver with much

  Affection and says tranquilly:

  ‘Surely, that was not meant for me?

  It is I, Roland, your old friend

  Who wants only to make amends.’

  Oliver says: “Now I hear you speak.

  I cannot see you. I am too weak.

  May God see you. I am sorry,

  When I struck you I struck blindly.’

  Roland answers: ‘No harm done,

  And before God, I wish you none.’

  They bow to one another and so

  Part with great love between the two.’”

  “I’m sorry,” Robert gasped.

  “No matter,” James said. “I would have just lost the book again if you had-—”

  “Your lass.” Robert forced open his swollen eyes. “I’m sorry I took her from you.”

  Before James could regain his composure, Robert stopped breathing.

  That last act of contrition had released him. Even in death, he had insisted on the last word. Thinking the chanson finished, he had given up his spirit without allowing the forgiveness to be reciprocated.

  Ah, Rob, you have charged on without me.

  Fighting for his voice, James read the last chanson verses aloud, for he would never let it be said that he had left any task assigned by his king undone:

  “‘Roland sees his friend in death,

  Face down and with dust in his teeth.

  Very gently he says good-bye:

  ‘Oliver, so there you lie!

  We have been days and years together

  And never either harmed the other;

  With you dead, there is nothing in life.’”

  THAT EVENING, JAMES ESCORTED ROBERT'S body to Cambuskenneth Abbey, where it rested for three days on a bier overlooking the battlefield of Bannockburn. The funeral entourage then passed to the south of Loch Lomond and lingered at the banks where Sweenie had ferried them to safety from the MacDougall hounds. An honor guard composed of McKie, McClurg, and the Templars rode behind the gurney, with the mastiff
Mungo bringing up the rear. The thousands who lined the route threw garlands and rushed forward to touch the casket. At Dunfermline, the king’s heart was sealed in a silver reliquary and his body buried in the Abbey next to Elizabeth. During the solemn ceremony, Walter Stewart, the nation’s new Regent, hung Robert’s encased heart, threaded with cowhide cords, around James’s neck.

  In the bay at St. Andrews, a galley sent by the MacDonalds waited to take James and the royal honor guard to the Holy Land. On this last night before his departure, James walked into the country’s hallowed cathedral there to pay his last respects at Lamberton’s tomb. The beloved bishop had passed away a few days after Robert’s death. Only weeks before, the cleric had returned from Avignon, where he had renewed his demand that the spiritual interdiction against Scotland be lifted. Resigned at last to England’s defeat, Pope John XXII had reluctantly rescinded the bull of excommunication against Scotland. The Church had finally been forced to recognize a king crowned by a Pictish princess, anointed by Culdee monks, and protected by heretical Templars.

  The bishop had finally won his holy war for the old Celtic Church.

  At midnight, the mourners carried torches to the beaches below the cathedral so that Scotland might watch its king’s heart sail away. As his small currach was pushed off from the rocks, James saw Jeanne and her son on the bluffs. Ordering the oars held, he waded back to the dunes and stood before the boy who had brought him the news of Robert’s impending death.

  “I never asked your name.”

  The boy pawed at the sand with his foot, afraid to look up. “Archibald.”

  James whistled Mungo from the boat, and when the old hound bounded through the water toward them, he told the boy, “Take care of Mungo for me, will you, Archie? We’ll all go hunting when I get back.” He hugged his son goodbye and repeated the last words that his own father had spoken to him before being led away to London Tower. “Remember that you are a Douglas. You bend to none but God and your—”

  A collective gasp of alarm interrupted his instruction to his son.

  He looked up at the watery horizon and saw two warships slicing the fog and sailing up alongside the waiting MacDonald galley. Their masts had hoisted banners bearing the Plantagenet leopards. The Scots began retreating to the bluffs to prepare for an English attack, and he was about to climb the sea wall to muster the defenses when Jeanne grasped his arm to stop him.

  She pointed to a white banner being raised on the foremast of the lead ship. “They have been sent as safe escort.”

  Had Isabella arranged this? He could not believe that she would risk such a gesture, even though the two kingdoms had suspended hostilities. Given her precarious position with the English parliament in London, the offer was as dangerous as it was magnanimous.

  He gazed across the moorlands one last time and gave thanks for the many lasses who had appeared with aid for him at pivotal moments in his life. Christiana’s prophecy in the Arran cave had indeed come to pass: Belle, Eleanor, Idonea, Christiana, Elizabeth, Jeanne, Marjorie, the Galloway crone—all had proven stronger than the men of England. History would not remember their sacrifices, for the cold-blooded monks who recorded the deeds of kings and warriors gave scant credit to the lasses who stood with them. But Christiana’s clairvoyance had proven all too true: Without these women, he and Robert would never have prevailed in their war for independence.

  He filled his lungs with the fresh air of his homeland, recalling that day years ago when he had sailed off with Lamberton for France. On his return from Paris, he had vowed never to leave this Isle again.

  So much for oaths.

  What was it that Isabella had once told him? Aye, never allow yourself to be drawn into the orbit of a king.

  He walked with Jeanne to the water’s edge, and whispered to her, “Take care of Lintalee. When I am back in two years, I’ll make things right between us.” He kissed her and pushed the currach into the sea.

  As he was rowed away, the haze cleared, and he looked toward the sky. His heart ached with an inexplicable dread.

  He could not find Columba’s star.

  XLI

  A RUSH OF ALIEN SENSATIONS assaulted James as he led his nine men up the marble steps of Sevilla’s palace. Castilian tongues clattered around him while pungent aromas from the murakkaba breads leavening in the market kilns flared his nostrils. He began to feel light-headed, blinded by the glare of the harsh Spanish sun that refracted off a towering minaret left by the Moors who had once governed here.

  The Templar d’Aumont did not hide his disgust at being subjected to such insidious infidel influences. “We should have continued on to Majorca.”

  “The galley requires provisioning,” James reminded the monk. “And Keith’s broken arm must be tended. What harm can come of enjoying the Castilian king’s hospitality for a few days?”

  D’Aumont and his two Templar brothers, including William Sinclair, hid their necklaces with the outlawed Beausant insignia. The court of Alfonso XI would be thick with Dominican inquisitors, they knew, and if their affiliation were to be discovered, these rabidly devout Castilians would not hesitate to enforce the papacy’s call for their arrests, given the Temple’s history in this country. Decades ago, the French grand master had abandoned Castile to the Moors, a betrayal that gave rise to the formation of rival Spanish order, the Knights of Calatrava, whose monks were still embroiled in a crusade to wrest the borderland of Al Andalus from Muslim Granada.

  A turbaned functionary led the Scots into the royal hall, and the swarthy Calatravans turned and greeted them with cold silence.

  King Alfonso, alone of all the Castilians present, appeared delighted by their arrival. The twenty-year-old monarch with sparkling black eyes and aquiline nose leapt from his chair to great his famous guest. There was an excessive gracefulness in his manner, the flowing sleeves of his white silk robe tumbling with each flourish of his slender hands. James had expected to find an ascetic warrior-king in the mold of the heroic Cid, but this boy resembled more an Arab caliph or a Greek potentate. Was that a hint of eye lining, or were his lashes naturally prominent?

  At Alfonso’s signal, a troubadour knelt before James and sang:

  “Two hearts, noble, stout;

  One beating, one mute;

  Two realms, fierce, redoubt;

  One free, one resolute;

  The great Alfonso remembers Bruce

  And welcomes Douglas, warrior yet

  Who on the English did fiercely loose

  A sharp defeat they shan’t forget.”

  Cupping the heart cask that hung from James’s neck, Alfonso studied it as if he were touching a holy relic. “Is it true, Lord Douglas, that you and your king were once hunted by dogs?”

  James was surprised that the reports of his Loch Lomond escape had made it all the way to Espagna. He shrugged off the feat, quipping with self-deprecation, “Even starving hounds would not have bothered with our fleshless bones.”

  Alfonso smiled at his humility. “Do you not believe that the Almighty has a purpose for all events, even those seemingly random?”

  “I am a man of arms, Sire. I leave theology to the clerics.”

  “What about your famous spider? Was it not sent at the moment of your direst need?”

  “Aye, I believe it was.”

  “And your biblical Stone. Miraculously unearthed for King Bruce.”

  “God’s hand was upon us then, as well.”

  “So you do delve into theology.” Alfonso retreated into prayer as he walked before the ranks of his Calatravans. He stopped under a high balustrade that held a life-sized Christ on a cross twice the size of any crucifix extant in Scotland. He glanced up, leading his guest’s attention toward the icon.

  James marveled at the realistic carving of Our Lord in His travails. He could not shake the feeling that Christ’s bleeding face and liquiscent glass eyes were focused directly on him alone.

  Alfonso waited for the crucifix to work its power. “I too am a pious
servant of God. And I believe the Almighty’s grace has been visited on me this day. He has brought me the greatest warrior alive. At the moment of my darkest peril.”

  D’Aumont checked James with a forearm to his chest. “Lord Douglas is sworn to an oath.”

  Alfonso ignored that remonstrance and closed in on his famous guest. “Your King Bruce fervently desired to take the Cross, no?”

  “How did you learn of this?” James asked.

  Alfonso’s eyes shaded with sadness. “A pity the Bruce did not see his dream fulfilled.” The king delayed as if wishing to say something more, but then thought better of it. “My seneschal will see to it that you are well supplied. I will commission our Cistercians at San Clemente to pray for your safe journey on to Palestine.” He folded his hands in preparation to take his leave.

  James glared at d’Aumont for having insulted their royal host. Clearly, the Castilian monarch had sought only the honor of their companionship.

  Walking from the hall, Alfonso stopped below the crucifix. Visited with a revelation, he turned back to James. “Perhaps it can yet be accomplished.”

  “My lord?”

  “Your King Bruce’s wish. The Holy Land is now open only to pilgrims, so you will see no battle there. But here, on the plains of Al Andalus, the great Douglas could win eternal salvation for the valiant Bruce. And you and your knights could be off to the Holy Sepulcher before winter sets in.”

  “The Bruce asked for Jerusalem only,” d’Aumont insisted.

  James stood mesmerized by the possibility. For thirty years he had prayed for the chance to take up the Cross and fulfill the boyhood vow he had made with Robert. Yet the Templar spoke true; he was compelled to decline the invitation to join the Iberian crusade, for it would require contravening the dictates of Parliament. “You do me great honor, Majesty. But I am constrained by the mission set upon me by my country.”

  A ravishing lady with dark Egyptian features appeared from the shadowed periphery and came slithering to Alfonso’s side. She had ringlets of chestnut hair and enchanting green eyes; a wide gold belt hung low on her jewel-studded gown of crimson velvet and fell in a chevron to the valley below her waist, allowing her comely hips to lead each step. Announced by the ambrosial scent of cassia perfume, she stood before James and studied his dark features. “You have the look of an Iberian. Pray tell, why is this?”