The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (15 page)

He tried not to look at her. “My lady … ”

Smiling at his quaint modesty, she pressed a finger to his
lips to gain his silence. She untied the drawstring of her blouse and slid it
from her shoulders.

He pulled her closer, desperate to kiss her. Heart pounding,
he brushed her cheeks and felt her sweet breath as he captured her arms above
her head to admire the fullness of her breasts. He nuzzled them tenderly with
his tongue and returned to waiting lips for another kiss—Belle’s face stared
down at him.

He pulled away and turned aside.

“Do I not please you?”

“I am promised to another.”

She led his hand back to her taut nipple. “We are all
promised to another.”

He pulled his hand back and struggled to avert his eyes.

When he did not weaken, the princess covered herself and
plopped cross-legged at the foot of his bed. She slapped his sternum playfully
with her heel. “Silly
jeune homme
.
Tell me about her, then, if you must.”

He gazed through the window toward the Seine, recalling that
day in Kilbride when Belle’s long hair had hung dripping down her slender neck.
“She’s the most bonnie lass in all Scotland. Eyes blacker than a Highland
night, and what a temper! Skittish as a colt and just as fast. God, what
beauty!”

Isabella allowed her blouse to slide farther down her
shoulders. “More beautiful than
moi
?”

He failed to even notice. “Aye, more fetching than—”

She punished his stomach with a sharp kick. “You are an
imbécile
when it comes to
femmes
!” She gathered up her cloak and
turned to leave.

He captured her wrist to delay her a moment more. “So I’ve
been told. You are both beyond any man’s dreams. It is so strange. You and
Belle share a name. And the way you look at me, it is as if you also share a
soul.”

She shot him a sideways
glance of suspicion. “Your dancing improves. … Are you betrothed?”

He sank, dejected. “Her father schemes to wed her off to
another clan.”

Isabella ran her hand through his thick hair. “Then you must
forget her.”

“She will wait for me. I know she …” He fell silent, stopped
short by the memory of her riding off with Tabhann that day in Kilbride.

“Has she told you that she loves you?”

He hesitated. “Not in those words.”

“Then we are not so much alike. If I loved a man, I would
use those words
exactement
.”

Incensed by her
skepticism, he bolted up. “And I suppose you’ve whispered many a honeyed verse
into Caernervon’s ear!”

The princess turned away in hurt.

He embraced her, apologetic, uncertain how to comfort her.
In that moment, with her angelic face strafed by pain, she seemed much older
than her tender fifteen years.

“My father requires peace with England. I am to be his means
to attain it.”

James reached into the crease of her untressed nightgown and
examined a locket that hung from a gold chain. Before she could deny him, he
opened its casing and found the imprint of a knight’s heraldry. “So, I am not
the only one who pines away.”

She snapped the locket shut. “My father sent him
away to the Flemish war.”

“Coutrai?”

She answered him with a rush of tears.

Her lover, he realized,
had been one of the hundreds of knights killed at the Battle of the Two Hundred
Golden Spurs, a disaster from which Philip’s army had yet to recover. “And now
you’ve agreed to suffer the rest of your life with a man you’ll come to
despise?”

“You seem to know a great deal about my future husband!”

He looked off into the distance, stung by dark memories of
Berwick. “Aye, I have laid eyes upon Edward Caernervon. And I would give the
little I own to do so again.” His grip on her arm had tightened so fiercely
that she winced. He gently rubbed away the welt. “Listen to me. You must refuse
this marriage. It will bring you only sorrow.”

Sighing, the princess
rested her head on his chest. “‘Refuse’ is not a word in the lexicon of my
sex.”

 “If you
are
forced into this arrangement,” he said with determination, “I promise I will
one day make you a widow.”

She greeted that naïve boast with a forlorn smile of
resignation. “All of us, sooner or later, must give up the vanities of
romance.”

He would not have believed a lass so young could turn so coldly cynical. “I’ll never stop loving Belle. Even if she …” He could not finish the thought. “I’ll never stop loving Belle. Even if she … ” He could not finish
the thought.

Isabella kissed his
forehead. “If you will not accept my charms, at least take my counsel. Should
you truly intend to abide by such a foolish pledge, you must never become
caught in the orbit of a king.” She arose from the bed and gifted him with one
last glimpse of her ravishing figure. Stoked, he reached to bring her back, but
she repulsed
his hand and whipped her cloak to cover herself. “Ah, but you are promised to
another.” She blew out the candle and vanished into the darkness.

Frustrated, he fell back into the bed. Moments later, he
heard the door crack open again.

In the darkness, Isabella’s voice warned, “This lady you
love will pay dearly for your
haute
principles, James Douglas. Men make oaths. And we women suffer the
consequences.”

T
WO MONTHS AFTER THEIR ROYAL
audience, Bishop Lamberton
slipped unannounced into James’s sleeping cell late at night and tossed him a
black robe. Warned by a finger to the lips not to speak, James put on the
religious garb and followed the bishop down the back steps of the Hotel de
Ville to the deserted Paris streets near the Grand Pont. Wherever they were
going, disguised as friars, they were taking a circuitous route, backtracking
to the same shadowy corners that they had passed minutes before. Satisfied at
last that they had not been followed, Lamberton hurried him toward a winding
staircase that lead down to the banks of the Seine. An oarsman helped them
aboard a small fishing boat and then rowed them up an unlit canal that flowed
past the walls toward the northern outskirts.

An hour later, they disembarked at the port of an isolated
fortress whose most prominent feature was a central chapel built in the shape
of an octagon. The thick oaken gates of the compound screeched open, and into
the slant light walked the elderly knight who had met privately with the bishop
at the palace. One of the rampart tapers flared, revealing the full extent of
the environs. They were standing inside the Paris Temple, the most heavily
guarded sanctuary on the Continent.

Five monks, draped in
white burrel mantles blazoned on their right shoulders with the red
cross-pattée
, stepped out from the recesses behind the
columns and came aside their leader. These celibate initiates of the Order of
the Poor Knights of Christ, commonly called Knights Templar, could have been
mistaken for Old Testament warriors. Every aspect of their training and
appearance had been prescribed for advantage in battle; they sheared their hair
to prevent it from being grasped by enemies and grew their beards wild because
the Moslems considered a smooth face a sign of effeminacy.

James looked around for the chests of gold that he had heard
tales about, but the vaulted chamber appeared empty and austere. The Temple
maintained hundreds of commanderies across Christendom, and this fortress
served as its headquarters. After their loss of Palestine to Saladin, the
Templars had turned to the pursuit of commerce and—rumor had it—to esoteric
practices such as alchemy and magic. By dominating the Mediterranean trade
routes and offering banking services to the courts, they had also grown
wealthier than any monarch, even the rapacious Philip.

The eldest knight locked the massive doors. “I ordered you
to come alone.”

Lamberton signaled for James to descend to a reverent knee.
“The lad is in my trust. He is the son of William Douglas the Hardi.”

The grand master eased his defiant stance and brought James
back to his feet. “I am Gerard de Villiers. I fought with your father at Acre.
Is he well?”

James’s throat tightened. “He rots in London Tower.”

One of the hooded monks behind the grand master closed in on
them with a threatening glower. “At least he lives. That is more than can
be said for our brothers you Scots murdered at Falkirk.”

James fought against Lamberton’s restraint, hot to charge
the mouthy monk. “I’ll have your name before I send you to Hell!”

Challenging them with a better look at his scarred face, the
monk retracted his cowl with a finger shorn at the lowest knuckle, a remnant
from Moslem torture. Cursed with brooding eyes and a turtle mouth, he held the
rigid imperiousness of a man who had little use for Christian charity and
meekness. “Peter d’Aumont. Burn that name to memory. If you should ever cross into
Auvergne, you will receive a different welcome.”

James saw the bishop grimace with regret at hearing the
Falkirk calamity invoked. In that battle, the London Temple had broken its vow
of neutrality by joining Longshanks to help defeat Wallace. Two English
Templars, Brian de Jay and Alan Froumant, had been killed in the final charge.

Deflecting d’Aumont’s threat, Lamberton tried to convince
the grand master to see the matter in a different light. “Edward Plantagenet
uses your Order for his own designs.”

“The English king is our benefactor. Our brothers across the
Channel took up arms with him for a Christian cause.”

“Against fellow Christians,” James reminded him.

“The boy has a loose tongue,” de Villiers said.

“An inheritance of his lineage,” Lamberton admitted. “As is
his compulsion to speak the truth.”

“If Philip’s spies discover that you have come here without
his sanction,” de Villiers warned, “you will never leave Paris alive. I agreed
to this meeting only because of Scotland’s service in Palestine. Now, then, what is
this proposal you would have us consider?”

Lamberton glanced with concern at the other monks. He had hoped to prosecute his cause in private with the grand master, but he saw that he would have to risk that their lips remained sealed. “Philip sues for peace with England to purchase time to rebuild his army. If the treaty is signed, Longshanks will be free to recall his forces from France and send them against us.”

“We will offer a Mass for the salvation of your soul.”

The bishop let that snide dismissal pass. “We need arms and
financing.”

De Villiers repulsed the bishop’s brazen request with a punishing glare. “Why should we care who wins your war with England? A cellar of rats would be a preferred venue to your country. You Scots have brought on your troubles with your incessant bickering. You cannot even agree on a king.”

Lamberton fingered the onyx crucifix hanging at de
Villiers’s breast. “By whose authority do you serve?”

D’Aumont answered for his superior. “Christ and the Blessed
Virgin.”

“And yet your charter requires that you answer only to the Pope.”

D’Aumont bristled. “The Holy Father is Christ’s vicar on
earth. Have you marcher heathens forgotten that?”

Lamberton walked to a lancet window and studied the distant
torches of the royal palace to assess how difficult it would be for Philip’s
army to storm this fortress. “If the pope
is
Christ’s vicar, why then
does he wander France as a nomad under the king’s thumb? Philip taxes the
clergy to finance his wars, but Clement raises not a whimper of protest. Our Lord’s
Kingdom seems more and more of this world.”

“The Temple is not taxed,” d’Aumont said. “What impositions
other orders accept are of no concern to us.”

“Your treasury dwarfs
Philip’s coffers,” Lamberton said. “He ransacked the Lateran in search of gold.
Why would he think twice about gutting the Temple treasury in his own city?”

D’Aumont shared a sardonic laugh with his cloaked brothers. “The
Scots send us lunatics and orphans for envoys!”

Despite their professions of indifference, James sensed that
these monks were also concerned by the growing power of the Dominicans, just as
the bishop had surmised. That day at the palace had made it all too evident,
even to this powerful grand master, that the inquisitor Lagny had wormed his
way into the inner circles of the Capetian court.

“The Keys of St. Peter are now kept locked in Philip’s privy
chamber,” the bishop reminded the Templars. “One monastic order, and only one, has
positioned itself to gain their possession. And it is not the Temple.”

De Villiers narrowed his glare. “Reckless talk like that
could get you a seat before an Inquisition tribunal.”

Lamberton allowed the ensuing tense silence to extend, underscoring the gravity of what he next asked. “Why do you suppose every conqueror since Caesar has tried to subjugate my country?”