The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (2 page)

Beguiled by the strangeness of her bardic inflections, the
earl and his squire edged closer to better hear her.

“But one runt of a lad, inspired by a headstrong maiden from Fife, would not sit prey for an easy clawing.” Isabella stabbed the crackling log as if gutting a combatant, forcing the two Scots to shield their eyes from the flying embers. Her shuddering voice, taut with the emotion of memory, fell to a near whisper. “Nay, the stars had destined Jamie Douglas to stalk the stalker.”

The Scots

James
Douglas:
son of Wil Douglas
Wil Douglas:
a rebel leader, nicknamed “the Hardi”
Eleanor Douglas:
second
wife of William Douglas
Isabelle “Belle” MacDuff:
daughter of Ian MacDuff
Ian MacDuff:
Earl
of Fife and chieftain of Clan MacDuff
Robert Bruce:
grandson of the Competitor
Robert Bruce the Competitor:
grandfather of Robert
Gibbie Duncan:
childhood
friend of James Douglas
Elizabeth de Burgh:
daughter
of the earl of Ulster
William Lamberton:
Bishop
of St. Andrews
Edward Bruce:
brother
of Robert
Thomas Bruce:
brother
of Robert
Nigel Bruce:
brother
of Robert
Mary Campbell:
sister
of Robert Bruce
Christian Seton:
sister
of Robert Bruce
Red Comyn:
patriarch
of the Clan Comyn
John “Cam” Comyn:
Lord
of Badendoch, son of Red
John “Tabhann”
Comyn:
Lord of Buchan, nephew of Red
Idonea Comyn:
widow
of Red’s eldest brother
Thomas Dickson:
servant
of William Douglas
Christiana of the
Isles:
leader of Clan Gamoran
Angus Og MacDonald:
Lord of the Isles
Dewar of
Glendochart:
Culdee patriarch
Ned Sween:
a
Culdee monk
Murdoch, McKie, and McClurg:
sons of the Galloway crone
Thomas Randolph:
nephew
of Robert Bruce
Sim Ledhouse:
an officer serving James Douglas
William Sinclair:
a Scot Templar

The English

Edward I:
King
of England, nicknamed “Longshanks”
Edward Caernervon:
son
of Longshanks, becomes Edward II
Edward III:
son
of Isabella of France
Gilbert de Clare:
Earl
of Gloucester, kinsman to the Bruces
Robert Clifford:
a Borders officer
Aymer de Valence:
Earl
of Pembroke
Robert Neville:
a
knight called “The Peacock of the North”
Henry de Bohun:
a
knight in the service of Edward II
Thomas Lancaster:
Earl of Lancaster, a rival of Edward
II
Hugh Despenser:
second favourite of Edward II
Roger Mortimer:
Isabella of France’s paramour

The French

Philip IV:
King of France, called “the Fair”
Isabella of France:
daughter of Philip IV
Piers Gaveston:
Caernervon’s Gascon favourite
Giles d’Argentin:
a knight
Abbot of Lagny:
a Dominican inquisitor
Peter d'Aumont:
a Knight Templar
Jeanne de Rouen:
a Cistercienne

Dishonor was offered,
They refused;
Blood was on the hair,
And from the harp
A sigh of sorrow.

— a Celtic lament

S
OOTED BY PILLAGE SMOKE BLOWN
inland across the North Sea,
hundreds of Scots—including women, children, and feeble old men—dangled kicking and gagging from
gallows that had been hastily erected below the burning spires of Berwick.

That morning, a shock force of English knights had
launched the spring campaign of 1296 by cutting a swath of destruction into
Scotland’s largest port. Now, hours into the butchery, Yorkshire and
Northumbrian
routiers
rampaged down the city's narrow wynds, stripping and rolling strangled inhabitants into
the Tweed to clear the execution ropes for more victims. The river’s
blood-slicked currents swept this flotsam of misery and death toward the
estuary on the coast, where the corpses eddied with the frenzied salmon driven
harbor side by the poisonous spillage from torched merchant ships. Trapped in the motte tower at the center of the conflagration, a half-starved garrison of two hundred Scot knights could only watch from the ramparts and shout promises of vengeance at the English murderers below them.

On a distant hill overlooking the flaming walls,
fourteen-year-old James Douglas collapsed to his knees and retched.

His two gray mastiff pups, Cull and Chullan, nipped at his heels as if to protest this shameful reaction to his first glimpse of war. Scoffing at rumors of widespread killings, he had convinced his best friend, Gibbie Duncan, to join him on the three-day run here from Douglasdale. But now he saw with his own eyes that the reports of a massacre were true. These English devils were burning and looting all that stood in their path east of the Selkirk Forest.

He fought for breath, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, and
ran to catch up with Gibbie. A premature birth had left him sickly and slight
from the start, but nature had compensated him with fierce agate eyes and
straight black hair that he kept shorn short in the fashion of the Romans who
had built the ancient stone wall south of his Lanarkshire home. He had heard
the gossiped whispers: that his veins ran with the blood of a distant centurion
and that his skin had darkened to the shade of lightly tanned leather when his
mother, dying in childbirth, had screamed a pagan pact to bargain his survival.

Rushing ahead, Gibbie, a
year younger but a head taller than him, dropped to his knees on the brow of
the next hill and inched his eyes above the broom. Running a hand through his
wild flaxen hair, he hissed through the gap where his front teeth should have
been, and then pointed toward a column of mounted knights making fast for Berwick.
“That’s the English king!”

James staggered up the steep sandstone spur, refusing to
believe it. “Edward Plantagenet wouldn’t muddy his boots this far north.”

Gibbie gnawed on a root tuber and spat his opinion of his
friend’s skepticism. “You think I don’t know the royal pennon?”

James finally caught up. He crouched atop the perch, blinking away the sting of the smoke. When his eyes had cleared, he looked down into the valley and saw that the lead rider of the armed column had freakishly long legs and wild white hair flowing to his shoulders. Gibbie was right—the English king had arrived from York. But it was another sight that tested his unsettled belly again. The Plantagenet herald carried a standard with a fire-breathing monster reared on its hinds. Every Scot lad had been taught what the raising of the dragon meant: Berwick’s defenders would be dealt with as traitors to the crown. His heart raced at the fearsome sight. These English knights who served King Edward the First rode chargers twice the size of Highland ponies and wore silver armour so resplendent that the old Roman road up from Sunderland now resembled a glittering snake. They seemed spawned from biblical giants of another race—and their Goliath was being hailed across Christendom with an ominous new title:

The Hammer of the Scots.

When the royal column
disappeared over the far ridge, he clambered up to the limb of a sprawling oak
for a better view of his father’s defense of the Scot tower. Called “Le Hardi”
in honor of his service to the Cross in Palestine, Wil Douglas had been
recruited by the guardians of the realm to lead the insurrection against the
English aggression. Sinewy and raw-boned, he stood a hand taller than most in
his ranks and could still sling a log farther than any man in Lanarkshire. Yet
a decade of fighting had aged him beyond his forty-two years; his eyes were
ringed with smoky circles of fatigue and his thick chestnut shocks had receded
to a band of grey tufts above the temples. He now slumped so severely from the
weight of his hauberk that his torso appeared to have slipped the moorings of
his spine. Although his crackling storytelling and bawdy jests used to be
legendary across Scotland, James could not remember the last time he had heard
his father laugh.

He searched the smoldering pines to the north. There was still no sign of the promised relief army from Stirling. Below the city’s walls, on the banks of the Tweed, English soldiers guarded the lone bridge that led into the port. Swollen from the spring thaw, the river curved through the low dunes and came within a hundred yards of the tower before emptying into the sea. He feared that if the English were allowed to fire their catapult all night, his father’s timbered keep would collapse before morning. If that happened, the road to the northern provinces would be thrown open. Weighing the risks, he drew a long breath and insisted, “Somehow, we have to malafooster that stone thrower.”

Gibbie kept chewing his
root. “Those scousers down there are thicker than a cloud of midges. How would
we get into the camp unnoticed?”

While thinking hard on that
problem, James cocked his ear to the south. A minstrel’s ditty wafted up in the
breeze from the camp followers straggling behind the English army. Hatching an
idea, he whistled an imitation of the tune as he pulled a penknife from his
pocket and whittled a soft branch into a hollow flute with five holes.
Satisfied with its pitch, he split off another limb and hurriedly carved three balls
the size of crab apples. He threw the wooden balls at Gibbie. “How’s your
juggling?”

Gibbie lunged for them, but he lost his hold on the limb and plummeted to the heather. Cursing, he arose and gathered up the balls, wondering what in hell’s molasses his friend was up to now. James was already gone, running toward the river armed with only a tune pipe and some cockeyed scheme. “Douglas, you bawheided choob! You’re dafter’n an unbolt door on a windy day!”

A
S DARKNESS FELL, THE TWO
boys floated down river toward
Berwick. Moving with the strong currents, they held their shirts and leggings
above their heads while the pups paddled furiously behind them to keep up.
After a half-hour of frigid swimming past the charred debris, they reached the
banks below the tower and discovered that the English had advanced their lines
to within a mere hundred paces from the walls. They dressed quickly, shaking the blood back to their toes.

After whispering a prayer to St. Ninian for protection,
James nodded his readiness to Gibbie. Then, he leapt over the embankment and
marched into the English camp, playing the flute and singing:

“The pretty trees of Berwick
are hung with fruit so ripe.”

Gibbie followed,
juggling awkwardly, while the pups howled.

The soldiers sitting around the fires erupted to their feet with weapons drawn and searched the surrounding darkness for the source of the singing.

James shook with fear, but he forced himself to finish the song:

“Scots and dogs that deigned to pick
with their English lords a gripe.”