The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (21 page)

As James and Robert prepared for the last encounter of the
day, which would determine the contest, the princess scanned the throngs
pressed against the rails and saw Belle wrapped in a tattered cloak, shivering
and white with fear. “My lord, your chivalry exceeds your love of play-acting,
I trust?”

Longshanks was annoyed at being distracted from the
preparations for the last run of the day. “What say you?”

Isabella pointed to the crowd. “I fear that poor lady down
there is nearly frozen from the wind. May we invite her to the protection of
our canopy?”

Longshanks squinted at the shivering woman. “Is she not a
Scot?”

“She is, my lord.”

“Then my advice to you, little one, is to leave the
governance of my realm to me and attend to making yourself desirable to my
son.”

“Sire, I was only—”

“And remind me to have that side door in your bedchamber
greased. I’m told it has an annoying creak.”

Informed that the king knew of her lurking in the anteroom,
Isabella tried to dissemble her alarm. Had he also become aware of her other covert
activities, such as sending coded messages to Paris about troop movements and
gathering surveillance about his health from the court physicians? She looked
down at the list rails and saw that the spectators had become so desperate to
witness this last meet that their surge had caused the plankings to give way.
The guards had to drive them back across the boundaries with pike thrusts.

At the far end, James waited for Robert to make the first
move.

Robert was desperate to avoid the confrontation, but he knew delay would only sharpen Longshanks’s doubts about his loyalty. With a resigned heave of disgust, he took to the stirrups and accepted his lance.

As James lowered his helmet and came to the position, Belle fell to her knees, praying that neither man would be injured.

The horn sounded, and Robert exploded in fast start. His ponderous stallion had been foiled to match its master both in breadth of stature and explosive temper.

James spurred his outsized pony toward the confrontation. Down the stretch, Robert lowered his lance, steadying its point. Nearing the collision, James reined to a dangerous halt—and threw his lance to the ground.

Robert reined up, lurching sideways in a violent halting
maneuver that threatened to fracture his stallion’s front legs. He finally
regained control of the testy horse and circled James in an attempt to
understand what had just happened. “In God’s name! Up with you!”

James refused to move. “I’ll not break lances on the helm of
another Scot for the amusement of Englishmen.”

Robert glanced at the pavilion and saw Longshanks pacing in
agitation. He removed his helmet and muttered through set teeth, “Pick it up,
damn you! We’ll be the laughing stock of all England.”

“I don’t see Longshanks laughing.”

Before Robert could stop him, James rode to the pavilion and sat stoically before the English king, scanning the cold faces of his countrymen who had crowded up on both sides of the lists below the raised platform. The Scots at the rails stood silent, waiting to hear an explanation for his refusal to take on the Bruce. He glared at them, disgusted at their inconstancy. How many of them had come to his father’s aid at Berwick? Robert had now shown his true colors as well, accepting the draft onto the English team rather than standing up for his mother’s ancient Celt lineage. He stole a bitter glance at Belle, who knelt shivering aside Tabhann, tending to his gut wound. She looked up at him with pleading eyes, but he knew the truth. She had also rejected him to further the interests of her clan in the hope of becoming queen. Denied a decision on the tournament, even his fellow Scots began pelting him with debris.

Traitors, all of them. To the man … and woman.

Longshanks paced in front of his viewing chair, furious that
his scheme to force Robert’s hand and turn him against his fellow Scots had
been thwarted. He shouted at James, “You pimple-assed puke! I would have
returned your father’s castle had you won the day.”

James knew better. He fixed his glare on Princess Isabella
as he answered the king, “Then you would have merely given me what I already
own.” He turned and lashed his pony across the field.

Longshanks restrained Clifford from making the arrest.

The officer could only look on in disbelief as James, for
the second time in as many days, was allowed to depart Berwick with impunity.

James galloped through the lists, and this time it was
Robert who was forced to give way.

A
ROAR CLAMORING UP FROM
the banks of the Thames rattled
the stained-glass windows of Westminster Hall, and the lords of the English
Parliament, fearful that another bread riot had broken out in the city,
adjourned their plenary session to take up their arms in the cloakroom. Bishop Lamberton, swept up in the rush from his diplomatic
station in the rear benches, elbowed his way to the doors. His heart sank at
what he saw.

A London mob was parading William Wallace, half-naked on a nag, down the Strand. Crowned with a laurel wreath to mock his injudicious boast at Stirling Bridge that he would one day wear the English crown, the once-indefatigable Scot warrior had aged terribly during his seven years on the run. His massive frame was now gaunt and his long hair had thinned to a pitiful mane.

The bishop fought a path through the jeering throngs. “Wallace!”

Heartened to hear a brogue, Wallace turned and found the
only friendly face in the rabble.

“Who betrayed you, Wil?”

Wallace hung his head, ashamed at having let down the bishop
in his command of their insurrection forces. He growled the revelation
hoarsely, his throat strafed from thirst. “Mentheith!

Paling with rage, Lamberton now counted it a blessing that
he had left young Douglas in Scotland, sparing him this shameful spectacle.
Driven back by a volley of hurled rocks, he cursed the treachery of Sir John de
Mentheith, the keeper of Dumbarton Castle and one of Red Comyn’s vassals. The bishop
slipped behind the barricades and hurried alone through a back alley toward
Westminster Hall. Reaching its doors again, he demanded reentry by invoking the
ecclesiastical authority of his onyx crucifix.

Inside the chaotic courtroom, Peter Mallorie, the king’s
chief justiciar, sat perched on the bench surrounded by jurists chosen from the
usual slate of petty barons whose allegiance had been purchased by the Plantagenets.
Shackled and half-starved from the forced ride south, Wallace was dragged to
the docks and manacled with chains like a caged beast.

Mallorie could barely be heard above the tumult. “You,
William Wallace of Renfrew, are charged with high treason!”

Roughly handled by the bloodthirsty rabble, Lamberton surged
against the bar and shouted at the justices arrayed above him, “The accused
must be permitted an advocate!”

Mallorie ignored the point of order and hurriedly read out
the indictment. “A runaway from righteousness! A robber! A committer of
sacrilege! An arsonist and a murderer more cruel than Herod and more debauched
than Nero!”

Wallace heaved with each difficult breath. “The victim robs
the robber?”

Mallorie pointed at him in threat. “The prisoner shall be
silenced!”

“My woman!” Wallace fought the restraints. “Ravished and
murdered!

A few scattered protests were drowned out by rehearsed calls
for the death sentence yammered by a gang of dockworkers and tavern thugs paid
by the king’s henchmen to make certain the jurists did not lose resolve. Lamberton saw that these
judicial shills were determined to hold a sham trial without calling witnesses.
While in London these past months attempting to negotiate a truce, he had told
all who would listen that the High Sheriff of Lanark, William de Heselrig, had
murdered Wallace’s wife, and only then had Wallace retaliated by killing the
English officer. More than a few Londoners were sympathetic to the grievance.
Wallace had, after all, harassed mostly Northumbrians, deemed by Londoners to
be only a hair less savage than Scots. Moreover, Wallace’s arrest set a
troublesome precedent; duly elected as a Guardian of Scotland, he was entitled
to the protection of an ecclesiastic law that banned the execution of heads of
state without arbitration by the Holy Father.

Wallace denied the
charge. “I swore no homage to Edward Plantagenet!”

Lamberton shook his head to warn him that such claims,
though justifiable, would only inflame sentiment for his execution. He knew that
all now rested on Wallace’s standing as a former governor of Scotland.

Regaining a semblance of order, Mallorie shouted from the
bench, “At Stirling, you did slay Hugh Cressingham and six hundred troops by
stealth, seducing them into your snares like criminals in the night! At Dunbar,
also, and at Falkirk, murder was committed!”

His infamous temper sparked, Wallace roared at his accuser.
“Does your King commit a crime when he takes the field to fight the French? If
I am charged with waging war for my country’s freedom, then I stand guilty as
accused!”

“He confesses!” one of the bench barons shouted.

Wallace rattled his chains at the bribed justiciar. “Aye, I
have slain Englishmen! And I have stormed castles unjustly claimed by your
King! If I have done injury to the houses of religion, I repent. But Edward of
England has committed the same acts upon ours!”

Mallorie sped his notary
to ink the quill. “The accused affirms his guilt!”

Lamberton shouted over the hooting. “Of rightful conflict
only! He must be dealt with as a prisoner of war!” Ignored by the bench, he
pleaded with Wallace, “Demand to be represented by a Guardian! That will gain
delay!”

But Wallace merely slumped in defeat. Delivered up as a
scapegoat by his own countrymen, he had no more fight left in him. He shook his
head at Lamberton. “Save yourself, Bishop. Tell the lads I did my best.”

Lamberton, helpless to
thwart the inevitable outcome, stared incredulously at his old friend as the
swarming scum shoved him to the rear.

On the bench, Mallorie stood to be heard. “The prisoner
shall be dragged to Smithfield and hanged until unconsciousness, cut down and
revived, castrated, disemboweled, his entrails burnt before his eyes, quartered
and decapitated. His head shall be displayed on Tower Bridge and his limbs
exposed to public view. What remains of his corpse shall be mutilated and
burnt.”

When the crowd hushed to hear the prisoner’s reaction,
Wallace straightened and spoke in an unwavering voice. “My suffering will last
but minutes. England’s torment will endure until the last Scot draws breath.”

Lamberton vowed to
remain with his old comrade to the end. As a churchman, he knew that the
torment of such a brutal execution was designed to be both physical and
spiritual. Holy Church held that no mortal could gain Heaven unless buried in
blessed ground with body intact, a doctrine promulgated to justify the
superstition that all flesh would arise on Judgment Day. Those dissolute
cardinals in the Curia could not fathom angels traipsing all over the world to
gather up missing arms and severed heads, so they had embraced the inane dogma
that the mutilated would be denied the Resurrection.

Damn their prideful souls!

That afternoon, as a mule dragged Wallace the five miles to
Smithfield, Lamberton walked behind the grisly procession and petitioned a
miracle for Scotland, whose survival now seemed more doubtful than ever. He
also begged forgiveness for having so callously dismissed Wallace to young
Douglas after the Falkirk defeat. Unlike the Bruces and Comyns, Wallace had
cared not for lands or titles. His lone cause had been Scotland’s honor.

When, five hours later, the executioner raised his ax for
the last time, a blood-covered Wallace turned to Lamberton and screamed,
“Scotland free!”

His head bounded from the gallows with his eyes willed open
in defiance.

He had fought the whoresons to the very end.

At that moment,
Lamberton was gifted with his miracle. He now understood what he had required
to win this war with England: Not treaties with the French, or armaments, not
even a new king. No, on this day Longshanks had unwittingly delivered up the most potent weapon for Scotland’s arsenal.

A martyr.

E
DWARD
C
AERNERVON STEPPED WARILY INTO
the royal bedchamber
at York and covered his mouth to stifle the acrid stench of flesh rot. Tar
pitch had been lathered across the walls to capture the invisible humors, and
on the bedside table sat a silver bowl with bloodletting instruments.

Blessed accoutrements of death.

Summoned north from his hunting excursion with Gaveston, he
had been promised that his father, delirious with rheumatic fever, was near the
end. He had ruined two horses in his haste to arrive in time to witness the
glorious last breath, stopping only to send orders to London to have his coronation
robe spun and his wedding to that French bitch arranged.