The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (25 page)

T
ORN WITH INDECISION,
R
OBERT HAD
been pacing for nearly an
hour across the highest hill above Dumfries, the site of numerous clan
skirmishes with the Comyns over the centuries. Jangled from no sleep for three
nights, he was having trouble keeping his thoughts clear. His reconnaissance
that morning had confirmed that Red Comyn was lodging in Greyfriars Abbey, just
outside the town, and that the market craw-roads were thick with the
chieftain’s armed men. Fearing his twin brothers, Nigel and Thomas, would
gainsay his plan before he could prosecute it, he had delayed telling them the
reason for his hasty summons of them from Lochmaben with instructions to bring
vassals Christopher Seton, James Lindsay, and Roger Kirkpatrick. He
shoved the nearest twin toward a waiting horse. “Tom, off with you to that
ridge again.”

“You
sent me up there fifteen minutes ago,” Thomas Bruce grumbled. “Who is it you
expect me to find?”

“Jamie
Douglas.”

Thomas
stared gape-jawed at him. “After you arrested him and gave up his tower? We’ll
see Wallace’s ghost come join us first.”

 Robert bit off another flurry of curses at
David Brechin, the Comyn turncoat he had intercepted on the rush back from
London. By his calculation, Brechin should have reached St. Andrews two days
ago. He wouldn’t consider the possibility that James had refused to come to his
aid. If, as he suspected, Brechin had violated his oath by telling Red of their
encounter in Yorkshire, the Comyns would be lying in wait. Riding into Dumfries
with only six men would be a dangerous gamble. Yet putting off the
confrontation would only allow Red to escape east and combine his forces with
Clifford at Berwick.

“Whatever it is you intend,” Nigel insisted, “let’s have at
it. Else Tom and I are going back home.”

Robert shook his head, stung by the bitter hand that fate
had dealt him. If he could not command obedience from his own brothers, how
could he expect to rule a country? Edward, next in seniority, had always been
the enforcer of clan solidarity, but he had chosen an inauspicious time to be
away in Hartlepool retrieving a shipment of wheat. Kicking at the dirt to vent
his anger, Robert motioned the others to their horses, and then climbed to his
saddle. He glanced longingly at the northern horizon one more time. Seeing no
sign of James, he led his paltry troop, disguised in hoods, down into the
Galloway valley.

A
HALF-HOUR LATER, THE
Bruces arrived at Greyfriars Abbey,
and Robert dismounted, signaling for his men to guard the approach. Walking to
the monastery’s door, he pulled the cowl further over his head to obscure his
face, and banged the clapper.

A friar opened the whispering slot. “Full for the evening.”

He thrust his arm through the aperture to prevent the friar from ignoring him. “Advise Lord Comyn that Brechin brings news from London.” He retracted his arm, and the waddling friar slammed the slot shut.

Minutes later, the friar returned, opened the gate, and
allowed Robert to enter the outer courtyard. “Comyn says you are to wait here
until the Abbot finishes a private Mass for him.”

Unable to shake the pesky Franciscan, Robert reluctantly
took a seat on a bench and searched for a way to enter the chapel unnoticed.
Red’s troopers, he feared, would be returning any moment now for the end of the
Mass. He rubbed his stomach to feign hunger. “Might you spare some bread?”

The friar kept his eyes
fixed on his own navel. “There is a tavern down the street.”

Robert restrained his
urge to throttle the stingy oaf. Fast running out of time, he decided to try a
different tact. “My liege intends to grant a benefice to honor the many rewards
that God has granted him. There’s enough coin in my saddlebag to build a new
church.” He leaned toward the friar, as if to whisper a confidence. “You must
not tell your abbot, but the Red has narrowed it down to this abbey or
Jedburgh.” He stood to depart. “Perhaps I will return later.”

The friar, his beady eyes flaming with gold lust, grasped
Robert’s arm to delay him. “Thieves lurk about in these parts. I’d best take
your treasury to the chapter house for safe keeping.”

When the tonsured oaf
hurried out the abbey’s entrance to retrieve the donation, Robert slipped
inside the cloisters and fell in with a cadre of ascetic brothers who were
ambulating in a circle, deep in prayer. He counted three Comyn men guarding the
chapel. After a second pass around the courtyard, he disappeared unnoticed into
a vestibule and found a vestment frock and a chalice. Trading in his riding cloak
for the vestment, he hid the chalice under his sleeves and reentered the
cloisters. He merged again into the circulating herd of meditating friars whose
eyes were trained inward. Approaching the chapel, he brought out the chalice
and bowed his head, waiting to be allowed entry.

The guards, thinking he
was delivering the Eucharist, waved him inside. The door closed, and
Robert clicked the bolt behind him. Red Comyn, the only
congregant present, knelt on the front pew. The abbot was about to
offer the benediction when he stopped, seeing a the dim outlines of a hooded
figure standing near the baptismal font.

Alerted by the abbot’s distraction, Red turned and squinted
through the haze of incense toward the door. “Brechin? I told the monk to have
you wait.” He arose from the kneeler, his eyes full of hope. “The deed … it is
done?”

Robert retracted his hood and stepped into the light. “Not
quite.”

Red’s eyes bulged. He couldn’t fathom how the friar had
mistaken Robert for the shorter Brechin. “Bruce … I was told you were in
London.”

Robert walked slowly down the aisle, reassured by the
discovery that Brechin had not double-crossed him. “I was nearly to York before
I realized that I failed to obtain your signature on our agreement.”

“What say you? I
executed it, by Christ! My own copy bears the mark.”

Robert reached into his
hauberk, pulled out a folded parchment, and laid it across the altar lintel.
“Sign it, and I will leave you to your prayers.”

Annoyed at the
interruption, Red drew a quill from an inkwell near the baptismal and smoothed
out the document to find the empty space for the signature. “There it is, clear
as …” He reread the last line—
not
of their agreement, but of his secret letter to Longshanks. “Where did
you get this?”

Robert came up fast to
deny him a reach for his weapon. “Lying knave!”

The abbot fluttered his cassock sleeves in protest against
the sacrilege. “This is a house of God!”

Robert shoved Red toward the altar. “Nay, a viper’s nest!”

“Off me, Bruce!”

“You schemed my death!”

Red turned to call his guards, but he fell silent when
Robert opened his stolen frock to reveal a dagger at his belt. Unnerved by the
crazed look in Robert’s eyes, Red raised his hands in a gesture of concession.
“Take the throne! Keep your damn lands as well!”

“In writing. And you will read it aloud in the town square.”

Cornered, Red reluctantly began inscribing the terms of the
devolution. When the quill ran dry, he dipped it into the ink well. He hovered
the stylus over the parchment—and drove the quill’s point at Robert’s eyes.

Robert swerved to parry the attack, but the quill impaled
his hand and splattered ink across his face. Blinded, cried out and he clung to
Red’s shoulders. Red threw Robert to the floor and ran for the sacristy door.
Robert captured Red’s leg and held fast, his eyes burning so horribly that he
feared he was losing his sight. He released the ankle and staggered to his feet
swinging fists. Red tried to run past him, but he drove a shoulder into the
chieftain’s chin and heaved him back against the altar.

The abbot saw the dagger
at Robert’s belt. “No weapons here!”

Robert heard the cleric’s
shout as a warning that Red had drawn his blade. He pulled his dagger and
rammed it into Red’s chest.

Red looked down in disbelief at the hilt buried to his
sternum. Blood trickled from the chieftain’s hands onto the altar linens. He
slid to his knees and struggled to extract the weapon from his gut.

Robert furiously rubbed his bloodshot eyes to regain sight.
Horrified at what he had done, he looked to the abbot for absolution. “God’s
mercy! I did not mean to …”

The abbot pointed to the crucifix above the altar as if
calling on Christ for a witness. “Mortal sin! Hellfire will be your justice!”

Red collapsed unconscious, his stomach gashed.

Robert fled to the sacristy and ran through the cloisters.
The friars walking in prayer stared at him in horror, as if confronting a
black-splotched demon.

The Comyn guards rammed open the chapel door and discovered
Red lying in a pool of blood. “Bruce!” they shouted. “Take the Bruce!”

Robert escaped the lunges of the startled Franciscans and
scaled the abbey walls. He dived head over heels and landed in the alley
between the monastery and the tithe barn.

N
IGEL
B
RUCE FOUND HIS BROTHER,
bloodied and dazed, hiding on
his haunches in a corner of a cattle pen. “Rob, what in God’s name has happened
to you?”

“I fear … I’ve killed him.”

Nigel backed away a step. “Comyn? In a sanctuary?”

Robert stared at his own bloodied hands. “I am lost.”

The other Bruce men came running up they alley, but they
were driven back by the mob pouring down the other end.

Kirkpatrick drew his sword to slow the attackers. “Get him
out of here!”

Robert was in shock, unable to move.

Kirkpatrick dragged him to a stabled horse. Slapping at the
mount’s flanks, he sped Robert off with his brothers through the barn toward
the outskirts of the village. “If Comyn lives, he’ll turn this deed to his
advantage! Lindsay and I will make certain the deed is done!”

R
OBERT AND HIS BROTHERS HAD
remained crouched for three
hours behind a copse on the lookout hill above Dumfries. With no sign of
Lindsay and Kirkpatrick, they feared the two men had been captured.

Now, a lone horseman galloped in from the west, with the afternoon sun sinking from its apex behind him. Robert knew that the Comyn loyalists in Dumfries would be sending word of the murder to Dalswinton to marshal reinforcements. If the messenger got through, he and his brothers would be doomed. Still splattered with Red Comyn’s blood, he signaled his brothers to hide in the ravine while he climbed a tree that hovered over the road. When the rider passed under its branches, he pounced and knocked him from his saddle.

Thomas and Nigel came running and aimed their blades at the
intruder. Robert leapt to his feet with dagger drawn, ready to drive
it home.

The downed rider rolled over and shook his head in
accusation. “Castle razing, and now highway banditry? Can’t you Bruces find
honest employment?”

Grinning for the first time in days, Robert raised James and
embraced him. Then, he shoved his friend away in hot anger. “You took your damn
time!”

James rubbed his
smarting scalp. “I wanted to see a little of the countryside first.” With
biting emphasis, he added, “There’s not much scenery in a jail.”

Robert was about to
protest that indictment as undeserved when Kirkpatrick and Lindsay came
galloping over the ridge. The two men reined up and fell exhausted from their
saddles.

Kirkpatrick heaved for breath. “A near thing … but done.”

Robert stood paralyzed
by his vassal’s confirmation of Red’s death. All his life he had yearned to be
rid of his clan’s most hated enemy. Yet during these past hours, he had prayed
for Red’s survival, fearful the clans would raise the dead Comyn chieftain up
as a martyr and dismiss his traitorous letter to Longshanks as a forgery. He
knew that Tabhann and Cam would now cite the murder as justification for their
right to the throne.

James glanced around.
Finding himself surrounded by men slumped in silent despond, he demanded, “Is
somebody going to tell me what all this head-slinking skullduggery is about?”

Robert could not look
him in the eyes. “I killed Red Comyn.” He turned away in despair. “It is the
end of me.”

James slammed his fist
into his palm, celebrating his old enemy’s fitting demise. “No! A beginning,
Rob! If you will seize it!”

Deafened by his own self-pitying lament, Robert kept
muttering to himself. “The murder of a Guardian under the king’s peace on holy
ground.”

James grasped Robert’s shoulders to instill him with
resolve. “Where are Red’s kinsmen?”

Robert remembered that same manic grin from the day the
Comyns had surrounded them as boys in Douglasdale. “At Sweetheart Abbey, by
last report. But what does—”

“Up with you!”

“To go where?”

James leapt on his horse and pointed the Bruce brothers to
their saddles. Grinning wild-eyed, he shouted at Robert, “To see you become a
king!”

P
ELTED BY A COLD RAINSTORM,
James led the Bruces to the
walls of Dalswinton Castle, the Comyn bolthole that sat two leagues north of
Dumfries. He called up to the tower, “The Bruce would speak with Red Comyn!”

The sergeant of the keep peered over the rampart. “Comyn
attends the bench in Dumfries.”

“That is base hospitality!” Dripping wet, James trotted
along the walls feigning outrage. “He was to meet us here! By God, we will take
our counsel with the Earl of Badendoch, then!”

“At Sweetheart. With his cousin, Lord Buchan.”

Slipping a hidden smile
at Robert to confirm their good fortune, James shouted up at the sergeant,
“Well then, that means you must be in charge! The Bruce is in peace with Comyn!
You have been advised, of course!” When the sergeant met that news with a look
of skepticism, James barked at him, “Am I required to produce the bond while we
stand out here to catch our deaths? There will be Hell to pay if my liege is
forced to seek shelter at Roslin!”