The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (26 page)

The sergeant finally
ordered the gates opened. Robert lunged his horse forward, too eager to enter, until
James captured his reins to prevent him from creating suspicion. Once inside,
James surveyed the walls and saw that ten men defended the keep. He nodded the
Bruce brothers to the left and Kirkpatrick and Lindsay to the right.

“You are in luck!” The sergeant on the ramparts pointed
toward the southern moorlands. “My liege returns.”

Swallowing a curse, James cracked open the gate. Two hills
away, Tabhann and Cam led thirty riders on a forced pace toward the castle. If
the portcullis were dropped, he and the Bruces would be trapped. Yet if they
allowed the keep to remain manned, the Comyns would retain a crucial base from
which to harass Lochmaben. He shouted at the sergeant, “The Bruce shall ride
forth to greet the Comyns! And I shall announce our arrival to those inside the
tower!”

The sergeant hesitated, debating the unconventional
protocol, but finally he nodded his agreement. Robert and his brothers had no
choice but to trust James’s instincts, and they cantered toward the gate.

James sidled up aside
Robert and whispered, “I’ll meet you at Stirling.”

“I’ll not go without you.”

“Get out!” James muttered while smiling at the sergeant.
“Now!”

Robert and his men kept good formation as they rode out of
the castle, as if to greet the approaching Comyns. A quarter-league away,
Tabhann and Cam halted to discern the identity of the distant riders. Robert
maintained a gentle canter—until wheeling ninety degrees and spurring north
with his men.

Tabhann, suddenly recognizing the Bruces, lashed to the chase.

While the guards on the walls were distracted, James
retreated on his horse into the inner tower. He climbed the central staircase,
scraping the lacquered floorboards with his mount’s shoed hooves. Reaching the
second floor of the great hall, he unloosed a torch from the wall to set fire
to the tapestries, and soon the hall was engulfed in billowing smoke. He reined
the spooked horse back toward the stairs and, turning to make certain the
flames had taken, saw a flash of metal above the hearth.

The Dun Eaddain Ax.

Determined to regain his boyhood prize, he drove the balking
horse back into the inferno. Choked by the smoke, he pressed his sleeve against
his nose and searched the hot stones for the relic that Tabhann had stolen. At
last he found its handle and pulled the ax from the moorings. His horse buckled
in a panic, nearly overcome by the heat. As he reined back toward the
staircase, he heard a shout through the smoke—

“Idonea!”

That voice sent a shudder down his spine. Was his mind
playing tricks? No, it couldn’t be. The Comyns would never risk bringing Belle this far south.

“Where are you?” screamed a woman from deep within the
smoke.

His throat was too strafed to call out. One of the Comyn
guards broke through flames, but he kicked the man back into the inferno. The
smoke prevented him from finding the staircase. Losing consciousness, he saw a
faint beam of light streaming through the haze. The golden particles formed an
image of the Virgin Mary. Her radiant halo pulsed with hues that transformed
from a cold indigo to the incandescent orange of the sun. The Virgin stood
beckoning him toward her with outstretched hands.

Was this the hour of his death?

He crossed his breast, grateful at least that the Blessed
Mother, not the raven goddess Morgainne, had come to escort him to his
Judgment. The blackness became peaceful and … the frightened horse charged
toward the holy light. He hugged the animal’s sweating neck and recoiled from a
jaw-jarring impact.

A loud shattering rang out like the singing of angels.

A rush of wind assaulted his face—he was airborne.

He came to his wits sprawled on the bailey grounds. A few
paces away, his horse writhed with a fractured leg. He looked up to the tower
and saw that he had just crashed through a stain-glass window bearing the image
of the Blessed Mother.

Tabhann leaned out the broken window. “Close the gate!”

Recovering his jarred sight, he discovered that the Comyns
had returned to the castle after giving up their chase of the Bruces. Ax still
in hand, he mounted the nearest pony and dashed for the portcullis. He saw that
he wouldn’t make it through in time, so he leapt off the pony and slapped it
toward the lowering spikes.

The guard was forced to abandon the crank to draw his sword.

James dodged the blow and swung his ax.

The guard looked down in disbelief—at his severed arm.

Twenty Comyn men rushed down the tower, angling to surround
him. He clambered up the ramparts and jumped over, a second
before a volley of arrows zinged overhead.

The pony was waiting for him.

T
ABHANN HELD A SWORD AT
the throat of the sergeant who had
been duped into allowing the Bruces to enter the castle. “Who did this?”

The sergeant’s wobbly knees buckled him to the floor. “The
Devil himself, by the blackness of his skin.”

Tabhann’s searching gaze swept toward the mantle above the
hearth. The brackets that held the ax were empty. He kicked at the sergeant in
hot anger.

Belle, dusted with smoke residue, ran into the great hall
and found her husband with buckets in his hands, inspecting the fire damage.
Before she could speak, Cam staggered up the staircase clutching a letter.

“He’s dead!”

Jubilant, Tabhann embraced his cousin. “We are finally rid
of Douglas?”

Belle collapsed to her knees at hearing the news of—

“My father!” Cam cried. “Bruce murdered my father!”

Belle sank in relief. It was not James who had been killed,
after all.

Disgusted, Tabhann threw open a window to air out the
chamber. The smoke slowly cleared, revealing Idonea’s charred body under the
mouth of the chimney. He kicked the widow’s corpse aside and muttered as he
walked out, “At least the day hasn’t been a total loss.”

Belle rushed to the crone and unclenched her rigored fist. A
shard dropped from the dead widow’s hand. In her last moments of life, Idonea
had pressed her face to the flue in a frantic search for air. Belle covered the
ghastly-burned body with a blanket and, grief-stricken, prepared to leave when
she saw a message scribbled on the stones above the hearth.

No MacDuff, no King.

N
OT EVEN
B
ISHOP
L
AMBERTON'S ARRIVAL
with Elizabeth Bruce
could lift the black cloud of despair that had descended on their new king. Robert sat slumped in a corner of the abbot’s quarters in
Scone Abbey, the exhilaration of the past days replaced by a grim realization
that half of Scotland now condemned him as a usurper. With James’s aid, he had
crossed Stirling Bridge before the Comyns could prevent his escape and, rushing
to this ancient site of coronations, had seized the crown. But the hasty ritual
held the day of his arrival had fallen flat, and on this night, the clansmen
were gathered in the nave to hear his justification for the brazen act.

Elizabeth could no
longer stand by in silence and watch her husband spiral deeper into his pit of
melancholy. “It is easy enough to be king of summer, Robert! But persist in
this morose pity, and king of winter you will never be!”

He repulsed her reaching
hand. “Now
you
turn against
me, woman?”

James came to Elizabeth’s defense. “You’ve turned against
yourself. Confront the clans in this unseemly gloom and they will also turn
against you.”

Robert glowered at him. “I have you to blame for this.”

James bristled at the
charge. “I advised you to be resolved. I’d rather be certain than right. You’ve
always preferred to be right and never certain.”

Robert hung his head, too distraught to offer a rebuttal.

The bishop signaled for James and Elizabeth to give him
privacy with the king. Led by James from the chapel, Elizabeth began weeping,
fearful of what now awaited the consort of an irresolute traitor to England. When he was alone with Robert, Lamberton dragged a chair near the hearth
and donned his purple stole. “I will hear your confession.”

Robert turned aside. “It is no use. I am doomed to Hell’s
fires. No monarch can survive a papal interdict for murder. Clement will order
every priest in Scotland to withhold the sacraments.”

“The pope does not dictate who rules Scotland.”

“And God? What of His judgment?”

The bishop perfunctorily
signed his breast and muttered the necessary incantations, not revealing to
Robert that he despised this Roman abomination of mandatory annual confession,
which had no precedent in Scriptures. “Allow me to worry about the Almighty’s
judgment. What sins have you committed?”

Robert’s eyes flooded with self-reproach. “I have lusted for
power.”

“Go on.”

“And nurtured a burning hatred for the Comyns.”

“A righteous hatred.”

“Murder on holy ground.”

Lamberton lifted Robert’s chin to demand his reluctant gaze.
“Did Christ not commit violence upon the money changers in the Temple?”

“Aye, but …”

“The English and their Judases prey upon our land. You have
overturned their usury tables. You will drive them from our temples.”

“Can I be so easily forgiven for Red Comyn’s death?”

“God alone is the arbiter of men’s souls. But this I can
promise you. I will stand with you on the Day of Judgment and contend against
St. Peter himself to prove that you have acted with God’s blessing. For your
penance, you must, for the remainder of your life, abide by two oaths. First,
you will never accept papal tyranny over Scotland.”

“And if I have no choice?”

Lamberton placed a hand
on Robert’s head. “I will see to it that you do.”

Robert thought hard on that promise. Before committing, he
asked to hear the condition that he was required to accept.

Lamberton fixed a fearsome glare on his royal penitent.
“Never again doubt that you are our rightful king.”

Robert flinched from the piercing inspection of his soul. Yet the cleric had uttered that last assurance with such spiritual certitude that, for the first time, he felt instilled with the conviction that his destiny was indeed preordained. He kissed the bishop’s ring in gratitude and arose with a deep breath of renewal. Whispering a prayer to seal his confession, he arose, lifting his shoulders, and walked into the abbey’s nave. Six hundred nobles stared up at him in harsh accusation. He waited until their murmurs dissipated. Then, he shouted, “I will avenge the murder of Wallace! And I will see you free of English tyranny!”

The lairds were stunned
by his transformation. This self-proclaimed king held none of his usual
shiftiness of glance or look of wishing to be elsewhere. They had expected to
hear another rambling legal brief in defense of his seizing the throne, but
instead he had greeted them with a ringing call to action the likes of which
had not been heard in this chamber since Wallace. Recovering from a stupefied
silence, they erupted in cheers and stomping.

Drawn by the clamor,
James rushed into the nave. Robert greeted him with a smile begging his
forgiveness.

From the sacristy, Lamberton watched their reconciliation
with pride. When the acclamation reached a crescendo, the cleric pulled a cord
and unfurled the royal standard from its perch over the clerestory.

The clansmen gasped, and not a few wiped tears, for they had
not seen the hallowed banner in twenty years, not since it had been
ceremoniously withdrawn from view after King Alexander’s death.

“You crown a murderer!”

That shout—from the rear
of the nave—disrupted the veneration.

At the doors stood Ian
MacDuff, the outlaw son of the chieftain who had been killed at Falkirk. Young
MacDuff swaggered down the aisle and lifted Robert’s hand into the air. “Still
stained with Comyn blood!”

Robert yanked his hand back and tried to stammer a defense.

Before Robert could finish a sentence, James lunged forward
and drove MacDuff against the rood screen. “Your blood will stain mine!” As the clansmen erupted in heated arguments,
James elbowed MacDuff aside and jumped atop a stall to be heard. “Comyn’s death
was self-defense!”

“What did you expect a Douglas to say?” MacDuff countered.

“Longshanks wants Bruce dead!” James reminded the clansmen.
“Does that not tell you who should lead us?”

MacDuff raised his arms for silence. “It matters not! Have
you forgotten?”

“Forgotten what?” asked one of the men.

MacDuff snarled an evil grin. “The Destiny Stone remains in
Westminster.”

The clansmen deflated, cruelly reminded that no coronation
could take place without the holy relic. They turned to Lamberton for his
opinion on the legality of that ancient impediment.

“MacDuff speaks true,” the bishop conceded. “No king can
rule without the scream.”

Robert slacked his jaw at the bishop’s inexplicable
betrayal.

MacDuff reached into his pocket and threw a few coins across
the floor of the nave. “Drinks for you lads! I’d not have you waste a journey.”
With his defeat of the Bruces confirmed, he strode confidently toward the rear
entry and reached for the bolt on the latch—

The doors opened, seemingly of their own accord.

Six Culdee monks carried
in a wooden box half the size of a casket. On Lamberton’s command, they lowered
the casement and pried open its lid. The clansmen gathered around the box and
saw that it held a stone of black basalt whose shape was more a pillar than a
block. Polished to a gleam, it was intricately carved with ancient symbols such
as triangles and spirals that merged and danced in waves as if animated with an
ineffable energy. The reflection from the candles sparkled and multiplied off
its brilliant sheen. Confused by this delivery, the clansmen turned to the
bishop for an explanation.