The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (32 page)

Edward and the men remaining behind prepared to fight a
rear-guard action while Robert led James, staggering, from the chapel. With the
shouts of a fight ringing out behind them, they hurried into a tunnel that the
Culdees had built long ago to assure access to the miraculous waters of St.
Fillan’s pool.

D
RIVEN BY THE BAYING OF
the MacDougall bloodhounds,
Sweenie led Robert’s band of twenty half-starved men in stitched buckskins and
scraggly beards down a narrow shepherd’s path that ran along the treacherous
face of Ben Oss. The vicious dogs, having picked up their scent, were getting
closer, and the waters of Loch Lomond, silver and rippling under a full moon
below them, offered their only hope for escaping the turncoat Comyn allies who
were on the chase to deliver them up to Longshanks.

Exhausted, Robert knifed to his knees. “Go on! Leave me!”

James dragged Robert to his feet and prodded him to keep
running. Despite his shoulder wound, he had held up better than Robert during
their three-day marathon, having learned years ago how to survive in the
wilderness after Clifford had forced his family into destitution. “If you stop,
your legs will cramp.”

Robert groaned and staggered with each forced step. “Damn
MacDougall! The Comyns will pay for this!”

“Aye, see, you’re feeling better already.”

“And damn
you
, Douglas! For talking me into this
hell on earth!”

James increased their pace in punishment for that
indictment. “You’re too late. We’re both already damned. Even the pope moves
faster than you do!”

The other men took turns assisting the king until they came
to a lush glen shaded by a thick grove bordering Loch Lomond.

Sweenie waddled off ahead to make certain the MacDougalls
were not hiding in wait. Minutes later, the little monk returned, looking
shaken. “Not a soul on this end, but …”

“Out with it!” James demanded.

“I can see their fires. They’re
patrolling the west banks.”

James kicked at a log in hot anger. The MacDougalls had
split up and sent a second party north of the peak to the far side of the loch,
expecting their small band to cross the water at its narrowest point.

Robert glared at
Sweenie. “This misshaped brounie has led us into a trap!”

“Leave off him,” James said. “He had one plan more than you
did.”

Edward Bruce peered off into the darkness, trying to locate
the torches of the MacDougall hunting parties. “Lorne will negotiate. We’ll
offer him lands for refuge.”

Robert sank to the ground, defeated. “Longshanks has Lorne
caught in his talons. The game is up.”

James jabbed a stick at Robert’s ribs. “We’ll cross farther
south.”

Robert was too tired to
parry the goading thrusts. “A man with a full belly couldn’t swim that length.”

James studied the loch’s mist-shrouded depths. “There’s
still three hours until daylight. Find where the loch is widest and meet me
there at dawn.”

“Widest?” Robert protested. “What in Hell’s name are you intending?”

James disappeared into the darkness.

A
THICKENING FOG DESCENDED OVER
the loch, blotting the
morning sun and blanketing the environs in an eerie quiet. Robert and his
exhausted entourage had spent the night crouched behind boulders, shoving and elbowing
one another to stay awake. James had been gone all night, and Robert estimated
by the rising loudness of the baying that MacDougall hounds would be on them
within three hours.

“Douglas tricked us,” Edward Bruce snarled. “He knew he
stood a better chance if he—”

The water along the banks
splashed. The Bruce men drew
daggers, bracing to fight for their lives.

Edward was about to lunge
at the approaching shadow when a lone man split the fog and pulled up an
abandoned fishing bark.

James captured Edward’s hand and deflected the thrust aimed
at his chest. Legs buckling from fatigue, he ordered the Bruce men, “Three at a
time. Sweenie’s the lightest, so he’ll row.”

Incredulous, Edward stepped into the half-rotten boat to
test it. “We’d have a better chance of walking across the water.”

James offered Robert a handful of shriveled brae berries.
“Go on with your depraved brother. I no longer can endure the company of two
Bruces in the same shire. Your poor mother must have gained her sainthood for
putting up with your incessant whining.”

Famished, Robert savored the scent of the berries, but he
gave them to Sweenie. “You’ll need these more than me. I’ll cross last.” He
turned to his brother, who was still shaking the boat, unwilling to accept that
they were going to attempt to use it. “Eddie, you go first. One of us must
survive.”

James shoved Edward into the leaky currach, along with
another man. “Since I discovered this fine galley, I claim the honor of
guarding the king. And when the bards tell of this day, I’ll make certain they
know it was Edward Bruce who hightailed it first. Now, off with you! Don’t
worry if you can’t swim. The hot air from Bruce’s bluster will keep you
afloat.”

As Edward slouched off cursing, James led those staying
behind to the protection of the woods above the loch. Calculating that each
crossing would take at least a half-hour, he chose not to confide to Robert
that it was well nigh impossible for Sweenie to make ten return trips before
dropping from exhaustion, let alone accomplish the feat before the dogs found
them. He gathered up a bed of leaves and, settling down to catch a moment’s
rest, found Robert watching him with an unnerving smile. “You make me more than
a little skittish looking at me that way? Has it been that long since you’ve
been cozy with Liz?”

Robert kicked at him. “I would have wagered what little
remains of my kingdom that you weren’t coming back.”

“Damned if I didn’t consider it. But then I’d have missed
watching you be drawn and quartered.” James rolled to his side and felt a hard
object against his ribs. He reached into his vest and pulled out a small book.

“Where did you get that?”

“Belle gave it to me at Glen Dochart.”

Robert crawled nearer to inspect the book. “At least they’ll
say you died a literary man. What is it?”

James opened the clasp on the book and held the first page
toward the dawn light breaking through the trees. “The Chanson of Fierabras.”

“One of my favorites. Your lassie has fine taste, except in
men.”

James carefully dried the pages in the crisp morning air.
“You’ve read this? Aye, you would have, given your fine English schooling and
all.”

Robert rested the back of his head on his hands and gazed at
the thin band of orange rising over the loch. “My mother would recite
Fierabras
to me when I pestered her for tales about the crusades. It is the story of
Charlemagne and his knights, Roland and Oliver. An adventurous pair, those two
were. And bumbling. They stumbled into a hundred battles with the Moors.”

“If they were so loutish, how’d they always manage to
escape?”

“Mostly by jesting their way through trouble,” Robert said.
“The infidels thought they were crazed.”

James held up the first page and read Belle’s inscription:

To my beloved Oliver,

May you and your Roland find the warmth of merry fellowship
on your Quest.

Your constant Floripas.

“Who is Floripas?”

Robert tried to snatch the book from him. “Are you reading
ahead? She was the ravishing sister of Fierabras.”

“And Fierabras? He was the son of the Moorish king?”

“Aye, and dark-skinned.” Robert winked to drive home the
barbed comparison. “He was as ugly as Floripas was fair. Fierabras led a fleet
to Rome to steal the true Cross. Oliver fights a duel with him to regain the
relic, but …” He delayed for effect. “Something dire transpires.”

James thumbed through the book. “What happens to Floripas?”

Robert suddenly understood why Belle had chosen this book as
a gift to James. “Floripas leaves her home in Syria to save her brother in
France. She falls in love with the enemy of her people.”

“She abandoned her family?”

“And her God,” Robert said. “Floripas converts to
Christianity. When she convinces her brother to spare Oliver from execution,
Roland offers her a reward. She asks him to require her Christian knight to
marry her.” His voice trailed off as he became lost in his thoughts about
Elizabeth.

“Are you going to tell me what happens, or not?”

Robert marked a page
with a pine needle. “Savor it in small bites, Jamie. We’ll have many a night
for it, I fear. Here’s a taste to wet your whistle.”

James read aloud the passage that Robert had pointed out:

“‘Sir’ said Floripas. ‘This man gives me.’
‘By my head,’ said Roland, ‘so shall it be.
Come forward, sir, and this lady take ye.’
‘Sir,’ replied the knight. ‘May God punish me if any but
 Charlemagne give
her to me.’
When Floripas heard, to rage was she stung.
‘By Mohamet,’ she swore. ‘You shall all be hung!’
‘Sir,’ said Roland to his fellow knight, ‘Do what we
desire.’
Sir,’ answered the knight, ‘just as you require.’”

They both laughed so loudly at the inept attempt by
Floripas’s lover to avoid the chains of marriage that the other men erupted
from their slumber with daggers drawn. They discovered the twosome wrestling
over the book in a contest to read the next verse. Robert nearly had it in his
grasp when a horn sounded through the fog
to signal that Sweenie had returned.

James waved another two men
down the embankment toward the currach. Finding them delaying to hear more of
the chanson, he threw a rock to chase them. “We’ll tell you how it ends in the
unlikely event you don’t drown.” He tossed the book at Robert and told him to
read more. “Start from the beginning. And leave off with that insufferable
London accent of yours.”

S
WEENIE SLUMPED OVER THE OARS
as he split the mists and
floated to the banks. Miraculously, after just three hours, the little monk had
ferried all the men except James and Robert to safety.

James pulled the splintering currach to the shore and whispered, “Wee-kneed, you’ve earned your perch in Heaven this day.”

Robert stepped in, but the bark threatened to swamp, so James swam alongside them to lighten its weight. Keeping silent, Robert and Sweenie rowed into the protection of the fog just as the MacDougalls and their bloodhounds reached the shore.

The icy waters soon drove all feeling from James’s limbs. Robert captured his arm and held him tightly, requiring Sweenie to double his efforts on the oars. After several minutes, James felt Robert’s hand throb and begin to cramp. James tried to hold on, but too fatigued to stay awake, he slipped from Robert’s grasp and slid off into the loch.

I wish the book returned, James Douglas.

Belle’s voice jolted him back to consciousness, and he felt himself dropping to the bottom. Swallowing water, he fought to the surface and swam through the fog to find the side of the currach. To stay awake, he counted aloud the number of times the oars split the water.

Four hundred and
eighty-four strokes later, the boat lurched against land. Robert leapt into the
waist-deep water and pulled James to his feet. They heard a distant voice
shouting through the fog.

“I’ll search over there.”

James dropped to his knees on the shore, biting off a curse.
The MacDougalls had posted sentries on both sides of the loch. Edward and the
others had likely been captured, but crossing back would only land them in the
hands of the other search party. They would have to fight their way out, or die
trying. He drew his dagger and signaled for Robert to follow him.

The searching voice called out again. “Bruce!”

James coiled, preparing to charge at the man, but Sweenie held him back.

The little monk motioned for Robert and him to stay crouched. Then, he pulled his soaked hood over his head and walked into the mists chanting, “Our Father, who art in heaven, give us up his name!”

“Who goes there?” shouted the shrouded voice.

The fog prevented James from seeing what was happening. He leapt to his feet, determined to go to the monk’s aid, until Robert restrained him.

S
WEENIE WAS COUNTING THE STEPS
he had walked into the
blinding soup when the discarnate voice called out again.

“How many fingers on
Fillan’s hand?”

The shouting man, Sweenie suspected, was asking for a password, and it was probably a trick question. The saint’s shriveled arm was kept pickled in brine at Whithorn Priory, but he had never cared enough to go see the relic. Had souvenir seekers hacked off some of the fingers? Maybe Fillan had been born with a malformed arm. Not likely, considering the Roman monks would have banished him as a child of Satan. He stalled for more time. “Left or right?”