The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (38 page)

D’Aumont grasped the bishop’s hands to convey the depths of
their desperation. “We ask only for time to plead our case. If your king is a
fair man, he will see that we have been wronged by the pope, just as he has
been wronged.”

Lamberton studied the monk, marking the fervency in his sleep-denied eyes. He had long suspected these Templars of possessing evidence that the papacy wanted quashed, just as Rome had suppressed the Culdee testimonies of Christ’s presence in Britain. They were haughty in their ways, for certain, but if his dream of a nation honoring freedom of conscience was ever to take flight, then these monks deserved Scotland’s protection. Though not convinced about the wisdom of such a dangerous course, he finally nodded his assent to their sanctuary request, taking on the responsibility of trying to convince Robert Bruce of its justification if he ever gained his release.

Eyes welling up in gratitude, D’Aumont pressed a kiss to the
finger where the bishop’s ecclesial ring would have resided.

Lamberton brought him back upright. “Avoid the Temple’s
preceptory at Ballentradoch. Clifford will expect you to try for Sinclair’s
lair. Kintyre is good country for laying low. There are hundreds of inlets and
hidden harbors there.” He pinched the cross pattée on the Templar’s mantle. “And
you should rid yourselves of these red crosses for a time.”

“God be with you.”

The two French imposters draped their heads with their cowls
and slipped out through the grille. Making fast for the stairwell, Jeanne
turned back on the first step. “Your scribe in Paris … did he ever learn to use
the sword?”

Smothering a smile, Lamberton shook his head, affecting
regret and disappointment in his adopted son. “The lad had no skills for the
military life. Should you ever encounter him again, it would profit you to coax
him into a rematch.”

James of Douglas, always bent on plots.

— Vita Edwardi Secundi

R
OBERT CARRIED TWO FLAGONS OF
steaming ale to the rocky
shore below Castle Tioram and offered one to James. “You needn’t keep a
lookout.”

Waving off the drink, James continued pacing the dunes surrounding Christiana Gamoran’s secluded islet. As he had done every morning for the past three months, he searched the watery horizon for the masts of Angus Og MacDonald’s galleys. Each passing day he spent trapped here made him more despondent. Buffeted by storms, Clifford had given up the chase across the Firth of Lorn and had thrown up a cordon of patrols around this narrow channel into Loch Moidart. As a result, the haggard survivors of Robert’s army, unable to forage sufficient provisions for the winter, had been forced to disperse across the Isles to survive on their own until spring, when the Bruce brothers would scour Ireland for more volunteers.

“Chris’s
scouts assure me that the English are anchored at Tobermory.”

Plied again with the offer of drink, James refused it and turned his back on Robert in disgust. “I’m not worried about the English.”

“What
so vexes you, then?”

“You’ve
read the
Iliad?
”

“One of my favorites.”

“Then
you know the misfortune a woman can cause a fighting man.”

Robert
followed James’s gaze of accusation toward Tioram’s tower, where Christiana,
still in her night robes, stood watching them in the window. Finally taking the
import of this line of questioning, Robert set his jaw and reminded him, “We
wouldn’t be alive without her.”

“Do you forget you still have a wife?”

Robert slung the second ale cup at him. “I’ll not be lectured on the sanctity of marriage! Not by one who asked me to break them for that MacDuff lass!”

James kicked the empty flagon back at him. “Aye, you’re already damned to Hell by the pope. Why not make the best of it?”

Robert leapt from the
bluff and flattened James in the wet sand. They scuffled and traded punches as the
waves crashed over them. Pressing his forearm against James’s chest, he demanded, “What would you have me do, damn you?”

James heaved him aside and came back to his feet with fists clenched. “I’d have you remember how many
men are dying while you sit here idling away in that soothsayer’s arms!”

“I have no army!”

“You have me! But not
much longer!”

Robert kicked sand at
him. “Go then! What good have you been to me anyway? It is a king you address!
Do you forget that?”

“Aye, a king who rules
from the bed of a mistress while his realm is being ransacked!”

Robert was fast on his heels. “Abandon me, then! That’s what you’ve been planning all along! You accuse me of being blinded by a woman? Look at you! That MacDuff lass is all you talk about! Chris has maids. Take one to your bed.”

James turned away to hide the hurt in his eyes. Ten lasses
in his bed wouldn’t make him forget Belle—nor the fact that Robert had made him
break his promise never again to abandon her. Whirling back to face him, he hit
him in his most vulnerable spot, his insecurity. “Do you know why only five
hundred men joined us at Methven?”

Robert glanced aside, as if not believing the defense he was
about to offer. “The summons was too hasty.”

“Nay, it was because few trusted you to stay the course.”

Robert reacted as if cut to the quick. “Stay the course? I
have
stayed the course! And the course
you led me upon has brought me to this! A prisoner in my own kingdom!” He drew
a deep breath to calm himself, allowing the heat between them to cool. “We must
bide our time until we get more recruits. Clifford patrols every foot of
Carrick and Galloway.”

“And by spring, there will be nothing left to recover.
Longshanks will hold every castle from Stirling to Inverness.” After a pensive breath, James revealed his intent. “I leave on the morrow, with or without you.”

“We have haven’t eighty men within the day’s call.”

“I’ll make do with ten.”

Robert caught his arm. “The dampness here has sogged your
head.”

James waited for him to remove the hand. “There’s another
way to fight the English. Clifford may own the day, but I will own the night.”

He climbed to the bluffs and unexpectedly came face to face with Christiana,
who had walked down from the castle after observing their fight. Looking distraught, she held a folded parchment in the fold
of her sleeve.

Robert, still on the beach below, waited for her to
reveal what was on her mind. “Well, out with it, woman!”

Clutching the letter with its seal broken, Christiana could
not look at him. “Your brother Edward says he has a hundred men with arms on
Arran. Thomas and Alexander wait in Ulster with two hundred more.”

Robert reacted as if convinced that she had misread a coded message his brothers had sent. “That cannot be all they’ve managed to muster.”

Christiana glanced sharply at James; then, she flung the
letter at Robert. “Edward says you must come now, or never.”

Robert shook his head in disbelief as he read the few
hastily scribbled lines on the message. “How does he expect me to transport
them across the sea?”

Christiana turned aside to hide her tears. Driven to the
task by James’s forceful glare, she finally admitted to Robert what she had
promised James privately several days ago. “I’ve ordered ten of my galleys up
from Doirlinn.”

Her willingness to risk her navy for his cause stunned
Robert. He climbed to the bluff and reached for her hands, whispering softly,
“Chris, how can I ever repay you?”

She repulsed his attempted embrace. “The ships come with one
condition.”

“Name it.”

“Never return to me.”

Before Robert could argue against her decision to deny him
her bed, she hurried away. Several steps up the path, she turned back to
confront James. “And I
have
read
Homer.”

James realized that she had overheard their shouted argument
while she had been walking down from the tower through the mists.

“It was
not
a
woman who set those Greeks upon that journey,” she reminded him. “It was a
man’s lust for war and revenge for a wife stolen by another man.” She whipped
her cloak across her shoulders and did not look back as she walked away.

A
WEEK LATER, AS THEIR SMALL
invasion fleet sat at the ready
in Whiting Bay, James paced the swaying deck of the lead galley. Below him, the
white-capped waves sheltered by the grey cliffs of Holy Isle lapped at the hull
with deceptive calm. Fearing the sea would turn violent with the approach of
night, he looked up again in exasperation at the crag where Robert had stood
fixed for two hours, peering across the Firth of Clyde toward his birthplace at
Turnberry. To the south, off the Irish coast on Rathlin Isle, a second small
force led by Thomas and Alexander Bruce had been sent orders to sail at dusk,
which was now only minutes away.

From his lofty vantage overlooking the bay, Robert called
down to him on the ship again. “You are certain the watchmen saw the signal?”

Green from the churn, James braced against the riggings to avoid retching. Behind him, their three hundred volunteers huddled on the row benches for warmth and muttered complaints that they had wasted enough time waiting to launch for the mainland. Most were fast losing faith in this new king. Yet with the other claimants to the throne now dead or firmly under the Plantagenet thumb, their only alternative to Robert’s irresolute rule was English oppression. Lust for revenge, not loyalty to Bruce leadership, had driven most of these refugees to this desperate hour.

Robert peered across the sea again. “I can't see beyond that far bow!”

“Three fires!” James shouted at him. “With the middle extinguished
if all is clear! Cuthbert can be trusted! We’ll find the English bedded down
when we land!” When that assurance did not move Robert from his rooted stance,
James leapt across the gunwale and clambered up the rocks to speed him to the
task. “If we don’t go now, your brothers will be left stranded.”

While Robert studied the ten bobbing coffins that Christiana
had supplied him, a seal lounging on the rocks began barking at him, as if to
mock his indecision. The king shook his head in dismay, rudely reminded that
even the lowliest of his subjects afforded him no respect.

Although he would not admit it, James conceded that Robert
had good reason to doubt the likelihood of their success. The condition of
Christiana’s ships did little to inspire confidence. Unlike the English galleys
with their fortified forecastles and keels of bolted timbers, these
steep-pitched Highland barks had been clapped together with rusted clinch nails
and moss caulking, and their rectangular sails of dun-colored wool were so
thread-worn that they appeared on the brink of ripping from their frayed hemp
cordage. In truth, the hulls were no better than those of the dugouts that had
carried their Norman ancestors to these isles centuries ago. Despite these
misgivings, he put up a false bravado and assured Robert, “The Danes reached
Ireland in hollowed logs with less ballast than these offer. We’ll easily
manage the fifteen miles to Ayrshire.”

With a heavy sigh of resignation, Robert climbed down from
his perch and walked to the shore. Relieved that a decision had finally been
made, the men raised their oars before he could change his mind. Assisted to
the lead galley, Robert glared at the bowsprit crowned with the head of a red
dragon. Touching it for good fortune, he ordered Sweenie, “Bless this sailing,
monk.”

Sweenie climbed atop James’s shoulders. Lowering his head, he prayed loud enough for all the men to hear: “Lord, you parted the waters for Moses. But we’re not asking for a miracle like that on this night. We’re Scotsmen here. We’ll make our own fate. Just ease the gales a bit and we’ll take it from there.”

Appalled by the blasphemous benediction, Robert stood glaring at the shrugging monk, until James chided him, “You’re damned for eternity anyway. So stop your bellyaching about not getting a High Mass.”