The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (40 page)

The brothers nodded eagerly at the prospect for revenge.

That was the first Robert had heard of the dangerous plan.
He warned James, “There’s fighting enough here in Galloway still.”

Since leaving the crone’s cabin, James had pointedly refused to speak to him, making it clear whom he blamed for Belle’s capture. Only now, without the courtesy of a direct glance, did he reveal his intent to plunge into the Borders and the northern English shires to harass the garrisons there. “I’ll stay with you until we deal with this English army on our heels. Then I’m going south to find her.”

J
AMES PLACED HIS EAR TO
the shepherd’s path that led into the Glen Trool wilderness, but the ground remained quiet. After three days of scouting this meandering loch that fed the Black Water of Dee, he had found no sign of the English army that the Galloway crone had reported was here. He was starting to suspect that the old woman had simply imagined it all.

He prayed that she had also been mistaken about Belle’s capture, but somehow he had to find out for certain. In the old days, to locate the whereabouts of an enemy or lost comrade, his father had often employed an ancient Pictish trick called ‘riding the wind.’ The hags who taught the magic warned that separating one’s spirit from the flesh to travel to far places was a tactic full of peril, for one could easily become lost forever in the netherworlds.

Despite
the dangers, he decided to risk it. He
sprawled out on his back with eyes closed, imagining a map of England against
his lids. The sun’s rays warmed his face and brought a tingling numbness to his
legs, and soon he slipped into that liminal space between sleep and
wakefulness. He felt his spirit rising to his head and leaving his body.

Moments
later, a shadow came over him.

Had
he been transported to Belle so quickly? He resisted the urge to open his eyes
and instead allowed the vision to congeal. A soft hand caressed his face. He
sank into her touch, amazed at how real this conjuring seemed. She slid her
fingers slid past his throat, untied his shirt, and searched for the heart
stone she had given him. Clever lass. He captured her face to bring her lips to
his.

Her
scream scattered the corbies in the trees.

He
leapt to his feet, shielding his eyes from the blinding sun. The silhouette of
a girl stood before him. He was disoriented, uncertain if they were still in
Glen Trool. Had his wind riding reversed the spell by bringing Belle’s spirit
to him? This apparition before him had her height and long black hair. She
stared at his face for several seconds, as if she didn’t recognize him.

“I thought you were dead,” she said.

Overjoyed, he reached for her. “I searched for you at
Kildrummy—”

A scrawny girl in rags pushed him away. “Don’t hurt me!”

He rubbed his eyes. What was this curse that every woman he now encountered looked like Belle? Was Morgainne playing games again with her glamourie? Recovering from his disappointment, he reached into his pouch and offered the half-starved lass a piece of jerky. “Are you from these parts?”

She stopped her chomping long enough to mumble, “Muldonoch.”
She kept looking beyond his shoulders. “Where are the others?”

“What others?”

Her eyes darted from side to side. “I heard the king was in these woods.”

“Who told you that?”

She wouldn’t look at him directly. “Is there more food?”

He noticed a rip on her blouse edged with bloodstains. He
tried to examine a whip mark on the top of her back, but she fought him off. He
steadied her with a grip on her arm, then pulled down her collar and found her
shoulders marred with flogging scars, recently inflicted. “Who did this to
you?”

She tried to yank her arm free of his grasp, refusing to
answer him.

He threw her over his shoulder. “You’ll damn well get your
wish to see the king!”

J
AMES WALKED INTO THE CAMP
and dropped the kicking lass in
front of Robert. “One of your subjects wishes an audience.”

“I sent you for venison.
She looks too scrawny for roasting.”

James prodded the crawling girl forward on her knees. “We’re
the hunted ones. And she’s the flush hound.”

Robert clamped the lass’s chin. “Who sent you into these
wilds?”

The fierce glares from the men around her finally drove the
frightened girl to an answer. “An Englishman named Clifford. He holds my family
and said he’d kill them if I came back without learning your numbers.”

James roughly hoisted her to her feet. “Clifford is in Glen
Trool? Lie to us, scamp, and you’ll wish you were back in his hands.”

“You think I don’t know who thrashed me? Another lord rides
with him! They call him the Flower of Northumberland!”

He glanced at Robert with kindled anticipation on hearing the sobriquet of Pembroke, the treacherous earl who had deceived them at Methven. He tightened his grip on the girl’s shoulders. “How many are with him?”

“Three thousand, maybe more. They’re coming up the loch like
locusts and bragging they ain’t leaving until they have King Hob’s head on a
pike.”

Edward Bruce drew his dagger and grabbed the girl’s hair to
bend her throat for cutting. “Traitorous hizzie! You’ve led him to us!”

“Lay off her,” Robert ordered.

Edward threw the girl
aside, incredulous at his brother’s refusal to punish the treason. “We’ve
waited for three months. All the English have done is gotten stronger. I say we
attack them now!”

As the lass staggered
coughing and gagging to her knees, Robert searched the dark depths of the
wilderness below for more evidence to confirm her unlikely claim that an
English army was here in the west, hunting them. If she spoke true, they would
soon be surrounded and outnumbered. Although a few more recruits had trickled
in to him from Carrick and Annandale, his younger brothers with their three
hundred volunteers had not yet arrived from Ireland. “We can’t move against
Pembroke without Tom and Alex.”

James saw that the girl
became even more jittered at the mention of the Bruce kinsmen. He clamped on
her arm to draw out what information she might be withholding. “What do you
know about them?”

Her face turned white.
“They landed in Galloway, but …”

“Out with it!” Robert
shouted.

“The English captured
them! They butchered your brothers and scattered their limbs for the crows to
feed on!”

While Robert stood frozen, unable to believe what he had heard, Edward raced for his armor, frothing and swearing like a madman. Several of the men followed him to the weapons while others waited for the order to march on the English and take revenge.

James drew Robert aside.
“If we splinter now, we’re lost.”

Robert dropped his hands to his knees. “What would you have
me do?”

“We don’t have the
numbers to fight them in the open.”

Edward, blind with rage, had to be restrained from rushing
at James. “They weren’t
your
brothers!”

“Question my loyalty again, and I’ll do Clifford’s work on you!” James shoved Edward aside and climbed a boulder to be heard by all. “Have you forgotten Falkirk? The English bring warhorses and outnumber us six to one! I say we fight them at our time and in the manner of our choosing! Make the forest our field of battle and burn every path before them! Let them share the hunger we now suffer!”

Horrified, Edward looked to Robert, expecting him to countermand such a craven strategy. “Rob, Douglas would make us the laughing stock of every court. Do you want to be remembered as the king who turned Scotland into a land of cutthroats? If we’re to die, let us die with honor here.”

“Did Tom and Alex die with honor?” James asked Robert. “I
say we send honor to Hell with the bloody English bastards!”

Still choked with grief, Robert waved up the little monk who now served as his chaplain. “I’d have the Almighty’s counsel on this.”

Sweenie pondered the dilemma. Then, he waddled up the
boulder and climbed atop James’s shoulders to be heard by the ranks.
“St. Peter carried a sword to defend our Lord. Did he not slice off the ear of
a Roman soldier?”

McClurg nodded. “Aye, but Christ told him to lay down the
blade in the garden of sorrows.”

“That He did, wise Master McClurg!” Sweenie cried. “Yet is
not Our Lord all knowing? Christ knew that St. Peter was carrying the blade
long before He ordered it sheathed. So, I ask you, why would Christ allow the
apostle to bring the weapon in the first place if He did not believe there be a
time and a place for its use?”

The men traded amazed looks; they were never disappointed in
Sweenie’s ability to read signs and justifications for their cause in Holy
Writ.

Sweenie kicked at James’s ribs, spurring him to keep moving
along the high rock. “I once asked the Dewar about this very conundrum.” He
delayed the revelation to heighten their expectation and draw the men even
closer.

“Damn it, Sweenie!” McKie shouted at the monk, who was
winking as if armed with a secret. “Are we going to have to beat it out of
you?”

 Sweenie grinned
slyly. “Aye, lads, the Dewar did indeed tell me of a more satisfying
explanation. One revealed in a long-lost gospel brought to our fair land by St.
Joseph of Arimathea. St. Peter, it seems, was not a simple fisherman.”

“What was he, then?” Edward asked.

“A freedom fighter.”

“Like us!” McClurg observed.

Sweenie pounded his tiny palm against the top of James’s
head to emphasize the point of his sermon. “Aye, like us, lads! The good saint
of the sword and his mates were called Zealots. Why? Because they fought like
madmen to rid their people of a conqueror’s yoke. And like us, they hadn’t the
numbers or weapons to overcome the Romans in open battle. So, what’d they do,
you ask? They relied upon raids and the fomenting of trouble in the night.” He
paused to allow the import of this to sink in. “Now I’m asking myself why
should we fight our war on the Devil’s terms? God intended no man to be a slave
to another. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, saith the Lord. I say we give to
Longshanks what he’s given us. Hunger and fire and terror!”

Robert regarded Sweenie skeptically, but finally he
begrudged the monk a nod of approval. His new Culdee chaplain might not be the
most orthodox of churchmen, but he knew how to spiritually prepare men for war.

James heaved Sweenie off
his shoulders and landed him with a knuckle-scrape on his tonsured dome in
congratulations. “Well-preached for an excommunicated homunculus.”

Motioning James and
Sweenie down, Robert climbed atop the vacated boulder to address his men. “Let
this be our testament! Tell our people that we will harry the English on foot
and draw them to the darkest corners of our terrain! Turn the forests and moors
and mountains into our allies! Our war will know no season! Let the English
come north and find fields burned and laid waste! Soon enough their empty guts
will have them longing for home!”

James saw the traitorous
girl listening spellbound to the speech. He looked up to Robert and asked,
“What about the lass?”

Robert glared down at
the girl. “Are you a true Scot?”

She cowered on her
knees, expecting her throat to be cut. “Aye, my lord.”

“And you’re willing to
prove it?”

“For your forgiveness,
anything.”

Robert forced her to
suffer another moment’s penance, then ordered her: “Return to Clifford and tell
him that King Hob sits at the mouth of Loch Trool licking his wounds.”

“What if he asks of your
strength?” she asked.

Finding her counting the
men with her fingers, James curled her hand into a fist to save her the
trouble. “Tell our old friend Clifford the truth. Our king is accompanied by
five hundred miserable skeletons who never cease scrapping.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
J
AMES LED
ten men on a run across the
western traverse of the steep Trool. On the opposite banks of the loch, Edward
Bruce and his detachment of two hundred Scots hid behind the trees high on the
ridges while Robert and the rest of the army remained in the camp to stoke the fires
that would hopefully seduce the English into the glen.

James conceded that this plan to split their small troop was fraught with risk, but he could see no other choice. If the English were allowed to pass through the forest uncontested, Pembroke and Clifford would reach the sea and burn the coastal cities between Straener to Turnberry.

He felt behind his back for his ax, making sure it was still
there. All now depended on his suspicion that the stubborn English whoresons
had not learned the lesson of Stirling Bridge. He would apply Wallace’s famous
feint again, allowing them to chance upon him in the glen. Once discovered, he
would retreat on foot and draw the English cavalry deeper into the wilderness
on a chase. When Clifford’s knights became separated from the protection of
their infantry, he and his Scot raiders hidden on the hills above would
introduce the English to Hell’s new location.