The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (44 page)

James stared at the letter, astonished that his Galloway
raids had spawned such a reputation for him all the way to—

The zing of a blade startled him.

He turned to find an English knight standing at the door. He
cursed his failure to check the courtyard again. When the intruder did not make
a move to attack, he warned him, “You are in my home.”

The Englishman only then identified the Scotsman he now
confronted. He tried to maintain a defiant stance, but his trembling hand
betrayed his fear. “It may be your home, but it has been put in my charge.” He
saw the letter in James’s hand. “Is it your practice to plunder private
correspondence?”

James reread the name “Webton” on the address. “I do when
the recipient serves a king who seeks to destroy my country.”

Webton glanced toward the window, but saw no sign of
Clifford returning. Ashen-faced, he admitted, “I have no hope of taking you,
but I must try.”

James kept the man in the corner of his eye while he studied
the signature on the letter. “Tell me of your lass.”

Webton blinked with affront. “What is that to you?”

“She claims to know me. Enough, at least, to slander me.”

Webton was denied in his attempt to retrieve the letter.
“She is the Earl of Sussex’s daughter. That is more than you are entitled to
know.”

James paced the room,
watching for a threatening lunge. “How long?”

“Until what?”

“Your year is attained.”

Humiliated, Webton cast his eyes down. “On the morrow.”

James dragged up a chair, causing the skittish officer to
flinch from the screech of its legs. He sat at the writing table. Gripping his
ax with his left hand, he dipped a quill into the inkstand while keeping Webton
in his periphery. When he had finished writing on the back of the letter, he
refolded it and kicked another chair toward his opponent.

Bewildered, Webton asked him, “Am I your prisoner?”

“Sit with me awhile.”

Webton warily took the chair across the table.

They sat together in tense silence while James watched the
window for Clifford’s return. As the minutes passed, every happy moment that he
had spent in this tower came back to him. The first time he had laid eyes on
Belle in the vale below, she had lifted him to his feet and had spurred him on
during the race. Would he have won this ax if not for her help? Would she be
suffering in that cage now if he had not stalked her along that burn out there?
A man caught in this cracked world, it seemed, was nothing but a stone tumbling
down a glen, striking others in its path until all were cast into the abyss.
Once lost, a stone never returns to the top of the mountain.

Were the best times of his life now behind him?

A
T MIDNIGHT, THE BELLS OF
St. Bride’s kirk rang out from the
village in the vale. James stood and, without offering a word of his intention, walked
into the great hall. He retrieved a torch from the wall sconce and threw it on
the pile of smashed furniture. The panels quickly erupted in flames. When the
fire was sufficiently seeded, he retreated down the staircase, too overcome to
look back.

Webton followed him out to the bailey, uncertain what was
happening.

James mounted the Englishman’s horse. “In return for your
life, will you grant me a small favor?”

Webton hesitated, suspicious. “I’ll not betray my oath to my
king.”

James handed him his
lady’s letter. “See to it that this is sent to London.” Followed by the two mastiffs, he rode off before the
Englishman could protest the unseemly arrangement.

Left alone inside the castle, Webton opened the letter and
read what James had written on its reverse side:

To the Earl of Sussex,

On this day, 30 April in the year of our Lord 1307, Sir
John Webton subdued me and held me prisoner in the defense of Castle Douglas.
In compliance with his command, I have rendered this account of the incident. I
beseeched him not to fire the tower, but he chose to destroy it rather than
leave it to the capture of my men, as would I have done had the circumstances
been reversed. My only solace in this unhappy affair is the knowledge that
England sends incompetent men such as Robert Clifford to command their armies
instead of stalwart officers such as Lord Webton.

James of Douglas

A
HUNDRED MILES EAST OF
Douglasdale, the citizens of Berwick
crowded along the banks of the Tweed to witness the unthinkable scene. In the
river’s swirling currents, their new king swam naked and cavorted with Piers
Gaveston, who only a week earlier had rushed across the Channel from Brittany.
For the two men to indulge their passion for swimming in private was scandalous
enough; skill in floating, after all, was a vice inspired by the Devil. But to
engage in such behavior under the very public gaze of the Dominican inquisitor
Lagny could only be explained as the wanton fruit of sinful pride.

On the Northumbrian side of the river, the most powerful earl in England, Thomas Lancaster, sat mounted in ceremonial garb, accompanied by a hundred knights. He had been forced to wait for more than an hour, a snub that even the lowliest peasant understood. The last of the high lords to recognize Caernervon’s succession had finally come north to give homage, a condition for reclaiming his forfeited lands of Lincoln, Salisbury, and Leicester. Yet Lancaster refused to be brought completely prostrate. As the leader of those barons who had schemed to weaken the monarchy, he drew the line at bending knee on ground stolen by the Plantagenets with illegal royal levies. For this reason, the earl would not cross into once-Scottish Berwick, and instead had insisted that Caernervon travel the paltry distance of the river’s breadth to meet him.

In the river, Gaveston, who had convinced the king to make Lancaster wait in penance for his initial recalcitrance, splashed playfully and pulled his royal lover’s feet underwater to steal a kiss.

Edward surfaced in a panic. “Have you taken leave of your
wits?” He looked toward the horizon to see if Lancaster had witnessed the
indiscretion. “I should never have allowed you to talk me into this.”

Gaveston whipped his long black hair behind his head and
waved contemptuously at the haughty baron he so despised. “Black Dog of Arden!”
he screamed at the morose-tempered Lancaster. “Your king commands you to bark!”

Edward saw Lancaster staring down his long nose at them,
pecking and bobbing like a snorting basilisk. “Look at him! He gives me the
Evil Eye!”

Gaveston loved to mimic the earl’s quirky mannerism; this
enraged reaction was precisely what he had hoped to elicit with his taunts. He
shouted even louder so that all of Lancaster’s courtiers could hear. “I’m
looking forward to our next tournament! How many months has it been since I
wiped Nottingham field with your hairy ass?”

“Don’t stir his bile!” Edward begged. “I must deal with him
on the treasury.”

Gaveston flipped onto his back in imitation of Lancaster’s
fall during their last jousting match. “What can he do to you?”

“He conspires with Gloucester and Warwick to force the
ordinances on me!”

“What ordinances?”

Caernervon swam farther down river, hoping to escape
Lancaster’s spiteful gaze. “The barons are scheming to take control of my
purse.”

“Cretins!” Gaveston shouted. “Blood-sucking beasts!”

“Piers … do you truly believe I am king?”

Gaveston swam closer to embrace him. “Not that again.”

“The rumors persist that I am not my father’s son.”

“Lancaster pays his broadsheet hacks to spread those lies.”

“They all find me repugnant. The commoners won’t even touch
me for the scrofula cure. I am told the monks at Canterbury have discovered
precious oil in the crypts there. The Virgin appeared to Becket and offered it
to him to be used for miracles. I have petitioned the Holy Father to allow me
to be consecrated again with the oil. Perhaps then the people will accept me.”

“That papist puppet in Avignon will demand a pretty
compensation for that crock of magic piss,” Gaveston predicted. “Clement favors
France in the present diplomacy.”

Beset by a host of worries, Caernervon climbed to the bank and retrieved his robe. Drying himself, he looked toward the tower in the distance where Belle’s cage swayed in the wind. “That witch is the cause of my misfortune! She cursed my father! Now she has blackened me! I should send her to the stake!”

Gaveston climbed out of the river and waved off that idea. “Death would only strengthen her powers.”

Caernervon pulled at his
own hair, powerless to enhance his standing with both the commoners and the
lords, “To the Devil’s dungeon with them all!”

Gaveston rested against a tree and watched a line of wood
mites march from a rotten root toward the river. When Caernervon came closer to
see what had caught his attention, the Gascon drew a circle that intersected
the path of the mites. To Caernervon’s astonishment, the insects inside the
circle refused to cross the imaginary border. Gaveston enjoyed the king's reaction to
the magic and, with an evil smile, directed his lover’s gaze toward Berwick
tower. “If that Scotswoman truly is a witch, perhaps you should learn from her
and adopt the methods she used to bring down your father.”

“You mean …” Caernervon turned a glance of alarm toward the
inquisitor conferring with Lancaster beyond the river. “Conspire with demons?”

Gaveston gathered two flat stones and a burnt twig at the
river’s edge. On one stone, he sketched a caricature of Lancaster, and on the
other he drew the image of an ax. Mumbling an incantation, he smashed the
stones together and looked toward Lancaster. “He’ll meet the edge of a blade
soon enough.”

Caernervon was stunned. “You’ve learned to cast the
glamour?”

“My mother taught me the art when I was a lad.” Gaveston
became uncharacteristically solemn, darkened by the memory. “She was an
Albigensee. The Dominicans”—he shot a sneer at the observant inquisitor—“forced
me to stand at the pyre and watch her burn.”

“What other sorcery do you know?”

Gaveston led the king away from the banks and to a wooded
spot near a bend in the river. There they knelt together on a smooth boulder
above a still pool. The Gascon stared at the water for nearly a minute.
Suddenly, he pointed at the king’s reflection. “Keep your eyes on your spirit!”

Caernervon meditated on his image floating in the water.
After several moments of his intense concentration, his face faded from sight.
He erupted to his feet, blinking, astonished by the magic. “I’ve disappeared!”

 Gaveston chose not
to reveal to the gullible king that one’s eyes lose their focus after staring
on an object too long. “The angels have erased your past. You are free to
create your future. Scry the mirror of the world for what you wish.”

Caernervon whispered aloud his heart’s desires. “Lancaster
ascends the scaffold. Warwick and Gloucester follow him. I see us together
always in London court. But how can that be?”

“What prevents it?”

“That damnable French
she-cur that my father forced on me as queen. She will accuse me of avoiding
her bed to provoke Parliament to humiliate me.”

Gaveston stared at the currents for so long that Caernervon
feared he had fallen into a trance. Suddenly, the Gascon grasped his lover’s
head to aim his gaze. “Do you not see it?”

Caernervon frantically searched the water. “See what?”

“Isabella is on a ship to France. Look! She holds a document
and is crying.”

“A divorce! I am to have a divorce! But how?”

Gaveston cocked his ear to better hear the spirits speak to
him. “You must petition the Holy Father.”

“But Clement is under Philip’s thrall. What could I possibly
offer the Church for release from my vows?”

Closing his eyes, Gaveston reached a hand into the swirling
water and pulled out a reddish stone shaped like a splayed cross. “It must be a
sign.”

Caernervon caressed the
stone as if it were a precious relic. “The Templars.”

“That’s it! They are telling you to arrest the scheming
monks!”

“But the Temple has always supported our cause.”

Gaveston stroked the king’s chest. “Philip has confiscated
their commanderies in France. If the French king is also allowed to gain the monies
in the London Temple, he will strengthen his armies, and you will suffer an
odious defeat. Do you not see the divine answer? This solves all of your
problems. The Holy Father will look kindly upon your petition for divorce. The
Temple’s funds will free you from domination by the barons. And we shall
forever be together, without the shadowing presence of that Frenchwoman.”

Caressing the stone, Caernervon suddenly made up his mind.
“Yes, send the order to London.”

Gaveston rewarded him with a kiss. But then, the Gascon
turned away, his eyes hooded in sadness.

Overjoyed at the prospects of finally being rid of Isabella,
Caernervon could not understand why Gaveston had suddenly become downcast.
“Tell me, Poppie. What is wrong?”

Gaveston choked back tears. “Lancaster and the other lords
despise me so. I can no longer bear their shaming. Mayhaps they
are
right. I am not worthy to be with
you.”

“I am king! And I say who is worthy and who is not!”

Gaveston stifled sobs. “If only I were equal to them in
rank. I wish they could not treat me so basely.”

The king grasped him by the shoulders. “I was waiting to
tell you this eve when we supped. I have decided to name you Earl of Cornwall!”

Ecstatic, Gaveston embraced the king. As they hugged, the
Gascon looked across the river and, making certain that Edward did not see his
gesture, nodded furtively to the inquisitor Lagny on the far bank.