The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (48 page)

The second task, now at
hand, was even more daunting. These high curtain walls were designed to prevent
easy scaling, and the English believed that he and his Scot raiders carried no
siege equipment. But Sim Ledhouse had put his mind to an invention that might
turn the tide of the war, if it performed as promised. The clever blacksmith
had calculated that by connecting two lengthy hemp ropes with a series of
folding planks, they could roll up the flexible ladders, carry them on their
backs on the quick, and unroll them when they were positioned under these
walls.

Two shrill whistles came from the far side of the keep. That was Ledhouse’s signal. He was in position at the
postern gate, ready to create the diversion.

James nodded for the
sons of the Galloway crone to load their crossbows with the grappling hooks,
which had been attached to the top ends of the rope ladder. The timing of their
launches would have to be precise. He and the lads whispered to three
together—and fired at the rampart nearest to Belle’s cage.

The hooks snaked the
ropes into the black sky … the iron claws held. The ladder planks
cascaded into place, just as Ledhouse had designed.

James went up first, promising to signal when he reached the
top.

S
CALDED WITH HOT JUICES FROM
the tray dropped into his lap,
Caernervon howled and shot up from the table to his feet. He ripped down his
wet leggings with no consideration for modesty. “Idiot! I’ll have your head
sewn on that sow’s neck! My God, I am boiled! Piers, help me!”

Alerted by the shouting,
Clifford rushed from the allures outside the tower and came running into the
hall. He found the chamber in chaos and the king rolling on his back with his
breeches halfway to his thighs. Despite Caernervon’s ravings, Clifford did not
hurry to the king’s side, but kept his gaze fixed upon Gaveston, who sat limp,
negligent to his lover’s plight.

Gaveston looked down in horror at his sleeves and found them
soaked from sweat chills. Trembling, he tried to rise from the chair and fell
to his knees, clutching his stomach. His green face contorted from confusion to
agony.

“Piers!” The king writhed on the floor like a hooked worm.
“Help me!”

Clifford glanced through the window toward the tower
defenses. His guards were no longer at their stations. He turned and scanned
the tables.

The queen had disappeared.

The officer ran out through the door, leaving the king and his
favourite writhing on the floor. The servants and other guests, fearful of
being blamed for the poisoning, had scurried off.

“I am dying!” Gaveston screamed. “Poppie, I am dying!”

Caernervon tried to assist the retching Gaveston to a chair.
He called for his physician, but no one answered him. Abandoned, he dragged his
favourite out of the hall and down a dark corridor, crying for his guards.

Hands reached from the shadows and stifled the king’s
screams.

T
HE TOP EDGE OF THE
rampart crumbled, forcing James to hang
on by one arm. Regaining his grip, he pulled himself over the wall.

Two English guards stood
across the allure, not twenty paces away.

His breath quickened as
he surveyed the battlements.

There was the cage. And Belle, covered by a hooded robe, sat huddled in the
corner with her back to him.

He could have used the
Trinity lads at his side now, but he feared another crossbow shot to bring them
up would give his presence away. He slid alone along the shadows between walls
and the tapers. As the guards strode closer, he drew his dagger and slit the
throat of the man on the left. The second guard turned to speak to his fellow
sentry—an uppercut to his jaw sent him tumbling over the ramparts.

That
would be signal enough for the lads.

Rubbing his knuckles, he stalked his way toward the cage, hiding behind each buttress along the tower wall. How long he had dreamt of this moment. What would he say to her? How would he explain his failure to come for her at Kildrummy? Would she even recognize him now?

He stole along the wall
from corbel to corbel and came to the hoist beam that dangled the cage over the
moat. He dared not call out for fear that her reaction would alert the guards.
The beam’s edge was no wider than his foot, forcing him to inch his way slowly
toward the roof.

Atop the cage, he reached down to test the latch. The door was unlocked. Strange, he thought. Grasping the edge of the cage’s roof,
he flipped head over heels, kicked in the grille, and landed on the cage floor.

Belle sat slumped over in sleep.

He quietly crawled across the cage. Closing his eyes, he
captured her shoulders and turned her, pressing a kiss to her lips to prevent
her from screaming

She returned the passionate kiss and pulled him closer.

How desperately he had missed that embrace! She edged him
into the shadows and lay next to him. She felt so vibrant and strong. Thank God
for that. He opened his eyes to see the face that had remained etched in his
mind for five long years.

A firm hand replaced her
lips on his. “Get away! At once!”

Had her voice become so altered? Confused, he pulled back her hood. In the dim light from the
torches, he saw, for the first time, the face that had spoken those words of
warning.

Isabella of France pressed her hand against his chest to
ease the shock to his heart. “Clifford suspects you are here.”

He reeled against the bars. “But where is …” His question
died with a gasp.

Isabella took his face
into her hands to bring him back to the moment’s urgency. “Your lady remains in
Berwick. Clifford placed an imposter here in her stead. I bribed the woman to
take her place and warn you.”

Despairing, James could not force himself to move.

“Do not fail your countess now. Live, and come for her
another day.”

Shouts rang out near the north walls—Ledhouse and his men were in a hot fight. Outnumbered, they
wouldn’t hold out for long.

Isabella pulled him, listless with a heavy heart, to his
feet. She climbed out the door of the cage and clambered onto its roof,
beckoning him to follow. When they were both atop the cage, she led him across
the beam that extended several feet from the tower’s wall. They reached the
allures just moments before the English soldiers poured down the gangway. She
dragged him into the shadows and swept him into a side alcove. When the
pounding of boots receded, she inched her eyes beyond the corner of the
buttress and saw that the way was clear again. She kissed his hand and sent him
running for the wall to escape.

Covered by the flickering darkness, James slid to his
stomach and dived under the protection of a crenellation. He reached up and
groped the edge of the walls until he found the grappling hook that the Trinity
lads had shot up again. He wrapped his leg over the merlons, grasped the rope
in preparation to rappel down, and—

He fell from a blow to the back of his head.

Tabhann raised his sword, hot for the kill. “Aye, I never
believed you were gutted. I was born for that deed, not Sim Ledhouse.”

James rolled aside, narrowly avoiding the blade’s thrust.

Tabhann chased him to the rampart’s edge and pressed the
sword to his throat. James arched over the side with his head dangling. Tabhann
raised his weapon for the finishing blow—

A grappling hook shot over the wall and jerked the blade
from his grasp.

Hiding in the shadows,
Isabella slid an abandoned pike across the stones.

James pounced on the
weapon. Behind him, the shouts came
closer—the English guards were rushing up the ramp. He prodded Tabhann
toward the beam that extended the cage over the wall.

Tabhann tried to delay
until Clifford’s men arrived, but the punishing thrusts drove him backwards.

“Climb it,” James ordered.

Given no choice, Tabhann
crawled onto the beam and backed away from the rampart. When he was atop the
cage and beyond James’s reach, he grinned. “Fool! You can’t reach me now!
You’ve condemned yourself!” He pointed out James to the onrushing English
soldiers. “Douglas! Over here!”

James slithered back into the shadows with Isabella. Hidden
from view, he shouted in his best Yorkshire accent, “Douglas escapes! On the
cage!”

Tabhann lost his preening grin. Unable to kneel and hide
without risking a fall, he tried to stave off a volley. “Don’t fire”

Hearing the Scot voice in the darkness, the guards unleashed
their arrows.

Tabhann looked down at blood oozing over the gravy stain on
his shirt—his chest was riddled with fletches. He tried to shout a curse at James, but his words faded as he fell to
his death.

T
HE DOOR TO THE QUEEN'S
chamber flew open, moments after
Isabella slid into bed and wrapped herself in the covers.

Armed with a torch,
Clifford marched in with a contingent of soldiers.

Thankful that she’d had time to put on her gown, Isabella
pulled the sheets to her neck and acted dazed, as if she had been asleep. She
had seized on the chaos of Gaveston’s attempted poisoning—she suspected
Lancaster, but the culprit could have been any of a dozen men in court—to rush
from the hall and exchange places with Belle’s impostor while Clifford was
distracted. She hoped the officer wouldn’t notice that her hair had not been
brushed out, or that the candle next to the bed was still smoking from having
been snuffed only seconds before he entered. Shielding her eyes from the harsh
light, she shouted at him, “How dare you, sir!”

“Orders, my lady.”

“Orders to invade the privacy of my
boudoir
? Issued
by whom?”

Ignoring her demand, Clifford searched behind the curtains and furniture.

She was infuriated by his refusal to answer her with
anything but a smug smile, a gesture that she knew was aimed at the irony of
her sham protest. Because of the king’s neglect of her, many whispered behind
her back that she had come to regard nights alone a privilege.

“I will lodge a protest of this with my father!”

“You must be a sound sleeper,” Clifford observed in a veiled
challenge. “To remain undisturbed by the shouting outside.”

“If you intend to
persist in this debasement, then dismiss these men!”

She held her breath
while the officer debated her demand. She might be a despised Frenchwoman among
the English courtiers, but she knew Clifford needed no reminding that she could
still cause him problems should her flighty husband decide to appease her at
the officer’s expense. As she hoped, given the man’s reputation for caution on
the military field, Clifford chose the better course of discretion and ordered
his soldiers out.

Alone with her now,
Clifford kept searching the chamber, rifling through the intimates in her
wardrobe. “The Black Douglas lurks in this tower.”

She cackled to dismiss
that suggestion as absurd. “That coward would never show his face in Roxburgh!”

“You left the feast at a very convenient time.”

Her heart raced. Did he suspect her? “Where is my husband?”

“For his safety, he is being escorted back to Berwick.”

“And he leaves me in this sty? Without a word of his
departure?”

Clifford saw the covers ripple near her on the bed. He
raised his blade, ready to impale the intruder—and tore away the sheets.

Gloucester, half naked, lay next to the queen.

The earl erupted from his hiding in the bed and drove
Clifford with a pointed finger toward the door. “You pox-cheeked trough maggot!
Do you forget your fucking station? Speak a word of this to anyone, even to
those cunted hedgehogs you whore on, and by God I will see you remanded on the
next ship to Brittany for violating the privacy and honor of the Queen!”

Speechless, Clifford bowed in contrition and hurried from
the chamber.

When the door slammed
shut, Gloucester tapped the footboards.

James crawled out from
under the bed frame.

Isabella hurried the two men toward a side door.

James delayed to thank her, but she sped him off with a
whispered assurance, “Your lady has all your stubbornness and more. She
survived to see Longshanks admitted through the gates of Hell. She will not
allow my titmouse of a husband to outlast her, either. Now go, and God be with
you.”

T
HREE SHARP WHISTLES—THE SIGNAL
of Robert’s courier—flushed
a bevy of swallows from the treetops of Ettrick Forest. James leapt from the
dense brush and flagged down the approaching riders, hoping to learn why the
English had not retaliated for his Roxburgh raid. In the four months since his
failed attempt to rescue Belle, the Borders had been so quiet that he feared
Caernervon had already launched his expected invasion of Scotland by sea.

Twenty horsemen arrived, led by a dark-faced man who reined
to a halt and sniggered, “St. Fillan must have cast a spell on Clifford’s nose!
I could smell your sorry Lanark asses all the way from Peebles.”