The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (54 page)

Clifford edged closer to the stream. “I have convinced the
king that imprisoning your woman no longer serves our purpose!”

Hopeful, he stopped and turned back.

Clifford grinned at the silence, having exposed his old
rival’s weakness. “Tomorrow, my courier will deliver an order to Berwick … for
her execution.”

Cam laughed. “She lost her head once when she crowned Bruce.
We’d not see her lose it again, eh Douglas?”

“You can still save her,” Clifford offered. “Bruce need not
know. When we move for Stirling in the morning, hold back your division
until we gain the high ground. It will be over before you engage. I will see to
it that the execution order never arrives.”

James dived into the burn and swam furiously to overtake the
two scoundrels. When he reached the far bank, he pulled his dagger for the
kill, but they had disappeared into the mists.

“B
RING HER.”

That command, from somewhere in the morning’s darkness,
startled Belle out of a fevered sleep. Lifted off the cage floor, she went
rigid with fear. Had Caernervon finally ordered her to the execution block?
Nearly blind from the hunger glaze that had hardened over her eyes, she could
make out only flashes and shadows as she was removed from the cage and carried
up the tower stairs.

The howling of the sea wind silenced suddenly.

She heard the crackling of a hearth. Tears of bitter irony
stung her swollen lids. She had languished in the harsh elements for seven
years, freezing during the winters and sweltering during the summers, but now
she would meet her end under a dry roof in a chamber heated for comfort. The
soldiers laid her on what felt like piles of straw, no doubt strewn to soak up
her blood. Even at death’s approach, she couldn’t help but sink into the
luxurious softness of the matting. Deprivation had heightened what she had once
taken for granted. This nesting, better suited for mules, felt as heavenly as a
feather bed.

Was Caernervon watching her from the balustrade? Aye, he
would expect her to break and beg a chance to renounce her allegiance to Robert
Bruce. But she would not give him the satisfaction. She lifted to her knees,
struggling against the faintness to remain upright. She stretched her neck to
offer the executioner a better target and shouted at the English king, “Come
strike the blow, eunuch!”

A door slammed.

She shuddered and collapsed—but her head still pounded
horribly. She risked opening her eyes and saw the same swirl of blurs that only
seconds before she thought would be her last view of this world. Her heart
sank. She was still alive. She reach up and felt for the wound on her neck, but
found none.

Incompetent swordsman!
Why does he not finish me?

A bowl of warm liquid redolent of honey and cinnamon came to
her lips. She tried to sip it, but her throat was too swollen to swallow. She
coughed and retched with spasms. Her lungs felt as if they were on fire.
They are reviving me only to suffer the
blade again.
She
shoved away the bowl in a rage. Her thrashing arms were restrained.

“You are safe here,” a woman’s voice whispered.

Smooth hands caressed her
forehead … and then a blurred face, framed in blonde hair, came hovering over
her.

The English queen?

She reached out, clawing at the softness under her, and
found that she was not on execution straw, but a bed. She sobbed, undone by the
discovery. “You must take me back. If your husband learns—”

“You needn’t worry about him,” Isabella of France said. “At
least for this night. He has taken an army north to fight your people.”

Alarmed, Belle tried to arise. “Jamie must be warned.”

Isabella eased her back to the pillow and brought more tea
to her lips. “There is nothing you can do for him now.”

Belle tried to marshal her fragmented thoughts. More and
more, her mind now lapsed into periods of forgetfulness, and each time it happened,
she feared that she would not return to sanity. She fought against these
involuntary retreats from the world, worried she might not recognize Jamie when
he came for her. Having lost track again of the months again, she had to ask,
“What year is it?”

“1314. The 24th of June.”

“Midsummer day?”

The queen nodded wistfully. “When I lived in Paris, I so
looked forward to the festival. I’d stroll the gardens picking roses to offer
to my
beau
.”

Belle smiled. “I’d swim naked in the sea like Aphrodite.”

“You Scots are mad!” Isabella covered her mouth immediately,
concerned that she might have given offense.

A burst of frantic chirping came from outside the window.

Belle turned at the sound, realizing that the larks that
nested atop her cage had been thrown into perturbation by her disappearance.
“Aye, I suppose we
are
mad. But only a Frenchwoman touched in the head
by glamourie dust would risk her position with king and Parliament to keep a
Scot prisoner alive.”

The two women shared a nervous laugh that died with a sad
silence.

“I do have one quibble with you,” Belle added, wishing to
chase the melancholy that had overtaken the moment. “That loaf of bread you
tossed me on the day of Longshanks’s funeral was week-old and moldy.”

“The harder the crust, the easier the throw.”

Belle sensed that the queen was examining her wasted
condition, trying to fathom how she had managed to stay alive. They were
nothing alike in features or temperament, but their lives had taken parallel
paths. Both had been thrust into the same foreign land and made prisoner to the
same despicable monarch. Her suffering in that cage was nearly unbearable. Yet
she would not trade it for Isabella’s fate; to be cast off for another woman
would be crushing enough, but to be abandoned for another man’s bed with no
hope of enjoying the intimacy of passion was a cruelty that only the
Plantagenets could design.

She remembered the first time they had spoken, on the dance
floor of this very tower. She had always wondered why the presumptuous French
girl came to her rescue that day. How angry Jamie had been at them both; she
could still feel the heat from his wild eyes. The Almighty’s ways were passing
mysterious. Had Isabella not contrived that reunion with James, she would never
have rushed to Scone to place the crown on—

A wail startled her.

A matron stood at the door with a crying infant. “Mum, it is
the hour.”

Isabella untied her bodice and took the swaddled child to
suckle it. She indicated for the matron to leave, but before doing so, the
matron retracted the curtains in a protest against the French practice of
coddling babes.

Belle was stunned. “Your husband has proven a man, after
all?”

When the queen did not answer her, Belle raised her head to
examine the infant cocooned in strips of linen and lace. She caressed its downy
head and saw from the embroidery of the cloth that it was a boy. These cruel
English imprisoned their children with such bonds in the belief that the
natural act of crawling was insubordinate. Was it any wonder that their men
turned ravenous for war?

As if to confirm that judgment, the infant lunged at
Isabella’s nipple.

Belle was suddenly swept by a wave of revulsion. This birth
meant that the Plantagenet house would survive for another generation. How many
more of her countrymen would die under the watch of this child? And then, a
revelation came: Had God asked her to endure this diabolical confinement to
bring her to this moment of opportunity? She turned an ear. The floorboards
were no longer creaking—the guards must have departed with the matron.

A stream of golden light revealed the location of the
window.

She had not walked that far in seven years. Could she summon
the strength to commit the deed? Deprived of his heir, Caernervon would lose
the flagging support of the earls, and the English invasion would be rendered
stillborn.

“He is ten months old,” Isabella said.

Belle struggled to her elbows, shifting nearer to the edge
of the bed while continuing to talk to disarm Isabella. “Have you named him?”

“Edward.”

Belle winced at hearing the surname that had been a curse on
Scot lips for two generations, and now a third. Malevolent fate. A woman who
did not love her husband had been given a child whose destiny marked it for the
oppression of thousands. How many times had she replayed that night in Methven,
when she and Jamie had talked of raising a family? Her best years had been wasted
in that cage, and she feared from the dead feeling in her womb that she could never
provide him with those children.

“Would you like to hold him?”

Before Belle could answer, she felt the infant placed in her
wasted arms. The boy stopped crying and grinned up at her, as if daring her to
do it. The shutters on the window rapped
against the stones. Could the guards on the ramparts see her through the open
panes? Her hands were shaking. If Caernervon discovered that she had been
allowed to hold his heir, the queen would suffer gravely.
Why does
she take such wanton risk?
She saw
Isabella’s drawn face staring down at her with a look of desperate expectation.

She
wants
me to kill it.

Was this why she brought
her in from the cage?

Aye, she also abhors the
thought of Caernervon’s progeny ascending the throne. It all made sense now. If
Isabella committed the deed, her husband would have his justification for
ridding himself of the marriage that he despised and thus freeing England from
its treaty with France. If, on the other hand, an imprisoned Scot woman was the
culprit, Isabella would be vilified for weakness and negligence in showing
mercy to a fellow lady of noble rank, but the English barons would never permit
her to be exiled or executed, not after she had proven capable of bearing
children with the unreliable Caernervon. His preference for men was now widely
rumored across the Continent. Longshanks had beguiled Phillip into the marriage
when his son had still been a callow youth. No monarch would risk bonding a
daughter to Caernervon now.

She felt the infant’s head pressing against her shriveled
bosom. The wind was rising, and the first rays of dawn were forming on the
horizon. The wind was rising, and the first rays of dawn were forming on the
horizon. The matron might return any moment to close the rattling shutters. She
covered the babe’s head with the corner of the blanket.
Why did I do that?
The
infant nuzzled closer to her and fell asleep in her arms. She tried to quell
the trembling in her hands. “My eyes are poor. May I take him to the light?”

Isabella assisted her to her feet and helped her walk with
unsteady steps toward the bay window. She felt the queen’s hands trembling
against her elbows as she ran a finger across the child’s matted sprouts of
hair. A blast of sunlight suddenly hit her face, warning her that she had
reached the ledge. This wee monster that ran with the ancestral blood of
Longshanks reached for her breast. As she tightened her hold, her long nails
brushed the infant’s pink neck, and its mucous-rimmed eyes looked up at her in
accusation. The queen eased the grasp on her elbow, allowing her the required
freedom of movement to lean into the window. One more step and—

Heavy boot steps came thudding down the hall outside.

Isabella quickly took the child back, a moment before the
chancellor of the royal household, accompanied by the sneering matron, entered
the chamber.

The official took the infant from her. “The prince must be
returned to the nursery. And you will be kind enough to join us, madam.”

Belle silently cursed the meddling matron for reporting the
request that they be left alone. Isabella had already tested the court’s
forbearance by ordering her to be temporarily removed from the cage. She could
not risk a report of her unpopular leniency to a Scot prisoner being sent north
to her husband.

“A minute more,” Isabella begged the official. “I must help
the lady walk a bit to regain the strength in her legs.”

The chancellor would not relent. “Your chambermaid can
attend to that.”

Belle’s spirit sank. Her delay had cost them the opportunity.

As the queen reluctantly prepared to leave with the court
official, the infant wailed in protest and fought to return to Belle’s arms.
Isabella looked quizzically at the infant, then at Belle, unnerved by their
sudden bonding.

Belle knew this might be her last chance to ask the question
that had burned in her heart for years. Risking the suspicion of the
chancellor, she turned aside and whispered to Isabella’s ear, “Do you love
him?”

Unnerved, Isabella acted as if she had forgotten something
near the bed. She told the chancellor, “The lady has womanly needs I must
attend.”

He glared at her, but finally acquiesced to the delay in her
departure. He handed the infant to the matron and followed her out.