The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (60 page)

“Do you love her?”

He hesitated. “I’ll always love Belle.”

“No! I mean, do you love Jeanne?”

James scooped another handful of pebbles and skipped them
across the stream to avoid answering her. Each throw carried more anger.

“She loves you. Can you not see that?”

He flung the last rock so hard that several low-flying
razorbills dived in retaliation. “There are things you don’t understand.”

Marjorie lurched to her feet, nearly losing her balance.
“You have no right to say that! Seven years I spent in that English hole! There
are things
you
don’t understand! You
and
my father!” When he
gently lowered her back to sitting, she began weeping. “Belle had a choice. I
did not.”

“Choice? What do you mean?”

Marjorie reacted as if wishing to retract that last
utterance, but his fierce glare demanded an explanation. Finally, she revealed,
“The English king was going to make an example of me and Liz. … But Belle took
our place.”

James captured her arms to speed the revelation. “Why?”

“I don’t know why! Why does anything happen? Why didn’t I
die instead of her? No one loves me! There’s not a night I don’t pray to wake
up dead!”

“Don’t say that! You carry Scotland’s hope.”

She struggled to escape his grip. “I don’t want to carry
anything! I hate this miserable world!”

“You must remember your father—”

“My father cares nothing for me! He uses me only for his
designs! All of you use us! You used Belle! And now you use Jeanne!”

She shoved him away and ran up the hill. Before he could
catch her, she pulled herself atop the mare and galloped north, spooking off
his horse.

J
EANNE HAD SHARED ONLY A
few words with James during their
frantic gallop north to find Marjorie. Her banishment at the river could only
mean one thing: He had asked the lass about Belle. She wasn’t certain what
incensed her more—that James had recklessly brought up the subject despite
Marjorie’s fragile state, or that she had deluded herself into believing that,
by sleeping with him, she could help him forget the dead countess. At this
moment, she had more pressing concerns than bruised feelings; the king would
hold her dearly responsible for allowing his daughter to run off.

Chilled by a gale brewing in the east, James drew his cloak
tighter around his neck as he scanned the moors along Knock Hill on the road
between Paisley and Renfrew. Finding no sight of Marjorie, he stole a glance at
Jeanne, trying to divine the reason for her enforced silence. “The day has
turned cold enough without you frosting it.”

Jeanne reined to a sharp halt. “I was warm enough in your
bed!”

“I didn’t ask you to come to me! I was doing well enough
without you!”

“You are a pig-headed man!”

“And you are a conniving French changeling of a—” A loud
cawing cut him short. He saw a bevy of sparrow hawks circling
just beyond the hill.

Jeanne watched as the birds hovered and tightened their formation. She had seen that same chilling pattern of flight on battlefields. Before she could ask what was wrong, James galloped across Knock Hill. He found Marjorie’s horse, with its saddle slipped, watering at the river. Several feet away, Marjorie lay bloodied and unconscious. He leapt down and hurried to the girl, feeling for a pulse. Jeanne came riding up and, dismounting, knelt at his side. She took one look at Marjorie and turned aside, shaking her head.

James pressed his ear to Marjorie’s breast and slapped her bloodless face, trying to revive her. “She’s not dead!”

Jeanne restrained his hand. “It’s the child.”

“How long … can it live?”

Jeanne made the sign of the Cross to speed mother and infant
to Heaven. “There is nothing we can do.” She tried to stop him from tearing at
Marjorie’s chemise to expose her stomach. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

He pulled a dagger. “Damn it, woman! Tell me where to cut!”

Driven by his crazed eyes, Jeanne traced the path where the
incision should be made. He sliced open Marjorie’s womb and retracted the
cavity walls. She removed the fetus and exposed the umbilical cord for him to
sever. She wrapped the infant in the shreds of the chemise.

“Is it alive?” he asked.

Jeanne cradled the child and felt a tremor. She nodded,
overcome with hope and grief. It was a boy—a future king.

He kissed Marjorie’s cold cheek. For the first time in the
lass’s short but discontented life, she held a look of blessed repose. Her
existence had been filled with more horror and suffering than most men could
have endured. Yet Fate had chosen to withhold its cruelest indignity until the
end. She had been taken from this cold-hearted world without even the comfort
of knowing that she had delivered Scotland’s salvation.

J
EANNE HAD INSISTED ON STAYING
with the Stewarts at Renfrew to help care for the premature infant, so James made the journey back to Lintalee alone. Robert had yet to be informed of the birth of his heir, named David after Robert’s maternal grandfather; he was still in the west near Loch Ryan, preparing to lead an army across the sea to Ireland to go to the aid of his brother. Edward had captured Carrickfergus and, with characteristic bluster, had declared himself High Monarch of Ireland. His power grab had miraculously united the squabbling Irish earls, spurring them to side with an English monarch they’d never seen rather than submit to a Scottish invader on their doorsteps. Hard-pressed, Edward had sent a desperate plea to Robert for aid.

He muttered another curse at that nonsense. Before leaving
for Ulster, Robert had issued an order appointing him as Lieutenant of the
Realm during his absence. He had always counseled Robert against such dangerous
diversions, but the king suffered a blind spot when it came to Ireland. His
Celtic mother had weaned him on stories about Culchullan and the Stone of
Destiny, and Robert had come to see himself as a resurrected Arthur who would
reunite Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as Merlin had prophesied.

Now, as he approached the Lintalee defile, the acrid sting
of black smoke attacked his nostrils. He rushed through the pass and saw a billowing
cloud churning over the ridge. His manor was charred and ransacked. Galloping
up, he leapt off his saddle and ran through the smoldering doors. Seven Scot
corpses lay burnt on the smoking floor. Murdoch’s mutilated body hung from the
rafters with a placard tied to its neck:

Salutations to the Blackened Douglas,

Your abode now matches your name. Should you wish to thank
me in person for the alteration, I am accepting visitors at Berwick on the
Tweed.

Yours truly, Sir Robert Neville

L
ASHING HIS FROTHING HORSE INTO
Berwick, James rode behind the siege moat surrounding the city and called his Scot fighters to him.

Sim Ledhouse, who had been placed in command of the
encirclement operation, tried to draw him back to safety behind the lines. “Can
you not find another fight of your own, Jamie?”

In a wrathful state,
James high-stepped his steed below the walls, giving no care to the range of
the English arrows. “Who is Robert Neville?”

“The Peacock?” Ledhouse asked. “How did you know he was
here?”

“Damn you! Answer me!”

“A knight from Durham with a mouth that exceeds his stature.
What’s gotten your hackles up?”

“McClurg and McKie?”

“On the lines near the beachhead.”

James raced down the moat trench toward the coast, nearly
trampling several of his own men in his path. He found the two Trinity brothers
stationed behind the barricades. “Up with you, lads!”

Baffled by his cryptic summons, the Galloway brothers
mounted their ponies and followed him in a sortie around the walls.

James shouted at the
defenders on the ramparts, “Bring me Neville!”

“He dines this hour!” a sergeant said. “Call back tomorrow!”

Not recognizing him without his banner, the garrison shouted catcalls at him, convinced that he was a raw recruit too eager for his first fight.

After studying the window in that section of the tower where he remembered the officers used to take their meals, James returned to the trenches and circled the trebuchet that Ledhouse had constructed, the only stone thrower possessed by the Scots. He had never been an advocate of siege guns, deeming them too unwieldy for his slash-and-run tactics, but on this occasion the contraption might serve his purpose. “Sim, can you aim this thing with any accuracy?”

Ledhouse grinned. “I can hit the lip marks on Caernervon’s
ass.”

James nodded him to the task. “Third window.”

Ledhouse ordered beams wedged under the running ramps to
increase the trebuchet’s leverage. When the gun was angled to his satisfaction,
James slashed the restraining rope. The stone crashed through the tower’s
aperture and drew a stream of invectives inside.

Moments later, Neville appeared on the ramparts with a brown
soup stain marring his robin-blue satin blouse. “A plague upon the knave who—”

“At the river!” James shouted. “Within the hour!”

Richmond arrived on the
walls a step behind Neville. Recognizing the hero of Bannockburn, the English
commander crouched behind a merlon thrust, leaving Neville exposed.

Neville laughed at the officers cowering around him. “Who is
that piss ant down there?”

“The Scotsman you’re hunting.”

“
That
black root stump has been terrorizing you?”

“You can easily take him,” Richmond assured Neville, turning
to silently warn his officers against countermanding the prediction.

Grinning at the chance
to add to his reputation, Neville shouted down at his challenger, “Thirty men
each.”

“Three! And bring along
those bastards your mother calls your brothers!”

Liking those odds even more, Neville dug a slither of meat from his teeth and spat it. “Between the river and the west tower. I hear that’s where they threw your whore. You can join her after I carve you up.”

James and the Trinity
brothers rode into the open field and waited.

A
HALF HOUR LATER,
N
EVILLE,
attired in a fancied breastplate
of hammered silver, emerged from the gate on a sleek Flanders charger jingling
with bells. Accompanied by his two brothers, the Peacock paraded back and forth
under the walls as if entering a tournament. The soldiers in both camps lowered
their weapons in a temporary truce to watch the encounter.

After enduring Neville’s flashy antics for several minutes,
McKie turned to James. “Are you going to tell us what this is about?”

James delayed answering him until the Peacock reared his courser again, trying to taunt a charge. Then, he looked directly at the two Galloway lads who had shared his every hardship since the Turnberry invasion. “These Englishmen before us murdered your brother at Lintalee.”

The Trinity brothers, turning ashen with anger, drew their swords.

As they watched the Peacock strut and bark insults, James whispered, “The order I am about to give you, lads, I would not obey it if I were in your stead.” His only indication that the brothers were listening was the whitening of their knuckles as they gripped their weapons. “The first-born Neville is a menace. I will deal with him. But his kinsmen must be taken alive.”

McKie and McClurg said
nothing, but kept their gazes fixed on the prancing Nevilles. Despite their
lust for revenge, James knew they understood the realm’s need of such
high-ranking prisoners for ransoming comrades who still languished in
Caernervon’s dungeons. Still, he felt the same knot in his gut he had suffered
on the day Clifford had dragged his father to the Tower. A Scot denied blood
justice was never again a whole man. He offered them the only words of
consolation he could summon. “Murdoch was like a son to me. There’s none in
this world I’d rather have at my side than the two of you. When I charge the
Peacock, circle behind his brothers and cut off their escape.”

The Peacock, unable to hear what James had whispered, threw
up his hands in exasperation. “I dine at six, blackbird! Dally much longer and
I’ll hang another ten of you!”

James inched his horse forward. “You and me.”

The Peacock gave up a confused half-laugh. “First you said
three. Now one? I’m beginning to think you don’t want to fight at all.”

James reached into his saddlebag and removed the placard
that Neville had hung from Murdoch’s neck. He threw it at the hooves of the
Englishman’s horse and, in a ploy to shame him into the single duel, shouted
his reply loud enough for the English defenders on the walls to hear. “The
invitation was for me alone! If this tourney shill you have sent out is not up
to it, I will allow you to send another more seasoned knight in his stead!”

The Peacock glanced up
at Richmond. The officer, watching from the tower, eagerly nodded him to
action. After debating the proposed change, Neville forced another laugh and
taunted James, “Are you going to sit there and prattle on until darkness gives
you an excuse to retire?”

James tossed his sword to McKie. He pulled the Dun Eadainn
ax from behind his back and rested it on his pommel. The Peacock lost his preening grin. On the ramparts, Richmond and his soldiers murmured with
anticipation. They had seen the effectiveness of
that
weapon at Bannockburn.

The Peacock retreated a step and whispered to his brothers.

James spurred to the charge.

The Peacock came at him—with his brothers joining in the assault. James had expected the treachery. He glanced over his shoulder and shook his head at McKie and McClurg to enforce his order not to come to his aid. Nearing the collision, he veered left of the onrushing brothers and caused the Peacock sweep past him, too late in altering his aim. He hammered the youngest Neville from his horse.