The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (69 page)

James measured the distance his hand would have to travel to
thump Sweenie’s gourd-sized head. “He has a ten league head start with a
thousand less men.”

Sweenie nodded in mock agreement. “Aye, and he’s not as long
in the tooth.”

“I should have left you to roast on the spit at Myton.”

“I was just making a point,” Sweenie said.

“And what point might that be?”

“From what I hear, that fifteen-year-old lad on the English
crib throne intends to run you about like an old hare until you drop from
exhaustion.”

“Does he now?”

“It’s not too late to turn back to Lintalee and spend the
rest of your dotage tending your garden. Randolph could take the command. He
reminds me of you in the old days.”

Instead of rising to the challenge, James sought refuge in
dark silence.

Sweenie was concerned about his refusal to engage in the
banter. Robert had always been the one to suffer the bouts of melancholy, not
him. Turning serious, the monk kicked his hobbin closer and asked, “What
troubles you?”

James spurred ahead to be alone. The knot in his stomach
warned that this campaign would not be like the others. Could Isabella not
control her own son? The boy king was raising an army rumored to be twice the
size of the force his father brought north in 1314. Reportedly, young Edward
had also employed crack mercenaries from the Continent and was releasing
hundreds of felons from jails with the promise of a pardon as bounty in
exchange for ten dead Scots. If Isabella’s wee troublemaker so desperately
wished a taste of war, he would be accommodated—not in Scotland, but deep in
the heart of his own kingdom, where the fat Yorkshire burghers who replenished
the brat’s treasury could watch their own towns go up in flames for a change.

In such low moments, he actually longed for those desperate
days when he and Robert scurried across the Highlands on foot, starving but
firm in the conviction of their cause. Half of the men who fought with them at
Bannockburn were now dead or crippled. In these past few years, he had
communicated with the royal court at Cardross only by courier. He still nursed
the insults suffered over Brechin’s execution and Robert’s demand that he take
a wife. Robert’s dementia had worsened after Elizabeth’s death from injuries
suffered in a fall down the stairs at Cullen Castle, and the entire kingdom now
feared that the clans would renew their feuds before three-year-old David
reached his majority.

He also missed Jeanne’s calming touch. He hadn’t heard from
her in over a year, not since her terse message advising that she would be
staying north to attend to the king’s household and nurse his senile
stepmother, who had passed away a few months later. Lintalee had grown cold
with the French lass’s absence. He had treated her poorly, that he could not
deny. He had hoped he might grow to love her over time, but his longing for
Belle had only increased with the years. He understood why she could no longer
endure his companionship. Perhaps he should allow his memory of Belle to fade
into oblivion. No one else remembered her sacrifice, and it had brought
Scotland no closer to peace. He hung his head and muttered, “What use all
this?”

Sweenie risked suffering a harangue by riding closer. “The
great Irish chieftain Culchullan also suffered from heartsickness. So forlorn
was he with the memory of a banshee from the netherworld that he could not
force his limbs to move. It is the bane of all warriors of our race.”

“Did he ever gain release from his cares?”

“Aye,” Sweenie said, “but at a steep price.”

“What healed him?”

“His charioteer rode to Anglesey and asked the Druids for a
cure. The holy men sent the charioteer back to his master with the Elixir of
Forgetfulness.”

“The potion worked?”

Sweenie nodded. “But to seal the magic, Culchullan was
required to forget all he had experienced in his life. All glories and deeds,
even his comrades.”

James pondered the strange tale. “Culchullan’s lass must
have been responsible for his acts of valor. Why else would he have been
required to forget them to chase her memory?”

Sweenie shrugged. “I have never been in the thrall of a
woman, so I possess no knowledge of such things.”

A commotion to the rear disrupted their column, suddenly
lifting James’s spirits. McClurg and McKie drove up a band of fifty Welsh
archers shackled at the wrists. James grinned at the haul; a wagon laden with
captured gold would have been less precious, for longbowmen were such a bane to
his troop that a Welshman’s quiver was said to carry twenty-four Scot souls.

“We found them wandering near Hartbottle,” McKie reported.

James marveled at the prodigious height of the captives and
their thick fingers calloused from years of drawing the bowstrings. Many in
this fearsome Welsh troop were much older than he had expected, but all had
sunburnt faces and quick eyes. They had known no other employment since
childhood, having been drafted into the royal service after demonstrating their
skills on local archery fields following Sunday Mass. He rode through their
ranks and demanded, “Where is your swaddled king?”

None of the Welsh would answer him, until a frightened young
squire blurted out: “North of Durham. Looking for you.”

“How many men does he bring?” James asked the boy.

The captured squire felt his comrades tried to silence him
with scowls, but his nerves finally got the better of his honor. “Twenty
thousand.”

James turned aside to
hide his dismay. Young Edward’s boast of running him to death like an old hare
now seemed more credible. With such an advantage in odds, the English could
come at him from every direction. He and Randolph would need to move fast to
combine forces with the Earl of Mar, who commanded a third Scot column moving
farther south. He turned back to the two Trinity brothers and ordered, “Find
Randolph and tell him to meet us south of Hexam on the quick.”

“What about the Welsh?” McKie asked.

James studied the captives. “Hang them.”

The condemned archers fell to their knees, praying in despair—all
but their officer, who stepped forward with an air of noble resignation. “Do
what you will with me. But I ask Christ’s mercy for my men.”

James was impressed by
the officer’s selfless courage. “If I spared any, it would be you.”

“We are conscripts. We despise the English more than you
do.”

“You showed little of that hatred at Falkirk. I cannot risk
your return to Edward’s army. Fifty of you could turn a battle.”

“These men have families.”

He had no time to debate the merits of leniency. So many
prisoners on foot would severely hinder his speed, and he could not spare the
troops required to escort them to the border. The English scouts would be
searching for their lost herce of archers, and if he and his Scots were
discovered, they would lose the advantage of surprise. He led the Welsh officer
a few steps away from the others. “You and your men wish to live at any cost?”

The officer silently interrogated his homesick conscripts. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he nodded grimly.

T
HE YOUNG
E
NGLISH KING HAD
been counseled to pack away his
battle gear to keep it from rusting, but despite having ridden nonstop for
three days in a cold downpour, he insisted on remaining in the ponderous armour
crafted for him by London’s finest silver workers. Freed at last from the
chafing control of his mother, he was determined to imitate the stories he
had heard of his famous grandfather living in the saddle.

John of Hainault, the military advisor retained by Isabella,
sighed wearily as he wiped the water from his visor and surveyed their
undisciplined, squabbling mash of untested knights and conscripts. Nothing
about them remotely resembled Longshanks’s old army of conquerors. This
headstrong boy seemed unconcerned that half of his baggage wagons had been
abandoned to the mud and that he had somehow lost an entire bataille of
archers. Riots were breaking out between the Welsh and Yorkshiremen over
gambling disputes. Worst of all, Edward had no clue where he was, let alone the
Scots he was chasing.

Fearful that the inexperienced king was losing control of the army,
Hainault tried a more forceful persuasion. “My lord, the horses must be rested,
or we shall all soon be waist-deep in mud.”

Edward stretched up in stirrups that had been fashioned to
fit his short legs. He pointed toward the black smoke that billowed up over the
distant horizon. “They are just over that ridge! We are within reach of them!”

“We have been within reach of them for two weeks. This
Douglas—”

“I forbade you to speak that name!”

Unaccustomed to being addressed in such a churlish manner,
by a teething cub no less, Hainault was beginning to question the wisdom of
having placed his mercenaries at the command of Isabella’s headstrong son. Yet
now, trapped in the middle of this slogging nightmare, he could not transport
them back across the Channel without first being paid. With muted voice, so as
not to rile the boy any more than necessary, the officer observed, “The
Scotsman appears to be leading us in circles.”

“He is running from us!”

“If he were
running from us, would he not be running home?”

Edward’s face twisted in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“We have been chasing him south. If he feels endangered, why
does he not retreat north?”

Edward felt the judging glares of his junior officers. To
mask his insecurity, he barked at Hainault, “Speak plainly, damn you!”

Hainault racked his brain for an example to simplify his
point. “If you cornered a rat in your room, would you leave the door open?”

“Of course not! You think me a fool?”

“No, my lord. You are a master strategist. But what would
you do to rid yourself of the rat?” Hainault knew very well what the boy would
say, having heard him repeatedly vow that he would never commit the mistakes of
his dimwitted father, who had allowed the Scots to seduce him through a
corridor of destruction to the humiliating defeat at Bannockburn.

“I’d close the door,” Edward said, “and let the vermin
starve!”

“Then I suggest you close the door.”

Hainault watched with hope as Edward, inspired anew, looked north across
the vast stretch of Northumbria that had been denuded of trees. Here there was
no Ettrick Forest to protect Douglas and his Scots, only barren lengths of
windswept plateaux crisscrossed by stone fences and hedgerows. If the boy took
this army north to Haydon Bridge, he would have Douglas trapped below—

Anguished screams came from the rear.

The Welsh rushed from the column to greet what appeared to
be a band of beggars staggering down the ridge.

Edward was furious. “I gave no order to break ranks!”

Ignoring the young king,
the Welsh conscripts ran to embrace their lost countrymen and found their right
hands wrapped with bloodied bandages. The officer leading these returned
archers uncovered a stump on his right arm and held it up for Edward’s observation.
The others in his charge followed his example and displayed their drawing
hands—all missing the thumb and first two fingers.

Edward brought a sleeve to his mouth. “Who did this?”

The mutilated officer pulled three blackened fingers from
his belt pouch and threw them to the ground in an indictment of the young
king’s incompetence in allowing them to be captured. “It was our choice.”

“
Your
choice?” Edward screamed. “An entire herce
ruined! Do you know how much of my treasury I spent to equip you Welsh ingrates?”

“Douglas offered us our lives. That is more than your
grandfather offered my kinsmen. We are no longer of use to you. I am taking my
men home to their families.”

Edward sat stupefied as the disabled archers walked off,
heading south.

Hainault captured the king’s reins and led him away from the
troops, afraid they would lose even more confidence in him if they witnessed
another of his raging fits. “Keep your wits about you. We must cross the Tyne
and wait for Douglas to turn north.”

Despite his inexperience, Edward possessed the remarkable
ability to swiftly alter his emotions. Retreating into the steely mien that he
had so often practiced, he shook off Hainault’s paternal hold on his arm. “Call
a council of my knights.”

“For what purpose?”

Edward studied the black smoke swirling above the distant
villages burned by the Scots. “Why should I wait for the rat to starve when I
can send in the dogs?”

J
AMES KEPT HIS GAZE FIXED
on the bleak purple horizon that
seemed to roll on without end. Eight days had passed since his scouts last saw
the English army, and he feared young Edward had finally tired of their game of
hide-and-seek. He had driven his Scot raiders deeper into the heart of
Northumbria and had crossed the Tyne and Wear rivers to wreak havoc in the
Gaunless valley, dangerously stretching their escape route back to the Borders.
So long as he had held the English in his sights, he had been confident he
could outrun them.

But
Isabella’s babe-king had somehow managed to vanish.

Now,
with the sun falling fast, James hurried his small army back up the Weardale,
keeping south of the river. The local villages were abandoned, and the few
farmers they had ferreted out from the cellars had known they were coming. For
the first time on this campaign, he was worried. “Where is the wee bastard,
Tom?”

Randolph tried to put up an insouciant front. “The lad isn’t
clever enough to go north.”

“Hainault is at his side.”

Randolph kept looking over his shoulder. “Should we try for
the Tyne?”

Undecided, James rode ahead to reconnoiter the slanting
moors. This vale north of the River Wear was wider than its southern
counterpart, but still narrow enough to force the English army to crowd
together in discomfort. South of the river arose a jagged ridge of sharp rocks
and outcroppings. That spot offered as good a defensive position as any he had
seen within a day’s ride. Yet if he took shelter up there, the river would deny
him a quick retreat back to Scotland. The horses were exhausted, and he had
burned every burgh within reach. He had no choice but to make camp and wait for
wee Edward the Slow to find him.