The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (70 page)

J
AMES AND HIS RAIDERS SAT
mired in the rain for another
week. Although their supplies and fodder had become dangerously low, he took
heart in the knowledge that they had survived worse privations. He had trained
them to carry iron grilles, a provision that allowed them to stop at any time
on their raids, cook oatcakes, and be back in the saddle within the hour, and
when they came upon cattle or venison, they would roast steaks inside skinned
hides while remaining on the run. Unaccustomed to eating meat, they found that
the oats offered the additional advantage of settling their stomachs, and thus,
unlike the English, they were never tied to a commissary train or held to the
mercy of local burghers.

Then, on the eighth day of this torturous vigil, the
mud-caked Scots were awakened by shouts. Returning from a scouting sortie,
McKie and McClurg dragged up a captured English squire. St. Finian carrying
sheaves of heavenly manna could not have offered a more welcome sight.

James pulled the dazed prisoner to his feet and greeted him
with a clamping grip to the nape of his neck. “We thought you and your friends
had all high-tailed it back to London. Where is your army?”

The squire buckled on seeing the dark face of his
interrogator. He managed a tremulous reply through his constricted throat: “I
don’t know.”

James honed his dagger on a rock. “I am not a patient man by
nature. Today you have the misfortune of encountering me wet and hungry.”

The squire collapsed to
his knees, certain he was about to receive the same treatment meted out to the
Welsh archers, or worse. “I left it a week ago. The king was as lost as I am
now. He has offered an earldom to any man who finds you. There are fifty others out
there looking for you, too.”

“We’ve been sitting in this quagmire because that pipsqueak
can’t find his way around his own kingdom?” James counted off his steps in his
usual method of calculating the days it would take to return to the border.
“What is the condition of his troops?”

“The corn trains are rain-sotted. Most of the lads have
taken ill.”

James dragged the frightened squire to a horse. “You’ve been
saved by the inanity of your new king. Go collect your reward.” He drew a map
on a scrap of sheepskin and armed the squire with it. “Advise wee Eddie that if
he doesn’t come soon, I’m going to go tell his mother how poorly he has
behaved.”

Stunned by the reprieve, the squire stabbed at the stirrups,
mounting as fast as his shaking legs would allow.

“Wait!” James turned to Sweenie. “How much grain do we have
left?”

The monk shook his head. “Not enough to do what you’re
thinking.”

James ignored Sweenie’s protest and motioned for him to
deliver a small sack of oatmeal to the squire and tie it to his saddle. “To
your king with my compliments. I’d not have him starve before he finds us.”

T
WO DAYS LATER,
J
AMES WATCHED
with relief as Edward led his
bedraggled columns into the Weardale as if on parade down the Strand. The
babe-king and his knights wore helmets crowned with the latest fad: Heraldic
crests forged in the shapes of beasts such as lions, wolves, and dragons. And
just as he had hoped, the boy was marching his battalions into the narrow
ribbon between the steep moors and the river’s banks. With a sharp whistle, he
deployed his outnumbered Scots behind the rocks, keeping the swollen river
between them and the English. Satisfied with their concealment, he saddled a
horse and mounted.

Randolph tried to hold him back. “You’re not going down there?”

James abandoned the safety of the boulders and trotted for
the river.

On the northern bank, Edward struggled to remove his
bascinet that featured a gold-gilt leopard reared on its hinds. After nearly a
minute of this ineptitude, Hainault came up to assist him. Finally unhelmed,
Edward chased his officer back with a punishing glare, and then he turned with
a puffed chest to accept the capitulation of the Scot felon who had defied his
forefathers. Yet on the far side of the river, James merely sat in the saddle
with an insufferable smirk. Unable to endure this insolent stare-down, Edward
blurted, “I demand your surrender!”

“Is that gratitude?” James asked. “I trust the oats were
nourishing. I enjoy mine with a sprinkle of sugar. Some of my men prefer them
soaked in goat’s milk, but we’ve had no luck finding a decent cannery here in
England. Might you offer a recommendation?”

Edward edged closer to the water. “Did you not hear me?”

The boy’s features came into sharper focus, and took James
by surprise. He had expected the gaunt frame of Longshanks or the vapid grin of
Caernervon, not the overwhelming beauty of his mother. In this short time he
had observed him, he suspected that his young foe had also inherited Isabella’s
mercurial temper and insurmountable will. Time would tell if he had been
blessed with her stout heart, as well.
This is your first test, lad. Don’t
let your mother down. Let’s play the game out.

“Did you not hear me!” Edward shouted again.

“Did you not hear
me
?”

Confused, Edward cupped his ear. “What say you?”

“I said, ‘I demand your surrender!’”

“
My
surrender? No, I said I demand
your
surrender!”

James pointed at the nervous English soldiers waiting in
ranks behind Edward. “Would you kindly order your men to strip naked, Eddie?
You may keep those swaddling wraps on your loins. I wouldn’t want you to soil
yourself in front of your subjects.”

Edward’s voice cracked with utter incredulity. “Strip?”

“It took us a week to remove the armour from your father’s
rotting knights on the fields around Stirling. It will save us a great deal of
needless work if you remove your shirts and leggings before the battle.”

Edward’s lips quivered with rage. Finally, he managed to
sputter, “Knave! I will see your head hung from the Tower!”

“That’s what your old man used to say! You remind me of
him!”

Apoplectic, Edward spun toward Hainault and ordered, “Bring
it up!”

James watched as the English conscripts roll forward a giant
iron tube that rested on a wooden frame with wheels. The yeomen lifted the
hollowed end of the contraption toward the sky with ropes and drove wedges to
fix its elevation, then they poured a bag of dark powder down the its gullet
and ignited a dangling cord. A whistling cut the air, followed by an explosion
in the sky.

The concussion nearly threw James from his horse. Recovering
his balance finally, he reined around in a circle and found the English
laughing at him.

Edward sported an impudent grin. “How do you like my new
toy?”

Witnessing that marvel, James knew his world had changed forever. If
Caernervon had possessed such a weapon at Bannockburn, he and Robert would
never have prevailed. He was determined not to reveal his concern as he waited
for another explosion from the sky, but a rain cloud swept up the river from
the west, spurring the gunnery yeomen to scramble and cover their magical tube
with skins. Apparently whatever alchemy was used to conjure the explosion could
not be summoned in rain.

Betrayed now by the weather, Edward slammed his fist to his
thigh and called forward the next option in his arsenal, shouting, “Archers!”

Hainault was reluctant to relay the order, but he deemed it
best not to question the young king in front of the Scots. On his signal,
officers shoved the remaining bataille of long bowmen to the front.

The Welsh staggered up, some falling, others bending over to
retch.

Their erratic behavior confounded Edward. “What in God’s
name is wrong with them? Have they caught the fever shivers?”

Hainault whispered to the king, “Triple rations of ale. It
was the only way I could keep them from deserting. They are deathly afraid of
that Scotsman.”

Disgusted at their loss of fortitude, Edward rode through
the Welsh ranks pummeling the cowering archers with the flat of his blade. “You
will
cross the river and kill that Scot! Or I will order the
Hainaulters on you!”

The Welsh bowmen confronted a cruel choice: Attack the Black
Douglas, or suffer the mayhem that the German mercenaries were itching to
inflict on them. One by one, the archers waded into the water holding their bows
aloft to keep them dry.

On the far bank, James restrained his skittish horse,
silently begging the archers deeper into the water.
Come on, you poor
wretches. Give your new cradle king another lullaby to cry himself asleep.
The first van of the three hundred
archers swam across the river, and he slowly backed up the ridge, remaining
just within their range. Many of their arrow fletches had been crushed and
soaked by the rains, which he knew would severely hamper their accuracy. He
pranced his horse in a taunt to draw them up the ridge.

The archers were so eager to take advantage of his proximity
that they strung their bows without driving stakes into the ground to fend off
a counterattack. They tweaked their strings, notched arrows, and—

Behind James, Randolph and his mounted raiders appeared over
the ridge. They galloped toward the river, taking dead aim at the archers.

Edward could only watch as his frightened Welsh ran back for
the protection of the water, too late to avoid being slain by the dozens. Those
few who managed to avoid the first onslaught dived into the river, but Randolph
and his cavalry rode along the banks, picking them off as if they were spearing
salmon.

Only twenty survivors made it across to the English side.

Stricken by the costly butchery, Edward screamed at James,
“Coward! Come fight me on an open field!”

James blew him a kiss. “That would not be honorable of me,
lad! You have no archers!”

F
OR ANOTHER WEEK, THE TWO
shivering armies sat staring at
each other from across the river, each wondering which side the soupy mud would
swallow up first. To frazzle Edward’s nerves, James had ordered his men to
slink along the banks at night and blow their horns, and the English, penned in
like hogs in muck, could not sleep for fear of an ambush.

Yet James and his raiders were also trapped, down to
one portion of watery porridge a day. That night, as the rain picked up again,
Randolph laid down aside James on the sloping ridge and watched the English
camp. “We’ll have to fight them eventually. If the lad is smart enough to wait
us out, we’re finished.”

James looked up at the clearing night sky and found
Columba’s star for reassurance. He had been wondering how long it would take
the old Randolph of the “straight-at-them” to return. His friendly rival had
never fully accepted his tactics of the burn and run. He, on the other hand,
had decided long ago that another bloody battle would never gain their freedom.
They had won at Bannockburn, but the English still refused to leave them alone.
There would always be a new generation of London knights seeking glory in
Scotland. The only way to be rid of these people was to turn them against each
other, tire them of paying ransoms and seeing their towns go up in flames,
convince them that it was more likely that Scotland would annex Northumbria and
Yorkshire. No, he had no intention of wasting another thirty years fighting
this
Edward. He had to teach the lad so painful a lesson that he would never again
think of setting foot north of the border. He turned to Randolph and asked,
“Did I ever tell you the story of the fisherman and the fox?”

Randolph sat up and wrung the rainwater from his bedroll.
“If you did, I managed to forget it, as I have all of your tedious yarns.”

He continued telling his tale as if Randolph had begged to
hear it. “A fisherman comes home to his cabin one night and finds a fox eating
a roasted fish at the hearth. The fisherman draws his blade to kill the trapped
fox. You’re the fox. What do you do?”

Randolph snorted at the simplistic riddle. “What else can I
do? I lunge at his throat. Trust I’m quicker than him.”

“Aye, that’s what I
thought you’d say.” James pulled up his cloak and feigned drowsing off.

Randolph levered to his elbows. “What? That’s it?”

“You’re dead. Tale over.”

“What would you
have done?”

“Steal the man’s bed quilt.”

Randolph waved off the suggestion. “You make less sense with
each passing day.”

“I’d throw his bedding into the fire. When the fisherman
lunges to save his precious quilt, out the door I’d go.”

Randolph kicked and cursed his tattered roll, forced to
choose between covering his sodden feet or his drenched neck. “Where are you
going to find a quilt out here?”

James whistled. “Sweenie!”

The monk erupted from his slumber spewing curses. “If a man
is to be denied a decent meal, is it asking too much to let him sleep?”

“Are the English well-bedded?” James asked the monk.

“Aye, you’ve given them time to build boards under their
tents and set their wine casks nicely upon stilts. They’re a Moor’s tongue
drier than we are.”

Smiling at the little monk’s cantankerousness, James rested
the back of his head on his hands and studied the clouds, which looked to augur
more rain. “A few days ago, I spied a lovely spot a short jaunt up the river.
The Bishop of Durham’s hunting park. It sports a stone wall that must be the
envy of every baron in England.”

“You woke me to tell me that?” Sweenie growled.

While counting the fires in the English encampment, James
heard the faint voice of a minstrel singing a love ballad. He bounced his hand
to the music’s beat and mused, “Wee Eddie, I fear, is getting a bit too
comfortable.”

Before dawn, Edward arose from his knees after prayers, certain that the
Almighty would finally bless him with victory after his all-night vigil under the crucifix. Refusing food, he strapped on his armour, which had been wiped with oil to prevent rusting, and walked from his tent to join his sleep-deprived army mustered in battle formation along the river. He was determined to crush these maddening Scots with a surprise attack. The fog remained low and thick, but the saints had granted him one intercession: the rains had finally abated. He ordered his knights to cross the river on the barges first, with the infantry to follow. When his army had finally reassembled in stealth on the far side, he drove his steed up the rocky embankment and broke the dawn’s silence with a war cry to signal the assault.