The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (71 page)

Only a
few jackdaws cackled in reply as the mists swirled and cleared over the
abandoned Scot encampment. A half-league to the east, the sun crept over the
horizon, revealing the banners with the Cross of St. Andrew.

Edward
bit off a flurry of curses. The damnable Scots had moved their camp farther up
the river on even more impregnable ground. Stomping the mud from his boots, he
ordered Hainault to cross back over the river, tear down their own tents, and
carry them along the banks to again face off against the enemy.

The work was
backbreaking for the hungry, demoralized troops. Forced into even closer
quarters, the Hainaulters scrapped with the Yorkshire conscripts, and not a
night passed without one of the sleep-starved wretches waking from
hallucinations that the Scots were upon them. The false alarms became so
frequent that even Edward began to ignore them.

O
N THE TENTH NIGHT IN
his
new camp, Edward donned a clean nightshirt and, after giving orders that under
no circumstances was he to be disturbed, settled into his bed. Desperate to
catch up on his lost sleep, he covered his eyes with shades and plugged his
ears with wads of lint to drown out the incessant horn blaring of the Scots. He
had even taken an extra goblet of wine, vowing aloud—as if his own mind could
not possibly disobey a royal command—that he would no longer be plagued by the
recurring nightmare of his father arising from the grave and wresting back the
crown. Rumors were rampant in the camp that Caernervon had been seen alive in a
monastery in France, and mutinous whispers blamed the army’s predicament on
divine retribution for the illegal deposition.

The wine soon worked its effect, and he drifted into
drowsiness.

But after an hour of fitful tossing, the same smirking face
that had plagued him for weeks reappeared in his dream. He mumbled and tossed.
God’s
curse upon these nights! How dare that felon treat me as a laughing stock! What
a repugnant man! Dark as a Moor! And that lisp syrupy and thick! I will have
him dragged to the Tower in the very footsteps of his father. They said Wallace
did not cry out, but I will see to it that the executioner slows the—

“Lords of England! You shall all die!”

Damn that infernal man!

Edward stuffed the earplugs deeper to chase the phantom
alarums rattling in his brain.

“The Scots! Douglas! The Douglas is on us!”

Edward pounded his
forehead against the matting. “Enough! Leave me be!”

“Then leave us be.”

The infuriating voice now sounded so real that his ears
buzzed. He ripped off his eyes shades, searching for the bottle to numb his
nerves with more wine.

The Black Douglas—in the flesh—stared down at him.

Edward nearly pissed himself as he crawled from the bed and
scrambled for the flaps. He saw through the crack that his guards were slain
and the camp was filled with the din of a desperate fight. This time the Scots
had not feigned the ambush. Trapped, he lunged for a dagger hanging in a
scabbard from the tent post. “I won’t be taken. You’ll have to kill me.”

The lad’s foolish courage took James by surprise. He had
planned to throw the royal brat over his shoulder and be off before the English
learned what had hit them. Now, with only seconds before the guards came
rushing in, he brought his blade to Edward’s slender throat to finish him.

Isabella’s limpid eyes stared back at him.

 “Do it, damn you!”
cried Edward. “I’ll die a martyr! All England will chase you to the ends of the
earth!”

James could not bring himself to run the boy through. “I
knew your mother.”

“My mother is a French whore!”

James was about to chastise the insolent pip when a blow
from behind drove him to his knees. Dazed, he looked up at an English guard
raising a blade.

Sweenie split the flaps and pounced on the guard’s back.

James tried to stand, but the grogginess dropped him to his
knees again.

Edward crouched in the corner and watched in frozen terror
as his guard threw Sweenie to the ground and lunged for James. Sweenie dug his
teeth into the attacker’s arm. The guard wheeled and drove his dagger into
Sweenie’s gut. The monk clung tight to the Englishman to prevent him from
retracting the blade and use it against James. They wrestled and knocked the
taper from its stand, killing the light.

“Here!”

Blinded by the darkness, James swung his blade at that
shout. He felt blood splatter across his face. Wiping his eyes, he came over
the fallen guard and stared down in horror. His blow had also wounded Sweenie.
The monk lay unconscious and bleeding, the dagger still in his gut.

Sweenie had sacrificed himself to warn of the guard’s
approach.

Still concussed, James didn’t have the strength to drag both
Sweenie and Edward away. He glared a promise of revenge at the boy as he threw
Sweenie over his good shoulder. He kicked the supports and rushed out, letting
the tent fall on Edward with a crash. Caught under the canvass, the boy
screamed and thrashed, thinking he was being smothered to death.

Staggering for the river with Sweenie on his shoulder, James
shouted at his men in the darkness, “To Douglas!”

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
E
DWARD MARCHED
through his camp surveying the damage inflicted by the Scot ambush. Two
hundred of his soldiers had been killed and his cannon spiked with packed mud.
But even in this wretched panorama of butchery, he found hope. “Douglas is
desperate.”

“They lost only three men,” Hainault said. “I fear we are
more desperate.”

“I stared him down!” Edward screamed. “He would not take me
on! He is not the demigod you make him out to be. He is old and tired. Assemble
the ranks.”

“Our troops have not slept nor eaten for days.”

“At once!” Edward demanded.

Hainault did as ordered, and when the weary troops were
finally loaded on the rafts, the young king rode before them and shouted the
speech that he had rehearsed for weeks. “Men of England!” he screeched in his
high-pitched voice. “This is your hour of glory! The Scots have no crafts to
cross the river! We outnumber them! God is on our side! To victory!”

Hainault reluctantly signaled for the assault.

Fueled only by the hope that their torment would soon be
over, the forlorn English soldiers silently rowed the rafts across the river
while keeping their eyes trained on the smoke wafting above the Scot
encampment.

When the last of his army had crossed, Edward listened for
the sounds of battle on the ridge above. Minutes later, he saw his infantry
coming back down from the rocks with their pikes on their shoulders. He
screamed at them, “What in God’s name are you doing?”

“They are gone, my lord,” an officer reported.

“That is impossible!” Edward ordered himself and Hainault
ferried over to the Scot side, and together they clambered up the slope.
Reaching the heights, they looked down below the ridge and found the Scot fires
still burning. Yet all that remained in Douglas’s camp was a pyramid of stones
hung with a placard:

Brother Ned Sween of the True Culdee Church of Christ
Friar, Patriot, Comrade
The Best of Scotland Shall Forever Here Stand Watch

Edward followed a trail of
hoof prints in the mud to a second ridge, where the river angled back. The few
trees that had stood behind that rise had been hacked away, out of view from
his English encampment. The Scots had bundled the logs and laid them across the
shallowest part of the river, then had ferried their horses across the water
tethered to the flotsam. He slowly realized that the Scots had used their
incessant raids and horn blowing to drown out the sounds of the timbering,
which must have taken more than a week. The hardness of the horse chips
confirmed that the Scots had gained a half-day’s head start north. He fell to
his knees and burst into tears. “No! No!”

Hainault shook his head as he stood over the sobbing king.
This expedition had cost him five hundred men and had nearly drained England’s
treasury. Convinced now that he would never be paid, the continental officer
began walking toward the river, forced to find another way to get his survivors
back across the Channel.

“You cannot leave me!” Edward shouted.

Hainault turned back with a look of empathy. “Take heart, my
lord. You have been outfoxed by the most cunning warrior alive. Learn from this
experience. Perhaps it will one day serve you.”

“But what am I to do now?”

“Sue for peace. So long as James Douglas commands Scotland’s
borders, you will never subdue that kingdom.”

J
AMES SQUEEZED
D
AVID
B
RUCE'S SHAKING
hand to reassure the
frightened lad as they climbed the rampart steps leading to the great hall of
Berwick Castle. Following instructions from Cardross, he had not revealed to
the king’s four-year-old heir the momentous nature of the ceremony that they
were about to attend. Ten months after his Weardale campaign, another peace
proposal arrived from London, this one accompanied by a marital agreement that
would conjoin the royal families of the two warring realms.

He
felt certain that had Elizabeth Bruce been alive, the wedding preparations
would have been handled with more tact. But Robert, embittered by his wife’s
death from the fall and the ravages of his disease, had become so withdrawn that
he had never gotten to know his son. Despite the continued rift in their
personal relations, he had received orders from Robert tasking him with the
delicate mission of bonding this perilous union between Scotland and England.
The king’s paramount concern, his councilors had advised, was that the boy not
be allowed to mar this long-awaited day with a display of childish weakness.

During
their weeklong journey south, he had grown fond of the precocious David, who
was small of stature, sensitive, and keenly observant, as he had been at that
age. The lad had inherited Robert’s dark hair and chiseled features, but his
puckish Irish grin and natural optimism clearly came from his mother. He
wondered if the boy would thrive or suffer under the burden of the crown. No
doubt a little of both, as had been the experience of his father.

Halfway
up their ascent, David stopped to search the column of Scot nobles that stood
in procession behind them. “Why is Papa not with us?”

Uncertain
how to address that question, James finally explained, “Your father is still
not feeling well.”

“Is
he going away like Mama?”

James
lowered to a knee. “Let’s hope he’ll be better when we go home.”

“But why must I be married now?”

Impressed by the lad’s perceptiveness, he decided it was
time to put an end to the cruel policy of isolating him from the truth. “To
make certain the English stay at peace with us, your father has arranged for
you to wed the sister of their king.”

“What if I don’t fancy her?”

He had no good answer for that valid question. This
condition of the new Treaty of Edinburgh troubled him, too, but he took some
consolation in knowing that both children would be allowed to live in their
respective domiciles until they attained the age of majority. Before he could explain
the situation further, the tower’s iron-framed doors screeched open. He
shuddered with a start, just as he had thirty-one years ago when he had climbed
these same steps for the signing of the ignominious Ragman Rolls. Few of the
Scots present on that shameful day were alive now to witness this triumphant
return.

A gruff chamberlain marched out, driving David into James’s
arms. James looked up at the impatient Englishman and gestured for a moment’s
delay. The chamberlain slammed the doors, sneering a silent threat at the boy. James brought David, trembling, out of earshot of their
countrymen who were watching with concern from the balustrade. “I once knew a
lass in Paris who was not much older than you. To gain peace for her country,
her father asked her to cross the Channel and marry the son of the King of
England.”

“Did she go?”

“Aye, she did. And you will meet her this afternoon. Perhaps
she will tell you how she managed to be so brave. She will be watching to see
if you have the mettle to be a king.”

When David, blinking tears, nodded his readiness, James
pounded on the door again. This time, it was
his
legs that nearly
buckled. Here he was lecturing the boy on duty while his own nerves were
threatening to betray him. He gazed across the river toward the spot where
Gibbie had leapt to his death. And over there, beyond the bailey, stood the
dungeon that once held his father. Every sorrow in his life seemed to have
traveled through this city. He prayed this day would not add to that litany of
grief. David tugged at his hand to indicate that the chamberlain was waiting,
and he roused from the dark memories. “Aye, lad, let’s go do Scotland proud.”