The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (9 page)

Red Comyn, Ian MacDuff, and John of Lorne, the patriarch of the MacDougall clan, sat on one side of a long trestle table, accompanied by five lesser nobles from the North. Across from them sat James’s father and his ally, Robert’s grandfather, old Bruce the Competitor. With his long white hair oiled and gathered in a tail, the Competitor appeared exactly as a king should, James thought, and though crippled by a mysterious ailment that ate at his skin, he still retained a quickness of gesture and met all with a righteous jaw.

William Lamberton, the Bishop of St. Andrews, stood at the
head of the table, looking out of place among these crusty warriors. The
cherubic cleric’s fleshy jowls were sprinkled with the hue of crushed
pomegranates, and his healthy girt begged for one button more to be loosed
above the waist cord. A thicket of dark tangled hair had merged with the
overgrowth of his peppered beard to give his face the appearance of being
framed by a molted yuletide wreath. A natural diplomat born with a dogged
optimism, he was cherished by all Scots for his disarming cheerfulness and lust
for life’s pleasures, be they a hearty repast or a bawdy yarn.

Yet the bishop’s sanguine disposition was being tested this night. Folding his hands in a gesture of spiritual authority, he pleaded for these bitter adversaries to set aside their grievances for the good of the country. “My lords, now is the time to strike. My informants tell me that Longshanks has returned to London.”

Red Comyn twirled his ivory-hilted knife against the table,
skeptically weighing that bit of surveillance. “Clifford remains camped at
Jedburgh.”

Lamberton abandoned his post of neutrality and moved toward
Red with outstretched hands. “Longshanks has siphoned off troops to Brittany to
fight the French. If we rise up now—”

Red Comyn stabbed his dagger into the boards. “Aye, priest,
easy for you to call the muster! When the blood flows, you retreat to your
cloister!”

Old Bruce the Competitor pressed to his unsteady feet. With
a trembling hand, he extracted the dagger, slid its blade into a crack, and
snapped it at the hilt to demonstrate he still possessed strength enough to
command respect. “I’ll not hear the Bishop slandered! He is more patriot than
any Comyn!”

“He preaches your cause as the gospel!” Red snarled at his old rival. “His
donation plate is kept so perpetually filled by Bruce emoluments that it’s oft
mistook for the cauldron of Bran.”

The Competitor shaded purple, unable to summon words to vent
his rage.

Seeing the elder Bruce thwarted by the mental slog of age, Wil Douglas eased him back to his chair. Then, Wil turned to the bishop and asked the question that was on all of their minds. “What makes you believe another rebellion will succeed when all the others have failed?”

Lamberton pulled a chalk numb from his pocket and traced a
crude map of Scotland on the table, circling the area representing the Tweed
Valley. “The Marches are laid waste from Berwick to Stirling. If we draw the
English north of Perth, we’ll stretch their lines of provision to the breaking
point. Another month, and they’ll be starving.”

“We’re already starving,” Ian MacDuff reminded the cleric. “Another month, and Longshanks won’t have to war on us. We’ll all be dead of famine.”

Even from his distant vantage in the far corner, James could see that the bishop’s strategy would lead the English advance through Lanarkshire and his father’s domains. As always, the South would suffer the brunt of the war and pillaging, while the North—much of it Comyn country—would remain unscathed. In the past, he had heard his father express doubts that Longshanks would fall for such a ruse. But Lamberton was an old family friend, and he knew that his father had promised not to speak out against the bishop’s proposal until all the guardians had been given the chance to vote on it.

Red pressed the wily bishop for more details on his plan. “And who would you have command this new army of uprising?”

Lamberton walked to the hearth to stir the fire. With his back turned, he said in a near whisper, as if to blunt its impact, “William Wallace.”

Hearing that, James traded a hopeful glance with Robert. Wallace, the rebel son of Alan Wallace, a noble from Elderslie, had continued to fight with hit-and-run tactics long after the other chieftains had surrendered. He was fast becoming a hero to every Scot boy from Melrose to Aberdeen.

Yet these hard-boiled
chieftains around the table reacted as if they had not heard the bishop
correctly. Finally, Red Comyn repulsed the nomination with a loud snort.
“Wallace is nothing more than a sheep herder turned brigand.”

Ian MacDuff agreed. “The man couldn’t lead a mule to a trough.”

Lamberton lunged and pounded the boards so hard that several empty tankards were sent flying. “He leads well enough while you sit here idle! He has a thousand men in the Selkirk! Join him and ten thousand more will follow!”

The bishop’s anger was a revelation to James. Beneath the cleric’s façade of Christian meekness lurked a fighter no less fierce than any of these men.

Red snickered to MacDuff,
“The Church now does the bidding of outlaws.”

“I do my own bidding,”
boomed a voice at the door.

The men turned, reaching
for their weapons.

At the threshold stood the
largest man that James had ever laid eyes upon. Two hands taller than six feet,
he wore his hair braided and draped over his broad shoulders and carried across
his back a broadsword that was a third longer than standard length. Lines of
rage had been scored into his face, and his protruding marbled eyes, hooded
with lids bruised ruddy from weariness, amplified his looming presence. Alerted
by a keen sense of all that moved around him, the intruder turned toward the
shadows in the corner, giving away the presence of the two boys with his held
gaze.

James glanced worriedly at
his father, expecting to be scolded for listening.

Finding James staring raptly at his sword, the stranger offered it for his inspection, and then asked the elder Douglas, “Your stripling, Wil?”

“Aye.” Wil made no attempt to hide his disapproval at the intruder’s brazen act of appearing at the meeting uninvited. “Jamie, meet William Wallace.”

Wallace nearly crushed
James’s hand with his clasp. “You’re the lad who won the ax this year.” He
glared at the chieftains, as if to emphasize that his next admonition was also
intended for them. “With honor comes duty.”

Unable to lift the heavy
broadsword, James slid its tip across the floor and offered it to Robert for
his admiration. But the Competitor, glaring, denied his grandson the
opportunity to test it.

“Off to bed with you,
lads,” Wil Douglas ordered.

“Let them stay,” Wallace said. “They should hear what I have
to say.” As the boys hurried to the table before their elders could countermand
that suggestion, Wallace paced the room. Finally, he stopped and reminded them
all, “My woman was garroted for staving off the advances of an Englishman.”

James nodded with empathy for Wallace’s heartbreak, but the Northern chieftains merely smirked and huffed with impatience. James knew that they had all suffered similar losses; such mournful tales of murdered kinsmen and confiscated lands drew little sympathy in Scotland these days.

Sensing the futility in that appeal, Wallace retreated
from sentiment and resorted to baser interests. “Longshanks would declare it a
felony for our women to marry us. If the English are allowed to steal our
womenfolk, the blood of our ancestry will be forever poisoned.”

“Then go on and fight the English, hotfoot,” Red said.
“We’ll give you a week’s provision and endow a Mass for your success.”

Wallace hovered over the seated chieftain. “You think me a
fool, Comyn. But I’m clever enough to know that I cannot win this war alone. If
Scotland is to be free of the English yoke, I must have all of you with me. The
Comyns, the MacDuffs, the Douglases”—he turned sharply to the Competitor—“and
the Bruces.”

The Competitor was not accustomed to being called out,
particularly by a man of such inconsequential rank. He clenched his pocked jaw
defiantly and glared at his grandson, as if to inoculate Robert against such
high-sounding harangues. “If sermons won battles,” he muttered, “Christ would
never have been nailed to the Cross.”

Wallace and the other clansmen waited for an answer from Red
Comyn, who controlled the most castles and troops.

Red allowed the tense silence extend, savoring his position
as linchpin for bringing the majority of the clansmen to the rebellion. At
last, he said, “I will draw my sword. … But only if Bruce recognizes my right
to the kingship.”

“You have no right!” the Competitor shouted.

Lamberton tried to render stillborn the argument that they
all had endured a thousand times. “I pray you! At least give Wallace a
hearing!”

In the midst of these hurled recriminations, the Competitor
clutched his chest and lurched backwards. Robert broke his frail grandfather’s
fall and eased him back to the bench. The Competitor finally mustered enough
strength to answer Wallace in a barely audible rasp. “Edward will put down this
insurrection and turn Stirling into another Berwick.”

“Bruce should know,” Red quipped loud enough for even the
Competitor to hear. “His pups have been weaned on the Plantagenet teats.”

The clansmen erupted again with shouts and accusations.

Wallace slammed the flat of his broadsword against the
table, silencing them. “If this be the example of your stewardship, then
English rule can be no worse!” He slid the sword down the table toward Wil. “My
brother served in your ranks at Berwick, Douglas. This blade was all that came
back from him. You saw firsthand what permanent English dominion would mean for
us.”

James saw his father steal a nettled glance at him, as if
unsure what to do.

Wallace circled the table, glaring at each chieftain as he
passed. “Yet here you sit, quarreling over whose wrinkled ass best fits the
throne. You’ll be kings, for certain. The lot of you. Kings of gutted castles
and scorched moorlands, if you persist in this bickering.”

Red dipped his dagger’s point in the candle grease and drew a line through the bishop’s map toward Annandale, the disputed land fought over with the Bruces for decades. He aimed the dagger at the Competitor. “If
this
snake remains on my borders, I’ll
not move my forces.”

Wallace turned to the Competitor. “Bruce, will you take up
the cause? If not for me, for the legacy of your grandson here?”

The men hung on the Competitor’s reply. If he joined the
rebellion, they would all be forced to follow to avoid losing face.

“I’ll not send my flesh and blood to die for your folly,”
old Bruce said.

Denied, Wallace looked to Wil Douglas, his last hope.
“Hardi, you once fought to the very walls of Jerusalem. Will you not stand
aside me in this crusade against the Devil?”

A loud report cracked in
the hearth, and Wil stared at the embers, as if questioning whether the heavens
had just sent him a warning. Troubled, he turned back with deadened eyes toward
Wallace … and shook his head.

Wallace burned into
memory the faces of those who had abandoned him. He tried to dredge up another
indictment of their cowardice, but then waved it off as not worth the effort.
Seeing the ax in James’s grasp, he dropped to a knee and ran his fingers across
its lacquered handle. “Why did you run that race, lad?”

James proudly displayed his prize. “For this.”

Wallace tested the weight of the ax, a mere kitchen cleaver in
his massive hands. “Nay, you ran it because your old man ran it forty years
ago. Just as his old man ran it before him. I remember that day, by Christ, a
cold morning it was. The winds were howling down Ben Nevis louder than the
ghosts of the damned. Your father thrashed me sound, he did, and Red there,
too.” He paused, allowing the ideals of youth to return to these failed
memories, and then stared at Wil Douglas while continuing to address James,
“You ran the race, lad, like all of us did, because you’re a Scotsman.” He
slammed down the ax and split the boards. “And if Edward Longshanks has his
way, you’ll be the last of us to run it!”

Wil Douglas erupted to his feet at the insult.

Wallace leaned to James’s ear, intimating that his young
admirer was the only person present worthy of his confidence. “Remember this
night, lad. Remember to rise above the pettiness of greedy old fools.” He
pushed the table over in a fury, sending several of the men tumbling. Before
the chieftains could draw their daggers in retaliation, he slung his broadsword
over his shoulder and walked toward the door.

“Wallace!” Wil Douglas shouted.

The rebel leader turned with his gnarled fists balled for a
fight.

Wil Douglas extracted the ax from the trestle boards and marched toward the man who had just called him out. Bishop Lamberton tried to intercede, but the elder Douglas, eyes afire, pushed the cleric aside.

Wallace stood before his old comrade, bracing for a blow.

Wil Douglas quivered with raw emotion as he raised the
ax—and tossed it to James. He reached for Wallace’s hand, changing his mind,
and said with little enthusiasm, “I am with you.”

A gasp of dismay filled the room.

James
saw Robert look to his grandfather, silently begging him to join Wallace and
avenge their clan’s good name. But the Competitor answered his grandson with a
contemptuous hiss.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, THE CLANGING
of a hammer against an anvil
roused James from a fitful sleep. He found Robert, already dressed, sitting on
his cot and staring into the pre-dawn darkness. Neither had managed to gain
much rest. After the exhilaration of the night’s meeting had faded, James
remembered the oath that his father had given to the English as a condition for
his release from Berwick dungeon. If captured again, his father would face
imprisonment or execution. Robert, however, had lain awake for a different
reason. Although his grandfather had repeatedly explained to him the necessity
of pitting clan against clan, he felt humiliated by the decision to put
their personal interests before those of Scotland.