The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (30 page)

“Tabhann will come for me.”

“Coming and getting are two different things. I’ll not leave
you again. And you must promise you’ll never leave me.” He moved in for another
kiss, but she turned aside, trying to swallow the knot of emotion in her
throat.

“Have you forgotten that I’m a married woman?”

“You’re not married in God’s eyes.”

“So now you see what God sees, do you?”

“No loving God would perpetually tie you to that rank excuse
of a man.”

A chilling call broke their embrace. … The raven had
returned.

James threw a stone to chase off the death goddess. He
tightened his arms around Belle in defiance of the raven’s warning. “I intend
to wed you, Isabelle MacDuff. And you best be preparing yourself for those ten
children.”

Her eyes flooded. In moments of foolish revelry, she had
dreamed of hearing those very words. Yet she could not allow herself to believe
that such a thing was possible. “No priest would ever join a bonded woman and
an unchurched rebel.”

The raven cawed again, as if to mock that hope.

James looked up at Columba’s star. Did the Almighty revel in
the perverse sufferings of mortals? Why would He take Belle and marry her off
to Tabhann, only to bring her to him again for this fleeting hour? In what
cracked world would such a cruelty be abided? He leapt to his feet and threw on
his leggings. “I’ll wager you a life of washing my laundry that I can find a
priest who will.”

“Wash your own—”

He nearly yanked her arm from its socket as he dragged her
through the woods toward the camp, giving her barely enough time to fix her clothing.
He sloshed with her hand-in-hand across the stream and rushed her to the ridge
where the others in the camp were congregated. He roused Robert from his
blanket and, bending to catch his breath, said, “I’d ask a boon of you.”

Robert was perplexed by his agitation. “You’ve earned a
hundred.”

The other men, awakened by the commotion, arose from their
bivouacs and drew around James to learn the reason for the excitement.

“The hand of this lady in matrimony,” James told Robert.
“You’re the king now,
regnum
father to us all. And my
anam
friend.”

Robert was about to laugh, until he saw that James was
serious in the request. He signaled for old Fraser to wake the snoring bishop.

Escorted to the king like a groggy condemned man, Lamberton
grumbled, “There’d best be a bonnie good reason for this rough summons.”

Robert spun the plump cleric to face James and Belle. “It’s
high time you earned your keep, Bishop.”

James stifled a grin, knowing that Lamberton was expecting to hear another of the endless disputes that he was always being required to arbitrate in this army. Being the most learned man in Scotland, the cleric was constantly called upon to resolve wagers ranging from the length of Edward Plantagenet’s femur to the theological explanation of why salmon swam upstream.

“Well?” the bishop demanded, growing impatient.

“I say you can perform miracles,” James said. “But this lady
here doubts my faith in you.”

Lamberton waved off the challenge. “This lass
is the miracle worker, not me. She shape-shifted our London dandy here into a
king. Nothing I could conjure would match that feat. Pay her what you owe her
and leave me to return to my dreams.”

“Turn back time,” James begged his old mentor. “Make us man
and wife, and your sainthood will be assured.”

The bishop studied Belle. “This is your wish, my lady?”

She cast her eyes down in shame. How many nights had she
cried herself to sleep pining to be Jamie’s wife? Yet she knew Tabhann would
never stand for it. If she went through with this ceremony, the Comyns would
exact a fearsome revenge. How could she be so selfish? Did Jamie truly expect
her to jeopardize Robert’s kingship by igniting another clan war, all for her
love for him? She reluctantly reminded the bishop, “I am bound by prior vows.”

Lamberton pressed a forefinger to his lips, as he always did
when in deep thought. He watched the oaks and birches swaying in the breeze
near the stream, remaining in this pensive stance for so long that the men
began to wonder if he had fallen into a mystical rapture. Finally, he
announced, “There is an ancient law of our land, one that the Romish monks have
long sought to ban from our memories. A man and woman cannot be made one unless
their oaths are uttered under an oak tree of at least a hundred rings.”

James brightened. “A fine law that is.”

The bishop scowled at the interruption. Regaining silence,
he continued with his brief sermon, “If the tree blossoms the next spring, the
hearts of the betrothed are confirmed true.” He took Belle by the hand. “My
lady, did you by chance marry Tabhann Comyn under an oak tree?”

“No, but—”

“Well then, in my bishopric, you remain a free woman. Though
I would counsel you to think twice before yoking yourself to this untamed colt.
Plenty of better choices abound. Randolph there, and even Frasier, wrinkled as
he is.”

The men elbowed James aside to offer their proposals to
Belle.

Blushing at the attention, she pulled James closer. “Your
concern is well taken, Bishop. But I’m told that God gives more to those who
need it.” She smiled lovingly at James and added, “With all his faults, and
they be many, this is the man with whom I’ve prayed to share my life.”

Robert brought Elizabeth into his embrace. “Come to think of
it, my love, we’d best renew our vows under the oak, too.”

Amid the cheers, the bishop led the wedding procession into
the grove near the stream. Choosing what he deemed to be the oldest of the
oaks, he positioned the two couples under its groaning branches and intertwined
their arms in the ancient symbol of infinity. “Do you, Isabelle MacDuff,
promise to be a loving and loyal wife, for as long as you and your husband both
shall live?”

“I do.”

“And do you, James of Douglas, son of Wil the Hardi, promise
to protect and honor this woman as your wedded wife, until death—”

Before the bishop could finish the vows, old Scrygemour
lunged forward.

James smiled at the half-deaf standard bearer’s premature
attempt to offer his congratulations. He gently braced the aged veteran by the
shoulders to escort him back to the others so that he could finally, after all
of these years, say the words that he had longed to speak.

Scrygemour descended slowly to his knees, and fell
forward—with an arrow in his back.

The night sky whistled with missiles.

The Scots stood motionless, unable to comprehend what was
happening.

James heard another volley unleashed from somewhere above
them. He lunged at Belle and wrapped her in his arms, taking the brunt of a
glancing arrow. He shouted at Robert, “Get down!”

Several men fell around him, groaning and impaled.

“The Bruce!” cried English voices in the darkness. “Take the
Bruce!”

The ambushed Scots reached for the daggers at their belts,
forgetting that they had failed to bring their weapons.

An English soldier sprang from trees and ran for Robert, who
was bent over the lifeless Scrygemour, trying to extract the arrow.

James tripped the attacker, stole his sword, and gutted him.
He led Belle in a blind retreat toward the stream. Halfway to the banks, he
looked back and realized that he had lost Robert. “To Douglas!” he screamed,
hoping that Robert would hear him above the din of the desperate fighting.
“Scots to Douglas!”

Robert’s voice cried out through the black night. “Jamie!”

“Rob, leave them!”

“My standard!”

The screams and moans of Scots falling victim to the English
archers on the wooded ridges drowned out James’s shouts to muster a defensive
line. The long shadow of a man moved a few paces ahead, and James placed Belle
behind him. Raising his blade, he braced to confront the attacker.

Robert, dazed, came staggering toward them in the moon’s
hazy light. “Pembroke deceived me!”

James shoved Robert off with Belle toward the water. Then, he stalked back into the darkness. The fires in the camp had
been doused, and the night rang loud with the sounds of desperate combats. He
heard hooves coming fast on him. Crouching behind a tree, he pounced on the
rider and knocked him from the saddle.

“Bruce!” the unhorsed knight shouted. “Come fight like a
man!”

Recognizing that voice, James lunged and drove Clifford
against a tree. “When have you ever fought like a man?”

“Jamie!” a woman shouted from somewhere nearby.

He froze—that was Belle’s voice coming back toward him. He
prayed for just a few more seconds as he pressed his forearm against Clifford’s
windpipe.

“Jamie!” Belle cried again, this time with raw desperation.

The English soldiers were closing in around him. Denied hearing Clifford rasp his last breath, James kicked the officer coughing to his knees. He corralled his neighing horse, mounted, and rode toward the high rocks where the Bruce brothers were fighting a rear-guard action while the women swam for the far bank. He galloped into the advancing English and cleaved the lead riders from their mounts. The ambushers called a retreat to regroup, yelling warnings that the Scots had mustered reinforcements. Afforded a moment’s reprieve from the fighting, he dismounted with a leap and lifted Belle to the saddle that he had just vacated. “Away! At once!”

Robert climbed onto another horse and dragged Elizabeth up with him.

“I won’t go without you!” Belle cried at James.

James slapped the flanks of both horses and sent them
galloping into the thickets. “Head west! I’ll find you!”

T
HE DESCENT OF A FORKED
shadow over Belle’s hooded eyes startled her from a disturbed slumber. Lifting to her elbows, she peered up
into the dim light of early morning and saw two fangs of a snake poised to
strike at her nose. She shrieked and slapped at the slithering creature.

Her hand hit something hard.

The menacing reptile was in fact an exquisite brass belt
buckle sculpted into the head of a serpent, worn at the waist by a
spectral hermit who looked as old as the stone walls that surrounded her. The
encrusted tendrils of the cleric’s long white beard scraped against her cheeks
as he leaned down to examine her more closely. Perturbed by what he observed,
he tapped his gnarled staff near her ear and then grumbled an order in Gaelic
to a dwarfish, pigeon-breasted monk who stood at his side.

Disoriented, Belle rubbed the sleep from her lids. Wondering
if might still be dreaming, she ran her hand across a crude baptismal cauldron
blackened by centuries of tallow smoke. Finding it all too real, she crawled to
a cruciform slit to glance outside. In the near vale, painted in a hundred shades
of funereal purple, lay the most desolate moorlands in all Scotland.

That bleak horizon revived her memory.

During their desperate retreat from Methven, Robert and
James had left her and the Bruce women here at Glen Dochart Abbey, a Culdee
monastery founded near the cave where St. Fillan had secluded himself for
twenty years. Hidden in a rock-strewn valley near Loch Tay and bordered by the
snow-capped peaks of Ben More and Ben Lui, the shrine was nothing like the
impressive descriptions that she had heard of it as a child. All that remained of
the once-thriving monastic community was this crumbling chapel and some wattle
huts, and even by primitive Highland standards, the place resembled more a cave
than an abbey. The Cistercian missionaries who had crossed the Channel to bring
Scotia under Rome’s dominion had not bothered to raze the kirk, confident that
the few remaining Culdee hermits could not survive another harsh winter here
without their stores of salted meat and kegs of ale.

With her head throbbing from the cloying incense, she looked
over her shoulder and, still on her knees, found the two mismatched recluses
staring at her as if never having laid eyes on a woman before. “Who are you?”

The shorter monk made the introductions. “This is the
venerable Dewar of Inchanffray. And I am his novice.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

The Dewar tapped his staff again in his mysterious code, apparently demanding a translation from his stumpish companion, who had a pug nose and a balding head crisscrossed with a few strands of straw hair. The novice babbled something in Gaelic to his superior. Then, after they finished what sounded like an argument, the novice turned back to her and answered her lingering question. “Since yesterday.”

“Where are the others?”

The dwarfish novice came closer, revealing as he opened his
rathole mouth that he had lost all his teeth except four molars. “Your king has
departed with Lord Douglas.”

“James Douglas is not a lord,” she corrected him.

The novice relayed her protest, and reported his superior’s
animated reply. “My abbot says the man who calls himself Douglas is destined to
become a lord, and that the Almighty deems the past and future to be of one
unrent weave in time.” He paused before imparting the rest of the translation,
“He also said you should be in a nunnery practicing the art of silence.”