The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (31 page)

Belle shot to her feet. “You may tell this two-legged relic
that not only does he stink—” She was stopped short by the dwarf’s impudent
grin.

Accosted by the Dewar’s quizzical glare, the younger monk
bowed to cover his muttered aside to her, “I contrived that last part. My abbot
comprehends not a word of the Scot English. It is my only amusement here.”

Baffled by the prank,
Belle needed no translation to see that the old Dewar disapproved of a female
lodging in his sanctuary. When the crusty hermit persisted in glowering at her
as if she were Satan’s handmaiden, she resolved to remind him that Pict
priestesses had ruled this land long before St. Fillan was even a twinkle in
his mother’s eye. But before she could do so, the abbot’s diminutive minion
captured her hand and nearly dragged her through a narrow tunnel that opened to
an adjacent croft hut that had a pot of oat gruel simmering over a peat fire.

The wee monk shut the
door. Then, he filled the ladle with the steaming curdle and offered it to her.

She sniffed its contents. “What’s in this?”

“Rabbit marrow. And stock that’s better left to the
mysteries of Our Lord.”

Despite its unappealing
ingredients, she gratefully accepted the offering, having not eaten in two
days. The gruel had a pungent nip that tasted of soured goat’s milk flavored
with turnips. In her state of hunger, spiced almond soup could not have been
more satisfying.

While she lapped up the
gruel, the little monk squinted through the greeting slot to insure that the
Dewar was not lurking just beyond the door. “The other lassies are asleep in
the Abbot’s quarters. Your lord Douglas left before dawn to search for
survivors.”

Belle huffed, tired of men assuming that she submitted to be
ruled by other men of inferior station. “How many times must I tell you? Jamie
Douglas is
not
a lord! And he certainly is not
my
lord.”

The monk shrugged, granting her protest little credence.

“I am a countess, I
would have you know! And thanks to the damnable English, I am not even married
to him … yet.” Her voice trailed off in despair, as if not quite believing that
fate would ever allow it to happen. With an impotent wave, she gave up the
effort to educate the rube. “Do you have a name?”

Amused by her outburst, the monk climbed atop the table and
sat cross-legged in front of her while she ate. “Ned Sween. The others here
call me Sweenie. Sweenie the Wee-kneed. You may call me Sweenie. Or Wee-kneed.”

Distracted by the odd way that his head bobbed on his
slender neck, she wondered if the tic was caused by the disproportionate weight
of his skull.

The monk mistook her stare for skepticism about his
self-styled pedigree. “Christ wished a nickname. Why shouldn’t I have one?”

“Christ did
not
wish a nickname!”

The monk raised a finger
in the air to repulse her objection. “Scripture says He walked around pestering
the disciples to reveal what other people were calling him.”

She made the sign of the Cross to blunt the anger of the
saints. “The old man permits you to blaspheme like that?”

The monk’s pebble-shaped eyes sparked with mischief. “So
long as it’s not in the Gael tongue.”

Now even more dumbfounded, Belle looked around at the spare
cell overgrown with lichens and stank of mildew. The only concession this queer
monk had made to the biblical command of cleanliness was a pole broom being
used by wolf spiders for their webs. The bed, a crude construction of shaved
poles and heather straw, resembled more a lark’s nest than a clerical abode.
Two indentations had been worn into the floor stones from centuries of previous
inhabitants kneeling in prayer, and above the cot hung not the traditional
Roman crucifix but the cross of St. Bride with its four flanges at right angles
in a rotary pattern. She had seen such pagan crosses when traveling the north
as a young girl, and remembered being struck by how their traverses resembled
fiery tails of the sun. “Does the Dewar know you follow the old ways?”

“He has never thought to inquire.”

“Why did you come to live
here if you don’t follow Christian rules?”

The tonsured dwarf stole her bowl with his stubby, claw-like
fingers and waddled over to the pot to ladle another helping of gruel for her.
“I was left as a lad on the moors to die. The Dewar found me on one of his
sojourns into the wilds to imitate the forty days of Christ’s trials.”

“Your clan abandoned you?”

Sweenie tested the simmering gruel and flavored it with
another dash of thyme. “An English demon named Clifford hung my mother from the
highest tree in Ayrshire. In honor of my deformity, he decided I merited a
slower death.” He curled his lower lip to reveal a scar.

“My Lord.”

“He nailed a rag to my mouth scribed with a warning that the
same ill use would be
gien
to any who resisted the invaders.”

“That man Clifford is Hell’s doorman!”

Sweenie shrugged off the memories of his ordeal. “God’s ways
are inscrutable. The Dewar required a scribe to correspond with foreigners. I
had a talent for words, so he took me in and sent me to Iona to learn the
Anglian tongue.”

She took another sip and coughed painfully from the gruel’s
burn in her chest. The chill she contracted during the windy ride from Methven
had now settled deep into her lungs.

Seeing her wheeze in
discomfort, the monk placed his hand over her throat and closed his eyes. After
nearly a minute of mumbling incantations, he scampered from the cell and
returned with a smooth black stone, about the size of three fists. “Fillan’s
healing rock. Daren’t tell the Dewar that I used it on you. He’s of the opinion
that lasses steal its power.”

She caressed the strange
lozenges and spirals that had been engraved into the stone. She felt a
strange tingling, and her breath began to deepen and ease. A pressure grew between her eyes, and an inward
vision suddenly flashed across her mind’s eye: Jamie was on his knees, covered
with blood and crawling toward her. She struggled to come to him, but he kept
moving away.

She shrieked and dropped it—this was no Christian relic, but an ancient keek-stane, a scrying talisman used by the ancients for divination. She rushed from the cell. Sweenie took a flying leap from the table and waddled after her. Bursting into the Dewar’s quarters, where Elizabeth and the other women were asleep on mats, she shook the queen awake. “Something awful has happened!”

Elizabeth arose with a start. “Are you ill?”

Through the window, Belle heard desperate shouts ring out
from the valley. Clutching her cloak around her, she ran out the ice-draped
door of the abbey and met Robert and Edward Bruce dragging James up the frozen
slope. The king and his brother carried James unconscious into the
kirk. They ripped open his shirt to reveal a ragged tear on James’s shoulder.

Hearing Belle’s cries, James forced open his eyes. “A flesh
wound is all.”

Robert heaved from the run. “Lorne and the MacDougalls have
taken up with the Comyns. Nigel is trying to hold them off near the river.”

Belle tore a swath from her sleeve and wrapped it around the
gash, which looked more serious than James had let on. “Where is the rest of
our army?”

Robert turned aside, unwilling to let her see the shame in
his eyes. “Fraser and Randolph have been taken prisoner. There has been no word
from the Bishop. I’ve no more than thirty men left. Lorne will be on us within
the hour. Pembroke and Clifford patrol the south. If we fail to make the Isles
before they gain our flank …” He could not finish the report.

Sweenie’s minikin face darkened on hearing Clifford’s name.
He told the king and his men, “There’s a ford two miles south along Glen Falloch.
It offers the quickest way to reach Loch Lomond.”

Robert only then noticed the monk lurking in the shadows.
“South? That leads me into English hands!”

“Aye,” the wee monk said. “And Clifford knows it.”

James, dazed and weak from the loss of blood, lifted his
head. “Rob, he’s right. They’ll expect us to cross north of the loch. We should
follow the eastern banks and ferry over farther down the water.”

Robert stared at the monk, trying to fathom how such a freak
of nature could possibly be trusted for directions. “Who is this blathering
gargoyle?”

The monk bowed. “Ned Sween is my name, Sire. You can call me
Sweenie. Or Wee-kneed. Or Sweenie the—”

“Just call him Sweenie!” Belle shouted at Robert,
exasperated by the monk’s penchant for babbling on incessantly when there was
no time to spare. “He has good reason to see you escape from Clifford’s net, my
lord. He was once abused cruelly by the man.”

Drawn by the shouting, the Dewar arrived and thumped his staff to demand an explanation of the commotion. When Sweenie, reluctantly, revealed his desire to go fight the English, the Dewar’s shaggy white brows drooped in sadness. But finally, the old hermit placed a hand on his companion’s head in a half-hearted blessing, and Sweenie told Robert, “I’ll go with you.”

Robert stood speechless, questioning if God Himself had
decided to mock his fledgling kingship by restocking his tattered army with
grotesques and mutants. Left with no good alternative, he nodded a bitter
assent. Resigned to losing his most valued acolyte, the Dewar
prepared to retire to his cell and resume his prayers. Before departing, the
old hermit fixed his hard grey eyes on Belle and uttered something in Gaelic
that sounded like a warning.

Shuddering, but not knowing why, Belle asked Sweenie, “What
did he just say to me?”

Sweenie was driven to the revelation by her demanding glare.
“He says you must never fail in your faith, for it will be tried.”

Belle turned and confronted the Dewar, waiting for an
explanation of the strange prophecy, but the hermit merely pulled his cowl over
his head and walked off into the tunnel.

While Belle was still trying to make sense of the unsettling
exchange, Sweenie perched himself on a stool and drew a map of the Dalry vale
on the stones of the wall with a charcoal shard. He traced its route with his
finger for the king and his men. “The path across Ben Oss to Falloch is too
steep for horses. We’ll have to go around it this way.” He waited until they
nodded their understanding of his plan, and then doused the drawing with
skillet grease to prevent the English from finding it.

“Send the women east,” Edward told Robert. “They’ll
only slow us.”

James lifted to his elbows to plead against Edward’s advice.
“They must stay with us! Rob, without them, you’d not have the crown!”

Robert seemed befogged, slowed in his thinking. He glanced
at his sisters Mary and Christian, who huddled together in fear with his
daughter, Marjorie. After nearly a minute of agonized debate, he pulled
Elizabeth into his arms. “Nigel will take you and the lasses to Kildrummy.
Atholl is too ill to run with us. He’ll go with you. The castle is strong.”

James winced, still trying to stand. “No! I’ll take them!”

Robert burned him with a hurt look accusing betrayal. “I
can’t make it to the Isles without you.”

James finally managed to climb to his feet. Staggering from
faintness, he drew Robert aside and whispered with every ounce of strength he
could muster, “I can’t leave Belle again.”

“You swore you’d never leave
me
.”

James blinked to stay conscious, his blurring gaze resiling
from Belle back to Robert. He knew Robert would not survive if left on his own
in the wilds. Coddled during his years in London, Robert had never suffered the
deprivations of the barren moors. Torn by love and allegiance, James reached for
Belle and searched her eyes, silently asking a release from the promise he had
made to her on the night at Methven, that he would never again let Tabhann or
anyone else separate her from him.

Belle tried to be strong, but the beginnings of a demand
dissolved into a plaintive cry. “Jamie, please … take me with you.”

James cupped her face in his hands. “He is our king. You did
not risk your life to place the crown on his head only to see him fail, did
you?”

Her voice cracked. “I beg of you.”

Shouts came from the Dalry valley.

“At once!” Edward warned. “Or we are all lost!”

James kissed Belle, his bloodied cheeks wet with her tears.
“I
will
come for you. I promise.”

“Our vows! I would leave a husband, at least!”

James looked to Robert,
who was pacing anxiously at the door, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “Will you
finish our betrothal in the Bishop’s stead?”

Robert, preoccupied with his troubles, did not hear the
request. Before James could ask again, Edward hurried his brother out
of the abbey and toward the horses.

Denied, James braced Belle at her shoulders, locking onto
her frightened eyes. “We are married in our hearts. When I get him to safety,
I’ll find you. We’ll take the vows then.”

Before she could answer him, Edward ran back into the chapel
and pulled her from James’s grasp. She escaped the Bruce brother’s clench long
enough to retreat to her knapsack and retrieve a small, leather-bound volume.
Coughing back the emotion, she pressed the book to James’s heart. “I’d planned
to give it to you on the anniversary of the day you won the ax.” Fearing they’d
both break down completely, she steeled her emotions and ordered him in the
firmest voice she could manage: “I wish the book returned, James Douglas.”

He couldn’t let go of her. “Never forget I love you.”

Edward dragged her away and drove her from the kirk.
Outside, he lifted her onto one of the horses. He sent her galloping off only
moments before his brother Nigel came running up the valley with the
MacDougalls in hot pursuit. Afforded no time to trade even a word of farewell
with his fleeing brothers, Nigel leapt on the last horse and lashed to catch
the women rushing north.