The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (50 page)

James held back his cocked fist. “The countess will be
released?”

The inquisitor nodded. “She will be taken to a nunnery and
nursed to health. Within the year, on Lord Gaveston’s safe return, she will be
delivered to you.”

He weighed the desperate offer. Holing up Gaveston in one of his Ettrick hideaways would not be difficult, but if the Gascon were forced to remain at Caernervon’s side, the English lords would be too preoccupied with scheming their king’s demise to unite and mount an invasion. Such a delay, even for just a few months, would give Robert precious time to strengthen his army and drive the English garrisons from Stirling and Berwick. If he accepted this arrangement to save Belle, he might well be dooming Robert’s kingship.

Rob or Belle, again.

A
JOLT SHOOK
B
ELLE FROM
her stupor.

She lifted her head, cursing
at her mind’s tricks. She could no longer make it through the nights without
being attacked by hallucinations of falling into the river and drowning. Half
blind, she levered to her elbows and crawled in the darkness to the bars,
navigating by the flickering of the distant flames on the rampart tapers.

Yet this time it was no nightmare—the cage was being cranked
down.

The blurred outline of a
towering form came rising toward the gate. For a fleeting moment, she thought
she saw Jamie’s face. Her heart leapt. Had he
come to take her home? She folded her hands to St. Bride in gratitude. Yet she
dared not utter his name for fear that any act of desperation to rush to him
might cause the English to reconsider.

She had not touched the
ground in years. How she had dreamt of whisking her toes again through the wet
grass. Then, she remembered her weakened condition. She could not let Jamie see
her in such a frightful state. She poured what little water remained in her
drinking cup down her face to cleanse the sea salt from her rough cheeks. She
ran a hand across her forehead, knowing that she must be hideous with her skin
so windswept and cracked. Would he still love her looking like this?

A new angle on the world
came into her vaporous view—and the cage halted, several feet yet from the
ground.

Caernervon, in armour,
rode up on a charger and sat staring at her.

The king’s altered appearance stunned her. He had lost
several stones in weight, and his drawn eyes were bloodshot and full of
bitterness. She tried to make out what moved beyond his shoulders. A long column
of soldiers, including Gloucester and Clifford, sat arrayed in mounted
formation with banners flying. She searched their blurred faces in vain to find
the man she loved.

“No song for me this
morning?” Caernervon asked her. “I was looking forward to a performance. What
has it been since you last serenaded me? Five years?”

She squinted again at the mounted men behind him. Where was
Jamie? And why had Caernervon traveled here to Berwick with such a large
entourage? Of course! Jamie had
refused to cross into enemy land. The English were preparing to escort her to
the border for an exchange of prisoners. She pulled up from her knees,
determined to walk out just as she had walked in. The river was lined with
townspeople who had come to see her depart.

Caernervon extended his
hand to her through the prongs.

As his reach came closer
to her blinking eyes, she realized that he was offering her the key to the cage
latch. She smiled through tears. It was just like Jamie to demand that she be
allowed to open the door herself. He would suffer no Englishman to boast of
that deed. She reached for her freedom—

The king pulled back the
key, inches from her grasp. “They beheaded him.”

She collapsed to her knees.
Please God, no!

“On Blacklow Hill. Lancaster and Warwick dragged him from
his bed in dead of night. Thousands packed picnic lunches and blew horns as he
was led to the block. I am told it was like a festival.”

She fell back and, sinking in grief, drew her wasted legs to
her elbows. She heard soft weeping, and looked up. Tears were streaming down the king’s cheeks. Why was
he
crying?

They executed his favourite—not Jamie!

She pulled back onto her
knees in numbing relief. She was not leaving England, after all, but she didn’t
care. Jamie was still alive.

“You will see Douglas soon enough,” Caernervon promised her.
“I will not return from Scotland until I have him at the end of a rope. Here,
under your gaze, he will meet the same end that Piers suffered. I should think
you would want to live long enough to witness that.”

In her periphery, a sudden movement high on the tower caught her attention. She shielded her failing eyes from the harsh sunlight and forced as much distance as she could into her sight. A hand quickly pulled the covering over the window. The royal chamber, she remembered, was in that section of the tower. Had Isabella been watching her speak to her husband? Why, she wondered, had the English queen remained here in Berwick instead of returning to more hospitable accommodations in London or York? She shuddered with a horrid thought: Had Isabella conspired with Lancaster to murder Gaveston? She drew strength from knowing that the plucky Frenchwoman had learned to survive among these English, who despised her also. Turning back to Caernervon, she locked onto his vengeful eyes and asked him, “Does it not seem strange?”

Alerted by her distraction, Caernervon glared at the
now-abandoned window in the tower. “Strange, you say?”

“That God places inferior men on thrones.”

Caernervon seemed to take refuge in an inward glare of hatred for the world. “Do you still love James Douglas? After what he has done to you?”

“More each passing day.”

“
That
is what strikes me as truly strange. Considering
that he could have had you removed from this misery.”

She steeled her reaction. But inside, she was shaking with
confusion.

Caernervon motioned his entourage off, out of hearing range. Clifford delayed his departure, concerned that the Scotswoman might strike out at the king with her nails if he came too close to the cage, but Caernervon demanded that the officer peel off toward the bridge with the others.

Alone with Belle, Caernervon whispered through the prongs,
“Last month, I offered Douglas your release. He refused to respond to my
merciful proposal for an exchange.”

“Liar!”

“Nay, in truth, he told me my envoy that he considered you
dead. Robert Bruce is all he cares about now. But fear not, my lady. I intend
to defend your honor. The man who jilted you will soon suffer the agony that I
now endure when Bruce climbs to the block.”

She saw him waiting for her to crack with emotion, but she
turned away, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

He slammed his fist against the cage. Punishing his mount
with the reins, he wheeled and galloped north across the bridge.

Clifford circled back and
came up, alone, to the lowered cage. Glancing over his shoulder as the royal
column crossed the Tweed into Scotland, the officer curled a treacherous
smile at her. “I must commend you, my lady. Your stubbornness to stay alive has
served us admirably.”

“I have never served
you
! And never will!”

“You must not sell yourself so short in your influence. You have proven more valuable to England than a dozen divisions, for you have accomplished what none of my countrymen could manage. You have turned our king into a warrior.”

She squinted at Caernervon riding over the distant hills. Had she unwittingly doomed Robert and James to annihilation, as the officer claimed? Sensing her doubt, Clifford grinned at her and bowed his head with mock courtesy. As he rode off to rejoin the invasion force, the guards on the ramparts hoisted her cage back into the drizzling sky.

T
ETHERED TOGETHER BY ROPES AT
their waists, three hundred
volunteers from the western Isles waited anxiously in their hollow-square
formation, uncertain if the attack would come from the Torwood at their front
or across Giles Hill behind them. In the hazy distance to the north, a besieged
English garrison stood atop the ramparts of Stirling Castle, shouting taunts
and placing wagers on whether the Scot infantry would run.

A low rumbling from the south sent rabbits scurrying up the
old Roman road that led to the small milling village of Bannock. Moments later,
a frothing herd of long-horned Angus broke through the Torwood pines and
stampeded toward the raw Scot recruits.

The officers in the center of the schiltron shouted orders
for pikes to be lowered in a practiced maneuver that resembled a giant hedgehog
bristling to repulse a predator. When the thundering cattle closed within a
stone’s throw of the front ranks, the volunteers abandoned their sharpened
poles and broke for the cover of the burn. Those veterans stationed behind them
struggled to hold the line, but they too were finally dragged off in the
panicked scramble.

Punished by the hoots of the Stirling defenders, Robert
Keith the Marishal led his small contingent of Scot cavalry down the ridge and
rustled the cattle back to their pens.

Watching from Coxet Hill, Robert Bruce bit off a flurry of curses at the shameful result of the drill that he had devised to harden his green troops. He lashed his palfrey into the midst of the hangdog volunteers and flayed them with a stinging critique. “God’s blood! Shall I send sheep upon you next? If you won’t stand up to thirty heifers, how do you expect to face down English knights?”

“We’ve had our fill of this foolishness!”

He turned in the saddle to find the source of that challenge
in the fractured ranks. “Show your face!”

A thick-bearded Islesman armed with a spiked targe stepped
forward. “I’ll fight the damned Angles! But I’ll not stand idle for bovine to
gore me!”

Edward Bruce, determined to be his brother’s enforcer of
discipline, rode up and circled the mutineer. “You’ll do as ordered, or you’ll
hang!”

The obstinate Islesman looked for support from his comrades, who had been
sent by Angus Og MacDonald from the hinterlands of Kintyre, Skye, and Gamoran.
These sailors were more accustomed to the hit-and-run of galley raids than the
tedious repetition of ground maneuvers, but none showed the stomach to stand up
to the Bruces. The Islesman was thus forced to be satisfied with hissing at
Edward’s horse and growling, “If I’m still welshing livestock a week hence, I’m
shanking it back to Jura.”

From the corner of his eye, Robert saw his brother waiting
for him to punish the insubordination. Yet he waved off the confrontation as
futile. No Scotsman could be forced to fight if his heart was not in the cause.
He had tried to forge this motley collection of feuding clansmen and firth
ruffians into an army, warning them that they would suffer the same fate as
Wallace if they did not abandon their petty animosities, but his exhortations
had met with little success. Randolph’s northern men from Moray and Inverness
would not even share a camp with Edward’s levies from the eastern provinces. With
a heavy sigh, he ordered Keith, “Bring up the Annandale lads. God willing,
they’ll shame the others to—”

“Douglas comes!” shouted a hundred voices.

Interrupted by the roar of excitement, Robert broke a rare
grin. Blessed with the arrival of the one man who could raise his spirits, he
nodded permission for his volunteers to run down the slope and greet the rider
galloping up on the famous sleek black Yorkshire horse captured at Roxburgh. He
cantered through the cheering throngs and reached for the hand that he had
waited for months to clasp. “We feared you’d found the end of Clifford’s rope.”

James heaved to catch his breath from his forced ride
through the Torwood. “That’s one worry you needn’t lose sleep over. There’s
nary a tree left in the Borders to hang a good Bruce man these days.”

Despite the jest, Robert sensed an uncharacteristic gravity
in his old friend’s manner. He edged closer and lowered his voice, “What news
from the South?”