The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (63 page)

Sweenie halted his retreat to tug at James’s sleeve. “You
promised that one day you would allow me to lead a charge into battle.”

James dropped his hands to his knees, catching his breath.
“Stop talking nonsense. We have to run north, and fast.”

“Give me thirty men,” Sweenie pleaded. “I’ll put up a feint,
hold them off until you and the others get away.”

“That would be suicide.”

Sweenie lowered his eyes and assumed a pious pose. “I have lived a bonnie life, and now it’s time for me to pay back my king. I ask only one favor.” He stole a glance up at James to determine if his act had cast its spell.

“And what would that be?”

“Compose a song lauding my sacrifice and
sing it to King Robert in my memory.”

James was ashamed for having wrongly judged the selfless
monk. There would be detachments from Berwick heading north to cut them off, he
knew, and his only chance of saving most of the men would be to leave a small contingent
to fight a rear-guard action. If any of the volunteers survived, they would
have to find their way back to Scotland on their own.

McKie and McClurg stepped up. “We’ll stay with the
Wee-Kneed.”

Thirty more men also came forward and stood with Sweenie.

James pressed the little monk’s head to his breast. “I’ll
not forget this.”

Sweenie snickered under his breath, “Aye, you won’t.”

B
EFORE JAMES COULD CHANGES HIS
mind, Sweenie led his band of
volunteers into the thick fog toward the direction of the oncoming legion of
clerics. When the escaping Scots finally rode out of sight, the monk
stopped his small troop halfway to the river and traced a line through the
grass with his staff. “Gather up all the hay and brush you can find and set them
afire here.”

His volunteers traded skeptical glances, but finally
they obeyed him.

Sweenie trusted the smoke from the burning brush
would give them more cover. He stripped off his shirt, dug his hand into a
crock of pitch, and painted his face with pagan emblems. Satisfied with his
artwork, he threw the crock to McKie. “Pretty yourself up, lads. When you hear
Heaven shout St. Finian’s name, run toward the river and don’t stop until
you’ve been baptized in its bloody waters.”

As Sweenie crawled alone beyond the smoke to survey the valley, the men stared at the little monk, wondering if he had lost his wits under the strain. Below him, the English archbishop was leading his canons and burghers across the bridge as if on a Good Friday procession.
Come on, sweet cherubs. Your heavenly reward
awaits you.
He waited until the last of the English militia had followed
the canons to the near side of the river, and then he stood up in the high
grass and shouted, “Who’s the holiest saint that ever walked this isle?”

The archbishop fixed a banishing eye on the black-streaked
demon. When the incubus would not dissolve back into the smoke, the cleric held
up his towering crucifix for protection and answered the impudent challenge,
“St. Michael!”

Sweenie rejected that suggestion by turning a back flip and
demanding again, “Nay! Who’s the holiest saint ever walked this isle?”

The archbishop was not
accustomed to having his theological authority questioned, particularly by an
evil sprite in front of his canons. He tried again: “St. George, may he protect
us!”

Sweenie leapt into the air again and smacked his feet
together. “Nay!”

Now in a tempestuous snit, the archbishop marched toward the
blaspheming cretin. “Damn you to Hell! Who then?”

Sweenie ran at the oncoming clerics and screamed, “St.
Finian!”

Hearing the prearranged
signal for the attack, McKie, McClurg and the other Scots shot forward through
the smoke and fog. Half naked and painted like savage Picts, they emerged from
the burning brush shouting at the top of their lungs. When they reached the
clearing, they found only priests arrayed against them.

The two bizarre armies stopped, confused, and stood staring at each other.

Sweenie broke the brittle silence by resuming his sprint toward the
archbishop and shouting, “St. Finian was a Scot! And it’s a Scot saint come to
take you to Judgment this day!” He glanced over his shoulder and laughed as his
volunteers charged down the hill and cut down the first ranks of canons.

The archbishop suddenly
lost faith in the certainty of God’s protection. He dropped his crucifix and
fought a path back through his frightened charges in a frantic dash back to the
bridge. Left without their spiritual leader, his canons abandoned their weapons
and followed him in the retreat, careening into the burghers who were just then
trying to cross the swale. Those in the rear of the hightailing mob had to jump
into the river to avoid being slaughtered. The currents became filled with so
many floating monk robes that the river resembled a rushing stream of lily
pads.

W
HILE JAMES WAITED FOR THE
last of his mounted troop to ford
the river, he heard the distant screams of battle through the fog. He was about
to offer up a prayer for Sweenie and his martyred volunteers in the rear guard
when he spied a white robe floating downstream.

Randolph circled back. “We’d best head north with all speed.
Sweenie and the lads won’t hold them off for long.”

More robes came bobbing past, and it occurred to James that
he had never seen Caernervon’s troops wearing white burrel mantles. He
dismounted and waded in to retrieve one of the robes. Below it, he found the
body of a tonsured priest. He leapt on his horse and raced back toward Myton
Bridge. As the fog and smoke lifted, painted savages came running at him dragging
bundles filled with gold plates and chalices. A black-faced gargoyle prodded up
a prisoner with an archbishop’s staff. Across the river, the surviving canons
ran toward York clad only in their undergarments.

The backtracking Scot raiders howled with joy at discovering
Sweenie’s victory. They leapt down from their mounts and raised the little monk
on their shoulders to parade him across the smoking field.

Randolph brought the monk eye to eye with James, and
observed with a smirk, “I’d say you owe the Wee-Kneed a ballad.”

James recognized their prisoner. “You’ve hooked a rare fish,
Sweenie! This is William Ayreminne! Caernervon’s Keeper of the Rolls!”

The English captive grimaced at hearing his identity
revealed.

James lifted the man’s lowered chin with his blade. “Where
is your queen, Roll Keeper?” Refused an answer, James nodded for McKie to noose
the Englishman’s neck and lift him by leveraging the rope across a saddle
pommel.

The gagging prisoner squealed, “The river!”

James ordered him dropped. “Your next flight will be to your
Maker.”

Clutching at the rope under his chin, the prisoner gasped,
“The archbishop sent her by barge to York!”

James rushed his raiders south along the banks of
the Swale, desperate to catch Isabella before she could be sailed to safety. Dusk was falling when he climbed the last hill and caught glimpse of York’s impressive ramparts. A barge lit by torches was being rowed feverishly toward the city’s river gate. He counted no more than ten men defending the tower. Just as he had predicted, Caernervon had siphoned off the garrison to be used in the attack on Berwick.

He galloped along the banks in search of a ford,
calculating that the precious cargo would reach the portcullis within the hour.
Then, he saw a lady emerge from a pavilion on the barge. Surrounded by armed
guards, she turned toward him with a look of desperation. He squinted to
increase his sight. It had been ten years since he had last seen her. Could
that
woman truly be Isabella? She appeared fuller in figure than he remembered, but
her azure blue eyes still burned bright in her face. He began removing his
boots.

Randolph tried to restrain him. “Even if you could swim it, we’re already a day behind. If we don’t turn north now, we’ll not make it back.”

Shaking off his hand, James leapt from his saddle and dived into the
water.

T
HE GALLOWS ATOP
Y
ORK'S KEEP
had been set high enough for the draw and quartering to be seen from afar. On this morning, after attending a celebratory Mass in the minster, Caernervon led the finest procession held in England since the celebration of his father’s victory in Wales. Behind him, his prize prisoner was dragged from the tower and marched down the street in chains while the crowds roared and threw garlands of black roses in mocking tribute.

Caernervon finally reached the execution site and took his viewing seat. Isabella, at his side, turned away, unwilling to watch the grisly ordeal. As the throngs chanted “Edward” and offered up grateful hosannas to him for capturing the Black Douglas, the executioner waited for his signal to commence.

Smiling, he milked the grand moment, for he
knew that these recalcitrant barons below him would now be required to give
back all the rights that he had been forced to relinquish in their damnable
Ordinances. When the cheers reached their crescendo, he stood from his throne
to accept the accolades. One flick of his hand and the man who had so plagued
him—

“My lord! A force approaches!”

In the saddle, Caernervon roused from his drowsy revelry. He
looked toward the blackened Northumbrian valley and saw a fast-moving band of
horsemen coming at him amid a cloud of dust.

Was that not the three-starred shield of robin’s egg blue on
the herald?

“Douglas!” the king shouted. “At once, upon him before he
escapes!”

As his knights galloped
hell-bent toward the trapped Scots, Caernervon joined them in the lead,
glancing back at Despenser with a toothy grin of anticipation. All was falling
into place, just as he had planned. When Douglas and his raiders had been
reported rushing north from York, he had convinced Lancaster to abandon the
Berwick siege and move west to cut the Scots off before they reached the
border. Of course, some credit went to his vapid French wife, who had
unwittingly forwarded a piece of invaluable intelligence. Her last letter
mentioned that a captured spy had revealed under torture that Douglas intended
to return along the coast to the Solway Firth. Armed with that timely gift, he
had sent Lancaster to encircle Douglas and drive him into their pincers.

At last, the stain of Bannockburn would be erased.

The cloud of dust came
closer, and Caernervon, drawing his sword, spurred to the glorious
confrontation. The dust settled and the banners became more distinct. Those
were not silver stars, but red roses. Baffled, he slowed to a halt as the two
converging forces came into sight of each other.

The lead knight in the oncoming van removed his helmet.
“Well?”

Lancaster?

Caernervon lurched up in the saddle. “Where is Douglas?”

Thomas Lancaster
searched the grassy fields around them. “You were to chase him to me.”

“No, you were to chase him to me!” Caernervon cried. “Tell
me you have not lost him.”

Lancaster narrowed his beady eyes. “I never had him!”

An officer in the king’s guard pointed toward the far scarp
of the Pennines, nearly a league away. There a line of horsemen rode rapidly
along the horizon, heading north. Above the fleeing column flew a banner with a
blue shield and three silver stars.

Caernervon circled his mount around Lancaster in an
apoplectic fit. “Treasonous scapegrace! You have allowed Douglas to escape!”

Lancaster’s face pinched with suppressed rage. “Had you
heeded my counsel, we would have Berwick fully defended and impregnable by
now!”

A courier galloped up from the south. “My lord! The queen!”

Caernervon stood in his stirrups, frantically scanning the
distant column of escaping Scots. “My God! Has she been captured?”

“She is safe behind York’s walls, my lord,” the courier
assured him.

Caernervon closed his eyes in relief. Although he would
gladly be rid of Isabella, a Scot ransom for her return would have ruined him.

“She sent me to find you, Sire,” the courier explained.

“What in Hell’s name does she want now?”

“She begs you weigh with due skepticism the surveillance
that she mentioned in her previous correspondence. She fears that the Scot
prisoner may have been lying to throw you off Douglas’s true route back to the
Borders.”

Caernervon sat stupefied. “She tells me this …
now?”

As the last of the Scots disappeared over the horizon, Lancaster turned a glare of unchecked disgust on the purported son of Edward Longshanks.

T
HE LAIRDS RUSHED FROM THEIR
high-backed choir seats in
Newbattle Abbey and welcomed James and Randolph home with thunderous applause
and hearty backslaps. Although the two raiders had failed, by mere minutes, to capture
the English queen, their plunge deep into Yorkshire had so shaken the
Plantagenet court in London that Caernervon had sent envoys to Dunfermline to
negotiate a two-year truce to the war, the first in twenty-four years.