The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (77 page)

“In
the Douglasdale kirk of St. Bride.” The earl displayed his clan’s crest on his
brooch to her. “The guardians of my kingdom ordered a heart be added to our
herald in honor of his sacrifice.”

She
studied the crest, then looked up at him. “You fought at Poiters?”

The
earl nodded bitterly. More than a year had passed since that disastrous defeat
in France, but his memory of it was still raw.

“Do
you know who lost that battle for you?”

The
earl glared at her, unable to fathom why she would punish him with such a cruel
question.

“Your
uncle taught my son how to fight at Weardale. Edward in turn imparted those
lessons to my grandson, the Black Prince. So, as I see it, you Scots have only
yourselves to blame for your predicament.”

He smiled grimly at the irony. “One heart has yet to return
home to Scotland, my lady. I would be grateful to know where the Countess of
Buchan rests.”

Isabella turned aside to muffle a cough of emotion. “I was
never told, but I fear she was abandoned to the pauper’s pit at Berwick.”

Seeing that she too had grown fatigued, William made another
move to depart. At the door, he heard her call him back.

“The last time your
uncle and I spoke,” she said, “he told me something else in confidence. The
night that he and Robert Bruce looked death in the face on Arran Isle, there
was more to the spider’s prophecy.”

Intrigued, William
glanced at his squire.

Isabella stared into the
fire. “The clairvoyant Isleswoman promised him that your Stone of Destiny would
remain hidden until its scream is again required. She also said that the
Templars charged with its protection would one day resurrect themselves in the
guise of another brotherhood and fulfill their quest for tolerance of faith and
conscience in a land far across the sea.”

William did not know
what to make of the strange revelation.

“Now,” Isabella
insisted. “There is a secret you must surrender to me. … This man with you is
not your second.”

“Madam, I assure you
that—”

When Isabella stood
abruptly to repulse that lie, William finally nodded his accomplice forward and
gestured him to an admission.

“My mother was …”

Isabella confirmed the
confession for him. “Jeanne de Rouen.”

Archibald Douglas
glanced at the door, worried that the guards would discover his true identity
as the bastard son of the Black Douglas. “I escaped your grandson’s prison in
Poiters by passing myself off as a commoner who could bring no ransom. None of
the officers in your army would believe that a Scot nobleman could have skin as
dark as a Moor’s. Your pale English made the same mistake when they underestimated
my father.”

Isabella warmed her
hands over the last of the flickering embers, debating if she should reveal
this deception to the castellan, who reported all of her activities to her son.
She asked Archibald, “Do you believe, sir, that a lone abiding love can change
the world?”

Archibald’s face
tightened. “I swear on the Holy Rood that I have seen only war and bloodshed
bend the will of men. And I swear on my father’s memory that I will not rest
until England suffers what we Scots have long endured.”

Smiling sadly, Isabella
stared beyond his shoulders, as if speaking to a specter behind him. “Men swear
such oaths. Women suffer the consequences.”

“My lady?”

Drawn back to the
present, Isabella promised Archibald, “My influence in London court has waned,
but I will attempt to find you safe passage to Scotland. In return, you must do
me two favors.”

The generous offer
astonished Archibald. “Anything within my power.”

Isabella shuffled with
bated steps toward the altar and opened the Bible that sat on its lintel. She
took out a pressed red poppy she had picked on her last walk along the Seine in
Paris. “Place this in the kirk at Douglasdale.”

Archibald accepted
custody of the remembrance. “And the second?”

The queen mother
retreated to the small lancet window that offered her only view of the outside
world. She had stood there often over the years wondering how the Countess of
Buchan had survived her confinement under much worse conditions. “If you are
unfortunate enough to live to be my age, you will encounter many a doubter who
will gainsay what I have just told you about the triumph of love. Argue not
with them like a rabid churchman. Was a heart ever swayed by cold logic or a
hot pyre?”

The two Scotsmen
shrugged, unable to offer a contradicting example.

She grasped Archibald’s
hand, as if to summon a distant memory from the ancient blood pulsing in his
touch. “Rather, sit them down in one of your storied castles above a moonlit
loch, and pour them a horn of your finest spirit, one that musters the ghosts
and curls the tongue with the taste of history. Then, tell them, as I have you,
of your father and his brave Lass of Scone, and how they gave all to crown a
king and set a nation free.”

The poet who could do justice to the exploits of
Douglas would win himself great and enduring fame.

— John Barbour,
The Brus

William Douglas, the nephew of James Douglas, visited
Isabella of France shortly before her death in 1358, but nothing was recorded
of their conversation. Nor is it known if Archibald Douglas, who escaped prison
after the Battle of Poiters, was present at this meeting, although he
accompanied his cousin on the campaigns in France.

Primary sources for Scotland’s wars of independence during
the 14th century are limited, and they have suffered the accusation, levied
against many medieval accounts, that legend intrudes. The most comprehensive
source is
The Brus
, an epic written in 1375 by John Barbour,
Archdeacon of Aberdeen. Barbour relied on first-hand reports of participants
who spoke several years after the events. The cleric vowed to tell the truth as
best he could find it, and most historians believe that, in large measure, he
succeeded. An unabashed admirer of James Douglas, Barbour depicted him as
Bruce’s equal in skill, cunning, and courage.

In his
Tales of a Grandfather
, Sir Walter Scott
described Robert Bruce as the first to see the spider in the cave. Yet
researchers have confirmed that Scott’s version was based on an account in Hume
of Godcroft’s history of the Douglas clan, written two hundred years earlier.
In Godcroft, it is Douglas who sees the spider and convinces Bruce of its
significance.

To my knowledge, I am the first author to suggest the possibility that
James Douglas and Isabelle MacDuff were lovers. Baffled by Isabelle’s decision
to turn against her husband and clan, chroniclers in England at the time spread
rumors that she was Robert Bruce’s mistress. Yet I contend that it was more
likely her love for Douglas that drove the Countess of Buchan to risk her life
by placing the crown on Bruce’s head.

Barbour offered a tantalizing hint of this in his
description of the escape from Methven. Elizabeth Bruce, Isabelle MacDuff, and
the king’s sisters accompanied their husbands on that desperate retreat after
the English ambush. The archdeacon revealed with a euphemistic wink that among
those harried Scot warriors trying to get Robert Bruce and his family to
safety, “not one among them there that to the ladies’ profit was more than
James of Douglas.” The modern biographer I.M. Davis was more direct; without
hazarding a guess as to the woman in question, he wrote that Douglas “may have
been running a love affair” during the Methven campaign.

It seems implausible that
Douglas would have carried on such an affair with Elizabeth Bruce or the
married Bruce sisters during the retreat, particularly while their husbands—his
comrades—were in danger and in such close proximity. Isabelle MacDuff, however,
was estranged from John Comyn, an enemy of the Bruces. Falling in love with
Douglas would explain her decision to risk her life and abscond west with the
Bruces. Moreover, Davis found no record indicating that Douglas had ever
married. The late Caroline Bingham observed in her biography of Robert Bruce
that the king would have expected his councilors to take wives for the sake of
propriety and the smooth devolution of titles and domains. Barbour described
Douglas’s life in great detail, but the cleric inexplicably failed to explain
this mystery. The most likely explanation is one that the chroniclers of the
time would have failed to know, or would have deemed too private to record: A
broken heart.

This story is historical
fiction, not academic history, and aspects of it are, by necessity,
speculative. I took liberties with, and filled gaps in, traditional accounts of
the period with my portrayal of: 1) James Douglas’s boyhood, of which little is
known except that he came under the tutelage of Bishop Lamberton and
accompanied the cleric to Paris; 2) Douglas’s relationship with Jeanne de Rouen,
a character that I created because nothing is known about the identity of the
woman who gave birth to his son Archibald out of wedlock; and 3) the
fascinating and controversial Isabella of France. Twice Douglas narrowly missed
capturing the English queen, and they came together for the last time in
Berwick to formalize the peace agreement and forge the marriage between David
Bruce and Isabella’s daughter. Beyond that, their interactions must be left to
the imagination.

Finally, historians
continue to debate the factual basis for the legend that a small band of
Knights Templar escaped the persecutions in France and, after being given
refuge in Scotland, came to Robert Bruce’s aid at Bannockburn. To defend that
possibility, I would remind readers of what M. Louis Charpentier, the French
author and researcher of medieval Gothic cathedrals, once cautioned: “When
history and tradition are not in agreement, it is safe to bet, almost as a
certainty, that it is the historians, makers of history, who are deceived.”

The ballad
Raglan Road
was written by the late
Irish poet Patrick Kavanaugh. Quotations from John Barbour’s epic,
The Brus
,
are from Tom Scott’s translations in his
Tales of King Robert the Bruce.
The song on the galleys during the Turnberry invasion was based upon Robert
Burns’s poem,
March to Bannockburn
, which was likely based on verses
sung during the Bruce wars. Belle’s ballad in the cage is from the old Celtic
song,
The Braes O’Balquiddher.
Excerpts describing the adventures of
Roland and Oliver are from
The Story of Roland
by James Baldwin.

A special thanks goes to Alyssa Rasley for her superb
editing; to John Rechy and the members of his writing workshop for their
invaluable guidance and support; and to Michelle Millar, Stewart Matthew, John
Jeter, and David Martin.

The definitive biography of James Douglas is I.M. Davis’s
The
Black Douglas.
Biographies of Robert Bruce are numerous, but my favorite
is the late Caroline Bingham’s
Robert the Bruce.
Pat Gerber’s
Stone
of Destiny
offers theories about the relic, and Michael Prestwich’s
The
Three Edwards
explores the lives of those Plantagenet monarchs. Several
books have been written about Bannockburn and the disputed location of the
second day’s battle; Peter Reese’s
Bannockburn
provides a good
overview. Yet the most valuable and memorable account of the battle that I had
the privilege to receive came from a private tour generously conducted by the
late Bob McCutcheon, a Stirling bookseller and local expert on the Bruce years.
After walking the battlefield with Mr. McCutcheon one memorable afternoon, I
came to understand not only the tactics, but also the proud Scottish
temperament that helped win that unlikely victory.

For a reader’s guide, news of events, and a virtual tour of
the many sites in the story as they appear today, please visit
www.glencraney.com
.

A graduate of Indiana University School of Law and Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism,
Glen Craney
practiced trial
law before joining the Washington press corps to cover national politics and
the Iran-contra trial for
Congressional Quarterly
magazine. The
Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences awarded him the Nicholl Fellowship
prize for best new screenwriting. His debut novel,
The Fire and the Light,
was named Best New Fiction by the National Indie Excellence Awards and a
Finalist/Honorable Mention winner by
Foreword Magazine
for its Book of
the Year in historical fiction. He lives in Malibu, California.

www.glencraney.com

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