by Glen Craney
This time, she shoved him away, incensed that he had dismissed her views so flippantly. “You’re no different than the Comyns!” Unable to find the words sufficient to vent all the rage that had built up inside her these past days, she retreated up the path toward the castle, crying and yanking down the laundry from the branches as she ran.
“A week from this night!” he yelled at her. “Meet me here!”
WHEN OUT OF HIS SIGHT, Belle stopped running and crumpled to the ground, torn with confused emotions. This Douglas boy was infuriating, but he possessed a strange hold on her. She looked down and saw a smooth rock in the shape of a heart, with a tiny hole eroded by water through its center. The old folk called such sculpted rocks elf cups, for fairies left them as omens of fated love. Rely upon shrouded images that are not direct—wasn’t that what the crone had told her?
She picked up the heart-stone and heaved it through the mists. That would be his answer. If his feelings for her were true, the Little People would help him find it.
JAMES HEARD A MUFFLED WHISTLING through the fog. He dived just in time to avoid being brained by a stone that splashed the water. He looked down at the ripples and saw a heart-shaped stone floating back toward him with the current.
Had the heavens dropped it on him?
He fished the stone from the stream and studied it. Gathering his clothes on the bank, he quickly dressed and, pulling a leather cord from his leggings, threaded the stone and hung it around his neck. He scampered to a nearby oak and retrieved the crude flute that he had hidden with his prized ax. He played a few notes and sang an old ballad that his stepmother had taught him:
“On Raglan Road on an August day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue.
I saw the danger yet I walked
Along the enchanted way
And I said, ‘Let grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day.”
Falling leaves showered him with a warning that the season would soon turn cold and dark. He waited, hoping for Belle’s response, but the glen remained silent. “A week hence, we meet here again!” he called out through the mists. “If you say nothing, it’s a promise!”
Only the cackaws in the treetops answered him.
RACING THE SUN IN A dash for home, he slowed his approach as he came upon a dark tunnel called Ninian’s Faint. This winding shepherd’s path bordered by steep limestone scarps was the last difficult stretch before the Lanark hills opened up into the wide vales of Douglasdale. Above him, a precarious ridge of cracked rocks crowned the notorious ravine.
His father had once told him how the Druids of old believed that malignant spirits congregated in these swires. Legend had it that St. Ninian proved Christ’s superiority over the tree-hung god of the ancients by walking the scree alone at night. The saint never revealed the trials he had suffered here, but it was said he always marked the anniversary of his feat with a resounding sermon on Our Lord’s temptations in the Judean desert.
The light was fading fast, and to go around the cranny would delay him an hour. Cull and Chullan held back, but he whistled them up and walked into the defile, turning sideways to avoid the jagged corners. After several minutes, the ravine splayed open toward the low sun. He shielded his eyes and turned toward a fleeting sweep of shadows.
The pups yelped a warning—seconds before a rock hammered his forehead.
“I thought I told you to stay away from her.”
Hearing that voice distantly, he reached to his scalp and felt blood oozing down his brow. Dazed, he lifted to his knees and forced his eyes to focus.
Tabhann, twirling Belle’s nightgown, stood over him.
Cam and the MacDuff brothers were with Tabhann, seven in all.
He cursed his carelessness. He had fallen for the oldest Highland trick, the ambush in an enclosed pass. He glanced over his shoulder and saw one of the MacDuffs, armed with a rod, blocking the defile to his rear. Firming his grip on the ax, he vowed to take a couple of them down with him, and Tabhann would be the first. He charged at the oldest Comyn, but his blow was glancing and the ax slid from his hand. Tabhann and his mates took turns pummeling him. He slowly slipped into blackness—until a rustling shook the brush above him. Bloodied, he revived and rolled to his knees.
Tabhann and his gang were staring up at the bluff, where an older boy sat mounted on white steed as sleek and fine as a racehorse. The rider was attired in the saffron regalia of noble birth and had a square jaw and a broad, noble forehead.
“Keep moving,” Tabhann warned the traveler. “This is none of your concern.”
The rider ignored the order and edged his horse down into the ravine. His dark blue eyes, lustrous but sensitive to light, swam with an aqueous film that gave him a pained expression. He looked around the swale in mock confusion. “Am I not in Scotland?”
Cam balled his fists. “Are you brain addled?”
“Maybe he can’t hear,” Tabhann suggested, “with all those baubles jangling from his shirt.”
The traveler dismounted and sniffed the air. “I can certainly smell Comyn dung, so this must be Scotland.” He came nose to nose with Tabhann. “And that makes it my concern. … Because I’m your future king.”
Tabhann darkened, suddenly recognizing the stranger. “Robert Bruce.” He spat, as if to void his mouth of a foul taste. “English scum. I’ll go to the grave before I see you crowned.”
Bruce leaned down to wipe Tabhann’s spittle from his boots. “Let’s get a start on it, then.” He came back up with a cross hook that sent Tabhann airborne.
Cam rushed to his cousin’s aid, but Bruce buckled him with a forearm. The MacDuff brothers dove into the fray, and Bruce parried their charges like a trained swordsman, but the force of their numbers soon overwhelmed him.
Forgotten in the melee, James climbed from his knees and leapt on Tabhann’s back, riding him face first into the prickly gorse. Recovering to his feet, James fought his way out of the scrum and came back to back with Bruce. Surrounded, he whispered to his new comrade, “They got us in fists.”
Bruce wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. “Aye, but we got them in wits. Two to none, by my count.”
The Comyns and MacDuffs puffed like bulls as they closed ranks for another charge. James saw his ax and dived for its handle, but Tabhann denied him with an elbow. Pinned, James slung the ax inches from Tabhann’s reach.
Chullan pounced on the weapon and dragged it to Bruce.
Rewarding the pup with a pat, Bruce whipped the weapon around his head so deftly that the Comyns and MacDuffs were momentarily stunned into inaction. “This has a fine heft.”
Still under Tabhann’s weight, James grunted, “Don’t get too attached!”
Tabhann kicked James aside to charge at Bruce.
Bruce hurled the ax at Tabhann’s jaw. Stunned with a gash from the glancing blow, Tabhann staggered back. One by one, the Comyns and MacDuffs scampered off. Tabhann, the last to retreat, shouted promises of revenge.
Wincing from his bruises, James leveraged gingerly to a knee and offered his hand to his rescuer in gratitude. “I owe you one.”
Bruce picked up the ax again and held its handle toward the fading sun to examine the name on the last inscription. “You’re Wil Douglas’s son?”
“Aye.”
Bruce firmed their handshake. “Good timing. You can show me the way to Castle Douglas. I’m to meet my grandfather there this night.” He had a quick, expressive mouth and a sonorous voice that betrayed a dissonant hint of self-doubt. His smile was never fully committed, but remained in conflict with some inner sentinel against hubris. “So, was it over a lass or an insult?”
James stretched his bruised limbs to check for damage. “How did you know?”
Bruce retrieved his skittish horse and palmed its nostrils to soothe its nerves. “Do we Scots fight over anything else?” He winced from a thigh bruise a
s he tried to mount.
James helped him to the stirrups. “The lass I love holds you to be no Scotsman at all.”
Offended by the questioning of his loyalty, Bruce repulsed the assistance. “My father’s ancestors came to this isle with the Conqueror, as did yours, Douglas. You and I are half-bred from Norman stock.”
“So, does she speak true?”
Sighing, Bruce hung his head with a sadness that seemed passing strange for one so blessed in fortune and features. He muttered to himself, “What is a Scot? A Norman? A Dane? A Pict? An Irishman who swims?”
James had always assumed that the cut of a Scotsman was readily evident. Now, he wasn’t so sure. As he led Bruce’s horse up the ravine, he pondered the question at length, and finally he offered, “Any man who fights the English. There’s a bloodline good enough for me.”
Bruce smiled ruefully, amused to find that James had been wrestling with what had been offered as a mere rhetorical comment. “The French may take issue with you. … Perhaps a Scotsman must be made, not born.”
James enjoyed a laugh at his own expense. Despite Belle’s doubts about the Bruce clan, he liked this Robert Bruce. She might dismiss the Bruces as Longshanks’s lackeys, but no true Englishman would have risked his life here in the Lanarkshire wilds to help a foreigner. Perhaps the Almighty had intended the future Lord of Annandale to spend his youth in England for some greater purpose. After all, as James’s father had once told him, the wolf must first sleep with the lamb to gain its trust.
V
THAT NIGHT, JAMES AND ROBERT Bruce slipped unnoticed into the shadowed periphery of Castle Douglas’s great hall, where the chieftains of the realm, meeting in secret to decide how best to confront the English occupation, were arguing over the latest dire news: Longshanks had thrown John Balliol into London Tower on charges of financial malfeasance.
Months earlier, the English king had appointed the incompetent Balliol as puppet ruler of Scotland, but that cynical act was now exposed as a clever ploy to force the Holy See and the royal courts across the Channel to concede that the clans were incapable of governing themselves. Each man present had cast his lot with the Comyns or the Bruces in the ruinous struggle for the throne, and now none could travel across their ravaged shires without suffering accusations of greed and betrayal.
Red Comyn, Ian MacDuff, and John of Lorne, the patriarch of the MacDougall clan, sat on one side of a long trestle table, accompanied by five lesser nobles from the North. Across from them sat James’s father and his ally, Robert’s grandfather, old Bruce the Competitor. With his long white hair oiled and gathered in a tail, the Competitor appeared exactly as a king should, James thought, and though crippled by a mysterious ailment that ate at his skin, he still retained a quickness of gesture and met all with a righteous jaw.
William Lamberton, the Bishop of St. Andrews, stood at the head of the table, looking out of place among these crusty warriors. The cherubic cleric’s fleshy jowls were sprinkled with the hue of crushed pomegranates, and his healthy girt begged for one button more to be loosed above the waist cord. A thicket of dark tangled hair had merged with the overgrowth of his peppered beard to give his face the appearance of being framed by a molted yuletide wreath. A natural diplomat born with a dogged optimism, he was cherished by all Scots for his disarming cheerfulness and lust for life’s pleasures, be they a hearty repast or a bawdy yarn.
Yet the bishop’s sanguine disposition was being tested this night. Folding his hands in a gesture of spiritual authority, he pleaded for these bitter adversaries to set aside their grievances for the good of the country. “My lords, now is the time to strike. My informants tell me that Longshanks has returned to London.”
Red Comyn twirled his ivory-hilted knife against the table, skeptically weighing that bit of surveillance. “Clifford remains camped at Jedburgh.”
Lamberton abandoned his post of neutrality and moved toward Red with outstretched hands. “Longshanks has siphoned off troops to Brittany to fight the French. If we rise up now—”
Red Comyn stabbed his dagger into the boards. “Aye, priest, easy for you to call the muster! When the blood flows, you retreat to your cloister!”
Old Bruce the Competitor pressed to his unsteady feet. With a trembling hand, he extracted the dagger, slid its blade into a crack, and snapped it at the hilt to demonstrate he still possessed strength enough to command respect. “I’ll not hear the Bishop slandered! He is more patriot than any Comyn!”
“He preaches your cause as the gospel!” Red snarled at his old rival. “His donation plate is kept so perpetually filled by Bruce emoluments that it’s oft mistook for the cauldron of Bran.”
The Competitor shaded purple, unable to summon words to vent his rage.
Seeing the elder Bruce thwarted by the mental slog of age, Wil Douglas eased him back to his chair. Then, Wil turned to the bishop and asked the question that was on all of their minds. “What makes you believe another rebellion will succeed when all the others have failed?”
Lamberton pulled a chalk numb from his pocket and traced a crude map of Scotland on the table, circling the area representing the Tweed Valley. “The Marches are laid waste from Berwick to Stirling. If we draw the English north of Perth, we’ll stretch their lines of provision to the breaking point. Another month, and they’ll be starving.”
“We’re already starving,” Ian MacDuff reminded the cleric. “Another month, and Longshanks won’t have to war on us. We’ll all be dead of famine.”
Even from his distant vantage in the far corner, James could see that the bishop’s strategy would lead the English advance through Lanarkshire and his father’s domains. As always, the South would suffer the brunt of the war and pillaging, while the North—much of it Comyn country—would remain unscathed. In the past, he had heard his father express doubts that Longshanks would fall for such a ruse. But Lamberton was an old family friend, and he knew that his father had promised not to speak out against the bishop’s proposal until all the guardians had been given the chance to vote on it.
Red pressed the wily bishop for more details on his plan. “And who would you have command this new army of uprising?”
Lamberton walked to the hearth to stir the fire. With his back turned, he said in a near whisper, as if to blunt its impact, “William Wallace.”
Hearing that, James traded a hopeful glance with Robert. Wallace, the rebel son of Alan Wallace, a noble from Elderslie, had continued to fight with hit-and-run tactics long after the other chieftains had surrendered. He was fast becoming a hero to every Scot boy from Melrose to Aberdeen.
Yet these hard-boiled chieftains around the table reacted as if they had not heard the bishop correctly. Finally, Red Comyn repulsed the nomination with a loud snort. “Wallace is nothing more than a sheep herder turned brigand.”
Ian MacDuff agreed. “The man couldn’t lead a mule to a trough.”
Lamberton lunged and pounded the boards so hard that several empty tankards were sent flying. “He leads well enough while you sit here idle! He has a thousand men in the Selkirk! Join him and ten thousand more will follow!”
The bishop’s anger was a revelation to James. Beneath the cleric’s façade of Christian meekness lurked a fighter no less fierce than any of these men.
Red snickered to MacDuff, “The Church now does the bidding of outlaws.”
“I do my own bidding,” boomed a voice at the door.
The men turned, reaching for their weapons.
At the threshold stood the largest man that James had ever laid eyes upon. Two hands taller than six feet, he wore his hair braided and draped over his broad shoulders and carried across his back a broadsword that was a third longer than standard length. Lines of rage had been scored into his face, and his protruding marbled eyes, hooded with lids bruised ruddy from weariness, amplified his looming presence. Alerted by a keen sense of all that moved around him, the intruder turned toward the shadows in the corner, giving away the presence of the two boys with
his held gaze.
James glanced worriedly at his father, expecting to be scolded for listening.
Finding James staring raptly at his sword, the stranger offered it for his inspection, and then asked the elder Douglas, “Your stripling, Wil?”
“Aye.” Wil made no attempt to hide his disapproval at the intruder’s brazen act of appearing at the meeting uninvited. “Jamie, meet William Wallace.”
Wallace nearly crushed James’s hand with his clasp. “You’re the lad who won the ax this year.” He glared at the chieftains, as if to emphasize that his next admonition was also intended for them. “With honor comes duty.”
Unable to lift the heavy broadsword, James slid its tip across the floor and offered it to Robert for his admiration. But the Competitor, glaring, denied his grandson the opportunity to test it.
“Off to bed with you, lads,” Wil Douglas ordered.
“Let them stay,” Wallace said. “They should hear what I have to say.” As the boys hurried to the table before their elders could countermand that suggestion, Wallace paced the room. Finally, he stopped and reminded them all, “My woman was garroted for staving off the advances of an Englishman.”
James nodded with empathy for Wallace’s heartbreak, but the Northern chieftains merely smirked and huffed with impatience. James knew that they had all suffered similar losses; such mournful tales of murdered kinsmen and confiscated lands drew little sympathy in Scotland these days.
Sensing the futility in that appeal, Wallace retreated from sentiment and resorted to baser interests. “Longshanks would declare it a felony for our women to marry us. If the English are allowed to steal our womenfolk, the blood of our ancestry will be forever poisoned.”
“Then go on and fight the English, hotfoot,” Red said. “We’ll give you a week’s provision and endow a Mass for your success.”
Wallace hovered over the seated chieftain. “You think me a fool, Comyn. But I’m clever enough to know that I cannot win this war alone. If Scotland is to be free of the English yoke, I must have all of you with me. The Comyns, the MacDuffs, the Douglases”—he turned sharply to the Competitor—“and the Bruces.”