by Glen Craney
When he did not weaken, the princess covered herself and plopped cross-legged at the foot of his bed. She slapped his sternum playfully with her heel. “Silly jeune homme. Tell me about her, then, if you must.”
He gazed through the window toward the Seine, recalling that day in Kilbride when Belle’s long hair had hung dripping down her slender neck. “She’s the most bonnie lass in all Scotland. Eyes blacker than a Highland night, and what a temper! Skittish as a colt and just as fast. God, what beauty!”
Isabella allowed her blouse to slide farther down her shoulders. “More beautiful than moi?”
He failed to even notice. “Aye, more fetching than—”
She punished his stomach with a sharp kick. “You are an imbécile when it comes to femmes!” She gathered up her cloak and turned to leave.
He captured her wrist to delay her a moment more. “So I’ve been told. You are both beyond any man’s dreams. It is so strange. You and Belle share a name. And the way you look at me, it is as if you also share a soul.”
She shot him a sideways glance of suspicion. “Your dancing improves. … Are you betrothed?”
He sank, dejected. “Her father schemes to wed her off to another clan.”
Isabella ran her hand through his thick hair. “Then you must forget her.”
“She will wait for me. I know she …” He fell silent, stopped short by the memory of her riding off with Tabhann that day in Kilbride.
“Has she told you that she loves you?”
He hesitated. “Not in those words.”
“Then we are not so much alike. If I loved a man, I would use those words exactement.”
Incensed by her skepticism, he bolted up. “And I suppose you’ve whispered many a honeyed verse into Caernervon’s ear!”
The princess turned away in hurt.
He embraced her, apologetic, uncertain how to comfort her. In that moment, with her angelic face strafed by pain, she seemed much older than her tender fifteen years.
“My father requires peace with England. I am to be his means to attain it.”
James reached into the crease of her untressed nightgown and examined a locket that hung from a gold chain. Before she could deny him, he opened its casing and found the imprint of a knight’s heraldry. “So, I am not the only one who pines away.”
She snapped the locket shut. “My father sent him away to the Flemish war.”
“Coutrai?”
She answered him with a rush of tears.
Her lover, he realized, had been one of the hundreds of knights killed at the Battle of the Two Hundred Golden Spurs, a disaster from which Philip’s army had yet to recover. “And now you’ve agreed to suffer the rest of your life with a man you’ll come to despise?”
“You seem to know a great deal about my future husband!”
He looked off into the distance, stung by dark memories of Berwick. “Aye, I have laid eyes upon Edward Caernervon. And I would give the little I own to do so again.” His grip on her arm had tightened so fiercely that she winced. He gently rubbed away the welt. “Listen to me. You must refuse this marriage. It will bring you only sorrow.”
Sighing, the princess rested her head on his chest. “‘Refuse’ is not a word in the lexicon of my sex.”
“If you are forced into this arrangement,” he said with determination, “I promise I will one day make you a widow.”
She greeted that naïve boast with a forlorn smile of resignation. “All of us, sooner or later, must give up the vanities of romance.”
He would not have believed a lass so young could turn so coldly cynical. “I’ll never stop loving Belle. Even if she …” He could not finish the thought. “I’ll never stop loving Belle. Even if she … ” He could not finish the thought.
Isabella kissed his forehead. “If you will not accept my charms, at least take my counsel. Should you truly intend to abide by such a foolish pledge, you must never become caught in the orbit of a king.” She arose from the bed and gifted him with one last glimpse of her ravishing figure. Stoked, he reached to bring her back, but she repulsed his hand and whipped her cloak to cover herself. “Ah, but you are promised to another.” She blew out the candle and vanished into the darkness.
Frustrated, he fell back into the bed. Moments later, he heard the door crack open again.
In the darkness, Isabella’s voice warned, “This lady you love will pay dearly for your haute principles, James Douglas. Men make oaths. And we women suffer the consequences.”
IX
TWO MONTHS AFTER THEIR ROYAL audience, Bishop Lamberton slipped unannounced into James’s sleeping cell late at night and tossed him a black robe. Warned by a finger to the lips not to speak, James put on the religious garb and followed the bishop down the back steps of the Hotel de Ville to the deserted Paris streets near the Grand Pont. Wherever they were going, disguised as friars, they were taking a circuitous route, backtracking to the same shadowy corners that they had passed minutes before. Satisfied at last that they had not been followed, Lamberton hurried him toward a winding staircase that lead down to the banks of the Seine. An oarsman helped them aboard a small fishing boat and then rowed them up an unlit canal that flowed past the walls toward the northern outskirts.
An hour later, they disembarked at the port of an isolated fortress whose most prominent feature was a central chapel built in the shape of an octagon. The thick oaken gates of the compound screeched open, and into the slant light walked the elderly knight who had met privately with the bishop at the palace. One of the rampart tapers flared, revealing the full extent of the environs. They were standing inside the Paris Temple, the most heavily guarded sanctuary on the Continent.
Five monks, draped in white burrel mantles blazoned on their right shoulders with the red cross-pattée, stepped out from the recesses behind the columns and came aside their leader. These celibate initiates of the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ, commonly called Knights Templar, could have been mistaken for Old Testament warriors. Every aspect of their training and appearance had been prescribed for advantage in battle; they sheared their hair to prevent it from being grasped by enemies and grew their beards wild because the Moslems considered a smooth face a sign of effeminacy.
James looked around for the chests of gold that he had heard tales about, but the vaulted chamber appeared empty and austere. The Temple maintained hundreds of commanderies across Christendom, and this fortress served as its headquarters. After their loss of Palestine to Saladin, the Templars had turned to the pursuit of commerce and—rumor had it—to esoteric practices such as alchemy and magic. By dominating the Mediterranean trade routes and offering banking services to the courts, they had also grown wealthier than any monarch, even the rapacious Philip.
The eldest knight locked the massive doors. “I ordered you to come alone.”
Lamberton signaled for James to descend to a reverent knee. “The lad is in my trust. He is the son of William Douglas the Hardi.”
The grand master eased his defiant stance and brought James back to his feet. “I am Gerard de Villiers. I fought with your father at Acre. Is he well?”
James’s throat tightened. “He rots in London Tower.”
One of the hooded monks behind the grand master closed in on them with a threatening glower. “At least he lives. That is more than can be said for our brothers you Scots murdered at Falkirk.”
James fought against Lamberton’s restraint, hot to charge the mouthy monk. “I’ll have your name before I send you to Hell!”
Challenging them with a better look at his scarred face, the monk retracted his cowl with a finger shorn at the lowest knuckle, a remnant from Moslem torture. Cursed with brooding eyes and a turtle mouth, he held the rigid imperiousness of a man who had little use for Christian charity and meekness. “Peter d’Aumont. Burn that name to memory. If you should ever cross into Auvergne, you will receive a different welcome.”
James saw the bishop grimace with regret at hearing the Falkirk calamity invoked. In th
at battle, the London Temple had broken its vow of neutrality by joining Longshanks to help defeat Wallace. Two English Templars, Brian de Jay and Alan Froumant, had been killed in the final charge.
Deflecting d’Aumont’s threat, Lamberton tried to convince the grand master to see the matter in a different light. “Edward Plantagenet uses your Order for his own designs.”
“The English king is our benefactor. Our brothers across the Channel took up arms with him for a Christian cause.”
“Against fellow Christians,” James reminded him.
“The boy has a loose tongue,” de Villiers said.
“An inheritance of his lineage,” Lamberton admitted. “As is his compulsion to speak the truth.”
“If Philip’s spies discover that you have come here without his sanction,” de Villiers warned, “you will never leave Paris alive. I agreed to this meeting only because of Scotland’s service in Palestine. Now, then, what is this proposal you would have us consider?”
Lamberton glanced with concern at the other monks. He had hoped to prosecute his cause in private with the grand master, but he saw that he would have to risk that their lips remained sealed. “Philip sues for peace with England to purchase time to rebuild his army. If the treaty is signed, Longshanks will be free to recall his forces from France and send them against us.”
“We will offer a Mass for the salvation of your soul.”
The bishop let that snide dismissal pass. “We need arms and financing.”
De Villiers repulsed the bishop’s brazen request with a punishing glare. “Why should we care who wins your war with England? A cellar of rats would be a preferred venue to your country. You Scots have brought on your troubles with your incessant bickering. You cannot even agree on a king.”
Lamberton fingered the onyx crucifix hanging at de Villiers’s breast. “By whose authority do you serve?”
D’Aumont answered for his superior. “Christ and the Blessed Virgin.”
“And yet your charter requires that you answer only to the Pope.”
D’Aumont bristled. “The Holy Father is Christ’s vicar on earth. Have you marcher heathens forgotten that?”
Lamberton walked to a lancet window and studied the distant torches of the royal palace to assess how difficult it would be for Philip’s army to storm this fortress. “If the pope is Christ’s vicar, why then does he wander France as a nomad under the king’s thumb? Philip taxes the clergy to finance his wars, but Clement raises not a whimper of protest. Our Lord’s Kingdom seems more and more of this world.”
“The Temple is not taxed,” d’Aumont said. “What impositions other orders accept are of no concern to us.”
“Your treasury dwarfs Philip’s coffers,” Lamberton said. “He ransacked the Lateran in search of gold. Why would he think twice about gutting the Temple treasury in his own city?”
D’Aumont shared a sardonic laugh with his cloaked brothers. “The Scots send us lunatics and orphans for envoys!”
Despite their professions of indifference, James sensed that these monks were also concerned by the growing power of the Dominicans, just as the bishop had surmised. That day at the palace had made it all too evident, even to this powerful grand master, that the inquisitor Lagny had wormed his way into the inner circles of the Capetian court.
“The Keys of St. Peter are now kept locked in Philip’s privy chamber,” the bishop reminded the Templars. “One monastic order, and only one, has positioned itself to gain their possession. And it is not the Temple.”
De Villiers narrowed his glare. “Reckless talk like that could get you a seat before an Inquisition tribunal.”
Lamberton allowed the ensuing tense silence to extend, underscoring the gravity of what he next asked. “Why do you suppose every conqueror since Caesar has tried to subjugate my country?”
D’Aumont snorted. “You have a few monasteries worth plundering.”
Lamberton waited for the derisive laughter to fade, then nodded and surrendered an enigmatic concession. “It is true that we Scots possess little of material value. And yet, we hold a priceless treasure.”
Intrigued, de Villiers drew closer, waiting for the revelation.
Lamberton smiled knowingly at James to confirm how easily his trap had snared its prey. “You see, lad, these Poor Monks of Christ are not content to await Heaven. They hoard earthly lucre, but what they truly lust for is secret knowledge of God’s power. An odd vice for holy men sworn to obey the Holy Father and reject all things of this world.”
“Our Lord admonished us to seek!” d’Aumont shouted.
Lamberton met the Auvergne monk’s loud indignation with calm assurance. “Aye, and no doubt you have found.”
James took the bishop’s oblique answer as a barbed reference to rumors of clandestine Templar diggings in the Holy Land, excavations that had revealed certain practices and travels of Our Lord that might prove embarrassing for Rome—or wherever the French pope was resting his head these nights.
Having just demonstrated that he was not some guileless Highland priest, Lamberton drew de Villiers aside and lowered his voice in an attempt at conciliation. “You and I, Gerard, are pilgrims set upon the same quest. I now require your aid. One day you may seek mine.”
Overhearing the prediction, d’Aumont hissed contempt. “A soothsayer in Christian garb! What say you, prophet? Shall I dine on venison or pheasant this night?” He closed on Lamberton with threat. “I will offer you a prophecy, you Druid bag of wind. The Channel will turn to wine before the Temple looks to Scotland for salvation.”
The monks laughed coarsely—until de Villiers glared them to silence.
Lamberton nodded at James to indicate that they had suffered enough insults for one night. The bishop made a move to leave, but the Templar master delayed him with a hand to his arm.
“This Stone that holds such fame in your country. You have seen it?”
Lamberton affected surprise at the grand master’s interest. “Many times, before it was stolen by … what was it you call him? Your benefactor?”
De Villiers weighed his next inquiry carefully. “Do you believe it to be the pillar on which Jacob rested his head while dreaming of the ladder to Heaven?”
Lamberton probed for the real reason why the grand master was so interested in the Stone. “Is that what you have been told?”
Before answering him, de Villiers dismissed his monks from the chamber. D’Aumont hung back, but finally he too was chased by his superior’s glare.
Alone with the two Scots, the grand master retreated to the hearth and ran his finger across the joints of its arch. “In Palestine, I heard Arab prisoners speak of a legendary basalt stone that held the Ark of the Covenant in Solomon’s Temple. They claimed the stone became suffused with miraculous powers from its proximity to the Ark.” With a calculated casualness, he turned to the bishop and inquired, “Of what shade and texture is this Destiny Stone of yours?”
“My memory fails me on that point.”
“No doubt your memory could be revived.”
“I grow more forgetful each day,” Lamberton said in a veiled warning. “My feeble mind may soon fail me completely unless my country finds assistance in its cause for freedom.”
The Templar master was vexed by the bishop's refusal to be more forthcoming. “Perhaps I should go to Westminster and see this Stone for myself.”
Ushering James to his side, Lamberton drew his hood over his head and reached for the door ring. “I’ve no doubt you already have.”
THE NEXT DAY, JAMES FOLLOWED Lamberton across the tourney fields north of Notre Dame, where they came upon a bizarre scene: A knight stood waist-deep in a pit, dug just wide enough to allow him to swivel while a dozen opponents took turns attacking him. After dispensing with the last of his challengers, the half-buried showman threw off his helmet, revealing flowing blonde hair, a trimmed beard, and a narrow face creased with scars. James bit off a mumbled curse of recognition. This French courtier planted in the ground
like a cranebill was none other than the knave in whose arms Isabella had escaped during the dance at the royal palace. Broad-shouldered and impressive for a knight in his early forties, he could have stepped out of a Grail legend. Yet there was a sad wisdom in his soft sapphire eyes that transfused him with an emanation of timelessness.
The knight twirled his sword to taunt his demoralized attackers. “Shall I burrow to my chin and fight you with my teeth? Saints of Christ! This is what passes for the king’s champions? I’ve met blinded Moors with more skill! Come on! I’m twice the age of you sucklings!”
Finding none of his students willing to risk a second foray, the Frenchman spotted the two Scots watching the lesson. He flung his sword at James’s feet and shouted, “I have heard of your brave Wallace, jeune homme! Show these cockerels the purpose of a blade!”
James waited for Lamberton to explain this insanity, but the bishop merely nodded for him to pick up the sword.
“I haven’t all day! Give me a run!”
Disgusted by this charade, James threw the weapon aside.
The knight kept taunting him. “That’s a Scottie for you! They showed the cracks of their derrieres at Falkirk, aussi!”
James lunged for the sword and charged at the slandering Frenchman.
The knight, though restricted to moving his upper torso only, ducked deftly and whipped his mailed forearm into James’s shin, collapsing him. Before James could make sense of what had happened, the knight captured the end of the blade, snagged his collar with its hand guard, and dragged him to his smirking face. “So what they say is véritable. A Scottie always leaps before he thinks.”
Lamberton pulled James to his feet just in time to cause his punch to land short. “Jamie, meet Sir Giles d’Argentin. He’s the only knight to have unhorsed Longshanks in a tournament.”
The grinning Frenchman climbed from his hole and offered his hand.
James, still smarting from the clap to his shin, refused it.
“I meant no insult, monsieur. Fight with your eyes, not your ears. The bishop tells me you hail from fine warrior stock.”