The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas

by Glen Craney

  “Nonsense!” Longshanks climbed to his viewing seat on the pavilion and slapped his hands to commence the tournament. “Don’t think I haven’t heard the talk, Rob. Some are trumpeting you as the most skilled knight west of Constantinople—behind d’Argentin and me, of course. If not for this infernal gout, I’d be out there myself. Now, to the task, lad! Give us a show.”

  Gloucester drew his cousin aside. “You needn’t do this. Claim injury.”

  But Robert knew that refusal was not an option. He slammed his visor and joined the English combatants on the north end, fixing a withering glare on James in the distance for having fomented this trouble for him.

  While the Comyns prepared their ponies with blinders, James chose a set of rusted armour from the pitiful array of choices offered by the quartermaster.

  Tabhann, laughing, forced a lance into James’s hands. “When this is finished, Douglas, why don’t you swim back to France and take up again with those Parisian sodomites.”

  James shoved the offered weapon aside and found one to his own liking. “So you’ll be free to make treasonous deals with Longshanks?”

  Red restrained Tabhann from throwing a fist. “It’s the English we’re fighting this hour. We’ll take care of him later.”

  James put one foot in the stirrup. “I want Clifford.”

  Red smirked. “We’ve decided you’ll take the Bruce.”

  Mounting to wait his turn, James looked to Campbell for support in his protest, but the Comyns outranked the Bruce kinsman, and Campbell could only shrug, powerless to overrule the decision.

  Red grinned at his own cleverness as he took the first position in the lists to face off against the Templar Sinclair. Both riders circled their skittish mounts, and when the horn blasted, Red charged through the low mist screaming Gaelic curses. He collided with the Templar in a din of skidding violence and was catapulted to the ground. The Comyn men rushed over the rails to examine Red. Relieved to find him only dazed, they dragged him from the muck. The victorious Sinclair returned to his post, accepting with indifference both the English accolades and the Scot hoots.

  On the pavilion, Longshanks chortled while warming his hands over a cauldron of burning coals. He noticed that Princess Isabella did not share his enthusiasm for the initial English victory. “I do hope you’ll write of that result in your letters to your vapid father. Be certain to describe every detail. Perhaps he will be less inclined to foment alliances with these Scots behind my back.”

  The princess looked toward the far end of the pavilion, where her future husband was cavorting with Gaveston in a game of chess. Trained in the French art of the subtle riposte, she asked the king, “Does your son not partake of the joust?” When that question chased the monarch’s biting humor just as she intended, she answered her own question with mock innocence. “No, I am learning that he prefers more delicate pursuits.”

  Distempered by that observation, Longshanks demanded more warmed ale and turned back to the lists in time to see Neil Campbell draw the assignment against Gloucester. Gaining a step on the horn, Campbell charged and hugged his steed’s neck to avoid offering an easy target. A few paces from impact, Campbell leaned toward the right and thrust his lance across his body to catch Gloucester by surprise. Both lances shattered and rained black shards across the slate sky. Gloucester wavered, finally slipping from the saddle. Bleeding from a shoulder gash but still horsed, Campbell returned unsteadily to a greeting of thunderous Scot cheers.

  On the pavilion, Isabella leaned over to receive the king’s assessment of that loss, but he pointedly ignored her.

  At the English end in the lists, Clifford snorted with satisfaction at seeing Gloucester thrown. Yet the officer’s mood soured when Cam Comyn drove d’Aumont from his destrier with an unorthodox smote, slamming the Templar sideways with the lance rather than using its tip.

  D’Aumont rushed limping on foot to the pavilion to cry foul, but Longshanks was so confident in the superiority of his two remaining knights that he waved off the protest; this loser was a Frenchman and a Templar, after all, and his defeat had been a rousing crowd-pleaser with both sides.

  Before mounting for the fourth run, Clifford slammed his mailed forearm into Robert’s chest, a ritual designed to prepare one’s comrade for the coming jolt. The blow, more forceful than necessary, caught Robert by surprise and caused him to stumble. Clifford laughed as Robert lurched to recover his balance under his heavy hauberk. “Gloucester was meant for the monastery,” he said as he rode to the launch position. “Gird up, Bruce. We need to teach these Highland root grubbers a lesson before they gain the notion that they can stand on a field with us. I dealt with the half-wit father of that Douglas polecat. He’ll come at you wild and uneven.”

  At the Scot end of the lists, Tabhann waited for the horn, nervously rubbing the length of his lance handle. At last, the blast shook the skies. Wrapped in black and silver, Clifford’s charger came snorting toward the climax with such pounding fury that it resembled a fire-breathing monster. Near the collision, Clifford deftly shifted across his pommel to avoid Tabhann’s lance. Tabhann took the impact in his gut and landed so violently that he tumbled across the ground like a wind-driven pinecone. The exuberant English peasants pelted Tabhann with rotten apples.

  Delighted by Clifford’s triumph, Longshanks needled Isabella, “You must concede that in the art of theatrics, we English do excel you French. Look at the dénouement that I have arranged for your delight.”

  As James and Robert prepared for the last encounter of the day, which would determine the contest, the princess scanned the throngs pressed against the rails and saw Belle wrapped in a tattered cloak, shivering and white with fear. “My lord, your chivalry exceeds your love of play-acting, I trust?”

  Longshanks was annoyed at being distracted from the preparations for the last run of the day. “What say you?”

  Isabella pointed to the crowd. “I fear that poor lady down there is nearly frozen from the wind. May we invite her to the protection of our canopy?”

  Longshanks squinted at the shivering woman. “Is she not a Scot?”

  “She is, my lord.”

  “Then my advice to you, little one, is to leave the governance of my realm to me and attend to making yourself desirable to my son.”

  “Sire, I was only—”

  “And remind me to have that side door in your bedchamber greased. I’m told it has an annoying creak.”

  Informed that the king knew of her lurking in the anteroom, Isabella tried to dissemble her alarm. Had he also become aware of her other covert activities, such as sending coded messages to Paris about troop movements and gathering surveillance about his health from the court physicians? She looked down at the list rails and saw that the spectators had become so desperate to witness this last meet that their surge had caused the plankings to give way. The guards had to drive them back across the boundaries with pike thrusts.

  At the far end, James waited for Robert to make the first move.

  Robert was desperate to avoid the confrontation, but he knew delay would only sharpen Longshanks’s doubts about his loyalty. With a resigned heave of disgust, he took to the stirrups and accepted his lance.

  As James lowered his helmet and came to the position, Belle fell to her knees, praying that neither man would be injured.

  The horn sounded, and Robert exploded in fast start. His ponderous stallion had been foiled to match its master both in breadth of stature and explosive temper.

  James spurred his outsized pony toward the confrontation. Down the stretch, Robert lowered his lance, steadying its point. Nearing the collision, James reined to a dangerous halt—and threw his lance to the ground.

  Robert reined up, lurching sideways in a violent halting maneuver that threatened to fracture his stallion’s front legs. He finally regained control of the testy horse and circled James in an attempt to understand what had just happened. “In God’s name! Up with you!”

  James refused to move.
“I’ll not break lances on the helm of another Scot for the amusement of Englishmen.”

  Robert glanced at the pavilion and saw Longshanks pacing in agitation. He removed his helmet and muttered through set teeth, “Pick it up, damn you! We’ll be the laughing stock of all England.”

  “I don’t see Longshanks laughing.”

  Before Robert could stop him, James rode to the pavilion and sat stoically before the English king, scanning the cold faces of his countrymen who had crowded up on both sides of the lists below the raised platform. The Scots at the rails stood silent, waiting to hear an explanation for his refusal to take on the Bruce. He glared at them, disgusted at their inconstancy. How many of them had come to his father’s aid at Berwick? Robert had now shown his true colors as well, accepting the draft onto the English team rather than standing up for his mother’s ancient Celt lineage. He stole a bitter glance at Belle, who knelt shivering aside Tabhann, tending to his gut wound. She looked up at him with pleading eyes, but he knew the truth. She had also rejected him to further the interests of her clan in the hope of becoming queen. Denied a decision on the tournament, even his fellow Scots began pelting him with debris.

  Traitors, all of them. To the man … and woman.

  Longshanks paced in front of his viewing chair, furious that his scheme to force Robert’s hand and turn him against his fellow Scots had been thwarted. He shouted at James, “You pimple-assed puke! I would have returned your father’s castle had you won the day.”

  James knew better. He fixed his glare on Princess Isabella as he answered the king, “Then you would have merely given me what I already own.” He turned and lashed his pony across the field.

  Longshanks restrained Clifford from making the arrest.

  The officer could only look on in disbelief as James, for the second time in as many days, was allowed to depart Berwick with impunity.

  James galloped through the lists, and this time it was Robert who was forced to give way.

  XII

  A ROAR CLAMORING UP FROM the banks of the Thames rattled the stained-glass windows of Westminster Hall, and the lords of the English Parliament, fearful that another bread riot had broken out in the city, adjourned their plenary session to take up their arms in the cloakroom. Bishop Lamberton, swept up in the rush from his diplomatic station in the rear benches, elbowed his way to the doors. His heart sank at what he saw.

  A London mob was parading William Wallace, half-naked on a nag, down the Strand. Crowned with a laurel wreath to mock his injudicious boast at Stirling Bridge that he would one day wear the English crown, the once-indefatigable Scot warrior had aged terribly during his seven years on the run. His massive frame was now gaunt and his long hair had thinned to a pitiful mane.

  The bishop fought a path through the jeering throngs. “Wallace!”

  Heartened to hear a brogue, Wallace turned and found the only friendly face in the rabble.

  “Who betrayed you, Wil?”

  Wallace hung his head, ashamed at having let down the bishop in his command of their insurrection forces. He growled the revelation hoarsely, his throat strafed from thirst. “Mentheith!

  Paling with rage, Lamberton now counted it a blessing that he had left young Douglas in Scotland, sparing him this shameful spectacle. Driven back by a volley of hurled rocks, he cursed the treachery of Sir John de Mentheith, the keeper of Dumbarton Castle and one of Red Comyn’s vassals. The bishop slipped behind the barricades and hurried alone through a back alley toward Westminster Hall. Reaching its doors again, he demanded reentry by invoking the ecclesiastical authority of his onyx crucifix.

  Inside the chaotic courtroom, Peter Mallorie, the king’s chief justiciar, sat perched on the bench surrounded by jurists chosen from the usual slate of petty barons whose allegiance had been purchased by the Plantagenets. Shackled and half-starved from the forced ride south, Wallace was dragged to the docks and manacled with chains like a caged beast.

  Mallorie could barely be heard above the tumult. “You, William Wallace of Renfrew, are charged with high treason!”

  Roughly handled by the bloodthirsty rabble, Lamberton surged against the bar and shouted at the justices arrayed above him, “The accused must be permitted an advocate!”

  Mallorie ignored the point of order and hurriedly read out the indictment. “A runaway from righteousness! A robber! A committer of sacrilege! An arsonist and a murderer more cruel than Herod and more debauched than Nero!”

  Wallace heaved with each difficult breath. “The victim robs the robber?”

  Mallorie pointed at him in threat. “The prisoner shall be silenced!”

  “My woman!” Wallace fought the restraints. “Ravished and murdered!

  A few scattered protests were drowned out by rehearsed calls for the death sentence yammered by a gang of dockworkers and tavern thugs paid by the king’s henchmen to make certain the jurists did not lose resolve. Lamberton saw that these judicial shills were determined to hold a sham trial without calling witnesses. While in London these past months attempting to negotiate a truce, he had told all who would listen that the High Sheriff of Lanark, William de Heselrig, had murdered Wallace’s wife, and only then had Wallace retaliated by killing the English officer. More than a few Londoners were sympathetic to the grievance. Wallace had, after all, harassed mostly Northumbrians, deemed by Londoners to be only a hair less savage than Scots. Moreover, Wallace’s arrest set a troublesome precedent; duly elected as a Guardian of Scotland, he was entitled to the protection of an ecclesiastic law that banned the execution of heads of state without arbitration by the Holy Father.

  Wallace denied the charge. “I swore no homage to Edward Plantagenet!”

  Lamberton shook his head to warn him that such claims, though justifiable, would only inflame sentiment for his execution. He knew that all now rested on Wallace’s standing as a former governor of Scotland.

  Regaining a semblance of order, Mallorie shouted from the bench, “At Stirling, you did slay Hugh Cressingham and six hundred troops by stealth, seducing them into your snares like criminals in the night! At Dunbar, also, and at Falkirk, murder was committed!”

  His infamous temper sparked, Wallace roared at his accuser. “Does your King commit a crime when he takes the field to fight the French? If I am charged with waging war for my country’s freedom, then I stand guilty as accused!”

  “He confesses!” one of the bench barons shouted.

  Wallace rattled his chains at the bribed justiciar. “Aye, I have slain Englishmen! And I have stormed castles unjustly claimed by your King! If I have done injury to the houses of religion, I repent. But Edward of England has committed the same acts upon ours!”

  Mallorie sped his notary to ink the quill. “The accused affirms his guilt!”

  Lamberton shouted over the hooting. “Of rightful conflict only! He must be dealt with as a prisoner of war!” Ignored by the bench, he pleaded with Wallace, “Demand to be represented by a Guardian! That will gain delay!”

  But Wallace merely slumped in defeat. Delivered up as a scapegoat by his own countrymen, he had no more fight left in him. He shook his head at Lamberton. “Save yourself, Bishop. Tell the lads I did my best.”

  Lamberton, helpless to thwart the inevitable outcome, stared incredulously at his old friend as the swarming scum shoved him to the rear.

  On the bench, Mallorie stood to be heard. “The prisoner shall be dragged to Smithfield and hanged until unconsciousness, cut down and revived, castrated, disemboweled, his entrails burnt before his eyes, quartered and decapitated. His head shall be displayed on Tower Bridge and his limbs exposed to public view. What remains of his corpse shall be mutilated and burnt.”

  When the crowd hushed to hear the prisoner’s reaction, Wallace straightened and spoke in an unwavering voice. “My suffering will last but minutes. England’s torment will endure until the last Scot draws breath.”

  Lamberton vowed to remain with his old comrade to the end. As a churchman, he knew that the torm
ent of such a brutal execution was designed to be both physical and spiritual. Holy Church held that no mortal could gain Heaven unless buried in blessed ground with body intact, a doctrine promulgated to justify the superstition that all flesh would arise on Judgment Day. Those dissolute cardinals in the Curia could not fathom angels traipsing all over the world to gather up missing arms and severed heads, so they had embraced the inane dogma that the mutilated would be denied the Resurrection.

  Damn their prideful souls!

  That afternoon, as a mule dragged Wallace the five miles to Smithfield, Lamberton walked behind the grisly procession and petitioned a miracle for Scotland, whose survival now seemed more doubtful than ever. He also begged forgiveness for having so callously dismissed Wallace to young Douglas after the Falkirk defeat. Unlike the Bruces and Comyns, Wallace had cared not for lands or titles. His lone cause had been Scotland’s honor.

  When, five hours later, the executioner raised his ax for the last time, a blood-covered Wallace turned to Lamberton and screamed, “Scotland free!”

  His head bounded from the gallows with his eyes willed open in defiance.

  He had fought the whoresons to the very end.

  At that moment, Lamberton was gifted with his miracle. He now understood what he had required to win this war with England: Not treaties with the French, or armaments, not even a new king. No, on this day Longshanks had unwittingly delivered up the most potent weapon for Scotland’s arsenal.

  A martyr.

  EDWARD CAERNERVON STEPPED WARILY INTO the royal bedchamber at York and covered his mouth to stifle the acrid stench of flesh rot. Tar pitch had been lathered across the walls to capture the invisible humors, and on the bedside table sat a silver bowl with bloodletting instruments.