by Glen Craney
Robert spun the plump cleric to face James and Belle. “It’s high time you earned your keep, Bishop.”
James stifled a grin, knowing that Lamberton was expecting to hear another of the endless disputes that he was always being required to arbitrate in this army. Being the most learned man in Scotland, the cleric was constantly called upon to resolve wagers ranging from the length of Edward Plantagenet’s femur to the theological explanation of why salmon swam upstream.
“Well?” the bishop demanded, growing impatient.
“I say you can perform miracles,” James said. “But this lady here doubts my faith in you.”
Lamberton waved off the challenge. “This lass is the miracle worker, not me. She shape-shifted our London dandy here into a king. Nothing I could conjure would match that feat. Pay her what you owe her and leave me to return to my dreams.”
“Turn back time,” James begged his old mentor. “Make us man and wife, and your sainthood will be assured.”
The bishop studied Belle. “This is your wish, my lady?”
She cast her eyes down in shame. How many nights had she cried herself to sleep pining to be Jamie’s wife? Yet she knew Tabhann would never stand for it. If she went through with this ceremony, the Comyns would exact a fearsome revenge. How could she be so selfish? Did Jamie truly expect her to jeopardize Robert’s kingship by igniting another clan war, all for her love for him? She reluctantly reminded the bishop, “I am bound by prior vows.”
Lamberton pressed a forefinger to his lips, as he always did when in deep thought. He watched the oaks and birches swaying in the breeze near the stream, remaining in this pensive stance for so long that the men began to wonder if he had fallen into a mystical rapture. Finally, he announced, “There is an ancient law of our land, one that the Romish monks have long sought to ban from our memories. A man and woman cannot be made one unless their oaths are uttered under an oak tree of at least a hundred rings.”
James brightened. “A fine law that is.”
The bishop scowled at the interruption. Regaining silence, he continued with his brief sermon, “If the tree blossoms the next spring, the hearts of the betrothed are confirmed true.” He took Belle by the hand. “My lady, did you by chance marry Tabhann Comyn under an oak tree?”
“No, but—”
“Well then, in my bishopric, you remain a free woman. Though I would counsel you to think twice before yoking yourself to this untamed colt. Plenty of better choices abound. Randolph there, and even Frasier, wrinkled as he is.”
The men elbowed James aside to offer their proposals to Belle.
Blushing at the attention, she pulled James closer. “Your concern is well taken, Bishop. But I’m told that God gives more to those who need it.” She smiled lovingly at James and added, “With all his faults, and they be many, this is the man with whom I’ve prayed to share my life.”
Robert brought Elizabeth into his embrace. “Come to think of it, my love, we’d best renew our vows under the oak, too.”
Amid the cheers, the bishop led the wedding procession into the grove near the stream. Choosing what he deemed to be the oldest of the oaks, he positioned the two couples under its groaning branches and intertwined their arms in the ancient symbol of infinity. “Do you, Isabelle MacDuff, promise to be a loving and loyal wife, for as long as you and your husband both shall live?”
“I do.”
“And do you, James of Douglas, son of Wil the Hardi, promise to protect and honor this woman as your wedded wife, until death—”
Before the bishop could finish the vows, old Scrygemour lunged forward.
James smiled at the half-deaf standard bearer’s premature attempt to offer his congratulations. He gently braced the aged veteran by the shoulders to escort him back to the others so that he could finally, after all of these years, say the words that he had longed to speak.
Scrygemour descended slowly to his knees, and fell forward—with an arrow in his back.
The night sky whistled with missiles.
The Scots stood motionless, unable to comprehend what was happening.
James heard another volley unleashed from somewhere above them. He lunged at Belle and wrapped her in his arms, taking the brunt of a glancing arrow. He shouted at Robert, “Get down!”
Several men fell around him, groaning and impaled.
“The Bruce!” cried English voices in the darkness. “Take the Bruce!”
The ambushed Scots reached for the daggers at their belts, forgetting that they had failed to bring their weapons.
An English soldier sprang from trees and ran for Robert, who was bent over the lifeless Scrygemour, trying to extract the arrow.
James tripped the attacker, stole his sword, and gutted him. He led Belle in a blind retreat toward the stream. Halfway to the banks, he looked back and realized that he had lost Robert. “To Douglas!” he screamed, hoping that Robert would hear him above the din of the desperate fighting. “Scots to Douglas!”
Robert’s voice cried out through the black night. “Jamie!”
“Rob, leave them!”
“My standard!”
The screams and moans of Scots falling victim to the English archers on the wooded ridges drowned out James’s shouts to muster a defensive line. The long shadow of a man moved a few paces ahead, and James placed Belle behind him. Raising his blade, he braced to confront the attacker.
Robert, dazed, came staggering toward them in the moon’s hazy light. “Pembroke deceived me!”
James shoved Robert off with Belle toward the water. Then, he stalked back into the darkness. The fires in the camp had been doused, and the night rang loud with the sounds of desperate combats. He heard hooves coming fast on him. Crouching behind a tree, he pounced on the rider and knocked him from the saddle.
“Bruce!” the unhorsed knight shouted. “Come fight like a man!”
Recognizing that voice, James lunged and drove Clifford against a tree. “When have you ever fought like a man?”
“Jamie!” a woman shouted from somewhere nearby.
He froze—that was Belle’s voice coming back toward him. He prayed for just a few more seconds as he pressed his forearm against Clifford’s windpipe.
“Jamie!” Belle cried again, this time with raw desperation.
The English soldiers were closing in around him. Denied hearing Clifford rasp his last breath, James kicked the officer coughing to his knees. He corralled his neighing horse, mounted, and rode toward the high rocks where the Bruce brothers were fighting a rear-guard action while the women swam for the far bank. He galloped into the advancing English and cleaved the lead riders from their mounts. The ambushers called a retreat to regroup, yelling warnings that the Scots had mustered reinforcements. Afforded a moment’s reprieve from the fighting, he dismounted with a leap and lifted Belle to the saddle that he had just vacated. “Away! At once!”
Robert climbed onto another horse and dragged Elizabeth up with him.
“I won’t go without you!” Belle cried at James.
James slapped the flanks of both horses and sent them galloping into the thickets. “Head west! I’ll find you!”
XVII
THE DESCENT OF A FORKED shadow over Belle’s hooded eyes startled her from a disturbed slumber. Lifting to her elbows, she peered up into the dim light of early morning and saw two fangs of a snake poised to strike at her nose. She shrieked and slapped at the slithering creature.
Her hand hit something hard.
The menacing reptile was in fact an exquisite brass belt buckle sculpted into the head of a serpent, worn at the waist by a spectral hermit who looked as old as the stone walls that surrounded her. The encrusted tendrils of the cleric’s long white beard scraped against her cheeks as he leaned down to examine her more closely. Perturbed by what he observed, he tapped his gnarled staff near her ear and then grumbled an order in Gaelic to a dwarfish, pigeon-breasted monk who stood at his side.
Disoriented, Belle rubbed the sleep fr
om her lids. Wondering if might still be dreaming, she ran her hand across a crude baptismal cauldron blackened by centuries of tallow smoke. Finding it all too real, she crawled to a cruciform slit to glance outside. In the near vale, painted in a hundred shades of funereal purple, lay the most desolate moorlands in all Scotland.
That bleak horizon revived her memory.
During their desperate retreat from Methven, Robert and James had left her and the Bruce women here at Glen Dochart Abbey, a Culdee monastery founded near the cave where St. Fillan had secluded himself for twenty years. Hidden in a rock-strewn valley near Loch Tay and bordered by the snow-capped peaks of Ben More and Ben Lui, the shrine was nothing like the impressive descriptions that she had heard of it as a child. All that remained of the once-thriving monastic community was this crumbling chapel and some wattle huts, and even by primitive Highland standards, the place resembled more a cave than an abbey. The Cistercian missionaries who had crossed the Channel to bring Scotia under Rome’s dominion had not bothered to raze the kirk, confident that the few remaining Culdee hermits could not survive another harsh winter here without their stores of salted meat and kegs of ale.
With her head throbbing from the cloying incense, she looked over her shoulder and, still on her knees, found the two mismatched recluses staring at her as if never having laid eyes on a woman before. “Who are you?”
The shorter monk made the introductions. “This is the venerable Dewar of Inchanffray. And I am his novice.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
The Dewar tapped his staff again in his mysterious code, apparently demanding a translation from his stumpish companion, who had a pug nose and a balding head crisscrossed with a few strands of straw hair. The novice babbled something in Gaelic to his superior. Then, after they finished what sounded like an argument, the novice turned back to her and answered her lingering question. “Since yesterday.”
“Where are the others?”
The dwarfish novice came closer, revealing as he opened his rathole mouth that he had lost all his teeth except four molars. “Your king has departed with Lord Douglas.”
“James Douglas is not a lord,” she corrected him.
The novice relayed her protest, and reported his superior’s animated reply. “My abbot says the man who calls himself Douglas is destined to become a lord, and that the Almighty deems the past and future to be of one unrent weave in time.” He paused before imparting the rest of the translation, “He also said you should be in a nunnery practicing the art of silence.”
Belle shot to her feet. “You may tell this two-legged relic that not only does he stink—” She was stopped short by the dwarf’s impudent grin.
Accosted by the Dewar’s quizzical glare, the younger monk bowed to cover his muttered aside to her, “I contrived that last part. My abbot comprehends not a word of the Scot English. It is my only amusement here.”
Baffled by the prank, Belle needed no translation to see that the old Dewar disapproved of a female lodging in his sanctuary. When the crusty hermit persisted in glowering at her as if she were Satan’s handmaiden, she resolved to remind him that Pict priestesses had ruled this land long before St. Fillan was even a twinkle in his mother’s eye. But before she could do so, the abbot’s diminutive minion captured her hand and nearly dragged her through a narrow tunnel that opened to an adjacent croft hut that had a pot of oat gruel simmering over a peat fire.
The wee monk shut the door. Then, he filled the ladle with the steaming curdle and offered it to her.
She sniffed its contents. “What’s in this?”
“Rabbit marrow. And stock that’s better left to the mysteries of Our Lord.”
Despite its unappealing ingredients, she gratefully accepted the offering, having not eaten in two days. The gruel had a pungent nip that tasted of soured goat’s milk flavored with turnips. In her state of hunger, spiced almond soup could not have been more satisfying.
While she lapped up the gruel, the little monk squinted through the greeting slot to insure that the Dewar was not lurking just beyond the door. “The other lassies are asleep in the Abbot’s quarters. Your lord Douglas left before dawn to search for survivors.”
Belle huffed, tired of men assuming that she submitted to be ruled by other men of inferior station. “How many times must I tell you? Jamie Douglas is not a lord! And he certainly is not my lord.”
The monk shrugged, granting her protest little credence.
“I am a countess, I would have you know! And thanks to the damnable English, I am not even married to him … yet.” Her voice trailed off in despair, as if not quite believing that fate would ever allow it to happen. With an impotent wave, she gave up the effort to educate the rube. “Do you have a name?”
Amused by her outburst, the monk climbed atop the table and sat cross-legged in front of her while she ate. “Ned Sween. The others here call me Sweenie. Sweenie the Wee-kneed. You may call me Sweenie. Or Wee-kneed.”
Distracted by the odd way that his head bobbed on his slender neck, she wondered if the tic was caused by the disproportionate weight of his skull.
The monk mistook her stare for skepticism about his self-styled pedigree. “Christ wished a nickname. Why shouldn’t I have one?”
“Christ did not wish a nickname!”
The monk raised a finger in the air to repulse her objection. “Scripture says He walked around pestering the disciples to reveal what other people were calling him.”
She made the sign of the Cross to blunt the anger of the saints. “The old man permits you to blaspheme like that?”
The monk’s pebble-shaped eyes sparked with mischief. “So long as it’s not in the Gael tongue.”
Now even more dumbfounded, Belle looked around at the spare cell overgrown with lichens and stank of mildew. The only concession this queer monk had made to the biblical command of cleanliness was a pole broom being used by wolf spiders for their webs. The bed, a crude construction of shaved poles and heather straw, resembled more a lark’s nest than a clerical abode. Two indentations had been worn into the floor stones from centuries of previous inhabitants kneeling in prayer, and above the cot hung not the traditional Roman crucifix but the cross of St. Bride with its four flanges at right angles in a rotary pattern. She had seen such pagan crosses when traveling the north as a young girl, and remembered being struck by how their traverses resembled fiery tails of the sun. “Does the Dewar know you follow the old ways?”
“He has never thought to inquire.”
“Why did you come to live here if you don’t follow Christian rules?”
The tonsured dwarf stole her bowl with his stubby, claw-like fingers and waddled over to the pot to ladle another helping of gruel for her. “I was left as a lad on the moors to die. The Dewar found me on one of his sojourns into the wilds to imitate the forty days of Christ’s trials.”
“Your clan abandoned you?”
Sweenie tested the simmering gruel and flavored it with another dash of thyme. “An English demon named Clifford hung my mother from the highest tree in Ayrshire. In honor of my deformity, he decided I merited a slower death.” He curled his lower lip to reveal a scar.
“My Lord.”
“He nailed a rag to my mouth scribed with a warning that the same ill use would be gien to any who resisted the invaders.”
“That man Clifford is Hell’s doorman!”
Sweenie shrugged off the memories of his ordeal. “God’s ways are inscrutable. The Dewar required a scribe to correspond with foreigners. I had a talent for words, so he took me in and sent me to Iona to learn the Anglian tongue.”
She took another sip and coughed painfully from the gruel’s burn in her chest. The chill she contracted during the windy ride from Methven had now settled deep into her lungs.
Seeing her wheeze in discomfort, the monk placed his hand over her throat and closed his eyes. After nearly a minute of mumbling incantations, he scampered from the cell and returned with a smooth black st
one, about the size of three fists. “Fillan’s healing rock. Daren’t tell the Dewar that I used it on you. He’s of the opinion that lasses steal its power.”
She caressed the strange lozenges and spirals that had been engraved into the stone. She felt a strange tingling, and her breath began to deepen and ease. A pressure grew between her eyes, and an inward vision suddenly flashed across her mind’s eye: Jamie was on his knees, covered with blood and crawling toward her. She struggled to come to him, but he kept moving away.
She shrieked and dropped it—this was no Christian relic, but an ancient keek-stane, a scrying talisman used by the ancients for divination. She rushed from the cell. Sweenie took a flying leap from the table and waddled after her. Bursting into the Dewar’s quarters, where Elizabeth and the other women were asleep on mats, she shook the queen awake. “Something awful has happened!”
Elizabeth arose with a start. “Are you ill?”
Through the window, Belle heard desperate shouts ring out from the valley. Clutching her cloak around her, she ran out the ice-draped door of the abbey and met Robert and Edward Bruce dragging James up the frozen slope. The king and his brother carried James unconscious into the kirk. They ripped open his shirt to reveal a ragged tear on James’s shoulder.
Hearing Belle’s cries, James forced open his eyes. “A flesh wound is all.”
Robert heaved from the run. “Lorne and the MacDougalls have taken up with the Comyns. Nigel is trying to hold them off near the river.”
Belle tore a swath from her sleeve and wrapped it around the gash, which looked more serious than James had let on. “Where is the rest of our army?”
Robert turned aside, unwilling to let her see the shame in his eyes. “Fraser and Randolph have been taken prisoner. There has been no word from the Bishop. I’ve no more than thirty men left. Lorne will be on us within the hour. Pembroke and Clifford patrol the south. If we fail to make the Isles before they gain our flank …” He could not finish the report.