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

by Glen Craney

  Sweenie’s minikin face darkened on hearing Clifford’s name. He told the king and his men, “There’s a ford two miles south along Glen Falloch. It offers the quickest way to reach Loch Lomond.”

  Robert only then noticed the monk lurking in the shadows. “South? That leads me into English hands!”

  “Aye,” the wee monk said. “And Clifford knows it.”

  James, dazed and weak from the loss of blood, lifted his head. “Rob, he’s right. They’ll expect us to cross north of the loch. We should follow the eastern banks and ferry over farther down the water.”

  Robert stared at the monk, trying to fathom how such a freak of nature could possibly be trusted for directions. “Who is this blathering gargoyle?”

  The monk bowed. “Ned Sween is my name, Sire. You can call me Sweenie. Or Wee-kneed. Or Sweenie the—”

  “Just call him Sweenie!” Belle shouted at Robert, exasperated by the monk’s penchant for babbling on incessantly when there was no time to spare. “He has good reason to see you escape from Clifford’s net, my lord. He was once abused cruelly by the man.”

  Drawn by the shouting, the Dewar arrived and thumped his staff to demand an explanation of the commotion. When Sweenie, reluctantly, revealed his desire to go fight the English, the Dewar’s shaggy white brows drooped in sadness. But finally, the old hermit placed a hand on his companion’s head in a half-hearted blessing, and Sweenie told Robert, “I’ll go with you.”

  Robert stood speechless, questioning if God Himself had decided to mock his fledgling kingship by restocking his tattered army with grotesques and mutants. Left with no good alternative, he nodded a bitter assent. Resigned to losing his most valued acolyte, the Dewar prepared to retire to his cell and resume his prayers. Before departing, the old hermit fixed his hard grey eyes on Belle and uttered something in Gaelic that sounded like a warning.

  Shuddering, but not knowing why, Belle asked Sweenie, “What did he just say to me?”

  Sweenie was driven to the revelation by her demanding glare. “He says you must never fail in your faith, for it will be tried.”

  Belle turned and confronted the Dewar, waiting for an explanation of the strange prophecy, but the hermit merely pulled his cowl over his head and walked off into the tunnel.

  While Belle was still trying to make sense of the unsettling exchange, Sweenie perched himself on a stool and drew a map of the Dalry vale on the stones of the wall with a charcoal shard. He traced its route with his finger for the king and his men. “The path across Ben Oss to Falloch is too steep for horses. We’ll have to go around it this way.” He waited until they nodded their understanding of his plan, and then doused the drawing with skillet grease to prevent the English from finding it.

  “Send the women east,” Edward told Robert. “They’ll only slow us.”

  James lifted to his elbows to plead against Edward’s advice. “They must stay with us! Rob, without them, you’d not have the crown!”

  Robert seemed befogged, slowed in his thinking. He glanced at his sisters Mary and Christian, who huddled together in fear with his daughter, Marjorie. After nearly a minute of agonized debate, he pulled Elizabeth into his arms. “Nigel will take you and the lasses to Kildrummy. Atholl is too ill to run with us. He’ll go with you. The castle is strong.”

  James winced, still trying to stand. “No! I’ll take them!”

  Robert burned him with a hurt look accusing betrayal. “I can’t make it to the Isles without you.”

  James finally managed to climb to his feet. Staggering from faintness, he drew Robert aside and whispered with every ounce of strength he could muster, “I can’t leave Belle again.”

  “You swore you’d never leave me.”

  James blinked to stay conscious, his blurring gaze resiling from Belle back to Robert. He knew Robert would not survive if left on his own in the wilds. Coddled during his years in London, Robert had never suffered the deprivations of the barren moors. Torn by love and allegiance, James reached for Belle and searched her eyes, silently asking a release from the promise he had made to her on the night at Methven, that he would never again let Tabhann or anyone else separate her from him.

  Belle tried to be strong, but the beginnings of a demand dissolved into a plaintive cry. “Jamie, please … take me with you.”

  James cupped her face in his hands. “He is our king. You did not risk your life to place the crown on his head only to see him fail, did you?”

  Her voice cracked. “I beg of you.”

  Shouts came from the Dalry valley.

  “At once!” Edward warned. “Or we are all lost!”

  James kissed Belle, his bloodied cheeks wet with her tears. “I will come for you. I promise.”

  “Our vows! I would leave a husband, at least!”

  James looked to Robert, who was pacing anxiously at the door, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “Will you finish our betrothal in the Bishop’s stead?”

  Robert, preoccupied with his troubles, did not hear the request. Before James could ask again, Edward hurried his brother out of the abbey and toward the horses.

  Denied, James braced Belle at her shoulders, locking onto her frightened eyes. “We are married in our hearts. When I get him to safety, I’ll find you. We’ll take the vows then.”

  Before she could answer him, Edward ran back into the chapel and pulled her from James’s grasp. She escaped the Bruce brother’s clench long enough to retreat to her knapsack and retrieve a small, leather-bound volume. Coughing back the emotion, she pressed the book to James’s heart. “I’d planned to give it to you on the anniversary of the day you won the ax.” Fearing they’d both break down completely, she steeled her emotions and ordered him in the firmest voice she could manage: “I wish the book returned, James Douglas.”

  He couldn’t let go of her. “Never forget I love you.”

  Edward dragged her away and drove her from the kirk. Outside, he lifted her onto one of the horses. He sent her galloping off only moments before his brother Nigel came running up the valley with the MacDougalls in hot pursuit. Afforded no time to trade even a word of farewell with his fleeing brothers, Nigel leapt on the last horse and lashed to catch the women rushing north.

  Edward and the men remaining behind prepared to fight a rear-guard action while Robert led James, staggering, from the chapel. With the shouts of a fight ringing out behind them, they hurried into a tunnel that the Culdees had built long ago to assure access to the miraculous waters of St. Fillan’s pool.

  XVIII

  DRIVEN BY THE BAYING OF the MacDougall bloodhounds, Sweenie led Robert’s band of twenty half-starved men in stitched buckskins and scraggly beards down a narrow shepherd’s path that ran along the treacherous face of Ben Oss. The vicious dogs, having picked up their scent, were getting closer, and the waters of Loch Lomond, silver and rippling under a full moon below them, offered their only hope for escaping the turncoat Comyn allies who were on the chase to deliver them up to Longshanks.

  Exhausted, Robert knifed to his knees. “Go on! Leave me!”

  James dragged Robert to his feet and prodded him to keep running. Despite his shoulder wound, he had held up better than Robert during their three-day marathon, having learned years ago how to survive in the wilderness after Clifford had forced his family into destitution. “If you stop, your legs will cramp.”

  Robert groaned and staggered with each forced step. “Damn MacDougall! The Comyns will pay for this!”

  “Aye, see, you’re feeling better already.”

  “And damn you, Douglas! For talking me into this hell on earth!”

  James increased their pace in punishment for that indictment. “You’re too late. We’re both already damned. Even the pope moves faster than you do!”

  The other men took turns assisting the king until they came to a lush glen shaded by a thick grove bordering Loch Lomond.

  Sweenie waddled off ahead to make certain the MacDougalls were not hiding in wait. Minutes later, the little monk
returned, looking shaken. “Not a soul on this end, but …”

  “Out with it!” James demanded.

  “I can see their fires. They’re patrolling the west banks.”

  James kicked at a log in hot anger. The MacDougalls had split up and sent a second party north of the peak to the far side of the loch, expecting their small band to cross the water at its narrowest point.

  Robert glared at Sweenie. “This misshaped brounie has led us into a trap!”

  “Leave off him,” James said. “He had one plan more than you did.”

  Edward Bruce peered off into the darkness, trying to locate the torches of the MacDougall hunting parties. “Lorne will negotiate. We’ll offer him lands for refuge.”

  Robert sank to the ground, defeated. “Longshanks has Lorne caught in his talons. The game is up.”

  James jabbed a stick at Robert’s ribs. “We’ll cross farther south.”

  Robert was too tired to parry the goading thrusts. “A man with a full belly couldn’t swim that length.”

  James studied the loch’s mist-shrouded depths. “There’s still three hours until daylight. Find where the loch is widest and meet me there at dawn.”

  “Widest?” Robert protested. “What in Hell’s name are you intending?”

  James disappeared into the darkness.

  A THICKENING FOG DESCENDED OVER the loch, blotting the morning sun and blanketing the environs in an eerie quiet. Robert and his exhausted entourage had spent the night crouched behind boulders, shoving and elbowing one another to stay awake. James had been gone all night, and Robert estimated by the rising loudness of the baying that MacDougall hounds would be on them within three hours.

  “Douglas tricked us,” Edward Bruce snarled. “He knew he stood a better chance if he—”

  The water along the banks splashed. The Bruce men drew daggers, bracing to fight for their lives.

  Edward was about to lunge at the approaching shadow when a lone man split the fog and pulled up an abandoned fishing bark.

  James captured Edward’s hand and deflected the thrust aimed at his chest. Legs buckling from fatigue, he ordered the Bruce men, “Three at a time. Sweenie’s the lightest, so he’ll row.”

  Incredulous, Edward stepped into the half-rotten boat to test it. “We’d have a better chance of walking across the water.”

  James offered Robert a handful of shriveled brae berries. “Go on with your depraved brother. I no longer can endure the company of two Bruces in the same shire. Your poor mother must have gained her sainthood for putting up with your incessant whining.”

  Famished, Robert savored the scent of the berries, but he gave them to Sweenie. “You’ll need these more than me. I’ll cross last.” He turned to his brother, who was still shaking the boat, unwilling to accept that they were going to attempt to use it. “Eddie, you go first. One of us must survive.”

  James shoved Edward into the leaky currach, along with another man. “Since I discovered this fine galley, I claim the honor of guarding the king. And when the bards tell of this day, I’ll make certain they know it was Edward Bruce who hightailed it first. Now, off with you! Don’t worry if you can’t swim. The hot air from Bruce’s bluster will keep you afloat.”

  As Edward slouched off cursing, James led those staying behind to the protection of the woods above the loch. Calculating that each crossing would take at least a half-hour, he chose not to confide to Robert that it was well nigh impossible for Sweenie to make ten return trips before dropping from exhaustion, let alone accomplish the feat before the dogs found them. He gathered up a bed of leaves and, settling down to catch a moment’s rest, found Robert watching him with an unnerving smile. “You make me more than a little skittish looking at me that way? Has it been that long since you’ve been cozy with Liz?”

  Robert kicked at him. “I would have wagered what little remains of my kingdom that you weren’t coming back.”

  “Damned if I didn’t consider it. But then I’d have missed watching you be drawn and quartered.” James rolled to his side and felt a hard object against his ribs. He reached into his vest and pulled out a small book.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Belle gave it to me at Glen Dochart.”

  Robert crawled nearer to inspect the book. “At least they’ll say you died a literary man. What is it?”

  James opened the clasp on the book and held the first page toward the dawn light breaking through the trees. “The Chanson of Fierabras.”

  “One of my favorites. Your lassie has fine taste, except in men.”

  James carefully dried the pages in the crisp morning air. “You’ve read this? Aye, you would have, given your fine English schooling and all.”

  Robert rested the back of his head on his hands and gazed at the thin band of orange rising over the loch. “My mother would recite Fierabras to me when I pestered her for tales about the crusades. It is the story of Charlemagne and his knights, Roland and Oliver. An adventurous pair, those two were. And bumbling. They stumbled into a hundred battles with the Moors.”

  “If they were so loutish, how’d they always manage to escape?”

  “Mostly by jesting their way through trouble,” Robert said. “The infidels thought they were crazed.”

  James held up the first page and read Belle’s inscription:

  To my beloved Oliver,

  May you and your Roland find the warmth of merry fellowship on your Quest.

  Your constant Floripas.

  “Who is Floripas?”

  Robert tried to snatch the book from him. “Are you reading ahead? She was the ravishing sister of Fierabras.”

  “And Fierabras? He was the son of the Moorish king?”

  “Aye, and dark-skinned.” Robert winked to drive home the barbed comparison. “He was as ugly as Floripas was fair. Fierabras led a fleet to Rome to steal the true Cross. Oliver fights a duel with him to regain the relic, but …” He delayed for effect. “Something dire transpires.”

  James thumbed through the book. “What happens to Floripas?”

  Robert suddenly understood why Belle had chosen this book as a gift to James. “Floripas leaves her home in Syria to save her brother in France. She falls in love with the enemy of her people.”

  “She abandoned her family?”

  “And her God,” Robert said. “Floripas converts to Christianity. When she convinces her brother to spare Oliver from execution, Roland offers her a reward. She asks him to require her Christian knight to marry her.” His voice trailed off as he became lost in his thoughts about Elizabeth.

  “Are you going to tell me what happens, or not?”

  Robert marked a page with a pine needle. “Savor it in small bites, Jamie. We’ll have many a night for it, I fear. Here’s a taste to wet your whistle.”

  James read aloud the passage that Robert had pointed out:

  “‘Sir’ said Floripas. ‘This man gives me.’

  ‘By my head,’ said Roland, ‘so shall it be.

  Come forward, sir, and this lady take ye.’

  ‘Sir,’ replied the knight. ‘May God punish me if any but

  Charlemagne give her to me.’

  When Floripas heard, to rage was she stung.

  ‘By Mohamet,’ she swore. ‘You shall all be hung!’

  ‘Sir,’ said Roland to his fellow knight, ‘Do what we desire.’

  Sir,’ answered the knight, ‘just as you require.’”

  They both laughed so loudly at the inept attempt by Floripas’s lover to avoid the chains of marriage that the other men erupted from their slumber with daggers drawn. They discovered the twosome wrestling over the book in a contest to read the next verse. Robert nearly had it in his grasp when a horn sounded through the fog to signal that Sweenie had returned.

  James waved another two men down the embankment toward the currach. Finding them delaying to hear more of the chanson, he threw a rock to chase them. “We’ll tell you how it ends in the unlikely event you don’t drown.”
He tossed the book at Robert and told him to read more. “Start from the beginning. And leave off with that insufferable London accent of yours.”

  SWEENIE SLUMPED OVER THE OARS as he split the mists and floated to the banks. Miraculously, after just three hours, the little monk had ferried all the men except James and Robert to safety.

  James pulled the splintering currach to the shore and whispered, “Wee-kneed, you’ve earned your perch in Heaven this day.”

  Robert stepped in, but the bark threatened to swamp, so James swam alongside them to lighten its weight. Keeping silent, Robert and Sweenie rowed into the protection of the fog just as the MacDougalls and their bloodhounds reached the shore.

  The icy waters soon drove all feeling from James’s limbs. Robert captured his arm and held him tightly, requiring Sweenie to double his efforts on the oars. After several minutes, James felt Robert’s hand throb and begin to cramp. James tried to hold on, but too fatigued to stay awake, he slipped from Robert’s grasp and slid off into the loch.

  I wish the book returned, James Douglas.

  Belle’s voice jolted him back to consciousness, and he felt himself dropping to the bottom. Swallowing water, he fought to the surface and swam through the fog to find the side of the currach. To stay awake, he counted aloud the number of times the oars split the water.

  Four hundred and eighty-four strokes later, the boat lurched against land. Robert leapt into the waist-deep water and pulled James to his feet. They heard a distant voice shouting through the fog.

  “I’ll search over there.”

  James dropped to his knees on the shore, biting off a curse. The MacDougalls had posted sentries on both sides of the loch. Edward and the others had likely been captured, but crossing back would only land them in the hands of the other search party. They would have to fight their way out, or die trying. He drew his dagger and signaled for Robert to follow him.

  The searching voice called out again. “Bruce!”

  James coiled, preparing to charge at the man, but Sweenie held him back.

  The little monk motioned for Robert and him to stay crouched. Then, he pulled his soaked hood over his head and walked into the mists chanting, “Our Father, who art in heaven, give us up his name!”