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

by Glen Craney

  Then, on the eighth day of this torturous vigil, the mud-caked Scots were awakened by shouts. Returning from a scouting sortie, McKie and McClurg dragged up a captured English squire. St. Finian carrying sheaves of heavenly manna could not have offered a more welcome sight.

  James pulled the dazed prisoner to his feet and greeted him with a clamping grip to the nape of his neck. “We thought you and your friends had all high-tailed it back to London. Where is your army?”

  The squire buckled on seeing the dark face of his interrogator. He managed a tremulous reply through his constricted throat: “I don’t know.”

  James honed his dagger on a rock. “I am not a patient man by nature. Today you have the misfortune of encountering me wet and hungry.”

  The squire collapsed to his knees, certain he was about to receive the same treatment meted out to the Welsh archers, or worse. “I left it a week ago. The king was as lost as I am now. He has offered an earldom to any man who finds you. There are fifty others out there looking for you, too.”

  “We’ve been sitting in this quagmire because that pipsqueak can’t find his way around his own kingdom?” James counted off his steps in his usual method of calculating the days it would take to return to the border. “What is the condition of his troops?”

  “The corn trains are rain-sotted. Most of the lads have taken ill.”

  James dragged the frightened squire to a horse. “You’ve been saved by the inanity of your new king. Go collect your reward.” He drew a map on a scrap of sheepskin and armed the squire with it. “Advise wee Eddie that if he doesn’t come soon, I’m going to go tell his mother how poorly he has behaved.”

  Stunned by the reprieve, the squire stabbed at the stirrups, mounting as fast as his shaking legs would allow.

  “Wait!” James turned to Sweenie. “How much grain do we have left?”

  The monk shook his head. “Not enough to do what you’re thinking.”

  James ignored Sweenie’s protest and motioned for him to deliver a small sack of oatmeal to the squire and tie it to his saddle. “To your king with my compliments. I’d not have him starve before he finds us.”

  TWO DAYS LATER, JAMES WATCHED with relief as Edward led his bedraggled columns into the Weardale as if on parade down the Strand. The babe-king and his knights wore helmets crowned with the latest fad: Heraldic crests forged in the shapes of beasts such as lions, wolves, and dragons. And just as he had hoped, the boy was marching his battalions into the narrow ribbon between the steep moors and the river’s banks. With a sharp whistle, he deployed his outnumbered Scots behind the rocks, keeping the swollen river between them and the English. Satisfied with their concealment, he saddled a horse and mounted.

  Randolph tried to hold him back. “You’re not going down there?”

  James abandoned the safety of the boulders and trotted for the river.

  On the northern bank, Edward struggled to remove his bascinet that featured a gold-gilt leopard reared on its hinds. After nearly a minute of this ineptitude, Hainault came up to assist him. Finally unhelmed, Edward chased his officer back with a punishing glare, and then he turned with a puffed chest to accept the capitulation of the Scot felon who had defied his forefathers. Yet on the far side of the river, James merely sat in the saddle with an insufferable smirk. Unable to endure this insolent stare-down, Edward blurted, “I demand your surrender!”

  “Is that gratitude?” James asked. “I trust the oats were nourishing. I enjoy mine with a sprinkle of sugar. Some of my men prefer them soaked in goat’s milk, but we’ve had no luck finding a decent cannery here in England. Might you offer a recommendation?”

  Edward edged closer to the water. “Did you not hear me?”

  The boy’s features came into sharper focus, and took James by surprise. He had expected the gaunt frame of Longshanks or the vapid grin of Caernervon, not the overwhelming beauty of his mother. In this short time he had observed him, he suspected that his young foe had also inherited Isabella’s mercurial temper and insurmountable will. Time would tell if he had been blessed with her stout heart, as well. This is your first test, lad. Don’t let your mother down. Let’s play the game out.

  “Did you not hear me!” Edward shouted again.

  “Did you not hear me?”

  Confused, Edward cupped his ear. “What say you?”

  “I said, ‘I demand your surrender!’”

  “My surrender? No, I said I demand your surrender!”

  James pointed at the nervous English soldiers waiting in ranks behind Edward. “Would you kindly order your men to strip naked, Eddie? You may keep those swaddling wraps on your loins. I wouldn’t want you to soil yourself in front of your subjects.”

  Edward’s voice cracked with utter incredulity. “Strip?”

  “It took us a week to remove the armour from your father’s rotting knights on the fields around Stirling. It will save us a great deal of needless work if you remove your shirts and leggings before the battle.”

  Edward’s lips quivered with rage. Finally, he managed to sputter, “Knave! I will see your head hung from the Tower!”

  “That’s what your old man used to say! You remind me of him!”

  Apoplectic, Edward spun toward Hainault and ordered, “Bring it up!”

  James watched as the English conscripts roll forward a giant iron tube that rested on a wooden frame with wheels. The yeomen lifted the hollowed end of the contraption toward the sky with ropes and drove wedges to fix its elevation, then they poured a bag of dark powder down the its gullet and ignited a dangling cord. A whistling cut the air, followed by an explosion in the sky.

  The concussion nearly threw James from his horse. Recovering his balance finally, he reined around in a circle and found the English laughing at him.

  Edward sported an impudent grin. “How do you like my new toy?”

  Witnessing that marvel, James knew his world had changed forever. If Caernervon had possessed such a weapon at Bannockburn, he and Robert would never have prevailed. He was determined not to reveal his concern as he waited for another explosion from the sky, but a rain cloud swept up the river from the west, spurring the gunnery yeomen to scramble and cover their magical tube with skins. Apparently whatever alchemy was used to conjure the explosion could not be summoned in rain.

  Betrayed now by the weather, Edward slammed his fist to his thigh and called forward the next option in his arsenal, shouting, “Archers!”

  Hainault was reluctant to relay the order, but he deemed it best not to question the young king in front of the Scots. On his signal, officers shoved the remaining bataille of long bowmen to the front.

  The Welsh staggered up, some falling, others bending over to retch.

  Their erratic behavior confounded Edward. “What in God’s name is wrong with them? Have they caught the fever shivers?”

  Hainault whispered to the king, “Triple rations of ale. It was the only way I could keep them from deserting. They are deathly afraid of that Scotsman.”

  Disgusted at their loss of fortitude, Edward rode through the Welsh ranks pummeling the cowering archers with the flat of his blade. “You will cross the river and kill that Scot! Or I will order the Hainaulters on you!”

  The Welsh bowmen confronted a cruel choice: Attack the Black Douglas, or suffer the mayhem that the German mercenaries were itching to inflict on them. One by one, the archers waded into the water holding their bows aloft to keep them dry.

  On the far bank, James restrained his skittish horse, silently begging the archers deeper into the water. Come on, you poor wretches. Give your new cradle king another lullaby to cry himself asleep.The first van of the three hundred archers swam across the river, and he slowly backed up the ridge, remaining just within their range. Many of their arrow fletches had been crushed and soaked by the rains, which he knew would severely hamper their accuracy. He pranced his horse in a taunt to draw them up the ridge.

  The archers were so eager to take advantage of his proximity th
at they strung their bows without driving stakes into the ground to fend off a counterattack. They tweaked their strings, notched arrows, and—

  Behind James, Randolph and his mounted raiders appeared over the ridge. They galloped toward the river, taking dead aim at the archers.

  Edward could only watch as his frightened Welsh ran back for the protection of the water, too late to avoid being slain by the dozens. Those few who managed to avoid the first onslaught dived into the river, but Randolph and his cavalry rode along the banks, picking them off as if they were spearing salmon.

  Only twenty survivors made it across to the English side.

  Stricken by the costly butchery, Edward screamed at James, “Coward! Come fight me on an open field!”

  James blew him a kiss. “That would not be honorable of me, lad! You have no archers!”

  FOR ANOTHER WEEK, THE TWO shivering armies sat staring at each other from across the river, each wondering which side the soupy mud would swallow up first. To frazzle Edward’s nerves, James had ordered his men to slink along the banks at night and blow their horns, and the English, penned in like hogs in muck, could not sleep for fear of an ambush.

  Yet James and his raiders were also trapped, down to one portion of watery porridge a day. That night, as the rain picked up again, Randolph laid down aside James on the sloping ridge and watched the English camp. “We’ll have to fight them eventually. If the lad is smart enough to wait us out, we’re finished.”

  James looked up at the clearing night sky and found Columba’s star for reassurance. He had been wondering how long it would take the old Randolph of the “straight-at-them” to return. His friendly rival had never fully accepted his tactics of the burn and run. He, on the other hand, had decided long ago that another bloody battle would never gain their freedom. They had won at Bannockburn, but the English still refused to leave them alone. There would always be a new generation of London knights seeking glory in Scotland. The only way to be rid of these people was to turn them against each other, tire them of paying ransoms and seeing their towns go up in flames, convince them that it was more likely that Scotland would annex Northumbria and Yorkshire. No, he had no intention of wasting another thirty years fighting this Edward. He had to teach the lad so painful a lesson that he would never again think of setting foot north of the border. He turned to Randolph and asked, “Did I ever tell you the story of the fisherman and the fox?”

  Randolph sat up and wrung the rainwater from his bedroll. “If you did, I managed to forget it, as I have all of your tedious yarns.”

  He continued telling his tale as if Randolph had begged to hear it. “A fisherman comes home to his cabin one night and finds a fox eating a roasted fish at the hearth. The fisherman draws his blade to kill the trapped fox. You’re the fox. What do you do?”

  Randolph snorted at the simplistic riddle. “What else can I do? I lunge at his throat. Trust I’m quicker than him.”

  “Aye, that’s what I thought you’d say.” James pulled up his cloak and feigned drowsing off.

  Randolph levered to his elbows. “What? That’s it?”

  “You’re dead. Tale over.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “Steal the man’s bed quilt.”

  Randolph waved off the suggestion. “You make less sense with each passing day.”

  “I’d throw his bedding into the fire. When the fisherman lunges to save his precious quilt, out the door I’d go.”

  Randolph kicked and cursed his tattered roll, forced to choose between covering his sodden feet or his drenched neck. “Where are you going to find a quilt out here?”

  James whistled. “Sweenie!”

  The monk erupted from his slumber spewing curses. “If a man is to be denied a decent meal, is it asking too much to let him sleep?”

  “Are the English well-bedded?” James asked the monk.

  “Aye, you’ve given them time to build boards under their tents and set their wine casks nicely upon stilts. They’re a Moor’s tongue drier than we are.”

  Smiling at the little monk’s cantankerousness, James rested the back of his head on his hands and studied the clouds, which looked to augur more rain. “A few days ago, I spied a lovely spot a short jaunt up the river. The Bishop of Durham’s hunting park. It sports a stone wall that must be the envy of every baron in England.”

  “You woke me to tell me that?” Sweenie growled.

  While counting the fires in the English encampment, James heard the faint voice of a minstrel singing a love ballad. He bounced his hand to the music’s beat and mused, “Wee Eddie, I fear, is getting a bit too comfortable.”

  Before dawn, Edward arose from his knees after prayers, certain that the Almighty would finally bless him with victory after his all-night vigil under the crucifix. Refusing food, he strapped on his armour, which had been wiped with oil to prevent rusting, and walked from his tent to join his sleep-deprived army mustered in battle formation along the river. He was determined to crush these maddening Scots with a surprise attack. The fog remained low and thick, but the saints had granted him one intercession: the rains had finally abated. He ordered his knights to cross the river on the barges first, with the infantry to follow. When his army had finally reassembled in stealth on the far side, he drove his steed up the rocky embankment and broke the dawn’s silence with a war cry to signal the assault.

  Only a few jackdaws cackled in reply as the mists swirled and cleared over the abandoned Scot encampment. A half-league to the east, the sun crept over the horizon, revealing the banners with the Cross of St. Andrew.

  Edward bit off a flurry of curses. The damnable Scots had moved their camp farther up the river on even more impregnable ground. Stomping the mud from his boots, he ordered Hainault to cross back over the river, tear down their own tents, and carry them along the banks to again face off against the enemy.

  The work was backbreaking for the hungry, demoralized troops. Forced into even closer quarters, the Hainaulters scrapped with the Yorkshire conscripts, and not a night passed without one of the sleep-starved wretches waking from hallucinations that the Scots were upon them. The false alarms became so frequent that even Edward began to ignore them.

  ON THE TENTH NIGHT IN his new camp, Edward donned a clean nightshirt and, after giving orders that under no circumstances was he to be disturbed, settled into his bed. Desperate to catch up on his lost sleep, he covered his eyes with shades and plugged his ears with wads of lint to drown out the incessant horn blaring of the Scots. He had even taken an extra goblet of wine, vowing aloud—as if his own mind could not possibly disobey a royal command—that he would no longer be plagued by the recurring nightmare of his father arising from the grave and wresting back the crown. Rumors were rampant in the camp that Caernervon had been seen alive in a monastery in France, and mutinous whispers blamed the army’s predicament on divine retribution for the illegal deposition.

  The wine soon worked its effect, and he drifted into drowsiness.

  But after an hour of fitful tossing, the same smirking face that had plagued him for weeks reappeared in his dream. He mumbled and tossed. God’s curse upon these nights! How dare that felon treat me as a laughing stock! What a repugnant man! Dark as a Moor! And that lisp syrupy and thick! I will have him dragged to the Tower in the very footsteps of his father. They said Wallace did not cry out, but I will see to it that the executioner slows the—

  “Lords of England! You shall all die!”

  Damn that infernal man!

  Edward stuffed the earplugs deeper to chase the phantom alarums rattling in his brain.

  “The Scots! Douglas! The Douglas is on us!”

  Edward pounded his forehead against the matting. “Enough! Leave me be!”

  “Then leave us be.”

  The infuriating voice now sounded so real that his ears buzzed. He ripped off his eyes shades, searching for the bottle to numb his nerves with more wine.

  The Black Douglas—in the flesh—stared d
own at him.

  Edward nearly pissed himself as he crawled from the bed and scrambled for the flaps. He saw through the crack that his guards were slain and the camp was filled with the din of a desperate fight. This time the Scots had not feigned the ambush. Trapped, he lunged for a dagger hanging in a scabbard from the tent post. “I won’t be taken. You’ll have to kill me.”

  The lad’s foolish courage took James by surprise. He had planned to throw the royal brat over his shoulder and be off before the English learned what had hit them. Now, with only seconds before the guards came rushing in, he brought his blade to Edward’s slender throat to finish him.

  Isabella’s limpid eyes stared back at him.

  “Do it, damn you!” cried Edward. “I’ll die a martyr! All England will chase you to the ends of the earth!”

  James could not bring himself to run the boy through. “I knew your mother.”

  “My mother is a French whore!”

  James was about to chastise the insolent pip when a blow from behind drove him to his knees. Dazed, he looked up at an English guard raising a blade.

  Sweenie split the flaps and pounced on the guard’s back.

  James tried to stand, but the grogginess dropped him to his knees again.

  Edward crouched in the corner and watched in frozen terror as his guard threw Sweenie to the ground and lunged for James. Sweenie dug his teeth into the attacker’s arm. The guard wheeled and drove his dagger into Sweenie’s gut. The monk clung tight to the Englishman to prevent him from retracting the blade and use it against James. They wrestled and knocked the taper from its stand, killing the light.

  “Here!”

  Blinded by the darkness, James swung his blade at that shout. He felt blood splatter across his face. Wiping his eyes, he came over the fallen guard and stared down in horror. His blow had also wounded Sweenie. The monk lay unconscious and bleeding, the dagger still in his gut.