The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas
Page 56
Epilogue
Norfolk, England
February, 1358
AS THE QUEEN MOTHER CAME to the end of her account, William Douglas sat in stunned silence. He remembered, as a lad, having heard that one of the Scots in the honor entourage, a knight named Keith, had been left in Seville to mend his broken arm. When Keith learned of the disastrous battle on the Al Andalus plains, he had rushed to the field and had found James’s riddled body near the thrown heart cask. Keith had brought both back to Scotland. Sighing from weariness with the world, he stood to take his leave, unable to comprehend why God had denied King Robert and his uncle their dream of reaching the Holy Land.
Isabella, daubing her eyes with a kerchief, placed a hand on his forearm to delay him a moment more. “The Bruce’s heart, I was told, now lies at Melrose Abbey?” When the earl confirmed that report, she hesitated before risking the one question that she had withheld for too many years. “I was never told where your uncle was laid to rest.”
“In the Douglasdale kirk of St. Bride.” The earl displayed his clan’s crest on his brooch to her. “The guardians of my kingdom ordered a heart be added to our herald in honor of his sacrifice.”
She studied the crest, then looked up at him. “You fought at Poiters?”
The earl nodded bitterly. More than a year had passed since that disastrous defeat in France, but his memory of it was still raw.
“Do you know who lost that battle for you?”
The earl glared at her, unable to fathom why she would punish him with such a cruel question.
“Your uncle taught my son how to fight at Weardale. Edward in turn imparted those lessons to my grandson, the Black Prince. So, as I see it, you Scots have only yourselves to blame for your predicament.”
He smiled grimly at the irony. “One heart has yet to return home to Scotland, my lady. I would be grateful to know where the Countess of Buchan rests.”
Isabella turned aside to muffle a cough of emotion. “I was never told, but I fear she was abandoned to the pauper’s pit at Berwick.”
Seeing that she too had grown fatigued, William made another move to depart. At the door, he heard her call him back.
“The last time your uncle and I spoke,” she said, “he told me something else in confidence. The night that he and Robert Bruce looked death in the face on Arran Isle, there was more to the spider’s prophecy.”
Intrigued, William glanced at his squire.
Isabella stared into the fire. “The clairvoyant Isleswoman promised him that your Stone of Destiny would remain hidden until its scream is again required. She also said that the Templars charged with its protection would one day resurrect themselves in the guise of another brotherhood and fulfill their quest for tolerance of faith and conscience in a land far across the sea.”
William did not know what to make of the strange revelation.
“Now,” Isabella insisted. “There is a secret you must surrender to me. … This man with you is not your second.”
“Madam, I assure you that—”
When Isabella stood abruptly to repulse that lie, William finally nodded his accomplice forward and gestured him to an admission.
“My mother was …”
Isabella confirmed the confession for him. “Jeanne de Rouen.”
Archibald Douglas glanced at the door, worried that the guards would discover his true identity as the bastard son of the Black Douglas. “I escaped your grandson’s prison in Poiters by passing myself off as a commoner who could bring no ransom. None of the officers in your army would believe that a Scot nobleman could have skin as dark as a Moor’s. Your pale English made the same mistake when they underestimated my father.”
Isabella warmed her hands over the last of the flickering embers, debating if she should reveal this deception to the castellan, who reported all of her activities to her son. She asked Archibald, “Do you believe, sir, that a lone abiding love can change the world?”
Archibald’s face tightened. “I swear on the Holy Rood that I have seen only war and bloodshed bend the will of men. And I swear on my father’s memory that I will not rest until England suffers what we Scots have long endured.”
Smiling sadly, Isabella stared beyond his shoulders, as if speaking to a specter behind him. “Men swear such oaths. Women suffer the consequences.”
“My lady?”
Drawn back to the present, Isabella promised Archibald, “My influence in London court has waned, but I will attempt to find you safe passage to Scotland. In return, you must do me two favors.”
The generous offer astonished Archibald. “Anything within my power.”
Isabella shuffled with bated steps toward the altar and opened the Bible that sat on its lintel. She took out a pressed red poppy she had picked on her last walk along the Seine in Paris. “Place this in the kirk at Douglasdale.”
Archibald accepted custody of the remembrance. “And the second?”
The queen mother retreated to the small lancet window that offered her only view of the outside world. She had stood there often over the years wondering how the Countess of Buchan had survived her confinement under much worse conditions. “If you are unfortunate enough to live to be my age, you will encounter many a doubter who will gainsay what I have just told you about the triumph of love. Argue not with them like a rabid churchman. Was a heart ever swayed by cold logic or a hot pyre?”
The two Scotsmen shrugged, unable to offer a contradicting example.
She grasped Archibald’s hand, as if to summon a distant memory from the ancient blood pulsing in his touch. “Rather, sit them down in one of your storied castles above a moonlit loch, and pour them a horn of your finest spirit, one that musters the ghosts and curls the tongue with the taste of history. Then, tell them, as I have you, of your father and his brave Lass of Scone, and how they gave all to crown a king and set a nation free.”
Author's Note
The poet who could do justice to the exploits of
Douglas would win himself great and enduring fame.
— John Barbour, The Brus
William Douglas, the nephew of James Douglas, visited Isabella of France shortly before her death in 1358, but nothing was recorded of their conversation. Nor is it known if Archibald Douglas, who escaped prison after the Battle of Poiters, was present at this meeting, although he accompanied his cousin on the campaigns in France.
Primary sources for Scotland’s wars of independence during the 14th century are limited, and they have suffered the accusation, levied against many medieval accounts, that legend intrudes. The most comprehensive source is The Brus, an epic written in 1375 by John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen. Barbour relied on first-hand reports of participants who spoke several years after the events. The cleric vowed to tell the truth as best he could find it, and most historians believe that, in large measure, he succeeded. An unabashed admirer of James Douglas, Barbour depicted him as Bruce’s equal in skill, cunning, and courage.
In his Tales of a Grandfather, Sir Walter Scott described Robert Bruce as the first to see the spider in the cave. Yet researchers have confirmed that Scott’s version was based on an account in Hume of Godcroft’s history of the Douglas clan, written two hundred years earlier. In Godcroft, it is Douglas who sees the spider and convinces Bruce of its significance.
To my knowledge, I am the first author to suggest the possibility that James Douglas and Isabelle MacDuff were lovers. Baffled by Isabelle’s decision to turn against her husband and clan, chroniclers in England at the time spread rumors that she was Robert Bruce’s mistress. Yet I contend that it was more likely her love for Douglas that drove the Countess of Buchan to risk her life by placing the crown on Bruce’s head.
Barbour offered a tantalizing hint of this in his description of the escape from Methven. Elizabeth Bruce, Isabelle MacDuff, and the king’s sisters accompanied their husbands on that desperate retreat after the English ambush. The archdeacon revealed with a euphemistic wink that among those harr
ied Scot warriors trying to get Robert Bruce and his family to safety, “not one among them there that to the ladies’ profit was more than James of Douglas.” The modern biographer I.M. Davis was more direct; without hazarding a guess as to the woman in question, he wrote that Douglas “may have been running a love affair” during the Methven campaign.
It seems implausible that Douglas would have carried on such an affair with Elizabeth Bruce or the married Bruce sisters during the retreat, particularly while their husbands—his comrades—were in danger and in such close proximity. Isabelle MacDuff, however, was estranged from John Comyn, an enemy of the Bruces. Falling in love with Douglas would explain her decision to risk her life and abscond west with the Bruces. Moreover, Davis found no record indicating that Douglas had ever married. The late Caroline Bingham observed in her biography of Robert Bruce that the king would have expected his councilors to take wives for the sake of propriety and the smooth devolution of titles and domains. Barbour described Douglas’s life in great detail, but the cleric inexplicably failed to explain this mystery. The most likely explanation is one that the chroniclers of the time would have failed to know, or would have deemed too private to record: A broken heart.
This story is historical fiction, not academic history, and aspects of it are, by necessity, speculative. I took liberties with, and filled gaps in, traditional accounts of the period with my portrayal of: 1) James Douglas’s boyhood, of which little is known except that he came under the tutelage of Bishop Lamberton and accompanied the cleric to Paris; 2) Douglas’s relationship with Jeanne de Rouen, a character that I created because nothing is known about the identity of the woman who gave birth to his son Archibald out of wedlock; and 3) the fascinating and controversial Isabella of France. Twice Douglas narrowly missed capturing the English queen, and they came together for the last time in Berwick to formalize the peace agreement and forge the marriage between David Bruce and Isabella’s daughter. Beyond that, their interactions must be left to the imagination.
Finally, historians continue to debate the factual basis for the legend that a small band of Knights Templar escaped the persecutions in France and, after being given refuge in Scotland, came to Robert Bruce’s aid at Bannockburn. To defend that possibility, I would remind readers of what M. Louis Charpentier, the French author and researcher of medieval Gothic cathedrals, once cautioned: “When history and tradition are not in agreement, it is safe to bet, almost as a certainty, that it is the historians, makers of history, who are deceived.”
Sources, Acknowledgements
and Further Reading
The ballad Raglan Road was written by the late Irish poet Patrick Kavanaugh. Quotations from John Barbour’s epic, The Brus, are from Tom Scott’s translations in his Tales of King Robert the Bruce. The song on the galleys during the Turnberry invasion was based upon Robert Burns’s poem, March to Bannockburn, which was likely based on verses sung during the Bruce wars. Belle’s ballad in the cage is from the old Celtic song, The Braes O’Balquiddher. Excerpts describing the adventures of Roland and Oliver are from The Story of Roland by James Baldwin.
A special thanks goes to Alyssa Rasley for her superb editing; to John Rechy and the members of his writing workshop for their invaluable guidance and support; and to Michelle Millar, Stewart Matthew, John Jeter, and David Martin.
The definitive biography of James Douglas is I.M. Davis’s The Black Douglas. Biographies of Robert Bruce are numerous, but my favorite is the late Caroline Bingham’s Robert the Bruce. Pat Gerber’s Stone of Destiny offers theories about the relic, and Michael Prestwich’s The Three Edwards explores the lives of those Plantagenet monarchs. Several books have been written about Bannockburn and the disputed location of the second day’s battle; Peter Reese’s Bannockburn provides a good overview. Yet the most valuable and memorable account of the battle that I had the privilege to receive came from a private tour generously conducted by the late Bob McCutcheon, a Stirling bookseller and local expert on the Bruce years. After walking the battlefield with Mr. McCutcheon one memorable afternoon, I came to understand not only the tactics, but also the proud Scottish temperament that helped win that unlikely victory.
For a reader’s guide, news of events, and a virtual tour of the many sites in the story as they appear today, please visit www.glencraney.com.
About the Author
A graduate of Indiana University School of Law and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Glen Craney practiced trial law before joining the Washington press corps to cover national politics and the Iran-contra trial for Congressional Quarterly magazine. The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences awarded him the Nicholl Fellowship prize for best new screenwriting. His debut novel, The Fire and the Light, was named Best New Fiction by the National Indie Excellence Awards and a Finalist/Honorable Mention winner by Foreword Magazine for its Book of the Year in historical fiction. He lives in Malibu, California.
www.glencraney.com
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“GET THIS CHICKENSHIT SLUICE T-T-TROUGH moving! If you don’t put a gitty-up on, the damn war’s gonna be over b-b-before we fire a shot!”
Lt. John Keyes shook his head at that pathetic yelp of false courage. He had heard similar boasts from many of the farm boys who had lined up that week at his induction station, but none sputtered with such an unstrung stammer. The way he sized it, anyone from around these parts trying to join the Navy had to be a little yellow anyway. Most of these dust-grimed crackers in overalls hadn’t seen
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