The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (27 page)

Eyes glinting with mischief, Lamberton asked them, “Did you
really think I’d let the English take it?”

One by one, the men leaned over the casket to take a second
look. Many were too young to have seen the Stone of Destiny and had only heard
it described as a chunk of pale red sandstone drilled with holes. Some of the
men fell to their knees, others scrambled to caress the precious talisman.

As a low buzz of excitement escalated into cries of
unabashed joy, Lamberton nodded to James in sheepish contrition. Raising his
voice so that all could hear, the bishop explained how, during the English
invasion of Perth in 1296, he had directed the Culdees of Glen Dochart, under
an oath of secrecy, to remove the true Stone across the Firth of Tay to a cave
on Dunsinnan Hill, near the crumbling castle of old King Macbeth. In its stead,
he had ordered a cornerstone from an abandoned kirk be carved with a few
meaningless glyphs and placed below Scone’s altar. When Longshanks and his
soldiers marched into the Abbey that tragic day, the Culdees had put up a
spirited defense of the forgery.

The clansmen stomped their boots in admiration for the
clever ruse.

“A sign!” James shouted.
“God saved the Stone of Destiny for the Bruce!”

Ian MacDuff stood
motionless, unable to believe this sudden turn of events. As the delirious
clansmen pushed past him to touch the relic, he fought his way down the aisle
to confront Robert again. “Aye, you may have the Stone Fatal! But you still
lack a MacDuff! My clan must give the oath! It is the law!”

This time, Lamberton’s consternation was genuine. In the
excitement, he had forgotten the second condition for installing a new king.

MacDuff came nose to nose with Robert and taunted him with
the shibboleth that would doom his royal ambitions. “No MacDuff—”

“No King!”

MacDuff spun to accost the scoundrel who had stolen his
thunder.

At the opened doors, surrounded in an eerie haze of steam,
stood a hooded woman draped under a cloak muddied from a forced ride.

The men were aghast at this violation of the ancient
prohibition against women entering the presence of the Stone.

James took a step closer to aid his sight in the nave’s dim
light.

It cannot be.

Even if Tabhann
had
allowed Belle to come south
from Dundarg, a journey this far on horseback in such short time in harsh
weather would have been nearly impossible. His chest tightened with a
foreboding. Had the voice he heard at Dalswinton been hers in the flesh, and
not his imagination? Had she died in the conflagration, only to come back now in
the ghost?

But this was no shade that now strode down the aisle.

Belle repulsed her brother’s attempt to block her from the
Stone. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she lowered to her knees and ran her
hands across the ridges of hieroglyphics that circled the basalt. The blessed
talisman appeared exactly as she had seen it in her dreams—noble, defiant, and
mysterious. Ten years ago at Kinghorn, her father had banished her heart’s
desire, but she had never given up hope. The lead-cased windows flashed from a
streak of lighting, and a shattering scream came from Moot Hill, a hundred
paces to the north. The clansmen shuddered from the unworldly sound. She looked
up and saw a golden nimbus swirling around Robert’s head.

The sign.

She kissed the Stone and retraced her steps down the aisle.
Reaching the rear doors, she turned back. With her face aglow, she shouted at
the men, “This night, a MacDuff stands for the Bruce!”

She threw open the doors and marched out into the driving
rain.

The clansmen were too stunned to move.

James rushed Robert to the doors before the others could
fathom what was happening. Lamberton, signaling the Culdee monks to retrieve
the Stone, hurried them to follow.

Only when Robert had been whisked from the Abbey did those
who remained behind divine the unthinkable act that Belle was preparing to
perform. They rushed from the abbey, jostling and elbowing to be the first to
reach the mound where Scottish kings had been inaugurated as far back as memory
could attest.

As Belle led the soaked procession to Moot Hill, she smiled
at the irony in God’s inscrutable ways. In times of old, before the Roman
missionaries banished women from their spiritual authority, men had followed
Pict queens up this same path. She reached the grassy apex and turned her face
toward the attacking rain to invoke the spirits of those holy women who had
come before her. Extending her hand, she called for the slender band of
hammered gold that the bishop kept under his cloak. She stood behind the Stone
and, waiting, held the crown aloft.

Still flustered by her miraculous arrival, James climbed
closer to her and whispered, “You would do this for him?”

“I do this for you.”

“You’re putting your life in danger.”

“By this, I would make it right between us.”

James backed away,
allowing Lamberton to escort Robert to the Stone seat.

Belle pressed her womb
against Robert’s back to steady against the wind.

Robert felt her shivering against him. “My lady, you are
cold.”

“No, my lord,” Belle whispered. “I tremble because I have,
at last, come to know the purpose of my life.”

Ian MacDuff fought his
way up the hill to the fore of the gathered ranks. “Woman, I forbid this! You
will not betray your clan and husband!”

Belle shook so fiercely from a rage fed by a life of bending
to men’s threats and violence that she feared she might drop the crown. “What
is a clan without a country? As for my husband, you and my father forced the
Comyns upon me for your own gain!”

“You are no longer my sister!”

Her reply shook the heavens. “I was
never
your
sister in heart!”

Enraged by her defiance, Ian drew his sword.

James unsheathed his
weapon to counter the attempt to stop the coronation.

With the zing of blades
sounding all around her, Belle lowered the crown onto Robert’s head. “Robert
Bruce, a MacDuff crowns thee King of Scotland.”

The northern lights flashed through the rain clouds across
the night’s horizon, and thunder crashed across the moors.

Robert was struck momentarily speechless by Belle’s bold act. Only now did he fully comprehend the sacrifices that she and James had accepted to see him reach
this summit. He nodded a concession to Lamberton, who had been proven prescient
in his insistence that the ghosts of the ancients would come to Scotland’s aid. Then, he stood for the first time as King Robert the First of Scotland
and raised the hands of Belle and the bishop to the heavens, affirming that it
was a Pict princess and a secret Culdee, not a Roman pope, who had helped bring
him to this hour of his destiny. “Spread the word!” he shouted. “This night, I
call a wapinshaw! All able-bodied men shall report to Stirling within the week.
Armed and provisioned for war!”

S
EATED WITH THE OTHER LADIES
of the royal retinue, Isabella
of France peered over the railing of the clerestory balcony above London Temple and shook her head in disgust as she watched three hundred esquires, the
pampered progeny of England’s nobility, trample one another in a drunken
stampede to reach the dais in the crowded nave below.

Attired in ceremonial robes, Longshanks limped into the octagonal church of the Knights Templar and tapped the shoulders of the kneeling Caernervon with the sword that he had used to subjugate Wales. Two months after receiving news of Robert Bruce’s coronation, the ailing monarch had decided to initiate the largest class of knights in the history of the realm for another invasion of Scotland. He had also recalled his son from exile on the Continent to join in receiving the collective knighthood, an act of clemency that she had greeted with great chagrin, for Caernervon’s absence had given her an excuse to return to France that spring. With her fiancé's return to England, she too had been called back to London for yet another visit, this time ostensibly to choose the maids who would serve as her attendants here when she was finally married. In truth, she knew the real reason for this enforced invitation was that Longshanks did not trust her father to comply with the terms of the marital treaty.

Aside from the king, the only sober men in attendance were the involuntary hosts of the ceremony, including Peter d’Aumont, the Auvergne crusader monk. The Templars maintained a marked distance from the debauched initiates, forced to stand by and watch their hallowed sanctuary be fouled. Longshanks had commandeered their headquarters on the excuse that Westminster was not large enough to hold the proceedings, but Isabella knew that the king was merely testing the loyalty of the Temple before he departed for York.

The Bishop of Canterbury tried to stammer an invocation, but
the inebriated roars drowned out the oration, and the feeble cleric gave up his
effort.

Outraged by the
sacrilegious conduct of the initiates, the old king stumbled down into the
midst of the startled esquires and flailed his long arms at them like cudgels.
“By Christ, I will have silence!”

The debauched esquires floundered heaving and retching to
their knees.

When the king had finally regained what passed for decorum,
he commanded the doors be opened, and retainers carried in gold platters laden
with white swans tethered under chains of gold.

“Before God and these swans,” Longshanks announced. “I swear
to avenge the death of John Comyn! I welcomed Robert Bruce into my household!
And he repays me with treachery!”

“To war!” the esquires warbled. “Scotland must heel!”

Longshanks was flushed with renewed vigor, having
miraculously risen from his deathbed with the anticipation of another military
campaign. “We have temporized with these heathens long enough! I will raise the
largest army ever assembled on this Isle! The garrisons at Carlisle and Berwick
are being provisioned! I have assigned command of the western advance to my
son, with Henry Percy at his service! And I shall take personal command of our
eastern advance!”

Cued to his grand moment, Caernervon staggered to his feet,
belching from the wine. “I swear by all I hold sacred that I shall not sleep
two nights in the same bed until I bring Bruce’s head back to London on a
pike!”

A cad quipped an aside to another esquire, “Easily done,
considering Eddie hasn’t slept in the same bed twice since he sprouted
whiskers.”

The tottering king, too deaf to hear the jests directed at
his son, called forward the esquires to receive their knighthoods. At his
signal, the scullions released the chains on the platters, and the swans took
flight with a loud flapping, unleashing their droppings on the assembly.

Caernervon prattled on while the esquires slipped and fell
on the bird dung in their rush to be knighted. “I am your Arthur, my good
knights! And you are my Round Table!”

“To the tables!” the new knights shouted, elbowing for the
doors.

As the other female observers on the balcony descended the
stairs to cross the grounds and join the Westminster feast, Isabella was left
forgotten on her perch high above the main floor. Grateful for this respite
from the three-day debauch, she decided to linger a while longer.

After a few minutes of rare quietude, she reluctantly raised
her head above the banister in preparation to leave. Below her, in the empty
nave, she saw a tall monk lurking in the shadows near the rear of the church.
She ducked to avoid being seen, fearful that the cleric would report her
transgression of the Templar bylaw against women remaining alone in the
sanctuary. She risked another peek and only then recognized him to be the Abbot
of Lagny, the cold fish who had served as papal prelate in her father’s court
in Paris.

What was
he
doing here in England?

Watching through the banister’s brocade, she saw Caernervon
double back into the sanctuary from a side door. Her husband slithered aside to
the monk and asked in a frantic voice, “Is there word from Gaveston?”

The Dominican glanced around the nave, making certain they
were alone. “We have lodged him in Bon-Repos abbey in Brittany. As near the
Channel as prudence allows.”

“He knows of my plan?”

The Dominican hesitated. “The king’s health appears to have
steadied.”

“This Scotland campaign will put an end to him,” Caernervon
promised. “Tell me of Piers. I cannot bear his absence.”

The Dominican lowered his voice, forcing Isabella to place
an ear to the floorboards. “I am uncertain how much longer I shall be able to
serve as intermediary for your correspondence.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are aware of Gaveston’s … inclinations?”

“Tell me he has not taken another favourite!”

The Dominican tried to calm the excitable prince. “I have
learned that his mother was burned for Albigensee witchery.”