The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (33 page)

“Are you clan Donald or Dougall?”

Sweenie risked a step nearer. “My mother never told me.”

“Enough of your cunning tongue! Show your face!”

Sweenie drew up his
courage and pushed deeper into the fog, determined to latch onto the MacDougall
knave and gnaw him to death with his gums, if necessary. Ten steps into the
soup, he bumped his forehead against a knee. He looked up. Above him loomed the
tallest man he had ever encountered. He nearly swallowed
his tongue.

But instead of attacking, the bearded giant backed away. Eyes bugging, he pulled a coin from his pocket and bounced it off Sweenie’s chest. “An offering. Forgive the intrusion. No mischief, please.”

Sweenie concealed a smirking grin at his good fortune. This
hairy behemoth wrapped in folds of tartan
wool was apparently under the delusion that he had just stumbled upon a
gnome, one of the Little People who haunted these moors. Unarmed as he was, the
monk decided to use the only weapon at his disposal, his cleverness. He
puckered his nose into an elfish scowl and seized on the foolish man’s
superstition. “A six-pence? That pittance for the trouble you’ve caused me?
Your name, mortal!”

“Angus Og MacDonald.”

“Your business in my glade?”

“I’m searching for the king of Scotland.”

Sweenie scoffed. “You expect me to fall for such nonsense? What monarch in his right mind would be lurking about here in such foul weather?”

“Robert Bruce is his name. I was told he seeks refuge in
these parts.”

Sweenie made a waddling circuit around the giant’s ankles.
“I thought Comyn the Red was the leader of you miserable wretches? Who is this
Bruce you speak of?”

“Are you as daft as you are wee?” The giant Scot immediately
regretted his outburst. “The Red is now under sod. Bruce is our monarch now,
but he’s hard pressed by his enemies.”

Sweenie climbed atop a mossy boulder and sat cross-legged,
pressing his tiny fist against his chin in a pose of deep thought. “I might be
able to conjure up this king of yours with a little magic. But a six-pence
won’t even pay for the first incantation.”

The distant howling of
the hounds from across the loch sped the giant Scotsman to the transaction. He
reached into his waist-pouch and relinquished ten more coins.

Dropping the offering into his pouch, Sweenie broke off a
twig and tested its flex by circling it above his head as a wand. “Fire and
wind, earth and water—eh, I almost forgot. I need a description to inspire the
vision. What does this Bruce fellow look like?”

“A man of good height.”

“And countenance? Fair or repugnant?”

“Average for a Lowlander. Nothing remarkable.”

“How is he with the ladies? Well met?”

The looming scout squinted quizzically. “Is that necessary?”

“Would I have asked it if not?”

MacDonald raised his hands in contrition, fearing he had
angered the sprite. “Bruce gains his share of attention, but I suspect it is
due more to his wealth than comeliness.”

A rustling near the loch was followed by a loud thump.

“Just some of my
friends,” Sweenie assured the man. “Pay them no heed, or they’ll find us and
demand more compensation.” He began dancing a jig atop the boulder. “Bring me
Bruce! Bring me Bruce!”

A hail of rocks rained down on them both.

The frightened MacDonald man looked to the heavens in
confusion.

Sweenie attacked his own head with his fists. “I remember
now! The one asking the miracle has to perform the dance.”

The MacDonald man was about to protest that condition when
Sweenie aimed his wand at him in a warning. The Islesman reluctantly began
shuffling in an awkward imitation of the monk’s gyrations while looking around
to make certain no one was observing his embarrassing display.

“You call that a jig?”
Sweenie cried. “I’ve seen slugs move with more abandon. The elements won’t
congeal unless you stir the wind faster.”

Doubling his effort, MacDonald churned a jigging frenzy—until two men appeared through the mists. He glanced at Sweenie in amazement at the efficacy of the spell. Approaching the conjured men cautiously to test their reality, he yanked on the taller newcomer’s scruffy beard. He gritted his teeth and cursed in a voice lowered to avoid alerting any scouts around. “Damn you, elf! This isn’t the Bruce. You’ve summoned some half-wit beggar.”

“Average countenance?” Robert growled at MacDonald. “The
ladies seek me only because of my wealth?”

The giant clansman’s eyes bulged. “By the Rood.”

Despite the danger of the moment, James couldn’t help but
rollick with laughter. He slapped the stunned Islesman’s broad back in a hearty
greeting and whispered, “Well summed, MacDonald. Though I felt you gave him too
much benefit of the doubt regarding the lasses.”

The MacDonald clansman embraced Robert with a bear hug. “We
feared the dogs had gotten you.” He brought Sweenie to his side. “I beg you, my
lord, grant a benefice to this leprechaun. I’d have never have found you
without his wondrous powers.”

“Aye, we mustn’t forget
the spirits.” Robert nodded James to the task. “Vassal, give our wee ally here
from the nethers his just reward.”

James grasped Sweenie by his cord at his waist, flipped him
upside down, and scraped his knuckles across the bald oval on the monk’s scalp.

MacDonald was horrified by the abuse. “Douglas, are you mad?
He’ll curse us to our last days!”

 Released, Sweenie spun head over heels and
landed on his feet like a cat.

“Sweenie, meet the Chieftain of the Isles,” James whispered.
“No galley sails from here to the Orkneys without the mandate of this oversized
bag of hazelnuts. But pray he’s never attacked by a navy of faeries.”

Red-faced, MacDonald didn’t know whether to thank the
scheming monk or heave him into the loch. He pointed a threatening finger at
all three men and warned, “If a word of this gets out, you’ll all swim to—”

The louder barking of the hounds drove them behind the
boulder.

MacDonald pushed Robert toward the wooded ridge. “The Earl
of Lennox escaped Methven and made his way to my castle in Dunaverty. We found
your brother this morning. We’d best not tarry.”

Holding back, James turned to assess Sweenie’s condition.
“You got one more jaunt left in you, Wee-kneed?”

Sweenie flexed his puny biceps. “Aye, my lord.”

Robert saw to his regret that James was determined to
backtrack and find Belle. “I owe you my life. … Go on, then.”

Clasping Robert’s hand in farewell, James instructed
MacDonald, “Angus, take good care of our king. I’d not serve a day under his
boiled-brain brother.” He thumped Robert on the chest. “I’ll find you in the
Isles.”

“Clifford will be patrolling the south,” McDonald warned
him. “Go by way of Strathyre.”

Halfway down the slope, James turned back and called out,
“Bruce!”

Robert spun in his tracks, looking hopeful. “You’ve changed
your mind. I knew you couldn’t stay long from me.”

James motioned with a
cupped hand. “Let’s have it.”

With a guilty shrug, Robert reached under his shirt and
tossed over the copy of the
Chanson of Fierabras
that he had purloined
while James was slumbering on the far banks. Before James could burn his ears
with a flurry of curses, Robert ran off for the ridge to catch up with
MacDonald.

Reunited with his precious gift from Belle, James hurried
back to the loch and found Sweenie catching a wink in the currach. He shook the
monk awake and pushed the boat off into the waters.

Halfway across the water, James broke their weary silence to
correct one of the dwarf’s more irritating habits. “How many times must I tell
you? I am
not
a lord. Leave off such fancy titles for those like your
new king who traipsed about the London courts with curled toes.”

“But your lady insisted that I address you as such.”

“Did she now?”

Sweenie grunted and puffed as he rowed. “Aye, she told me
that life had given you so little in compensation of features or wit that we
should allow you this one false conceit, at least.”

Ears reddening, James stole the oars from the lippy monk and
sped their pace to find his Floripas.

T
HE FIRST RAYS OF THE
March sun broke over the Don River as
Tabhann Comyn led his mounted mosstroopers into the golden moors of Buchan.
During the six months since Belle had escaped from Dalswinton, he and his
cousin Cam had scoured the North, searching for her and planning their
vengeance against James Douglas and the Bruces. At last, they had turned up a
promising piece of surveillance: MacDougall’s spies had reported seeing several
stragglers, including women, running for Kildrummy castle. If his wife was
among them, he was determined to see that she received a proper welcome home.

Reaching the crest of the Grampian Mountains, he gained his
first glimpse of Kildrummy, the northern keep that had been held by their clan
before the Bruces stole it. Black clouds roiled above its quadrant towers. The
castle was under siege, and had been for at least a week, by the look of the
trebuchet damage to the walls. Scanning the heralds flapping over a white
canvass pavilion, he pointed to the Plantagenet dragon, too shocked to utter
the possibility.

“Longshanks is too ill to ride this far north,” Cam assured
him. “It must be the prince.”

Tabhann was relieved that Longshanks was not up here in Mar rutting around, but Edward Caernervon’s unexpected arrival presented him with a different, and troubling, dilemma. For all his cruelty, Longshanks could be counted on to act rationally, in accord with England’s interests. The Comyns and the MacDuffs were still in the English king’s peace, and so long as Robert Bruce was at large, he felt confident that Longshanks would find it advantageous to embrace him as a victim of the usurper. The Plantagenet’s misspent arrow of a son, however, was flighty, prone to wild swings of emotion, and at times reclusive. He might prove to be an unreliable ally.

As Tabhann led Cam and their men into the English camp, which had been set a mere two hundred yards from Kildrummy’s curtain walls, he suffered the glares of the conscripted Yorkshiremen and Northumbrians, who made little distinction between traitorous and loyal Scots. Spying Nigel Bruce at the crenellations directing the tower’s defense, he lashed his horse through the English pike men and nearly trampled several of them in his haste to confront his old clan enemy. “Damn you, Bruce!” he snarled up at the walls. “I’ll have my wife! And your head on a pike!”

“She found your bed too small!” Nigel shouted down at him. “At least, I think that’s what she said she found too small!”

That retort drew raucous howls from the English archers, who
lowered their bows in admiration for young Bruce’s witty bravado.

Enraged, Tabhann lashed his horse along the perimeter of the
moat in search of some means to attack. Denied a target for his wrath, he
retreated through the jeering conscripts and rushed up to Caernervon’s
pavilion.

From their position in
the vale below the castle, Robert Clifford and Aymer de Valence, the newly
appointed commander of the English army in the North, had been observing
Tabhann’s raging performance with amusement. “A magnificent sortie,” Clifford
remarked dryly. “Those walls suffered dearly.”

Tabhann leapt off his saddle and came strutting up huffing
indignation. “That is
my
castle you
are destroying!”

Clifford pushed the complaining Scot aside. “You expect us to stand back after the fighting while you sweep in to collect the spoils?”

“The Bruces stole it from my uncle!”

Valence half-listened to Tabhann’s rant while he signaled
for the trebuchet to be reloaded. “I don’t give a damn, Scotsman, if your mum
suckled you in that tower while the angels sang lullabies. Engage those
ramparts again without my permission, and you’ll walk to Lanercost in chains.”

A helmeted knight arrayed in flashy French silks galloped
into the camp. He dismounted and strode into the prince’s pavilion without even
being questioned about his purpose.

Tabhann looked to Valence for an explanation of that privilege, but the earl merely shrugged. Furious that a foreigner was permitted a prior audience, Tabhann marched toward the pavilion.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Clifford warned.

Ignoring the advice, Tabhann forced his way inside. He found
Caernervon under the sheets, naked and in the arms of Piers Gaveston.
Sputtering for words, he was hard-pressed to know which was more shocking: that
the prince was intertwined in a perverse embrace, or that his Gascon dandy had so
brazenly violated Longshanks’s order of exile.

Caernervon grinned and stroked Gaveston’s oiled locks for
Tabhann’s benefit. “It seems, Piers, that the beasts have broken out of the
stables again.”

Tabhann retreated a step. “I would speak with you, my lord,
concerning my wife.”