The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (36 page)

Robert resorted to the one subject that never failed to
bring a smile to his friend’s face. “That lass of yours loves you more than
life itself. If I were a wagering man—”

James snorted cynically.
“If you’re anything, you’re a wagering man. Why else would you have listened to
my nonsense about seizing the crown?”

“You’re the one who made the more foolish bet, putting all
you had on me.” Robert reached into his jerkin and tossed an English pence at
him. “Here’s another wager. I’ll give you odds that Belle and Liz are quilting
a sham near some raging hearth right now. Nigel wouldn’t let me down. Norway is
where they are, I’m certain of it. With my sister in Haakon’s court.”

James ran his finger across Longshanks’s inscription on the
coin. Suddenly, he was swept by a wave of despair. “I’ll never hold her again.”
He turned aside and rolled onto to his stomach, trying to chase the shooting
hunger pangs.

“Don’t go down on me, Jamie. I can’t see it through if you
give up.”

James blinked hard, trying to focus his tunneling vision. He groped
his way to the fire and tried to stoke the embers, but what little driftwood he
had managed to find was too green to take a flame. The oystercatchers had
grubbed the bluffs clean of all the pignuts and tubers, and he didn’t have the
strength to wade into the water and spear a fish. As the night’s cold descended
on the cave, he felt an encircling darkness in his soul. He gave up on the fire
and muttered in anguish, “I can’t see a light ahead.”

Robert crawled closer to the pitiful pile of kindling and
blew weakly on the ashes. “It’ll be dawn in a few hours.”

“No, I mean … I can’t see how we can defeat the English.
Wallace had ten thousand men with him. Five hundred came to our call. Half of
those we lost at Methven. Longshanks holds every castle north of Carlisle. Your
brothers are scattered. Angus has been forced to take to the sea.”

When Robert could not
summons a rebuttal to that grim assessment, James lowered the back of his head
to the ground. Fearing he would never wake up if he fell asleep, he stared at
the ceiling to fix his eyes against the vertigo. Above him, a large black
spider dangled on a thread. The wiggling creature had fallen from its corner
and was retracting its legs in a frenzied effort to regain its web.

The spider threw itself
against the limestone but failed to secure a hold.

Summoning what little strength he had left, James climbed to his knees for a closer view. Again and again, the spider launched an improbable quest to regain its home, only to fall short. “Rob, look at this.”

Half blind, Robert leaned on his elbows and watched the
blurry image of a spider twirl toward him. On the spider’s back was a red and
yellow streak, the colors of his clan’s heraldry. Nearly exhausted, the spider
climbed its thread in preparation for one last attempt.

“He’s going for the rebound.”

Robert squatted under the spider and reached to assist it.
“That thread won’t hold.”

He held back Robert’s hand. “No, he can do it. Come on,
laddie!”

The spider continued its perilous ascent up the thread,
stopping to rest every inch or so. When it could climb no higher, it paused as
if to summon courage—and dropped to its death or freedom. The thread stretched
and rebounded. The spider catapulted toward the web and clung fast.

They cheered as the spider crawled to the center of its web
in triumph.

“A sign, Rob! See how he preens on his regained throne. A
king speaks to a king! He is telling you never to give up!”

“You believe it so?”

A light flashed near the mouth of the cave.

James pulled Robert
behind him. Clutching a rock, he cursed under his breath, fearing that their
shouts had drawn Clifford’s scouts. As the torches approached, he came to his
knees, preparing to fight to the death.

The outlines of a woman in black robes appeared within the
blinding aura of the torches. Her sleeves resembled wings, and her hood fell to
a point like a predator’s beak.

James backed away. Not Clifford, but the raven goddess
Morgainne, had come back for them. He remembered that she always melded into
her mortal shape when arriving to announce a death. He scooped a handful of
rocks and threw one of them at her. “You’ll not take him!”

“Who gives me orders in my own land?”

He flashed another stone to scare off the carrion bitch.
“Take me, damn you, if you must have a soul to slake your blood thirst!”

The death goddess retracted her hood, revealing strands of
wild red hair and pale skin. Several men with torches came up from the shadows
and stood aside her. The shortest of them rubbed his arm and threw the rock
back at James, grazing his ear.

“That’ll require a severe penance!” Sweenie cried, rubbing
his scalp.

Edward Bruce rushed up to embrace his brother. “We’ve been
searching under every rock from here to Mull for you. MacDonald has his galley
waiting in the bay. The English patrols are on the eastern side of the isle. We
must hurry. They’ll sail around the cove within the hour.”

Edward helped Sweenie and the other men carry Robert from the cave.

James held back, seeking his equilibrium from the discovery that the woman was not Morgainne. Still struggling to squint his eyes into focus, he asked her, “Who are you?”

She offered a hand to assist him to his feet. “Christiana of
the Isles.”

“The daughter of Gamoran,
the chieftain?”

She nodded. “My father is dead. I now lead my people.”

“How did you find us this far south?”

Christiana rolled her eyes into her upper lids, as if overtaken by an inner vision. She looked up at the spider hanging above her head and stroked its spine. The spider arched its back as if to acknowledge her greeting. She whispered something to it in what seemed to be some form of oracular communication. Then, she looked down at James and warned him, “A lady suffers for you.”

James’s weakening knees knifed him to the ground. “Belle?”

Christiana translated the rest of the prophecy from the spider. “She dangles. Bait to catch a king.”

He crawled closer.
“Speak plainly, woman! Do you know where she is?”

Christiana’s voice turned husky. “Many years from now, a great
nation is promised on the far side of the world. But this shall come to pass
only if you and your king gain victory here.” She placed her ear near the
spider to better hear its message. “Look to the blood crosses. They bear the
salvation of the Light in your hour of travail.” After a long silence, she
finished with another warning, “This war cannot be won by you alone.”

“Blood crosses? What in God’s name does
that
mean?”

She turned and walked away.

“Damn you! Answer me!”

At the mouth of the cave, Christiana looked over her
shoulder at him with a heavy-lidded glare of contempt. “For you to prevail in
this war, the women of your land must prove stronger than the men of your
enemy.”

“Of
my
land? Do you forget that you are a Scot, as
well?”

“I am an Isleswoman. Whether I shall one day be a Scot
depends on you and your king. From what I’ve seen so far of your skills in
governance, I doubt there’s much chance of it.”

“Babbling hag! What do you know of our war!”

Christiana whipped her cloak across her face, leaving only
her flaming eyes bared. “I know this much. Only the female spider bears the
colours of royalty. The truth of my vision has already been confirmed.”

James was utterly baffled by all of these shrouded declarations. “And, pray tell, how?”

“Had that spinning lass and I not come to your aid this
night, you and your fair-weather king would have been dead by morning.”

B
LINDFOLDED,
B
ELLE WAS DRAGGED FROM
a mule and shoved down
a cobblestone path. The past week had been a whirlwind of confusion and terror,
ever since that desperate night when the man pounding on the door of St.
Duthac’s kirk turned out to be not James, but the Earl of Ross, a Comyn ally
who had found and deciphered the scribbled message she had left at Kildrummy.
Taken from the Tain sanctuary with the other women, she had been kept
uninformed about her whereabouts. Now, as her eyes were uncovered, she adjusted
to the harsh sunlight and saw a Latin inscription on the keystone of an
archway.

Her heart sank.

She was standing at the gate to Lanercost Abbey, the English
army’s headquarters just south of the Borders. The guards drove her into the
abbot’s quarters. Inside, the windows were draped with black bunting and an
odor of camphor filled the stifling air. Prodded another step forward, she saw
a group hovering around a canopy made of gauze-thin linen. As a candle’s flame
flickered, their faces became clearer: Caernervon stood aside a bed, flanked by
the Earl of Ross and the Dominican Lagny. Elizabeth Bruce, her stepdaughter
Marjorie, and the Bruce sisters knelt at the foot. They turned toward her with
fright in their swollen eyes.

Caernervon retracted the sheer canopy. “Father, I have
captured the bitches.”

A desiccated hand reached through the gauzy folds and
beckoned Elizabeth Bruce closer. “Dearest Liz, praise God you are saved from
that felonious husband of yours. … Where is he hiding?”

Elizabeth’s breathing shallowed. “I do not know.”

“Light!” the king shouted. “I am not in the grave yet!”

The royal physician rushed up to massage the old monarch’s chafed temples, muttering muttered a warning about the sun aggravating the headaches.

Longshanks, shriveled to half his normal weight, repulsed
another invasion on his person and tore the canopy from its supports. He
dragged up against the headboard and captured Elizabeth’s hand. “Am I too
frightful to look upon?” When she tried to retreat, he forced her ear to within
inches of his labored breath. “Vile rumors are being spread about you, Liz.
They are saying you counseled Bruce to turn against me.”

Elizabeth’s words quavered. “Your Majesty—”

“Of course, I protested that slander. My favorite daughter
of the loyal Carrick would never betray my trust.” Finding her too distraught
to form a response, he caressed her tangled russet hair, each stroke firmer in
its threat. “My little songbird. You were always so facile with the quips.
Perhaps you need some time in a nest to regain your voice.” He shoved her away.
“Take her to York dungeon!”

Little Marjorie screamed as Elizabeth slid to her knees, her
mouth gaped in a silent shriek.

Belle rushed up to prevent Elizabeth from collapsing. She
pleaded leniency for her queen. “Robert Bruce cares nothing for this woman. He abandoned
her in his haste to escape from Methven. You will only be doing his bidding if
you allow her to languish and suffer.”

Stunned by Belle’s intercession, Elizabeth was about to contradict that falsehood when Belle glared a warning at her to remain silent.

The Earl of Ross, seeing that the king could not place
Belle’s face, came to his aid. “The Earl of Buchan’s absconding wife, Sire.”

Belle caught a shadow of
movement in the corner. Isabella of France, standing off in dark to avoid the
king’s detection, came into the dim light. The French princess shook her head
in a covert plea for Belle not to draw more attention. But Belle ignored the warning and stepped in front of the prostrate Elizabeth to deflect
the king’s ire. “I now belong to James Douglas.”

Longshanks covered his scabrous shoulders with a velvet robe
stained in blood and phlegm. Wincing from the painful effort, he stood and,
tottering before finding his balance, shuffled a few steps toward her. “So, it
was
you
who placed the crown upon the traitor?”

“Upon the rightful king of Scotland.”

Longshanks enjoyed the bemused reaction of his son—and spun
back on Belle, slapping her to the floor. “Perhaps you’ve not been informed of
what we do to traitors.”

Disoriented for a breath, Belle looked up from her knees.
Through stinging tears, she saw the king nod to the Earl of Ross. A side door
opened, and attendants carried in a board draped with a sheet.

Longshanks ripped off the covering.

The severed heads of Nigel Bruce, the Earl of Atholl, and
Christian’s husband, Christopher Seton, sat impaled on spikes, their faces
frozen in their last agonized repose.

Belle stifled a gasp. The mouth of a fourth head—which
looked disturbingly familiar—had been grotesquely stretched open. She nearly vomited,
sickened by the smell of putrid flesh lathered with preserving tallow.

Longshanks seemed to draw strength from the macabre display.
“Atholl protested that his rank did not merit a common hanging, so I had him
strung up twice as high as the others.” He laughed so hard that a hacking spasm
nearly choked him. Regaining his breath, he grasped the bloody scalp of the
unidentified head and held it in front of the women. “Do you not recognize
him?”