The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (46 page)

Robert struggled to his feet. “I should have you strung up!”

“Aye, if by the continuance of terror you would enforce your
rule.”

Robert stumbled, wincing from the ache in his ribs. The men
rushed to brace him, but he pushed them aside. He commanded a rope and with
trembling hands noosed Randolph’s neck. “You accuse me of waging this war by
base means. Do you know who fathered that strategy?”

Randolph, glancing at the beam above him, shook his head.

“Our mutual friend for whom you have such high esteem.”
Robert waited for his nephew to break. Finding him still defiant, he nodded in
a grudging admiration for his principles and removed the noose from around his
neck. “You resemble Jamie in more than just features. You’ll stay with me,
Thomas. Fight or not, that is your choice. But I’ll not give you the
satisfaction of taking leave of this cracked world before I do.”

J
AMES CRAWLED OUT FROM HIS
leafy lair in the outskirts of
Ettrick Forest and listened for the rustling of Clifford’s patrols. Finding the
wilderness trail near Jedburgh deserted, he signaled for his three hundred
raiders to join him in the clearing. Pale from weeks of no sun, the men emerged
from the cover of the foliage and sprawled along a high ridge south of the
Tweed River, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to bask under the warm
spring rays.

As they lounged, James walked among his small band, checking on the condition of their feet and weapons. He had driven them hard during these three years since the Douglas Larder raid, but their punishing sorties against the occupied Borders burghs had prevented the English from sending reinforcements against Robert’s army in the Highlands. Clifford was always predictable in his retaliation, burning the same Scot castles and abbeys and ordering his officers into this wilderness on a fruitless search for prisoners. Inevitably, Clifford would become overconfident, convincing himself that the Scot raiders had finally fled north, and then he and his Lanark men would then strike again at the occupation garrisons, poisoning their wells and ambushing their supply trains.

Despite these successes,
he was growing frustrated with the gadfly role that Robert had assigned him.
Berwick remained out of his reach, and he feared Belle would not survive much
longer in that miserable cage designed for her humiliation. He had scoured his
brain for some way to rescue her, but in the end, he knew an attack on the
impregnable port city with such a small force would be suicidal.

While the others caught
up on their sleep, he unrolled his tattered pack and took refuge again in the
hope that had always kept him from despair: He and Belle with a dozen children
in some manor house above a salmon stream. As he daydreamed, he gazed down at
this lush valley lined with oaks, and blinked hard. Before him lay the very
landscape that had always appeared in his reveries, accurate to the covering groves
that would protect against the harsh winter winds. This rock-strewn clearing
guarded the ancient Roman way that offered the only route into England for
twenty leagues in either direction. The horse path snaked around the hill and
descended into a cranny with steep shoulders. No one could cross the border
here without passing through this natural gateway; it would make a perfect spot
to situate his headquarters and build a home for Belle. Inspired, he rousted
Sweenie from his slumber.

“That was an hour?” the
monk grumbled.

“What is the name of
this place?”

Rubbing his bleary eyes,
Sweenie pulled out the sheepskin map that he kept hidden in his sacerdotal. He
ran his stumpy forefinger down the angling line demarking the border and
stopped at an insignificant “X” that represented a desolate shepherd’s pass.
“Lintalee.”

“Lintalee? What does
that name mean?”

“It’s Gaelic for the
only place in God’s kingdom in which I’ve managed five minutes of sleep since I
had the misfortune of encountering you.”

“Bless this hill,” James
told him. “Or do whatever you churchmen need to do to make it mine.”

“Make it
yours
?” Sweenie leapt to his feet and stamped his short
staff in protest. “What makes you think the Almighty fashioned this landscape
for
you
?”

“I was just visited with a holy vision.” He captured the
little monk by the scruff of his neck and led him down the valley toward the
creek. “I’m thinking of building a chapel here, maybe even an abbey.” He winked
in conspiracy. “Of course, its abbot will enjoy a rich endowment.”

Sweenie escaped his hold and harrumphed at the bribe. “You
think I’m fool enough to squander away my days of old age under your—”

A thunder of hooves came rumbling up from the south.

James whistled the other men back to the woods. Too far away
to rejoin them without being seen, he led Sweenie on a run toward the ravine.
He gave his dagger to the monk and swept his hand across his own throat to
instruct him on the swiftest technique for the kill.

The approaching patrol galloped into the sunken path with none
of the cautious manner typical of Clifford’s troopers.

James pounced into the crease of the first two riders. He
dragged them from their saddles while Sweenie leeched on the third rider’s back
and rode him like a snorting bull. James stunned a fourth intruder with a knee
blow, then jumped astride a fifth rider and pinned him. In the midst of the
scuffle, he felt a strange softness on the man’s chest.

“Hold off!” one of the unhorsed riders shouted.

The rest of the Scot raiders jumped down from their hiding
in the trees and appeared above the ravine with their notched bows aimed at the
trespassers.

The leader of the mounted patrol stepped forward with his hands raised. “We have no quarrel with brigands. Allow us passage, and you will be well compensated.”

James collared the man. “Brigands? I’ll sever that
slandering tongue!”

McClurg restrained him from gutting their captive. “At least
find out where his lucre is stashed before you render him speechless.”

“Finian’s teeth!” Sweenie shouted.

The Scots turned to find the monk still wrestling with his
victim, biting and cursing like a landlocked Islesman. Outsized, Sweenie
finally ripped away the man’s cloak and exposed a mantle sewn with a splayed
red cross.

James removed the helmet from one of the riders he had just
unhorsed. Standing before him was Jeanne de Rouen, the lass who had bested him
in swordplay in Paris. He stripped off her riding cloak and discovered that she
wore a black mantle stitched with a red, eight-pointed cross.

Driven to the task by dagger points, her companions removed
their own cloaks, revealing splayed red crosses on their mantles.

“Murderous bastards!” Sim Ledhouse snarled at the crusader
monks. “I lost two kinsmen at Falkirk to these conniving Templars. Caernervon
sent them slithering up here to do his assassin work. I say we slice them from
ear to ear and send their heads back to London.”

James recognized their leader as Peter d’Aumont, the haughty
Auvergne monk who had shouted threats at him in Paris. He twisted the
knave’s collar to demand an explanation for this trespassing so far from
France. “What skullduggery brings the French Temple to Scotland?”

“Philip has imprisoned our brothers on false charges of
crimes against the Church. Those still alive are now at the mercy of
torturers.”

Ledhouse got into d’Aumont’s face. “This one’s a coward as
well as a traitor! He leaves his men behind while he flees to save his own
hide.”

“To fight on!” d’Aumont insisted. “I led what few I could
muster into the Orient Forest near Troyes. We made our way by night to La
Rochelle and sailed across the Channel.”

“Longshanks favored the Temple,” James reminded the French
monk. “And Caernervon was knighted in your sanctuary.”

“Piers Gaveston is in league with the Dominicans,” Jeanne de
Rouen said. “The friars have turned Caernervon against us. Your Bishop of St.
Andrews languishes in Winchester dungeon. He told us to head west to Kintyre
and the Isles.”

“Lies!” Ledhouse shouted. “Lamberton would never aid these
popish swine!”

Sweenie circled the Templars while debating their claim.
“Even if what they say is true, the Bruce will not sanction this. If he is
discovered harboring heretics, the Church will never release him from
excommunication.”

“And if we let them live,” Ledhouse warned, “they’ll lead
Clifford to us.”

James twirled his dagger under d’Aumont’s nose. Nothing
would give him more pleasure than to gut the arrogant Frenchman. He was about
to dispatch him when a raven’s shriek shook the treetops—Christiana Gamoran’s
enigmatic warning in the Arran cave came to his memory.

Look to the blood crosses.

He stared at the Templar mantles. Could these red insignias
be the blood crosses that the clairvoyant Isleswoman had promised would one day
show him the way to victory? He shook off the idea as ludicrous. How could
these outlawed monks, notorious for being loyal only to what benefited their
order, possibly help Scotland? His father had told stories of their treachery
in the Holy Land. The Temple Master there had accepted bribes from the Saracens
to raise the siege of Damascus and leave other Christians to die.

No, he would not fall for their trickery. If Lamberton had
sent them into the Borders with his blessing, he would have supplied them with
a sign to confirm his patronage. On his signal, his men threw ropes over the
limbs to string up the Templars.

Jeanne stepped forward to be the first to die.

James admired how his former tourney-field opponent had
flowered into a ravishing woman, no longer able to hide her curves under her
mantle. “I thought only men were allowed to join the Temple.”

 D’Aumont answered
for her. “She is a Cistercienne. Attached to our commandery to assist in the
education of the brothers.”

James scoffed at that claim. “She educated you, all right.
With the business end of a steel blade, just as she did me once.”

Jeanne blanched in sudden recognition, only then making the
connection between her former opponent in Paris and the legendary Scot raider
she had heard tales about. “
You
are the Black Douglas?”

“You seem surprised.”

“I never expected to find you in the company of soldiers.”

“And why would that be?”

“Your bishop said you had turned out more suited for the
monastery.”

Regaled by laughter, James begrudged a sheepish smile. “Did
he now?”

Their raucous reaction to her observation confused Jeanne.
“When I asked if you had continued with your martial study, the bishop said you
had proven not cut out for the warring life. He also suggested that it would be
to my advantage to challenge you again.”

James chortled, nodding at what he knew was a confirmation
of their claim; that clever quip carried the bishop’s imprimatur, for certain.
Eager for a rematch, he cut the bindings on Jeanne’s wrists and threw a sword
to her.

Jeanne reddened, informed that she had been the brunt of a
jest at the bishop’s behest. She returned the blade. “I was also told that the
offer of shelter was an ancient tradition in your land. If you cannot see it in
your heart to give us refuge, I will not fight you for it to provide amusement.”
She stepped in front of d’Aumont and brought James’s dagger to her slender
throat, daring him to follow through with his threat.

James maintained his threatening glower, but she did not
waver. Then, another warning from the past rang in his ear:
The women of
your land must prove stronger than the men of your enemy.
This French lass
possessed more courage than any of these monks who rode with her. He severed
the bindings on the wrists of her fellow Templars, then cut a swath from his
own surcoat and gave her the shred of cloth embroidered with his clan’s crest.
“Show this to any who threaten you with harm.”

His raiders shook their heads in disgust, forced to stand down. The Templars, stunned by the reprieve, mounted quickly and headed north.

Galloping with them, Jeanne halted several lengths away. She split off from her comrades and doubled back to James. After a hesitation, she whispered, “The lady held in Berwick … I have heard it said that she is your woman.”

“Aye.”

She cantered a few steps off to lead him farther away from
his men. “Our spies in London tell us that Edward plans to visit Roxburgh on
the fortnight. The queen and his favourite will accompany him. He has ordered
the towers festooned to his meet his taste in fashion.”

“Thank you for the
surveillance about Caernervon’s weakness for fine furnishings,” James said
sarcastically, giving little care to the fact that prissy monarch would be
visiting yet another of the strongly defended Borders castles.

Jeanne looked fiercely into his eyes to drive home the
import of her report. “Half of Roxburgh’s garrison is to be redeployed in
neighboring towns to make room for Edward’s bloated entourage. It is also
rumored …” She hesitated again, as if debating whether she should finish.