The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas (49 page)

James stepped back and
cursed under his breath.
Thomas foccin’ Randolph.

His raiders, aware of the simmering rivalry between the two
men, grinned at the promise of entertainment that this encounter held. Instead
of dispatching the traitor to the block, Robert was now grooming his turncoat
nephew into one his most trusted lieutenants. Even more galling to James
were the rumors that Robert had mistaken Randolph for him at Inverurie.

Dismounting with a flare, Randolph reached into his
saddlebag and tossed a charred brick at their boots. “A souvenir from Edinburgh
Castle.”

James examined the kiln
marks on the brick while his men hooted down Randolph’s claim that he had
retaken the well-defended crag fortress from the English.

“No mortal could scale
those walls,” McClurg insisted.

Randolph greeted his old
comrades with handshakes and backslaps. “There you’re wrong, you stinking
Unholy Ghost!”

James kept a skeptical
distance. “Edinburgh is truly ours?”

“Aye, Jamie! You should
have been there!”

As the Lanark men
crowded around Randolph, mesmerized by the vision of the Scottish Lion once
again flying above those hallowed heights, James threaded their ranks to
protest, “I
would
have been if you had told me—”

“We sat under that rock for two months,” Randolph bragged.
“One fine summer morn, I told the lads, ‘I don’t have the patience of Jamie
Douglas, just waiting for starvation to take its course.’”

James reddened. “The Hell you say! When did I ever—”

Sweenie threw an elbow
at James’s ribs. “Will you let the man finish?”

As James was shoved to the rear, Randolph rubbed the dust
from his mouth and continued his report. “Now, where was I?”

“Below Edinburgh’s walls!” Ledhouse reminded him.

“Aye, lads.” Randolph
turned to each man with exaggerated intensity, regaling his rapt audience in
the round. “There I was, staring up at that rock thrice the height of St.
Andrew’s spire, and I said to myself, ‘If Jamie Douglas can scale Roxburgh, then
by Christ I owe it to him to have a run at these ramparts, even if they make
Constantinople’s towers look like Aberdeen cattle pens. The English had raised
the walls ten—no, twenty lengths higher. Mind you, the fact that you lads
failed to hold Roxburgh tower longer than it takes a Northumbrian to enjoy a
good shit gave me pause, but not for long.”

Sweenie kept hammering at the kneecaps of those around him
to keep from being crushed in the listening scrum. “How many English defended
it?”

Randolph swept his hand
across an imaginary parapet. “A thousand if there was one, my tonsured heretic
sprite.”

“Two hundred half-starved conscripts,” James insisted from
the rear.

“So up we go, one at a time. Thirty against two thousand.
The night was so pitched you couldn’t see your hand at your nose. A good thing
that was, lads! No looking down into the depths of Hell that awaited us if we
fell. I’m leading the way, of course. When I gain the crest, I reach for the
ledge. And a rock breaks off and lands with a crash that would wake the dead.”

“Guards?” Sweenie cried, flinching from the vision.

Randolph stood shadowing over the monk. “Aye, you
boot-stomped plug of devil dust! English men-at-arms as thick as these oaks!
And just as stout! One calls out, ‘You’re a dead man, Scottie!’”

Sweenie slammed his knuckle of a fist against his tiny palm.
“Damn the ill fortune!”

Randolph lowered his
voice to draw them all closer. “Lads, I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t
calculating the very words I’d soon be saying to my Maker. But St. Fillan be my
witness, a miracle was granted me that very instant, for the guard just laughed
and moved on. The brainless scouser was only trying to scare his mate with a
false alarm.”

“The Almighty be praised,” Sweenie declared, releasing a
held breath. “Truly, a sign of the righteousness of our cause.”

Randolph parried and
punched at James to imitate his fight with the sentry. James fought to escape
the clench, but his struggling only served Randolph’s purpose in reenacting the
scene as he described it, blow by blow.

“When the last man was
up and over, the alarums rang out,” Randolph said. “And the garrison came on us
like the locusts on Pharaoh. But when, I ask you, lads, could three thousand
Yorkshiremen hold back thirty Scots?”

Untangling from Randolph’s hold, James was determined to put
a stop to the yarn before the number of Edinburgh’s defenders grew to be half
the population of England. “You conveniently failed to explain how you got to
the top of that tower.”

“Did I now?” Randolph reached into his saddlebag again and
emptied the remainder of its contents at James’s boots.

A rope ladder, threaded with wooden plank, unfolded across
the ground.

Randolph smothered a chuckle. “We plundered this marvel from
an English patrol near Falkirk. “Someone carelessly abandoned it at Berwick.”

Ledhouse’s eyes rounded. “That’s
my
ladder!”

Randolph slapped
Ledhouse’s back in mock commiseration. “I’m sure the bards will mention that
when they sing of my conquest.”

James nodded with a grin, good-naturedly accepting the brunt
of the jest. “You came all this way to regale us with your exploits, did you?”

From the shadows, Randolph brought forward a horse that
carried a blindfolded man whose hands were bound.

“A prisoner?” James protested. “What do you expect
me
to do with him?”

Randolph dragged the
captive from the saddle. “He came to us demanding to speak to the Black
Douglas. Apparently he couldn’t find you on his own.”

Suspecting another prank,
James waved off that claim and prepared to return to his seat at the fire.
“I’ve had my fill of your amusements for one night.”

“I carry a message from the King of England,” the prisoner
said.

James spun on his heels at hearing that familiar voice.

The Lanark raiders tightened a circle around the imperious
Englishman. But despite their glares of intimidation, the blindfolded captive
remained adamant in his demand. “What I have to say is for the ear of Douglas only.”

James confronted him. “I have nothing to hide from these
men.”

“I must first confirm that you are Douglas.”

Ledhouse pressed a dagger to the prisoner’s throat. “No
Englishman sees the Douglas in Ettrick and lives to tell of it.”

When the messenger
refused to retract his condition, James yanked off his blindfold. Before him
stood John Webton, the knight whose life he had spared in the attack on Castle
Douglas. “Your letter-writing lady is well, I trust.”

Webton displayed a
betrothal band on his finger. “She sends her regards.”

“I hope you didn’t come all this way expecting a wedding
gift.”

Webton lowered his voice to soften the impact of what he
next related, “You are to come to Melrose Abbey on morrow eve. Alone and
unarmed.”

“By whose demand?”

“On that I have been sworn to secrecy.” Webton was reluctant
to finish his report. “I was also commanded to tell you … if you wish to see
the Countess of Buchan again, you will be there.”

Ledhouse drove the Englishman against a tree. “Let’s string
him up!”

Impressed by Webton’s courage, James held his men at bay
while he tried to divine the purpose of such a strange message. After mulling
the risk, he cut the bindings on Webton’s wrists and led him back to his horse.

Webton mounted. “What answer shall I convey?”

James slapped the flanks
of the horse and sent his former deskmate galloping off without a reply.

“I’ll follow him,” McClurg said.

“No,” James ordered.

Randolph glared at him with a slack jaw. “You’re not
thinking of going?”

James turned over in his
mind all of the reasons the English might have for seeking such a meeting. He
had recaptured many of the castles in the south, but Clifford still held
Stirling, Bothwell, Jedburgh, Dunbar, and Berwick. If one of the garrison
commanders sought the parlay on his own initiative, Caernervon’s army would not
yet have launched its invasion. Could this be a ruse to capture him? Or confirm
that he was still in the Borders? No, Clifford would never expect him to walk
alone into such a trap. Something else had to be afoot. Perhaps Lancaster was
signaling a desire to join Robert in the war against Caernervon.

“Jamie?” Randolph said,
reminding him that they were all waiting.

James wrapped his arm around Randolph’s shoulder and led his
rival below a limb where their battle gear was hung. “Tom, I suspect your life
has been a long series of disappointments since that day you traipsed into
Inverurie playing me. I’m going to give you an opportunity to experience the
thrill again.”

Randolph turned to the other Lanark raiders for an
explanation. “I’ve heard about these daft spells of his.”

James sized up Randolph’s height and measured him with his
own black hauberk imprinted with the robin-blue Douglas crest. Marveling at how
well it fit Randolph, he now understood how Robert could have made the mistake
of identity at Inverurie. “With your scrawny frame, you may buckle under its
weight, but hopefully you’ll find a way to manage.”

“You going to let us in this cockeyed plan?” Ledhouse asked.

James rifled through one of the bedrolls. Finding a monk’s
cowl, he slipped it over his shoulders for a disguise. “Tomorrow night, the
Black Douglas attacks Jedburgh. Too bad I won’t be there to enjoy it.” He
playfully thumped Randolph’s chest with his fist. “Try not to ruin my
reputation.”

T
HE NEXT NIGHT,
J
AMES STALKED
the roofless hull of Melrose Abbey, a Cistercian monastery abandoned after repeated English raids. He slipped alone into the ashlar ruins and searched the dark nave, moving with stealth from pillar to pillar. By now, if the English had taken the bait, Randolph and the lads would be drawing Clifford toward Jedburgh with their diversionary raid. Whoever was meeting him here would expect him to approach from Ettrick in the west, so he had come in from the direction of the coast, but he had seen no tracks or fresh horse chips around the grounds.

Pipistrelle bats squealed from their perches on the vaulting
and dived at him. He spun around with his hand on the dagger under his cloak.
From the shadows at the high altar, the silhouette of a draped figure appeared.
He halted and waited for an indication of the man’s intent.

A black-robed figure walked into the diffused light. “I
bring a proposal.”

He couldn’t see the face receded in the hood. “From whom?”

The messenger hesitated. “The King of England.”

Why did that voice sound familiar? He turned and scanned the
colonnades to insure again that no one was lurking behind him. Taking a step
closer, he saw from the messenger’s garb that he was a monk. “Churchmen now
conduct England’s diplomacy?”

“Your lady will be delivered.”

He closed in on the monk. “Edward Caernervon is not so
generous.”

The monk retreated a step to avoid being identified. “Keep
your distance. … Someone dear to the king is in danger. You will give him
refuge.”

He narrowed his blinking gaze, astonished by the
extraordinary demand and its peremptory tone. “And if I refuse?”

“The Countess of Buchan will not survive another winter.”

He drove the insolent monk against the altar and ripped off
the knave’s hood, exposing his face.

Staring up at him was the Dominican Lagny, the inquisitor he
had first encountered as a young man in Paris. The monk signaled with a weak
turn of his head at the shadows behind the altar. From the protection of a
column walked a skeleton of a man wheezing with labored breaths. The Dominican
brought the half-dead wretch forward. “The king wishes him protected.”

Several seconds passed before James recognized the invalid.
Hollow-eyed and pale as a ghost, Piers Gaveston no longer resembled the
blustering scoundrel who had sat laughing at him during the signing of the
Ragman Rolls, when his fellow countrymen had been forced to submit in
humiliation to Longshanks.

His mind raced with the implications of this astonishing offer. Although installed as the Earl of Cornwall, the Gascon had to be in grave danger with the other earls if Caernervon was resorting to such risky measures. If Lancaster were to discover that Caernervon was negotiating to place the safety of his favourite over the interests of the realm, the foundations of the Plantagenet house would certainly crumble. Still, he sensed that this monk’s plea for sanctuary rang true. His own spies had reported rumors from Yorkshire that Caernervon could not sleep and was refusing food for fear of ingesting more poison intended for Gaveston. He had initially dismissed such reports as scurrilous gossip planted by enemies of the Plantagenet intent on removing Gaveston from his position of influence in the court. But now, seeing the Gascon so deteriorated …

“Robert Bruce takes the credit for your victories,” the
Dominican said. “His queen enjoys the warmth of a nunnery while your lady
languishes in torment. You can still save her.”

He cocked his ear toward the dark recesses. Caernervon might
be desperate, but would that coward really send this cleric skulking across the
border without an armed escort? He glared at Gaveston and tried to find some
quality in the cretin justifying such loyalty. “Caernervon risks his crown for
him
?”

The monk did not break his cold, emotionless gaze. “The king
has instructed me to ask
you
a question.”

“And what would that be?”

“Have you ever known a love for which you would abandon
all?”

He came nose to nose with the supercilious inquisitor. “Aye,
I have known two. And both have suffered at Caernervon’s pasty hand.”

The Dominican flinched as if expecting a blow. “The king
asks only that you take Gaveston into your custody until he can consolidate his
forces against Lancaster. The Bruce need not know of the arrangement.”