The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas Read online

  The Hammer of the Scots.

  When the royal column disappeared over the far ridge, he clambered up to the limb of a sprawling oak for a better view of his father’s defense of the Scot tower. Called “Le Hardi” in honor of his service to the Cross in Palestine, Wil Douglas had been recruited by the guardians of the realm to lead the insurrection against the English aggression. Sinewy and raw-boned, he stood a hand taller than most in his ranks and could still sling a log farther than any man in Lanarkshire. Yet a decade of fighting had aged him beyond his forty-two years; his eyes were ringed with smoky circles of fatigue and his thick chestnut shocks had receded to a band of grey tufts above the temples. He now slumped so severely from the weight of his hauberk that his torso appeared to have slipped the moorings of his spine. Although his crackling storytelling and bawdy jests used to be legendary across Scotland, James could not remember the last time he had heard his father laugh.

  He searched the smoldering pines to the north. There was still no sign of the promised relief army from Stirling. Below the city’s walls, on the banks of the Tweed, English soldiers guarded the lone bridge that led into the port. Swollen from the spring thaw, the river curved through the low dunes and came within a hundred yards of the tower before emptying into the sea. He feared that if the English were allowed to fire their catapult all night, his father’s timbered keep would collapse before morning. If that happened, the road to the northern provinces would be thrown open. Weighing the risks, he drew a long breath and insisted, “Somehow, we have to malafooster that stone thrower.”

  Gibbie kept chewing his root. “Those scousers down there are thicker than a cloud of midges. How would we get into the camp unnoticed?”

  While thinking hard on that problem, James cocked his ear to the south. A minstrel’s ditty wafted up in the breeze from the camp followers straggling behind the English army. Hatching an idea, he whistled an imitation of the tune as he pulled a penknife from his pocket and whittled a soft branch into a hollow flute with five holes. Satisfied with its pitch, he split off another limb and hurriedly carved three balls the size of crab apples. He threw the wooden balls at Gibbie. “How’s your juggling?”

  Gibbie lunged for them, but he lost his hold on the limb and plummeted to the heather. Cursing, he arose and gathered up the balls, wondering what in hell’s molasses his friend was up to now. James was already gone, running toward the river armed with only a tune pipe and some cockeyed scheme. “Douglas, you bawheided choob! You’re dafter’n an unbolt door on a windy day!”

  AS DARKNESS FELL, THE TWO boys floated down river toward Berwick. Moving with the strong currents, they held their shirts and leggings above their heads while the pups paddled furiously behind them to keep up. After a half-hour of frigid swimming past the charred debris, they reached the banks below the tower and discovered that the English had advanced their lines to within a mere hundred paces from the walls. They dressed quickly, shaking the blood back to their toes.

  After whispering a prayer to St. Ninian for protection, James nodded his readiness to Gibbie. Then, he leapt over the embankment and marched into the English camp, playing the flute and singing:

  “The pretty trees of Berwick

  are hung with fruit so ripe.”

  Gibbie followed, juggling awkwardly, while the pups howled.

  The soldiers sitting around the fires erupted to their feet with weapons drawn and searched the surrounding darkness for the source of the singing.

  James shook with fear, but he forced himself to finish the song:

  “Scots and dogs that deigned to pick

  with their English lords a gripe.”

  The soldiers glared at the two ragged jesters—and burst into laughter.

  Their merriment, however, was short-lived. A sullen-looking officer, clad in a black hammered breastplate and spiked gauntlets, marched through the ranks with a sinister gait that cowered the men to silence. He wore his long black hair lacquered back in a ducktail on his collar, and his liquorish mouth was coated with an evident distaste for all who fell under the inspection of his gimlet eyes. Glaring at them down a crooked nose notched by scars, he demanded, “Who halted the firing of this sling?”

  An older Englishman with reddish-blond hair and a finely trimmed beard cantered up on a sleek ebony horse. The three chevronels on his breastplate revealed him to be Gilbert de Clare, the Earl of Gloucester. “The men have been on the march for weeks, Clifford. Allow them this brief amusement.”

  Clifford.

  James shot an alarmed glance at Gibbie. He had often heard his father curse the name of Robert Clifford, a mosstrooper granted seized Scot domains for serving as the Plantagenet watchdog here in the Borders. Although only in his mid-twenties, the English officer’s hard, contemptuous features were so suffused with an urgency to inflict cruelty that he appeared to be much older.

  Clifford refused the baron even the courtesy of a direct look. “I am not leading a festival here.”

  Gloucester was quick to put the officer in his place. “You are not leading anything. His Majesty commands this army. And I am his second in rank.”

  James was stunned to hear such insolence spoken to a nobleman. The English earl had a high forehead and pouchy, bloodshot eyes that gave him the weary look of a philosopher exiled into a world of crass thugs. Although married to the king’s daughter, he was also kinsman to several prominent Scot nobles, a lineage that reportedly had cast him into disfavor in London. His counsel against this interference in Scotland’s affairs had further strained his relationship with the king, and James suspected the wily Longshanks was testing Gloucester’s loyalty by requiring the baron to accompany the army north.

  Clifford edged a hand to his sword. “You’ve dragged your heels since we left York.”

  Rankled, Gloucester straightened in the saddle. “You accuse me of treason?”

  “Always one boot on each side of this border.”

  “Damn you, Clifford! Not in front of the men!”

  Clifford turned laughing to the ranks. “So orders the cousin to the Bruces and Stewarts!”

  Despite giving up thirty years in age, Gloucester leapt from his saddle and lunged at the mouthy officer. The two Englishmen clenched and grappled, but the bulk of their livery impeded their blows. A sergeant-at-arms finally broke them apart, and Gloucester surfaced from the fight clutching his chest. “I will have recourse for that slander! By the Cross, I will have—”

  “My treasury!”

  That shout, from behind them, had the silencing effect of an explosion.

  Edward Plantagenet’s wiry white locks fanned over his black velvet royal robe as he strode with long, loping steps toward the two scrapping men. The king stopped and, turning to a freckle-faced boy trailing behind him, remarked with a tone of deceptive benevolence, “I have spent half the coin of my realm to provision this army, Eddie. Can you tell me what it still lacks?”

  The monarch’s twelve-year-old heir, Prince Edward Caernervon, stood cocooned in a miniature breastplate and armed with a sword half the length of regular issue. He carved a path through the downcast soldiers, who were forced to suffer his abuse. Looking up at his towering father, he offered a guess. “Archers?”

  “Nay, I have a thousand Welsh bowmen.”

  The prince tried again. “Engines?”

  The king’s left lid drooped menacingly as he walked to the giant catapult and caressed its beams. This odd disparity of his eyes, one slack and the other sharp, gave the impression that two warring souls inhabited his body. When his lazy eye quivered, as it did now, a malevolent daemon seemed to take possession of him. “That surely cannot be the source of my troubles. This trebuchet has the longest range of any on the Isles.”

  The prince removed his small helmet, unleashing a mop of red hair. “I’ve guessed it now, father! You have no officers worthy of you!”

  The king spun so swiftly on Clifford that his trailing attendants lurched backwards into the muck. “From the mouth of a babe!�
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  Clifford kept his head bowed. “If Your Grace would assign me command—”

  The king lunged at the officer and pinned his neck to the trebuchet girdings. “Why has that tower not been taken?”

  Clifford gasped, “This man Douglas will not relent.”

  Shocked by the swift surge of violence, James stole a quick glance at the ranks. Although the soldiers kept their eyes down, Gloucester smiled coldly, clearly enjoying the insolent officer’s comeuppance.

  Finally, the earl interceded with a cool demeanor that suggested he held himself equal to the Plantagenet in both pedigree and intelligence. “These demonstrations of terror only stiffen the resolve of the Scots,” he told the king. “Wil Douglas may be a firebrand, but he has grievances.”

  The king abandoned Clifford and closed fast on Gloucester. “Grievances? These Scots beg me to arbitrate their disputes! And this is how they show their gratitude? I did not betroth you to my daughter, sirrah, to suffer your insipid lectures on statecraft!”

  James saw Gloucester redden, yet the baron had no choice but to swallow the affront. Gloucester was one of the few men alive whose memory reached into those tumultuous decades after the English king’s grandfather had been brought to heel at Runnymede in 1215. Yet this Edward now ruled as if the Magna Carta had never been signed. When, months earlier, the Scot nobles had petitioned Edward to arbitrate their dispute over their empty throne, he had twisted the request into a pretext for annexing the kingdom to his own.

  Clifford searched the camp for a diversion to lighten the king’s mood. “My lord, why not demonstrate to the rebels how little worried we are by their defiance. A few verses by this rhymester and his juggler will raise our spirits.”

  James hunted for an opening to the river. His plan had been to deceive a few conscripts into letting him sleep close enough to the engine to set it afire during the night, not to give a royal performance. Clifford snapped fingers for him and Gibbie to step up on the quick. Given no choice, James cleared his throat while searching for a new verse. Finally, he sang:

  “By Longshanks he is known.”

  Groans from the ranks revealed too late that the king’s nickname was never spoken in his presence. Yet James forced himself to continue, fearing that hesitation would prove even more disastrous:

  “From Wales to far-off France,

  For his boots reach long,

  And his step be strong … ”

  He raked his brain for a finale.

  “… The better upon their necks to dance.”

  An uneasy hush fell over the men—until the king gave up a hearty laugh.

  Relieved, James offered a half-bow. When he arose, he saw, in the clearing just beyond the tents, a band of captive Berwick residents being herded toward the gallows. The poor wretches trudged across the camp in a wavering line of misery, their battered heads slung in despair. An old woman in the condemned group turned and screamed something at him in Gaelic. He took a step to go her aid, but caught himself and looked away.

  Longshanks and his officers were now trading jests, oblivious to the next batch of victims being driven to the ropes. Prince Edward, however, was quiet and observant, and his gaze came to rest heavily on James.

  James turned, too late, to see suspicion in the prince’s eyes. He feared that the English boy had detected his consternation about the hangings.

  “Where are you from, jester?”

  James enunciated the name of a Yorkshire town in his best imitation of the way the English inhabitants of that region spoke. “Knaresborough.”

  “Knaresborough, my lord. You address the future king of England.”

  James lowered his head. “Forgive me, my lord.”

  The prince turned on Gibbie. “And you?”

  Gibbie gave the same answer, but his Lanarkshire twang was much too evident, causing the prince’s eyes to narrow.

  Young Edward tugged at the king’s sleeve, and in a childish voice that James realized was artifice, asked, “Father, why does this boy talk so queerly?”

  The king only then noticed that the hoisted woman’s screams of “Douglas” mixed with Gaelic seemed to be aimed at James.

  Sensing danger, James signaled Gibbie with a sharp nod to start singing another ballad to distract the king. He joined in, and soon they were both bellowing like drunkards and drawing laughter again from the men.

  Yet this time Longshanks was not fooled. The king took a step closer toward the gallows and, narrowing his eyes like a hawk, answered his son’s question, “Perhaps we should inquire, Eddie.”

  Clifford understood at once what his liege was contemplating. He prodded James and Gibbie toward the gallows.

  Heart pounding in his chest, James cursed silently each time Clifford slapped him on the back of the head. Without turning to give away his plan, he stole a conspiring glance at Gibbie and searched the perimeter of the camp for the nearest path of escape. Clifford forced him to climb the steps, and when he resisted, the officer grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him up.

  The dangling Scot woman was ordered dropped from the beam. Revived, she looked up and saw James’s terrified face staring down at her. She tried to avert her eyes, until Clifford ordered her lifted again. Unable to stand by while she suffered, James broke from Clifford’s clutches and rushed up to support her legs, but the henchman corralled him back to the boards.

  Clifford kicked James, stepping over him, and raised a gloved hand to clamp the woman’s raw throat. “Your life for a name.”

  Motivated with another yank of the rope, the half-dead woman screeched, “The Hardi’s son! Lord, forgive me!”

  Longshanks watched this exchange play out from below the gallows. Now even more intrigued, he turned toward the tower to compare James’s features with those of the Scot commander on the ramparts.

  Helpless on his hands and knees, James looked longingly toward his father, who was too far away to discern in the darkness what was causing the commotion in the English camp. In a surge of desperation, James leapt from the gallows platform, and Gibbie dived after him. Splattered in the mud, the two boys scrambled to their feet and darted for the river, but the soldiers pounced on them near the banks and dragged them back to the camp.

  Pummeled with clods of mud, James looked up over his elbow in time to see the skeleton of the great catapult being ratcheted for another launch. A stone was sent crashing into the motte tower.

  Longshanks’s laugh punctuated the whine of the arm’s recoil.

  AT DAWN ON THE NEXT morning, Wil Douglas, renewed with hope by the cessation of the bombardment, peered over the battered ramparts of his motte tower. In the light of the rising sun, he saw for the first time that the English lines, supported by the catapult, had closed to within fifty yards during the night. Yet that was not what caused his face to drain.

  James and Gibbie stood with their necks noosed on the top beam of the siege engine.

  Longshanks rode closer to enjoy the Scot commander’s reaction. “Surrender, Douglas, and your garrison will be spared!” he shouted. “Resist, and your son will hang! I am told he’s your only child! You should have spent less time inciting treason and more nights bedding that Northumbrian whore!”

  James could not bear to look at his father. His reckless disobedience of the order to remain in Douglasdale had placed the garrison in even greater peril. After a brittle silence, he heard the clang of swords dropping to the allure boards. Moments later, the gates cranked open, and his father and the half-starved Scot knights walked out unarmed.

  The English soldiers moved in and descended on them with fists and pikes.

  Bloodied, Wil Douglas was forced to kneel before the English king, “Do what you will to me. Release my son.”

  Longshanks signaled for the noose to be lifted from James’s throat. “I am a merciful man.”

  “And the other lad,” Wil Douglas demanded.

  “For him, another exchange must be negotiated.” On the king’s command, the soldiers dragged up t
he elder Douglas to take his son’s place on the beam.

  Gloucester lashed up on his horse to confront the king. “My lord, you gave your word that the garrison would not be harmed.”

  Longshanks refused to look at the earl. “I said nothing of its leader.”

  “This is sharp practice not worthy of your Grace.”

  “Hold your tongue, sir!” the king snarled at the baron. “Or by the Cross I will have you remanded to York for treason!”

  Seething at the perfidy, Gloucester surveyed the troops for support, but he found no protest in their eyes, only blood lust for the delay and casualties that the Scots had cost them.

  Having silenced the baron, Longshanks stood in his stirrups to be heard by the Scot prisoners. “By divine ordain, we English are your brothers! Holy Mother Church has called on me to rid you of your pagan scrapping! The decision is yours this day! Will you accept the sovereign benevolence of England, or God’s retribution?” He looked down and smiled at James, who had been forced to his knees. “You will be the first to make the choice, lad. Which shall it be? Comrade or clan?”

  Only then did James comprehend the sinister strategy that Longshanks had devised to steal Scotland: By stoking the ancient enmities between the clans, the king intended to prevent them from uniting. James could only watch in horror as the Scot knights, lined up against the wall, tried to rush the gallows and save his father, but they were driven back.