Free The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas by Glen Craney

the Bruce clan, he liked this Robert Bruce. She might dismiss the Bruces as Longshanks’s lackeys, but no true Englishman would have risked his life here in the Lanarkshire wilds to help a foreigner. Perhaps the Almighty had intended the future Lord of Annandale to spend his youth in England for some greater purpose. After all, as James’s father had once told him, the wolf must first sleep with the lamb to gain its trust.

V

    T HAT NIGHT, J AMES AND R OBERT Bruce slipped unnoticed into
the shadowed periphery of Castle Douglas’s great hall, where the chieftains of
the realm, meeting in secret to decide how best to confront the English
occupation, were arguing over the latest dire news: Longshanks had thrown John
Balliol into London Tower on charges of financial malfeasance.
    Months earlier, the English king had appointed the incompetent Balliol as puppet ruler of Scotland, but that cynical act was now exposed as a clever ploy to force the Holy See and the royal courts across the Channel to concede that the clans were incapable of governing themselves. Each man present had cast his lot with the Comyns or the Bruces in the ruinous struggle for the throne, and now none could travel across their ravaged shires without suffering accusations of greed and betrayal.
    Red Comyn, Ian MacDuff, and John of Lorne, the patriarch of the MacDougall clan, sat on one side of a long trestle table, accompanied by five lesser nobles from the North. Across from them sat James’s father and his ally, Robert’s grandfather, old Bruce the Competitor. With his long white hair oiled and gathered in a tail, the Competitor appeared exactly as a king should, James thought, and though crippled by a mysterious ailment that ate at his skin, he still retained a quickness of gesture and met all with a righteous jaw.
    William Lamberton, the Bishop of St. Andrews, stood at the
head of the table, looking out of place among these crusty warriors. The
cherubic cleric’s fleshy jowls were sprinkled with the hue of crushed
pomegranates, and his healthy girt begged for one button more to be loosed
above the waist cord. A thicket of dark tangled hair had merged with the
overgrowth of his peppered beard to give his face the appearance of being
framed by a molted yuletide wreath. A natural diplomat born with a dogged
optimism, he was cherished by all Scots for his disarming cheerfulness and lust
for life’s pleasures, be they a hearty repast or a bawdy yarn.
    Yet the bishop’s sanguine disposition was being tested this night. Folding his hands in a gesture of spiritual authority, he pleaded for these bitter adversaries to set aside their grievances for the good of the country. “My lords, now is the time to strike. My informants tell me that Longshanks has returned to London.”
    Red Comyn twirled his ivory-hilted knife against the table,
skeptically weighing that bit of surveillance. “Clifford remains camped at
Jedburgh.”
    Lamberton abandoned his post of neutrality and moved toward
Red with outstretched hands. “Longshanks has siphoned off troops to Brittany to
fight the French. If we rise up now—”
    Red Comyn stabbed his dagger into the boards. “Aye, priest,
easy for you to call the muster! When the blood flows, you retreat to your
cloister!”
    Old Bruce the Competitor pressed to his unsteady feet. With
a trembling hand, he extracted the dagger, slid its blade into a crack, and
snapped it at the hilt to demonstrate he still possessed strength enough to
command respect. “I’ll not hear the Bishop slandered! He is more patriot than
any Comyn!”
    “He preaches your cause as the gospel!” Red snarled at his old rival. “His
donation plate is kept so perpetually filled by Bruce emoluments that it’s oft
mistook for the cauldron of Bran.”
    The Competitor shaded purple, unable to summon words to vent
his rage.
    Seeing the elder Bruce thwarted by the mental slog of age, Wil Douglas eased him back to his chair. Then, Wil turned to the bishop and