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

asked the question that was on all of their minds. “What makes you believe another rebellion will succeed when all the others have failed?”
    Lamberton pulled a chalk numb from his pocket and traced a
crude map of Scotland on the table, circling the area representing the Tweed
Valley. “The Marches are laid waste from Berwick to Stirling. If we draw the
English north of Perth, we’ll stretch their lines of provision to the breaking
point. Another month, and they’ll be starving.”
    “We’re already starving,” Ian MacDuff reminded the cleric. “Another month, and Longshanks won’t have to war on us. We’ll all be dead of famine.”
    Even from his distant vantage in the far corner, James could see that the bishop’s strategy would lead the English advance through Lanarkshire and his father’s domains. As always, the South would suffer the brunt of the war and pillaging, while the North—much of it Comyn country—would remain unscathed. In the past, he had heard his father express doubts that Longshanks would fall for such a ruse. But Lamberton was an old family friend, and he knew that his father had promised not to speak out against the bishop’s proposal until all the guardians had been given the chance to vote on it.
    Red pressed the wily bishop for more details on his plan. “And who would you have command this new army of uprising?”
    Lamberton walked to the hearth to stir the fire. With his back turned, he said in a near whisper, as if to blunt its impact, “William Wallace.”
    Hearing that, James traded a hopeful glance with Robert. Wallace, the rebel son of Alan Wallace, a noble from Elderslie, had continued to fight with hit-and-run tactics long after the other chieftains had surrendered. He was fast becoming a hero to every Scot boy from Melrose to Aberdeen.
    Yet these hard-boiled
chieftains around the table reacted as if they had not heard the bishop
correctly. Finally, Red Comyn repulsed the nomination with a loud snort.
“Wallace is nothing more than a sheep herder turned brigand.”
    Ian MacDuff agreed. “The man couldn’t lead a mule to a trough.”
    Lamberton lunged and pounded the boards so hard that several empty tankards were sent flying. “He leads well enough while you sit here idle! He has a thousand men in the Selkirk! Join him and ten thousand more will follow!”
    The bishop’s anger was a revelation to James. Beneath the cleric’s façade of Christian meekness lurked a fighter no less fierce than any of these men.
    Red snickered to MacDuff,
“The Church now does the bidding of outlaws.”
    “I do my own bidding,”
boomed a voice at the door.
    The men turned, reaching
for their weapons.
    At the threshold stood the
largest man that James had ever laid eyes upon. Two hands taller than six feet,
he wore his hair braided and draped over his broad shoulders and carried across
his back a broadsword that was a third longer than standard length. Lines of
rage had been scored into his face, and his protruding marbled eyes, hooded
with lids bruised ruddy from weariness, amplified his looming presence. Alerted
by a keen sense of all that moved around him, the intruder turned toward the
shadows in the corner, giving away the presence of the two boys with his held
gaze.
    James glanced worriedly at
his father, expecting to be scolded for listening.
    Finding James staring raptly at his sword, the stranger offered it for his inspection, and then asked the elder Douglas, “Your stripling, Wil?”
    “Aye.” Wil made no attempt to hide his disapproval at the intruder’s brazen act of appearing at the meeting uninvited. “Jamie, meet William Wallace.”
    Wallace nearly crushed
James’s hand with his clasp. “You’re the lad who won the ax this year.” He
glared at the chieftains, as if to emphasize that his next admonition was also
intended for them. “With honor comes duty.”
    Unable to lift the heavy
broadsword, James slid its tip across the floor and offered it to Robert for
his