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

admiration. But the Competitor, glaring, denied his grandson the
opportunity to test it.
    “Off to bed with you,
lads,” Wil Douglas ordered.
    “Let them stay,” Wallace said. “They should hear what I have
to say.” As the boys hurried to the table before their elders could countermand
that suggestion, Wallace paced the room. Finally, he stopped and reminded them
all, “My woman was garroted for staving off the advances of an Englishman.”
    James nodded with empathy for Wallace’s heartbreak, but the Northern chieftains merely smirked and huffed with impatience. James knew that they had all suffered similar losses; such mournful tales of murdered kinsmen and confiscated lands drew little sympathy in Scotland these days.
    Sensing the futility in that appeal, Wallace retreated
from sentiment and resorted to baser interests. “Longshanks would declare it a
felony for our women to marry us. If the English are allowed to steal our
womenfolk, the blood of our ancestry will be forever poisoned.”
    “Then go on and fight the English, hotfoot,” Red said.
“We’ll give you a week’s provision and endow a Mass for your success.”
    Wallace hovered over the seated chieftain. “You think me a
fool, Comyn. But I’m clever enough to know that I cannot win this war alone. If
Scotland is to be free of the English yoke, I must have all of you with me. The
Comyns, the MacDuffs, the Douglases”—he turned sharply to the Competitor—“and
the Bruces.”
    The Competitor was not accustomed to being called out,
particularly by a man of such inconsequential rank. He clenched his pocked jaw
defiantly and glared at his grandson, as if to inoculate Robert against such
high-sounding harangues. “If sermons won battles,” he muttered, “Christ would
never have been nailed to the Cross.”
    Wallace and the other clansmen waited for an answer from Red
Comyn, who controlled the most castles and troops.
    Red allowed the tense silence extend, savoring his position
as linchpin for bringing the majority of the clansmen to the rebellion. At
last, he said, “I will draw my sword. … But only if Bruce recognizes my right
to the kingship.”
    “You have no right!” the Competitor shouted.
    Lamberton tried to render stillborn the argument that they
all had endured a thousand times. “I pray you! At least give Wallace a
hearing!”
    In the midst of these hurled recriminations, the Competitor
clutched his chest and lurched backwards. Robert broke his frail grandfather’s
fall and eased him back to the bench. The Competitor finally mustered enough
strength to answer Wallace in a barely audible rasp. “Edward will put down this
insurrection and turn Stirling into another Berwick.”
    “Bruce should know,” Red quipped loud enough for even the
Competitor to hear. “His pups have been weaned on the Plantagenet teats.”
    The clansmen erupted again with shouts and accusations.
    Wallace slammed the flat of his broadsword against the
table, silencing them. “If this be the example of your stewardship, then
English rule can be no worse!” He slid the sword down the table toward Wil. “My
brother served in your ranks at Berwick, Douglas. This blade was all that came
back from him. You saw firsthand what permanent English dominion would mean for
us.”
    James saw his father steal a nettled glance at him, as if
unsure what to do.
    Wallace circled the table, glaring at each chieftain as he
passed. “Yet here you sit, quarreling over whose wrinkled ass best fits the
throne. You’ll be kings, for certain. The lot of you. Kings of gutted castles
and scorched moorlands, if you persist in this bickering.”
    Red dipped his dagger’s point in the candle grease and drew a line through the bishop’s map toward Annandale, the disputed land fought over with the Bruces for decades. He aimed the dagger at the Competitor. “If this snake remains on my borders, I’ll
not move my forces.”
    Wallace turned to the Competitor. “Bruce, will you take