The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas Read Online Free PDF

gazed sadly toward the north, revealing that he was also distraught over this breach of the ancient tradition. “None of us will see the Stone this year. Perhaps never again.”
    She was stricken. “But why?”
    “The Stone is not on Moot Hill.” Driven by her demanding
glare, Ian finally explained, “Edward Longshanks has taken the Stone to London.
The monks at Perth gave it up without a whimper. Those tonsured cowards expect
us to fight their wars, but they would betray Christ Himself before risking
their own necks. The English king keeps it under his throne in Westminster and
now boasts that, by our own laws, he is master of Scotland.”
    “The Stone screamed in his presence?”
    He would not look at her directly. “There were
screams enough … from London Tower.”
    Biting on her sleeve to stifle a sob, she imagined to her
horror how the English tyrant must have kicked and abused the Stone, torturing
it like a prisoner on the rack to extract its secrets. “Edward Longshanks
cannot become king of Scotland! Not without the Stone’s affirmation! You told
me so!”
    Her father’s eyes hooded with shame as he gazed at the
distant banners of an English occupation garrison fluttering over Stirling
Castle to the west. “That tale was just a priest’s deceit to gain donations for
a new abbey.”
    She thrashed at him in protest. “The Stone is true!”
    Ian captured her wrists until she relented. “I stood witness at Alexander’s
coronation! I tell you there was no scream! It is high time you gave up these
foolish fantasies!” He turned away and looked grimly toward Stirling Bridge,
where all of Scotland’s troubles eventually crossed.
    Crestfallen, she coughed back tears. “Can we go to Scone to see where the Stone once rested, at least?”
    Her father shook his head. “I’ll not lay eyes on the sacred
mound so gutted and defiled.”
    She fell to her knees, undone. To lose a precious dream was
anguish enough, but to have it renewed upon one’s heart only to be dashed a
second time was a cruelty that she could not fathom. The bard’s prophecy had
been nothing more than a soothsayer’s ruse. All faith drained from her, and she
vowed never again to believe in a God who would allow the perpetuation of such
a falsehood. She looked up at her father, who had remounted, and called out to him. “Why then have you brought me on this journey if not to see the
Destiny Stone?”
    As he road off, he answered her without turning, “You’ll meet your destiny soon enough!”
    Snapping their reins to renew their journey, her brothers
glanced back at her with knowing grins.

III

    B ELLE AND THE M AC D UFFS WERE greeted by hostile stares from the other clans, who had gathered under an expanse of tall oaks in a sheltered Lanarkshire vale. On her journey south, she had overheard her father warn that such a large congregation of armed men threatened to draw retaliation from the English garrison at Carlisle. But Wil Douglas, the rebel leader who had recently bribed his release from Berwick’s dungeon, knew Edward Longshanks’s scheming mind better than most, and he had convinced the guardians that less suspicion would be aroused if they held their secret meeting here in the South, disguised as the annual harvest celebration. It was for this reason that her father and his ally, Red Comyn, a claimant to the throne, had reluctantly agreed to cross into the shire of the despised Douglases, the clan that had been their enemy for centuries.
    As her father and brothers rode through the encampment with their chins in the air, she hung back several lengths, the only protest she could muster against her contrived presence here. She saw Wil Douglas waiting for their arrival at the tower of his castle with his second wife, the former Eleanor de Louvain, a frail Northumbrian sparrow who had fallen in love with him after he had taken her hostage during a raid on Jedburgh. She felt sorry for the Douglas chieftain’s new wife, for she was