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

rumored to have no friends, disowned by her Northumbrian kin as a traitor and shunned by distrustful Scots.
    She scanned the bleak environs and shook her head, unimpressed. These endless meadows, broken only by an occasional rocky eruption, resembled Yorkshire more than the northern Scot provinces. Huts slathered with pitch circled the tower like clusters of barnacles, and the curtain wall looked to have been razed and rebuilt so many times that its patchwork masonry brought to mind a cheap quilt. On a barren hillock to the west stood a sleepy village of twenty mud-joisted cabins. The Douglas Water, a rusty creek barely deep enough to sustain a small school of salmon, meandered past the only redeeming feature in this forgettable place: a small kirk dedicated to St. Bride.
    Dismounting without an
offer of assistance, she walked unescorted through the camp. Everyone was
talking about the war, laying blame for the loss of Berwick, and she found it
nigh impossible to follow these swirling tempests and feuds. But there was one
reality she understood all too clearly: That despicable English king with the
odd nickname had ruined her dream of seeing the Stone of Destiny, and she would
very much like to curse the ogre to his face.
    She was about to rehearse
the precise wording of that condemnation when a blast from a ram horn disrupted
the clans from their ale-fueled arguments. As if struck by madness, the men ran
howling toward the south gate. She was swept up in their rush and deposited in
an open field where twenty boys, including her two youngest brothers, crouched
at the ready with axes in their hands. Barefoot and naked to their waists, they
had formed up what appeared to be a battle line. Breathless, she exclaimed,
“Are the English upon us?”
    A tall, shaggy Bute man standing next to her spewed his
mouthful of ale. “English? Are you a peat brick shy of a decent fire, lass? The
lads are running for the Dun Eadainn Ax.”
    The rube spoke with such
a thick tongue that she had to ask him to repeat his explanation. Disgusted
with her ignorance of the northern Gaelic, he peppered his translation with enough
Scot words that she finally took his meaning. “They’ll catch their deaths in
this cold! Just for a tool?”
    The inebriated Highlander swooped over her again, dowsing
her in spittle. “A tool , you say? A
talisman of miracles it is, holy as the Rood itself! Brought across the sea by
Fergus and buried under the great Arthur’s throne on Eadainn Fort Hill!” He
cursed her ignorance with a wild swipe at the air. “Go clean the trestles! This
is no business for a mush-headed filly anyway.”
    She looked around and saw that the other women had retired
to the tower, no doubt to warble about wool spinning or the latest in fashion
from the Continent. Not interested in such trivialities, she ignored the command
to join them and pushed deeper through the throng of men to find out what was
so important about this race. At the starting line, she found the young
competitors elbowing for the best position. She risked another question to the
hairy drunkard who had just tried to banish her. “Which one’s the fastest?”
    The Bute man huffed,
resigned to her persistence. “Put your purse on the carrot-headed one with the
idle eye. He’s half blind, but don’t let that fool you. He’s as ornery as his
old man. John Comyn’s his name. Everyone calls him ‘Cam’ because of the crooked
way he ganders.”
    Hearing his name, Cam Comyn looked up from his three-pointed
stance and startled Belle with a buck-toothed grin. His lazy eye trailed off,
causing her to look toward its unintended direction. He regained her attention
by flexing his scrawny biceps in her face.
    She was astonished that anyone might suppose such
boorishness remotely impressive. Sniffling and blowing snot, the clod possessed
the vapid stare and twittering movements of a dullard. Indeed, a more repugnant
creature she could not imagine—until the taller boy next to