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

What strikes you apt about that plain of strategy?”
    Belle now regretted her decision to make conversation. Hoping to
find a graceful excuse to beg off, she blurted the only answer that came to
mind. “It has two colors, but what is—”
    “How is it arranged?”
    “In squares. Still, I do not see what this has to do with my
question?”
    “Blessed me, but airen’t you the clever one!”
    Angered at being the brunt of a joke that she didn’t even understand, Belle whipped her hood over her head and prepared to leave the old bat to stew in her bile.
    The crone captured her hand to delay her. “Forgive me. I’ve lost all manners. It’s been months since I’ve held discourse with anyone. I tend to rail against the spirits when …” She pursed her lips, having nearly revealed some dark secret.
    “Then I would then have you address me directly,” Belle
insisted. “If I am to be cast into this despicable betrothal, I must know what
awaits me.”
    “Directness is not always the best choice. Forget ye that
direct is the path of the ax upon the neck? You must learn to look sideways and
speak in shrouded ways.” The crone glowered at the Comyn boys ahead, as if
conjuring up a fitting spell for their demise. “Scotland is the chessboard, and
each clan a square. None be the same color as that upon its borders, aye?”
    Belle nodded slightly, uncertain where all of this chess
talk was leading.
    “If the red squares were all in the north and the black in the south, peace would be granted us.” The woman spat again through her toothless gums in a gesture of malediction. “But the Almighty in His inscrutable wisdom has determined it not to be. And we suffer for it.” Finding Belle too baffled to form a question, the woman shook her head, frustrated at her failure to communicate the critical point. “Think of the Comyns and their domains as the red squares.”
    “And the black?”
    “The Bruces.”
    Belle had heard only passing references to that Southern
clan. “The Bruces of England?”
    “Of Scotland, as well. That clan holds fiefs on both sides of the border. The eldest, Bruce the Competitor, was King Alexander’s fealt comrade. He’s now even longer in the tooth than me.”
    “The Competitor claims the throne against Red?”
    The crone nodded. “The two are like cats in a sack.”
    Belle waited to hear the significance of that observation. “Aye, and … ?”
    “Edward Longshanks pulls the drawstring.”
    Belle failed to see what relevance all of this political
intrigue bore upon her problem. In two days, her father would depart
for Fife, leaving her at the mercy of the Comyns. Would she ever see St.
Andrews again? What would become of her diary? She had left it in her
bedchamber under lock. Nothing would prevent her brothers from prying it open
and—
    The crone snapped two bony fingers to regain Belle's wandering
attention. “The destiny of the branch can be read in the roots. The time of
both the Competitor and the Red is fast passing. Old Bruce’s feckless son has
turned recluse in Norway. It is the grandson, Robert, who was born under
auspicious stars. I have scryed his future in the black glass. He will vie for
the throne against Red’s pups. Only a malevolent aspect with Saturnia can keep
him from his fate. Melancholy will be his crown of thorns. But the English King
has seers, too, and he will try to keep young Bruce under his spell in London.”
    Belle’s head was pounding from trying to follow the woman's strange
manner of speech. She watched, confused, as the crone played imaginary
chess moves upon the pommel of her saddle, tossing aside invisible knights and
queens with building vehemence.
    “The Bruces and the Comyns scheme to checkmate each other,”
the crone explained in a running commentary. “For every Bruce castle, you will
find a Comyn keep in the next square. To win the kingship, a Bruce must leap a
Comyn and a Comyn must leap a Bruce.”
    At her wits' end, Belle finally went