The Guardian (15 page)

“‘Who will command overall?’ he asked.

“‘You will,’ I said. ‘This will be your raid.’

“He was to move quickly and in secrecy, I explained, insofar as secrecy was possible, keeping to the open country and avoiding contact with anyone else. Some of my own priests had mapped out a route that would allow them to travel north unnoticed by the English. ‘But if they should see you,’ I told him, ‘don’t stop to fight. Press on and make for Perth, and if you can, bring Ormsby’s plundered treasure back here with you.’ The weather had broken, so we were hoping for fifteen to twenty miles a day, putting them in Perth within the week.

“‘I’ll send my men back, then, to the forest?’ he asked me.

“‘Aye,’ I told him. ‘They’ll be better off there than here.’

“‘Fine,’ he said, ‘I’ll see to it.’”

“And so Will rode to Perth,” I said. “Thank you, my lord, for taking the time to tell me that tale. It means much to me, and now I understand why I did not understand before. But … they failed to capture Ormsby.”

The bishop shook his head. “That was no failure. He was forewarned of their arrival and escaped ahead of them. But capturing Ormsby was never in the plans. It was his plunder we were after— taxes, according to England, but plunder by any honest man’s description.”

“And how was he forewarned?”

“I’m told Will and Douglas’s men met a force of mounted English archers unexpectedly, close to Perth itself, and in the skirmish some of them escaped into Perth and raised the alarm. Ormsby surrounded himself with a bodyguard and fled.”

“And Will made no attempt to catch him?”

His lordship shrugged. “I doubt Will even knew which way he went. He had more important matters on his hands at that time: capturing the baggage train and making sure the English garrison was isolated and disarmed.”

“How big was the garrison?”

“A hundred men, give or take a half score, according to your cousin.”

“And what happened to them?”

“Will gave them into the keeping of Sir William Douglas, who stripped them of every weapon and piece of armour they wore and marched them back south under close guard until they reached England, where he ordered his lieutenants to strip them again, naked this time, and set them free to make their way home.”

“To fight us again, in the future …”

The bishop looked at me askance. “What would you have done differently, Father? That is the way of warfare. We could not imprison them, and God knows we could not murder them. We had no choice but to release them.”

I nodded reluctantly, aware that he was right. “And what did Will do, after he relinquished the prisoners to Lord Douglas?”

“He spent some time among the burgesses of Perth, letting himself be known and seen as I had instructed him, and then he rode back here, directly.”

He met my gaze squarely and I nodded. “As you had instructed him … So William Wallace is your agent nowadays.”

I almost expected him to grow angry at that, but he answered without raising his voice. “No,” he said. “You know better than to say that. William Wallace is not the kind of man that any other man may safely or conveniently use to his own ends.” He stopped and smiled. “And I have just realized I was wrong in what I told your cousin that day. He may be forever
William
Wallace, but most folk speak of him simply as Wallace now, as though that were his single given name. He has become an agent of destiny—of history, if you like. He has outgrown ordinary folk like you and me, I think, and my master in Heaven has taken him under His guard. I now believe, with all my heart, that your cousin Will belongs, in the truest, grandest sense, to this land of ours, this Scotland.”

It was the first time I had ever heard my cousin spoken of as a man who was larger than life and greater than the common run of men. That comment from Bishop Wishart was my first glimpse of what God had in mind for my cousin William Wallace; the first hint of the fame and fortune that would raise him up to glory, for a time at least, in the eyes of all who fought with him and all who knew him.

“You look gravely concerned, Father,” the bishop said. “What are you thinking?”

“About Will, my lord, is all,” I said. “I feel great need to see him. To ask for his forgiveness.”

“His forgiveness?” That idea brought a furrow to his lordship’s brow. “For what do you need forgiveness?”

“For Mirren’s death. She was in my care when she was taken.” “That may be.” The tiny frown was still in place. “But there was not a thing you could have done to change anything that happened that day, Father James. It was the will of God, else it would not have come to pass, and for any mere man to feel guilt in such case is to come close to hubris.”

“I know that, Your Grace,” I replied, hearing the misery in my own voice. “At least, my head and my heart know it, but a part of me feels guilty nonetheless.” I waited for the acknowledgment I knew would come, and when he nodded I lapsed into silence, feeling, above all, helpless. But there was one aspect of my life, at least, in which I felt I could still make a useful contribution. “May I presume, my lord, that you will continue to have a need for my secretarial services?”

“Your
secretarial
services?” His jaw dropped. “Good God, man,” he said in plain Scots, “I hae a glut o’
secretaries
. A chapter
full
o’ them! I canna turn around wi’out trippin’ ower one. Why would I need anither? No, Jamie, I hae nae need of you for that, and I’m surprised you think I would.”

I was hoping that my face did not reflect the extent to which his answer had shaken me.

“No, Father James,” he continued in his usual churchly Latin, “I need you for your mind and your insights. For your long head and your gift for reading men and seeing what lies beneath their smiles and posturings. And to that end I have been sitting here awaiting you these three days, impatient to put you to work.”

If his first words had almost overwhelmed me with something akin to terror, my reaction to this last swung me almost as hard in the opposite direction. “To work on what, my lord?” I asked, making every effort to sound calm.

“On whom, not what. Young Bruce, the Earl of Carrick, first and foremost.”

“The Earl of Carrick? But not an hour ago you said you believe him to be his own man. I took that to mean you now approve of him.”

“Aye, and so it did, when I said it.” He had switched back into Scots, as he usually did in order to deprecate himself and his opinions in front of others. “So it did. But I jalouse I might yet change my mind once I’ve heard your take on the chiel. I hae been wrong a wheen o’ times afore now, bishop though I be, an’ so I hae nae great expectations o’ bein’ right a’ the time.”

I smiled, but kept my response in Latin. “Nothing much to fret over there, my lord. I will meet and speak with the earl as soon as I can arrange it. Is he approachable, or does he hold himself aloof?”

“Och, he’s easy enough to talk to.” My employer had no intention of being shepherded anywhere, even in matters of language. “Ye’ll hae nae difficulty there. It’s what ye’ll see when you look ahint the surface o’ the man that I’ll be waiting to hear about. I dinna expect you to find any grim secrets under there, but some men hae great talents when it comes to hidin’ things about themsel’s, an’ sometimes the last thing ye can do is tell that frae lookin’ at their faces or listenin’ to what they say. But that’s what you’re best at, seein’ what’s there under the surface, where maist men canna see.”

“How old is the earl, my lord?”

“He’s about an age wi’ you, I’d say. Mayhap a wee bit younger. You’re what now? Five and twenty? Aye, well, he’d hae been three and twenty in July. The two o’ ye will get along fine, ye’ll see.”

He peered up at the sky, where most of the blue had been obscured by banked clouds. “It looks like rain,” he said. “And Father Martin will be thinking by now that we’ve abandoned him. We’d best stir our stumps and be awa, for it’s still a good two hours frae here to Turnberry.” He stood up and reached down to gather up his bag and walking staff.

“One more question if I may, my lord, before we go? It has to do with the English force you mentioned, Percy’s people. I have never
met Lord Douglas and know nothing of him other than by repute, but he is a known troublemaker of notoriously ill repute, not only to the English but even here in Scotland. He has been a chronic source of irritation and dispute to the Council of Guardians for as long as I can remember, and you yourself are acutely aware of that. So the fact that he is here now, siding openly with you and enjoying the support of the last two remaining Guardians in Scotland, will not go unnoticed by the English commanders.”

The gravity of my remark tipped the bishop back into Latin. “We will deal with that when it arises, Father. If it ever does. It is my duty to care for my flock, especially when they are troubled. Sir William Douglas is a troubled man and I will minister to him as I would to any other in my care. And that is a matter between me and the God to whom I must answer. It has nothing to do with Henry Percy or his masters, and I will not be dictated to by any Englishman in the performance of my pastoral duty.”

There was nothing I could say in response to such equanimity, and so I set about gathering up my own few belongings in preparation for the last stage of our journey to Turnberry.

CHAPTER NINE

INSURGENCY

T
urnberry Castle overwhelmed me when I first set eyes on it, and I would have stopped right there at the forest’s edge to examine the place more carefully, but Bishop Wishart had seen the view before and it held no mystery for him, and so he kept walking directly towards the drawbridge, and I had to hurry to keep up. Turnberry was a massive fortification built of local stone and situated on a rock promontory that thrust out into the Firth of Clyde, with the Isle of Arran in the distance and beyond that the indistinct shoreline of the Mull of Kintyre. The side of the castle that we approached was a high, unbroken wall penetrated by a single central entrance tunnel reached only by crossing a drawbridge over a wide, steep-sided moat. I saw a strong-looking, circular tower with a pointed roof at the northeast corner, and opposite that, at the southwest corner, I could see the roof of a lower but more substantial-seeming tower, which I assumed to be the keep, housing the Bruce family.

We had to wait for the portcullis to be raised, even though the guards had clearly been expecting us and allowed us to pass without comment. The portcullis was enormously heavy, and its lower edge was lined with lethal, keen-edged spikes, yet it rose smoothly and almost noiselessly to allow us to pass beyond it to the bailey, the open space inside the curtain walls. We followed meekly as his lordship led us through the yard, between and around the various buildings that well nigh filled the place, until we came to the keep. There, the first of what turned out to be a small army of supplicants came running to claim the bishop’s attention.

I gazed around while the bishop dealt with the most urgent matters being thrust at him, and I noted most of the facilities to be found in castles everywhere. I saw a cooperage and a carpentry shop, as well as several smithies, a bakery with rows of outdoor ovens, a number of granaries, an ox-powered mill, and even a brewery. There was a leather tannery, too, and a fuller’s pond farther away, for though I could see no sign of either one, my nostrils told me they were both close at hand. I was still taking stock of our surroundings when his lordship called us to his side and informed us that Lord Bruce had gone hunting but was expected to return soon, and in the meantime someone would show us to our quarters. The bishop himself had several pressing matters to attend to.

As soon as we were inside our quarters—a long, narrow room containing eight cots and little else—Martin dropped to the hard surface of the bed he had selected and closed his eyes, and something about the beatific smile on his face told me he would not easily rise up again. I made my way back to the bailey yard to continue my exploration of the castle, where I found myself largely ignored by the locals, all of whom appeared to have a great amount of work to do and very little time in which to do it. While everyone around me bustled busily, I meandered aimlessly.

I recognized a familiar noise that had been growing gradually louder as I walked, and I quickly found its source, a large enclosure in an angle of the curtain wall that was obviously set aside as a training area. Two men were fighting there with quarterstaves, watched by a small group of spectators who were shouting and jeering at both men in that manner that marked them all as friends. By the time I arrived they had been going hard at each other for some time. Both were big, tall men, one of them even bigger, it seemed to me, than my cousin Will, and they looked even larger than they normally would because they were wearing practice armour made of pads of densely felted wool strapped over boiled and hammered bull-hide coverings for their arms, legs, and torsos, while their heads were protected by large, heavy-looking war helms.

No one paid me the slightest attention as I made my way towards the fighters, and the moment I sat on one of the upended sections of log that served as seats for spectators, someone among the watchers yelled, “Go on, Rob! Into him!” and both fighters redoubled their efforts, so that the whirling staves were barely visible at times, and the breathing of the combatants became louder and more ragged.

The larger man feinted a high blow to his right, then changed direction in mid-thrust and whipped his staff down and around to the left, checked it, and pivoted tightly, slashing backwards with a short, savage jab that the other man could not counter quickly enough. The blow landed solidly beneath the fellow’s sternum, driving the wind out of him in an explosive gasp, and he dropped his quarterstaff as he staggered backwards for two steps, then fell to his knees and pitched forward onto his face to lie gasping and whooping for breath within three paces of where I sat watching.

The spectators and the victor were already celebrating and exchanging wagers, paying little attention to the downed man, since he was no more than winded, but I stood up and moved quickly to help him because I knew, from experience, precisely what he was feeling. Will had once downed me the same way, with an identical sleight, driving the wind from me with a crippling, well-aimed jab, and I had never forgotten the pain and the surging panic of not being able to draw a breath. I bent over the man, seeing how he was convulsing but unable to turn his body because of the constrictive bulk of his padded armour. I flipped him over to lie on his side, and he immediately curled into a ball, whooping and cawing in agony. I left him to it, knowing he would soon recover, and went to pick up his fallen quarterstaff.