The Guardian (29 page)

I was grinning at him by that time, recalling how he loved to banter. “No, Sir Andrew,” I said. “I’m here looking for you, no more than that.”

“Then your task is done. I’m here and you’ve found me. But I’m plain Andrew Murray. No king has yet had me kneel at his feet to endow me with the grace of knighthood. Come, sit down and have something to drink.” He swung around, placing a hand on my shoulder and raising his voice to address the men gathered around the fire, all of them so watchfully quiet that I could hear the crackling of the fire.

“Hear me, all of you. This is my good friend Father Jamie Wallace from Glasgow. Mark ye that name, Wallace. He is cousin and close friend to William Wallace, of whom all Scotland talks today, and he once saved my life when his wild cousin tried to kill me. If you treat him well, he might tell you about it sometime. But in the meantime he must be nigh famished for the lack of strong
drink, so someone fetch him a jug, and you, young Furness, may have the privilege of giving up your seat by the fire for him when we return. First, though, we have matters to discuss between ourselves, Father Wallace and I, so we’ll remove ourselves for a spell to where we can speak privily. Come, Jamie, they’ll bring us to drink over there.”

He led me to another fire some twenty paces away and asked the men seated there if they would leave us alone to talk, and in the time it took for us to settle by the fire and toast each other’s health in the ale that quickly followed us, the others moved away, leaving us in the middle of a fire-lit space too large for anyone to approach unseen or to overhear what we were saying.

Of course, the first question he had to ask, after being assured that Will and Bishop Wishart were both well, was how I came to be in Moray, afoot and alone. He evidently had some notion that I might have walked all the way from Glasgow, so I told him about my sea voyage aboard
The Golden Gannet
, my landing in Auch, and my meeting with Sandy Pilche.

“Aye,” he said quietly when I had finished. “I was fortunate to find Sandy, though in truth it was he who found me. He’s a fine man and a miracle worker when it comes to organizing things. But now’s not the time to talk about Sandy Pilche. You’re the one who is important here—you and your mission, for I know you would not be here without a mission. And as you came by sea, I assume there’s urgency involved.”

“There is,” I said. “I fear God’s work—which means the bishop’s work—demands some haste from time to time.”

“You’re not the first to tell me that,” he said, speaking almost to himself. “And you’re not the first to arrive from Aberdeen by sea in the past few days.” His face settled into a scowl. “It seems the need for haste is greater on all fronts nowadays. And everyone who’s hurrying, no matter what his heading, believes God is on his side.” That was followed by a disdainful sniff, and he looked at me squarely. “So I think we had best speak right away of what brings you up to Scotia for the first time in your life.”

“Aye,” I said. “But first I need to know how much
you
know. Have you heard anything of what’s afoot in the south?”

He shook his head. “Nothing of worth,” he said. “We’ve heard talk of risings there, and I hear Will’s name mentioned from time to time, but no more than that. Someone said the Steward—Stewart himself—is in the southwest, but that would suggest Wishart is with him, and I’ve heard nothing of that. Is he?”

“Aye, he is. I’ll tell you everything I know—or everything I
knew
before I left Carrick, two weeks ago. Since then, of course, anything could have happened. There was an English army in the offing when I left, marching towards Ayr. A well-commanded army, apparently, under Sir Henry Percy and Sir Robert Clifford, both, I was told, highly ranked among Edward’s Welsh veterans.”

“I know of Percy” Murray said. “And you’re right. From all I hear he is no man’s fool. Won his spurs, quite literally, in the Welsh wars and is highly regarded by everyone who counts, including his own men. The other one—Clifford, you say? Him I don’t know.”

“Hatched from the same clutch, reared in the same brood. Not so well born, perhaps, but even more ambitious.”

“Then we’ll hear more of him, no doubt. And do the bishop and the Stewart intend to fight these two?”

“No,” I said slowly. “They have no plans, per se, to come to blows. They have a strong defensive position, which they intend to hold, and they intend to negotiate with Percy, to buy time for forces elsewhere in the realm to organize themselves.”

“That sounds foolish. If Percy is half the soldier they say he is, he’ll dance around them until they grow dazed and then he’ll cut them down at his own speed.”

“I doubt that. The bishop assured me that the Steward’s defensive position at Irvine is unassailable.”

“Hmm.” He managed to express a world of cynical disgust in that single sound. “No place is unassailable, Jamie. That’s a priest’s foolish talk.”

I shrugged, unable to dispute that. “Accurate or no, that’s what I was told: that the place is in the hills close by Irvine town and the
enemy won’t be able to assail it without sustaining heavy losses. Whether that be true or not remains to be seen.”

“Aye, you’ll get no argument from me on
that
.” He hesitated, frowning a little. “You said you left from Carrick to come here. Not Glasgow? What took you to Carrick? That’s on the southwest coast, is it not?”

“It is. I went there to join the bishop. And he was there to meet with the Steward, who was meeting in turn with Bruce, the Earl of Carrick, at Bruce’s castle of Turnberry.”

I saw his eyes go wide, and he jerked a hand up to stop me. “Wait. Bruce is here in Scotland?
Young
Robert Bruce?”

“The Earl of Carrick, aye. He has thrown in his lot with the bishop and Lord Stewart. He and my cousin Will and the knight Sir William Douglas. They are up in arms against the English.”

“But that can’t be! The others I can understand, but Bruce has lived in England these past five years at least. They say he spends all his time in Westminster, where he is one of the King’s spoilt favourites. They say he has become an English parasite.”

“I think you may have been misinformed on that,” I replied. “You have been misled on his whereabouts at least. I assure you Bruce is here in Scotland, and under arms. I spoke with him in Carrick a fortnight since, at his castle.”

“So you know him, Robert Bruce?”

I smiled. “I would not say that. I met him briefly, on church business and at the bishop’s instigation. It was no more than that.”

“But you spoke with him, the Earl of Carrick, two weeks ago.”

“I did.”

“And does that have anything to do with your presence here?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Hmm … All right, what
does
bring you all this way?”

“Your need for weaponry. I’m told you are short of weapons.”

He snorted something that might have been the start of a bitter laugh. “Short! Aye, you might say that. My sergeants-at-arms are training my recruits with wooden swords—quarterstaves, to be sure, and ages old in honour and tradition, but there comes a stage in
training when the practice weapons have to be replaced with the real thing, and we have none other than those we take from dead or captured Englishmen. So yes, you could say we are short of weapons.”

“Well, that is about to change. I am instructed to tell you that the agents of Mother Church, under the aegis of the See of Glasgow, have arranged for a cargo of ingot iron and finished weapons and chain mail to be delivered to you at Aberdeen harbour within the month. I have the papers you will need to claim the cargo—no names attached to them, for reasons of maintaining secrecy, but I have all those in my head. How you will take delivery, of course, is for you to determine, since I understand there will be an English garrison to contend with.”

Andrew had stiffened as I told him this. “The garrison will not present a problem,” he said. “But there are other difficulties. Within the month, you say?”

“Aye, aboard the vessel
Poseidon
, out of Lübeck.”

He drew in a great breath and stared at me for several seconds longer, then grunted and stood up, twisting around to look back towards the other fire. “D’you recall my saying you were not the first man off a boat from Aberdeen this week?”

“I do. Who were the others?”

“One other.” He raised an arm and pointed. “The dark-haired fellow over there, wearing the blue cap with the silver badge and the bright yellow feather. Do you know him?”

I stood up and looked where he was pointing. The man he described was some distance away and the light was untrustworthy, but he was yet close enough for me to recognize had I known him. “I don’t,” I said. “Should I?”

“Probably not. His name is Garnat MacDonald, but he’s most often spoken of as Gartnait of Mar, heir to the earldom of Mar, by Aberdeen.”

“I recognize the name. His sister Isabella was Bruce’s wife.”

“
Was?
”

“Aye, sadly. She died last year, birthing a daughter. They had been wed for less than two years. Bruce was—still is—distraught.”

“God! I knew naught of that … I’m newly wed myself, did you know that?”

“Yes, Sandy told me. Your wife is well, I trust?”

“Aye, and lovely as a spring morning. We are expecting our first child by year’s end, thanks be to God, though the last thing a woman needs is to be big with child while her man is fighting a war, risking death with almost every day that comes.” He inhaled sharply. “That must have ripped the guts out of Bruce, for I cannot imagine how I would feel to lose my Eleanor … And he is here in Scotland now, you say, and out with Stewart and Wishart in defiance of the Plantagenet? That’s a turnaround. I wonder if it had aught to do with Edward?” His eyes narrowed. “He’s not here as Edward’s man, you’re sure of that?”

“I’m sure of it,” I told him. “He claims, in fact, to be here as
Scotland’s
man. Not Balliol’s, not King John’s, but Scotland’s.”

“By God, I confess that surprises me.”

“I can see that. But why should it surprise you, really, Andrew? The man’s as Scots as you are. Both your ancestors, de Moray and de Brus, came to this realm around the same time, two hundred years ago, sent here by the same Norman king, William Rufus.”

“That’s true, but …” He hesitated, then gave a dismissive shake of his head. “No matter. But I thought he was in England.”

“Until you pointed him out, I thought Gartnait of Mar was in England, too, as Edward’s captive.”

“And so he was. His father remains there as a prisoner, hostage to the son’s attendance in support of Edward’s war in France. It’s a long story, but Gartnait arrived at Inverness a few days ago, sent up from Aberdeen by his associates, to warn me off and convince me to stand down and disband my army.”

I had felt a deep pang of anxiety as he spoke the words. “Which you have no intention of doing, I hope?”

“What think you?” He sat down again, waving me down, too, then raised his mug and sipped at his ale, the first time he had done so since toasting my arrival. “I could be offended that you even ask such a question.”

“Don’t be. It was an observation, if you like.” I drank from my own mug and set it down again. “Who are these associates of Gartnait’s you spoke of, that they could dictate to him within his own earldom and send him all the way up here to make demands of you?”

He drew air through his teeth. “An astute question, Father. And appropriate, too. They are friends and relatives of mine, as is Gartnait himself, but senior in rank and title to both of us. Edward convinced a number of Scots magnates to exchange imprisonment in England for service in France and Gascony. Hardly a difficult choice for any of them, I suspect, after spending the best part of a year in captivity and facing more to come.”

“That makes perfect sense,” I said. “Perfect sense for Edward, too, for he would have them under his thumb thereafter, their sworn paroles the guarantee of their fidelity. But no word of this arrangement has reached us in the south.”

“It affects me ill, though, in this matter of collecting the bishop’s cargo from Aberdeen, because according to Gartnait there’s an army coming north from Aberdeen right now, to stamp me down.”

He set down his cup carefully, then gripped his knees and swayed effortlessly to his feet with barely a grunt before stepping over to a supply of logs that lay ready for the fire and selecting a couple that were to his liking. He thrust them into the coals in the fire pit, pressed them home with the thick sole of his armoured boot, and returned to sit again as they began to burn.

“When the magnates with Mar were released from London, they agreed to return home and make ready to embark for France come August. It seems, though, that on the very day they set out northward, a man called Andrew de Rait, a Scottish knight loyal to Edward, arrived in Westminster from the north—from here in Inverness, in fact—with word for Edward about the nuisance we’ve been causing here in Moray. He carried letters from Reginald de Cheyne, the commander of Inverness Castle—the first official notification Edward had received of our rebellion. That, incidentally, is Edward’s word, not ours. It’s an English word with an English
meaning. Ours is an uprising, not a rebellion. We have risen up in protest against his tyranny, but the English use the term
rebellion
because a rebellion gives an appearance of support to Edward’s false claims of ruler status.”

“How did you learn,” I asked him, “about Andrew de Rait and the letters from de Cheyne?”

“Gartnait told me. In return for de Rait’s loyalty, Edward endowed him that same day with all the lands that had been forfeited after Dunbar by his brother. He then turned de Rait around on his heels and sent him chasing after the party that had left for Scotland that morning, with new instructions.”

“And who were these travellers?”

“John Comyn, the Earl of Buchan, for one, although there’s no surprise in that. He was the leader, accompanied by the other John Comyn, his cousin, the Lord of Badenoch—the Black and the Red branches of Comyn together. Also among their number was Edward’s lickspittle toady, Henry de Cheyne, the Bishop of Aberdeen—as God is my witness, I detest that loathsome, unctuous man. Sir Edward de Balliol, the king’s brother, was with them, too, as was Malise, Earl of Strathearn, and Gartnait himself. There were others, but those are the principals.”