The Guardian (53 page)

“Of course, my lord. The Sacrament cares not when it be celebrated, provided it be not ignored.”

Thomas bowed deeply and the earl turned away, satisfied, and gave his attention to his unexpected guests. There was a period of activity as servers hurriedly cleared away the seats set out for Mass and replaced them with wooden chairs that they set around a heavy, oaken table. Mere weeks earlier, I would have been astounded to see such a table in such a place, but since then I had learned much about the Earl of Surrey and how he went to war. His personal baggage train, attended by his own retainers, was almost half as large as the army’s own supply train, and it carried all the outward signs of wealth and privilege he deemed appropriate to his age and station.

When the servants withdrew, he waved a hand towards the table. “Sit where ye will,” he said. “There is no ranking here.”

Even so, by the time everyone was seated, the Scots were on one side of the table and the English—Warrenne, Cressingham, and four more—were on the other. The remaining people in the pavilion, Thomas and I among them with three other priests, moved away and stood lining the walls, waiting for whatever might develop. I knew none of the four men seated alongside the earl and the treasurer, but I suspected that the youngest among them might be Henry Percy.

Earl Warrenne, blunt and forthright as I had come to know he was, wasted no time but spoke directly to the Steward. “We should all know each other here, but since there is one among you I don’t know myself, I’ll settle that now.” He looked directly at Sir Alexander Lindsay. “Who are you, sir?”
Lindsay smiled and inclined his head slightly in salute. “My name is Lindsay, my lord, Alexander Lindsay of Barnwell.”

“Lindsay …” Warrenne’s brow wrinkled slightly. “That name is known to me. Are you kin of any kind to that Sir David de Lindsay of the Byres, who crusaded in Egypt with Prince Edward?”

“He was my father, sir, but I never knew him. He died on crusade.”

“Aye, he did, and I can see him in you now. I was with him when he died, you know. He was my friend, not merely a brother in arms. He was a fine, upstanding man whose name you may bear with pride.”

He spoke then to the others on his side of the table. “So, Sir Alexander you all know. As for the others, in the middle you have James Stewart, Lord High Steward of Scotland. On his right is Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, and to his left is Earl Malise of Strathearn. And the man on the end there is Lord James’s brother, Sir John Stewart.”

He changed his focus to the Scots. “You all will know Sir Hugh de Cressingham, King Edward’s treasurer for Scotland. Beside him is my grandson Sir Henry Percy, Baron of Alnwick, and beside him is his teacher and mentor, Sir Marmaduke Tweng. The man beside Sir Marmaduke is Sir Tibbalt de Blount, constable of Tyneside, and he commands our forces from that region. And Prior Anselm of Hexham Priory in Northumberland is a visitor here, newly arrived and bearing letters from the Bishop of Lindisfarne to my attention.” That said, he seated himself, leaned back in his chair, and eyed the Steward. “You came to speak, so speak.”

I had been staring at the man beside Sir Henry Percy, for his was a name I had known for years. Sir Marmaduke Tweng was a warrior knight of great fame, a veritable paladin, known and respected throughout Christendom and named in tones of awed respect whenever men spoke of tourneys and chivalric prowess. I had heard many men speak of him, and never a word of disrespect from any, but I had never expected to set eyes on him, and I was still sufficiently boyish and wide-eyed to feel a thrill of wonder at being in his
company, even as a bystander. He was no longer young, yet far from being either old or failing, but his eyes sparkled with humour and vitality and he radiated confidence and calm. He had the broad width of shoulders that bespoke a lifetime practising with heavy weapons. Beside him, the fiery and much-talked-about Sir Henry Percy looked young and callow, in spite of the stern set of his features and his obvious determination to be recognized as a man among men.

A deep harrumph from the Steward interrupted my musing. “We are here about a task that should be equally beneficial to both our realms,” he said. “We both are well served should we be able to resolve this matter facing us in the valley of the Forth without blood being shed on either side.”

“And how do you suggest we might achieve that?” It was plain from the irony in the earl’s voice that he was expecting some attempt to trick him.

“By suborning Wallace’s army. Depriving him of his best men.”

I was rocked to my very soul by what the Steward had said, and before I could adjust my thoughts he spoke again.

“You may not be aware of this, but in recent weeks he has attracted a number of knights and men of noble station to his cause, and they now rank high among his followers. That is why we are here now. I have no knowledge of how he enlisted their support— for he is a common outlaw, beyond doubt—but there is no doubt that he did. I believe, however”—he checked himself, then indicated his companions—“
we
believe that those men might still be induced to bethink themselves and return to their true loyalties, which are to the realm and to their natural station as nobles of Scotland.”

“As you yourself were induced by Baron Alnwick here?” I was not alone in wincing at the sudden sound of Cressingham’s braying, at once both hectoring and abrasive. “You were a rebel recently yourself, Stewart, flouting the King’s peace, as everyone here knows. But now you expect us to heed your advice for dealing with rebels?”

“Ah, Master Cressingham,” Lord James said quietly, turning his head slightly to look the treasurer in the eye with no sign of antipathy
. “What a loss good men everywhere will suffer when your dulcet tones and tactful words are one day silenced in this world … In response to your question, though, I must say yes, I do expect that you will heed my advice, since I propose to offer the men in question precisely what Sir Henry offered me and my companions at Irvine. The logic of it is sound and the acceptance of it is a matter of good sense, since no reasonable, healthy-minded man can deny his own origins. The men of whom I speak have gone astray, choosing to follow a broken man who has gulled them with empty promises of what he calls freedom.” His face clearly showed the scornful contempt in which he held the mere idea.

I had barely managed to collect myself to that point, because the words I had heard from this man were heretical. I drew myself up to my full height, anger roiling in my throat, and was about to step forward when the Steward’s eyes shifted and met mine, stopping me before I could move. His face was blank, but I knew instantly that he had been aware of me all along and that his acknowledgment of me now was deliberate. As I hesitated, he frowned, still looking directly into my eyes. It was a clear instruction to stand still.

Then, his face still wearing that same frown, which now became one of abstracted attention to some passing thought, he spoke again to Earl Warrenne. “The treasurer may be correct, to a degree, my lord,” he said, “but he is wrong nonetheless. I was involved in a recent uprising, but I negotiated an honourable peace with your grandson here, Sir Henry, and have abided by the terms of it since then.”

“No, by God, sir, that you have not,” snarled Cressingham, causing Lord James to whip up one hand and silence him.

“Yes, by God I have, sirrah!” His voice was savage. “Name me one instance where I have not.”

“We have heard nothing from the Earl of Carrick since the day the terms were made.”

“Spare me your concerns about the Earl of Carrick! I barely know the man. He has been a favourite of your King for years, and he came out of England last May, uninvited, and aligned himself with us, claiming the right to do so as an earl of this realm. But it is
no responsibility of mine if he or any other man reneges upon an oath or fails to honour a promise made in person. That has nothing to do with me, Master Cressingham, and if you choose to impugn
my
honour further by insisting that it is, I will be more than happy to defend that honour in single combat—sword, daggers, mace, axe, or any other weapon that you choose.”

Not a sound occurred in the great pavilion. Even the servants were shocked into immobility by the vehemence of the Steward’s rejoinder. Not a man around that table doubted his sincerity or his sudden readiness to spill the treasurer’s blood.

“Well?” he barked.

Cressingham was widely known to be hotheaded, but even he recognized the implacable nature of James Stewart’s anger, and he flushed. “You take me wrong, my lord High Steward. I had no thought to impugn your honour. I was but commenting on—”

“We all heard your comments, sir,” Stewart said. “Be kind enough to keep them to yourself in future, unless you have firm evidence upon which to base them.” He turned back to Earl Warrenne, ignoring Cressingham thereafter. “I was about to say, my lord earl, that the truce I entered into mere months ago with your King, ably negotiated by your grandson and agreed upon at the time by all concerned, was built upon the logic of sound principles and the accepted canon of feudal law. I could find no fault with the terms as presented to us, and since I am suggesting that we—both you and I, representing the realms of Scotland and England—extend identical terms to these people facing us across the river, I anticipate that they will likewise accept what we will say to them.”

Warrenne sniffed. “Some of them might,” he said. “I doubt the Wallace fellow will. And it comes to me, too, that the other so-called leader of this rabble, the northerner de Moray, may be as bloody-handed as is Wallace. What will you say to them?”

“Nothing. They are outlaws, both of them. My aim is to win their well-born supporters away from them by appealing to their better natures and their family loyalties and offering them amnesty. And also by pointing out to them the hopeless nature of their situation
should they refuse, the certainty that they will lose everything they hold dear when Wallace and his rabble are stamped out.”

He waited for de Warrenne to respond, but the earl betrayed no eagerness to speak. Instead he shifted his backside and slid lower in his seat, tucking in his chin and tugging gently at the tuft of hair beneath his lower lip as he stared back at Stewart, the silence stretching and growing and everyone else in the assembly waiting and wondering which man would yield first.

It was the Earl of Surrey who spoke first, showing not the slightest sign that there had been any kind of conflict going on. “Of how many men are we speaking here?”

The High Steward shrugged, but not broadly. “Word of this has come to me but recently from people who know of other people, knights and titled folk, who have joined Wallace, so we do not really know how many of them there are at this time, but there is no question of there being anywhere close to a hundred. A score, perhaps. Perhaps twice that many. And to be truthful even half a hundred would not surprise me. More than that would, though.”

“It would surprise me, too. Why are you really here, Stewart? Because this is nonsense. The loss of fifty men would go unnoticed in an army of a thousand. And this rabble-rouser has drawn several thousand to his cause, however foolish such a cause might be.”

Lord James rose to his feet, then stepped around his high-backed chair and leaned forward against it on his hands, his chin almost touching the peak of its back as he perused the row of Englishmen across from him. “His cause is simply stated, and to Scottish ears there is no foolishness in it,” he said, in firm, measured tones, looking from face to face. “It is to drive the English out of Scotland, root and branch. And there’s the pity of it, and the reason why this must be done—because he has set himself a task that is impossible to complete, and all that he can ever achieve will be catastrophic damage to his own folk, in the certain death of the thousands who follow him.

“But the men we will take from him—be they a score in number or half a hundred—are not ordinary men, and their defection will
not
go unnoticed. In fact the opposite is true.” The Steward’s gaze drifted back to meet mine again, and for a moment he looked directly into my eyes as he continued: “You are correct in what you said a moment ago. Wallace is an outlaw and his so-called army is a rabble, without training, without discipline, and without a hope of surviving their first encounter with your army. He has no means of protecting them against your massed ranks of longbow archers. And he has no horses other than a hundred or so of their stunted mountain ponies, useful for herding cattle but worse than useless against trained and armoured cavalry. The only mounted strength that Wallace has, in fact, is vested in the very men we will take from him, men who know, already, that they have no hope of winning against your mounted knights and men-at-arms, the same men who know, too, that in riding with Wallace they are demeaning and insulting their own families, spurning the very way of life that made them who they are. The loss of them would be a giant blow to Wallace’s esteem. It would be seen as a betrayal of enormous consequence, and I doubt Wallace could recover from it. It would destroy his confidence and undermine his self-assurance, but even more, it would destroy the status he enjoys among his rabble.”

“Hmm …” De Warrenne sat up slightly straighter. “And you believe, in all honesty, that you can achieve such a thing?”

“I would not be here otherwise.”

The Englishman frowned. “How would you go about it? What would you do?”

“We would ride into their camp and simply do it. We’re all Scots. We would be welcomed.”

“Never! They’d hang you high the moment they got wind of your intent.”

“And how would they conceive of our intent?” The Steward indicated the Gaelic earls seated beside him. “We three rank among the senior officers of Scotland’s realm. No one would ever think to doubt our good intent. Think about what is involved here, Lord Warrenne—why these men of whom we speak are so important to the rogue Wallace. It is because they represent something
the man has never known or had until now—respectability. They are knights and men of rank, of stature and status, even the meanest of them. And thus they offer him and his a kind of recognition, an illusion of valid authority. Acceptance from his betters is something Wallace craves, and something he can never have. He is an outlaw and a criminal, and no one knows that better than he does, so it will never occur to him to turn us away or refuse to talk with us. He will not be able to believe his eyes when we approach his camp, because our presence there will give him what he lacks so sorely: a visible sign of having gained that respectability and recognition that is like meat and drink to broken men like him— the essence of life itself.”