The Forest Laird (15 page)

Standing beside Will, barely reaching the middle of his swelling upper arm and looking for all the world like a slight and tiny child—though she was anything but either one—the girl Mirren stood gazing up at him, watching his face with a deeply thoughtful look on her own. As I approached, the young woman stepped away from him to make room for me. I was aware of her bright blue eyes scanning me from head to foot, her lips smiling gently. But being me, I ignored her look and turned instead to Will, blissfully unaware that in the short time I had been watching elsewhere, William Wallace’s life, and all of Scotland’s destiny, had been changed forever.

CHAPTER FIVE

1

“W
here first we find love, there also we encounter grief.”

I cannot remember who said that, but it springs into my mind unbidden whenever I think of Mirren Braidfoot and my cousin Will, and it never fails to grip me like a fist clenching around my heart. I am a priest, and although that in itself is no guarantee of chastity or lack of prurience, I have never known the love of a woman, either physical or emotional. I have known temptation, certainly, for that is the common burden of mankind, but I have always managed, somehow, through no strength of my own and most often by the power of fervent and sustained prayer, to avoid yielding to it.

That said, however, I have been fascinated all my life by the overwhelming strength of the love one sometimes finds between certain men and women, and I have always found the power of it, for both good and ill, to be close to frightening. Had King Alexander not yearned for the welcoming warmth of his young wife, for example, he would not have died as he did on his way to join her. And had William Wallace never met Mirren Braidfoot, he would not have died as he did in London’s Smithfield Square.

I do not mean this to be taken as a condemnation of Mirren. In all the years that passed after that first meeting in Elderslie, neither Will nor she did any wilful thing to harm the other. As a courting pair, two young people discovering each other, they were the very essence of God’s intent for His beloved children; as a married couple, they knew bliss together; and as supporters of each other’s dreams, even when apart, they were unshakable. There was no weakness in their love, no inborn flaw, no fault; merely perfect love and fidelity. But as these attributes buttressed their love, they also left them open to their enemies.

It had already begun that day of their initial meeting, though none of us would learn of that for months to come.

Will told me many times about being swept away by love that day, about what he saw and how he felt when he was smitten by the woman who would quickly come to mean all the world to him, and as I listened to him over the first few months of such outpourings—for by then Mirren had returned to her home in Lanark—I was struck by the resemblance between the way he spoke of her and the ardour with which Andrew Murray had described his own love, the young woman with the liquidly beautiful name Siobhan. Both young men burned with the same ardent passion, and from the lambent purity of Will’s enthusiasm I came to see, through his eyes, what my own eyes had missed that afternoon.

I had arrived in Elderslie at mid-morning, mere hours before they met, and as soon as I had delivered the letter that had brought me there to Sir Malcolm, I set out to where he had told me I would find Will, a good half-hour’s walk from the main house. I found him near the westernmost edge of Sir Malcolm’s lands, close to the village of Elderslie itself and hard by the wagon road that led to it from Paisley. He was crouched over a narrow track through the long grass that lined the roadway, pawing at the grass with spread fingers, his head moving from side to side as he inched forward. He heard me coming, glanced up, then returned his attention to the ground ahead of him.

“Good day, idle Forester,” I greeted him. “Have you lost something?”

He swept his open hands through long grass, then looked at his palms and shrugged to his feet. “Not lost, nor found,” he said. “I’m looking for blood. But there doesna seem to be any.” It had been two weeks since last we met, but he spoke as if we had parted no more than an hour earlier; no greeting, no acknowledgment, no surprise.

“And should there be?”

He stooped then to pick up the strung bow in the long grass and then unstrung it, bracing the stave with his foot as he pulled it down to free the loop from its end.

“Aye, there should. I shot at a doe here … Throw me my case, there.” He caught the case easily and flipped off its cap, then turned completely around, his eyes scanning the surrounding grass as he slid the long stave into its tube. He replaced the cap and slung the case over his shoulder, shaking his head. “She should be lying here dead, but my eyes tell me I missed her from sixty paces.”

I made no reply to that, not knowing what to say, for I had never known him to miss any target from that range. He was still looking about him, his eyes now checking the line of flight from the base of an ash tree sixty paces away and passing his right side, right over the road and into a dense thicket of brambles.

“Anyway, she ran, and I thought I’d gut-shot her and would have to hunt her down, but there’s no blood. And no sign of my arrow. Mind you, I felt it flutter as it left the string. I must have torn the fletching without noticing and it flew off course. But God be my witness, I hate losing arrows.”

“What was wrong with the doe?”

Will sniffed and pulled several broadhead hunting arrows from the bag at his side, peering closely at the fletching on each one. “Old age and a lame leg. She’ll no’ last the winter and might no’ even reach it. I thought it would be kinder to kill her now and end her pains … But she’s well away from here by now.” He dropped the arrows back into his bag. “What brings
you
here this fine morning, then? You’re like to shrivel up and blow away in the brightness out here if you’re no’ careful, after being cooped up in your old, dark library.”

“Came to see you, and to deliver a letter to Sir Malcolm.”

“In that order, eh?” His thickening beard almost concealed the quirk of his grin. “Well, you see me now, and you seem to be in fine fettle. Though you look more like a damn priest each time I see you.”

It was true. Since taking up residence at the Abbey I had worn the grey habit of the resident monks. “I am a damn priest—or I soon will be.”

He grunted, then took hold of my right wrist and held my hand up to examine my fingers. “Ink … Are you still practising wi’ your bow? I don’t see any calluses.”

I freed my hand and wiggled my fingers, looking at them almost ruefully. “No, I never seem to find the time nowadays. And besides, it’s no fun if you’re not there. I’ve lost nearly all my calluses this past year.” I glanced across the road to the bramble thickets. “Are you not going to look for that arrow?”

“Nah, we’d never find it. It was moving flat across the ground. It could have passed right through that whole thicket without hitting anything. Did you bring anything to eat?” I shook my head and he grimaced. “Damn. Neither did I. Ran out and forgot all about eating this morning, wanting an early start. Looked for this wee doe for hours before I found her, and then missed her completely from close enough to touch her. Not a good morning’s work … Ach well. Let’s go into the village and find something to eat. It’s no’ far, and I’m famished.”

We talked about trivial things as we walked the half mile into the village and made our way directly to the sign of the Boar’s Head by the side of the common, where a few of the loiterers sitting by the entrance nodded to us as we entered. The dim interior reeked of stale beer, bad food, and smoky, guttering lamps even at noon. Supposedly a hostelry, as announced by the crudely painted sign of the mightily tusked boar’s head that hung above the front door, the place was in reality what the local folk called a howff—a drinking hole that could not even claim the respectability of a tavern. It was a den where men came at night to whore and gamble, drink and blaspheme, but it was also the only place in the village that sold food for instant consumption during the day, and as such it attracted a wider variety of customers in daylight than it did by night.

There were few customers inside, and we seated ourselves in a dark corner at the end of the plank table that served as a crude counter and sipped at flagons of thin, sour ale while we waited for the slatternly wife of Big Rab, the owner, to slop two platters of the day’s meat pie in front of us. Neither of us made any remark on the food or its delivery; we had been there many times before and were familiar with the way things were done. To my surprise, though, the pie that day was the best I had ever tasted there, hot and savoury and well stuffed with chunks of onion, turnip, and meat, and topped with a well-made crust. We ate without comment, neither of us daring to wonder aloud what kind of meat was in the pie, or where it came from, although I fancied that I could detect both venison and wild hare in the well-spiced mixture. We both knew that if it were venison, it had been taken illegally, so I kept silent and merely enjoyed it while Will, the forester and keeper, ate it without expressing either curiosity or enjoyment.

I could see he was far from happy with the situation, and at the same time I was aware of Big Rab loitering anxiously in the background, glancing worriedly at us from time to time and plainly expecting Will to say something. As we drained our flagons and stood up to leave, Rab’s wife came bustling towards us, the look on her face holding sufficient guilt to condemn both her and her man. Will muttered a gruff word of thanks and threw a coin on the table. I followed him wordlessly out of the place, noting the look of relief on Big Rab’s face as he scuttled away into the rear of the establishment.

As soon as we were outside I noticed that the loiterers had all gone. “Good pie,” I said. “I wonder who cooked it.”

“I don’t want to know,” he growled. “No more than I want to know where the deer came from.”

As he spoke, someone called his name in the distance, and we both turned to see one of Sir Malcolm’s tenants, a man called James Laithey, waving to us from the butts on the common. Here, as in any town or village, anyone who owned cattle had the right to graze them on the common, but in Elderslie, a strip of ground along the longest side was set aside in the summer months for archery. It was barely wide enough for three men to stand side by side and shoot towards the far end, some two hundred paces distant, but it was sufficient for the needs of the archers who used it, none of whom owned a longbow. The normal bow of Scots huntsmen and archers was broad and flat in section, sometimes laminated with layers of horn or sinew, and made from local ash or elm or even beech, and their average length was a yard and a half. One sometimes saw a five-foot bow being used, but those were usually in the hands of visiting bowmen, travellers who roamed the countryside matching their skills against the local marksmen and usually prospering. Will’s bow was an entirely different weapon from all of those, and he was generally reluctant to demonstrate its power in competition, a delicacy that was accepted gracefully by others once they had seen its power, and Will’s accuracy, for themselves.

I noticed strangers among the usual gathering of villagers, including a noisy group of about ten young people of both sexes and an unknown bowman who stood apart from the crowd and seemed to be the centre of attention. It was obvious from the height and width of both him and his long, broad bow that he was a wandering archer, looking to win money from the local marksmen.

“Shit,” Will muttered. “I suppose I’d better see what James wants. I could do without knowing, though, for I’m guessing at it already and I don’t like it.”

We waited for the other man to reach us.

“What is it, James? I have to get back to work.”

Laithey wasted no time in telling us. The stranger’s reputation had preceded him, for he had been making the rounds of the neighbouring villages and was far more proficient at his art than he professed to be. He would compete, appear to falter, lose several bouts, and then, on the point of paying his losses, would ask for one more match at double the stakes, at which point he would rally, and finish up with deadly precision, winning everything.

Will shrugged. “What do you want of me, James? You know I don’t shoot for money. This fellow will take one look at my bow and walk away.”

Laithey nodded. “He might. But he’s awfu’ cocksure and pleased wi’ himsel’. He likely thinks he can beat you.”

“How does he even know me? I’ve never seen him before.”

“Some of the fellows saw ye goin’ into the howff. They were talkin’ about ye, and the fellow was listenin’. And besides, if he walks away now, he’ll take every coin in the village wi’ him, for they’re a’ in his pocket already.”

Will sighed and looked sideways at me, rolling his eyes. “Who are those other folk, the young ones?”

“Just visitors, frae Paisley,” Laithey told him. “They’re here to visit young Jessie Brunton—her sisters and their friends.”

Will sighed. “Well,” he said at length, “I’ll offer him a match, but I doubt he’ll take it. If he’s won everything already I’m surprised he’s still here.”

“Don’t be. He was interested in what the lads had to say about ye. That’s why he’s waitin’.”

“Then he’s wasting his time. I’ve no money other than a groat or two.”

Laithey, who was known for both sobriety and thrift, grinned, for he had admired Will’s skill for years. “I’ll put up the coin,” he said. “Just this once, to see you beat this thief. And when you win, I’ll gi’e back the winnings to the fools who lost them.”

“You will? I’ll hold you to that. But what if I lose?”

The other man shrugged, still smiling. “You willna. But ’gin you do, I’ll take it as God’s judgment on me for gambling.”

Will dipped his head. “So be it. Let’s try him, then. But I doubt he’ll take the wager.”

The stranger, who introduced himself as plain Robertson, agreed to Will’s challenge with apparent reluctance, eyeing the long leather case that hung from his shoulder. But as the one being challenged, he had the setting of the terms, and it was immediately obvious he knew what he was doing. The most effective range of the yew longbow was between two hundred and two hundred and twenty paces, shooting at a six-inch target centre or a similarly thick fence post; beyond that distance, the yew archer tended to lose accuracy, and at lesser ranges the arrow flight was constrained by the bow’s huge strength, and the inaccuracy became even greater.

“Targets,” Robertson said. “Split posts, three inches thick, two feet high.” He watched narrow-eyed as Will considered that before nodding slowly, but then he could not hold back a wolfish grin as he continued. “At a hundred.”