The Forest Laird (47 page)

I shifted my eyes sideways to Will and found him listening closely, his eyes narrowed to slits as he concentrated upon every word being spoken, and as I looked, he spoke up.

“
How
will Scotland not permit it? Who is this ‘we’ you speak of, and what do they intend to do, to change anything?”

It was the Bishop who responded this time. “We are the community of the realm. The description is new—”

“I’ve heard of it,” Will said.

“Aye, you have, for the idea is not new. It has been around for years, being talked about by everyone. Recently, though, it has begun taking hard form, in the persons of those most involved.”

“The magnates.” There was a flat, dismissive quality to Will’s voice, but the Bishop appeared not to notice it.

“The magnates, aye, but not alone … no longer alone. These are changing times. In recent years we have been seeing the emergence of an addition to the three main estates of the realm. A fourth is coming into being. The first three still hold sway: the bishops of the Church, the earls of the ancient Celtic kingdom, and the barons of the current realm. But a strong new voice is now making itself heard in the land—the voice of the burgesses, some of whom are beginning to call themselves the fourth estate. For the time being, though, and in the case we are discussing, the vested power is unchanged. The parliament in Stirling appointed a council of twelve governors—four bishops, four earls, and four barons—to assist King John wholeheartedly in his dealings with England, to provide visible and formidable support for the King’s grace in the face of bullying and bluster.”

Will muttered something tinged with disgust, and Wishart cocked his head sideways, eyeing him. “Have you something to add, Will?”

“Aye,” came the low response, “but nothing new. How long, think ye, before Edward yanks the chain and threatens to deprive your magnates of their lands in England? That has never failed to bring them obediently to heel before, and I see no reason why things should be different now.”

“But things
are
different now. These men have accepted full responsibility for their new tasks in the eyes of parliament.”

“And have they willingly agreed to forfeit their estates in England?”

That brought no answer, and the silence stretched until Will spoke again.

“That’s what I thought. And that, my lord, is why I will not fight. As long as these men rely on the wealth of their estates in England, England’s King will have them on a choke leash. Tell me this, and be truthful: why should I, why should
any
man of ability or worth, be expected to endanger and abandon his own family and step forward to fight for, or with, or beside these … these posturing buffoons, knowing them likely to skip sideways in the middle of the measure and end up dancing on the other side, accepting table scraps from England and leaving us to die for our folly in trusting them?”

He was glaring at the Bishop, defying him to interrupt him, and when Wishart said nothing he continued. “Magnates! Magnates, my arse.
Maggots
suits them better. Sir William Douglas may be a brigand and a bully and a rebel, but at least no one doubts where he stands. That kind of man I can deal with. But until these
maggots
can make up their mind about whether they’re Scots or English, they’ll get no support from me or any of my kind. And until then, be damned to them.” He dropped his voice dramatically and spoke his next words slowly and clearly. “I will not fight to enrich some faceless, half-bred mongrel magnate at my own expense and risk.”

He permitted that to linger in the air, then sat back in his chair. “On the other hand,” he said, “the moment the Scots noble houses wash their hands of all they held in England and commit themselves to being Scots and to caring for their folk and for this realm, I will stand prepared to change my mind. And if it comes to waging war, united one and all against Edward’s greedy grasp, I will come quickly out of Ettrick, with every outlaw I can muster, and join the fight.”

“And you are determined not to fight until then?”

Will laid his hands flat on the table, fingers spread. “I have explained my situation, my lord, as clearly as I am able, but I will do so again. I have a wife big with child. Within days we will have a son or a daughter, the first of many, I hope and pray. I will not endanger the welfare of my family needlessly. If it should come to a just war, properly led by trustworthy commanders for the common good, then I will march with everyone else. But I will risk nothing for, nor will I support in any way, anyone who has no care for me or mine and no interests in his mind but his own welfare.”

He appeared to suck at something lodged in his teeth, then shrugged. “An honest man can serve only one master—in this case, one King. Any fool knows that. And Scotland
has
a King, crowned with all the blessings of Church and state. The allegiance of our so-called magnates is clear—their monarch is King John. Yet they fear to give offence to Longshanks, lest they lose wealth and privilege. Bluntly, they are duplicitous and treasonous, and I intend to keep myself and my family as far removed as I can be from all the stink of their corruption.”

He stood up and bowed stiffly to Bishop Wishart and the canon. Then, without another word, he was gone, closing the door quietly behind him. No one spoke for a long time, but then Wishart sighed and looked over at Lamberton.

“You did not even get to speak with him.
Mea culpa
. I pushed him too hard.”

Lamberton shook his head. “No, my lord. Master Wallace had passed the point at which anyone could push him further long before we came here. But no matter. I will seek him out later, once he has had time to cool down.” He glanced then at me, and his mouth twisted in a wry grin. “Your cousin is a man of strong opinions.”

“Aye, he is. But you always know precisely where you stand in your dealings with him. He is just and level headed. And he will talk to you later, so be it you do not attempt to change his mind or make him feel guilty about the decision he has made.”

“I have no intention of attempting either one. I merely wish to talk to him about a mutual friend, Sir Andrew Murray.”

“You are a friend of Andrew’s? Then he
will
talk to you, gladly.”

The Bishop cleared his throat and rose to his feet, pulling his breviary from his scrip. “I think there is little to be gained by remaining here now … in this room, I mean. I think I would enjoy walking alone for a while.” He nodded a farewell to both of us and made his way out into the encampment, deep in thought. Lamberton and I exchanged glances and then, with nothing further to say to each other, we went our separate ways.

4

F
rom the moment I heard that the birthing had begun, I was swept up in a spate of fearful imaginings that I would not have thought, two hours earlier, could exist within me. Will himself fared little better. After being told that Mirren had collapsed and been taken indoors to the shadowy domain of the hovering midwives, my virile, assertive cousin was transformed: the colour vanished from his face, he appeared to shrink in size and bulk, and his very movements, normally firm and decisive, took on an aspect of uncertainty and timidity. The Bishop and his chancellor offered Masses for the welfare and safety of mother and child, but their presence had no real relevance for any of the rest of us. People like Ewan and Shoomy and Alan and Long John, faces familiar and everpresent, were far more comforting and supportive at such times than mere clerics could ever be.

Throughout that long, moonless, seemingly endless night we waited, huddled in cloaks around a leaping fire while shapeless, faceless women scurried back and forth among the shadows, on errands we were not equipped to guess at. From time to time we would hear noises, some of them loud but all muffled and meaningless, that made us squirm with discomfort over our own ignorance of what was happening. Then came a succession of harrowing screams that left us all chilled, afraid to look at one another. Thanks be to God, though, the last of those awful screams was closely followed by the wail of a newborn.

Shoomy barked a laugh and punched the new father lightly on the shoulder.

“Dada,” he growled, and everyone laughed and started to talk all at once in the welcome release of tension. Everyone, that is, except Will. He sat as tensely as before, staring towards the cluster of huts housing the midwives, unable to forget, I was sure, those last agonized screams. I crossed to where he sat and gripped him firmly by the shoulder.

“Stay here,” I said. “I’ll go and find out how she is.”

As I approached the nearest of the midwives’ huts, I saw a stirring in the shadows, and one of the elder wives stepped towards me.

“Father,” she said, neither questioning nor inviting comment.

“Mistress Wallace,” I said. “How is she?”

The woman raised one brow as she stared at me, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. A priest, asking after the welfare of the mother of a newborn child, was something rare, for in the matter of a newborn’s life, the greeting and harvesting of a new soul, the welfare of the mother was never a priority. If a choice became necessary between the survival of the mother and the life of the child, the child’s life took precedence.

“They are both well,” she said eventually. “Mother and son are both hale and strong. Permit us time to clean the chamber and prepare the child, and then you may bring the father.” She nodded, graciously enough, then glided away into the shadows.

I went back to where Will still sat by the fire, every angle of his body radiating stiffness and tension. Long John and Ewan stood close by.

“God bless all here,” I said as I approached. “He has already blessed your newborn son and his mother. Both are well. Strong and healthy. God be praised.”

Will had raised his head, staring at me wide-eyed. “Mirren?”

“She is well, I’m told, and anxious to have you meet your son.”

He stood up slowly, holding my gaze, and reached out to touch me. I felt his hands grasping the front of my robe, and then he drew me towards him, without even being aware that he had taken hold of me. “She’s well, Jamie? She lives?”

“And waits to show you your new son, Cuz. Come now, by the time we walk over there they should be ready to receive us.”

Ready they were, too, and my throat swelled up with love and pleasure and gratitude to God in His goodness as I watched my cousin’s introduction to his first-born son. Mirren was startlingly, radiantly beautiful, and it was impossible for me to imagine her as the source of those appalling screams that had so frightened us a short time earlier. She was regally wrapped in furs and brightly coloured woollen shawls, and she held her son in the crook of one elbow, the fingers of her free hand tucked gently under his chin. As Will stepped forward shyly to stoop and kiss the top of her head, she reached up and tugged at the side of his beard with her fingertips, a gentle, loving gesture of tender affection, after which she held the swaddled child up to him with both hands. He took the small bundle from her as though it held the most precious substance in all the world—which, of course, it did—and raised it up in front of his face to where he could stare at the wondrous creature inside, and then he stood rapt, for long, long minutes, transfixed by what he saw.

It was also on that night of the child’s birth that I had the most memorable discussion of that entire visit with Canon Lamberton. Bishop Wishart had retired early yet again, but Will sat with us until long into the night, finally able to relax and enjoy himself, and I was glad to see him and William Lamberton warm to each other over a flagon of ale by the side of a leaping fire. The two Williams compared their experiences of having met and come to know their mutual friend Andrew Murray, and I was surprised to learn that Lamberton had met Murray in Paris. I did not know that Andrew had been in Paris, and neither did Will, but Lamberton told us he had been there on business for his father, a man of great power in the north.

Both Will and I knew that Sir Andrew Murray of Petty had been justiciar in the north about the time of King Alexander’s death and that he was closely connected by marriage to the all-powerful Comyn family. Those things were common knowledge, if little understood, in south Scotland, and now that the name of Murray is renowned, and has been for decades, it may seem strange to younger people that it was not always thus.

In the days before Wallace emerged from his woody lair, Scotland was a vastly different place, and the division of the kingdom into north and south, separated by the Firth of Forth, was real and alienating. The English called the Firth of Forth “the Scottish Sea,” and in fact it separated north Scotland from the south the way the narrow sea the English call the Channel divides France from England. The analogy is not inapt, for the folk north and south of the Forth spoke vastly different tongues and appeared to be even racially different, with Erse-speaking Gaels and Norse-descended folk of Danish and Norwegian Viking stock making up the bulk of the northern populace, while the inhabitants of the south spoke mainly English and a polyglot trading language that was becoming known as Scots. Between the two regions there lay a huge cultural gulf and a mutual sense of distrust that was tenuously held in suspension by the intermediary efforts of the Church.

Now, when Canon Lamberton raised the name of Andrew’s father, the senior Andrew de Moray, both Will and I began to question him.

“He’s a famous man,” Will said. “But I am not sure
why
he should be so famous. D’you know?”

Lamberton sat back and laughed. “How does any man become famous, Will? He is rich, above and beyond all else, wealthy on a scale that folk like us cannot imagine.” He sipped at his ale pot before continuing. “He is the Lord of Petty, which means small, as you know, but there is nothing remotely petty about His Lordship, for he owns most of the enormous lands of Moray, which is unimaginably vast. His primary seat, from which he controls what most people would call his empire, is Hallhill Castle, a giant stronghold on the south bank of the Moray Firth, but he also holds the lordship of Avoch in the Black Isle, which is controlled from Avoch Castle, another huge fortress, said to be impregnable, that sits east of Inverness and overlooks the Moray Firth. He is also lord of Boharm, which is governed from Gauldwell Castle and contains the estates of Arndilly and Botriphni. Oh, and he also owns other lands and estates at Alturile, Brachlie, and Croy, in the Petty region. Young Andrew is heir to all of it.”