The Forest Laird (51 page)

“And that, I suggest to you, is the main reason for what you see as the shiftiness and unreliability of the magnates—and most particularly the Norman-Scots magnates—in this matter of loyalties. They live in a state of constant confusion, not because they are stupid or untrustworthy but simply because they do not know
what
to believe, Will. Their family histories and traditions are strongly rooted in the ancient system of feudalism and chivalry, wherein everything was clearly defined and there was no room for doubt. Now my brethren and I are telling them otherwise, preaching from a book of new ideas, proposing new values that fly in the face of everything they have been taught and are predisposed to believe in.
That
is why they vacillate so much, Will.”

My cousin sat listening blank-faced, his chin resting on his steepled fingers.

“These are not learned men, but neither are they inept. They are not ignorant in the laws of duty and chivalry, but they are unlettered and unread. They believe in actions, not ideas, and they respond to actions, not to words written on paper or recited by clerics. That is the truth, Will, and we cannot alter it within mere weeks or months. That is the way this world of ours functions. And I believe the magnates, for all their supposed powers, are afraid of the way their world is changing. Their way of life requires stability and permanence, but even the positive changes nowadays, such as the emergence of the burgesses, must seem threatening to the old guard. In their world, where change is anathema, everything now seems to be in flux.”

Will grunted, and I saw Lamberton’s eyebrows go up as Wishart’s came down in a frown.

“And what is
that
supposed to mean?” the Bishop growled.

“It means that I agree with you,” Will said, his eyes unfocused. “And that must be the first time on that topic. I confess I find it hard to imagine the Earl of Buchan being afraid of change. Still, I’ll not dispute what you have said, except to say that not everything in their world is in flux. I can see one thing that is dangerously static, and I see it very clearly.”

“Aye? And what is that?”

“Their military experience. And that is what I meant when I spoke of the way they have fought for centuries. It comes to me that they have learned nothing through all those centuries and have no time to learn anything new now. They have great confidence in their own abilities, God knows, but how valid is it?” He held up one hand to prevent anyone interrupting. “I bring it up only because I’ve been worrying over it since you left to hunt for Buchan. I do not like what I have been thinking, my lord Bishop, but this matter has sunk into my head and would not leave me alone until I came to grips with it. I am a verderer—a forester and not a soldier, as you know. But even so, I can see what is there to be seen and I find that I cannot ignore it, no matter how many others can. And the first thing that I see is numbers. The English outnumber us by ten to one, at least. For every hundred men we can march to battle, they can field a thousand, and if they lose a thousand men, they can make good that thousand losses where we may not, and they can do it ten times over.” He grunted again, his jaw working. “Now, it’s fine to say they’re naught but Englishmen and any Scot is worth a score of them, but that is hardly credible when blows are to be traded. We all bleed the same red blood and we all feed the same black earth.

“But the simplest, plainest truth, the thing that frightens me and dominates my thoughts at all times now, is that the English are in solid fighting trim and we are not. They are focused and tight, disciplined and battle hardened. Their forces are keenly edged and toughened after years of sustained warfare in France, in Gascony, and in Wales. Their morale is high, with ample reason, whereas our swaggering has nothing to back it up or sustain it. The Welsh and English archers are well trained and well equipped, furnished with arrows by the hundreds of thousands, produced incessantly by fletching manufactories set up throughout England to keep the country’s bowmen armed and ready to fight instantly and anywhere. Their infantry is equally well equipped, and tempered by years of fighting in scores of battles. And their cavalry is something which we simply cannot match. We lack the enormous horses that the English breed, and because our horses are smaller, our armour must be lighter, so we have no knights who can withstand the might of England’s chivalry.

“But even were we able, by some divine magic, to erase those differences, we would still be facing disaster, for we have not fought—I mean really
fought
, hard battles in the field—for more than thirty years. No Scots army has taken the field since the fight to throw out the Norwegians, at Largs, more than thirty years ago. And even that was no real battle by any standards. Since then, the closest our leaders have come to formal battlefield experience, the closest in
decades
, is on short raids into neighbouring territories against their own kind. That does not fill me with hope about the outcome of this new war.”

“Let us pray you are wrong, Will.”

“Pray all you wish, my lord, but prayer will not alter the fact that we are outweighed and outdistanced on every front. Pray hard, and have your people pray hard, too, for we’ll have need of every prayer they can muster. As for myself, I intend to fight, but I will do it here, where I can serve best by protecting the rear of our forces against incursions from the south. The English host will doubtless invade across the flats of Solway, striking into Annandale and Galloway, but there will be a constant progress of supplies and reinforcements coming north by way of Berwick and by the roads through Coldstream and Jedburgh. My men will keep those roads secure and bar all interference by those routes. You have my word on that.”

2

T
he Bishop and his chancellor left us to return to the cathedral in Glasgow on the morning of the fifteenth of March, the day the ancients called the Ides. I remember warning them to travel with care that day, which had not been a propitious one for Julius Caesar. I recall clearly, too, that it seemed to take a long time for them to reach the end of the long avenue and veer from sight. It was the last thing I can remember that happened slowly from that day forward.

“I like that man Lamberton,” Will said as we walked back towards his hut. “He has a good head and a stout heart and he loves this land of ours. I would follow him, were he a fighter.”

“He is a fighter, Cuz, but he’s a warrior of God. He’ll fight savagely for those things he believes in, but he will do it with nerve and sinew, and his only weapons will be his mind, which is formidable, and his will. He would never spill blood, though, unless it be his own, in sacrifice. He has the makings of a fine bishop, and I have not the slightest doubt he will be one someday.”

“If he survives this war.”

I glanced at my cousin in surprise. “Of course he will survive. Edward does not make war on clerics.”

“Hmm. Edward has not made war on clerics
yet
. But it seems Edward is breaking new ground everywhere he goes these days, and he does not enjoy being crossed. I would not like to cross him in person. Mind you, I’m no bishop.”

As he said the words, we heard Mirren calling his name, and we turned as one to see her watching us, her body tilted to hold her son on her hip as she beckoned.

“Is she not grand, Jamie? Look at her, the stance and the pride of her. Truthfully, I have to thank God I’m no bishop … and to thank Him even more that I’m no saint. Let’s find out what she wants.”

The following day brought word of English troop movements in the fringes of the forest to the south of us, between the towns of Selkirk and Wark and Coldstream, and Will summoned his three appointed leaders to his camp to discuss what they would do to intercept and harass the Englishmen. Within days Will’s men were involved in hostilities, provoked by a seemingly unwarranted attack on a village no more than five miles from his main camp. Word of it came to us from one of the villagers, who had escaped into the woods for long enough to watch the brutality escalate to the point where women and children were being slaughtered as they tried to flee, shot down by bowmen who bet among themselves over how each running target would be hit—in the arm, leg, torso, or head. I was appalled, not so much by the attack itself as by the borderless abyss I sensed yawning ahead of all of us.

Will questioned the man closely for some time, searching for anything that might provide a reason for the attack. But once he had satisfied himself that it was brigandage and murder, pure and simple, he called in Long John and the others and sent a contingent of forty archers off towards the village with orders to bring back as many of the raiders as they could find. Two injured prisoners, both of them English, were brought back within a matter of days; their party of five men, three of whom had died rather than surrender, had been the only people found. There had to have been many more involved in the raid, but they had obviously been under orders to scatter widely after the attack.

The two prisoners had been questioned extensively before they were brought in, and so we knew who had employed them. They were truculent and they were afraid, and the booty they had been carrying when they were taken was enough to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that they were guilty.

The case against them was laid out by one of our own, Alan Crawford of Nithsdale, and the elder of the pair was identified under oath by Walter Armstrong, the survivor who had brought the tale to us. He recognized the archer as the man he had seen shoot two arrows into his cousin Willie, the village blacksmith. The two were judged by a quartet of judges and found guilty, after which the judges met together to determine their punishment. The deliberations were short and the judgment unanimous. Each man had the middle finger of his right hand severed with a single chisel blow. They retained their lives but lost their livelihood, since neither of them would ever again be able to draw a nocked arrow. Their wounds were cauterized roughly, and they were set free.

As soon as they were gone, Will called his leaders into conference again and set them to organizing patrols, morning and evening, to ensure that all traffic moving through the greenwood for a twenty-mile radius would be tracked.

Later that day, when Mirren was called away by one of the women, she left Will and me alone with the baby for a few minutes. He was eight months old by then, as burly and agile as a badger and almost impossible to restrain, even for his father. Will finally hoisted the boy high into the air, then held him out to me.

“Here, then. Away and see your holy Uncle Jamie.”

I caught the child under the arms, instantly aware as I always was nowadays of the weighty, solid, squirming bulk of him and the speed with which his hands moved to whatever he identified as worthy of examination. This time it was my nether lip, and his tiny fingers grasped it before I could avoid them. I winced in anticipation of the pain, but before he could tighten his killing grip, I was saved by the sudden swoop of one of the women who doted on the boy. She whipped him up and away from me, carrying him off towards the women’s quarters, doubtless to be fed something warm and delicious.

“I thought he was going to rip that bottom lip of yours right off,” Will said, and his grin spread wider. “I don’t know what the reason for it is, but my son seems fascinated by your mouth.”

“Aye, as I am by yours.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“Are you going to fight?”

All the animation left his eyes and he sat staring at me, willing me to continue but unwilling himself to respond.

I kept going. “A week ago you told Bishop Wishart you would not fight. Since then, you’ve sent out men to fight.”

“Only in defence of our own peace.”

“Perhaps, but now you are arranging day and night patrols. I am not saying they are unnecessary, but I am wondering if you are changing your mind about your involvement in this affair that’s bubbling on the hob.”

He continued to gaze at me, his face unreadable, and after a while I began to think he was not going to answer me at all, but then he shook his head, a short, sharp, impatient gesture.

“If you are asking me if I am going marching off to war, then no, I am not. I meant every word of what I said to Wishart. So no, I’ll not fight. Not without solid reason. The magnates will not miss my presence, and the realm of Scotland, needy though it might be, has no great need of William Wallace. None grand enough, at least, to outweigh the need my wife and children have of me.”

“Children?” I heard the surprise in my own voice.

Will grinned almost shamefacedly and lapsed into Scots. “Aye. Mirren’s expecting again. The women say she’s three months along already.” He flipped a hand and made a face, as though asking me what else he could have done. “I would ha’e waited longer, y’ know? But she would ha’e none o’ it. No need to wait, she said. She’s as strong as a horse and likes the thought o’ twa wee ones close enough together to be company for one anither. A lad and a lass, she wants, and close thegither, so what was I to say—or dae, for that matter?”

He shrugged and dipped his head. “Anyway, that’s the way o’ it, and I intend to see them safe through whatever lies ahead o’ us. War is no fitting pastime for a man wi’ bairns and a comely wife. So what I said to the Bishop holds true. I’ll take no part in fighting for some magnate—
any
magnate—who canna make up his mind whether he’s Scots or no’. I ha’e no such doubts. I’m a Scot, as were my grandsires and theirs before them. I ken wha and what I am, and I ken wha my King is. ’Gin he calls upon me directly, then I’ll go to war. For him. But for naebody else, Jamie.”

The rough accent of the local people vanished again beneath the lustre of the Church’s tongue. “In the meantime, I intend to keep my family safe and hidden from marauding eyes here in the forest. Should any seek to threaten them or me, then I will fight, and those I fight will rue the day they sought to find me. But that is all. So be the English keep themselves and their evil presence far from me, then I will keep myself away from them.”