The Forest Laird: A Tale of William Wallace

by Jack Whyte

  Will and I were speechless, appalled by our own ill manners, but fortunately that was not the case with Andrew. “My lord,” he said quickly, his voice tinged with desperation. “My lord, forgive me. We were deep in talk and did not see you coming.”

  Lord John swung back towards us, still smiling. “That much was obvious,” he said. “But I find myself wondering about what you found so engrossing. When I was your age, the only topic that could inspire such dedication and reverence was consideration of the beauties of young women.”

  None of us was capable of responding to that, but from the corner of my eye I could see the wave of colour that engulfed Andrew’s face as his mouth opened and closed. Balliol, however, was merciful and allowed his squire to slip easily off the gaff.

  “I am new come from a meeting with the Abbott and his staff, which means I have spent the entire day talking about affairs of state and bruising my backside through a too-thin cushion, and so I thought to take some fresh air.” He reached behind him and kneaded his buttocks. “I had been thinking about you, young Andrew—guiltily, I suppose—imagining you waiting and fretting somewhere and no doubt cursing me, and so when I saw you here I thought to bid you good day and tender my regrets for having summoned you only to leave you waiting, since even a squire has the right to a little freedom.” He glanced sideways at Will, who had finally managed to close his open mouth. “You have made friends, I see.”

  “Yes, my lord, I have.” Close to stammering, Andrew made us known to his master, who extended his hand to each of us in turn, nodding and smiling and making us feel at ease, a feat I would not have thought possible mere moments earlier. He was neither as tall nor as broad as Will, but such was the impression of confidence that radiated from the man that he seemed to occupy no less an amount of space, and I noticed now that he was eyeing Will’s staff.

  “That looks like a quarterstaff,” he said. “Or is it simply a big walking stick?”

  Will actually smiled. “My tutor tells me it is a quarterstaff, my lord.”

  “And who is your tutor?”

  “A man called Ewan Scrymgeour.”

  “Scrymgeour … A Scots name.”

  “Aye, sir, but his mother’s family is Welsh. He was an archer with King Edward, until the Welsh wars.”

  “Hmm.” Lord John glanced at Murray, then looked quickly over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the deserted forecourt behind him. “Good. Then walk with me, if you will, to where the air is even fresher.”

  The three of us fell in behind him as he walked steadily towards the fringe of mature elms and oaks that began some hundred paces from where we had been standing. He seemed to float ahead of us, moving easily and gracefully with long, confident strides, the red and nested white shields of the great House of Balliol emblazoned across his wide shoulders and the wind of his passage making the long skirts of his surcoat billow at his heels. None of us spoke, though all three of us boys exchanged curious looks as we followed him. He led us into the trees until we were concealed from any eyes that might be watching from the Abbey behind, then stopped in a clear space between the boles of two enormous elms. There he shrugged out of his beautiful white surcoat, allowing it to fall from his shoulders. He caught it in one hand and threw it aside, all the while smiling at Will.

  “This will suit, no?” he said. “A fine spot to test your skills and permit me some exercise.” He extended his hand. “Andrew, your staff, if you will.”

  Murray looked mystified, but he held out his staff, and his master took it, spun it easily in one hand, then moved gracefully into the opening stance for combat.

  “You want to fight me?” Will asked, wide-eyed.

  “Not fight—to try you. So come.”

  A sharp shake of his head indicated Will’s bewilderment. “I can’t fight you. You are—”

  “I am a student of this weapon, which I use for sport, trained in its use but rusty from long lack of practice.” The easy smile was back on Balliol’s face, and he flipped the staff until he held it cross-handed. “You start.”

  “You are the King’s envoy, my lord. It would be death to strike you.”

  “Pah! What makes you even think you could strike me, a stripling youth like you? I’ve been training with this thing since I was half your age and now I’m twice as old as you. If you can hit me, though, then hit me hard, for I intend to drub you.” He straightened up again quickly and took a step back, his smile now a wide grin. “Besides, would you deny me in my pleasure and my need? The King’s envoy? I need the exercise and you’re the only one here to supply it. I can hardly fight my own squire, can I? Imagine, were he to beat me! You, on other hand, might beat me soundly with no ill effect, if God’s asleep. So come, let’s be about it, shall we?”

  Clearly Will had no option other than to appear the buffoon here. He raised his staff reluctantly and shuffled forward.

  Lord John Balliol sprang into action, attacking immediately and compelling Will to defend himself. Will responded half-heartedly at first, until the first few solid blows that rattled his defences told him he was facing an expert who was bold and dangerous and determined to thrash him soundly. I saw Will’s face suddenly harden, and from then on the fight was waged between two well-matched rivals. Back and forth they fought grimly, neither seeking nor giving quarter, sometimes standing toe to toe, belabouring each other’s defences without either one scoring, sometimes ranging widely around the small clearing between the trees, scanning each other for signs of weakness or an unguarded opening and prepared to leap and strike.

  I recall two solid hits, the first to Will’s left thigh and the other to Lord John’s right shoulder when his foot slipped and he reeled for a moment. By that time, sweat was pouring from both of them, soaking their clothing, and the grass of the clearing was trampled flat, scuffed deeply with the marks of their grinding feet. And then came a flurry of hard, rapping blows too fast to follow with the eye, and Balliol reeled and fell back against one of the two trees. Will swept up his staff to finish it, then hesitated.

  Lord John threw down his staff and raised his hands, waving them and labouring for breath. “Enough,” he cried. “I’m done. You have me, by God’s holy beard.”

  Will opened his hands and let his own staff fall, then doubled over, his hands on his knees, gasping for breath as hungrily as his opponent. Andrew Murray and I simply stared at each other, wideeyed with awe, fully aware that we had just witnessed our friend defeat one of the most noble men in Scotland.

  “Sweet Christ, yon was a tulzie.” Balliol spoke in Scots, straightening up to his full height and wiping his streaming brow with the back of his wrist. “I havena fought that hard in years, and never against a beardless laddie. Andrew, my coat, if ye will.”

  Andrew had picked up the discarded garment long since and now he stepped forward, holding it open for his master to shrug into. Lord John flexed his shoulders to adjust the coat until it hung properly, then turned again to Will, who had also straightened up by then, though he was still breathing heavily.

  “You flinched,” he said, “at the end there, stopped because of who I was, forgetting what I was: your enemy. That kind of hesitation could kill you in a real fight. You need to learn a truth, William Wallace, so learn it now. When fighting man to man there can be no rank or titles involved. If ever you cross blades with any man in earnest, no matter who, there can be only one outcome. Either you kill him or he will kill you. Never forget that.” He held up his palm to silence Will before he could respond. “Never forget that. Had it been I who had you off balance there, I would have felled you like a tree, and so would any other opponent worthy of his salt. Do you hear me?”

  Will Wallace nodded. “Aye, my lord. I do.”

  “I pray you’ll heed me then, in future. Mercy can be fatal in a tulzie, so when you have the chance to end things, end them. Never hesitate. Clear?”

  “Clear, my lord.”

  “So be it, then.” Balliol drew the open edges of his surcoat together and gla
nced around the clearing. “And now I must go. It was a good bout and I thank you, all of you.”

  Then he said a strange thing.

  “King Alexander, may God bless him, is hale and strong, newly wed and eager to breed sons to replace the heirs whom God saw fit to take from him these past few years. He will have need of men like you when you are come to manhood. See you hold yourselves in readiness to serve him when he calls on you. This realm—any realm—depends upon the loyalty and strength of good, true men, of any rank, to stand behind their King.”

  The edges of a grin flickered about his lips and he nodded, this time in dismissal. “So be it. Fare ye well, William and James Wallace. Andrew, follow me, and seek me in half an hour in the Abbot’s chambers.”

  I knew that what Lord John had said would not apply to me, since I would be a priest when I was grown to manhood, a warrior of God, perhaps, but not a fighting man in the world of Will and Andrew. But if God spared me to serve Him and my King, I knew that I could do so as loyally and strongly and perhaps even better in the priesthood than I ever could have in the army.

  King Alexander, who had ruled Scotland by then for thirty-six years, had married for the second time, mere months earlier, at the age of forty-four. His first wife, Margaret, had been the daughter of Edward of England, and she had borne Alexander two sons and a daughter. The Queen had died ten years before, and was swiftly and tragically followed by all three of her children, leaving Alexander with one sole, distant heir, an infant girl born to his now dead daughter, who had been married to the King of Norway. Determined to breed other sons, Alexander had wed a high-born, beautiful, and nubile young French woman called Yolande of Dreux. The King was young and in good health; the country was at peace and prosperous; and God seemed content to smile upon the realm of Scotland.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1

  The unthinkable happened less than a month after our meeting with Andrew Murray. Alexander III, King of Scots, died in his prime, killed by a lightning strike while travelling to reach his new wife in Fife. He left his country and its people leaderless, the King’s authority invalid without an heir.

  His body was found the day after, sprawled on the rocks that lined the shore beneath a high cliff, and no one could say what had happened to him. Determined to rejoin his new Queen that night in defiance of the tempestuous weather and of the widespread rumours that the day in question, March 18th, was to be a Day of Judgment, he had crossed the storm-racked Firth of Forth from Edinburgh Castle in a small ferry boat. From there, refusing shelter offered him, he had ridden northeastward with two guides, against their advice and that of others who thought him mad to brave the storm. In the tumultuous darkness some time later, the three men, king and guides, had been separated.

  The word spread slowly at first, for that part of the kingdom was wild and isolated, but once the tidings reached Edinburgh, the news flew from there as though on the wings of birds, so that soon all of Scotland knew of its sudden deprivation. Few of the common folk who heard the news were capable of thinking beyond the moment, and far fewer yet could begin to imagine an outcome to what they had heard. But there were others, men of power accustomed to thinking for and of themselves, who perceived everything that was involved in Alexander’s death, and those men moved quickly. They understood that Scotland, within the space of a single night, had been thrown headlong into a turmoil they might use to their advantage.

  I was in the Abbey library, transcribing a document, when the tidings reached us, having taken eight days to speed from Edinburgh to Glasgow and thence to us in Paisley. I recall Brother Duncan rising from his table and moving across the room in answer to a hissed summons from someone who had entered at my back. I remember that he looked angry at being thus interrupted, but Duncan always looked forbidding and so, having my own work to occupy me, I paid no more attention as he swept by me. After a deal of whispering between him and whoever had come looking for him, I heard the door close, and he came back into the room, but moving slowly now. Sensing something amiss, I set down my pen, looking at him idly to see what might be afoot. But as soon as I saw the stricken look on his face, a rash of gooseflesh swept up my nape, and even as my mind formed the thought that something was far wrong, the great bell in the Abbey tower began to toll. In all my time there as a student, I had heard it toll but once, announcing the death of one of the senior brethren.

  The Abbot’s dead was the first thought that came to me, and I would to God that had been all it was, for now I know what chaos would endure for twenty years before the next strong king would wrest back control of the realm.

  Brother Duncan paid no attention to the measured sound. He stood wringing his hands like a penitent, and I became aware that everyone else was staring at him as intently and as fearfully as I was. Eventually he blinked and looked around at us all, his assistants, then summoned us to him with a wave of both hands. He waited until we had surrounded him and then he made as if to speak, raising his hands before letting them fall to his sides.

  “In God’s name, Duncan, what is it?” The voice was Brother Anselm’s. “Someone has died, that much is plain, but who?”

  “The King.” Duncan’s voice was so faint that I thought I had misheard him. So, clearly, did the others, for they all broke into a spate of questioning. But when he responded only by repeating the same words in the same shaken voice, the horror of it silenced all of us.

  We all knew the King could not be dead. He was God’s own anointed, crowned King of Scots at Scone and beloved by all; a champion in the prime of life, healthy and hale and lusty, newly wed to a young and lovely wife. His representatives had been here in our own Abbey mere weeks earlier, conducting his royal affairs and expounding his wishes for both Church and realm. It was impossible that he should now be gone so suddenly, after ruling the kingdom so well and wisely for so many years. The sound of my own heartbeat filled my ears with a dull, leaden throbbing, and the air outside the green-tinted windows seemed to darken.

  2

  The Abbey routine was shattered. All the brethren who were not summoned into conference of one kind or another were sent to pray for the soul of the departed King, and soon the sound of massed chanting swelled from the Abbey church as the brotherhood immersed itself in ritual prayers for the dead. The resident students, unexpectedly left at liberty, found themselves free to do as they wished and quickly disappeared as boys will, eager to be about their own pleasures. My sole wish was to carry the news home to Will and Ewan before they could hear it from anyone else, for I wanted to see the look on their faces when they first heard of it.

  The farm we tended for Sir Malcolm lay a mile beyond the Abbey precincts, on the far edge of Paisley town, and I ran the entire way, bursting with the import of my message. Will had stayed home that day, too enthralled by the new project that Ewan had set him even to consider going to school, and I ran directly to the stone cottage that he and Ewan had converted into a bowyer’s workshop.

  They were huddled together, almost head to head in the dim little room, their attention focused tightly on the object that lay before them on the table, and so great was their concentration that they barely looked up when I burst through the door.

  “The King’s been killed,” I blurted. “King Alexander’s dead, fallen from a cliff.”

  Ewan had been in the act of picking up the object on the table in front of him when I charged into the room and had scarce accorded me a glance, so I knew that they had seen me from the open window, running across the yard. Now he raised the long, regular block of wood to his good eye and held it towards the shaft of pale sunlight from the window, squinting along the perfectly squared length of it and turning it until he had compared all four edges. Will had half turned to look at me, but he said nothing, merely turning back to watch Ewan with the length of wood. It was, I knew, the single most precious item—in the eyes of Ewan and Will at least—in the entire household, but at that moment it meant nothing to me, and I found it incredible that Ewan and
Will had both ignored my announcement.

  “Didn’t you hear me? King Alexander’s dead.”

  “Is that why you’re home so early?” Ewan lowered his arms and turned to me, holding the heavy wooden batten easily.

  “Aye. Word came from the Bishop in Glasgow not an hour ago.”

  “Ah, then it must be true.” He laid his burden carefully back on the table and ran a finger across the tiny guide marks that had been inscribed into the piece at varying distances, then glanced at Will. “And what would you have us do, Jamie, now that we know?”

  “What?” I felt utterly deflated, having run so far and so fast to shock them, only to find them indifferent. “What did you say?”

  Ewan shrugged. “I asked what you would have us do, about the King.”

  My mouth opened and closed. There was nothing any of us could do, but I felt a great lump swelling in my throat and fought to speak through it.

  “We could pray for his soul and wish him well on his way.”

  “We could, and we will, later, once I have finished this.” His fingers stroked the length of wood on the table, and he spoke down towards it, splaying his fingers to span several of the incised lines on its surface. “We’ll pray for him together, all of us, tonight, for I have a thought that every monk in the Abbey will be praying for him at this moment. If that’s true, God will not miss us if we are tardy by an hour or two. In the meantime, though, Will and I have been working on these measurements all morning and we need to finish them ere we forget what we’re about and have to start again at the beginning.” And then he swung towards me with a great smile on his face and reached out to tousle my hair. “So away you go now and leave us to it. Aggie has some fine stew in the kitchens, fresh made, and Will and I are stuffed with it. Fresh bread, too, with the smell of it rich enough to draw the moisture from your very soul. We’ll finish here within the hour, God willing, and we’ll come and find you.”