by Jack Whyte
“Aunt Margaret won’t care about the danger,” I said, and he looked me straight in the eye.
“Mayhap not. But would she thank us for being left homeless because we were careless? Bek would burn her place about her ears if he as much as suspected we might be here.”
Abashed, but knowing he was right, I went outside and called Big Andrew to me, telling him to select six men, including the four who had armed themselves, from among our recent prisoners. I explained to Andrew what was needed and left it to him to set out his guards while I sought out my aunt.
When I returned to the hut about an hour later, I brought several of Lady Margaret’s people with me, all of them bearing food and drink: cold fowl and mutton and half a haunch of venison, along with hard-boiled duck eggs, vegetables pickled in sour wine, a basket of recently picked pears, wedges of hard, sharp cheese, and heavy loaves of bread baked that same day. The men had been busy, and now there were four large leather tents erected in the clearing around the hut, and a leaping fire danced in the deep fire pit. Everyone was in good spirits, and I quickly learned the reason for that: Will was awake and alert and apparently none the worse for his long sleep, and Mirren was smiling again.
More thankful for both of those pieces of information than I would have believed possible a few hours earlier, I made my way directly to the hut and found Will propped up in his couch with his back against the wall, cradling Mirren in his arms. I stopped in surprise and, I admit, confusion, never having seen the two of them in anything resembling family intimacy, and I stood there in the doorway hovering on the point of leaving. Will laughed at my obvious dismay and called me inside to join them, where all I could think to do, after embracing him, was ask if he was hungry. Fortunately he was, and Mirren sprang up, and the business of feeding him quickly took care of my embarrassment.
When his hunger was satisfied, Will decided he wanted to join the crew around the fire pit, and he leaned on me as he hobbled painfully, bent forward, to the fire. Miraculously, I thought, his ribs appeared to be undamaged, for he could breathe deeply without a deal of pain, but his lip was split at one corner, both his eyes were blackened, and his left ear was swollen grotesquely, the result, he told me, of a kick that might have taken off his head had it landed properly. He lowered himself carefully to sit on one of the logs that ringed the fire pit.
Almost the first thing he did was ask to meet the former prisoners, and he greeted each one in person and asked him how he had come to be arrested by the English. All were equally confused at first about why they had been singled out for arrest and abduction, but it soon became evident, as one tale followed another, that there was a depressing sameness to their plaints. Each had come to understand that he had given offence to someone—not necessarily an Englishman and sometimes not even identified—or he had allegedly committed some transgression, usually unspecified, and had consequently been denounced for one petty crime or another, then arrested and removed from his home. Families had been dispossessed and homes confiscated.
When the last of them had finished his story, Will stood up carefully and spoke to all of them, pointing out that they would now be legally proscribed. They were twice guilty of outlawry, first by the fact of their arrest and removal from their dwelling places, and then by association with the fight and escape that had taken place that morning. None of them could return to their homes now, he told them, although he was quick to point out that they could not have gone home anyway once taken into custody by the English. In the eyes of the English they were now felons, no different from himself and his associates, and the fact that they had escaped from custody during, or as the result of, the murder of at least a dozen Englishmen compounded the seriousness of their plight.
Watching his listeners, I could see more than a few unhappy faces. Will was watching them too, though, and now he asked if any of them wished to speak. One fellow, who had been scowling ferociously since soon after Will began talking, thrust his hand in the air.
“Aye,” he said, and there was no mistaking the truculence in his voice. “I want to say somethin’.” He looked around him, and I thought that he seemed slightly surprised at his own temerity, as though afraid of having said too much already.
“Say away, then,” Will said, smiling slowly at him before lowering himself back down on the log. “What’s troubling you?”
“Troublin’ me? You mean besides your telling me I’ll never see my wife and bairns again?” He fixed his wide eyes on Will’s. “Aye, well, there is one thing troublin’ me … It’s you, Maister Wallace. You’re troublin’ me. You’re troublin’ the shite out o’ me.”
He looked quickly around at the men flanking him and gulped a quick breath before turning back to Will again. “Who are you, maister? What makes you so special, and why should we pay you any heed? We’re no’ outlaws—at least we werena before now—but I think you’re different frae us. You seem to be awfu’ well set up here in the woods … for an honest man, that is.”
He cast another nervous glance around the silent assembly. I could see the fear in his eyes, but he had plainly decided to speak out, even if he should die for it.
“I mean, I ken ye cut us free this mornin’ and gave us the chance to run, and I ken ye’ve asked nothin’ o’ us since, and ye’ve fed us here and gi’en us tents for to sleep under, but what do ye want frae us? What ha’e we got that you need? What is it—?” He stopped abruptly and threw up his hands. “There. That’s enough,” he mumbled. “That’s what I wanted to say. Ye asked us, and I tell’t ye.”
Will sat slightly hunched, his face unreadable as he looked at the speaker. “You’re right,” he said at last. “Right in your questions and right in your concerns, so let me try to answer each of them, for all of you.” He looked around the fire pit at the faces staring back at him. “Because I think ye might all ha’e been thinking the same thoughts as our friend here … What was your name again? Rab, was it no’?”
“Aye, Rab Coulter.”
“That was it. I’ll no’ forget it again. Well, Rab Coulter, as for who I am, I am plain William Wallace, from right here in Elderslie. I’m a forester, and I used to work these very woods, which were owned by my uncle Sir Malcolm Wallace. The hut there, and this clearing, were where I worked most of the time, as head forester. That’s why I’m so familiar wi’ them—so well set up, as you said. Ewan Scrymgeour, sitting over there, used to work with me, but we moved on a few years back. I got married and took Mirren here, my wife, to live down near Jedburgh, and then my uncle died last year. This was to have been the first time I brought my wife home, but when we reached Paisley yesterday morning, we discovered that her aunt and her cousins who lived there had been attacked and ravaged earlier that day, on their way to Mass, by a passing pack of soldiers. No local men would have dared attempt such a thing, and we found evidence—tracks of hobnailed boots—to back our claim that it was the English, and so I journeyed to meet with Bishop Bek of Durham, who leads the force you were being taken to join this morning.”
“Bek. I ken that name. Is he no’ the English King’s lieutenant in Scotland?”
Will nodded to the man who had spoken. “Aye, that’s his title. And he knows mine. Well, he knows my name. I ha’e nae title. But I met wi’ the Bishop-lieutenant in his camp this morning to explain to him what had happened in Paisley and ask for his aid in dealin’ wi’ the crimes that had occurred, and I named mysel’ to him openly, as nephew to Sir Malcolm Wallace o’ Elderslie.” He grimaced. “I’m beginnin’ to think that might no’ ha’e been the cleverest thing I ever did.”
He waited for the outbreak of grim laughter to die down, then continued. “It’s obvious to me now he didna like what I was sayin’, because minutes after I left him I was jumped by some of his bully boys. They did a fine job o’ stampin’ on me, as ye can see. I dinna remember much about it, but when they had finished they threw me out into the roadway in front o’ their camp. I ha’e no idea what they planned after that, but my cousin Jamie here sw
ears that they would ha’e killed both him and me had the rest o’ my friends here decided to pay no heed to what I’d told them and followed me anyway. The rest you ken—you were there and saw it for yourselves. But I didna cut you free and I didna bring you here. Nor did I feed you. I was unconscious the whole time that was going on. The decision to free you was made by Ewan, and you are free—free to join us, to stay here, or to go as you please. But …”
He drew a long, deep breath as he looked deliberately around the gathering, meeting each man’s eye. I saw, with a shock of recognition, that he was consciously moulding these people to his will for his own purposes, and I realized for the first time that my cousin, during his two-year absence from my life, had become an adept leader of men. I felt my skin ripple with a stirring of gooseflesh and I found myself looking at this man, whom I had thought I knew well, in an entirely different way.
“But …,” he said again. “I said you willna be able to return to your homes, but I didna say you would never see your families again. I canna tell you that. How could I? That all depends on you—on who you are, each and every man o’ you. You can go home tomorrow, those o’ ye who want to run the risk, and find your wives and bairns and tak’ them wi’ you when you leave, ’gin they’ll go wi’ ye. But then ye’ll be faced wi’ the matter o’ where to take them. For ye are all outlaws now, like it or no’. It’s the truth, and it has already changed your whole life, frae the minute they marched you away. So where will ye go? Now that you canna show your face where folk might recognize it? And how will ye keep yourselves alive, if ye find a place that’s safe enough to stay in?”
He paused again, and they hung on his words, waiting for him to tell them what they needed to hear.
“Look at yourselves,” he told them. “Go on an’ tak’ a good look. Fourteen o’ you were headed for jail this morning, maybe for worse. They would ha’e tortured you, to get you to confess to whatever they needed from you. I ha’e nae doubt o’ that. Fourteen of you, and only two of you had ever seen each other before. You were prisoners, wearing iron collars and being led like sheep to whatever they intended to do wi’ you. But now ye’re free men again, and we’ll ha’e those collars off you before mornin’.”
There was a chorus of muttering at that, and when it had died down he waved a hand towards his own men, grouped together on one side of the fire.
“The rest of us here number nine: myself, my dear wife, and my close friends. Come daylight tomorrow, we will be going home to Selkirk Forest.” He glanced back at Rab Coulter. “Aye, Selkirk Forest.”
His eyes moved again, and now he was smiling, though the bruises on his face masked most of his expression. “Dear God, you’re probably thinkin’, but yon’s a big place, yon forest—it covers half the country, and it’s wild. Well, it is, I’ll grant ye. It is vast, and it is wild. But there are places in there that are no’ wild at a’, places so beautiful they’d make you cry wi’ wonder, and the very hugeness o’ the place makes people feared to go into it, for fear o’ gettin’ lost. And that suits us. Selkirk Forest is our home, teemin’ wi’ game and fowl, and every burn and river full o’ fish. No one need ever starve in there. The place is one great larder.”
There was silence again until someone asked, “Are ye sayin’ we could go with ye, into the forest?”
“I don’t see why not. There’s plenty o’ room.”
“But what about our families, our wives and bairns?”
“What about them? Have you not been listening to me? Bring them wi’ you.”
“But will it be safe?” This was a different voice, from one of the men at the back, and it had a ring of panic to it.
“Will it be safe? I canna tell you that. But I can say wi’ certainty it will be at least as safe as it was where you were living before you were arrested, and it could be a lot less dangerous. At least ye’d have no trouble wi’ the English there, in the depths o’ the greenwood. It’s no’ friendly country for armies in there.” He drew a deep breath and began again, this time in a louder voice, speaking slowly and clearly.
“Look, I don’t know what to tell ye, other than that things are changing here every day. Ye must have seen it for yourselves, and ye must know that if it werena so, none o’ the things ye’ve been through in the last wheen o’ days would ha’e happened. None o’ ye would be outlawed, and ye’d all be livin’ under your own roofs. Things are awfu’ different here in Scotland since King Alexander died. When he was King, we lived well. We were at peace and folk kenned who they were and what the law demanded o’ them. But that’s a’ different now. We ha’e changed in the space o’ a few years frae a solid realm into a contested kingdom. The Bruces and the Balliols, the Comyns and the other magnates—the Buchans and the Stewarts and a’ the rest o’ them who’d like to wear the crown—ha’e set our country on its arse wi’ their bickerin’ and squabblin’, and it’s common folk like us who aey bear the brunt o’ such foolery—except that this time it’s no’ foolery. Now they’ve brought in the English, and we’re payin’ the costs o’ that, too. We’ve aey had to live wi’ the Scots nobility and their pride and stupidity, but now we have the English to contend wi’, too, lordin’ it over us all, and these English are movin’ a’ the time, marchin’ armies here and yonder and robbin’ ordinary folk blind to keep their people and their horses fed.
“Well, some o’ us have had enough o’ it. We ha’e a new King now, we’re told, King John. Mayhap he’ll be a fine, strong King like Alexander, may God rest his soul, and we’ll be happy if that’s so. But we winna ken the truth o’ that for years to come. And in the meantime there are folk out there, folk who should know, who’ll tell ye Edward o’ England has plans o’ his own for Scotland, and the only strong King he’ll countenance in this realm is himsel’.” He stopped again, and no one sought to interrupt him.
“This much I believe,” he continued. “Nothing in this land is going to get better soon, from the viewpoint o’ folk like us. And that is why we ha’e chosen to live in the forest. We’ve lived there now for nigh on two years, and there were folk there when we arrived. We’re a community there in the woods—there are several hundreds of us. We have our laws and rules, and they are much like the laws and rules we knew before, when we were ordinary folk, living within the law. And so I will say this to you: go back to your homes and find your families, then make your way, if you so wish, to the forest near Jedburgh. Ask there for William Wallace, o’ anyone ye meet, and ye’ll be directed to where we are. After that, ye’ll be free to join us completely if you so wish. But ye’ll have to live by our laws and rules, and if ye break those, you’ll be banished back into the outside world.” His mouth quirked in a smile. “But they’re simple rules, and easy to keep.
“And now I’m going to go and sleep, and hope I don’t stiffen too much in the night. We’ll need to be away before dawn, so don’t stay up too late around the fires just because you can. Those of you wi’ collars should talk to Shoomy over there. He’s our smith and will clip off your bindings.”
Shoomy was ready to go to work immediately, and we knew the job of striking off the collars would not take long. They were temporary fetters, fastened with knotted wire, and even as Will and I were making our way back to his hut, Will with an arm around Mirren for support, I heard the loud snip as the first man was cut free.
When we reached the front of the hut, I bade Will and Mirren a good night, but as I turned to leave, Will stopped me, speaking in Latin.
“Ewan tells me you still remember how to swing a quarterstaff …” I made no response, and he continued, “What time will you leave tomorrow?”
I looked at him in surprise. “When you do. Why would you even ask?”
“Because we’ll be leaving practically in the middle of the night. I see no need for you to lose that much sleep. You can lie in.”
“How can I lie in? I’m coming with you.”
He eyed me strangely. “What gave you that idea?”
“It came to me when I rem
embered how to swing a quarterstaff. They’ll be looking for me now, along with you.”
“Ah! I see. And who would they be looking for? Did you tell them who you are?”
“No, but—”
“Who, then, might they think you are?”
I found myself blustering, somehow resenting what I took to be the implications of the question. “They saw me. They know my face. They know I was with you when you arrived.”
“Who saw you? The men who saw you are all dead, from what I’ve heard.”
“Except the Bishop himself.”
He cocked his head. “And does he know your real name? Does he even know where to begin looking for you? You told him you were from Jedburgh. Jamie, all the Bishop saw when he rode by us was a grey-frocked cleric, a mendicant monk carrying the tools of a common scribe. He paid no more attention to you than he would to any other beggar in his path.”
“He looked at you close enough.”
“Ah. You saw that, did you? Good. And yes, he did. Did he look at you the same way?”
“No. He barely glanced at me that time, but he looked closely enough when we were face to face and he thought I had named him responsible for the men we were after. And that was before you called me Father James.”
“Aye, but you are not Father James, are you? You’re not even Brother James. You are Jamie Wallace, a mere student. And so at worst he will set his people to looking for a minor priest from Jedburgh. He will not instruct them to visit Paisley Abbey and interrogate the seminarians. I’m the one he wants, Jamie, the one he knows. I’m the marked man. He’ll be at Uncle Malcolm’s house looking for me at sunrise, so you stay well away from there and make your way back to Paisley alone. Do you understand what I am saying, Jamie? There is no safer place for you than at the Abbey, and it is time for you to take those vows and be ordained.”