The Forest Laird: A Tale of William Wallace

by Jack Whyte

  His eyes grew wide and his brows arched high. “Because it must! We live in changing times, Father James, and there are shifts afoot today, even as we speak, that will reshape our very world. Look at our towns here, our burghs. What do you see?”

  I blinked at him. “Towns, my lord, nothing more. Though I can see from your face that I am in error. What should I see?”

  “Burgesses, Father. Merchants with counting houses, traders with warehouses full of goods, skilled artisans everywhere, masons and manufacturers. They are everywhere.”

  “I know they are, my lord. But I still don’t understand what you are talking about.”

  He bent forward, and there was an intensity about him that made me feel apprehensive. “Ask yourself where they came from, Father,” he said in a low voice, “and what their presence means.”

  “Their presence in the burghs, my lord? They live there. What else should it mean? Forgive me, for I am not accustomed to feeling stupid, but I still don’t follow you.”

  He grinned fiercely, a very un-bishoplike grin. “I know you don’t. Nor does King John, nor do his magnates, and King Edward and all his earls and barons are no more enlightened than any of those. These people, Father James, these merchants, traders, and their like, are calling themselves burgesses nowadays. Burgesses! Is that not a wondrous name? Perhaps not, you might think, but it is a new one. They were not here a hundred years ago—burgesses did not exist at that time. Nor sixty, nor even fifty years ago. But now every town in the land has its burgesses, and they all build and own guildhalls and craft centres and fraternal lodges. They are all solid, upstanding, and prosperous citizens, too wealthy to be thought of, or treated, as peasants.

  “These are men of substance now, Father James. An entire new breed, a new kind of man. And they conduct their daily affairs—commercial enterprises, they call them—in every land throughout Christendom and even beyond, dealing in every kind of commerce you could imagine. Ours deal mainly in wool, shipping hundreds of bales each year to places like Lubeck and Amsterdam that have none, in return for finished cloth. But some of them send glazed bricks to Brussels, and others ship metal and ores of tin and lead and iron to France and Burgundy, and bring back wines in payment. Most of them use the good offices of the Temple bankers to conduct their business, and they pay heavy taxes in return for the rights to maintain trading premises and safe quarters in their various ports of call.

  “And as they grow and prosper, their voices are being raised in the affairs of all the burghs throughout this land. They are demanding and receiving more and more say in how their towns are governed and maintained, and from year to year, as their good influence continues to expand, our burghs are being governed by their own burgh councils.”

  He stopped, clearly waiting for me to respond, and when I failed to do so he succeeded in achieving the improbable, frowning and smiling at the same time. “You cannot see it.”

  I was floundering in my failure to grasp his meaning, and I saw him shrug.

  “Well,” he said quietly, sounding vaguely disappointed, “that is hardly surprising, I suppose. You are the first person with whom I have tried to talk about this, and I know I looked at it for years myself without seeing it for what it is.”

  He coughed, clearing his throat, then began again.

  “Now listen closely to me, Father James, for I am about to open a new window and show you a world you have never thought of and could never imagine. Are you listening?” I nodded. “This world of ours is changing, as I have said. It is changing visibly, from day to day. We are witnessing an upheaval that will rival the fall of Rome. Believe me when I tell you that the burgesses of our towns—and of all the other towns throughout Christendom—will change the very world as we know it.”

  I confess I was half afraid that my mentor was losing his mind.

  “The system cannot coexist with these new burgesses, Father James, and it cannot survive without them. And therefore it must perish. Not today, and probably not within our lifetimes, but the system will perish. Of that I have no doubt.”

  “What system, my lord Bishop?” I asked. I felt like a fool.

  “The system that governs the world, my son. The system within which we live and work, the one by which we have survived these hundreds of years. There is always a system governing men’s existence. The Church is one; the pagan Roman Empire was another. We have no proper name for the one that governs us now, other than the system of fealty, in which society is bound by the laws of lord and liegeman, duty and allegiance, and honour is defined by loyalty and common service. But these burgesses are a new phenomenon and they exist outside the commonality. They are beholden to no one but themselves for their success, which means they owe fealty and allegiance to no one but themselves. They have no sworn lieges to whom they are committed, for their entire commitment is to their own commerce. They cannot be levied to fight for any lord and master, for they are their own men, and therein lies their threat. Think upon that, Father, if you will: they are their own men. That is a concept that has not been heard of since the days of Republican Rome. These are men without allegiance! Imagine, if you can, what that means.”

  I was aware that somewhere outside, among the trees surrounding the cathedral grounds, the thrush had begun to sing again in a soaring crescendo of magnificent sound, but though I heard it, it was as if through a thick fog. I shifted in discomfort.

  “It seems to me, my lord, that should what you are suggesting become known, these burgesses would all be wiped from the face of the earth, for the nobles could not live with such knowledge. They could not afford to countenance the possibility of people living within their lands who pay them no allegiance.”

  “Ah, but you are wrong, Father James. The nobles cannot simply wipe the burgesses out, for they are already too dependent upon them. These burgesses all pay taxes on the profits of their enterprises. They pay them, albeit indirectly, to the nobles, and those taxes amount to vast sums of money. The nobles, on the other hand, produce nothing. They merely own the land on which others live and work. That is news to no one.

  “But now, with the emergence of these burgesses, there are different elements in play, and they refuse to fit within the system’s status quo. The towns themselves, the burghs of Scotland—Glasgow and Edinburgh, Perth and Berwick, Aberdeen and St. Andrews and even Paisley—have grown too big and much too prosperous to be controlled by any single man, no matter how powerful a lord he may be in name. They are owned now by their burgesses and citizens—part of the realm still, but no longer part of the old system. No nobleman, be he earl or baron, chief or mere laird, can dictate anything but his displeasure to the citizens of Scotland’s burghs today. The burgesses have outgrown—not yet thrown off, but definitely outgrown—the power of the nobles.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked eventually. “The King and his Council of Guardians yet govern the realm.”

  “What it means, Father James, is that sooner or later—and I mean not tomorrow or even a decade or a century from now, but inevitably—the common folk of this land of ours will wrest control of it from the nobility who own it now in its entirety.”

  I tried to grasp that thought, but it was too large and too tenuous for me to grapple with at that moment. I did make the leap, though, from what the Bishop had just finished saying to what he had said at the start.

  “You believe Will Wallace will be a part of this great change you foresee. That’s why you want me to find him for you.”

  “Hmm.” The old fox hesitated, then shook his head. “No. Your cousin will have a part to play in what transpires, I have no doubt of that, but he will be part of the process of change, not necessarily a part of the change itself. No, Father, I want you to find him because I have gained information that I must pass on to him, vitally important information concerning the welfare of this realm, and you are the sole means I have of delivering it to him without anyone else being aware of it.”

  Then why all the obscure digression? I th
ought. “Information. I see. Shall I write it down, Your Grace?”

  “No. No, it is too … sensitive, too delicate and dangerous to put into writing, I suspect, and a letter can be stolen and traced. This information is but newly arrived and I must think it through. And I intend to think it through with you as my witness and sounding board, Father, so that, familiar with it and all its implications, you might then go on alone to meet with your cousin, carrying the information in your head. Would you agree to that?”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  “Good. Excellent. Listen, then. I received this word last night, roused from my sleep in the dead of night, the middle watches before matins. It was brought by a wandering priest whom I have known for years and trust completely. He had divined its import and brought it directly to me with all the speed he could achieve on foot. He was in Norham Castle one night nigh on two weeks ago and overheard a conversation that should never have occurred. He had arrived there late, after curfew, and unable to enter the castle proper, he had curled up in a gatehouse to sleep for a few hours out of the wind.

  “Edward Plantagenet was in residence there that night, as was Bek of Durham, and they chose to walk together out of doors in the dead of the night, presumably to discuss matters of grave import without the danger of being overheard. Fortunately for us, that was not how things transpired, for they ended up walking a great distance from safety, outside the castle walls, only to have their discussion within a few paces of my visitor, who froze in place, fearing for his life.

  “He told me that their entire conversation was about Scots bandits and their thieving activities in the Selkirk area—your cousin Will and his people. The stories that we hear of them up here in Glasgow are simple stories told by simple folk who enjoy having someone champion them even from afar, moral tales of wicked English trespassers brought to grief by intrepid Scots avengers. The reality, though, according to what my informant overheard, is far more potent. These Greens—and that is what the English King himself called them—are causing Edward much grief with their raids and depredations, far more so than any of us might have imagined. But it is Edward’s inability either to capture them or bring them to battle that is goading him to madness. He is faced with mutiny among his troops.”

  He cut me off with a wave of his hand before I could even begin to react.

  “I know there is nothing new in that rumour. That is precisely the point I wish you to make to your cousin, so listen closely. We have been hearing for years that Edward is having troubles among his own people in England, that his barons are on the point of rebelling against his incessant demands for more and more funds and fighting men for his campaigns in Aquitaine and Normandy and Gascony. That is a given of Edward’s life in governing his realm, and until now he has been able to cope with it and look after his affairs here in Scotland.

  “But this … this situation here and now is different. This is in Scotland, and it is not a rebellion against unjust or overweening demands. This is a rebellion over money—gold, silver, and copper coins. The English soldiers in Scotland have not been paid in months, because three consecutive baggage convoys, northward bound from England and laden with payrolls and paymasters, have been intercepted by the Greens, their goods stolen and their armed escorts slaughtered. Each one in turn, according to English sources, was hit in overwhelming strength by outlaw forces from the forest as they passed. But now it appears that each of the last two convoys was accompanied by a military escort twice as strong as the force accompanying its predecessor, and still they were overwhelmed. Edward’s intelligence estimates an enemy force numbering upwards of five hundred in the last attack.”

  “Five hundred …”

  “Aye, that’s what I am told. So now the English are considering bringing their payrolls in by ship, establishing a military treasury in Leith or Edinburgh itself, and off-loading their paymasters’ cargo there. But setting up an English treasury on Scottish soil will take time to arrange, and it will involve a deal of negotiating with King John and the Guardians. It will not happen overnight.”

  “No, I see no way that it could. So what will Edward do in the meantime? From what you have said, he will need to do something to change the situation as it stands.”

  “He intends to. That was the purpose of such a secretive meeting between him and Bek. He will attempt to achieve by subterfuge what he cannot achieve by force.”

  He hesitated but a moment, then launched into the details of the English plan.

  The following morning, before dawn, I left Glasgow and headed south and east, towards Selkirk and its great forest.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1

  I stretched my leg slowly and cautiously, I thought, to relieve a mild cramp in my calf, but the movement was sufficiently visible to startle the small herd of deer in the clearing in front of me. Barely a heartbeat after I had stirred, the entire herd was bounding away to vanish into the thick undergrowth that edged the glade. I cursed myself in silence and glanced guiltily at Shoomy, who lay beside me, but he did no more than purse his lips and frown gently, moving his head almost imperceptibly from side to side and spreading the fingers of his hand in a warning to be still. I lowered my head to the grass again, closing my eyes and straining to hear beyond my own heartbeat as I waited.

  We had been in place for four hours by then, having arrived in the dead of night when there was little chance of being detected, and daylight had crept up around us as we sat or lay there, snugly wrapped in waxed woollen blankets, within the dense fringe of bushes that edged the glade, so that from the blackness of pre-dawn we had emerged almost imperceptibly into one of those unpredictable, seemingly magical mornings that sometimes come along without warning. In all that time together in the night-chilled darkness, save for the muted responses to the Mass I celebrated by torchlight when we first arrived, we had barely spoken, not because of any fear of making noise, but simply out of the human need to think without sharing what we were thinking.

  Now, however, our stillness had a purpose. Shoomy had chosen this spot with care, deeming it most likely to yield rewards, and now we were waiting for someone to appear, and the need for silent immobility was absolute.

  I was unsure what the first sound I heard actually was. It was too distant and indistinct to identify, but mere moments later it came again, and this time I recognized it as the fluttering sound of air being snorted through a horse’s nostrils. I knew the others must have heard it, too, and I forced myself not to move. A long time passed, it seemed, before the next sound came, and then it was the heavy, muffled thump of a stamped hoof on soft ground, and it was accompanied by a whispered shushing as the animal’s rider sought to keep it calm. Another long silence followed that, with none of us daring to breathe, lest the sound be too loud, but eventually there came another sound of movement, accompanied by the unmistakable creak of leather saddlery. The screen of leaves near where I lay shivered, then parted infinitely slowly, pushed aside by an extended hand, to reveal a man leaning far forward over the neck of a horse, his chin almost against its mane and his eyes peering between the beast’s twitching ears.

  Nothing moved as the scout examined everything he could see ahead of him and on each side. He wore a conical steel helmet, which forced him to keep his head tilted severely back, and he was highly alert and vigilant, his very life dependent upon both. He examined everything minutely, meticulous and unhurried in his inspection, so that long before his questing eyes turned in my direction I had pulled myself down into the smallest possible bulk, hugging the ground as I sought to keep my head and the curve of my back beneath the gentle ridge that separated me from his line of sight. I waited to be discovered, but nothing happened, and then I heard him move again, the soft fall of hooves as he walked his horse quietly away. I heard no sound of sweeping branches, though, and so I raised my head again as slowly as I could and looked for him. He had vanished, evidently circling the clearing behind the screen of leaves that marked its edges.

&nbs
p; I caught sight of him again moments later, emerging as before from the screening bushes, too far away now to see me easily even had he been looking in my direction. This time, however, he came through the screen, peering carefully about him as he rode into the green-shaded glade. His shield was slung diagonally across his back, and he held the reins easily in his left hand, his right grasping the hilt of a long-bladed sword in a grip that allowed the bare blade to lie along his thigh and rest gently against his knee, featherlight and unobtrusive, yet ready for instant action at the first flicker of movement.

  Clear of the bushes, he drew rein for a moment at the very edge of the clearing, his eyes sweeping the open, seemingly innocuous space on both sides of him. Then he nudged his mount on again, leaning forward in the saddle as before and seeming to shrink even lower as he passed beneath the low-hanging branches of the huge elm that dominated the glade. He was in no danger from the overhanging boughs, for the lowest of them cleared his head by almost two feet, but his reaction was an instinctive avoidance of a sensed, potential threat. I remember thinking, though, that it clearly had not occurred to him that he might be attacked from above, for he did not once look up, and in consequence the man who leapt down on him caught him completely unprepared and drove him crashing to the ground and into unconsciousness. The only sound we watchers heard was the abrupt, wrenching thud of two bodies colliding and then hitting the earth concussively before the startled horse could even snort in fright.

  The attacker rolled and rose quickly to his feet, and I saw that it was Alan Crawford, now one of Will’s senior lieutenants. He spun back to the unhorsed man, crouching over him quickly with a bared dagger in his upraised fist. But a moment later he straightened up and sheathed the weapon, then summoned the others to come forward, giving orders to some to secure the prisoner and to others to fan out into the forest from which the rider had come. Now, as two of his men gagged the fallen man and bound him at wrists and ankles, Alan crossed to where I crouched beside Mirren and two other women.