The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  I slowed my pace gaping at him.

  “Why should they?” he continued. “How could they? The magnates—earls, barons, lords, or knights—have no time for them, the ordinary folk who live on their lands and keep them fed. The commoners are given no consideration at all, other than how they might be used and squeezed harder and farther to the benefit of their betters. It has been that way for hundreds of years—so much a way of life that no one has ever thought to question it. Until now. The people—the common folk—are growing aware of themselves and of the power that lies within them—power to say aye or nay, in one united voice, when they so wish.”

  I was shaking my head even as I listened. “This is nonsense, Martin.”

  “Is it? Is it nonsense that when most of the noblemen of Scotland are in English jails, your cousin Will’s name is on the lips of every man, woman, and child in Scotland? Is it nonsense that the people flock to him from everywhere, shouting his name and willing to risk their lives for him—ordinary men who would never have dreamt of taking up weapons in their own cause before he came along? Is it nonsense that this man, your own cousin, holds no knightly rank but yet commands an army? That has never happened within this realm since the Normans first came north from England, and believe you me, Father James, it is a development of great significance for every living being in this land, for it must mean that nothing can ever be the same again. The Scots folk have found a leader they can follow willingly—William Wallace. One of their own kind, from their own ranks. And they are raising a collective voice in his support that no man has ever heard before.”

  “That is …” I began.

  “That is God’s own truth,” he said. Then he stopped suddenly, and held out a hand to stop me, too, as he gazed at something ahead of us. I peered into the distance and tried to make sense of what appeared to be a dead man lying in our path, some hundred and fifty paces away.

  “Mother of God,” I whispered, my mouth suddenly gone dry. “What have we found?”

  Father Martin’s arm stretched out to stop me as effectively as an iron bar. “Don’t move,” he breathed. “Stand absolutely still.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LOAVES AND FISHES

  “Are you hungry, Father James?”

  The words were jarring to my ear. Here we were, faced with a corpse, perhaps murdered, and my companion was speaking of being hungry. Appalled, I turned to look at him and felt my mouth drop open when I saw the smile on his face. He was not looking at me, though. His eyes were fixed on the body on the ground ahead of us. I looked back, just in time to see the “dead” man move, and at once felt light-headed with the relief of recognizing that I had been mistaken.

  The man lay on his side more than a hundred paces from us, surrounded by rough tussocks of grass at the very edge of the riverbank we were following, and now I saw that he was fishing, peering fixedly down into the stream that flowed within a foot of his lowered face. His right arm was bared to the shoulder, its ample sleeve pulled high up to his neck, and his arm hung motionless, stretched down into the water beneath the bank. At the end of that arm—and I knew this as surely as I knew my own name—barely within reach of his stretched, caressing fingers, lay a fat-bellied trout, being lulled and cozened towards sudden death as its would-be killer prepared, with great patience, to snatch it up and throw it onto the grass at his back.

  Martin spoke quietly. “I wonder if he has had any luck.”

  “Pray the Lord he has,” I said reverently. “Allied to a kind and sharing nature.”

  At that moment, the motionless form convulsed in a sudden heave and a spray of upflung water that caught the light of the afternoon sun and scattered like beads of glass. My eyes fastened upon the silvery form of the large fish at the centre of the commotion as it soared through the air, scooped up and tossed to the grassy bank by its successful stalker. As soon as the creature landed, the fisherman pounced upon it and gripped it firmly in one hand while dealing it a solid rap on the head from a short cudgel that he had held prepared.

  Martin gasped. “Sweet Jesus be praised—that’s his lordship!”

  It was indeed. Within the space of two heartbeats, the unknown fisherman had been transformed. The head now bared to the sunshine bore the unmistakable square tonsure of holy orders, and the nondescript, brownish robe the fellow wore was revealed as one of the rich brown, green-edged cassocks that were the chosen garb—some said the episcopal livery—of our employer and superior in Christ, Robert Wishart, Lord Bishop of Glasgow.

  I hurried forward to offer him my hand. The sprawling man, clutching a glistening fish in one strong hand and his cudgel in the other, looked up at me with surprise and dawning recognition on his face. He was utterly without dignity in that moment, his legs kicking beneath his cassock as he struggled to regain his balance and sit up without using his hands, and as I looked down at him, a voice warned me to pay heed and take care at the same time, or I would be crushed by what this most powerful and dangerous prelate in Scotland would bring about. Now, six and forty years later, I recall that never-again-heard voice as being oracular.

  “Jamie,” he said, dropping the stunned fish on the grass and stuffing the cudgel into his cassock before wiping his hands on his green scapular. “Welcome, laddie. I’ve been waiting for you. Help me up.”

  He grasped my outstretched hand in his own and I leaned back against his weight as he pulled himself easily to his feet, casting a sideways glance at my companion as he did so. “You found him, then,” he said in Scots. “Good man. Now here, take this.” He bent easily and lobbed the fish so that Martin could catch it. “There’s a stake on the edge o’ the bank there wi’ two lines attached to it. One o’ them is tied around the neck o’ a goatskin full o’ fine German wine that I rescued from Lord James’s custody—it should be near perfectly cooled by now—and the other is threaded through the gills of three more o’ thae trout. None o’ them as fine as that beauty, mind you, but the four o’ them thegither should fill three hungry bellies. I’ve a fire going over there by that big tree, and you’ll find a griddle already on the coals. There’s fresh bread and some salt in a bag there, and even some fresh-churned butter. Make yourself busy and start cooking while I talk with Father James here, for if you’re like me, we’re a’ three famished.”

  I watched as the Irish priest quickly crossed to the edge of the bank, where he pulled in the attached cords hand over hand until he retrieved the wineskin and the other three fish. When I looked back again to the bishop, my hand went automatically to my mouth, to hide my missing teeth.

  “Don’t bother,” he said in Latin, and not unkindly. “It’s not really noticeable. I had expected much worse. What about your voice, though? Has it affected your ability to speak?” He waited, and I blinked at him. “You’re going to have to say something to me sooner or later, you know, so why not now?”

  “What would you have me say, my lord bishop?”

  He laughed, and raised his hand in a gesture I remembered well as being a sign of pleasure. “No more than that, lad, no more than that. I understood every word of it, and that’s as much as I need to know. Aye, well. I’m glad you’re back, Jamie, for God in His Heaven knows I’ve had need of you these past few months. The world we have known appears to be going to Hell, in accordance with the wishes of the enemies of our realm.”

  I assumed that by “enemies” my employer was referring, though perhaps not exclusively, to the English Archbishop of York, whose goal it was to have all of Scotland subjected to the authority of York. If he had his way, the Church in Scotland would be flooded with English clergymen at every level. The case had been argued before the papal curia for a hundred years, and Scotland’s cause had been supported every time. But now, with Edward Plantagenet reigning as King of England, it took on new life. Though the King had no love for the Archbishop of York, he supported him wholeheartedly in his designs for Scotland because they fit hand in glove with his own. With English priests and bishops preaching the King of Englan
d’s will along with Holy Scripture from every Scottish pulpit, the folk of this realm would be deprived of hope as well as salvation.

  “You knew we would be coming this way, my lord?” I asked him.

  “What other way could you come from Ayr? I warned Father Martin to waste no time in bringing you to me, and I hoped that, weather permitting, you would be here this afternoon. Besides, I was at loose ends, Sir James being much preoccupied today with matters to do with his own territories and tenantry. I would have been bored to death, sitting around listening to such things. And so, it being a fine day for a change, I decided to come out to the riverbank and wait for you. And here we are.”

  “Indeed.” I looked around me again, seeing nothing but the beautiful, rolling meadow stretching for miles and becoming more heavily wooded as it progressed. “Turnberry Castle is nearby, then?”

  “Near enough. It’s about two miles over yonder, on the coast.” He waved vaguely towards the west. “Have you ever met young Lord Bruce?”

  “No, my lord. I’ve heard of him, of course, but who has not? The Earl of Carrick has made quite a name for himself since his grandfather quit Scotland and took the family with him.”

  His lordship was looking at me askance, one eyebrow cocked high. “Do I hear disapproval in your voice, Father James?”

  “No, sir. I but speak of his reputation … of how men speak of him.”

  “Aye, I know. Tell me, do you remember how you felt when first you tried to speak through your new-lost teeth? Did it not cross your mind that other men might laugh at you and talk about you for sounding different?”

  I was slightly bewildered by his sudden change of topic until his next words showed me what he was thinking.

  “For if it did,” he continued, “and if you thought such a thing even for a moment, I would take that as ample cause to disregard what ignorant men might say on anything of import. None of us has any real control over what other people think or say about us, Jamie, and none but a fool would believe that men, being men, are always charitable. Young Lord Bruce is his own man, I now believe, and fashioned in the manner true to his lineage.”

  “Now. Does that mean you have met him recently?”

  “It does. Two weeks ago, to be precise, and then again last night, here.”

  “In Turnberry?”

  “Does that surprise you? It is his home, you know, and was his mother’s before that. He was born here.”

  “Aye, but … I thought he was in England.”

  “And so he was, for years. But now he is here, with us.”

  “With us …” Something about the way he said the words made me wary. “Your pardon, my lord, but if I may ask the question, who is us?”

  “Us, the members of our fellowship here in the southwest, united in the cause of Scotland’s realm.”

  If there was such a fellowship, I thought, it was one I had never heard of, but he was already carrying on, unaware that he had said anything unusual.

  “For the moment we are myself and Lord James the Steward— the last two of the Council of Guardians still in residence within the realm. But we also have Sir William Douglas of Douglasdale, Lord Robert Bruce the Earl of Carrick, and a host of others—lesser nobles, knights and churchmen, and burghers and commoners, including your cousin.”

  “Will’s here? I thought— Father Martin told me he had gone back to Selkirk last week.”

  “And so he did. He was with us in Ayr until last week, but he is now back in Selkirk Forest, on our behalf.” He tilted his head to one side, squinting at me because of the sun at my back. “You knew he went to Perth, did you not?”

  “Father Martin told me.”

  “Aye, well, that expedition did him little harm in the eyes of the people. He came back with more than three times the following he’d had before he left, all of them from the territories he’d crossed on the way north. They’re willing enough, but they’re raw and untrained and would be worse than useless against English footmen. So I sent him back to the greenwood with them, to meld them with his own folk there and train them sufficiently to send them into a fight without feeling like a murderer. He was loath to go at first, but then he saw the sense of it.”

  “I see. And how long will he remain there?”

  The bishop shrugged. “For as long as may be required. He has a rabble now. What he needs is an army, or at least a force capable of putting up a fight. And so he’ll train them, in the forest and in south Lothian, harassing the English garrisons there, most of which are small enough to goad to the point of fury and folly.”

  “And what about here? Canon Lamberton told me about the new English appointees named to restore the peace here, Percy and Clifford. Where are they now, do you know?”

  “Aye.” He wrinkled his nose. “They were in Galloway last week, at the new abbey, resting their men and horses, but I heard word yesterday that they’re coming this way.”

  “To Ayr?”

  “Mayhap. They are in search of us, after all.”

  “And when they find you, what will you do? You’ll need Will’s people with you, unless you have an army of your own at hand … Have you?”

  He eyed me calmly, showing no offence at the familiar way I had been addressing him. “We have some men,” he said quietly. “A force of kinds—large enough to present an impression of strength, but not a real or efficient army. As for what we will do if Percy arrives? We’ll talk to him.”

  “Talk to him? Forgive me, my lord, but he might be in no mood for anything but slaughter, and if he talks at all it’s unlikely to be of anything other than complete capitulation to Edward’s authority. Percy is a warrior, from the little I know of him. He’s a firebrand, hungry for glory and reward. Such men set little stock upon talking.”

  The bishop’s nod of agreement was slow and deliberate. “True,” he said, “that is true … So if the man wishes to discuss capitulation, that is what we will discuss, for as long as may be necessary.”

  I gaped at him, and he smiled at me. “Come, Father, as a son of Holy Mother Church you should be well aware that wars may be fought with words as well as with weapons—and sometimes more effectively.” He stepped closer to the riverbank and picked up a capacious-looking leather bag with a bronze buckle and a long shoulder strap. He passed the carrying strap over his head and adjusted it across his breast so that it hung comfortably by his side. “As a priest, Jamie,” he said, switching smoothly into Scots, “ye should ken never to underestimate the power o’ words. They may no’ hae the cuttin’ edge o’ a steel blade, but they can turn aside the wrath o’ an angry man, an’ they can draw the sting frae a wound quicker than a poultice will.” He nodded to me to accompany him as he started walking towards the fire and Father Martin.

  “While we talk here in the southwest,” he continued, speaking Latin again, “holding the English in prolonged debate, others elsewhere may prosecute their designs in greater safety, free of the fear of being harassed by Percy’s helots. To be talking with them at all will make us look like cavilling poltroons, but that is of little matter if it leaves our forces elsewhere free to do what they must do.”

  “What forces elsewhere? Andrew Murray?”

  “Among others, yes. Careful there, mind your feet,” he said, and I stepped carefully around the edge of a large burrow of some kind, half-obscured by nettles. “Andrew is among them, and he is one of the best, a natural leader, a trained knight, and a born strategist, every bit as popular and successful in his own territories as Will is here. But I meant everywhere, Jamie, rather than elsewhere. The entire country is up in arms in a way that it has never been roused before, particularly in the Highlands and the Isles. And this time it’s not arrayed behind the magnates, for most of the magnates, as you know, are shut up in English jails. The uprising this time is in the name of the folk and on behalf of the folk, and it is driven by generations of hatred and resentment of the English and their arrogance, from the time of the first Norman invasions. It has little to do with the nobi
lity, in any sense. There has never been anything like it in all our history.”

  We had reached the fire beneath the ancient elm tree by then, where Father Martin was stooped over the coals, tending to the fish that he had spitted carefully on willow twigs and placed precisely on some broad burdock leaves atop the iron griddle, where they would be able to cook perfectly, mere inches above the heat.

  “Martin,” the bishop said, “the blessed Peter himself could not have made a cooking fish look better—or smell better, for that matter. Are you near done?”

  “I am, your lordship. You came well prepared. I’ve set out the bread on the burdock leaves there, and there’s some salt to bring the flavour from the fish itself. I’ll be but a minute more, and then we can eat.”

  “And so we shall, but first we need to drink.” He collected the plump wineskin from the base of the tree and poured into three horn cups that Martin had placed beside it. “Here, Father James,” he said. “Take your own and mind not to spill it, for it’s liquid gold. Father Martin, here’s one for you, and then you need to hear what we are talking about.”

  We drank together, and then the bishop and I made ourselves comfortable while Martin served the meal and his lordship offered a grace. The fish was magnificent, and for a long time there was nothing to be heard from any of us but the sounds of blissful satisfaction.

  Finally, though, the bishop sat up and belched quietly. “That was wondrous,” he said quietly. “Now, Father James, if you’ll clean up here and see to dousing the fire, I’ll tell Father Martin about what we were discussing while he prepared this magnificent meal.”

  By the time I finished putting out the fire and disposing of our refuse, his lordship had told Martin all he needed to know and was talking about the uprising he had mentioned to me.

  “And who is leading this uprising?” I asked. “The Church?”

  “Yes, led by our bishops.”

  “Not all our bishops, my lord,” I demurred. “De Cheyne of Aberdeen has always been Edward’s man, has he not?”