The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  He fell silent again, staring into nothingness, and finally, when I became convinced that he had forgotten I was there, I prompted him. “What happened then, Sandy?”

  His eyes moved away from me, focusing on a point somewhere beyond my left shoulder. “Well,” he said, his voice flat. “Kenny met an English patrol on his way to Inverness. They tried to stop him, but he wouldna stop, and so they chased him. When they caught him, they accused him of stealin’ the horse he was riding. He still wouldna listen, for he was frantic, hell-bent on reachin’ the twa wifies in Inverness, and when he wouldna tell them his business they beat him senseless. And then they left him hanging, upside down and naked, from the rafters of a burnt-out cottage at the side of the road. He froze to death …”

  I felt a coldness settle around my chest.

  “A farmer found him sometime after that—a day or two, it might ha’ been—an’ cut him down,” he continued in that same flat voice. “But nobody knew who he was.”

  I did not want to ask, but I had to. “And Meg?”

  “The bairns came … Or one o’ them did, or tried to. Poor Tam was terrified out o’ his wits, demented wi’ her screamin’, an’ he ran back to the farm, twa miles up the glen in the storm, to get help.” He gazed at the tabletop. “When they got back to the smithy, Meg was dead, and so wis the unborn bairns. Young Tam disappeared soon after an’ hasna been seen since.”

  I sat there, appalled. “How … how do you know what happened, Sandy?”

  “What?” His brow knitted in a frown.

  “You say he met an English patrol, and they accused him of stealing the horse, then beat him and left him for dead. How do you know that? How can you be sure Kenny didn’t simply fall among thieves?”

  “Because I ken the men wha did it. I ken their names. Made a point o’ learnin’ them all. They boasted about it back in their barracks in Inverness, ye see, an’ they brought the horse back with them, to sell it. No’ a trace o’ shame in any o’ them. They crowed about what they had done, catching a Scotch horse thief and servin’ him the justice he deserved, leavin’ him hung up to live or die according to God’s will.”

  “I see. And did you make a formal complaint against them?”

  He looked at me as though I had spoken gibberish. “A complaint? To the English, about English sodgers? No, Faither, I didna complain. I had the men wha did it killed, is what I did. Ten of the whoresons an’ the sergeant who was wi’ them that day. I broke the sergeant’s neck mysel’, forbye I slit the throat o’ the whoreson who boasted o’ haein put the rope round Kenny’s neck. And if that was mortal sin, then I’m ready to burn in Hell for it, an’ I winna complain there, either.”

  “Have you confessed that to a priest since then?”

  He looked sidelong at me. “Aye, to you. But I havena been to confession, if that’s what you’re askin’. I’m no’ a hypocrite, nor a liar. For confession to be real, ye hae to feel regret—contrition’s the word, is it no’? Ye hae to feel contrition for what ye did. I don’t. I’d dae it again this minute if I thought one o’ thae whoresons was still alive.”

  He shrugged. “A month or so after that, Andrew Murray came home after escapin’ from England. Afore he went on to Auch he went to the provost’s house in Inverness, to find out where his wife was an’ what was happenin’ on the Black Isle. The provost’s an auld crony of Sir Andrew of Petty, the Auld Laird as he’s kenned here, and Andrew knew he’d get the truth frae him no matter how bad it was. I heard he was there and I went there an’ waited for him to come out. We went to a howff for a jug o’ ale, and I telt him what had happened to Meg, and what I had done. And then he said he was on his way here to throw the English out of Auch. He didna hae a soul to stand beside him then, but I never doubted he would do it. First they’d be out o’ Auch, he said, and then out o’ the Murray lands everywhere.

  “We got drunk together that night, him and me, and we mourned Meg. And afore he left the next day, he asked me to go wi’ him an’ help him fight the English. I said I would but that I had affairs to settle first. And so I sent my ain wife awa to live wi’ her mother’s sister in Elgin while I was out wi’ Andrew. She wasna happy, but she went, and then I spent a week shuttin’ down my warehouses and raisin’ volunteers amang the other burgesses in Inverness. By the time I was ready to leave, we had near a hundred fightin’ men— every one o’ them well armed and angry and sick an’ tired o’ bein’ treated like dirt. I marched them here, and we’ve been workin’ an’ fightin’ together ever since.”

  “One more question, if you’ll permit it, and then I’ll ask you no more. Why you, a successful merchant? You’ll pardon me, I hope, for saying so, but it’s a big leap, from warehouseman to warrior. I am having difficulty understanding why it would occur to Andrew de Moray that you could be a comrade-in-arms to him.”

  “You have a point,” he said. “I wasna always a merchant, though. When Andrew first kent me, I was wild. Him an’ me fought a wheen o’ times, a couple o’ dunghill cocks crawin’ an’ flexin’ their wings, and I won every time. That’s why my da set me to watchin’ ower him an’ Meg. He knew she wis safe as lang as I was there wi’ her. So Andrew kent me as a fighter, and a better one than him, man to man—or boy to boy. But even then, when we wis young, he’d never get angry when I’d beat him. He’d want me to teach him what I did instead, to show him how I did it. And so I would. But it wasna even that, no’ really. What made him decide to ask me to join up wi’ him was somethin’ that happened that mornin’ afore he left here to go back to Auch. It had been happenin’ for days, in fact, for I was in the middle o’ takkin’ stock in the warehouses when he arrived.

  “There wis folk comin’ and goin’ a’ the time Andrew was there in the yard and I kept expectin’ him to get angry, for we’d had a lot to drink the night afore an’ I knew he must be feelin’ it as much as I was, and now we kept on gettin’ interrupted an’ couldna hear oursel’s think. But instead o’ that, he just sat there listenin’ to what my folk was sayin’ to me, leanin’ on his hand wi’ his elbow on the arm o’ his chair, no’ missin’ a bit o’ what was goin’ on. And then, at the end o’ one long talk I had wi’ a clever young loon frae Elgin, he looks at me and says, ‘You understood all that?’”

  His face quirked into a grin. “An’ of course, when I said I did, he wanted me to teach him all about it, then and there—everythin’ I’d spent the last ten years learnin’, one step at a time frae dawn through dusk, maist days. An’ yon’s really why he wanted me to join him.”

  I blinked at him. “You’ll have to pardon me, Sandy. I don’t understand.”

  “He wanted me because I’m an organizer. I deal every day in a’ the stuff he kens nothin’ about an’ hasna the time to learn. You’re a priest, but you work for a bishop, do ye no’? And your bishop works for an archbishop, who likely works for a bigger archbishop—what are they called, the high-ups? Cardinals, aye, that’s them. And the cardinals work for the Pope, who’s the highest o’ them all. It’s the same in an army. Ilka high chief, ilka man in charge, whether they cry him general or commander, has a quartermaster—Andrew had a fancy Latin word for it, if I can remember it … factotum, that’s it. Every commander, he said, needs a good factotum to see to the details o’ what needs to be done, somebody whose job it is to make sure a’ the people an’ their gear—weapons, armour, food and supplies, horses, wagons an’ kine an’ swine for slaughter—reach the right place at the right time. And he had nobody, he said. His father’s folk were a’ scattered, kicked out o’ Auch when the Auld Laird was sent to jail, but they were all too old anyway, and they had aey treated him like a bairn because his father wis their god. He needed someone he could trust, he said, someone he could rely on to stand behind him and tak care o’ a’ the details—someone that he knew was loyal to him an’ no’ afraid o’ crossing folk who needed to be crossed an’ put in their place.

  “And so that’s what I am now, Faither James. I’m a factotum. I mak sure that men an’ supplies are
in place and ready whenever and wherever Andrew wants them to be. An’ when I can, I fight. And now I’m thinkin’ we’ve been sittin’ here too long. Brendan an’ his lads will be waitin’ outside, so ye’d best be away, and I’ll get back to my work.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ANDREW DE MORAY

  Iarrived in Andrew de Moray’s camp at dusk that same evening, which was a development I had not expected. It lay on the upper slopes of the rolling hillsides between the firth’s end and the northern tip of Loch Ness, not far from Inverness, and the chief’s sanctuary lay at its very centre, in a steep-sided ravine carved into the downslope on the far side of the ridge we had climbed to reach it. As my two guides led me down into it—they were really guards, but deferential and considerate—the brush-filled walls rose above us on either side, closing us in and creating an illusion of isolation even while, at the very least, there were upwards of half a thousand men camped all around us.

  I could see the glow of firelight ahead of us as we descended the ravine, and as we drew closer the light from leaping flames reflected from the sides of several large tents. My guards steered me towards those tents until I could make out the forms of half a score of men seated on logs around a fire. Although I was still too far distant to be able to pick out individuals, I had no doubt that I was witnessing a council of some kind. One of my guards reached out to halt me in the shadows between two of the tents, while the other, who had told me his name was Fergus, stepped forward to talk to a man who was hovering watchfully, his attention focused tightly on the group around the fire.

  This camp steward—for that was plainly what he was—turned to peer at me, his expression unreadable, and then he moved away and bent to whisper in the ear of one of the group seated by the fire. The man to whom he spoke, whose body radiated displeasure at being interrupted, straightened and twisted around on the log that was his seat, peering back to where I stood in the shadows. I could see his face in the firelight, but it was clear that he could not see me well, for he leaned forward and squinted into the dimness. Then he rose to his feet and began to come towards me.

  “Jamie!” he roared, silencing everyone around him. “Jamie Wallace. It is you!” He spoke to me in Scots, a great courtesy, since the language he normally spoke was the Gaelic. “Welcome to Moray! I swear I thought I must be hearing things when Angus said your name.” He threw his arms wide as I approached him and we embraced, watched by perhaps a hundred pairs of eyes. “You are welcome here, my friend,” he said more quietly. “It delights me to see your smiling face. I know there’s no need to ask if you are well, for I can see you are.” He cocked his head. “You’ve changed a bit about the mouth, though. It looks as though you might have been talking about politics with English soldiery,” he said admiringly, for the sake of his audience. “But I didn’t think priests were permitted to brawl like ordinary folk. Is that why you’re up here? Have you been exiled to the north, an excommunicated fugitive?”

  I was grinning at him by that time, recalling how he loved to banter. “No, Sir Andrew,” I said. “I’m here looking for you, no more than that.”

  “Then your task is done. I’m here and you’ve found me. But I’m plain Andrew Murray. No king has yet had me kneel at his feet to endow me with the grace of knighthood. Come, sit down and have something to drink.” He swung around, placing a hand on my shoulder and raising his voice to address the men gathered around the fire, all of them so watchfully quiet that I could hear the crackling of the fire.

  “Hear me, all of you. This is my good friend Father Jamie Wallace from Glasgow. Mark ye that name, Wallace. He is cousin and close friend to William Wallace, of whom all Scotland talks today, and he once saved my life when his wild cousin tried to kill me. If you treat him well, he might tell you about it sometime. But in the meantime he must be nigh famished for the lack of strong drink, so someone fetch him a jug, and you, young Furness, may have the privilege of giving up your seat by the fire for him when we return. First, though, we have matters to discuss between ourselves, Father Wallace and I, so we’ll remove ourselves for a spell to where we can speak privily. Come, Jamie, they’ll bring us to drink over there.”

  He led me to another fire some twenty paces away and asked the men seated there if they would leave us alone to talk, and in the time it took for us to settle by the fire and toast each other’s health in the ale that quickly followed us, the others moved away, leaving us in the middle of a fire-lit space too large for anyone to approach unseen or to overhear what we were saying.

  Of course, the first question he had to ask, after being assured that Will and Bishop Wishart were both well, was how I came to be in Moray, afoot and alone. He evidently had some notion that I might have walked all the way from Glasgow, so I told him about my sea voyage aboard The Golden Gannet, my landing in Auch, and my meeting with Sandy Pilche.

  “Aye,” he said quietly when I had finished. “I was fortunate to find Sandy, though in truth it was he who found me. He’s a fine man and a miracle worker when it comes to organizing things. But now’s not the time to talk about Sandy Pilche. You’re the one who is important here—you and your mission, for I know you would not be here without a mission. And as you came by sea, I assume there’s urgency involved.”

  “There is,” I said. “I fear God’s work—which means the bishop’s work—demands some haste from time to time.”

  “You’re not the first to tell me that,” he said, speaking almost to himself. “And you’re not the first to arrive from Aberdeen by sea in the past few days.” His face settled into a scowl. “It seems the need for haste is greater on all fronts nowadays. And everyone who’s hurrying, no matter what his heading, believes God is on his side.” That was followed by a disdainful sniff, and he looked at me squarely. “So I think we had best speak right away of what brings you up to Scotia for the first time in your life.”

  “Aye,” I said. “But first I need to know how much you know. Have you heard anything of what’s afoot in the south?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing of worth,” he said. “We’ve heard talk of risings there, and I hear Will’s name mentioned from time to time, but no more than that. Someone said the Steward—Stewart himself—is in the southwest, but that would suggest Wishart is with him, and I’ve heard nothing of that. Is he?”

  “Aye, he is. I’ll tell you everything I know—or everything I knew before I left Carrick, two weeks ago. Since then, of course, anything could have happened. There was an English army in the offing when I left, marching towards Ayr. A well-commanded army, apparently, under Sir Henry Percy and Sir Robert Clifford, both, I was told, highly ranked among Edward’s Welsh veterans.”

  “I know of Percy” Murray said. “And you’re right. From all I hear he is no man’s fool. Won his spurs, quite literally, in the Welsh wars and is highly regarded by everyone who counts, including his own men. The other one—Clifford, you say? Him I don’t know.”

  “Hatched from the same clutch, reared in the same brood. Not so well born, perhaps, but even more ambitious.”

  “Then we’ll hear more of him, no doubt. And do the bishop and the Stewart intend to fight these two?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “They have no plans, per se, to come to blows. They have a strong defensive position, which they intend to hold, and they intend to negotiate with Percy, to buy time for forces elsewhere in the realm to organize themselves.”

  “That sounds foolish. If Percy is half the soldier they say he is, he’ll dance around them until they grow dazed and then he’ll cut them down at his own speed.”

  “I doubt that. The bishop assured me that the Steward’s defensive position at Irvine is unassailable.”

  “Hmm.” He managed to express a world of cynical disgust in that single sound. “No place is unassailable, Jamie. That’s a priest’s foolish talk.”

  I shrugged, unable to dispute that. “Accurate or no, that’s what I was told: that the place is in the hills close by Irvine town and the enemy won’t
be able to assail it without sustaining heavy losses. Whether that be true or not remains to be seen.”

  “Aye, you’ll get no argument from me on that.” He hesitated, frowning a little. “You said you left from Carrick to come here. Not Glasgow? What took you to Carrick? That’s on the southwest coast, is it not?”

  “It is. I went there to join the bishop. And he was there to meet with the Steward, who was meeting in turn with Bruce, the Earl of Carrick, at Bruce’s castle of Turnberry.”

  I saw his eyes go wide, and he jerked a hand up to stop me. “Wait. Bruce is here in Scotland? Young Robert Bruce?”

  “The Earl of Carrick, aye. He has thrown in his lot with the bishop and Lord Stewart. He and my cousin Will and the knight Sir William Douglas. They are up in arms against the English.”

  “But that can’t be! The others I can understand, but Bruce has lived in England these past five years at least. They say he spends all his time in Westminster, where he is one of the King’s spoilt favourites. They say he has become an English parasite.”

  “I think you may have been misinformed on that,” I replied. “You have been misled on his whereabouts at least. I assure you Bruce is here in Scotland, and under arms. I spoke with him in Carrick a fortnight since, at his castle.”

  “So you know him, Robert Bruce?”

  I smiled. “I would not say that. I met him briefly, on church business and at the bishop’s instigation. It was no more than that.”

  “But you spoke with him, the Earl of Carrick, two weeks ago.”

  “I did.”