by Jack Whyte
“Damn! That’s too far. A four-hour ride, at least, and I need to be here. You’ll have to go for me.”
“Already? But I came to speak with you, about Will and what he is thinking.”
“And we’ve done that, Ewan. And I think the problem is resolved.”
He looked at me, his single eye exaggerating his astonishment. “It is? It’s been resolved? Why didn’t I know that?”
“Ewan, d’you think Will trusts me?”
“Of course he trusts you, more than anyone else in the world.”
“Good. Then I beg you to remind him of that trust, even though you think he needs no such reminding. Point out how deep and old it is, how reliable it is, and really how reliable I am in the whole scape of his life. You think I’m talking nonsense,” I said. “But I’m not. If there’s any nonsense involved here, then Will himself is the one to blame for it, with all this twaddle about not knowing whether or not he can trust Andrew Murray. Well, Will needs to know—to accept—that he can trust Andrew Murray twice as much and twice as far as he would ever dream of trusting me. I have been here for weeks, Ewan, spending time with Andrew Murray, and I know, beyond question, that Will is fretting over nothing. Andrew de Moray—Andrew Murray the man—is rock solid, Ewan. He is sound in everything he does, and I judge him honest, upright, noble, and without pretension. And he considers William Wallace his close friend, simply because of the bond they forged as boys together. Not only would I stake my life on that being true, I would stake—no, I will stake, I am staking—the welfare of this kingdom, of the realm of Scotland itself, on the truth of it.”
I paused, looking Ewan straight in the eye. “I trust him, Ewan. I trust him absolutely. And my cousin will trust him, too, as soon as he meets him face to face again. And so that’s what we must achieve within the day ahead of us, you and I. We must bring them together tomorrow, alone.”
“You should be there, too. You have a place there with them. Always have had.”
He was right and I nodded. “And I can be useful to both of them. Good.”
“So how will we arrange this?”
“I’ve no idea, but it will be done. First, we’ll go and eat because we’re both starved. Then we’ll talk about details, and then we’ll sleep. You’ll be up and away by dawn and I’ll follow you by noon with Andrew … Did you make any friends in Dundee? People you would trust?”
“A few,” he said as he rose to his feet. “One in particular, a half-Welsh archer by the name of Olwen. I’d trust him.”
I stood up, too, adjusting my satchel to hang comfortably. “Does he know the Dundee countryside?”
“He’s lived here for twenty years.”
“Good, then get him to suggest a meeting place close to the road we’ll come down, then make sure Will is there to meet us when we arrive. I’ll talk with Andrew tonight. And now we should find some food, before the smell of fresh bread renders me too weak to walk.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE ROAD TO DUNDEE
The man sent to meet us on the road the next day was an old friend from my days as a young, newly out of school lad in Paisley. He was known as Long John of the Knives and had been one of Will’s most trusted followers since those early days. He was extremely tall—one of the few men I had ever seen who towered several inches over Will himself, which explained the “Long” part of his name. The heavy belt around his waist explained the last part: it supported a collection of sheathed knives, and anyone who knew the man knew, too, that he could sink any one of them into any target and from any distance with astonishing speed.
He was waiting for us as we breasted a sharp rise in the road, sitting at ease on a roadside stone at the edge of a deep gully on the right of the path, and enjoying the bright warmth of the summer sun. He might have been dozing as he waited, but his hearing was keen and as soon as he heard us he stood up, smiling at me in welcome and nodding in greeting to Andrew, recognizable in his half-plate armour worn over a close-fitting suit of mail, the whole covered by a loose, brilliant blue surcoat emblazoned with the three white stars of de Moray.
I was very glad to see Long John, for it had been years since we had last met. I moved to dismount, but as was ever the case, John had little time to waste on niceties.
“No,” he said in Scots and held up a hand. “I’ll no’ keep ye. I ken ye need to meet wi’ Will, an’ he’s waitin’ for ye.” He pointed down the hill at his back. “There’s a wee glen doon there, ahint the scree,” he said. “An’ a linn, forbye. The linn’s no’ much to look at, but it’s deep enough to haud the two o’ ye an’ ye’ll likely be glad o’ it on a hot day like this. There’s a fire doon there, and a nice brace o’ hares simmerin’ in a pot wi’ ingins an’ garlic, an’ some fresh-baked bannock to go wi’ it. Ye’ll see Will there, so I’ll be on my way and leave ye to say what ye hae to.” He tilted his head towards Alistair. “Ye’re welcome to come wi’ me, unless ye’re privy to what’s to be discussed.”
Alistair cocked an eyebrow at Andrew, who waved him gently on his way.
“Right,” Alistair said, hoisting his pack again. “I’ll join you again later.”
“Grand,” said Long John. “I’ll see ye again later, Jamie. Maister Murray.” He nodded gravely to Andrew and then walked away, accompanied by Alistair.
“Do you know,” Andrew mused, “if I didn’t know for a fact that no friend of Will Wallace’s could ever be such a thing, I might be tempted to think yon fellow could be a dangerous man.”
“Who, Long John of the Knives?” I said, smiling. “What could possibly make you think that?”
“I have no idea,” he murmured. “Save, perhaps, for something in the way he walks. He’s like a big cat.”
“He is. He and Alistair are two of a kind. There’s something feline about both of them.”
“Aye, but Alistair is just a plain, grey Highland wildcat. Long John there is like a great cat from Africa that I once saw at King Edward’s court. Some kind of leopard, it was, spotted as they are, but this one was lean and tall, long-legged like a hunting hound, and lightning fast. Anyway, let’s go and find Will.”
“No need. I’m here.”
The voice, coming from directly at our backs, made us both jump, and we stood up simultaneously in our stirrups, twisting around awkwardly to look back. Will smiled a little, his mouth quirking upwards as he noted our surprise, but it was not the grin I would have expected from him after such a trick. My first reaction was a kind of regret that Long John should have lied to me, but then I realized that he had done no such thing. He had said only that we would see Will by the fire down at the linn. He had not said Will was already there.
That momentary twinge of misgiving I had felt on seeing Will’s restrained smile persisted through the greetings that followed as we exchanged the normal, banal pleasantries and small talk. I had never known Will to be as ill at ease as he was in those first moments. Andrew noticed it, too, much to my chagrin, for when Will turned away to lead us down into the ravine, the Highlander glanced at me with a raised eyebrow.
And it was Andrew, blunt and forthright as always, who settled the matter as well, tackling it head-on in his own inimitable way as soon as we arrived at the concealed meeting place. He bent over the fire and lifted the lid off the pot that sat nestled on a bed of cooking stones, sniffed deeply and appreciatively at the cloud of fragrant steam that swirled up and around him, then stood up to gaze towards the six-foot waterfall, and the deep pool beneath it.
“A beautiful spot,” he said to no one in particular, but speaking Latin because he knew Will’s Gaelic was less than fluent. “Cool, clear, deep water to refresh a fellow on a hot and sunny, sweaty afternoon, and pot-roasted meat to fill his belly afterwards. A sane man could scarce ask for more on a day like this … Unless it were an understanding of why the friend he has come so far to see is being so damnably unfriendly.” He looked Will square in the eye. “What think you, Will Wallace? Is there a valid reason for your reluctance to smile
and welcome us honestly, or are you merely showing me a side of you that I never suspected was there? Something is stuck in your nose, I think. So blow it out. How have I offended you?”
Will, who had been leaning on his walking staff, did not quite step backwards, but he reared up to his full height and, to my dismay, answered Andrew’s question with another, adding to the overall impression of disdain that radiated from him. “Why would you think you have offended me?”
“Wrong word,” Andrew snapped. “I do not think I have offended you. I am hoping I have offended you, for then I would know it was unwitting and I have no reason to be angry. Failing that, though, I would have to take your treatment of me to this point at face value, and that would be unfortunate, for to say you have been less than friendly would be understating the truth.”
I was appalled. I had anticipated, at most, some minor difficulty in smoothing Will’s ruffled feathers and cajoling him into acknowledging his lifelong bias against magnates. It had never occurred to me that I might find myself facing the very real possibility that these two men, my two closest friends in the world, would refuse to bury their differences—differences I was fully aware Andrew Murray had not known about. I knew too, beyond doubt, that the Highlander would not back down and would not be bullied, even by William Wallace. And for once in my glib-tongued life, at a time when I really needed to be eloquent and persuasive, I found my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Andrew turned his back on Will and took one long step across the distance that separated him from where I stood holding the reins of his horse and my own. He bent forward and around his animal to pull his heavy quarterstaff from where it hung securely beneath the skirts of his saddle, then sprang away before either Will or I could react. He flipped the heavy quarterstaff up and caught it in a two-handed grip.
Will watched, one eyebrow rising high on his forehead. Andrew kept moving, with exaggerated stealth and slowness, looking about him carefully until he found a spot where he could stand and fight easily.
“Well?” he said. “Are we to fight, you and I, or merely stand here all day staring at each other?”
I thought I detected the first flickering of a smile at the edge of Will’s mouth, and my relief was instantaneous.
“You hae no more chance of beating me today than you did the first time we fought,” Will said.
“That was years ago and we were boys. But remind me about it when we are done.” And with that Andrew attacked, crossing the space between them in two swift strides and launching a lightning-fast series of thrusts and strokes. Few of the moves he made were like anything I had seen before. He was using his staff more as a short lance or a two-handed stabbing sword than as the standard flailing-broadsword quarterstaff, and it was clear to me from the outset that Will thought the same, for he fell back at once and snapped into a classic defensive pattern of block and parry. He responded to Andrew’s new moves with great caution, and I was hugely impressed, for I had never before seen Will Wallace being less than fully committed in a fight.
Will was narrow-eyed in concentration, refusing to commit himself to an all-out fight before he had gleaned some kind of understanding of the tactics being used against him. After a time, though, I saw the tension start to drain from him as he began to grasp the elements of Andrew’s strategy, and after that the tempo of the bout increased appreciably. The clacking rattle of heavy staves of seasoned oak and ash hammering against each other grew faster and faster until it was almost impossible to say which of the two opponents was working harder.
Andrew took the first blow, a hard sideways rap to the outside of his thigh. It almost felled him, but he swung sharply out of the fight zone, throwing himself into an elaborate spinning dance on one leg that whirled him close to a boulder. There he dropped his staff and braced himself against the stone surface while he sucked air harshly through tight-clenched teeth and massaged his thigh with one hand until life returned to it.
Moments later, when the whirling reel was at its height again, Will took the brunt of a hard-swung shot that must have come close to breaking his arm, and probably would have shattered the bone had it not been for the spectacular layers of archer’s muscle that transformed my cousin’s upper arm and shoulder into a limb that not one man in a thousand might possess. That caused another break in the proceedings, but no one made any suggestion that the trial might have gone far enough.
The two opponents faced off to each other for a third time, and this time there was no question of either man going for a quick victory. They circled each other warily, filled with obvious respect for each other’s prowess, and I could not remember ever having known it to take so long for the opening blow to be struck in a two-man contest. Once that opening blow was struck, though, the rest followed quickly, and the air was filled again with the rushing sounds of whirling quarterstaves and the staccato clattering of attack following retreat and circling to renewed attacks, with neither combatant showing the slightest sign of flagging.
The end came suddenly. The two men came together, as they had so often before, their weapons windmilling but under tight control, and then it seemed to me that Andrew swayed or dipped somehow and stepped in closer on one foot before switching away on the other, bypassing Will as he went. But as he went he bent to his left from the waist and braced himself on the ball of his outstretched left foot to sweep his right leg backwards, catching my cousin behind the knees and knocking him off balance precisely at the moment when the right end of Andrew’s trailing staff, firmly held in a cross-chest, levered grip, swept up and out to catch him square beneath the jaw. Will staggered and spun, cross-legged and cross-eyed, trying valiantly to remain upright, and as he did so Andrew pivoted tightly and swung his staff up and over to crash down across Will’s shoulders, smashing him to the ground, face down.
Even as I opened my mouth in shock, though, Andrew spun towards me, raising a finger to his lips and bidding me with an outstretched hand to stand still. He stepped nimbly away, back towards the pot simmering on the nearby coals. Once again I watched a cloud of fragrant vapours swirl about his head as he lifted the lid.
“This smells really good,” he said to me. “And the bannock looks freshly made. Come on over here and let’s eat before our quarrelsome friend wakes up and adds his hunger to our own.”
“Let me see to the horses first,” I said, only then beginning to marvel at how quickly things had developed here, for tending to our mounts would normally be the first priority of any rider at the end of a journey. I led the two horses away cautiously, for the ground was uneven and littered with sharp-edged, flinty stones that could easily split a hoof. As I did so I heard Will groan, and I looked back just in time to see him thrust himself up onto one elbow.
By the time I had finished tending to the horses and returned to the fireside, the two erstwhile combatants were sitting side by side, Andrew staring thoughtfully into the fire while Will glowered morosely into the bowl from which he was eating. Neither of them spoke to me as I rejoined them, although Andrew glanced up at me and winked, tacitly indicating that he had the situation in hand to his liking, before looking back into the fire. And so I ignored both of them and went about helping myself to some food. I split and spread a slab of bannock and drenched it in the delicious-smelling gravy from the stewpot on the firestones before adding a plump thigh and other pieces of meat from the hares. I then moved to a spot close by the fire, keeping carefully upwind of it, and made myself as comfortable as I could before I started to eat. And still neither man so much as looked at me.
I ate in silence, consuming everything on my plate until I could mop up the last remaining traces of gravy with my last piece of bannock. When I was replete I stood up and carried my plate to the stream, where I used some sandy grit and a piece of cloth to scrub away the congealed grease carefully, without scratching the metal unduly. I then rinsed it again and dried it meticulously before replacing it in my travelling bag. The platter, my own personal salver, was in all probabi
lity the most valuable possession I owned at that time. It had been given to me, with a matching cup, by Bishop Wishart a few years before and it was made of pewter, a rare and precious alloy. It had been made in France and was quite literally irreplaceable, since no one in all Scotland knew the secrets of making pewter.
Will groaned, loudly enough that I thought immediately that he was doing it for effect rather than out of great discomfort. Sure enough, as I turned to look over at him, he flexed his right shoulder dramatically and raised it above his head, bringing his hand down to cup the back of his thick neck.
“Holy Mother of God,” he said. “Did you have to hit me that hard?”
“Don’t play the fool,” said Andrew. “You know damned well I did. And even so, I wasn’t sure I had hit you hard enough. Have you seen yourself recently? Anyone hoping to put you down for long has no choice but to hit you with everything he can muster.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?” Andrew said, his eyebrows raised. “Is that all you have to say? What does ‘hmm’ mean?”
Will sniffed. “I suppose it means I hope you won’t hit me again, for a while at least,” he said.
Unnoticed by either man, I resumed my seat by the fire.
“Where did you learn all those fancy moves?” my cousin asked.
“In England.”
“They’re … elaborate. Flamboyant, even.”
Andrew shrugged. “Aye, mayhap. But effective, too. That was you face down on the ground there, not me. In England nowadays they’re using techniques that were brought back from France and other places overseas. The German states are very enthusiastic about all that, and very thorough in their studies of the tactical uses of what was formerly a simple wooden staff but has become a wooden sword and sometimes a lance.”
“Hmm. Teutons.”
“Aye, Teutons. They started it, or the Emperor Barbarossa’s Teutonic Knights, but that was a long time ago. Barbarossa has been dead for more than a hundred years and matters have come a long way since then. Warfare has changed. Armour and weapons are different and better. Even steel is harder and holds a better edge. And why were you being so evil-tempered and foul-minded when Jamie and I arrived?” The unexpectedness of the question made me blink. “Are you really angry at either one of us?”