The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  I entered the cathedral nave almost perfunctorily, not expecting to see anyone I knew there. I genuflected in front of the main altar and then knelt there for a quarter of an hour, curbing my impatience by imposing a penance upon myself and praying for the souls of the unfortunate hundreds who had died at Stirling the month before. Only when I had completed the number of prayers I had decreed for myself did I rise, genuflect, and go outside again in search of my employer.

  The residence known as the Bishop’s Palace lay at the rear of the cathedral precincts, and it was more of a defensive keep than a house, though no one had ever been able to explain why a bishop should require a castle keep. I made my way directly to the rear of the interior, where the cathedral chapter maintained a suite of offices for diocesan affairs, and I heard my employer before I ever saw him. The door to his inner office was open and his current secretary, whom I had known for years, was seated just outside it, flicking the tip of his nose with the end of a grey goose quill as he peered down at a document held open on his desktop by a quartet of granite pebbles. He looked up, hearing my approach, and his face broke into a smile, but as he started to stand I waved him back into place and silenced him with a finger to my lips, then walked right into the room beyond the open door.

  There was a huge old piece of weathered wood in there, an ancient tree stump that sat upright on the stubs of its dried, sawn-off roots. Its bole, a good fifteen inches in diameter, stretched upwards to the height of a tall, helmed man, and its entire surface was scarred and chipped and scored and dented from years and years of being hacked by swords, or more accurately by a sword. It had been in place when I first arrived there years earlier to take up my duties as a junior secretary, and I had asked about it on my first day because I thought it looked grotesque sitting there in the bishop’s official pontifical office—an unsightly excrescence on a magnificent, highly polished floor of flawlessly milled pinewood. It was the bishop’s aid to meditation, I was told, and my employer would belabour the ancient hardwood mightily as he wrestled with whatever problems were besetting him.

  Now His Grace was at it again, and as he came into view I was reminded of my own situation of several months earlier when I had first regained my feet after a long period of being confined to bed. Even though Robert Wishart was no longer young, his shoulders were still broad and square, if slightly hunched, and his back was still wide, though now somewhat stooped. He was working hard, the blade of his sword whistling as he swung it vigorously. He must have sensed someone behind him, for he swung one more hard, chopping blow, then spun to crouch facing me, his blade extended towards me, clutched firmly in both hands. I saw his eyes flare with surprise, and then he straightened up abruptly and lowered his point.

  “Jamie,” he said, as though he and I had spoken mere hours earlier. “I was beginning to think the Augustinians were going to keep you up there at Cambuskenneth.”

  “No fear of that, my lord,” I said. “I had a task to finish there, and when it was done, I came home. The word of your deliverance from Roxburgh reached us just before I left, and so I wanted to be here to welcome you back to Glasgow.”

  He looked careworn, which was not unusual, for he took his duties seriously and always had, and four months away from his seat would have done nothing for his peace of mind. His face, naturally swarthy and weathered, had always been gaunt and lined, but now his cheeks were sunken and the lines in his face were graven deep, emphasizing the hawk-like jut of his great, bony nose and the sharp glint of his eyes blazing out from beneath fierce, grizzled brows.

  “They treated you well in Roxburgh, my lord?”

  His eyes changed, and then he smiled the little smile I knew so well, the one that told me he had seen through my supposedly innocent question.

  “For jailers, you mean? Aye, I suppose they did. They never maltreated me, if that’s what you are asking, but neither did they let me forget for a minute that I was a prisoner. They gave me clean clothes once a month—I was due another just when your cousin rescued me—and the food was edible. Not enjoyable, mind you, nor even plentiful, and there were times when it was barely adequate, but it was edible. The governor there, a man called Grey, had nothing much to say about anything other than warfare and the headaches of running a garrison. A boring man, he was, with little conversation and less humour. Fortunately, I seldom saw him. But I can see from your face you are concerned about me. Do I look that ill done by?”

  “No, my lord,” I said, shaking my head. “No, you don’t … You’re merely thinner, I suppose.” I nodded towards the tree stump. “I haven’t seen you whacking that thing in years. Why now?”

  He turned away and laid his sword on top of the table. “I felt in need of the exercise. I had little opportunity for anything of that kind in Roxburgh. They seldom let me out of my room.”

  I nodded again towards the stump. “I remember that when you used to attack that thing most strongly, it usually meant you had a thorny problem on your mind. You would keep hacking off splinters of tree until you had resolved it.”

  He smiled again, a small, lopsided grin. “You remember that, do you? I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. You miss but little.”

  “I try not to miss anything, Your Grace. May I ask, then, what’s bothering you now?”

  He pushed his lips out in a pout that I recognized as a sign that he was thinking hard, deciding whether to lie or be truthful, and then he brought up his hand and rubbed his nose hard with his open palm. “Damnation, Jamie,” he said. “You never were an easy one to hoodwink, but that’s why I valued you so much.”

  He crossed to the table and sheathed his sword, then collected his scapular from where he had thrown it over the back of his chair and shrugged into it, pulling it down over his head and then arranging it on his shoulders so that it hung comfortably, front and rear. His pectoral cross lay on the table, too, and he slipped its chain over his head, then hesitated in the act of turning back to face me, his eye fixed on the sheathed dagger attached to the sword belt on the tabletop. He reached out with both hands, drew the weapon, and spun on his heel, throwing the blade end over end at the old tree trunk, some eight paces from where he stood. It crossed the room in a whirling blur and struck the trunk hilt first, leaping straight up in the air and clattering to the floor.

  “Shite!” His voice was harsh as he crossed to where the dagger lay and picked it up, staring down at it as he tested its edge against the ball of his thumb, and I knew, then and there, beyond a doubt, that he had bad news to break to me.

  “What is wrong, my lord?”

  “Murray,” he said.

  I felt the surprise register on my face and in my voice as I responded, “Andrew?”

  “Andrew, his father, and his uncle William. All of them together.”

  “Forgive me, my lord, but I don’t understand,” I said. “Andrew is here and the others are imprisoned in England.”

  “No, one of the others is in France.” He cut himself short and I could see that he was seething with barely suppressed anger. “Word’s been coming in since yesterday. Three separate messengers, the first of them last night and then two more this morning, one from Bristol and one from Westminster. The Bristol message, a brief letter written in haste by Murray of Bothwell himself, William the Rich, says that by the time anyone reads his words in Glasgow, he himself will be in France with Edward, and he does not expect to return to Scotland. No reason given for his being in France or for Edward’s decision to compel him to go there. No explanation of how, why, or when. Merely the word, sent privily in a letter carried by an itinerant friar who was five weeks on the road from there to here.”

  “And the Westminster message?”

  “Mere rumour, passed on to me by a friend in the Bishop of Westminster’s entourage, who had heard someone in authority—he didn’t name names—say that Andrew’s father, the Lord of Petty, is dead. Found dead, apparently, of natural causes—or so we are expected to believe—in London Tower. As I say, though, that i
s no more than rumour. We have no proof of any part of it.” He cocked his head to look at me. “When did you last see young Andrew, and how was he?”

  The word of Andrew’s father’s death had stunned me, notwithstanding the qualifier that had been tendered with it, for it meant, among other things, that Andrew might now be Lord of Petty. “Two weeks ago, Your Grace … No, forgive me, it was closer to three, just before he left Stirling to return to Bothwell. He looked well, I thought. As well as could be expected, I mean, after having a sword thrust through his guts. He had lost weight and looked haggard, as you would expect of a wounded man, and he was in no fit condition to ride a horse—in fact, they took him to Bothwell in a carriage— but Will told me he was recovering more quickly than expected. And his condition could only have improved once he reached Bothwell and had access to proper care and rest.”

  “Aye, and so it might have. Where was Will at that time?”

  “On his way to the Borders. He had left Stirling the day before. What did you mean by ‘so it might have’?”

  “Hmph!” The bishop’s grunt sounded disgusted. “I meant had he stayed in Bothwell as he was supposed to, it would have been good for him.”

  “He didn’t stay?”

  The bishop scowled. “He was gone again within the week. As soon as his escorts departed for Stirling, he was on the road again, riding south and east to East Lothian to join your cousin, who was in Haddington seeing to the collection of food and grain, as decreed by the Perth assembly. They spent much time there together, generating a spate of letters that they signed jointly as commanders of the army of Scotland and the community of the realm. The letters went out to the Hansa trading leagues of every seaport and trading post on the other side of the North Sea, telling them all that the kingdom of Scotland, by the grace of God, has been delivered from the English, its freedom regained in battle, and that Scotland is once again open for trade. They must have had an army of clerics making copies for days on end, though I’m told the letters were all signed on the same day, the eleventh of October.

  “I knew nothing about any of that until I returned from Roxburgh a few days ago. At any rate, Andrew eventually returned to Bothwell, though no one seems to know how or when. That’s all we know—and it’s all we would have known had we not received a letter from Andrew’s uncle, Father David Murray. You remember him, do you not?”

  “I do, my lord. He talked to us about his nephew that night we dined at Turnberry.”

  “That’s him. He wrote to say he had gone to Bothwell recently from Moray, whence he had escorted Andrew’s young wife, who is with child. Upon their arrival they discovered his nephew to be in dire condition—in extremis was how Father Murray phrased it—and not likely to live for long. It seems his wound, while outwardly appearing to mend, had been festering unchecked beneath the skin and had erupted as the result of the hard riding Andrew had done on the way to and from Haddington. Father Murray, knowing nothing of my recent release from Roxburgh, and not daring to leave the young woman alone, wrote to William Lamberton as deputy bishop here in the hope that he might be able to send word to me of Andrew’s likely death.”

  I have no notion of how long I sat there, speechless and sightless, before he called me back to the present, his voice now filled with concern verging on alarm as he asked me how I felt. Even as anger at the inane banality of the question swelled up in me, though, I knew he could not possibly have known how affected I would be by these tidings, for though he was aware that I had known Andrew as a boy, he could not possibly have known about the closeness and affection I had recently developed for my Highland friend.

  I shook my head, attempting to clear it. There was no point, I knew, in saying anything to upset the bishop further, for I could see he was already greatly disturbed, and I remembered the deep, paternal affection he had always shown towards Andrew, even as a boy. And so I merely asked, “Where is Canon Lamberton now, am I permitted to ask?”

  “On his way to Bothwell,” he said, showing no surprise. “He’ll be there by now, I imagine. I should have gone myself, but I could not. I’m bound here for now, tending to several urgent matters, none of which permit me to leave the cathedral, so William went in my place …”

  His voice trailed away, and then, lapsing into Scots as he so often did, he muttered, “The damned young fool. Ye’d think he’d tell somebody he was in pain! Ye’d think he’d hae the sense to ken somethin’ was far frae right, for he must ha’ been in agony, these weeks on end. But no, he was that stubborn and he didna want to be a bother to anybody. An’ his damned Moravian honour wouldna let him whine. God damn the injustice o’ it a’. He was what, twenty-five?”

  I nodded. “Aye, twenty-five. He and I are the same age.” I sat up straighter. “I should go and see him.”

  “No, you should not.” In the blink of an eye, with the change of topic, he had reverted to his normal Latin speech. “That would be a waste of time. Even William might have been too late to see him, for Father Murray said he might not last out the week, and his letter was written last Wednesday, so he meant the end of the week now past. The wound was foul, he said then, and Andrew was unconscious and raving most of the time and growing worse from hour to hour. The odds are he is dead by now, even as we sit here talking. I know Davie Murray well, and he is no alarmist, but he said it would take a miracle to save his nephew’s life.”

  “Dear God in Heaven, protect us all. Have you sent word to Will?”

  “I have, but I’ve no conviction he’ll receive it, for we don’t know where he is. There are reports of his men raiding far and wide in Durham and Northumberland, and even farther west along the Borders, but no one knows where precisely he is, and he likes to keep it that way. He knows the sound of his name strikes terror into English hearts and he uses that terror as a weapon, showing himself time after time in places miles apart, and even having other big men pretend to be him, so that he is being sighted several times a day in different places altogether.”

  “So how many men did you send out to find him?”

  “Three men I trust.”

  “Three? You sent but three, against such odds? Why?”

  “Because we need to be discreet. Until we know for sure of Andrew Murray’s death—the which may God forbid—we need discretion over and above all else.”

  “Why, in the name of all we revere, should we need to be discreet?”

  He looked at me sternly, a frown ticcing at his brows. “Why?” he repeated. “You ask me why? Bethink yourself, man. The entire land is seething with angry, envious men whose power has been usurped by two young upstarts whose names were all but unknown a year ago. Now they are become the most powerful men in all the realm, beloved of the Fates, like Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux, David and Jonathan. Not even our Lord God in Heaven knows what might happen if word were to get out too soon that one of the two has been struck dead, but the likelihood is that the surviving one would not remain long in power.” He paused, head cocked. “You see that, I hope?”

  “I see it now that you bring it home to me,” I said, slumping back into my chair. “You are right, of course. Of the two men, Andrew was the one more acceptable to the magnates. His rank and birth made him one of them, whether they liked it or not, and as such, he provided Will with a degree of authority and dignitas, simply by according him the respect and ranking of an equal. The magnates will waste no time in using Andrew’s death to their own advantage, undermining Will’s authority.”

  “Attempting to undermine his authority.” The bishop’s voice was hard as steel. “I believe they’ll find Will’s position more difficult to undermine than they would have thought possible two months ago.”

  “Aye, they might, but they’ll keep trying. How can we stop them? What can we do if Andrew is already dead?”

  “We can conceal his death for as long as we can. At least until we can sit down with Will and make some kind of plan to deal with what we will all have to face.”

  “Pshaw!” I
threw up my arms. “What kind of plan will keep the magnates from reacting? They’ll move against Will as soon as they hear tell of what has happened, and there won’t be a thing he, or we, can do to stop them.”

  “No, Father, they will not move, not until they have decided what is best for them to do, and they will not do that without consulting one another as to what would be the best way to proceed. And they’ll tread very carefully, believe you me.”

  “Why would you think that, my lord?”

  “Father James, you are Will Wallace’s cousin and you should know why I think it. Think, man! Scotland’s magnates have had their own little fiefdoms to rule since the days of King David, and each of them sees himself as God within his own domain. They listen to no man in deciding what they may and may not do in their own lands, and for hundreds of years they’ve treated their folk like cattle. Stirling Bridge has changed all that. Your cousin and Andrew Murray have changed all that, and I, for one, believe they’ve changed it forever.”

  He fell silent, fingering the silver cross on his breast, then picked up the old, worn sword belt with its attached weapons and crossed to lean the sword against his tree trunk, lodging its plain steel pommel carefully in one of the old, splintered scars he had gouged long since in the once-smooth surface. When he was satisfied the sword would stay in place, he came back towards me, clasping his hands behind his back, beneath the scapular panel that hung there.

  “When I said Andrew Murray and your cousin have changed things forever, I meant every word of it, for I now believe, with all my heart, that the Scots folk will never submit again to the kind of tyranny that the Normans have subjected them to in the past. Let’s admit this, you and I, here, between ourselves and as men of God committed to His Holy Church and the salvation of all souls before and ahead of all human endeavours and loyalties: when we speak of the Scots magnates, we don’t mean the Scots at all. The magnates are all descendants of the Normans who came over here in 1066— two hundred and some years ago—with William the Conqueror, and they have been here ever since, ruling this realm for so long that now they think of themselves as Scots and consider the true Scots to be provided by God for their especial benefit.” He shrugged. “Is it untrue? The exceptions, of course, are the mormaers, but they were never Norman. They were here when the Normans arrived, the ancient earls and rulers of the Gaels.”