The Forest Laird

by Jack Whyte

  “So what did this fellow say?”

  “Nothing much. Will’s manner had cowed him. He was the old man’s steward, as I said, but a mere house servant. He had little knowledge of the working end of the old man’s business, and he mumbled something about the workforce all having gone home to wait for what would happen next. And then he told us that another wool merchant, a Master Waddie, would be coming over from Paisley in two days’ time to act in the interests of the son and heir, taking a detailed inventory of the materials in store and the contracts outstanding. He said word would not yet have had time to reach young Master Graham, who served the Lord Robert Bruce as a verderer and would most likely be somewhere on the Bruce lands in Annandale. It would take him, the man believed, at least two days to reach home, so he and the Waddie fellow might well arrive at the same time.

  “Will said he would talk to Lord Ormiston, but that his lordship had been long away from home, about his affairs in Edinburgh, and was anxious to get back to his wife, who was infirm. He then asked if we might be permitted to pay our last respects to the old man before we left, on his lordship’s behalf, and the fellow let us into the house and then left us alone. Old Graham was laid out on his bed in the main room. There was a priest there, and two monks, and a couple of others, men and women both, most of whom were peering about them as though they had never been there before.”

  “And then?”

  “We knelt and prayed by the bedside. Well, we knelt anyway, while the priest prayed. And then, having established our right to be there, about our supposed master’s business, we walked around the other buildings, the warehouses and barns and stables, and three big, stinking sheds where the wool was treated and combed before they baled it.” A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “At that point I think you would have been right about the thievery. Will was looking, I believe, for an easy way to rob the place.

  “One of the stone warehouses had a private room with a padlocked door, and it was obvious that the old man had worked in there on his affairs. But the padlock was unlocked, the door was open, and no one was nearby, so we went in. There were papers and parchments everywhere, strewn about all over the place, as though someone had been rooting around in there looking for something to steal. Will opened a small wooden chest that sat on the big writing table and pulled out a handful of scrolls—single sheets of parchment, all of them unsealed but rolled and tied, with ribbons and blank seals attached. He opened one, and then another, and then he began to smile. He flipped me the one that had made him smile. I looked at it closely, but it took me a while to realize its import …” His voice faded and he smiled again at the memory.

  “Well, what was it?” I prodded.

  “A contract, a bill of sale. With spaces left blank for the details of the transaction. But it was signed by Alexander Graham. None of the others were, but for some reason the old man had signed his name and set his seal to this one. Will took it back from me and tucked it and three others into his scrip, and then we went off and continued our inspection. All three barns were stuffed to the roof with bales of wool, some of it prime, some poorer. But they were stuffed, Jamie. Hundreds and hundreds of bales. We found out later that they had been preparing to ship trains of wagons to Glasgow, Dumfries, and Edinburgh the following week, for the Michaelmas Fairs in September, less than a month away.

  “On our way back out to our horses, we met the steward again, and he was as friendly as could be. Will asked him if someone could tell us about wagons, and he directed us to one of the wooden barns outside the compound walls, where we found an old man getting ready to leave. He showed us an enormous wagon, the biggest I have ever seen, and told us it could carry ten full-sized bales with ease. Then he showed us the leather sheets they used to cover the bales for protection, and the long straps they used to secure the load. Will asked him how many horses, and he told us two. Two big whoresons was what he said.”

  In spite of my queasiness at the crime being described, I found myself fascinated. “So what happened then?”

  “We came right back to Paisley, to find help for what Will had in mind. We needed some men we could trust, and so we went to Jamie Crawford’s howff.”

  “Of course you did.” I knew Crawford’s howff well. It had been a favoured haunt of ours for a long time, a plain but well-run tavern frequented by archers and other interesting characters, where the food was simple but wholesome, the ale was dependable, and no one ever asked awkward questions.

  “One of the sons, Alan, was there,” Ewan said, “and he and Will went off into a corner. I could tell, watching them, that Alan liked what he was hearing, grinning and nodding his head and looking around the room.”

  Alan Crawford and Will had been friends since our first year at the Abbey. He was a big, bluff fellow, Will’s age and almost as big. The only weaponry Alan ever carried was a long, single-edged dirk that hung at his side—I had never known him to bare the blade—and a heavy quarterstaff that Will had taught him to use. He was the only man I had ever seen who could best Will Wallace in a toe-to-toe bout. The respect that achievement garnered him was widespread.

  “Did you know what Will was telling him?”

  Ewan grinned. “That we had need of help and would pay well for two weeks’ work. Four men, to help us take a heavy wagon north, then bring it back. Good men, willing to work hard and to fight if need be. A silver groat a day, each man.”

  I stifled the urge to whistle. A groat, our smallest silver coin, was worth fourpence, and the maximum going wage for a skilled labourer was twopence a day. A groat a day, for two weeks’ worth of easy work, was a deal of money.

  “So,” I said instead. “Did you find your four?”

  “Five,” Ewan answered, his grin still in place. “Alan was the first, but there was a man there we had not expected to find. You remember Robertson, the archer Will bested the day he first met Mirren? Well, he was there, and Alan vouched for him. He remembered Will and was glad to see him—no hard feelings at all—so he was our second. Then there was Big Andrew Miller, who’s always ready for anything that smells of a fight, and Long John of the Knives was the fourth.”

  The faces of the last two men flashed into my mind, although I had not seen either one in years. Big Andrew’s name was a jest, for he was one of the smallest men in Paisley, but he was lean and wiry and as strong as a braided sinew bowstring, and he carried a crossbow wherever he went. Long John of the Knives, on the other hand, towered several inches over Will, and there was never any doubt of where his name came from. He wore a heavy belt around his waist, and from it hung a dozen sheathed knives, all of different sizes. Long John could sink any one of them into any surface, with astonishing speed, from twenty paces. He was a peaceful man, though, and threw only at targets, perhaps because no one ever gave him cause to take offence. Will, I thought, had chosen well.

  “Who was the fifth, then?”

  “An outlander, a Gael from the northwest, from an island called Skye. He had been in Paisley for a month or so, and Alan and Robertson had both befriended him. No one knew much about him, but both men vouched for him as being tight lipped, trustworthy, and a dour man in a fight. They called him Shoomy, but his real name is Seumas, Gaelic for James. Will had been watching him since we arrived, and I could tell he was taken by the man, though it might just have been the sword. Shoomy carries a sword that’s much like Will’s bow—bigger and longer and more dangerous looking than any other to be seen. He’s a big lad, tall and lean, but well muscled and quick, and that sword gives him twice the reach of any man around.”

  He scratched gently at the side of his nose. “So, there we were within the hour, seven of us in all, and a bargain struck. Will borrowed ink and pens from Jamie Crawford and went away to make his own arrangements for the following day, while I rented some nags for the five lads.

  “We slept in the stable at the howff that night and were on the road by dawn. By mid-morning we were back at the Graham place. There was hardly anyone there
—a few labourers lazing about and a huddle of women carding wool was all we saw. Will presented the steward with a completed contract for the delivery of nine bales of prime wool and the rental of a heavy wagon and team to transport them. It bore the name of Lord Thomas Ormiston of Dumfries—we discovered later that he had been dead for six years by then,” he added, flashing me a grin, “and the signature and seal of Alexander Graham himself, indicating the full amount had been paid months earlier, delivery to wait upon Lord Ormiston’s return from the north. We received a written bill of sale in return, left one of the nine bales as surety for the return of the wagon, then loaded the remaining eight and headed, everyone supposed, for Dumfries.”

  “It was theft, then. So where did you go?”

  “To Glasgow, to Bishop Wishart. He heard Will’s confession and granted him absolution once he’d heard the entire tale. Restitution received for harm done, he said—all right and proper. And then he sent us north with the wool, to Sir Andrew Murray.”

  “In Moray? Why would he send you all the way up there?”

  Ewan rearranged his long legs, crossing one over the other. “Because he is a bishop and God works in mysterious ways. You should know that, and you almost a priest.”

  “I’m serious, Ewan. Why?”

  Ewan looked at me directly then, no trace of humour in his eyes. “Because he is the senior Bishop of Scotland at this time and he believed, for reasons he didna see fit to explain to us, that sending Will up there would be for the good of this realm. There were fell things happening at that time. Edward of England had named Bishop Bek of Durham his deputy in Scotland, for one thing. Bek is a dour and humourless man devoted to his King before his Church. Wishart had no love for Bek then and has even less now.

  “He required Will to make contact with the younger Murray and renew their acquaintance while delivering certain … matters—several documents of what he termed ‘some delicacy’—directly to Sir Andrew’s attention. He left us in no doubt of the importance of what he required of us.”

  “Wait. Are you saying Wishart included you in his designs?”

  “Aye, but only because I was already there with Will and Will vouched for me. But in return for Will’s services, and very much to the point at the time, Wishart offered rich payment. He would speak personally, he said, with Mirren’s father, whom he knew well, on Will’s behalf. And the blood-price wool would be of use to Murray, he said, for there had been a blight of some kind among the sheep in the north, and we would be well paid for it. The money gained from that would enable Will to offer Master Braidfoot a suitable bridal price for his only daughter, and the Bishop would then grant Will a position as a verderer, with a good, strong house, on the Wishart family lands near Jedburgh.” He looked at me from beneath his arched right eyebrow. “Ye’ll see, I think, it wasna an offer Will could refuse.”

  I felt slightly abashed. “Yes, I can see that. Especially in his frame of mind at the time. And so you travelled north. I’m guessing it went well there, for you’ve said Will is married and living and working in the south now.”

  He nodded. “Aye. It took us eight days to reach Murray’s lands, and it was an interesting journey. Scotland is a wild place nowadays, much changed since King Alexander died, and there were times when we were glad there were seven of us, for had we been fewer in number we would have been plucked like fowl along the road and left wi’ nothing.”

  “What d’you mean? You would have been robbed?”

  “Robbed and killed, lad. None of us doubted that, once we saw how it was out there. There’s no law beyond the burghs today. Once out of the towns and into the countryside, it’s every man for himself and God help the unprepared. The whole world is out of balance. Without a king to hold them in check, the nobles—or so they like to call themselves—are all become savages, every petty rogue of them looking out for himself alone. Each one of them treats his holdings as his own wee kingdom, to be ruled as he sees fit, using whatever private army he can afford to hire. Which means that there’s no order anywhere—no discipline, no loyalty, no honour—and a traveller moving through the land runs a gamut of risks at every turn, like to lose everything he possesses each time he meets a stranger. They are all bandits, Jamie, soldiery as well as outlaws, and common, decent folk live in terror of their lives.

  “Three times we encountered what might have been serious trouble on the road. Three times in eight days. And on one of them, north of Stirling, we had no other choice than to fight. We left eight dead men behind us, eight out o’ nigh on twenty who attacked us, but thank God none of them were ours. We took down five o’ those early, with our bows—me and Robertson and Will—and Big Andrew’s crossbow. By that time, though, the others had come too close for bow work, but Long John and Shoomy killed three more of them before they could blink, and the rest ran away.”

  I could only shake my head, unable to believe that the situation could be as bad as Ewan was saying.

  “Anyway, we found Sir Andrew where he was supposed to be, and young Andrew was with him. Between the pair o’ them, they gave us a chieftain’s welcome. I couldna believe how happy your friend Andrew was to see Will, and it seemed to be mutual—Will was brighter than I had seen him since before he fell foul o’ the Graham fellow.” He lapsed into silence, staring into the fire, and I saw his eyelids starting to droop.

  “Don’t nod off now, Ewan,” I said, afraid of losing him and the story both. “They were still friends, then?”

  He blinked owlishly. “Oh aye! It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. You know Will, he seldom mixes well wi’ strangers, and there they were, after five or six years, embracing each other and laughing together like brothers who had been apart for no more than an hour. Brotherly, though God knows there’s little resemblance between them apart from size. And yet there’s something each of them has that’s reflected in the other. Don’t ask me what it is, for I can’t say. The closest I can come to it is that they share a common … light.” He winced. “That sounds daft, I know, but each of them has this glow about him that seems to spill out whenever they’re excited, and those two get each other stirred up all the time. You can almost see it—their excitement, I mean—everyone around them feels it.”

  He raised his hands in surrender. “That’s it, lad. I barely know what I’m saying, but I know I have to sleep. I’ve been on the road since before dawn, and now that I’m old, I need my rest.” He looked across at me. “An hour or two wouldna hurt you, either.”

  “But I want to ask you about—”

  “Ask me tomorrow. I’ll be in better fettle for talking once I’ve slept.”

  There was no point in arguing, and so we went to find our beds. Whereas I have no doubt that Ewan was asleep before he even lay flat, I lay awake for a long time, thinking about all that he had told me. And then, just as I was drifting to sleep at last, I tensed, my mind suddenly crystal clear again.

  Ewan had been hiding as he waited for me to reach him that day. Ewan, masked and unexpectedly returned after two full years away from Elderslie, should have had no reason to hide himself in a clump of brambles. Reason to be cautious, yes, but to hide from the whole world?

  3

  People had already started arriving from neighbouring houses and hamlets by the time I rolled out of bed soon after daybreak, and more kept coming throughout the morning, turning the entire household and the grounds into a frenzy of preparations. Cousin Anne arrived before mid-morning with her husband and her three children, and Aunt Margaret conscripted me to take the children for a walk in the grounds, to keep them out of the way of the work ongoing everywhere, so I did not even set eyes on Ewan until after the midday meal had been served. Trays and platters of cold meats, pickled roots and onions, and slabs of fresh bread with jugs of cold spring water from the well were carried out from the kitchens and set on tables for people to help themselves however and whenever they wished.

  I had already eaten by the time Ewan appeared, and when I saw the long tube of
the bow case hanging from his shoulder I guessed he had been practising in the nearby woods. He winked at me as he approached the serving tables, then unslung the bow case and set it down beside his quarterstaff before beginning to load a wooden platter for himself. I went to fetch us a couple of mugs of ale from the kitchens, then crossed to where he had found a seat at an unoccupied table under a tree, against the wall of one of the outbuildings. He nodded his thanks as he took the ale, and I sat sipping at my own as he wolfed down his food. When he had swallowed the last mouthful, he leaned back and quaffed off what seemed like half of his ale. Then, typically, he belched.

  “That was good,” he said. “But you don’t look happy. What’s on your mind?”

  “Questions,” I murmured. “More questions.”

  He looked around us casually “Ask, then. We’re alone. What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know why you were hiding yesterday when we met, because I don’t believe it had anything to do with your being cautious about Graham of Kilbarchan.” He didn’t stir and his expression betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. “Whatever you were hiding from, whatever it was about, it’s much more recent than the trouble that sent you away from here two years ago. Is it not?”

  He tilted his head slightly to one side, and then he nodded. “Aye, it is. I was going to tell you about it.” He glanced around again. “Will wants to come home. Sent me to see if it was safe.”

  “He wants to—? What’s stopping him? Let him come! Go back and tell him we’re waiting for him, then bring him back, wife and all.”

  The big archer ducked his head. “Not quite that simple, Jamie. That’s why he sent me up alone. To check out the possibilities, see what’s to be seen.”

  “In what sense? What are you looking for?”