The Forest Laird

by Jack Whyte

  “Not so, Bishop. You have no power to hold me here. Father James came in with me, and I will leave with him.”

  “No, you will not. If you do, it will be as a rebel and an outlaw, and if I have to, I will have my men break your legs. I am King Edward’s deputy in this accursed place, and you will be bound by what I tell you to do. I have words for you, and even as an upstart, contumacious Scot, you will be bound by them, so bide you there.”

  We had already heard the steady tramp of mailed feet approaching, and then someone held the flap of the great tent open while a dozen men marched in, accompanied by two sergeants and an armoured, surcoated knight. Bek pointed at me and spoke to the knight. “This one, the priest. Take two men and see him off the grounds—forcibly if he does not move quickly enough to please you. He will wait outside the gates for his friend. The rest of you, have an eye to the big one. I doubt he will have much to say, but attend us while he listens to what I have to say to him.” Bek pointed at me again. “Do not think this affair is over, priest. I know your name and I promise you, wherever you may go from here, you and I will meet again and you will answer for this in curia, before a tribunal of your superiors.” He flicked a finger at de Vrecy. “Out of my sight with him.”

  There was no point in resisting, and so I went quietly enough, with one burly guard’s hand on each shoulder as they pushed me along between them. My escort marched me briskly through the outer gate and past the sergeant guardsman’s post to the seat where Will and I had waited earlier. There they barked an order at me to halt, and one of them pushed me roughly down onto the bench, warning me that I should stay there unless I wanted to be flogged.

  I sat and fumed and waited for what must have been an hour, and then I finally heard them coming from behind the hedge, shouting at each other, laughing and high spirited like any group of young men with idle time on their hands. But when they came into view in the gateway I could only stand and stare, stupefied. They carried Will out through the gates on his back, head down, feet raised behind them as they came. He was unconscious and dripping blood from his backward-hanging head, and six of them held him in a cradle of interlocked arms, like pallbearers, though it was clear from their expressions that they were neither mourning him nor enjoying the strain of carrying his weight. Four more men walked close behind them, men I knew immediately were archers, since all four were unarmoured and carried quarterstaves, and it was they who were shouting and laughing, though none of the hilarity appeared to be directed towards my unconscious cousin.

  As I finally began to pull my wits together, one of the six bearers grunted something to the others and began to count aloud, and on three, they heaved in unison and sent their burden toppling heavily to the ground in front of the gate, where it sprawled in a puddle left from the previous day’s rain. They drew away then, preparing to leave, and I heard what I knew was my own voice whining in wordless protest as I ran to Will and dropped to my knees beside him, but even as I landed, a booted foot struck me high on my right side and sent me reeling. One of the archers stood over me, looking down and grinning as he drew back his boot to kick me again.

  But then an arm interposed itself, thrusting him back and away, and the largest of the four bowmen reached out one-handed, almost casually, and rapped me viciously on the knee with the heavier end of his quarterstaff. In that instant of flaring pain, I became a student with a quarterstaff once again, facing a drubbing from Ewan Scrymgeour.

  I seized the end of the fellow’s staff and jerked it towards me, using it, along with his surprised resistance, to support my weight as I surged to my feet, and then I twisted the weapon from his suddenly unresisting hand, switched my grip, and cracked the heavy butt above his ear before his mouth could even open in disbelief. As he fell sideways I spun towards the others, whirling the staff in my hands until it formed a blurred, semi-solid shield in front of me. I know not, honestly, who was the more surprised by the development, they or I. They certainly had not anticipated finding a scrawny Scots cleric who handled a quarterstaff with authority. I, on the other hand, had not thought to find myself suddenly facing nine armed and soon-to-be-vengeful enemies.

  Even as I weighed the situation, though, it began to change. The man closest on my left began to sway towards me, raising his staff, and another swung away to circle around and come at me from behind. I dropped the first man with a straight-armed chop to the top of his skull, then flung myself sideways, spinning completely around and dropping into a crouch as I brought the full, accelerating weight of my weapon against the back of the other’s knees, felling him like a tree.

  By that time, though, my short-lived advantage had worn itself out, and I felt the weight of a smashing blow across my shoulders, driving me down and onto my face, and I knew as I fell that I would not be rising to my feet again unless someone helped me, which seemed highly unlikely at that point. I sprawled across the body of the man I had hit last, and he was already moving again, scrabbling and kicking in his efforts to stand up. I felt hands grasping me, pulling and heaving at me, and I ended up on my back, my shoulders flat on the ground, gazing up at the foul-tempered gate sergeant who had leapt to straddle me, roaring to everyone else to keep back as he swung a rusty, heavy-bladed sword high in both hands, aiming to cleave my skull. I saw his arms reach the top of their swing and pause there, and as he chopped the blade down towards my head, I remember thinking, “God never wanted me to be a priest,” and I started to close my eyes.

  Before I could, though, something extraordinary happened. The man above me went away. He went very swiftly and suddenly. There one moment, focused tightly on splitting my skull apart, and abruptly gone the next, his disappearance marked by a single flash of disbelief on my part as I saw the tail end of a squared steel rod sprout from his elbow.

  It was a crossbow bolt. Fired by Big Andrew from close range, it had struck squarely and with immense force on the man’s downward-sweeping left elbow, driving his upper arm bone straight back with sufficient violence to shatter the shoulder socket and throw its owner several paces backward in a spinning mass of whirling limbs and gouting blood. I blinked and saw another man go down, hurled backward by an arrow that struck him in the centre of his chest and pierced his iron cuirass and the linked-mail shirt beneath it as if they were made of cloth. Bodkin, I thought, recognizing the only kind of missile that could punch through armour, and then I became aware of the hiss and snap of arrows all around me, and the meaty thump they made when they hit human targets.

  Someone leaned over me, and I heard Ewan Scrymgeour’s voice close to my ear. “Lie still, and we’ll ha’e ye out o’ here in no time. Shoomy, ye have him? Right, then, let’s away. Alan, bring they people wi’ us, cut them loose. Come on, now, quick, afore they come lookin’.”

  I was not badly hurt at all, merely stunned by the blow I had taken across my back and shoulders, and as Ewan and another fellow dragged me hurriedly away, their arms hooked beneath my armpits, I realized that they had ignored Will’s wishes and followed him anyway. And their instincts had been right. Had they not been there, Will Wallace and I would both have died there in front of the camp gates.

  “Wait,” I grunted, scrabbling with my feet. “I can walk. Let me up.” The two men hauling me stopped and looked down at me skeptically. “Really, Ewan, I’m fine. I had the wind knocked out of me, but I’m fine now.”

  I looked back at the scene we were leaving and was unsurprised to see bodies everywhere: the six men-at-arms who had been carrying Will, the four loud-mouthed archers, the sergeant who had been so determined to kill me, the four guards of his detachment—none of them was moving. My gaze went then to the gate in the hedgerow, and I could not believe that no one had come to see what the commotion was about. There must have been at least two hundred men in that encampment.

  Ewan removed his hooked arm from my armpit and helped me to my feet. I swayed there for a moment, collecting myself, then nodded towards Will, who was still being carried by the man Shoomy and three others
. “How is he? I couldn’t tell.”

  “No more could I,” Ewan growled, “but he’s breathing. Now come, we have to get away from here.”

  I fell in beside him, moving quickly, aware that we were less than thirty paces from the edge of the trees that would screen us from the camp gates, but knowing, too, that the pursuit that would follow was bound to be both grim and determined. We had killed English soldiers, and, irrespective of the provocation that had caused it, their companions would want our heads hoisted on poles, to show the world that English lives could not be taken lightly. We would not easily escape punishment for today’s escapade, and that thought made me lengthen my stride.

  The group of freed prisoners, still in their iron collars, scurried to keep up with us.

  “What about them?” I asked Ewan.

  He glanced over to see who I was talking about, then shrugged. “What about them? They’re alive and they’re free again. Outlawed, for a fact, but free.”

  “But what will happen to them?”

  We had reached the edge of the trees, and Ewan turned, waving to the stragglers to hurry and get themselves out of sight. As soon as the last man had passed us, he braced his foot and pulled down the top of his bow stave, bending it until he could remove the bowstring. “Can’t use a bow in the deep woods,” he murmured. “What will happen to them? They’ll continue as before, living in a Scotland that might soon be ruled by England.”

  “No,” I said, “that will never happen. We have our own King now. Where’s your bow case?”

  “That way, about a hundred paces in.” He pointed the way and I followed him. “Once we’d seen where we had to go, we went back in and left everything there.”

  We emerged into a small clearing, where Ewan’s companions were snatching up their bow cases and the other weapons they had left. Knives or swords were distributed to some of the Scots prisoners. Everyone knew we had no time to waste if we were to get away safely, for the English would be hard on our heels, and their outriders would all be mounted.

  We split up, with orders to reassemble in the woods behind Sir Malcolm’s house as soon as could be after dark that night. I ran with Ewan’s group, now numbering seven, and as we slipped away from the oak clearing, we heard the first distant shouts of discovery coming from Bek’s camp.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1

  We began to feel increasingly concerned about Will. We were about an hour along the road from Bek’s encampment, and we had fully expected him to wake up cursing at us for our rough handling of him, but still he had not regained consciousness. Shoomy insisted that we set him down and examine him for fatal wounds that we might not have noticed in our rush to get him away, but we could see nothing that looked life-threatening. He had been badly beaten, evidently with clubs or quarterstaves, and there were other abrasions on his body where he had been kicked and trampled. He was still bleeding sluggishly in places, too, from a scalp wound and a deep puncture that looked like a stab wound in one thigh, but we found nothing to explain why he should remain unconscious for so long.

  We had stopped right outside a farmyard, and when Shoomy declared that we could carry Will no farther, for fear of injuring him more gravely than he already was, the yard was the first place we looked for some other means of transporting him. A dog began barking as soon as we approached the gate, and moments later the farmer himself came out to investigate. He took one look at us in his gateway and turned to run, but one of Shoomy’s men was already leaping to restrain him, and before he could shout to warn anyone else, the hapless man found himself with his back against a wall, a hand over his mouth, and a knife point at his throat.

  Shoomy stepped up beside his man and pulled the knife wielder’s arm down to his side. “You are in no danger from us, no matter what you think,” he said quietly to the farmer. “We are Scots and freemen, but we had a tulzie wi’ some English soldiery a few miles back along the road. They’ll be following us, but they’ll no’ bother you, I think, so be it we’re long gone by the time they get here. But we ha’e an injured man wi’ us and we need some way of carryin’ him. If ye can help us, we’ll pay ye for your time and trouble and be on our way quickly. What say you?”

  The farmer did not hesitate. “What d’ye need?”

  “Something wi’ wheels, but light, if you ha’e such a thing.”

  “Aye. I’ve a light cart I use for carrying poles. A handcart. There’s room for a man to lie down on it. You can pull it atween ye. It’s ower there.” He pointed to a high-wheeled handcart leaning against the side of a shed, and a short time later he stood clutching a silver shilling—thrice the value of a new cart—as we strode away, having piled the cart with straw to make a bed for our passenger.

  Ewan and I parted from Shoomy and his companions then, leaving them to go directly to the Wallace house in Elderslie while we took the long way round, passing through Paisley town to collect Mirren. That little task had been difficult for a few moments, because Mirren had come frowning to us after a nun summoned her, and as she grappled with the unexpectedness of seeing us there and then looked for Will, an entire range of expressions flickered over her face.

  “Where is he? What happened?”

  Ewan cleared his throat. “They took him … beat him … the English. He went into Bek’s camp alone. You know what he’s like. But we managed to get him away from them and he’s fine, I think. Shoomy’s ta’en him to Elderslie. We came to get you.”

  “You think? Am I supposed to take comfort from that? You think my man is fine? I don’t care what you think, Ewan Scrymgeour. In God’s name, tell me what you know. Is he wounded?”

  “No, Mirren. Hurt, aye, but no’ wounded. He was badly beaten—God alone knows how many men were involved in that, but there must have been a wheen o’ them—and we knew nothing of it until they brought him out of their camp and threw him in the roadway.”

  She turned her wide eyes on me, and in spite of having done nothing wrong, I felt my face flush with shame.

  “And you,” she said. “You were there with him, were you no’? Did you just stand there and watch?”

  I shook my head, but before I could speak she continued, “You were supposed to protect him, Jamie Wallace—to stand beside him with your pens and ink and bear witness for him, protecting him just by being there. That was why he took you instead of any of the others.”

  I was still shaking my head, though slowly now. “No,” I heard myself say. “They forced me to leave. They kept me outside the camp gates while Will met with the Bishop.”

  She shook her head in a tiny gesture of disgust and looked back at Ewan, who started to tell her about how I had attacked the archers, but she cut him off. “Where is he now? Elderslie, you say?”

  “Aye, he’ll be there by now,” Ewan said. “I told everyone to meet at his old hut in the forest behind the house as soon as it was dark enough for them to get there without being seen. Alan and Shoomy and John know where it is. They’ll show the others.”

  “What others?” But before he could explain she was turning away. “We should hurry, then,” she said. “It’s near dark already. I’ll have to see to Mairidh before I go. She’ll fret if she doesna know where I am. You wait here. I won’t be long.”

  As she began to move away, Ewan spoke again. “How … how are your cousins?” He sounded more ill at ease than I had ever heard him, but at least he had been able to voice the question that had been stuck in my throat.

  Mirren looked back at him, and her shoulders slumped noticeably. “My cousins? They are mostly dead, I fear.” Her voice was low, her tone more sad than mourning. “Shelagh died this afternoon, and Morag has not opened her eyes since she was found this morning. Only Mairidh shows any awareness of who or where she is, and she is very … weak.” She straightened her shoulders then. “She’ll be fine among the sisters here until I come back. But I need to see to Will. Wait you here, then. I’ll no’ be long.”

  2

  Mirren stood looking down at Will
’s motionless form on the cot, her mouth compressed into a lipless line as her eyes flitted around the tiny, crowded room. “Just like Morag,” she said, almost to herself, and then raised her eyes to where Shoomy stood at the foot of the cot. “When did he last say anything?”

  Shoomy shook his head wordlessly, and a small frown ticked between Mirren’s brows. “Moved, then—when did he last move?” “He hasna moved, not since they brought him out o’ that damned camp.”

  Mirren drew in her breath with a hiss and glanced towards the brazier on the stone slab in the corner of the hut. “Right, I want that fire built up and a pan of water on it to heat. And I’ll want some clean rags to wash him with.” She looked around at the crowd that hemmed her in. “How many of you are there, in God’s name?”

  Alan Crawford answered her. “There’s a score of us, milady. Twenty.” “Twenty! And have you no other place to go? Am I to have all of you in here all night?”

  “No, Mirren, you’re not,” Ewan said, and everyone turned to look at him. “Will and I have four big leather tents in the back storeroom. They’ll hold six men apiece, so there’ll be room for everyone to sleep dry, and we’ll be out of your hair once we’ve learned how to put them up in the dark. Forbye, there’s plenty o’ firewood in the stack out there, and a good, deep fire pit that canna be seen frae a distance, so some of you—you, Shoomy, and a couple o’ others—can start building us a fire to cook on.” He clapped his hands together loudly. “Right then, all o’ ye, outside and gi’e Mistress Wallace room to think. Andrew and John, you come wi’ me. You too, Alan, and we’ll find those tents.”

  As the crowd began to file out of the hut, Ewan raised his hand to catch my eye. “Jamie,” he said. “It might be a good idea for you to go up to the big house. Tell your auntie that we’re here and explain what’s going on, just in case she hears about it otherwise and grows afeared. I don’t think there’s much chance of Bek’s people looking for us this far away, but we’d be fools to take risks when there’s no need, so we’d better post some guards out by the road south. Tell your auntie we’ll be away in the morning by first light, lest we endanger her.”