The Forest Laird

by Jack Whyte

  In all, seventy-eight men died that first day in June. None of them were ours. Thus the word was spread, in the name of King John Balliol, that a new presence was active in Scotland’s border country and to the north of it; a vengeful presence, bent upon the protection of the common folk.

  For a time after that, the entire border territory lay quiet while the harriers who had provoked Will’s anger took stock of their situations and debated how next to proceed, for it transpired that they had larger matters than an outbreak of border warfare to concern them, and far more to worry about than the threats of a ragtag collection of bare-arsed outlaws snarling at them from the shadows of Selkirk Forest. And so, hesitant and probably afraid to aggravate a situation that they did not yet fully understand, the oppressors at the local levels of the reprisals held their forces in check while they waited for further instructions from their masters.

  Tension had been building for more than a year between the new Scots monarch and his increasingly impatient and domineering English counterpart, who had for all intents and purposes placed him on the throne and now saw no reason to disguise the fact that he considered John of Scotland to be in his debt and in his pocket thereafter. The pressure of an impending confrontation between the two monarchs had every political opportunist in Scotland on tenterhooks that summer of 1295, wondering which way to jump next in order to safeguard his own wealth and welfare. It was obvious that choices would soon have to be made, by every noble house and nobleman in Scotland. Which of the two kings was most like to win in this contest—a battle of wills but not necessarily a war? The odds greatly favoured Edward, but John was a relatively unknown quantity, and no one had any desire to commit to either monarch prematurely, or to be seen to pick sides too soon, lest he lose everything on a wrong bounce of the dice.

  Throughout that entire period Bishop Wishart kept us informed, to the best of his considerable abilities, on what was happening politically within and even beyond his territories as the various families, houses, and personalities of the magnates manoeuvred for power and position. The Bishop’s network of clerical spies and agents, as I knew from close experience, grew ever larger and more complex, fuelled by the fierce, protective ardour of Wishart’s concern for the Church’s welfare in Scotland, its integrity and very identity within the Scots realm. Even with that backing, though, His Grace could not supply us with all the knowledge we required in such fluid conditions, for the nature of the information we needed most urgently was not the kind that lent itself to discussion in the company of priests or strangers. Men who spoke of such topics were dealing in grave risk, entailing treachery and even treason, with dispossession, imprisonment, and death looming over them. That amount of risk, aligned with such dire penalty, tightened men’s tongues, so it was unsurprising that our sources all dried up in short order as that summer settled in.

  2

  E very now and then, in the life of each of us, a day comes along that seduces us with its unusual delights and leads us far astray from where our so-called better judgment warns us we should be, and yet so attractive are the fruits it offers us that we can set our consciences aside for a while and give ourselves over to unaccustomed pleasures.

  On the eighteenth morning of July that year I found myself in such a situation. I remember the date precisely because Ewan laughed about it when he came to visit me that morning, after attending my pre-dawn Mass. It was his natal day, he told me. He was now forty-three years old, and he and his cousin Alec had decided to celebrate the date properly for the first time in years, by spending the entire day in activities that no one, anywhere, would be able to call useful.

  The statement was so astonishingly unlike anything that I had ever heard Ewan say that I had to smile when I heard it, knowing exactly whence it had sprung. I was at loose ends that morning, by merest chance and for the first time in weeks, and I can still recall the surge of high spirits with which I laughed in return and told Ewan I would be glad to assist them with their celebrations on such a beautiful day.

  Alec, whom I had met weeks earlier and liked immediately, was a newly discovered cousin, another Scrymgeour. Younger than Ewan but older than Will, he had come into the forest a few months earlier, announcing loudly that he had come seeking the warrior William Wallace, to offer him his sword and services. He had been taken to meet Will, who had greeted him with cautious reserve and more than a little suspicion, wondering how anyone from Argyll could legitimately claim to have heard of activities in a forest so far to the south. Those suspicions, though, had been short lived, and the two men had become close and trusting friends within mere days. From the perspective of years I can see it was inevitable that, with his imposing size, ferocious loyalty, and formidable fighting skills, Alexander Scrymgeour would, in a very short space of time, become one of Will’s staunchest and most distinguished followers.

  “When did you last draw a bow?” Ewan asked me.

  I had to think, calculating rapidly. “Two years ago, at least. Why?”

  “Because I think it’s time for you to reintroduce yourself to the discipline. You’re growing soft and pudgy.”

  “I am not! There’s no fat on this frame, if you would care to test it.” I stopped. “Besides, I have no choice there, Ewan, and you know it. I am a priest. I cannot carry a weapon.”

  “Pshaw! You could if you wanted to. Your own Bishop Wishart has no fear of carrying a sword—nor of using it if he has to.”

  “But His Grace—”

  “Oh, relax. I said it’s time for you to reintroduce yourself to the discipline. I did not say to killing. It’s the training, Jamie, that will keep you fit and hale. Come with us now. I’m going to try to teach Alec here to use a quarterstaff. Too late for him to hope to learn to draw a bow.”

  “Mind your mouth, Cousin. I can draw a bow.”

  Ewan responded without even looking at his cousin, speaking quietly as always. “Too late to mind my mouth, it’s ruined. And too late for you to learn to draw a bow—a real bow, I mean, like mine, a round yew bow. The other kind, the kind your folk use, can barely throw an arrow half the length of mine. You’ll see, Cousin. You too, Jamie, come along.”

  “I’ll come, but I no longer have a bow. I have a staff, but it’s for walking and not heavy enough for fighting, even if I wished to.”

  “I know that. We brought two with us. You may use mine. I’ll wager you’ve not lost the knack of it. Now then, we have food and even a flask of wine, and it’s a fine day and we have no demands on us, so come, let’s waste no more of it.”

  Three hours later, I awoke from a doze with the sun burning my face through a gap in the canopy of leaves above my head. We had found a pleasant spot on the banks of a wide stream that had once been a wider river, and had made man-sized targets from a couple of ancient logs that we dragged from the stream bed and lodged upright against the flank of the former riverbank. Ewan had quickly demonstrated the truth of what he had told Alexander, for the big Scot, despite his enormous muscles and breadth of shoulder, had been unable to draw Ewan’s longbow to its full extent. He had tried manfully for almost half an hour, but had finally slumped down on the stream bank without having been able to send a single arrow effectively towards the two targets.

  I had fared little better, though somehow my muscles still seemed to remember the knack of combining the series of movements that produced the archer’s pull. I managed to cast three arrows with a degree of accuracy, though I hit neither target, but then my performance deteriorated rapidly as my body rebelled against the unaccustomed stresses. For another half-hour after that, we tried one another with the quarterstaves, and I was the one who proved most useless there, my muscles long unused to the efforts and tensions of wielding the weapon. And then, eventually, we had eaten, washing the food down with some of the wine we had brought with us and diluted with clear stream water, and dozed off on the grassy bank, beneath the shade of a towering elm tree.

  I rolled onto my side to escape the direct heat of the sun and
saw Ewan sitting on the edge of the bank, his feet dangling in the water as he concentrated, head down, on something in his fingers.

  “What are you doing?”

  He cocked his head towards me without taking his eyes off whatever he was holding. “I’m getting ready to catch our dinner. There’s a deep hole not far downstream and it looks to be a haven for fine, juicy trout. I remembered I had some hooks in my scrip, but they had strings attached and now they’re all a-tangle and I’m trying to unsnarl them. If I succeed, I shall go fishing. If I do not, I’ll throw the whole mess into the river.”

  “And which will it be, think you?” Alec had sat up, too, and now sat squinting towards where Ewan worked meticulously, his tongue protruding as he frowned in concentration over his hooks.

  “Probably the river, the way things are looking now,” Ewan growled.

  “Aye. Well, keep trying, and I’ll go and try my hand at the guddlin’.”

  Smiling to myself, I rose to my feet and followed Alec, intrigued to see how he would fare. I had seen many try but few succeed at guddling, for it involved stroking the belly of a fish and lulling it until you could grasp it and flip it up onto the bank. It was not easy to do, but neither was it impossible—it merely required endless patience and an ability to lie still and move one’s questing hand slowly and imperceptibly once it was in the water.

  It was clear from the outset that Alec was a master guddler. Within minutes he located a low spot on the riverbank, with a deep channel beneath it, and was soon bare from the waist up, lying full length on the grass with his arm sunk almost to the shoulder beneath the water and his gaze fixed on the large, fat trout that hovered below him. In mere minutes, it seemed to me, he surged up and threw the sparkling fish high into the air to land on the grass behind him, and by the time I had scrambled after it and killed it with a sharp blow to the head from my knife hilt, he was back on his side again, peering down into the water in search of his next catch.

  Ewan, in the meantime, had untangled his hooks and was paying us no attention as he pulled up clods of earth in the hunt for worms. I watched idly as he caught one fat grub and threaded it carefully onto a hook attached to a long length of twine, then cast it out into the gentle current of the stream. He, too, had Fortuna on his side that afternoon, and between his efforts and Alec’s, we ended up with six fine trout, all about a foot in length. I foraged for firewood and suitable firestones, then kindled and tended the fire while Ewan mixed a dough for bannocks and set them to bake on a flat stone among the coals. When the time was right, Alec, who had cleaned the fish and flavoured them with salt and wild onions, spitted them expertly on sticks and arranged them over the fire, tending them carefully.

  We ate surrounded by a magnificent panoply of birdsong, and none of us spoke a single word throughout the meal; we were too appreciative of God’s bounty, savouring every delicious mouthful, and when nothing remained but the fish heads, skins, and bones, Alec sighed blissfully and tipped those into the fire.

  It was yet early, with a good six hours of July daylight left to us, and we decided to walk again, for the sheer pleasure of it, and so I shouldered Ewan’s quarterstaff, leaving him to carry his bow in its long case. Alec had his own staff, and so we walked for an hour or so, seldom speaking but enjoying our companionship and the beauty of the terrain that surrounded us as the deer path we were following led us gradually higher until we reached a rock-strewn hilltop from which we could look down on the greenwood spread out at our feet.

  “Look at yon beauty,” Alec said, nodding downhill to our right, to where a fine stag stood poised in an open glade, his head high as he sniffed at the breeze for any hint of danger. He sensed none, and we watched as he lowered his head eventually and grazed, following the lure of the richest plants until he vanished among the surrounding trees. I was turning to look behind me when I saw Ewan freeze. “What?” Alec asked before I could even think to speak. “You see something?”

  “Aye, but I don’t know what … Something, though. A flash, yonder between the hills, about two miles out.”

  “Hmm. Jamie, did you see anything?”

  “No, but I saw Ewan see it.”

  “Right, then. Between the two hills. Three pairs of eyes are better than one …”

  Several minutes passed before the next visible stirring occurred, but I saw it instantly.

  “There!”

  “Aye,” Alec growled. “What did you see?”

  “It was a man, I think, but it might have been two.”

  “Two it was,” Ewan said in his soft voice. “Two men, one right behind the other, coming towards us. They crested a small ridge, I believe. One head visible for a speck of time, followed by the other. Coming this way now, but headed where, I wonder …” He coughed gently, clearing his throat. “I don’t know the path they’re on, don’t know where it goes or whether or not it forks, but if it keeps coming straight this way, then it will have to go down there to our left, parallel to the way we came. We’ll stay here and wait for a closer look, and if we think that’s where they’re going, we can cut back down and catch them as they come out into the water meadow where we ate.” He shook his head. “Two men? Alone? They’re either mad or they’re looking for Will’s lads.”

  A short time later, the two appeared again.

  “One of them is wearing armour.”

  “Aye, and the other is not. And one’s on a horse, the other on a mule.”

  Alec jerked his head around to stare at his cousin. “How can you tell that?”

  “I can see its ears. Can’t you?”

  The other man looked at me and rolled his eyes. “No, but I’ll take your word for it. A horse and a mule. That means a knight and his servant.”

  “It might,” Ewan said. “Then again, it might not. The man is muffled in a heavy cloak, so his armour might be no more than a breastplate, and the servant might be a woman. Would you care to make a wager?”

  I had been half listening to the pair of them, keeping my eyes on the newcomers. “They turned right,” I said. “Their right, our left. I saw them go, and then they disappeared. If we’re to be in place by the time they arrive down there, we had better go now.”

  Within moments we were striding back along the path we had followed on the way up, moving twice as fast as we had earlier.

  “Damnation,” Alec growled. “We only have the one bow.”

  “It’s all we’ll need, believe me,” Ewan answered. “Give me an open space in which to aim and shoot, and this bow against two men is far more than we’ll need.”

  We reached the point where the path had started to climb, and bore right from there, leaving the path and skirting a fringe of hawthorn trees and willows until we came again to the path, where it entered the water meadow. Ewan looked around quickly and pointed to a copse less than twenty paces from the pathway, and we followed him as he made straight towards it. The strange pair, whoever they were, would have to come along the path behind us and would pass us in the open, providing us with an unobstructed view of them. None of us spoke as we entered the trees and took up positions from which we could see the pathway without being seen ourselves, and we settled down to wait. Ewan, the only one of us with a weapon, strung his bow carefully and then thrust three arrows, point down, into the ground in front of him.

  Mere minutes later, the two riders came into view from the north, and at the sight of the one wearing armour I straightened up. “It’s His Grace,” I said. “Bishop Wishart, in his other guise.” I stepped from hiding and walked out into the open.

  Wishart called out my name and kicked his mount to a canter as soon as he recognized me, and the man behind him on the mule attempted to follow suit, but his mount had a mind of its own and refused to change its plodding gait, so that the gap between the two men widened rapidly.

  “Who did you say this is? A bishop?”

  Alec sounded skeptical, and I glanced at him, grinning. “The Bishop, Alec. You are about to meet His Grace Robert Wishart, the fo
rmidable Bishop of Glasgow. He is a grouchy old terror who has no time for fools or folderols, so smile, man, for I promise you will enjoy him.”

  His Grace of Glasgow rode right up to us before drawing rein and scanning each of us from head to foot as we each bowed to show him our respect. Ewan and I bent more deeply than did Alec, who watched to see what we would do before he committed himself, then bent forward stiffly from the waist and lowered his chin. The Bishop merely eyed us during his examination; offered no greeting; expressed no opinion until he had completed his scrutiny. Finally he grunted.

  “An unlikely trio at first glance, but not entirely unsuited to escort a prince of Holy Church. You look well, Father James. And you, Ewan Scrymgeour, look … like yourself.” He turned slightly to eye Alec again. “This one, though, I have never seen before.”

  “My cousin Alec, Your Grace. Alexander Scrymgeour, lately come from Argyll to join us.”

  Wishart’s eyebrows rose. “From Argyll? Then it is little wonder that I have never seen his face.” He looked directly at Alec. “And how is my old colleague Bishop Laurence? I knew him well at one time, though we have seldom met these past two decades. He has been Bishop of Argyll for nigh on thirty years … But of course, you know that, being one of his flock. I trust he is still hale?”

  Alec dipped his head, clearly less than comfortable in making small talk with a bishop. “I have never met His Grace, my lord, but I know he is yet hale—old, as you say, and growing frail, but he yet governs his flock from Lismore and keeps them in order.”

  “Aye. He was ever strong in that regard.”

  What neither man mentioned, yet all of us knew, was that there was little love lost between the two Bishops. Bishop Laurence was a native MacDougall of Argyll and, as such, his sympathies coincided with those of the all-powerful House of Comyn, which was enough by itself to set him at odds with Wishart and several other bishops who aligned themselves with the House of Bruce. Wishart’s comment about having known the other Bishop well at one time was a reference to the period, twenty years earlier, when he himself had come into harsh conflict with his own cathedral chapter over a disciplinary matter, and Laurence of Argyll had been one of the two judges chosen by papal mandate—the other being the Bishop of Dunblane—to try to resolve the case. His Grace never spoke of the matter, and it had become one of those arcane little secrets known of, but never discussed, by the cathedral community.