The Forest Laird

by Jack Whyte

  Lamberton tilted his head in an unmistakable indication that he considered my point to be moot. “Edward of England’s treasury is bankrupt, too, but that has not prevented him from continuing to wage war against his Gascon rebels, or conducting an illicit campaign against this realm. Monarchs fight wars for widely differing reasons, but almost all of them do it—incessantly, it seems—and nothing is more ruinously expensive than conducting a war. Yet by that very token, no route to conquest and expansion or dominion is more direct or more effective than the one offered by war. A successful war results in massive riches, which, in return, defray the enormous costs incurred in waging war. It becomes a never-ending cycle.”

  “Granted,” I said, nodding in agreement. “But you indicated that Philip had a new viewpoint, did you not? I interpreted that to mean he believes he can achieve this melding of all the duchies and territories where no one has done so since the days of the Caesars.”

  “Aye, that is what I meant. And I believe there are several reasons why he might succeed. The first of those being that all the duchies share a common language. A common root language, that is. They all speak variants of the old Frankish tongue. We call it French, but many of them continue to call it by their local names—Angevin in Anjou, Poitevin in Poitiers, Oc in the Languedoc, and so on. There are regional differences, some of them profound, but fundamentally the tongue is French and they can all speak it and understand each other. Which means a newly conquered territory can be absorbed without great disruption.”

  I stepped into the shadows beneath a dense stand of trees, where I hoped we would be challenged by the fourth and last of the guardsmen on duty. Lamberton followed at my heels, and within moments a voice rang out ahead of us, challenging us to stand where we were. I identified myself quickly, addressing the guardsman by name and telling him we were two priests with much to talk about and no desire to sleep, and after a brief exchange of greetings he waved us on, no doubt glad to have had the opportunity to speak with someone even for mere moments and even gladder, I was sure, to have been awake and at his post when we approached him.

  “Tell me,” I asked as soon as he had fallen out of hearing behind us. “Are there burgesses in Philip’s France?”

  “Heavens, yes—more than there are in Scotland, and they may even be wealthier, which means Philip’s problem there is more pronounced than ours yet is. Philip, gazing into his empty treasury and needy as he always is and ever was, is seeing the returns from his royal lands and holdings growing smaller from year to year, while more and more people are thriving without having to pay tribute, in the form of rent and revenues, to their so-called betters. Yet under the existing system he has no means of redress, other than to increase those holdings by any means available—namely, wars and conquest. But the riches of his burgesses must make him gag, because their wealth is laid out before his eyes in every town and city of his realm.”

  “So how will he change that?”

  “By changing the way things stand—by enacting new laws that will allow him to apply new taxes in ways that have never been seen before. He has already set his lawyers to work. He will tax merchants for the premises they own within his kingdom and for the use of the roads within his realm. He will tax them for their use of those ports and storage facilities they need in order to pursue their ventures. Rest assured, his lawyers will eventually find ways of taxing merchants for the nails that hold horseshoes in place. And in return he will offer them his royal protection—the protection of the state—against outside interference in their operations. Far more important, though, will be his offer to include them in the country’s governance.”

  “Governance? To what extent?”

  “To whatever extent he sees fit, though that will be subjected to his divine right to rule. But at least he is speaking of giving his merchants—his mercantile citizens—a voice for the first time. And that may be the single largest and most significant change in the coming new order. Like our burgesses, these men are commoners. The call themselves bourgeois in France, and it means exactly the same thing, burgh-dwellers. They have never had any voice, or any influence, in anything. But now they will. They may not speak out as loudly or as effectively as they do here in Scotland, where there is no divinely entitled monarch, but the French bourgeois will nevertheless be heard from more and more as they grow richer. Philip needs their wealth, but more than that, he needs their support. He cannot simply plunder their vaults, for they would quickly move away to a safer place where they could continue working beyond his influence, and that would be fatal to all his hopes. So he must keep them on his side. He must tax them in such a way that they will submit to his taxation, however grudgingly, and continue in their commerce. He has no choice. He will be forced to compromise, and that is a new phenomenon.”

  We followed the moonlit footpath around one more bend and found ourselves back where we had started. Ahead of us the fire I had built up before we left had dwindled to a glowing pile of embers, and we made our way straight towards it.

  “Have we been gone an hour?” Lamberton asked as I pushed and prodded new fuel into the coals, stirring up a storm of sparks and blue- and purple-tinted flames.

  “Close to it. When was the last time you were awake this late by choice?”

  He laughed. “Other than in all-night vigil, I have no idea. And I cannot even remember my last vigil, so it has been a long time. We will probably both regret it tomorrow.”

  “I think not. The time has not been wasted—not from my viewpoint, at least. The discussion of ideas is never a waste of time. Tell me, if you will … It seems to me we lost sight of the importance of Will’s outlaws in all we were discussing. Where do they fit into all of this?”

  “They do not, and that is precisely why they are important. Their importance here in Scotland echoes that of the French burgesses: they have never had a voice before, but from now on they will. Make no mistake, Father James, the outlaws living here today—in Will’s community, certainly—are historically different from the outlaws who once hid from justice in these woods. Most of those people had set themselves outside the law by their own actions. They were criminals at least, and some of them were monsters. But most of the people living here in the greenwood with Will are outlaws through oppression, not through choice. They have been dispossessed and uprooted, cast out of their homes and villages through no fault of their own. They are victims themselves, not victimizers.”

  “I understand that. But how will they have a voice?”

  “Because they are the people, Father James, and their voice is a new one, and once it has been raised, it will never die away. The people of this land are making themselves heard as they have never been before. The burgesses are demanding a new place in the scheme of things, and so are the common folk, and once that has begun, nothing can stop it. People here in Scotland are talking about themselves as a community—the ‘community of the realm’ has become a common phrase today. For the first time in history there is talk everywhere of the will of the people—the people, Father. All the people, not merely the landowners, the magnates, or the earls and barons. The people!”

  He rose to his feet. “I think I might sleep now, for an hour or two. My eyelids are grown heavy suddenly. And tomorrow I will meet your cousin Will, who, though he does not yet know it, represents—or, I believe, soon will represent—the voice of the people of Scotland. Think upon that before you fall asleep yourself, tonight, if you sleep at all—William Wallace, vox populi, the voice of a people.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  1

  Bishop Wishart officiated at Mass before dawn the next day, with Lamberton and myself as co-celebrants, and as soon as we had broken our fast afterwards, he set out with Canon Lamberton to visit my two junior colleagues, Declan and Jacobus. Aware that part of the Bishop’s objective that morning would be to assess my performance and general fitness through the observations of my two subordinates, I settled down to read my breviary, and I was still deep in meditati
on when a messenger arrived to tell me Will had returned and wanted to see me.

  I was glad to see Mirren standing with Will in their doorway, glowing with health and smiling happily up at her husband from the crook of his arm. Her belly was enormous, but there was no doubting her well-being, and I offered a swift prayer of thanks that my misgivings of the previous evening had been baseless. Will had seen me as soon as I emerged from the trees, and he waved, beckoning me to follow them as he turned and moved into the hut, his wife still held close. By the time I stepped inside, though, Mirren had disappeared. I assumed that she had withdrawn behind the painted screen of reeds that separated their sleeping chamber from the remainder of the dwelling and called a greeting to her, but I received no answer and so looked at Will, raising one eyebrow in inquiry.

  “She went out through the other door. She’s meeting with her women. Come and sit.” He was already sitting in the large, padded chair he had built for himself in the corner by the empty stone hearth, and he waved me to the chair facing it.

  “Wishart’s here, I’m told,” he said as I moved to sit. “What does he want, d’you know?”

  “I have no idea. You’ll have to ask him that yourself. But he was none too happy when he found out you weren’t here, so it might be urgent.”

  “Who’s the other fellow with him?”

  “One of the cathedral canons, a man called Lamberton. He’s been in France these past two years. Came back a short time ago and was raised to chancellor of the cathedral. He’s a clever lad.”

  “Lad? How old is he?”

  “Your age, I would guess. Not much more, perhaps a little less. But he has talents beyond his years.”

  “He must have, to be chancellor already.” He frowned. “We never had a chancellor at the Abbey, did we? What does he do?”

  “He regulates the daily life of the cathedral. It’s an administrative post.”

  “So why is he here?”

  “He’s here to meet you.” I stopped short, looking in wonder at the thing that had just caught my eye. “What is that?”

  Will twisted in his seat to see what I was staring at. “What’s it look like? It’s a sword. Why does this … Lamberton, you said? Why does he want to meet me? Or will I have to ask that, too, myself?”

  “You will. He would not tell me. Not that I asked.” I was still gazing at the sword in the corner behind him, propped upright beside the long leather cylinder of his bow case. “That’s the biggest sword I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s enormous. Where did it come from?”

  “It’s a gift, from Shoomy. He brought it from his brother’s smithy last week.”

  “Shoomy’s brother is a smith? I didn’t even know he had a brother.”

  Will sniffed. “I didn’t know, either, until Shoomy brought me this. When I asked him where he had got it, he told me it had been gathering dust in his brother Malachy’s forge. Apparently the brother is well known, the finest sword crafter in all the northwest.

  But Shoomy is so close-mouthed, I had to drag that out of him. Never says more than he has to, our Shoomy. Most of the time that can be a blessing. At other times, though, it can be damned annoying.”

  I had walked over to the weapon and now stood admiring the craftsmanship and skill of the man who had fashioned it. It was resting, point down, in the corner, and its long, bare blade gleamed dully in the light from the window. “May I handle it?”

  “If you wish, but you won’t be able to swing it in here.”

  “I can see that, but I have no intention of swinging the thing, Cuz. It’s huge … I would gladly settle for being able to lift it.” I reached out to touch the pommel, and had to raise my hand to the level of my head to do so. From its large, acorn-shaped pommel to its pointed tip, the weapon was as tall as I was, which made it just under six feet long. I estimated the hilt, which was covered in leather and bound with spirals of what appeared to be bronze wire, to be about a foot and a half in length. The slender, twisted, downwardcurving cross-guard, of the same gleaming metal as the blade, was as wide as my shoulders but no more than a thumb’s width in section, and it had been turned throughout its entire length to give it the appearance of a length of corded metal rope, with decorative quatrefoils at each end. But there was much more to the defences for the wielder’s hands than I had seen on any other sword. I had to step in close to see how it had been done, but the swordmaker had taken great pains with the metal cross-block over the top of the blade, which was a palm wide at that end. He had hammer-welded one-half of an oval steel ring onto each side of the thick block, then bent the twin pieces down until they lay almost flush with the flat of the blade on either side, leaving just enough space between ring and blade to trap the blade of an unwary opponent.

  I ran my finger down the addition and hooked the first joint into the space between guard and blade. “This is fine workmanship. Is it sharp?”

  Will had come to stand beside me. “Not there, that part’s for gripping, but the cutting edge is lethal. Be careful if you touch the blade lower down.”

  I had suspected as much, simply from the way the light caught the lower edges of the blade; it had that unmistakable twinkling look of razor-sharpness. The edges of the first ten inches of the blade below the guard were hammered flat to provide a guiding grip for fighting at close quarters, permitting the swordsman to wield the weapon as a stabbing spear rather than a slashing blade. Below that, at the top of the blade proper, which was tapered and double-edged for its remaining three-and-a-half feet, twin spurs projected from the edges of the blade, and though they were not long, they were thick and strong, hooking towards the point, their purpose to catch and break the impetus of an opponent’s hard-swung blow. I had almost no experience of swords or of the knightly art of swordsmanship, but I knew that the weapon I was looking at was magnificent by any standard and was too long and cumbersome to be used easily from horseback.

  “So Shoomy’s brother made this thing for you?”

  “No, not a bit of it! How could he? He had never heard of me, any more than I had of him. I said Shoomy found it in his brother’s forge. He made the hilt and guard, Shoomy said, for that is what he does best. The blade itself, though, was made elsewhere, probably in Germania for one of those Teutonic Knights you sometimes hear about. How it ended up in Malachy’s forge, I don’t know. It lay there for several years, it seems, before Malachy fashioned a new hilt, pommel, and guard for it, and then he discovered he couldn’t sell it. It was too big … bigger than any sword around and made for a giant, folk said. And so it lay there for two years until Shoomy set eyes on it and brought it back for me.”

  “I see … And what made Shoomy think you needed a sword—you, the bowman? Or was this a mere whim prompted by the size of the thing?”

  My cousin grinned at me, though without much humour. I could see it mostly in the crinkling around his eyes; that was enough, nevertheless, to allow me to imagine the wry quirk of the lips concealed beneath the thick growth of his beard. “You should have been here six weeks ago. Then you’d have no need to ask that question.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “We met some strangers in the woods … unfriendly strangers.”

  “Englishmen?”

  “A few, but most of them were Scots. We know that because we heard them shouting to one another, back and forth, but to this day we don’t know who they were. A score of them, give or take one or two, and all horsed. They had seen us coming. Attacked us from hiding, with crossbows. Killed four of us before we even knew we were being watched.”

  “How many were you, against their score?”

  “Eight of us, until that first volley—four thereafter. That we got out at all was a miracle. They hit us as we were passing through the edges of a bog, surrounded by thickets of osier willow. We had no room to do anything, least of all to draw a longbow, and the few shots we were able to loose were deflected by the dense growth around us. They, on the other hand, were on higher, drier ground, clear of the bog, unha
mpered in their aim, and shooting short steel bolts.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “We ran away, into the bog, and we were fortunate they chose not to follow us. They could have picked us off one by one out there, floundering in the mud as we tried to wade across. I don’t know why they didn’t follow us. They should have. I would have, had I been them. And thanks be to God they didn’t. I’d be dead otherwise.”

  “What would you have done if you had this sword with you that day?”

  He bared his teeth, white flashing through the darkness of his beard. “I might have charged at our attackers and died trying to reach them before they could shoot me down.”

  “That’s what I thought. So why do you now need a sword? To enable you to be killed more easily?”

  He smiled again, but this time the smile was genuinely amused, warming his eyes. “No, Cuz. If I wear it at all, it will be as a symbol.”

  “A symbol … Very well, then, let’s accept that it could be a symbol. Heaven knows it’s big enough. But a symbol of what? Outlawry?”

  His smile did not falter. “No, of leadership. Bear in mind, though, that I said ‘if I wear it at all.’”

  “If … Is there doubt that you might?”

  “Enormous doubt, Jamie.”

  “Enormous is more than merely large. What causes such great doubt, may I ask?”

  “Aye, you may ask. It’s caused by the fact that I’m about to be a father. I am to have a son, Jamie, or perhaps a daughter. It matters not which to me, but either one will be a responsibility I’ve never had before. A small wee person, wide-eyed and alive and hungry for knowledge, and dependent upon me for his or her existence. For that reason alone I will be steering well clear of any more leadership in future. If God permits me, I intend to stay here safely in the greenwood with my wife and child, providing for them and getting more of them.”

  I found myself grinning at him inanely, wondering where this new Will had come from. In all the years I had known and loved him I had never seen this aspect of him, never even suspected its existence. I had always known he loved Mirren, that he had loved her from the first time he set eyes on her, but I had never suspected that he might love her dearly enough to shut himself off voluntarily from the entire world on her behalf.