The Forest Laird

by Jack Whyte

  “Believe me, Cousin,” I told him, “if you were fortunate enough to be able to do such a thing, I would count myself blessed to be able to travel here from Glasgow to minister to you and your family once each month.”

  A tiny frown grew instantly between his brows. “But you don’t think it is likely to happen. I can hear it in your voice … see it in your eyes.”

  “No, I did not say that, Will, but you yourself will have to admit, if you but think on it, that the odds against your winning that peaceful isolation are great. Your name is too well known now for you to simply disappear, especially after your announcement of your name and your intentions to His Lordship of York in April. I am not saying you could not vanish from the ken of men, because of course you could, but it would not be easily arranged. Nor easily maintained.”

  “The ease of doing it and the difficulties of sustaining it do not concern me,” he said slowly. “It will be done, if I wish it to be done. Determination to stay hidden is what I’ll require most—that, and a place where no one will find me accidentally. Will you help me with that, if I call upon you?”

  “Of course I will, and happily. And I will apply myself from this time on to making it possible. This will be a worthwhile task.”

  He lowered his head. “My thanks, Cousin.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. Wait until I’ve found the way to make it work. In the meantime, though, take my advice and keep this sword well hidden. Thank Shoomy for it, but ask his leave to hold it safe against a time when you might really need it. It will attract too much attention if you wear it openly, for it smacks too much of something a leader might carry for effect. And that brings us around in a complete circle to what we were talking about when we began. Whence did this all spring, this notion of symbols and leadership?”

  “Murray,” he said, and I did not know whether he meant Andrew Murray or the place called Moray, for they both sounded the same when spoken.

  He grimaced then and clawed at his beard with hooked fingers, scratching deeply as he continued speaking. “This has to come off. I swear it’s full of fleas. And I should know better than to sleep with the dogs when I’m on the road. Mirren will flay me.” He paused, collecting his thoughts. “Where did this thing about leadership and symbols come from?” He shrugged. “I first heard of it from Andrew Murray, when I saw him in the north a few years ago, on that errand for the Bishop. He carries a battle-axe with him everywhere now because it has become his emblem. He even has one blazoned on his standard, which is laughable. Murray is a swordsman, as you know—always has been. And because he’s trained all his life on the English quarterstaff, there is no one in Scotland who can best him face to face and toe to toe with a sword in his hand.

  “Several years ago, though, when his father’s lands were invaded by raiders from the far northeast, he won a dire fight using an axe against a mounted raider after he himself had been unhorsed. The axe was all he had, he told me, for when he was knocked from the saddle, he had fallen on his sword and shattered the blade. When his opponent charged him for the kill, Andrew managed to dodge aside and hooked the end of his axe blade behind the knee joint of the fellow’s armour. He couldn’t say afterwards if it actually hooked behind the fellow’s knee brace or caught in a flaw in his chain mail, but he knew it was a fluke, the sheerest accident, and he told me he could never have done it again. It worked, though, for when the fellow’s horse spun away, Andrew’s weight on the lodged axe pulled the rider from its back. The fellow hit the ground hard and Andrew split his helm with a single blow. The word spread that Andrew Murray was a peerless axe man. He has never used an axe in a fight since then, he says, but he carries one with him everywhere he goes, because his people expect to see it. And he rides beneath a yellow banner marked with a blood red axe head, a symbol of his puissance, as the French call it.”

  “And he thought you might wish to bear one, too, someday?”

  “No, it was not quite that straightforward.” He crossed the tiny room in a few strides to where a jug stood, covered with a white cloth, beside a quartet of earthen mugs. He poured a mug of ale for each of us and brought one to me, waiting until I raised it in a salute that he returned before bringing the rim of his mug to his own lips. He drank deeply, then lowered his cup and belched softly. “There, now that tasted good.” He reached out to touch the cross-guard of the great sword, his hand side by side with mine.

  “What Murray said was that every leader, great or small, needs a recognizable emblem—a symbol of his leadership. His became a battle-axe, irrespective of what he himself might have wished for, and that led him to wonder what mine might be, if ever I should become a leader of men here in the south.” He flicked his thumb against the metal of the guard, then turned away and moved back to his big chair. “It was whimsical thing, of no real import, and we were but passing idle time. I had forgotten all about it until I came in here one day and saw that great thing leaning in the corner. It came to me then that Andrew’s symbol should have been a sword but ended up being an axe, and I knew that my own should be a bow, but that as a symbol, a bow, contrary to all my love and respect for it as a weapon, now seemed somehow … insubstantial. Slender and slight looking and not at all weighty or solid.

  “That thought, in turn, reminded me of something else Andrew had said that day. We had been talking about battle tactics and leadership and the worth of infantry as opposed to cavalry and of both together in the face of massed archery. The English use their Welsh archers to great effect, as you know, and in the last twenty years, under Edward, they have been working hard to train their own men in the Welsh techniques. Massed bowmen, properly deployed, can rout the finest army ever fielded, for modern armies have no defence against them.”

  He fell silent, and I waited for him to finish, but he was clearly thinking about something else by then.

  “So?” I prompted. “What was his point?”

  “Eh? Oh, that we have neither sufficient bowmen nor adequate cavalry in Scotland, so any fighting that we have to do in years ahead will be left to our foot soldiers.” He saw the expression on my face and spoke quickly to forestall what I might say. “We have fine bowmen. I’m not denying that. Excellent archers, and I am one of them. But we have nowhere near enough of them, Jamie. Where we can turn out a hundred archers, the English can field a thousand in half the time, and they can keep doing the same for every other hundred we can raise. The same goes for heavy chivalry—armoured knights and the mounts to carry them. We have numerous and noble knights as well, but they wear mail, not solid plate armour, because nowhere, nowhere in all Scotland, do we have a single horse as big as those the English breed and train to fight. They call them destriers. Murray calls them destroyers—destroyers of infantry. I agree with him. Frankly, Cuz, we have nothing we can field against an English army with a hope of winning.”

  “And you believe it will come to that, to fielding men against them. Is that what you are saying?”

  “Aye, it might. It could. But we would do little fielding, in the true sense of the word. We might find ourselves having to fight them, but we will not be confronting them in battle. That would be madness, self-destructive folly. If we are to fight them with any hope of winning, it will have to be as outlaws and brigands, fighting the way we fight them now, using the land itself against them, then hitting them hard and fast and withdrawing before they can strike back at us.”

  “But we do not fight them now, Will.”

  “Yes, Cuz, we do. Not often yet, and not to any great extent. But we do fight them. What else would you call the patrols we’ve been sending out since April but fighting? And it is going to get worse. As the English grow more confident in their ability to bully the folk here with impunity, those of us who can will be forced to strike back against them more and more often. And understand this: it will be men like us for the most part, the common folk and the so-called outlaws, who will have to bear the brunt of it, for we can put no trust in the magnates’ willingness to defend us. Some
will stand by us, people like Sir William Douglas of Douglasdale—more of an outlaw himself than we are—and Murray, too, in the north. But men like those, whether they be influenced by principles or politics, are few and far between. That leaves common folk like us with but two choices: we can lie down like sheep and let them all, English and Scots nobility alike, trample us under their feet, or we can fight for what we have and what we hold, uncaring who has legal title to the ownership.”

  “But, Will, we have nothing. We have no land, we have no rights, and we have no voice.”

  My cousin shrugged. “I said both ‘have’ and ‘hold,’ Jamie. We hold the lands in which we live and we will not relinquish them meekly. And until God Himself takes the field against us and stamps us out, we will have our pride, our integrity as men, and our freedom. All of them worth fighting for.”

  “And will you lead your folk, Will, beneath the symbol of a sword? This sword?”

  His teeth flashed again behind his beard. “Did you not hear a word I said about what I intend to do from this time on? I meant it, Jamie, every word of it. I am not the only man in Selkirk Forest capable of swinging a blade or casting an arrow. I can name you half a score, right here and now, who could step over me and take command were I shot down in battle. Only one man was ever irreplaceable, Jamie, and He died for all of us. As for the rest, the common leaders, kings and generals, there’s always someone, and often someone better, waiting to step in and take command. I will be gone, lost in the forest, and the matter of who will replace me is for God to decide, but I do not believe for a minute that He will abandon us.” He straightened up, head cocked. “Who’s there?”

  The door swung open and one of the guards stuck his head inside. “Yon Bishop’s back, Will. Riding in now.”

  “Thank ye, Alistair. I’ll be right out. Tell the Bishop that and bid him make himself comfortable in the gathering hut.” He turned back to me. “Well, shall we go and find out what this visit is about?”

  “Not I, Cuz. I was not invited. Go you alone, for now. If they then send for me, I’ll come, but for the time being, I believe their business is with you.”

  He narrowed his eyes and regarded me for several moments before nodding slightly. “So be it, then. You’ll dine with us tonight?”

  I said I would, then he nodded again and glanced around him as though looking idly for something he did not find, before he crossed quickly to the door and left me there alone.

  2

  As soon as Will was gone, I stepped back to the big sword and reached up to grasp the hilt. It fell heavily towards me when I tugged at it, but as I stepped quickly back, tightening my grip and hefting it properly, the weapon settled into my grasp, and I felt the beautiful, integral balance of the thing. I lifted it higher, holding it with both hands, and the long blade rose effortlessly, reflected light from the small window nearby flickering along the watermark patterns on the blade as it moved. I decided that it must weigh somewhere between seven and eight pounds, with most of the mass centred in the upper third of the weapon to provide a fulcrum for the long, lethal beauty of the blade. I was concentrating so deeply on what I was doing that the sound of Mirren’s voice at my back made me jump and turn towards her reflexively, still clutching the sword.

  She had been in the act of taking off the light shawl that had covered her head, but she released it and threw up her hands in mock horror as the long blade swept towards her, even though it came nowhere near where she stood. “Heavens! Will you kill me, Father James?”

  I lowered the point to the floor immediately, mortified, and began to bluster an apology.

  “Jamie Wallace, you’re blushin’ like a wee boy caught stealin’ honey. I startled you, and I’m sorry. I didna know you would be here.” She hesitated, then added, “But now that you are, I want to ask you something. D’ye mind?”

  “No, of course not. Let me put this back where it belongs.” I turned away and replaced the sword in its corner, and as I did so I heard her lowering herself slowly and carefully into her chair. “This is a fine weapon,” I said over my shoulder, giving her time to settle herself decorously.

  “It’s for killing men,” she answered dismissively. “I’m surprised to hear you, of all people, finding something good to say about it. We will a’ die some day soon enough. I canna see any beauty in a thing made to bring that time closer.”

  I turned to face her, bowing my head respectfully. “Forgive me, Mirren. You’re right, of course. I was admiring the form of it, the symmetry and proportion, not thinking of its purpose. Now, what do you wish to ask me?”

  She finished adjusting the light shawl over her hair, apparently having decided to retain it, then looked at me with narrowed eyes. “What does Robert Wishart want from my Will?”

  I was caught off kilter by her hard tone, and she continued before I could say anything. “I’m asking Jamie the cousin, not Father James the priest, and I want you to sit down and talk to me, eye to eye, Jamie Wallace. What does that old schemer want from my man? And don’t try to tell me he doesna want anythin’, for I’ll no’ believe you any more than ye’ll believe yersel’.”

  I raised my hands in surrender. “I swear to you, Mirren, I don’t know. I didn’t even know the Bishop was coming. We met him by accident yesterday, Ewan and Alec and me, in the forest. We could just as easily have missed him. I really think, though, that you might be doing him an injustice …” My voice died when I saw the look that came into her eyes, and I felt a tide of blood colour my face.

  “Aye,” she said, “ye may well blush. Ye were about to tell a lie that would shame a hardened liar, let alone a priest. You know as well as I do that Robert Wishart does nothing, ever, wi’out reason, and his reasoning is often as twisted as the top o’ that big, curly staff he carries when he’s fully robed. What’s it called?”

  “The crozier, the pastoral staff.”

  “Aye, that. It’s braw, I suppose, but naebody would ever ca’ it plain or simple. Just like his thinkin’. Everything that man does is to a purpose. I’ve heard tell, to his credit, that everything he does is for the good o’ Scotland’s realm. I ken that, and it’s fine and good. But my concern is that he’s planning to use my Will for something I don’t like, and I’ve a deathly fear o’ what that might be.”

  “There’s no need for that, Mirren,” I said. “Bishop Wishart would never ask Will to do anything dishonourable.”

  “Dishonourable? Are ye daft, Jamie Wallace? What in the name o’ God do you think I’m talking about here? What does honour have to do wi’ anything ither than the witlessness o’ stupid men strutting like fighting cockerels?” She looked at me wild eyed, as though she could not believe that I could be so obtuse as to miss her meaning, and continued in a voice that was little louder than a sustained hiss. “I’m no’ talking about that kind o’ rubbish. I’m talking about puttin’ my man’s life in danger, about sending him out to do something brave and stupid that could get him killed and leave me here wi’ a newborn babby an’ nobody to raise him. I’m talking about my Will, your cousin and closest friend, dyin’ for that auld man’s notions o’ what’s right for Scotland. And I’ll tell you, Jamie Wallace, I wouldna gi’e a handful o’ acorns for this whole holy realm o’ Scotland and a’ the bishops in it if it came down to a choice between its life and my Will’s.” She stopped, breathing deeply.

  I raised a placatory hand, but only half-heartedly, because I truly did not know what to say to her. “That will not happen, Mirren,” I said, hearing the uncertainty in my own voice. “It would never come to that, or anywhere close to that.”

  “Close to what? Close to what, Jamie? To fighting? To war? To my Will getting killed?” Her voice was granite hard, her eyes scornful. “Tell me ye dinna seriously believe that tripe.”

  “Of course I believe it, Mirren. It’s true.”

  “True? Sweet Jesus, Jamie Wallace, listen to yourself! There’s been mair folk killed around here in the past three years than in the thirty years afore that, when K
ing Alexander was alive. And that’s just plain Scots folk. When ye start addin’ in strangers and English sodgery on top o’ that, it doesna bear thinkin’ about.”

  “But that’s all banditry, Mirren, not war. And besides, the worst of it seems to be over now.”

  “Oh, is it? Och, I’m so glad ye told me that.” The contempt in her voice was chilling, and even though I knew her scorn was not aimed at me, I cringed inside. “I’m sure a’ they dead folk would be glad to ken it was banditry that killed them and no’ war.”

  “What do you want me to do, Mirren? What can I do that will help?” I had to swallow my impatience forcefully.

  I don’t know what she had expected me to say, but her head jerked up and her eyes went wide. And then, to my absolute horror, she began to weep, not noisily or even audibly, but hopelessly. She was staring at me and her eyes were enormous, the helpless agony in them spearing through me as her tears welled up and spilled profusely down her face to drip from her chin. She simply sat there, letting them flow.

  I had not spent much time alone with Mirren, but as I had slowly come to know her I had learned to appreciate and respect her strength of character and will as being truly extraordinary, and I had heard Will himself say, many times, that she was the strongest woman he had ever known. To see her reduced to tears like this was, therefore, appalling to me. I knew, of course, that her condition, so close to being brought to childbed, was precarious and that her behaviour could be expected to vary from what was normal, but so pathetic was my ignorance that I had no appreciation of what normal was supposed to be. And so I merely sat there, praying for inspiration and assistance.