Order in Chaos

by Jack Whyte

  I also acknowledge, freely and with gratitude, the invaluable collaboration and assistance of my hands-on editors, Catherine Marjoribanks and Shaun Oakey, whose individual skills, after years of working with them, never fail to awe and impress me. To them, and to all the other Penguins at Penguin Group Canada, my sincere thanks.

  Jack Whyte

  Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada

  January 2009

  Read on for a preview of Jack Whyte’s exciting new novel,

  THE FOREST LAIRD

  PROLOGUE

  It pains me to hear people say nowadays that William Wallace died defiant, a true and heroic patriot, with a shout of “Freedom” on his lips, because it is a lie. William Wallace died slowly and brutally in silence, to my sure and certain knowledge, for I was there in London’s Smithfield Square that morning of August 24 in 1305, and all I heard of defiance was the final, demented scream of a broken, tortured man driven beyond endurance long before he died.

  I was the last of our race to see him alive and to speak with him, the sole Scot among the crowd that watched his end, and the only one there at the time to mark and regret and mourn his passing, a thing that shames me for my countrymen when I hear these rumors now. I did not really see him die, though, because my eyes were closed, screwed shut against the tears that blinded me, and my throat was swollen with grief, choking off my breath. When I was able to breathe again and wiped my eyes to look, his spirit had departed, and they were already quartering his corpse, the chief executioner proclaiming his death and holding aloft the severed head of the Scotch Ogre who had terrified all England.

  Sir William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland, my friend, my blood cousin, and my lifelong nemesis, would never terrify another soul.

  But, by the living God, he had terrified enough within his lifetime for his name to live on, in Scotland at least, long after his death, a grim and implacable reminder of the penalties that could and would be extorted as the punishment for disloyalty, treachery, and disobedience.

  As I watched the executioners dismember his remains, I accepted the reality of his death as I had accepted its inevitability two weeks earlier, when the word first reached me that he had been taken by Sir John Menteith and handed over to the justice of the English King. I had known that was coming; not that Menteith would arrest him, but that someone would, somewhere and soon, for William Wallace’s time had passed, and he had fallen from grace in the eyes of the people he had led and inspired a few years earlier. He had become an embarrassment, a source of discomfort to all of them, a thorny, disapproving, uncompromising reminder of all that they had dared and then abandoned. For they had come to terms—nobles, clerics, and commoners—with England’s Edward Plantagenet, and the English King was being regally lenient, exercising forbearance towards all Scots rebels who would join his Peace, save only the outlawed traitor Wallace. The price of that forbearance was the surrender of the brigand Wallace to Edward’s justice. Every noble, sheriff, and justiciar in the Realm of Scotland was charged with the duty of apprehending the former Guardian on sight and dispatching him to London as a common criminal. Sir John Menteith had merely been the administrative official closest to hand when Wallace, still defiant, eventually showed himself.

  I was in England on my way to London when I heard the news, bearing documents from my superior, Walter the Abbot of Paisley, to the Bishop of York and the Bishop of London. I stopped to rest at the Priory of Reading on the final leg of my journey, where I found the sole topic of conversation among the brethren to be the recent capture of Wallace and his immediate dispatch to London to face King Edward for his sins. Everyone knew he would be tried summarily and executed out of hand, but the manner of his death, the physical details of how it would be achieved, were matters for debate and conjecture among the jaded monks, who seldom had open cause to speculate upon such worldly things. I listened to their prattling, saddened, and thought about William Wallace and how different was the man I knew from the monster they were all deploring and decrying.

  I gave no indication that I knew him, of course, but I resolved then and there to see him, somehow, while I was in London. I had friends there among the clergy, many of them powerful, and I promised myself that I would use them to find him wherever he was being held and, if it were humanly possible, to visit him and offer whatever small comfort I could in his final, friendless hours among an alien people who loathed and feared him.

  In the event, I had no trouble finding where he was imprisoned, for the whole city of London was agog with the news, and with the help of a trusted friend, Father Antony Latreque, Sub-Abbot of Westminster, I was admitted to the prisoner’s cell on his last night to hear his last confession.

  The tears I would later shed in Smithfield Square, blinding me to his final moments, would have nothing to do with the barbarity that I was witnessing that bright, late-August morning. They would surge instead, completely overwhelming me, from a sudden memory of Wallace’s own tears earlier, long before dawn and before they came to lead him out to death. The sight of those tears had shaken me, for I had never seen Will Wallace weep since the day our childhood ended, and the anguish in his eyes there in his darkened cell had been as keen and fresh and unbearable as the pain he and I had endured together on that long ago, far off day.

  He did not recognize me when I entered, and I was grateful, though I had expected it, for it had been four full years since he and I had last seen each other. He saw only a cowled priest accompanying a portly, mitered abbot. The jailer had seen the same thing, ignoring the priest completely while he whined to the abbot about his orders to permit the prisoner no visitors.

  “We are not visitors,” Abbot Latreque replied disdainfully. “We are of Holy Mother Church, and our presence marks a last attempt to make this felon repent the error of his former ways and confess himself before God. Now provide us with some light, open up this door, and let us in, then wait out here.”

  Abashed, the fellow slouched away to bring each of us a freshly lit torch, then unlocked the heavy door, set his shoulder to it, and pushed it open, permitting us to enter a room that was far larger than I had expected. My first glance showed me a broad, flagstoned floor, dimly lit by one flickering flambeau in an iron sconce on the left wall. I saw no sign of the prisoner and assumed, correctly, that he was hidden in one of the cell’s dark corners. The rattle of keys and the creaking of the massive door had alerted him, though, for he spoke before we had fully crossed the threshold, his words accompanied by a single brief clash of chains.

  “I need none of your English mouthings, Priest, so get you gone and take your acolyte with you. I need no English translator to poison my words before they reach God’s ears.”

  They were not the exact words I had expected, but I had estimated precisely the tone and content. Abbot Antony was appalled, and it showed clearly on his face, for though he had been a priest for most of his life, he was, in fact, a monk by dedication and had seldom strayed far from the cloister. To hear such venom in a single voice, directed not merely at him but at his entire church and his people, left the poor man speechless, but not addled. I had warned him that he might hear appalling things when he confronted this prisoner, and so he pulled himself together quickly and nodded solemnly, returning to the script he and I had prepared against the risk that others might be present to overhear what was being said. Wallace, in the meantime, stood watching scornfully.

  “I had heard,” Antony said, “that you were obdurate in your hatred of my kind, but it is my Christian obligation as a man of God to do all in my power to help you towards salvation … and so …” He hesitated, then went on. “And so I have taken pains to bring you an intermediary, twixt you and God, to whom you may speak in your own tongue. Father James, here, is of your folk. I will leave him to commune with you and hear your confession. I myself will wait outside and see that you are undisturbed.”

  Now the prisoner turned his eyes towards me for the first time, and though he was merely a shape stirring
among blackness, I could tell from the way his head moved forward that he was squinting to see me better. I stood motionless, holding my flaring torch out to one side but making no attempt to push back my cowl.

  “What is a Scots priest doing here?”

  I said nothing, and Antony answered. “His duty; comforting the afflicted. Will you speak with him? If so, I will leave the two of you alone.”

  Wallace stood silent for a long time, gazing at me as though wondering what I was about, and then he shrugged and nodded, the movements easily visible now that my eyes were adjusting to the darkness. “I’ll talk with him, if only to hear my own tongue. Who are you, Priest? Where are you from?”

  “Thank you, Father Abbott,” I said quietly, and Antony nodded and turned quietly away towards the still-open door. I heard him speak to the jailer outside, and then the man appeared, frowning dubiously, and hauled at the massive door until it scraped shut, leaving me alone with the prisoner, to whom I now turned. “Where am I from? I am from Paisley, from the abbey there. Do you not know me, Will?”

  The shadowy figure straightened up as though he had been struck. “Jamie? Jamie Wallace, is that you? What in God’s name are you doing here? Your very name could hoist you to the gallows alongside me.”

  I pushed my cowl back off my head and let him see my smile. “Plain Father James? I doubt that, Will. The Wallace part of me is unknown, here in England.”

  “Then pray you to God it stays that way. This is madness, Jamie. But, man, it’s good to see your face.”

  “And to see yours, Cousin, though God Himself knows I had never thought to see you in such straits.” I moved towards him, to embrace him, but as the light from my torch fell upon him I stopped short, gazing at him in consternation.

  “What kind of barbarism is this?”

  To his credit, he grinned at me and drew himself up to his full, imposing height before lapsing into our own tongue. “D’ ye no’ ken, I’m a dangerous chiel?* They ca’ me the Scotch Ogre and they a’ believe I eat bairns† whene’er I get the chance.”

  His hair and beard were wild, matted, and unshorn, and he wore only a ragged shirt, one arm of which had been torn from his shoulder, exposing the massive knots of corded muscle there, but I paid little attention to those things. I was staring at the harness that bound him. “Can you sit?”

  His grin widened, but there was no humor in his eyes. “Sit? Sit on what? It takes me a’ my time to stand, wi’out cowpin’* sideways. I ha’e to stand spread-legged and lean my back against the wa’, else I’ll fa’, and these chains winna even let me dae that.”

  The chains that bound him, wrists and ankles, were thick and heavy, the manacles tautly fastened to a thick, leather belt that circled his waist at the level of his lower ribs. The girdle in turn was fastened right and left to short lengths of chain, with very little slack, which were secured to a heavy iron ring mounted on the wall at his back. He could not fall, nor could he turn; all he could do was stand upright or allow his weight to sag into the harness around his waist, but there would be no comfort there, either, for now I saw that the two lengths of chain from the belt were of different lengths, the shorter one attached beneath his right shoulder, ensuring that he could only hang tilted to one side.

  He was watching me quizzically, and his beard moved while one side of his mouth twitched upwards in a half grin as he read the consternation in my face.

  “How long have you been held there like that?”

  “Three days.” He spoke still in Scots. “Ye’ll pardon the stink, I hope, for they havena let me loose since they strapped me in here.” He was unbelievably filthy, and at his mention of it the appalling stench of him hit me like a blow, making me wonder how I could not have been aware of it ’til then. I lowered my torch, looking down at his bare and befouled legs beneath the tattered shirt he wore. They were crusted with feces, and the ground at his feet was a stinking puddle.

  “Sweet Jesus,” I said, my senses reeling. “Who is responsible for this? This is—” I stopped, unable to find words.

  “This is Edward’s vengeance, or the start o’ it, for a’ the grief I’ve caused him these past years. Tomorrow … no, today, he’ll make an end o’ it. But ere he’s done, I think I’ll be yearnin’ for the comfort o’ just standin’ here, dandlin’ my chains … D’ ye ken he wouldna even come to look at me, Jamie? Ye’d think he’d want to look, at least, would ye no? To gloat a wee bit, wag a finger at me … But no. He left it a’ to his judges … And they’ll pass me to his executioners, come break o’ day.” I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out, and as I stood there searching for words, he continued. “It’ll be a fine day, the jailers tell me. A grand summer’s day to die on. But this London’s a dirty, smelly place, Jamie … A sad and dirty place to die, wi’ the whole populace cranin’ their necks to watch. I’d gi’e anything to hear the birds singin’ to welcome the dawn in the Tor Wood one last time.” He snorted in self derision. “But I hae nothin’ now to gi’e, and we’re a long way frae Ettrick Forest …”

  And at that moment, a moment I can recall with absolute clarity all these years later, a miracle occurred.

  Somewhere beyond the high, barred window in the outer wall above our heads, a bird began to sing, and the clarity and volume of the sound stunned both of us into silent immobility. The song was liquid, brilliant in its welling beauty, the notes rising and falling with limpid perfection so that it seemed the creature producing them was here in the cell with us instead of outside in the pitch blackness of the night. I watched Wallace’s eyes widen and fill with a kind of superstitious fear as he listened, transfixed, and I must admit that I, too, was awestruck by the coincidence of his expressed wish and the sudden eruption of the birdsong.

  “Mother of God,” he whispered. “What kind o’ sorcery is this? It lacks three full hours ’til dawn. What kind of creature makes such a sound in the blackness of the night?”

  I realized then that he had never heard a nightingale before, and it came to me that I had never heard one either before first coming to England’s southern parts.

  “It’s only a bird, Will, nothing more. They call it a nightingale because it sings at night. I think there are none in all Scotland, though I may be wrong. I’ve certainly never heard one there, and it’s not the sort of thing you could easily forget. Is it not wonderful?”

  He listened, making no move to answer me, but I could see the tension drain from him, and eventually he flexed his knees and allowed his weight to settle slightly into his restraints, though not far enough to tip him sideways. “Aye,” he murmured, “it is that, a thing o’ wonder. How big would it be, this … nightingale, you said?”

  “Aye. It’s a tiny thing, smaller than a blackbird, brown and plain with no outward finery at all to mark it. Save for that voice.”

  He grunted and said no more, and I have no idea how long we stood there listening to it before the bird apparently took flight again and the silence of the night returned.

  “He’s gone. Will he come back, think ye?”

  “I know not. Your guess would be as good as mine.

  But he answered your wish. That was like a miracle.”

  “Aye …” His voice fell away to nothing, and he stood there, gazing into nothingness and, I thought, evidently seeing things that existed in his mind alone. But I was wrong.

  “D’ ye remember that day in Dalfinnon Woods, Jamie, before they caught us? Remember we hid from them, amang the brambles on our hands and knees? It was so quiet, and we listened so hard for the sounds o’ them comin’, and then only thing we could hear was a lintie* singin’ in a tree above our heids? God, yon bird could sing … Like a lintie, they say … he could sing like a lintie. But unless you kent what a lintie sounded like, you’d never be able to tell if that was true or no’ … It was wee Jenny who tell’t me that day that the bird was a lintie, for I didna ken. How was I to know? Poor wee Jenny …” I saw the first tear form and tremble on his lid, but he squeezed his eyes fiercely sh
ut and flicked his head.

  “Seven, she was, and yon big English whoreson killed her wi’ a flick o’ his wrist. Didna even look at what he’d done, didna even turn his heid to see … Just cut her wee, thin neck the way ye would a stoat. Jesus, Jamie, I saw that in my dreams for years, her head rollin’ and bouncin’ like a bairn’s ba’ kicked into the bushes, its mouth open and its eyes wide, as if she was wonderin’ what had happened. What they did to you and me afterwards was cause enough to hate them a’ and want to see them deid, but poor wee Jenny …”

  He snatched a long, quivering breath, and straightened up again, leaning his shoulders back against the wall, his face a mask, and when he spoke again he had reverted to Latin. “His name was Percy, did you know that? The man who killed Jenny? William Percy. Some kind of baseborn relative of the English earl.”

  He had noted my negative head shake, for he sniffed and nodded. “I met him again, years later, after Stirling Bridge, when I recognized him among the prisoners. He didn’t know me, but I had carried his face in my mind ever since that day. I hanged him by the heels and reminded him what he had done to us and to my little sister. He denied everything, but he could not deny the scar that had marked his face that day and marked it still … a long, crooked gash that had turned his beard white on one side of his mouth. I spilt his guts with my dirk and let them hang down over his face, and when he stopped screaming I cut off his head. Not as cleanly as he had cut off Jenny’s, though, for it took me three blows because of the way he was hanging upside down.”

  I closed my eyes at that, trying to shut out the image he had conjured, but he had not finished talking and did not notice my revulsion. “England has had ample cause to rue that day’s work in Dalfinnon Woods in the years that have passed since … And this new day will bring an end o’ it, when they hang me up and draw my guts the way I cut out his.”