CHAPTER SEVEN

1

When I bade farewell to Will and Ewan at the Abbey gates that day in 1290, I had no notion that Will had already changed his mind about where they would go and what they would do as soon as they were out of my sight. He told me nothing, in order to protect me from the need to lie later, and for the next two years I remained unaware of the truth, immersed in my studies.

It was some time before the matter of Alexander Graham’s perfidy was settled. For many months, Robert Bruce’s affairs took him far into the northeast, and he returned to the south only in early August. He stopped in Glasgow to confer with Bishop Wishart before continuing south to Lochmaben, his home castle near the English border. It was during that meeting that Wishart told the patriarch about the slaughtered herd of Bruce deer and the attempt to foist the blame upon Sir Malcolm Wallace’s nephew, reminding Bruce that he himself had met Will in the Bishop’s own palace precisely at the time the deadly charges of poaching were being brought against him. Shortly thereafter, Bruce arrived in Elderslie to speak with Sir Malcolm, and within hours, officers were dispatched to arrest Alexander Graham of Kilbarchan and bring him to the Wallace house for trial.

Graham protested his innocence, claiming that the case against him was untenable, but Robert Bruce’s certainty about Will’s innocence was absolute. The suspicions surrounding the events, including the one-sided rivalry over Mirren, attested to by herself in writing and witnessed by her local priest, combined with the mysterious disappearance of the perjured Tidwell, the sole witness against Will but far more likely a potential witness against Graham, proved overwhelming. Bruce’s judgment was Draconian. Graham of Kilbarchan was hanged on August 25th, his entire estate forfeited to Robert Bruce, in whose employ he had been and whose good name he therefore impugned when the crimes were committed. Bruce offered the estate to Sir Malcolm, as reparation for the harm done his family, but the knight refused any part of it.

Will Wallace was free to come home to Elderslie. But he did not do so.

I grew accustomed to his absence, although I often thought of him and wondered how he and Ewan were faring in their southern forest sojourn. We discovered in time that he was well, whatever he was doing, because twice that autumn, gifts arrived from him for Lady Margaret, brought by those itinerant traders who travel the length and breadth of the country, mending pots and pans and selling posies and herbal potions wherever they can find a purchaser. Both men had the same story: they had been stopped on a forest path by a stranger who had paid them well to deliver the packages however and whenever they could come to the Paisley district.

And then, as I rode along a woodland path on a bright summer afternoon the following year, I heard my name being called from a clump of brambles, and I almost fell from my old horse in fright. I spun around to see Ewan watching me from the thick foliage at the side of the path. I could not see him clearly, merely the bulk of his shape among the shadows, but I recognized him instantly by the green of his clothing and the mask that obscured his face, and I gasped his name in disbelief as I swung my leg over my beast’s back.

“No! Stay!”

I froze where I was, half on and half off my mount, one foot in the stirrup, the other dangling behind me, and gaping towards where he stood with one hand raised, holding me there.

“Are you alone? Is anyone behind you?”

“No,” I twisted in the stirrup nevertheless to look along the path at my back. “I’m alone. What are you doing in there? Are you hiding?”

There came a swell of movement as the big man pushed away the hanging fronds of bramble with his long staff and stepped towards me, the sound of thorns being ripped from his clothing clearly audible. I watched as he pulled his long cloak free of the last of them and then deftly tucked his mask up into his hood and stepped forward to look up at me, his ruined, beloved face creased into its old, lopsided grin.

“Aye, hiding—from you, until I knew there were no strangers with you. I saw you coming from a mile away, but you had others with you.”

“I did, but they were on their way to visit old Friar Thomas. They turned off the path some time ago.”

“Good. Now you can greet me properly.”

I swung down and embraced him, inhaling the warm, wellremembered scent of him happily before he pushed me away to sweep me up and down with his eyes, taking note of my plain grey monk’s habit.

“You’re not a priest yet?”

“No, not yet, but soon now. My ordination—everybody’s—was postponed after the Maid died, when we came close to war.” Princess Margaret of Norway, the seven-year-old heir to Scotland’s throne, had died in September 1290 of natural but unexplained causes. She had been living still in Orkney, where her father, King Eric II of Norway, had lodged her for safety.

“Where’s Will?” I was looking around as I asked him.

“Not here,” he said. “He couldn’t come. Sent me instead, to tell you he is well. Content with married life and hoping you might visit us in the south. I was on my way to the Abbey, but from where I was it looked as though these other people were with you, or following you. What brings you to Elderslie in the middle of the week?”

“I’m on my way to visit Aunt Margaret. Isabelle is to be married in a few days, so between them they have conscripted me to help with the arrangements for the wedding. Aunt Margaret has been unwell since Uncle Malcolm died.”

Ewan drew himself up as though I had slapped him. “Sir Malcolm’s dead? God rest his soul.” He crossed himself. “When did he die?”

“Six months ago, of dropsy, though he had been unwell for a year before that. But that is why young Isabelle’s marriage has taken so long to arrange. She was supposed to have been wed soon after you left, you may recall, to a young fellow of good family from Paisley, James Morton. I know you’ve met him.”

Ewan nodded. “Aye. His father holds extensive lands out there.”

“He did, but he died, too, last year. Young James is master now.”

Ewan whistled softly. “Master of his own lands! He must be what? Nineteen now? And he has waited two years for the girl?”

“He has, and I admire him for it, but Isabelle refused to wed while her father was sick, so he had little option, if he truly wanted her. Now that Sir Malcolm has been dead for half a year, Aunt Margaret has insisted that they go ahead and wed.” I smiled. “She has three grandchildren, from Anne, but she is hungry for more.”

Ewan’s gaze was distant. “Will’s going to be upset. We had no idea.”

“I know. But no one knew where you were. The messengers we sent turned Selkirk Forest inside out looking for you. Where have you been?”

“Farther south this past year and more, near Jedburgh. Can I come with you to Elderslie?”

I nodded and began to walk with him, leading my horse and quizzing him as we went about what he and Will had been up to for the past two years, but in the mile or so that lay between us and our destination he parried all my questions patiently. He pleaded fatigue—he had been on the road all day and most of the previous night, he said—and asked my leave to put off his tale for a single telling, to my aunt and me together. I could see that he was determined to have his way and so I did not press him, though I doubted Lady Margaret would be capable of joining us in any lengthy session. Since Sir Malcolm’s death she had been retiring earlier, it seemed, with each passing day and rising earlier each morning, hours before dawn, to prepare for the coming day. With Isabelle’s nuptials less than a week away, I knew that all her energies would be tightly focused on women’s things.

As it transpired, I was both right and wrong. The house, when we arrived, was full of young women, all of them busy either sewing or working on long lists of details that had to be attended to, and Aunt Margaret was delighted to see Ewan again after such a long absence. She banished all the young women to another part of the house with their fabrics and their endless lists and chatter, and then she settled down with us in the family room, voracious in her appetite for all the news she could possibly hear of Will and his doings, and about Mirren and the home she had set up for and with him.

It was only after listening to her questions for some time that I began to see that the information she was seeking had absolutely nothing to do with what I wanted to hear. Aunt Margaret was solely concerned with her beloved nephew and his new wife and the life they shared together, the details of their house and its furnishings, the likelihood of their having children, how Mirren spent her time while Will was away. I tried several times to intervene, seeking answers of my own, but Ewan turned my queries aside with ease and virtually ignored me, focusing all his attention solicitously upon my aunt while I sat silent. Not a word was said about the reasons for Will’s departure two years earlier.

Eventually, though it was still daylight outside, her ladyship announced that she would soon retire to bed, but had no doubt that Ewan and I would have much we wanted to talk about without the constraints of an old woman’s presence. We stood and bowed to her, and she went bustling off.

Fergus the steward fed us royally but simply on fresh-baked bread and the broiled, succulent meat of a months-old calf that had been fattened up for the wedding feast but had broken a leg two days earlier. The meat, though fresh and tender, was bland, but Fergus had prepared a mixture of berries and fruits into a sauce that transformed its plainness into something fitting for the palate of a god, and we devoured everything he placed in front of us, washing it down with the household’s wonderful ale. Throughout the meal we talked of generalities, mutually consenting to discuss nothing of importance until the board had been cleared, Fergus had retired, and we were once more alone.

2

Ewan got up eventually from the table and threw two fresh logs on the big fire, then poured us both more ale and settled himself in Sir Malcolm’s large, padded armchair by the fire. I moved to join him, sitting in my aunt’s smaller chair. He was at ease, and it was clear he had decided it was time for me to know what he knew. I can hear his voice today in my mind as clearly as I did then.

“Right, lad. You’ve been very patient, and I thank you for it. What I have to tell you now is for your ears alone. So where do you want me to start?”

“Where do you think? Right at the outset, from the last time I saw you two, riding away on your trip south, two years ago.”

“We didn’t go south. Not that day.” My surprise must have been obvious on my face. “That’s right, you didn’t know, did you? Will didn’t tell you, and I couldn’t.”

“What d’you mean, you couldn’t?”

“I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know any more than you did. I thought we were heading southeast, too, until we reached the road and Will turned west. That’s when he told me he had changed his mind. He’d decided to take the blood price.”

“The blood price?” “Aye. It’s an ancient judgment, a penalty levied in return for blood shed or attempted.”

“I know what a blood price is, Ewan. I want to know about this blood price. What’s that about?”

“Ah, well. The one he was owed. Or decided he was owed.”

“By Graham, you mean.”

“Aye.”

“How did he come to that, in God’s name?”

He twisted his mouth into a wry expression that was not quite a grin. “He didn’t. It came to him, that morning, while he was looking at the bales of wool used to buy Masses for old Graham’s passing. Will looked at those two bales and saw a ransom paid to God to redeem the soul of an old thief who should have been beyond redemption. He saw that they had come out of the son’s riches, though through someone else’s impulse, and that they would never be missed among the wealth young Graham inherited. And that set him thinking about justice and retribution and, of course, blood prices.” His voice became more reflective. “It had become clear to him, while he was standing there with you and Father Peter—and I could not fault his reasoning—that Graham’s scheming had threatened his life. Not merely his livelihood but his life itself. Had the plot succeeded, Will would have hanged and Graham would have owed an unsuspected blood price to Sir Malcolm. But it had failed, through sheerest chance, and although Will had avoided the hangman, he and I were headed into exile while Graham was walking free.” He hesitated. “Where is Graham now? And did they ever find the other fellow, the Englishman?”

“The verderer, Tidwell.” I shook my head. “No, never. We believe he was murdered by Graham. But Graham’s dead, too.”

“He is? Since when?”

“Since the autumn of that year. Bruce had him hanged, for plotting murder and sedition. Uncle Malcolm sent word to you, but you were nowhere to be found.”

“Aye, so you mentioned. Damnation. We’ve been skulking around for two years, not knowing that.” He shook his head. “Ah well, even had we known, it would ha’e made but little difference. Will had his duties to see to, on several fronts. Still, it makes me feel better just to know he’s dead. He was a nasty whoreson, that one, despite all his mild airs and seeming gentle ways. A murderous animal.”

“So you knew nothing?”

“How could we? We didn’t know anything after we left.”

“Come, Ewan, that’s a weak excuse. We didn’t know where you had gone, but you knew where to find us. You could have sent home for word, failing all else. It’s been two years.”

“We couldn’t contact you. Will didna dare. We didna know the threat had been removed. We knew only that Graham’s treachery had left Will in danger of his life, under threat from assassins. And hand in glove wi’ that went the threat of danger to his family from the same people. It was a risk Will didna want to take.”

“All right. So instead of going east to Selkirk you went south to Jedburgh. Are you at the Abbey?”

“No. Close by, though, on Wishart’s lands.”

“The Bishop’s?”

He nodded.

“And how did you come to be there?”

He arched an eyebrow at me. “Because that was the way things happened. We’ll get to that. Right now let me tell you what Will was thinking when first we left here.

“He had been left with no choice but to quit his employment, his home, and his family, and to take me with him, which, as he saw it, deprived me of my livelihood as well. Nothing I could say would change his mind on that. And besides, in his eyes, he had lost his hopes of winning Mirren. He believed Hugh Braidfoot would never consent to having his daughter wed to a penniless forester who was under suspicion in a hanging crime—the selfsame man, mind, who had deprived her of a wealthy husband in the first place.”

“But that is nonsense. Will was guilty of no crime.”

“Under suspicion, I said. And he was. Think of it from Will’s view. He couldna bear the thought of losing Mirren. And so he decided Graham should—what were the words he used? Something he learned in school … Graham should make reparations. That was it. And I agreed with him. Still do.”

“I see. And what were these reparations?”

Ewan hooked one long leg over a padded arm and stretched his other foot towards the fire. “Restitution. And before you ask me, I’ll tell you. Restitution for the threat to his life in the first place and the malice that bred it. Restitution, too, for lost opportunity—to woo, wed, and live a normal life as an honest man. Restitution for lost time in which to live up to obligations to employer and charges. Restitution for monies lost in recompense for filling those obligations. And restitution for losses other than those that can’t easily be replaced—good name and reputation being first among them.” He laid his head back against his chair, watching me levelly. “I’ll tell you how we made the tally, too.” He held up one hand, forefinger extended, preparing to count the points off on his fingers, but I interrupted him.

“We, you said. You were involved in this tallying?”

“Of course I was. Will had seen the two bales of prime wool proffered for a year of Masses to shorten the old man’s years in Purgatory. That cleared his mind wondrously and set a value on his thoughts concerning how he had been wronged and how much he had lost thereby, in forfeiture. He would have made a canny merchant, our Will. And once I saw the way his mind was set, I helped him out. So …”

He began to count on his fingers. “For the two major offences against him, threat of death and loss of marriage prospects, two bales each. For the loss of work, wage, and good name, one bale apiece, making seven bales in all. But then, as any good merchant will, he included his costs. He added in the costs of transportation—two wagons with teams and drivers, he thought—and covered those with two more bales, making nine altogether.”

“You stole nine bales of wool?”

“Nine bales of prime wool, Jamie. But we didna steal it and it wasna really nine, as things turned out. We just claimed nine as due to us. Or as owed to Will. The whole thing was”—he thought for a moment—“straightforward. Bar a few earlier arrangements.”

I sat there immobile, my mind consumed with the thought that my cousin had become a thief and placed himself beyond the law. No wonder, then, that he had stayed away so long and that Ewan had been alert to the presence of others.

“Tell me exactly what took place,” I said, “because all you’ve done to this point is confuse me. Start again at the beginning.”

“It’s a gospel you want, then.” He sighed, then took a long swallow of ale. “Well, if I fall asleep in the telling, in God’s name don’t wake me.

“It started at the main road. I made to turn right and Will went left instead, as though towards Glasgow. When I asked him where he was going, he said Kilbarchan and pointed west. I kept my mouth shut and followed him for the next while until we reached the village.

“It’s a strange wee place, a cluster of cottages, less than ten, I think, and all the folk are weavers. The houses all have looms in them, sometimes more than one, so there’s hardly any room left for the folk to sleep. We stopped at one house and asked how we would find the Graham place, and the weaver pointed out the way to us. It was another mile distant. He said we couldn’t miss it, and he was right, there it was.

“I said Kilbarchan was a strange wee place, but Graham’s property was a strange big place. Four stone buildings in a walled enclosure. Prosperous, as you’d expect. One of the four was the main house and the other three were warehouses, we discovered. We sat on the crest, looking down at it, and counted the people moving about down there. There weren’t many. I counted eight of them, and they were all around the main house. I thought we would leave then, but Will kicked his horse forward, and we rode down.”

He pulled thoughtfully at his ale again. “Some self-important fellow met us at the front of the house, asking to know our business. He was the household steward, but with the old man dead, he thought himself in charge of everything. Your cousin amazed me by presenting himself as a well-bred man of affairs, addressing the fellow in Latin until it became clear that the man could not understand a word. From then on, he spoke plain Scots, saying he had been sent to make inquiries by his master, Lord Ormiston of Dumfries, regarding a contract that Sir Thomas had with Alexander Graham the wool merchant for the purchase of raw wool. Told the fellow that Sir Thomas had paid in advance months earlier but that upon reaching Paisley the previous day, with the intent of taking delivery, he had been informed of the merchant’s untimely death and, not wishing to trespass upon the family’s grief, had sent us two to ask when we might return to complete our business to everyone’s satisfaction. That impressed even me—to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“So what did this fellow say?”

“Nothing much. Will’s manner had cowed him. He was the old man’s steward, as I said, but a mere house servant. He had little knowledge of the working end of the old man’s business, and he mumbled something about the workforce all having gone home to wait for what would happen next. And then he told us that another wool merchant, a Master Waddie, would be coming over from Paisley in two days’ time to act in the interests of the son and heir, taking a detailed inventory of the materials in store and the contracts outstanding. He said word would not yet have had time to reach young Master Graham, who served the Lord Robert Bruce as a verderer and would most likely be somewhere on the Bruce lands in Annandale. It would take him, the man believed, at least two days to reach home, so he and the Waddie fellow might well arrive at the same time.

“Will said he would talk to Lord Ormiston, but that his lordship had been long away from home, about his affairs in Edinburgh, and was anxious to get back to his wife, who was infirm. He then asked if we might be permitted to pay our last respects to the old man before we left, on his lordship’s behalf, and the fellow let us into the house and then left us alone. Old Graham was laid out on his bed in the main room. There was a priest there, and two monks, and a couple of others, men and women both, most of whom were peering about them as though they had never been there before.”

“And then?”

“We knelt and prayed by the bedside. Well, we knelt anyway, while the priest prayed. And then, having established our right to be there, about our supposed master’s business, we walked around the other buildings, the warehouses and barns and stables, and three big, stinking sheds where the wool was treated and combed before they baled it.” A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “At that point I think you would have been right about the thievery. Will was looking, I believe, for an easy way to rob the place.

“One of the stone warehouses had a private room with a padlocked door, and it was obvious that the old man had worked in there on his affairs. But the padlock was unlocked, the door was open, and no one was nearby, so we went in. There were papers and parchments everywhere, strewn about all over the place, as though someone had been rooting around in there looking for something to steal. Will opened a small wooden chest that sat on the big writing table and pulled out a handful of scrolls—single sheets of parchment, all of them unsealed but rolled and tied, with ribbons and blank seals attached. He opened one, and then another, and then he began to smile. He flipped me the one that had made him smile. I looked at it closely, but it took me a while to realize its import …” His voice faded and he smiled again at the memory.

“Well, what was it?” I prodded.

“A contract, a bill of sale. With spaces left blank for the details of the transaction. But it was signed by Alexander Graham. None of the others were, but for some reason the old man had signed his name and set his seal to this one. Will took it back from me and tucked it and three others into his scrip, and then we went off and continued our inspection. All three barns were stuffed to the roof with bales of wool, some of it prime, some poorer. But they were stuffed, Jamie. Hundreds and hundreds of bales. We found out later that they had been preparing to ship trains of wagons to Glasgow, Dumfries, and Edinburgh the following week, for the Michaelmas Fairs in September, less than a month away.

“On our way back out to our horses, we met the steward again, and he was as friendly as could be. Will asked him if someone could tell us about wagons, and he directed us to one of the wooden barns outside the compound walls, where we found an old man getting ready to leave. He showed us an enormous wagon, the biggest I have ever seen, and told us it could carry ten full-sized bales with ease. Then he showed us the leather sheets they used to cover the bales for protection, and the long straps they used to secure the load. Will asked him how many horses, and he told us two. Two big whoresons was what he said.”

In spite of my queasiness at the crime being described, I found myself fascinated. “So what happened then?”

“We came right back to Paisley, to find help for what Will had in mind. We needed some men we could trust, and so we went to Jamie Crawford’s howff.”

“Of course you did.” I knew Crawford’s howff well. It had been a favoured haunt of ours for a long time, a plain but well-run tavern frequented by archers and other interesting characters, where the food was simple but wholesome, the ale was dependable, and no one ever asked awkward questions.

“One of the sons, Alan, was there,” Ewan said, “and he and Will went off into a corner. I could tell, watching them, that Alan liked what he was hearing, grinning and nodding his head and looking around the room.”

Alan Crawford and Will had been friends since our first year at the Abbey. He was a big, bluff fellow, Will’s age and almost as big. The only weaponry Alan ever carried was a long, single-edged dirk that hung at his side—I had never known him to bare the blade—and a heavy quarterstaff that Will had taught him to use. He was the only man I had ever seen who could best Will Wallace in a toe-to-toe bout. The respect that achievement garnered him was widespread.

“Did you know what Will was telling him?”

Ewan grinned. “That we had need of help and would pay well for two weeks’ work. Four men, to help us take a heavy wagon north, then bring it back. Good men, willing to work hard and to fight if need be. A silver groat a day, each man.”

I stifled the urge to whistle. A groat, our smallest silver coin, was worth fourpence, and the maximum going wage for a skilled labourer was twopence a day. A groat a day, for two weeks’ worth of easy work, was a deal of money.

“So,” I said instead. “Did you find your four?”

“Five,” Ewan answered, his grin still in place. “Alan was the first, but there was a man there we had not expected to find. You remember Robertson, the archer Will bested the day he first met Mirren? Well, he was there, and Alan vouched for him. He remembered Will and was glad to see him—no hard feelings at all—so he was our second. Then there was Big Andrew Miller, who’s always ready for anything that smells of a fight, and Long John of the Knives was the fourth.”

The faces of the last two men flashed into my mind, although I had not seen either one in years. Big Andrew’s name was a jest, for he was one of the smallest men in Paisley, but he was lean and wiry and as strong as a braided sinew bowstring, and he carried a crossbow wherever he went. Long John of the Knives, on the other hand, towered several inches over Will, and there was never any doubt of where his name came from. He wore a heavy belt around his waist, and from it hung a dozen sheathed knives, all of different sizes. Long John could sink any one of them into any surface, with astonishing speed, from twenty paces. He was a peaceful man, though, and threw only at targets, perhaps because no one ever gave him cause to take offence. Will, I thought, had chosen well.

“Who was the fifth, then?”

“An outlander, a Gael from the northwest, from an island called Skye. He had been in Paisley for a month or so, and Alan and Robertson had both befriended him. No one knew much about him, but both men vouched for him as being tight lipped, trustworthy, and a dour man in a fight. They called him Shoomy, but his real name is Seumas, Gaelic for James. Will had been watching him since we arrived, and I could tell he was taken by the man, though it might just have been the sword. Shoomy carries a sword that’s much like Will’s bow—bigger and longer and more dangerous looking than any other to be seen. He’s a big lad, tall and lean, but well muscled and quick, and that sword gives him twice the reach of any man around.”

He scratched gently at the side of his nose. “So, there we were within the hour, seven of us in all, and a bargain struck. Will borrowed ink and pens from Jamie Crawford and went away to make his own arrangements for the following day, while I rented some nags for the five lads.

“We slept in the stable at the howff that night and were on the road by dawn. By mid-morning we were back at the Graham place. There was hardly anyone there—a few labourers lazing about and a huddle of women carding wool was all we saw. Will presented the steward with a completed contract for the delivery of nine bales of prime wool and the rental of a heavy wagon and team to transport them. It bore the name of Lord Thomas Ormiston of Dumfries—we discovered later that he had been dead for six years by then,” he added, flashing me a grin, “and the signature and seal of Alexander Graham himself, indicating the full amount had been paid months earlier, delivery to wait upon Lord Ormiston’s return from the north. We received a written bill of sale in return, left one of the nine bales as surety for the return of the wagon, then loaded the remaining eight and headed, everyone supposed, for Dumfries.”

“It was theft, then. So where did you go?”

“To Glasgow, to Bishop Wishart. He heard Will’s confession and granted him absolution once he’d heard the entire tale. Restitution received for harm done, he said—all right and proper. And then he sent us north with the wool, to Sir Andrew Murray.”

“In Moray? Why would he send you all the way up there?”

Ewan rearranged his long legs, crossing one over the other. “Because he is a bishop and God works in mysterious ways. You should know that, and you almost a priest.”

“I’m serious, Ewan. Why?”

Ewan looked at me directly then, no trace of humour in his eyes. “Because he is the senior Bishop of Scotland at this time and he believed, for reasons he didna see fit to explain to us, that sending Will up there would be for the good of this realm. There were fell things happening at that time. Edward of England had named Bishop Bek of Durham his deputy in Scotland, for one thing. Bek is a dour and humourless man devoted to his King before his Church. Wishart had no love for Bek then and has even less now.

“He required Will to make contact with the younger Murray and renew their acquaintance while delivering certain … matters—several documents of what he termed ‘some delicacy’—directly to Sir Andrew’s attention. He left us in no doubt of the importance of what he required of us.”

“Wait. Are you saying Wishart included you in his designs?”

“Aye, but only because I was already there with Will and Will vouched for me. But in return for Will’s services, and very much to the point at the time, Wishart offered rich payment. He would speak personally, he said, with Mirren’s father, whom he knew well, on Will’s behalf. And the blood-price wool would be of use to Murray, he said, for there had been a blight of some kind among the sheep in the north, and we would be well paid for it. The money gained from that would enable Will to offer Master Braidfoot a suitable bridal price for his only daughter, and the Bishop would then grant Will a position as a verderer, with a good, strong house, on the Wishart family lands near Jedburgh.” He looked at me from beneath his arched right eyebrow. “Ye’ll see, I think, it wasna an offer Will could refuse.”

I felt slightly abashed. “Yes, I can see that. Especially in his frame of mind at the time. And so you travelled north. I’m guessing it went well there, for you’ve said Will is married and living and working in the south now.”

He nodded. “Aye. It took us eight days to reach Murray’s lands, and it was an interesting journey. Scotland is a wild place nowadays, much changed since King Alexander died, and there were times when we were glad there were seven of us, for had we been fewer in number we would have been plucked like fowl along the road and left wi’ nothing.”

“What d’you mean? You would have been robbed?”

“Robbed and killed, lad. None of us doubted that, once we saw how it was out there. There’s no law beyond the burghs today. Once out of the towns and into the countryside, it’s every man for himself and God help the unprepared. The whole world is out of balance. Without a king to hold them in check, the nobles—or so they like to call themselves—are all become savages, every petty rogue of them looking out for himself alone. Each one of them treats his holdings as his own wee kingdom, to be ruled as he sees fit, using whatever private army he can afford to hire. Which means that there’s no order anywhere—no discipline, no loyalty, no honour—and a traveller moving through the land runs a gamut of risks at every turn, like to lose everything he possesses each time he meets a stranger. They are all bandits, Jamie, soldiery as well as outlaws, and common, decent folk live in terror of their lives.

“Three times we encountered what might have been serious trouble on the road. Three times in eight days. And on one of them, north of Stirling, we had no other choice than to fight. We left eight dead men behind us, eight out o’ nigh on twenty who attacked us, but thank God none of them were ours. We took down five o’ those early, with our bows—me and Robertson and Will—and Big Andrew’s crossbow. By that time, though, the others had come too close for bow work, but Long John and Shoomy killed three more of them before they could blink, and the rest ran away.”

I could only shake my head, unable to believe that the situation could be as bad as Ewan was saying.

“Anyway, we found Sir Andrew where he was supposed to be, and young Andrew was with him. Between the pair o’ them, they gave us a chieftain’s welcome. I couldna believe how happy your friend Andrew was to see Will, and it seemed to be mutual—Will was brighter than I had seen him since before he fell foul o’ the Graham fellow.” He lapsed into silence, staring into the fire, and I saw his eyelids starting to droop.

“Don’t nod off now, Ewan,” I said, afraid of losing him and the story both. “They were still friends, then?”

He blinked owlishly. “Oh aye! It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. You know Will, he seldom mixes well wi’ strangers, and there they were, after five or six years, embracing each other and laughing together like brothers who had been apart for no more than an hour. Brotherly, though God knows there’s little resemblance between them apart from size. And yet there’s something each of them has that’s reflected in the other. Don’t ask me what it is, for I can’t say. The closest I can come to it is that they share a common … light.” He winced. “That sounds daft, I know, but each of them has this glow about him that seems to spill out whenever they’re excited, and those two get each other stirred up all the time. You can almost see it—their excitement, I mean—everyone around them feels it.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “That’s it, lad. I barely know what I’m saying, but I know I have to sleep. I’ve been on the road since before dawn, and now that I’m old, I need my rest.” He looked across at me. “An hour or two wouldna hurt you, either.”

“But I want to ask you about—”

“Ask me tomorrow. I’ll be in better fettle for talking once I’ve slept.”

There was no point in arguing, and so we went to find our beds. Whereas I have no doubt that Ewan was asleep before he even lay flat, I lay awake for a long time, thinking about all that he had told me. And then, just as I was drifting to sleep at last, I tensed, my mind suddenly crystal clear again.

Ewan had been hiding as he waited for me to reach him that day. Ewan, masked and unexpectedly returned after two full years away from Elderslie, should have had no reason to hide himself in a clump of brambles. Reason to be cautious, yes, but to hide from the whole world?

3

People had already started arriving from neighbouring houses and hamlets by the time I rolled out of bed soon after daybreak, and more kept coming throughout the morning, turning the entire household and the grounds into a frenzy of preparations. Cousin Anne arrived before mid-morning with her husband and her three children, and Aunt Margaret conscripted me to take the children for a walk in the grounds, to keep them out of the way of the work ongoing everywhere, so I did not even set eyes on Ewan until after the midday meal had been served. Trays and platters of cold meats, pickled roots and onions, and slabs of fresh bread with jugs of cold spring water from the well were carried out from the kitchens and set on tables for people to help themselves however and whenever they wished.

I had already eaten by the time Ewan appeared, and when I saw the long tube of the bow case hanging from his shoulder I guessed he had been practising in the nearby woods. He winked at me as he approached the serving tables, then unslung the bow case and set it down beside his quarterstaff before beginning to load a wooden platter for himself. I went to fetch us a couple of mugs of ale from the kitchens, then crossed to where he had found a seat at an unoccupied table under a tree, against the wall of one of the outbuildings. He nodded his thanks as he took the ale, and I sat sipping at my own as he wolfed down his food. When he had swallowed the last mouthful, he leaned back and quaffed off what seemed like half of his ale. Then, typically, he belched.

“That was good,” he said. “But you don’t look happy. What’s on your mind?”

“Questions,” I murmured. “More questions.”

He looked around us casually “Ask, then. We’re alone. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know why you were hiding yesterday when we met, because I don’t believe it had anything to do with your being cautious about Graham of Kilbarchan.” He didn’t stir and his expression betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. “Whatever you were hiding from, whatever it was about, it’s much more recent than the trouble that sent you away from here two years ago. Is it not?”

He tilted his head slightly to one side, and then he nodded. “Aye, it is. I was going to tell you about it.” He glanced around again. “Will wants to come home. Sent me to see if it was safe.”

“He wants to—? What’s stopping him? Let him come! Go back and tell him we’re waiting for him, then bring him back, wife and all.”

The big archer ducked his head. “Not quite that simple, Jamie. That’s why he sent me up alone. To check out the possibilities, see what’s to be seen.”

“In what sense? What are you looking for?”

“Englishry.”

“In Elderslie?” I made no attempt to hide my scorn.

“Why not? They’re everywhere else.”

“Not here, they’re not. Not yet.”

“Are they in Paisley?”

I shrugged. “At the Abbey, aye, sometimes. There’s always bishops coming and going, and the English ones have taken to riding with escorts ever since Pope Gregory gave Edward the right to appoint Scottish bishops last year.”

Ewan grunted. “Aye, Bishop Wishart wasna pleased about that at all. Said—and he was right—it undermined the entire authority of the Church in Scotland. A foreign pope granting a foreign king authority over the Scots clergy. ’Gin I were an English bishop in Scotland today, I’d travel wi’ an escort, too, lest my holy arse got booted back into England.”

“Then … has Will crossed the English?”

Ewan hesitated. “Aye, you might say that.”

“What did he do?”

His huge shoulders flexed beneath his clothing. “Nothing you wouldna ha’e expected him to do, knowing Will.”

“Tell me, then.”

“He hit an English soldier.”

“He hit an English soldier. In a brawl, you mean.”

Ewan sighed. “No,” he said, in a strange, tight voice. “It was no brawl. But there’s background to it that you need to know in order to understand it. Last year was bad, Jamie, all upheavals, as I’m sure you know from living at the Abbey, filled wi’ politics and posturing and praying and positioning by folk of every stripe, and all of it shaped to suit the dreams and schemes of the men who would call themselves great. And it culminated last May and June, we’re told, with Edward Plantagenet being named overlord of Scotland. That was his price for agreeing to serve as judge in the matter of the kingship, overseeing Balliol and Bruce, and none of the magnates seemed inclined to argue with him at the time.” He shrugged. “Mind you, how could they, really? As Bishop Wishart made clear to us at the time, they all hold great and prosperous lands in England, through Edward’s goodwill and at his royal pleasure. Lord John Balliol himself owns fifteen vast estates in England, many of them in the richest, southern areas, did you know that? And Bruce holds almost as many—at least ten that Wishart knows of—and both men openly pay homage to Edward as their feudal lord and benefactor in England. Their feudal lord.”

Ewan unclenched his fist, flexing his fingers slowly, and continued in a quieter voice. “And so Edward was named feudal overlord of Scotland in May last year—and within days there was an English army at Norham and all the Scots royal castles were surrendered to the English.” He turned his head to look directly into my eyes. “According to the lawyers on both sides, they were handed over temporarily, to be returned later, of course, once a new King of Scots has been crowned. But in the meantime, Edward holds them and we lack them, and their strength looms over us, manned by English garrisons.

“And then in June, less than a month after that, all the Guardians resigned and were reappointed by Edward the same day, and two days after that they all swore fealty to Edward—but not as feudal overlord, as was agreed at Norham. Oh, no. This time they swore their allegiance and fealty to Edward Plantagenet, Lord Paramount of Scotland. God help us all!”

“Ewan,” I said, “I know all that, knew it while it was happening. But you. You were never this political before.”

“No, I was not.” He leaned forward. “You’re right. Not even when Edward was doing to my homeland of Wales what he is now preparing to do to Scotland.”

“Oh come, Ewan,” I said, close to scoffing. “That was war, and Wales was his enemy. I would hardly say it’s as bad as that here.”

“Oh, would you not?” He raised his chin until he was almost looking down his boneless nose at me. “Then you will have to pardon me, Master James. How old are you now?”

I hesitated, dismayed by the hostility in his tone. “Twenty, as you know.”

“Aye, twenty …” He managed to make it sound like an infantile age.

“It’s clear you have a point to make and I am missing it. Explain it again, if you will.”

“It’s nothing you would know, Jamie,” he said in a kinder tone. “You’re a priest, or as near as can be, living in an Abbey. Everything you hear is filtered for the Church’s ears. It’s those of us who live outside who know what’s really going on. The south is full of English soldiery nowadays. They’re everywhere around us, like a coating of slimy, foul-smelling moss, and there’s no way to stay clear of them. They lord it over everyone, and there seems to be no one to whom they are accountable. At the lowest level, the common men-at-arms are ruled by knights and sergeants. Those in turn are commanded by bailiffs and petty officers, who are appointed to various duties by sheriffs and justiciars, who hold their power through the various barons Edward has brought with him to Scotland. And the barons serve the earls—”

“The English earls, you mean.”

“Aye, in most instances, but when the Scots Earl of Carrick’s men, many of whom are Englishmen, are mixed with those of the English Earl of Hereford, who is to tell which is which in the heat of an argument? The earls are all Edward’s deputies, of course, Scots and English—that goes without saying—but collectively their retainers act as though they are a law unto themselves. They lean heavily on the Scots folk and treat them like serfs.”

“Like serfs? How is that possible?”

“How is it possible? Jamie, it’s commonplace. Certainly where we are, in the south, but I’ll be surprised if it is different anywhere else. There are too many English here nowadays, and too few of us, and there is no war between us—only arrogance on their part and long-suffering acceptance on ours. But they treat us like a conquered folk and make no effort to disguise their contempt for us.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Aye, I can. It’s the reason Will needs to come home. He’s a wanted man because of it, but he did nothing wrong. He committed no crime, broke no laws. He simply crossed the English. But now there’s a price on his head and he’s in hiding and dare not come home.”

“A price on his head … How much?”

“Five silver marks.”

“And for what is he being sought?”

“For assaulting an English soldier who was doing his duty.”

“And is that true?”

“I’ll tell you what happened, and you can judge for yourself.” He wedged his back against the wall behind him and launched immediately into his story.

“About three months ago, perhaps three and a half, Will and I travelled to Glasgow to meet with Bishop Wishart and report on our stewardship, and on our way home again we stopped at Lanark, to pick up some yarn and thread and the like for Mirren at the Lanark Fair. The town was full of soldiery, most of them English, though some of them were Scots, but we had grown accustomed to that, because we had noticed, on the way north, that there were more English everywhere than we’d ever seen before. But we had kept to ourselves, avoided contact with anyone and encountered no difficulty, and behaved the same way on our return journey—until we came to Lanark.

“Something was different there,” he continued, “something was amiss, and we didn’t know what at first. And then we turned a corner into the marketplace and it was all but empty, save for a half-dozen people who immediately stopped what they were doing—they were huddled together over something we couldn’t see—and turned to look at us. They looked frightened, and guilty, and that’s when Will recognized what was wrong. They were afraid of us, though we couldna tell right then what was frightening them. But they werena talking, and they certainly werena laughing. It was scarce midmorning, and the stalls were all quiet and the only other people there at all were soldiers.

“‘These folk think we’re English,’ Will said to me, watching them. ‘They’re afraid of us. It’s our bows. They’ve taken us for English archers, and no wonder. Look over there—half the men on the other side of the square are archers, dressed just like us.’ He was right, and I hadn’t noticed it until that moment. He held up a hand and stood watching the group of folk in front of us, and when they were all looking at him, waiting for him to do or say something else, he raised his hand a little higher. ‘We’re not Englishmen,’ he says, just loud enough for them to hear. ‘No matter how you think we look, we are Scots like you. We carry English bows, but that means nothing. We are merely passing through on our way south to Jedburgh. What has been happening here?’”

“I thought for a while that no one was going to answer him, but then one of them, he looked like the oldest man among them, looked from one to the other of us. ‘Come forward,’ he says, ‘and see for yourselves what’s happening.’ So we did. There was a young fellow among them, lying on a stall table and covered in blood, and they were trying to stop him bleeding. I was able to help them with that, and once we had the bleeding stopped it didna take us long to find out what had happened.

“The old man—his name was Nichol—told us the English had discovered a new game with quarterstaves and were having a grand time with it. It had started earlier, in another town, but word of it had spread quickly so that everyone now knew what was involved. Gangs of English soldiery would swagger through a town, driving the local men ahead of them the way beaters drive game, until they thought they had gathered enough victims for their sport. Then they would round in their prey and the games would begin. The rules were very simple. Two English soldiers would compete in a bout of staves, watched by an audience of mixed Scots and English. When the bout was over, the quarterstaff being an English weapon, the Scots were invited to try them out. Any Scot who dared was encouraged to knock down a braced English soldier by hitting him across the shoulders. Should he fail, there was no penalty other than the recognition of the fact that the Scots were no match for Englishmen in the use of an English weapon. Should he succeed, on the other hand, he would be rewarded with a silver groat for his accomplishment.”

“That sounds fair enough,” I said.

He raised a hand to silence me. “But the Scots could not win, because the weapons they used were flawed.”

I frowned. “How can a quarterstaff be flawed? It’s essentially a club.”

“True, but even a club can be weakened. When they finally found someone who was willing to try for the groat—and believe me, they made a grand business of provoking people, challenging their manhood, insulting them, and questioning their bravery—the contenders were offered their choice of any of the staffs carried by the soldiery. The weapons were laid out on the ground and their owners stepped away from them. The locals were unsuspicious. They had just watched the English soldiers laying about each other with the same weapons.

“Yet two groups of Englishry were mingled there, one carrying sound, solid weapons that they used to fight each other, and the others carrying weakened staves that were used to gull the locals. So some young fellow, like the one we found bleeding in the marketplace, would eventually take up a staff and smash it across the armoured shoulders of the Englishman who stood there waiting for the blow. But every weapon laid out for the young man’s choice had been cut diagonally, and the damage skilfully disguised. So when the hapless dupe, encouraged by everyone, swung the wretched thing at full strength against the armoured man’s back, the staff shattered, the jagged, broken end rebounding viciously to strike the unarmoured Scot, drawing blood most times and frequently inflicting brutal damage, to the great amusement of the watching English …”

A shadow fell across the table between us, and I looked up to see a pretty young woman gazing down at us, her body tilted sideways against the weight of the great wooden jug she balanced against her hip. “You two are deeply into something,” she said, flashing us both a merry grin. “It must be thirsty work, talking so much. Will I pour you some more ale?”

We sat happily and watched her as she filled our mugs and meandered away in search of other drinkers, and as she went, Ewan turned to me, waggling a finger at her departing form.

“I know you’re not a priest yet, but does that—?”

“Not even slightly,” I said, smiling at the tone in his voice as I waved his question aside. “Now tell me what Will did when he found out about this game the English were playing.”

Ewan grinned wolfishly, the girl already forgotten. “Why would you even think he might do something, a quiet lad like our Will?”

“Because that’s the way he is—quiet and shy and bashful and loath to speak his mind. Tell me, what did he do?”

“Will stripped off his green tunic and cloak and pulled on a plain homespun shirt that he borrowed from one of the men in the marketplace. Then he laid his bow case down, and I set aside my quarterstaff and picked up his instead. We left the weapons and the rest of our belongings with Nichol and his people—we’d told them what we were going to do—and we went looking for English bully boys.”

“And found them, no doubt.”

“Oh yes. On the far side of the town, away from the main road. The forest grows right to the edge of the town there—one minute you’re among buildings, the next you’re in the deep forest. Anyway, it was the right kind of place for what the English wanted. There were men-at-arms aplenty there, but most of them were archers, which surprised us at first. We found out later that they were attached to a force brought up from the Welsh borders by the English baron John de Vescy, a crony of Bishop Bek. Anyway, by the time we caught up with them, they had herded a group of locals into a clearing in the woods and were taunting them, defying them to pick up the cudgels and try their luck against an unarmed Englishman. I simply marched Will up to them, holding him by the arm as though I had taken him by force, and pushed him into the middle of the clearing.”

“Just like that? And no one challenged you?”

Ewan looked all innocence. “Why would anyone challenge me? They took me for one of themselves, dressed as they were and carrying a quarterstaff, a cased longbow, and a quiver of arrows. The only two who spoke to me did so in Welsh, and I answered them in Welsh, telling them I was a newcomer, arrived that day. Who was to doubt me? Besides, I had brought them a victim for their amusement. He stood there mute, glaring around him like an angry bull. Everyone was impressed by the size of him at first, but then they saw that he was weaponless, and none too clean, and ill dressed in a tattered old tunic, with bare, dirt-crusted legs and ruined sandals. So they dismissed him and began again as though he wasn’t there.

“But as they talked and harangued their prisoners and explained what they were proposing, he appeared to take an interest, and his interest grew until he began to nod his head and shamble about—not saying a word, mind—and gesturing with his hands to indicate that he wanted to try one of the staffs.”

“And eventually they gave in and let him,” I said.

“They did. When it was plain that no one else wanted to take up the challenge, he was their only chance for amusement. And so the party with the doctored staves came forward and dropped them on the ground, so that he could pick one. No one noticed that I stepped forward with them and dropped mine at the same time. But of course, it was not mine at all. It was Will’s, and he picked it out of the pile, peering at it as though he had never seen such a thing before, and swinging it awkwardly as though that, too, was new to him. I backed away quietly and made my way to where I could take up a covering position to guard his escape, for I knew he would soon be heading towards me, and moving quickly.

“Sure enough, I saw the biggest man among them take up his stance and prepare for Will’s blow. He was armoured heavily enough, with a metal cuirass over a quilted leather jerkin, and his arms were well guarded against injury, and it was plain from the way he swaggered up that he was prepared for what was to follow.

“Well, he was not prepared at all. Who could prepare against a hard-swung staff from Will Wallace? The blow landed like a falling tree and knocked the fool right off his feet, flying arse over end until he smashed into the nearest tree and fell unconscious. And then, before anyone could react, Will took out the two men standing next to him, with two hard chops, side to side, his staff barely moving a foot in either direction, dropping them both where they stood. The first man hit was lucky, though the blow probably cost him a few broken ribs, even with the armour. But Will broke heads that day, and three of the men he struck down stayed down for good. In all, he disabled seven men—and I mean he disabled them—before anyone could even begin to rally against him. And by the time anyone did, he was already racing towards me, the other locals scattering in all directions.

“I’d had an arrow nocked to my string since before Will swung his first strike, and now I brought it up and pulled. There were three runners close to catching Will. I felled the first of them, shattering his left shoulder and throwing him backward with the force of my arrow. By the time I had another arrow set, the second man had recognized me and knew what was coming. Still running flat out, he threw himself sideways into the brush by the side of the path and lay there, making no attempt to come out. The third man had pulled a sword from his sheath and was swinging it up to hack at Will when my arrow took him low, just above the left knee, knocking the legs from under him. I nocked a third arrow, but no one moved now among the small group of Englishmen remaining in the clearing.

“I counted five men left there, each of them staring intently at either Will or me, and I knew our descriptions would be spread and they would hunt us down for this, or try to. I waited until Will ran past me and then I spun and followed him, neither of us slacking our pace until we reached the market square and reclaimed our clothing and weapons from Nichol and his companions. We told them to scatter and deny they had ever seen us, and then we made our way to where we had left our horses, and we were quickly out of Lanark.”

I sat silent for some time, absorbing all that he had told me. “So that was three months ago?” I asked eventually.

He shrugged. “Don’t know for certain. Where are we now?”

“September. Today is the sixteenth.”

“Then it would have been four months ago. Late May.”

“And where have you been since then?”

“In the forest, near Selkirk village.”

“Did Mirren go with you?”

“Aye, she had to. Too many people knew who we were. It would no’ have been safe for her to stay. Besides, she wouldna leave Will.”

“A rough life for a woman, that, living in the forest, under open skies.”

“Not at all. They live in a cave, those two, and it’s better than many a house I’ve seen. It’s dry, warm, spacious, and well lit, comfortably furnished, and well hidden. It even has separate bedchambers and a clean pool.”

“A pool? You mean for bathing?”

“Aye, though it’s chilly, even in high summer. It’s spring fed. Pure, crystal water.”

“Do they live alone there?”

“Aye, except for me and half a hundred others. We have an entire community there.”

“Hmm. So why does Will want to leave?”

Ewan shrugged. “Who can say? He doesna talk about it much, but I think he’s had enough of the outlaw life, and I think he would like to bring Mirren home to meet her new family here in Elderslie and visit her aunt and cousins in Paisley.”

“Then he should do so,” I said, “as soon as he can.”