CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1

The year that followed was unlike any other I ever experienced, and I think of it now as the happiest time of my adult life. I remember it as a time of freedom and great beauty, of soaring hope amidst increasing desperation, and, for me at least, a time of liberation and fulfillment, spent as a forest chaplain, ministering to the folk—the families and assorted misfits and strange, often wonderful characters—who were attracted, for a multitude of reasons, to the man William Wallace.

Foremost among those reasons, of course, was the fact that Will had stepped forward and declared himself as he did that day when he took the English paymasters’ gold from the Archbishop. No one had ever stood up boldly in the face of both Church and state and declared himself to be representing and defending the common folk of Scotland, and word of it spread throughout the land like fire in dry grass.

The nobility condemned him, of course, but everyone else dismissed that as unimportant, for in their view, by their indifference to what was happening to their countrymen, the nobility had abdicated their right to take offence. What was significant was that Wallace’s action lit a fire in the breasts of the countless hundreds of ordinary men who had grown sick of the incessant bullying and chronic injustice bred of the system they were forced to live under. In a development that no one could have foreseen, they chose, overwhelmingly, to join William Wallace in his forest domain and to stand beside him as free men, beholden to no masters and responsible for their own destiny.

It was this burgeoning of small but vibrant communities within the greenwood that led to my being delegated to work there as a priest, ministering to the needs of Will’s followers. I had returned quickly to Glasgow and Bishop Wishart after the raid on the English paymasters’ wagons, bearing tidings of the outcome of my mission to Will, and His Grace had listened, stone faced. When I had finished my report, he nodded once, thanked me, and dismissed me. Had anyone asked me later, even under torture, to describe his reaction to what I had told him, I would not have been able to say.

Then word came to us, with all the condemnatory wrath of an outraged clergy, of a heinous crime against a nameless bishop during the prosecution of his divine duties. That report spoke of the impious and blasphemous theft of unnamed but invaluable Church property. I had been back for two weeks by then, so it was evident to both the Bishop and me that people had spent considerable time colluding on the details of what had actually happened and what would be released for public consumption. Once again, Bishop Wishart listened grim faced and offered no comment.

Two weeks after that, though, during the Friday-evening communal meal in the cathedral refectory, when I was deep in thought and shamelessly ignoring the droning voice of the visiting friar who was reading that evening’s scriptural selection, I was interrupted by one of the secretariat and summoned immediately into the Bishop’s presence.

He was alone in a corner by his window when I arrived, sitting with his feet propped up on a cushioned stool and tapping a flattened, much-misshapen scroll against his chin as he stared into the blackness beyond the window’s tiny, diamond-shaped panes. He looked up at me and grunted, then waved for me to pull forward another chair and join him, and as soon as I was seated he handed me the scroll. Someone had flattened it roughly, cracking its seal in folding it to fit into a pouch or pocket. I unfolded it and immediately recognized Will’s penmanship, which made me smile.

“Does this not make you wish, my lord, that everyone was capable of being his own scribe? How much clearer everything would be, were that the case.”

“Aye, but wishing for that would be a waste of God’s time, Father James, for such never will be the case. Your cousin is one of the three or four literate men I know outside of our clerical ranks. Read it.”

The missive was brief and to the point: in the space of a month, Will had written, the situation in the greenwood had changed greatly. People had begun to gather there from every direction, lured by the promise of freedom, whatever that might be, and their numbers were growing daily and showing no signs of abating. He had underscored freedom, but aside from adding whatever that might be, he spent no more time attempting to define what they were seeking. He and his people were coping, he wrote. Food was plentiful, and they had made sure people were living far from the main road, deep in the forest and beyond reach of attack.

The largest need he could foresee, Will wrote, was for priests. He had a few people among his followers with rudimentary knowledge of the healing crafts, but not one single monk or priest. Children were already being born, elders were dying, and young people were exchanging marriage vows. He needed priests now, he said, to live among his people and minister to them.

I lowered the letter and looked wordlessly at Bishop Wishart, who was staring back at me. He had pouted his lips and was picking and plucking at them with a fingertip.

“You want me to go.”

He stopped what he was doing and sat up straight, removing his feet from the stool. “Aye,” he said. “At once. Take Declan and Jacobus with you. They can both use the experience to advantage. They will be in your charge and will answer to you as their superior.”

I nodded, content with the authority he had granted me. The two priests he had named were respectively the youngest and the eldest in the cathedral chapter, and both would undoubtedly benefit from escaping the daily sameness of the cathedral’s regimen. Father Declan had been ordained with me. He was two years older than I was, but there were years of difference between us in experience and temperament, for Declan, orphaned since birth, had been cloistered all his life. He was a true Innocent, his most heinous sin, I would have wagered, no more serious than a sometime tendency to daydream. Now, however, he needed to learn to deal with real, living people, the sheep for whom God had made him responsible as a shepherd, charging him to lead them to Salvation.

Father Jacobus had been crippled for decades by a mysterious infirmity that had barred him physically from serving as a normal priest, making it impossible for him to mix with people and share their daily lives. And then his affliction had miraculously vanished, between one day and the next, shortly before I came to Glasgow. His return to health had been complete, so that now he positively glowed with vigour and devotion, but like Declan, he had been immured for many years, and the time had come for him, too, to step beyond the bounds of a regulated, monastic existence and reacquaint himself with the bountiful and wondrous world of God’s creation.

“When do you wish us to leave, my lord?”

“As soon as you can. Gather all you think you might need, including medicines and supplies, and have it loaded on a wagon—two wagons, if you need them—but don’t tell me or any of my people what you take, or how much you take, or where it’s going. That way, no one will be able to betray anything, even by accident. As soon as you are ready, come and find me. By then I will have written a reply to your cousin, and you can take it with you.”

“Of course, my lord. How long will we be gone?”

He had already started to look about him, his attention shifting to his next task, but now he looked back at me, his eyes showing his surprise. He gave a grunt, then answered in Scots. “For as long as ye’re needed. So dinna fret about returnin’. ’Gin I ha’e need o’ you i’ the interim, I’ll send for you. But until then, think o’ the Selkirk Forest as your kirk.”

He smiled then, a small sideways twisting of his mouth accompanying the softening of his fierce old eyes, and reverted to Latin. “A vast, green cathedral of your own, Father James … I know you will not abuse it, and I will pray for your success and happiness among the beauties of God’s wilderness.” He paused again, then added, “I envy you this, you know, this freedom you now have. Were I much younger, I would jump at the chance to do what I am now instructing you to do. Ah, well … We are what and who we are and we live in the here and now, so there’s an end of that nonsense. Go now, with my blessing, and make a start on what you have to do.”

I knelt quickly, and as he made the sign of the cross over my bent head, I was aware of a sensation of lightness in my chest.

2

The guards at the turnoff point recognized me as I approached and remained hidden, only one of them stepping out from his hiding place to wave us forward. He was one of Will’s sergeants, as they were known, soldier leaders chosen from among the ranks, who wore a coloured shoulder patch to mark their status. They were responsible for maintaining discipline among the wild men who formed Will’s active units. He threw me a casual salute as I passed by, running his eye over my loaded pack horse and the wagon at my back. I knew that he had already passed the signal on to the watchers at his back that we were friends. Without that signal, we would not have survived the first mile beyond his post.

From where we had turned, a long, narrow, tightly winding path protected Will’s main encampment from attack. It took an hour to travel, twisting and turning through evil-looking bogs that threatened to suck our wheels down into the mud, and sometimes snaking between impenetrable thickets of tangled blackthorn and hawthorn. These thorn thickets were not high, but they were dense and unyielding, forcing everyone who came this way to keep to the narrow path.

I knew, without ever setting eyes on any of them, that we were being watched constantly as we rode by within arrow shot of evervigilant guards, and I knew beyond doubt that men were also watching us from the high branches of the scattered, massive trees that towered above the growth on both sides. And so we rode in silence until the path emerged into a spacious water meadow, straightening into a long, grassy avenue that led directly to the cluster of solid-looking log buildings along the edge of a small lake.

From the moment of our arrival at Will’s camp, I felt at home and ready to tackle anything that might be thrown at me. Will came out to greet us when he heard someone shout my name, and when he saw me sitting my horse with another, laden, at my back and a wagonload of goods behind that, his face split into an enormous smile and he spread his arms wide, waiting to embrace me. I swung down from my mount and he swept me up into a mighty hug, threatening to crush my ribs as he swung me around in a circle.

“Damn, Jamie, you look good,” he said, holding me by the shoulders, and then his face went serious as his eyes moved to take in my two fellow priests watching us from their wagon. “I swear there’s nothing more unwelcome to an unsuspecting host than the sight of an empty-handed visitor,” he said, then laughed again and punched me on the shoulder. “Welcome, Cousin. Bid your fellows climb down and have a drink with us. Patrick will take care of your horses and the wagon.”

He shouted to the man Patrick and rattled off a string of orders, and in no time at all Fathers Declan and Jacobus had been helped down and willing hands were busy with the disposition of the supplies we had brought. I introduced Will to Declan and Jacobus, and he welcomed them cordially, then herded us towards the rear of the camp, where I saw more buildings than had been there on my previous visit.

“Here,” he said, ushering us into a pleasant little clearing at the back of one of the new buildings and directing us to one of several tables with benches attached. “Sit here. It’s comfortable and it smells good, with the smoke from the kitchens there making everyone hungry.”

“Those are the kitchens?” My surprise was unfeigned, for these buildings were more than twice the size of the kitchens I had seen before.

“Aye. I’ve heard it said we are raising an army here, but I tell you, Cuz, if we are, it’s an army of gulls and gannets—save that gulls and gannets fly away once their bellies are full. I swear, I’ve never seen so many hungry people.” He leaned back, stretching out his legs and crossing his hands over his belly. “But the food is good and plentiful, thank God, and we yet have room to sit and spread our legs. And here’s Tearlaigh. Ewan has taught our cooks to make a passable beer from local hops, and Tearlaigh’s been his best pupil. His beer is almost as good as Ewan’s. You’ll find it goes down smoothly.”

A giant of a man had come bustling towards us carrying a leather bucket and with a loop of wooden beer tankards strung around his neck, and now he served us, unhooking tankards from his string and filling them with foaming beer.

“So where is Ewan?” I asked, having taken my first gulp of what was a truly excellent brew.

“He’s around somewhere. I saw him a while ago.” He stood up and looked around, but sat down again immediately. “He won’t be far away. He never is.”

“And Mirren, she is well?”

“Aye, blooming like a flower. She’ll be glad to see you, Cuz.”

I had my own ideas on that, for Mirren, I believed, had little time or liking for me, but I smiled and brought my two companions back into the conversation.

It was good to be off the road after the long journey, and as the sun went down fires began to appear between the scattered tables, and soon we moved to sit by one of them, enjoying the heat, the drifting smoke, and the dancing firelight. The beer was excellent, and some time later I woke myself up by nodding forward and tipping the brew into my lap. I know the three of us slept that night in one of the new huts by the kitchens, but I barely remember moving from the fire, and when I awoke the next morning before dawn, I had no idea where I was.

My two charges and I spent several hours after morning Mass sorting through our clerical provisions and selecting the items we would need in our first week in our new communities. Those included basic liturgical vestments for ceremonial occasions like the consecration of the new churches we would build, and sacramental items like chalices and ciboria used for the Eucharist, as well as mundane but necessary clerical supplies like writing materials. Each of us had his own consecrated altar stone, of course, but we needed bread and wine, for the consecration of the Mass, and salt, holy oil, and chrism for dispensing the other sacraments. We knew we could restock our supplies simply by walking back to the main encampment, but we knew, too, that we would have enough to do in the days ahead of us to waste time fretting over supplies.

Afterwards, Will walked us the length and breadth of the territories that his men now commanded, an area almost two full miles in length and close to a mile in width, comprising a rough oval of low, rolling, tree-covered terrain containing three primitive settlements surrounded by a wide belt of undisturbed, heavy-growth forest. Building was under way in all three settlements, and people were already living in the newest dwellings.

Having left Declan and Jacobus to begin their new ministries in the first two settlements, I was at the mercy of whatever I might find at the third. Any fears I might have had were soon proven groundless, though, for the last site was the most beautiful of the three, and I felt at peace there from the moment I saw it. It lay the farthest from Will’s main encampment, a full half-hour’s walk, but it was set in a tranquil and lovely place, a gently sloping, oak-grown, and mosscovered hillside above a wide, rocky stream. The rocky hilltop above the settlement was split by a yawning ravine, exposing sheer sides where great slabs of stone, stained by lichen and moss, appeared to be bound together by a network of massive, mossy tree roots. I could see several cave openings up there, and guessed that people had been using these natural shelters for habitation long before Will Wallace and his outlaws came this way.

Today, the caves were being used by Alan Crawford of Nithsdale and the crew of men assigned to him to build shelter for the newcomers. Alan’s was the largest of the crews I had seen, and their work was well in hand when we arrived. I counted six sturdy military-style barrack buildings made of heavy, new-cut logs. Four of those already bore thick roofs, and the remaining two were raftered and being covered with planking that would soon be covered with a thin coating of sod.

Alan remembered me and greeted me cordially as soon as I dismounted.

“Well met again,” I said to him, shaking his hand. “If this is to be my new home—and it appears it is—I thank you for preparing it against my coming. But where is everyone else?”

Alan pointed a thumb towards his men, who were already back at work. “We’re a’ there is for now. The new settlers winna start comin’ till tomorrow. That’s whit wey we’re tryin’ to get these last twa huts finished afore it gets dark. That first group will a’ be men, mind—about twa score o’ them—and we’ll put them to work the minute they get here. They’ll build mair huts, bigger yins, for families, weemin and bairns.”

“Ah. And at what time do you start work in the morning?”

He looked at me blankly. “Why, when we ha’e broken fast.”

“Prayed and broken fast, you mean, do you not?” I said.

He grinned. “Aye, of course … now that you’re here, Father James.”

“Good. Mass will be at daybreak. You can let your men know.”

He nodded, still smiling, and walked away, and I turned to Will.

“What? You’ve got that old Will Wallace look on your face. What are you thinking?”

He gave a small shrug. “Nothing. I was just wondering where you will say your first Mass. You’ll need an altar.”

“No, I won’t. Not a real one, not at first. You know that as well as I do. Any flat surface will do—any tabletop, anywhere, as long as it’s big enough to hold the altar stone.”

“Fine. But you will need a church of some description, sooner or later, even if it’s no more than a roof on pillars, a shelter to keep your people dry in foul weather. We can build you a real altar then. But you’ll have to tell Alan’s builder yourself what you need. Don’t leave it to Alan to instruct him, or you’ll be sorry. Alan’s a fine organizer and driver of men, but he’s none too good with abstract notions. The builder’s name is Davie Ogilvie, and he’s a northerner like Shoomy. You’ll do well to put yourself in his good graces, for he can build anything you can describe to him. He’ll build you a cathedral out of kindling, if that’s what you ask for.”

“I’ll settle for a solid little chapel, but I’m grateful for the advice. In the meantime, though, where should I sleep tonight? Do you know or care?”

“Neither one nor the other, Cuz. Alan’s people are sleeping in the finished huts over there, but I think that might not suit your needs anyway … nor theirs, now that I think about it. A priest should have a place to be alone and do whatever priests do when they’re alone.” He paused, then waved towards the nearest cave. “Were I you, I’d throw my belongings in there. It’s dry, and it’s warm and draft free, with a couple of separate chambers, and Alan has told me it has a natural chimney that draws smoke right up through the roof.”

“So if it’s that good, why isn’t Alan himself using it?”

Will grinned and ducked his head. “Because I told him to leave it for you. I knew you’d be coming, sooner or later.”

“You sly snake! You asked Wishart to send me here, didn’t you?”

“Not in so many words. It was more of a suggestion, a word of encouragement. I knew he’d send you anyway. He needs you as a go-between from him to me, so it makes sense to have you billeted with me, where you can do the most good.”

I shook my head in mock disgust and hoisted my heavy pack. “Right, then, show me this cave and you can light a fire while I unpack.”

3

Ever since we left Glasgow, I had been fretting privately about our collective inexperience. All three of us had been cloistered in the sanctified atmosphere of the cathedral, yet now, of a sudden, we would be living and working with a real congregation, men, women, and children of all ages and descriptions who would look up to us as God’s own representatives. They would depend upon us for their sacraments and for their moral and spiritual guidance and welfare, and they would have a never-ending need for help in clinging to their faith in the midst of their daily lives. It was a terrifying prospect, and I entered into the experience like a boy dropping into a swimming hole from an overhanging branch, remembering Will’s exhortation from years earlier when he and I had discovered the deep hole in the river by Paisley Abbey. “Jump in,” he had told me, “and swim out.”

I hung up my liturgical vestments in an alcove dug into one wall of my cave on that first night, thinking that by the time I had need of them, they would have had a few days for the wrinkles to smooth out. A full month later, those garments were still where I had hung them. In all that time, I had worn the same hooded, monkish robe—a single, dark grey, ankle-length garment, ragged beyond belief and tied with a rope at the waist. I had gone barefoot, too, most of that time, while building my own church side by side with Davie Ogilvie the builder. He was an immensely strong man, though he did not look large, and I quickly developed a great regard for his skills, which included the astonishing ability to visualize complex constructions in his mind and then translate them into charts and drawings from which others could work.

I used up my supply of Communion bread very quickly, but that was easy to replace. Bread is bread, plentiful at most times. Wine, however, is an entirely different matter, scarce and difficult to come by in rural Scotland. I was not short of it to begin with, but I knew I had little prospect of renewing my supply easily, and so I quickly cut down the amount we used in the Mass and found that, by diluting even that fastidiously, I could stretch my supply well enough.

For the first week I celebrated Mass each morning as the first of our new settlers began to trickle in, but by the end of the second week I had to schedule a second Mass on the Sunday, and soon after that I was saying Mass twice a day, every day. By the third Sunday, I found myself exchanging nods with those faces among my congregation that had already grown familiar, and by the fourth, I knew most of the people’s names. We were one hundred and twelve souls by that time, and our numbers would exceed two hundred within the year. From the moment I awoke in my cave that first day and went to celebrate Mass with Alan Crawford’s work crew, I never again had time to fret about being capable of fulfilling my obligations.

I was celebrating the second nuptial Mass among my congregants, early in June, when Will stalked into the roofed building we called a church, and as soon as I saw the set of his shoulders and the cast of his face I knew something was gravely wrong. It had been raining intermittently all morning, and he wore a heavy cloak of wool, waterproofed with a thin coat of brushed-on wax. He made a place for himself at the rear of the congregation, where he stood with his head bowed while I continued with the service. The young couple I was marrying that day were a delightful pair, well thought of by everyone, and the church was filled with well-wishers, so I put Will out of my mind as well as I could for the time being and returned my attention to the sacrament I was conferring on the young pair, not wishing to give them anything less than a ceremony they could recall throughout their lives. I distributed Communion to the throng, Will included, and then brought the service to a close by leading the radiant new wife and her goodman out to meet their families, friends, and neighbours. I stood at the threshold of my poor little church and watched the parade weave away, with great hilarity and jubilation, to enjoy their wedding feast.

When Will and I were once more alone, I stepped to the altar and carefully cleaned and wrapped my precious chalice and ciborium, then packed them carefully into their leather case and carried them with me as I led Will to the cave that was my home. One of the women who insisted on caring for my few comforts had built a roaring fire against the day’s dampness, and as we reached the fire, Will threw back his cloak and unslung a fat, heavy wineskin from where it had hung beneath his shoulder.

“One of my fellows took this from a knight he and his men stopped this side o’ Selkirk town. It’s miraculous wine, they say.”

“Miraculous?” I took the skin from him and hefted it appreciatively. “This will be put to good use, I promise you. I’ve been thinking I would have to send Father Declan back to Glasgow for a fresh supply, because we are already on the last of what we brought with us. My gratitude, then, to whoever was responsible. But miraculous? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Miraculous, for one thing, that he and his men didn’t drink it themselves. But also that they brought it back because they knew that you and the other priests are short … I confess, Cuz, that astonished me. Tousle-arsed forest outlaws saving good wine for a priest? Impossible, I would have said.”

I smiled. “Well, take off your hat and offer thanks to God for your enlightenment, and have more charity in future. Would you like a cup of it?”

“After all that? I would to God I could, but I would feel like a thief, so, no.”

I had started to remove my vestments and now I paused, eyeing him and smiling to take any sting out of my words. “But you are a thief, Cuz. That’s why you are here in the forest, after all.”

“That is true, Cousin Priest, and I had no need to hear it. But I am grateful, nonetheless, for the thought about the cup of wine and I’ll gladly drink some ale if you have any.”

“In the chest there, between the chairs. Pour one for me, too.”

I finished taking off my chasuble and stole and hung the garments carefully in the niche I used for them, and then I stripped off my long, white alb and folded it meticulously into its box on the floor of the niche. I had but the one and I seldom wore it because it was almost impossible to keep clean and fresh looking, and so I reserved it for special occasions like this morning’s Nuptial Mass. Normally, I celebrated the Sacrifice in my plain monk’s robe, believing that God cared little how I dressed so long as I served him in the spirit of love and piety.

By the time I turned back to the fire, Will had poured ale for both of us and set a flagon for me on the rough table between the two chairs that flanked the fireplace. I drank deeply, then set the vessel down before looking across at my cousin.

“All right, what’s wrong, Will? You’re plainly angry over something. What brings you here? Apart from bringing the wine, I mean.”

“Reprisals.”

I heard the word, and understood it, but for several moments it meant nothing to me.

“From the English,” Will said. “They’re punishing folk for what I did last April.”

“April! That was months ago.”

“Aye, it was, but they’re taking payment now. Plainly they took a while to think about what to do next, that’s all. And now they’re doing it.”

“Doing what, Will? Are they coming here?”

“No. They’d never dare, unless they came in strength, to wipe us out, and they won’t risk that … unless they have permission from King John, and I don’t see that coming. Nothing would please Edward more than to have right of passage from the border to here, but there’s too much going on between the two kingdoms and their Kings right now to permit our wee affairs to take on that kind of import. But reprisals are being carried out against us, Jamie. I’ve had reports, and we have had casualties coming in, to bear witness to what’s going on. Farms and whole villages laid waste and burned, their people hanged or slaughtered. Men taken on the road, about their own affairs, and hanged without trial. Their women ravaged, sometimes spared, sometimes not … And no one, anywhere, able to identify the killers.” He dragged his hands down over his face and mouthed a formless moan of weariness and frustration.

“I want to send some of them here, the survivors, to the main camp, but we can’t handle them. We’ve no room, and we’re too close to any enemy that comes against us. Close enough to fight them, certainly—that’s why we’re there. But there’s no safety for any but ourselves, the fighting men. Can you take some of the others, d’you think? Have you room?”

“Of course we can take them, and we’ll make room if need be. Where are these people from?”

“They’re plain folk from around here, on the outskirts of the forest.”

“Which outskirts?”

He shrugged. “Nowhere, everywhere. Some attacks were close by our territories, others were farther afield, near places like Selkirk village. But none were actually within our reach for retaliations. Most were in the southwest, though … west and southwest.”

“How far?”

That made him frown. “Ten miles? No, more than that.” He hesitated, thinking rapidly. “Twenty miles at least, perhaps more.”

“Twenty miles south and southwest of your main camp. That’s Bruce country.”

“Aye. It is.” He glanced at me and nodded. “They would ne’er ha’e dared try such a thing when old Bruce the Competitor was alive, God rest his soul. The old man would ha’e gone to war over it. But now his son, the Lord o’Annandale, sits in England’s Carlisle Castle as its custodian, and his grandson, the Earl of Carrick, is in London, playing the popinjay at Edward’s court. So you’ll hear no complaints from the Bruces.”

“And why have these survivors come to you?”

“Because they have no other place to go, why else?”

“Do you know them? And if the answer to that is yes, then how do you know them, that they should come to you?”

“I don’t know them. They are just folk who had heard of us, that we were in the greenwood, and who came to us when they lost everything. I knew none of them before they came, and none of them knew me.”

“But if that’s so, if they had no connection to you, why were they harmed?”

“Come on now, Jamie, don’t vex me. We’re dealing with Englishmen here! Think you they need a reason to be as they are? To behave the way they do? Have you forgotten Ellerslie and what they did to us and our kin?”

“No, Will, I have not. But this is different—”

“How is it different? How can you sit there, knowing nothing about what is going on, and say it is different? Different to what? I’ll send you three wee boys who watched their parents being butchered like stirks. Three wee boys younger than we were, with ravaged arses sorer than ours were! Tell them how different this is, then watch how they walk, hobbling in pain and shame, and how they look around them at the men they meet, waiting to be jumped upon again. Different? The only difference I see is in the time. When they did it to us, we were children, weak and helpless. Now, by the living Christ, I am a man grown, and I will meet these English whoresons with a man’s strength and judgment.”

My mind had filled with the image of two other small boys, running in endless terror for days on end, and I held up my hand to stem his words.

Now he checked himself. “What?”

“I hear what you are saying. And I understand. I disagree, but that is neither here nor there. But tell me about the logic behind these attacks. How can you be sure they have anything to do with the robbery in April?” I watched the frown that came over his face. “From what you have said, or from what I think I’ve heard you say, none of these … reprisals has taken place anywhere near the scene of the April robbery. Is that correct?” I could see in his eyes that it was, and so I continued. “But you are convinced beyond doubt that whatever is going on has to do with what you did that day.” Once again, reading his face, I could see that I was right. “Yet where is the connection? Why would you not simply believe these are random raids, like the one that cost us our home in Ellerslie? Why are you so sure they are linked to the April theft?”

He frowned again, briefly, then sat up straighter and looked me in the eye. “Because they have to be. No other explanation makes sense. Besides, it fits the nature of the beast. Edward Plantagenet is not a passive enemy. We created havoc with that raid—absolute havoc that no one, he least of all, had dreamed of. We destroyed all of his carefully structured plans, smashed them to splinters just when he must have thought he had been supremely clever. Can you imagine how he must have raged when he heard of it? But the most infuriating goad of all must have been that he could not breathe a word about any of it. How could he complain about the theft of illegal funds, funds that should never have been brought into Scotland in the first place and should never have been smuggled across the border under the protection of Holy Church under any circumstances? He would have been condemned by everyone, publicly disgraced. Mind you, I am not saying that, in itself, would have deterred him. I’ve no doubt he would have been prepared to defy the whole world had his stratagem been successful. But once his funds were lost, he had no hope of winning anything but scorn, condemnation, and harsh judgment … perhaps even excommunication.”

As I listened to his words, the scope of what William Wallace had personally done to England’s King sank home to me as it had never done before. Until that moment, I had seen the events of that now distant day in April solely from a clerical perspective, assessing the damage done to the fabric of Holy Church by the actions of the renegade Archbishop of York. Other than the physical bulk of the royal specie we confiscated—and I had not seen so much as the image of his regal head on a single captured coin—there had been no visible trace of Edward of England present that day, and I had somehow lost sight of his overwhelming influence in the entire affair. It had never crossed my mind until that moment, listening to Will, that Edward Plantagenet, the implacable and remorseless conqueror of Ewan’s people in Wales, might come looking, in person, for vengeance against my cousin for having dared to defy him. It appalled me now to see how blind and wilfully stupid I had been, living in a fool’s paradise.

“You’re right,” I whispered, fighting down a surge of nausea. “Edward can’t let that go unavenged. He will have you killed.”

“He might try, Cuz, but he’ll have to come and get me himself if he wants to see me dead …” His voice died away, then resumed more quietly. “In the meantime, though, he’s serving notice.”

“Notice? I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Killing these simple folk is what I mean. There’s no reason for it, other than to make me notice. Women and children, innocent of any crime, die or are evicted with their men. Their slaughter is a signal, nothing more. A signal to me, from him, that he knows I’m here and would have words with me. Words.” He grunted. “I’d hear few words from him, other than ‘Die,’ and he would have some other speak for him before he’d soil his tongue by using it on me. He’s a savage man, I’ve heard. D’you remember the tales of what the Turks did to Christian pilgrims, before the Great Crusade?”

“No. I mean, I’ve heard many tales, but I don’t know which ones you mean.”

“I’m thinking of the one Pope Urban used when first he raised the Cross in France. He told of how the Mussulmans would take a Christian man and slit his belly, then tie his entrails to a stake and chase the man around the stake until he died, gutted. I never really believed that happened, but Edward of England could do such a thing. He is that kind of man. A dire enemy.”

“God forbid!” I shuddered and blessed myself with the sign of the cross. “No Christian king would ever kill a man in such a barbaric fashion.”

My cousin looked at me and smiled a grim little smile. “Edward Plantagenet would, if he thought it necessary. He thinks these raids against the folk are necessary, to capture my attention.”

I gazed down into my empty flagon. “Can you stop it, this slaughter?”

“Aye. I can ride into Lanark, or to some other English garrison, and give myself up.”

“No, Will. Apart from that. Can you stop the slaughter?”

“Probably not.” He bent forward and picked out a log from the pile by the hearth, then laid it on the embers and pushed it into place with his booted foot. “But I can make it hazardous for any Englishman foolish enough to step out of doors to take a piss in southern Scotland. It will take the like of an army of men to achieve that, but Edward Longshanks and his English bullies have provided us with just such an army. At last count, we had close to nine hundred men throughout the south, most of them bowmen and all of them willing to rise at the blast of a horn.”

“Nine hundred?”

“Aye, from Selkirk to Teviotdale to Dumfries and as far west as Galloway. Had you asked me yesterday if it was feasible to field so many, I would have said no.” His lips quirked, but there was no humour in his eyes. “But now I say yes. It will take planning, but we can do it. We have to stop this obscenity, this wanton slaughter. And if that means killing them to stop them killing ours, then so be it. We will do what needs to be done. And we will do it as soon as it can be arranged. We’ll flood the entire south with patrols, strong foot patrols, three hundred men on any given day, and woe betide any stranger with as much as a knife who can’t appease them with good reasons for being armed and where he is. We will be declaring war on England. Let there be no misunderstanding. It will not be open war, and it will not be knightly war, or chivalrous, but it will be war—bloody and brutal and unforgiving, for as long as Longshanks wants it.”