CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1

“Thae priests are back, chappin’ at wir yetts,” was how Alec Scrymgeour put it five days later, when he interrupted Will and me to announce that the Bishop and the canon had returned. By “knocking at our gates,” we understood him to mean that they were close to arriving, approaching along the winding bog path from the south.

Will’s brows crooked in a small frown as he looked at me, but he said nothing. We had expected the two clerics to stop by on their return journey, but nowhere near as soon as this. They had left in search of the Earl of Buchan, who had last been heard of as being somewhere south and west of us, in the territories of Annandale, and we had anticipated it would take them at least a full day, and more likely twice or even three times that long, to find him. Given that the Bishop had ridden all the way from Glasgow to meet with Buchan and must therefore have had matters of great import to discuss with the Comyn earl, Wishart and Lamberton should not have been expected to return this way for at least another three days.

“Perhaps they ran into the earl on the road,” I suggested, and Will shrugged.

“Aye, and mayhap they missed him completely. He might not even have come south yet. That wouldn’t surprise me. The man’s a Comyn and an earl, unpredictable on both counts. Considers himself beholden to no one and answerable to even fewer. We’ll find out soon enough.”

Our visitors arrived less than half an hour later, and we were waiting for them as they emerged from the serpentine path into the water meadow at the southern edge of the encampment. They were evidently glad to reach us—especially when Will informed them there was wine awaiting them in his house and a young deer already turning on the spit in their honour—and they seemed cheerful enough, with no air of dejection about them to indicate a failed mission. But the protocol of the day dictated that nothing be said until the proper time, and so no one asked any questions or ventured any comments until the rituals of hospitality had been observed around the shallow fire pit outside Will’s hut, after which the casual attendees departed about their own affairs and the four of us were left alone to talk without interruption.

Lamberton started by explaining that they had, in fact, encountered Buchan on the road, no more than half a day after leaving us, to the great surprise of both parties. The earl, it transpired, had sent his main army of several hundred men marching south and west into Annandale while he himself had taken a small escort of horsemen and made a diversionary cross-country journey to the east, to visit briefly with James Stewart the High Steward, who had garrisoned and was holding Roxburgh Castle. Through Stewart he had passed on dispatches to Sir William Douglas in Berwick, and then, on the road back towards Annandale to rejoin his army, he and his men had run into Bishop Wishart’s little group at a fork in the road. They had set up a camp close by the road junction so they could conduct their business.

When Lamberton had finished, Will turned to Wishart. “And all went well? You achieved everything you sought?” The canny old churchman raised an eyebrow, the merest flicker of response, but Will carried right on. “I know you went in search of something from Buchan, my lord. You would hardly have ridden all the way from Glasgow merely to wish him well. Am I permitted to ask what it was?”

The older man sighed, and I thought he looked more frail than he had seemed a mere half year earlier, when he had first brought Lamberton to visit us around the time of young Will’s birth. He looked exhausted and dispirited, but even as the thought came to me, he straightened his shoulders and pulled himself up straighter, visibly shaking off the appearance of listlessness.

“Aye, William,” he said, “you are permitted to ask. And I can even answer you now, which I could not have done before we left to meet with John Comyn. There are plans afoot to send an army of mounted skirmishers over the border into England at the first sign of hostilities. It will be led by a number of earls—”

“Now there’s an error at the outset, my lord, if I may say so. No group can be a leader. It sounds fine and noble, but it’s nonsense. All your group of earls will do is fight with one another for command.”

“No, not so!” The Bishop’s voice was whip-like. “Bear in mind, my son, that the Church itself is such a group, and leads the entire world.” He paused, and then resumed in a milder tone. “Granted, the Pope is the leader of the Church, but the cardinals are effectively His Holiness’s earls, and they wield their powers effectively. So it will be in this case. The earls will share joint command, each leader commanding his own men, as has ever been the case within this realm when the earls raise the Scots feudal host, calling every ablebodied fighting man in the realm to arm himself and answer the summons. They will act separately but in unison, in accordance with a carefully prepared plan in which every earl will have a role to play. It is the way our forefathers have fought for centuries.”

“Aye, for centuries … and there’s another point I wish to raise in time to come.” Will glanced sideways at me. “Jamie, remind me of that if I forget to bring it up—the way they have fought for centuries.” He turned back to Wishart, who sat blinking at him, his lips moving, but Will himself appeared unfazed. “Pardon me, my lord. Which earls will be involved in this cross-border attack?”

“Six at this point. Stewart of Menteith, Malise of Strathearn, Strathbogie of Atholl, Donald of Mar, Malcolm of Lennox, and William of Ross. And, of course, Comyn of Buchan, newly named Lord of Annandale after Bruce’s defection and failure to answer the call to arms, will now make a seventh.”

“The Comyns are well represented, I see—Ross, Buchan, and Mar.”

“Aye, and don’t forget John Comyn the Younger of Badenoch, son of the Guardian. He rides with them.”

“Hmmph. And where will they ride to, can you tell me?”

“They will begin with a three-pronged raid into Cumberland, from south of Jedburgh, striking at Hexham and Corbridge. Farther west, under the command of Buchan, they will attack Carlisle itself.”

“Carlisle. You will pit Comyn against Bruce. Think you that is wise?”

The Bishop sighed deeply and peered into his drinking cup. “I do now, though I would not have thought so before you asked me your question about Bruce’s loyalties the other night. Before that, I would not have doubted Bruce’s commitment to this realm. But then I looked at your question through different eyes—the eyes of a discerning and often disapproving cleric, rather than the wishful, self-deluding eyes of an optimist and a patriot—and what I saw unsettled me. Bruce is for Bruce. His commitment has never been otherwise. And if Bruce has to stoop to using Edward’s power to open up the route to Scotland’s throne on his behalf, against the Comyns, why then, that is what Bruce will do …”

His voice faded, and then he resumed, in a firmer tone. “Not all men in this realm are as we are, Will. They do not all share our vision, for though you and I are far apart in our opinions and judgment on many things, we do share a grand vision, and one, I believe, that is God-sent. We dream—you and I and other folk like us—of a new and different world. We dream of freedom and of independence as a people—a single people united by our shared place in this land that mothers us, a people with the right to stand up tall and free, beholden to no foreign king or outside power, free to designate and control our own united future, our destiny, according to the people’s will.”

He turned his head slightly to include me.

“We call ourselves Scots, and nowadays we talk about the community of the realm, and we seek to redefine ourselves and our role in our own lives and living.” One corner of his mouth twitched as though he might smile a little, but all he did was jerk his head in a tiny gesture of regret. “We may all be Scots—we are all Scots, in name at least—but we are not yet one people. Not by any measure. We are a folk greatly divided by and among ourselves, by language and race, Highlands and Lowlands, Isles and forests. But the greatest of all our divisions, I believe, lies between our magnates and our common folk, and that is the one I fear most as an obstacle to commonality and unity.”

“How so, my lord?” I thought I knew the answer, but I could not resist asking the question.

He looked at me, his face expressionless. “Because the common folk and the magnates are two different creatures. The common folk of this land, including us in Holy Mother Church, perceive ourselves as Scots, plain and simple. The magnates have no such belief and no such certainty. If anything, most of them see themselves as English at root. But Bruce is for Bruce, Father James,” he said. “Make no mistake about that. And similarly, Comyn is for Comyn. And all the other noble houses, comprising every magnate in the land, support one or the other. The others are all for themselves as well, be it understood, but fundamentally the two houses of Bruce and Comyn split the land between them. King John’s hold on the crown, on the realm itself, is faltering. If he should fall and fail—which God forbid—then Bruce and Comyn will divide the land between them yet again, and until that balance of power is rendered null, Scotland will have but little chance of knowing peace and prosperity, and none at all of ever knowing independence.”

He turned back to Will. “And so, by pitting Buchan against Bruce, I have chosen to gamble with the fate of this realm. I now believe Bruce will stand for Edward Plantagenet and bar the gates of Carlisle against us. If he does, I doubt that we’ll be able to dislodge him. But if he sees his ancient enemy, the House of Comyn, descending upon him from his own lands of Annandale, he might be tempted to come out and fight, and if he does that, then our odds of taking Carlisle are greatly improved. That is my hope, and it is why I asked John Comyn of Buchan to take the lead in the southwest.” He stopped short, eyeing Will. “You look skeptical.”

“I am skeptical. We are speaking of Robert Bruce V here, the new Lord of Annandale. Were we dealing with his father, the old Competitor, then your hope would be a certainty. That Robert Bruce would bring his men howling out of Carlisle’s gates like a swarm of vengeful wasps. The son, though, is made of different stuff. He is no poltroon, that is not what I am saying. From what I have heard, he does not fear a fight, but he will not fight merely for the love of fighting. He lacks his father’s balls of steel and the fiery temper that went with them. This Robert Bruce thinks before he acts, every time, and he will never act rashly. He won’t come out of Carlisle, I fear.”

Bishop Wishart stared at Will for a long time, then twisted his mouth wryly. “And I fear I agree with you. Damn the man.”

I could see Will was on the point of twitting His Lordship about such an utterly un-episcopal wish, and I held my breath, but the temptation evidently passed and he changed the subject instead.

“What will the Steward do, my lord? Does he intend to remain pent up in Roxburgh?”

“Sir James will do what he must. He has already left the castle in the hands of a lieutenant and is posting north to join King John. As the Crown’s most senior officer, his duty is to raise the Scots host in defence of the realm. He is about that now, and when the time comes, he will lead the host as instructed by the King’s grace.”

“Then he is not yet committed.”

“He is committed to act. That is why he now rides north without rest. But he has not yet moved against England. When he does, I myself will ride with him, representing Mother Church … And what will you do, William Wallace?”

Will peered down at his hands, digging some ingrained dirt from the side of one fingernail with the nail of his thumb.

“I have been thinking about that, my lord, and I have reached a decision. I told you I would fight, if it came to war and if you gave me a leader to follow, but though the war is here, I have yet to hear of such a leader. Frankly, this matter of the earls raiding into England bothers me. It seems too … indeterminate, with too much left to chance. Edward’s army stands ready at Newcastle. He will march north from there, towards Berwick. Why, then, are the earls striking at Carlisle? What is to be gained there?” He threw up his hands. “Nothing, except the business of Bruce and Comyn, making war upon each other for the benefit of England, when they should be marching to reinforce Berwick.”

The Bishop hawked loudly, then spat into the fire. “You might well be right, William, but we can influence none of that from here. Besides, Berwick wants and needs no help. They have the strongest burgh walls in all Scotland, and they are determined they will hold William at the border.”

“Perhaps,” Will growled. “Aye. Perhaps, indeed. We can but hope so. But I mislike the smell of all this, and I would like to see more solid planning, for the need to fight is clear. Edward of England has declared a war against this realm without just cause, and every man in Scotland must stand up and fight for it.”

The Bishop raised a hand. “Edward believes his cause is just, William. I have no doubt of that. He believes absolutely that his status as overlord of Scotland is valid and that this realm is his fiefdom. By extension, King John is his feudal vassal and is now squarely in open rebellion against his lord by having made alliance with Edward’s enemy, Philip of France. That is why Edward has declared war: to depose his faithless vassal, John Balliol, King of Scotland.”

“But that is—”

“That is what? Outrageous? Infamous? Damnable?”

“Aye, all of those.”

“It is indeed, from where we look at it, but it is none of those if you believe as Edward does. But his claim is based on ancient Norman law, law that has never been enshrined or observed in Scotland since William the Bastard first landed in England, two hundred and thirty years ago. Norman lawmakers might wish it otherwise, but Scots law is far older than theirs, and the realm of Scotland has never been Norman. That is the fallacy underlying Edward’s claims, and that is why his lawyers, both civil and canonical, have worked so hard to cloak his every action in a veil of legalseeming obscurities.

“And that, I suggest to you, is the main reason for what you see as the shiftiness and unreliability of the magnates—and most particularly the Norman-Scots magnates—in this matter of loyalties. They live in a state of constant confusion, not because they are stupid or untrustworthy but simply because they do not know what to believe, Will. Their family histories and traditions are strongly rooted in the ancient system of feudalism and chivalry, wherein everything was clearly defined and there was no room for doubt. Now my brethren and I are telling them otherwise, preaching from a book of new ideas, proposing new values that fly in the face of everything they have been taught and are predisposed to believe in. That is why they vacillate so much, Will.”

My cousin sat listening blank-faced, his chin resting on his steepled fingers.

“These are not learned men, but neither are they inept. They are not ignorant in the laws of duty and chivalry, but they are unlettered and unread. They believe in actions, not ideas, and they respond to actions, not to words written on paper or recited by clerics. That is the truth, Will, and we cannot alter it within mere weeks or months. That is the way this world of ours functions. And I believe the magnates, for all their supposed powers, are afraid of the way their world is changing. Their way of life requires stability and permanence, but even the positive changes nowadays, such as the emergence of the burgesses, must seem threatening to the old guard. In their world, where change is anathema, everything now seems to be in flux.”

Will grunted, and I saw Lamberton’s eyebrows go up as Wishart’s came down in a frown.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” the Bishop growled.

“It means that I agree with you,” Will said, his eyes unfocused. “And that must be the first time on that topic. I confess I find it hard to imagine the Earl of Buchan being afraid of change. Still, I’ll not dispute what you have said, except to say that not everything in their world is in flux. I can see one thing that is dangerously static, and I see it very clearly.”

“Aye? And what is that?”

“Their military experience. And that is what I meant when I spoke of the way they have fought for centuries. It comes to me that they have learned nothing through all those centuries and have no time to learn anything new now. They have great confidence in their own abilities, God knows, but how valid is it?” He held up one hand to prevent anyone interrupting. “I bring it up only because I’ve been worrying over it since you left to hunt for Buchan. I do not like what I have been thinking, my lord Bishop, but this matter has sunk into my head and would not leave me alone until I came to grips with it. I am a verderer—a forester and not a soldier, as you know. But even so, I can see what is there to be seen and I find that I cannot ignore it, no matter how many others can. And the first thing that I see is numbers. The English outnumber us by ten to one, at least. For every hundred men we can march to battle, they can field a thousand, and if they lose a thousand men, they can make good that thousand losses where we may not, and they can do it ten times over.” He grunted again, his jaw working. “Now, it’s fine to say they’re naught but Englishmen and any Scot is worth a score of them, but that is hardly credible when blows are to be traded. We all bleed the same red blood and we all feed the same black earth.

“But the simplest, plainest truth, the thing that frightens me and dominates my thoughts at all times now, is that the English are in solid fighting trim and we are not. They are focused and tight, disciplined and battle hardened. Their forces are keenly edged and toughened after years of sustained warfare in France, in Gascony, and in Wales. Their morale is high, with ample reason, whereas our swaggering has nothing to back it up or sustain it. The Welsh and English archers are well trained and well equipped, furnished with arrows by the hundreds of thousands, produced incessantly by fletching manufactories set up throughout England to keep the country’s bowmen armed and ready to fight instantly and anywhere. Their infantry is equally well equipped, and tempered by years of fighting in scores of battles. And their cavalry is something which we simply cannot match. We lack the enormous horses that the English breed, and because our horses are smaller, our armour must be lighter, so we have no knights who can withstand the might of England’s chivalry.

“But even were we able, by some divine magic, to erase those differences, we would still be facing disaster, for we have not fought—I mean really fought, hard battles in the field—for more than thirty years. No Scots army has taken the field since the fight to throw out the Norwegians, at Largs, more than thirty years ago. And even that was no real battle by any standards. Since then, the closest our leaders have come to formal battlefield experience, the closest in decades, is on short raids into neighbouring territories against their own kind. That does not fill me with hope about the outcome of this new war.”

“Let us pray you are wrong, Will.”

“Pray all you wish, my lord, but prayer will not alter the fact that we are outweighed and outdistanced on every front. Pray hard, and have your people pray hard, too, for we’ll have need of every prayer they can muster. As for myself, I intend to fight, but I will do it here, where I can serve best by protecting the rear of our forces against incursions from the south. The English host will doubtless invade across the flats of Solway, striking into Annandale and Galloway, but there will be a constant progress of supplies and reinforcements coming north by way of Berwick and by the roads through Coldstream and Jedburgh. My men will keep those roads secure and bar all interference by those routes. You have my word on that.”

2

The Bishop and his chancellor left us to return to the cathedral in Glasgow on the morning of the fifteenth of March, the day the ancients called the Ides. I remember warning them to travel with care that day, which had not been a propitious one for Julius Caesar. I recall clearly, too, that it seemed to take a long time for them to reach the end of the long avenue and veer from sight. It was the last thing I can remember that happened slowly from that day forward.

“I like that man Lamberton,” Will said as we walked back towards his hut. “He has a good head and a stout heart and he loves this land of ours. I would follow him, were he a fighter.”

“He is a fighter, Cuz, but he’s a warrior of God. He’ll fight savagely for those things he believes in, but he will do it with nerve and sinew, and his only weapons will be his mind, which is formidable, and his will. He would never spill blood, though, unless it be his own, in sacrifice. He has the makings of a fine bishop, and I have not the slightest doubt he will be one someday.”

“If he survives this war.”

I glanced at my cousin in surprise. “Of course he will survive. Edward does not make war on clerics.”

“Hmm. Edward has not made war on clerics yet. But it seems Edward is breaking new ground everywhere he goes these days, and he does not enjoy being crossed. I would not like to cross him in person. Mind you, I’m no bishop.”

As he said the words, we heard Mirren calling his name, and we turned as one to see her watching us, her body tilted to hold her son on her hip as she beckoned.

“Is she not grand, Jamie? Look at her, the stance and the pride of her. Truthfully, I have to thank God I’m no bishop … and to thank Him even more that I’m no saint. Let’s find out what she wants.”

The following day brought word of English troop movements in the fringes of the forest to the south of us, between the towns of Selkirk and Wark and Coldstream, and Will summoned his three appointed leaders to his camp to discuss what they would do to intercept and harass the Englishmen. Within days Will’s men were involved in hostilities, provoked by a seemingly unwarranted attack on a village no more than five miles from his main camp. Word of it came to us from one of the villagers, who had escaped into the woods for long enough to watch the brutality escalate to the point where women and children were being slaughtered as they tried to flee, shot down by bowmen who bet among themselves over how each running target would be hit—in the arm, leg, torso, or head. I was appalled, not so much by the attack itself as by the borderless abyss I sensed yawning ahead of all of us.

Will questioned the man closely for some time, searching for anything that might provide a reason for the attack. But once he had satisfied himself that it was brigandage and murder, pure and simple, he called in Long John and the others and sent a contingent of forty archers off towards the village with orders to bring back as many of the raiders as they could find. Two injured prisoners, both of them English, were brought back within a matter of days; their party of five men, three of whom had died rather than surrender, had been the only people found. There had to have been many more involved in the raid, but they had obviously been under orders to scatter widely after the attack.

The two prisoners had been questioned extensively before they were brought in, and so we knew who had employed them. They were truculent and they were afraid, and the booty they had been carrying when they were taken was enough to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that they were guilty.

The case against them was laid out by one of our own, Alan Crawford of Nithsdale, and the elder of the pair was identified under oath by Walter Armstrong, the survivor who had brought the tale to us. He recognized the archer as the man he had seen shoot two arrows into his cousin Willie, the village blacksmith. The two were judged by a quartet of judges and found guilty, after which the judges met together to determine their punishment. The deliberations were short and the judgment unanimous. Each man had the middle finger of his right hand severed with a single chisel blow. They retained their lives but lost their livelihood, since neither of them would ever again be able to draw a nocked arrow. Their wounds were cauterized roughly, and they were set free.

As soon as they were gone, Will called his leaders into conference again and set them to organizing patrols, morning and evening, to ensure that all traffic moving through the greenwood for a twenty-mile radius would be tracked.

Later that day, when Mirren was called away by one of the women, she left Will and me alone with the baby for a few minutes. He was eight months old by then, as burly and agile as a badger and almost impossible to restrain, even for his father. Will finally hoisted the boy high into the air, then held him out to me.

“Here, then. Away and see your holy Uncle Jamie.”

I caught the child under the arms, instantly aware as I always was nowadays of the weighty, solid, squirming bulk of him and the speed with which his hands moved to whatever he identified as worthy of examination. This time it was my nether lip, and his tiny fingers grasped it before I could avoid them. I winced in anticipation of the pain, but before he could tighten his killing grip, I was saved by the sudden swoop of one of the women who doted on the boy. She whipped him up and away from me, carrying him off towards the women’s quarters, doubtless to be fed something warm and delicious.

“I thought he was going to rip that bottom lip of yours right off,” Will said, and his grin spread wider. “I don’t know what the reason for it is, but my son seems fascinated by your mouth.”

“Aye, as I am by yours.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Are you going to fight?”

All the animation left his eyes and he sat staring at me, willing me to continue but unwilling himself to respond.

I kept going. “A week ago you told Bishop Wishart you would not fight. Since then, you’ve sent out men to fight.”

“Only in defence of our own peace.”

“Perhaps, but now you are arranging day and night patrols. I am not saying they are unnecessary, but I am wondering if you are changing your mind about your involvement in this affair that’s bubbling on the hob.”

He continued to gaze at me, his face unreadable, and after a while I began to think he was not going to answer me at all, but then he shook his head, a short, sharp, impatient gesture.

“If you are asking me if I am going marching off to war, then no, I am not. I meant every word of what I said to Wishart. So no, I’ll not fight. Not without solid reason. The magnates will not miss my presence, and the realm of Scotland, needy though it might be, has no great need of William Wallace. None grand enough, at least, to outweigh the need my wife and children have of me.”

“Children?” I heard the surprise in my own voice.

Will grinned almost shamefacedly and lapsed into Scots. “Aye. Mirren’s expecting again. The women say she’s three months along already.” He flipped a hand and made a face, as though asking me what else he could have done. “I would ha’e waited longer, y’ know? But she would ha’e none o’ it. No need to wait, she said. She’s as strong as a horse and likes the thought o’ twa wee ones close enough together to be company for one anither. A lad and a lass, she wants, and close thegither, so what was I to say—or dae, for that matter?”

He shrugged and dipped his head. “Anyway, that’s the way o’ it, and I intend to see them safe through whatever lies ahead o’ us. War is no fitting pastime for a man wi’ bairns and a comely wife. So what I said to the Bishop holds true. I’ll take no part in fighting for some magnate—any magnate—who canna make up his mind whether he’s Scots or no’. I ha’e no such doubts. I’m a Scot, as were my grandsires and theirs before them. I ken wha and what I am, and I ken wha my King is. ’Gin he calls upon me directly, then I’ll go to war. For him. But for naebody else, Jamie.”

The rough accent of the local people vanished again beneath the lustre of the Church’s tongue. “In the meantime, I intend to keep my family safe and hidden from marauding eyes here in the forest. Should any seek to threaten them or me, then I will fight, and those I fight will rue the day they sought to find me. But that is all. So be the English keep themselves and their evil presence far from me, then I will keep myself away from them.”

I felt a blossoming relief well up in me and raised my hand to bless him. “Then so mote it be, Cousin William, and may God keep you and yours in safety in such times.”

It was a heartfelt prayer, and at the time I felt sure it must have flown directly from my lips to God’s all-hearing ear.

3

War.

In merely setting those three letters down here, hours ago, penning each of them with increasing slowness, I found myself fascinated by the contradiction between the brevity of the word itself and its overwhelming, cataclysmic meaning. It is a commonplace little word, seldom truly understood by those who use it daily. Even to speak it aloud, or even shout it at the top of one’s lungs, in the context of going to war, or being at war, fails to elicit more than a mild stirring of interest. That is because in most instances—thanks be to God—war in the abstract has no real significance for ordinary, peaceable, law-abiding folk. To those unfortunate enough to know otherwise, that is both extraordinary and incredible, but unless we have been personally touched by its insanity and brutality, its monstrous, crushing inhumanity, we remain armoured in the innocence of hope and the blithe assumption that it could never happen to us.

The people of Scotland were that way in the springtime of the year of our Lord 1296. They heard the talk of war with England and they knew that matters had been set in motion that were beyond their control, grave matters that would affect them and change the very way their land was governed. And yet they did not grow unduly alarmed. An entire generation had come to middle age without ever knowing the dangers, the risks, or the enormous tragedy of extensive warfare, and the men whose duty it would now become to fight this new war and confront the English approached the task with a wideeyed confidence that reflected their innocence and ignorance. That innocence was about to be rudely shattered.

On the twenty-sixth of March, under the command of Sir John Comyn, Earl of Buchan and High Constable of Scotland, King John’s army, jointly led by seven earls of the realm, marched south from Annandale and crossed the sands of the Solway Firth at low tide to strike at the English stronghold of Carlisle, forcing Robert Bruce, the castellan there, to declare his loyalties. Bruce chose the side of Edward Plantagenet and barred his city gates against the Scots, who set fire to the town outside the castle walls. The word that came to us in Selkirk Forest later was that Buchan had miscalculated, assuming Carlisle would fall to his first surprise assault. Instead, his attack came as no surprise at all, and Bruce’s resistance was unwavering.

As Buchan had been moving against Carlisle, though, Edward himself had arrived at Newcastle, in the northeast, and advanced with his main army to the border town of Berwick, Scotland’s most prosperous burgh, on the River Tweed, where he demanded entry. It was a demand that must have been foreseen, but the citizens of Berwick made a grievous error, born of the overconfidence engendered by too many years of peace. They overestimated their own defensive strength, and they underestimated the power and temper of the man whom they defied. They made no secret of their contempt for the English King and his army, and openly laughed and jeered at Edward himself when he rode forward to inspect their walls. Infuriated by this treatment, the like of which he had never been shown by any enemy in a lifetime of warfare, Edward unleashed his full power on the burgh and trampled over its vaunted defences, bringing them down within a single day. When the burgesses and town fathers sued for peace after that, he ignored them, and set out to teach Scotland a lesson on the foolishness of attempting to withstand England’s power. Mercilessly determined to avenge what he perceived to be an insult to his personal honour, he turned his army loose on the populace, and they burned the burgh down, butchering fifteen thousand citizens of all ages and both sexes. Edward permitted the rape of the burgh to go on for three days before calling a halt to it solely because the bodies clogging the streets had begun to rot sufficiently to become a hazard to his own men.

The sack of Berwick was a deliberate, royally condoned atrocity that appalled every person in Scotland, north and south of the Firth of Forth, and so I expected to find Will in a towering rage when I arrived in his camp. But he was quite the opposite, evidently the only man in his entire encampment who was not up in arms. When I asked him for his opinion of the reports we had received, he simply looked away.

“Which reports are you talking about?”

“Why, the Berwick reports,” I said tentatively. “Are there others?”

“Aye. We have reports out of Carlisle, too.”

“Great God! They burned Carlisle?”

His headshake was terse. “Nah. Not them. We burnt it, or we tried to. We set it afire on the outskirts, and it was going well, I’m told, but then the defenders threw us out and tackled the blaze before it could destroy the whole town.”

“They threw us out …”

“Aye, they did, just the way you said they would. It was Robert Bruce we were attacking, and him behind strong walls with his own Annandale men and a garrison of English veterans to back them. The mere sight of Buchan’s Comyn banners coming south at him out of his own lands of Annandale would have been enough to guarantee he’d hold Carlisle forever against such an attack.”

“So what happened to the Scots host?”

Will shrugged. “They turned aside and went raiding south of the border. From what I’ve heard, the five earls split their forces and set out in search of booty. Buchan himself came back to Scotland, and promptly wrote to Bishop Wishart and Bishop Fraser of St. Andrews, reporting Bruce’s perfidy in repulsing the army of his anointed King.”

“You mean they simply split up and disbanded the host? How could they be so irresponsible? They could have ridden to save Berwick.”

“They knew nothing about Berwick, Jamie. In all probability they didn’t even know Edward had come north. The English had already surrounded Berwick by the time Buchan reached Galloway.”

“Dear God in Heaven! What a waste …”

Will shrugged. “Perhaps, but no useful purpose would have been served by dashing across the north to Berwick, even had they known of it. The men of Berwick itself thought they were invincible behind their walls, so we may hardly blame the earls for thinking they could win some time and land and booty while leaving Berwick to fend for itself and hold the English at the border crossing. They had all lost sight—every one of them—of the true savagery and treachery of their enemy.”

I seldom saw my cousin smile in the days that followed, and then it was solely for Mirren or little William. Like the rest of us in Scotland at that time, he saw little in the land to smile about. I knew he was chafing at the restraints he had imposed upon himself, but he also knew there was nothing he could have done to influence what was going on beyond the forest. He had sworn publicly that for as long as the English left him alone, he would leave them alone, and during that spring and early summer, no one came to disturb his tranquility. The English had far more important matters to attend to elsewhere in Scotland.

Three weeks after that talk of ours, on April 27th, Edward’s army, commanded in the King’s name by John de Warenne, the second Earl of Surrey, met and smashed the army of the Scots magnates at Dunbar. John Comyn the Constable was captured and sent to England to be imprisoned there, along with the Earls of Atholl, Menteith, and Ross and, much to the chagrin of Will and me when we heard of it, Sir Andrew Murray of Petty and his son, Andrew Murray the Younger, our greatly admired friend. The day after the battle, Edward himself arrived at the head of his army to demand the surrender of Dunbar Castle, which capitulated without a blow being struck. Three weeks later, Edward arrived in the burgh of Perth, having bypassed Stirling on the landward side on his way north, and while he was there, King John Balliol wrote to him in person, suing for peace.

Ten days later, in his own royal castle of Kincardine, John Balliol, the King of Scotland, bent the knee to Edward Plantagenet and begged his English cousin’s royal pardon for rebelling against him. Five days after that, at Stracathro in Angus, where he had been taken as a prisoner under escort, John Balliol, a broken man by then, formally and publicly renounced his alliance with King Philip IV of France. The next day, July 8th, 1296, under the merciless eyes of his royal tormentor, he was formally deposed as King, the royal insignia torn from his gold-encrusted tabard by no less a person than Antony Bek, Prince Bishop of Durham.

Scotland was without a king again; the throne lay vacant and the entire country waited to see who would be first to claim it. In that year of 1296, however, no one did, and the weather grew colder as the months lurched towards winter. To be sure, Edward of England called himself nothing more than the feudal overlord of Scotland, and he made no slightest mention of any claim to the kingship, but in truth he behaved like a despotic monarch, and his behaviour left no one in Scotland in any doubt of how he saw himself. He went to great lengths to subjugate the kingdom and humiliate and stifle its contentious leaders, and in his determination to achieve that he confiscated the Stone of Destiny, upon which every legitimate King of Scots, including King John himself, had been crowned since time immemorial, and shipped it back to England, to his palace in Westminster.

Edward also summoned a parliament at Berwick, where he demanded, and received, a written oath of allegiance from more than two thousand Scots freeholders: knights, lairds, earls, barons, lords, chieftains, and burgesses. The resulting document, in the form of four huge parchment rolls comprising thirty-five pieces, each of those a list signed and sealed under duress, was known as the Ragman’s Roll, meaning, according to whom you ask, the Witnesses’ Roll, or more popularly, the Devil’s Roll. No matter which it meant, though, no one who signed the roll was glad to have done so. More significantly, few who had signed it felt constrained by having done so, and Edward bought himself no loyalty or wellwishers by forcing the Scots freemen to comply with his arbitrary wishes.

Will himself put it best of all, I believe, when he said to me later, mere weeks before he flung down the gauntlet in cold fury and set out to destroy England’s presence in our land, “Edward Plantagenet. Can you believe the folly and the hubris of the man? He surpassed the boast of Julius Caesar, for he came, he saw, he conquered, and then he went home again without making sure he had won. He should have stayed here and ground the spurs on his boot heels into our throats when he had us down. He should have crushed us, killed us all then and there, while he yet could. But he went home instead, and left us to recover, and now he’ll rue it.”