The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  My face felt strangely different, because my remaining teeth had been realigned by the resetting of my jawbone. I was appalled by the enormous size of the emptiness where my front teeth had been—the bare gums there felt grotesque. It was I who would be known as Gaptooth from then on, I believed in those early days. At first, no words would come to my lips at all, and later, when they did, I mangled them so badly that I could not bear to listen to my efforts. To call my new impediment a lisp was ludicrous, for the sounds I mouthed were unintelligible.

  Of course I soon overcame my difficulties, and my confidence increased rapidly once I realized that people could understand what I was saying. For a long time, though, racking, shame-laden dreams would startle me awake, humiliating nightmares in which folk howled with disbelieving laughter each time I opened my mouth.

  The first time I tried to swing my legs off the bed, I discovered that I could not make them move. I had to fight down a flood of despair. I was twenty-four years old, and until my present misfortune I had been in fine condition, strong as a beast of burden despite, or perhaps because of, my priestly calling, for my extra-clerical duties had kept me moving constantly, travelling the length and breadth of southern Scotland in all weathers, and mainly afoot. I knew I could regain my earlier strength, although I did not deceive myself that it would take time.

  It wasn’t long before I could stand up from my bed without swaying and falling, and I remember well the excitement that filled me as I took my first unsteady steps. Within the week I was outside, walking for almost a full hour one day in the cloisters that enclosed the small priory. The day after that, I went out into the world beyond the gates again for the first time. I walked very slowly at first, no more than a few hundred steps, and I tired quickly, but I was filled with restless joy. A few days later I walked again, counting my footsteps carefully until I reached five hundred paces, then retracing my steps to where I had begun, exulting in the knowledge that I had walked a full Roman mile.

  I walked faster and farther every day thereafter, and one day I felt the urge to run, whereupon I quickly discovered the shortcomings of priestly robes. Feeling quite rebellious, I bought a warm woollen tunic and thick leggings from one of the local weavers, to replace my constrictive cassock, and I moved unencumbered from then on. I cut myself a thick, straight, heavy sapling, too, to use as both a walking stick and a makeshift quarterstaff. On one of my walks I had a recollection from boyhood, of emerging from a swimming hole with my cousin Will and seeing for the first time the clean-cut muscles that were starting to fill out his body after months of training with our boy-sized quarterstaves. I found myself smiling at the recollection of how mercilessly our tutor, Ewan Scrymgeour, had driven us in those early days, and I saw no reason why those selfsame exercises could not benefit me now. It had been several years since last I swung a quarterstaff, but I knew I could quickly recapture the skill. Now, swinging my stick with more and more confidence as my arm, chest, and back muscles remembered the once-familiar disciplines, I belaboured trees and standing posts wherever I found them in my travels, enjoying the increasing control of those fighting techniques that came back to me quickly as I practised. A full five weeks of such activity reshaped me and gave me back my strength and stamina, but I felt no urgency now to return to Glasgow, being content for the moment to remain in Lanark, in what had become my sanctuary.

  Then, on a bright, warm morning at the beginning of June, a visitor arrived at our priory doors, and his tidings left me in no doubt of where my duties lay. I was invited to join Prior Richard in his quarters to meet with his guest, and I recognized the newcomer immediately. Father William Lamberton was the youngest canon of Glasgow Cathedral, appointed to the post soon after his return to Scotland three years earlier by Bishop Wishart himself, in recognition of the young priest’s brilliant academic prowess in Paris, where he had attended university for several years. We knew each other, having met several times when he and Bishop Wishart had come to Selkirk Forest to visit Will in his outlaw days there, but I was flattered nonetheless when he greeted me with evident pleasure. He had come expressly to see me, he told me, to ascertain the state of my health and, provided I was able, to summon me back to work. Bishop Wishart, he said, had need of me.

  I assured him I was well enough and improving daily, and he cocked an eyebrow.

  “What about talking, though? Is it very difficult?” He raised an open palm as though in apology. “I know it must be greatly different, of course, but that’s not what I mean. I am speaking of forming actual words, given that you have lost all your teeth.”

  I pursed my lips as I thought of how no one else had dared—or thought—to ask me such a question. I had always liked Father Lamberton, and I liked him yet, particularly now that his direct question had disarmed me.

  “I didn’t lothe them all,” I said. “I thtill have a few on each thide. It’th only in the front tha’ I have trouble.”

  He smiled. “And not too much of that. You sound much as you did before—though a bit more oothy than toothy.”

  I asked him at once for news of Will, and he told me the same news that Prior Richard had related earlier—that after his daring raid on Lanark, Will had marched south to join forces with Sir William Douglas, who was out again in open defiance of Edward and had reportedly threatened to drive the English out of Scotland. I could see from the set of his face as he spoke, though, that there was more to the story, and so I probed gently, and he told me that Will and Lord Douglas had left Douglasdale some time before and marched northwest, leading a large number of men towards Ayr and Irvine, where they had been joined by Bishop Wishart and James Stewart, the hereditary Steward of Scotland, one of the most powerful magnates of the realm. That surprised me greatly, because the Stewart, as he was known, was a very significant personage, and I could not easily see him choosing to align himself publicly with such an ill-regarded ruffian as William Douglas, whose knightly ranking was, if anything, an affront to the order of chivalry. There in Ayr, Lamberton said, in the Stewart’s home territories, everyone was awaiting the advent of Edward’s new enforcers for Scotland. I asked him why he had used that word enforcers, and he eyed me sombrely. “Because that’s what they are,” he said, his voice low and level. “Enforcers. Edward is furious and not merely angry and enraged, but vengeful. And, by his own reasoning, not without cause. He has declared Scotland to be in a state of revolt—against himself, its overlord and lawful liege.”

  I looked at Prior Richard in disbelief, expecting him to refute what Lamberton had said, but he merely stared back at me from beneath raised eyebrows, and I understood that such matters were beyond his humble purview. I turned back to Lamberton.

  “But that is ridiculous! Its lawful liege? Scotland’s lawful liege, the King of England? That is utter nonsense. How can he even—?”

  Prior Richard quickly raised a hand, and both of us turned to look at him. We had matters to discuss, he said, that held no allure for him, and he would feel far better returning to his duties and leaving us alone to pursue ours. Neither of us objected, and the moment the prior had closed the door behind him, I turned back to Lamberton.

  “Revolt? Rebellion? That really is—”

  He swept up a hand to cut me short. “Ridiculous. Aye, you said. But you speak as a Scots priest, Father James, sitting here in Scotland in all humility. Edward, on the other hand, speaks as the Plantagenet, the King of England—and he speaks from England, where his word is law. And there, at least, none dare to disagree with him. But why would they even wish to do such a thing? What he is saying is what his barons want to hear, and he needs them to hear it.”

  “But why stoop to such infamy, in God’s holy name? How can Scotland rebel against England? Why would Edward say or even suggest such a thing? We are a sovereign kingdom, unbeholden to him or to England. Has he no shame? No fear for his immortal soul?”

  Lamberton chewed at his lips pensively and then sat down slowly, motioning me towards the small room’s only other c
hair, close by the work table.

  “He is a king, Father, driven by a king’s needs, and as he sees it, his immortal soul must wait upon his mortal obligations. You, as an honest priest, may perceive no difference between a king’s needs and those of an upright, God-fearing man, but some men believe those differences exist—particularly men like Edward of England. His barons are in a state of near mutiny against his demands in raising an army to fight in France, and he is close to losing control of them. Thus one of his kingly needs is for a rebellion in Scotland. That gives him the means to bring the barons back to heel, by catering to their greed and their lust for conquest close to home. So what does it really matter if the morality of that rebellion is indefensible? Scotland has provided him with the excuse he needed.”

  “But it’s not rebellion. You know that. Will’s uprising is in defence of Scotland.”

  “I know that, Jamie, as does every Scot in this land today. But try telling it to England. All they’ll hear down there is ‘uprising,’ and that’s all they’ll need to hear. The sole purpose of your cousin’s uprising is to sweep the English out of Scotland in the name of our King, King John Balliol, and in our eyes that might be noble, even patriotic. But in Edward of England’s eyes, and in the eyes of his people, it is rebellion, plain and simple. As Lord Paramount of Scotland—and that is his indisputable title, awarded to him by the people of Scotland—Edward, in his own mind at least, already outranks a mere Scottish king. He has demonstrated that, by arraigning and dispossessing Balliol as a disloyal vassal, stripping him of his kingship. Thus any rising in Balliol’s name can only be perceived by Edward as rebellion against his overlordship.”

  “But that is—”

  “Specious logic. Of course it is—to us. To Edward it is but common sense and straightforward kingcraft. And thus he is greatly angered, publicly so, and determined to stamp out these rebels and their leaders. Hence his decision to dispatch enforcers to do his royal bidding.”

  “Stamp out their leaders. Do you mean Will and William Douglas?”

  “No, not at all. Your cousin and the Lord of Douglas are but two of dozens. The entire country is up in arms, with Lothian alone remaining relatively peaceful. The leaders Edward is referring to are the nobility of Scotland.”

  I sat mulling that. Lothian, in which I had been raised, was the eastern portion of the country, stretching north from the English border to Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth, and it was the largest English-speaking area in Scotland. It had been taken and settled by the Norman French more than two hundred years earlier as part of William’s conquest, and it lay on the principal invasion route from England, which made its folk more vulnerable and, in a minor way, slightly more amenable to English ways and customs. Elsewhere in the country, the dominant language was Gaelic and the predominant view of England and things English was one of distrust if not detestation.

  “So he intends to invade again?” I asked.

  “No. Not this time. He has too many other things to fret over. He needs to get to France with an army, to finish the war there and put Philip Capet firmly in his place. That’s far more important to him than the nuisance of what he perceives as a few rebellious Scots. He sees us as little more than vermin, incapable of offering serious threat to his plans. He defeated us in battle last year at Dunbar, and he has the greater part of the Scots nobility in his prisons, so he considers the problem of Scotland, such as it is, to be largely solved, save for a few local outbreaks of resentment. Edward won an engagement and earned himself a temporary respite, but I suspect he will not recognize that he failed to cut the heart out of Scotland’s proud people. Nonetheless, he has made arrangements to clean the place up. Have you heard of Sir Henry Percy, or young Robert Clifford?”

  “I know of Percy—at least, the name is familiar. Isn’t he the fellow Edward knighted in front of his whole army at Berwick, before he began the attack there? He’s a minor baron, is he not?”

  “Hardly minor, but yes, that’s the man. Henry, Baron Percy of Alnwick in Northumberland. He is grandson to John de Warrenne, the Earl of Surrey and a close crony of the Plantagenet, and that has done the young man no great harm. He made a name for himself as a fire-eater, a bit of a hothead, during the war in Wales, distinguished himself several times—sufficiently to bring himself to Edward’s favourable notice.”

  “And this other one, Clifford?”

  “Clifford is of the same ilk, cut from the same cloth—eager and ambitious, brash and hungry for glory. Edward has named them joint commanders in Scotland, charged with the responsibility to defeat and imprison all Scots rebels. The latest word we heard is that Edward has enjoined the northern sheriffs of Lancaster, Cumberland, and Westmoreland to raise levies from their territories with all dispatch and send them into Scotland to aid in the suppression.”

  “Damn! That is invasion, whether Edward be there or no. So what will Wishart and the Stewart do now? Will they continue to support Will?”

  “Aye, and Douglas. Don’t lose sight of Sir William. He is a knight, of noble birth, so he carries more weight than your cousin Will, in name at least. For Douglas, a nobleman, to raise his voice and his hand against his peers is a grave matter, never taken lightly by those peers. This is a man of rank and substance, defying his own kind, and he cannot be hanged like a common felon. Will is a different matter altogether. He could be hanged out of hand as an outlaw, though that’s unlikely now, I think. His Grace of Glasgow and the Stewart will stand by both of them, and their combined support could achieve miracles. I imagine they will send your cousin and his followers north before the Englishmen arrive, though that is pure conjecture on my part. I have not spoken with His Grace for nigh on a month.”

  “You said they’ll send Will north. North to where?”

  “To Moray, to lend support to the uprising there.”

  “What uprising?”

  He blinked at me. “Did you not know? The whole northeast is up in arms, under your old friend Andrew Murray of Petty.”

  It was my turn to blink. “Andrew Murray? The one who escaped from Chester? He came to us for help on his way home, months ago.”

  “That’s the man. His father, may God watch over him, remains in London, in the Tower.”

  I had known the elder Murray was still held prisoner, but this news of his son’s uprising was unexpected. I had an instant recollection of myself as a boy, with Will and this same Andrew Murray, sitting, naked and shivering, around a smoky fire on a chilly spring day in the woods surrounding Paisley Abbey while we waited for our sodden clothes to dry after a frightening misadventure.

  “I have to get back,” I said. “Will you come with me?”

  Lamberton shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m bound east myself, to Fife and St. Andrews, where I must represent my lord bishop at a gathering. I stopped by here on the way solely because His Grace wrote to me in Glasgow asking me to come here and send you to him, were you well enough. And you are, so you should leave immediately. Have you a horse?”

  “No, but I’m growing stronger every day. I’ll walk. It will take but two good days from here.”

  “No,” he said emphatically. “The bishop is supposed to be at Ayr with the Stewart, and that’s half again as far from here as Glasgow is, but by this time he might just as easily be at the Stewart castle in Ardrossan on the Isle of Bute. Either way, there’s no high road westward from here, so you’ll be following the lie of the land for most of the time. You’ll need three days, perhaps even four, and it’s June, so you might be ploutering through wind and rain and mud and mire the whole way.”

  I grimaced, for I had indeed lost sight of the fact that Wishart was not in Glasgow, but then, spurred by Lamberton’s evident urgency, and anxious anyway to take possession of my life again, I immediately set about planning in my mind my journey to the coast. Lamberton was right; June could be the foulest, wettest month of the year in Scotland, and if the previous month’s weather gave anything by which to judge such matters, this y
ear showed no signs of being different.

  I knew I would need heavy, well-made foul-weather gear to keep me warm and dry, as well as a sturdy tent and bedding, basic cooking utensils and rations, a strong pack, and a pair of heavy boots if I were to walk for fifty miles across trackless moorland in a matter of days. Yet I had no such equipment. My entire store of clothing had been lost with everything else I owned the day we fell afoul of the English knight Redvers and his men-at-arms. I looked at Lamberton.

  “Can you give me some money?” I asked. I explained my situation to him and told him that I had purchased the leggings and tunic I wore with the only money I had.

  He produced a small purse from inside his robes before I had finished talking, but paused in the act of passing it to me and withdrew it. He reached instead into the scrip at his waist and pulled out another, slightly larger one, which he tossed to me. “That will be more useful than the other. The coins in it are common, silver and copper. I nearly gave you gold.” He smiled. “Too rich for your purposes in dealing with Lanark tradesmen.”

  “My thanks,” I said, pocketing the purse. “I’ll see to it you’re reimbursed in Glasgow.”

  He waved my thanks away. “God’s work, God’s purposes.”

  I went into Lanark that same afternoon and made my purchases. Everything I found was of the highest quality, including a pair of boots that fitted me perfectly, though they had been made for a man who had died before he could collect them from the boot maker. I saw no irony in the fact that this unknown benefactor had died the night my cousin Will had raided Lanark.

  I took the road to the west early the following morning, while Canon Lamberton struck off towards the east road to Fife, and the rain started almost before I had passed beyond sight of Prior Richard’s small community. It began as a steady drizzle, but as the day advanced the clouds overhead thickened and drew lower, and the rain grew ever more sullen and heavy until everything blended into a grey blur within which distances were unfathomable. I slept that night in an ancient stone shelter built by some long-dead shepherd in a hillside gully, and primitive though it was, it kept me dry and warm enough to sleep well.