The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  I plunged in. “Your presence,” I said. “In the south, after you have armed your men.”

  His eyes were veiled and unreadable. “Where, exactly, in the south, and when, and why?”

  I did not know what I had been expecting at that point. Surprise, certainly; disbelief perhaps; refusal in all probability, possibly combined with a measure of anger; even complete outrage would have been understandable in response to such a blatant demand, but the last thing I would ever have anticipated was this absolute calm. This man, for all his youth, was more mature than many another twice his age or older.

  “Wallace will be in Dundee in mid-August,” I said, “to take delivery of a cargo of weapons from a Norwegian ship that should arrive soon, about the same time as the one you’ll meet at Aberdeen. The bishop wants you to meet Wallace there, to meld your armies unseen by the English, and then march together to Stirling. That’s where matters will come to a head.”

  He continued to watch me, and I went on. “Everything depends upon timing, you see. It always does, of course, but in this instance more so than any other. Wishart and the Steward are holding Percy and Clifford in debate—probably now, as we speak. Their intent is to buy time and occupy the English, to enable you to march south without interference.

  “An English army is already marching from the northern counties of England to reinforce Percy’s unit, but we expect more to head northward once the news of what is really happening here sinks home with Edward. When I left Turnberry it seemed plain that he was considering the risings here as local outbreaks—an irritating annoyance, to be swatted casually by whatever English force was nearest. We now know he has revised that opinion. That’s why he sent de Rait running after Buchan and Badenoch with changed orders.

  “By now, for all we know, all England might well be in uproar, for once Edward Plantagenet is goaded to snap at an annoyance, he snaps like a dragon, all fire and fury and implacable resolve. His main concern, Dei gratia, will continue to be his venture in France—the bishop says he has too much invested there to be able to back away from it now—but I swear he will move heaven and earth to bring about an end to all uprisings in Scotland.”

  “This army marching to reinforce Percy in the southwest,” he said. “When should it arrive?”

  “Soon, if they are not already there.”

  “And you expect there will be other armies?”

  “Almost certainly, yes, though whether they will be newly requisitioned or rearranged from existing resources, I cannot say. I heard a rumour at Turnberry that Hugh de Cressingham had been recalled to duty from Lancaster, where he had been negotiating with the northern barons. Word was—though unsubstantiated, of course— that he was to return to Scotland with three hundred heavy horse and ten thousand footmen— Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I mislike that—Cressingham coming back.”

  “I said it’s but a rumour, Andrew. But mislike it or not, it should hardly surprise you. He is the treasurer for Scotland, after all. Our sources close to him have made it clear to us that Cressingham’s mission to the northern barons on Edward’s behalf is strictly secondary to his main responsibility, which is to raise revenues from Scotland for Edward’s war in France. And to do that, the man must be in Scotland.”

  “Aye,” he said, “I understand that, but I still dislike the thought of it. I have never met the fellow, but neither have I ever heard his name mentioned other than in tones of hatred and loathing.”

  I nodded. “You and I have that in common, then. His title is Treasurer, but the folk in Glasgow and elsewhere call him the Treacherer.”

  “Not up here, they don’t, not yet. But the name does not surprise me, after what he did. He single-handedly destroyed the wool trade and came close to bankrupting this entire country, the grasping, thieving bastard. Treacherer indeed.”

  Every man in Scotland, and every woman and child, too, was familiar with Cressingham’s treachery. But they were equally familiar with the other, fouler traits attributed to him—his gratuitous cruelty and the extreme and sickening pleasure he derived from watching people suffer and often even die, hanged or callously cut down for simply bringing themselves to his attention in the performance of his so-called duties.

  Andrew Murray was still scowling at the thought of him. “And now he is coming back,” he growled.

  “The rumour has it that he has been ordered back, at the head of a large contingent from the northern baronies.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  I shrugged. “I see no reason not to. Were I Edward, I would send him back.”

  “And de Warrenne is to be with him?”

  “That is what our sources in Westminster tell us.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Wishart has spies in Westminster?”

  I grinned at him. “No, his lordship has episcopal friends and colleagues throughout Christendom.”

  “Aye, as a good bishop, he would. But he has spies in Westminster, too.” He touched the tip of a finger to the end of his nose, a mannerism of his that I had forgotten but one with which I had grown familiar when I knew him as a boy. It was an unmistakable sign that he was thinking deeply. “De Warrenne is old, is he not?”

  “He is, at least as old as Edward and probably older, nearing seventy. He lost his only son last year, killed in a jousting accident, and the loss appears to have sapped him. He has two daughters still alive, the elder of whom is mother to Henry Percy, the fellow facing Bishop Wishart as we speak. The other, of course, you know.”

  “Do I?” He frowned. “I think not, Father James. Who is she?”

  I thought he was jesting, but he was looking back at me in sublime innocence. “She is your queen,” I said. “Isabella, wife of King John Balliol.”

  “Damnation,” he said mildly. “I must have known that, of course.” He waved the topic away impatiently. “No matter. So this Warrenne fellow is powerful, with connections everywhere, it seems.”

  “Aye, but bear in mind, he hates everything about Scotland, according to Robert Winchelsea, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is an old and close friend of his. De Warrenne hates our climate and our lack of roads and generally everything about us and our realm. So he has no enthusiasm for coming north of the border again, even with an enormous army. All he wants to do, according to his friend the archbishop, is to stay at home and enjoy his dotage and his grandchildren.”

  “But he will come north with the Treacherer despite all that … Together or separately? One army or two?” he asked. I shrugged, and he grunted. “Probably two,” he concluded. He fell silent for a moment, then straightened his shoulders and flung up his hands.

  “Enough,” he said. “This is pointless speculation, so a pox on Cressingham and all his ilk, for now at least. What else have we to talk about? What of your cousin Will?”

  “Much of great interest,” I said. “He’s up in arms like you, having raised the dragon banner in Lothian, harrying the English and burning crops to deny them to the English garrisons in the towns and castles there. He is under strict orders, though, from you-knowwho, to stay well away from sieges and the like and to keep his men doing what they do best—hit-and-run raiding. Strike, disrupt, and disappear to strike again somewhere else. But he’s under strict orders, too, with regard to timing. He’ll raid widely in Lothian until the end of July, then head west to cross the Forth at Stirling before striking east again into Fife. He’ll pick up his cargo in Dundee and wait for you near there in mid-August.”

  “Hmm. How many people does he have now?”

  “He himself said the number was more than a thousand, with more coming in every day, sometimes hundreds in a single day.”

  “The middle of August,” he said. “That might not be easily done. As I’ve explained, I can’t leave here until this Comyn situation is resolved.”

  “Of course you can! If the Comyns arrive here and find you gone, they’ll claim victory and send word to England that you fled in advance of their arrival, and that sh
ould make them all happy. They’ll have carried out Edward’s wishes without bloodshed, and they’ll also have avoided any need to antagonize friends and neighbours by appearing to be too zealous in their support of England. In the meantime you will be free to march to Aberdeen and take possession of the weapons aboard that ship.”

  He turned his head slightly and gave me a look to which my mind applied the word mocking. “Do you expect me to take pleasure in that thought, Father, that I would flee ahead of them?”

  “No, not really, I suppose, but it would resolve the situation you were so concerned about.”

  He twisted his mouth into a humourless smile. “If I believed that for a moment, I would do as you suggest. But it would solve nothing. If I leave my lands before the Comyns come, I’ll forfeit them. Buchan or Badenoch will annex them as soon as it’s known I’m gone, and they will claim Edward Plantagenet’s authority to do so.”

  “How can they do that? There is no rebellion if you are not here openly under arms.”

  “Not so, Jamie. They don’t need me. They’ll claim that Moray is in rebellion—not Andrew Murray, but the region itself. Every man in Moray has stood openly and steadfastly with me in open defiance of England these past two months and more. That makes Moray a nest of rebels by England’s definition. They’ll claim, with authority, that they were expressly ordered by the Lord Paramount to stamp out rebellion here by whatever means necessary.

  “But Buchan and Badenoch are not only Edward’s representatives, bound to obedience by their paroles. They are also our neighbours, land-hungry neighbours whose lands abut ours, and with Edward’s mandate they will snatch up my lands the moment I disappear from sight. And that means they’ll spill blood among my folk, because my Murrays will not meekly submit to having their land stolen from beneath them. And if that happens, then nothing will have improved since before we started to fight in May.” He shook his head. “No, I won’t countenance that, will not accept it.”

  “So what will you do?”

  He grinned, a fleeting thing but cheering to see. “I’ll do what I’m on my way to do now. As soon as Gartnait leaves for Inverness in the morning, I’ll form my men up and march them south to the Spey.”

  “But he’ll warn the Comyns that you’re coming, and they’ll be waiting for you.”

  “D’ye think me daft, man? Gartnait doesn’t know what I intend to do. He thinks I came this way with him simply to see him safely aboard his ship in Inverness before we return to Auch to regroup. He thinks we’ll head northwest into the mountains in search of safety as soon as he is gone. But by the time he reaches Aberdeen, we’ll be set up on the bank of the Spey, in the Bog of Gight. We’ll wait there for Buchan and his crew to come to us through the Ingie and hope to lure them into fighting in the bog.”

  “Is Buchan likely to do that?”

  He shrugged with one shoulder. “I have no idea, but we’ll find out. One thing is certain. If he does commit to a fight under our terms, he’s finished. So let’s pray he feels strong and confident. In the meantime, we should go back and join my other guests. But listen, as far as anyone else is concerned, you have brought me up-to-date on the situation in the southwest and delivered the letters you were carrying from Wishart and Lord Stewart to my attention. Apart from that, we have been sitting here by the fire reminiscing about our times together when we were boys, before the world went mad. Shall we go?”

  In the hour that followed, I spoke briefly with Gartnait of Mar. He was a pleasant fellow, a few years older than I, and I commiserated with him over the death of his sister, Bruce’s wife, whom he had loved dearly. It was evident to me, too, that he thought highly of his goodbrother Bruce and set great store upon their friendship, for he asked after him eagerly when I told him of having met the earl, and I detected no hint of malice or envy when he spoke of him; indeed, the topic of Bruce’s defiance of Edward and his rejection of the King’s favours occasioned not a single word of criticism, and I tucked that information away for future consideration.

  The remainder of the evening passed quickly and pleasantly, with a wonderful meal of fish, meats, and kale steamed in a covered pot with herbs and some exotic spice, and we were entertained with pipe music performed by a visiting bard from the Shetland Isles whose sole purpose in travelling all over the northern parts of the realm was to play the ancient, plaintive music of their people for his audience to enjoy. The night approached early for July, and the entire camp was abed by darkfall.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  TRAVELLING SOUTH

  Three days later we were moving swiftly eastward to the River Spey, where we would lie in wait for the Comyn army. We had skirted Inverness without incident, keeping out of sight of the castle town. The army that accompanied us, which Bishop de Cheyne of Aberdeen would later describe in writing to England as “a very large body of rogues,” comprised the combined strengths of Andrew Murray’s twin strongholds of Auch and Balconie.

  From Inverness we had struck directly east, paralleling the south shore of the Moray Firth a few miles away on our left. But, in contrast to what I quickly gathered was the normal run of things in Andrew-led expeditions, this journey was a restrained and joyless thing, because Andrew himself was restrained and joyless. He rode from the outset in a scowling silence that had an unsettling effect on his people. As the sole outsider there, I was probably the person least affected by his mood, for I had nothing against which to compare it. To his friends and intimates, though, the young leader’s withdrawal was a matter of great concern, and each man there, at least as I saw it, was busy questioning himself and his recent behaviour, hoping that it had not been some action of his that had triggered such a prolonged and uncharacteristic reaction from their leader.

  Eventually, after two whole days of brooding silence, he drew rein at mid-morning, in the middle of nowhere, and sat motionless, staring off into the horizon ahead. The people following directly behind him came to a milling, disorganized halt. He stood up in his stirrups and turned to look north and northwest. Then, after barely having spoken a word to anyone for forty-eight hours, even when questioned directly, he raised his right hand above his head and rotated it three times before pointing down at his own helmet and barking, “Captains! To me!” He turned then to the trumpeter who rode at his side. “The summons.”

  The fellow raised his bugle at once and blew the call to summon all the captains within hearing, and there was an immediate surge of movement as those commanders began to move towards him. I kneed my mount away to one side, to make room for them, but Andrew waved to stop me. “Father James,” he called. “A word with you, if you will.”

  He trotted his mount towards me, pointing as he came towards a clear space in the bushes off to one side of the track we had been following. “We can talk over there without being heard,” he said when he was beside me. “I want you to know what I intend to do next, because I might not have the chance to talk to you about it again. Your bishop’s business must be first in your mind, as it should be, and I don’t want you to think I’ve lost sight of it.”

  I had no idea what he meant, but I followed him until he reined around to face me, far enough away from everyone else for privacy. “What do you intend to do?” I asked him.

  “You don’t know where we are, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.” I waved a hand at the head-high brush and bushes surrounding us. “I know I’m lost. I know we are on the south side of the Moray Firth, heading east to Elgin, where we will turn south towards the River Spey. Should I know more?”

  He smiled gently. “No,” he said, “not really. But over yonder”— he pointed northwards—“over yonder, less than two miles from here on the sea coast, across easy terrain, lies Castle Duffus.”

  “Very well,” I said. “I’ve never heard of it, but it’s clearly important to you, and so I shall ask why.”

  He grinned, but it was a savage, short-lived thing, showing no hint of amusement. “Because it is garrisoned by Englishmen.”

&n
bsp; I restrained myself from shrugging. “From what I understand, all the castles hereabouts have English garrisons. Why is it noteworthy in this instance?”

  “Because the English had no need to seize this one. Its owners were already in Edward’s pocket.” His face was grim. “Castle Duffus is my ancestral home, Father James. The original stronghold was built two hundred years ago by my first ancestor in Scotland, a Flemish knight called Freskin. From the day it was built, it was the seat of what became the de Moravia family. The folk who lived there until recently, the Murrays of Duffus, were close kin of mine and good, firm friends. But a few years ago one of them, the eldest daughter, married Reginald de Cheyne, the traitorous whoreson who governs now in Inverness in Edward’s name, calling himself the governor of Moray. He’s an outlander, Scots-born but English in all else, and he has long since outlived his welcome.” He fell silent again, but it was clear he had not finished, and so I waited.

  “In the clear but foolish hope of justifying his indefensible conduct,” he continued, “he claims to be a victim of coercion in everything he does, forever bleating about how Edward holds his son, young Reginald, in custody somewhere in England, supposedly as surety for his father’s obedience and good conduct. But in truth there is too much evidence against the arrogant, unthinking oaf for that claim to be credible. He works too hard on Edward’s behalf, performs his tasks too eagerly to be able to claim duress. He is a traitor to his own folk, pure and simple, and I have decided to make an example of him.”

  “And how will you do that?” I could see no point in protesting. His mind was clearly set on whatever he had decided to do.

  “By rooting him out and destroying him. Duffus is his today, part of his wife’s dowry, defiled forever by the stench of his treachery. I think I’ve taken it. Today, I mean. I should have, by this time. So now we’re going to go and make sure of it.”

  “You’re making no sense, Andrew.”

  “Ah, but I am, Father.” He grinned. “I couldn’t tell you sooner, couldn’t tell anyone at all, for fear word would get out, but it’s all done now, for better or for worse. I’ve had men inside the castle’s gates since early yesterday—half a score of my best by the end of the day.”