The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  “Great Heaven! How can you be so sure of that?”

  “Because I had men watching what went on. Had anything gone wrong, I would have heard of it last night. But I heard nothing, and so they have entered safely, in ones and twos throughout the day, and found places to hide. As I said, they’re my best men and it’s a Murray castle—they all know the layout of the place.”

  “But what can ten men do against an entire garrison?”

  I saw a feral flash of bared teeth. “My ten best men, Jamie, each one worth ten more. They can wait until the darkest hour of night, then dirk the guards and throw open the gates.”

  “For whom, in God’s name? Not for us, surely. We’re more than two miles away and it’s mid-morning already.”

  “No, not for us. For Sandy Pilche.”

  When I closed my mouth, my few remaining teeth came together hard. “I had no idea you were planning such a thing.”

  “That pleases me, for if you have guessed nothing of what was going on, then no one else has, either. Sandy and I planned the operation before we left Auch. We skirted Inverness carefully, as you know, keeping out of sight. But I had to be sure we would be seen and followed, and attracting their attention while seemingly attempting to creep by without being seen was the best way of achieving that. We have been under close watch ever since.”

  “But why?” I felt myself frowning. “And why do I think I’m going to feel foolish when I hear the answer to that question?”

  Andrew spread his hands wide, his elbows tucked in against his sides. “As long as they were watching us, they knew that we were marching directly east, through Forres to Elgin, staying well south of the coastline and going nowhere near Castle Duffus, which meant we therefore posed no threat to de Cheyne there.”

  “And Sandy Pilche?”

  “Sailed last night from the Black Isle in the dark with two hundred men, and was waiting outside Duffus when the gates fell open.”

  “Dear God in Heaven! So you have taken Duffus!” I was shaking my head. “One part of me can see the satisfaction in that, but another part entirely is asking why. What will you do with it now? Having taken the place, you’ll have to hold it, and in the meantime there’s an army coming against you from the south.”

  “Not so,” he said. “I have no further need of Duffus. The place means nothing to me. It’s far more valuable to the English, now that they’ve lost it. I’ll sack it, free any prisoners, then burn the damned place down and leave it useless to de Cheyne and everyone else. And then, to add insult to their injuries and make the lesson even more pointed, I’ll raze the whole damned region. The folk are all gone, anyway. Their lands were stolen from them. I will show the English that they have outlived whatever welcome they imagined existed for them here in Moray.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, to where his captains were now assembled. “They’re ready for me over there, so now I have to tell them what’s been happening and what they are to do over the next few days.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  He hesitated, then looked me square in the eye. “You’re a priest. Are you sure you want to do that? We’ll be spilling blood.”

  “Then you’ll have need of a priest.”

  “So be it, then,” he murmured, sounding slightly doubtful. “Come with us, and bring the Holy Sacraments with you.”

  And so I rode to war, not as a combatant but most certainly as an observer and a comforter, and as such I was sometimes involved as Andrew and his followers destroyed Castle Duffus and its surrounding estates and outlying farms. He turned his army loose, more or less, with orders to burn or otherwise ruin growing crops before they could be harvested, and to confiscate livestock and destroy anything that might be deemed in any way useful to the occupying English. He took care to tell his men that the folk among whom they would be marauding were all Scots like themselves, with no say in, and no responsibility for, the behaviour of the occupying English, so no abuse of them personally would be tolerated, and punishment for transgressions would be swift.

  I was called upon to serve as one of a large number of observers sent out with the raiding groups and charged with making sure that they adhered to the spirit of Andrew’s intent. I was more than glad to learn afterwards that not a single instance of abuse had been reported. In the meantime, though, I had been sickened by the whole experience of having to sit idly by as the very stuff of the life of the countryside—growing food, fine pastureland, and thriving livestock—was utterly destroyed. I returned to camp on the final day of the campaign reeking of smoke from burning crops and buildings, my throat raw from the helpless retching caused by the smoke itself and the roiling sense of disgust that had haunted me since the expedition began.

  The Duffus garrison had turned out to be smaller than anticipated, numbering fewer than forty men, and the men of Moray had been merciless in dealing with them, but Andrew left two wounded English commanders alive, to relay word to Sir Reginald de Cheyne that his days of trampling Moray underfoot were at an end, that his remaining castles and holdings would soon be taken and destroyed, and that de Cheyne himself now stood proscribed by the Murrays of Petty, a bounty offered for his capture or death.

  Duffus Castle was a valuable asset—a strongly fortified castle surrounded by an arable estate—but it was a Murray fiefdom, and it was unprecedented at that time for a Scots leader to destroy his own possessions in order to deny them to the enemy. The sacking and destruction of Castle Duffus, more than any previous action had, made it perfectly plain to the Scots populace and to the occupying English forces in the region that nothing was to be held sacrosanct from that time on.

  A few days after leaving Duffus, during a marching break late in the forenoon, I sat on a large stone in a grassy, sunlit hollow on the bank of the River Spey and listened to Andrew Murray as he spoke to his assembled army. To one side of me, one incautious man must have swallowed a fly or a bee, for he erupted in a sudden fit of noisy coughing, to the great annoyance of those around him, who cursed him roundly.

  I was immediately struck by the fellow’s facial resemblance to a priest I knew in Glasgow, whose name was Ignatius. Father Ignatius, though, was soft-bellied and overweight, notorious among his peers for his sweet tooth and his self-indulgences. The disparaging thought sprang instantly into my mind, and irrelevant as it was, it made me aware that there was not a single fat man in the army that surrounded me. All around me, everywhere I looked—and I searched keenly—I saw lean, hard faces surmounting lean, hard bodies.

  They were tall men by and large, these Highland mountain dwellers, and noted for that height in southern parts, where they were known disparagingly as caterans by people who believed that a cateran was a rogue, a vagabond. In fact the name was simply the Gaelic word for a landsman, a peasant farmer. But neither the northern land nor the way of life of the folk who lived on it permitted the luxury of extra fat on any man’s frame. Highland Gaels, from the time they were born, had to claw their way doggedly towards survival, day in and day out. They lived on barren lands that blunted and rejected ploughs, and they survived mainly on a sparse, unvarying diet of ground oats and goat’s milk, leavened very seldom with infusions of venison or mutton. Theirs was a life of constant hardship that stamped the evidence of their privations into the very fabric of their bodies. There was a gaunt, spare sameness to them all—a long-legged, watchful, catlike grace to their movement that suggested danger, coiled tension, and a barely muted threat of explosive violence should they be crossed or displeased. Even their clothing had a sameness to it: hard-wearing garments of durable, tight-woven homespun wool, dyed in a range of drab, natural browns, dark greens, and shades of grey that leached the differences out of their wearers, reducing them, from a distance at least, to indistinguishable, featureless clumps of … folk.

  That drabness, that sameness, brought home to me that day a sudden understanding of one of most noticeable differences between the Celtic Gaels and their southern Scots counterparts: the Gaels loved colou
r, the more vibrant the better, and their adornments and jewellery reflected that love, probably because their clothing could not; brightly coloured feathers in yellow, red, pale greens, and brilliant whites and blues flashed in the July sun, pinned to men’s caps and to the breasts of their tunics and plain leather jerkins. And the jewellery that they wore was even more distinctive, fashioned mainly of heavy silver, though I had seen a few pieces made of gold, and studded with big, brightly coloured local stones: blood-red garnets, lozenges of polished jet, pale purple amethysts, and the flashing, glassy yellow stones called cairngorm, with here and there a glowing blob of precious amber marking a man as being wealthier or more fortunate than his fellows. Set against the dullness of their clothing, the sparkling highlights on brooches, pins, belt buckles, and the hilts and sheaths of dirks and swords drew attention to the men’s strutting, cocksure self-awareness, the strength and natural arrogance of males in their prime who knew they would not easily be bested. And now here they were, held rapt, drinking in a younger man’s every word.

  A single glance at the man addressing them established his preeminence instantly, for his dress, his armour, his weapons, and his bearing all set him apart. Tall and wide shouldered, he exuded confidence and good breeding, and his voice rang with the strength and authority of a man bred to leadership. He wore a simple but richly woven dark brown woollen tunic and matching close-fitted trews tucked into thick-soled boots that were reinforced with strips of steel to protect his ankles, and on his upper body he wore a heavy shirt of burnished mail covered with a light, sleeveless linen surcoat of bright blue, bearing the three white stars of the ancient House of de Moravia. A fine, heavy sword hung by his left side, and a long dirk in a handsomely chased sheath balanced it on his right.

  I had never heard Andrew speak publicly before, and I admired the way he held himself, gazing down calmly and solemnly at these wild men who were his followers—I estimated that there were between five and six hundred of them packing the hollow—and waiting for them to grow silent. When they did, he reached behind him to unhook the battle-axe that hung at his right hip. It came free smoothly and he raised it high above his head to a roar of approval that made me smile, remembering what Will had told me about it.

  Despite what men now thought, Will had said, Andrew Murray had never had much regard for the battle-axe as a weapon, preferring the more knightly sword and lance, but he had used the weapon to great advantage on one occasion, albeit without intent. It had happened at a tournament hosted by some English nobleman years earlier in Aberdeen, when Andrew, newly knighted, afoot, and disarmed in the heat of a melee with a group of heavy horse, had snatched up a fallen axe to defend himself. He had been fortunate when the trailing edge of the blade had caught firmly in the links of an English knight’s mail, allowing Andrew to use his weight to unhorse the fellow and cause him to be adjudged dead by the tourney judges. The incident had been much talked about by Murray’s men, all of them unaware of its accidental nature, and Andrew had become famed as an axeman of great ability. Since then the battle-axe had hung from his hip at all times, a visible symbol of his prowess and abilities.

  When the roar began to fade, he released his grip on the axe’s handle and caught the heavy head as it fell, then swung it behind him and replaced it smoothly on his hip, and as he did so he began to speak, stilling the crowd instantly. He spoke in Gaelic, and he spoke in short, easily understood sentences, and again I found myself admiring his control of himself and his audience.

  “I’m taking you to fight,” he began, and paused to wait out the upswelling of muttered comments. “Against our own.” This time there was no audible reaction, but he paused again, scanning the faces staring up at him.

  “Against our own,” he repeated. “Not Englishmen this time. Scots like ourselves. Think on that. Think on it and be sure you know what is at stake before we go on.”

  Again he scanned the faces watching him. “I could tell you tales and cozen you, to anger you. I could denounce and curse the men we go to fight—Comyn of Buchan and his cousin of Badenoch, Malise of Strathearn, and Edward de Balliol, the King’s own brother. I could decry all of them, the leaders, magnates, and mormaers of Scotia who bring their men against us now in the name of Edward Plantagenet.”

  He allowed the names to hang naked in the air as he looked around the gathering.

  “I could do that, but it would not change the fact—it will not change the fact—that the men who follow those leaders are our own kin, men bred and raised in these very parts. They follow because they must. Remember that. They have no other choice. Some of them will be known to us, some loved by us, blood of our blood. Kinsmen, coming against us because they have to follow those who lead them. Kinsmen who will kill some of us—will be killed by some of us—because their leaders choose to stand with England. I want you all to think on that, to know what it means, before we move from here.”

  This time the silence seemed to me to hold a different quality, an element of solemnity.

  “Be clear on this, above all else,” he said, his voice now loud and strong and clarion clear. “The enemy we are facing is England. Edward Plantagenet. No other. That these are Scots who come against us is a ploy—a lesson Edward hopes to teach us about power and politics. Buchan and Badenoch, along with their friends and all the men who follow them, are but an English weapon in this fight—a weapon swung against us. That they are Scots, and kin of ours, merely makes the weapon heavier and sharper, deadly enough to crush and maim us if we stand still from guilt and let them cut us down.

  “And bear in mind, too, that Comyn stands for Comyn first and last when blood is spilt and lands are up for grasping. Buchan and Badenoch are our neighbours. That is fact. So is Malise of Strathearn. But they are drooling neighbours who have long been covetous of our lands in Moray. Will we stand by and give those up because we fear to spill Comyn blood when it comes against us?”

  “No!” The roar was deafening, and a distant echo returned it to our hearing moments after it had faded.

  “So be it, then. I have thought long about this, and here is what we will do. Spey lies at our backs—that’s why your feet are wet.” A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd. “I thought about waiting for them back on the other side, forcing them to fight their way across to meet us. But that would have been folly. The time of year is wrong. The river is too low and easy to cross, no barrier at all to heavy horse. And Buchan will have heavy English horse with him, be sure of that.”

  He stretched himself up to his full height and looked out over his men to the lush growth at their backs. “We’re better off on this side of the Spey. There’s only one road up to here from Aberdeen, and they have to take it, through the forests of the Ingie and along the edge of the Bog of Gight. I know that country inside out and so do you. And that’s where we’ll wait for them. Inside the forest where their heavy horsemen will be useless, and in the bog itself, where they’ll be even worse off. We’re all afoot, and that’s the way we fight.” His eyebrows rose in a wildly exaggerated expression of alarm. “All except me, that is, so make sure you don’t mistake me for an Englishman!” Murray held his smile until the laughter began to flag, then became serious again.

  “And so we will fight them our way. On our terms. In the woods and in the bog—in mud and water, where they can’t deploy their horsemen, their armoured men-at-arms, or their ranked archers. We’ll lure them off the road and into the woods, and we’ll kill them.

  “You might find that some of them will say they have no wish to fight you. But be careful. They might be feigning friendship. Better to be sure they’re really harmless than to die from a stab in the back.” He raised a hand high, fingers spread. “The English are the English, straightforward enemies. Kill them as you find them. But be careful of the Scots you face. Make sure they’re weaponless before you turn your back on any of them.”

  He looked around the throng again.

  “There’s one more thing to say,” he said, in a sligh
tly quieter voice, “though it alters nothing of what I said before. I swear, I have no idea if this will come to pass, but there is a chance that they truly might not want to fight us. They’re under oath to Edward, true. He holds their paroles. But these men have been in prison for a year, and they were there for defying Edward and thumbing their noses at England. They can’t be strong after a year in prison. And above all they are Scots. They’ll have no real desire to fight for England against their own realm—against their neighbours and cousins.” He paused again. “If they want to fight, we’ll fight them. And if not, we’ll wait and see. Now, are there any questions?”

  “Aye, I have one.” The speaker was a forceful-looking character, unsmiling and dour. Like most of his fellows here, he wore no armour, though he was well equipped with a long, plain sword and matching dagger, the hilts of both polished to a shine from years of daily use. “Tell me this,” he rasped. “If Buchan and his folk do fight, and I catch hold of the old earl, who gets his ransom money? Me or you?”

  Again the crowd erupted in laughter.

  “Alistair,” Andrew said when the noise died down, “you bring old Buchan’s bony arse to me in person and I swear in front of everyone assembled here that you’ll have every silver groat we can squeeze out of it in ransom for him.” A loud cheer greeted that. “And now it’s time to form up and be on our way again.”

  As the assembly began to break apart, Andrew beckoned me over, grinning. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad that’s out of the way. It went as well as could be hoped for, don’t you think?”

  “I agree,” I said. “And I’ll pray the gentle Jesus proves you right about Buchan’s reluctance to fight against his own.”

  “We won’t know until the time comes,” he said quietly, then looked at me sidelong. “Look, I’m going to have to leave you on your own for a while, perhaps for several days, for I must attend to a number of things in a very short time.”