The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  Callum held no weapon, and I turned to point that out to the other man, who grinned at me as evilly as he had glared at Callum, with the same hatred in his dead, black eyes. I opened my mouth to speak and he spat at me, a mouthful of mucus that he had clearly been nursing for that purpose. The spittle hit the front of my tunic and hung there, but I was too busy looking at the madman’s weapons to care about that. They were common enough, but both were half the size I would expect. In one hand he held a single-bladed battle-axe, with a long blade no more than three fingers wide, but the other end of it was a heavy, flattened hammerhead, a bludgeon designed to shatter skulls. His other hand held a short flail, made from a net of tightly woven leather strips twisted around a thick handle, with a heavy, fist-sized pebble, or perhaps it was an iron ball, securely bound inside the net. And then I heard the unmistakable slither of Callum’s dirk leaving its sheath.

  There are moments in life that announce themselves, with absolute authority, as being catastrophic, and our minds accept them instantly, aware that we are utterly powerless to influence the outcome of whatever is about to happen. I saw young Callum, upright now, his face and neck slick with appallingly bright blood, advancing to confront his attacker with his long-bladed dirk in his right hand and his small, circular targe in front of him, covering his left breast. He never had the chance to raise his weapon. The other man whooped some kind of battle cry and sprang forward, high into the air, his flail whipping over and down to crash into Callum’s temple, sending the young man reeling, already dead. But before he could even fall, the war hammer in his attacker’s other hand swept over and smashed in the other side of his skull, driving the eye on that side out of its socket to hang by a length of something unspeakable. Callum fell sideways like a log.

  My mind was empty. I saw the broken corpse at my feet, and I saw the crazed, grinning face of the killer leering at me. Then I felt myself hurled aside as Alistair de Moray straight-armed me out of his way, his long-bladed sword in one hand and his dirk in the other. He did not make a sound; he simply threw himself towards the three men now confronting him, because the other two had advanced to flank their friend as soon as they saw Alistair approaching. His long blade flickered out and across, too quick to follow, and the man on his right sprang back, barely in time to avoid being cut. And as he moved, so too did his companions, sidling backwards and moving apart to present a larger target and to give themselves room to fight.

  Alistair straightened slightly from his fighting crouch and moved forward, ignoring the men on either side of him now, all his attention focused on the killer, who was still grinning insanely, still muttering to himself, and still brandishing the weapons he had used on Callum. He took a short step backwards, then another, and then sprang, leaping high into the air towards Alistair with another of those blood-curdling screams, swinging both axe and flail. But Alistair leapt backwards, too, avoiding the other’s rush, and instantly launched himself forward, that long blade thrusting ahead of him.

  I thought it strange that the madman’s arms flew up and apart a moment before the Highlander’s blade plunged into the soft flesh beneath his sternum, sinking in for half its length before its point jarred against the fellow’s spine. It all happened very quickly, and then, just as quickly again, it was all over. The assassin dropped to his knees like a spike-hammered bullock in a sudden, dead silence, then pitched forward full length, face down, and I saw the black metal handle of a knife projecting from the base of his skull. I raised my head to look for an explanation, and was unsurprised to see Long John approaching from behind the dead man. On either side of him, the madman’s two supporters were being close held, their arms pinioned to their sides.

  My cousin was suddenly there, looking down at the two corpses. “Berry,” he said, almost to himself. “I always kent it would come to this.” He raised his eyes to Andrew. “I hae to ask your pardon, my friend, for lettin’ anythin’ like this happen at our first meetin’. I never knew the young man wha died here, but I can see he’ll be sair missed.”

  I knew, because he was speaking in the broad, rural dialect called the Doric, that he was highly aware of the silent, gawking crowd that had gathered. He turned then to the two prisoners. “As for the pair o’ you,” he said, pitching his voice to be clearly heard, “d’ye no’ mind my warnin’ ye on what would happen gin ye didna mend your ways? Are you too stupid to ken a threat of death when ye hear it?” He shrugged. “It’s clear ye are.”

  He turned back to Andrew. “Master Murray, you’ll nae doubt hae arrangements to make for your young man there, I suppose. Would you care to do that now?”

  “Aye, and I thank you.” Andrew turned to Alistair, who was sheathing his sword after cleaning the blade. “Will you arrange a burial for Callum,” he said in Gaelic, “and tell Sandy you’ll need money to send to his wife. Someone will have to go and tell her, but it will wait until we get home. That will save the poor woman months of mourning.” He nodded his thanks to Will.

  Will nudged the dead man at his feet with the toe of his boot. “Hang this filth,” he said to Long John.

  “There’s a knife wound in his neck, Will,” Long John said. “A rope would cut right through him.”

  “Then loop it under his shoothers, but hang the whoreson. Hang him high, where everyone can see him. And hang these two aside him. They stood at his side when he was alive and murdering folk, now they can hang at his side when he’s dead and danglin’ frae a rope.

  “The rest o’ ye!” His voice rose dramatically, ringing out clearly to the encircling crowd, which had grown larger with every passing moment. “Hear me now! Pay heed! This foolery is finished”—he pronounced it feeneesht—“it’s a’ done an’ there’s naethin left to see. We’ve had murder done here an’ justice rendered, blood for blood and a life for a life. So awa ye go now, back to what ye were daein afore a’ this started.”

  Someone murmured to me, asking me to move aside, and a pair of men with a stretcher crouched in front of me and covered poor Callum’s mutilated corpse with a grey blanket before they lifted him onto the stretcher and carried it away, and as I watched them go I heard Will call my name. I looked in the direction of his voice and saw him standing with Andrew in the middle of a large group of their captains and lieutenants. Surprised at their numbers, for I had so far paid them no real attention, I estimated that there must have been close to two score of them surrounding their leaders.

  Will was looking at me, frowning. “Are you well?” he asked.

  We both knew I could not be well after witnessing such horrors as I had seen, but there was genuine concern on his face, and I nodded wordlessly, acknowledging his solicitude.

  “But?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Will, except for what we’ve seen here. But I need to talk to the two men you’ve condemned. They deserve an opportunity to confess their sins and be forgiven in God’s eyes.”

  He drew himself up, and for a moment I thought he was going to refuse me permission to visit them, but he scowled and shook his head. “You think they deserve that, Jamie? You saw what they did. They knew Berry was raving mad, perhaps possessed by demons, and yet they chose to help him murder an innocent boy.”

  “I know. I was there and watched as they did it.”

  “And you can still say they deserve forgiveness?”

  “In God’s eyes, Will, every man deserves forgiveness. I would never attempt to tell you they deserve forgiveness in yours, for your nature, like my own, is human and demands satisfaction. But I must offer them the solace of confession and last rites. That is my duty.”

  “Then it’s a damnably foolish duty. But go ahead and do it if you must—later, though. After I’ve done speaking here.”

  He strode to the stone-ringed fire pit and leapt up onto the largest of the upright seating stones surrounding it. From there, where he could both see and be seen by all his captains, he beckoned them to come closer, and beckoned to me as well, and when we were all gathere
d, he stood looking down on us for a time, his gaze moving from man to man, eyeing Andrew’s Highlanders as squarely as he did the familiar faces of his own men. Then he spoke into the profound silence surrounding him, in plain, intelligible Scots.

  “Master de Moray’s scouts behind us in the southeast report that there’s a fleet of English ships headed up the Tay to Dundee.” He made eye contact with each man as he spoke. “We don’t know what they intend to do—whether they even intend to land—and neither Master Murray nor I have any wish to wait around here to find out. So we’ll break camp in the morning and be on our way west again come noon.”

  “What about Dundee?” The question came from one of his own captains.

  Will nodded. “Those of you who joined us today know nothing of what has been happening here these past nine days, and you should know. Because many of you speak only the Gaelic, I’m going to have your commander tell you what you need to know. And those of you who follow me and speak no Gaelic, there will be nothing said here that you don’t already know. Master Murray, will you come up?”

  Will jumped down from the stone and Andrew exchanged places with him. He went straight to the meat of things, his Gaelic liquid and beautifully rippling.

  “As many of you know, a ship similar to the one we met at Aberdeen arrived at Dundee for Master Wallace a few weeks ago. Unlike Aberdeen, though, which contained a mere skeleton force, Dundee is strongly garrisoned and the English are well supplied, in case of siege. Wallace’s army, thousands strong, reached the town nine days ago and set about besieging the castle—the sight of their numbers served to keep the English penned up inside the place. But Wallace’s main reason for laying siege to the castle was to distract the garrison from the activities down at the wharf, while his men were unloading the cargo of the ship that had been waiting for them. That cargo of weapons and armour is now safe beyond Dundee and distributed where it will do most good. But the siege, which is hopeless at this time, since we lack the proper siege engines, remains in place.

  “That is what prompted the question you heard asked, ‘What about Dundee?’ And the answer to that question is that word will go out within the hour to the besieging force to abandon the siege works and evacuate their positions before morning. They will then march westward, following the coast road, and meet up with us there.”

  “And these English ships,” someone asked, “what about them?”

  “What about them?” Andrew dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “Were we to remain in place, besieging Dundee, they could land and assault us from behind, but they can do nothing to us as long as we keep moving. And so we will leave here and keep moving until we reach Stirling. That is all I have to tell you, so you may split up now and tell your men whatever you need to. Eat well tonight and then sleep well, and tell your lads to do the same, for we’ll be up and away come the dawn. Dismissed!”

  He looked directly at me and smiled, extending his hand because I was no more than two paces from him.

  “Father James,” he said. “Will you help me down?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHANGES AND CHALLENGES

  From the moment we turned our backs on Dundee the following day, to strike west towards Perth and the Tay crossing, the pace of events picked up visibly for all of us. I overheard Will and Long John talking quietly together, on our second day on the road, about how, after long weeks of trying to conceal an army on the sixty-mile march from Lanark to Dundee, everything had changed, and concealment was now the last and least of anyone’s cares.

  The same held true for Andrew and his Morayshire men; they and I had come south from Aberdeen and had hardly seen a living soul along the way, but now we were being overtaken daily by new recruits who had followed us southward. They, of course, had the advantage of travelling in small groups, which meant that they could move quickly and without attracting attention. We could not, because an army can travel no faster than its slowest component, the all-important baggage train. The distance from Aberdeen to Dundee, for a crow in flight, was little more than seventy miles, but for an army travelling on foot over mountainous terrain, as we were, that distance was hugely multiplied by many factors, some of which, like the trackless four-mile stretch of sheer-sided ravines and deep gullies we encountered near Kincardine, resulted at times in a daily progress of less than five miles.

  Some of the recruits and volunteers who overtook us in those days after Dundee came alone or in small groups, but there were also several substantial contingents of ordinary men from some of the Highland districts, Forfar in the Mounth being one such place, who marched under the supervision of trusted men selected by their local sheriffs for their steadiness and dependability. These levies were raw and untrained rural folk for the most part, but all of them carried a weapon of some description, even if it were no more dangerous than a hay fork. In addition to the locally raised levies, three groups of well-armed and well-disciplined fighting men under the command of experienced commanders also made their way to us, the smallest of the three consisting of thirty-two mounted men. It was after one such surprising arrival that a discussion among Will, Andrew, and their senior lieutenants threw some light on what was happening.

  Forty-four armoured men, well equipped and mounted and wearing uniform surcoats of pale brown linen emblazoned with a black boar’s head, had joined us that afternoon, to the alarm of our forward scouts, who thought them English at first. They turned out to be men from the ancient abbey town of Dunkeld, raised and equipped by Matthew de Crambeth, the bishop of that see. Their commander, Sir Iain Crambeth, was the bishop’s eldest nephew, a soft-spoken knight with a highly pleasant disposition and sufficient education to converse intelligently on a wide range of subjects.

  It was after dinner on the night he arrived that the subject of his uncle arose and led to a wide-ranging discussion of the changing realities of Scotland. The food had been cleared away and the army’s high command—though none of the ten men present at that gathering would ever have thought to call themselves by such a title—were seated around a roaring fire, talking freely but drinking sparingly because supplies of ale had run low and the last small cask of good wine had formally been declared dead by Andrew’s cousin Alistair two nights earlier. Will had been in good form throughout the meal, playing the gracious host and keeping his guests amply entertained, but it was Andrew Murray who drove any thoughts of after-dinner music and minstrelsy from the minds of the gathering.

  “Sir Iain,” he said, during a lull in the talk, “I am curious about the device on your surcoat, that black boar head. Knowing that Bishop Crambeth himself is responsible for your joining us here, I would presume it to be the bishop’s own emblem, save that it appears to be a remarkably savage image for a bishop of the Holy Church. And besides, I am sure Father James here told me Bishop Crambeth was in Paris. Has His Grace recently returned? Forgive me if I seem to pry, but it seems to me it would be difficult for the bishop to raise a body of men as well equipped and organized as yours without being here in person.”

  I raised an eyebrow, for I could have told him otherwise and I was genuinely surprised that Andrew should not know that for himself. But then I realized I was being naive. Andrew had spent far too much time around senior prelates to be in any doubt about what a bishop could and could not do.

  Sir Iain, however, took not the slightest offence at Andrew’s questions. In fact he laughed aloud. “You are in error in both cases, my Lord of Petty. In the first place, the black boar head is our family emblem, not my uncle’s alone. It is the crest of Crambeth and has been since from before the days King David sat upon our throne. The pale brown of the surcoat is my father’s and will be mine one day, and it sets us apart from other septs of our house, which use white, grey, and pale blue.” He smiled engagingly. “As for the need for His Grace to be at home in Dunkeld in order to furnish monies in the cause of the realm, it seems clear to me, Lord Murray, you have not spent much time around the servants of Holy Mother Church. Our Lady
Church has a long and puissant arm and can achieve great things with no apparent effort. My uncle Matthew remains in France, at the court of King Philip, where he works incessantly with the good Bishop Fraser of St. Andrews on Scotland’s behalf, to achieve the reinstatement of King John.”

  Twice now the newly arrived knight had misnamed Andrew, according him a title he did not possess, and I waited for Andrew to correct him. Instead he looked directly at me, as though divining what was in my thoughts, and winked one eye slowly. He had started people thinking, though, and a fresh question quickly followed.

  “Where are all these new people coming from?” The speaker was one of Will’s lieutenants, a newcomer. “Nobody seems to be trying to stop them reaching us.”

  “No one is even pretending to try, Cormac, so you needna feel confused.” All eyes turned to Will. “It’s a sign of the times we live in—a sign that folk are taking note of what we’re doing. The only folk in all Scotland today who would want to stop us are the English, and they are all too much in disarray to do anything. You might expect the magnates and the mormaers to try, but they are holding their breath instead, watching each other sideways and waiting to see what becomes of us and our wee uprising.”

  His gaze turned in my direction. “Isn’t that the truth, Father James? You know me, and so does everyone else here, and you all know my lack of esteem for the magnates of our land. But that lack means that when I say things like that, folk shrug and think I’m but venting spleen.”

  He turned back and raised his voice, indicating with a sweep of his arm that he wanted everyone there to listen to what he was saying. “Father James here is my cousin, for those of you who don’t already know that, and even though his clothing and appearance might not tell you so at first glance, he is a priest, attached to the chapter of Glasgow Cathedral. Jamie disagrees strongly with my views on our noble families, and we have argued over that since we were boys. And so I’m asking him, in front of all of you, for his opinion on what I said about the magnates and mormaers holding their breath. Father James, on your honour as a priest, am I wrong?”