The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  Every eye was fixed on me. “No, Cousin,” I said. “In all conscience I cannot but agree with your opinion. Based upon the evidence we know about—the events of the past few weeks in general since we left Aberdeen, and the last few days in particular since we left Dundee—I have to agree that it looks as if the entire nobility of Scotland is biding its time.” I looked around at the faces watching me, and I saw no trace of doubt.

  “And why should they not?” I continued. “Politically, they would be fools to do otherwise at this stage. They have nothing to lose by waiting, providing they don’t commit themselves one way or the other. If they do nothing and we fail and go down in the face of England’s armies, they will provide a hundred different reasons to Edward of England for not having been able to come to grips with us before we met our well-earned ends. On the other hand, if we should win, they will claim equally to have supported us all along, since they made no move to interfere with our patriotic efforts. And even should we do no more than bring about a stalemate, why, then they will have won again, by gaining time to lick their wounds and sniff the air and guess which way the cat will jump next time.”

  “Aye, thank you, Father James,” Will said. “I ken how it must gall you to agree wi’ me on sic an arguable point.” That won him a laugh from his listeners, and he switched out of the dialect to the more formal language he used with his lieutenants. “It is true, nonetheless. That’s why we have seen no signs of opposition from the Earl of Buchan and his crew. Even the Balliols, those few of them who remain in Scotland today, have made no move to interfere with us, and nor have the Bruce supporters in Mar or Lennox. The earldoms of Atholl, Strathearn, Menteith, and Lennox all lie ahead of us as we march, but we have heard no word of anyone seeking to resist our passage, have we?”

  No one answered him, so he rose to his feet and looked about him. “I’m told we’ve drunk all the ale we had,” he said. “That’s a disgrace. But on the other hand, we are close enough to Perth that we’ll be able to send a wagon in tomorrow night and resupply ourselves.” He waited until the wave of raillery subsided and then raised a hand for silence. “Think of this,” he said. “And that means you, too, Cormac. No one will be attacking us until we come to Stirling, which should be within the week. We’ll come towards it from the northwest, looping down and around through the Ochil Hills, and with the grace of God we’ll get there before Percy and his lackeys show their noses. Now get ye all to bed and sleep well, for we’ve a hard day ahead of us. I bid ye all a good night.”

  “Before we go, Will, one more question?”

  He smiled. “Always another question, Father James, eh? Ask away, then.”

  “Why would you come down through the Ochil Hills? Surely it would be faster and easier to go directly to Stirling from the east?”

  “It would be. But it would also be more public. I don’t want to set people talking about the Scots army being on the move, for then the English will hear about it. If we keep our presence unknown, we can approach at our own pace and set up camp in the woods at the base of the Abbey Craig, facing the end of the causeway across the Forth. We can be in hiding there before Percy and Clifford reach Stirling.” He had watched comprehension dawn in my expression as I listened, and now he nodded. “Good, then,” he said, glancing around him. “That’s settled. Now, all of you, go and get some rest.”

  The crowd around the fire dispersed slowly after that, the men chatting easily among themselves before drifting off in ones and twos, until eventually there were but six of us remaining: Will, Ewan and myself, and Andrew, Sandy Pilche, who had caught up to us that very day, and Alistair Murray. The talk was desultory for a spell, until Will sat up straight and turned to Andrew, frowning slightly.

  “I’ve been sitting here thinking about the Comyns being out of prison, Andrew, and I’m reminded that there is something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a few days now.”

  “Then ask, anything you like, though I doubt I can tell you much about the Comyns. We are relatives, and they have always been our neighbours, too, but none of them have ever been close friends to me or mine.”

  “In truth,” Will said, “there was only one Comyn in my head— John, the Earl of Buchan. He’s the one who should have challenged you before you ever got as far south as Aberdeen, if he had ever meant to fight at all. And that made me wonder, what was Buchan’s intention? Did he ever intend to attack you and commit himself to being Edward’s man against a Scots uprising? And that question set me to wondering about this whole liege-and-lackey situation that exists between Edward and our noble magnates. Common folk like us—and I know you are not really one of us, being one of them by birth and station, but I include you as a tried and trusted friend—folk like us will never really understand what is involved in all that, because that system of lieges and vassals and ancestral fealty, of ancient, formal loyalties, doesn’t affect us one whit. It belongs up there”—he waggled his fingers vaguely in the air over his head— “with them, the magnates, somewhere over and above our base-born, ordinary heads. It has no significance to us in our day-to-day lives.

  “And yet the truth is that it does affect us, does it not? It affects every single one of us, man, woman, and child, in ways we can’t begin to imagine, for it’s the biggest weakness in this realm of ours. It threatens our very existence as a separate people.” He stopped himself and frowned. “That is the truth, mad though it sounded even as I said it. It’s the single biggest weakness that this country has. It threatens our very status as a folk.”

  He spoke now to Ewan Scrymgeour. “Look at what has happened to the Welsh, to your mother’s folk. Wales, the land where you were born, is part of England now, and the folk there, who were there before the Romans came—and I’ve heard you say this yourself—are being treated like a lesser kind of English peasant, inferior by birth and not worthy of the name of Englishman. That’s what Edward is trying to make happen here in Scotland. And in keeping with his overall plan, that’s why he tried to use the Comyns of Buchan and Badenoch to rid himself of you in Moray, Andrew. If he can use the Scots to keep the Scots in order, he need not expend a single Englishman. But fortunately for all of us, the Comyns stayed their hand, for sufficient time at least to permit you to come south.”

  Andrew nodded slowly. “I understand what you are saying,” he said. “And it makes much sense, despite the valid arguments that every titled family in Scotland will put forth against it in favour of the hallowed customs of feudality. I’ve heard your argument that speaks of changing times and changing needs to fit those times, and I’ve been told it’s a viewpoint you share with some of our exalted bishops, and even, rather surprisingly, with the young Earl of Carrick. And it is also an opinion with which I am inclined to agree, in principle at least, even though all my training and my traditional beliefs are based firmly on the side that disputes such viewpoints.”

  He bent forward and picked up a half-burnt twig from the ground at his feet, blowing the dead ash from the end of it before holding it up for everyone to see. “Dead,” he said. “No spark of life in there.” He flicked the unburnt portion into the fire, where he watched until it burst into flames. “It galls me, though, that I can see no way to change things, other than by throwing the entire thing into the fire. The magnates need their estates in England. They need the revenues they gain from them because their revenues here at home are so small and unreliable. The English seize and tax everything in Scotland, from wool to herring, taking the stuff of life right out of our magnates’ coffers and making them more and more dependent on their English rents.” He flicked a finger towards me. “We’ve been through all of this before, Jamie and I, and the sole remedy we could dream up would require that every noble house in Scotland resign its entire holdings in England, returning them to the Crown.” One side of his face twisted into a rueful smile. “I fear that finding a spark of hope in that, as things stand today, might be as faint a hope as was finding a spark of life in that cold twig, before I threw it back into th
e fire.”

  “That may be true.” Will’s response was immediate and firm. “But as things stand today, we are the sole remaining force of any strength in Scotland committed to Scotland’s cause, and we are in danger of being defeated by Scotland’s own noble families because of their need for English gold and lands.” He barked a short, bitter laugh. “That is beyond shameful, and if it is really true, mayhap we deserve to be conquered.”

  There was no response to that, but after a few moments Andrew spoke again.

  “You started that by saying you had a question to ask me, Will, but you went off into the question of Buchan’s intentions. What did you want to ask me at the start of this?”

  “Aye, it was about this matter of parole and obligations and your family’s role in what is going on. Would it offend you if I ask you about that?”

  “Not at all. Ask away.”

  “Well, we know Edward has been releasing high-born prisoners who agree to join him in his war in France. That’s why Buchan and Badenoch and Gartnait of Mar and the rest of that crew were marching up from Aberdeen, and I’d wager there are others like them, scattered across the country—prisoners who would rather fight in France than rot in English jails. But I’ve been wondering why your father and your uncle of Bothwell have not been similarly freed. They’re both rich beyond belief, so each of them could easily raise a private army of his own to take to France, particularly if he had no other choice. It’s not like the Plantagenet to ignore such opportunities, and we know he is in sore need of money, with all the resistance to his French war from his barons. Do you have any thoughts on that? Or is there something I don’t know?”

  Andrew Murray grinned. “They locked me up in Chester Castle,” he said. “Do any of you know the place?”

  We all shook our heads, except for Ewan Scrymgeour. “Aye, I know it,” he said. “It’s in Wales. I was there once, when I was younger, as an archer with King Edward. Prince Edward, he was then. It’s the biggest castle I’ve ever seen.”

  “I thought the same when I first laid eyes on it,” Andrew said. “It’s gigantic, one of the oldest castles in all Britain, built by the Romans over hundreds of years. It was the fortress of the Twentieth Legion, the Valeria Victrix, for more than three hundred years, and in all that time, it’s said, no prisoner ever escaped from it.”

  Will raised a pointing finger. “Yet you escaped from it.”

  “I did … but solely because no one expected me to try.” He shrugged. “Everyone believed escape was impossible, and so I simply walked away one day. I was one of six prisoners taken there after our defeat at Dunbar, and the other five are still there, living in comfort and treated well.”

  “If they’re that well cared for,” Will said, “why did you feel the need to break out?”

  Andrew grinned again. “I thought you were never going to ask me that. I broke out because I believed that Edward had no intention of ever setting me free. He meant me to die in Chester Castle. To understand why that should be, we must go back to what you said about my father and my uncle William. Both of them are, as you say, rich beyond belief, but do you know how rich that really is?”

  He looked at each of us, as if expecting someone to say they did. “Well, lads,” he said, “there are rich men—and you’ve all seen a few of those, if merely from afar—and then there are wealthy men. Most people will tell you there’s no difference between being rich and being wealthy, since both are beyond the reach of ordinary men, but I swear to you, on my father’s honour, that those people are wrong.” He looked around him, and then he clicked his fingers. “Think of a new-growing tree,” he said. “A healthy, thriving, two-year-old sapling, and imagine it stands for riches. Well, here is the difficult part of understanding the difference between the words ‘rich’ and ‘wealthy.’ If that green, healthy sapling is riches, then wealth, real wealth, is an ancient, majestic oak so vast, so overwhelming, that the sapling doesn’t even see it as being a tree, doesn’t know it is growing in the oak’s great shadow. It simply believes that the shade surrounding it is the way the world was made.

  “I fully understand the differences between that sapling and the oak tree looming above it. And I understand it because I know that if I survive my father and my uncle, I will be the wealthiest man in all Scotland, seigneur, as the French say, of all the enormous territories of Bothwell in the southwest and Moray in the northeast.” He looked askance at Will, who was frowning slightly. “I am not attempting to make myself look grand, Will Wallace. I am trying to make my answer to your question understandable. So, why have my father and my uncle not been freed?”

  He stood up and shrugged out of the woollen shawl that covered his shoulders against the cool evening air, and folded it upon itself four times before placing it carefully on the log he had been sitting on. Then he sank down to sit on it, sighing appreciatively. “There,” he said. “A cushion between me and the hard realities of a soldier’s life. That’s much better. Believe me, all of you, when I say that, of all the cushions in the world, none is more comforting than the privilege accorded to great wealth. And among the wealthy noblemen of Scotland, none were more closely aligned with Edward Plantagenet when he was first crowned King than were my father and his brother William the Rich. Even then, forty and more years ago when they were very young indeed, each one of them already outshone the greatest of the English dukes and barons for wealth and possessions. The brothers were so wealthy that Edward could not influence them with offers of land or holdings in England, and he never tried to. He borrowed easily from them instead, and he numbered them publicly among his closest friends, always taking care to repay the loans before asking for renewals. I knew that as a boy, and I know exactly when it stopped and matters changed.” He gazed into the fire.

  “Well, man?” Will prompted him. “You have us all holding our breath.”

  “It was six years ago, in the early summer of ninety-one, several months after the death of Eleanor of Castile, the truly beloved wife who had kept Edward on a tight leash for more than forty years. Her death was sudden, the illness that took her unknown, and Edward appears to have lost his reason for a time because of it, his mind unhinged. He went into mourning and remained in complete seclusion for more than three months, during which the entire country stopped functioning. For three whole months, all governance in England simply stopped: no laws were enacted, no treaties were signed, no courts were convened, and nothing that required governmental approval was approved. Edward had always been a conscientious taskmaster, who would brook no laziness or inefficiency in his subordinates, and because of that, through sheer fear of the consequences of an inadvertent error, the entire government ground to a halt.”

  He made a tutting sound as he shook his head slowly. “But the time passed, the country survived, and Edward eventually emerged from his self-imposed exile from the world. And yet the man who came out of seclusion was no more than a bitter, twisted shadow of the King people remembered. The changed monarch of England was forever angry and contentious, suspicious of his lifelong friends, and convinced, deep within himself, that he had forever lost the destiny of which he had been so sure all of his life.

  “Everyone was aware of it, though few dared comment upon it. But among those few were my father and my uncle. They had earned the right as his friends, had known him close as kinsmen for more than forty years. And yet, because they were close friends, they held their peace for a long time—held it, in fact, until they could, in good conscience, hold it no longer.”

  “And when they did speak up, how did Edward react?”

  “Not well,” Andrew said with a grimace. “I remember hearing my uncle say, on many occasions, that princes are predictable, despite what most folk like to say, because they will all react angrily to anything that does not immediately fall into line with their wishes. Well, Edward proved that to be true. Their criticism marked the beginning of my family’s fall from grace in the eyes of England’s King.”

  “The beginning, y
ou say. And what marked the end of it?”

  Andrew made a snorting sound. “The day they told the King that they knew what he was doing. That would have been about three months later, in the high summer of that year.”

  Will was nodding. “That was the summer when the court of auditors convened to judge the claims of Balliol and Bruce.”

  “It was. My father was the first of the brothers to notice that something was wrong. I have the impression that it was something Edward said in an unguarded moment that alerted him, some minor lapse of judgment, or perhaps a mere slip of the tongue. Whatever it was, my father came to understand its true meaning in the weeks that followed. A month or so later, when he was sure of his own conclusions, he summoned his brother from Bothwell and told him what he suspected: that Edward had a close-held, secret agenda and intended to add Scotland to England’s Crown as he had Wales.

  “My uncle agreed with my father’s interpretation, and together they confronted Edward in a private meeting and told him what they had divined. At first he pretended good-natured amusement, denying everything with laughter and trying to cajole them into believing they had been mistaken. They were unconvinced by his protestations. They warned him that the House of de Moray would oppose him, beard to beard, if he ever tried to gain control of Scotland. And they offered him a means of avoiding embarrassment at the same time. If he did nothing further to advance these plans he said he did not have, then they, in turn, would remain silent about those beliefs they could not prove.

  “And so a truce was struck and time moved on, and John Balliol was crowned King of Scotland. And my father and uncle lived on, too, unmolested and protected by their wealth and privilege. Last year, though, they went to war with King John against Edward and were captured at the Dunbar fight and imprisoned in the Tower.” He shrugged. “I doubt they will ever see freedom again, for they have the power—the will and the wealth—to denounce Edward publicly and oppose him actively. And had I chosen to remain in Chester Castle, I would probably be conveniently dead by now, through some obscure accident, for why would Edward free me, knowing I would inherit both estates?” He brought his hands together slowly, resting them beneath his chin. “So that is why I chose the path I have taken. My public denouncement of the King of England in what I do now from day to day is far more effective than any other that my father and uncle might make from where they are.”