The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  He made no attempt to hide the scorn he felt for them, and I rewound the scroll and set it down between us on the tabletop.

  “Aye,” I said. “You’ll be getting a lot of that now, no doubt.”

  “Aye, enough to make me want to vomit. There were a score such letters awaiting me when I got back to Stirling, all of them from folk desiring me to be duly grateful—humbly grateful, they meant me to understand—that they now support my leadership of Scotland’s folk. And all wishing me, at the same time, to ignore what they did, holding back and doing and saying nothing that might commit them, shutting their eyes and ears until they could see which way the cat was going to jump. Well damn them all. I never cared what they thought or did before, and I’ll not change that now.”

  “How is Andrew?” I asked, not because I wanted to change the subject but because I had not heard any word of him.

  “He’s fine, thank God,” Will said. “His wound was not as deep as we had feared, and he grows stronger every day.” He peered around as if searching for something he had mislaid. “In fact, I’m going to see him now and I want you—no, I need you to come with me.”

  “For what?”

  He looked at me with raised eyebrows. “To help us. There’s much to be done, Jamie, a terrifying amount, and I’m not good at that kind of rubbish.” He snapped up a hand to quiet me before I could even open my mouth. “I know, I know, it’s not rubbish at all. Far from it. It’s work that needs to be done, and done well, handled with an eye to other people’s certain discontent at what we do. Andrew’s better at it than I, but even he is a soldier, not a cleric, and a clever cleric’s what we need. There’s a wide range of matters that have to be resolved, matters of government and the safety of the realm that can’t be put off much longer. I could not be content to leave them in the hands of the same folk who have failed us in the past. I don’t trust the magnates and I do not want them taking control again. Not without oversight and supervision from able folk—folk I know and trust. That’s why I need you. You have the critical eye of a cleric trained in such things.”

  “I can tell you here and now, Cuz,” I said, “that’s far too much responsibility for me. Matters of state are too important and too complex to entrust into the hands of someone who does not know exactly what’s involved.”

  “And isn’t that what I’ve just said? How do you think I feel when I contemplate what needs to be done now? It frightens me nigh to death, Jamie.” He pushed his chair back and stood up again, then walked away to where his sword stood propped in the corner of the fireplace, and I watched as he grasped it by the hilt and swung it towards me, his arms outstretched and elbows locked, sighting at me along its long blade.

  “This is what I know, Jamie. Weapons, fighting. And even this with the sword is new to me. I’m an archer, a bowman. I can pick a moving target a hundred paces away, then track it and knock it down before most men can even see what I’m aiming at.” His arms relaxed and he stepped back towards me, holding the great sword one-handed and laying it gently on the tabletop. “And I’m learning how to use this, too, more easily than I thought I would. But what I know nothing about, what I can never hope to learn about, is statecraft, the ten thousand things any man needs to know if he is to govern a country, and the thought of having to deal with it is terrifying.”

  “I believe that,” I said.

  “You remember Brother Duncan, Jamie?” I nodded, for Duncan had been a favourite teacher of ours at Paisley Abbey. “Well, Brother Duncan once told me that God would set no man a task he was incapable of doing. If the task is assigned to you, and you know that it is truly yours, then that assignment is a token of God’s confidence in your ability to do it.” He grunted. “No matter that you might not know how to do it at the time. That’s not important. What is important, Duncan said, is that you learn how to do it in the time ahead, and that you work at it until the job is done.”

  “I remember that,” I said, “for he was talking to me, about working in the library. I’m surprised you remember it, for it had nothing to do with you.”

  “It does now, Cousin, for I can’t deny the task God has set for me. I worked towards it and reached out for it on the Carse of Stirling. And now I must learn how to deal with it.”

  The tone of his voice had altered subtly, and I stared at him, suddenly wary of what I heard. “You sound as though you believe that,” I said.

  “I do, Jamie. What other choice have I? My biggest fear is that I won’t be able to live up to it.”

  “Live up to what?”

  “To the challenge.” He sighed. “We have an opportunity here, I think, to do something truly fine in Scotland, something that has never been done before—an opportunity to shape something noble for our folk and rid them of the fear of never knowing what to expect from those above them. But the misery of that is that I don’t know where to start or, once I do, how to go from there. All I can do is pray to God for guidance, and I’ll have to rely on you and your brethren for help with that.”

  I had never heard my cousin speak that way of God before, but I knew that that was not the time to say so, and so I smiled, and tried to sound unconcerned as I said, “Well, I don’t even know what we are talking about yet.”

  He made a doleful face and started ticking off topics on his fingers. “The magnates, first and foremost,” he began. “How do we handle them? Can we handle them? Will they agree to work with us, mere base-born folk beside their lofty names?” He ticked another finger. “The Church. Scotland’s bishops. The three strongest men in Scotland’s Church aren’t even here. Wishart’s in jail, Fraser of St. Andrews is in France on King John’s behalf, and Crambeth of Dunkeld’s there, too, and like to stay there for some time. We need to address that, and quickly, for the last thing our cause needs is weakness within the Church. We need the support of all our bishops, but of those three most of all, because they control the country and its clergy.”

  I was nodding before he had even finished speaking. “I know Wishart’s deputy in Glasgow, Canon Lamberton,” I said. “He’s a good man, with the same kind of strength—the fortitude and forthrightness—Wishart has always had. You’ll like him. In fact you should make a friend of him as quickly as you can, because he is his own man and will not be dictated to if he is not convinced of the righteousness of the dictator. I know he’ll be of great help to you once he knows what you require. I can write to him. What else is on your list?”

  “The English.” He snorted derisively. “They’re right at the very top of my own personal list. We’ve run them back across the border, and Edward’s safely at war in France, but the whoresons still hold all our castles. Here we are in Stirling, talking about governing the country, and the castle above our heads is held by Englishmen! That has to change, and quickly. That will be among my first three priorities, and we’ll start by starving out the garrison here in Stirling.”

  He ticked a fourth finger. “And then there are the Scots. They’ll be no easy folk to govern, especially now that they’ve run the English out, and we won’t be able to tackle that until we’ve decided what to do about the magnates—and they’ll be determined to cling tightly to the administration of the realm’s rules of chancery. The magnates are going to be our biggest problem.”

  “Which brings us around in a full circle. Is there anything else?”

  “Aye,” he said heavily, “there is. The biggest, most contentious matter of them all. It overshadows all the others and it influences every aspect of everything we need to do.”

  “You make it sound like doomsday.”

  “Close … close. We have no money, Jamie.” He saw the lack of understanding in my priestly eyes. “Scotland has no money. The realm is penniless—bankrupt. This country of ours ran on wool, Jamie. It made us prosperous, after a fashion. It certainly allowed us to survive in comfort. But that fat slug Cressingham destroyed the wool trade, and we are left with nothing in its place for earning revenue. Our barns and warehouses are empty, their contents
seized and shipped to England as taxes. The farmers who reared the sheep that supplied our wool have eaten their animals. The English burned our granaries and flooded our pastureland. Many farmers refused to plant crops, unwilling to labour in the fields only to have their harvests ripped away from them at the end of the year. And our trading fleets have gone elsewhere. Add that to everything else the English have plundered from us in the past two years, and then throw in the costs of arming and equipping armies—one for us, to fight the English at Dunbar in support of King John, and now this one to pay for Edward’s wars in France— and we’re left with nothing, Cousin. You can’t feed folk with nothing.”

  He smiled, a small, bitter, self-deprecating smile. “Think about that while we walk from here to Stirling, and then be prepared to hear the same, with variations, from Andrew.”

  “Is Andrew well enough to deal with all of this?”

  The smile reappeared, slightly broader this time. “He has no choice. We need him on the walls.” He picked up the Comyn letter and placed it inside a plain but polished wooden chest that stood on a small table in one corner of the tent’s main room. “Believe me, though,” he added, “when I heard that he had been carried off the field without my ever learning of it, I died inside at the thought that he might have been killed, leaving me to face this dying world alone. Selfish, no doubt of that, but what I am facing, what I have to contend with, is the ending of the world as I have known it all my life. Would you disagree with that?”

  I shook my head. “Probably not, from your point of view,” I said. “You have achieved some signal changes in these past few months. My world is much the same as before, but my world is the Church with all its permanence, whereas yours is … the ever-changing world of men, with all its flaws and follies.”

  He picked up his huge sword and slipped it through the ring that hung between his shoulders, then crossed to take a long cloak from a stand in one corner and swung it out and around to settle on his shoulders with the sword’s hilt thrusting up from beneath it. “Come,” he said. “We’ll talk as we walk. Andrew’s expecting us and there is no reason for us to keep him waiting.”

  It took us the better part of half an hour to walk the two miles from Will’s camp to the house in Stirling where Andrew had been lodged. We would have taken him to his own estates in Bothwell, once he was well enough to travel, but the English garrison still held Bothwell Castle. And so we had found quarters for him in a house that had belonged to the former town provost of Stirling, and while far from being grand in the sense of denoting nobility, it was large enough for a family of ten. What made it suitable for Andrew in his convalescence was that it had a separate suite of chambers at the rear, complete with a door leading to the lane behind the house. Mistress Morton, the provost’s widow, lived in the main house still with her two plain and unmarried middle-aged daughters, Morag and Marjorie, and she had been happy to make her premises available to the dashing young chieftain from Moray. Andrew’s wife, Eleanor, had been summoned from Auch Castle to join her husband, and when she eventually arrived, she would move into Andrew’s quarters with him.

  Andrew was even happier to see us than Will had been to welcome me, and we spent no small amount of time catching up. He was looking far better than I would have expected, considering that he had had half a foot of steel thrust through his lower back a mere week earlier. He was gaunt, of course, his jaws more sunken and his cheekbones sharper, and the lines running from his nose to bracket his mouth were graven deep. He was sitting stiffly, on a high-backed wooden chair. But his eyes were bright and clear, he was clean and close-shaved, and he bore no discernible trace of sickness about him. He offered us wine when we arrived, but neither one of us accepted, and soon we had come down to business, considering the priorities Will had defined earlier, and tossing thoughts and ideas back and forth from one to another as they came to us.

  We had barely started on the topic of the letters from the Comyns and other magnates when we were interrupted by one of the widow’s two daughters, who tapped on the door and entered timidly, her eyes fixed in awe upon my cousin Will and her entire demeanour suggesting she might flee at the slightest sound.

  “What is it, Morag?” Andrew said courteously. “You look concerned. Are we making too much noise?”

  Her eyes shot wide and then she frowned immediately, making me want to smile. “Eh? Whit? Och no. We canna hear a thing oot there. There’s a man here to see you.”

  “A man? Did he give you his name?”

  “No, sir, but he asked for you.”

  “What manner of man is he, can you tell me?”

  Wide-eyed again, she nodded. “Aye. He’s big … Bigger nor you. And he has armour on, like Maister Wallace’s, but cleaner, shinier.”

  “Shinier, aye. Is he old or young, though? Does he have a beard?” I had the distinct feeling that Andrew was teasing the woman, trying, albeit gently, to fluster her, but if that were the case he was wasting his time.

  She pressed her lips into a slightly disapproving pout. “He’s young,” she said.

  “Then be so good as to bring the young man in, if it please you.”

  Morag nodded, still with that look of pouting disapproval, and pulled the heavy door shut behind her.

  “I wonder who would come calling upon me at this hour of the day, and in shinier armour than yours, Will.” He sounded facetious, as though he was not really expecting an answer, but before Will could respond the door swung open again and the answer walked into the room and stopped short, gazing at Will and me in astonishment that quickly yielded to a grin of pleasure.

  “God bless all here,” he said. “But as He is my God and witness, I did not think to find a house full of Wallaces! I but came by to make myself known and offer my respects to Master de Moray.” He turned immediately, smiling still, to where Andrew sat mystified, watching him with wondering eyes. “Pardon me, sir, for this discourtesy in interrupting you while you are conferring with your colleagues. No, stay,” he said, seeing Andrew gathering himself to rise and greet him. “No need to stand on my behalf.” He extended his hand and strode forward quickly to where Andrew could reach it without having to rise. “As I say, I came but to present my respects. I am Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, and I am here to place myself at your service.” He moved his eyes slightly to include Will. “At service to you both, indeed, if you will have me.”

  Andrew had not recovered from his astonishment, and looked wide-eyed at Will, but my cousin was gazing fixedly at Bruce.

  “Where were you last week,” he said bluntly, “when we were fighting at Stirling Bridge? We could have used your service then.”

  “I was in the Carrick hills,” Bruce said, and shrugged. “In my own lands, safe among my own folk. I know you are familiar with the outlaw life, Master Wallace, how it feels when you cannot openly approach folk that you meet for fear of being recognized and taken or betrayed. When you must live in hiding, it grows difficult to stay abreast of things well known to other people. I have been living with my head down these past three months, avoiding the attentions of the English since the surrender at Irvine, because I much dislike the terms imposed upon me there by Henry Percy and his warty familiar, Robert Clifford. I had no part in the discussion of those terms, and they demand that I give up my wee girl Marjorie as hostage to my good behaviour and obedience. They have required three oaths of loyalty from me in as many years, and now they want to take my daughter as an earnest of my honour and good faith. She is not yet a year old, and she is all I have left of my wife, Izzy, who died birthing her. So I removed her to safety, where she will not be found. And that is where I was last week.

  “As for why I missed the Stirling fight,” he went on, “I was misinformed about de Warrenne’s movements—Cressingham’s, too—and by the time I discovered the truth, I was too late to join you. I knew you had come west from Dundee, and I knew you would block Surrey’s advance at Stirling, but I did not know how quickly it would come to pass. I thought to be he
re in time to join you. And for that failure, I am regretful, for I would dearly love to have been here with you when you sent them packing.”

  I had been watching Will all the time Bruce was speaking and I could see he was impressed by the earl’s words. I had no doubt in my mind that Bruce had spoken truthfully, and my gut told me Will believed him, too.

  “Let me say one thing more, Master Wallace, before you reject my offer to join you.” Bruce paused. “The offer is genuine. I know exactly what you think of Scotland’s magnates—people like me. We have spoken of it in the past, between we two, and so I am aware of your distrust and your suspicions when it comes to dealing with what the nobles of this realm delight in calling the nobility, with their divided feudal loyalties and ancient ways of doing things. I know all that, and yet here I stand, to face you. I have little doubt you’ll be collecting finely worded letters of intent from every noble household up and down and all across the land these days, offering service and assistance whenever you might have need of it. Am I correct?” He was watching Will keenly, and even though his question went unanswered, he smiled. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “For my part, I believe you might have need of service and assistance here and now.”

  “Why would you think that?” Will’s voice was soft.

  Bruce glanced over to where the sweat-beaded metal ewer of untouched wine sat on the table beside its cups, and he turned to Andrew. “Would you object were I to pour myself some wine?” He moved without waiting for an answer, though Andrew was already shaking his head and waving him to proceed. He poured one cup of wine and then look up inquiringly at the rest of us. “Anyone else?”

  “Aye,” Will said, nodding, and Bruce ended up pouring wine for all of us and taking Andrew’s cup to him.

  Bruce tasted his, nodded in approval, then sat at the table, close to Andrew. “Why would I think that, you asked. Well, let me try to answer.” He sipped his wine again, then set down his cup. “You two have achieved a miracle. You took a ragtag army of ill-equipped and untrained men and led them to destroy an English battle force in its full panoply. And then, having broken and beaten them in the field, you chased them all the way back to England. And you did all of it without help from any of the great houses”—he glanced at Andrew—“with the singular exception of the House of de Moray, be it said. And now you are the two most puissant men in all the realm—victorious, triumphant, and with an eager, loyal army at your backs. The word throughout the realm, I’m being told, is that you have united all the folk, the ordinary folk of Scotland, as they have never been before. That is something unprecedented.”