by Jack Whyte
The words provoked a storm of cheering and unrestrained enthusiasm among the watching commoners—a storm that barely failed to mask the underlying threat within what he had said. The Earl of Buchan understood the implicit challenge clearly, and he was too old a campaigner to ignore it or to try to deflect it. He nodded, keeping his face inscrutable, then spoke again, his tone conciliatory.
“Your pardon, Master Wallace. I had no wish to give offence. I meant, of course, that you and Master Murray call yourselves—and justifiably so—commanders of the army of the kingdom of Scotland and the community of that realm. And so, that being said, what would you have us do from this day forward?”
Another flash of recognition brought more of Will’s words back to me: They won’t think to take the responsibility upon themselves, but they won’t hesitate to foist it onto us.
“I would have you all accept that the realm has need of all of us,” Will answered. “All of us, from the highest to the lowest, irrespective of rank and station. I would also have you recognize that we have never known a time more dire than today. And I would have you agree that there are a number of things we can do right now to heal ourselves, and then work together to make them happen.”
“Can you name some of those things we might do right now?”
“Aye, easily, as can any man with eyes to see and a mind with which to reason. The first would be to agree that we are on the edge of famine. We don’t have food to feed our folk because the English took it. We have no stores of grain or meat, and few crops in the ground, so we’ll have little harvest again this year.” There was a rumble of bitter agreement as those words sank home to their listeners. “North and south of Forth the folk are starving, but there is something we can do immediately to change that.” Utter silence then as people waited to hear what that something was, but Will out-waited them until the High Steward asked the question in everyone’s mind.
“And what is that?”
“We can begin by conducting a survey of the entire realm, dividing it into regions and making an inventory of what food, and how much of it, each region holds and what it requires most. That could be quickly done, with teams of clerks sent out as soon as they can be assembled and instructed.” There was much mumbling and sage nodding of heads as folk digested that, but Will was far from finished with that topic.
“In addition, though,” he continued, raising his voice to recapture everyone’s attention, “there is much more we can do to save ourselves, and our folk, by acknowledging one simple and straightforward truth.” He turned in a full circle, spreading his arms to embrace everyone there. “Lothian,” he said, and waited for a reaction.
I truly did not know what he was expecting, for at first I saw no connection with the preamble and neither, it appeared, did anyone else.
“Lothian,” he said again. “Think about Lothian, about how rich and prosperous it is. It covers all the southeastern area of this realm, from Berwick on the border all the way north to Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth. You all know that, or you have heard it, but most of you know nothing at all about the place because few of us ever go there. We stay away from it, because it’s as good as English. It has always been English. The Lothian folk speak English—not Scots or Gaelic. They speak English or Norman French because they deal with the English all the time—English merchants and English traders and English earls and dukes and barons, English garrisons and English administrators.
“For that reason, the English have always taken good care of Lothian. And who can blame them? It’s the richest farmland in Scotland and it hasn’t been damaged by war at all, not for years. There is no war in Lothian. But—and this I swear by the living God—there is food aplenty: rich, lush farmlands, overflowing granaries, and fine, fat herds of cattle, sheep, goats, and swine, all of it harvested and tended carefully, kept in store for English use. Most of it—most of Lothian, I mean—is Cospatrick country, the fief of Patrick Cospatrick, Earl of Dunbar and March. And that means it’s Northumbrian English in all but name, since Cospatrick lives in England and is Edward of England’s man.”
He raised his voice to a roar. “But Lothian is Scotland, whether the English believe that or not. And we should be there now, reminding the folk of who they are!” He paused, then resumed in a more moderate tone. “My own people in Selkirk Forest tell me the Lothian farmers have enjoyed a wondrous harvest, so their bins are full. Full enough, I would say, to feed their fellow Scots in this time of need. So I say we should be sending expeditions in force, to encourage the locals there to share their good fortune with their countrymen.”
He had to stop then, until the turmoil of response died down, but there was no doubting the tenor of the room: even the assembled lords seemed unanimous in their praise of Will’s proposal.
The High Steward raised a hand to Will. “We can put your idea to the vote, Master Wallace, though I believe it already has the approval of all here, but it raises the question of who would be responsible for its execution. Would you wish to see to that yourself?”
“No, my lord Steward, I would not—though many here will think me highly qualified, as a bandit and an outlaw, to conduct such levies.” That brought a roar of laughter, and Will waited until it died away. “In the normal run of things, I would be glad to commend my friend and colleague Andrew Murray to you, for he would bring all his integrity to the execution of the task, and speaking as the outlaw and bandit that I am, moral integrity is something I have never aspired to. But Andrew Murray needs time now to rest, having had an English sword blade sheathed in his back, and so on his behalf I must refuse yet again. But nevertheless this task is a knotty one, and the details of completing it will require serious attention from an organizing authority.
“Besides,” he added, “that idea was only one of the things I proposed doing right away. There is another.”
Again a silence settled over the assembly as people strained to hear every word that would follow. Will looked from face to face, from one side of the crowded hall to the other, and when he spoke he barely had to raise his voice, so intense was the silence.
“I have thought about this one at length,” he said. “And I will conduct it myself … We are not simply starving here in Scotland. We are in dire poverty—penniless and ill used. Our coffers have been emptied these two years by England’s tax collectors and we have nothing left—we can’t refill them. Our traders lack the wherewithal to trade and our merchants lack the goods and storage spaces they would need if ever they were able to restart their enterprises. We have all grown accustomed to the sight of our wealth, our goods and our resources, being shipped away to England, never to return. The wagon trains and their escorts seemed endless, and there were times this past year when the sound of wheels rumbling away into the distance barely seemed to fade before new squeaks and the clomping of heavy hooves announced the coming of the next. My folk in Selkirk Forest seized many of them back as they went by, but nowhere near enough to make the English stop, or even take notice. No matter what we did to try to stop them, the wagon trains kept moving, carrying the riches of our realm down into England, then returning laden with supplies and rations for the English garrisons.”
He reached down into the scrip that hung at his waist and produced a tightly rolled and beribboned scroll, brandishing it above his head for all to see. “I have word here,” he said, “from people I sent out right after the Stirling fight. They say there will be no more wagon trains bound for English garrisons in Scotland … because there are no more English garrisons in Scotland, or there will be none, within the next two weeks. Stirling and Edinburgh Castles are surrendered, as are—” He had to stop again, for his voice was overwhelmed in the cheering that greeted the recapture of the realm’s two greatest fortresses. He waited patiently for it to subside. “The other castles left in English hands will soon follow, for they are all cut off. Lochmaben in Annandale is ours now, and Roxburgh, where Bishop Wishart is detained, will not hold out for long, I am assured.” The appr
oving roar swelled up again, but this time he waved it down quickly.
“I have a point to make here, and it is this: roads stretch in both directions. They go and they come, and wagon trains move as easily north along them as they move south. I am told that the roads on the other side of the border are better than ours, so I am going to use them. But I have not been told, by anyone, that there is the smallest hint of either poverty or famine in the fat and fertile lands on the far side of the border. It is a land flowing with milk and honey, where the milk and honey both are served in golden cups.”
He straightened up and looked around the enormous room again, then raised his voice to a shout. “It’s time the English gave back some of the wealth they’ve stolen from us, and it’s high time they learned what it feels like to be invaded and abused, robbed and despoiled. I will ride into England within the next few days with a raiding party of three thousand, all mounted and well armed, and all hell-bent on plunder and the refurbishment of our realm’s treasury with funds that were stolen from us over the past few years. We will harry Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland, hitting hard and often—towns, ports, castles, and whatever else we find. We will mount no sieges and waste no time in conventional warfare. We’ll attack targets as we find them and move on quickly afterwards, shipping our plunder northward in as many wagons as we can find.”
“Where will you get three thousand horses?”
I did not see the man who shouted the question, but the voice had come from the ranks of the lords opposite.
“I would steal them if I had to, but I have them already. Garrons and Irish ponies. They’re not the beasts you and your knightly friends might choose to ride—they’re no coursers or rounceys—but they’re strong and sure-footed, with broad, flat hooves that will let us ride through places where your dainty-hooved mounts would founder. They’re Border horses, all of them, and ridden by Border fighters, from Annandale, Liddesdale, and Galloway. Nothing in England will withstand us.”
The same man responded. “Will you take none of your own men with you, then?”
Will grinned at him, though it was more snarl than smile. “They are my own men,” he said. “All of them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A NATURAL AND PERFECT CHOICE
In the month that followed the sine die adjournment of the assembly, great things were achieved by those appointed to pursue the objectives drawn up by the committees created in the crucible of that gathering. The tasks they faced were daunting, and their completion would take far longer than the single year Will had anticipated as the time remaining before the English returned, but a solid start was made during those first weeks, with priority given to the twin tasks of fighting the famine, by resupplying the realm with food from the wealthy Lothian country, and fighting the darkness of ignorance caused by the shortage of parish priests. Every ordained priest in the land, including many whose lives had been entirely cloistered and monastic until that time, was put to work within days of the assembly, visiting parishes that lacked a priest, to ensure that community life went on as it ought to, with every family having access to the Blessed Sacraments. And as though by magic, both of these programs began to show results within a single fortnight.
Then, with the rapid resurgence of hope and a rejuvenated sense of communal identity, and despite the lack of common funds to pay for such improvements, a determined effort was launched to repair the damage done by Edward’s army of occupation. Under the aegis of the Church authorities, and backed staunchly by the support of the High Steward and the High Constable of the realm, who compelled their subordinate lords, under pain of treason, to grant leave to their liegemen to participate in the endeavour, armies of local volunteers were conscripted everywhere and assigned to repair the public works identified as being crucial to the welfare of the realm. Bridges were rebuilt—though not the one across the Forth at Stirling—and river fords were repaired. On the eastern coast, seaboard and port facilities such as piers, wharves, boat-yards, slipways, cranes, and warehouses were refurbished. Mills were repaired and in some instances rebuilt completely, with new millstones where the earlier ones had been damaged beyond repair. And granaries, barns, and farm buildings that had been torn down or burnt, or both, were replaced with new ones. And as the work progressed and successes grew, the whole country grew stronger: sawmills and manufactories prospered, stonemasons flourished again, and the associated trades and guilds in every burgh began to thrive ever more strongly. The work would continue for years, we all knew, but the skills of the people organizing the efforts of everyone involved on such a scale would grow in proportion, and everyone knew that, too.
I spent most of that first month completing my secretarial tasks in Stirling, at Cambuskenneth Abbey, and it was there I heard the tale of how Will Wallace, in a triumph of brazen effrontery, had talked the English commander of Roxburgh Castle, which sat on a spit of land at the junction of the Tweed and the Teviot Rivers and was considered impregnable, into surrendering without a blow being given or received on either side. I smiled, on hearing the story, for though people recounted it in tones of awe, I recognized it as being typical of my cousin. He had never been much of a gambler, but whenever he did decide to flirt with the gods of chance, he would study the situation and calculate the odds for and against success. Then, his mind made up, he would proceed with his plan of engagement, never betraying his intentions by the slightest flicker until he had done what he set out to do. He seldom lost his hazard.
In this instance, he had parleyed with the English commander, eye to eye, and convinced him that, as the last surviving English governor of any castle in Scotland, he ran the risk of being flayed like the infamous Cressingham if he was taken. Roxburgh Castle was deemed impregnable, he pointed out, but he pointed out, too, that it lacked its own well and depended upon an underground supply of river water that was about to be sealed off because Wallace himself had hired a local stonemason to dam and divert the river channel. He won his gamble, and within a day had taken possession of the ancient castle, freeing its sole prisoner, Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow.
My bishop was free again, and from the moment I learned of it I could hardly wait to finish the report I had been working on—the accounting of the Battle at Stirling Bridge. The preliminary work had all been completed, much of it while I was attending the assembly at Perth, and so I drove my team of scribes relentlessly to complete the project, and on the fourth day after having heard that Bishop Wishart was a free man again, I was satisfied that it was finished and I could return to Glasgow with a clear conscience. I left the work of producing copies in the capable hands of the Augustinian friars, bade my farewells to their holy abbot and his considerate almoner, and betook myself home to Glasgow in the last but one week of October.
The word had spread by then that Will had been raiding widely in the north of England, and the tales of his exploits were widespread, yet most of them were so lurid that I could take little pleasure from them: offensive and outrageous stories about the excesses of his raiders; about the terror his name now generated in the towns of Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland; and about the destruction and despoliation of priories, abbeys, and churches by his people throughout the northern counties. It was not the kind of information I enjoyed receiving about my cousin, even knowing his detestation of all things English, and I sought refuge from it by travelling south alone and on foot, avoiding human contact as much as I could.
Most of my favourite, personally loved places are intimately linked to my boyhood years, and the most important of those is Paisley, with its great abbey church. It makes little difference to me today that the church no longer exists. Edward Plantagenet ordered it burned down in 1307, six and thirty years ago in the first year of King Robert’s reign, but the abbey church and its magnificent library were indelibly stamped into my most beloved memories long before that infamous date. But my daily loyalty had long since been transferred to the cathedral church in Glasgow. By the time of the Stir
ling fight in 1297, Glasgow Cathedral had been my home for years, and I always imagined that my footsteps grew lighter and more carefree as I approached it after any absence, no matter how brief.
On this occasion, that was particularly true, for it had been nigh on four months since last I saw my employer. He had sent me off to Selkirk Forest and thence to Moray slightly before mid-June, and already it was mid-October. Now that he was free again, and presumably in good health—for I was confident that I would have heard word had anything been amiss in that regard—I walked in a condition approaching euphoria, my sense of relief and happiness being close to overwhelming.
And so on the morning of Monday, the twenty-first day of October, having completed the thirty-mile journey south from Stirling in two days, I crossed the bridge over the River Clyde and made my way past the wharves and warehouses lining the riverside until I found myself at the Mercat Cross by the town’s salt market. Ahead of me, dominating the skyline, was the massive yet unfinished cathedral church that, along with the natural anchorage of the river channel, gave the small town of Glasgow its prominence.
Eight hundred years earlier, St. Mungo had established his small church by the side of the ford there, at the junction of the river Clyde and the smaller, swift-flowing stream known as the Molindinar Burn, in the knowledge that he would have no shortage of travellers ripe for conversion to Christianity. The ford was the southernmost one on the Clyde, which deepened rapidly as it flowed west to the Irish Sea from that point, and Mungo had fallen in love with the location’s natural, tranquil beauty, naming it glas gui, which meant “the dear, green place.” And it really was a beautiful place, only slightly marred in recent years by the commercial shipping activities of the trading fleet that plied regularly between there and Ireland and less frequently taking the hazardous voyages between the more distant ports of France and Spain. In recognition of its growing importance, the town had been awarded the status of a royal burgh by King William the Lion, and now the burghers, and their town, were prospering. The cathedral had been decades in the building, and would take decades longer to complete, but the glory of God takes no notice of the passage of time.
