The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  He caught my eye. “Why, Father James, you are shocked.” His face was crinkled in a rueful grin that contained little of humour, and I shook my head and spoke quickly before he could say more.

  “No, my lord bishop, that’s not—” I stopped, aware of the lie before I uttered it. “Well, it is true, I suppose, but I am not shocked in the way you think. I’m merely shocked that you would say such things aloud. For you could be hanged for saying them.” I hurried on before he could stop me. “And why would you say them anyway, whether they be true or not?”

  “They came from what I said directly before, Jamie, when I said Andrew and Will have changed the old ways forever. For the folk will not settle back easily into harness now, to be the way they were before Will Wallace and Stirling Bridge. Think about that, Jamie, about what I’ve been told your cousin said in Perth, the truth of it: it was the folk themselves, the folk, who won the Stirling fight, and they did it without the magnates.” He gestured for me to keep silent, even though I had made no move to speak.

  “That’s not all of it, though, for what they did, in truth, was to stand against magnates—the magnates of England—and run them off the field of battle. They thrashed them and threw them out. And now they are harrying England itself. Believe me, Father James, our own Scots magnates will think long and hard before they run the risk of prodding and provoking this new creature that William Wallace and Andrew Murray have created from the folk of Scotland.”

  I felt my jaw sagging open and closed it quickly, but I had seen the truth of what he said.

  “That’s why we need to plan,” Wishart insisted. “That’s why we need to meet with Will, as quickly as it can be arranged. We need to strengthen his authority as commander of the army, and to keep the army itself beyond the reach of the magnates. I believe the latter part will be easily achieved. And I believe that, in achieving it, we can resolve the other difficulty—supporting Will against his nobly born detractors. He’ll have no lack of those.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Mind you, hearing myself say such things, I hope I am not committing the sin of pride—what the Greek ancients called hubris—in presuming to guess at the will of God. I really have no certainty at all of what I am saying. I’m but giving voice to what I hope, and what good sense would seem to dictate. And there’s a doubting voice inside me asking when I last knew the magnates to do anything according to the dictates of good sense and logic. They’ll always look to their own interests before those of anyone else. But that may work to our advantage, for we won’t need much time, once Will’s back here. We’ll simply have to keep Andrew’s passing secret for as long as may be possible. That’s why I sent William to Bothwell, simply to be there and to keep an eye on things, to make sure no unwelcome word goes out before we want it to.”

  That made me feel better immediately, simply to know that Canon Lamberton was taking charge in Bothwell, and I said so with sufficient enthusiasm to draw a questioning glance from the bishop.

  “I’ve never asked you for your professional assessment of Canon Lamberton, have I?” It was hardly an ingenuous question, for he knew full well he had not. His memory was flawless on such matters.

  “No, my lord,” I said. “You never have.”

  “Well, then, let me ask you now. You are sufficiently familiar with the canon’s personality and methods to have formed some judgments, I presume.”

  “Yes, my lord, I am, and I have.”

  “And so? Tell me what you think of him.”

  “I think you could not have found a better or more suitable deputy anywhere in the length or breadth of Scotland. I find him admirable, competent, articulate, compassionate, pious without being unctuous, effective in all that he does, and loyal—to you and to his calling—above all else.”

  “But.” His pounce was catlike. “There’s more. I can hear it in your tone.”

  I sucked in a great breath and blew it out. “Nothing at all to Canon Lamberton’s discredit … It’s merely something that troubles me, and it is irrational, not really worthy of mention.”

  “Spit it out.”

  I shrugged. “Will doesn’t seem to like him, and I don’t know why. But it concerns me.”

  “Have you asked Will about it?”

  “No, I have not. Mainly because I haven’t had the opportunity.”

  “What makes you think he dislikes him?”

  “Nothing … the look on his face …” I told my employer what I remembered of the occasion when I had first noticed Will looking strangely at the canon, when we were discussing the need to appoint a replacement for Bishop Fraser of St. Andrews.

  He nodded. “Aye, he telt me about it,” he murmured, this time in Scots.

  “About what?” I could hear the surprise in my own voice, and he smiled and slipped back into Latin.

  “About that conversation. It was the first time he had ever met Lamberton, he said, and we talked about it at some length.”

  “And he said he didn’t trust him?”

  “No, not exactly. He said he believed Canon Lamberton would be a natural and perfect choice as Bishop of St. Andrews.”

  I sagged in my chair, feeling as though the wind had been kicked out of me. “Will said that?”

  “He did.” The old face cracked in a grin. “He’s a clever lad, your cousin. He always was. He said everything you said, but added one more thing. He spoke of a glow of fiery innocence and purity and great, shining enthusiasm that consumed the man while he was defending God’s omniscience in having placed someone in Scotland already—a man ready and willing and fully equipped to take up the required burden of the office.”

  “William Wallace said all that, in those words?” I could scarce believe what I had heard.

  “He did,” the bishop said. “And more. Sufficient to convince me he was right, though I will admit I took but little convincing. The man is a natural choice for the position.”

  I was agog. “That is—wonderful,” I said, my voice sounding hushed. “Does the canon know?”

  “No, he does not, and nor will he until it has all been arranged. For now, the only ones who know are we three. And that is how it must stay until I can arrange everything to satisfaction. So I command you: not a single word, not even a hint of interest in the vacancy, to anyone from this time forth. You may think the pride of magnates and mormaers is a difficult matter in which to deal, but believe me, Father James, you will never know the truth of such things until you have had to juggle with the pride and wilfulness of prelates. Now away you go and make yourself ready to resume your life here, then come and see me when you are ready to return to work.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE SIGN OF THE BLUE COCKEREL

  To my complete astonishment, Canon Lamberton arrived back in Glasgow the next afternoon, with a small entourage that included an enclosed wagon drawn by a pair of horses and containing the desperately ill and pain-ravaged Andrew Murray, miraculously alive despite the expectations of everyone around him. With Andrew was his wife, the Lady Eleanor Murray, who was visibly pregnant and greatly distraught over her husband’s condition. Like everyone else, she had been given to understand that his wound was not life threatening and that he was recuperating well. The greater her shock, then, to reach the end of her journey through roadless and largely lawless lands and discover that she might have to bury her young husband and then return alone to Morayshire as a grieving widow.

  I was present at her arrival in Glasgow, but we did not meet or speak to each other; she was too absorbed in her own grief to have time to look about her at people she did not know, and I was too uncomfortable around women in general to think to impose my presence upon her sorrow. I was curious about her, nevertheless, because I knew Andrew was completely besotted by her, forever talking about her wit as well as her beauty. And she really was beautiful, in that strikingly black-haired, blue-eyed Celtic fashion seldom encountered in southern parts of the country. Of course, I saw no slightest sign of the sparkling wit her doting husband had
so loved, but I did admire her quiet dignity and the calm self-possession with which she bore her evident grief.

  I wanted to visit Andrew immediately upon his arrival, but his physician, Father Henry Tertius, denied me access on the grounds that my friend was far too ill and in too much distress to see anyone. I accepted Father Tertius’s decree without demur, for he was generally recognized as the most gifted and highly trained physician in all of southern Scotland. He had graduated from the University of Bologna as a doctor of canon law while still very young, and had then gone on to study medicine extensively at the universities of both Oxford and Paris.

  I went instead in search of Father Murray and found him walking in the cloisters on the cathedral grounds, head bowed and hands clasped behind his back as he paced slowly back and forth. As I hovered there, on the point of retreating and leaving him to his meditations, he looked up and saw me and called me by name. I was flattered that he remembered me, and for a few minutes we exchanged small talk, in which I offered him my condolences on his family situation and asked after Andrew.

  “Aye,” he said. “You were there at Stirlin’, were you no’? Then you’d hae been like the rest o’ us, ta’en right aback wi’ the way he’s come doon.” I remembered how down-to-earth and plain-spoken he was, preferring to speak the tongue of his local parishioners and countrymen over the Latin vulgate preferred by his fellow clerics. “Nane o’ us knew how bad his injuries truly are, though I suppose we should have kent, gin we’d used the brains God gied us. Ye canna take a sword stab in the kidneys then just jump up an’ walk away. An’ yet, that’s what he did, and we a’ just believed it …” He shook his head in disbelief, then squinted at me again.

  “It was Turnberry, was it no’, where we first met, you and me? That night Rab Wishart asked me to talk about my nephew. Aye … Here, come ower here an’ sit wi’ me, for I could use some company.” He indicated a stone bench against an ivy-covered wall, and we sat down together in the full, pale light of the October sunshine. “That would ha’ been when, last May?”

  “Aye, May it was,” I said. “I am surprised you would remember me.”

  He raised an open palm, half smiling. “And so you should be, had it no’ been for Canon Lamberton, and for your name bein’ Wallace. I remember your face, now that I see it, but prior to lookin’ up and seein’ you, all I knew or recalled about ye was what the canon telt me. He said you an’ Andrew became close friends, and ye worked wi’ the four o’ them—him and Wallace, Andrew an’ Bruce—on the aftermath o’ the Stirlin’ fight an’ the arrangements afore an’ after the Perth assembly. So there’s nae magic involved in my kennin’ you, Father Wallace. Ye’re a member o’ the Stirlin’ Council, and as one o’ them, ye’re one o’ the people clever men ought to ken.”

  “The Stirling Council?”

  He looked at me askance, then grinned. “Have ye no’ heard tell o’ it? It’s the name o’ the organization runnin’ Scotland at this very moment. I’ve just finished cryin’ all o’ them by their names— Wallace, Murray, and Wallace, wi’ a kirkman called Lamberton, an’ a nod o’ the head frae an earl cried Bruce.”

  I was not accustomed to hearing my own name included in context with such company, but I had more urgent concerns.

  “Tell me about Andrew, if you will, Father, for they won’t let me see him and I don’t know how bad he really is. Do you believe he is going to die?”

  He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, then nodded slowly, his expression one of regret and dejection. “Aye,” he said, “I fear he is. I saw it in his eyes when I arrived in Bothwell last week wi’ his lady wife. I’d sent a sodger on ahead o’ us to warn them we’d be there within’ the hour, but when I saw Andrew wasna there at the castle yetts to greet her as we drew close, I kent somethin’ was far frae right … And it was. He had collapsed the previous night and wasna even conscious when we arrived.”

  “Was there a physician with him then?”

  “No. There had been one there, but he had left when Andrew insisted on riding to Haddington—said he refused to be responsible for such folly. And he was right.”

  “And no one had replaced him?”

  Murray shrugged. “I was told they wanted to bring someone else in. Ian Balfour, Sir William’s deputy and factor here in Bothwell these thirty years, wanted to bring in a Hospitaller knight frae Lanark, but Andrew wouldna hear o’ it, an’ the time just flew by then until it was too late.”

  “They should have brought him in, regardless of what Andrew wanted—Dominic of Ormiston, I mean.” I saw from his face that the name meant nothing to him. “That’s the Hospitaller from Lanark. Brother Dominic is the man who wired my broken jaw last spring. He’s very good. They should have brought him in at once. I cannot believe no one looked to Andrew at all in all that time.”

  “All what time? There wis nae time lost or wasted. The lad was fine when he rode off, and he looked fine—or he was pretendin’ to—when he got back. The trouble started after that. One minute he seemed hale, and then he fell down unconscious.”

  “But surely this—this man Balfour must have seen that something was amiss? How could he not have seen it?”

  “I asked the same question,” Murray said. “And they telt me there was nothin’ to see. Everyone there said the same thing. The stab wound looked clean and healthy. But the damage was happenin’ elsewhere, and Andrew himsel’ was the only one who could tell. An’ of course, he was sayin’ nothin’.” He looked down at his hands, folded in his lap.

  “When I saw him lyin’ there in bed that day in Bothwell, I couldna believe my eyes. He was a dead man, lyin’ there, but he wis still breathin’. We couldna waken him. By then it was too late to send for the man frae Lanark, so I wrote to Canon Lamberton, hoping he’d send someone, but he decided to come himsel’. He took one look and made arrangements right then and there to bring Andrew here directly, so that Father Tertius could see to him. I wasna too happy about that, for I was feart the lad might die on the road, but Canon Lamberton said it wis in God’s hands anyway …” He shook his head dubiously. “I’ll tell ye, though, I’ll be mair than surprised if it’s no’ too late by now. He’s wasted awa to a shadow o’ what he was, and he doesna look likely to recover.”

  I was so upset by then that I could no longer sit still, so I rose to my feet and began to pace in agitation, my hands clasped tightly at my back and my mind full of thoughts about how Will would react, and how the news of Andrew’s death would affect the political situation not merely here in Scotland but in England and France, too. Father Murray watched me pace, his face clearly showing his concern, but he said nothing, content to leave me to my own deliberations. Finally I stopped and faced him, reluctantly asking the banal question that I knew he could not answer any more sensibly than I could.

  “What will we do, if he dies?”

  Hearing the words as they emerged from my mouth like a bleat of self-pity, I felt a surge of loathing at myself for even voicing such a feckless question. But David Murray shrugged, tacitly admitting that he was as powerless as I to change one whit of anything that had happened or would happen in the future.

  “I hate even to say it,” he said, looking up at me, “for it’s what any tavern tosspot would tell ye. But there’ll need to be changes made. In the way we do everythin’. We’ll need to adjust, mak allowances for the way things will be down the road. An’ no’ just you an’ me an’ Lamberton, but the whole o’ the country. The realm itsel’ will hae to adapt.”

  He paused, thinking, and then resumed talking in a different manner and tone, his words more deliberate and thoughtful and the broad Scots of his local dialect muted. “An’ let us hope and pray, for the love o’ God and the good o’ everybody, that we don’t go down the same road we took after the death o’ the old king, Alexander …” He grunted and sat straighter. “My nephew was no king, God knows,” he said quietly. “And Alexander was no strutting young man, for that matter. But there are similarities in the circumstances of their deat
hs that might bode ill for all of us: two champions, two proven, potent leaders, one young and one not so, but both victorious and well loved, both responsible for the welfare o’ the realm, and both o’ them unexpectedly cut down before they could complete what they had planned.” He held my gaze. “A bad development, that, Father Wallace, and dangerous in that it could open up the threat o’ civil war again. The Comyns, thanks be to God, no longer hold the power they had when Alexander died, and most of them are away, in jail or in France, and the Bruces’ prospects arena’ what they were, either. But they’ll a’ come back once word o’ what’s happened gets spread about. That will be the time of greatest peril for the realm, when some folk will try to twist things to suit their own needs while others will look elsewhere to foster theirs.”

  He sniffed, then rose and reached out to grasp my upper arm, frowning at me. “It’s your cousin who’ll need to be the strongest, though, for the fate o’ the whole realm will be in his hands now. And he’ll have to take control, on his own, before anyone else can move to stop him. And believe you me, there will be no shortage o’ folk willing to try. He’ll need all the help we can provide for him—you and me and Willie Lamberton and Bishop Wishart. The Steward will back us up, too, I’m sure, for Wallace is his man at root, and a few o’ the other earls might stand up wi’ us, forbye, but everything will come down to how your cousin handles things. He’s the man who’ll hae to set the reel for the fiddlers to play in the times ahead. Gin he permits it, gin he so much as falters, them that’s jealous o’ him will rip the leader’s reins out o’ his hands in the blink o’ an eye and we’ll be back into the old ways as if the Stirlin’ fight never happened. But if he stands firm and rallies the ordinary folk at his back, he’ll be able to thumb his nose at every magnate in the land, for they’ll no’ be able to put him down, short o’ murder … And I wouldna like to be the man foolish enough to try to murder William Wallace.”