The Forest Laird

by Jack Whyte

  The shadowy figure straightened up as though he had been struck. “Jamie? Jamie Wallace? What in God’s name are you doing here? Your very name could hoist you to the gallows alongside me.”

  I pushed my cowl back off my head and let him see my smile. “Plain Father James? I doubt that, Will. The Wallace part of me is unknown here in England.”

  “Then pray you to God it stays that way. This is madness, Jamie. But, man, it’s good to see your face.”

  “And to see yours, Cousin, though God Himself knows I had never thought to see you in such straits.” I stepped forward to embrace him, but as the light from my torch fell upon him I stopped short. “What kind of barbarism is this?”

  He grinned at me and drew himself up to his full, imposing height. “D’ye no’ ken,” he said in our own tongue, “I’m a dangerous chiel? They ca’ me the Scotch Ogre and they a’ believe I eat bairns whene’er I get the chance.”

  His hair and beard were matted and unshorn, and he wore only a ragged shirt, one arm of which had been torn from his shoulder, exposing the massive knots of corded muscle there, but I paid little attention to those things. I was staring at the harness that bound him.

  “Can you sit?”

  His grin widened, but there was no humour in his eyes. “Sit? Sit on what? It takes me a’ my time to stand wi’out cowpin’ sideways. I ha’e to stand spread-legged and lean my back against the wa’, else I’ll fa’, and these chains winna even let me dae that.”

  The chains that bound him, wrists and ankles, were thick and heavy, the manacles tautly fastened to a thick leather belt that circled his waist. The girdle was fastened right and left to short lengths of chain that were secured to a heavy iron ring mounted on the wall at his back. He could not fall, nor could he turn. All he could do was stand upright or allow his weight to sag into the harness around his waist, but there would be no comfort there, either, for now I saw that the chains from the belt were of different lengths, ensuring that he could only hang tilted to one side.

  “How long have you been held like that?”

  “Three days.” He spoke still in Scots. “Ye’ll pardon the stink, I hope, for they havena let me loose since they strapped me in here.” He was unbelievably filthy, and at his mention of it the appalling stench of him hit me like a blow. I lowered my torch, looking down at his befouled legs beneath the tattered shirt he wore. They were crusted with feces, and the ground at his feet was a stinking puddle.

  “Sweet Jesus,” I said, my senses reeling. “Who is responsible for this? This is …” I stopped, unable to find words.

  “This is Edward’s vengeance, or the start o’ it, for a’ the grief I’ve caused him these past years. Tomorrow—no, today, he’ll make an end o’ it. But ere he’s done, I think I’ll be yearnin’ for the comfort o’ just standin’ here, danglin’ frae my chains. D’ye ken, he wouldna even come to look at me, Jamie? Ye’d think he’d want to look at least, would ye no’? To gloat a wee bit, wag a finger at me. But no. He left it a’ to his judges …”

  I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.

  “It’ll be a fine day, the jailers tell me. A grand summer’s day to die on. But this London’s a dirty, smelly place, Jamie, a sad and dirty place to die. I’d gi’e anything to hear the birds singin’ to welcome the dawn in the Tor Wood one last time.” He snorted. “But I hae nothin’ now to gi’e, and we’re a long way frae Ettrick Forest.”

  And at that moment, a miracle occurred.

  Somewhere beyond the high, barred window above our heads, a bird began to sing, and the clarity and volume of the sound stunned both of us into silence. The song was liquid, brilliant in its welling beauty, the notes rising and falling with limpid perfection so that it seemed the creature producing them was here in the cell with us instead of outside in the pitch-blackness of the night. I watched Wallace’s eyes widen and fill with a kind of superstitious fear.

  “Mother of God,” he whispered. “What kind o’ sorcery is this? It lacks three full hours till dawn. What kind of creature makes such a sound in the blackness of the night?”

  “It’s only a bird, Will, nothing more. They call it a nightingale, because it sings at night. I think there are none in all Scotland, though I may be wrong. I’ve certainly never heard one there, and it’s not the sort of thing you could easily forget. Is it not wonderful?”

  He listened, and I could see the tension drain from him. Eventually he allowed his weight to settle slightly into his restraints. “Aye,” he murmured. “It is that, a thing o’ wonder.”

  I have no idea how long we stood there listening to it before the silence of the night returned.

  “He’s gone. Will he come back, think ye?”

  “Your guess would be as good as mine. But he answered your wish. That was like a miracle.”

  “Aye …” He stood gazing into nothingness. “D’ye remember that day in Dalfinnon Woods, Jamie, before they caught us? Remember we hid from them, amang the brambles on our hands and knees? It was so quiet and we listened so hard for the sounds o’ them comin’ and then the only thing we could hear was a lintie singin’ in a tree above our heids? God, yon bird could sing. Like a lintie, they say—he could sing like a lintie. But unless you kent what a lintie sounded like, you’d never be able to tell if that was true or no’. It was wee Jenny who tell’t me that day that the bird was a lintie, for I didna ken. How was I to know? Poor wee Jenny …” He squeezed his eyes shut and flicked his head.

  “Seven, she was, and yon big English whoreson killed her wi’ a flick o’ his wrist. Didna even look at what he’d done, didna even turn his heid to see. Just cut her wee, thin neck the way ye would a stoat. Jesus, Jamie, I saw that in my dreams for years, her head rollin’ and bouncin’ like a bairn’s ba’ kicked into the bushes, its mouth open and its eyes wide, as if she was wonderin’ what had happened. What they did to you and me afterwards was cause enough to hate them a’ and want to see them deid, but poor wee Jenny …”

  He straightened up again, leaning his shoulders back against the wall, and reverted to Latin. “His name was Percy, did you know that? The man who killed Jenny? William Percy. Some base-born relative of the English Earl. I met him again, years later, after Stirling Bridge, when I recognized him among the prisoners. He didn’t know me, but I had carried his face in my mind ever since that day. I hanged him by the heels and reminded him what he had done to us, and to my little sister. He denied everything, but he could not deny the scar that had marked his face that day and marked it still. I spilt his guts with my dirk and let them hang down over his face, and when he stopped screaming I cut off his head. Not as cleanly as he had cut off Jenny’s, though, for it took me three blows, because of the way he was hanging.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the image he had conjured.

  “England has had ample cause to rue that day’s work in Dalfinnon Woods. And this new day will bring an end o’ it, when they hang me up and draw my guts the way I cut out his.

  “Some people—Archbishop Lamberton was one—have asked me why I hate the Englishry so much, but I have had so many reasons that I’ve never been able to answer any of them. Christ knows we Scots have never had far to look for reasons to despise these people’s cruelty and arrogance, but that day in Dalfinnon Woods has much to do with all of it. Bad enough that they had already killed my mother and father that morning. But what they did to us in that wood, that earned them my true hatred—as strong today as it was then.

  “But you forgave them, Jamie, where I never could and never wanted to.” He shook his head in perplexity. “How could you do that, after what they did to you that day? You forgave them, and I never doubted your sincerity. But I never understood it either. We grew closer after that, we two, but then our ways parted. You took up the Cross and I took up the bow. And yet we remained friends, even while you disapproved of me and everything I did.”

  I held up my hand to stop him. “I seldom disapproved of what you stood for, Will, or what you wanted to
achieve. It was the how of it, not the why, that caused me pain. I lauded your objectives, but I deplored the savagery in your achieving them.”

  “Savagery … Aye. But only a fool would turn the other cheek to enemies whom he knew would kill him dead for doing so. Or think you that the English are not savages?”

  “What we saw in Dalfinnon Woods was depravity, Will, committed by a gang of drunken men. They might as easily have been Scots, but for the grace of God.”

  “They were English, Jamie.”

  “Aye, and they were drunk. No man improves with drink. But to hold their crimes, bad as they were, against all England and all Englishmen makes no kind of sense to me.”

  “Well, it’s too late now to argue over it.”

  “Tell me about Cressingham.”

  “Cressingham?” My question plainly surprised him, for he cocked his head to one side and thought for a moment. “Cressingham was an idiot—a strutting, sneering fool. The most hated Englishman in Scotland.”

  “Aye, but he was also your prisoner, after Stirling Fight. Did you really skin him alive to have a sword belt made for yourself?”

  He flinched. “No, as God is my judge! That is the talk of jealous enemies. I was nowhere near the place when he was killed.”

  “But he was killed. And flayed alive before that.”

  “Aye, he was. It’s one of the reasons they’re going to hang me as a felon. Retribution, they say. But I was not there, and I knew nothing of it until the murder was done. I had too much on my mind that day, after the battle and with Andrew Murray sorely wounded, to pay attention to what my malcontents were up to. But the responsibility was mine, as leader. That lies beyond argument and I accept it.”

  I turned away, thinking to lecture him about appearances and guilt by association, but when I swung back to face him I found his eyes awash with tears, and the sight turned my self-righteous words to ashes in my mouth. William Wallace had never been known to weep over anything. That was part of his legend among the wild, ungovernable men he had led for so long. But he was weeping now, unashamedly, the tears running down his cheeks and into the thicket of his matted beard.

  “What is it, Will? What’s wrong?” Silly, futile questions, I knew.

  He raised up his head and looked directly at me. “Was I wrong, Jamie? Have I been a fool, all these years?”

  I could only gape at him.

  “I did but what my conscience told me, and I did it for our poor, sad land and for our folk. I knew I had no skill for it and no right to do it, and I set down the Guardian’s flag after Falkirk, when that became plain to all. But the folk were crying with need, and they were never going to find support among Scotland’s nobles. And so I stepped in and agreed to be Guardian, at Wishart’s urging—Wishart and others, the Lords of Scotland’s Church. They, at least, stood loyal to King and realm when the great lords were scrabbling solely for themselves. And so I led them, the Scots folk, against all those who would grind them down—Scots magnates and English parasites—led them to victory at Stirling with Andrew Murray, and then to slaughter at Falkirk. And after that, I walked away and left others to direct the path of the realm.”

  “There were no others to direct it, Will. You were God’s anointed for the post, and the Falkirk defeat was not your doing. You should have stayed.”

  “Shite! It was my doing, Jamie. Andrew Murray would never have let what happened there take place. He would have found a way to make it work. His death after Stirling Bridge was Scotland’s greatest loss, and mine. And what would I have done, had I stayed? Led another thousand men to death in some other slaughter? No, Jamie, no …”

  He cleared his throat and pressed his shoulders back against the wall in search of comfort. “I could not do that, not after what I’d learned, watching those whoreson horsemen run away, fleeing the field and leaving us behind like beasts for the slaughter. Scotland’s pride! Faugh! That travesty at Falkirk taught me that Scotland will never be free until her own lords and magnates decide to turn themselves around, till they see that their own freedom, their personal honour—and few of them have any of that left, in the eyes of the folk—must be torn from England. As long as they sit on their arses arguing, giving more time and thought to the welfare of their lands in England than they do to matters at home, Scotland will be a wasteland, its folk slaughtered by the nobility on both sides while their magnates make bargains for their own enrichment.”

  “Come, Will, it’s not that bleak. There are some among the nobility who show great loyalty to the realm.”

  “Aye, but damn few and nowhere near enough. The others are loyal to themselves alone. I saw it clear that day at Falkirk, and that’s when I knew I could stand no more. I washed my hands clean of the whole mess, like Pontius Pilate, and it turns out they hated me for it. And so now I am to die when the sun rises and I ask myself— No, that’s not true, Jamie. I ask you, was I mistaken in the path I chose?”

  He stood up straight and rattled the chains on his arms, looking down at them before he raised his tormented eyes to me. “Did I wrong Scotland? God knows, I have committed sins aplenty in the eyes of men like yourself, and none of them have bothered me since I saw my duty clear ahead of me. But it would grieve me now to think I had been wrong for all these years, or that I had shirked my duty in the end.” He lapsed from the churchly Latin back into Scots. “Ye’ve never lied to me, Jamie. Ye’ve confronted me, ye’ve shouted at me and defied me, but ye hae never lied to me. So tell me now. Have I been wrong?”

  “I cannot answer that, Will. Only God can. Tell me, are you afraid of what they will do to you?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “The executioners? Are ye daft? Of course I am. They’re gaun to kill me, Jamie, to gut me and cut me into bits, and I’m no’ like to enjoy any part o’ it. God knows I’m no’ feared to die, though. There were times, right after Falkirk, when I would ha’e welcomed death, frae any quarter, and every day God sent for years prior to that, I thought to die in one tulzie or another. It’s no’ the dyin’ that worries me, it’s the manner o’ it, for I wouldna like to die badly, bawlin’ like a bairn that’s had his arse skelped. Will you be there?”

  “You mean among the crowd? No, God forbid. Suffice that I’m here now.”

  “Would you come if I asked you to, Jamie? To be there as my witness? There’ll be naebody else.”

  “To watch you die? That’s something I have no desire to see, Will.”

  “Aye, but no’ just to see it—to bear witness to it afterwards. An’ forbye, your being there wad stop me frae girnin’ an’ makin’ a fool o’ mysel’.”

  It was easy to smile at that, I found.

  “I think there’s little chance o’ that, Will. No Guardian of Scotland was ever any man’s fool.”

  “Aye, but I failed as Guardian.” He gazed at me soberly. “Will ye come, for me?”

  I closed my eyes and then nodded. “I will, Sir William. I will be your witness, and I will honour your trust and be honoured by it. Will you confess yourself now? Are you prepared for that?”

  His slow nod of agreement lifted a weight from my soul.

  “Aye, Father James, I will. I’m ready … both to talk to God and to meet Him.”

  And so I stood in Smithfield Square and bore silent witness to the death of the man whom I believe to have been Scotland’s greatest and most loyal son. He was thirty-five years old, two years my senior. I remember, because that day was my thirty-third birthday, and almost as many have gone by again since then.

  Young Robert Bruce, the Earl of Carrick, seized the throne the following year, in 1306, and over the course of the next two decades ousted the English finally from Scottish soil and built a single, unified country out of a feudal chaos. He it was who brought our land the unity, peace, and prosperity of which my cousin William had dared to dream.

  But it was not until recently, when these new rumours of “The Wallace’s” heroic and defiant death began to circulate, that I recalled Will’s insistence that I serve as his
witness and speak out on his behalf. It had not entered his mind that he might be lionized; he was concerned about being defamed and demeaned in death. And now the opposite is happening, and that strikes me as being even more ominous than his dying fears. He is being recreated, and falsely, by people who seek to use his greatness for their own ends.

  And so, the time has come for me to write of the William Wallace I knew, for the man these empty rumours would put in his place is painted in false and garish colours, portraying a hero of the ancients, without sin, without flaw, without remorse, and, worst of all, without the beguiling, infuriating mixture of lovable strength and deplorable faults that made my cousin Will the man he was.

  The Forest Laird

  CHAPTER ONE

  1

  Even now, when more than fifty years have passed, I find it difficult to imagine a less likely paladin. Yet paladin he was, to us, for he saved our lives, our sense of purpose, and our peace of mind, restoring our shattered dignity when we were at our lowest depth. Possibly the least attractive-looking man I ever saw, he quickly became one of the strongest anchors of my young life. But on that first evening when he startled us from an exhausted sleep, we saw only the monstrous, green-framed, and hairless face of a leering devil looming over us.

  We were gibbering with terror, both of us, and our fear was real, because for two full days we had been running in terror, uphill and down, stumbling and falling and blinded with tears and grief, sobbing and incoherent most of the time and utterly convinced we would be caught and killed at any moment by the men pursuing us. We had no notion of the miles falling behind us or the distance we had covered. We knew only that we had to keep running. At times, rendered helpless by exhaustion, we had stopped to rest, huddling together in whatever place we had found that offered a hint of concealment, but we never dared stop for long, because the men hunting us had legs far longer than ours and they knew we could condemn them for the crimes we had seen them commit. And so, as soon as we could find the strength to run for our lives again, we ran. We drank whenever we found a stream, but we dared not stop to hunt or fish. We could not even steal food, because we fled through open country, avoiding people and places that might house our pursuers.