The Forest Laird

by Jack Whyte

  Will had said nothing at all about Ewan’s background and had left out the episode of the Ormiston slaughter, because we had decided, he and I, that we owed too much to the archer ever to name him outlaw. Ewan’s plan, which we boys had decided to subvert so we could remain with him, had been to deliver us close by Sir Malcolm’s house, then continue on his way to Selkirk Forest, where he hoped to join a band of others like himself, living in the greenwood. As it turned out, though, we had been discovered by a large group of Sir Malcolm’s own workers, who had brought us to the home farm to meet their master face to face.

  “Aye, yon’s a fair question and I’ll answer it fairly.” There was no hint of subservience in Ewan’s voice. He spoke as a free man addressing an equal. The big archer flexed his fingers and sat up straight in his chair. “I buried my mother the day before we left to come here, and there was nothing to hold me there any longer. No friends, no loyalties, nothing to bind me. The boys were alone and helpless, headed for Elderslie or Paisley. I have friends in Selkirk. So it made sense to me to see them safely here in passing.”

  A silence filled the room, broken only by the song of a blackbird beyond the windows. Finally Sir Malcolm nodded. “Friends in Selkirk, aye … That would be in the forest there, I’m thinking?”

  Ewan dipped his head again. “Aye, Sir Malcolm. In the forest.”

  Sir Malcolm rose from his chair and went to stand by the window, gazing out, his hands clasped loosely at his back. “It comes to me that I know no one in all these parts who has friends in Selkirk Forest,” he said softly. “In the town, yes. I have two friends in the town. It is a small place. But in the forest? No. The men there are … different. What did you do to earn their friendship, these men?”

  “Nothing. I have never met a one of them. My home forest is Ettrick.”

  “Ettrick Forest covers all of south Scotland, with Selkirk Forest but a part of it. You are an archer.”

  “Aye, sir, I am. Trained in England and in Wales. I fought with Prince Edward.”

  Sir Malcolm turned back slowly, silhouetted now against the window’s light. “Did you, now? I hear he is a doughty fighter. And what happened to make you change?”

  For the first time, Ewan looked surprised. “He turned to invade Wales, to conquer my folk and make us part of England. I am but half Welsh, but I would have no part of that, and my father was newly dead, so I came to Scotland to care for my mother, who was Welsh.”

  “Scrymgeour. Your father was a Scot?”

  “Aye, from Kyle. Bruce country.”

  “Archers are seldom farmers.”

  “True. Nor am I one.”

  “Your father did not own a farm?”

  “Once, he did. But it was hard, sour ground. He fell sick and could not work. And then he died.”

  “So what entitles you to live in Ettrick Forest?”

  I was having difficulty making sense of what was being said here because the two men were talking obliquely, their tones, although I could not see how, evidently conveying more than their mere words. I glanced at Will and saw from the frown between his brows that he was as perplexed as I was.

  “Entitles me?” Ewan’s voice was suddenly harder, and he moved his jaw in a way that emphasized the disfigurement of his mashed nose. “I might argue with you, Sir Malcolm, on your choice of words. But the entitlement, if such it was, sprang from the ill nature of a bullying, strutting fool who thought himself all-powerful.”

  Sir Malcolm’s head tilted slightly.

  “My mother, rest her soul, was a healer,” Ewan continued. “Had been one all her life and was famed for it. A good woman with a good calling. A local lairdling had an infant son who fell sick, and so he sent his people to fetch her, to cure the boy. But the child was beyond help. He died of whatever ailed him and his mother named my mother witch and they tried to hang her. I saved her life, but in the doing of it blood was spilt and I was outlawed.”

  “What lordship was this?”

  Ewan met the older man’s eye. “Ormiston.”

  “Of Dumfries? Sir Thomas?”

  “No, sir. Of Clewes, Sir Walter.”

  “Thomas’s brother. I know him well. You call him fool, but he is not.”

  “Sir Walter is dead, sir, these three years. His son William is now Laird of Ormiston.”

  “Aha. And he seems not to be the man his father was. Is that what you are telling me?”

  “I tell you nothing, Sir Malcolm. I was but answering your question.”

  “Aye, right.” Sir Malcolm hesitated. “You said you saved your mother’s life, yet buried her but recently. Were the two events connected?”

  “Aye, sir. They found her again, in a place where I thought her safe.”

  “And?”

  “They hanged her.”

  “I see. And this time you were not close enough to save her.”

  “No. But they were still close by when I arrived. They sought to hang me, too.”

  “And?”

  “They will hang no more old folk. Nor young, for that matter.”

  “And so you head for Selkirk … How many did you kill?”

  Ewan sniffed. “All of them. I am an archer. They had clubs and blades.”

  Sir Malcolm was frowning. “How many?”

  “Fourteen men, all save one of them hirelings bought and brought to keep the local folk in terror. And four dogs.”

  “Sweet Jesus! And William of Ormiston?”

  “He was the fourteenth man.”

  Sir Malcolm’s frown deepened to a scowl, and suddenly Will spoke up, his voice taut with urgency. “He was trying to kill us, Uncle. The man Ormiston. Ewan had left him alive. We were watching from the slope above and he came at us, trying to ride us down. His horse almost trampled Jamie, but he rolled clear and the rider turned around again to kill him with his sword, and Ewan shot him from the valley bottom, two hundred yards below us.”

  The tense, dark brows smoothed slightly and the eyes beneath them turned to Ewan. “Is that true?”

  The big man shrugged. “It was a touchy shot. I might easily have missed and had but one arrow left.”

  “From so far away?”

  “It was a good distance. I made the shot.”

  “And my nephew and his cousin are here. Then we have much to thank you for, it seems. More than I thought.”

  “Not much. I was there, and I was fortunate not to miss. After that, the walking was simple, since we were all headed eastward.”

  “You could have travelled southeast and sent the boys on alone.”

  “Aye, but I enjoyed the company along the road and I was in no great haste.”

  “Hmm. And now what?”

  Ewan smiled. “And now, if you will grant me your blessing, I’ll move on south, to Selkirk.”

  I sensed Will look at me but I resisted the temptation to look back, knowing that his eyes would be filled with apprehension, for if Ewan left now, so too would Will’s newborn dream of mastering the longbow.

  Sir Malcolm looked from Will to me, his gaze lingering on each of us, before he turned back to Ewan. “You say you buried your mother. Will she be found?”

  “Not easily, no. They found her alive, but they’ll no’ find her grave.”

  “And the others. Will they find them?”

  “Aye, sooner rather than later. I left them where they fell, made no attempt to hide them. They were too many. But I cut my arrows out of them before I left.”

  “Because someone might have recognized them?”

  “No. Because they were all I had, too valuable to leave behind.”

  “And think you anyone will believe a single man killed all of them? Fourteen, you said, and four dogs?”

  The question surprised Ewan, for his eyes widened. “Aye, that’s the number, but that thought had not occurred to me.”

  “Nor would it to most men. Whoever finds them will believe they were surprised by an armed band. No one will imagine a single man might be to blame. But will they think to nam
e you as the leader?”

  “No.” Ewan’s headshake was firm. “I had not been seen in those parts for more than two years until that day, and none expected to see me then.”

  “So you will not be accused. You are sure you left none alive?”

  “I am.”

  Sir Malcolm nodded abruptly. “So be it, then. Blessings come in many guises. You can stay here with us, if you would like. No one knows you here, save the boys, and God knows I can find employment for a man of your size and strength.”

  “So be you mean that and are not jesting with me, I will stay gladly.”

  Sir Malcolm slapped his hands on his thighs and surged to his feet, unaware of the elation with which Will had beaten him to it. “It is done, then,” he growled. “Welcome to Elderslie and to my household. Now I have much to do. I must send word of the boys’ tale to Ayr, to the Countess of Carrick. My murdered family’s blood cries out for justice and she will know what to do. I doubt the husband’s there yet. Robert Bruce has troubles in his own lands of Annandale, and young Will’s two brothers ride with him. The Countess will pass on the word to where it needs to go. Then I must summon my brother Peter and my cousin Duncan here, to meet these lads and help me decide what should be done with them. In the meantime, you three are hungry and road weary, so we will feed you and find you a place to sleep for a few hours, and after that you’ll feel much better.

  “Now, let’s be about our business.”

  2

  I thought at first that I would dislike my cousin Duncan the monk, for he looked cold and unfriendly the first time I set eyes upon him, but I was to learn that he was one of those men whose forbidding exterior conceals a vastly different reality. Of all men I have known, save only Ewan Scrymgeour, there has been none whom I loved more than my perpetually scowling cousin, for Brother Duncan Wallace’s soul was a brilliant light shut up inside a leather bottle, its luminous purity glimpsed but occasionally through a dried seam. He was a transcriptor at Paisley Abbey, responsible for the translation, copying, illumination, maintenance, and welfare of the library’s priceless manuscripts. Though at our first meeting I knew none of those words, and far less what they entailed, I quickly came to know them more than passing well, for they became my life as Duncan passed his great love of them on to me.

  His cousin, Father Peter, was a priest at the Abbey, as open and friendly as Brother Duncan seemed aloof and distant, and Will and I both liked him immediately. He welcomed us with wide-stretched arms, and then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he invited us to walk with him around his brother’s grounds, and there he spoke to us of Will’s parents and the happy times he had shared with them. By the time we arrived back at the house, both of us felt we had known Father Peter all our lives.

  The family gathering that followed was precisely that: a gathering of Sir Malcolm’s family, with ourselves as the new additions. Lady Margaret was there—presiding was the word that occurred to me immediately upon seeing her matronly presence—as were her two younger sons, Henry and Malcolm, aged fourteen and twelve. The eldest son, Steven, was squire to a knight in Lanercost, we learned, and had not been home for a year. The family’s two daughters were also in attendance, Isabelle, the younger at seven, being firmly kept in her place by her older sister Anne, who, even at eleven, showed signs of becoming a beauty. In addition to these, clustered around the table were Sir Malcolm, his brother Peter, his cousin Duncan, myself and Will. Ewan attended as Sir Malcolm’s guest and stood at the rear of the room, close by the doors, leaning back against the wall with his hands clasped loosely in front of him as he watched.

  This was only the second time I had ever seen Ewan without his longbow and quiver—even when they were not hanging from his body, they were usually within his reach. But this was also the first time I had ever seen him around children other than myself and Will. It was obvious that the children, especially the girls, had been severely warned about their behaviour, but children are children, and I had seen the fearful glances they cast in Ewan’s direction. He had seen them too, of course, and carefully avoided making eye contact with either little girl and kept his face expressionless—insofar as that was possible—at all times.

  The wide-eyed children often turned to stare at Will and me as Sir Malcolm told them, in a greatly simplified version, the story of what had befallen us in Ellerslie and later on the road. That we would join the family as adopted sons was not disputed, but there was more to be decided concerning our futures. Will and I could have happily blended into the family’s life, working on the farm to earn our keep, but Father Peter and Brother Duncan were firm in their opinion that we should be educated as befitted our stations as the sons of a landowner and the adopted sons of a belted knight. Father Peter suggested that we be sent to Paisley Abbey as students, where he and Brother Duncan could oversee our studies. Sir Malcolm glanced at Lady Margaret, who nodded, and then he thumped his fist upon the table and declared it should be so.

  I was excited at the prospect of going to school in the Abbey. Even in the far west, in Kyle, we had heard tell of the great Cluniac Priory of Paisley that had been famed for a hundred years before being raised to the exalted status of an Abbey. It was one of the wonders of the realm, as grand as the famed sanctuaries at St. Andrews, Glasgow, York, and London.

  Will, though, was far from happy with what was transpiring. I could see both misery and panic in his eyes as he tried to come up with a sound reason for objecting to the elders’ proposal. Paisley lay seven miles from Elderslie, a mere two-hour walk at a fast pace. But that time doubled if you had to return within the day, and we already knew that Will’s scholastic life as a student in Paisley would be too full to permit any such effort. He would not have four clear hours and more in any day—and that fact eclipsed any possibility of his being able to work with Ewan on his archery. Both of us knew that Ewan had made no such commitment to Will, but Will ignored that truth. He was determined to become a longbow archer, and he was determined that Ewan Scrymgeour would be his tutor and trainer.

  The entire dilemma was resolved within moments, however, when Sir Malcolm brought up the matter of our lodging. We could live at the Abbey, he said, as part of the establishment, but having endured and hated the same regimen himself as a boy, he believed that complete immersion in the Abbey’s life might be unhealthy for us over the long term if we were not cut out by nature for the priesthood. Better, he suggested—ignoring the startled silence from the two clerics at the table—that we study at the Abbey school for the sake of our minds but remain lodged outside the precincts for the sake of our growth and independence.

  Father Peter expressed his dismay at that, pointing out what he perceived to be obvious: the mere idea of our living unsupervised beyond the Abbey and its discipline was untenable, he said. We were too young to know our own minds, and that, to him, opened us and our immortal souls to great risk.

  Sir Malcolm sat back in his chair and eyed his brother shrewdly. “It is not their souls I am concerned about, Peter, but their minds,” he growled. “You and your brethren should be able to see to their souls. My thought is to ensure their minds are left free to grow without being influenced by too much … sanctity.”

  He raised a hand to forestall the other, whose eyes had gone wide with pious outrage. “I know, I know what you’re thinking and I’ve heard it before. There canna be such a thing as too much sanctity. But I am here to tell you that there can. I, too, studied at the Abbey. The years I spent there taught me many things, among them the basic truth that while some men and stripling boys may thrive on being surrounded all the time with clouds of incense and constant choruses of prayer and hymns, others will not. I was one who did not, and I thank God I had the will and strength of mind to come through it unscathed. But I could name you others who did not fare so well, men who, as young lads, lacked the temperament that you call vocation, yet lacked the strength forbye to overcome the guilt of being seen by themselves and others as unfit to hear the calli
ng. To this day many of those who survive are blighted by their failure, condemned to live as half-formed beings, neither men nor priests. Unable to enjoy the companionship of women yet incapable of renouncing them, they live between the two worlds of normal humanity and sanctity. I will not risk that happening to my wards, and if you seek to argue with me you will leave my house, so pay attention to me. I am not proposing anything unfitting, merely that the boys live outside the Abbey while they study within it. As to their ability to do so without supervision, I take your meaning and I am not entirely witless.” He turned in his chair to look towards the rear of the room. “Master Scrymgeour, will you come forward?”

  A quick frown came to Ewan’s face, but he moved towards the table obediently and stood behind Brother Duncan at the lower end, directly opposite Sir Malcolm.

  “We are all in your debt, Master Scrymgeour, and I told you on the day that you arrived that I could easily find work for you here in my household should you wish to stay. It comes to me now that I have a more important task for you than I originally thought.”

  Ewan was still frowning slightly.

  “An uncle of ours died three years ago in Paisley, another Malcolm Wallace. He was my godfather and I was named for him. He was old and had outlived all his family, and so his farm and his lands passed down to me.” I saw Father Peter’s expression soften as he realized where this might be leading, and he sat back in his chair “It is a small farm,” Sir Malcolm continued, “though larger than some around it, and it has pleasant lands attached to it—a large apple orchard, a fine paddock, and several arable fields of good size, forbye the house itself and surrounding byres and pigpens. I have done nothing with it these three years, despite my best intentions, and I fear it is falling into disrepair.

  “Now, I know you have said you are not a farmer, but your father was, and this place I speak of is far richer and more fertile than your father’s place that you described to me. If you have any feeling for the land at all, I think you might enjoy it. I wouldna set you to the plough, though, unless you chose to be a ploughman. You would be my overseer, your charge to see the farm well kept and well worked, without theft or shirking by the men I’d send you. The house is big enough to need a cook and a housekeeper, and large enough to accommodate you and my two new charges. By day you would be my factor. By night, you would tend and guard the boys, keeping them at their books and out of mischief. What say you?”