The Forest Laird

The Forest Laird

Also by Jack Whyte

A DREAM OF EAGLES

The Skystone

The Singing Sword

The Eagles’ Brood

The Saxon Shore

The Sorcerer, Volume I: The Fort at River’s Bend

The Sorcerer, Volume II: Metamorphosis

Uther

THE GOLDEN EAGLE

Clothar the Frank

The Eagle

THE TEMPLAR TRILOGY

Knights of the Black and White

Standard of Honor

Order in Chaos

JACK WHYTE

The Forest Laird

A TALE OF WILLIAM WALLACE

VIKING CANADA

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First published 2010

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

Copyright © Jack Whyte, 2010

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Whyte, Jack, 1940–

The forest laird : a tale of William Wallace / Jack Whyte.

(The guardians trilogy ; bk. 1)

ISBN 978-0-670-06846-3

I. Title. II. Series: Whyte, Jack, 1940- . Guardians

trilogy ; bk. 1.

PS8595.H947F56 2010   C813’.54   C2010-903458-9

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This book is dedicated, like all the others, to my wife
,

Beverley, because I couldn’t have found a better or more

suitable companion on this journey…

AUTHOR’S NOTE

T
he prospect of writing about Sir William Wallace, post-
Braveheart
, was a disconcerting one from the outset because the screenplay reflected, to a very solid extent, what I had been taught about the great man during my childhood and school days. Arguably, there were inaccuracies and omissions in screenwriter Randall Wallace’s treatment of his subject, but by and large it was remarkably faithful to the essence of its source, which was the epic poem “The Wallace,” written by Blind Hary more than a hundred years after the events with which it dealt. That hundred-odd years’ gap poses serious problems for anyone looking to make, let alone prove, assertions about the hero’s life. Add to that the fact that we can’t even be sure if the poet was blind or if his name really was Hary, and the “iffiness” of making any authoritative declaration about Wallace becomes even more pronounced. All we can say with certainty today is that Sir William Wallace definitely lived, he was one of the most important and influential men of his time, and that his influence is still a potent force in Scotland.

I was born in a town called Johnstone, in Renfrewshire, near the city of Paisley and a few minutes’ walk from the Wallace Monument in the neighbouring village of Elderslie—the communities were separated by an imaginary line across the main street. The monument was a common but significant presence in my boyhood, as was an awareness of Wallace himself. Now, after more than four decades living in North America, with everything from historical perspectives to social realities changing radically and rapidly in form and texture from month to month, it seems strange to look back and remember how genuinely and ungrudgingly we revered him as boys. In a time when our fathers and uncles were still returning home from World War II and when the only electronic medium in general use was the vacuum-tube radio, Wallace was a real and almost living presence in our lives.

Embarking on the task of writing a novel about William Wallace, then, especially after
Braveheart
, was a daunting prospect, if for no other reason than running the risk of being accused of cribbing from the movie. In approaching this book and considering what I would need and how I might go about acquiring it, I was forced to accept, very reluctantly, that after forty-odd years of living in Canada, I had forgotten (or at least had difficulty remembering) much of the authenticity of the land in which I had grown up. Once I acknowledged that, however, I had no difficulty at all in accepting the inevitable corollary, which was that I was long overdue for a factfinding mission to Wallace’s Scotland. The question I then had to answer was
Where is Wallace’s Scotland, and how does one find it?
I didn’t know the answer at the time, but I
thought
I knew, so I planned my itinerary carefully, estimating that I would need five weeks to do everything and see all the places I wanted to see. And that last consideration is where the entire structure of my plan began to fall apart.

The plain truth is that the Scotland Wallace knew no longer exists, except in the loneliest, most inaccessible spots, places where the Guardian himself seldom ventured. Seven hundred years of increasing population, with spreading settlement and agriculture, deforestation, road building, and democratic civilization have transformed the country beyond recognition. There are towns, cities, villages, and hamlets everywhere, all linked by a sophisticated, intricate network of roads. Where there is any semblance of open country remaining, it is dotted with farms and cottages and divided by stone walls and fences. And there is no such thing as silence. No matter where you go in Scotland today, even in the most remote spots such as Glencoe or the Moor of Rannoch, you will hear human presence in the roar of a jet overhead, the whistle of a distant train, or the in the sound of traffic on a nearby road.

Wallace would not recognize his own country. No trace at all remains of the original wooden bridge at Stirling, the site of his major victory over the English. The area known as the Carse of Stirling, along with the treacherous bogs that lined it on both sides and made crossing the River Forth so hazardous for invading armies throughout Scotland’s history, has been tamed for hundreds of years, broken to the plough and cultivated into rich farmland, criss-crossed with good roads and sturdy bridges. The enormous forest that once covered almost the entire southeastern and southern quadrants of Scotland, known variously as Ettrick Forest and Selkirk Forest, has vanished almost completely, with only tiny remnants remaining, carefully planted and ordered, nurtured, and meticulously tended under the auspices of the Scottish Forestry Department. Even the few major historic buildings that Wallace would have known are skeletal today—St. Andrews Cathedral and Sweetheart Abbey are beautiful and imposing, often breathtaking in certain light and circumstances, but they are ancient ruins with no vitality, and it is almost impossible for modern people to imagine them full of bustling life.

Places such as Stirling Castle and Edinburgh Castle appear to us to be timeless and unchanging, but the truth is that the fortified and wooden palisaded “castles” shown in
Braveheart
give a far more accurate idea of what they would have been like seven centuries ago because the great, imposing stone edifices we see today had not yet been built when Wallace was alive. Paisley Abbey was there in the early fourteenth century, but even it has changed beyond recognition. Edward of England burned it down in 1306–7, two years after Wallace’s death, and left only two arches standing, and when the abbey was rebuilt, those arches were incorporated into a new, very different building. They are still easily visible today, if you know where to look, but the building itself is a relatively modern edifice.

This book, then, is my attempt to accommodate and interpret some of the new ideas that have recently emerged regarding William Wallace, and it incorporates several intriguing ideas and suggestions proposed by people far more qualified to judge them than I am. In one very narrow and particular respect, and with no disrespect in mind, his life can be compared to that of Jesus, in that both emerged from obscurity at a late age—between twenty-seven and thirty—and each had a short, brilliant, meteoric public career that ended in execution. No one really knows what either man did in the years before he stepped into public scrutiny, and this tale speculates what might have been in the case of Scotland’s greatest Guardian.

Jack Whyte

Kelowna, British Columbia

July 2010