The Forest Laird (53 page)

Le Jay’s smile did not waver, and he gave a sideways dip of his head. “Aye, you are correct, my lord, as ever … to the Pope and, of course, to our Grand Master.”

“But not to Edward of England—” Crambeth held up one hand to forestall a response. “I have no intent here to embarrass you, my friend, nor do I wish to discomfit you in any way, but there is something here I plainly do not understand.”

“I must point out,” le Jay said, ostensibly responding to Bishop Crambeth but clearly, from the pitch of his voice, addressing the whole gathering, “that Edward Plantagenet is no man’s idea of a normal, temporal monarch. He is unique, distinguished from all others in several respects, and the oath of which you spoke, my lord Bishop, was not undertaken lightly. Quite bluntly, I could not have undertaken it at all had my obeisance not been authorized by our Grand Master at the time, Sieur Tibauld de Godin. I was merely the vehicle on that auspicious occasion. It was the Order of the Temple itself that extended the privilege of its fealty to King Edward, in recognition of his outstanding exploits and achievements on behalf of the Church and the Pope.”

Aware of the effect of his words upon those to whom this information came as a revelation, le Jay sat silent for a moment before he continued. “Edward crusaded as a Prince, in the Holy Land, in Acre to be precise, on the Ninth Crusade. He stood with our order and fought beside us there against the Turkish heathen. And in his Christian monarchy, he espouses the principles of feudalism, in which it is decreed that all Christian society is hierarchical, extending upwards through monarchs to the Pope himself. Edward Plantagenet has proved his devotion and commitment to the Pope, every bit as completely as we in the Order of the Temple have proved ours, and therefore we Templars see no contradiction between our fealty to this particular King and our loyalty to the Pope.”

“Hmm.” Crambeth nodded. “So be it. I thank you for resolving that for me.” He turned away to talk to Hazelrig again, but then hesitated and swung back towards the Templar. “So, and again I beg your indulgence, but would I be correct in saying that although your sworn duties as a Temple Knight forbid you to bear arms against another Christian, your sworn fealty to England’s King might send you here to fight your fellow Scots in his name?”

A profound silence fell over the table. Le Jay sat open mouthed. His face flushed and then just as quickly grew pale, his fingers curled motionless in the fork of his great black beard. Finally, though, he found his voice and spoke in a cold monotone.

“I would not do such a thing. The King would not demand that of me.”

Crambeth sighed. “The King, if you will forgive my saying so, Sir Brian, is a king, and an oath of fealty may never be retracted. If times and your King’s needs were to become desperate enough, you could be required to fight—and kill—your fellow Scots.”

Cressingham’s harsh voice filled the room like the braying of an ass. “Aye, and you might well be called upon to do precisely that, Sir Knight, if this miscreant Wallace continues his outrages against the King’s Peace.
Him
you might be asked to apprehend and bring to justice. The man is an outlaw—a thief and a murderer, with a following of like-minded vermin little better than a swarm of rats.” The treasurer rose to his feet. “I have already written to King Edward, requesting his permission to stamp out this pestilence of outlaws that pollutes this ungrateful land, and to make the forests safe for honest English travellers again. I wrote most eloquently of the need for haste and vehemence.”

Amid the furor that followed, I looked down the length of the table to where Antony Bek, the King’s deputy, sat glowering, his florid face the very picture of fury and discomfiture. His frown grew ever deeper, and I could see the effort it was costing him not to raise his voice and savage everyone, including the fool Cressingham, but he clenched his fists and took them off the table, lowering them to where no one could see the whiteness of his knuckles.

Beside him at the head of the table, Bishop Wishart sat silent, his eyes moving from face to face around the gathering. When they reached me, he raised one eyebrow, very slightly, and I nodded to him, signifying my understanding of what had taken place. Will’s name was on everyone’s lips, and none of the English party had anything good to say about him, the consensus being that he should be taken into custody as soon as possible, his punishment used as an example to others of the folly of attempting to defy English rule.

I caught Sheriff Hazelrig’s eye and thought he looked amused, so I leaned across the table and asked him what his opinion was on the matter of Wallace and the forest outlaws.

“Too much smoke and not enough fire,” he said with a casual shrug. “The man is an outlaw, beyond the law and beyond the protection of Church or state. He has managed somehow to acquire a reputation and has gained a small amount of fame among the local peasants. But he is a nonentity and a common criminal, and someone simply has to make a decision to put an end to him, and then go out and do it. He and his rabble cannot be expected to prevail against a strong force of disciplined soldiers. And his past activities, from what I have heard, are of the kind that can neither be condoned nor forgiven. I do not think he has been active within my territories of Lanark, but I might be wrong. I have not been here long enough to ask about that, but I will. Then, if I find he has transgressed against my jurisdiction, I shall move against him and destroy him without hesitation. If it is not me, it will be someone else. Sooner or later, all such nuisances are dealt with properly and finally. And legally.” He smiled, good-naturedly, I thought. “You’ll see. Someone will get him, soon.”

2

“F
ather.”

I was striding quickly, heavily muffled in my warmest winter cloak, but something about the voice stopped me in mid-step, and I turned around carefully to peer into the shadows beneath the walls on my right. It was dark and boneachingly cold, a wet, dismal, chilly night in November, and I was on my way back to my room after a late-night visit to the cathedral’s infirmary, where one of our oldest and most beloved brethren lay dying, beyond any aid that our medical fraternity could offer him.

“Who’s there?” Strain as I would I could see no one within the blackness facing me. I knew that there was a row of four rowan trees in front of me, between the footpath on which I stood and the wall of the building, but they, too, were swallowed by the blackness. I was alone in the darkness, facing someone, at least one man, whom I could not see and whose voice was filled with strain and wariness, but I sensed no threat to myself. I was about to repeat my question when the answer reached me.

“I am a stranger here, but I mean you no harm. I but seek your help.”

“My help in what, exactly?” The voice was coming from straight ahead of me and it was close enough that I felt I ought to be able to see something of the speaker, if only a darker or lighter shade of blackness, but still I saw nothing.

“In finding shelter. Sanctuary.”

I hesitated, thinking quickly about how I should best proceed.

“Shelter is simple to provide, especially on a night like this, but sanctuary? That might be more complicated. Who are you, and why would you seek sanctuary here?”

The voice that came back was stronger this time. “My name is common enough, but I am a fugitive, a wanted man.”

“Wanted by whom?”

“By England.”

“By
England
? That sounds very grand. Have you offended the entire country, then? Or do you mean England’s King, in person?”

“I do. Edward Plantagenet of ill renown. Is Robert Wishart yet Bishop here?”

“He is, and has been for years. Where have you been, that you should wonder such a thing?”

“In England. Imprisoned. Can you inform him that I am here?”

“I can. But not if you are nameless.”

“Tell him Andrew Murray of Petty seeks audience with him. Murray the Younger.”

It seemed to me then that I actually felt my heart knock, physically, against my chest. “Andrew?” I asked, stunned. “You are supposed to be in England, in prison.”

“And I was. Have you not been listening? And who are you, to know me by my name?”

“Jamie Wallace. Will’s cousin. We met in Paisley years ago, you and I.”

“Aye, when Will broke my head and you pulled me from the river. I remember. Well met, then, Father James. Will told me you were to be ordained the last time we two spoke. I thought you would still be in Paisley.”

The blackness moved and he stepped forward, pushing back a hood to bare his head and show the paleness of his face, and I saw why I had not been able to see him before. Like the huge man who now moved up to stand silently by his side, he was wearing the black robe of a Dominican friar, a single, cowled garment that covered him from head to foot and rendered him invisible on a night like this. But the shock of seeing his face revealed reminded me sharply that he was indeed a fugitive and that it would be best to take him and his man indoors and out of sight as quickly as possible.

The two hours that followed passed by very quickly, notwithstanding that Bishop Wishart required a full hour of it alone with Andrew. I had plenty to do in the interim, though, organizing hot food and dry clothing and airing fresh bedding for our unheralded guests. By the time Andrew emerged from the Bishop’s quarters, and despite my own busyness, I had grown acquainted with his travelling companion, a gentle soul whose name, he told me, was Wee Mungo. Mungo himself appeared to see nothing incongruous in his name, but he was even taller and broader and thicker through the chest than my cousin Will, and I had only ever met three men that big. I had no doubt he was a warrior, probably impressive in his wrath if he were provoked, and I knew he would not otherwise be accompanying Andrew Murray under such dire circumstances. But he was a simple soul, with the gentle disposition and demeanour of a backward child. I enjoyed the way his eyes grew wide when I told him that this great cathedral was named after the saint who had first settled here and built the first church by the side of the Molendinar Burn, his own patron, Saint Mungo, whom the Islesmen called Kentigern. It was Mungo the saint, I told him, who had named this place, calling it Glasgow, which meant “the dear, green place” in the old tongue.

The big man sat enraptured while I told him the story, and when Andrew Murray joined us and stood quietly by the fire, he tousled the big man’s hair fondly and asked him if he had enjoyed the tale. Wee Mungo nodded, still wide-eyed with the wonder of what he had heard, and then went obediently to bed when Murray dispatched him as quietly and firmly as a fond father would a beloved son.

“Wine, Jamie Wallace,” Murray said as soon as we were alone. “I’ll sell you my birthright for a cup of wine.”

“There’s a mess of pottage involved, too,” I said, grinning at him. “I raided the kitchens and fed myself and Wee Mungo while you were with His Lordship. There’s a pot of stew on the hob there, and some fresh bread. Serve yourself and I’ll go and rob the sacramental wine store.”

“You won’t!” The shock in his voice was real, and I felt my grin grow wider.

“Of course I won’t. We keep the good stuff in the Bishop’s pantry. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Later, while we disposed of half a jug of excellent wine between us, I learned that he had been detained in Chester Castle in north Wales, more than a hundred miles from the Tower of London where his father was imprisoned. Once the hostilities had died down, however, his guards’ initial vigilance and zeal had changed into laxity bred of the awareness that their stronghold was the oldest in England, built as the headquarters of the 22nd Legion in the time of the Caesars, and occupied continuously by garrisons thereafter. No one ever escaped from Chester. That truth was so universally accepted that Murray had found it easy to plan his escape.

Wee Mungo had been the only one of his retainers left with him, and he had managed to achieve that by demonstrating to his English captors that the big man was utterly harmless and could be left to himself all day long without ever getting into any more mischief than a young boy would. And so when the time came to escape, Andrew Murray and his giant companion walked out through the fortress’s main gate as part of a work party, as they did every day, but on this day they had surprised and overcome their lackadaisical guard, tied the fellow up, and simply walked away. From Chester, the two men had made their way north and east to the Solway Firth, and thence north to Glasgow. It had taken them seven days.

“But didn’t they come after you? They must have tried to catch you, surely?”

Andrew sipped at his wine, his face serious. “Aye. They did. They were in better condition than we were from the outset, and seven of them caught up to us between Carlisle and the Firth.”

“They caught you, but you’re here. How did you escape?”

“They didn’t catch us. I said they caught up to us. Mungo killed them. All of them. He does that sometimes.”

That silenced me for a spell, as I thought about the childlike giant who had sat so bemusedly in front of me just a short while before. I stared hard at Andrew Murray and he stared equally hard into his cup, as though examining his reflection in the wine.

“Mungo is two very different people,” Murray explained. “One of those is the innocent, gentle soul you met tonight. The other is the antithesis of the first. A warrior, but a warrior unlike any you have ever seen. When that person takes over, Mungo becomes a killer, savage, merciless, and implacable.”

“To everyone?”

“God, no, Heaven forbid! No, he knows which side he is on at all times, and he would never turn on a comrade, but to anyone facing him on the wrong side, he is Death incarnate.”

I made the sign of the cross upon my breast. “May God forgive him.” I reached down and collected the wine jug, and divided what remained between us. “So what will you do now that you’re back in Scotland?”

“Back in Scotland and outlawed, you mean. I’m a fugitive from the King’s Peace.”

“The King of England’s Peace.”