The Guardian (30 page)

“And de Rait obviously overtook them.”

“He did. Instead of preparing to leave for France, they are now ordered to remain here in Scotland and use all the resources at their disposal to stamp out the so-called rebellion in Moray and Rossshire—that’s me and my folk. Bishop de Cheyne and Gartnait are ordered to proceed immediately to the relief of the Constable Fitzwarren in Urquhart Castle, and that’s a waste of time, since Urquhart has been unthreatened these past eight weeks. The Comyns, for their part, are to remain in the north, and in the field, until the rebellion be completely quelled.”

“Well, there’s nothing there that’s hard to understand, is there?” I said. “Stop Andrew de Moray by any and all means. So why would they send Gartnait to talk to you?”

One side of Murray’s mouth twitched in a half smile. “Because
it would have been the most straightforward means of achieving their objective, were it successful. It was the most logical way to begin, and certainly worth the effort.”

“But why try at all? They must have known you were unlikely to simply give up and go home. And now you know they’re coming to find you, so they’ve sacrificed whatever surprise they might have achieved by marching here directly.”

“No surprise was possible, Jamie. I’ve known since I set foot again in Moray that someone, someday, would be sent to remove me. The biggest bother in my mind now is that ship. I won’t be able to meet it until I’ve dealt with Buchan and his army.”

“The ship is unimportant at this point,” I said. “That’s weeks away, and will resolve itself when the time is right. In the meantime, you will have time to outface the Buchan crew.”

“I hope you’re right. They’ll come soon, though, and they’ll come northwest, through Mar and Badenoch to the Spey river. That’s the eastern border of Moray. They’ll have to come by the Ingie and the Bog of Gight, and that’s where I’ll be waiting for them.”

“The bog I can guess at, but what’s the Ingie?”

That won me a smile. “It’s a place, or rather a region. It’s the biggest of the royal forests in the north, and it lies on the far side of the Spey. It’s dense and trackless—which means completely impenetrable to a marching army. Inside its western boundary, bordering the Spey itself, there’s a huge, mud-choked tract of impassable mire called the Bog of Gight. Not good country for heavy horsemen, believe me. But any army coming north and west has to follow the outer edges of both the forest and the bog. It’s the only route there is, and I was brought up near there, so I know every inch of it. I’ll stop them there.”

“And what about Gartnait? You can’t let him go back to Aberdeen. Will you hold him here?”

“No,” he said. “He’ll be leaving in the morning. There’s a ship waiting for him in Inverness.”

I was stupefied. “You’re letting him go?”

“What else am I to do, Jamie?” he asked with a broad smile. “He is my friend, and he is in a nasty predicament, but he came here openly to explain his situation to me.”

“And all credit to him for that. But he’s an avowed enemy, Andrew. He’s Edward’s man, bound by parole. He’ll destroy you if he can and hand what’s left of you and yours over to England.”

Andrew Murray smiled again. “Mayhap,” he said. “You might be right, but not unless, as you say, he destroys me. And I have some views of my own on that matter. Besides, his enmity’s a passing thing—a politician’s enmity, enforced by England’s aging King.”

“Enmity is enmity, Andrew, no matter how it’s painted. No one ever confuses it with friendship.”

“Then we must be very different in this part of the world.” He stood up again—rather angrily, I thought—and moved to stare into the fire, his brows compressed in a frown. “Listen to me now, Jamie,” he said, and his voice was soft and serious. “And mark what I’m telling you. The greatest sadness of this war—a war we neither sought nor thought to have to wage—is that the men we actually have to fight, chin to chin and eye to eye, are, in the main, our own countrymen. That is the most damnable part of the pervasive rot that festers in our realm these days: the English use us against ourselves, for their own ends. And here in the Highlands it appears to be more true than anywhere else. Most of the commanders who hold our royal castles against us are Scots, at least by birth. The garrison troops are all English, but the men commanding them are Scots. Edward controls their purse strings, with the threat of denying them their English lands and the income from those lands, and that means he controls their behaviour and obedience. That is the truth of life here in Highland Scotia. But it is not the entire truth, for Comyn, who has no real need of English lands or money, is marching north to lay waste to Moray. Tell me now, why do you think that is the case?”

I was gaping at him, unable to respond.

“I’ll tell you why it is. It’s because we’ve done it to ourselves— we, the magnates of Scotland, myself included. We have deceived
ourselves and deluded our own people and now we are being made to pay the price. Edward Plantagenet, the all-high King of England, has proved himself to be the great manipulator of the ages, setting us all at one another’s throats for gifts of English land and titles, baubles that bind us to his will and to his whims while he steals our realm from us. He holds each man of us hostage against ourselves, in one way or another.

“Look at Sir Reginald de Cheyne, the Scots castellan of Inverness. He is one of the most eminent Scots in the land, nephew to John Comyn of Badenoch and baron of both Inverugie and Strabrock, with their huge estates. The man was King Alexander’s Chamberlain of Scotland in his youth! But now he fights for the Plantagenet because Edward holds his first-born and dearest son, young Reginald, prisoner in England. The Countess of Ross, who brought her people out against me when I sought to besiege the Englishman Fitzwarren in Castle Urquhart, did so because her goodman the earl is close held and under threat of death in one of Edward’s jails. It happens everywhere nowadays, and all the time.

“And now the Comyns, Red of Badenoch and Black of Buchan, are in similar straits, under Edward’s orders to destroy me. They have no wish to fight against their own. They are Highlanders and they know themselves how great the hatred of the English is among their folk. But they can see no way out from the bog into which they have floundered. They hate and fear Edward, but they won’t stand against him now because they don’t believe they can beat him. He proved that—to their eyes at least—last year when he crushed Scotland’s finest army at Dunbar and imprisoned more than half of all the Scots nobility.”

“Do you really believe the Comyns will march against you?”

“I believe they have no wish to, but I believe equally that
they
believe they have no choice. They’re my close kin, my family, blood of my blood, and though they might be cursing me today for putting them in the case in which they find themselves, I’m reasonably sure they have no wish to kill me or slaughter my followers. That’s why they sent Gartnait to talk to me. They believe this will be settled the
usual way, by discussion and compromise and
quid pro quo
. That’s the way these risings and disturbances have always been settled. From time to time tempers grow frayed, some blood is spilt, there is much rushing around and rattling of spears and bows, and then an agreement is reached, oaths are renewed, titles and rewards and concessions are dispensed, and everyone goes home again.”

“But not this time,” I said.

“No, not this time, and never again. The world has changed, Father James. Edward of England changed it with his dishonesty and perfidy, his betrayal of our trust and goodwill, and now the folk of Moray are changing it again, and as long as I remain alive it will not change back in England’s favour. My Comyn cousins have yet to learn all that, but it is not their fault that they were away in England’s jails while new realities took hold up here in Scotland’s north, in the aftermath of the Dunbar disgrace. For me, and for the folk who follow me, the time for compromise and submission, aye and for deep-staining shame, is over. My father is a prisoner in London, too, but I’ll no longer be bullied into letting an English madman trample me and my folk into the dirt through fear for my father’s life. My father would die of shame if he thought I would do so.

“So now I am committed and will not be deflected from my path. I’ll fight until England is beaten or I am dead. Gartnait will tell Buchan and Badenoch that when he returns to Aberdeen, and in the meantime I’ll be working to make sure that nothing they might do on Edward’s behalf thereafter can surprise me or my army. And when I’ve dealt with them, I’ll go to Aberdeen and take possession of my cargo there.”

He picked up a short length of charred-end wood and peered at it closely. “That is as far as my planning goes,” he continued. “I talked with Gartnait for hours last night, and I made my decision near dawn. This morning I sent out the word for the rest of my folk to follow me eastward to the Spey and to join me at my father’s castle in Boharm. Once my army is there—and we’ll leave all Moray stripped of manpower—we’ll wait and see what the Comyns
do, for there’s no point in planning anything until we see what their intentions are.” He threw the stick back in the fire. “Would you like to talk to Gartnait?”

“Not if he’s siding with the English,” I said. “I care not what his reasons are for that, but I can’t ignore the fact that the friends with whom he rides are Comyns, for they are no friends of me or mine. They have made no secret, these past years, of their disdain for us Scots who live south of Forth and follow the House of Bruce. Besides, did you not say he will leave in the morning for Inverness?” He nodded. “Well, then, there’s little point, I think, in spending time with him that would be better spent with you.”

He shook his head, half smiling. “I always liked that about you. Direct and to the point. It really is grand to see you, Jamie. I’ve often wondered what you have been doing, knowing the good bishop and how he drives his people. I could scarce believe my ears when I heard you were here. But I confess, the fact that you
are
here has me concerned. Wishart sent you. I know that because he is the only one who could have, and he is also the only one who would have sent
you
, in particular. Not even Will could send you all the way up here to me unless Wishart gave his permission. Let us talk then, you and I, of Bishop Wishart’s urgencies. What else does he want of me?”

I plunged in. “Your presence,” I said. “In the south, after you have armed your men.”

His eyes were veiled and unreadable. “Where, exactly, in the south, and when, and why?”

I did not know what I had been expecting at that point. Surprise, certainly; disbelief perhaps; refusal in all probability, possibly combined with a measure of anger; even complete outrage would have been understandable in response to such a blatant demand, but the last thing I would ever have anticipated was this absolute calm. This man, for all his youth, was more mature than many another twice his age or older.

“Wallace will be in Dundee in mid-August,” I said, “to take delivery of a cargo of weapons from a Norwegian ship that should
arrive soon, about the same time as the one you’ll meet at Aberdeen. The bishop wants you to meet Wallace there, to meld your armies unseen by the English, and then march together to Stirling. That’s where matters will come to a head.”

He continued to watch me, and I went on. “Everything depends upon timing, you see. It always does, of course, but in this instance more so than any other. Wishart and the Steward are holding Percy and Clifford in debate—probably now, as we speak. Their intent is to buy time and occupy the English, to enable you to march south without interference.

“An English army is already marching from the northern counties of England to reinforce Percy’s unit, but we expect more to head northward once the news of what is really happening here sinks home with Edward. When I left Turnberry it seemed plain that he was considering the risings here as local outbreaks—an irritating annoyance, to be swatted casually by whatever English force was nearest. We now know he has revised that opinion. That’s why he sent de Rait running after Buchan and Badenoch with changed orders.

“By now, for all we know, all England might well be in uproar, for once Edward Plantagenet is goaded to snap at an annoyance, he snaps like a dragon, all fire and fury and implacable resolve. His main concern,
Dei gratia
, will continue to be his venture in France—the bishop says he has too much invested there to be able to back away from it now—but I swear he will move heaven and earth to bring about an end to all uprisings in Scotland.”

“This army marching to reinforce Percy in the southwest,” he said. “When should it arrive?”

“Soon, if they are not already there.”

“And you expect there will be other armies?”

“Almost certainly, yes, though whether they will be newly requisitioned or rearranged from existing resources, I cannot say. I heard a rumour at Turnberry that Hugh de Cressingham had been recalled to duty from Lancaster, where he had been negotiating with the northern barons. Word was—though unsubstantiated, of course—
that he was to return to Scotland with three hundred heavy horse and ten thousand footmen— Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I mislike that—Cressingham coming back.”

“I said it’s but a rumour, Andrew. But mislike it or not, it should hardly surprise you. He is the treasurer for Scotland, after all. Our sources close to him have made it clear to us that Cressingham’s mission to the northern barons on Edward’s behalf is strictly secondary to his main responsibility, which is to raise revenues from Scotland for Edward’s war in France. And to do that, the man must be in Scotland.”

“Aye,” he said, “I understand that, but I still dislike the thought of it. I have never met the fellow, but neither have I ever heard his name mentioned other than in tones of hatred and loathing.”

I nodded. “You and I have that in common, then. His title is Treasurer, but the folk in Glasgow and elsewhere call him the Treacherer.”

“Not up here, they don’t, not yet. But the name does not surprise me, after what he did. He single-handedly destroyed the wool trade and came close to bankrupting this entire country, the grasping, thieving bastard. Treacherer indeed.”