The Guardian (33 page)

“And bear in mind, too, that Comyn stands for Comyn first and last when blood is spilt and lands are up for grasping. Buchan and Badenoch are our neighbours. That is fact. So is Malise of Strathearn. But they are drooling neighbours who have long been covetous of our lands in Moray. Will we stand by and give those up because we fear to spill Comyn blood when it comes against us?”

“No!” The roar was deafening, and a distant echo returned it to our hearing moments after it had faded.

“So be it, then. I have thought long about this, and here is what we will do. Spey lies at our backs—that’s why your feet are wet.” A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd. “I thought about waiting for them back on the other side, forcing them to fight their way across to meet us. But that would have been folly. The time of year is wrong. The river is too low and easy to cross, no barrier at all to heavy horse. And Buchan will have heavy English horse with him, be sure of that.”

He stretched himself up to his full height and looked out over his men to the lush growth at their backs. “We’re better off on this side of the Spey. There’s only one road up to here from Aberdeen, and they have to take it, through the forests of the Ingie and along the edge of the Bog of Gight. I know that country inside out and so do you. And that’s where we’ll wait for them. Inside the forest where their heavy horsemen will be useless, and in the bog itself, where they’ll be even worse off. We’re all afoot, and that’s the way we fight.” His eyebrows rose in a wildly exaggerated expression of alarm. “All except me, that is, so make sure you don’t mistake me for an Englishman!” Murray held his smile until the laughter began to flag, then became serious again.

“And so we will fight them
our
way. On
our
terms. In the woods and in the bog—in mud and water, where they can’t deploy their horsemen, their armoured men-at-arms, or their ranked archers. We’ll lure them off the road and into the woods, and we’ll kill them.

“You might find that some of them will say they have no wish to fight you. But be careful. They might be feigning friendship. Better to be sure they’re really harmless than to die from a stab in the back.” He raised a hand high, fingers spread. “The English are the English, straightforward enemies. Kill them as you find them. But be careful of the Scots you face. Make sure they’re weaponless before you turn your back on any of them.”

He looked around the throng again.

“There’s one more thing to say,” he said, in a slightly quieter
voice, “though it alters nothing of what I said before. I swear, I have no idea if this will come to pass, but there is a chance that they truly might not want to fight us. They’re under oath to Edward, true. He holds their paroles. But these men have been in prison for a year, and they were there for defying Edward and thumbing their noses at England. They can’t be strong after a year in prison. And above all they are Scots. They’ll have no real desire to fight for England against their own realm—against their neighbours and cousins.” He paused again. “If they want to fight, we’ll fight them. And if not, we’ll wait and see. Now, are there any questions?”

“Aye, I have one.” The speaker was a forceful-looking character, unsmiling and dour. Like most of his fellows here, he wore no armour, though he was well equipped with a long, plain sword and matching dagger, the hilts of both polished to a shine from years of daily use. “Tell me this,” he rasped. “If Buchan and his folk
do
fight, and I catch hold of the old earl, who gets his ransom money? Me or you?”

Again the crowd erupted in laughter.

“Alistair,” Andrew said when the noise died down, “you bring old Buchan’s bony arse to me in person and I swear in front of everyone assembled here that you’ll have every silver groat we can squeeze out of it in ransom for him.” A loud cheer greeted that. “And now it’s time to form up and be on our way again.”

As the assembly began to break apart, Andrew beckoned me over, grinning. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad that’s out of the way. It went as well as could be hoped for, don’t you think?”

“I agree,” I said. “And I’ll pray the gentle Jesus proves you right about Buchan’s reluctance to fight against his own.”

“We won’t know until the time comes,” he said quietly, then looked at me sidelong. “Look, I’m going to have to leave you on your own for a while, perhaps for several days, for I must attend to a number of things in a very short time.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m a grown man and I’ve spent days on my own before.”

He smiled again. “Good! That’s excellent. Walk with me, then, to the horse lines. I wasn’t hungry before, but I could eat something
now. With any kind of fortune we’ll scrounge some trail food from the cooks.”

“No complaints from me,” I said, and fell into step beside him. “Who was that man Alistair? He seemed very … different.”

“Different?” He chuckled. “Oh, Alistair is that and more.” But then, instead of explaining, he asked, “How many men would you guess were there altogether?”

I shrugged. “At a guess, five to six hundred.”

“Six hundred and thirty-four,” he said quietly in his sibilant Gaelic. “Sandy Pilche counted them before we left Duffus. And among all of them, including my own Wee Mungo, Alistair Murray is the one you least want to have angry at you.”

I had suspected as much, purely from the fellow’s appearance.

“He’ll guard you while I’m away.” Andrew saw my reaction. “No, I’ll hear no objections. You need a good man at your back, Jamie, so humour me and don’t argue. You are a stranger here and don’t know who you can trust or who you can’t. Neither do I, in truth, apart from my close friends and captains. Alliances change overnight in times like this, and friends are being suborned every day by Edward’s spies and toadies. And you are not only a stranger but also a messenger from the south, from Wishart and the Steward. Take my word, Jamie, your life will be in danger all the time you’re here, so whether you like it or not, Alistair will be your guardian angel henceforth. Trust him as you trust me, for he is my cousin and one of my oldest friends—we were raised beneath the same roof and shared a bed for years as boys. He will look after you as well as I could, mayhap even better.” He looked about us, and his face broke into a grin. “Here he comes now, so let me make you known to each other.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A SHOW OF PRUDENCE

I
t was to be four days before I laid eyes on Andrew Murray again, for he vanished into the Bog of Gight shortly after introducing me to his cousin Alistair, at the head of a scouting group of half a hundred men. The rest of the army, including me and my new shadow, Alistair Murray, followed them hours later at a far slower pace and eventually reached an encampment that had been partially prepared for us.

I was surprised to see it at first, but I quickly learned that it was typical of Sandy Pilche’s thoroughness. And it made me realize once more that Andrew Murray had planned far ahead. Six spit-roasted deer ensured that everyone ate well that night once the work of setting up camp and posting guards had been completed, and afterwards, as the dusk was deepening to night, the sergeants and captains moved from fire to fire, sending their various charges to their beds.

I was astir and celebrating Mass in the open air, at an altar made from a folding table, long before dawn the following day. The night had been warm and calm and the pre-morning air was motionless, and I was gratified to see how many men joined me there in the peaceful darkness by the flickering light of a few torches. As the Mass progressed, I was aware of increasing activity all around us, and by the time the brief Sacrament was over, the morning sky was pale and birds were singing in the surrounding trees. I blessed my congregation and dismissed them, and soon after that the daily drills began.

I spent the next few hours watching the men, for what I was witnessing was far from the kind of disciplined drilling I had seen the English soldiery practise on the few occasions when I had been close enough to study them. There, squads and groups of men had marched in solid blocks to the commands of petty officers, all uniformly moving according to long-established procedure.

The Moray men I watched that morning were made of different stuff. Highlanders all, they scorned the rigid formations that formed the building blocks of English military prowess. They took pride in being warriors, and the tactics used by the English invaders were alien to them, to the extent that whereas the common English soldier went to fight protected by effective armour, whether of boiled, hammered leather or linked mail or both, the Highland Gael was frequently known to plunge into battle completely unclothed, discarding the toga-like garment in which he habitually wound himself, because it was too restrictive for armed combat.

I remember I laughed when first I heard that, thinking it a lie concocted to gull fools, but Sandy Pilche convinced me it was true, telling me, in all seriousness, that the Scots Highlander preferred to fight naked, armoured only in his own righteousness and protected by a round shield called a targe and the keenness of his own steel. The Gaels were not soldiers, he insisted; they were not militarily disciplined; they were warriors, each one unique, a law and a force unto himself, and their training methods reflected that. The disciplines they pursued in readying themselves for battle were mostly concerned with stamina and bodily strength. I quickly became accustomed to the sights and sounds of them competing with one another in great feats of strength, hurling massive stones one-handed and hoisting and throwing entire tree trunks, besides running for hours at breakneck speed across terrain that would daunt even my cousin Will’s forest outlaws.

Even so, I spent the greater part of the days that followed sitting alone in my tent, compiling a report on my progress to Bishop Wishart. I knew I would probably deliver it into his hands in person,
since no one else was likely to reach him before I did in mid-August, yet I was glad to get to work and enjoyed the challenge of capturing the details of my journey before I could forget them.

The solitude was mental rather than physical, because, like the poor in the Scriptures, Alistair Murray was always with me. When I went outside he hovered around me like a hunting hawk, his eyes scanning our surroundings high and low for signs that anyone was watching me too closely or thinking about harming me. He was constantly fingering the hilts of his weapons, too, gripping them and twisting them, easing them in their sheaths as if he were afraid of finding them too tightly seated should he need to draw them quickly. I was impressed by his dedication, but I found his fierce-eyed presence disconcerting and wished he were less intense.

I tried speaking to him, when first we found ourselves alone together after Andrew left, but my attempt at cordiality rattled off the armour of his indifference like hailstones off a slate roof, and for a while I was determined not to speak to him again. I found it difficult to remain angry at him, though, for it was plain that he was focused on protecting me, and so I spoke to him whenever he was nearby, hoping to break through his indifference. And slowly but surely he began to thaw, though it was alien to his nature to be garrulous or demonstrative. By the end of the third day he would answer me, sometimes even civilly, but it was always I who initiated the conversations, such as they were.

On the morning of the fourth day, I had broken my fast with a handful of salty roasted oats and chopped hazelnuts and was washing them down with fresh spring water from the hillside above our camp when I saw him across the communal space fronting the fire pit outside my tent. He had been gone for mere minutes, probably to relieve himself, and as he moved fluidly back towards me, idly twirling the heavy quarterstaff he carried, I snatched up my own walking staff, a stout and useful one as heavy as his, and stepped forward to meet him. He halted immediately, eyeing me speculatively: no doubt the warrior in him recognized the threat I posed in
stepping forward boldly as I had, while the good Catholic in him balked at the prospect of challenging, perhaps even having to fight, a priest in holy orders.

I hefted my staff across my chest and stretched it towards him, holding it with my hands about a foot apart. “A challenge,” I said, and spun the weapon quickly with my right hand. “To pass a little time. I’m trained to it, so you needn’t be afraid of hurting me. And even if you do,” I said with a grin, “I promise I’ll absolve you of the sin of it. Guard yourself.”

I dropped into a fighting stance and advanced towards him and he reacted instinctively, raising his own weapon and sidling away from me. His face, though, still betrayed his confusion, and I leapt at him, swinging my staff hard towards his head. He countered with a solid block and a counterstroke, his reflexes taking him instantly where his piety would not permit, but before the blow was fully released I was already on one knee, my staff scything towards his ankles. He leapt back nimbly, avoiding my sweep and launching himself back at me in a driving blur of whirling wood that ended with a sudden sharp, one-ended thrust that might have cracked my sternum had it landed.

We went hard at it for a full quarter-hour, neither conceding anything to the other, and eventually he threw down his staff and raised both hands.

“Enough,” he gasped. “Enough. I keep waiting for you to remember you’re a priest, but you need no reminding, do you?”

I dropped my own weapon beside his. “No,” I said, “I don’t. But from time to time, especially when I take a hard rap, I have difficulty remembering not to blaspheme.” I drew a deep, shaky breath, then let it out. “I enjoyed that … and in truth I think I even needed it. It has been some time since last I fought.”

“Is that a fact?” he said, in a voice both wry and dry. “Well, ye’ll be glad to know it was barely noticeable. You fight well for a man who has no business fighting.”

“Oh, I might argue that,” I said. “Remember, even our Lord Jesus took a whip to clean the money lenders from the Temple.
Priests are men above all else, Alistair, and any man will fight, given sufficient provocation.”