The Guardian (67 page)

“He didn’t
stay
?”

The bishop scowled. “He was gone again within the week. As soon as his escorts departed for Stirling, he was on the road again, riding south and east to East Lothian to join your cousin, who was in Haddington seeing to the collection of food and grain, as decreed by the Perth assembly. They spent much time there together, generating a spate of letters that they signed jointly as commanders of the army of Scotland and the community of the realm. The letters went out to the Hansa trading leagues of every seaport and trading post
on the other side of the North Sea, telling them all that the kingdom of Scotland, by the grace of God, has been delivered from the English, its freedom regained in battle, and that Scotland is once again open for trade. They must have had an army of clerics making copies for days on end, though I’m told the letters were all signed on the same day, the eleventh of October.

“I knew nothing about any of that until I returned from Roxburgh a few days ago. At any rate, Andrew eventually returned to Bothwell, though no one seems to know how or when. That’s all we know—and it’s all we would have known had we not received a letter from Andrew’s uncle, Father David Murray. You remember him, do you not?”

“I do, my lord. He talked to us about his nephew that night we dined at Turnberry.”

“That’s him. He wrote to say he had gone to Bothwell recently from Moray, whence he had escorted Andrew’s young wife, who is with child. Upon their arrival they discovered his nephew to be in dire condition—
in extremis
was how Father Murray phrased it—and not likely to live for long. It seems his wound, while outwardly appearing to mend, had been festering unchecked beneath the skin and had erupted as the result of the hard riding Andrew had done on the way to and from Haddington. Father Murray, knowing nothing of my recent release from Roxburgh, and not daring to leave the young woman alone, wrote to William Lamberton as deputy bishop here in the hope that he might be able to send word to me of Andrew’s likely death.”

I have no notion of how long I sat there, speechless and sightless, before he called me back to the present, his voice now filled with concern verging on alarm as he asked me how I felt. Even as anger at the inane banality of the question swelled up in me, though, I knew he could not possibly have known how affected I would be by these tidings, for though he was aware that I had known Andrew as a boy, he could not possibly have known about the closeness and affection I had recently developed for my Highland friend.

I shook my head, attempting to clear it. There was no point, I
knew, in saying anything to upset the bishop further, for I could see he was already greatly disturbed, and I remembered the deep, paternal affection he had always shown towards Andrew, even as a boy. And so I merely asked, “Where is Canon Lamberton now, am I permitted to ask?”

“On his way to Bothwell,” he said, showing no surprise. “He’ll be there by now, I imagine. I should have gone myself, but I could not. I’m bound here for now, tending to several urgent matters, none of which permit me to leave the cathedral, so William went in my place …”

His voice trailed away, and then, lapsing into Scots as he so often did, he muttered, “The damned young fool. Ye’d think he’d tell somebody he was in pain! Ye’d think he’d hae the sense to ken somethin’ was far frae right, for he must ha’ been in agony, these weeks on end. But no, he was that stubborn and he didna want to be a bother to anybody. An’ his damned Moravian honour wouldna let him whine. God damn the injustice o’ it a’. He was what, twenty-five?”

I nodded. “Aye, twenty-five. He and I are the same age.” I sat up straighter. “I should go and see him.”

“No, you should not.” In the blink of an eye, with the change of topic, he had reverted to his normal Latin speech. “That would be a waste of time. Even William might have been too late to see him, for Father Murray said he might not last out the week, and his letter was written last Wednesday, so he meant the end of the week now past. The wound was foul, he said then, and Andrew was unconscious and raving most of the time and growing worse from hour to hour. The odds are he is dead by now, even as we sit here talking. I know Davie Murray well, and he is no alarmist, but he said it would take a miracle to save his nephew’s life.”

“Dear God in Heaven, protect us all. Have you sent word to Will?”

“I have, but I’ve no conviction he’ll receive it, for we don’t know where he is. There are reports of his men raiding far and wide in Durham and Northumberland, and even farther west along the Borders, but no one knows where precisely he is, and he likes to
keep it that way. He knows the sound of his name strikes terror into English hearts and he uses that terror as a weapon, showing himself time after time in places miles apart, and even having other big men pretend to be him, so that he is being sighted several times a day in different places altogether.”

“So how many men did you send out to find him?”

“Three men I trust.”

“
Three?
You sent but three, against such odds? Why?”

“Because we need to be discreet. Until we know for sure of Andrew Murray’s death—the which may God forbid—we need discretion over and above all else.”

“Why, in the name of all we revere, should we need to be discreet?”

He looked at me sternly, a frown ticcing at his brows. “Why?” he repeated. “You ask me why? Bethink yourself, man. The entire land is seething with angry, envious men whose power has been usurped by two young upstarts whose names were all but unknown a year ago. Now they are become the most powerful men in all the realm, beloved of the Fates, like Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux, David and Jonathan. Not even our Lord God in Heaven knows what might happen if word were to get out too soon that one of the two has been struck dead, but the likelihood is that the surviving one would not remain long in power.” He paused, head cocked. “You see that, I hope?”

“I see it now that you bring it home to me,” I said, slumping back into my chair. “You are right, of course. Of the two men, Andrew was the one more acceptable to the magnates. His rank and birth made him one of them, whether they liked it or not, and as such, he provided Will with a degree of authority and
dignitas
, simply by according him the respect and ranking of an equal. The magnates will waste no time in using Andrew’s death to their own advantage, undermining Will’s authority.”

“
Attempting
to undermine his authority.” The bishop’s voice was hard as steel. “I believe they’ll find Will’s position more difficult to undermine than they would have thought possible two months ago.”

“Aye, they might, but they’ll keep trying. How can we stop them? What can we do if Andrew is already dead?”

“We can conceal his death for as long as we can. At least until we can sit down with Will and make some kind of plan to deal with what we will all have to face.”

“Pshaw!” I threw up my arms. “What kind of plan will keep the magnates from reacting? They’ll move against Will as soon as they hear tell of what has happened, and there won’t be a thing he, or we, can do to stop them.”

“No, Father, they will
not
move, not until they have decided what is best for them to do, and they will not do that without consulting one another as to what would be the best way to proceed. And they’ll tread very carefully, believe you me.”

“Why would you think that, my lord?”

“Father James, you are Will Wallace’s cousin and you should know why I think it. Think, man! Scotland’s magnates have had their own little fiefdoms to rule since the days of King David, and each of them sees himself as God within his own domain. They listen to no man in deciding what they may and may not do in their own lands, and for hundreds of years they’ve treated their folk like cattle. Stirling Bridge has changed all that. Your cousin and Andrew Murray have changed all that, and I, for one, believe they’ve changed it forever.”

He fell silent, fingering the silver cross on his breast, then picked up the old, worn sword belt with its attached weapons and crossed to lean the sword against his tree trunk, lodging its plain steel pommel carefully in one of the old, splintered scars he had gouged long since in the once-smooth surface. When he was satisfied the sword would stay in place, he came back towards me, clasping his hands behind his back, beneath the scapular panel that hung there.

“When I said Andrew Murray and your cousin have changed things forever, I meant every word of it, for I now believe, with all my heart, that the Scots folk will never submit again to the kind of tyranny that the Normans have subjected them to in the past. Let’s admit this, you and I, here, between ourselves and as men of God
committed to His Holy Church and the salvation of all souls before and ahead of all human endeavours and loyalties: when we speak of the Scots magnates, we don’t mean the Scots at all. The magnates are all descendants of the Normans who came over here in 1066— two hundred and some years ago—with William the Conqueror, and they have been here ever since, ruling this realm for so long that now they think of themselves as Scots and consider the true Scots to be provided by God for their especial benefit.” He shrugged. “Is it untrue? The exceptions, of course, are the mormaers, but they were never Norman. They were here when the Normans arrived, the ancient earls and rulers of the Gaels.”

He caught my eye. “Why, Father James, you are shocked.” His face was crinkled in a rueful grin that contained little of humour, and I shook my head and spoke quickly before he could say more.

“No, my lord bishop, that’s not—” I stopped, aware of the lie before I uttered it. “Well, it is true, I suppose, but I am not shocked in the way you think. I’m merely shocked that you would say such things aloud. For you could be hanged for saying them.” I hurried on before he could stop me. “And why would you say them anyway, whether they be true or not?”

“They came from what I said directly before, Jamie, when I said Andrew and Will have changed the old ways forever. For the folk will not settle back easily into harness now, to be the way they were before Will Wallace and Stirling Bridge. Think about that, Jamie, about what I’ve been told your cousin said in Perth, the truth of it: it was the folk themselves, the
folk
, who won the Stirling fight, and they did it without the magnates.” He gestured for me to keep silent, even though I had made no move to speak.

“That’s not all of it, though, for what they did, in truth, was to stand against
magnates
—the magnates of
England
—and run them off the field of battle. They thrashed them and threw them out. And now they are harrying England itself. Believe me, Father James, our own Scots magnates will think long and hard before they run the risk of prodding and provoking this new creature that William Wallace and Andrew Murray have created from the folk of Scotland.”

I felt my jaw sagging open and closed it quickly, but I had seen the truth of what he said.

“That’s why we need to plan,” Wishart insisted. “That’s why we need to meet with Will, as quickly as it can be arranged. We need to strengthen his authority as commander of the army, and to keep the army itself beyond the reach of the magnates. I believe the latter part will be easily achieved. And I believe that, in achieving it, we can resolve the other difficulty—supporting Will against his nobly born detractors. He’ll have no lack of those.”

His eyes narrowed. “Mind you, hearing myself say such things, I hope I am not committing the sin of pride—what the Greek ancients called
hubris
—in presuming to guess at the will of God. I really have no certainty at all of what I am saying. I’m but giving voice to what I hope, and what good sense would seem to dictate. And there’s a doubting voice inside me asking when I last knew the magnates to do
anything
according to the dictates of good sense and logic. They’ll always look to their own interests before those of anyone else. But that may work to our advantage, for we won’t need much time, once Will’s back here. We’ll simply have to keep Andrew’s passing secret for as long as may be possible. That’s why I sent William to Bothwell, simply to be there and to keep an eye on things, to make sure no unwelcome word goes out before we want it to.”

That made me feel better immediately, simply to know that Canon Lamberton was taking charge in Bothwell, and I said so with sufficient enthusiasm to draw a questioning glance from the bishop.

“I’ve never asked you for your professional assessment of Canon Lamberton, have I?” It was hardly an ingenuous question, for he knew full well he had not. His memory was flawless on such matters.

“No, my lord,” I said. “You never have.”

“Well, then, let me ask you now. You are sufficiently familiar with the canon’s personality and methods to have formed some judgments, I presume.”

“Yes, my lord, I am, and I have.”

“And so? Tell me what you think of him.”

“I think you could not have found a better or more suitable deputy anywhere in the length or breadth of Scotland. I find him admirable, competent, articulate, compassionate, pious without being unctuous, effective in all that he does, and loyal—to you and to his calling—above all else.”

“But.” His pounce was catlike. “There’s more. I can hear it in your tone.”

I sucked in a great breath and blew it out. “Nothing at all to Canon Lamberton’s discredit … It’s merely something that troubles me, and it is irrational, not really worthy of mention.”

“Spit it out.”

I shrugged. “Will doesn’t seem to like him, and I don’t know why. But it concerns me.”

“Have you asked Will about it?”

“No, I have not. Mainly because I haven’t had the opportunity.”

“What makes you think he dislikes him?”

“Nothing … the look on his face …” I told my employer what I remembered of the occasion when I had first noticed Will looking strangely at the canon, when we were discussing the need to appoint a replacement for Bishop Fraser of St. Andrews.

He nodded. “Aye, he telt me about it,” he murmured, this time in Scots.

“About what?” I could hear the surprise in my own voice, and he smiled and slipped back into Latin.