The Forest Laird (22 page)

He arched an eyebrow at me. “Because that was the way things happened. We’ll get to that. Right now let me tell you what Will was thinking when first we left here.

“He had been left with no choice but to quit his employment, his home, and his family, and to take me with him, which, as he saw it, deprived me of
my
livelihood as well. Nothing I could say would change his mind on that. And besides, in his eyes, he had lost his hopes of winning Mirren. He believed Hugh Braidfoot would never consent to having his daughter wed to a penniless forester who was under suspicion in a hanging crime—the selfsame man, mind, who had deprived her of a wealthy husband in the first place.”

“But that is nonsense. Will was guilty of no crime.”

“
Under suspicion
, I said. And he was. Think of it from Will’s view. He couldna bear the thought of losing Mirren. And so he decided Graham should—what were the words he used? Something he learned in school … Graham should make reparations. That was it. And I agreed with him. Still do.”

“I see. And what were these reparations?”

Ewan hooked one long leg over a padded arm and stretched his other foot towards the fire. “Restitution. And before you ask me, I’ll tell you. Restitution for the threat to his life in the first place and the malice that bred it. Restitution, too, for lost opportunity—to woo, wed, and live a normal life as an honest man. Restitution for lost time in which to live up to obligations to employer and charges. Restitution for monies lost in recompense for filling those obligations. And restitution for losses other than those that can’t easily be replaced—good name and reputation being first among them.” He laid his head back against his chair, watching me levelly. “I’ll tell you how we made the tally, too.” He held up one hand, forefinger extended, preparing to count the points off on his fingers, but I interrupted him.

“We, you said. You were involved in this tallying?”

“Of course I was. Will had seen the two bales of prime wool proffered for a year of Masses to shorten the old man’s years in Purgatory. That cleared his mind wondrously and set a value on his thoughts concerning how he had been wronged and how much he had lost thereby, in forfeiture. He would have made a canny merchant, our Will. And once I saw the way his mind was set, I helped him out. So …”

He began to count on his fingers. “For the two major offences against him, threat of death and loss of marriage prospects, two bales each. For the loss of work, wage, and good name, one bale apiece, making seven bales in all. But then, as any good merchant will, he included his costs. He added in the costs of transportation—two wagons with teams and drivers, he thought—and covered those with two more bales, making nine altogether.”

“You
stole
nine bales of wool?”

“Nine bales of
prime
wool, Jamie. But we didna steal it and it wasna really nine, as things turned out. We just claimed nine as due to us. Or as owed to Will. The whole thing was”—he thought for a moment—“straightforward. Bar a few earlier arrangements.”

I sat there immobile, my mind consumed with the thought that my cousin had become a thief and placed himself beyond the law. No wonder, then, that he had stayed away so long and that Ewan had been alert to the presence of others.

“Tell me exactly what took place,” I said, “because all you’ve done to this point is confuse me. Start again at the beginning.”

“It’s a gospel you want, then.” He sighed, then took a long swallow of ale. “Well, if I fall asleep in the telling, in God’s name don’t wake me.

“It started at the main road. I made to turn right and Will went left instead, as though towards Glasgow. When I asked him where he was going, he said Kilbarchan and pointed west. I kept my mouth shut and followed him for the next while until we reached the village.

“It’s a strange wee place, a cluster of cottages, less than ten, I think, and all the folk are weavers. The houses all have looms in them, sometimes more than one, so there’s hardly any room left for the folk to sleep. We stopped at one house and asked how we would find the Graham place, and the weaver pointed out the way to us. It was another mile distant. He said we couldn’t miss it, and he was right, there it was.

“I said Kilbarchan was a strange wee place, but Graham’s property was a strange
big
place. Four stone buildings in a walled enclosure. Prosperous, as you’d expect. One of the four was the main house and the other three were warehouses, we discovered. We sat on the crest, looking down at it, and counted the people moving about down there. There weren’t many. I counted eight of them, and they were all around the main house. I thought we would leave then, but Will kicked his horse forward, and we rode down.”

He pulled thoughtfully at his ale again. “Some self-important fellow met us at the front of the house, asking to know our business. He was the household steward, but with the old man dead, he thought himself in charge of everything. Your cousin amazed me by presenting himself as a well-bred man of affairs, addressing the fellow in Latin until it became clear that the man could not understand a word. From then on, he spoke plain Scots, saying he had been sent to make inquiries by his master, Lord Ormiston of Dumfries, regarding a contract that Sir Thomas had with Alexander Graham the wool merchant for the purchase of raw wool. Told the fellow that Sir Thomas had paid in advance months earlier but that upon reaching Paisley the previous day, with the intent of taking delivery, he had been informed of the merchant’s untimely death and, not wishing to trespass upon the family’s grief, had sent us two to ask when we might return to complete our business to everyone’s satisfaction. That impressed even me—
to everyone’s satisfaction
.”

“So what did this fellow say?”

“Nothing much. Will’s manner had cowed him. He was the old man’s steward, as I said, but a mere house servant. He had little knowledge of the working end of the old man’s business, and he mumbled something about the workforce all having gone home to wait for what would happen next. And then he told us that another wool merchant, a Master Waddie, would be coming over from Paisley in two days’ time to act in the interests of the son and heir, taking a detailed inventory of the materials in store and the contracts outstanding. He said word would not yet have had time to reach young Master Graham, who served the Lord Robert Bruce as a verderer and would most likely be somewhere on the Bruce lands in Annandale. It would take him, the man believed, at least two days to reach home, so he and the Waddie fellow might well arrive at the same time.

“Will said he would talk to Lord Ormiston, but that his lordship had been long away from home, about his affairs in Edinburgh, and was anxious to get back to his wife, who was infirm. He then asked if we might be permitted to pay our last respects to the old man before we left, on his lordship’s behalf, and the fellow let us into the house and then left us alone. Old Graham was laid out on his bed in the main room. There was a priest there, and two monks, and a couple of others, men and women both, most of whom were peering about them as though they had never been there before.”

“And then?”

“We knelt and prayed by the bedside. Well, we knelt anyway, while the priest prayed. And then, having established our right to be there, about our supposed master’s business, we walked around the other buildings, the warehouses and barns and stables, and three big, stinking sheds where the wool was treated and combed before they baled it.” A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “At that point I think you would have been right about the thievery. Will was looking, I believe, for an easy way to rob the place.

“One of the stone warehouses had a private room with a padlocked door, and it was obvious that the old man had worked in there on his affairs. But the padlock was unlocked, the door was open, and no one was nearby, so we went in. There were papers and parchments everywhere, strewn about all over the place, as though someone had been rooting around in there looking for something to steal. Will opened a small wooden chest that sat on the big writing table and pulled out a handful of scrolls—single sheets of parchment, all of them unsealed but rolled and tied, with ribbons and blank seals attached. He opened one, and then another, and then he began to smile. He flipped me the one that had made him smile. I looked at it closely, but it took me a while to realize its import …” His voice faded and he smiled again at the memory.

“Well, what was it?” I prodded.

“A contract, a bill of sale. With spaces left blank for the details of the transaction. But it was signed by Alexander Graham. None of the others were, but for some reason the old man had signed his name and set his seal to this one. Will took it back from me and tucked it and three others into his scrip, and then we went off and continued our inspection. All three barns were stuffed to the roof with bales of wool, some of it prime, some poorer. But they were
stuffed
, Jamie. Hundreds and hundreds of bales. We found out later that they had been preparing to ship trains of wagons to Glasgow, Dumfries, and Edinburgh the following week, for the Michaelmas Fairs in September, less than a month away.

“On our way back out to our horses, we met the steward again, and he was as friendly as could be. Will asked him if someone could tell us about wagons, and he directed us to one of the wooden barns outside the compound walls, where we found an old man getting ready to leave. He showed us an enormous wagon, the biggest I have ever seen, and told us it could carry ten full-sized bales with ease. Then he showed us the leather sheets they used to cover the bales for protection, and the long straps they used to secure the load. Will asked him how many horses, and he told us two. Two big whoresons was what he said.”

In spite of my queasiness at the crime being described, I found myself fascinated. “So what happened then?”

“We came right back to Paisley, to find help for what Will had in mind. We needed some men we could trust, and so we went to Jamie Crawford’s howff.”

“Of course you did.” I knew Crawford’s howff well. It had been a favoured haunt of ours for a long time, a plain but well-run tavern frequented by archers and other interesting characters, where the food was simple but wholesome, the ale was dependable, and no one ever asked awkward questions.

“One of the sons, Alan, was there,” Ewan said, “and he and Will went off into a corner. I could tell, watching them, that Alan liked what he was hearing, grinning and nodding his head and looking around the room.”

Alan Crawford and Will had been friends since our first year at the Abbey. He was a big, bluff fellow, Will’s age and almost as big. The only weaponry Alan ever carried was a long, single-edged dirk that hung at his side—I had never known him to bare the blade—and a heavy quarterstaff that Will had taught him to use. He was the only man I had ever seen who could best Will Wallace in a toe-to-toe bout. The respect that achievement garnered him was widespread.

“Did you know what Will was telling him?”

Ewan grinned. “That we had need of help and would pay well for two weeks’ work. Four men, to help us take a heavy wagon north, then bring it back. Good men, willing to work hard and to fight if need be. A silver groat a day, each man.”

I stifled the urge to whistle. A groat, our smallest silver coin, was worth fourpence, and the maximum going wage for a skilled labourer was twopence a day. A groat a day, for two weeks’ worth of easy work, was a deal of money.

“So,” I said instead. “Did you find your four?”

“Five,” Ewan answered, his grin still in place. “Alan was the first, but there was a man there we had not expected to find. You remember Robertson, the archer Will bested the day he first met Mirren? Well, he was there, and Alan vouched for him. He remembered Will and was glad to see him—no hard feelings at all—so he was our second. Then there was Big Andrew Miller, who’s always ready for anything that smells of a fight, and Long John of the Knives was the fourth.”

The faces of the last two men flashed into my mind, although I had not seen either one in years. Big Andrew’s name was a jest, for he was one of the smallest men in Paisley, but he was lean and wiry and as strong as a braided sinew bowstring, and he carried a crossbow wherever he went. Long John of the Knives, on the other hand, towered several inches over Will, and there was never any doubt of where his name came from. He wore a heavy belt around his waist, and from it hung a dozen sheathed knives, all of different sizes. Long John could sink any one of them into any surface, with astonishing speed, from twenty paces. He was a peaceful man, though, and threw only at targets, perhaps because no one ever gave him cause to take offence. Will, I thought, had chosen well.

“Who was the fifth, then?”

“An outlander, a Gael from the northwest, from an island called Skye. He had been in Paisley for a month or so, and Alan and Robertson had both befriended him. No one knew much about him, but both men vouched for him as being tight lipped, trustworthy, and a dour man in a fight. They called him Shoomy, but his real name is Seumas, Gaelic for James. Will had been watching him since we arrived, and I could tell he was taken by the man, though it might just have been the sword. Shoomy carries a sword that’s much like Will’s bow—bigger and longer and more dangerous looking than any other to be seen. He’s a big lad, tall and lean, but well muscled and quick, and that sword gives him twice the reach of any man around.”

He scratched gently at the side of his nose. “So, there we were within the hour, seven of us in all, and a bargain struck. Will borrowed ink and pens from Jamie Crawford and went away to make his own arrangements for the following day, while I rented some nags for the five lads.

“We slept in the stable at the howff that night and were on the road by dawn. By mid-morning we were back at the Graham place. There was hardly anyone there—a few labourers lazing about and a huddle of women carding wool was all we saw. Will presented the steward with a completed contract for the delivery of nine bales of prime wool and the rental of a heavy wagon and team to transport them. It bore the name of Lord Thomas Ormiston of Dumfries—we discovered later that he had been dead for six years by then,” he added, flashing me a grin, “and the signature and seal of Alexander Graham himself, indicating the full amount had been paid months earlier, delivery to wait upon Lord Ormiston’s return from the north. We received a written bill of sale in return, left one of the nine bales as surety for the return of the wagon, then loaded the remaining eight and headed, everyone supposed, for Dumfries.”