The Forest Laird (24 page)

“The English earls, you mean.”

“Aye, in most instances, but when the Scots Earl of Carrick’s men, many of whom are Englishmen, are mixed with those of the English Earl of Hereford, who is to tell which is which in the heat of an argument? The earls are all Edward’s deputies, of course, Scots and English—that goes without saying—but collectively their retainers act as though they are a law unto themselves. They lean heavily on the Scots folk and treat them like serfs.”

“Like serfs? How is that possible?”

“How is it
possible
? Jamie, it’s
commonplace
. Certainly where we are, in the south, but I’ll be surprised if it is different anywhere else. There are too many English here nowadays, and too few of
us
, and there is no war between us—only arrogance on their part and long-suffering acceptance on ours. But they treat us like a conquered folk and make no effort to disguise their contempt for us.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Aye, I can. It’s the reason Will needs to come home. He’s a wanted man because of it, but he did nothing wrong. He committed no crime, broke no laws. He simply crossed the English. But now there’s a price on his head and he’s in hiding and dare not come home.”

“A price on his head … How much?”

“Five silver marks.”

“And for what is he being sought?”

“For assaulting an English soldier who was doing his duty.”

“And is that true?”

“I’ll tell you what happened, and you can judge for yourself.” He wedged his back against the wall behind him and launched immediately into his story.

“About three months ago, perhaps three and a half, Will and I travelled to Glasgow to meet with Bishop Wishart and report on our stewardship, and on our way home again we stopped at Lanark, to pick up some yarn and thread and the like for Mirren at the Lanark Fair. The town was full of soldiery, most of them English, though some of them were Scots, but we had grown accustomed to that, because we had noticed, on the way north, that there were more English everywhere than we’d ever seen before. But we had kept to ourselves, avoided contact with anyone and encountered no difficulty, and behaved the same way on our return journey—until we came to Lanark.

“Something was different there,” he continued, “something was amiss, and we didn’t know what at first. And then we turned a corner into the marketplace and it was all but empty, save for a half-dozen people who immediately stopped what they were doing—they were huddled together over something we couldn’t see—and turned to look at us. They looked frightened, and guilty, and that’s when Will recognized what was wrong. They were afraid of us, though we couldna tell right then what was frightening them. But they werena talking, and they certainly werena laughing. It was scarce midmorning, and the stalls were all quiet and the only other people there at all were soldiers.

“‘These folk think we’re English,’ Will said to me, watching them. ‘They’re afraid of us. It’s our bows. They’ve taken us for English archers, and no wonder. Look over there—half the men on the other side of the square are archers, dressed just like us.’ He was right, and I hadn’t noticed it until that moment. He held up a hand and stood watching the group of folk in front of us, and when they were all looking at him, waiting for him to do or say something else, he raised his hand a little higher. ‘We’re not Englishmen,’ he says, just loud enough for them to hear. ‘No matter how you think we look, we are Scots like you. We carry English bows, but that means nothing. We are merely passing through on our way south to Jedburgh. What has been happening here?’”

“I thought for a while that no one was going to answer him, but then one of them, he looked like the oldest man among them, looked from one to the other of us. ‘Come forward,’ he says, ‘and see for yourselves what’s happening.’ So we did. There was a young fellow among them, lying on a stall table and covered in blood, and they were trying to stop him bleeding. I was able to help them with that, and once we had the bleeding stopped it didna take us long to find out what had happened.

“The old man—his name was Nichol—told us the English had discovered a new game with quarterstaves and were having a grand time with it. It had started earlier, in another town, but word of it had spread quickly so that everyone now knew what was involved. Gangs of English soldiery would swagger through a town, driving the local men ahead of them the way beaters drive game, until they thought they had gathered enough victims for their sport. Then they would round in their prey and the games would begin. The rules were very simple. Two English soldiers would compete in a bout of staves, watched by an audience of mixed Scots and English. When the bout was over, the quarterstaff being an English weapon, the Scots were invited to try them out. Any Scot who dared was encouraged to knock down a braced English soldier by hitting him across the shoulders. Should he fail, there was no penalty other than the recognition of the fact that the Scots were no match for Englishmen in the use of an English weapon. Should he succeed, on the other hand, he would be rewarded with a silver groat for his accomplishment.”

“That sounds fair enough,” I said.

He raised a hand to silence me. “But the Scots could not win, because the weapons they used were flawed.”

I frowned. “How can a quarterstaff be flawed? It’s essentially a club.”

“True, but even a club can be weakened. When they finally found someone who was willing to try for the groat—and believe me, they made a grand business of provoking people, challenging their manhood, insulting them, and questioning their bravery—the contenders were offered their choice of any of the staffs carried by the soldiery. The weapons were laid out on the ground and their owners stepped away from them. The locals were unsuspicious. They had just watched the English soldiers laying about each other with the same weapons.

“Yet two groups of Englishry were mingled there, one carrying sound, solid weapons that they used to fight each other, and the others carrying weakened staves that were used to gull the locals. So some young fellow, like the one we found bleeding in the marketplace, would eventually take up a staff and smash it across the armoured shoulders of the Englishman who stood there waiting for the blow. But every weapon laid out for the young man’s choice had been cut diagonally, and the damage skilfully disguised. So when the hapless dupe, encouraged by everyone, swung the wretched thing at full strength against the armoured man’s back, the staff shattered, the jagged, broken end rebounding viciously to strike the unarmoured Scot, drawing blood most times and frequently inflicting brutal damage, to the great amusement of the watching English …”

A shadow fell across the table between us, and I looked up to see a pretty young woman gazing down at us, her body tilted sideways against the weight of the great wooden jug she balanced against her hip. “You two are deeply into something,” she said, flashing us both a merry grin. “It must be thirsty work, talking so much. Will I pour you some more ale?”

We sat happily and watched her as she filled our mugs and meandered away in search of other drinkers, and as she went, Ewan turned to me, waggling a finger at her departing form.

“I know you’re not a priest yet, but does that—?”

“Not even slightly,” I said, smiling at the tone in his voice as I waved his question aside. “Now tell me what Will did when he found out about this game the English were playing.”

Ewan grinned wolfishly, the girl already forgotten. “Why would you even think he might do something, a quiet lad like our Will?”

“Because that’s the way he is—quiet and shy and bashful and loath to speak his mind. Tell me, what did he do?”

“Will stripped off his green tunic and cloak and pulled on a plain homespun shirt that he borrowed from one of the men in the marketplace. Then he laid his bow case down, and I set aside my quarterstaff and picked up his instead. We left the weapons and the rest of our belongings with Nichol and his people—we’d told them what we were going to do—and we went looking for English bully boys.”

“And found them, no doubt.”

“Oh yes. On the far side of the town, away from the main road. The forest grows right to the edge of the town there—one minute you’re among buildings, the next you’re in the deep forest. Anyway, it was the right kind of place for what the English wanted. There were men-at-arms aplenty there, but most of them were archers, which surprised us at first. We found out later that they were attached to a force brought up from the Welsh borders by the English baron John de Vescy, a crony of Bishop Bek. Anyway, by the time we caught up with them, they had herded a group of locals into a clearing in the woods and were taunting them, defying them to pick up the cudgels and try their luck against an unarmed Englishman. I simply marched Will up to them, holding him by the arm as though I had taken him by force, and pushed him into the middle of the clearing.”

“Just like that? And no one challenged you?”

Ewan looked all innocence. “Why would anyone challenge me? They took me for one of themselves, dressed as they were and carrying a quarterstaff, a cased longbow, and a quiver of arrows. The only two who spoke to me did so in Welsh, and I answered them in Welsh, telling them I was a newcomer, arrived that day. Who was to doubt me? Besides, I had brought them a victim for their amusement. He stood there mute, glaring around him like an angry bull. Everyone was impressed by the size of him at first, but then they saw that he was weaponless, and none too clean, and ill dressed in a tattered old tunic, with bare, dirt-crusted legs and ruined sandals. So they dismissed him and began again as though he wasn’t there.

“But as they talked and harangued their prisoners and explained what they were proposing, he appeared to take an interest, and his interest grew until he began to nod his head and shamble about—not saying a word, mind—and gesturing with his hands to indicate that he wanted to try one of the staffs.”

“And eventually they gave in and let him,” I said.

“They did. When it was plain that no one else wanted to take up the challenge, he was their only chance for amusement. And so the party with the doctored staves came forward and dropped them on the ground, so that he could pick one. No one noticed that I stepped forward with them and dropped mine at the same time. But of course, it was not mine at all. It was Will’s, and he picked it out of the pile, peering at it as though he had never seen such a thing before, and swinging it awkwardly as though that, too, was new to him. I backed away quietly and made my way to where I could take up a covering position to guard his escape, for I knew he would soon be heading towards me, and moving quickly.

“Sure enough, I saw the biggest man among them take up his stance and prepare for Will’s blow. He was armoured heavily enough, with a metal cuirass over a quilted leather jerkin, and his arms were well guarded against injury, and it was plain from the way he swaggered up that he was prepared for what was to follow.

“Well, he was not prepared at all. Who could prepare against a hard-swung staff from Will Wallace? The blow landed like a falling tree and knocked the fool right off his feet, flying arse over end until he smashed into the nearest tree and fell unconscious. And then, before anyone could react, Will took out the two men standing next to him, with two hard chops, side to side, his staff barely moving a foot in either direction, dropping them both where they stood. The first man hit was lucky, though the blow probably cost him a few broken ribs, even with the armour. But Will broke heads that day, and three of the men he struck down stayed down for good. In all, he disabled seven men—and I mean he
disabled
them—before anyone could even begin to rally against him. And by the time anyone did, he was already racing towards me, the other locals scattering in all directions.

“I’d had an arrow nocked to my string since before Will swung his first strike, and now I brought it up and pulled. There were three runners close to catching Will. I felled the first of them, shattering his left shoulder and throwing him backward with the force of my arrow. By the time I had another arrow set, the second man had recognized me and knew what was coming. Still running flat out, he threw himself sideways into the brush by the side of the path and lay there, making no attempt to come out. The third man had pulled a sword from his sheath and was swinging it up to hack at Will when my arrow took him low, just above the left knee, knocking the legs from under him. I nocked a third arrow, but no one moved now among the small group of Englishmen remaining in the clearing.

“I counted five men left there, each of them staring intently at either Will or me, and I knew our descriptions would be spread and they would hunt us down for this, or try to. I waited until Will ran past me and then I spun and followed him, neither of us slacking our pace until we reached the market square and reclaimed our clothing and weapons from Nichol and his companions. We told them to scatter and deny they had ever seen us, and then we made our way to where we had left our horses, and we were quickly out of Lanark.”

I sat silent for some time, absorbing all that he had told me. “So that was three months ago?” I asked eventually.

He shrugged. “Don’t know for certain. Where are we now?”

“September. Today is the sixteenth.”

“Then it would have been four months ago. Late May.”

“And where have you been since then?”

“In the forest, near Selkirk village.”

“Did Mirren go with you?”

“Aye, she had to. Too many people knew who we were. It would no’ have been safe for her to stay. Besides, she wouldna leave Will.”

“A rough life for a woman, that, living in the forest, under open skies.”

“Not at all. They live in a cave, those two, and it’s better than many a house I’ve seen. It’s dry, warm, spacious, and well lit, comfortably furnished, and well hidden. It even has separate bedchambers and a clean pool.”

“A pool? You mean for bathing?”

“Aye, though it’s chilly, even in high summer. It’s spring fed. Pure, crystal water.”