The Forest Laird (6 page)

I had never seen the like of what followed, nor have I witnessed the equal of it to this day. Ewan Scrymgeour dealt death in a woodland meadow that day as though he were the god of death himself. Standing alone beneath the tree on which his mother had been killed, he slew every man and dog who came against him, shooting them down indiscriminately as they attracted his attention, some within mere yards of him, like the first dog that died in the air as it sprang for his throat, and others from greater distances. None of the men attacking him had bows, and that was his sole advantage. To deal with him they had to come within spear-throwing distance, or within a sword’s length of him, and he killed them one by one before they could.

His assailants soon recognized that he never missed, and they lost all desire to fight. But these men had murdered his mother, and Ewan shot them down mercilessly as they rode and ran away until only two of them remained alive—a man on foot, who had hung back beyond range of the archer’s bow, and the leader of the mounted group. This man, who wore the mail and half armour of a knight, had held himself well clear of the fighting, sitting his horse below Will and me at the base of our slope and watching as the action swirled and eddied.

Ewan lowered his bow, still holding an arrow nocked, his eyes fixed on the man below us. But then the man on foot began to run away. I do not believe Ewan had been aware of the fellow until he began to run, but the archer spun towards him and raised his bow again. He stepped into his pull, drew the bowstring back to his ear, held it there for a moment, then released. The fleeing man had been close to three hundred paces distant when he broke into his run and he was running almost as fast as Ewan had run earlier when the arrow struck between his shoulders, its force, even from such a great distance, tumbling him forward, wide armed, into a sprawling, motionless lump.

Even at the age of eight and never having seen a longbow used before, I knew that the feat I had just witnessed was extraordinary. But the mounted knight had missed it, for he had swung his horse around as soon as he saw the other man divert Ewan’s attention and was now driving hard up the slope towards us, his bared sword held high. I could not see his face, for he wore a visored helmet, but I knew that he meant to kill us.

Will pushed me down and away from him, shouting at me to
roll
, and as I threw myself to the ground I saw him run towards the oncoming man and then dive into a downhill roll, his head tucked into his knees. I heard a thunderous thumping of hooves above and beside me, then heard a violent hiss as the point of a hard-swung sword flashed past my face, and frightened out of my wits I rolled again, as the rider reined in his mount and turned, gathering himself to slash at me again, sure this time of his target. I saw his arm go up and heard myself whimper, and then came a sound like a dull, hard hammer blow. My would-be killer flew backward over his horse’s rump and crashed to the ground.

I had not seen the arrow hit him, but when I scrambled to my knees to look it was there, transfixing him, buried almost to its feathered fletching in the very centre of his chest, sunk through the layers of armour meant to protect him. I could see Will’s feet and legs beside me, and when I looked up at him his eyes were wider than I had ever seen them. Still dazed and hardly believing I had not been killed, I stood up to look for big Ewan, and there he was with his bow by his side, standing motionless where I had last seen him, beneath the tree, beside the body of his mother. It would be years before I learned to appreciate how difficult it is for a bowman to shoot accurately at a target that is far above or below him.

Will was still staring at the arrow buried in the dead knight’s chest. He turned to me and blinked, then looked down the slope.

“Let’s help Ewan bury his mother,” he said.

As we stood silent over the grave Will had helped Ewan dig with the shovel his mother had used in cultivating her wild crops—I was judged to be too small for such heavy work—I found myself thinking of the carnage that had swept into our lives during the previous few days. Numbed by the grief in Ewan’s face, I stared down at the mound of fresh dirt over the woman I had never known and saw the faces of my own recent dead—my uncle Alan and my aunt Martha, Will’s parents; Timothy and Charlie, Sir Alan’s oldest and most faithful retainers, bound to him and his family by a lifetime of service and dedication to the bloodlines of the healthy little herd of cattle they had bred and reared; Jessie, the plump, careworn household cook who had mothered me after my arrival in Ellerslie; Roddy and Daft Sammy, the slow-witted pair of labourers who had worked the cattle stalls and sometimes served in the stables with Angus, the dour old Highland groom; and sunny little Jenny, the laughing child whose severed head had bounced and rolled across the ground in Dalfinnon Woods before my eyes. Had that been only three days before? Ten dead, including the unknown woman we had buried here, and behind us, in the little valley, an additional eighteen, fourteen of them men, the others dogs. So much death. So much blood.

I have no recollection of leaving the graveside, no memory of entering the cave that had been Ewan’s mother’s home. I regained my awareness only after night had fallen, when I opened my eyes to find myself sitting against a wall close by a roaring fire. Ewan and Will were seated on the other side of the flames that filled the hollow space with leaping shadows. Ewan’s legs were apart, stretched towards the fire, and he appeared to be asleep, his single eye closed and his slumped back supported by the sturdy frame of a shortlegged chair of the kind my mother had used while nursing my younger siblings. Behind him, the mouth of the cave was outlined in light, its centre filled with blackness.

Will sat rapt, gazing at Ewan’s massive bow as he ran his hands, first one and then the other, up and down the planed, polished surface of the unstrung stave. It was far taller than he was, and perfectly circular in section, too thick in the middle for his ten-yearold hand to grasp, but tapering gently towards either end, where it was less than a finger’s width in diameter and carefully notched to hold the looped ends of the string of braided sinew that would transform it from a simple but beautiful staff into the deadly weapon that could hurl an arrow for hundreds of yards to pierce steel plate and heavy, linked-ring mail.

He somehow sensed me watching and hefted the weapon parallel to the floor so that I could see the flames reflecting along its polished length. “Have ye ever seen the like, Jamie?” His voice was filled with wonder. “Have ye ever seen
anything
like this? I want to learn to use one o’ these, to use it like Ewan.”

Our host had not been sleeping, for he spoke now without moving his head or opening his eye. “Then you have a long road ahead of you, Will Wallace, for it will take you years to grow big enough to grip it properly, and longer still to build the thews to pull it. That is from my mother’s people’s land of Wales. It is not meant for ordinary men, and ordinary men have neither the strength nor the skills to pull it, let alone use it.”

“I’ll learn,” Will answered, “though it take me all my life from this day on. My name cames from the Welsh—Uallash. That’s the Gaelic word for Welsh. Will you teach me?”

Ewan opened his single eye. “Teach you! How can I do that? I am an outlaw, and now a wanted murderer. I slew fourteen men today.”

“You killed fourteen men who murdered your mother.” Will looked directly back at him, his face strangely solemn, his words emotionless, and as he spoke it struck me that my carefree friend and cousin had changed greatly in the past few days. “Forbye four dogs that sought to kill you,” he added in that same tone. “You didna
murder
anybody.”

Ewan grunted something deep in his chest that might have been a sardonic laugh. “I doubt the folk who find Laird William and his men will see it that way.”

“That was Laird William? The knight?” Again I noted the flatness in my cousin’s voice.

“No knight, that one,” Ewan replied. “Nobly born, but base in all things else. Aye, that was William, Laird of Ormiston, the craven who kept far off, then tried to kill you two when he thought himself safe from me. Who else did you think it might have been?”

Will still wore that expression that was new to me, a stillness marked by cold and angry-looking eyes.

“It matters not. He’s dead, and so he should be. Where will you go now?”

“Back to the forest, to Ettrick. There’s nothing to keep me here now. And if they hunted me before, they’ll really hound me now.”

Will stared into the fire, and what he said next came as a surprise to me as much as it did to Ewan.

“Come with us, then, to Elderslie. To our kinfolk there. No one there will ken you for an outlaw. They winna know you at all. We’ll say you worked for my father and werena there when the farm was attacked. Afterwards you found us, then brought us to Elderslie. They will be grateful for that, and my uncle Malcolm will find a place for you. He’s a good man, for I’ve heard my father say he set great store by him. And you, you’re strong—worth your wage to any man that hires you. You’ll be better off there, working for us, than hiding in the forest a’ the time.”

The big man produced what I now knew to be a smile. “Working for you, eh? How old did you say you are?”

“I’m ten. But I’ll soon be eleven. And I didn’t mean working for me. I was talking about my uncle Malcolm.”

“And what about my face?”

“It’s a good face … once you get over the fright of it. You can wear your mask at first, if you like, till folk get to know you.”

“Hmm.” Ewan’s broad brow, the only unmarred surface on his face, furrowed. “How am I to know if I would like it there?”

“The same way we’ll know. We’ve never been there either, so we’ll find that out thegither. But you’ll like it. And besides, I’ll need you there to teach me to be an archer.”

Ewan Scrymgeour placed one massive palm across his eyes and shook his head, then inhaled a great breath. “Well, William Wallace, that might be a good idea, and it might not. I’ll ha’e to think on it. Now get you two to bed, the both of you. I’m going back outside to talk to my mother about it.”

CHAPTER TWO

1

“N
ow sit down, all of you, and tell me again. Will, you tell me. And this time, take your time. Tell me all of it and leave nothing out. Sit.”

Sir Malcolm Wallace’s voice was a deep, rumbling roll of sound, his mouth hidden beneath a bushy, greying beard. He was nowhere near as large as the archer Ewan, but he somehow conveyed the impression of being much larger than he was. I suspected that had more than a little to do with the fine quality of his clothing, which even I could see had been tailored to emphasize the width of his chest and shoulders. He had dropped into what was obviously his own chair by the unlit fireplace, one side of his head and upper body bathed in light from the window in the wall. Will, Ewan, and I stood in what felt to me like darkness in the middle of the large, wood-panelled room.

All three of us moved obediently to sit facing him on three straight-backed wooden chairs, and as Will cleared his throat nervously, I looked about me, noting the richness with which I was surrounded. Sir William’s house was as big and solid as its owner, built of sandstone and far more grand than the house in Ellerslie where I had lived for the past two years with his brother’s family. The room in which we now sat had two windows and housed a heavy table with eight plain wooden chairs. The room’s only other furnishings were a massive sideboard against the rear wall and a slightly smaller armchair, padded with brightly coloured cushions, that sat across the fireplace from Sir Malcolm’s. His wife, Lady Margaret, had gone to the kitchens to prepare food for us.

Will cleared his throat a second time, then launched into his tale—our tale—from the start of it on that already distant-seeming day in Ellerslie a week earlier. Sir Malcolm had already heard it once, a garbled, blurted version, but now he sat stock-still, his fingers in his beard, and listened closely. Will stumbled in his description of what the men had done to the two of us, unsure how much to say or how to phrase it, but Sir Malcolm asked no questions and sat stone-faced throughout the recitation. Only once did his eyes move from Will, and that was to gaze speculatively at Ewan Scrymgeour when Will spoke of how we had come to meet, and eventually his eyes returned to his nephew, who was already talking about the final stage of our journey, leading to our arrival here half an hour earlier. The knight waited until he was sure Will had no more to say, then turned to Ewan.

“You have my gratitude, Master Scrymgeour, but you’ll forgive me if I ask a few questions.” Ewan’s nod of agreement was barely perceptible as Sir Malcolm continued. “Forbye the tragic matter of the murders committed here, which remains to be dealt with but canna be changed, it’s clear you saved the boys from further harm and brought them safely here. But I have to ask myself why. Why would a grown man leave his life and walk away from everything he knows to help two lost and hapless stripling boys? Few men I know would do that.”

Will had said nothing at all about Ewan’s background and had left out the episode of the Ormiston slaughter, because we had decided, he and I, that we owed too much to the archer ever to name him outlaw. Ewan’s plan, which we boys had decided to subvert so we could remain with him, had been to deliver us close by Sir Malcolm’s house, then continue on his way to Selkirk Forest, where he hoped to join a band of others like himself, living in the greenwood. As it turned out, though, we had been discovered by a large group of Sir Malcolm’s own workers, who had brought us to the home farm to meet their master face to face.

“Aye, yon’s a fair question and I’ll answer it fairly.” There was no hint of subservience in Ewan’s voice. He spoke as a free man addressing an equal. The big archer flexed his fingers and sat up straight in his chair. “I buried my mother the day before we left to come here, and there was nothing to hold me there any longer. No friends, no loyalties, nothing to bind me. The boys were alone and helpless, headed for Elderslie or Paisley. I have friends in Selkirk. So it made sense to me to see them safely here in passing.”

A silence filled the room, broken only by the song of a blackbird beyond the windows. Finally Sir Malcolm nodded. “Friends in Selkirk, aye … That would be in the forest there, I’m thinking?”

Ewan dipped his head again. “Aye, Sir Malcolm. In the forest.”

Sir Malcolm rose from his chair and went to stand by the window, gazing out, his hands clasped loosely at his back. “It comes to me that I know no one in all these parts who has friends in Selkirk Forest,” he said softly. “In the town, yes. I have two friends in the town. It is a small place. But in the forest? No. The men there are … different. What did you do to earn their friendship, these men?”

“Nothing. I have never met a one of them. My home forest is Ettrick.”

“Ettrick Forest covers all of south Scotland, with Selkirk Forest but a part of it. You are an archer.”

“Aye, sir, I am. Trained in England and in Wales. I fought with Prince Edward.”

Sir Malcolm turned back slowly, silhouetted now against the window’s light. “Did you, now? I hear he is a doughty fighter. And what happened to make you change?”

For the first time, Ewan looked surprised. “He turned to invade Wales, to conquer my folk and make us part of England. I am but half Welsh, but I would have no part of that, and my father was newly dead, so I came to Scotland to care for my mother, who was Welsh.”

“Scrymgeour. Your father was a Scot?”

“Aye, from Kyle. Bruce country.”

“Archers are seldom farmers.”

“True. Nor am I one.”

“Your father did not own a farm?”

“Once, he did. But it was hard, sour ground. He fell sick and could not work. And then he died.”

“So what entitles you to live in Ettrick Forest?”

I was having difficulty making sense of what was being said here because the two men were talking obliquely, their tones, although I could not see how, evidently conveying more than their mere words. I glanced at Will and saw from the frown between his brows that he was as perplexed as I was.

“
Entitles
me?” Ewan’s voice was suddenly harder, and he moved his jaw in a way that emphasized the disfigurement of his mashed nose. “I might argue with you, Sir Malcolm, on your choice of words. But the entitlement, if such it was, sprang from the ill nature of a bullying, strutting fool who thought himself all-powerful.”

Sir Malcolm’s head tilted slightly.

“My mother, rest her soul, was a healer,” Ewan continued. “Had been one all her life and was famed for it. A good woman with a good calling. A local lairdling had an infant son who fell sick, and so he sent his people to fetch her, to cure the boy. But the child was beyond help. He died of whatever ailed him and his mother named my mother witch and they tried to hang her. I saved her life, but in the doing of it blood was spilt and I was outlawed.”

“What lordship was this?”

Ewan met the older man’s eye. “Ormiston.”

“Of Dumfries? Sir Thomas?”

“No, sir. Of Clewes, Sir Walter.”

“Thomas’s brother. I know him well. You call him fool, but he is not.”

“Sir Walter is dead, sir, these three years. His son William is now Laird of Ormiston.”

“Aha. And he seems not to be the man his father was. Is that what you are telling me?”

“I tell you nothing, Sir Malcolm. I was but answering your question.”

“Aye, right.” Sir Malcolm hesitated. “You said you saved your mother’s life, yet buried her but recently. Were the two events connected?”

“Aye, sir. They found her again, in a place where I thought her safe.”

“And?”

“They hanged her.”

“I see. And this time you were not close enough to save her.”

“No. But they were still close by when I arrived. They sought to hang me, too.”

“And?”

“They will hang no more old folk. Nor young, for that matter.”

“And so you head for Selkirk … How many did you kill?”

Ewan sniffed. “All of them. I am an archer. They had clubs and blades.”

Sir Malcolm was frowning. “How many?”

“Fourteen men, all save one of them hirelings bought and brought to keep the local folk in terror. And four dogs.”

“Sweet Jesus! And William of Ormiston?”

“He was the fourteenth man.”

Sir Malcolm’s frown deepened to a scowl, and suddenly Will spoke up, his voice taut with urgency. “He was trying to kill us, Uncle. The man Ormiston. Ewan had left him alive. We were watching from the slope above and he came at us, trying to ride us down. His horse almost trampled Jamie, but he rolled clear and the rider turned around again to kill him with his sword, and Ewan shot him from the valley bottom, two hundred yards below us.”

The tense, dark brows smoothed slightly and the eyes beneath them turned to Ewan. “Is that true?”

The big man shrugged. “It was a touchy shot. I might easily have missed and had but one arrow left.”

“From so far away?”

“It was a good distance. I made the shot.”

“And my nephew and his cousin are here. Then we have much to thank you for, it seems. More than I thought.”

“Not much. I was there, and I was fortunate not to miss. After that, the walking was simple, since we were all headed eastward.”

“You could have travelled southeast and sent the boys on alone.”

“Aye, but I enjoyed the company along the road and I was in no great haste.”

“Hmm. And now what?”

Ewan smiled. “And now, if you will grant me your blessing, I’ll move on south, to Selkirk.”

I sensed Will look at me but I resisted the temptation to look back, knowing that his eyes would be filled with apprehension, for if Ewan left now, so too would Will’s newborn dream of mastering the longbow.

Sir Malcolm looked from Will to me, his gaze lingering on each of us, before he turned back to Ewan. “You say you buried your mother. Will she be found?”

“Not easily, no. They found her alive, but they’ll no’ find her grave.”

“And the others. Will they find them?”

“Aye, sooner rather than later. I left them where they fell, made no attempt to hide them. They were too many. But I cut my arrows out of them before I left.”

“Because someone might have recognized them?”

“No. Because they were all I had, too valuable to leave behind.”

“And think you anyone will believe a single man killed all of them? Fourteen, you said, and four dogs?”

The question surprised Ewan, for his eyes widened. “Aye, that’s the number, but that thought had not occurred to me.”

“Nor would it to most men. Whoever finds them will believe they were surprised by an armed band. No one will imagine a single man might be to blame. But will they think to name you as the leader?”

“No.” Ewan’s headshake was firm. “I had not been seen in those parts for more than two years until that day, and none expected to see me then.”

“So you will not be accused. You are sure you left none alive?”

“I am.”

Sir Malcolm nodded abruptly. “So be it, then. Blessings come in many guises. You can stay here with us, if you would like. No one knows you here, save the boys, and God knows I can find employment for a man of your size and strength.”

“So be you mean that and are not jesting with me, I will stay gladly.”

Sir Malcolm slapped his hands on his thighs and surged to his feet, unaware of the elation with which Will had beaten him to it. “It is done, then,” he growled. “Welcome to Elderslie and to my household. Now I have much to do. I must send word of the boys’ tale to Ayr, to the Countess of Carrick. My murdered family’s blood cries out for justice and she will know what to do. I doubt the husband’s there yet. Robert Bruce has troubles in his own lands of Annandale, and young Will’s two brothers ride with him. The Countess will pass on the word to where it needs to go. Then I must summon my brother Peter and my cousin Duncan here, to meet these lads and help me decide what should be done with them. In the meantime, you three are hungry and road weary, so we will feed you and find you a place to sleep for a few hours, and after that you’ll feel much better.

“Now, let’s be about our business.”

2

I
thought at first that I would dislike my cousin Duncan the monk, for he looked cold and unfriendly the first time I set eyes upon him, but I was to learn that he was one of those men whose forbidding exterior conceals a vastly different reality. Of all men I have known, save only Ewan Scrymgeour, there has been none whom I loved more than my perpetually scowling cousin, for Brother Duncan Wallace’s soul was a brilliant light shut up inside a leather bottle, its luminous purity glimpsed but occasionally through a dried seam. He was a transcriptor at Paisley Abbey, responsible for the translation, copying, illumination, maintenance, and welfare of the library’s priceless manuscripts. Though at our first meeting I knew none of those words, and far less what they entailed, I quickly came to know them more than passing well, for they became my life as Duncan passed his great love of them on to me.

His cousin, Father Peter, was a priest at the Abbey, as open and friendly as Brother Duncan seemed aloof and distant, and Will and I both liked him immediately. He welcomed us with wide-stretched arms, and then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he invited us to walk with him around his brother’s grounds, and there he spoke to us of Will’s parents and the happy times he had shared with them. By the time we arrived back at the house, both of us felt we had known Father Peter all our lives.

The family gathering that followed was precisely that: a gathering of Sir Malcolm’s family, with ourselves as the new additions. Lady Margaret was there—
presiding
was the word that occurred to me immediately upon seeing her matronly presence—as were her two younger sons, Henry and Malcolm, aged fourteen and twelve. The eldest son, Steven, was squire to a knight in Lanercost, we learned, and had not been home for a year. The family’s two daughters were also in attendance, Isabelle, the younger at seven, being firmly kept in her place by her older sister Anne, who, even at eleven, showed signs of becoming a beauty. In addition to these, clustered around the table were Sir Malcolm, his brother Peter, his cousin Duncan, myself and Will. Ewan attended as Sir Malcolm’s guest and stood at the rear of the room, close by the doors, leaning back against the wall with his hands clasped loosely in front of him as he watched.