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  “True, but de Cheyne is but one voice. A solitary bishop whose flock disapproves of his personal loyalty to the English King.”

  “His flock? The Aberdonians?” I heard the scorn in my own voice, remembering something I had overheard an admired teacher say when I was a student at Paisley Abbey. “Forgive me, my lord bishop, but the Aberdonians are not seen by other Scots as being Scots. They’re universally distrusted, regarded as aliens. Even their speech is unintelligible to anyone not born and raised there.”

  His eyebrow rose noticeably. “Ah,” he breathed. “Expertise, I see. Have you met many folk from Aberdeen, Jamie?”

  “No, my lord. I’ve met but a few. But they’re a strange and different breed.”

  “Strange, perhaps, and different sounding I will grant you. But they are Scots, Jamie, as much as we are, and they detest England and the English just as heartily as does your cousin, though for different reasons. What do you know of the history of Aberdeen, or Aberdonians, for that matter?”

  “Less than nothing,” I said.

  “Well at least you admit it,” he said quietly. “I myself was unwilling to do that, and I fear my feelings were much the same as yours until I had a long and frank discussion, no more than a few days ago, with a priest from those parts. He overheard something I said and took me to task for my mistaken beliefs, and I was greatly impressed by what he had to say.”

  He was looking at me expectantly, and so I asked, “Was he from Aberdeen?”

  “No, but he was from Petty, in Moray, which is close by.”

  “And what did he tell you, my lord?”

  “Well, to begin, he pointed out that for hundreds of years, in the course of trade and commerce, the people of our east coast have intermarried with the traders and sailors from the Low Countries, and over the generations these incomers have been absorbed into the general populace, so that they are marked now only by their ‘foreign’-sounding names. No one questions their origins now because they are Scots, plain and simple. But that was never the case in Aberdeen.” He saw my brows crease at that and nodded, forging ahead. “It was hundreds of years ago, but from the outset, for whatever reasons, and most probably because of its location, Aberdeen attracted a far larger settlement of Low Country merchants and traders than any other place did. It was remote, it had a fine harbour, and it was easily accessible, offering great advantages in access to overseas ports and trade. And so the incomers stayed there and prospered. But where their fellows elsewhere intermarried with the local Scots, the populace in Aberdeen were numerous enough to keep to themselves, and because they were forever receiving new immigrants from the homelands, they never had the need to marry outside their own kind. And so they became the folk they are today, isolated, insular, and different from other Scots in many ways, speaking in their own fashion and living as they do. But they are Scots nonetheless, after hundreds of years of living here.”

  “And they disapprove of Bishop de Cheyne’s adherence to Edward of England?”

  His lordship shrugged. “I cannot speak to that, but Father Murray seemed convinced of their deep dislike of the English.”

  “Murray? From Petty? Is he related to Andrew Murray of Petty?”

  “Aye, close kin. He is currently pastor of Bothwell, which is owned by Sir Andrew’s wealthy brother William, whom men call le Riche. Aha!” His eyes widened slightly as he saw Martin nod. “Do you know the man, Father?”

  “Familiar name, my lord,” Martin said. “And not merely to me. William le Riche is spoken of throughout the land, and I even heard of him in France. There’s nothing like being wealthy beyond the dreams of men to get your name well known.”

  “That, I fear, is one of the great and unjustifiable truths of life in this vale of tears,” the bishop said, and then looked all around the spot where we were sitting on the riverbank, beneath the massive spread of the ancient elm. Then he sighed and bent forward to pick up the wineskin, which remained more than half full despite our best efforts to deplete it over the previous half-hour. “You know, I hate to leave this beautiful spot, but I think we should be moving on. Is there anything else that either one of you wishes to talk about before we go?”

  It was a polite question, born more of courtesy than anything else, but it reminded me that I had, in fact, something important that I wanted to discuss with him.

  “If it please you, my lord, I do have a matter to raise with you, but I would prefer to do so privily, whenever you might find it convenient.”

  “Will it take long?”

  “No, my lord, not at all.”

  “Then it would be convenient now. I have no doubt Father Martin will excuse us if we take a stroll together.”

  Martin was on his feet in an instant. “No need for that, my lord. You two stay here and talk and I’ll walk on ahead and wait for you along the way.”

  Neither of us offered any argument, and he picked up his shoulder pack and walked away, leaving the bishop looking at me and waiting for me to broach my subject.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE PERTH RAID

  An hour later the three of us were together again, walking side by side as we followed the path towards the coast and Castle Turnberry. We walked in silence for the most part, though Martin and the bishop spoke to each other quietly from time to time.

  For my own part, I was content to walk with my own thoughts, reviewing my conversation with the bishop on the matter of my employment. I had been anticipating that discussion for weeks by then, acutely aware of my long absence from Glasgow and the consequent loss of familiarity with his lordship’s immediate affairs, and growing increasingly afraid that I might have been gone too long and could therefore have been supplanted through necessity. I need not have worried, as things turned out, owing in great measure to Father Martin’s diligent attention to my uncompleted duties.

  The bishop quickly made it clear that he had been aware of the gravity of my physical condition from the moment Ewan Scrymgeour had delivered me to the priory in Lanark. Ewan, a hairless giant whom I had known since I was ten, was the half-Welsh, half-Scots archer who had taught both Will and me to shoot an English longbow, though my career as an archer had not survived my initial attraction to the priesthood. Ewan was now one of Will’s senior and most trusted lieutenants, and after seeing me safely delivered to the priory he had sent a full report to the bishop before he returned to join Will.

  The entire southwest, his lordship told me, had quickly plunged into chaos in the aftermath of the events surrounding my own injuries: the deaths of Mirren Wallace, her unborn child, and her young son Will at the hands of the English, and the glaring, violent savagery of my cousin Will’s bloody revenge. But even before the word had had time to spread—and it did so with the speed typical of such tidings—it seemed that all of Scotland, both north and south of the River Forth, had erupted in simultaneous outrage against the English and their lawless hypocrisy. The bishop recounted for me the events that Father Martin had described—how, even before the atrocity of Mirren Wallace’s abduction, Sir William Douglas, Lord of Douglasdale, had been in armed rebellion against what he perceived to be intolerable English tyranny and had found himself besieged in Sanquhar Castle by an English force dispatched from Berwick by Sir Henry Percy to capture him. He told me, too, how Will had raised the siege and rescued Douglas, after which they had headed north towards Ayr, to acknowledge the authority of Sir James Stewart as the senior Scots magnate left in the country, and how the Steward had immediately sent word to his fellow Guardian, Bishop Wishart, to join him at Ayr.

  The bishop fell silent at that point, clearly believing he had told me all I needed to know, but I was far from satisfied with what I had heard.

  “You and Father Martin have both told me about Will’s raid on Perth, my lord, and I know that he and Douglas very nearly captured Ormsby, Edward’s justiciar for Scotland. But I confess I don’t yet understand the reason for the urgency. What triggered it?”

  My employer blinked at me in
astonishment. “You mean the raid itself? Abuse, Jamie,” he said quietly. “Abuse caused it. Ormsby and his English ravens were stripping the countryside of everything that could be gathered up and shipped to England. Will and his party rode a-purpose to stop the thefts. They moved quickly, across country, taking care not to be seen, and they almost captured the man himself.”

  “But they took Perth?”

  “No, no, they did no such thing—and you need to be careful about saying things like that. Perth is a Scots town, so there was no need to take it. But they certainly entered it and saved it. What they did was to repeat your cousin’s feat at Lanark. They surprised the English garrison and drove them out, and they reclaimed Ormsby’s plunder before it could be shipped to Edward. It was done at my insistence, and under the auspices of the Lord High Steward.” He gazed at me keenly. “That surprises you?”

  “It does, my lord, for it must have entailed great risk for the Steward. Why would he commit to such a course of action, openly declaring himself in armed opposition to Edward and England, after maintaining his neutrality so carefully and for so long? From all I know of Lord James, he is a thinker and a planner, not a man of precipitate action.”

  “I have no quibble with your description of his lordship’s temperament, Father,” the bishop answered, “but I think your fundamental view of his neutrality is wrong. Ask yourself now, afresh: is neutrality really what the Steward has been practising?” An eyebrow raised high in scorn accompanied that question. “You’ll agree, I hope, that neutrality entails a refusal to identify with either side in a conflict. That is not what is happening here. Lord James is no third party, refusing to take sides in a fight between others. He is one of the leading victims being bullied in an unconscionable program of aggression and intimidation by an invader. Do you really believe the English consider Lord James to be a neutral party in their plans for Scotland?” He paused, waiting for me to respond, then asked again, “Do you believe that?”

  Again he waited for a response. “No, I thought not. James Stewart is one of the greatest and wealthiest of all Scots magnates— and he is also one of the few not languishing in English prisons. His ancestral blood is Norman French, but it is sufficiently fortified with Erse strains by now to make him sympathetic to the ancient Celtic ways. Today he is a Scot, one of this realm’s greatest and most powerful sons, bred in the bone and long since purged of any English sympathies. And he is being harassed daily by base-born upstarts, unlettered English louts who treat him and his lands and holdings as their own, as though they hold some God-given right to flout him and maltreat him solely because they are English and he is not. They accord him no recognition, acknowledge no rights of his, and treat him as a lackey. The Lord High Steward of the realm! There is no cause for wonderment, Father James, that when it fell to him, he seized the opportunity to retaliate. What is amazing is that he put up with an intolerable situation for as long as he did.”

  He reached down to the scrip that hung from his waist, clearly thinking he must now have dealt with the explanation to my satisfaction, but I imposed myself again.

  “Forgive my persistence here, my lord, but Father Martin told me Will was in charge of the raid—in command—and yet Sir William Douglas was there, far above Will Wallace in both rank and station. That makes no sense to me at all. Why would not Douglas command? It was a mounted party, and it struck far to the north and at top speed—hard-riding, hard-fighting horsemen. Will can ride, if he must, but he’s no horseman. So why was he even there? Why did you send him?”

  My employer straightened up abruptly, his face registering astonishment and perhaps anger at my presumption, but then he gave me a tight, almost reluctant grin. “Because I needed to send him,” he said. “I needed him there and I needed him visible—more than William Douglas, whose name is less than stainless, as you say, or Sir John Stewart, or any other knight I could have sent, and more than any magnate in all Scotland—more than all of them together, in fact. I needed the folk to see William Wallace and to know that Wallace would go wherever he was needed in the fight against the English. The folk needed a champion in Perth, and I needed that champion— No, Scotland needed that champion to be William Wallace, a man of the folk. And so I sent him. It was the right thing to do.”

  “That may be so, my lord,” I said, determined to make my point even if it earned me the bishop’s displeasure. “But I can’t see Will Wallace agreeing to do that—leaving his followers behind and striking off on his own, so far out of his own territory—without long and convincing persuasion. I know my cousin well, I think, and the behaviour you are describing is out of character for him.”

  “Aye,” the bishop said, “just as this dogged questioning is out of character for you.”

  “Then I ask for your indulgence, my lord. My concern may have made me over bold, but I have not seen Will since the moment he entrusted me with the lives of his family, and I failed him. He has seldom been far from my mind since then and I find myself fretting over him, even though Heaven and all the saints know he is more than capable of seeing to himself.”

  The bishop raised his hand in an absent-minded blessing. “Be at peace, Father. You have done nothing wrong and you ask for no more than is your due. Were I unwilling to speak of this I would not, and there would be an end of it. You are perfectly correct in your judgment. Will had no wish to go riding off into unknown parts without good reason. It took me a long time to convert him to my way of seeing things, and I confess that at first I thought I would fail.” He hesitated. “Truthfully, though, I am afraid that much of his initial reluctance was born of a thoughtless approach—or at least an ill-considered one—by Lord Stewart, who set about things awkwardly and created an impression I found hard to overcome afterwards.”

  “How so, my lord?”

  “Why, simply by being himself. The Lord High Steward of the realm is not—” He half smiled. “Let me say simply that Lord James is a courtier, unaccustomed to dealing with the kind of solid bluntness your cousin brings to all his dealings. And being somewhat … isolated by his exalted status, he had no knowledge of William Wallace’s scandalous and widely noted dislike of magnates in general.”

  “Oh dear. What did Will say to him?”

  “It was what Lord James said to him, at the outset, that set the tone of what followed. The Steward and I had been discussing what we ought to do about Ormsby, since we bore the responsibility of being the last two Guardians remaining in the country, and we had gone in search of Wallace to petition his advice and enlist his support. We found him talking with the Earl of Carrick, and Lord James spoke up, flatteringly, about Wallace’s prowess as a horseman.”

  “A horseman? Our Will? The Steward said that?”

  “He did. Why would that surprise you?”

  “Because I would never have thought to say such a thing,” I said. “Will can ride, as can I, but I would never call either one of us a horseman. In fact Will thinks horses are a waste of time, because he’s a bowman ahead of all else.”

  Wishart smiled. “That is almost precisely what your cousin said to Lord James. ‘No, my lord,’ he said quietly. ‘I am no horseman. I am a longbowman—an archer. You cannot use a longbow on the back of a horse.’”

  I nodded. “That’s Will,” I murmured, but the bishop was already moving on.

  “I was regretting not having warned Lord James to let me do the talking,” he said. “For he was completely unaware of the nature of the man with whom he was dealing and he kept on. ‘But you can ride,’ he said—a statement, you understand, not a question.

  “I could see Will frowning, but I did not want to interrupt too quickly for fear of offending the Steward, so I held my peace. ‘Aye, after a fashion,’ Will said. ‘Why does that interest you, my lord?’” The bishop sniffed suddenly and fumbled in his scrip for a kerchief, and I waited while he blew his nose noisily. “Now,” he said afterwards, tucking the kerchief back where it belonged, “I’ve known your cousin long enough to be able to tell w
hen he is unhappy, and I could see he did not like the way the Steward was talking to him, so I intervened and explained that we needed him to ride.

  “‘To where?’ he said, glowering at me. ‘And why?’

  “‘To Perth,’ I told him, and I asked if he knew where that was. He didn’t like that. He scowled at me, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was feeling insulted.

  “‘Of course I know where Perth is,’ he said. ‘It’s north of Stirling, and a long damned way from Selkirk Forest—a hundred miles, at least. Too far for me to want to go there.’

  “‘It’s that far easily, Will,’ I told him, and said that was why we needed him to ride there, and ride fast. I remember he turned to look at Bruce, who clearly was not going to be able to help, then back to me. ‘Why me?’ he asked. ‘And why Perth, of all places? To what end? It sounds like madness.’”

  The bishop sighed. “Of course, the way he was hearing it, it was madness, for until then he had heard no reason for such a thing. But you should have seen his face when I told him next that we needed him to raid it, as he’d raided Lanark.” He looked down at the blackened embers of our fire. “I don’t know what I had expected him to say next,” he mused. “I hadn’t really considered it before then. But all he did was grunt and shake his head. He knew nothing of Perth, he said. His men were forest outlaws. They had no horses—wouldn’t know how to climb up on one, let alone ride such a distance. And that was when Lord James spoke up again. ‘We are not speaking of your men, Master Wallace,’ he said. ‘Only of you yourself.’”

  The bishop smiled suddenly. “I tell you, Father James, I was hard pressed not to laugh out loud, for if your cousin had been surprised when the Steward started talking about his horsemanship, he was utterly dumbfounded now. ‘What?’ says he, and I swear he was nigh gasping in disbelief. ‘You want me to go alone and attack Perth town by myself?’