The Forest Laird(126)

“You’re right,” I whispered, fighting down a surge of nausea. “Edward can’t let that go unavenged. He will have you killed.”

“He might try, Cuz, but he’ll have to come and get me himself if he wants to see me dead …” His voice died away, then resumed more quietly. “In the meantime, though, he’s serving notice.”

“Notice? I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Killing these simple folk is what I mean. There’s no reason for it, other than to make me notice. Women and children, innocent of any crime, die or are evicted with their men. Their slaughter is a signal, nothing more. A signal to me, from him, that he knows I’m here and would have words with me. Words.” He grunted. “I’d hear few words from him, other than ‘Die,’ and he would have some other speak for him before he’d soil his tongue by using it on me. He’s a savage man, I’ve heard. D’you remember the tales of what the Turks did to Christian pilgrims, before the Great Crusade?”

“No. I mean, I’ve heard many tales, but I don’t know which ones you mean.”

“I’m thinking of the one Pope Urban used when first he raised the Cross in France. He told of how the Mussulmans would take a Christian man and slit his belly, then tie his entrails to a stake and chase the man around the stake until he died, gutted. I never really believed that happened, but Edward of England could do such a thing. He is that kind of man. A dire enemy.”

“God forbid!” I shuddered and blessed myself with the sign of the cross. “No Christian king would ever kill a man in such a barbaric fashion.”

My cousin looked at me and smiled a grim little smile. “Edward Plantagenet would, if he thought it necessary. He thinks these raids against the folk are necessary, to capture my attention.”

I gazed down into my empty flagon. “Can you stop it, this slaughter?”

“Aye. I can ride into Lanark, or to some other English garrison, and give myself up.”

“No, Will. Apart from that. Can you stop the slaughter?”

“Probably not.” He bent forward and picked out a log from the pile by the hearth, then laid it on the embers and pushed it into place with his booted foot. “But I can make it hazardous for any Englishman foolish enough to step out of doors to take a piss in southern Scotland. It will take the like of an army of men to achieve that, but Edward Longshanks and his English bullies have provided us with just such an army. At last count, we had close to nine hundred men throughout the south, most of them bowmen and all of them willing to rise at the blast of a horn.”

“Nine hundred?”

“Aye, from Selkirk to Teviotdale to Dumfries and as far west as Galloway. Had you asked me yesterday if it was feasible to field so many, I would have said no.” His lips quirked, but there was no humour in his eyes. “But now I say yes. It will take planning, but we can do it. We have to stop this obscenity, this wanton slaughter. And if that means killing them to stop them killing ours, then so be it. We will do what needs to be done. And we will do it as soon as it can be arranged. We’ll flood the entire south with patrols, strong foot patrols, three hundred men on any given day, and woe betide any stranger with as much as a knife who can’t appease them with good reasons for being armed and where he is. We will be declaring war on England. Let there be no misunderstanding. It will not be open war, and it will not be knightly war, or chivalrous, but it will be war—bloody and brutal and unforgiving, for as long as Longshanks wants it.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1

I have asked myself a hundred times, over the years that have passed since that afternoon, if I could really have changed any of the things that happened afterwards, had I behaved even slightly differently as we spoke by the fire in my cave. Could I have influenced any of what occurred, had I planted my feet firmly and objected to what Will was proposing? What might he have done, had I ranted and admonished him, reminding him that he was endangering his immortal soul? Would he have relented? Would he have chosen some other way to proceed in order to achieve his goal?

I know, of course, that he would not. He would have done nothing differently and the outcome would have been unchanged. I have always known that, I suppose, even though I have fought against admitting it to myself. Simply by being who and what he was, William Wallace had preordained that he and the Plantagenet King would collide. The ancients would have said that it was written in the stars. They would also have said that I was committing the sin of hubris, overweening pride, by even thinking I might have had the power to alter any vestige of what happened. But it was not hubris. The curiosity I dwelt upon for all those years was merely wishful thinking. The truth is that I was but a humble priest, eclipsed by the titanic figures of Edward Plantagenet and William Wallace, both of whom History already regards as giants. When Will left me that June day, to launch his patrols to protect the common folk, his mind was already set beyond changing. His plans had been set before he told me about them, and their preparations were already under way.