“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.