The Forest Laird(165)
“Are you going to fight?”
All the animation left his eyes and he sat staring at me, willing me to continue but unwilling himself to respond.
I kept going. “A week ago you told Bishop Wishart you would not fight. Since then, you’ve sent out men to fight.”
“Only in defence of our own peace.”
“Perhaps, but now you are arranging day and night patrols. I am not saying they are unnecessary, but I am wondering if you are changing your mind about your involvement in this affair that’s bubbling on the hob.”
He continued to gaze at me, his face unreadable, and after a while I began to think he was not going to answer me at all, but then he shook his head, a short, sharp, impatient gesture.
“If you are asking me if I am going marching off to war, then no, I am not. I meant every word of what I said to Wishart. So no, I’ll not fight. Not without solid reason. The magnates will not miss my presence, and the realm of Scotland, needy though it might be, has no great need of William Wallace. None grand enough, at least, to outweigh the need my wife and children have of me.”
“Children?” I heard the surprise in my own voice.
Will grinned almost shamefacedly and lapsed into Scots. “Aye. Mirren’s expecting again. The women say she’s three months along already.” He flipped a hand and made a face, as though asking me what else he could have done. “I would ha’e waited longer, y’ know? But she would ha’e none o’ it. No need to wait, she said. She’s as strong as a horse and likes the thought o’ twa wee ones close enough together to be company for one anither. A lad and a lass, she wants, and close thegither, so what was I to say—or dae, for that matter?”
He shrugged and dipped his head. “Anyway, that’s the way o’ it, and I intend to see them safe through whatever lies ahead o’ us. War is no fitting pastime for a man wi’ bairns and a comely wife. So what I said to the Bishop holds true. I’ll take no part in fighting for some magnate—any magnate—who canna make up his mind whether he’s Scots or no’. I ha’e no such doubts. I’m a Scot, as were my grandsires and theirs before them. I ken wha and what I am, and I ken wha my King is. ’Gin he calls upon me directly, then I’ll go to war. For him. But for naebody else, Jamie.”
The rough accent of the local people vanished again beneath the lustre of the Church’s tongue. “In the meantime, I intend to keep my family safe and hidden from marauding eyes here in the forest. Should any seek to threaten them or me, then I will fight, and those I fight will rue the day they sought to find me. But that is all. So be the English keep themselves and their evil presence far from me, then I will keep myself away from them.”
I felt a blossoming relief well up in me and raised my hand to bless him. “Then so mote it be, Cousin William, and may God keep you and yours in safety in such times.”
It was a heartfelt prayer, and at the time I felt sure it must have flown directly from my lips to God’s all-hearing ear.
3
War.
In merely setting those three letters down here, hours ago, penning each of them with increasing slowness, I found myself fascinated by the contradiction between the brevity of the word itself and its overwhelming, cataclysmic meaning. It is a commonplace little word, seldom truly understood by those who use it daily. Even to speak it aloud, or even shout it at the top of one’s lungs, in the context of going to war, or being at war, fails to elicit more than a mild stirring of interest. That is because in most instances—thanks be to God—war in the abstract has no real significance for ordinary, peaceable, law-abiding folk. To those unfortunate enough to know otherwise, that is both extraordinary and incredible, but unless we have been personally touched by its insanity and brutality, its monstrous, crushing inhumanity, we remain armoured in the innocence of hope and the blithe assumption that it could never happen to us.
The people of Scotland were that way in the springtime of the year of our Lord 1296. They heard the talk of war with England and they knew that matters had been set in motion that were beyond their control, grave matters that would affect them and change the very way their land was governed. And yet they did not grow unduly alarmed. An entire generation had come to middle age without ever knowing the dangers, the risks, or the enormous tragedy of extensive warfare, and the men whose duty it would now become to fight this new war and confront the English approached the task with a wideeyed confidence that reflected their innocence and ignorance. That innocence was about to be rudely shattered.
On the twenty-sixth of March, under the command of Sir John Comyn, Earl of Buchan and High Constable of Scotland, King John’s army, jointly led by seven earls of the realm, marched south from Annandale and crossed the sands of the Solway Firth at low tide to strike at the English stronghold of Carlisle, forcing Robert Bruce, the castellan there, to declare his loyalties. Bruce chose the side of Edward Plantagenet and barred his city gates against the Scots, who set fire to the town outside the castle walls. The word that came to us in Selkirk Forest later was that Buchan had miscalculated, assuming Carlisle would fall to his first surprise assault. Instead, his attack came as no surprise at all, and Bruce’s resistance was unwavering.