The Forest Laird(168)

Cressingham, whose jurisdiction covered all things fiscal in Scotland, felt himself constantly under attack, and he took every threat of interference as a personal insult. He resorted to reprisals soon after his appointment as treasurer, taking hostages from among the populace and hanging scores of them out of hand as punishment for attacks against the King’s property and personnel. Others he executed by public beheading, irrespective of age or sex. The more people he killed, though, the greater the resistance and aggression he provoked, and by the end of the year, less than three months after his appointment, he was offering a reward to anyone who would bring him the head of any forest outlaw, and a premium in gold to any who would bring him the killer, William Wallace.

A chant of “William Wallace, Laird o’ the Forest” was popular that autumn, when some wag suggested that as de facto lord of his own woodland domain, Wallace demanded a toll of everyone who set foot upon his property. The toll for a Scot was a pledge of loyalty and silence; for an Englishman, it was forfeiture of everything he possessed; for English clergymen, it was forfeiture of everything they professed not to have at all; and for Hugh Cressingham, it was everything that bore the stink of his presence. And as the faceless forest bandit became the Forest Laird, and the fame of William Wallace spread, yet still he maintained the role of planner and supervisor and, true to his promise, did not fight in person.

I stayed in the forest with him and Mirren throughout that time, until September, when a messenger arrived to summon me back to Glasgow, where Bishop Wishart apparently had need of me, and during that time we often spoke of the imprisoned Scots leaders from Dunbar, and in particular about the calamitous effect Andrew Murray’s imprisonment in England would have on his northern people. The magnates had proved themselves to be as overconfident and ineffectual as Will had feared they might be, and he wasted no time mourning their absence now. Andrew Murray’s removal, though, was another matter altogether, for Murray was one of the few competent military leaders in all of Scotland. Edward Plantagenet was known to be whimsical when it came to forgiving rebellion and disobedience among his people, and it was generally conceded by those who knew him that he was not normally vindictive towards his own nobles. In this instance of the Scottish Rebellion, though, he was being obdurate, and when he refused his royal pardon to Sir Andrew Murray of Petty, one of the richest and most influential lords of Scotland, it boded ill for the probability of any leniency being offered to his rebellious and high-minded son. We regretted the loss of Murray, as we knew Bishop Wishart must be regretting it, but there was nothing we could do to change things.

The courier who came to fetch me also brought instructions that before I left I should divide my duties equally between my two subordinate priests, Fathers Declan and Jacobus, both of whom had flourished and matured wonderfully since moving out of the cloisters and into the world of ordinary men and women. They were both flattered to be thought worthy of increased responsibility, and I, in turn, felt confident in leaving them to tend to my erstwhile flock, and glad at the same time to be returning to my duties in the cathedral, though I knew I would miss my forest-dwelling kin greatly—most particularly my sturdy, stalwart, year-old godson—in the months ahead.

I met Cressingham, not at all coincidentally, soon after my return to Glasgow, when he presented himself at the cathedral to announce formally, for the benefit of Scotland’s clergy, his appointment to the post of King Edward’s treasurer for Scotland, and I immediately discovered that the name of Wallace was already anathema, not only to him but to all the Englishmen who accompanied him on that occasion. As senior bishop of the realm at the time, since Fraser of St. Andrews had been in France at King Philip’s court for more than a year by then, Bishop Wishart hosted the gathering at his episcopal seat in Glasgow. The Bishops of Dunkeld, Aberdeen, Moray, and Argyll all attended, hastily summoned, along with half a dozen of the country’s most distinguished abbots upon notice that the King’s party sought audience with Scotland’s senior prelates. The English contingent included several bishops and abbots, too, the most senior among them being Antony Bek, still King Edward’s deputy in Scotland. Besides the new treasurer himself and a few of his senior functionaries, a number of intermediately ranked nobles made up the English lay presence, led by one Robert Fitz Hugh, a baron from the region south of Newcastle. There were also two representatives of the Order of the Temple among the group, and I found that mildly surprising, since I had always believed—albeit without specific reason for so doing—that the Templars owed their allegiance solely to the Pope.