The Forest Laird(178)

Puzzled by what she had said about Will’s having “matters” to settle, I was about to ask her what was going on, but we were interrupted by the arrival of several women who had come to collect Mirren, and within moments I found myself alone in the darkening little hut. I rebuilt the fire and then wandered outside into the chilly March half light to look for Will.

Later that night, sitting beside Will at dinner, I watched as the crowd hummed around him like bees swarming about a displaced queen, affording me no opportunity at all to ask him about any of the matters that were on my mind. Bemused, I watched the press of people suck every vestige of attention and awareness out of him, and the experience left me dazed. Each time I saw him nowadays, I realized that my cousin had changed since the time before, becoming more and more of a public figure all the time, a leader and a commander of men even though, to me at least, he appeared to make no effort to ingratiate himself with anyone.

I went to bed that night comparing my memories of the shy and diffident but quietly confident Will Wallace with whom I had grown up to the William Wallace I had watched that night, a towering, confident figure filled with gravitas and authority, dispensing advice and encouragement to people, some of whom I knew he had never set eyes on before. And of all the things that niggled at my awareness, the most illogical appeared to be the one that should not have surprised me at all: this new dimension of respect and deference that surrounded him had not come into being until Will swore his oath to protect his family and avoid risking his life in pointless fighting against vested interests and insuperable odds. In avoiding violence and pursuing detachment, my cousin had assumed a mantle he had never thought, nor sought, to wear, and in so doing had become a new kind of champion in the eyes of the common folk.

2

I saw no signs of Will when I went looking for him after breaking my fast the following morning, but I knew he was nearby, and eventually I found him labouring in the saw pit in the woods beyond the encampment’s southern edge. He was stripped naked, save for a breechclout about his waist, and dripping from the effort of sawing a long, thick plank from a massive oak timber positioned above him over the pit. The fall of sawdust had coated his body, clinging to his sweat-soaked skin and body hair and giving him the look of a great blond bear, and with the enormous muscles of his back, shoulders, and chest engorged by the heavy work, he appeared to be truly gigantic. He saw me coming and he must have read what I was thinking on my face, for he barked a great, booming laugh and heaved himself up and out, beckoning me to follow him as he jogged away towards the nearby stream the men had aptly named the Sawpit Burn. There was a linn a short distance upstream, a waterfall about ten feet high with a large swimming hole scooped from the gravel bed beneath it, and he threw himself into it from the bank, tucking his legs up and shouting in sheer exhilaration as he went, and as the splash died down the surface of the pool was transformed to a golden turbulence by the sawdust released from his body. He surfaced quickly, shook his head violently, then ducked it beneath the surface again, scrubbing at his scalp with both hands before straightening up and flicking his long hair back out of his eyes.

“Hah!” he roared. “That’s better. Give me your hand.”

I reached out and helped him pull himself up the side of the bank, and as he towelled himself roughly I settled myself on a mossy patch with my back against a tree. It was a beautiful late-summer morning, and the sun had barely risen above the horizon. When he was dry, he tied the towel around his waist, then slapped his palms against his bare chest.

“Garments,” he said. “I left them over by the pit, clear of the sawdust. When I am decently clothed again, you and I will be ready for a drink.” He hesitated, head cocked. “At least I will be ready. You have that … devout look about you, Cuz, that priestly look.”

“Are you cold?”

“No, not at all. But I am almost naked, so I wish to dress.”

“And so you may, in a moment, but right now I want to talk to you without being interrupted, and I promise I won’t tell anyone you were almost naked when we spoke.”

In response he smiled and threw himself down beside me on the bank, then knocked me off balance with a straight-armed push. “Speak, then, but tell me first, will you be speaking as Father James or as my cousin Jamie?”

“Can I not be both at once?”

“I don’t know. Can you?” He waited for a moment, as though expecting an answer, then grinned slightly. “Never mind. Go ahead. You have my attention.”

I took the time to adjust my robe.