The Forest Laird(179)
“Your wife tells me you can’t take her to comfort her mother until several matters are settled. What kind of matters, I wonder, can be more important than the loss of a beloved father? And no matter what they are, how important can they possibly be, Will, that you would permit them to keep you here when it’s clear Mirren wants to go home to her grieving mother, to share her own grief for her father?”
He sat staring straight faced at me, no trace of raillery in his eyes now, but he made no attempt to speak.
“What, have you no answer? It’s a simple enough question. What is keeping you here when it is so important—to your wife and to her family—for you to travel to Lamington?”
Still he made no move to answer me, and I found myself suddenly impatient.
“Why would you even want to stay here at a time like this, Will? To dispense advice to your followers, the way you did last night at supper? Do you not think your wife deserves an equal or even greater share of your concern than strangers do?”
“It is not that simple.”
“No, it is that simple, Will. It’s simple. There’s nothing complex about it. You should be taking Mirren home, right now, to be with her mother in her time of bereavement. I fail to see how anything can be more important than that.”
“Right!” His voice was hard edged. “I heard you. But just because you fail to see something, Father, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Do you think I am doing this lightly, without cause? I can’t leave here now. Soon, perhaps, I hope so. But not now.”
“Why not?” I pushed.
“Because we’re in crisis.”
“Grave crisis, I assume, though there’s never any other kind. Crisis over what?”
He looked at me, his jaw set pugnaciously. “Over the price on my head and the bounty placed on any of my men taken, dead or alive.”
I felt as though something had writhed and then flattened in my guts.
“That’s new. Not the price on your head, we all know about that, but this bounty is new. We’ve heard nothing about it.”
His eyebrows rose mockingly. “In Glasgow, you mean, at the cathedral? How would you hear of it at all? It’s a local matter, locally imposed and locally enforced.”
“Who set this bounty?”
“A man called Hazelrig. Edward’s new enforcer. His title is Sheriff of Lanark.”
“Sir William Hazelrig? That can’t be. I’ve met him. He impressed me as a pleasant fellow. Except, of course, that he told me how quickly he would kill you if you ever crossed his path. Apart from that, though, I think you would have liked him.”
My cousin was staring at me, both eyebrows raised sufficiently to wrinkle his brow. “You have met this man?”
“Yes. I met him in Glasgow at the Bishop’s house. He came up with Cressingham when he came to make himself known to the Scots Bishops soon after his appointment.”
“And you liked him. Did you like Cressingham, too?”
“I disliked him intensely. The man reminds me of a carrion eater. But I enjoyed Hazelrig. I found him amusing and very pleasant.”
“It makes me very glad to know that, Cuz, because your pleasant and amusing acquaintance has hanged two of my men without trial, and ten more who were not my men but were accused of being so. No arguments, no opportunity to deny anything or say anything in their defence. Simply accusation and execution, plain and simple, neat and tidy, and unmistakably English. Oh yes, he’s a very pleasant fellow.” He held up one hand and dipped his head at the same time as though to ask, “What more can I say?” But he remained quiet for long moments before he spoke again.
“Sheriff Hazelrig has made it his overriding objective to bring about my end. He quadrupled the price on my head about a month ago, in the hopes of tempting someone to betray me, and hard on the heels of that, he offered a bounty of a silver mark for each and every Selkirk outlaw brought to justice or into King Edward’s Peace. That means dead or alive. It is a death sentence passed upon any man who is accused of being one of us, Jamie, irrespective of whether he is or not. The accusation is sufficient to cause death because there is no need to bring the man in alive. Any dead outlaw has clearly been brought to justice, and will surely never disturb the King’s Peace in the future.” He watched me, and when he saw my eyes narrow, he nodded. “Aye, it is iniquitous, no one will dispute that. But it is an iniquity sponsored and abetted by the King of England’s High Sheriff in Lanark, so who is to gainsay it?”
I shook my head, not quite in disbelief, but because I somehow hoped the truth would prove deniable. “But … what did you do to cause him to quadruple the price on your head?”