The Forest Laird(181)
The initial awkwardness of the post-parting silence passed more quickly and more easily than I had expected, due beyond a doubt to Mirren’s determination to make the best of the situation, and so by the end of the first day’s travel, the mood among the group was easier and more relaxed. It was a short day, too, for we were pulled off the road in a sheltered spot well before the sun began to sink. The March weather was consistent—inhospitably foul, cold, and damp—and the sun seemed to be setting earlier each day, instead of later.
Our cooking fire was small and almost completely concealed in a wide, deep-dug pit, and Alan prepared a remarkable meal of stewed goat, with vegetables and meat that he had brought with him, serving it with dried broad white beans he had braised in a deliciously salty sauce that set my mouth to tingling. We sat around the fire for no more than an hour after dinner that night, though, for despite knowing that Robertson and his bowmen were out there guarding us, we knew, too, that we were in unknown country and our firelight would be visible for miles. Just as I was about to retire to my evening prayers, one of Robertson’s men stepped out of the surrounding shadows, carrying a brace of fine hares, gutted and tied by the hind legs, that he handed to Alan before slipping away into the darkness again. I knew what we would dine on the following night.
We made better distance on the second day, having been up before dawn and on the road by daybreak, well muffled against the steady, cutting wind, and by three of the afternoon we had travelled more than twenty miles at a steady, ground-eating pace, avoiding the small town of Peebles by detouring a few miles to the south of it. Robertson’s people had already found our next camping spot, about five miles beyond that, and one of them waited for us by the roadside and then led us off into the woods, where we found the roofless ruins of an otherwise solidly built and surprisingly spacious house. We pitched our tents within its walls and slept soundly that night, sheltered from the wind that howled outside. We were, by my reckoning, within fifteen miles of Lanark.
On the morning of the third day, we awoke to a torrential downpour that had already flooded the low-lying areas around us and showed no signs of abating. Ewan and Alan, as the joint commanders of our little group, stepped outside the shelter of the walls into the greyness of the reluctantly breaking day to try to gauge the wisdom of breaking camp. They came back inside moments later to consult with me and Mirren about whether or not we wished to brave the weather and continue immediately towards Lamington, because they themselves were divided in their opinions.
I looked to Mirren, prepared to abide by her decision, but on this occasion Mirren, normally so straightforward and decisive, could not make up her mind about what she wanted to do. Leaving immediately meant in all likelihood that we might reach Lamington and her mother more quickly, but that was far from certain in the face of such outlandish weather, because according to Ewan and Alan the ground was a sodden quagmire and the wagons might be difficult to handle on steep and muddy surfaces. The alternative, to wait and see, would mean we might lose time initially, but when the weather finally broke and the wind and rain abated, the going would be firmer underfoot and conditions would certainly be both drier and warmer beneath the leather canopies of the wagons. Dryness and warmth for both herself and her young son was, I could see, the more appealing prospect in Mirren’s eyes, but I could also see that, precisely because it was so personally justifiable, she was loath to make that decision on her own. And so when she shrugged and turned to me, I smiled at her and made the choice to wait out the storm.
I have wondered a thousand times, over the years, if I might have changed anything by choosing differently that morning, but always my faith in God’s all-seeing wisdom convinces me—alas, never for long and never completely—that His will was carried out as He wished it to be.
We stayed in the camp for most of the morning, and for the last hour of that time the wind and the rain gradually died down and then stopped. We had already begun to break camp by then, and were having enormous difficulty in dismantling and stowing our leather tents, for their weight had been tripled by the amount of water they had absorbed. By the time we finally had the wagons loaded and were preparing to pull out, back onto the road again, the clouds were breaking up and clearing quickly, and bright sunlight was lancing down through the gaps here and there in spectacular glowing rays.
No one spoke much as we settled into the journey, but as the miles fell slowly behind us and the sun’s warmth dried our wet clothes, a semblance of good humour re-emerged and soon there was a steady flow of banter passing between the two wagons. At one point I twisted in my seat on the driver’s bench beside Big Andrew, to respond to a jibe from Ewan in the other wagon, and suddenly found myself racked by an intensely painful cramp in my left foot. My entire leg seized up and I writhed so violently against the pain of it that I lost my balance and fell sideways, barely managing to grasp the side of the bench in time to prevent myself pitching headfirst to the ground. Ewan, in the other wagon, saw me jerk and fall sideways, and for a few stupefied moments he thought I had been felled by an arrow.