Ewan had gone in search of his uncle, of whose success he had heard from time to time, with the underlying intention of purchasing some decent bow staves, but Daffyd ap Gryffyth had refused to sell to him. Instead, the old man took him into the massive warehouse where he kept his finest and most precious materials, supplies of yew imported from Tuscany and the forests southeast of Salerno, and led him straight to four of the finest staves among the thousands stockpiled there, all four lying side by side in their own ventilated space. These, he insisted, were beyond price and would be his personal gift to Ewan, the sole inheritance within his power to bestow, since his sons, now full partners in the enterprise, must take precedence. All four staves had been taken from the same tree, he explained, stroking the fine wood as he spoke of them; a tall, straight tree of Iberian yew. Iberian yew was unobtainable now in its native form, since most of Iberia had fallen to the Moors in the eighth century, but prudent merchants had salvaged a few thousand seedlings and saplings from the largely unoccupied but still contested areas of Galicia and Asturias during the tenth century, and plantations had been established in Italia and had flourished there, precious and close guarded.
The bole of this particular tree, Daffyd said, had been recognized early for its excellence and tended throughout its life by careful foresters who knew its value. It had grown perfectly straight and virtually free of imperfections until it was almost twenty inches in diameter, and from it the Tuscan sawyers had obtained four magnificent, perfectly straight, and knotless staves, a thing almost unheard of. Each of the four was square in section, four inches to a side and seven feet long, and each appeared to be made of twin laminated strips of reddish-brown colours. But the striations were natural. The darker strip, which would become the inner belly of the bow, was the iron-strong heartwood of the yew, capable of sustaining great compression; the outer, paler side was the sapwood, more pliable than the denser heartwood; it would form the outer “back” of the bow, and its tension, combined with the compression of the heartwood belly, would make the war bow that sprang from it the most powerful weapon of its kind for a single man in all the world.
Ewan had brought the four staves home to Scotland with great care, for they were truly priceless and irreplaceable, but he had brought others with him, too, staves of lesser quality, perhaps, yet cleaner, finer, and less knotty than any native yew remaining today in England.
Will had been practising the bowyer’s craft for years, working until all hours of the night under Ewan’s tutelage, the size of each ash or elm bow he made increasing as his body and strength grew. He had graduated, with great but private ceremony, to fashion his current bow from one of these lesser staves of yew, slowly and patiently perfecting the art of using the bowyer’s razor-sharp, double-handed drawknives to pare down the wood and taper the bow’s length under the proud but watchful eye of Ewan Scrymgeour.
Now, however, Will was close to outgrowing his own bow, and the time had come for him to make another, a longer, thicker, stronger bow that he would be hard set to pull. I knew that, but I knew, too, that his massive muscles would grow larger yet to master its challenge. And I knew that the pride both my friends would take—had already begun to take—in making Will’s new bow from one of Daffyd ap Gryffyth’s finest staves would be fully justified. But I wondered how it could justify their lack of concern over the death of their King.
Ewan and Will came into the kitchen while I was still sitting there mulling. The aroma of fresh-baked bread and of the spicy stew in the pot was still strong in the room, and they helped themselves hungrily to more food while Aggie poured them each a pot of ale from the large, covered wooden jug she kept beneath the stone sink in the corner farthest from the fire. It was still light outside, but the winter-weak March sun was lost in heavy cloud and sinking swiftly, and Aggie left us to our own devices as she bustled away to the quarters she shared with Maggie.
The two talked incessantly about the scale and measurements they had been applying to the stave, and I sat watching and listening until Ewan shovelled the last of his broth-soaked bread into his mouth, chewed and swallowed it, then lounged back in his chair with a contented sigh and took a big gulp of ale. I waited for the inevitable belch that always followed such a draught, and when it had subsided I asked him, “Will you really pray for the King tonight?”
He pulled his bowstring-callused fingers pensively down along the ruined bowl of his cheek, tracing the concave curve of its toothless emptiness.
“I will,” he said in his soft, lisping voice. “I said I would. But, Jamie, what do you suppose this means, this death of a King? What do you think will happen now?”