That said, however, I have been fascinated all my life by the overwhelming strength of the love one sometimes finds between certain men and women, and I have always found the power of it, for both good and ill, to be close to frightening. Had King Alexander not yearned for the welcoming warmth of his young wife, for example, he would not have died as he did on his way to join her. And had William Wallace never met Mirren Braidfoot, he would not have died as he did in London’s Smithfield Square.
I do not mean this to be taken as a condemnation of Mirren. In all the years that passed after that first meeting in Elderslie, neither Will nor she did any wilful thing to harm the other. As a courting pair, two young people discovering each other, they were the very essence of God’s intent for His beloved children; as a married couple, they knew bliss together; and as supporters of each other’s dreams, even when apart, they were unshakable. There was no weakness in their love, no inborn flaw, no fault; merely perfect love and fidelity. But as these attributes buttressed their love, they also left them open to their enemies.
It had already begun that day of their initial meeting, though none of us would learn of that for months to come.
Will told me many times about being swept away by love that day, about what he saw and how he felt when he was smitten by the woman who would quickly come to mean all the world to him, and as I listened to him over the first few months of such outpourings—for by then Mirren had returned to her home in Lanark—I was struck by the resemblance between the way he spoke of her and the ardour with which Andrew Murray had described his own love, the young woman with the liquidly beautiful name Siobhan. Both young men burned with the same ardent passion, and from the lambent purity of Will’s enthusiasm I came to see, through his eyes, what my own eyes had missed that afternoon.
I had arrived in Elderslie at mid-morning, mere hours before they met, and as soon as I had delivered the letter that had brought me there to Sir Malcolm, I set out to where he had told me I would find Will, a good half-hour’s walk from the main house. I found him near the westernmost edge of Sir Malcolm’s lands, close to the village of Elderslie itself and hard by the wagon road that led to it from Paisley. He was crouched over a narrow track through the long grass that lined the roadway, pawing at the grass with spread fingers, his head moving from side to side as he inched forward. He heard me coming, glanced up, then returned his attention to the ground ahead of him.
“Good day, idle Forester,” I greeted him. “Have you lost something?”
He swept his open hands through long grass, then looked at his palms and shrugged to his feet. “Not lost, nor found,” he said. “I’m looking for blood. But there doesna seem to be any.” It had been two weeks since last we met, but he spoke as if we had parted no more than an hour earlier; no greeting, no acknowledgment, no surprise.
“And should there be?”
He stooped then to pick up the strung bow in the long grass and then unstrung it, bracing the stave with his foot as he pulled it down to free the loop from its end.
“Aye, there should. I shot at a doe here … Throw me my case, there.” He caught the case easily and flipped off its cap, then turned completely around, his eyes scanning the surrounding grass as he slid the long stave into its tube. He replaced the cap and slung the case over his shoulder, shaking his head. “She should be lying here dead, but my eyes tell me I missed her from sixty paces.”
I made no reply to that, not knowing what to say, for I had never known him to miss any target from that range. He was still looking about him, his eyes now checking the line of flight from the base of an ash tree sixty paces away and passing his right side, right over the road and into a dense thicket of brambles.
“Anyway, she ran, and I thought I’d gut-shot her and would have to hunt her down, but there’s no blood. And no sign of my arrow. Mind you, I felt it flutter as it left the string. I must have torn the fletching without noticing and it flew off course. But God be my witness, I hate losing arrows.”
“What was wrong with the doe?”
Will sniffed and pulled several broadhead hunting arrows from the bag at his side, peering closely at the fletching on each one. “Old age and a lame leg. She’ll no’ last the winter and might no’ even reach it. I thought it would be kinder to kill her now and end her pains … But she’s well away from here by now.” He dropped the arrows back into his bag. “What brings you here this fine morning, then? You’re like to shrivel up and blow away in the brightness out here if you’re no’ careful, after being cooped up in your old, dark library.”