Will had already nocked another arrow by then, and before the shout could die away he stepped into his second shot. His movements were a joy to watch, a sacred dance to a rhythm known only to himself, and he loosed all six of his arrows in less time than Robertson had taken for his. But Will struck five marks close above the ground, within a hand’s breadth of their bases, and two of them dislodged arrows that Robertson had already placed. The sixth arrow had struck the ground at the base of the mark the other man had missed, but on closer examination it was found to have pierced the stake beneath the surface. Even without it, though, Will’s tally stood at five to Robertson’s remaining three.
To his credit, the other archer said nothing. He walked the hundred measured paces to the line of target posts, where he stood looking down at Will’s handiwork. He shook his head in disbelief, for Will’s grouping truly was astounding. Of the five shafts that had struck above the ground, the highest was less than an inch above the lowest. Robertson reached into the pouch at his waist and brought out a small leather purse; he hefted it in his hand, then lobbed it underhand to Will.
“I’ve never seen the like,” he said. “And I’ve never been so outmatched. I’ll stay out of your way, ’gin we ever meet again, Will Wallace.”
The two nodded to each other, in mutual respect, then bent to gather up their spent arrows as the crowd surged forward, and there was pandemonium as every man there wanted to shake the hand of each of the contestants. Will turned his back on the well-wishers and caught my eye. He threw the purse to me. “Take that to James while I finish up here.”
I took the money to Laithey, and as I turned away I saw the group of young people who had come to visit Jessie Brunton now thronging around Will. Jessie, I knew, had been recently married to a friendly young fellow called Tam Brunton, a miller who worked on Sir Malcolm’s estate. I had known her by her unmarried name, Jessie Waddie. She was the eldest daughter of Ian Waddie, a prosperous Paisley wool merchant. Waddie, it now turned out, was married to Margaret Braidfoot of Lamington, near Lanark, whose brother Hugh, a successful sheep farmer and therefore a valued associate of Ian Waddie, had a daughter called Mirren, whose presence was the underlying reason for today’s visit from all these young people. Mirren, aged seventeen, had come to Paisley on what had become an annual visit, to spend the summer with her beloved Auntie Meg and her daughters.
Jessie herself was standing close by, a slightly bemused smile on her face as though at a loss to explain her sudden popularity even to herself, and I went and spoke to her for a few moments, asking about her visitors. When I turned away from her again, I saw the tallest youth in the party struggling to pull Will’s bow, and I was amazed that Will would permit such a thing. It was only later—much later—that Will gave me his own slightly dazed account of what had happened while my back was turned.
2
“Who was the fellow trying to pull your bow? The big fellow the girls were all admiring?”
“Who? I don’t know. He’s one of Mirren’s friends.”
“He was dressed as a forester. Had you ever seen him before?”
“No, but he’s a Bruce man. He’s a woodsman, though, not a forester.”
“Is there a difference?”
That earned me a stare from beneath slightly raised eyebrows. “Aye, there’s a big difference, and fine you know it. A woodsman patrols the woods, looking for poachers, but that’s all he does. He has a forester to tell him what to do and where to go and when. He wears the green and he works in the woods, but he knows nothing of forestry, beyond being able to move quietly in the thickets.”
“Which Bruce does he work for, Annandale or Carrick?”
“The old man, Annandale. He owns the land alongside ours, to the south and west.”
We were sitting together by the fire in Sir Malcolm’s main room, late that same night. Sir Malcolm and Lady Margaret were long since abed, and we would have been, too, save that I was enjoying my time away from the Abbey too much to want to sleep, and Will was too tightly wound over the events of the afternoon. If he had mentioned Mirren Braidfoot once since we came home that day he had mentioned her a score of times; her name was rarely absent from his conversation, what little there was of that. I was perplexed, for I could hardly remember him ever mentioning any girl by name twice in the same day. But there he was, sitting across from me yet barely there, his gaze focused on whatever vision he was seeing in the leaping flames in the grate.
“So you don’t know this fellow’s name, the one who had your bow?”