“No.”
“Why did you let him take it?”
“What? Oh, because he wanted to.”
“He wanted to. And you just let him? Will, you won’t even let me carry that bow. Why would you give it to someone you didn’t know, and let him play with it?”
“Mirren wanted me to.”
“Mirren wanted … I think you’d better tell me— Will? Are you listening? Tell me what happened when you met this Mirren. How did you meet her?”
He frowned, blinking. “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I don’t remember. She was just there, suddenly, yellow and blue …”
It was enough for me to see her clearly. She had been wearing a yellow kirtle over a blue gown, and Will’s eyes were wide again with the recollection of it.
“I’d seen them there,” he continued, “the folk from Paisley, but I hadn’t noticed her before they all came flocking around me, and then there she was. Sweet Jesu, Jamie, but she’s bonnie. She was looking right at me, her eyes on mine, and I swear I near fell into them, they were so big. And so blue, like her gown. They were all talking to me, shouting at me, but I could hardly hear them and she never said a word. She just stared at me, and then she smiled. I thought she was going to laugh at me and my heart nearly stopped for shame, but she didn’t. She just looked and smiled. And God help me, I couldna smile back at her. I tried, I wanted to, but my face felt as though it was made of wood. I couldna make it work. And I just stood there, gawking at her like some daft wee laddie …
“And then that fellow tried to take my bow, wanted to try it. She saw me start to turn on him and stopped me … with her eyes. She didn’t speak. Her eyes … they flashed at me, warning me, I thought, though I didn’t know against what. Then she looked at him, and at the bow, and back at me, and nodded. And I let him take it, along with an arrow from my bag, a broadhead. Then he walked away and all the others followed him to see how he would do. And we were left alone, the two of us.” He looked at me, and his eyes were wide with wonder.
“What did she say to you?”
“That her name was Mirren. She knew mine already. Someone must have told her. She asked me where I lived, and when I told her, she said that I should come and look for her within the week, at her uncle’s house in Paisley, in the evening when my work was done … It was the strangest thing, Jamie. She told me how to find her, and when to come, and yet she never looked at me. She kept her eyes on the young fool with the bow the whole time, as though watching him and leaving me ignored, like a log on the ground. And then she said I should take my bow back, so I did. The poor gowk hadn’t even drawn it to half pull. I took off the string, put the stave back in its case, and when I turned around again he was helping her up onto the wagon, and they left. She never looked at me again. Just left me standing there like a witless stirk.”
“But she told you when and where to find her, Will. And did it privily, with no one being the wiser. Plainly she wanted none of them to know. Women do that sometimes.”
He looked at me as though I had crowed like a cockerel. “Do what?”
I shrugged, aware of my own witlessness. “Behave strangely.”
“How would you know that? Who told you such a thing?”
“Nobody told me … I must have heard it somewhere.”
“Hmm. Then did you happen to hear what I should do now?”
“No, but I know … You should do as she bade you. Look for her in Paisley at her uncle’s house the next time you are free of an evening.”
3
The woodsman’s name was Graham, and he came from a village called Kilbarchan, some twelve miles from Elderslie, though he now lived in a bothy on the Bruce lands south of us. Will learned his name quickly, for Graham of Kilbarchan was forever underfoot—like dung on a new boot was how Will put it—whenever he went to Paisley to see Mirren, and he soon grew to loathe the sight of the man. A week elapsed before he could wind up the courage to go and look for her at the home of her uncle, Waddie the wool merchant. He found her without difficulty, for she had been expecting him and was watching for him, but there his true difficulties began.
Mirren’s uncle took his responsibilities seriously, and the safety and moral welfare of his sister’s only daughter while she was in his care was one of his main concerns that summer. The girl was beautiful, and wealthy by Paisley standards, so she attracted admirers and suitors as a blooming bank of flowers draws bees, and Ian Waddie had to deal with all of them.
Unfortunately for Will, he dealt equally with all of them save one, treating them uniformly with hostile disapproval. The sole exception was the young woodsman from Kilbarchan, who was the only son of Alexander Graham of Kilbarchan, another of Master Waddie’s prime suppliers of fine wool. This Graham had amassed sufficient wealth and property in a lifetime of hard work and sharp dealings to make his son appear as a supremely qualified suitor, despite the young man’s general fecklessness, and that impression was greatly enhanced by the father’s advanced age and rapidly failing health. Young Sandy would inherit everything, and for that reason alone, according to Mirren, Ian Waddie would have encouraged his suit even had the young man been a drunkard and a leper.