“Will said he would talk to Lord Ormiston, but that his lordship had been long away from home, about his affairs in Edinburgh, and was anxious to get back to his wife, who was infirm. He then asked if we might be permitted to pay our last respects to the old man before we left, on his lordship’s behalf, and the fellow let us into the house and then left us alone. Old Graham was laid out on his bed in the main room. There was a priest there, and two monks, and a couple of others, men and women both, most of whom were peering about them as though they had never been there before.”
“And then?”
“We knelt and prayed by the bedside. Well, we knelt anyway, while the priest prayed. And then, having established our right to be there, about our supposed master’s business, we walked around the other buildings, the warehouses and barns and stables, and three big, stinking sheds where the wool was treated and combed before they baled it.” A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “At that point I think you would have been right about the thievery. Will was looking, I believe, for an easy way to rob the place.
“One of the stone warehouses had a private room with a padlocked door, and it was obvious that the old man had worked in there on his affairs. But the padlock was unlocked, the door was open, and no one was nearby, so we went in. There were papers and parchments everywhere, strewn about all over the place, as though someone had been rooting around in there looking for something to steal. Will opened a small wooden chest that sat on the big writing table and pulled out a handful of scrolls—single sheets of parchment, all of them unsealed but rolled and tied, with ribbons and blank seals attached. He opened one, and then another, and then he began to smile. He flipped me the one that had made him smile. I looked at it closely, but it took me a while to realize its import …” His voice faded and he smiled again at the memory.
“Well, what was it?” I prodded.
“A contract, a bill of sale. With spaces left blank for the details of the transaction. But it was signed by Alexander Graham. None of the others were, but for some reason the old man had signed his name and set his seal to this one. Will took it back from me and tucked it and three others into his scrip, and then we went off and continued our inspection. All three barns were stuffed to the roof with bales of wool, some of it prime, some poorer. But they were stuffed, Jamie. Hundreds and hundreds of bales. We found out later that they had been preparing to ship trains of wagons to Glasgow, Dumfries, and Edinburgh the following week, for the Michaelmas Fairs in September, less than a month away.
“On our way back out to our horses, we met the steward again, and he was as friendly as could be. Will asked him if someone could tell us about wagons, and he directed us to one of the wooden barns outside the compound walls, where we found an old man getting ready to leave. He showed us an enormous wagon, the biggest I have ever seen, and told us it could carry ten full-sized bales with ease. Then he showed us the leather sheets they used to cover the bales for protection, and the long straps they used to secure the load. Will asked him how many horses, and he told us two. Two big whoresons was what he said.”
In spite of my queasiness at the crime being described, I found myself fascinated. “So what happened then?”
“We came right back to Paisley, to find help for what Will had in mind. We needed some men we could trust, and so we went to Jamie Crawford’s howff.”
“Of course you did.” I knew Crawford’s howff well. It had been a favoured haunt of ours for a long time, a plain but well-run tavern frequented by archers and other interesting characters, where the food was simple but wholesome, the ale was dependable, and no one ever asked awkward questions.
“One of the sons, Alan, was there,” Ewan said, “and he and Will went off into a corner. I could tell, watching them, that Alan liked what he was hearing, grinning and nodding his head and looking around the room.”
Alan Crawford and Will had been friends since our first year at the Abbey. He was a big, bluff fellow, Will’s age and almost as big. The only weaponry Alan ever carried was a long, single-edged dirk that hung at his side—I had never known him to bare the blade—and a heavy quarterstaff that Will had taught him to use. He was the only man I had ever seen who could best Will Wallace in a toe-to-toe bout. The respect that achievement garnered him was widespread.
“Did you know what Will was telling him?”
Ewan grinned. “That we had need of help and would pay well for two weeks’ work. Four men, to help us take a heavy wagon north, then bring it back. Good men, willing to work hard and to fight if need be. A silver groat a day, each man.”