“Wait. Are you saying Wishart included you in his designs?”
“Aye, but only because I was already there with Will and Will vouched for me. But in return for Will’s services, and very much to the point at the time, Wishart offered rich payment. He would speak personally, he said, with Mirren’s father, whom he knew well, on Will’s behalf. And the blood-price wool would be of use to Murray, he said, for there had been a blight of some kind among the sheep in the north, and we would be well paid for it. The money gained from that would enable Will to offer Master Braidfoot a suitable bridal price for his only daughter, and the Bishop would then grant Will a position as a verderer, with a good, strong house, on the Wishart family lands near Jedburgh.” He looked at me from beneath his arched right eyebrow. “Ye’ll see, I think, it wasna an offer Will could refuse.”
I felt slightly abashed. “Yes, I can see that. Especially in his frame of mind at the time. And so you travelled north. I’m guessing it went well there, for you’ve said Will is married and living and working in the south now.”
He nodded. “Aye. It took us eight days to reach Murray’s lands, and it was an interesting journey. Scotland is a wild place nowadays, much changed since King Alexander died, and there were times when we were glad there were seven of us, for had we been fewer in number we would have been plucked like fowl along the road and left wi’ nothing.”
“What d’you mean? You would have been robbed?”
“Robbed and killed, lad. None of us doubted that, once we saw how it was out there. There’s no law beyond the burghs today. Once out of the towns and into the countryside, it’s every man for himself and God help the unprepared. The whole world is out of balance. Without a king to hold them in check, the nobles—or so they like to call themselves—are all become savages, every petty rogue of them looking out for himself alone. Each one of them treats his holdings as his own wee kingdom, to be ruled as he sees fit, using whatever private army he can afford to hire. Which means that there’s no order anywhere—no discipline, no loyalty, no honour—and a traveller moving through the land runs a gamut of risks at every turn, like to lose everything he possesses each time he meets a stranger. They are all bandits, Jamie, soldiery as well as outlaws, and common, decent folk live in terror of their lives.
“Three times we encountered what might have been serious trouble on the road. Three times in eight days. And on one of them, north of Stirling, we had no other choice than to fight. We left eight dead men behind us, eight out o’ nigh on twenty who attacked us, but thank God none of them were ours. We took down five o’ those early, with our bows—me and Robertson and Will—and Big Andrew’s crossbow. By that time, though, the others had come too close for bow work, but Long John and Shoomy killed three more of them before they could blink, and the rest ran away.”
I could only shake my head, unable to believe that the situation could be as bad as Ewan was saying.
“Anyway, we found Sir Andrew where he was supposed to be, and young Andrew was with him. Between the pair o’ them, they gave us a chieftain’s welcome. I couldna believe how happy your friend Andrew was to see Will, and it seemed to be mutual—Will was brighter than I had seen him since before he fell foul o’ the Graham fellow.” He lapsed into silence, staring into the fire, and I saw his eyelids starting to droop.
“Don’t nod off now, Ewan,” I said, afraid of losing him and the story both. “They were still friends, then?”
He blinked owlishly. “Oh aye! It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. You know Will, he seldom mixes well wi’ strangers, and there they were, after five or six years, embracing each other and laughing together like brothers who had been apart for no more than an hour. Brotherly, though God knows there’s little resemblance between them apart from size. And yet there’s something each of them has that’s reflected in the other. Don’t ask me what it is, for I can’t say. The closest I can come to it is that they share a common … light.” He winced. “That sounds daft, I know, but each of them has this glow about him that seems to spill out whenever they’re excited, and those two get each other stirred up all the time. You can almost see it—their excitement, I mean—everyone around them feels it.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “That’s it, lad. I barely know what I’m saying, but I know I have to sleep. I’ve been on the road since before dawn, and now that I’m old, I need my rest.” He looked across at me. “An hour or two wouldna hurt you, either.”