The Forest Laird(68)

“But I want to ask you about—”

“Ask me tomorrow. I’ll be in better fettle for talking once I’ve slept.”

There was no point in arguing, and so we went to find our beds. Whereas I have no doubt that Ewan was asleep before he even lay flat, I lay awake for a long time, thinking about all that he had told me. And then, just as I was drifting to sleep at last, I tensed, my mind suddenly crystal clear again.

Ewan had been hiding as he waited for me to reach him that day. Ewan, masked and unexpectedly returned after two full years away from Elderslie, should have had no reason to hide himself in a clump of brambles. Reason to be cautious, yes, but to hide from the whole world?

3

People had already started arriving from neighbouring houses and hamlets by the time I rolled out of bed soon after daybreak, and more kept coming throughout the morning, turning the entire household and the grounds into a frenzy of preparations. Cousin Anne arrived before mid-morning with her husband and her three children, and Aunt Margaret conscripted me to take the children for a walk in the grounds, to keep them out of the way of the work ongoing everywhere, so I did not even set eyes on Ewan until after the midday meal had been served. Trays and platters of cold meats, pickled roots and onions, and slabs of fresh bread with jugs of cold spring water from the well were carried out from the kitchens and set on tables for people to help themselves however and whenever they wished.

I had already eaten by the time Ewan appeared, and when I saw the long tube of the bow case hanging from his shoulder I guessed he had been practising in the nearby woods. He winked at me as he approached the serving tables, then unslung the bow case and set it down beside his quarterstaff before beginning to load a wooden platter for himself. I went to fetch us a couple of mugs of ale from the kitchens, then crossed to where he had found a seat at an unoccupied table under a tree, against the wall of one of the outbuildings. He nodded his thanks as he took the ale, and I sat sipping at my own as he wolfed down his food. When he had swallowed the last mouthful, he leaned back and quaffed off what seemed like half of his ale. Then, typically, he belched.

“That was good,” he said. “But you don’t look happy. What’s on your mind?”

“Questions,” I murmured. “More questions.”

He looked around us casually “Ask, then. We’re alone. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know why you were hiding yesterday when we met, because I don’t believe it had anything to do with your being cautious about Graham of Kilbarchan.” He didn’t stir and his expression betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. “Whatever you were hiding from, whatever it was about, it’s much more recent than the trouble that sent you away from here two years ago. Is it not?”

He tilted his head slightly to one side, and then he nodded. “Aye, it is. I was going to tell you about it.” He glanced around again. “Will wants to come home. Sent me to see if it was safe.”

“He wants to—? What’s stopping him? Let him come! Go back and tell him we’re waiting for him, then bring him back, wife and all.”

The big archer ducked his head. “Not quite that simple, Jamie. That’s why he sent me up alone. To check out the possibilities, see what’s to be seen.”

“In what sense? What are you looking for?”

“Englishry.”

“In Elderslie?” I made no attempt to hide my scorn.

“Why not? They’re everywhere else.”

“Not here, they’re not. Not yet.”

“Are they in Paisley?”

I shrugged. “At the Abbey, aye, sometimes. There’s always bishops coming and going, and the English ones have taken to riding with escorts ever since Pope Gregory gave Edward the right to appoint Scottish bishops last year.”

Ewan grunted. “Aye, Bishop Wishart wasna pleased about that at all. Said—and he was right—it undermined the entire authority of the Church in Scotland. A foreign pope granting a foreign king authority over the Scots clergy. ’Gin I were an English bishop in Scotland today, I’d travel wi’ an escort, too, lest my holy arse got booted back into England.”

“Then … has Will crossed the English?”

Ewan hesitated. “Aye, you might say that.”

“What did he do?”

His huge shoulders flexed beneath his clothing. “Nothing you wouldna ha’e expected him to do, knowing Will.”

“Tell me, then.”

“He hit an English soldier.”

“He hit an English soldier. In a brawl, you mean.”

Ewan sighed. “No,” he said, in a strange, tight voice. “It was no brawl. But there’s background to it that you need to know in order to understand it. Last year was bad, Jamie, all upheavals, as I’m sure you know from living at the Abbey, filled wi’ politics and posturing and praying and positioning by folk of every stripe, and all of it shaped to suit the dreams and schemes of the men who would call themselves great. And it culminated last May and June, we’re told, with Edward Plantagenet being named overlord of Scotland. That was his price for agreeing to serve as judge in the matter of the kingship, overseeing Balliol and Bruce, and none of the magnates seemed inclined to argue with him at the time.” He shrugged. “Mind you, how could they, really? As Bishop Wishart made clear to us at the time, they all hold great and prosperous lands in England, through Edward’s goodwill and at his royal pleasure. Lord John Balliol himself owns fifteen vast estates in England, many of them in the richest, southern areas, did you know that? And Bruce holds almost as many—at least ten that Wishart knows of—and both men openly pay homage to Edward as their feudal lord and benefactor in England. Their feudal lord.”