It was also said of the Greens, before the end of that summer, that no Scots folk had ever been accosted by them, and that, from time to time, they passed surplus food from captured English supply trains on to families whose own food and possessions had been confiscated by the English. The proof of that came after two wellorganized attacks by the Greens on English supply trains in the Dumfries area, when small raiding parties of English soldiers moved swiftly into surrounding villages, searching buildings for anything that might have been taken in the attacks. The Greens’ retribution for that came swiftly, too, and subsequent raiding parties were wiped out before they could reach their objectives.
I had developed an ambivalence towards such tidings since they began to come to my attention, for they always brought my patriotism into conflict with my morality. As a priest, I knew what the Greens were doing was legally atrocious; they were defying the duly constituted authority of government, spurning and openly flouting the King’s Peace. As a Scot, however, a member of the voiceless people whose lives were being trampled underfoot by those in power, I exulted in the victories of the Greens. They were defying the King’s power, certainly, but the Scots King himself was doing nothing, and in fact the King whose power they were mainly defying was not their own. The Greens were resisting the illicit power of Edward Plantagenet, who had no right, divine or otherwise, to be exercising his regal powers or his military prowess within the realm of Scotland, despite the high-flown language of the treaties he cited in support of his activities. Scotland now had a King of its own. The Scots lords and magnates had given the English monarch legal licence for his behaviour during the interregnum, but that should mean nothing now. The interregnum was long since over, even though Scotland’s King was being painfully slow to assert himself.
Looking back now from the distance of decades, I can see that my perspective on the entire affair of the Greens was distorted, naturally and probably inevitably, by the fact that I knew, respected, and even loved their leaders. They were my friends and family, and my trust in them was such that I could not think of them as malicious criminals. No matter how much supposed evidence was laid before me for inspection, I viewed it with suspicion and sometimes outright disbelief, knowing it had been fabricated by people whose bias against my kin and my very race was beyond question.
My sole error lay in thinking that I was the only one aware of that relationship.
2
“That cousin of yours is forging quite a reputation for himself.” It was an unexpected comment, coming as it did after a long period of silence, and my chest tightened with alarm. Of course I had no slightest indication that it heralded the single most important conversation I would ever have with my mentor, Robert Wishart, the Bishop of Glasgow and Primate of Scotland.
“My lord?” I asked, allowing the inflection of my voice to demonstrate my puzzlement.
“I said your cousin’s making a name for himself among the folk.” He used the Latin word populi, meaning the common people. “We should discuss it, you and I.”
It was March 20th, 1295, and I had been working for Bishop Wishart in Glasgow for more than a year by that time, learning to cope with more and more responsibility as my duties grew increasingly complex and demanding. We were in his private study that morning, in the administrative wing of the cathedral buildings, and since before dawn we had been working our way through the mountain of correspondence awaiting his attention. Beyond the open window, a far-off thrush was singing, its enthusiasm whetted by pale March sunshine, and in the middle distance I could hear the regular, rhythmic sounds of the stonemasons and builders as they went about their daily work, adding to the Cathedral buildings. Construction had been under way now for more than forty years, and no one, not even the Bishop himself, could say when the work might be complete. The Cathedral would continue to be built until it was deemed pleasing to the Deity.
I realized that I was dawdling, avoiding eye contact, and hoping to deflect whatever was in His Grace’s mind. Now I set aside my pen and looked him in the eye.
“What do you wish to discuss, my lord?”
“Will Wallace and his Greens.” He pressed his shoulders back against the carved oaken back of his armed chair. “It’s time we spoke of it openly.”
Openly … That was the last word I would ever have thought to apply to this matter, for Will’s identity as the leader of the Greens was the sole secret I had withheld from this man. I sat still for several moments longer, then picked up an ink-stained rag and made a show of wiping my fingertips.
“Where shall we start, my lord?”