Jack Whyte: Order in Chaos

Read on for a preview of Jack Whyte’s exciting new novel,

THE FOREST LAIRD

PROLOGUE

It pains me to hear people say nowadays that William Wallace died defiant, a true and heroic patriot, with a shout of “Freedom” on his lips, because it is a lie. William Wallace died slowly and brutally in silence, to my sure and certain knowledge, for I was there in London’s Smithfield Square that morning of August 24 in 1305, and all I heard of defiance was the final, demented scream of a broken, tortured man driven beyond endurance long before he died.

I was the last of our race to see him alive and to speak with him, the sole Scot among the crowd that watched his end, and the only one there at the time to mark and regret and mourn his passing, a thing that shames me for my countrymen when I hear these rumors now. I did not really see him die, though, because my eyes were closed, screwed shut against the tears that blinded me, and my throat was swollen with grief, choking off my breath. When I was able to breathe again and wiped my eyes to look, his spirit had departed, and they were already quartering his corpse, the chief executioner proclaiming his death and holding aloft the severed head of the Scotch Ogre who had terrified all England.

Sir William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland, my friend, my blood cousin, and my lifelong nemesis, would never terrify another soul.

But, by the living God, he had terrified enough within his lifetime for his name to live on, in Scotland at least, long after his death, a grim and implacable reminder of the penalties that could and would be extorted as the punishment for disloyalty, treachery, and disobedience.

As I watched the executioners dismember his remains, I accepted the reality of his death as I had accepted its inevitability two weeks earlier, when the word first reached me that he had been taken by Sir John Menteith and handed over to the justice of the English King. I had known that was coming; not that Menteith would arrest him, but that someone would, somewhere and soon, for William Wallace’s time had passed, and he had fallen from grace in the eyes of the people he had led and inspired a few years earlier. He had become an embarrassment, a source of discomfort to all of them, a thorny, disapproving, uncompromising reminder of all that they had dared and then abandoned. For they had come to terms—nobles, clerics, and commoners—with England’s Edward Plantagenet, and the English King was being regally lenient, exercising forbearance towards all Scots rebels who would join his Peace, save only the outlawed traitor Wallace. The price of that forbearance was the surrender of the brigand Wallace to Edward’s justice. Every noble, sheriff, and justiciar in the Realm of Scotland was charged with the duty of apprehending the former Guardian on sight and dispatching him to London as a common criminal. Sir John Menteith had merely been the administrative official closest to hand when Wallace, still defiant, eventually showed himself.

I was in England on my way to London when I heard the news, bearing documents from my superior, Walter the Abbot of Paisley, to the Bishop of York and the Bishop of London. I stopped to rest at the Priory of Reading on the final leg of my journey, where I found the sole topic of conversation among the brethren to be the recent capture of Wallace and his immediate dispatch to London to face King Edward for his sins. Everyone knew he would be tried summarily and executed out of hand, but the manner of his death, the physical details of how it would be achieved, were matters for debate and conjecture among the jaded monks, who seldom had open cause to speculate upon such worldly things. I listened to their prattling, saddened, and thought about William Wallace and how different was the man I knew from the monster they were all deploring and decrying.

I gave no indication that I knew him, of course, but I resolved then and there to see him, somehow, while I was in London. I had friends there among the clergy, many of them powerful, and I promised myself that I would use them to find him wherever he was being held and, if it were humanly possible, to visit him and offer whatever small comfort I could in his final, friendless hours among an alien people who loathed and feared him.

In the event, I had no trouble finding where he was imprisoned, for the whole city of London was agog with the news, and with the help of a trusted friend, Father Antony Latreque, Sub-Abbot of Westminster, I was admitted to the prisoner’s cell on his last night to hear his last confession.

The tears I would later shed in Smithfield Square, blinding me to his final moments, would have nothing to do with the barbarity that I was witnessing that bright, late-August morning. They would surge instead, completely overwhelming me, from a sudden memory of Wallace’s own tears earlier, long before dawn and before they came to lead him out to death. The sight of those tears had shaken me, for I had never seen Will Wallace weep since the day our childhood ended, and the anguish in his eyes there in his darkened cell had been as keen and fresh and unbearable as the pain he and I had endured together on that long ago, far off day.

He did not recognize me when I entered, and I was grateful, though I had expected it, for it had been four full years since he and I had last seen each other. He saw only a cowled priest accompanying a portly, mitered abbot. The jailer had seen the same thing, ignoring the priest completely while he whined to the abbot about his orders to permit the prisoner no visitors.

“We are not visitors,” Abbot Latreque replied disdainfully. “We are of Holy Mother Church, and our presence marks a last attempt to make this felon repent the error of his former ways and confess himself before God. Now provide us with some light, open up this door, and let us in, then wait out here.”

Abashed, the fellow slouched away to bring each of us a freshly lit torch, then unlocked the heavy door, set his shoulder to it, and pushed it open, permitting us to enter a room that was far larger than I had expected. My first glance showed me a broad, flagstoned floor, dimly lit by one flickering flambeau in an iron sconce on the left wall. I saw no sign of the prisoner and assumed, correctly, that he was hidden in one of the cell’s dark corners. The rattle of keys and the creaking of the massive door had alerted him, though, for he spoke before we had fully crossed the threshold, his words accompanied by a single brief clash of chains.

“I need none of your English mouthings, Priest, so get you gone and take your acolyte with you. I need no English translator to poison my words before they reach God’s ears.”

They were not the exact words I had expected, but I had estimated precisely the tone and content. Abbot Antony was appalled, and it showed clearly on his face, for though he had been a priest for most of his life, he was, in fact, a monk by dedication and had seldom strayed far from the cloister. To hear such venom in a single voice, directed not merely at him but at his entire church and his people, left the poor man speechless, but not addled. I had warned him that he might hear appalling things when he confronted this prisoner, and so he pulled himself together quickly and nodded solemnly, returning to the script he and I had prepared against the risk that others might be present to overhear what was being said. Wallace, in the meantime, stood watching scornfully.

“I had heard,” Antony said, “that you were obdurate in your hatred of my kind, but it is my Christian obligation as a man of God to do all in my power to help you towards salvation … and so …” He hesitated, then went on. “And so I have taken pains to bring you an intermediary, twixt you and God, to whom you may speak in your own tongue. Father James, here, is of your folk. I will leave him to commune with you and hear your confession. I myself will wait outside and see that you are undisturbed.”