Jack Whyte: Order in Chaos

“D’ ye remember that day in Dalfinnon Woods, Jamie, before they caught us? Remember we hid from them, amang the brambles on our hands and knees? It was so quiet, and we listened so hard for the sounds o’ them comin’, and then only thing we could hear was a lintie* singin’ in a tree above our heids? God, yon bird could sing … Like a lintie, they say … he could sing like a lintie. But unless you kent what a lintie sounded like, you’d never be able to tell if that was true or no’ … It was wee Jenny who tell’t me that day that the bird was a lintie, for I didna ken. How was I to know? Poor wee Jenny …” I saw the first tear form and tremble on his lid, but he squeezed his eyes fiercely shut and flicked his head.

“Seven, she was, and yon big English whoreson killed her wi’ a flick o’ his wrist. Didna even look at what he’d done, didna even turn his heid to see … Just cut her wee, thin neck the way ye would a stoat. Jesus, Jamie, I saw that in my dreams for years, her head rollin’ and bouncin’ like a bairn’s ba’ kicked into the bushes, its mouth open and its eyes wide, as if she was wonderin’ what had happened. What they did to you and me afterwards was cause enough to hate them a’ and want to see them deid, but poor wee Jenny …”

He snatched a long, quivering breath, and straightened up again, leaning his shoulders back against the wall, his face a mask, and when he spoke again he had reverted to Latin. “His name was Percy, did you know that? The man who killed Jenny? William Percy. Some kind of baseborn relative of the English earl.”

He had noted my negative head shake, for he sniffed and nodded. “I met him again, years later, after Stirling Bridge, when I recognized him among the prisoners. He didn’t know me, but I had carried his face in my mind ever since that day. I hanged him by the heels and reminded him what he had done to us and to my little sister. He denied everything, but he could not deny the scar that had marked his face that day and marked it still … a long, crooked gash that had turned his beard white on one side of his mouth. I spilt his guts with my dirk and let them hang down over his face, and when he stopped screaming I cut off his head. Not as cleanly as he had cut off Jenny’s, though, for it took me three blows because of the way he was hanging upside down.”

I closed my eyes at that, trying to shut out the image he had conjured, but he had not finished talking and did not notice my revulsion. “England has had ample cause to rue that day’s work in Dalfinnon Woods in the years that have passed since … And this new day will bring an end o’ it, when they hang me up and draw my guts the way I cut out his.”

He fell silent, thinking, then went on. “Some people—Archbishop Lamberton was one—have asked me why I hate the Englishry so much, and I have had so many reasons that I’ve never been able to really answer any of them. Christ knows we Scots have never had far to look for reasons to despise these people’s cruelty and arrogance … but that day in Dalfinnon Woods when they murdered my child sister and did what they did to you and me has much to do with all of it. Bad enough that they had already killed my mother and father that morning. But the aftermath there, what they did to us in that wood, three helpless children, that earned them my true hatred … As strong today as it was then.”

He stopped again and looked at me, and it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea of what he was thinking, but then he shook his head, regretfully, and when he resumed, he sounded bemused.

“But you forgave them, Jamie, where I never could and never wanted to. How could you do that, after what they did to you that day? That must have been difficult. I know it had nothing to do with fear. You must have felt fear in your life, we all have, but I’ve never seen you show it. You forgave them, and I never doubted your sincerity … I never understood it either, but I never doubted it. We grew closer after that, for years, we two, but then our ways parted, yours towards the church and mine towards the greenwood. You took the Cross and I took up the bow and then the sword. And yet we remained friends, despite the fact you disapproved of me and everything I did.”

I held up my hand to stop him and he waited.

“I seldom disapproved of what you stood for, Will, what you wanted to achieve. It was the how of it, not the why, that caused me pain. I lauded your objectives, but most of the time I deplored the savagery in your methods of achieving them.”

“Savagery … Aye. But only a fool would turn the other cheek to enemies who he knew would kill him dead for doing so. Or think you that the English are not savages?”

“No, I do not, Will, for like you I have seen their savagery. But what we saw that day in Dalfinnon Woods was depravity committed by a gang of drunken men. They might as easily have been Scots, but for the grace of God.”

“They were English, Jamie.”

“Aye, and they were drunk. No man improves with drink. But to hold their crimes, bad as they were, against all England and all Englishmen makes no kind of logical sense to me.”

“Well, it’s too late now to argue over it.”

“Tell me about Cressingham.”

“Cressingham?” My question plainly surprised him, for he cocked his head to one side and thought for a moment before he shrugged and said, “Cressingham was an idiot; a strutting, sneering fool. The most hated Englishman in Scotland.”

“Aye, but he was also your prisoner, after Stirling Fight. Did you skin him alive to have a sword belt made for yourself?”

He flinched as though as I had slapped him. “No, as God is my judge! That is the talk of fools and jealous enemies. I did not. I was nowhere near the place when he was killed.”

“But he was killed. And flayed alive before that.”

“Aye, he was. I regret that. It’s one of the reasons they’ve stated for why they’re going to hang me as a felon. Retribution, they say. But I was not there, and I knew nothing of it until the murder was done. I had too much on my mind that day, after the battle and with Andrew Murray sorely wounded, to pay attention to what my malcontents were up to. But the responsibility was mine, as leader. That lies beyond argument, and I accept it.”

I turned away, thinking to lecture him about appearances and guilt by association, the ways in which men perceive things, but when I swung back to face him, I found his eyes gazing directly at me awash with tears, and the sight turned my self-righteous words to ashes in my mouth. William Wallace had never been known to weep over anything. That was part of his legend among the wild, ungovernable men he had led for so long. But he was weeping now, unashamedly, the tears running unheeded down his cheeks and into the thicket of his matted beard.

“What is it, Will? What’s wrong?” Silly, futile questions, I knew, even as I asked, since so much was wrong and unalterable, but he raised up his head and looked directly at me.

“Was I wrong, Jamie? Have I been a fool all these years?”

Caught unprepared, I could only gape at him, but he must have been blinded by his tears for he shook his head sharply, as though casting his own questions aside. “I did but what my conscience told me to do, and I did it for our poor, sad land and for our folk. I knew I had no skill for it and no right to do it, and I set down the Guardian’s flag after Falkirk, when that became plain to all … But the folk were crying with need and they were never going to find support among Scotland’s nobles. And so I stepped in and agreed to be Guardian, at Wishart’s urging … Wishart and others … The Lords of Scotland’s Church. They, at least, stood loyal to King and realm when the great lords were scrabbling solely for themselves … And so I led them, the Scots folk, against all those who would grind them down—Scots Magnates and English parasites—led them to victory at Stirling with Andrew Murray, and then to slaughter and defeat at Falkirk. And after that, I walked away and left others to direct the path of the realm.”