CHAPTER TWELVE

1

I stretched my leg slowly and cautiously, I thought, to relieve a mild cramp in my calf, but the movement was sufficiently visible to startle the small herd of deer in the clearing in front of me. Barely a heartbeat after I had stirred, the entire herd was bounding away to vanish into the thick undergrowth that edged the glade. I cursed myself in silence and glanced guiltily at Shoomy, who lay beside me, but he did no more than purse his lips and frown gently, moving his head almost imperceptibly from side to side and spreading the fingers of his hand in a warning to be still. I lowered my head to the grass again, closing my eyes and straining to hear beyond my own heartbeat as I waited.

We had been in place for four hours by then, having arrived in the dead of night when there was little chance of being detected, and daylight had crept up around us as we sat or lay there, snugly wrapped in waxed woollen blankets, within the dense fringe of bushes that edged the glade, so that from the blackness of pre-dawn we had emerged almost imperceptibly into one of those unpredictable, seemingly magical mornings that sometimes come along without warning. In all that time together in the night-chilled darkness, save for the muted responses to the Mass I celebrated by torchlight when we first arrived, we had barely spoken, not because of any fear of making noise, but simply out of the human need to think without sharing what we were thinking.

Now, however, our stillness had a purpose. Shoomy had chosen this spot with care, deeming it most likely to yield rewards, and now we were waiting for someone to appear, and the need for silent immobility was absolute.

I was unsure what the first sound I heard actually was. It was too distant and indistinct to identify, but mere moments later it came again, and this time I recognized it as the fluttering sound of air being snorted through a horse’s nostrils. I knew the others must have heard it, too, and I forced myself not to move. A long time passed, it seemed, before the next sound came, and then it was the heavy, muffled thump of a stamped hoof on soft ground, and it was accompanied by a whispered shushing as the animal’s rider sought to keep it calm. Another long silence followed that, with none of us daring to breathe, lest the sound be too loud, but eventually there came another sound of movement, accompanied by the unmistakable creak of leather saddlery. The screen of leaves near where I lay shivered, then parted infinitely slowly, pushed aside by an extended hand, to reveal a man leaning far forward over the neck of a horse, his chin almost against its mane and his eyes peering between the beast’s twitching ears.

Nothing moved as the scout examined everything he could see ahead of him and on each side. He wore a conical steel helmet, which forced him to keep his head tilted severely back, and he was highly alert and vigilant, his very life dependent upon both. He examined everything minutely, meticulous and unhurried in his inspection, so that long before his questing eyes turned in my direction I had pulled myself down into the smallest possible bulk, hugging the ground as I sought to keep my head and the curve of my back beneath the gentle ridge that separated me from his line of sight. I waited to be discovered, but nothing happened, and then I heard him move again, the soft fall of hooves as he walked his horse quietly away. I heard no sound of sweeping branches, though, and so I raised my head again as slowly as I could and looked for him. He had vanished, evidently circling the clearing behind the screen of leaves that marked its edges.

I caught sight of him again moments later, emerging as before from the screening bushes, too far away now to see me easily even had he been looking in my direction. This time, however, he came through the screen, peering carefully about him as he rode into the green-shaded glade. His shield was slung diagonally across his back, and he held the reins easily in his left hand, his right grasping the hilt of a long-bladed sword in a grip that allowed the bare blade to lie along his thigh and rest gently against his knee, featherlight and unobtrusive, yet ready for instant action at the first flicker of movement.

Clear of the bushes, he drew rein for a moment at the very edge of the clearing, his eyes sweeping the open, seemingly innocuous space on both sides of him. Then he nudged his mount on again, leaning forward in the saddle as before and seeming to shrink even lower as he passed beneath the low-hanging branches of the huge elm that dominated the glade. He was in no danger from the overhanging boughs, for the lowest of them cleared his head by almost two feet, but his reaction was an instinctive avoidance of a sensed, potential threat. I remember thinking, though, that it clearly had not occurred to him that he might be attacked from above, for he did not once look up, and in consequence the man who leapt down on him caught him completely unprepared and drove him crashing to the ground and into unconsciousness. The only sound we watchers heard was the abrupt, wrenching thud of two bodies colliding and then hitting the earth concussively before the startled horse could even snort in fright.

The attacker rolled and rose quickly to his feet, and I saw that it was Alan Crawford, now one of Will’s senior lieutenants. He spun back to the unhorsed man, crouching over him quickly with a bared dagger in his upraised fist. But a moment later he straightened up and sheathed the weapon, then summoned the others to come forward, giving orders to some to secure the prisoner and to others to fan out into the forest from which the rider had come. Now, as two of his men gagged the fallen man and bound him at wrists and ankles, Alan crossed to where I crouched beside Mirren and two other women.

“Right,” he said quietly. “This should have been the point man on our side. The others, four of them, will be behind him, spread out on either flank. They may not have met our people yet, but when they do, if anything goes wrong, we’ll hear about it quickly enough. Keep your ears open for noises on both sides of the road. We’ll give them another quarter of an hour to reach us, and if they don’t appear, we’ll know they’ve been dealt with. Then we’ll head across the road and join Long John and the others.”

The main north–south road lay to our right, little more than fifty paces away but hidden from us by the woods. The remaining scouts, we knew, would be riding on both sides of it, four now on this side, five on the other, searching for people like us, people who might pose a threat to the train they were escorting.

Our group, of which we were but one-fifth, faced south, commanding the eastern side of the roadway. Across the road, five more groups hunted the scouts on the western side, prepared to kill all of them if required. In the entire party of fifty dispatched to neutralize the ten scouts, only Mirren, her two women, and myself were unarmed, and we were there in the first place simply because it was the safest spot Will had been able to think of for this morning’s work, far enough removed from what would happen where he was to ensure that Mirren would be in no danger. My task, ostensibly, was to guard her, but the mere idea of that was ludicrous, and I knew I was there only because Will had been seeking some means of protecting my priestly sensibilities against the kind of murder and mayhem that was likely to erupt in the confrontation that lay ahead.

I had arrived unannounced in his camp four days earlier, bearing strange tidings and urgent instructions from Bishop Wishart to which Will had listened initially in slack-jawed astonishment. That bemused wonder, though, had been supplanted within moments by the realities of the looming situation, and from then on everything had taken place at breakneck speed in Will’s forest camp. Edward of England had moved decisively, far more quickly than even Wishart, with his privileged knowledge, had imagined. As always, by seizing the initiative, Edward had left no opportunity for anyone else—most particularly enemies like Will and his band—to do anything other than react to what he had already set in motion. I watched with awe in the hours that followed my delivery of Bishop Wishart’s tidings as messengers were dispersed at speed to summon fighting men from all across the southeastern region of the country. Large numbers of other men soon began appearing, too, obviously summoned from close by, and I could see these were all commanders of varying rank. They wore no insignia, but there was no disguising the air of confident authority that hung about them. They were unmistakably leaders of men, set apart by their very bearing. These men vanished almost as soon as they arrived, into gatherings that were clearly planning sessions; and as those sessions progressed, more and more orders began to be issued, and activity throughout the encampment increased visibly.

I learned within the space of that first day that my cousin’s following was far greater and his authority more far-reaching than I had ever imagined, and that made me aware, too, that my very presence there at such a time must be a distraction to him and might soon become a nuisance, and so I sought to efface myself by simply keeping out of his sight.

Out of sight, however, did not mean out of mind, and as word reached us the next day that Edward’s messengers had already passed Berwick town, little more than thirty miles to the south of where we were, Will turned his attention to the safety of his wife, who was, he informed me, newly pregnant, and to me, his favourite, younger cousin. He knew me better than I knew myself, knew the strengths and weaknesses of my character and thus knew that the greatest of these, in both respects, was my immense regard for the sanctity of the Church. He knew I would have great difficulty in accepting what was now afoot, and so he guarded me from it by entrusting me with the care and safety of his wife and his future family, forcing me to take them away and out of danger.

Thinking of that, I found myself smirking at the irony of what had happened just moments earlier. Had we not fled Will’s camp, we would have been nowhere near the enemy scout who had come so close to us with his long, bare blade. But the thought was overwhelmed by a sudden commotion in the trees at my back. I heard a muffled grunt, an explosive breath, and then the lethal clang of steel on steel, followed by a scream that was cut off in mid utterance. Then came the plunging, stamping sounds of a heavy horse forcing its way through thick growth, and the bushes split apart, yielding to the advance of a heavily mailed and helmeted rider on an enormous destrier, the largest animal I had ever seen. My first, fleeting impressions were of an upraised visor and a red-bearded face with bright, glowering eyes. Then I saw a broad-bladed sword sweeping down, its bright steel fouled with blood, and as it fell it seemed as though someone leapt to meet it, springing effortlessly up towards the blade to counter its thrust. Blade and body met and seemed to melt together, motionless for a flicker of time, and then in a leaping spray of blood the sword continued its downward slash, taking the body with it and casting it aside, severed and broken.

The rider now stood up in his stirrups, ignoring his victim and looking about him. He slammed his visor closed with the crossguard of his sword and pulled his horse up into a rearing dance before launching it forward, and I found myself face to face with a charging knight at a distance of less than forty paces. He was enormous, as was the armoured creature beneath him, and the high crest on his visored helm made him look even larger. The crest was a rampant green lion, and the rider’s shield and surcoat were pale blue with the green lion, jarringly familiar, blazoned across the front of both. I knew this knight, had seen him somewhere before, perhaps even met him, but that faded to insignificance as he set spurs to his mount with a savage, rowelling kick and came thundering towards me and the three women huddled beside me. It never crossed my mind that he had seen us. I knew that with his head encased in his massive steel helm, his vision was severely restricted. He could see solely what was directly ahead of him, and that imperfectly, his sight constrained by the slits in his visor, and this close to me and my three charges, thundering directly towards us, he was no more than a blind and lethal juggernaut. His enormous warhorse, though, trained to kick down and kill any assailants in its path, was Death incarnate.

I started to crouch down, to cry to the women to get out of the creature’s way, but even as I did so I hesitated, appalled by the lumbering spectacle of the beast’s approach, and so I merely crouched there, wide-eyed with terror and unable to move, watching death come towards us.

But then an arrow struck squarely in the centre of the knight’s breastplate with a clean, violently metallic clang.

Bodkin, I thought. The bodkin was a war arrow with a solid, cylindrical head that tapered to a point, and it was designed to pierce plate armour. That they seldom did nowadays was due, I knew, to their being deflected more often than not by the newer, harder steel being forged by smiths today. Sure enough, in less time than it took for its impact to register in my awareness, the missile had vanished, spinning off into the distance. Nonetheless, the mounted man felt the full brunt of the impact and reeled in his saddle, almost unhorsed by the savage weight of the strike. He threw both arms up, fighting against the thrust of the missile’s impetus, and his shield went whirling away, end over end, ripped from his grasp. His horse, too, went down on its haunches, driven backward by its rider’s rapidly shifting weight. The horse quickly regained its balance and heaved itself back up onto all fours with a triumphant scream, and precisely at the moment when it looked as though the knight had won and would wrest back control of his animal, a second arrow struck, entering one of the slits in the rider’s visor and piercing his skull, killing him instantly and hurling him out of the saddle.

I stood stunned, weaving in shock. Someone grasped me by the shoulder and pressed me down towards the ground, and I sank gratefully to sit beside the women, my legs shaking. The man standing above me, his hand still on my shoulder, was an archer called Jinkin’ Geordie, so named because of an affliction that rendered him incapable of remaining still for any length of time without twitching. Even as I looked up at him, he twitched nervously. But it was plainly true, as I had heard before, that his affliction failed to affect his prowess in a fight.

“Was that you?” I asked him, a little breathlessly.

“Was what me?”

“The knight … Did you shoot him?”

“Aye. Can I ask ye somethin’?”

I was staring at the fallen knight, and I assumed that the fellow wanted to ask me something about him. “Of course,” I said, asking myself already what I could possibly know about the slain man. “Ask.”

He fixed me with an intense, furtive look. “I’ve been hearin’ folk talk, about what we’re to do. Sounds to me as though we’ll be killin’ priests afore this day’s oot, and I don’t know if I like that.”

I felt my jaw fall in shock. “Killing priests? In God’s holy name, Geordie, how can you even think such a thing? Of course we won’t be killing priests. The very thought is an abomination.”

The archer jinked—there really was no other word to describe it—his chin twitching down towards his right shoulder, which jerked forward to meet it as though in sympathy. “Aye, maybe so, right or no’,” he added. “But that’s what folk are sayin’. We’re goin’ to be killin’ priests this very day. I ken they’re there, too, the priests. I saw them mysel’, last night, frae up on the cliffs, aboon their camp. There was half a hunnerd o’ them.” He nodded emphatically. “Aye, easy,” he added. “Frae a’ the noise they were makin’, a’ the singin’ an’ chantin’, easy half a hunnerd.”

I forced myself to smile at him with a serenity I suddenly did not feel, and highly aware that others, including Mirren and her two women, were listening to our exchange.

“No, Geordie,” I told him, waving a hand dismissively and trying hard to keep my voice sounding relaxed and confident. “There’s nowhere near as many. There might be half a hundred men in that whole train, give or take a handful, but few of them are priests. We counted them last night, from the top of the same cliff. There are twenty-eight clerics in all. Two of them are bishops, six are priests, and the remaining score are Cistercian monks. And on top of that, there are these ten scouts, five on each side of the road, and this knight who was in charge of them, and perhaps half or threequarters of a score of servants.”

He cocked his head like a bird, one eye glittering as it caught the light and adding subtly to the birdlike resemblance. “Cistercian monks, ye say?” His voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “Are they no’ French, tha’e Cistercians? Aye, they are …What are French monks doin’ ower here?”

This Geordie was a curious soul, and simple, and I glanced down at Mirren, who was looking back up at me. She rolled her eyes as though to let me know I would receive no help from her.

“Geordie, I can’t tell you that. You know more about them than I do, so shush you now and let me go. I have to see to the knight there.”

I was less than ten paces distant from the fallen rider, and no one moved to join me as I walked over and stood looking down at him. I suppose there must have been some thought in my head of baring his face and identifying the man, for I was still convinced I had seen him somewhere before, but long before I reached him I knew I would do no such thing. He was unmistakably dead, reeking with the stench of voided bowels, and his face would remain unseen. The arrow that had killed him, travelling with incomprehensible speed and force, had hammered diagonally up through the front of his war helm and lodged inside, twisting the visor violently out of true and jamming it shut, and blood and grey matter from the shattered skull within had filled the helm and now oozed, thick and obscene, through the openings in the metal.

My stomach lurched and I snatched my gaze away, trying to empty my mind and resisting the urge to vomit, and as I did so my eyes fell on the man the knight had killed. The difference was startling, and somehow pitiful. The knight appeared largely unbloodied. The man he had killed, though, had been unarmoured, and the knight’s broad-bladed sword had split him wide open, carving him like a slaughtered deer and sending his lifeblood flying in all directions to stain the grass and the bushes for yards around the spot where he had fallen. I crossed to where he lay, holding the skirts of my robe high to avoid staining them with his blood, then bent forward slightly so I could see his face. He was a stranger to me, heavily bearded and poorly dressed in a tunic-like garment of rough homespun wool, and I could see no weapon anywhere near him. I wondered what had possessed him to attack a heavily armed and armoured mounted knight, alone as he was, on foot and unarmed, for I remembered seeing him springing high towards the falling sword.

I found myself suddenly seething with outrage. Will had sent me away from the coming day’s activities, with the women, in order to protect my feelings, because he knew I was uncomfortable with anything that smacked of defiance of Holy Mother Church. Now, though, with this single instance of mindless violence and unnecessary slaughter, a new understanding of what was happening everywhere in my country crashed down upon me. I saw that what I had been objecting to—what Will had tried to protect me from—was nothing less than an atrocity, an atrocity carried out against my fellow countrymen by a cynical foreign king using the Church’s name and privilege to abet a damnable war of aggression.

Bishops and senior clerics, indeed all clerics, by general consent, had no need to fear travelling alone, for no one in his right mind would ever dream of robbing a priest. But the two English Bishops whose presence here today had demanded our attention were engaged in activities that set them apart from their peers, and priestly innocence played no role in what they were about. They had a screen of killers thrown out ahead of them, purely to ensure that no profane eyes would gaze upon whatever it was that they were transporting. And I had been puling and fretting like a callow, unformed boy because I was afraid that Will was doing something that might draw down the displeasure of the Church upon my head. I stood there for some time, feeling my flesh crawl with the sickness of self-loathing and thinking about what that voluntary and wilful blindness said about me, and then I swung around and strode back to where Mirren, alone, stood watching me.

“What happened to you?” she asked as I reached her. “Did you know that man?”

“No. Scales from my eyes,” I answered, not caring whether she understood me or not.

“Aye? So where are you goin’ now? It’s plain to see you’re goin’ somewhere.”

I looked at her, and then beyond her to where one of our party held the reins of her horse and my own. “I’m going back to Will. You’ll be fine without me … Better off, in fact, for we both know how feckless I’d be in a fight.”

Her eyes had narrowed and she looked at me now with a completely different expression than the slightly scornful one that she habitually reserved for me. “And what will you do when you find Will? He’ll have no need of a priest under his feet, Jamie. D’ye not know that’s why he sent you away in the first place?”

“Aye, I do. And I’ll stay out of his way. But first I’ll give him the absolution I’ve been withholding.”

Her frown was quick. “Absolution for what?”

“For what he’s about to do. It needs to be done and he’s the one to do it, but it’s taken me until now to see that. Now I need to give him my support and my blessing.”

“D’ye think he needs those?”

“I don’t care, Mirren, and I didn’t say he needs anything. I need to give them to him, freely. I’ve been wrong. Stubborn and stupid and short-sighted.” I pointed with my thumb to the blood-drenched corpse on the grass behind me. “I see it now, my eyes washed clean by the blood of the sacrificial lamb there.”

“That sounds blasphemous,” she said more quietly.

“What’s happening in this land is blasphemous, and my Church has been perverted to make it possible. I’ve only now come to see that. So now I’m going to try to help change things.”

She nodded, a single dip of her head. “Aye, well, ye’d better hurry, or it’ll all be done when you get there. Away wi’ ye, and tell my man he’s in my mind and heart. Run now.”

2

Less than half an hour later, I walked out of the woods into full daylight again, leading my horse, and allowed my gaze to slide across the scene in front of me, marvelling at the rich brightness of it. The uneven surface of the rocky escarpment beneath my feet was sparsely carpeted with short, springy, startlingly green grass and striped in places by slanted, inch-high ridges of silvery-white, flaky stone. The sky was blindingly blue and cloudless. The sun had been climbing it now for nigh on two hours, yet in the valley below, the fog was still thick and solid. Directly ahead of me, seemingly just a short leap down from where I stood, a thick, flat blanket of greyish white stretched away from me. It had appeared solid mere moments earlier, but as I looked at it now I could see the topmost, budding twigs of the trees beneath it showing through, the mist that had concealed them eddying gently and dissipating in the tiny breeze. Across from me, half a mile to the south, a twin bluff loomed straight up from the fog-shrouded trees at its feet. Beyond that, stretching away like a string of green and silver beads, other hilltops sparkled in the strengthening sunlight.

“Fog doesn’t often stay this long,” a voice said beside me, and I turned and nodded to Will, who had been standing with three of his people, gazing down into the carpet of mist when I arrived. “But the wind’s coming up now, so it’ll all be gone soon.” He turned his head slightly to look me in the eye. “What brings you back here, and where’s Mirren?”

“She’s with Shoomy and the others. She’s fine. They’ve cleared away the scouts along the road, so you don’t need to worry about being taken from behind.”

“That’s good, but you didn’t answer my other question. What brings you back here?”

“Conviction, but not in the way you’re probably thinking. I’m here to tell you I’m sorry for the way I’ve been … stubborn and stiffnecked and arrogant.”

“Arrogant?” The expression on my cousin’s face was almost but not quite a smile, for there was uncertainty in his gaze, too. “Am I hearing aright? A priest, admitting to arrogance?”

I ignored the jibe and merely nodded. “An epiphany is what you’re seeing. I’ve had a change of heart in the past hour. I watched a man die and I saw the pity and the sickness of it all. And with that, I came to see that I have been wrong. Ever since he first told me about this, about what was in his mind and what he intended to ask you to do, I’ve been angry and afraid of my own Bishop’s motives and I’ve been questioning what I saw as his mutiny against the Church. But now I can see he’s right—has been right all along. This trickery that’s afoot is sinful, betraying the Church’s trust for the benefit of a mere man, no matter that he be a king.”

Will looked at me wryly. “So? What are you telling me?”

“That I am here to stand with you, as a representative of God’s Holy Church, on behalf of men of goodwill everywhere.”

Will stared at me for some time, his face unreadable, and then he turned away to look down into the valley at our feet. “And these men of goodwill, think you there are such creatures in England, Jamie, when the talk turns to Scotland?”

“Aye, Will. I do.”

“Right,” he said then, nodding. “Look, it’s clearing quickly down there. Look at it blow!”

Sure enough, the remaining fog was vanishing even as we looked, whipped to tatters and blown into nothingness by a strong breeze we could not feel, and as it cleared we saw the activity below us where the group we were waiting for had made camp late the previous afternoon. This party of churchmen was making a leisurely progress of the journey northward, its members secure in their safety as clerics in the service of God. They had crossed the border at Berwick three days earlier, and we had received word of their arrival within hours. Since then, they had travelled less than twenty miles, beginning each day’s journey after celebrating Mass and eating a substantial breakfast. Thereafter, at a pace set by the cows they had brought with them for their breakfast milk and matched by the horses pulling the upholstered wagon in which the Bishops rode, they had made their way steadily along the broad, beaten path that served as the high road into Scotland from England, eating their midday meal while on the move, and stopping at roadside campsites, selected by their scouts, long before the afternoon shadows began to stretch towards nightfall. Then, while the priests prepared for evening services, their servitors set up an elaborate camp with spacious leather tents and ample cooking fires, and the episcopal household staff busied themselves preparing the evening meal. The soldiers of the scouting party maintained a separate camp, a short way from the main one.

Now, in the open glades between copses, we could see the horse handlers leading two large, heavy wagons into place below us, in what would be the middle of their line of march. The two Bishops in their upholstered carriage would ride in front, and behind would come the two heavily laden supply wagons. Behind those, in turn, would come the priests and acolytes, walking with the Cistercian monks.

“They’re fine,” Will muttered. “Their Graces should be on their holy way any moment now. Did you recognize them?” I shook my head, and he looked back towards the group in the distance. “Aye, there they go. And now it’s our turn. Let’s get down there.” He swung himself up onto his horse and kicked it into motion as I mounted my own and fell into place behind him, following him down a narrow, twisting goat path until we reached the road. The three men who had been talking with Will when I arrived struck out on foot, making their way down separately by a far steeper route.

It took us no more than a few minutes to reach the spot Will had chosen for what he intended to do that morning, but the path we had taken down from the escarpment was vastly different from the winding route the Bishops’ train would follow through the valley bottom. It would be half an hour before they reached us, and in the meantime, Will had some final dispositions to see to.

The place we came to, the narrow end of the funnel-shaped valley we had been overlooking, had been burned out years earlier in a summer fire and was now a long, narrow clearing extending twenty to thirty paces along each side of the road for more than a hundred yards. It contained a rolling sea of waist-high grasses and a scattering of saplings, plus, on this particular morning, an army of at least a hundred men, all of them wearing hoods or masks and carrying bows of one kind or another. A large, recently felled tree, one of only a few to have escaped the fire of years before, lay by the roadside at the northern end of the exposed road, and broken branches and debris from its collapse littered the road. Beside it, drawn up close to a makeshift saw pit, a high-sided dray blocked the narrow roadway completely. It had been there since the previous day and was half-filled with sawn logs. The two draft horses that had brought it there were cropping idly at the rank grass by the roadside, some distance from the work area.

Will and I stood side by side in the bed of the cart, Will shrugging and twisting to settle a long, ragged cloak about his shoulders. It altered his appearance miraculously, because it had been made to do precisely that. Someone, working with great skill, had sewn a construct of woven willow twigs into the voluminous garment so that when it was properly in place, it turned its wearer into a grotesque hunchback. I watched him as he shifted and hauled for a few moments until he had the garment comfortably draped over his shoulders, and although I had seen him wearing it several times in the previous few days, I was amazed anew by how effective it was.

Ahead of us, emerging from the woods and running straight north towards where we waited, the road from England stretched like the shaft of a spear. Hardly anyone among the hundred standing in the grass moved at all, I noticed, and the air of tense expectancy was almost palpable. Eventually, though, a runner appeared at the far end of the path, waving to announce the imminent arrival of the quarry. Will gave a last signal, and everyone except him and me sank into the waist-high grass and disappeared from view.

He and I moved to the driver’s bench then and sat down, lounging comfortably and facing west, our backs towards the steep, rocky face of the escarpment we had just left. We made ourselves comfortable and I opened a cloth-wrapped bundle of bread and hard cheese, which we began to eat as though we had earned it, and there we remained as the first of the Bishops’ wagons, carrying the two prelates themselves, emerged from the forest and began to approach us.

As it drew closer and its accompanying party continued to spill out from the forest behind it, Will pretended to hear them coming and sat up straight, turning and leaning towards them. I followed his lead, both of us striving to look like dullards, uncomprehending but reverent and slightly awestruck by the richness of the train coming towards us so unexpectedly.

The leading wagon creaked to a halt about ten paces from where we sat, and for a moment nothing happened. But then the driver raised his voice, addressing us in passable Scots, though with a heavy, broad-vowelled, English intonation.

“Well? Are you going to sit there all day and do nothing? Move your cart aside and let us through. Didn’t the soldiers ahead of us tell you to clear the way?”

Beside me Will raised his eyebrows and his face became a portrait of innocent astonishment. “No,” he answered. “They tell’t me to move, right enough, and I said I wad, but they didna say onythin’ about you comin’ ahent them. Haud ye there, now, and I’ll move.” He stood up stiffly, muttering under his breath and bundling the remainder of our food clumsily into its cloth before setting it on the driver’s bench between us, seeming to ignore me completely. “Stay here,” he murmured so that only I heard him, and then he lowered himself over the cart’s side and moved deliberately to collect the grazing horses and lead them back by their halters, mumbling all the time to himself in a voice that was barely audible. He took his time about lifting the heavy draft collars over the animals’ heads before backing the team into place and starting to attach its harness. I watched in silence as the occupants of the other wagon fought to contain their impatience. There were three of them there, the one in the rear plainly a priest and the two in front even more evidently Bishops. None of them even deigned to glance in my direction.

The two Bishops were almost laughably dissimilar to each other in every respect. One of them was much younger than his companion, taller and with a red face and a big belly. His faceconcealing beard yet failed to hide a pouting, petulant mouth. It was plain at a glance that this lord of the Church, whoever he was, had no intention of being mistaken for anything less. His robes were imperially striking, heavy and opulent with texture and bright colours, and the fingers of his big, meaty hands were festooned with heavily jewelled rings. I decided, without ever looking into his eyes or hearing him speak, that I disliked him intensely.

I disliked his companion even more, though, and I also assumed him to be the superior in rank, if for no other reason than the disparity in their ages. In the older man’s eyes, naked and undisguised, was unmistakable contempt for anyone he considered beneath him, and it was clear he thought us far, far beneath him. This man wore black edged with crimson, and though the stuff of his vestments was probably no whit less costly than the younger man’s, the cut of it combined with the severity of its blackness to suggest a cynical attempt to appear austere and perhaps even thrifty. He wore no rings, save for a single episcopal ruby, and the crimson-edged black velvet of his pileolus, or bishop’s cap—a recent innovation from Rome, larger, heavier, and thicker than the traditional red silk skullcap, that had caused much discussion before being rejected by our community in Glasgow—marked him as a man who paid close attention to the drifting currents of theology and Church politics. Beneath the cap, his face was gaunt and devoid of humour. He never took his eyes off Will, from the moment he leapt down from the driver’s bench until he had the team properly harnessed and had pulled himself up to sit beside me again.

“Good,” he said quietly as he settled himself on the bench. “They’re all here.”

As indeed they were. In the time it had taken Will to harness the dray’s team, the rear elements of the Bishops’ train, the monks and servants, had had time to assemble around the wagons. Will stood up then and gathered the reins of our team in one hand while picking up the whip from its holder by his seat, preparing to drive us out of the way. But on the point of cracking the whip, he hesitated and turned towards the Bishops again.

“Ye’ll be Bishops, then, I’m thinkin’, by the dress o’ ye. English Bishops?”

No one deigned to answer him, but he had not expected a response. He half turned and indicated me with his whip. “This is a Scots priest. A priest, mind ye, no’ a monk. A real priest. Said Mass for us this mornin’, before dawn. And we had nothin’ to pay him wi’ for his services. But we fed him. He disna’ need much else. He’s a priest. He kens God will look after him, ye ken?”

I had to stifle the urge to smile at Will’s acting the dimwit. His mix of English and simple Scots should have been intelligible even to an Englishman, but both Bishops were staring at him blankly, the younger in astonishment, the elder in disgust. The priest in the back seat leaned forward and spoke to me in Latin, not even glancing at Will.

“Have your man move aside, Father. Their lordships here are not to be kept waiting by the likes of him or you. Quickly now.”

The peremptory, intolerant snap of his voice released something inside me and permitted me to smile openly at the man, who was tall and clean shaven, balding yet broad shouldered and fit looking, with narrowed, pale blue eyes and a stern, humourless look about him.

“You are a Scot,” I said courteously in the same tongue, permitting but a hint of my surprise to show through.

“Of course I am. What has that to do with anything? I am here to serve as translator for their lordships.”

“In their dealings with the untutored savages, you mean.”

“You are impertinent, Father.”

“No, I am merely truthful … and powerless here, Father, as are you. In the first place, this man is not mine to command. He is very much his own keeper. And if their lordships are to be kept waiting at all, I doubt they could improve upon being kept by the likes of him. Look at him, Father. This man speaks for Scotland.”

“You’ve been away from civilization for too long. Your wits are scattered!” The glance the priest threw at Will was withering. “A hunchback woodcutter, to speak for Scotland?”

“Aye,” Will said in English, suddenly and clearly. “If need be, for it seems no one else will.” Then, ignoring the slack-jawed expression of surprise that had sprung to the priest’s face, he raised his voice to a shout, in the command his hundred had been waiting for among the grass. “Up, Greens!”

Within the space of two heartbeats the train on the road was surrounded by a ring of standing bowmen, and every monk, priest, and bishop in the gathering was the target of at least one levelled arrow. Will’s men had risen up in utter silence from the chest-high grass, their weapons at the ready, and their appearance wrung a chorus of dismay from the clerics as the threat sank home. Without being ordered to, men everywhere in the throng began raising their hands in bewildered surrender. Will watched them until there was no one, monk, priest, or servant, who did not have his hands in the air, and then he said, still in English, “Everyone down from the wagons. Now.”

As the Bishops’ driver and his bench companion scrambled down and away, their passengers moved to follow them, but Will waved them back into their padded seats. “Not you three. You stay there for now.” All movement had ceased on the other two wagons as people watched to see what would happen next, but Will merely waved a pointing finger. “The rest of you, off. Move!”

To his credit, the elder of the Bishops was the first to regain his composure. As his servants and retainers began clambering down from the wagons at his back, he stood up again quickly and stepped forward as far as he could in the confined space of the wagon. There he raised a peremptory hand, pointing at Will. “Take heed, Hunchback, lest you imperil your immortal soul! Would you dare molest and rob God’s servants in the solemn execution of their duty?”

“Dare to molest and rob God’s servants in the doing of their duty?” replied Will in Latin as clear and fluent. The Bishop’s skeletal face registered sheer disbelief. “No, Bishop, I would not. But dare to rob thieving rogues and lying scoundrels who usurp God’s good name and privilege unlawfully in the name of England’s King within the realm of Scotland? Aye, that I will, and with pleasure. Those I would molest and rob at any opportunity, and I thank you for this one.”

“You blaspheme, woodsman!”

Will had not moved since this exchange began, holding the reins in his left hand while the other gripped the teamster’s whip loosely, but now he raised the long whip and pointed its drooping end at the black-clad Bishop, and his voice took on a biting, steely edge.

“No, Churchman, I do not. You are the blasphemous party here, wearing the robes of sanctity and episcopal privilege while playing the serpent. Your very presence here is a lie that turns to blasphemy as you pursue it.” He glanced down at his own men and indicated the black-clad prelate with a jerk of the head. “Watch him. Watch all of them. If any of them tries to speak again, pull him down and stifle him.”

A number of his own men, several of them his lieutenants, had already approached the Bishops’ wagon, and now some raised their bows at full extension towards the trio in the cart while others lowered theirs to rest their arms. As they did so, Will shook out the reins and cracked his whip expertly between the heads of his team. The animals leaned forward instantly into their harness and Will handled them surely, bringing them around easily until the two vehicles were wheel to wheel, though facing in opposite directions. The younger Bishop opened his mouth to speak, but Will cut him off.

“Did you not hear what I ordered done to you if you dare to speak? I meant it. Shut your mouth, Englishman, and keep it shut.”

The man froze, his mouth gaping, and he made no other attempt to speak, though his face writhed with fury and loathing. Will’s eyes moved to the Scots priest on the rear bench.

“You,” he said. “In God’s name, man, what are you doing? Have you no honour, no self-worth? How can you lend yourself to such a travesty as this and yet call yourself a Scot, let alone a priest?” He tilted his head sharply to one side as he saw something in the man’s eyes, something I had not seen because I had been watching Will.

The other man’s answer was swift and forceful. “I do not know what you are talking about, fellow, but I have done nothing other than my duty. I was dispatched by my superior, Bishop Henry of Galloway, to meet their lordships when they arrived in Berwick, my function to assist them in their dealings with whomever they might meet upon the road from there to Whithorn. You are the first person we have met since then, and it shames me to be named a fellow Scot with such as you.” He looked around him at the faces of the crowd staring up at him. “It’s evident that you are thieves and outlaws—the Greens of whom I have heard spoken. But most of you are masked and unrecognizable, and to this point you have done nothing irremediable. You are misguided, and I regret having witnessed your folly, but you might yet escape from this error without blood being shed.” He looked back at Will. “Let me ask you once again to stand aside and permit us to pass unmolested.”

I could see Will nibbling at his inner cheek, an indication that he was thinking rapidly, and when he spoke again his tone was less accusatory.

“You’re no craven, Priest, I’ll grant you that. But do you truly not know what’s afoot here? Is that possible?” He watched the Scots priest, and then nodded. “Aye, it would appear it is. Well, listen closely, Father. What’s your name? Father what?”

It looked for a moment as though the priest would refuse to answer, but then he shrugged slightly. “Constantine.”

“Constantine … A distinguished and imperious name. Listen then, Father Constantine, and do not interrupt me until you have heard everything I have to say. You will know when you have, because I will inform you. Do you understand me?”

The priest inclined his head and Will returned the gesture.

“Good. Scotland is teeming with English soldiery. You were aware o’ that, of course. They swarm like fleas on a hedgehog and they are causing us Scots much grief. They should not be here at all, no matter how the English try to justify their presence, for we have a King of our own again, King John of Scotland, of whom you must have heard, since he is from your own diocese of Galloway, as was his mother, Devorguilla. Well, see you, the fact that John now rules in Scotland means that Edward of England has no lawful place here, save as an invited guest bound by, and beholden to, the laws of hospitality. Yet Edward maintains an army on our soil and in defiance of our country’s ancient laws.”

Will paused, gazing directly into the priest’s eyes before continuing. “Edward is facing mutiny today, though, because his mercenary dogs have not been paid. Three times now his quartermasters have attempted to bring English money into Scotland to pay their troops, and three times have those quartermasters’ trains been intercepted and—taxed—their contents confiscated. I know that to be true, Father Constantine, because it was we who took the money, levying the taxes against Scotland’s future needs.

“In so doing, we sought to teach the English King a lesson: that this land is ours, an ancient realm secure in its own legal right and beyond his grasp. His armies are unwelcome here and we will not allow him to maintain them here unlawfully. He seeks to make our Scottish laws conform to his own wishes, but no man, not even the divinely anointed and legally enthroned King of Scots, can do that. And so we have thrice denied Edward permission to pay his troops within this realm by denying him the means with which to do it, knowing that if the troops remain unpaid, they will return to England, one way or another, in search of payment. And that is our intent: to send Edward’s army back to plague him rather than us.”

Every man in the surrounding throng was rapt, caught up in Will’s explanation as the Latin speakers among them translated what he had said. Even the English prisoners appeared interested in what he was saying. He looked about him slowly now, aware of the hush awaiting his next words.

“That has been the truth in recent months, and for a while now we have been awaiting Edward’s next response. And here, this day, we have it. A new ruse being attempted. A scheme involving trickery and treachery, in which you are involved. A devious and underhanded ploy that will have far-reaching implications for everyone because it betrays an understanding that has governed this world of ours since first the Word of Christ came to these shores.”

Another pause stretched out as he moved his gaze from face to face among his listeners. “It has always been the truth that churchmen, being humble servants of the Christ, may travel unmolested throughout all the lands of Britain and elsewhere. None but the most depraved of madmen would ever stoop to rob a priest, because in doing so he would be seen as robbing and insulting God Himself. But there is honour and responsibility involved in that covenant, my friends, on both sides. In return for that freedom of movement and the lack of fear in which they travel, all churchmen bear a sacred trust of honesty in their travels and endeavours. They may transport the Church’s goods without molestation, so be it they are engaged upon the Church’s affairs and in the sole interest of the Church itself.”

Will turned back to the priest. “Tell me, Father Constantine, what do you think is in those chests in the wagon at your back?”

The priest frowned. “You mean the kitchen supplies and provisions?”

“No, Father, not those. The others. The locked chests.”

A terse headshake from the priest. “I do not know what you mean.”

Will pointed to two small groups of his men who stood listening beside the wagons. “You and you. Find them.”

Several men hoisted themselves into each of the two draft wagons, and for a time there was much pushing and shoving as cargo was uncovered and dragged aside. The shout of discovery came from the second wagon, directly behind the Bishops’ own, and a moment later one of the men straightened up.

“They’re all in this one!” he shouted.

Will nodded. “How many?”

“Eight o’ them. Wee ones, but they’re …” The fellow stooped again and there came a series of grunts and scraping noises. “Heavy whoresons … all padlocked.”

“Break one open. Any one of them.”

“No! In God’s holy name, I—”

It was the older Bishop who shouted, and before he could say more than the Lord’s name, Will had dropped the reins and whip and leapt into the other wagon. He seized the Bishop in one hand by the front of his robe, pulled him up onto his toes, and then slapped him hard, sending the man’s pileolus flying. While every one of the watching clerics gasped in horror, he hauled the grimacing cleric up to within inches of his own face and snarled, “And now I have laid violent hands on one of God’s anointed. Well, we will test the truth of that in time to come, Bishop Weasel. In the interim, though, I have too much to do and lack the time to waste on you. Catch him,” he growled and threw the cleric like a child’s straw doll down into the waiting arms of his men. They caught him with a shout, and before it had died away Will had turned to the other prelate, who flinched and scrambled over the side of the wagon, almost falling to the ground in his hurry to escape. Will raised his arms, pointing and shouting orders in Scots.

“Line them all up over there. Keep them close and watch them, but don’t abuse them. These two here—the fat one and the black crow—I want them on their knees and bare headed. Bare arsed, too, if they give ye any trouble. I’ll come back to them.” He looked over to the wagon with the chests. “Sully, have you got it open yet?”

His answer was a loud, splintering blow. “Aye, it’s open now. Sweet Jesu!”

Will pointed at Father Constantine. “You. Come with me. Here, take my hand.” He took the priest’s proffered hand and steadied him across the gap between the Bishops’ wagon and our own, and when he was sure he had him safely across, he took the reins again and moved our vehicle to flank the next one in line.

He did not even have to speak, for the sight in the other wagon needed no words to explain it. Sully’s crew had smashed the lid of the small iron-bound chest that lay in the wagon bed in front of others exactly like it, and in doing so had scattered some of the densely packed coinage that the chest contained, so that large silver coins and smaller golden ones were strewn across the planking, gleaming and glittering in the sunlight that had now penetrated the clearing.

The startled priest began to speak, but he immediately bit down on his outburst, the muscles along his jaw standing out clearly. He turned his head to look at the two Bishops, his expression unreadable. The two Englishmen kneeling side by side in the road glared back at him, wild eyed, but neither one of them dared breathe a word. And finally he turned to me.

“Clearly there are grounds for suspicion here. As to whether what your companion alleges is true, I cannot say with certainty.”

“Then ask yourself why we are here, Father, and how we knew these chests would be here.” Will’s voice was a growl. “And weigh your own response against this one: I learned four days ago that this train would be coming from the south, and I was told what it would be carrying. I was also told how the plan to send it came about. My informant was a prelate of the Church in Scotland, warned by an associate in England who saw the perfidy in what was being done. Not all English bishops, it seems, are as duplicitous as these two. Some understand the difference between right and wrong and between honour and infamy.”

Father Constantine nodded slowly. “It may be as you say, and truth to tell, it looks that way. The fact remains, though, that I knew nothing of this, nor, I am sure, did Bishop Henry.”

He looked at Will again, before addressing the two English Bishops in a voice filled with genuine concern.

“My lords,” he began, “I may not help you here, for this is clearly beyond the scope of my duties to you, even did it not bring my personal honour and my loyalty to my King and realm into question. It does all of those things, though, and I intend to throw myself upon the mercy of King John, even though I know that, in allowing myself to be duped, I have been guilty in my failure to see what was going on beneath my nose. As for you and your case, I would recommend clemency in almost any other circumstances—penance and absolution—but I see no contrition in either one of you, and penance without contrition is pointless. It pains me to say that, my lords, but there is nothing I may do to change it. And so I must wash my hands of you.” He turned away from them and looked Will straight in the eye. “I am now in your hands, Master Woodsman.”

“Hmm. My hands are full, I fear, but I will think on that. In the meantime, come you and sit here, by our good Father James.”

As the priest began to make his way to join me, Will looked down at the two Bishops, who, as he had ordered, had been stripped of their outer garments. The larger man was kneeling dejectedly, staring down at his own knees, but the smaller, older man knelt upright, his head cocked as though he was listening for something.

“Now,” Will said, his voice addressed to no one in particular, “to business, for that is what this is, and let no man mistake it for anything else. We are dealing here with a sordid matter of trade and monies that has nothing to do with churchly offices or duties, save in the deliberate abuse of both.” He turned to the older Bishop. “You there, the Crow. If you are waiting for your mounted escort to come charging from the woods and rescue you, you wait in vain. Young de Presmuir and his scouts lost interest in your cause hours ago. In fact they lost all interest in everything.”

I saw the Bishop’s eyes narrow with bitter disappointment, but my mind was full of the young knight’s name, for my instinct had been correct. I had met the man. Henri de Presmuir, the knight of the Green Lion, had been a guest of Bishop Wishart on an evening soon after my arrival in Glasgow. He had been unarmoured, of course, but I recalled his livery of green on blue, and now I remembered that I had liked the young man, finding him amiable and pleasant to be with. Small wonder, then, that I had not recognized him in the murderous figure who had come charging at me through the misty trees that morning.

3

Try as I might I could see no smallest sign of shame or contrition in either of the two Bishops, who knelt on the ground glaring up at the enormous figure who loomed over them from the wagon’s height. Will raised his eyes to look towards the group of monks clustered behind them.

“Who is your leader? Who speaks for you?”

“I do,” someone answered in a deep, resonant voice, and a tall, lean man stepped forward. “My name is Richard of Helensburgh.”

“Helensburgh? Another Scot?” The tall monk nodded, and Will continued. “These Englishmen are well supplied with Scots to help them in whate’er they are about. And you are Cistercians, are you not? What are you doing here, then, with such as these? Are you a part of this charade?”

The monk’s face remained expressionless and dignified. “No, Master Woodsman, not at all. We belong to the community of the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, near Newcastle, and we have been travelling with their lordships since they passed through our Abbey lands, but we are not part of their expedition. We were commanded by our holy Father Abbot to travel with them for safety’s sake, and we have been obedient to his orders. We have barely spoken with any of their group, keeping ourselves to ourselves. Our task is to reach Lanark town, where we are to reclaim and refurbish a priory of our order that burned down some years ago and has lain abandoned ever since. Many of us resided there at that time, and after the fire we were received by our brethren in the Abbey of the Trinity. We have been there ever since, awaiting the proper time to return to our priory.”

“And that time is now?”

The monk dipped his head. “So says our Abbot Nicodemus, and we are bound to obey him in all things.”

“Then you may go in peace to find and rebuild your priory, Brother Richard, but ere you do, I require of you, in the name of King John and the realm of Scotland, that you bear witness to what is happening here.”

“As you wish,” came the quiet reply, and Will turned back to the kneeling men.

“What are your names?”

Both men stared through him, defiantly.

Will turned to Father Constantine. “Father? Do you know their names?”

“Aye, I do. Both are named John, but only one is a bishop. The elder is John Romanus, a bishop of south England. The other one is Brother John, Prior of Whithorn in Galloway.”

Will looked at the priest in surprise. “A Prior in Galloway? But he’s an Englishman, is he not? I thought all you Galloway people were close-knit and jealous of your holdings.”

Constantine shrugged. “We are, by nature … close-knit and close-mouthed. But the truth is that Edward’s people gained the right to appoint English bishops and priors to Scots benefices five years ago. Pope Nicholas saw to that. As for me, I’m but a simple priest. I do my duty, celebrate Mass daily, tend for the people in my care, and keep my nose clear of politics. But the Diocese of Galloway, and with it the Priory of Whithorn, has been subservient to the Archdiocese of York for a hundred years and more. That’s a fight that has been going on for years now, with the Scots Bishops wanting to keep England out and the English equally determined to rule Scotland’s Church.”

“That’s right. Of course!” The suddenness of my interjection brought both men round to look at me in surprise. “John Romanus, you said? A bishop of southern England?”

“Aye.” The priest was looking at me warily, as though expecting me to do something violent.

“What diocese would that be?”

“How would I know that? I never met the man until three days ago. The south of England was all he said when he named himself to me.”

“And you did not think that strange?”

“Why should I think it strange? Does England not have a south?”

Will interrupted. “What’s wrong, Jamie?”

I threw up my hands. “I cannot believe he does not know who this man is. We have a noble prisoner, it seems. The man is John le Romayne, Lord Archbishop of York. He holds primacy over the Diocese of Galloway and its Bishop, Henry, as well as over the Priory of Whithorn and his companion there, its prior. How could this man, a priest of Galloway, not know who he is?”

Constantine spun to face the English bishop, then turned angrily back to me. “I do not know him because I am a priest of Galloway! A priest, nothing more. I have never seen the man before. I know him by name and by repute, I know his status as primate of Galloway. But I had never set eyes on him until I joined his party at the border.”

Will ignored both of us and turned slowly to the kneeling Bishop. “Is this true? You are Archbishop of York? Then what, in God’s great and holy name, are you doing here?”

“I can answer that,” I said. “For it’s plain he isn’t going to.”

Romayne’s head swivelled towards me, his expression baleful. I felt my stomach stir with anger, but my mind was racing as bits and pieces learned and overheard fell into place. I took a step forward and looked down on him from Will’s side.

“The Archbishop is wealthy, as you might expect,” I said. “And that is fortunate for him, because were it not for the depths of his own pockets he would be in prison now, locked up in London Tower.”

I sensed rather than saw Will’s frown. “What are you saying? In prison, an archbishop?”

“Aye, an archbishop who dared, less than a year ago, to excommunicate King Edward’s most loyal friend and servant, Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham.” I let the words hang there, knowing they would bring a gasp of disbelief from all who heard them. “Bishop Bek, it seems, committed an indiscretion: he permitted the civil arrest of two miscreant priests of his diocese in Durham. That was unprecedented, for only the Church may arrest and imprison a priest. No civil body has ever had the right to challenge that. And therefore the Archbishop, as was his right in canon law, deemed Bishop Bek’s actions to be both detrimental and threatening to that law’s validity. The King himself intervened in Bishop Bek’s favour, though, and the case went before parliament for judgment.”

“And parliament found in favour of the King,” Will said.

“It did. It decided that Antony Bek, in calling for the arrests, had acted in his vice-regal capacity as earl palatine, not as Bishop of Durham. Parliament called for the imprisonment of Archbishop le Romayne on charges of impiety and lèse majesté in challenging the King’s earl palatine. As it transpired, though, in return for a princely fine of four thousand marks of silver from Master le Romayne’s own purse, the prison term was set in abeyance and the Archbishop was returned to his duties, though not to royal favour.”

The watching crowd began muttering as the translators caught up with what I had said. Men turned to each other with questions and comments, and the noise grew quickly until Will raised an arm to quell it.

“Enough!” he shouted in Scots, and the crowd fell silent. “Stand quiet now. There’s mair here than meets the eye and it could be important. Haud your noise, then, till we find out what it a’ means.” He looked back at me and lowered his voice. “What does it mean?”

“It means that the Archbishop badly wants to be back in the King’s high regard.” I could taste the truth of what was in my mind. “He wants it badly enough to ignore all the rules of episcopal conduct and to prostitute himself and his sacred office in trade for the King’s good graces. Few bishops would condone what he has done here, and none, I dare say, would stoop to it themselves. This foul man has suborned and betrayed the Church to win the mortal favours of a King, undoing the work of centuries with the betrayal of a sacred trust. Think about it, Will—about what’s involved here. This … this betrayal represents an awful, unsuspected sin. A sin, perhaps, such as has never been before.” I was speaking quietly, for Will’s ears alone, but I knew that Father Constantine could hear what I was saying, and now Will glanced across at him.

“Do you agree, Father?”

The priest nodded immediately. “I do. Completely. This frightens me with its power to change things forever … to destroy the Church’s trust. I am afraid to think on what might happen now.”

“Don’t be,” Will said, “because it’s already done. You cannot change it now.” He turned back to the watching crowd and held up his hands, commanding and receiving instant silence.

“All of you,” he said in Latin, looking from face to face and speaking slowly enough for the interpreters in the crowd to translate what he was saying. “Listen closely to me, because I am going to tell you what all this means—this treachery we have discovered. And make no mistake, any of you. It is treachery.” He glanced around him, catching eyes here and there in the throng that faced him. “Father Constantine has just told me that he fears what has happened here may have the power to destroy men’s trust in Holy Church, and I believe it will do just that, because much has changed today. And even if most of us seeing it cannot clearly understand it, it is there in plain view of anyone with the eyes to look.

“You wonder what I am talking about, what I mean. I see it in your faces. Well, I mean this: from this day forward, because of what we have discovered here today, no priest of any rank, anywhere in this realm or any other, can ever again claim the right to travel unquestioned. All may now be stopped and searched at any time, their goods and stores inspected in the search for contraband, for on this day this Archbishop that you see in front of you has been taken in perfidy and has destroyed the faith all men have always had in priests and in their Church. He has destroyed the universal faith that all priests are trustworthy by their very rank, that they can be relied upon, without question, to put the welfare of each living soul above all else, and to value God’s holy will and wishes for mankind ahead of all worldly considerations.

“The perpetrator of this sin, one of the highest ranking members of the Church in all England, stands exposed as a liar and a panderer, having betrayed his God, his Church, and his high office in return for the worldly status offered him by a petty king. By cynically smuggling England’s gold into another realm under the auspices of Holy Church and for the sole purpose of paying and sustaining an invading army, this priest has chosen worldly profit over the loss of his own soul, using his position of trust and privilege to undermine a peaceful foreign realm and its people.

“This is politics, my friends, in the guise of holiness. Treachery and depravity under the appearance of dignity and solemnity.

Blatant hypocrisy unveiled as the writhing mass of maggots that it is.” He looked directly down at Romayne then. “John le Romayne, Lord Archbishop of York, you have won yourself a place in the annals of infamy. Until the end of time you will be the man who destroyed the Catholic Church’s probity. May God have mercy on your crawling deformities, though I doubt that Edward Plantagenet will once he learns that you have cost him yet another paymaster’s train. For the present, hear my decree: in recognition of your treachery in thus attempting to smuggle Edward’s gold into Scotland, we now impound not only Edward’s money but yours, too. Those rich clothes of yours will keep cold bodies warm in winter, even though they serve as simple bedclothing, and the jewels that festoon your hands and bodies will buy food for starving folk.” He nodded to one of his men. “Strip them of everything. We will send them naked into the world, as they arrived. It may serve to remind them what poverty and humility mean to most people.”

He raised his eyes to address Brother Richard and his assembled monks. “You brothers may leave now, but go at once and waste not a moment in pity for these two. They will come to no more harm at our hands, for nothing we might do to them could injure them more than the maladies they have brought upon themselves. You all know what they have done and so you know they deserve no pity. Talk of it as you go, though. Tell everyone you meet along the road what you have seen today and make sure they all understand the gravity of what was done.” He stopped short then and surveyed the crowd. “It occurs to me, brethren, that there is a lesson here to be learned by all of us.”

He looked back down at the Archbishop, who had sunk onto his thighs and now appeared beaten and dejected.

“You all saw two Bishops here, where in fact there were none. You saw them with your own eyes, and you believed. Yet one was an Archbishop and the other but a Prior. Sleek and well dressed, the two of them, and looking like anything but what we now know they are in fact. And so the lesson is, Judge not by appearances. Yet we all do, and we tailor our appearances to suit our needs.” He paused.

“Me, for example, with my hooded cloak draped and arranged just so, to conceal my hunched back, and my men around you, with their masks in place to hide their faces. But will they need masks once word of this little adventure reaches Edward Plantagenet? I doubt it. When Edward hears of this, he will come ravening, seeking blood and vengeance in addition to his lost coin, and the presence or absence of a mask or two will make little difference to who is hanged or slaughtered.

“And so I say to you the time for masks and hoods is past. Bishops, plain to behold, are not bishops, and the men around you, who have been the Greens, will go masked no more. They will stand from this day forth as Scots, united in their stance against the tyranny and treachery of England and its King. And as for me, the hunchback?”

He slowly removed the hooded cloak, pushing the cowl back off his head and then throwing the heavy garment aside. He straightened his back and flexed his huge shoulders and raised his voice into a shout, shifting from Latin to Scots. “My name is William Wallace, of Scotland, and I dinna care wha kens it, so be damned to them a’. So tell them that when ye go out to spread the word o’ what has happened here, the shame and the disgrace o’ it. Tell them that Scotland has a voice amang the trees o’ Selkirk Forest. And tell them that their voices will be heard as long as we in Selkirk stand and fight. Tell them my name, too, and tell the English that, ’gin they want to tak’ me, I’m here waitin’ for them. An outlaw, aye, but a Scot first and last, and ready to fight to my last breath.”

In all my life I had never heard anything like the roar unleashed by that gathering. It swelled and expanded and changed shape as it grew to a sustained chant of “Wall-ISS! Wall-ISS! Wall-ISS!”