by Jack Whyte
“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!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1
The year that followed was unlike any other I ever experienced, and I think of it now as the happiest time of my adult life. I remember it as a time of freedom and great beauty, of soaring hope amidst increasing desperation, and, for me at least, a time of liberation and fulfillment, spent as a forest chaplain, ministering to the folk—the families and assorted misfits and strange, often wonderful characters—who were attracted, for a multitude of reasons, to the man William Wallace.
Foremost among those reasons, of course, was the fact that Will had stepped forward and declared himself as he did that day when he took the English paymasters’ gold from the Archbishop. No one had ever stood up boldly in the face of both Church and state and declared himself to be representing and defending the common folk of Scotland, and word of it spread throughout the land like fire in dry grass.
The nobility condemned him, of course, but everyone else dismissed that as unimportant, for in their view, by their indifference to what was happening to their countrymen, the nobility had abdicated their right to take offence. What was significant was that Wallace’s action lit a fire in the breasts of the countless hundreds of ordinary men who had grown sick of the incessant bullying and chronic injustice bred of the system they were forced to live under. In a development that no one could have foreseen, they chose, overwhelmingly, to join William Wallace in his forest domain and to stand beside him as free men, beholden to no masters and responsible for their own destiny.
It was this burgeoning of small but vibrant communities within the greenwood that led to my being delegated to work there as a priest, ministering to the needs of Will’s followers. I had returned quickly to Glasgow and Bishop Wis
hart after the raid on the English paymasters’ wagons, bearing tidings of the outcome of my mission to Will, and His Grace had listened, stone faced. When I had finished my report, he nodded once, thanked me, and dismissed me. Had anyone asked me later, even under torture, to describe his reaction to what I had told him, I would not have been able to say.
Then word came to us, with all the condemnatory wrath of an outraged clergy, of a heinous crime against a nameless bishop during the prosecution of his divine duties. That report spoke of the impious and blasphemous theft of unnamed but invaluable Church property. I had been back for two weeks by then, so it was evident to both the Bishop and me that people had spent considerable time colluding on the details of what had actually happened and what would be released for public consumption. Once again, Bishop Wishart listened grim faced and offered no comment.
Two weeks after that, though, during the Friday-evening communal meal in the cathedral refectory, when I was deep in thought and shamelessly ignoring the droning voice of the visiting friar who was reading that evening’s scriptural selection, I was interrupted by one of the secretariat and summoned immediately into the Bishop’s presence.
He was alone in a corner by his window when I arrived, sitting with his feet propped up on a cushioned stool and tapping a flattened, much-misshapen scroll against his chin as he stared into the blackness beyond the window’s tiny, diamond-shaped panes. He looked up at me and grunted, then waved for me to pull forward another chair and join him, and as soon as I was seated he handed me the scroll. Someone had flattened it roughly, cracking its seal in folding it to fit into a pouch or pocket. I unfolded it and immediately recognized Will’s penmanship, which made me smile.
“Does this not make you wish, my lord, that everyone was capable of being his own scribe? How much clearer everything would be, were that the case.”
“Aye, but wishing for that would be a waste of God’s time, Father James, for such never will be the case. Your cousin is one of the three or four literate men I know outside of our clerical ranks. Read it.”
The missive was brief and to the point: in the space of a month, Will had written, the situation in the greenwood had changed greatly. People had begun to gather there from every direction, lured by the promise of freedom, whatever that might be, and their numbers were growing daily and showing no signs of abating. He had underscored freedom, but aside from adding whatever that might be, he spent no more time attempting to define what they were seeking. He and his people were coping, he wrote. Food was plentiful, and they had made sure people were living far from the main road, deep in the forest and beyond reach of attack.
The largest need he could foresee, Will wrote, was for priests. He had a few people among his followers with rudimentary knowledge of the healing crafts, but not one single monk or priest. Children were already being born, elders were dying, and young people were exchanging marriage vows. He needed priests now, he said, to live among his people and minister to them.
I lowered the letter and looked wordlessly at Bishop Wishart, who was staring back at me. He had pouted his lips and was picking and plucking at them with a fingertip.
“You want me to go.”
He stopped what he was doing and sat up straight, removing his feet from the stool. “Aye,” he said. “At once. Take Declan and Jacobus with you. They can both use the experience to advantage. They will be in your charge and will answer to you as their superior.”
I nodded, content with the authority he had granted me. The two priests he had named were respectively the youngest and the eldest in the cathedral chapter, and both would undoubtedly benefit from escaping the daily sameness of the cathedral’s regimen. Father Declan had been ordained with me. He was two years older than I was, but there were years of difference between us in experience and temperament, for Declan, orphaned since birth, had been cloistered all his life. He was a true Innocent, his most heinous sin, I would have wagered, no more serious than a sometime tendency to daydream. Now, however, he needed to learn to deal with real, living people, the sheep for whom God had made him responsible as a shepherd, charging him to lead them to Salvation.
Father Jacobus had been crippled for decades by a mysterious infirmity that had barred him physically from serving as a normal priest, making it impossible for him to mix with people and share their daily lives. And then his affliction had miraculously vanished, between one day and the next, shortly before I came to Glasgow. His return to health had been complete, so that now he positively glowed with vigour and devotion, but like Declan, he had been immured for many years, and the time had come for him, too, to step beyond the bounds of a regulated, monastic existence and reacquaint himself with the bountiful and wondrous world of God’s creation.
“When do you wish us to leave, my lord?”
“As soon as you can. Gather all you think you might need, including medicines and supplies, and have it loaded on a wagon—two wagons, if you need them—but don’t tell me or any of my people what you take, or how much you take, or where it’s going. That way, no one will be able to betray anything, even by accident. As soon as you are ready, come and find me. By then I will have written a reply to your cousin, and you can take it with you.”
“Of course, my lord. How long will we be gone?”
He had already started to look about him, his attention shifting to his next task, but now he looked back at me, his eyes showing his surprise. He gave a grunt, then answered in Scots. “For as long as ye’re needed. So dinna fret about returnin’. ’Gin I ha’e need o’ you i’ the interim, I’ll send for you. But until then, think o’ the Selkirk Forest as your kirk.”
He smiled then, a small sideways twisting of his mouth accompanying the softening of his fierce old eyes, and reverted to Latin. “A vast, green cathedral of your own, Father James … I know you will not abuse it, and I will pray for your success and happiness among the beauties of God’s wilderness.” He paused again, then added, “I envy you this, you know, this freedom you now have. Were I much younger, I would jump at the chance to do what I am now instructing you to do. Ah, well … We are what and who we are and we live in the here and now, so there’s an end of that nonsense. Go now, with my blessing, and make a start on what you have to do.”
I knelt quickly, and as he made the sign of the cross over my bent head, I was aware of a sensation of lightness in my chest.
2
The guards at the turnoff point recognized me as I approached and remained hidden, only one of them stepping out from his hiding place to wave us forward. He was one of Will’s sergeants, as they were known, soldier leaders chosen from among the ranks, who wore a coloured shoulder patch to mark their status. They were responsible for maintaining discipline among the wild men who formed Will’s active units. He threw me a casual salute as I passed by, running his eye over my loaded pack horse and the wagon at my back. I knew that he had already passed the signal on to the watchers at his back that we were friends. Without that signal, we would not have survived the first mile beyond his post.
From where we had turned, a long, narrow, tightly winding path protected Will’s main encampment from attack. It took an hour to travel, twisting and turning through evil-looking bogs that threatened to suck our wheels down into the mud, and sometimes snaking between impenetrable thickets of tangled blackthorn and hawthorn. These thorn thickets were not high, but they were dense and unyielding, forcing everyone who came this way to keep to the narrow path.
I knew, without ever setting eyes on any of them, that we were being watched constantly as we rode by within arrow shot of evervigilant guards, and I knew beyond doubt that men were also watching us from the high branches of the scattered, massive trees that towered above the growth on both sides. And so we rode in silence until the path emerged into a spacious water meadow, straightening into a long, grassy avenue that led directly to the cluster of solid-looking log buildings along the edge of a small lake.
From the moment of our arrival at Will’s camp
, I felt at home and ready to tackle anything that might be thrown at me. Will came out to greet us when he heard someone shout my name, and when he saw me sitting my horse with another, laden, at my back and a wagonload of goods behind that, his face split into an enormous smile and he spread his arms wide, waiting to embrace me. I swung down from my mount and he swept me up into a mighty hug, threatening to crush my ribs as he swung me around in a circle.
“Damn, Jamie, you look good,” he said, holding me by the shoulders, and then his face went serious as his eyes moved to take in my two fellow priests watching us from their wagon. “I swear there’s nothing more unwelcome to an unsuspecting host than the sight of an empty-handed visitor,” he said, then laughed again and punched me on the shoulder. “Welcome, Cousin. Bid your fellows climb down and have a drink with us. Patrick will take care of your horses and the wagon.”
He shouted to the man Patrick and rattled off a string of orders, and in no time at all Fathers Declan and Jacobus had been helped down and willing hands were busy with the disposition of the supplies we had brought. I introduced Will to Declan and Jacobus, and he welcomed them cordially, then herded us towards the rear of the camp, where I saw more buildings than had been there on my previous visit.
“Here,” he said, ushering us into a pleasant little clearing at the back of one of the new buildings and directing us to one of several tables with benches attached. “Sit here. It’s comfortable and it smells good, with the smoke from the kitchens there making everyone hungry.”
“Those are the kitchens?” My surprise was unfeigned, for these buildings were more than twice the size of the kitchens I had seen before.