The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  Rab turned to him with a look that said plainly, “And who might you be?”

  “This is Father Thomas, Rab, a friend of mine from long ago.”

  Rab nodded. “Aye. God love ye, Faither Thomas, it wis worse nor that. A wild laddie might ravage a nest frae time to time— herryin’ it, we say here—until he’s telt no’ to do it again. This wasna the same kind o’ thing at a’. There was five o’ them, an’ they found a woman and twa young lasses a’ their lane in a farmhouse no’ far frae here. They herried the women, then butchered them and stole everythin’ they could carry. And they burnt the hoose.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Twa monks frae Stirlin’ Abbey was nearby and saw what happened. They came straight to Will as soon as it was safe, and they had five guid descriptions o’ the men. We kent the five o’ them, an’ fower o’ them wis nae surprise. The fifth was Geordie Miller, though. He hardly had the wit to ken what they were doin’ wasna right, but he was there an’ he was part o’ it. Henderson himsel’ and Geordie was the only ones that came back. But the ither three are dead men already, nae matter where they went. They’ll turn up someday, an’ when they do …”

  “So these men were tried and hanged on Will Wallace’s orders?” Thomas asked.

  “Tried!” Rab said, his voice dripping with scorn. “Naebody had any need to try anythin’. Henderson was drenched in blood and he was carryin’ a bag fu’ o’ weemin’s stuff, pots an’ needles and stuff he could sell. Will took one look in the bag and asked the monks if Henderson was one o’ the men they’d seen. They said he was the leader, an’ that was that. Will said we was to hang them right then and there.”

  I asked him, “What will you do with the brother?”

  “Nothin’,” Rab said. “There’s nae harm in him. He’ll forget it ever happened and he’ll settle himsel’ again, and we’ll look out for him in the meanwhile.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now take us to my cousin, if you will, for I should have been here days ago and he’s probably wondering what’s happened to me.”

  “I don’t like that at all. It’s dangerous and it’s foolhardy.”

  “What’s foolhardy about it? We’re there by invitation, Will.”

  “No, you’re there by tomfoolery, and someone’s going to discover that sooner or later. I want you out.”

  “Why? Because I’m your cousin? Would you be as angry if Thomas was in this alone?”

  Will was as angry as he had ever been with me, but I was equally upset at him. He sat glaring at me from across the table, radiating hostility and displeasure, and the others present—Andrew Murray, Sandy Pilche, and Ewan Scrymgeour’s cousin Alexander, who appeared to be permanently attached to my cousin nowadays—were all being unnaturally silent, afraid, I had no doubt, of interrupting and thereby incurring Will’s wrath. But my blood was up and I was beyond caring about Will’s displeasure, because all I could see was his stubbornness and his lack of imagination.

  I bit back on the bitter words in my mouth and restrained myself from banging my fist on the tabletop. “Will,” I said, hearing the impatience in my own voice, “there’s very little danger here. We are on the Church’s business, on the business of the Pope himself, and no one in England, from the King on down, wants to risk of offending the Holy Father at this time. There is too much at stake, with King Edward suing for papal judgments in his favour against King Philip in France, and in Gascony, as well as here in Scotland. The Archbishopric of York is trying yet again, despite a hundred reversals, to win the Pope’s permission to appoint English bishops to Scottish sees. All of these judgments are pending, so all the noblemen of England who find themselves in Scotland today are scurrying around on tiptoes whispering, for fear of doing or saying anything that might upset the Church, the Pope, or the cardinals and influence the outcome of Edward’s plans. Besides, Thomas and I are in a position of trust inside the enemy camp, so no one is going to question us or what we do. We are churchmen, and no one attached to the armies cares what we do.”

  “Aye, you are in a position of trust,” Will growled, his voice quieter, though the anger still bubbled in his throat. “And what you are proposing is a breach of that trust, the more heinous because you are both priests.”

  “Oh, listen to yourself, Will Wallace! That is ludicrous! Heinous? A heinous breach of trust? For counteracting the breach of trust that brought an invading English army across our borders? They have gone far beyond threats, Will. God knows I never thought to have to tell you that. You were the one who brought it home to me. And Thomas and I, as priests and patriots, have been given an opportunity to learn, for your benefit and for the good of all of Scotland, foreknowledge of how they intend to proceed with their military campaign to steal our realm from under us. I see no sin in that, and certainly no shame.”

  “Jamie is right, Will.”

  This was the first time anyone else had spoken up since Will and I had begun our altercation, and it was not surprising that it should be Andrew. Will turned his head slightly and looked at him through narrowed eyes, though he said nothing, and Andrew stared right back at him and continued.

  “If it were anyone else coming to you with this information you would not be able to believe your good fortune. Eyes and ears in the enemy camp! And not merely in their camp but in the command centre itself, and privy to the very thoughts and musings of the enemy leaders. Admit it, Will. This is an undreamed-of advantage. But you don’t want to accept it because it entails a risk to your cousin, your closest and dearest relative. Your emotions are blinding you to the advantages the situation offers all of us.”

  Will was glowering at me again while Andrew spoke, and when the Highlander had finished he answered him with his eyes still on me. “Jamie could be killed. His priestly rank would not protect him if he was caught spying.”

  “He’s a grown man, Will, and a trusted and respected cleric. Think you he has not thought about the risk involved?” He turned to me. “Father James, have you considered the possibility that you might die in doing what you might be able to do here?”

  “I have, and I think it’s unlikely,” I answered. “All we would do is pay heed to what we hear and pass on the information through our usual clerical channels. Besides, if the information I supplied were to save the life of even one man in battle, then I would gladly go to God as a martyr for the cause of the realm.”

  Will’s clenched fist hit the table with the force of a hard-swung axe, spilling ale from a nearby tankard, but when he spoke, it was not the angry roar everyone had expected. “You’re right,” he said, his voice sounding choked and tight. “Damnation, and may God forgive me, you’re right.”

  “So now what?” Andrew said. “How do we make the most of this opportunity? And how do we make sure that any word from Thomas or Jamie reaches us as quickly as possible?”

  I had the answer to that question before it was ever asked. The most obvious way was to entrust the delivery to the priests and monks who were always moving throughout the countryside, but I had concluded that that was not the most efficient way of doing things, for most of those monks and priests went everywhere on foot, which made them too slow. The other deterrent in my eyes was an uncharitable one, but no less valid. Priests and monks were men who spent most of their lives alone. It was a reality of our calling. When they did foregather with their peers, therefore, they tended to talk unguardedly, particularly if they were speaking in Latin. I do not mean they were knowingly careless in their speech, for most of them were aware of a need for confidentiality when carrying messages. They tended, nevertheless, to be free in their normal parlance, uncaring of being overheard among their equals, and trusting in the natural goodness of mankind to guarantee discretion regarding what might be overheard. In my mind, that disqualified most priests from consideration as clandestine messengers, particularly now, when the Scots and English armies were almost cheek by jowl and there were as many English priests as Scots in any gathering of clerics.

 
Instead, I suggested—and it was agreed—that we would maintain a small team of six trusted young Scots priests, chosen for their stamina and fitness, and infiltrated into the enemy camp as primary messengers. Priests and monks came and went constantly to and from the army encampment, generally being so ubiquitous that the camp guards rarely challenged them, so the odds were in favour of our six priests escaping notice. The six would work in pairs, with one man, a “walker,” on duty in the enemy camp while his cohort, a “runner” dressed in layman’s clothing, would be camped nearby, yet far enough removed—a mile or so away—to be safe from discovery by English patrols. The walker would walk each day to where his companion waited and pass on whatever information we had gathered since the day before, and the runner would run with it to a team of mounted messengers who would be camped roughly three miles from the enemy encampment. Andrew’s riders would then carry the dispatches to the Scots commanders, working in two-mile relays should speed and necessity dictate such a need.

  It was not a perfect scheme, and we had little time to implement it, but we were hopeful that once the six messengers were in place in the enemy encampment, our plan would quickly bear fruit.

  Three days later, Father Thomas and I were on the road again, moving quickly. First we made our way back to Glasgow, where we found the ill-tempered and abrasive Bishop Bek in residence and resentful that we had not awaited his return instead of rushing off to look for him. I endured his abuse with patience, since there was no point in attempting to deflect it, and eventually took possession of his response to Earl Warrenne, that being the original purpose, of course, for our excursion to Glasgow. From there, we travelled south and east again under threatening, lead-coloured skies to Lanark, there to rejoin the earl, who had finally brought his army up from Berwick. We were not permitted to rest, though, for the army was preparing to march again the day after we arrived. And so I called a somewhat hurried gathering of our people and alerted them about what to expect in the next day. We allocated duty times for our runners and walkers, but we could do no more than hope that Andrew’s riders were being vigilant out there, anticipating what might happen once the army began to move.

  The next day, when we set out from Lanark, was the second-from-last day of August, and the sun had sunk without being seen at all the day before, leaving everyone edgily aware that bad weather might well be in the offing. Sure enough, the heavens opened in the darkness before dawn and the rain poured in torrents until long after darkness fell again that night, inundating the entire countryside.

  De Warrenne’s people had considered postponing the march that morning, but the decision was not theirs to make, and the earl, having belatedly decided to move northward, was not now disposed to be dissuaded, so the order was soon given to set out, in the belief that the storm was too violent to endure and would therefore pass quickly. That was a disastrous decision, and its consequences became more and more obvious throughout the day in the degenerating condition of the terrain through which the army struggled. After hours of unremitting downpour, wagon wheels were sinking to the axles in freshly churned mud, and men and horses were slipping and floundering and falling helplessly everywhere I looked. We covered less than four miles that first day, and the entire effort amounted to a punishing, debilitating study in futility that infuriated everyone from the Earl of Surrey down to the meanest groom among the horse lines.

  Summer, in the sense of sustained periods of fine weather as enjoyed by the English and French during July, August, and September, is never a reliable phenomenon in Scotland, but if there is to be a spell of warm weather in any given year, the probability is high that it will occur at the end of August or in the early part of September. The year of our Lord 1297 was an exception. The weather turned foul on the penultimate day of August and it rained incessantly for seven days, with never the slightest sign of sunshine. Conditions along the route of the English march were dreadful, and the army floundered despairingly, men and beasts soaked to the skin without hope of relief, battling their way across broken, hostile terrain and through swollen, dangerous streams, and often wallowing in deep mud on softer ground, making little forward progress at even the best of times. The Welsh archers who provided the main strength of Warrenne’s unmounted contingent would have been helpless in the face of an unexpected attack during that entire week, for their bows were useless. Every man among them had his precious bowstrings carefully rolled up and tucked away in the driest, warmest hiding places they could devise—usually in tightly wrapped wax-coated packages of oiled cloth carried next to their skin—since nothing could be more useless than a damp bowstring on a Welsh longbow. The archers themselves were no more or no less miserable than anyone else on that hellish march, and I include myself and my religious brethren among that number, but at least the other marchers could have fought, had the need arisen. Rain is no great deterrent to using a sword, a spear, or for that matter a mace or an axe. Of course, any enemy force foolhardy enough to attack would have faced the same hardships, and so everyone dismissed the thought of human enemies. The sodden countryside and the ceaseless rain were enemy enough throughout that journey.

  The score of us in the clerical detachment attached to the Earl of Surrey’s entourage travelled in five large, solid wagons, each pulled by a team of four horses and covered with a sturdy roof of double-thick sailcloth for the protection of the valuable documents contained within the carts. For this reason we were able to sleep in relatively dry comfort each night, but we quickly learned that in times of adversity there are disadvantages to match every advantage. The wagons were ours, and we had to handle them and care for them ourselves, for no one else had either the time or the inclination to assist us with our opulent transport. And so we spent most of each day manhandling horses and wagons—both of them heavy, awkward, and recalcitrant—until we were so exhausted that we could scarcely keep our eyes open, despite our misery. And yet we knew that we were fortunate and truly privileged, because it was plain that we, among all the varied elements of Surrey’s army, were set apart from the misery and tribulations being suffered by everyone else.

  For the rank-and-filers of Surrey’s army, the most mundane tasks associated with setting and breaking camp each day quickly became torturous. The pitching and dismantling of tents was a nightmarish struggle, every evening and every morning, with slimy, water-soaked leather panels or equally heavy sodden sailcloth tenting and rough, thick hempen ropes with wet, obdurate knots. For that reason, very few tents were pitched on that march, most of the knights and men-at-arms and all the footmen preferring to find whatever shelter they could by themselves, since they could be no wetter or colder than they already were. None but the senior commanders slept under tents, the large, high-peaked rectangular kind known as pavilions, and that was more a matter of convention and dignity than one of warmth or shelter, for the very fabric of their roofs and walls was saturated with rain, and the ground on which they were erected was heavy mud. And while it was true that fires could be lit beneath the soaring roofs of the great tents, nothing could be dried effectively there, and worse, the tents themselves trapped the heavy smoke from the wet wood burning in the braziers, making the atmosphere almost unbreathable. Even the sleeping cots were wet, their covers heavy and cold with dampness. And in consequence of that general misery and squalor, there was little talk at night before men slept. Men ate in grumpy silence, unhappy with whatever food the hapless cooks had managed to prepare, and then they sought oblivion in sleep, hoping the rain would stop before they woke again.

  I heard the weather change finally, in the small hours of morning on the sixth day of September, because I was already astir, preparing to assist Father Thomas in celebrating a pre-dawn Mass, and the abrupt stillness when the rain stopped thundering on the leather roof of the tented pavilion we were using as a church caused both of us to look up. We looked at each other with raised eyebrows—we were the only two people there—smiled quickly, and returned to the sacrifice under way, but I know that I,
at least, was unable to focus completely upon it thereafter. Too many thoughts and possibilities were now swirling in my mind, and I wondered, not for the first time, how my friends had fared in Stirling throughout the week-long deluge.

  I had already been out of doors for an hour before daybreak, enjoying birdsong for the first time in many days and breathing deeply the fresh, clean air, and when the first rays of the sun lanced into a blue and cloudless sky, I imagined that everyone else would be as happy as I felt. I was soon disillusioned on that count. After a week of unrelenting rainfall, everything—clothing, bedding, tents, provisions, supplies, weapons, and livestock—was not merely soaked, but much of it had begun to grow mouldy. I realized that it would take much more than the promise of a bright, dry day to lighten the loads—both physical and emotional—of the bedraggled host that surrounded me.

  By then, though, couriers had arrived from Stirling Castle, reporting the presence of “a large host of Scotch rogues” in the vicinity of the town, and the English commanders knew they had run out of time. And so the woebegone army took to the road again, hauling their rain-sodden possessions with them.

  More than a week had passed since we had organized our system of messengers to ferry information from our camp to Stirling, but we had not sent out a single word in all that time other than that we had nothing to report. Our situation in the English camp, which had seemed so exciting and filled with potential for great success in duping the enemy, had produced nothing, thanks to the foulness of the weather.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE INVISIBLE PRIEST

  It was the eighth day of September, a Sunday, before we finally completed an entire day’s march without being rained upon, and we arrived in the middle of that afternoon at the spot where we would spend our last night of that particular stage of this campaign. We were perhaps three miles from Stirling town, and the castle, clearly visible atop its soaring crag in the distance, seemed to beckon to us as the feverish activity of setting up another marching camp broke out yet again.