The Forest Laird(110)

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.