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.”