“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.