There was no debate over which of the three was the leader, for his appearance spoke loudly for itself. He was dressed in plate armour, which established his identity beyond question as being English. No Scots knight could afford such expensive armour, any more than he could afford a horse large enough and strong enough to bear his weight were he dressed in such a manner. Horse and armour here were emphatically and defiantly Norman-English, flaunting the wealth, puissance, and arrogance of their owner. The colours and livery were unknown to me, the knight’s shield and surcoat and his horse’s skirts all similarly quartered in red and silver, with alternating diagonal bars in the top right and bottom left quarters and three red swans on a silver field in each of the others. The crest on the knight’s enormous silvered helm was a red bird, too—I presumed it to be a swan—flanked on each side by curving spirals of red and silver. A very fine and intimidating picture the man made, trotting towards us, and we stopped to await his arrival.
He reined in directly ahead of us, blocking the road as he raised the visor of his helmet to see us as clearly as he could. His face was hard to discern within the shadowed opening, but I saw a red-veined nose above a bushy red moustache, and then his voice came rasping towards us.
“Who are you people and what are you up to? No damned good, I’ll wager. State your names and your business and give me one good reason why I shouldn’t take the lot of you into custody.”
I stood up, and when he turned his glowering gaze on me I forced myself to smile and addressed him in my best English, since I was convinced that, like most of his ilk, he would be barely literate at best, with no knowledge at all of Latin, which he would sneer at as clerkish nonsense.
“I can give you an excellent reason, Sir Knight. We are engaged upon the affairs of Holy Church. I am Father James and I am a member of the secretarial staff of Lord Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow and senior prelate of the realm of Scotland. My associate here, Father Jacobus, has been with me on a mission to the south on behalf of His Lordship and we are now returning to Glasgow to conclude our business.” I indicated Ewan on the other wagon. “The bald man there is the Bishop’s uncle, Ewan Scrymgeour, brother to His Lordship’s mother, and the young woman with him is his daughter Margaret, who is in mourning for her recently dead husband, killed by bandits near the border with England. We are taking her to be with her mother until she has the baby. The others are all employed by Master Scrymgeour. I have letters of safe conduct from the Bishop, should you wish to read them.”
That was sheer bravado on my part and I knew the risk I was taking, for the only documents I had in my possession were two brief sets of notes given to me by Bishop Wishart before I left Glasgow. But I could sense both truculence and outright hostility in the choleric-looking Englishman, and so I decided to try to allay his suspicions by gambling heavily on his being illiterate, knowing that if I was wrong, we might all die here.
The fellow glowered at me for a moment from within the cavern of his helmet, his heavy eyebrows drawing into one thick, unbroken line, then grunted and held out a peremptory hand. “Show me.”
My stomach contracted in a spasm, but I maintained my outward composure and dug into my scrip for the two folded pieces of parchment. I handed them, unopened, to the knight.
“May I be permitted to ask your name, sir?”
The knight had removed one of his gauntlets and now held it clamped beneath an elbow as he strove to unfold and open the first letter. He grunted an interrogative sound, then growled, “Redvers. Sir Lionel Redvers of Suffolk. Now let’s see here …”
Having finally unfolded the parchment, he held it up and peered at it closely, and I felt the tension drain out of me. Had he been able to read, he would already have seen that what he held was no letter of safe conduct, but a list of brief instructions on what I was to do at various stages of my journey from Glasgow. He said nothing, though, and sat staring at the parchment as though memorizing its contents. Finally he sat up straighter—no easy feat, dressed as he was in full armour—refolded the letter, and returned it to me.
“So be it,” he growled. “But you can’t leave yet. We are awaiting a marching party here, and until they come no one can pass beyond this point. Where are you headed now? You’ll never get to Glasgow before dark.”
“No, sir. We had intended to stop at the inn in Lanark town.”
Someone shouted in the distance behind him, and the Englishman spun his horse to look back. “They’re coming,” he said to no one in particular, then looked back at me. “Stay here until we are gone, and then you may follow us. Lanark is no more than three miles from here.”