The Forest Laird(82)

Will stood up, his meek and humble demeanour somehow de-emphasizing his great size, and the sergeant backed away from him instantly, signalling to the two spear carriers to flank Will on either side as though he were a prisoner. I stood up, too, assuming I was going with them, but as soon as I did the gate sergeant lunged angrily towards me, waving me back down to my seat on the log. He cursed me for a Scotch fool and made it abundantly clear that I was to stay where I was and wait, but the other sergeant, much to my surprise, ordered the fellow to shut his mouth. “They came together,” he growled, “so they’ll go in together. The priest might be an interpreter, who knows?”

Bek’s pavilion-styled tent, fronted by a tall pole bearing his personal standard, was by far the largest of all, but there were many other, lesser pavilions similarly identified among the serried lines of troop tents laid out in neat formations. Men were everywhere, most of them either in organized drill groups or in work gangs being supervised by sergeants in the same white livery our guide wore. I saw few horses, but the strong aroma of dung told me large numbers were not too far away.

The sergeant stopped us when we were less than two paces from the entrance to the Bishop’s tent. “Wait here,” he said. “You’ll be called in when the Bishop’s ready for you.”

He marched away then, leaving us unguarded, side by side beneath the Prince Bishop’s banner.

“What d’ you think?” Will muttered. “Should we run now, while we still can?”

It was the first flash of humour I had seen in him since the previous day, and it made me feel better immediately, but before I could reply, the flap of the main tent opened and a priest in green liturgical robes beckoned us with cupped fingers.

Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, was at prayer, and the vaulted, shadowy spaces inside the pavilion provided the illusion that the tent itself was a church. Mummery was the word that sprang to my mind, along with an image from the previous year, when I had watched a travelling troupe of mummers present a drama in Glasgow about the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus. The false sanctity and obvious insincerity of the spectacle had filled me with revulsion then, and I found the same feelings roiling in me now.

Bek knelt alone at a prie-dieu, before a small, portable altar that bore a covered tabernacle and a silver chalice. His back was arrowstraight, his chin tilted slightly upward as he gazed towards the tabernacle, his fingers caressing the beads of a large and ornate rosary. It seemed to me that he had positioned himself very carefully, and for our benefit, before giving his acolyte the nod to admit us to his presence. He knelt for some time after our arrival, unmoving, ignoring us completely, but then he blessed himself with the sign of the cross and surged to his feet, removing the stole from his shoulders, folding it properly and kissing it before handing it to the priest who had admitted us. Only then did he glance at us quizzically, and then indicated, with a wave of his hand, that we should walk with him to another part of the tent, where he took up a position beside a glowing brazier and close to a padded armchair that was almost large enough to be a couch.

He barely looked at me as he asked, “To which community are you attached?”

I was keenly aware of the cool impersonality of his tone and the lack of honorific he accorded me, and the awareness gratified me. In his eyes, I was clearly less than nothing, a nameless, faceless priest whose drone-like existence was to be taken for granted and not remarked upon, but I was not a priest at all, and his arrogance had blinded him to that. He had glanced at my grey robe and seen only the garb of a lowly Benedictine cleric, and his own hubris had elevated me to the status of priesthood, never deigning to imagine that anyone less significant would have the temerity to enter his presence. I had anticipated his question, though, and the lie fell from my lips with the ring of truth.

“Jedburgh, my lord. The Abbey there. But I am currently assigned to Selkirk parish.” Were Bek to seek me in Jedburgh in future, I reasoned, he might or might not launch a search for me when he failed to find me, but had I named Glasgow, inviting him to seek me there afterwards at the cathedral, it might have caused a deal of needless embarrassment to others, among them Bishop Wishart.

He nodded absently and spoke to Will.

“You are the nephew of a knight, I am told, sent here on his behalf to question me. Is that correct?” He raised an interdicting hand. “If it is, then you must surely have an answer to my next question. If this matter has sufficient import in your uncle’s eyes to merit intruding upon my privacy in order to bring it to my attention, why then would he offer me the discourtesy of not presenting it in person?”