Thereafter, with the bright tang of the sacred Blood still tingling beneath my tongue, I bowed my head while the Bishop laid hands on me yet again and uttered the words that endowed me with the power to forgive men’s sins and impose penance upon them: “Receive ye the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”
After waiting and studying for so long, I was now, with those words, a consecrated priest, and my heart swelled in my chest with joy and with love for my fellow men as Bishop Wishart finally turned me to face and be greeted and welcomed by the fellowship of the assembled congregation. And there, among the applauding crowd, the first two faces I saw clearly belonged to Will Wallace and Ewan Scrymgeour.
The shock hit me in the chest like a hammer blow, and I turned instinctively to look at Bek, fearing that he, too, must have seen Will, but he was still smiling his frosty, condescending little smile, politely tapping the fingers of one hand into the cupped palm of the other and looking nowhere near the massed monkish ranks in the pews.
And only then did I realize that there was even less reason for Bek to recognize my friend in this setting than there was for him to recognize me. He had met Will but once—the clean-shaven, fresh-faced Will that I myself had barely recognized at that time, now that I thought back to it. The Will Wallace in the pews today was another man altogether, heavily bearded and darkly tanned—his face, I suspected, artificially stained with walnut juice for the express purpose of altering his appearance—and he was dressed as a resident Abbey monk, wearing a full habit and standing comfortably in the front ranks of the brotherhood, among Brother Duncan and his librarians. He saw me looking and grinned at me, his teeth flashing white in the darkness of his face. Knowing him safe then, and feeling a surge of admiration at his daring, I grinned back at him and moved my eyes to include Ewan in my welcome. As he and I locked eyes, he raised his right thumb to me in a gesture of support I had known well as a boy but had not seen since.
More than half an hour of blessings, good wishes, and salutations passed before I could finally embrace my two friends, and when I did I could barely see them for the sudden tears that blinded me.
“Are you mad?” I asked Will, the emotion making my voice sound husky. “You take your lives in your hands coming here. Especially with Bek present. What if he had recognized you?”
My cousin shrugged. “Then it would have been a different kind of morning. Besides, he wasn’t supposed to be here. You didn’t invite him, did you?”
“No, Cuz, I did not. But the fact that he came here anyway is an example of how easily our finest plans may come undone. I am glad to see both of you here today, but you took an awful risk.”
That earned me another shrug of those massive shoulders. “I took an oath to see you priested. D’you not recall?”
“Aye, I do. But that was before you were outlawed.”
“An oath’s an oath, even to an outlaw.”
“True, but I believe God would have held you guilty of no sin had you been prudent and stayed safely away.”
Ewan spoke up. “Remember who you’re talkin’ to, Jamie. When did you ever know this one to be prudent, or to do the sensible thing?”
I kept my face straight and nodded seriously. “True enough,” I said. “I’m always hoping he will change his ways, though. I suppose the most I can hope for on a day like this is that he will keep his head down.” I turned my eyes back to Will. “And how is your lady wife? I trust you left her in good health?”
“I did, and she sent you her cousinly love. She is well and thriving in the freedom of the greenwood, and she told me to tell you that you will be welcome any time you wish to come and visit us. So when will that be, now that you are priested at last?”
“I have no idea—but I hope it may be soon. Master Wishart’s the one controlling that, though, for now that I’m ordained he must see to it that I am kept busy learning my new tasks. For the remainder of my life, I will be learning how to be a priest. I know I’ll be leaving the Abbey, and that will grieve me, but His Grace has plans for me in Glasgow. He has said he wants me to be his amanuensis, and I suspect that will keep me constantly engaged for the next few years. But now that you are here, how long will you stay?”
Will slapped his flat belly with an open palm. “Another hour or so, no more. We will eat with you and be gone. We came to see you priested, Cuz, and now you are. There is nothing else to hold us here, and we have much to do when we return to Selkirk. So come and embrace us again, and we’ll leave you to your cleric friends, by whom you are well regarded.”