The Guardian

by Jack Whyte

  My companion looked at me, waving my words aside with extended fingers. “No, no, no, the Earl of Carrick is doing far more than you perceive, Father James. I believe you are missing a significant point in all this. Bruce’s defiance of Edward is less telling than his defiance of his own father, Annandale.”

  I was shocked. “I don’t follow,” I said. “What d’you mean?”

  “Think about it. Bruce’s father is still alive and hale and employed in Edward’s service in a position of great trust. Whatever the young earl’s motivation may be, he must have taken his father’s situation into consideration before deciding to change sides. He must have been aware that his defection would imperil Annandale’s position as governor of Carlisle and put him in an untenable position. And yet he went ahead and crossed over anyway. That tells me there was more than pique and injured dignity involved. There was a deliberate commitment in doing what he did, and his choice was not made without profound soul-searching and deliberation. It was a premeditated declaration, a political decision, taken with great forethought in the knowledge that he was breaking, possibly forever, with his own father. That is nothing like the behaviour of a rash young man whose pride has been hurt.”

  I had listened to this with growing amazement, recognizing the truth of his words as he spoke them, and when he had finished it took me several seconds to articulate the new and disturbing perspective he had suggested.

  “So,” I began, “you believe that Bruce had made up his mind to change sides long before he ever reached Castle Douglas that day.”

  “Something of that nature,” Lamberton concurred. “I have come to believe that, though perhaps not conclusively. Prior to the fact, he himself might not have decided consciously to defect, but there is no doubt in my mind that he had given the matter great thought. What he realized at Castle Douglas probably served to confirm his conclusions and precipitated his decision.”

  “So what has happened to his father?”

  Lamberton shrugged. “Nothing, as far as I know. Nothing yet, at least. And I can say with some certainty that I would have heard by now had Edward lashed out at him in retaliation for Carrick’s actions.”

  “So he still governs in Carlisle Castle?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Hmm. This casts the Earl of Carrick in an entirely new light. And I accept your opinion unreservedly on this matter of the threat to the child. If we can guess at Bruce’s motives, however dimly, so can Edward of England … which makes it easy to see why Bruce has vanished.” I shook my head. “You may think me addle-headed, Canon Lamberton, but I can’t remember how we came to talk of Bruce here.”

  He grinned, amused and, I thought, relieved. “We had been talking about my cousin, Father Thomas, and how such a rabid, anti-English Scot might have found himself in England’s court working, even at arm’s length, for the Plantagenet. He is there because he caught the eye of the King himself and managed to impress him. And that is, I suppose, what he has in common with Bruce. It is important to realize, Father James—for most people do not—that Edward deals in men. I once heard you say he studies kingcraft and that may be true, but men are his primary interest, his stock-in-trade. Their place of birth—even their station in life—is irrelevant to his designs, and he can afford to ignore their former loyalties once they come to his attention. When Edward Plantagenet decides he wants a man, he buys him, loyalties and all, and treats him like a jewel of great worth. Once he has the man entrapped, though, he ignores him, save when he needs something from him. This seems to be how it was with Bruce, who was once his great favourite. And my cousin Lionel, Thomas to you, is most definitely a Scot. And a zealous one, emphatically, by birth and temperament.”

  “So where is he now, this cousin of yours, that you have such access to his knowledge?”

  That earned me an open smile. “He is here in Glasgow, conducting business with the Bishop of Durham’s clerks on behalf of his current patron.”

  “The Bishop of Durham? Antony Bek, the King-breaker? Pardon my frankness and lack of charity, if you will, but I thought that sacrilegious, pontificating hypocrite long gone from these parts.”

  Lamberton’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Ah! I see you are yet another of the Prince Bishop’s admirers. He was gone for a while, but now he is back as part of Edward’s administration.”

  “And he is Thomas’s employer now, his patron?”

  “No, no, no, no, not at all. Thomas is merely dealing with his clerics, who cannot, in charity, be held responsible for their superior’s shortcomings. No, Father Thomas’s current patron is Sir John de Warrenne.”

  I sat gaping. “Thomas is part of the Earl of Surrey’s entourage?”

  “Household chaplain. He’s part of the earl’s household, not merely his entourage. His Grace of Surrey is a pious man, I’m told—genuinely so, I mean. I am not mocking him. He is no longer young, as you probably know, and in his later years he has found consolation for many things, including the loss of his beloved wife, in the observance of the Church’s teachings. He is generous in his donations, and in return his diocese—not coincidentally Winchester— takes great pains to ensure that his daily spiritual needs are well looked after. And to that end Bishop John of Winchester appointed Father Thomas as his chaplain and liaison with the diocesan chapter. It seems the earl had met Lionel a year or so earlier and liked him greatly, apparently because my cousin bears a strong resemblance to his favourite son, who died years ago. And when his old confessor died, he asked for Lionel by name.”

  “And Thomas is now his chaplain. Dear God! Do you have any …? That is …”

  Lamberton’s lips quirked into an off-centre grin. “Were you about to ask me if I know how significant that is? Because I do. I know precisely what it means to this realm of ours. Quite apart from the sacrosanctity of the confessional, which will of course remain inviolate, it means that we have free access to all information relating to half of the invading English forces, along with the very strong possibility of complete access to information about all of it, once the two armies meet up. How fluent is your French?”

  “It’s not,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Curiosity. Here’s another question, but think carefully before you answer it. Has anyone ever identified you as a Scot from the way you speak Latin?”

  “No,” I said. “Can you?”

  “My opinion’s not to be trusted. I’m a Scot myself, so I might not notice a distinctive element in your voice.”

  “Is that important?”

  “It could be, were you to live and move among Englishmen for a while.”

  “And why might I choose to live among Englishmen?” The question sounded sheepish even to my own ears.

  “Because the realm requires you to, Father James.” I heard the words clearly, but my comprehension had not quite caught up to my premonition. “Thomas—my cousin Lionel—has been living a very lonely existence recently. I feel sure it would be beneficial both to his spiritual and his physical well-being had he someone with whom to share his duties, someone dependable and trustworthy whom he has known for years.”

  I met his gaze squarely. “That might be true, Canon,” I said. “But where would he find such a man, so advantageously?”

  “Within the tabernacle that sustains us all, Father James—within God’s will. In a more worldly sense, though, he could easily meet him here in Glasgow when he comes to visit me within the week—a fortuitous reunion with an old friend and fellow student from his days in France.”

  “I see,” I said. “And can you tell me how it would benefit the realm if, as you say, I were somehow able to join Father Thomas?”

  The canon smiled. “I remember the way your eyes opened wide when I told you where he was—entrenched as a member of the Earl of Surrey’s household. You saw the possible advantages at once— the value of our having sympathetic eyes and ears in the enemy camp. The only thing missing now is the presence of an organizer who can take what he sees and hears a
nd pass it along to us. Father Thomas can’t do that, at least not safely, and he is far too valuable to risk endangering him.”

  “And I am not.”

  “You said that, Father James, not I. Your value is equally great, but differently allocated. God’s ways can be obscure and known solely to Himself.”

  And so it was that my mission took an entirely different turn, putting me, for the first time in my life, in the position of a spy.

  Instead of returning to Stirling after my meeting with Canon Lamberton as I had been instructed, I took the time to write a long letter to Will and Andrew Murray, explaining what had emerged in the course of my discussions with the canon, and the opportunity that had arisen to give us access to confidential information inside the enemy camp. I closed with a promise that they would soon be hearing from me with information drawn directly from the horse’s mouth. There was an element of danger involved in setting down such information in a letter, of course, but every travelling priest carried letters with him wherever he went. That was a commonplace of clerical life. Information and the dissemination of it were the lifeblood of the religious world, and one undistinguished letter among so many others would attract no attention from anyone I had to fear—more so, I thought, if the courier delivering it had no knowledge of its importance. And so I enclosed my letter inside another, this one addressed to my recent benefactor, the abbot of Stirling Abbey, requesting that he pass on the enclosed missive as quickly as possible to “my cousin Will.” I entrusted the package to Canon Lamberton with a request that he send it to Stirling with the next courier heading that way.

  With that safely taken care of, I travelled to Berwick with Father Thomas, who introduced me to Earl Warrenne’s clerical staff there as an old friend, Father Jacques de la Pierre, whom he had known when he was a seminarian in Paris. He explained that I hailed from the Basque region in the far south and that I spoke no English at all, in addition to which my French was so heavily accented that it was virtually indecipherable even to Frenchmen. I had been sent to him, he claimed, bearing messages from the Bishop of Paris, who was himself a Basque speaker and a close friend of Pope Boniface, and such was the tone of mysticism in which he spoke of those unspecified messages that everyone believed I had been sent because my way of speaking was something of a papal code in itself.

  I enjoyed being reunited with Thomas, for our earlier friendship, though fairly brief, had been a close one, born of the necessary intimacy of hard times shared in far-off places as penniless, hardworking students, and our first meeting after a long gap of years was an occasion for sharing nostalgic memories. The pleasure lasted beyond the reminiscences, though, and we soon fell to talking easily about the ramifications of Canon Lamberton’s plan for us. I was surprised afterwards, I recall, by how easily I set aside my own misgivings and committed myself to a course that involved deceit on a grand scale. I—or we, since Thomas was included with me— had absolutely no reason to fear being caught, he assured me, because priests were anonymous and faceless, and nowhere more so than in a military camp, where we were tolerated as being there to serve as interlocutors between fighting men and their God. Beyond that we were ignored, as we were unnecessary to the successful prosecution of warfare.

  All my friend’s assurances notwithstanding, though, I was thoroughly terrified during my first few days among the English, acutely aware that I was in the very belly of the beast. I had not known what to expect on first arriving there, but the reality had been both striking and disconcerting, because until that time I had never associated the word alien with any specific person or society. Yet alien was the word that came to me on my arrival in the English camp and stayed with me for a long time afterwards, because everything about the place was unfamiliar to me. Even the clothing people wore was different, influenced by Earl Warrenne himself, who was a stickler for deportment and decorum. Commanders could be distinguished from their subordinates at a single glance, set apart more by the quality and colours of their clothing than by any other visible sign of rank. But I noticed the general conduct of the camp’s inhabitants was different, too. Things like morale and confidence varied widely from unit to unit, and language differences could be so radical that the rank and file of units from different areas of England were often unable to speak to one another.

  In those first days I was constantly waiting for someone to address me in the Basque tongue and expose me as a fraud. No one ever did, and my fears faded rapidly once I found I was accepted without question and then—as Thomas had predicted—generally ignored.

  Much of my new-found sense of well-being undeniably sprang from the fact that I felt safe again in a religious community, where the politics of God and His Church took precedence over all else and where the racial origins of the community members were of no real significance. All such human differences were nullified by the common language of Latin, so that French curés spoke easily with their German, Dutch, Spanish, or Danish counterparts.

  Within two weeks of joining the chaplaincy of the Earl of Surrey’s camp, I had spoken with the earl himself, or rather been addressed by him, on three occasions, and on the third of those he was accompanied by Hugh de Cressingham, King Edward’s treasurer for Scotland, who had newly arrived from Newcastle. Earl Warrenne had come to speak to Father Thomas, of course; I was permitted to be present because I was a priest, known to be working closely with Father Thomas on business for King Edward and Pope Boniface, who were, at that time, engaged in secretive diplomatic negotiations having to do with the highly sensitive business of Church, state, and taxation.

  Lord John greeted me with a curt yet courteous nod and thereafter ignored me—he had been told I spoke no English. He introduced Cressingham to Thomas before grasping my friend by the elbow and leading him aside by two paces to speak quietly into his ear. Cressingham stood watching them, content merely to wait, and I, knowing myself unobserved, made use of the opportunity to look closely, and I will admit critically, at the man who was so wholeheartedly detested by everyone in Scotland.

  He was not an attractive man, in any sense of the word. Tall and grotesquely corpulent, he was cursed with a sallow, much-spotted complexion and pendulous, clean-shaven jowls that weighed down the lower half of his face and drew attention to the slackness of a loose, pendulous lower lip. He wore his hair to his shoulders uncombed and tied with a white ribbon, the only spot of brightness that he wore. I paid particular attention to his clothing, for I had been told that he spent inordinate amounts of money on rich and sumptuous clothing, all of it black and all of it especially made to disguise his obesity and supposedly to render him less physically repulsive. The man seemed completely oblivious to the reality that it was not his corpulence that made him so widely detested. The hatred and disgust he inspired was due entirely to his offensive, repugnant personality and his rapacious, merciless dedication to bankrupting Scotland and everyone who lived therein.

  As I stood observing him, I felt my skin crawling with an intense dislike akin to loathing. It was a sensation new to me at that time, and the recognition of it shocked me deeply, for my lifelong training had taught me to abhor such feelings towards my fellow men. Though I was to remember it many times over the years afterwards and seek to absolve myself of the guilt I felt because of it, I was never able to renounce it completely. Hugh de Cressingham was the most instantly despicable man I ever encountered. There was no single element of his being that offered a hint of redemption.

  I heard my name, and I looked quickly towards Thomas, who was waiting for a response to whatever he had said.

  “Forgive me, Father Thomas,” I replied, broadening my vowels ludicrously and slowing my speech in what Thomas had assured me was the speech pattern used by residents in what he called le Pays basque. “I was at home in the Pyrenees.”

  He grunted in acceptance, then said, still in French, “I was saying that Lord John here is dispatching a delegation to Paisley Abbey to collect some valuable documents from the archives there, documents re
lating to King Edward’s status as Lord Protector of the Realm. He wants us to accompany them as far as Paisley, for safety’s sake, and then to carry additional dispatches onward, on his behalf, to Bishop Bek of Durham, who is presently believed to be in Glasgow.”

  I shrugged, glancing at Earl Warrenne as though I were almost disinterested, and added, “So, we go?”

  “Just so,” Thomas agreed. “We go.”

  “Today?”

  “No, tomorrow morning. Lord John’s people are copying the dispatches we are to carry, and they will have them ready for us by tonight.”

  I shrugged again, taking great care to avoid looking again at the hulking figure of the Treacherer. Within a few moments the earl finished his business with Thomas and dismissed him with a wave of the hand before striding away, followed by Cressingham and leaving me with the distinct impression that his tolerance for the King’s treasurer was no greater than my own.

  “So we are bound for Glasgow,” I said as soon as we were out of earshot. “What brought that about?”

  “I have no idea. The man simply came striding by—have you noticed that he strides, by the way? He doesn’t simply walk, like other men. He strides.”

  “I’ve noticed, yes. So he came striding by … and what?”

  “He saw me, stopped in his tracks, and told me he was sending me north with this delegation bound for Paisley.”

  “But I can’t go to Paisley,” I said. “Not if I’m to remain a Basque. I trained there, in the abbey, and my cousin Malcolm is still the librarian and archivist there. I’ll be recognized the minute I set foot in the place, and no doubt the others in your delegation would be very interested to learn that I’m a Scot after all.”

  “Peace, Jamie. The man said we were to travel as far as Paisley with the others, and then we are to strike on past to Glasgow and Bek.”