The Forest Laird by Jack Whyte

Author:Jack Whyte
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780670068463
Publisher: Viking Canada
Published: 2010-09-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1

The remainder of that year, 1293, may have been uneventful for most of the realm of Scotland, but for me it was a hectic period, spent adapting to the practical reality of living daily as a priest. My new principal and superior, Bishop Wishart, was then the senior prelate of Scotland, and he went out of his way, from the outset of our relationship, to ensure that I became familiar with, and stood prepared to deal with, all the political developments that affected our lives, not only within the realm but even more dramatically in the closely associated circles of the Church in England as well as Scotland. It was an exhaustive field of activity, particularly in the early days, and he plunged me into it directly after my ordination, going so far as to provide me with a well-lit office cubicle so that I could study more effectively and apply myself to the tasks he set me without being interrupted.

Callow, inexperienced, and newly minted as I was, I knew nonetheless that I was being accorded extraordinary treatment for a tyro, and I braced myself to raise the matter with the Bishop, to discover why he should be at such pains before I even had a chance to prove myself to him.

But it was he himself who raised the matter. Soon after I had moved to Glasgow, exchanging my home in the Abbey for the new and ornate but yet unfinished cathedral there, he told me he had seen a talent in me years earlier, an ability that had impressed him sufficiently to ensure that he would keep a close eye on me thereafter. I must have looked truly perplexed.

“I don’t understand you, my lord,” I said. “Forgive me, but what are you talking about?”

“Your gift for reading people,” he said. “It’s quite amazing. I’ve never seen the like of it in one so young.”

I laughed aloud, at a loss for words.

“Don’t laugh, Father James,” he said testily. “If I wished to be amusing I could find more beguiling topics with which to entertain you. You have a gift, God-sent. A talent, lodged deep within you and thrusting itself forward despite your own wishes. God has granted you a rare capacity to look at men and see through all the artifices they present to mask them from the world. You do it without even being aware of it, and you see straight to the heart of whomever you are dealing with at any time. That, Father, is a capability so rare as to be priceless to a man like me, who has to treat from day to day with people whose main concern is to conceal their own true motives.”

He saw me begin to raise a hand in protest and swept my interjection aside before I could voice it. “Believe me, I am no fool babbling into my wine cup. I saw this in you years ago. And once I had noticed it, I watched for it increasingly, and I never saw it fail.

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