Page 29 of Laird of Smoke
By the time she bid them farewell, the sun was already halfway on its morning journey toward midday.
In the woods, she changed into the disguise she’d stitched out of the pale linen bedsheets—a rough cassock with a braided belt.She stuffed the top with rags to thicken her torso.Tying back her hair, she covered her head with an oversized gray cowl.Then she rolled on the forest floor to dirty the garments.To disguise her hands and bare feet, she wrapped them with scraps of mud-stained linen.She’d wanted to stain them with blood and perhaps animal dung.But there were limits to her commitment to the role.
Using pine pitch, she artfully affixed the mule hair to her face, creating an unkempt, grizzled beard that hung halfway down her chest.She added the cross she’d roughly carved out of the wooden candlestick, as well as the tablet and stylus, hung around her neck by strips of braided linen.As a finishing touch, she smeared her face and fingers with charred peat.Along the way, she found a fallen oak branch that was just the right size for a staff.
It was midday when she entered the gates of Scone Priory with a slow and measured gait, leaning heavily on the staff, as if she’d been walking for months.Anyone who saw her would recognize her as an ascetic and a pilgrim.
Despite her unclean appearance, she would be welcome among the monks, of course.They would offer her food at their table.And unless part of Adam’s punishment was going hungry, he would be among those supping.
She stopped at the fountain, ostensibly to get a drink.But she was actually perusing the cloister, looking for signs of Adam or the prior.And finding nothing.
Suddenly someone tugged on the back of her cassock.
She turned round with a scowl.It was a pair of oblates.They looked to be about seven years old, with brown cassocks, wide eyes, and inquisitive faces.
“Are ye a pilgrim?”one of them asked.
Eve gave them a slow nod.
“Where are ye goin’?”demanded the other.
She narrowed her eyes.Then she picked up the tablet and scrawled into it with the stylus, turning it toward them.
The first one squinted at the letters.“CAN…YOU…READ?”he read.“Aye, I can.”He wagged a thumb at the other lad.“Timothy can’t though.”
“Edward!”Timothy frowned and stuck out his tongue at Edward.
She scraped the tablet clean and scrawled into it again.
“What’s wrong?”Timothy asked.“Can’t ye talk?”
She shook her head.
“Why?”He wrinkled his nose in disgust.“Did ye get your tongue cut out?”
Edward gave him a light shove.“Dolt!He’s probably under a vow o’ silence.”Then he glanced at her.“Are ye under a vow o’ silence?”
She nodded.Then she showed him the letters on the tablet.
Edward read it for Timothy.“SAINT…ANDREWS.Ye’re on pilgrimage to Saint Andrews?”
She nodded.
“I’mgoin’ to Saint Andrews,” Timothy boasted.
“Nay, ye’re not,” Edward said.
“One day.”
“Maybe one day.But we’re stuck at the priory until we take our vows.”
“When’s that?”Timothy asked.
He shrugged.“My cousin John was fourteen.”
Timothy’s brows shot up.“Fourteen?That’s…” He screwed up his forehead to think.
“He can’t do sums either,” Edward confided.
