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there were different degrees of the Sight.
    The thought brought her out of her reverie and back to her mother’s quiet, stifling room. The tablets were in order now. She handed the basket to her mother.
    Christiana waved it away. ‘I’ll tell you this, Maggie. I’ve had no visions since the one that sent those men to their deaths.’
    ‘But you knew I was coming.’
    Christiana shrugged. ‘Perhaps the Sight has been taken from me. I pray that it is so.’
    Margaret knew it was not so, but that her mother wanted to believe it. ‘And you did not have a vision of Roger’s danger?’
    Christiana shook her head. ‘I told you I’d had no need. I could see with my mortal eyes his unsteady gait.’
    ‘What did Great-Aunt Euphemia teach you about the Sight?’
    Christiana idly poked at the tablets in the basket. ‘I pray that I have the strength to complete this soon.’ She sat back and gazed past Margaret’s shoulder. ‘She told me to discipline myself with meditation and long stretches of solitude to provoke the Sight and thus learn how it comes and how I might make use of it.’ She sighed and dropped the basket on to the floor beside her. ‘I have not the patience. Even the holy Dame Bethag despairs of me – though she never says so.’
    ‘Ma, your fasting is going to provoke visions. Hasn’t Dame Bethag told you that?’
    Christiana shrugged, picking at a thread on a cushion.
    Margaret said nothing of the fact that Christiana had at long last discovered to her sorrow another way to provoke the Sight – by pretending to have a vision. The Sight was a dangerous gift, requiring careful training, else it was as treacherous as a bird of prey in the hands of an inexperienced master.

2
     

A NDREW’S M ISSION
     
    Hearing of the English force moving north towards the border, Father Andrew crossed himself and prayed for God’s help in finding a way to get word to William Wallace. His disgust with himself for blindly obeying his abbot’s orders in support of Edward Longshanks had led to his defiant act of going to Edinburgh Castle on behalf of his sister Maggie, and thus to his abbot’s condemning him to the post as confessor to the English troops that camped at Soutra on their arrival in Scotland. As a Scotsman hearing the confessions of the enemy he would never be allowed to escape, nor would his own countrymen trust him if he managed to do so. But he kept despair at bay by telling himself God had a purpose in bringing him to this English camp, and he believed it was for this – to pass information about the strength of the companies to Wallace.
    It felt as if it had been long ago that Andrew and his servant Matthew had arrived at Soutra, but in fact they’d made the journey but four months earlier. They had approached the gate of the spital to the sound of their horses’ breath, the clop of their hooves on the stony road. The wind had funnelled beneath Andrew’s mantle as if urging him to fly. He remembered the bitter cold.
    In the spital’s forecourt the soldiers had hovered close to a crackling fire. Though the high walls created a windbreak, it was still very cold on the height. Several large tents took up most of the courtyard. Andrew was taken aback, wondering how many English resided here that the guest house and infirmary were not enough.
    ‘I had not expected so great a company,’ he’d said to his servant.
    ‘Where will we sleep?’ Matthew asked.
    ‘I’ll propose that we sleep in the canons’ dormitory.’ Andrew was determined to keep the lad with him, for Matthew had volunteered to accompany him into this exile. ‘They would not bed soldiers there.’
    The dormitory – Andrew wanted nothing more than to go straight there to lie down, but a servant greeted them with the news that the master of the spital wished to meet with Andrew at once.
    ‘Go with the groom,’ he told Matthew. ‘See that the horses are well rubbed down and then have him show you to the kitchen.’
    The servant led