We were perhaps three miles from Stirling town, and the castle, clearly visible atop its soaring crag in the distance, seemed to beckon to us as the feverish activity of setting up another marching camp broke out yet again. The surrounding countryside, so tranquil when it first came into view, was transformed within a single half-hour as the army spilled out of its line of march and became an amorphous, sprawling multitude of men and beasts and wheeled vehicles of all descriptions. We priests, the score of us, moved as one small part of the enormous mass, for our own role in this diurnal ritual was now as well known to us as the soldiers’ were to them. Since it was my turn that day to drive the wagon I shared with three others, I guided my team into place in our five-wagon chaplains’ procession to our assigned location and then set about the preparations for celebrating evening Masses in several locations, one for the Earl of Surrey and his personal entourage in the privacy of the big tented pavilion that served as the earl’s private quarters, and a number of others throughout the vast encampment that was being created all around us.
