Книга - Order In Chaos

Order In Chaos
Jack Whyte


The third instalment of Jack Whyte’s templar trilogy.The Order - a secret society of men from ancient, noble families, drawn together to safeguard the Christian Church's most precious secrets - has been decimated by a King's petulant will. Its members are being persecuted and most have been forced to flee for their lives as their leaders are burnt at the stake.But the Order's secrets must continue to be protected and hidden; so as their world falls apart, the dangerous task of smuggling the sacred treasure out from under the nose of a vengeful king falls to just a few brave men.









Order in Chaos

Book Three of the Templar Trilogy

Jack Whyte












To my wife, Beverley,mentor and care giver, who knows,invariably, when to leave me alone and when tohaul me out of my hermitage and back into the light of life…Thank you yet again.


I will give them into the hands of their enemies…and I will make [them]a desolation.

—Jeremiah 34:19-22




Table of Contents


Cover Page (#ufca53e34-04e4-5c47-b4fd-09df6085133b)

Title Page (#u9d190f53-027d-5953-b336-e1310614b000)

Dedication (#ub525aaed-c974-5ba5-91fe-43a42f32a76f)

Epigraph (#u9222fe58-9fe9-5805-930b-c889a4c3176f)

France (#u54283c9e-34c8-56cc-98b6-b036bb1a263b)

The Woman at the Gates (#ub586fc4a-897d-52ab-8c2c-2e50486d57d5)

Men of Goodwill (#uab24082f-e5c8-5993-8ff0-34401d34463f)

The Devil’s Work (#u0c7a9bae-42ef-52b3-aecb-ed0352562565)

A quest of Faith (#ub4d6ffe3-8b90-5f91-b488-2cd6fba58dc1)

Poisoned (#litres_trial_promo)

The Island of Arran (#litres_trial_promo)

The Holy Island (#litres_trial_promo)

Of Loyalty and Friends (#litres_trial_promo)

A Gathering on Arran (#litres_trial_promo)

Obedience (#litres_trial_promo)

The Caves of Roslin (#litres_trial_promo)

A Catalogue of Sins (#litres_trial_promo)

The Road to Legend (#litres_trial_promo)

The Return (#litres_trial_promo)

The Woman in the Byre (#litres_trial_promo)

Bishops and Cardinals (#litres_trial_promo)

A Colloquy in Nithsdale (#litres_trial_promo)

From Death Into Death (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Glossary (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About The Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Jack Whyte (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)



FRANCE (#ulink_fd322d30-ce78-58ec-ac06-9b692aea1521)




THE WOMAN AT THE GATES (#ulink_58c4811f-1522-5cf2-b554-12ecf9c9eb6d)

1


Even a man with no eyes could have seen that something was wrong up ahead, and Tam Sinclair’s eyes were perfect. His patience, however, was less so. The afternoon light was settling into dusk, and Tam was reduced to immobility after three days of hard traveling and within a half mile of his goal. The reins of his tired team now hung useless in his hands as a growing crowd of people backed up ahead of him, blocking his way and crowding close to his horses, making them snort and stomp and toss their heads nervously. Tam felt himself growing angry at the press around him. He did not like being among large numbers of people at the best of times, but when they were compressed together in a solid crowd, as they were now, the stink of their unwashed bodies deprived him of even the simple pleasure of taking a deep breath.

“Ewan!”

“Aye!” One of the two young men who had been lounging and talking to each other among the covered shapes of the wagon’s cargo pulled himself upright to where he could lean easily with braced arms on the high driver’s bench. “Whoa! What’s happening? Where did all these people come from all of a sudden?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have had to interrupt your debate wi’ your young friend.” Tam glanced sideways at the other man, quirking his mouth, almost concealed by his grizzled beard, into what might have been a grin or a grimace of distaste. “Go up there to the gates and find out what’s going on and how long we’re to be stuck here. Maybe somebody’s had a fit or dropped dead. If that’s the case, I’ll thank you to find us another gate close enough to reach afore curfew. My arse is sore and full o’ splinters from this damned seat and I’m pining to hear the noisy clatter as we tip this load o’ rusty rubbish into the smelter’s yard. And be quick. I don’t want to be sleepin’ outside these walls this night. Away wi’ ye now.”

“Right.” Young Ewan placed a hand on the high side of the wagon and vaulted over it, dropping effortlessly to the cobbled roadway and pushing his way quickly into the crowd. La Rochelle was France’s greatest and busiest port, and the high, narrow gates of its southern entrance, directly ahead of him, were fronted by this wide approach that narrowed rapidly as it neared the check points manned by the city guards.

Tam watched the boy go and then swung himself down after him, albeit not quite so lithely. The wagon driver was a strong-looking man, still in the prime of life, but the ability to do everything his apprentices could do physically was something he had abandoned gladly years before. Glancing intolerantly now at the people closest to him, he made his way to a small oaken barrel securely fastened with hempen rope to the side of the wagon. He took the hanging dipper and raised the barrel’s loose-fitting lid, then brought the brimming ladle of cool water to his lips and held it there as he looked about him, seeing nothing out of place or anything that might explain the blockage ahead. He did notice a heavy presence of guards with crossbows lining the walkways above and on each side of the high gates, but none of them appeared to be particularly interested in anything happening below.

In the meantime, young Ewan had moved forward aggressively, anonymous among the crowd. He was soon aware that he was not the only one trying to find out what was happening, and as he drew closer to the gates he found it increasingly difficult to penetrate the noisy, neck-craning throng. He was eventually forced to use his wide shoulders to clear a passage for himself, elbowing his way single-mindedly towards the front, ignoring the deafening babble of shouting voices all around him. He was almost there—if he stood on his toes he could see the crested helmet of the Corporal of the Guard—when he became aware of louder, shriller voices directly ahead. Three men came charging towards him, plowing through the crowd, pulling at people as they went, pushing and shoving and trying to run, wide eyed with fear. One of them shouldered Ewan aside as he surged by, but the young man regained his balance easily and swung around to watch the three of them scrambling into the throng behind him, dodging and weaving as they sought to lose themselves among the crush.

The crowd, like a living thing sensing the terror of the fleeing men, pulled itself away from them quickly, people pushing and pulling at their neighbors as they fought to keep clear of the fugitives, and in so doing exposing them to the guards in front of and on top of the gate towers.

The Corporal of the Guard’s single shout, ordering the fleeing men to halt, went unheeded, and almost before the word had left his lips the first crossbow bolt struck the cobblestones with a clanging impact that stunned the crowd into instant silence. Shot from high above the gates, and too hastily loosed, the steel projectile caromed off the worn cobblestone and was deflected upwards, hammering its point through the wooden water barrel from which Tam Sinclair was drinking, shattering the staves and drenching the man in a deluge of cold water that soaked his breeches and splashed loudly on the cobbles at his feet.

Cursing, Tam dropped down onto the wet stones, landing on all fours and rolling sideways to safety under the wagon’s bed as the air filled with the bowel-loosening hiss and sickening thud of crossbow bolts. His other apprentice, Hamish, jumped from the wagon bed and dived behind the protection of a wheel hub, fighting off others who sought the same shelter.

None of the three fleeing men survived for long. The first was brought down by three bolts, all of which hit him at the same time, in the shoulder, the neck, and the right knee. He went flying and whirling like a touring mummer, blood arcing high above him from a jagged rip in his neck and raining back down and around him as he fell sprawling less than ten paces from where he had begun his flight. The second stopped running, almost in mid-stride, teetering for balance with windmilling arms, and turned back to face the city gates, raising his hands high above his head in surrender. For the space of a single heartbeat he stood there, and then a crossbow bolt smashed through his sternum, the meaty impact driving him backwards, his feet clear off the ground, to land hard on his backside before his lifeless body toppled over onto its side.

The third man fell face down at the feet of a tall, stooped-over monk, one outstretched hand clutching in its death throes at the mendicant’s sandal beneath the tattered, ankle-high hem of his ragged black robe. The monk stopped moving as soon as he was touched, and stood still as though carved from wood, gazing down in stupefaction at the bloodied metal bolts that had snatched the life so brutally from the running man. No one paid any attention to his shock, however; all their own fascinated interest was focused upon the dead man at his feet. The monk himself barely registered upon their consciousness, merely another of the faceless, wandering thousands of his like who could be found begging for sustenance the length and breadth of Christendom.

So profound was the silence that had fallen in the wake of the shattering violence that the sound of a creaking iron hinge was clear from some distance away as a door swung open, and then came the measured tread of heavily booted feet as someone in authority paced forward from the entrance to the tower on the left of the city gates.

And still no one stirred in the crowded approach to the gates. Travelers and guards alike seemed petrified by the swiftness with which death had come to this pleasant, early evening.

“Have you all lost your wits?”

The voice was harsh, gravelly, and at the sound of it the spell was broken. People began to move again and voices sprang up, halting at first, unsure of how to begin talking about what had happened here. The guards stirred themselves into motion, too, and several made their way towards the three lifeless bodies.

Tam Sinclair had already crawled out from his hiding place and was preparing to mount to his high seat, one foot raised to the front wheel’s hub and his hand resting gently on the footboard of the driver’s bench, when he heard a hiss from behind him.

“Please, I heard you talking to the young man. You are from Scotland.”

Sinclair froze, then turned slowly, keeping his face expressionless. The woman was standing by the tail gate of his wagon, white-knuckled hands grasping the thick strap of a bulky cloth bag suspended from her shoulder. Her shape was muffled in a long garment of dull green wool that was wrapped completely around her, one corner covering her head like a hood, exposing only her mouth and chin. She looked young, but not girlish, Tam thought, judging from the few inches of her face that he could see. The skin on her face was fair and free of obvious dirt. He eyed her again, his gaze traveling slowly and deliberately but with no hint of lechery, from her face down to her feet.

“I am of Scotland. What of it?”

“I am, too. And I need help. I need it greatly. I can reward you.”

This woman was no peasant. Her whisper had been replaced by a quiet, low-pitched voice. Her diction was clear and precise, and her words, despite the tremor in her voice, possessed the confidence born of high breeding. Tam pursed his lips, looking about him instinctively, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention; all eyes were directed towards the drama in the nearby open space. He sensed, though he knew not how, that this woman was involved in what had happened here, and he was favorably impressed by her demeanor, in spite of his wariness. She was tight wound with fear, he could see, and yet she had sufficient presence of mind to appear outwardly calm to a casual observer. His response was quiet but courteous.

“What trouble are you in, Lady? What would you have of me, a simple carter?”

“I need to get inside the gates. They are…People are looking for me, and they mean me ill.”

Sinclair watched her carefully, his eyes fixed on the wide-lipped mouth that was all he could really see of her. “Is that a fact?” he asked then, his Scots brogue suddenly broad and heavy in the rhetorical question. “And who are these people that harry and frighten well-born women?”

She bit her lip, and he could see her debating whether to say more, but then she drew herself up even straighter. “The King’s men. The men of William de Nogaret.”

Still Sinclair studied her, his face betraying nothing of his thoughts although her words had startled him. William de Nogaret, chief lawyer to King Philip IV, was the most feared and hated man in all of France, and the woman’s admission, clearly born of a desperate decision to trust Tam solely on the grounds of their common birthplace, invited him instantly either to betray her or to become complicit with her in something, and complicity in anything involving the frustration of the King’s principal henchman surely led to torture and death. He remained motionless for a moment longer, his thoughts racing, and then his face creased beneath his short, neatly trimmed beard into what might have been the beginnings of a smile.

“You’re running from de Nogaret? Sweet Jesus, lass, you could not have named a better reason to be seeking aid. Stay where you are. You are hidden there. I need to see what’s going on ahead of us.”

Something, some of the tension, seeped visibly out of the woman, and she drew back slightly, concealing herself behind the rear of the wagon. Sinclair began to haul himself up onto the hub of the front wheel. He was still apprehensive and curious about the woman, but felt somehow that he was doing the right thing. He paused with one foot on the hub to look over the heads of the crowd and across the open space to where the monk still stood over the dead man, hunched as though petrified, and after a moment Sinclair gave a small snort and swung himself up and onto his seat.

There, settled on his bench above the crowd, he gathered the reins of his team in his hand, reached for the whip by his feet, and gave a piercing whistle. His two lanky but strong-looking apprentices came running to his summons, swinging themselves lithely up into the vehicle. The one called Ewan took a seat on the bench beside Tam, and the other settled himself comfortably again among the covered shapes of the cargo in the wagon bed. But, whip in hand, Tam Sinclair made no move to start his animals. He had nowhere to go. The crowd was jostling and shuffling, milling at the edges of the space surrounding the slain men, but it was not going forward. The guards were still intent upon discovering whatever it was that had set the trouble afoot, and none of them had thought to marshal the waiting traffic.

The three dead men had apparently been pulling a handcart with them, and from the garbled commentary of the people around him, Tam gathered that it was when the guards, their suspicions aroused for some reason, had set out to search the cart and then attempted to seize one of the men that the trio broke and ran. Now, watching a handful of guards swarming over the high-piled contents of the handcart, Tam wondered idly what could have been in there that was worth dying for. He would never find out, because even as his curiosity stirred, the Corporal of the Guard ordered the cart to be taken into the guardhouse and searched there. Tam eyed the guards as they hauled it out of sight, then shifted his gaze to the swaggering figure of the harsh-voiced knight who had emerged from the tower and was now stalking about the open space where lay the three dead men.

He was not a tall man, this knight, but his burnished half armor, worn over a suit of mail and topped by a domed metal helmet, enhanced his stature in the late-afternoon light, and the scapular-like King’s livery he wore, a narrow-fronted, dingy white surcoat edged with royal blue, the embroidered fleur-de-lis emblem of the royal house of Capet centered on the chest, added to the air of authority that set him apart from everyone else within sight.

Gazing stolidly from his perch high on the driver’s bench, Tam Sinclair was not impressed by what he saw in the knight. He himself had been a soldier too long, had traveled too far and seen too many men in situations of dire, life-threatening peril, to be influenced by a mere show of outward finery. External trappings, he had learned long years before, too often had little bearing on the substance of what they adorned. The man he was looking at was a King’s knight, but in the driver’s eyes that in itself was no indicator of manhood or worth. People called the King of France Philip the Fair, because he was pleasant, almost flawless, to behold, but beauty, Tam knew as well as anyone, went only skin deep. No one who knew anything real about the puissant monarch would ever have considered referring to him as Philip the Just, or even the Compassionate. Philip Capet, the fourth of that name and grandson of the sainted King Louis IX, had shown himself, time and again, to be inhumanly self-centered, a cold and ambitious tyrant. And in Tam Sinclair’s eyes too many of the knights and familiars with whom the King surrounded himself were cut from the same cloth. This particular example of the breed had drawn his long sword slowly and ostentatiously and walked now with the bared blade bouncing gently against his right shoulder as he made his way towards the tall monk who stood isolated on the edge of the crowd, still stooped over the man who had died clutching his foot.

“Ewan.” Tam spoke without raising his voice, his eyes focused on the knight’s movements. “There is a woman at the back of the cart. Go you and help her climb up here while everyone is watching the King’s captain there. But do it easily, as though she is one of us, and on the far side, where you won’t be as easily noticed. Hamish, sit you up here with me and pay no attention to Ewan or the woman.” Ewan jumped down from the wagon, and as Hamish moved up to take his place on the bench, Tam tipped his head, drawing the younger man’s attention to the tableau on his left. “I think yon monk’s in trouble, judging by the scowl on that other fellow’s face.” Hamish leaned forward to see, and watched closely.

As the knight drew closer, the monk knelt slowly and stretched out a hand to lay his palm on the dead man’s skull, after which he remained motionless, his head bent, obviously praying for the soul of the departed. The knight kept walking until he was within two paces of the kneeling monk, and then he spoke again in his harsh, unpleasant voice. “That one is deep in Hell, priest, so you can stop praying for him.”

The monk gave no sign of having heard, and the knight frowned, unused to being ignored. He jerked his right hand, flipping the long sword down from his shoulder, and extended his arm until the tip of his blade caught the point of the monk’s peaked cowl and pushed it back, exposing the scalp beneath the hood, the crown shaved bald in the square tonsure of the Dominican Order, the sides covered by thick, short-cropped, iron gray hair. As the knight’s arm extended farther, the monk’s chin was pushed up and tilted back by the pull of his cowl, showing him to be clean-shaven and pallid. The knight bent forward until their faces were level, and his voice was no quieter or gentler than it had been before, ringing harshly in the absolute hush that had fallen at his first words.

“Listen to me, priest, when I speak to you, and answer when I bid you. Do you hear?” He drew back until he was once more standing erect, his sword point resting on the ground. “I know you.” The monk shook his head, mute, and the knight lifted his voice louder. “Don’t lie to me, priest! I never forget a face and I know you. I’ve seen you somewhere, before now. Where was it? Speak up.”

The monk shook his head. “No, sir knight,” he brayed. His voice was surprisingly shrill for such a tall man. Shrill enough that Tam Sinclair, who had turned to see how young Ewan was faring with the task he had set him, shifted quickly in his seat to watch the interplay between the knight and the monk.

“You are mistaken,” said the monk. “I am new come here and have never been in this part of the world before. My home is in the north, far from here, in Alsace, in the monastery of the blessed Saint Dominic, so unless you have been there recently you could not know me. And besides”—his eyes, blazing in the late-afternoon light, were a pale but lustrous blue that held more than a hint of fanaticism—“I would not forget a man such as you.”

The knight frowned, hesitated, then swung the sword blade back up to rest on his shoulder again, his face registering distaste. “Aye, enough. Nor would I forget a voice such as yours. What is your purpose here in La Rochelle?”

“God’s business, master knight. I bear messages for the Prior of the monastery of Saint Dominic within the gates.”

The knight was already waving the annoying Dominican away, his altered demeanor indicating his reluctance to interfere with anything that concerned the Order of Saint Dominic, the Pope’s holy, hungry, and ever zealous Inquisitors. “Aye, well, move on and finish your task. You know where the monastery is?”

“Yes, sir knight, I have instructions written here on how to proceed within the gates. Let me show you.”

But as he began to reach into his robe the knight stepped back from him and waved him away again. “Go on with you. I don’t need to see. Go on, go on, away with you.”

“Thank you, sir knight.” The tall monk bowed his head obse-quiously and moved away towards the city gates, and his passage seemed to be the signal for a general admission. The crowd surged forward in an orderly manner as Ewan and the mysterious woman climbed in over the right side of the wagon, and the guards casually scanned the passing throng. Sinclair noticed, however, that they were questioning every woman who passed by, while allowing the men to pass unchallenged. He straightened up in his seat and kneaded his kidneys with his free hand.

“Lads,” he said, speaking the Scots Gaelic in a normal, conversational voice, “you are now promoted to the nobility. For the next wee while, you will be my sons. Ewan, when you speak to any of these buffoons, make your Scotch voice thicken your French, as though you were more foreign than you are. Hamish, you speak only the Gaelic this day, no French at all. You are new arrived here in France with your mother, to join me and your brother, and have not had time to learn their tongue or their ways. Now shift into the back and let your mother sit here.” He turned casually and spoke to the woman behind them. “Mary, come here and sit by me. Throw back the hood from your face, unless you fear being recognized.”

She pulled back the hood wordlessly, revealing a handsome, finely chiseled face with wide, startlingly bright, blue-gray eyes and long, well-combed dark hair. Sinclair nodded in approval as she took her place beside him, and he jogged the reins and set the wagon rolling slowly forward. “Now hold on tight and be careful. For the time being, you are my wife, Mary Sinclair, mother of my sons here, Ewan and Hamish. You are comely enough to make me both proud of you and protective of your virtue. And you speak no French. If any question you, and they will, look to me for answers and then speak in Scots. And try to sound like a household servant, not like the lady you are. They are looking for a lady, are they not?”

The woman met his gaze squarely and nodded.

“Hmm. Then try you not to give them one, or we’ll all hang. Come around the end of the bench there, but mind your step. Hamish, help her, and then stand behind her, at her shoulder. The two of you have the same eyes, thanks be to God, so be not shy about flashing them, both of you.”

Sinclair reined in his team. “Right, then. Here we go. Here comes the popinjay who thinks himself a knight. Just be at ease, all of you, and let me do the talking.” He brought the wagon to a halt just short of where the guards stood waiting.

The knight arrived just as the Corporal of the Guard stepped forward to challenge Tam, and he stood watching, making no attempt to interfere as the guardsman questioned Tam.

“Your name?”

“Tam Sinclair,” Tam responded truculently. He pronounced it the Scots way, Singclir, rather than the French San-Clerr.

“What are you?” This with a ferocious frown in response to the alien name and its terse iteration.

Sinclair responded in fluent gutter French that was thick with Scots intonations. “What d’you mean, what am I? I am a Scot, from Scotland. And I am also a carter, as you can see.”

The frown grew deeper. “I meant, what are you doing here, fellow, in France?”

Sinclair scratched gently at his jaw with the end of one finger and stared down at the guard for long moments before he shrugged his shoulders and spoke slowly and patiently, with great clarity, as though to a backward child. “I don’t know where you’ve spent your life, Corporal, but where I live, everyone knows that when it comes to the nobility, there’s no difference between Scotland and France, or anywhere else. Money and power know no boundaries. There is an alliance in force between the two realms, and it is ancient.

“What am I doing here? I’m doing the same thing in France that hundreds of Frenchmen are doing in Scotland. I’m doing my master’s bidding, attending to his affairs. The St. Clair family holds lands and enterprises in both countries, and I am one of their factors. I go wherever I am sent. I do whatever I am told. Today I drive a cart.”

The answer seemed to mollify the man, but he cast a sideways glance at his superior standing by. “And what is in your cart?”

“Used iron, for the smelters within the walls. Old, rusty iron chains and broken swords to be melted down.”

“Show me.”

“Ewan, show the man.”

Ewan went to the back of the wagon, where he lowered the tail gate and threw back the old sailcloth sheet that covered their load. The corporal looked, shifted some of the cargo around with a series of heavy, metallic clanks, and then walked back to the front of the cart, wiping his rust-stained fingers on his surcoat. Ewan remained on the ground beside him as the guard pointed up at the woman.

“Who is she?”

“My wife, mother to my two sons here.”

“Your wife. How would I know that’s true?”

“Why would I lie? Does she look like a harlot? If you have eyes in your head you’ll see the eyes in hers, and the eyes in my son beside her.”

The guardsman looked as though he might take offense at the surliness of Sinclair’s tone, but then he eyed the massive shoulders of the man on the wagon and the set of his features and merely stepped closer so he could see the woman and the young man behind her. He looked carefully from one to the other, comparing their eyes.

“Hmm. And who is this other one?” He indicated Ewan, still standing close by him.

“My other son. Ask him. He speaks your language.”

“And if I ask your…wife?”

“Ask away. You’ll get nothing but a silly look. She can’t understand a word you say.”

The corporal looked directly at the woman. “Tell me your name.”

The woman turned, wide eyed, to look at Tam, who leaned back on the bench and said in Scots, “He wants to know your name, Wife.”

She bent forward to look down at the corporal and the watching knight, glancing back at Tam uncertainly.

“Tell him your name,” he repeated.

“Mary. Mary Sinclair.” Her voice was high and thin, with the sing-song intonation of the Scots peasantry.

“And where have you come from?” the corporal asked her.

Again the helpless look at Tam, who responded, “This is stupid. The fool wants to know where you’re from. I told him you can’t speak his language, but it hasn’t sunk through his thick skull yet. Just tell him where we’re from.”

Tam didn’t dare look at the watching knight, but he felt sure that the man was listening closely and understanding what they were saying. “Tell him, Mary. Where we’re from.”

She looked back at the corporal and blinked. “Inverness,” she intoned. “Inverness in Scotland.”

The guardsman stared at her for several more moments, then looked wordlessly at the white-and-blue-coated knight, who finally stepped forward and gazed up at the woman and the young man standing beside her. He pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing as he looked from one to the other of them, and then he stepped back and flicked a hand in dismissal.

“Move on,” the corporal said. “On your way.”

NOT MANY MINUTES LATER, having passed through the city gates and out of direct sight from them in the rapidly gathering dusk, Tam stopped the wagon and turned to the woman in the back.

“Where do you go from here, Lady?”

“Not far. If your young man there will help me down, I can walk from here with ease. I have family here who will shelter me. What is your real name? I will send a reward, as token of my thanks, to the Templar commandery here, down by the harbor. You may claim it by presenting yourself there and giving them your name.”

Sinclair shook his head. “Nay, Lady, I’ll take no money from you. The sound of your Scots voice has been reward enough, for I am long away from home. My name is as you heard it, Tam Sinclair, and I have no need of your coin. Go you now in peace, and quickly, for William de Nogaret has spies everywhere. And give thanks to God for having blessed you with those eyes of yours, my lady, for beside young Hamish’s here they saved our lives this day. Ewan, go with her. Carry her bag and make sure she comes to no harm, then make your way to where we are going. We’ll meet you there.”

The woman stepped forward and laid a hand on Tam’s forearm. “God bless you then, Tam Sinclair, and keep you well. You have my gratitude and that of my entire family.”

It was on the tip of Sinclair’s tongue to ask who that family might be, but something warned him not to, and he contented himself with nodding. “God bless you, too, my lady,” he murmured.

She was a fine-looking woman, judging only by what he had seen of her face, and now as she made her way down from the cart with Ewan’s help, Tam watched her body move against the restrictions of what she was wearing and tried to visualize what she might look like without the bundled blanket that enfolded her. He stopped that, however, as soon as he realized what he was doing. Beauty apart, he told himself, the woman had courage and a quick mind and he was glad he had done what he had.

He watched her go with Ewan until they were out of sight, and then he turned his team laboriously from the main thoroughfare into a darkening, deserted side street. He traveled halfway along the narrow thoroughfare before hauling on his reins again as the stooped Dominican monk from Alsace stepped out from a doorway in front of him. Young Hamish jumped down to the ground, where he was joined by three other men who had witnessed the killings in front of the city gates and had since walked at various distances behind the wagon. They gathered at the tail gate and began to rummage among the cargo there, displacing metal objects with much grunting and puffing. Sinclair thrust his whip into the receptacle by his right foot as the monk spoke to him, keeping his voice low so that the others would not hear him.

“Who was that woman, Tam, and what were you thinking of? I saw Ewan helping her into your cart as I left the yard and could hardly believe my eyes. You know better than that.” There was no trace of shrillness in the monk’s voice now. It was deep and resonant.

There came a grunt, a startled curse, and the scuffle of feet as a length of heavy chain slithered and clattered to the cobbles from the back of the wagon. Sinclair glanced that way and then turned back, his eyes sparkling and a small grin on his face.

“What woman are you talking about? Oh, that woman. She was just someone in need of a wee bit o’ assistance. A Scots lass who spoke like me, and a lady, or I miss my guess.”

“A lady, traveling alone?” The question was scornful.

“No, I think not. I doubt she was alone at the first of it. I think those three poor whoresons killed out there were supposed to be her guards. She told me she was fleeing from de Nogaret’s men, and I believed her.”

“From de Nogaret? That’s even worse. You put us all at risk, man.”

“No, sir, I did not.” Tam lowered his shoulders and set his chin. “What would you have had me do, betray her to the popinjay knight and watch her hauled off to jail and who knows what else?”

The other man sighed and straightened up from his hunched stoop, squaring broad shoulders that the stoop had effectively concealed. “No. No, Tam, I suppose not.” He fell silent for a short time, then asked, “What was her crime? I wonder. Not that de Nogaret would need one.” He looked about him. “Where is she now, then?”

“On her way to join her family, somewhere in the city. I sent Ewan with her. She’ll be well enough now.”

“Good. Let us hope she will be safe. But that was dangerous, aiding her like that, no matter what the cause. Our business here gives us no time for chivalry, Tam, and debate it as you will, you took a foolish risk.”

Sinclair shrugged. “Mayhap, but it seemed to me to be the right thing to do at the time. You were already through the gates and safe by the time I took her up, and you are the one charged with our task. The rest of us are but your guard.” Sinclair lowered his voice until it was barely louder than a throaty whisper. “Look, Will, the woman needed help. I saw that you were going to be fine, then I weighed everything else and made a decision. The kind you make all the time. What’s the word you use? A discretionary decision. A battlefield decision. It had to be made, yea or nay, and there was no one else around to tell me what to do.”

The monk grunted. “Well, it’s done now and we’re none the worse for it, by God’s grace. So be it. Let’s get on. Aha! My sword. Thank you, Hamish.”

Hamish and his helpers, working so industriously at the rear of the wagon, had unearthed a cache of carefully wrapped weapons from the bottom of the pile of rusted scrap that filled the bed, and had quickly stripped away the protective wrappings before Hamish himself brought the monk a sword that was clearly his own. The monk instantly grasped the hilt with sure familiarity and he drew the blade smoothly from its belted sheath, holding its shining blade vertically to reflect the last light of the fading day. As he did so, they heard the sound of racing feet, and the last of their number came rushing towards them.

“They’re coming, Sir William,” he gasped, laboring for breath. “The knight remembered you. It took him a while, but sure enough, he straightened up suddenly, right in front of me, and his face was something to behold. ‘Templar!’ he shouts, and roused the guard again. Ranted and raved at them, then sent them after you. Ten men at least he turned out, I saw that much before I left, but there may be more. But he thinks you were alone. He sent them to find you, nobody else, so they’ll not be expecting opposition. They went off in the wrong direction first, along the main road.”

“Aye, towards the monastery, because they are looking for a monk, not for me.” The man addressed as Sir William was shrugging quickly out of his threadbare black habit. He pulled it forward over his head, then gathered it into a ball and flung it into the bed of the wagon. “Quickly now, Watt,” he said, gesturing to the newcomer. “Arm yourself, quick as you like, and let’s be away from here. Tam, we’ll leave the wagon here. No more need for it, now that we’re inside.”

He turned away from all of them then, pulling and tugging in frustration at the tunic he had been wearing beneath the monk’s habit. He had tucked it up around his waist earlier, to safeguard against its being seen through his rent and ragged habit, and now it was gathered thickly in unyielding layers around his waist and loins. He grimaced and cursed under his breath, squirming and wriggling until he eventually teased the bunched-up garment out of its constricting folds and wrinkles and arranged it to hang comfortably about him.

“My hauberk, Tam,” he said then, “but keep the leggings with you. There’s no time now to put the damned things on. I’ll do that later.”

From the bed of the wagon, before he jumped down himself to the cobblestones, Tam heaved him another, longer garment, this one a full coat of calf-length fustian, split to the groin in front and rear and covered in links of heavy mail.

“What about the horses?” he asked, vaulting down to the ground with a helmet and mailed hood in his hand.

“Leave them here. Someone will think himself blessed to find and claim them. Here, help me with this.” The knight had immediately donned the mailed coat, but his impatience was frustrating his efforts to fasten the leather straps that would hold it in place beneath his arms, and now one of the other men stepped forward to help him, concentrating closely on feeding the straps through the buckles beneath Sir William’s shoulders. The knight felt the last of them being tugged shut and he raised his arms high and flexed his shoulders, checking that they were securely covered yet not too tightly bound for swordplay. He then took the mailed hood from Tam Sinclair and pulled it over his head, spreading the ends of it across his shoulders and tugging at the flaps that he would lace together later, beneath his chin. When he was satisfied with how it felt, he took the flat crowned helm from Tam and settled it on his brows. “My thanks, Tam.” He nodded tersely to the other man who had helped him. “And to you, Iain. And now my sword, if you will.”

He hefted the long, cross-hilted broadsword and grasped it near the top of the belted leather sheath, then slung the belt aslant across his chest so that the sword hung down along his back, its long hilt projecting above his shoulder. “Now, quickly, lads. We’ve been here overlong already and they’ll be on our heels once they discover I am not ahead of them on the road to the Dominican House. Bring the bag, Thomas, and you, Hamish, bring the coats and hand them out as we go. The rest of you, stay together and make haste, but be quiet and be prepared for anything. Keep your weapons sheathed and your hands free, but if anyone tries to stop us, or to contest our passage, be he guardsman or citizen, I care not, cut him down before he can raise an alarum. Come!”

They moved away immediately, the former monk and his attendant wagon driver striding at the head of the group while their companions positioned themselves protectively around and behind them, and as they went the tall apprentice called Hamish held a large leather bag open in front of him, from which one of the others pulled out and distributed tightly rolled bundles of cloth, all save one of them a pale yellowish brown. As each man received his, he grasped a flap of the cloth and snapped his bundle open, shaking it until it was loosened, and then he shrugged it over his head, transforming himself instantly from a nondescript but strongly armed pedestrian into an instantly recognizable Sergeant of the Order of the Brotherhood of the Temple, his ankle-length brown surcoat emblazoned front and back with the equal-armed red cross of the Templar Crusaders. Their leader’s surcoat, the only white one among them, marked him clearly as a Knight of the Order, and he now walked ahead of them once more, his bare ankles and sandaled feet pale and strikingly evident beneath the heavy hem of the armored tunic under his white coat.

Tam Sinclair shifted a bulging sack effortlessly on his shoulder. “So, Sir Willie, are you going to tell me? Who was that popinjay knight? He knew you, plainly, but from where?”

Sir William Sinclair smiled for the first time. “Well, he did and he did not, Tam, but I’m surprised you even have to ask. Of all the people he might have been, he was the one I should least have expected to meet here. Did you really not know him?”

“No, but I knew there was something far from right when you started braying like a donkey. Where did that come from?”

“From need, Thomas, from necessity. I find it unbelievable that you didn’t recognize the man. How could you forget such a grating, swinish squeal? Less than a year ago you wanted to gut him, and I was hard put to pull you away. That was Geoffrey the Jailer. We crossed paths with him when last we traveled to Paris. He was in Orléans then, in charge of the King’s prison.”

At the words, the frown vanished from the other man’s face. “Of course! Virgin’s piss, now I remember him. It was the armor that obscured it. The torturer! He was an unpleasant whoreson even then, without the King’s surcoat—too fond by far of causing pain to the people in his power. But never mind me wanting to gut him. He made you clutch at your dagger, too, at one point. I thought you were going to fillet him right there in his own jail.”

“Aye, that’s the man. Geoffrey de something…Martinsville, that’s the name! I knew I knew it. But it’s the worst of chances that I should run into him here. He didn’t recognize me because my beard is gone and my head is shaved, but he obviously does have a memory for faces, as he claimed.”

“Here they come.” The voice came from the rear rank.

“How many, and where are they?” Sir William did not even glance back, and it was Tam Sinclair who answered him, his voice tense.

“Three pair of them. A hundred paces behind, perhaps more. At the far end o’ the street.”

“Can they see us clearly?”

“No, no more than I can see them, and that’s but poorly.”

“Good, keep going, then, and don’t look back unless you hear them running. They’re looking for a monk—a single man. Bear that in mind. They’ll take no heed of us as a group, not in our coats and this close to the Commandery.”

The seven men kept walking as a loose-knit group and apparently in no particular haste, yet managing nonetheless to cover the ground quickly as they made their way through the twisting streets of the ancient town towards their destination on the waterfront, the fortified group of buildings that made up the regional Templar headquarters known simply as the Commandery. Five of the men were strangers to the city—only Sir William and Tam Sinclair had been there before—and as they walked they looked about them, straining to see the gray stone buildings now in the rapidly falling darkness while keeping their ears cocked for the sounds of running feet or raised voices. No lights had been lit yet in the buildings they passed, and it seemed as though they were the only people alive and stirring in the entire city of La Rochelle.

The white-coated knight did not look about him. He strode along with his head high, gazing straight ahead, the monkish sandals on his bare feet making no sound on the cobblestones, and his mind was filled to distraction with an image of that woman. A woman of astounding beauty, with enormous eyes. She was no one he had ever met, for he had known no women in his adult life, celibate for so long that the condition was as normal to him as breathing. And when he tried to fasten on the image of this woman’s face he could not. He saw only those remarkable eyes.

Angry at his own folly in wasting time with such ridiculous meanderings, he shook his head as though to dislodge the treacherous thoughts, and lengthened his stride, forcing himself to concentrate on the task he faced. The Commandery of La Rochelle lay mere minutes ahead of him, and his mind filled now with the things he had to say to the men with whom he would be meeting very shortly. He was struggling to redefine, for perhaps the hundredth time, the arguments he would marshal. He knew that no matter how circumspectly he approached his explanation, and irrespective of the tact and skill he might use in laying out his tidings, his report, by its mere delivery, would inspire anger, disbelief, dismay, and doubts about his sanity.

Sir William Sinclair had spent his life acquiring a reputation for service and dedication to the ideals of the Order of the Temple, traveling so widely and for so long upon Templar affairs that he was now more familiar with France and Italy than he was with his native Scotland. And now, as a man in the earliest years of midlife, prematurely graying and grizzled yet still hale and strong, he took enormous pride in his newly acquired status as a member of the Inner Circle, the Order’s Governing Council. The last thing he had any need for now was the slightest hint that he might be delusional. And yet he knew that the information he was carrying would be unbelievable to him were it laid baldly in front of him by someone else. His record of service, he knew, would prevent him from being laughed out of countenance as he delivered the unimaginable tidings he bore this day, but the truth was that the story he had to tell defied credence, and his fellow knights, if they were nothing else, were pragmatists, known for neither gullibility nor inane credulity. To their ears his story must, and surely would, reek of delusion and outright folly. Their hard-nosed common sense and the fabled integrity of their senior elders were firmly grounded in a two-hundred-year-long tradition of probity and service to the Church and to Christendom.

Sir William’s task in the hours ahead was to convince the Knights Commander of the preceptory in La Rochelle that their world—the absolute power and influence enjoyed by the Templars throughout Christendom and beyond—would cease to exist within the week.

He knew, although he found little comfort in the knowledge, that he really had no need to convince them of the truth of his astounding message. He had the authority to enforce his mandate, to demand the full compliance and assistance of the La Rochelle commandery in prosecuting his own official duty, laid upon him personally by the Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay. All he had to do was order them to withdraw all their forces and possessions inside the temporary safety of their gates and remain there, fortified against the deadly and treacherous approaches of the King of France.

Lost in his ponderings, Sinclair was nonetheless aware of his surroundings, and he felt a surge of recognition as he rounded one last bend in the narrow street and saw the spill of light that marked the end of his journey and the broad, cobbled plaza that fronted the main entry to the Templar compound.

The preceptory buildings of the Commandery had been built by the side of the harbor, along the water’s edge, to accommodate the comings and goings of the vessels and the teeming personnel of the Order’s massive fleet of galleys, the majority of them cargo vessels that plied all the seas of the trading world. But a significantly large contingent of the fleet was composed of ferociously efficient war galleys, manned and commanded by brethren of the Order. This force, the Battle Fleet, existed for the sole purpose of precluding any possibility of theft of the Order’s assets at sea.

Sir William Sinclair hitched his shoulders and with both hands loosened his sword blade in its sheath, a habit so ingrained in him that he had lost awareness of doing it. But he expected no trouble now that he could see the lighted square ahead. The guardsmen who had been behind them earlier had vanished to search elsewhere, paying them no attention, plainly having accepted them for what they were. He flexed his fingers and grasped the sheath of his sword more firmly, straightening his shoulders and addressing himself once more to what he would say to the preceptor, and as he did so he became aware of a dark, narrow slash, a lane or alleyway between the high buildings on his left, mere paces ahead of him. He paid it little attention and strode by, followed by his companions, but in passing he heard a clamor of voices spring up from the blackness of the alley’s shadowed depths.

“Keep moving,” Sir William growled. “Pay no attention.”

“Halt!” The shout echoed from deep in the alley’s gloom. “You there! Halt in the name of King Philip.” They heard the clatter of running footsteps.

William Sinclair kept walking, lengthening his stride as he spoke over his shoulder. “Challenge them, Tam. Stop them, but no fighting if you can avoid it. Just keep them far enough away from me to keep them from seeing what I’m wearing. If they see that I am not wearing leggings and only have on the sandals of a monk, one of them might be clever enough to guess I’m the monk they’re looking for and we’ll have to spill blood. And they are King’s men, so that might not be a wise thing to do under our current circumstances.”

He strode on, headed directly for the open end of the street less than thirty paces away, and soon stepped into the empty square that stretched as far as the Commandery’s main gates. Once there, he looked back to where his six men had spread themselves in a line across the road with their backs to him, facing the junction with the lane and holding their drawn swords point down on the stones of the street. As they stood there, each with sufficient fighting room to defend himself with ease, a group of unkempt garrison soldiers poured out of the lane and skidded to a halt, their clamorous shouting fading instantly into silence. There were only ten of them, and they had clearly not expected to find a line of six Templars awaiting them with drawn swords.

As he watched the confrontation take shape, Sir William became aware of running footsteps approaching from the direction of the Commandery, but when he glanced over to see who was coming, he recognized the young sergeant, Ewan, who had gone off to escort the lady.

“Sir William!”

Sir William swung back to face the young man, chopping with his hand to quiet him, but Ewan was beside him now, and urgent with tidings.

“Sir William! I—”

“Shush, boy! Be silent.”

“But—”

“Silent! And pay attention here.” He waved his arm towards the street from which he had just emerged.

Tam Sinclair had given the King’s guards no time to rally themselves but had jumped right into confrontation, addressing himself to the lout who seemed to be their leader. The loud, hectoring voice he assumed, speaking flawless street French and betraying no sign of his true nationality, carried clearly down the tunnel of the street to Sir William’s ears.

“Well, filth, what would you have of us? Eh? What? By what imagined right do you dare challenge the Brotherhood of the Temple? You accosted us, ordered us to stand, in the name of the King. Why?”

None of the guardsmen made any attempt to answer him, their ignorance of what to do next betrayed by the way they glanced at each other, avoiding looking at any of the Templars.

Tam raised his voice even higher. “Come now, it is a simple question. And it demands a simple answer. Why did you shout at us to halt? Are we criminals? Do you know what you did, making demands of any of our Order without due authority? Where did you find the stupidity to attempt to interfere in the affairs of the Temple?”

Still no one answered him, despite the open insult in his words, and he gave them no respite. “Are you all mute? Or are you simply even more stupid than you look? You are King’s men—at least you wear the uniform—so you must know who we are. And you must know, too, that you have neither the right nor the capability to call us to account, for anything. We are sergeants of the Temple and we answer solely to our Grand Master, who answers, in his turn, to the Pope. Your king has no power to bid us stay or go in our affairs. No king in Christendom has such a right.”

He paused, as though sizing up his now bemused opponents. “So what is it to be? Will you search us and die, or merely question us and die, or fight us and die? Your choice. Speak up.”

The leader of the King’s men finally found his voice at this. “You can’t threaten us,” he said, his tone more of a whine than a complaint. “We are King’s men. We wear the King’s uniform.”

Tam Sinclair spoke as though nothing had been said. “On the other hand,” he said, “you have a fourth option. You may stand here, as you are, and without argument, and watch us as we walk away leaving your blood unspilled. Then, once we are gone, you will be at liberty to leave, too, and none of us, on either side, will breathe a word of this encounter. Are we agreed?” He addressed the man who had voiced the complaint, and he was impatient with the time it took to gain an answer. “Well, are we? Do we walk away or do we fight?” He raised the point of his sword to waist height, not threateningly but emphatically.

The other man nodded. “We walk.”

“Excellent. Stand you there, then, until we be gone.”

Sir William’s men turned their backs on their hapless challengers and, swords still unsheathed, walked down the now dark street to join him. Only then did he turn to the young man beside him, and Ewan began to speak immediately.

“My lord, I have—”

“Hush you. I know you have something to say, but it will wait until later. I have more pressing matters on my mind. Rejoin the others now, and don your surcoat.”

As the sergeant walked away, crestfallen, Sir William turned back towards the Commandery, knowing he had been seen from the gates as soon as he emerged into the open square, and that the senior guardsman on duty would immediately have summoned the Guard Commander. Now, striding towards the main gates, Sir William smiled in recognition as a veteran sergeant walked swiftly from the gatehouse, followed by four men, and then stopped short, frowning as he took in the bare ankles of the beardless man approaching him in the white surcoat of a knight and followed by an escorting group of sergeants. He raised one hand slightly in a restraining gesture to his men, until the man in the knight’s surcoat had reached the gateway.

“Tescar, well met. You look distrustful. Do you not know me? Or are you to bar me from the Commandery for a shaven chin?”

The sergeant’s wrinkled frown smoothed out in astonishment. “Sinclair? Sir William, is that you? God’s holy name, what happened to you?”

“A long tale, old friend, but I have urgent tidings from Paris for the preceptor. Is he within the walls?”

“You, too? Aye, he is, but you might have to wait in line. It’s first come, first served tonight, it seems, and you’re the third to come seeking him within this half hour.”

“Then I must claim priority, Sergeant. As I said, I bring urgent tidings from Paris, from Master de Molay himself. Is the admiral, too, inside?”

Tescar grinned. “Aye, he is, and the Master’s tidings are well delivered. Your brother knight arrived not ten minutes past, straight from the South Gate, no doubt with the same message.”

“What brother knight? We came in through the South Gate just as it closed, and we had to wait. There was no other Templar knight there. We would have seen him. Are you sure he said the southern gate? Who is he?”

The Sergeant of the Guard shrugged his wide shoulders. “That’s what he said, the South Gate. As to who he is, he’s a new one on me. I’ve never seen the man before. But he and another are here from Paris, bearing tidings from the Master for the preceptor and the admiral.”

Sir William Sinclair’s hands had dropped to his sword, one on the hilt, the other on the scabbard, as it occurred to him that this must have been the urgent message that had so agitated the young sergeant Ewan. He drew Tescar away by the sleeve, out of hearing of the others, and spoke in a low voice. “Listen to me, Tescar. There’s something wrong here. There is no other messenger. I am de Molay’s sole messenger to La Rochelle. What did this fellow look like?”

“Like you but better dressed.” Tescar was frowning now, beginning to look angry. “White mantle, white surcoat, full forked beard. Said he came from Paris with urgent tidings from the Grand Master. I passed him inside. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Did you ask his name?”

“Aye. It was English. Godwinson or Goodwinson, something like that. But he’s a Templar, beyond doubt.”

“Nothing is beyond doubt, Tescar. Not nowadays.” Sinclair had started for the entrance, his pace lengthening rapidly, and he waved a hand to bring Tam and the other sergeants after. “What did this fellow look like?”

“I told you. Like you, a Templar knight.” Tescar was hurrying to keep up with Sinclair, and the others followed them. “Big fellow, long beard, bright red with a pure white blaze on one side.”

“What?” Sinclair stopped in his tracks, spinning to face the sergeant and stopping him with a straightened arm. “A full red beard with a white streak? On the left?”

“Aye, that’s the one.” Sergeant Tescar, a veteran of many years, had learned to recognize urgency when it confronted him, and he wasted no time on useless questions. “I’ll take you in directly. Come. Your fellows here can go to the refectory. They’ll still have time for dinner.”

“No, they’ll come with me and I’ll make my own way in. You stay here and bar the gates. Seal this place up right now. No one is to leave here or come in until I say so, is that clear?”

“Aye, but—”

“No time for buts, Tescar. Seal this place tight and pray we’re not too late already. Tam, quickly, with me, and bring the others.”





MEN OF GOODWILL (#ulink_7458ebb1-dc18-52ef-b86b-56c5f741b1b6)

1


Sir William Sinclair strode through the main gate tower and emerged into the spacious quadrangle of the headquarters complex. It was enclosed by four buildings, each three stories high, and he angled left immediately towards the heavy double doors that fronted the main administrative building containing the offices and living space of the garrison’s senior personnel. Tam Sinclair almost had to run to catch up to him, but when he did he grasped his taller cousin by the sleeve and pulled him around.

“Wait, damnation, wait now! Just hold hard for a minute. What are we rushing into here? What’s amiss? Why are you running?”

“Because I don’t like the smell. Something stinks here, Tam. Didn’t you hear what Tescar said?”

“Aye, some, but not all of it. The two o’ you were whispering like lovers. Who’s this other knight, this Godwinson?”

“I don’t know, but whoever he is, he’s a liar. There is no brother knight involved in this with tidings from de Molay. You know yourself, de Molay sent no other messenger but us. And there was no other Templar waiting to get in at the South Gate while we were there.” They had stopped at the foot of the shallow flight of steps up to the doors. “So who is this Godwinson and where did he come from? Not from the South Gate—you know that. Do you recall seeing de Nogaret in Paris, two weeks ago?” Tam nodded, his face troubled, and Sir William continued, walking up the steps. “Aye, you do, but obviously not as well as I do. D’you recall who was with him at the time? Think hard now. They had just emerged from the King’s residence and were waiting for a carriage.”

“Aye, I remember seeing the fellow, but I don’t know who he was. I was too busy looking at de Nogaret himself, bad luck to him. But the other one was a big, red-bearded—By the Christ!”

“Aye, big and red bearded, with a white streak in his beard. But was he a Templar? I think not. Nor was he dressed like one. No, Tam, the Christ has nothing to do with this one, not if de Nogaret’s involved.” They had reached the top of the shallow steps fronting the administrative building’s entrance, and Sir William swung the doors open wide before striding through, his men behind him fanning out and looking about them, plainly not knowing what they were looking for.

“Keep your wits about you, lads,” Sir William said quietly, “and tread softly. I don’t know what we may find in here, but this is no time to be clattering around, so move quietly. And be prepared for the worst.”

He led them to a passageway that bore away to the right from the far end of the cavernous entranceway, but he suddenly stopped short. Tam Sinclair bumped into him.

“What is it?” Tam’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

“No guards.” Another pair of closed double doors was set into the wall ahead of them, and Sir William drew his sword with a long, slithering of steel. “I’ve been here a score of times, Tam, and never have I seen those doors unguarded. Hold! Someone’s coming.”

Now they could clearly hear the sounds of shod feet coming from farther down the passageway, rapidly growing louder, and then a white-mantled knight stepped into view. He saw them immediately and gasped in alarm at the sight of Sir William’s bare blade, but Sinclair was already approaching him, raising his finger to his lips in a signal for silence.

“Admiral,” he whispered urgently, “stay there. It’s me, William Sinclair.”

Admiral Charles de St. Valéry was clearly astonished, but he remained where he was.

“Where’s de Thierry?” Sinclair asked him.

St. Valéry looked as though he might answer angrily, but then he merely shrugged. “I have no idea. He was in the Day Room when I saw him last, but that was half an hour ago. I have been upstairs ever since. What need have you and your men of bared blades here in the Commandery, Sir William?”

Sinclair was looking about him, but the passageway was empty on both sides, save for his own men.

St. Valéry spoke again, his voice still soft, but with an edge to it. “Do you not intend to answer me, sir?”

“Aye, I’ll answer you, my lord Admiral.” Sinclair threw him a quick glance, but then looked back to the closed doors of the Day Room where the Commandery’s business was conducted. “In a few moments I hope to be able to tell you that no, we have no need for bared blades here, but for the present that is not clear. Where are your guards?”

“My—?” St. Valéry looked beyond Sir William to where his two guards should have been. “Where are my guards?”

“What of this Godwinson, where is he?”

“What are you talking about? Who is Godwinson?”

“Aye. You’ve been upstairs for half an hour, you say?”

“I have.”

“Then you were gone when Godwinson arrived. And I see you are neither armed nor armored.”

“No, I am not. What need have I of arms or armor in my own house?”

“Come with me, Admiral, and do as I say.”

He turned on his heel and led the admiral back to where Tam Sinclair and his sergeants stood waiting. “Tam, two of your men to guard the admiral here and keep him safe from harm.” As Tam signaled two sergeants forward, Sir William turned back to St. Valéry. “I have reason to believe enemies are waiting for you on the other side of that door, Admiral, and that whoever goes in there first had best be well armored. I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am correct. So you stay here, against the wall, until we find out what’s inside. Tam!”

“Aye, Will.”

“Four of your men back outside, quickly, to Tescar at the gates. Tell him they need crossbows. Do it quickly, but without attracting attention.”

“Aye.”

While they waited for the four sergeants to return, Admiral St. Valéry studied Sinclair, who, in turn, stood gazing silently at the closed doors to the Day Room.

“What are you thinking, Sir William?”

“About armor, my lord Admiral. You have armor in your quarters?”

“Of course.”

“And have you a metal cuirass?”

“I have.”

“Go then, if you will, and don both, as quickly as you can.”

The admiral smiled wryly. “Don both? I have an extra tunic, too, of the finest Moslem chain mail, the strongest, lightest armor ever made. Should I put that on, too?” He was being facetious, but Sinclair was not.

“Aye, you should.” He saw the widening of the admiral’s eyes and held up a hand. “The first man through that door, Sir Charles, might well take a crossbow bolt in the chest, and so a triple layer of protection would be no excess. I would take your mantle myself and play your part, but I have no beard today and am fresh shaven, whereas your appearance is…otherwise distinctive. So you should enter first. I will be beside you, and we will have four crossbows of our own trained on whatever lies inside that room.”

“Hmm. Who is in there?” No one had ever accused St. Valéry of being excitable or lacking courage, and now his voice revealed only curiosity, with no trace of alarm.

Sir William’s headshake was brief. “I know not, but I suspect we will find two dead guards, and the preceptor, Sir Arnold de Thierry, either dead or being held captive. We have been infiltrated, Admiral. Our defenses have been breached, and all I know of our visitor is that I saw him last in the company of the King’s chief lawyer, William de Nogaret, less than two weeks ago in Paris. I do not know his name, but he gave the English name of Godwinson to Sergeant Tescar at the gates and was admitted. He is dressed as a knight of the Temple, but he is no Templar and no friend of our Order.”

“You recognized him?”

“No, I have not yet set eyes on him, but I recalled him from Sergeant Tescar’s description.”

St. Valéry was frowning. “Then how can you know this is the same man? Descriptions are vague at best. This man may well be a visiting brother from England.”

“Then where are your guards, Admiral? Or did this Godwinson merely see fit to dismiss them? Tescar’s description left little room for doubt. A big man, wearing a full, red beard with a bright white streak down the left side of it. Now, there may be two men in France with long red beards so singularly marked, but until I know I am wrong, I’ll act as though I’m right. Please, go and put on your armor. We will wait for your return. Whatever has occurred within that room is long since done, and plainly no one is anxious to come out.”

Tam Sinclair’s four sergeants arrived back moments after St. Valéry left to put on his armor, and Sir William drew them aside and explained what he wanted them to do. Two of them then took up positions on each side of the double doors, their backs to the wall, while the other two lay on their bellies on the floor, their bodies angled away from the entrance, their loaded, drawn weapons trained on the doors. Sir William would enter first with the admiral, he told them, and would thrust the older man aside as they went in, in the hope of saving him from attack. He himself would dive to the other side, leaving the crossbowmen free to shoot from the floor into the open room. To the best of his knowledge there were only two men inside, he told them, but he could not be sure of that. Treachery spread in France like dry rot today, he said, pointing out that William de Nogaret had spies and employees everywhere. In any event, there would likely be only one crossbow inside the room, and once it had been fired, its wielder would have to reload. If the two men on the floor could not finish him, it would be the turn of the two by the doors. They would enter the room immediately, at the run, and switch sides. Among the four of them they should be sure of dealing with one bowman. Sinclair himself would take care of the red-bearded impostor.

Admiral St. Valéry returned, looking distinctly larger and walking with far less ease, his sword slung from his shoulder. Sir William swished his own sword through the air and then concealed it behind his back.

“By me, if you will, Admiral, on my left, and let’s find out what lies in wait for us. Those doors do open inwards, do they not?”

“They do…Ready?” St. Valéry went quietly forward until they stood facing the doors, side by side. He took hold of the black iron rings of the handles, raising them gently, one in each hand, then drew a deep breath, twisted both handles, threw the doors wide, and stepped inside.

At first Sinclair could see nothing at all. The large room appeared to be empty. But then he saw the broad smear of blood on the floor to his left where someone must have dragged a body aside, and at the same time he saw a flicker of movement to his right.

He reacted instantly, thrusting out his arm, straight and hard, in a blow to the admiral’s shoulder. The older man had been tense, and the unexpected push sent him spinning, barely in time as a hard-shot missile smashed into him, jerking him bodily off his feet and hurling him sideways to crash on the floor against the wall. Sinclair had used the strong, straight-armed blow to push himself sideways, in the other direction, and even as his shoulders slammed into the open door he saw another blur of motion from his left, and a second steel bolt, this one intended for him, half buried itself in the solid oak of the door by his head.

From below him he heard the thrum of a crossbow then and looked to see the man who had tried to kill him, his crossbow still at his shoulder, transfixed by a bolt from one of the sergeants on the floor of the passageway. Angled upwards as it was, the bolt passed cleanly through the man’s neck, beneath his chin, and shot out through the base of his skull before digging itself into the crevice between two of the stone blocks of the wall.

Sir William thrust himself forward from the door, whirling, sword in hand, as the rest of his men stormed into the room.

The red-bearded man in the knight’s mantle stood against the wall, still holding the crossbow that had struck down St. Valéry, and as he looked at Sinclair and the men pouring through the doorway he opened his hands and dropped the useless weapon, then shrugged out of his great Templar mantle and let it fall to the floor behind him as he drew his sword and fell into a crouch. Beneath the beard, his mouth was a snarling rictus.

“Mine,” Sinclair said.

The red-bearded man circled away from him, and Sinclair followed, waiting for him to make a move. Then came a whirling blur, a loud, meaty-sounding blow, and the stranger fell to his knees and pitched onto his face as Tam Sinclair’s dirk clattered on the stone floor beside him.

Sir William straightened slowly from his crouch. “Was that well done, Tam?”

“Aye, sir, it was. A perfect throw, hilt first. Unless, of course, ye really wanted to give the whoreson a second chance to kill ye.”

“He would not have killed me, Tam.”

“No, likely not. But you would ha’e killed him, and there would ha’e been an end o’ it. But now he’s still alive, I think, and we’ll ha’e a chance to find out what he came here for.”

“I know what he came here for, and he succeeded. He came to kill the admiral and the preceptor.”

“Shit, aye, but why?”

“To cause chaos tonight. In preparation for tomorrow.”

“Then he’s missed his aim. The admiral’s alive. The bolt but caught his hauberk and threw him away, but it didna hit him. He’ll be fine. Battered about a bit, but he’s no’ even bleeding.”

Sir William turned quickly to look to where a couple of his men were raising the limp form of the admiral from the floor. “Thank God for that. I thought I had been too slow. Send someone to the infirmary to fetch a surgeon or a physician, and have someone else remove the admiral’s armor before the fellow comes. Where is the preceptor?”

“Over here, sir.” The voice came from the far end of the room, where another sergeant was standing looking down at the floor behind one of the room’s long tables. “Him and the two guards. All dead.”

“Ah, God!” Sir William slowly walked the length of the great room until he stood looking down on the three corpses that had been dragged out of sight behind the table. Two were sergeants of the Order, their brown surcoats now black with blood. The third man was much older, dressed in the white mantle of the knights, with the Temple cross embroidered on its left breast. He, too, had been killed by a crossbow bolt, shot from a distance short enough to drive the lethal bolt clean through his chest, so that half of its length protruded from his back. There was little blood, apart from the exit wound itself, so the elderly man’s death must have been instantaneous.

Sir William knew the old preceptor’s story as well as he knew his own. Arnold de Thierry, a childless widower of one-and-twenty, had joined the Order on the island of Cyprus, thirty-one years earlier, on the fourth day of July in 1276, and had become one of the Temple’s most honored knights in fifteen years of campaigning in the Holy Land. His career there had ended when he was wounded in the earliest stages of the final siege of Acre in the year 1291 and was shipped out by sea and committed to the care of the Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes. There he was expected to die, but he fought instead for life, earning himself an undying reputation for futile bravery by refusing to allow the surgeons to amputate his wounded arm when it was deemed to be gangrenous. The wound, it transpired, was merely infected, and de Thierry in time regained almost full use of the limb. But while he was undergoing his long, slow recovery, his comrades in Acre were overrun and slaughtered by the Seljuk Sultan’s Mamelukes.

Hampered by his crippled arm, which was too gravely disabled for swordplay, de Thierry eventually returned to duty and was rewarded for his years of faithful service with the post of Preceptor of the Commandery of La Rochelle, a posting that he had rightly regarded as the highest honor he could have earned.

Preceptorship of a commandery was a military posting, as opposed to the administrative rank—something of a cross between an abbot and a small-town mayor—held by the preceptor of a Temple. Throughout Christendom the Temples run by the Order were civil institutions, financial and administrative posts, and their members, all nominally Templars, were artisans and traders of all stripes. Commanderies, on the other hand, were garrisoned posts, staffed by the fighting members of the Order, the knights and sergeants, and their purpose was purely military—the protection and guardianship of the Order’s affairs. The preceptor of a commandery was the first officer, responsible for all aspects of the installation, and nowhere was that responsibility more onerous or honorable than in La Rochelle, the most important location in France for the Order’s trading activities.

The commandery in La Rochelle, fronting the harbor with its extensive and easily defensible anchorage for ships of all sizes and types, was the primary garrison in the entire country, utterly essential to the worldwide welfare of the Order and its business. All of the industries and activities that the Templars pursued throughout Christendom and beyond—manufactories, plantations, orchards and farms; warehousing and storage facilities for the trading and sale of goods; distribution channels for commodities of every kind; real estate holdings and international banking activities—intersected at one time or another in the Commandery of La Rochelle, on the wharves and piers of the harbor or in the holding warehouses or the cargo shipping sheds.

Now, staring down at the preceptor’s still form, it came to Will that in merely witnessing this death, he was witnessing the end of an epoch. De Thierry was gone, and with him had vanished an era of unshakable integrity, absolute honor, and the purity of an ideal.

No more, Sinclair thought now. No more honor in the eyes of the law. No more fearlessness in the faithful performance of duty. And no more trust in the integrity of kings from men of goodwill. Farewell, old friend. You will be sorely missed, but you will suffer nothing by missing what will come tomorrow.

He turned away with a sigh and looked at Tam Sinclair, standing across from him on the other side of the three corpses. “Tam, send someone to bring Tescar. Tell whoever you send to say nothing but to bring him directly to me.”

“What in God’s holy name has happened here?” The voice was loud, and Sir William turned to look at the man in the doorway, then raised his hand to attract his attention. When the white-robed brother looked at him in outrage, the knight raised one finger, bidding him wait, then turned back to Tam. “Remember now, your man must say no word to Tescar.”

“Aye, I’ll send Ewan. He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

Sir William made his way then to the newcomer. “What is your name, Brother?”

The other man blinked at him, plainly wondering who he was, pale faced and clean shaven yet wearing the surcoat of a Temple Knight. “I am Brother Thomas,” he said. “I run the infirmary. What has happened here?”

“Are you surgeon or physician, Brother Thomas?”

“I am both, but—”

“Excellent. Now listen closely. I am William Sinclair, recently appointed to the Governing Council. I am beardless because I came here tonight in disguise, bearing instructions from our Grand Master in Paris to the preceptor and the admiral here in La Rochelle. And what has happened here is assassination. The preceptor has been killed, and the admiral has had a narrow escape. He is unconscious but unwounded, it appears. Listen carefully, therefore, to what I require of you, and take this under your vow of obedience. There are four dead men in this room. That one over there by the wall was one of the assassins. Behind the table at the back there you will find the bodies of two of your own garrison who were posted here tonight as guards, and the Brother Preceptor himself.

“You will bring your people here immediately, enjoining them to silence and obedience as I have enjoined you, and remove the bodies to the hospital. And then you will set them to cleaning this place up, removing the bloodstains and restoring the room to its former condition. As soon as you have issued your instructions, I need you to bring Admiral St. Valéry back to awareness. I have orders for him from the Grand Master, and their gravity permits no further loss of time. I need him—our Order needs him—awake and alert. Do you understand me, Brother Thomas?”

Brother Thomas nodded, but his eyes were drawn to the red-bearded man slumped unconscious over a table, closely watched by two of Tam Sinclair’s sergeants. “Who is that?”

“A prisoner. The second assassin. We will see to him. He will be in no need of your assistance for a while yet.”

“Yet?”

“Hurry, Brother Thomas.”

Tescar and Brother Thomas passed each other in the doorway, and Tescar stopped, mouth hanging as he gaped at the unconscious Godwinson. Wasting no words, the knight quickly told the sergeant what had happened, and then asked him for the names of the two deputy commanders, naval and garrison based. He remembered both names and sent Tescar to summon the men, again with a warning to say nothing of what he knew.




2


An hour later, having done everything that he could do to repair the ravages caused by the man Godwinson and his murderous associate, Sir William finally found himself back in the Day Room, with nothing to do but wait upon events that he could not control. He crossed his legs, shifting his backside as he sought a comfortable spot in the wooden armchair by the fireplace of the great, freshly scrubbed room that was the center of the Commandery’s daily affairs. He no longer wore his mail hauberk and surcoat, having changed them for a plain white monk’s habit, covered by the simple but richly textured white mantle of a Templar knight, with the embroidered cross on the left breast. He had not, however, set aside his sword, and now he sat staring into the flames and frowning, one hand supported on the cross-hilt of his upright weapon as though it were a staff. The entire room smelled of lye soap, and his eyes were burning from the stench of it, but he could tell it was fading, if only gradually. Nonetheless his head was aching from the stink, and he had spent much of the past hour outside, conducting the business of the garrison in the fresh air.

Godwinson, whatever his true name might be, was safely locked up in a heavily guarded cell. He had regained consciousness eventually, but had refused to say a word when they interrogated him, and Sinclair, finding himself growing dangerously angry, had ordered him taken away and confined. He had then briefed the two deputy commanders on how to pacify the outraged and humiliated garrison, although he had said nothing to either of them about the purpose of his mission there. They had accepted his credentials and had carried out his wishes obediently, accepting it as their duty.

He could tell them nothing of the truth, however, before he had informed St. Valéry of his reasons for coming to La Rochelle. He had returned from the infirmary a short time earlier, where Brother Thomas had assured him that the admiral was showing signs of returning to consciousness and that he expected no complications as a result of the violent fall. The crossbow bolt had missed the admiral’s body by the narrowest of margins, striking his cuirass and glancing off to lodge in the metal mesh of his hauberk, the violence of its delivery throwing the old man to the floor.

It still lacked three hours until midnight, and all the Scots knight could do was wait and try to hold himself in patience until St. Valéry was well enough to talk to him and listen to his tidings. Once those were formally delivered, Sir William could take over the admiral’s command, at least until such time as the man was fit to resume his post properly. Sinclair had the authority to do so in an emergency, granted him by the Grand Master in person.

Across from him, Tam stood against the far wall, his eyes downcast and his hands clasped quietly in front of him. They had discussed the evening’s events at length, but Sir William had been out of sorts and was well aware that he had abused his friend several times, deflecting much of his own anger and frustration onto his faithful kinsman’s uncomplaining shoulders. Now he felt stirrings of guilt and sought to make amends.

“You’re very quiet, Thomas. Why?”

Tam raised his head and looked at him, one black eyebrow lifted high, then turned away and stooped to throw three large logs onto the fire, pushing them firmly into place with the sole of his boot until he was satisfied that the new fuel would catch quickly. He stood straight again, wiping the dust from his hands with an edge of his surcoat, and turned at last to Will.

“Are you still fretting about me and that woman this afternoon?”

Will sat straighter in his chair and stared wide eyed at his sergeant cousin, who leaned against the mantel, looking down at him.

“Fretting, about you and a woman? I hope I need have no such concerns, Thomas.”

“No, well, you needn’t, but that’s about the tenth time you’ve called me Thomas this night, and that usually means you’re no’ pleased wi’ me. And when you say things the way you did just then, all proper and prim, that means the same thing. But I misspoke. I didna mean about me and the woman, the way you took it. I meant about me helpin’ the woman.”

“I know what you meant, and I have been thinking about it. What you did was wrong.”

Tam whipped his head down and away quickly, as though he might spit into the fire, but then, equally quickly, he swung back to face his cousin, and his voice was tight with aggravation. “How was it wrong, in God’s name? I told ye before, I only helped a fellow Scot escape from a man we despise. That she was a woman’s neither here nor there. She needed help, Will, and I was there to provide it, and all’s well. Had it been a man, you would ha’e thought nothing of it.”

“Not so. It might have put our mission at risk either way, Tam.”

“Och, Will, that’s rubbish and you know it. You’re bein’ pigheaded for the sheer pleasure o’ it. Our mission was ne’er in danger. Had it been you there, faced with her plight and her plea, and no’ me, you would ha’e done the same thing. You know you would.”

“No, I would not. I would have walked away from her.”

“You would ha—? You would ha’e walked away? Why, in the name o’ God? Because she was a woman? Sweet Jesus, Will, what if it had been your mother or one of your sisters? Would you not want someone to offer her help?”

“It was not my mother, Tam. Nor was it any of my sisters.”

“Well she was somebody’s mother or sister, or both.”

“Not so. She was a single, unescorted woman, traveling alone. An occasion of sin, waiting to avail itself of opportunity.”

“Och, for the love o’ Christ!” The disgust in Tam Sinclair’s voice was rich and undisguised. “How long have we known each other, Will Sinclair?”

Will raised an eyebrow. “Thirty years?”

“Aye, and more than that, and I swear you’ve become two people in those years.”

The knight tilted his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know you don’t, and that’s the shame o’ it. The lad I knew back then would ne’er ha’e spewed such canting, canonical rubbish. But since you came back from Outremer and began to grow involved in the Inner Circle, you’ve changed, my lad, and little for the better.”

Will stiffened. “That is insolent.”

Tam folded his arms over his chest. “Oh, is that a fact? After thirty years I’ve grown insolent, have I? Thirty years of encouragement from you to speak up and say what’s in my mind, to tell ye the truth where others might not want to, to be comfortable in being your equal when there’s just the two o’ us around, and all at once I’m insolent?”

Will’s ears had reddened and he sagged back into his chair. “You’re right,” he said. “That was unworthy. Forgive me.”

“Happily. But what’s eating at you, Will? This isna like you.”

Will tensed and then sat forward, tightening his grip on his sword’s cross-guard and narrowing his eyes as he stared right into the heart of the fire. “I don’t know, Tam. I just don’t know. It’s this thing tonight, I suppose—the malice of it, the sheer evil. A King’s minister—his chief lawyer—arranging murders. It’s insanity, unthinkable. And yet it happened…And I’ve been wondering about God’s will this past half hour. Was it God’s will, think you, that we should be in that part of Paris that day, at that particular time when de Nogaret and this scum Godwinson were emerging from the residence? Had we not been there and seen them, him with his white-streaked red beard, I would never have reacted when Tescar told us about his arrival, and St. Valéry would now be dead, too.”

“Ach, you would have reacted anyway, as soon as you heard that shite about his coming from Paris wi’ word from de Molay. You knew that was a fleering lie as soon as you heard it, and you would have behaved the same way, even if you hadn’t seen the whoreson in Paris and recognized the description. No God’s will there.”

“Well then, was it His will that this creature should succeed and take the life of Arnold de Thierry? There was a man who never offended God in all his life.”

“Whoa there now.” Tam threw up his hands as though conceding defeat. “You’re getting into things too deep for my poor head. I canna tell you anything about that, and neither can you. You’ll just drive yourself daft. Master de Thierry died an ill death, I’ll grant ye, but he died at his post and on duty, and that means he died on God’s business, so he’ll be wi’ all the others now, enjoying his reward.”

“All what others?”

“What others?” Tam sat blinking at him. “The other thousands like him who died blameless doin’ their duty. Ye surely dinna think he’s the first man ever to die the way he did? What about your ain family? Sinclairs ha’e been involved wi’ the Temple since the start o’ it. We canna say how many o’ them ha’e died uselessly in the service o’ God and His Church, but they died nonetheless. Three o’ your ancestors at once, and no’ so long ago—blood uncles and cousins—French and Scots, St. Clair and Sinclair, the three o’ them in Outremer at the same time, under that whoreson Richard Lionheart, fightin’ God’s ain Holy War against the Saracen Saladin and his Muslims…D’ye think God in His wisdom had decreed their deaths for standin’ wi’ the Plantagenet, a man weel-kent for his depravity an’ foul habits?” Tam shook his head. “It’s no’ left to the likes o’ us to judge God’s reasons, Will. God knows we ha’e enough o’ our ain faults to live wi’…”

“Have I really changed that much, Tam? Am I really the prig you described, spouting cant and nonsense?”

“Aye, you can be, sometimes, a wee bit.” Tam grinned suddenly, his whole face lighting up. “But not often, thanks be to God.”

Will stared into the fire again, and just as Tam began to think he would say nothing more, he spoke.

“I have been thinking about that woman, Tam.”

“Aye, well, she was a fine-looking woman. There’s nothing wrong wi’ that.”

“But there is!” Will whipped his head around to look in his sergeant’s eyes. “I am bound by oath to avoid women.”

“Ach, come away, Will, that’s not true, and the young Will St. Clair I knew, knew that as well.”

“It is true. I undertook a vow of chastity.”

“Aye, you did, that’s right. A vow of chastity. You swore not to fornicate, with either women or men. Fine and well—a vow’s a vow and I’ve taken a few mysel’. But tell me this, is fornication wi’ a man more evil than fornicating wi’ a woman?”

Will looked shocked. “Lust between men is unnatural, the foulest of mortal sins.”

“Aye, it is, I’ll grant ye that. And it’s disgusting even to think about, but it still happens. But is it worse than fornicating wi’ a woman?”

“Why are we even talking about this?”

“Because you started it. Is it worse?”

“Of course it’s worse.”

“Because it’s unnatural.”

“Yes.”

“Aye. So the other way—with a woman—is that then natural? Don’t get angry, I’m only asking you because I wonder why it is that you never try to avoid men.”

“Avoid men? What are you talking about?”

“I thought I was being clear. If fornication between men is unnatural and worse than the other, natural kind, then why do you not avoid consorting with men? A man wi’ the will for things like that could corrupt you into sin.”

Will reared back in his chair. “That is ridiculous. Not one man in ten thousand would ever dream of thinking such a thing. The very idea is laughable.”

Tam nodded. “I agree. It is. But so is the thought of your lumping all women into one mass of sin, as though they threatened your chastity.”

“That’s different. It’s not at all the same thing. I have no attraction to men. But I might find a woman attractive. And that would confound my vow.”

“What vow? Oh, aye, your chastity. Right. But tell me, when did you ever swear to deny a woman the right to live—the right to seek freedom or to escape an enemy the likes of de Nogaret and his animals? When did you vow to shun them all as people?”

“I never did any of those things.”

Tam’s face was somber. “You must have, Will, somewhere deep inside yourself. And you’re doing it now. All this muttering and mumbling only started when you saw that woman with us today.”

“That’s not true. I never even saw her from near enough to be aware of her as a person.”

“And yet she has been in your mind ever since?”

A brief silence fell between them, and Tam moved to sit in the armchair next to Sir William’s. “Have you ever really known a woman, Will?”

“That’s an asinine question. Of course I have known women.”

“Who? Name me one.”

“My mother. Several aunts. My sisters, Joan and Mary and Peggy.”

Tam shook his head. “Those are all relatives, Will. I was asking about women, flesh-and-blood people who are not kinsfolk. Have you?”

Sir William faced his friend again. “No, I have not, and you know that. You have been with me constantly these thirty years.”

“Aye, I was afraid you would say that. The sad part is that I believe you. But I was hoping I’d be wrong. As you say, I’ve been with you these thirty years. But I’ve had women, now and then, and you knew nothing of it.”

Tam watched the younger man stiffen in horror. “What can I say, lad? I’m a sinner. I’m a Templar sergeant, but I’m a man, too, first and foremost. I’ve been tempted, and I’ve yielded to it—not often, mind you, I’m no goat—and I’ve enjoyed it most times. And then I’ve confessed and been shriven. Forgiven by an all-forgiving God. You remember Him, the All-Merciful?” He leaned forward anxiously. “Say something, man, and breathe, for you look as though you might choke.”

Will’s eyes were enormous, his lips moving soundlessly, and Tam Sinclair laughed. “What is it, man? Speak up, in God’s name.”

That was effective, for the knight’s mouth snapped shut, and then he found his voice, although it was a mere whisper. “In God’s name? You can invoke the name of God in this? You took a sacred vow, Tam.”

Tam’s mouth twisted. “Aye, I know that. And I broke it a few times. But as I said, I confessed and was shriven and did penance thereafter, as all men do. We are men, Will, not gods.”

“We are Templar monks.”

“Aye, but we’re men first and beyond all else. And we have Templar priests and bishops to match God’s other priests and bishops everywhere, and nary a one of them that I know of but has a whore hidden somewhere. What kind of world have you built for yourself, Will, in there behind your eyes? Are you deaf and blind to such things? You must be, for they’re plain to hear and see.”

The knuckles of William Sinclair’s hand were white with the pressure he was exerting on the hilt of his sword, and when he spoke again his voice was icy. “We…will…not…speak…of…this.”

Nor did they, for at that moment the doors behind them opened and they looked over to see Sir Charles de St. Valéry watching them from the threshold.




3


Sir William was on his feet instantly, crossing towards the older man, but the admiral held up a hand to signal that he required no help. As the others watched him, St. Valéry looked slowly around the room, his eyes coming to rest on the raw scar in the wall where the bolt that killed Godwinson’s fellow assassin had chipped out a large splinter.

“It stinks of lye in here.”

“Aye, Admiral, I was thinking the same thing myself. But it is getting better. An hour ago, you could hardly breathe in here without choking.”

St. Valéry nodded absently and made his way towards the fireplace, and Sir William stepped aside to let him pass, but instead of sitting, the admiral leaned against the high back of one of the armchairs fronting the fire. He looked as though he had aged greatly in the few hours since they had last met. His face was pallid, his eyes sunk deep into his head, and the skin beneath them appeared liverish purple. But he held himself erect, and his posture was defiant.

“I have seen Arnold,” he said in a calm, flat voice. “The surgeons tell me there was little blood and that his death was instantaneous, which means he felt no pain. In truth, it means he might not even have seen death approaching. I would like to think he died that way, without feeling himself betrayed, for if he saw his murderers, he must have thought them Brethren of the Order. Such a betrayal, even the semblance of one, would have pained Arnold greatly. I shall regret his passing. He and I were friends for many years…more years than most men are allowed to live. I will miss him.” He stiffened his shoulders and drew a great breath, then turned to face Sir William, every inch the Admiral of the Fleet whose personal concerns must always be subject to the dictates of his duty. “But I fear I may be forced to postpone my mourning until later. I have been told you come bearing urgent tidings, Sir William. Tidings from Master de Molay himself.”

“I do, Admiral.”

St. Valéry swept out an arm to indicate the room in which they stood. “Do they have any bearing on this obscenity that took place here?”

Sir William glanced at Tam Sinclair, who merely nodded, his lips pursed.

“Yes and no, Admiral. I believe there’s a very real connection between what happened here and the tidings I carry, but I cannot yet be sure. I have no proof—merely suspicions. Tam agrees with me.”

“Hmm.” St. Valéry grasped the back of his chair and pulled it away from the roaring fire. “Then we had best be seated where you can deliver your charges in comfort.”

The other two men took the armchairs flanking the admiral, although in normal circumstances Tam would never have thought of doing such a thing. As a mere sergeant, he seldom mixed directly with the knightly brethren, but he had known Charles de St. Valéry for so long that his own conduct had earned him the right to both sit and speak up in the admiral’s presence, at St. Valéry’s own insistence.

“There is little of comfort in what I have to say this night, my lord Admiral,” Will Sinclair said as he sat down.

“Aye, well, that’s appropriate, Sir William. There is little of comfort anywhere this night. Tell me what you have. I presume it is in writing?”

“Aye, Admiral, in the Master’s own words. Tam?”

Tam Sinclair removed the heavy leather satchel that was slung across his chest. Then, holding it on his knees, he opened the buckle and withdrew two thick parchment-wrapped packages, one of which he handed to St. Valéry, who hefted it thoughtfully in his hand while he eyed the other package that Tam was returning to his satchel.

“The Master had much to say, it appears. Who is the other for, if I am permitted to ask?”

“Aye, Admiral.” Sir William waved a hand, and Tam passed the second package to the admiral as well.

St. Valéry looked at the inscription, and his eyebrows rose high on his forehead. “‘For Sir William Sinclair. To be opened on the Feast of the Epiphany, Anno Domini 1308. Jacques de Molay, Master.’” St. Valéry looked at Sir William. “The Epiphany?”

Will Sinclair shrugged, opening his hands to indicate his ignorance. St. Valéry grunted as he handed the bulky package back to Tam and took a fresh grip on his own, making no attempt to break the seal.

“Are you aware of what this contains?” Will Sinclair nodded. “And your own?”

“I have no idea, sir. The Master made no effort to tell me. He merely drew my attention to the inscription, so I shall find out on the Epiphany.”

“That sounds ominous. Frightening, even, since this is October. Three months for you to wait, in which time much could happen to affect your instructions—if instructions they be. Give me the gist, if you will, of what this one of mine contains. I’ll read it afterwards.”

Sir William inhaled sharply and stood up, moving to stand by the side of the fireplace, where he could look directly at the admiral. “As you know, the Pope himself summoned the Master home to France from Cyprus more than eight months ago, giving Monsieur de Molay no hint of why he was called or what was expected of him other than that he was to meet with Pope and King on matters pertaining to the future welfare of the Order and the proposed amalgamation of the Orders of the Temple and the Hospitallers, which Master de Molay has always vehemently opposed on several grounds.”

St. Valéry grunted. “I am familiar with the Master’s objections. Are you opposed?”

Sinclair nodded. “I am, Admiral. The Master fears the loss of our identity were we to join with Hospital. We all do, to some extent.”

“Tell me more, then.”

The younger knight brought his hands together in front of him. “Well, for one thing, the Hospital is far larger and more complex than our own Order—more diverse in its activities and less strict in its interpretation of its role and its duties. The Hospitallers have never been warriors before all else, and the Master fears we would lose our imperative need to win back the Holy Land in consequence. He also fears the duplication of installations in the cities—who would survive the amalgamation of those, Temple or Hospital? And who—which administration—would survive the consolidation? All of these things concern him, and he has found little satisfaction in the course of several meetings with Pope Clement in Poitiers and with King Philip in Paris, but nothing concrete has resulted in either case. And so our Master has sat waiting in Paris these two months past, wondering what might be afoot, but obedient to the King’s will. But then, less than a month ago, Master de Molay received a warning of a plot against the Order, which he treated with the utmost urgency. I have no idea whence it came, but I received the strong impression, purely through listening to what was and was not said, that it sprang from a trustworthy source close to King Philip himself, or to his minister and chief lawyer, de Nogaret.”

St. Valéry nodded, his expression serene. “I see. And to what end does this plot exist? Our money, obviously, and a move to confiscate it, since de Nogaret is in charge. What is involved, and how extensive is it?”

“More than you could possibly imagine, Sir Charles. When I found myself sitting across from Master de Molay and being entrusted with this secret, the scope of it appalled me to the point of thinking the Master had gone mad and was seeing demons everywhere. But in fact he had known of the plot for ten days by then and had had doubts of his own on first hearing of it. The source, he told me, was unimpeachable, and that had caused him sufficient concern to begin making arrangements, just in case the threat proved real.

“The warning was confirmed the very morning of the day I saw the Master, less than two weeks ago now. A second, more detailed report had arrived from the same trusted source. By the time the Master called me into his presence, his plans were in place, and I have been working at them ever since.”

St. Valéry was now frowning. “You make it sound like the end of the world.”

“It is, as far as we are concerned.” Sir William’s response was that of a commander to a subordinate, and St. Valéry took note of it. “It is the end of our world, here in France. Philip Capet, our beloved King, has his armies poised to act against us. His armies, Sir Charles. And his minions. The entire assembled powers of the Kingdom of France are being brought to bear upon us in one single, unprecedented coup. His creature, William de Nogaret, has issued instructions from his monarch to his army to arrest every Templar in the realm of France at daybreak on the morning of Friday, the thirteenth of October.”

St. Valéry stiffened. “That…that is simply unbelievable!”

“Aye, it is. It is also tomorrow.”

“This is preposterous.”

“I agree. No argument on that from me. But it is also true. The King’s men will be hammering at these doors tomorrow morning at first light.”

St. Valéry sat dumbstruck, and Sir William could guess the thoughts that must be surging through his head. Every Templar in the realm of France, arrested and imprisoned in one day? That was preposterous. There were thousands of Temple brethren in France, from one end of it to the other, and very few of them were soldiers. For the past hundred years the vast majority of so-called Templars had never borne arms of any kind. In reality they were honorary or associate brethren: merchants and bankers, clerics and shopkeepers, traders and artisans, guildsmen and local governors; the men who made the massive empire of the Temple function smoothly. The Order of the Temple was the richest civil institution in the world, and for two hundred years its military arm had been the standing army of the Church, the only regular fighting force in all of Christendom, with never a blemish on its record of probity and service. The vaunted Hospitallers were rivals nowadays, but beside the Templars, the original military order, their record was unimpressive. Small wonder that the admiral was stricken dumb by the mere idea that such an edifice as the Temple could be even threatened, let alone toppled, by a single, greedy King.

St. Valéry, however, was showing his mettle. Rather than fulminating in disbelief, he had brought his attention to bear on the situation with which he was faced. He looked now at Sir William, his jaw set in a hard line. “So what are my instructions? Am I to surrender my fleet?”

Will Sinclair actually smiled. “Never. You are to work all night tonight, in preparation for tomorrow, and then withdraw your laden vessels to safety offshore, where they cannot be reached. There is still some doubt in the Master’s mind about whether the warning is real or not, but there is none in mine.

“If tomorrow brings disaster, as I expect it to, you are to take your fleet out of France to safety, to await a resolution of this affair, for reason demands that it must be resolved eventually. But until it is, and reparations have been made by either side, you will remain at sea if need be, husbanding your resources. And you will take me with you, as escort to our Order’s Treasure.”

The admiral’s jaw dropped. “You have the Treasure here? The Templar Treasure?”

“Not here in La Rochelle, but close by.”

“How did you get it out of Paris?”

“It was not in Paris, has not been for the past ten years. It has been buried safely in a cavern in the forest of Fontainebleau since then. The Master ordered it moved secretly at that time, to keep it safe.”

“Ten years ago? Safe from whom, in God’s holy name?”

“From the men now seeking it, Sir Charles. From Philip Capet and William de Nogaret. There was no threat at that time. Master de Molay was merely being a careful steward, as is his duty.”

“So…” St. Valéry cleared his throat. “Am I to understand that you two men, accompanied by a small group of sergeant brothers, transported the entire Treasure of the Temple half the length of France unaided? How large is this treasure? Has it grown much since last you saw it?”

Sir William shook his head. “Not at all, Commander. The Templar Treasure is not the Order’s worldly wealth. Those are two different things. I saw the same four chests that were shipped out from the siege of Acre, and as closely as I could calculate, they contained the same bone-crunching weight they owned formerly.”

St. Valéry looked directly at the younger knight and posed the question foremost in his mind. “What do they hold? Did you ever learn?”

Sir William smiled. “You know I am bound by oath to tell no one anything on that subject, Sir Charles. Even so, I know no more than you.”

St. Valéry nodded. “Of course. And yet neither I nor my dear friend Arnold, God rest his soul, after our lifetimes of service, ever set eyes on the Treasure, whereas you have been entrusted with its safety twice now.”

“Not quite, Admiral. I have accompanied the Treasure twice and seen the chests containing it on both occasions. But the responsibility for its safety on the first occasion lay with our late Master Tibauld Gaudin. His was the charge to bear it northward to safety from Acre to Sidon. I merely sailed with him.”

“But this time the charge is yours. How did you transport it here?”

“Under heavy escort. I told you the Master had been planning ever since he first heard of this plot. He summoned me to Paris as soon as he received the first warning, and at the same time he began assembling a substantial force for the duty of protecting the Treasure.”

St. Valéry sat forward intently. “Substantial? How many?”

“Five score, a hundred of our brotherhood, fully equipped and supplied: horses, armor, weapons, squires, grooms, smiths, everything.”

“A hundred knights? Where did you find so many at one time?”

“In one place, you mean? We didn’t. Forty of the hundred are knights, Admiral. The remaining three score are sergeants, and the force was summoned in secrecy from all across the country. Master de Molay sent out the word a month ago for volunteers to assemble immediately, but discreetly and in small numbers, at several gathering points, and from those points they made their way to the forest of Fontainebleau, where my brother Kenneth was waiting to marshal them. Tam and I joined Kenneth in the forest and recovered the Treasure, and once our expected men were all assembled, we led them here to the coast by routes that kept us hidden from hostile eyes.”

“And the Treasure is safe now?”

“Completely, Admiral. Else I would not be here. It is safe, and my brother and his men have it secure.”

“And if they are betrayed? Such things can happen.”

Sir William Sinclair nodded. “True, they can. That is why we are here today with such appalling tidings. Treachery is bred of greed. But betrayal’s barely possible in this case. A thief would have to know in advance where the Treasure had lain hidden, in which case it would have been gone when we arrived to dig it up. Failing that, he would have to know that we have it, that we recovered it from Fontainebleau, and that we would then go where we went to hide it again. We scarce knew that ourselves until the last possible moment.”

“I see. And what will become of your hundred brethren should events come to pass as predicted tomorrow?”

“They will escape to fight another day.”

“On my galleys.” St. Valéry’s voice was wry. “Sufficient of them to transport a hundred armed men and their mounts.”

“Aye, and all their gear, grooms, and smiths, together with the Templar Treasure. Of course, Admiral. Those are the Master’s specific instructions.”

St. Valéry grunted, then grinned. “Of course. So, if we have to leave, we will take more than one treasure in our train…”

“That is the truth, Sir Charles. But any of your vessels that we leave behind will quickly be put to his own uses by the King of France, and that, I think, would please none of us.”

The admiral nodded, and then waggled the package he still held. “You know, had you come to me yesterday with this tale, I would have thought you as mad as you thought de Molay. But with the murder of my friend Arnold tonight, and the fact that someone sent assassins into this commandery, I believe your tale as told. And now I must read these documents.”

“Not someone, Sir Charles. There’s no question of identity here—no doubt concerning who is responsible. It was William de Nogaret himself who sent these people. Tam and I saw him talking with the Englishman Godwinson in Paris not two weeks ago.”

“Then may God damn his black and grasping heart to Hell. But it makes no sense. Why would he do such a thing? He would have arrested de Thierry and me tomorrow anyway, if what you say is true.”

Sir William returned to his chair. “True enough. But it makes grim and frightening sense to me when I consider the fact that La Rochelle is the strongest commandery in France, and it houses the fleet. And consider that no battle plan ever devised has gone unchanged after battle begins. Things go wrong. But if you and the preceptor had been killed tonight, what kind of chaos would have reigned here inside the Commandery? Discipline would have gone by the board, confusion and fear and speculation would have been rampant, and there would have been no organized resistance to tomorrow’s coup.”

“Aye, I take your point. Pardon me then, for a moment, while I read my orders.”

For the next quarter of an hour the only sounds in the vast room were the roaring crackle of the fire and the occasional slither of paper as St. Valéry shifted the pages in his hands. Finally he sat up straight again and waved the papers in the air, looking at William Sinclair with a speculative expression on his face. “Do you know everything this contains?”

The younger man shook his head. “No, sir. The Master told me what he believed I needed to know, no more than that.”

“Aye, well…you may learn more tomorrow, but let us hope that won’t be necessary.” He brandished the papers in his hand again. “In any case, my deputies must know of this, de Berenger and Montrichard. Guard!”

When the summoned guard stepped into the room, the admiral sent him to find the two deputies at once. As the man closed the doors behind him, St. Valéry hesitated and turned back to Sir William.

“What would you have done had I been killed tonight? Would you have delivered the Master’s instructions to de Berenger?”

Sir William nodded. “Of course. And to the other man, Sir Arnold’s deputy Montrichard. They would have assumed command immediately, and so the orders would have applied to them.”

“You have been very tactful, Sir William, but it is clear that I am now your subordinate. Only a member of the Governing Council would be entrusted with the safety of the Treasure.”

Sir William merely inclined his head in response to that.

St. Valéry pursed his lips slightly. “May I be curious, then, while we await the arrival of the others? Where do you intend to go when we leave here? Where will you take the Treasure for safety? Do you have orders from Master de Molay?”

“No, Sir Charles. At this moment, all I know is that we will go to sea, and I am still hoping against hope that this is all some kind of elaborate hoax.” He held up his hands to indicate that he knew nothing more. “To sea. That is all I know. Master de Molay originally wished me to sail to England, to the court of Edward Plantagenet, but word reached us while I was in Paris that King Edward died several months ago, on his way to invade my homeland again. So that changed everything, since Edward’s son is manifestly not to be trusted.”

“The King of England is not to be trusted, even before he assumes the Crown? How so? And how can I know nothing of this? Am I so insulated, here in La Rochelle, that I know nothing of the outside world?” St. Valéry’s voice betrayed genuine surprise.

Sir William looked directly at the older man and shrugged his wide shoulders. “The Order is your world, Admiral. You have had no time to waste on lesser things, and the nature of the new King of England is not something that would interest you at the best of times. The fellow is unnatural, sir. A pederast who would rather play the woman than the man. He flaunts his deviance openly in front of his barons, uncaring what they think, and he is notoriously indiscreet in matters of state. He parades his lovers shamelessly, showering them with gifts and privileges and bestowing rank upon them that they are not qualified to exercise. His barons have neither respect not tolerance for the man, and it is anticipated that he will not be long for this life unless he mends his ways. In the meantime, he is certainly of no value to us in this affair of ours.”

“I see. Then be equally blunt about this, if you will: where will you go, should things come to pass as you predict? You must have some idea.”

Sinclair straightened his shoulders and pushed himself up from his chair, drawing himself up to his full, imposing height. “To Scotland,” he said, as though issuing a challenge.

A long silence followed his words as the admiral absorbed what he had said, weighing his words against those he had uttered mere moments earlier about England. Finally, St. Valéry exhaled loudly and exchanged an expressionless glance with Tam before turning his head towards Sir William.

“Scotland…Aye, indeed. We have a strong fraternity in Scotland.” There was no discernible hesitancy or uncertainty in the older man’s voice, and yet his words somehow conveyed both.

“Aye, we do,” Sir William said, “and it has flourished these two hundred years. Our black and white baucent has been a common sight the length and breadth of the land, most recently engaged against the English Plantagenet on behalf of the people of Scotland. We will be welcome there.”

“Aye, by our brethren in the Order, certainly. But what of this new King of theirs, this Robert…?”

“Robert Bruce, King of Scots. I know him. He will not turn us away.”

“You know him?” St. Valéry frowned. “How so, as a friend, or as a king?”

“Need there be a difference?”

The admiral’s frown deepened in annoyance. “No, my lord Sinclair, there need not, but all too frequently there is. Kings are not ordinary men, and even I, immured in my ignorance, have heard that this new King of Scots is wild—rash and headstrong, and a sacrilegious murderer to boot, killing a man on the steps of God’s own altar.”

“Aye, Admiral, I know all that, and much of it, although not all of it, was as you say. But I know whereof I speak. The provocation was dire, and I doubt the Bruce was even aware of where he was at the time. I dare say the blow was struck and beyond recall before he even took note of his surroundings. Yet it was not a killing blow, and it was not Robert Bruce who killed the Comyn Lord of Badenoch. He stabbed him, certainly—struck him down with a dagger and then fled from the church, distraught at what had happened. But it was his men who, hearing him tell what he had done, rushed back inside and killed the Comyn. The killing was done, and there’s no denying that, but I would hesitate to call the Bruce himself a murderer.”

“You would? For the killing of a man on the steps of the altar? How can you say such a thing?”

Sir William cocked one eyebrow. “It was not I who said it, my lord Admiral. It was the Church in Scotland, in the person of Robert Wishart, the Bishop of Glasgow, with the full backing of William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrew’s and Primate of the Realm, who absolved Robert Bruce of the taint of murder less than a week after the event and thereafter had him crowned King of Scots. The Bruce had few possessions of his own at the time, and clothing was the least of those. He was crowned King wearing Bishop Wishart’s own ceremonial robes, lent to him by the Bishop himself for the occasion.”

He paused to let that sink home. “I would submit that no churchman, even the most venal and corrupt, would dare to align himself so openly and publicly with a man he truly suspected of the crime of murder, in a church or anywhere else.

“I would remind you of your own words, Sir Charles,” said Sir William as he crossed to sit in the armchair again. “Kings are not ordinary men…nor was this killing an ordinary matter. It was not a petty quarrel, a squabble that went wrong. It was a confrontation between two strong, proud, ambitious men, each of them jointly Lords Protector of the Realm of Scotland, each of whom believed the crown rightly belonged to him alone. Bitter, angry words led to sudden blows. One man left the chancel, and thereafter the other died.

“It was John Comyn’s supporters, one of them Pope Clement himself, who called the outcome murder at the hands of Bruce. What, I wonder, would they have called it had it been Bruce who died on the altar steps? Would John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch and the Pope’s favorite, now stand condemned? He would be King, certes, but would he be papally damned and excommunicate? Bear in mind, this is the same pope who now colludes to permit Philip Capet and de Nogaret to destroy our brotherhood. Was this pope, I wonder, less greedy and more honest last year than he is today?”

St. Valéry cleared his throat. “By your own admission, we do not really know if that is true or not, Sir William. The destruction of our brotherhood, I mean. It is merely what we have been told, and it may yet be proved false.”

“Aye, well, we will know tomorrow, beyond doubt, but I know what I believe this night.” Sir William stood up again suddenly, clapping his hands together decisively. “Robert Bruce is a true man, Sir Charles. He is young, I will grant, and he is rash and he tends to be hot-headed when provoked, which is not the greatest attribute a king may have. But he learns quickly and he never makes an error twice. Fundamentally, I trust the man and hold great hopes for him. But I firmly believe that we, our Order, may trust him. We have been strong in Scotland these two hundred years, but most recently we have been stronger than ever, in Scotland’s cause and for the King himself against the English. The Bruce will acknowledge that and give us refuge.”

St. Valéry grunted. “Does Jacques de Molay know you intend to go to Scotland?”

The Scots knight hesitated. “No, sir, he does not, although, to be truthful, I suspect he might anticipate my going there. But we did not speak of it, and the name of Scotland was never mentioned between us. Master de Molay left the choice of finding sanctuary to me and made no attempt to influence my judgment. It is my belief that he himself is not really convinced that the events we are preparing for here will actually take place. He is hoping the warnings that have come to us are false, but as a prudent warden, he has taken steps to avoid the worst of outcomes. In the event that tomorrow proves to be the day we have been warned against, he told me that God will make clear to me where I should go when the time is right, and he instructed me to require of you, as I have now done, that you hold yourself prepared, with all your fleet, to safeguard my flight.”

“But…? I hear a ‘but’ in your tone.”

“Aye, you do. It is my own belief the Master had no wish to know my destination. In ignorance of that, I think he believes he could not divulge it under torture.”

“Torture! Torture the Grand Master of the Order of the Temple? They would never dare commit such an outrage. The Pope would condemn them publicly.”

Sir William’s expression did not change. “The Pope, Sir Charles, will do whatever Philip Capet requires of him. Philip made him pope. He can unmake him just as quickly. And as for outrages and condemnation, de Nogaret already stands excommunicate for having kidnapped the last pope at King Philip’s behest. The old pope died of that outrage, but de Nogaret does not seem to be unduly inconvenienced by the consequences.”

They sat silent for a moment, and then Sir William spoke again.

“What will you do about the Englishman, Admiral? The assassin Godwinson.”

“Do about him? He will be brought to justice, condemned for murder.”

“When? And by whom, my lord? Come dawn, de Nogaret will set him free, and Godwinson will laugh as our own men file past him into his present cell. Little justice there, it seems to me.”

The admiral turned a little paler. He sat blinking for a moment and then shook his head in bewilderment. “What would you have me do, then? Kill him out of hand? That would be murder.”

“No, Sir Charles, I would merely remind you of your own words spoken earlier. As a member of the Governing Council, I hold higher rank than you. Thus the responsibility for such decisions is mine, not yours.”

“And what will you do?”

“I will see justice done. And I will do it now, tonight. I should have done it earlier. Godwinson forfeited his life when he left Paris with this deed in mind, and to allow him to evade just punishment would be a travesty. Tam, gather our men who witnessed what occurred in here and bring them to the cells. I’ll join you there.”

Tam nodded and left without a word, leaving the two senior men alone.

“You really intend to do this, to kill the man?” St. Valéry’s question was matter-of-fact.

“What option have I, Sir Charles? To let him live to boast about his triumph? You may wait here, if you so wish. No need for you to see this. We have sufficient witnesses to bear testimony to the man’s crimes.”

The admiral stood up and arranged his mantle carefully, then stepped forward to Sir William and did the same for the younger knight, adjusting the white garment so that it hung perfectly, the emblem of the Order pristine upon the left breast. He stepped back and examined his efforts critically, and then nodded, satisfied. “Good. And now I will bear witness with the rest of your tribunal. I owe it to Arnold’s memory and to his lingering soul. Lead on, Sir William.”




4


The judicial proceedings did not take long. Tam Sinclair and his sergeants were waiting at the entrance to the cells when Sir William and the admiral arrived, and Tam led the way into the gallery lined with individual cells, those on the left equipped with solid, iron-studded wooden doors with tiny inset grilles, and those on the right open cages, with thick iron bars on three sides and a solid stone wall at the rear. Godwinson was in one of the latter, sitting in deep shadow on the edge of a narrow wooden bunk and shackled hand and foot. His two guards sprang to attention and backed away as Sir William, St. Valéry, and their companions entered and then grouped together, looking into the prisoner’s barred cage. The Englishman grinned at them and spat sullenly.

“Come to gloat, have you? Gloat away, then, and be damned to you. But don’t take too long about it, for I won’t be here much longer.” He spoke in French but he was unmistakably English, his broad-voweled accent butchering the French words.

Sir William ignored the man after his first glance and looked about the space between the cells. It was a narrow, dark, windowless coffin of a place, with a high, peaked roof of red clay tiles over bare rafters, and it was filled with chill drafts that would, Sir William knew, keep it cold and dank even in the heat of summer. The walls were bare, uneven stone, chinked with plaster or dried mud, and the only furnishings were a long, narrow table of plain wood, three chairs, and a smoldering charcoal brazier set on a stone slab against the wall by one end of the table.

He crossed to the brazier and examined it, ignoring the awestruck silence of the two garrison guards. The charcoal had burned past its prime, and a hard, brittle crust of cinders covered the glowing ashes beneath. Behind him, Godwinson was still ranting, his raucous voice sounding more and more guttural as his diatribe grew more intense. Sir William picked up one of the iron pokers from its place by the fire basket and thrust it through the crust of clinker, breaking the carapace and sending up a shower of sparks. He stirred the embers hard, churning them into a sullen mass of flames, then left that poker in the fire and grasped the second one, forcing it into the burning embers beside its twin. That done, he hoisted up the guards’ bucket of fresh charcoal, using both hands to tip it forward and fill the brazier with fresh fuel, and as he did so, Admiral St. Valéry stepped beside him.

“What are you doing, Sir William?”

“I am remaking the fire, Sir Charles. It is cold tonight, and this place is drafty. Can you not feel it?” He moved away, to the front of Godwinson’s cell, where he crossed his arms over his chest, tucked in his chin, and then stood silently, staring at the raging man on the other side of the cage’s bars.

It seemed to take a long time before Godwinson realized that his rage and scorn were making no impression on the tall, white-robed knight who was obviously the one in charge of this party, but eventually his ravings died away and he sneered contemptuously at Sir William, who gazed back at him stonily, his face betraying nothing of his thoughts. Then, just as the silence in the high, dark chamber approached the absolute, he stalked away again, towards the table.

“Bring him out here.”

Godwinson fought strongly as they laid hands on him, but he was shackled and his struggles were useless against the six men who picked him up bodily and carried him out to where Sir William now sat at one end of the long table, his hands flat on the boards in front of him.

“Sit him there,” the knight said, pointing to the chair at the table’s other end. “Wrap his chains around the chair legs, lest he try to rise.”

Once again, Godwinson was powerless to resist, and quickly accepted it as two sergeants knelt by his sides and looped his leg chains around the legs of his chair. As soon as they had finished, however, he spoke to Sir William, his heavy voice filled with disdain.

“Who are you, whoreson? I promise you—”

“Stifle him.”

Tam had been standing by with a piece of filth-stained, wrinkled cloth in his hands, awaiting this command, and now he ripped the cloth in two, wadding one piece and forcing it into the Englishman’s mouth before tying it in place with the other half.

William Sinclair sat forward, resting his weight on his elbows, his chin on his raised fists. “Now, Englishman, listen to me. That man there,” he said, pointing to St. Valéry, “is the other man you came to kill tonight. Sir Charles de St. Valéry, Admiral of the Temple Fleet. You failed, failed even to wound him, and your master will not be pleased by that. But you succeeded in killing his oldest friend, the preceptor of this commandery, a man who was a hundred times more worthy of life than you have ever been. You murdered him, and every man here will bear witness to that. And you shot down two garrison guards, also brothers of the Temple. For any one of those, you deserve death, and were I your sole judge you would die here and now.

“For reasons of his own, however, Admiral St. Valéry does not wish me to kill you out of hand.”

He was watching Godwinson closely and saw the man’s eyes widen involuntarily as hope surged into him with the realization that he was not to die this night, for if he could survive the night, he knew he would walk free come the dawn. Sir William took grim satisfaction in stepping on that newborn hope before it could burgeon. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his breast again.

“I have fought men among the Turkish Sultan’s Mamelukes who know more of honor than you do, Englishman. Heathens they may be, and beyond redemption, but at least they fight in defense and belief of their God and his false prophet. Your only inspiration is greed.” He saw the assassin’s eyes narrow down to slits.

“Do you really think de Nogaret expected you to survive this day’s events? That would make you a fool, as well as a murderer. And do you think he will welcome you back, knowing you failed in what he set you to do? William de Nogaret is a hard man, Englishman. He will not raise a hand to help you now.

“Oh, I know…” Sinclair held up one hand, palm outward. “I know he will be here tomorrow. At dawn. I know that.” He saw consternation blossom in the Englishman’s eyes, but he kept talking, spacing his words evenly and allowing each thing he said to register before he said more. “But how think you he will react when he discovers that the admiral yet lives, and that the fleet is at anchor offshore, out of his clutches? Will he be happy with you?

“Of course, you may tell him that I arrived here in time to thwart you, and that I was aware of the festering plot he has dreamed up with the Capetian King and had come to remove the fleet from their greasy grasp. But will he take the time to listen, Godwinson? Will he let you speak?

“If he does, then I would wish you to tell him that I, William Sinclair, Knight of the Temple and member of the Order’s Inner Circle, have removed the fleet from France, and with it the fabled Templar’s Treasure for which he and his malevolent master lust so avidly. I would wish you to tell him that from me, and I would also wish you joy of his reward for your faithful service.”

Sir William stood up then, aware that Godwinson’s eyes were very different now above the gag that stifled him, and tipped his chair forward so that its back rested against the table’s end.

“Of course, that is only what I would wish, if I believed you would be able to tell him anything. Hear me now, assassin, for I am passing judgment on you, in my capacity as senior member of our noble Order and duly witnessed by these assembled here. You are thrice condemned for foul and cowardly murder, carried out under the concealment of the robes of this Order, which adds blasphemy to your crimes. At the request of Sir Charles de St. Valéry you may live on, but you will never thank us for that. You will never kill a man again, Godwinson, unless you choose to kill yourself. And you will never speak to anyone, ever, of what you did this day.”

He turned to Tam. “Hold him steady. Now, two of you seize the manacle chains and pull his arms straight, towards me. Good. Now tie the slack around the back of this chair. Make the chains secure.”

In moments, Godwinson was stretched face down along the table, incapable of struggling, his hands secured against the chair at one end, his feet restrained by the chair he was in. Sinclair’s face remained expressionless as he turned to one of his veteran sergeants, pointing to the heavy battle-axe that hung as always from the man’s belt and then extending his hand to receive it.

The sergeant fumbled at his belt and unclipped the weapon. Sinclair took it with a nod, testing its edge with the ball of his thumb. From the table, Godwinson began to moan, stifled by his gag and knowing what was coming. Sinclair pressed his lips together, and then intoned, “For the triple crime of murder you will lose the hands that killed. For the heinous sin of plotting those same murders, you will lose the tongue that accepted the task and thereby sealed your fate. So mote it be.”

The two heavy, chopping blows from the razor-sharp axe silenced Godwinson’s muffled screams.

“There are irons in the fire. Cauterize the stumps. Quickly. Now remove the gag.” He laid the axe down and drew the dagger from his belt, then bent down to open the unconscious man’s mouth and insert the point of his knife.

A moment later, he straightened up again, his face white, his mouth a lipless line. “Take him to the surgeons, as quickly as you may. And carry him face downward, lest he choke on his own blood.” He dropped his dagger into the heart of the fire in the brazier, then wiped his bloody fingers on the cloth of the maimed man’s gag.

“So mote it be,” he said again, mouthing the Templars’ ancient invocation, and then he turned and walked from the cell block.




5


"Sir William!”

Sir William stopped on the threshold of the Day Room.

“I have summoned de Berenger and de Montrichard,” said the admiral, hurrying towards him, “but I want to talk with you before they come. So if you will wait for me in the Day Room, I shall be but a moment.”

St. Valéry vanished into another doorway, and before Sinclair even had time to settle into a chair by the fire in the Day Room, the admiral had returned, clutching a plain, shiny black bottle and a pair of small glass tumblers. He set down the glasses and poured two measures of liquid into them, measuring them with a squinting eye.

“Here, I want you to taste this…It is a wonderful elixir, but I have to keep it safely hidden, lest it tempt my brethren. God knows, I have been tempted by it myself on a few occasions, and Arnold, may God rest his noble soul, had a marked taste for it. Sit you down. Sit anywhere, but choose a soft chair. We have very few of those, but that one over there, I’m told, is very comfortable. Pull it up to the fire.”

He picked up the brimming tumblers and brought them to Sinclair. “Here, drink. You will find it interesting.”

Sir William, wordless, took the proffered glass and raised it to his lips, but at the first taste from it, he broke into a fit of coughing.

The admiral chuckled. “Aye. Careful now, don’t spill it! It is a fiery potion, is it not? Made by the Benedictines in their abbey not far east of here. But persevere with it. The burning does not last, and I find that the essence is calming in times of severe stress. And as God is my judge, Sir William, I have seldom seen anyone more in need of calming than you are at this moment. You’re wound tight as a windlass. Drink, drink more.”

As Sinclair sipped again, more cautiously this time, the admiral drank from his own cup, watching him over the rim. The younger knight was deathly white, his cheeks drawn with strain, the lines about his mouth starkly evident. Clearly his ministration of justice had cost him dearly, and St. Valéry’s heart went out to him. True leadership by example was never easy, the old man knew from a lifetime of experience, but at times such as this, the assumption of personal responsibility for demonstrating leadership could be cripplingly painful.

“And more, Sir William. Drink again. It does grow easier, I promise you.”

Sinclair sipped again, more deeply this time, and closed his eyes, holding the sweet and fiery liquid in his mouth for a moment before allowing it to trickle down his throat. St. Valéry watched him and nodded slowly.

“Now, tell me, how do you feel?”

The eyes opened. “How do I feel? How should I feel? I have just maimed a man. I chopped off his hands and cut out his tongue with my own hands. How would you feel, Admiral, after such a glowing feat of arms? I feel soiled and befouled, as inhuman as the wretch I have just destroyed.”

“You meted out justice, and in a most admirable fashion, my lord Sinclair. You have no reason to feel soiled in any way. Had you done nothing, the fellow would have walked away tomorrow, unscathed and laughing, as you so rightly said. Now he will have a lifetime to repent his sins.”

“Repent? Hmm. Not that one, Admiral. I doubt he will repent of anything, save that he did not kill me when we first crossed swords.”

“But he will never hold a sword again. Or a crossbow. Yet he will have his life.”

“Perhaps. Or he may die of those wounds.”

“Not as long as he is in the hands of our surgeon brothers. They are highly skilled.”

“Aye, but tomorrow they will be arrested, and their skills may prove useless in protecting them.”

That made the admiral thoughtful. “Sir William, in all that you have told me you have said not a word about the garrison here, about what you wish them to do.”

“I am aware of that. But you read the Master’s instructions, Sir Charles. They must do nothing but submit to whatever tomorrow brings. Resistance would bring chaos and would give de Nogaret free rein to wreak havoc. He would claim insurrection and rebellion, and heads would roll. Your garrison will surrender upon demand. They will be taken into custody, but little else will happen to them. Their main purpose will be to present a semblance of normality at first, thereby providing us with time to make our way to sea without hindrance. And their victory will lie in the salvation of the fleet and our Treasure, although they will not know about the latter.” He sipped again at his drink. “This brew is excellent. What is it called?”

The admiral shrugged. “It has no name that I know of. It is merely the drink developed by the Benedictines, distilled from wine and flavored with pungent and pleasant-tasting herbs and spices. May I ask you a question that is personal, Sir William?”

“Aye, ask away.” Sinclair’s face was regaining some of its color and the lines around his mouth were less evident than they had been a short time earlier.

St. Valéry cleared his throat, feeling the taste of the liquor on the back of his tongue. “It is on this matter of Scotland. How long has it been since you were last there?”

Sinclair emptied his cup, then placed it on the floor and stood up. He leaned his ever-present sword against the back of his chair, then cupped his hands over his face, dragging his fingertips down his cheeks as though wiping away fatigue. “Too long, I fear, Admiral. I have not set foot in Scotland these twelve years and more. Why do you ask?”

“I expected your answer must be something of that nature, and yet you are remarkably aware of what is happening there, and your tidings are recent. How does that come about?”

“I have a sister there, Admiral. A younger sister, Margaret, who insists, in spite of not knowing her elder brother well, upon keeping him informed of all that is happening to his family. She sees it as her God-given duty to instruct me in the fortunes of all my clan, and I have been grateful for it these past five years, for she is clever and witty, her letters easy to read and filled with welcome and humorous tales of life at home.”

“I see. And how do you receive these letters?”

“Through our Order. She has them sent regularly from the Temple in Edinburgh to the Temple here in Paris. I received the latest bundle, eleven letters, when Master de Molay summoned me to Paris to instruct me in this current matter. The newest of them was less than three months old.”

“And this is your source of knowledge about the King of Scots? Is your sister privy to such matters?”

“Aye, she is, to a degree. In some of the letters, Peggy—we call her Peggy—spoke of King Robert and his troubles, and how they were affecting her and Edward. That is how I know of the events and the rumors surrounding the King’s accession to the throne last year.”

“Is this Edward, then, your brother?”

“No, Admiral, he is my good-brother, wed to my sister. His name is Edward Randolph. Sir Edward Randolph.”

St. Valéry raised his chin, startled. “Sir Edward Randolph? Is he kin in any way to Sir Thomas Randolph?”

“Aye. His brother.”

“Good God! Then your…your sister…”

“My sister is Lady Margaret Randolph. What of her?”

“She must then be a sister by marriage to Lady Jessica Randolph.”

Sinclair shrugged. “I know of no Lady Jessica Randolph. Peggy has never mentioned the name. But then, I don’t know Sir Edward, either. His elder brother Tom and I were boyhood friends—childhood friends would be more accurate—and the second brother, James, was a mere tad then, no more than seven or eight. Edward was born after I left home, so I suppose there may also have been a sister or two I never met.”

“No, you would not have met Lady Jessica, nor might your sister, I suspect, although each of them would certainly know of the other.” St. Valéry had spoken quietly and was frowning strangely. “The Lady Jessica is, as you say, much younger, and she seldom visits Scotland. She is a widow who has lived much of her life here in France and then in England, where her husband was an agent of King Philip. His name was Etienne de St. Valéry—Baron Etienne de St. Valéry. He was my younger brother. The Lady Jessica is la baronne Jessica de St. Valéry. Thus it would seem we are related through some complexity of marriages, you and I.”

Sir William blinked in surprise, not knowing how to respond to this. “Then I rejoice in calling you cousin, Admiral. It sometimes seems God placed us in a tiny world, for all its size. So I will be unlikely to encounter this Lady Jessica in Scotland?”

“No. She is here.”

“What do you mean, sir, she is here?”

“What I said. Lady Jessica Randolph is here.”

“Here in France?”

“Here in La Rochelle, in this commandery, and she is in grave peril. She has claimed sanctuary from William de Nogaret. Tam Sinclair saved her life this day.”

Seeing the utter incomprehension on his companion’s face, St. Valéry nodded. “Aye, you heard me rightly. The woman Tam brought through the city gates this afternoon is my brother’s wife…My brother’s widow. She has been asleep upstairs since just before you arrived. She had been on the road, hunted, for days, and she was exhausted. I decided that she would be better off asleep than awake this night. But everything has changed since then, and I wanted to tell you that she was here, and why. What is the hour?”

Sinclair shrugged. “Nigh on midnight by now, I’d think.”

“Aye, it must be. And thus today has been the first time in the history of this preceptory that Vespers has gone unsung beneath its roof. As I said, this news you brought us has changed everything. And Lady Jessica has no idea of it.”

“Why should she have any idea of it, Admiral? She is a woman, and we are speaking of Temple matters. Since when has any of that had significance for any woman?”

The admiral glanced at him sharply, as though on the point of rebuking him. “That particular aspect of our situation has no relevance for her, obviously, but there are other aspects of our circumstances here that do concern her, and directly so. She has placed her trust, her mission, and her very self in our hands, in the hands of the Temple, which has been protecting her interests for a long time now.” He glanced towards the door to the passageway outside, and the gesture reminded Sinclair that the two deputies would soon be coming to join them.

The admiral tilted his cup to drain the last precious drops, then peered into it through narrowed eyes, licking his lips fastidiously before he continued. “Jessica’s is a long story, but not directly concerned with our current plight, although there is some overlap…” Again he glanced at the door, then turned back, dismissing for a second time whatever had sprung into his mind. “She must be rested now. She has been sleeping for hours. Would you like another small dram before de Berenger and Montrichard come?”

“Aye, I would.”

“Excellent. And so would I. But just a small one. The beverage, delicious though it is, is potent beyond belief.” He returned to the table and poured a small amount more of the amber liquid into each of their cups. Then he sealed the bottle carefully before returning and touching his cup to Sinclair’s. “Since I first discovered this potion, Sir William, I have come to appreciate that we no longer tip in libation from our cups. That would truly be a waste of Heaven’s nectar. Let us drink to tomorrow and damnation to de Nogaret.”

“Gladly. Damnation to de Nogaret. But tell me more about your good-sister, for her situation intrigues me. Why is she here at all, and why is de Nogaret hunting her? Did you not say she lives in England?”

“She did. And as her story involves William de Nogaret, if this warning you have brought to us proves valid, her life will be in grave danger, for that devil will put her to the torture to gain what he is after.”

Sinclair had no illusions about de Nogaret’s malevolence. “He will indeed, if he catches her. No doubt of that. But what is he after? And why is she even here in France if she is on de Nogaret’s black list?”

“Money, Sir William. The King’s minister smells money. What else ever motivates that man, other than hatred?” St. Valéry sighed. “I told you my brother Etienne was an agent of the King, sent to live in England to administer Philip’s affairs there at the English court of Edward Plantagenet.” He sat down in the nearest chair and leaned back, his fingers laced over his midriff. “He found opportunities for himself, there in England, opportunities for trade, all of them legitimate and of the kind he judged would hold no interest for his master. And on an early return visit to France, he traveled south into the Languedoc before returning to England, specifically, as I have discovered, to set up a trading venture there with a man whom he had befriended years earlier, a Jewish merchant in the coastal town of Béziers, called Yeshua Bar Simeon.

“Etienne said nothing of this to anyone at the time, not even to us, his own family, preferring, as he ever did, to keep his own affairs secret and safely shielded from the eyes of others. He then went back to England, leaving the running of their activities in the hands of this Bar Simeon, and their venture prospered beyond belief, it would appear, for almost twenty years, until Bar Simeon fell ill two years ago. He was very old by then, a full score and more years older than Etienne. He knew that he was dying, and the nature of his agreement with my brother forbade him from delegating the work or passing it on to anyone else to execute.

“And so the old man sold off all their holdings everywhere and deposited the entire proceeds with our brethren, in the preceptory at Marseille. The preceptor there at the time, a fine man called Theodoric de Champagne, issued all the proper recordings of the transaction, but instead of taking them into his own possession, Yeshua Bar Simeon requested that the documents—the principal one being a letter of credit to be drawn on the Preceptory of Marseille—be sent directly to Etienne in London.”

St. Valéry set his tumbler down carefully beside him on the floor and then rose from his chair and began to pace the room, his hands now clasped at his back and his head bent to splay his long, forked beard against his chest. “Unfortunately, that was a request that could not be met, because it contravened our rules…the rules of our system.”

He stopped pacing and glanced sideways at Sir William. “You are a man of action, Sir William, a knight and a member of the Governing Council, but I suspect you may have had little experience in the commercial side of our undertakings, and so I know not if you are familiar with the precise way in which these things work.” He stopped, waiting for Sinclair to respond, and when the other man shook his head and waved for him to continue, he resumed his pacing, holding one hand still behind his back and gesturing with the other to emphasize the points he was making.

“Above all else, and I know you are aware of this, it is fundamentally simple. A man facing a long and dangerous journey brings his money to whatever Temple or commandery is closest to him. We take the specie into custody and issue him with a document, a formal letter of credit attesting to the amount of the deposit he has made, and he then carries that on his person and presents it to the nearest Templar presence when he arrives at his destination. In the meantime, using our own fleet as a direct courier, we have supplied a record of the transaction, including an enciphered code word for recognition, to whatever preceptory the man has decided to use at his journey’s end.

“Once there, our traveler presents his bona fides and proves his identity—a necessary precaution against fraud—and provides the code word, upon which he receives the full value of his letter of credit, minus a small administrative fee. It works very well as a system, but it has limitations. The man designated in the letter of credit must carry it and present himself in person. The letter of credit cannot be transferable to anyone else—no deputies, no assignees—for if that were possible, the system would break down, with no one truly able to verify anyone’s right to claim the monies involved.

“Thus, in this particular case, an impasse had been reached. Bar Simeon knew he was dying. He suffered a virulent attack of some kind, there in the preceptory, and was convinced he would last no more than a few days. He told de Champagne he had been ill for months, growing worse all the time, and did not expect to live to see his home again, and from the look of him, and the convulsions he had witnessed for himself, de Champagne knew it was the truth. Thus it would be useless for the old man to have the letter issued in his own name, for with his death the unclaimed deposit would be lost forever, declared forfeit and absorbed into our system. And for the same reason, he was in no condition to withdraw his funds again from Marseille and take them away with him. That left Theodoric in a moral quandary.”

“Aye, it would. So what did he do?”

St. Valéry had stopped pacing and now stood staring into the fire basket. “He prayed. And then he made a decision that ignored the rules that were impeding him, in this instance, from doing what he knew to be morally correct…

“Old Bar Simeon had told him the entire story, probably in desperation, once he realized that he had placed himself unwittingly in a cleft stick, so de Champagne knew that the monies belonged rightly and legally to my brother Etienne. He therefore acted upon his own authority, defying all our rules, and wrote the letter of credit in Etienne’s name. He then sent the documents to me under seal, accompanied by a letter explaining the situation and informing me that Bar Simeon had assured him that Etienne would know the code word involved, because it had been a password between the two of them since their first collaboration. De Champagne and I have known each other for many years and he trusted me to respect his confidence. Yeshua Bar Simeon was dead by then, of course. He died within two days of completing the transaction.”

“Hmm.” Sir William had been sitting forward in his chair, listening closely, and now he was impatient to hear more. “And what did you do?”

“Nothing at first. I was caught unprepared, never having known about, or even suspected, Etienne’s venture with the Jew, whom he evidently—and with good reason, it transpired—held in the highest esteem. But once I had thought about it for a time, I conferred with my friend and colleague here, Sir Arnold de Thierry, as the Preceptor of La Rochelle, because although I thought I knew what must be done, it seemed an arrogant and prideful course for me to steer, so far outside the confines of our rules. But Arnold believed I would be doing the right thing, and he encouraged me to proceed.”

“So you sent the letter to your brother in England.”

“No. That I could not do. That would have been flagrant defiance of our law. I held it in trust for him, here, where he must collect it in person. But I wrote to him in England, informing him that I had the documents in my possession.

“It must have been around that point that de Nogaret got wind of it, although we did not know that at the time. But until that transaction took place, and the documents were sent to me, no one, including myself and the rest of our family, had ever known that Bar Simeon and Etienne were connected in any way. None of us had even been aware of Bar Simeon’s existence. So the betrayal must have come from within our own ranks—from one of our brethren in Marseille, a corrupt knight or a sergeant in the pay of de Nogaret. It hardly seems believable, and it galls me more than I can say, but I can find no other explanation. But be that as it may, the word was out—de Nogaret was informed, and the reputation of our Order was besmirched.”

“How do you know the information was betrayed from Marseille? The spy might have been quartered here and read your letter before you ever sent it.”

“Not possible, Sir William, because I wrote and sealed the letter myself, at my own desk, and sent it off the same day aboard one of our galleys headed directly for London. And by the time it arrived in England my brother had already sailed for France on an urgent summons from the King. He had been preparing to come back anyway, and to bring the Lady Jessica with him, to visit our mother, who loves her dearly, so he merely advanced his plans and left as soon as he received the King’s summons. Fortunately for the Lady Jessica, and thanks to the urgency of his recall, he left her on the coast on making landfall, in the care of the Temple at Le Havre, and went directly to Paris on his own. He was arrested upon his arrival, we learned later, and thrown into prison, where he was tortured at great length and eventually died.”

Sir William sat silent, mulling over what he had been told, and then he slumped backwards, chin in hand, his elbow propped on the arm of his chair. “So why has de Nogaret not been beating down our doors? If they put your brother to the torture for an extended time, he must have told them everything he knew.”

“Aye, true, but he knew nothing…at least nothing that de Nogaret could use. Etienne left England before my letter arrived there. He had not received it and did not even know that Bar Simeon had been sick, or that he was dead. He certainly did not know that all his assets had been sold and the proceeds lodged with us. All he could tell the torturers was what he knew up to the time before the old man fell sick. De Nogaret had blundered badly; he had moved too soon. He knew the funds were in our hands, because of the report he had received from his spy among us, but he was powerless to do anything about that without the letter of entitlement, and he did not know where that was. Thanks be to God in His wisdom, our laws are clear on such things. The letter of credit goes to the depositor and no copies are made of it. The Temple holds the funds in trust, and no king or king’s henchman holds jurisdiction over our Order. It would never have occurred to de Nogaret that one of our preceptors might contravene the laws of our system and do what de Champagne actually did in sending the documents to me.

“And so he assumed the obvious: that the letter still existed and that Bar Simeon had passed it for safekeeping to another of his race.”

“A Jew, you mean. Wait you now, wait just a minute.” Sinclair sat frowning, his thoughts tumbling over each other. “When did all this occur?”

“More than a year ago and probably closer to two.”

“Before the purge.”

“Immediately before it. The plans for that event must have been well in hand already, for it was a massive operation.”

“Aye, it was, and there is not a single Jew left alive in France today to denounce it, even if anyone would listen. It was seen as right and fitting that the confiscated Jewish money—the riches of the Christ-killers—should enrich the French treasury.”

“You sound as if you disagree with that.”

“I do. Are you surprised, knowing the roots of our own ancient brotherhood in Sion? I have no truck with anti-Jewish hatred. I find it despicable and demeaning, involving willful denial of the fact that Jesus himself was Jew.”

“True, he was.” St. Valéry sat down again and retrieved his tumbler from beside his chair. “But none of the Jews in France—apart from Yeshua Bar Simeon, of course—had anything to do with Etienne’s money. Only we, the Temple, knew anything of that…” He sipped at his drink. “Has it occurred to you that we might arguably be considered usurers?”

Sinclair eyed the admiral askance. “No, because we are no such thing. We levy a small fee to cover the costs of doing what we do, safeguarding and transferring funds, but that is far from usury.”

“Aye, that is what we claim, but is it true? So much of us is little known, even among ourselves, that I fear much truth might have been lost since first the Temple was conceived in Outremer. Can you, for example, cite me the true meaning of the Order’s first medallion, the one with two knights mounted on a single horse?”

“Sigillum Militum Christi? It merely represents the fact that in the Order’s earliest days the knights were so impoverished that two men would often have to share one horse.”

St. Valéry’s lips twisted with disdain. “Again, that is what is said. I choose to doubt it. Think about it, Sir William. The original nine members of Hugh de Payens’s cadre were all members of the Order of Sion—the Order of Rebirth in Sion, as it was then known. After their discovery in the Temple ruins, their numbers swelled and the Temple was born, full of Christian fire and zealotry and underpinned with bigotry and bloodthirsty passion. It pleases me to believe that the first symbol they adopted—the two-man medallion—was an irony, developed, I tend to think, by de Payens himself, the founder of the Temple Order. To me, it depicts the fundamental duality of the transformed organization—not two men on one horse, but two men within each of the founding knights, the first of them the knight of the Temple Mount, the other the far more ancient Brother of Sion. That may be nonsense, born of my own solitude and too much thought, but I take comfort from it.”

His listener nodded slowly. “That would never have occurred to me,” he said eventually, his voice filled with admiration. “Not if I lived to be a hundred years old. But having heard it from your mouth, I believe it might be true.” He smiled, then stooped to pick up his own tumbler, draining it and savoring its fiery potency for long moments, and when he spoke again his voice was lower than it had been. “We never really learn much of anything, do we? Most of us cannot wait to forget all that we know. But what were we talking about before that?”

“About the Jewish purge, how well it succeeded.”

“Ah yes.” He hefted the empty glass in his cupped hand. “Those Benedictine monks must deal in magic. I have never had the likes of this before…my head is swimming.” He waved his hand, dismissing that topic. “And that was nigh on two years ago. What happened to the Baroness at that time?”

“Her people saved her.”

“What people, and how?”

“She and Etienne traveled at all times with a bodyguard of Scots, assigned to them by Lord Thomas Randolph himself. They were as loyal as wolfhounds, and as savage. Etienne took half of them with him when he went to Paris. They were with him when he was arrested and were cut down by the King’s Guard when they tried to intervene. But they trusted no one and had posted a rear guard outside the gates to keep watch. The watchers saw what happened and returned directly to Le Havre, where they commandeered a ship and took their lady off to safety. To her home in Scotland, though, not in England. As I say, they trusted no one, and Edward of England had been waging his war against the Scots for years, so the Baroness’s bodyguard chose to return her to her home and not to risk the goodwill of the English. I knew nothing of any of this at the time.

“Eventually, the letter I had sent to Etienne was forwarded to the Temple in Edinburgh from the Temple in London, but by then a good six months had elapsed. And then, completely unexpectedly, Lady Jessica sailed into La Rochelle, just over a month ago, to reclaim the treasure we held in trust for her, as my brother’s widow.”

“It must be a deal of money.” Sinclair’s tone was ironic, but St. Valéry nodded.

“It is. Six large chests of gold, in bars and coin, and five more of silver, bars and coin. Sufficient to ransom a king…or to support one in a time of desperate need…

“The Lady Jessica is quite open about her intentions. She intends to give the gold to Robert Bruce, your King of Scots. That is her absolute right, of course, but it entailed another problem that I had not foreseen. I required a password to release the money properly, and only Etienne could have known what that might have been. And so I sent another letter to Theodoric de Champagne in Marseille, explaining my dilemma and requesting the word from him, since he had the only duplicate. He sent it without commentary or demur, having been instrumental in launching this entire adventure, but in the interim the Lady Jessica decided that while waiting, she would visit my mother in Tours. My brother’s widow is a strong-willed woman and was convinced there would be no danger entailed, provided she went alone with only the smallest escort for protection.”

“And?”

“She was denounced and betrayed. A steward in my mother’s household was in the pay of de Nogaret. He sent off a messenger to Paris, but then was foolish and arrogant enough to demand that the Lady Jessica stay where she was when she prepared to leave. My youngest brother, Gilbert, killed the man and fled, leaving a trail and allowing Lady Jessica to make her escape.” St. Valéry paused, then continued in a level voice. “We have not heard from Gilbert since he disappeared, but we hope he is still alive. In the meantime, the Lady Jessica has been hunted all over France, and had it not been for your kinsman Tam Sinclair and his assistance today, she would have been captured trying to enter La Rochelle. The three men you saw killed were with her. She had hired them to smuggle her into the city, but they panicked when the guards began to check their handcart a second time, for they knew they were discovered.”

“So now you wish me to escort this lady back to Scotland.”

St. Valéry looked straight at Sinclair. “I do, but not alone. I will be coming with you, bear in mind. And with her you will accompany and safeguard the treasure for the King of Scots. It is my good-sister’s, and it is of incalculable value, and if it remains here, de Nogaret will seize it and he will have won a sizable victory even should he fail in all else.” He hesitated. “It is already loaded aboard my galley, along with a lesser treasure of our own.”

“A lesser treasure? May I ask what that is?”

“Aye, there is nothing secret about it. It is our own reserve of specie, gold and silver bars and coin, stored against redemption of letters of credit. I cannot leave that behind for de Nogaret, either, for it would be the first thing he seized in his master’s name, and Philip Capet already has more than enough of the Temple’s funds.”

“Of course, I had forgotten the funds each commandery holds in trust. How much is there?”

“Not as much as in the Baroness’s treasure, but far too much to leave behind. Six large chests, containing twelve thousand gold bezants.”

Will whistled. “We will be the most treasure-laden fleet on the seas.”

“Aye, we will indeed…provided, of course, that events tomorrow fit with your warning.”

“Aye, well they will, my lord Admiral. This atrocity with Godwinson has convinced me of that.”

“I agree with you. But I am beginning to wonder what is detaining de Berenger and Montrichard. Is that empty? Good. Give it to me, then, and I’ll hide it from sight, along with the bottle.”

No sooner had St. Valéry moved to do so than there was a knock at the door, and a young monk admitted the admiral’s two deputies. The admiral bade them welcome and then instructed the young monk to go upstairs and awaken his female guest, bidding him to say nothing of the events that had occurred while she slept, and to ask the lady to be good enough to join him as soon as she could make ready.

Behind him, Sir William stared straight ahead into the fire, his head spinning strangely, his thoughts dominated by the image of the wide-eyed woman at the city gates.





THE DEVIL’S WORK (#ulink_25dd3e16-41df-5395-832f-b30f3c9a84f3)

1


Jessie Randolph came awake instantly, and her heart began to race with fear the moment she realized she had no idea where she was. Wherever it was, it was cold and stygian black, not a glimmer of light to dispel the darkness or cast the faintest shadow, and the surface she was lying on was rock hard. Her head was raised, because her neck was uncomfortably angled, so she knew there was a pillow of some kind there, but it, too, was rigid, unyielding.

I’m on the floor. In a dungeon. They found me. De Nogaret’s men.

Fighting down the panic, clenching her teeth against the overpowering urge to scream, she reached out cautiously on both sides of her and almost sobbed with relief to discover, first, that there were no manacles about her wrists, no chains, and then the rough fabric of a pallet beneath her hands. She reached farther and found the edges of a narrow cot.

Where am I?

And then there came a knocking at a door very close to her, and she knew that was what had awakened her. Still she lay rigid, not knowing what to expect, and felt the fear that filled her settling into the pit of her stomach, icy and heavy as a ball of lead.

“My lady? Are you awake, my lady?”

The questioning voice was soft but urgent, as though its owner feared to make too much noise. It did not sound the least bit threatening. Her hands touched her clothing, exploring, feeling her body’s warmth beneath the garments.

I still have my clothes, and there’s no pain anywhere.

“My lady?” Another knock, louder this time. Jessie drew a deep breath and tried to keep her voice steady.

“I am here. What is it?”

“Admiral St. Valéry requests that you join him downstairs. Immediately, my lady, if it pleases you.”

Charles! Of course, I’m in the commandery at La Rochelle.

The knowledge washed over her instantly, banishing all her terror, and she pushed herself upright, swinging her feet over the edge of the cot to the stone floor and thrilling to the shocking coldness of the surface against her soles. So great was her relief from fear that she felt like throwing open the door and kissing the man outside. She was in La Rochelle! Safe!

She felt herself grinning as she imagined the look on the face of the fellow outside if she had thrown open the door and kissed him. He must be a monk. He might have dropped dead at her feet. She tried to swallow her euphoria and to keep her voice calm as she answered, “My thanks. Tell the admiral I shall be there directly.”

“I shall, my lady.” There was a line of light at the bottom of the unseen door, and as the man turned to leave it was blotted out.

“Wait! Please, wait. Stay where you are.” She hurried to the door, watching the line of brightening light for guidance and fumbling for the handle. When she found it she stopped, ran her hands rapidly over her bodice and shook out her skirts, making sure she was decently covered before pulling open the heavy door.

The man outside was young, his tonsured scalp gleaming even in the dimness of the torch-lit passageway. He wore the brown surcoat of a Templar sergeant, and he stood peering at her, clutching a fat wax candle in a sconce. As he saw her, his eyes widened, and she realized her hair must be in disarray. The poor fellow probably saw few women in his life and here he was confronted by one with her hair in what must have seemed like scandalously intimate disrepair. She held out her hand to him.

“Forgive me if I startled you, Brother, but will you leave me that light? There is no light in my chamber and I must make myself presentable before I meet with my brother.”

The earnest young man stepped forward, holding out his candle. “Of course, my lady. Is one light enough? I can bring more if you have need of them.”

“God bless you, Brother. Yes, if it please you. One can never have too much of light. Bring as many as you can, and you will have earned great gratitude.”

The young man bobbed his head and hurried away, and Jessie went back into her chamber, looking about her now that she could see. The room was tiny, containing nothing more than the narrow cot on which she had slept, a wooden crucifix on the wall beneath a tiny slit of a window, and a prie-dieu directly beneath it. She moved to the cot and bent to press her fingers into it. It did not yield, and the pillow at its head was a shaped block of wood covered with sailcloth.

God! I thought I was in a dungeon, but it is a monk’s cell. Of course it is. But there is little difference between the two. Yet I was glad enough of it when I arrived, I remember. These men have no comforts as we ordinary mortals know such things. Their lives consist of prayer and more prayer, hardship and privation and sacrifice. And fighting, from time to time. Oh, dear God, what must I look like? And no mirrors in this place. Not even a table. Where is my bag?

She found it where she had dropped it behind the cot, and soon she was rummaging deep within it, aided only slightly by the single candle’s light. She found the small leather satchel that was her most important possession and pulled it out, then loosened the drawstring and tipped the contents onto the top of the narrow bed: hairbrush, combs, a folded chamois square containing hairnets, another, bulkier, containing small solid articles that knocked against one another, and a soft square of woolen cloth that held a hand-sized rectangular mirror of smoothly polished silver. She used the mirror first, polishing it gently with its cloth before holding it up to examine her face and hair by the light of the candle in her other hand, and her mouth twisted as she saw what several days without her maid could do to her. But then she set the mirror and the candle down on the bed’s hard surface and set to work to repair the ravages she had counted so swiftly.

She reached into her piled hair with both hands, finding and removing the pins placed there to hold her thick locks in check, and then, when her questing fingers told her there were no more to be found, she bent her head and shook out her heavy tresses, combing them with her fingers and fluffing them, searching for knots and tangles. She found none that were not swiftly manageable and she immediately took up her hairbrush, drawing it in long, smooth sweeps to straighten her hair from her crown to her waist, holding individual hanks in one hand while she tugged the bristles through the rebellious end clumps, grinding her teeth impatiently and attacking remorselessly whenever she encountered a stubborn knot.

She had eradicated all the tangles and was brushing smoothly by the time the young monk knocked again. She opened the door quickly and beckoned for him to enter, aware of the automatic way his eyes fastened on her unbound hair. He was carrying an armload of short, fat candles in the crook of his elbow and a freshly lit one in his free hand. He stepped inside the chamber door and stopped, his eyes roaming around the tiny room, looking for someplace to deposit his burden. Jessie waved an arm to indicate the space in which they stood.

“There is no room for anything in here. Is there by chance a larger room nearby? One with a table?”

The young guard blinked at her, his eyes vacant in thought, and then he nodded. “Brother Preceptor’s cell is larger, my lady, and it has a table. And a chair.”

She waited, but he said no more, so she prompted him. “And is it nearby? Do you think I might use it for a short time?”

He frowned slightly, clearly not knowing what to make of her request, and so she prodded him again.

“I will not take long. And you did say my good-brother asked that I join him quickly, did you not?”

“Aye, my lady.”

“Well then, the quicker I can make myself presentable, the quicker I can meet him. Where is the Brother Preceptor’s cell?”

“This way, my lady.” He stepped out into the passageway and waited while she bundled up the contents of her little satchel and replaced them to take with her. When she was ready, he led her along the passageway to the left, where he stopped outside a door that stood ajar. “This is it, my lady.”

She held her candle high, peering around the preceptor’s cell. It was just as Spartan as the one she had left, and barely larger, no more than one third again as long, but it had two small tables ranged against the end wall, opposite the foot of the narrow bed. One of them was only large enough to hold the wash bowl and tall ewer that stood on it, but the other was larger, with an elaborate little ink horn and a matching horn cup containing several goose quills placed neatly on one side, and a plain wooden chair set in front of it.

“Perfect,” Jessie said, crossing quickly to the table with the wash bowl. “Oh, it’s empty.” She turned back to the monk, who had set down his own candle and was carefully placing the six fresh ones he had brought side by side, upright, on the table’s surface. “Would it be possible for you to find me some water, Brother, and a towel? I would dearly love to wash my face.”

The man was evidently growing accustomed to her requests, for he simply nodded this time and reached over to pick up the ewer. He hesitated.

“I will have to go to the kitchens for the water, my lady. Would you like me to have it heated for you?”

“I would mention your name in my prayers for a month if you could do that for me.”

“Thank you, my lady. It is Giles. I will return directly.”

As the door closed behind him, Jessie used her candle to light the others he had brought, and when they were all burning she ranged them along the back of the table before sitting down and spreading the contents of her little bag across the tabletop. She peered at herself again in the small mirror, tilting its shining surface this way and that to take full advantage of the increased brightness, and then she propped it against one of the candles and used her brush to part her hair carefully down the center of her scalp and pull it forward to hang in front of her. That done, she began to braid, her fingers moving quickly and with the confidence of years of practice. When she had completed the second braid, she checked them with the aid of the mirror and then rolled each one up in a flat coil, fastening it in place with long hairpins she thrust through the coiled braids, and she finally secured the entire mass to the sides of her head with long, curved, and intricately carved combs of tortoiseshell. She shook her head tentatively, watching in the small mirror, and then again more firmly. Satisfied when nothing moved, she then covered the entire mass with a delicate net of gold wire studded with tiny beads of amber, and pinned the net into place with four more small hairpins. Her next examination in the mirror was highly critical, but she could find nothing wrong. Not a single stray wisp of hair marred her work.

Now she stood up and began the almost impossible task of checking the appearance of her clothing. She had slept in her gown and accepted that there was nothing she could do about the wrinkles in the fabric, so she set about looking for stains and marks, scrubbing at the material with her hairbrush whenever she found anything she thought might be improved, and while she was doing that Brother Giles reappeared, carrying a pitcher of steaming water wrapped in a towel. He was accompanied this time by a second brother, this one wearing a cook’s apron and carrying a second, similar burden, the rolled towel held under one arm.

“I brought both hot and cold, my lady, which will permit you to mix the waters to your pleasure.”

“God bless you, Brother Giles, and you, Brother Cook. And two towels. And even soap! You have saved my life and my sanity between you.”

Both men beamed with pleasure, but neither one made any move to leave, and Jessie smiled at them. “Now I require but two more things of you, Brother Giles: a few moments of privacy in which to bathe my hands and face, and then the pleasure of your company as I go to find my husband’s noble brother, for I confess I have no slightest notion of where to find the admiral. Will you wait for me and attend me?”

“Most certainly, my lady.” Brother Giles looked at his companion and jerked his head towards the door, and both men left the room, closing the door behind them.

Jessie poured hot water into the bowl and then splashed in a little of the cold. She soaked one of the towels and rubbed some of the harsh, lye-scented soap into it, and wrung it out again before washing her face, hands, and arms with it, reveling in the clean, tingling sensation produced by the hot, astringently soapy water and the feel of the heated cloth against her skin. She dried herself with the second towel, then hesitated, and quickly undid the bindings of her bodice, pulling the laces wide and shrugging out of the garment so that it hung about her waist. The tips of her breasts tingled pleasurably as she wiped them with the hot, soapy towel, and a rash of goose bumps sprang up along her arms as the cloth brushed her nipples. She reminded herself where she was then, and that her brother-in-law was waiting for her. She wrung out the soap and wrapped the hot towel about her neck, sighing as she reached up to knead her nape beneath the tightly bound mass of her hair. She stood there for a few seconds, her head tilted back and her eyes closed in pleasure.

But then she reminded herself a second time of where she was, half smiling at the impropriety of being half-naked in a monk’s cell, and quickly dried herself and shrugged into her clothes, tightening the laces carefully and decorously. From her satchel she selected a small round, flat black box, and removed a short, thick piece of twig with frayed and shredded ends that lay on a bed of whitish-gray powder. She sucked on the frayed end, wetting it with saliva, then dipped it into the powder and used it to scrub her teeth and gums. She rinsed her mouth with a cupped palm of water from the cold jug and spat into the bowl, then rubbed her tongue over her teeth, dislodging the gritty residue before rinsing and spitting again. That done, she sat down one last time to peer into the mirror.

I look like death. No color at all. God, Marie, where are you when I need your skills? You’re safe, I pray, but you’re not here, so I must serve myself. Quickly now, but sparingly. It would not do to look the harlot in this place.

She opened the last of her packages and took out a number of small decorated wooden boxes with tight-fitting lids. She opened each one and arranged the differently colored pastes in front of her. Holding the mirror in one hand, she worked swiftly and deftly with the other, rubbing the pad of her middle finger lightly against the surface of one paste and then applying the merest trace of bluish color to her eyelids, smoothing the substance in until the only noticeable effect was a heightening of the color and light reflected in her eyes. She wiped her fingertip quickly on the damp towel and selected another box, applying a reddish paste to the skin over her cheekbones and blending it into her skin until there was no sign of it apart from the faintest hint of a flush on her cheeks. From a third box she added a tinge of deeper redness to her full, wide lips, then pressed them together, biting them gently. Lastly she reached for the tiny glass bottle that contained her single greatest assurance of self-respect. Working carefully, she extracted the tiny wooden stopper from the precious vial and upended the container until a single drop of viscous liquid dripped onto the pad of her middle finger. She raised it to her nostrils, inhaling the essence eagerly and fully aware that, once she had applied it, she would not be able to smell it again. That was a sacrifice she could live with, however, for she knew everyone else around her would be aware of it. She dabbed two tiny spots of the liquid beneath each of her ears and then smeared what was left into the hollow at the base of her neck, smoothing it into the soft skin there.

And finally she was done. She tucked all her devices into her small bag before blowing out the six candles, and then, clutching the bag beneath her arm, she went and opened the door.

Young Brother Giles raised his candle reflexively to throw more light on her, his jaw dropping as his eyes went wide. “My lady…” He gulped audibly. “You look—Are you…are you prepared now?”

She favored him with her sweetest smile. “I am, Brother Giles, and I have kept you waiting for an unforgivably long time. But I feel new born now, thanks to your kindness. I do not know what I would have done had you not been here to aid me. We women, as you must know, are notoriously different from men. We place much importance on appearances, most particularly our own, and thus I thank you again for being so considerate of my needs. I have but one more question: should we leave the six new candles here?”

The young monk smiled, but then his face quickly sobered again. “I see no need for that, my lady. Brother Preceptor would be most unsettled to find such a profusion of luxury in his cell. He might think he had been visited by supernatural agencies. But—” He looked down the passageway towards the stairs, and then continued in a firmer voice. “I shall take you down to the admiral now, if you are ready.”

As they began to walk side by side along the passageway, Jessie noticed the profound silence all around them.

“What hour of night is it, Brother? It seems like the very middle of it.”

“It is, my lady. Nigh on midnight.”

“And will you stay on duty all night long?”

“Oh no, my lady. I am due to be relieved at any moment. I may even have been relieved by now. The guard changes at midnight.”

Jessie stopped walking, right at the top of the stairs, and looked at him, her face full of concern. “Oh! Then I must beg your pardon for delaying you. Will you be punished for not being at your post?”

He half smiled again and shook his head. “Not tonight, my lady. The admiral himself sent me to see to you. It has been a most pleasant task.”

“Thank you once again, Brother Giles, that is a lovely compliment. But I wonder still about those candles. Could you leave them in the other room for me, and one of them alight? I fear I may have to return at some point, before the day breaks.”

A look of concern flickered on the young monk’s face. “There really is no need of that, my lady. No one will disturb them.” He started down the stairs ahead of her, speaking back over his shoulder as she followed him. “The preceptor will not be seeking rest tonight. Too many untoward things are happening. Do you know that we missed Vespers tonight? That has never happened before.”

“All of you, the entire fraternity? That is most unusual. What is going on, do you know?”

“No, my lady. I am a simple brother, privy to nothing of import. There is talk, and I have heard some of it, but nothing that is believable or worthy of repeating.” They had reached the bottom of the stairs. “Here we are. I will ask you to wait here, if it pleases you, while I announce you.”

He left Jessie standing at the foot of the long flight of stairs, in a high and narrow hallway that stretched off on both sides of her, lit with flickering wall-mounted torches. He knocked at a set of high double doors in the opposite wall and stepped inside.

Jessie stood very straight and tugged at her clothing, making sure once more that she was decently arrayed, and then raised her hands to pat her hair beneath its golden net. She felt nervous, for some inexplicable reason, and attributed it to the concern stirred in her by Brother Giles’s tale of missing Vespers. This was a monastic order, and the lives of its members were governed absolutely by the Templars’ Rule, which specified prayers at regular and immutable hours, except in times of war. Nothing but war and the need to fight could ever disrupt the schedule of daily prayers, and yet tonight they had missed Vespers. Something grave must be afoot.




2


Charles St. Valéry himself came through the doors to welcome her.

“Jessica, my dear sister, please, come in, come in. I trust you slept well?” He took her fingertips between his own thumb and forefingers and bowed her into the room, and she swept through the doorway, smiling widely as she crossed the threshold, then stopped abruptly as she saw there were a number of men already there. She counted three white robes, besides the admiral’s, and one brown-clad sergeant. She knew none of them.

Oh, dear God, a gathering of knights. Rigid pomposity, unwashed bodies, and reeking sanctimony. And what is that awful smell? Not sanctimony, certes. My God, they must have painted the entire room with lye soap! I have no need of this, at midnight.

She pivoted to face the admiral. “Forgive me, Charles, I did not know you were in conference. I understood that you had called for me, but I fear I should have waited before disturbing you.”

She had no way of knowing it, but the sound of her voice suggested broad, deep, gently vibrating silver Saracen cymbals to one of the room’s occupants, who shivered and was startled at the thought, and could think of no reason why it should have occurred to him.

Admiral St. Valéry laughed. “Not at all, dear sister.” He continued to hold her hand gently in his as he stepped gracefully by her on the right, turning her with him, and waved with his other hand to indicate the other men in the room. “Permit me to introduce my fellows. Two of them are the reason for my need to disturb your rest.”

Jessie scanned the assembled men. She glanced at Sir William cursorily before her eyes moved on to the brown-coated sergeant beside him. Her eyes narrowed briefly, and then flared with recognition.

“Tam Sinclair!” Her face lit up with the radiance of her smile. “This is the man I told you about, Charles—” But then she broke off and turned back to Tam, her brow wrinkling as she took in his surcoat with its Templar blazon. “But you were a carter…I had no idea you were of the Temple.”

“Nor had anyone else, my dear,” her brother-in-law said. “Tam came to us in secrecy, escorting Sir William here, with tidings from our Grand Master in Paris. Brothers, this is my brother’s widow, Lady Jessica Randolph, the Baroness St. Valéry.”

The woman nodded pleasantly to the assembly and then looked more closely at Sir William.

Great Heavens, he is big. Such shoulders. And he has no beard. I thought every Templar must wear a beard. They consider it a sin to go unshaven, though God Himself might wonder why. A good face, strong and clean, square jawline and a cleft chin. And wondrous eyes, so bright and yet so pale. And angry. Is he angry at me?

“I have never seen a Templar’s chin before,” she said, and watched his eyes flare. Someone laughed and quickly turned the sound into a cough. “Forgive me for being blunt,” she continued, “but it is the truth. Every Templar I have ever seen has been bearded.” She glanced again at Tam. “Tam there is Sinclair,” she said, pronouncing it the Scots way, and then looked back at the knight. “And therefore you must be his kinsman, the formidable Sir William Sinclair, Knight of the Temple of Solomon.”

Sir William continued to glare at her, but he was completely lost in the certain and unwelcome knowledge that the eyes in his mind would never change color again, and that the formless features he had grappled with were now etched into his soul.

What have I done to deserve his anger? Or is it merely that he is one of those woman haters?

“You know Sir William, my dear?” St. Valéry sounded astonished.

“No, brother dear, but I know of him. Sir William’s exploits are legendary.” She was smiling, and there was a hint of mockery in her disturbing blue-gray eyes as she turned her gaze back to Sir William and saw the hot blood of confusion and humiliation flushing his cheeks and spreading to the very tips of his ears.

In God’s holy name, he is not angry at me at all. The man is afraid of me. But for what? Because I am a woman? Can it be that simple and that sad? He can’t even find words. No, it must be something deeper than mere fear.

For his part, Sir William was cursing himself for blushing like a tongue-tied farm boy, and fighting to find suitable words with which to reply to her mockery, but all he could achieve was a single short sentence that almost choked him as it stumbled, stiff and surly, from his lips.

“You mock me, Lady.”

Jessie felt her eyes widening, but her smile remained in place. “No, sir, upon my word I do not.” I truly do not, I swear. But then she smoothed her face so that both her smile and the hint of raillery were gone and she looked him straight in the eye and spoke in the tongue of their native Scotland.

“I knew your sister Peggy, Sir William, when I was a wee girl, living at home. We spent much time together and were very close, she and I, and she regaled me all the time with stories about you: the things you did, the deeds that you performed.” She switched effortlessly back to French. “Peggy sang your praises constantly. You were her paragon, her shimmering, mail-clad brother, Soldier of the Temple and Defender of the True Cross. And yet she barely knew you, having met you only twice, and very briefly both times. Nonetheless, she could not have thought more highly of you.”

The big man frowned and his lips parted but nothing emerged, and so he tried again, in Scots. “She was but a lassie then, and silly.”

That earned him a swift, tart rejoinder, in French: “Is silliness always the way of lassies, Sir William? Peggy is a woman now, and I would wager her opinion of you has not changed. Would you still deem her silly?”

“I would not know.” He cursed himself for the transparent lie, for he had already admitted his admiration of his sister to the admiral, but he charged ahead, compounding his folly, incapable of doing otherwise and sounding more hostile than ever. “I know nothing of women, Lady.”

“That is plain to see, Sir William.” Jessie’s voice was noticeably cooler.

“Aye, well. I am a simple soldier—”

“Aye, and a humble monk. Quite so. I have heard that before, Master Sinclair. But it seems to me there is little of the simpleton about you, and far less of the humility you claim.” There, now chew upon that, Sir Churlish.

She turned away from the white-mantled knight, dismissing him coolly as she directed her attention back to the admiral, who was staring in consternation at what he had heard. She laid her fingertips on his arm, smiling at him as she indicated the other two men in the room. “I thought Commander de Thierry might be here. Am I to see him?”

St. Valéry cleared his throat, and when he spoke, he was careful not to look at anyone else. “Sir Arnold, I fear, is no longer among us, Sister. He died but a short time ago.” He paused, allowing her to express her grief and concern, but made no attempt to explain how short the time had, in fact, been. Little benefit, he thought, in upsetting the woman needlessly. He forced a smile onto his lips, and continued smoothly. “I am sure he would wish me, however, to apologize for his failure to be here to welcome you.” He paused again, clearly struggling with something, then continued. “May I present you to his successor, Sir Richard de Montrichard, and to my own vice-admiral, Sir Edward de Berenger?”

Both men bowed, and Jessie gave them her most winning smile, unaware that William Sinclair stood stupefied with anger, glaring wildly at her, his skin crawling with embarrassment at the way she had dismissed him, while his mind grappled with an acute and frightening awareness, as he took in every line and movement of her lithe and supple body, that he was looking at Temptation herself, the Devil’s work personified. The woman was simply more beautiful and far more disturbing than any other single person he had met in his thirty-odd years of existence.

Even as he looked and fumed, however, he saw how the woman was demonstrating her mastery over mere men. De Berenger, hard-bitten knight that he was, appeared to be besotted with her smiling radiance and her conversation, hanging on her every word and grinning like a fool who ought not to be loose without a keeper to watch over him. And even the dour deputy preceptor, Richard de Montrichard, was smiling and nodding at her every word, his eyes moving from her to de Berenger as he followed their conversation avidly. Will felt Tam’s eyes on him and turned towards the other man, scowling, but Tam refused to meet his gaze, looking away quickly before Will could read the expression in his eyes.

And still Will wanted to say something, to step forward, albeit too late, and put the woman firmly in her place with a few appropriately chosen words, letting her know that her wiles and guiles, no matter how indirect or how cloaked in sweetness, would be wasted in the present company. But nothing came to him—no barbed comment, no inspired witticisms, nothing at all that he could articulate—and he was reduced to standing impotently, shamed and humiliated yet knowing neither how nor why, staring at the back of her neck and shoulders and at the way her clothing clung to her caressingly and adjusted to her body’s slightest movement.

It was the admiral who rescued him from his agonizing immobility by calling all of them to come and sit by the fire. He held Lady Jessica’s chair for her and then sat on her right, waving to Sir William to take the chair on her other side as the other men took their seats. Sinclair moved forward reluctantly to sit where the admiral had indicated, in the only chair left vacant, and close enough to the woman to be able to smell her presence as the faintest suggestion of something warm and sweet and delightfully aromatic. Having spent his boyhood in Scotland and the remainder of his life in monastic garrisons throughout Christendom and the Holy Lands, Sinclair had never encountered perfume before, and so he had no suspicion that he was smelling anything other than Jessie Randolph’s natural scent. Despite his disapproval of the woman, he found himself perversely enjoying the tumult the subtle aroma caused in his breast.

Jessie Randolph betrayed absolutely no sign that she was aware of his presence, keeping her shoulder turned against him as she spoke softly to her brother-in-law. St. Valéry finally nodded and patted her hand reassuringly before clearing his throat and calling all of them to attention. But they were immediately interrupted by a loud knocking at the door, which opened to reveal an apprehensive guard.

Two women, the fellow explained falteringly, almost cringing in the face of the admiral’s angry frown, had come to the gates some time soon after dark, seeking the Baroness St. Valéry.

Jessie leapt to her feet. Marie and Janette! Thank you, dear Jesus, for this deliverance.

The guard said they had been lodged in the guardhouse, in one of the cells, because Sergeant Tescar had been ordered to permit no one to enter or leave the Commandery. But the two women had grown increasingly insistent that they must be permitted to see the Baroness, and so the Sergeant of the Guard had sent to ask for guidance.

Jessie swung to face St. Valéry, grasping his arm. “These are my women, Charles. My servants, Marie and Janette. We had to part on the road when we were warned that de Nogaret’s soldiers were looking for three women. I sent them on ahead, to await my arrival here and then come to me when we were all safe. I must go to them. Will you pardon me?”

Sir William had noted her obvious elation on hearing this news, and he had been warmed, in spite of himself, by the gladness in her eyes and the flush on her high cheekbones that signaled genuine concern for the women, so he was surprised when St. Valéry shook his head.

“No, my dear, I cannot release you.” He looked about at the other men, and waved his hand in frustration. “I have urgent information that you must hear now…information that even my deputies here know nothing of. Much has happened this day, and much more is about to take place, and we are running out of time, so I cannot afford to tell this sorry tale twice.” He glanced at de Berenger and Montrichard, seeing the incomprehension in their faces. “Your women are safe, Lady Jessica. They are in good hands and will not suffer by remaining where they are for a little longer. We will make them warmer and more comfortable now that we know who they are, but I cannot permit them to enter the Commandery without your presence. This is a monastery. We have no place to put them, and the mere presence of two unattended women might cause some consternation among our brethren. I beg you, send word to them to await your coming.”

Jessie was glaring at him through narrowed eyes, but she pursed her lips and nodded her head. “These tidings must be grave indeed, Brother, to cause you all to seal your gates and miss Vespers. I can scarce wait to hear them.” She turned to the guard. “Have my women eaten anything tonight?”

The fellow shrugged. “I don’t know, my lady. They were there when I came on watch. They may have eaten earlier.”

“Feed them now, then, if you will, and tell them I am pleased to hear of their arrival. Explain that I am held in conference here but will join them as soon as I am able. And give my thanks to the Sergeant of the Guard for heeding them.”

As soon as the guard had left, the Baroness returned to her seat. “Very well, Admiral,” she said with great dignity. “Tell us these mighty tidings of yours.”

The admiral stood up and turned to face them all, his back to the fire. “Mighty tidings they are, my friends. Grave, momentous, and well nigh incredible. Our Master, Jacques de Molay, sent warning and instructions to us today with Sir William here. He has been advised, he tells me, that this day that has now passed might well have been our last day of freedom in France.”

He looked from face to face—his sister-in-law the Baroness, Edward de Berenger, and Richard de Montrichard.

“Master de Molay believes the King wishes to be rid of us, us and our Order. There is no simpler way of putting it. Word came to him at the Commandery in Paris, from a source he trusts implicitly, that King Philip has issued a mandate for every Templar in the realm of France to be arrested at dawn tomorrow, taken into custody, and held prisoner. The plans were laid in place by William de Nogaret, chief lawyer of France, acting upon the King’s personal instructions.”

“But that is ludicrous!” Montrichard was on his feet in a single bound. “Why would the King do such a thing? How could he do it? It would be impossible. This makes no sense.”

“It might, Sir Richard, were you Philip Capet.”

All five men turned to stare at Jessica Randolph, astonished that she would speak out so boldly to contradict a man among a gathering of men, but Jessie remained unruffled, raising her hand, bidding them wait.

“Philip Capet rules by divine right, does he not? Of course he does. All men know that, since he has made no secret of his conviction on that matter. He is King by God’s will. And he has ruled now in France these what, twenty-two years?” She allowed the silence to stretch now, knowing that she had their attention. “Aye, he was crowned that long ago. Two and twenty years. And he is now thirty-nine, so he has spent more than half his lifetime as King of France. But what do we really know of him, after so long a time?”

She left them waiting, then asked again, “What does any man know of Philip Capet? They know his title: Philip the Fourth.” She looked around the group. “They know his unofficial name: Philip the Fair. But what more than that?

“And what does any woman know of him, for that matter? His wife, Queen Jeanne, died these two years ago, after being married to the man for one and twenty years, and all she had to say about him on her deathbed was that she once wished he might have warmed to her.”

Again she allowed the silence to linger, then added, “Once, my lords. She had once wished it. But she no longer cared.”

Sir William stirred, as though preparing to speak, but Jessie waved him to silence almost unconsciously.

“I know you are thinking that I am a mere woman and have no right to speak up here like this, addressing you on men’s affairs. Well, sirs, I know whereof I speak. This King knows no curb to his wishes—never has and never will. He will not be withstood, in anything to which he sets his mind. He rules, in his own eyes, by divine right, and considers himself answerable to God alone. Philip Capet, this monarch without a soul, a King without a conscience, slew my husband merely because he was displeased with him. Philip the Fair…” She looked around at her listeners once again, her eyes moving slowly, knowing no one of them would interrupt her now. “I have set eyes on him but once, but he is fair. Fairer by far to look at than my late husband was. Fair as a statue of the finest marble.”

Now she stood up and moved to the front of the fire, and as she did so St. Valéry stepped away and sat down again. She acknowledged the courtesy with a brief nod, but she was far from finished speaking.

“A statue, my lords. That is the extent of this King’s humanity. A statue rules in France—beautiful to look at, perhaps, but stone cold and lacking any vestige of the compassion we expect in mankind. Aloof in all respects, completely unapproachable and unknowable, devoid of human traits or weaknesses. This man surrounds himself with coldness and with silence. He never smiles, never invites or shares a confidence, never permits a casual approach to his presence. No one knows what he thinks, or what he believes, other than that he sees himself as a divinely ordained King of the Capet dynasty, as God’s own regent on earth, superior to the Pope and the Church and any other human power.

“And of the few human attributes we do know he possesses, none are admirable, none commendable. He is capricious, grasping, cunning, and ambitious. The lives of other people mean nothing to him. And he surrounds himself with creatures who will do his bidding, no matter what that bidding be.

“William de Nogaret reigns over all of those, the King’s favored minion. De Nogaret, who will stop at nothing to carry out the King’s wishes. Four years ago, you may remember, he rode with a band of men from Paris to Rome, eight hundred miles, to abduct a reigning pope, Boniface IV, on the eve of a pronouncement of excommunication for the whole of France. It was the most blatant crime against the papacy ever carried out, and he did it with impunity.

“The Pope, as we all know, died within the month, too old at eighty to survive abduction and outrage. And when his successor, Pope Benedict, dared to condemn de Nogaret publicly, and through de Nogaret the crowned King of France, he too died, of excruciating belly pains, and also within a month. He was poisoned, my lords. We all know that, but no one speaks of it because no one dare speak out and no one can prove anything. In the aftermath, though, thanks to his minion’s work, Philip had eighteen months to arrange the election of a French pope of his own, this Clement.

“And thus de Nogaret proved his daring, his brilliance, and his loyalty to Philip. And his reward was to be appointed the King’s chief lawyer. A man of brilliant mind and abilities—none will deny him that. But a thief, a murderer, a blasphemer, and an abductor of popes…The chief lawyer of France.”

“The Jews.”

The voice, dull and strangely lacking in resonance, was de Berenger’s, and all eyes swung to him.

“The Jews,” he said again, more strongly this time. “Last year, last July. It’s true, what Master de Molay says about tomorrow.”

St. Valéry sucked in his breath. “What about the Jews, man? What are you talking about?”

De Berenger shrugged. “Unannounced plots, my lord. Last year, on the morning of the twenty-first of July and without warning of any kind, every single Jew in France was arrested and imprisoned, then expelled from the country within the month, their holdings and possessions confiscated by the Crown for the good of the realm. I had forgotten it until now, and few people paid any attention at the time, for those arrested were Jews, after all, and our empty Christian coffers needed their Jewish money. But think you, my lord Admiral, that there might have been as many Jews in France that day as there are Templars now?” He looked at Jessica Randolph before his eyes moved on from man to man, engaging each of them in turn as he continued speaking.

“The planning and the execution of that coup against the Jews, with all the secrecy and coordination that was involved, was the sole responsibility of William de Nogaret. The same William de Nogaret, I must now remind you, whose parents are reputed to have burned at the stake in Toulouse as Cathar heretics, under the scrutinizing eyes of the Knights Templar, when we presided there as invigilators for a time, at the behest of the Dominican Inquisitors.”

“Mary, Mother of God!” No one so much as glanced at St. Valéry when he breathed the words.

De Berenger made a face. “It makes perfect sense now, even though it didn’t seem to make much at the time…I believe now that the Jewish arrests last year were a rehearsal for what is to take place tomorrow. There is not the slightest doubt of it in my mind.” He nodded his head slowly and deliberately. “The Grand Master’s warning is genuine, and he does not exaggerate the peril in which we stand. This thing has been long in the planning, but it has been done before. I think tomorrow will be a day of much terror and upheaval for our Order.”

He sat up straighter. “I am not suggesting that we will see slaughter in the streets, nor am I accepting that this will be or even could be the end of us. We are a military and religious order, when all is said and done, not a scattering of disconnected and defenseless Jews, so we will survive this travesty with more success than they were able to achieve. Besides, we have numbers on our side—not overwhelmingly so, but perhaps adequately—and we have our history of service, which is exemplary. Interference and interruption of our affairs may come out of tomorrow’s doings, but I seriously doubt there can be any chance of the total dissolution of our Order. Not even Pope Clement, weak vessel though he be, would countenance such a bare-faced travesty.”

The Baroness spoke again, her voice cold. “Pope Clement will countenance whatever he is told to countenance. He is every bit as much Philip’s creature as is de Nogaret, but he is worse, weaker and even more dangerous, because he fears for his own position. Therefore you must look for no help from him. Before Philip himself elevated him to the papacy, Clement was plain Bernard de Bot, an obscure nonentity who had somehow managed to have himself appointed Archbishop of Bordeaux. Philip found him there and promoted him because de Bot was known even then to be a greedy weakling, much given to vanity and flattery, and easily manipulated. He was greatly over-fond of worldly honors and recognition, and was notorious for his procrastination, so timorous and spineless that he would rather crawl a hundred miles on his belly than make a firm decision. He will offer you neither assistance nor hope, believe me, for he lives in terror of being un-poped by Philip.”

De Berenger shook his head. “Even were we to believe that implicitly, my lady, it would matter little in the long term. And the long term is what we must look to here. It may take months or even years for this matter to go through whatever kind of arbitration may be arranged, and in the meantime it may hit our coffers hard, but our holy Order will survive. It would be insanity to think otherwise. There will be—must be—some kind of resolution eventually, some form of reparation, and when—”

“Reparation? Spare me your arrogant and silly male certainty, sir!” Jessie’s face flushed with sudden, flaring anger, and de Berenger sat back, as open-mouthed as the others, none of whom had ever witnessed such behavior from a woman.

“Have you not listened to a word I’ve said? In God’s holy name, when will you people learn that you are not dealing with men hidebound by the concept of honor like yourselves? You call yourselves men of goodwill, and believe all others must be just like you. Men of honor and goodwill! Pah! This King believes himself ordained by God. He believes himself God’s Anointed, incapable of being wrong or doing wrong. He has no honor, as you think of it, and no goodwill or any need of it. God save us all from the blindness of men of honor!

“The man is desperate, see you! He is consumed and driven by the need for money. It is all he ever thinks of and all he ever strives for. He is mired in debt and his treasury is a bottomless pit. He will tax, take, steal, snatch, and tear funds from the hands of anyone and everyone he suspects of having money or of hiding it. His greed and his needs are insatiable, and he believes that God understands his needs completely and has given him carte blanche to satisfy those needs according to whatever remedies occur to him.”

“You sound as though you know the King passing well, Baroness, for one who has met him but once.” The voice was Montrichard’s, and it emerged as a condescending drawl.

She rounded on him like a lioness, her eyes seeming to spit fire. “I said I saw him once, sir knight. I never met him, so spare me your disdain. My husband was for years the King’s agent at the Court of England, laboring endlessly and thanklessly to generate funds in any way he could to throw into the Capet’s treasury. The result was not sufficient to please Capet, and so he had my husband killed. Rely upon it, sir, I speak not out of ignorance.”

De Montrichard appeared undaunted, but he was flushing, and his voice was less certain as he responded, “Your husband discussed the King’s affairs with you, madam?”

“My husband trusted me, monsieur. Far more so than his exalted monarch trusted him. The King received reports that the Baron had funds of his own and set de Nogaret to hunt them down. He failed, but Philip the Fair killed my husband in the searching.” She turned away as if to walk from the room, but then spun back again, her skirts swirling, her eyes flashing, and her hand chopping at the air in exasperation before coming back up to point straight at de Berenger.

“And he will kill all of you, if he sees need, to lay his greedy hands on your Order’s wealth. Do you truly think there will be reparations made in the future? Reparations for what? The royal confiscation of your wealth by divine right? Do you really think Philip Capet will give back what he takes, or settle for taking less than everything, once the die is cast? If you do, sir, you are a fool, vice-admiral or not. I am merely amazed that he has not taken action against you before now.”

Since the woman first began to speak, Sinclair had been sitting entranced, slack mouthed and unaware that he was staring at her openly. She was a superb woman, wide hipped and broad shouldered, with a narrow waist, long, clean-lined legs, and high, proud breasts that were emphasized by what she wore. He had never seen anything like her and was hypnotized and fascinated by the way she looked and moved, her bosom heaving, eyes scintillating, and her cheeks flushed a hectic red, but far less red than her wide and mobile mouth.

It was only when she called the vice-admiral a fool that he regained his composure, snapping his mouth shut and sitting up straighter in his chair, flushing again at the awareness of what he had been watching and thinking about. But her last words were still ringing in his ears, and he suddenly found himself speaking.

“I am not,” he said.

It was the first time he had spoken since belittling his sister, and he felt all their eyes come upon him at once, but now he was in command of himself. The Baroness had thrust herself into a discussion among men, and had demonstrated her superiority to all of them, but here, among his peers, Sinclair’s voice was supreme. As a woman, Lady Jessica Randolph unsettled him. As a Baroness, however, she had intruded upon his domain and could be summarily dealt with like any other subordinate.

“Not what, Sir William?” St. Valéry asked.

“I am not surprised, Admiral. The Baroness said she is amazed the King has not moved against us until now. It came to me then that I am not at all amazed. It has taken him until now to arrange a suitable reaction.”

There was a long pause before St. Valéry responded. “A suitable reaction to what? Forgive me, Sir William, but your meaning escapes me.”

“Aye, and so it should.” Sinclair sat back in his chair, gripping its arms and pushing his shoulders against the wood at his back, his face twisted into a grimace as he debated whether to explain, but then he realized how ludicrous it was, under the present circumstances, to worry about the confidential nature of what he had to say. “King Philip made application to join our Order, a year and a half ago, after the death of his wife, Queen Jeanne.”

St. Valéry’s eyebrows rose. “He did? I knew nothing of that.”

“Few did, Sir Charles. It was not common knowledge. Being the King he is, he could hardly take the common path, and so he approached the Governing Council directly.”

“And? What happened?”

“We considered his application, in accordance with our laws and customs, and the matter went to secret ballot.”

The admiral nodded. “Common practice, even at the Inner Circle level, I suppose.”

“Aye, but Philip was blackballed.”

St. Valéry and the other knights gasped.

“Blackballed!” the admiral repeated. “Someone voted him the black ball?”

Sinclair shook his head. “No, Admiral. Eleven of us voted that day. There were eight black balls.”

“What does this mean, this talk of black balls?” The Baroness was standing over them, frowning.

St. Valéry looked up at her. “We use two balls in voting on important questions within our Order. One is black, one white. Each man places one of the two, unseen, inside a bag that passes from hand to hand in secret ballot. The white ball means yea, the black, nay. In the overall vote, a single black ball holds the veto, the denial.”

Now it was the Baroness who appeared nonplussed. She blinked at Sinclair. “You are a member of the Inner Circle?”

He dipped his head. “The Governing Council. I am.”

“And you refused the King admission to your ranks? You denied Philip Capet?”

Sinclair nodded again. “Aye, we did. Eight of our Council members that day believed, as had been discussed in our preliminary hearing, that the King was seeking to join us for the wrong reasons: not to serve our brotherhood but to avail himself of the opportunity to assess and gain access to the Order’s wealth.”

Oh, you honest, self-deluding fool. You have no idea of what you did, do you? “You turned away the King of France and yet you did not foresee this day?” She shook her head, keeping her face expressionless. “Well, you were correct, both in your assessment and in your honorable behavior thereafter, but your insult was a fatal one. The Order of the Temple was destroyed that day by eight black balls. It ceased to exist the moment Philip Capet found out you had rejected him. It has merely taken all the time from then until now for the word to reach you.”

Sinclair nodded mutely, accepting the truth of what she had said, and she turned then to St. Valéry.

“So what will you do now, my lord?”

The admiral smiled at her, although his face was tired and drawn. “God bless you, my dear sister. How typical it is that you should have no thought of yourself, with de Nogaret approaching our doors.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked from her to the other men before continuing. “We will do much, have done much already. The fleet has been provisioning for sea these past five hours and more, allegedly preparing for an exercise tomorrow morning. Your funds are safe, tallied and loaded already on my galley. You will sail with me and we will see you and your gold delivered safe to Scotland. Go you now and find your women, if you will. Tam will go with you and see the three of you set safe aboard. You will not find your quarters wide or spacious, for our galleys are built for war, with little thought of comfort, but they will be sound and safe, and warmer than any of de Nogaret’s dungeons. Once aboard, you should try to sleep, although that may prove difficult, with all the comings and goings tonight. We will set sail on the morning tide, and later, if weather, time, and chance permit, we may transfer you to one of the larger cargo vessels, depending upon how fully they are laden. Tam, will you take Lady Jessica to her women?”




3


"Iwas surprised to find Sir William in agreement with me.” Jessie Randolph spoke in Scots, and Tam Sinclair, walking ahead of her, was taken by surprise at her unexpected words and looked back over his shoulder at her.

“How so, my lady?”

“How so? Because he obviously does not like me. Is he like that with all women? Ill mannered and surly?”

Tam stopped walking and turned back to stare at her for a moment, and she stopped, too, waiting for his answer. Then his mouth crinkled into a wry grin and he bobbed his head once. “Aye, you could say that. In every conversation I have heard him have with a woman in the last twenty years, he has been exactly like that. Ill mannered and surly soundin’.”

“Is he a woman hater, then? I would not have thought so before speaking with him.”

Tam’s grin grew wider. “No, Lady Jessica, Will’s no woman hater.”

“What’s wrong with him, then? You said he is like that with all women.”

“He’s just rusty, my lady. Very rusty. What I said is he has been like that with every woman I’ve heard him speak wi’ in twenty years. But you’re the first and the last of them.”

“The fir—? In twenty years? That is impossible.”

“Aye, so you might think, but it’s far frae impossible, lass. It’s both possible and true. The last woman I heard Will Sinclair talk to was his mother, Lady Ellen, and that was on the day he left home for good, dreaming even then of joining the Order…thirty years ago, that was. Will avoids women. Always has. He’s fanatical in that, and his life as a Templar monk makes it easy to do. It’s an extension of his vow o’ chastity, no more than that. And he’s very conscientious.”

They were still standing in the long passageway outside the Day Room, and now Jessie looked both ways along the empty hall, for no other reason than to give herself time to adapt to this staggering piece of information. Tam began walking again, and she followed.

“He is a monk. I can accept that. But he does not live in cloisters. He is a knight, too, so he moves about the world.”

“Aye, he travels constantly, especially since this business wi’ the Governing Council. But can you no’ see that that’s how he keeps himsel’ chaste? He never stops working, except to pray.”

“Then he must be a saint…an anchorite.”

“No, my lady, he’s a man. He’s no smooth-tongued troubadour, I’ll grant ye that. If it’s charm and courtly wit you’re lookin’ for, you’re lookin’ in the wrong place in Will Sinclair. But he’s the finest man I know, and I’ve been wi’ him since the outset. He was just a lad of sixteen when he left Scotland, and he went directly to the Holy Land. Spent years fighting there and was one o’ the few men to survive the siege o’ Acre.”

“He was at Acre? I did not know that. Were you there, too?”

“Aye, I was.”

“How did you get out?”

“Wi’ Will. I was his sergeant. He went nowhere without me.”

“But he escaped, and you with him. How did that happen? Everyone else in Acre died, did they not?”

Tam Sinclair heaved a deep sigh. “Aye, Lady, that they did…Not everyone, exactly, but close to it.”

“So why not you and he? How did you manage to escape?”

“He left under orders, lass. Ordered out, wi’ Tibauld Gaudin, who was commander of the Temple at that time—second in command there to the Marshal, Peter of Sevrey. The Marshal, y’ unnerstand, is the supreme military commander o’ the Order in time o’ war.”

“Who’s who is not important, Tam. Why was William Sinclair chosen to be saved?”

Tam shrugged his wide shoulders. “Because he was. He was chosen. It’s that simple, lass. Gaudin the commander liked him. Will had saved the commander’s life a couple o’ times, in skirmishes wi’ the Heathen. Besides, Will was very good at what he did—a natural leader and a bonny fighter. When Gaudin got his orders to take the Treasure o’ the Order into his charge, an’ to take it away to safety on one of the Temple war galleys, from Acre to Sidon, he wanted men around him he could trust. Will was the foremost o’ all o’ those.”

“And you took the Treasure to Sidon?”

“Aye, in Asia Minor.”

“And what then? Where did you go after that?”

Tam shrugged again. “We came back here to Christendom, and Will began to be moved around from one garrison to another, always being given higher rank and more and more responsibility, in Scotland first, then in France, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Spain again and back to France. And then, a few years ago, he began studying for his advancement to the Council of Governors. If honor and loyalty, trustworthiness an’ bravery mean anything to ye, then ye’ll never find a greater store o’ any of them than in this one man.”

She stopped again, and turned to face Tam. “You have heard me voice my opinions on honor and bravery to the others. They are manly virtues, and therefore to a woman’s eyes they are useless and futile. Find me a woman who wants to be married to a dead hero and I will show you a woman who is unhappily wed. Dead men provide no comfort or love in a harsh winter or any other time.” She paused. “Mind you, I find there are living men who offer little more, and it strikes me that your Will Sinclair is one of them…I can only pray his manners will improve when we are aboard ship. It is a long passage to Scotland, and I would not enjoy spending all of the time with a great boor.”

The tone of her voice had changed, losing its quick and urgent intimacy, and Tam responded to the difference, becoming more formal. “You’ll be on different ships, my lady. You will be wi’ the admiral, and unless I miss my guess, Will’s place will be wi’ the vice-admiral, Maister de Berenger.”

Jessica Randolph nodded. “Aye, that makes sense. The galleys are war ships, as Charles said, not fitted for comfort or for idle passengers, so you are probably right, we will be aboard separate vessels, you and I. Now take me to my women, Tam, if you would. I’ve kept them waiting long enough.”

“We’re nearly there, my lady. Come away.”




4


After Jessie Randolph and Tam had left the room, William Sinclair sat still for a few moments, watching the door that had closed behind them, and then he turned to Edward de Berenger.

“Forgive me, Admiral,” he said. “I had to cozen you earlier about the naval exercise tomorrow, but I had no choice at the time. Sir Charles had not yet read his instructions from the Grand Master.”

De Berenger nodded, affably enough, and turned to St. Valéry. “What about the other elements of the fleet, Admiral? Is there hope for them?”

“Yes, some hope. Master de Molay dispatched word to our Commanderies in Brest and Le Havre, bidding them take all available galleys and set sail last night, on the same exercise you thought you were to join. The fleet commander in Marseille received similar orders a week ago, to set sail with his galleys immediately and make his way down through the Straits of Gibraltar and then north to Cape Finisterre in northern Spain. We will all come together there, and sail wherever we must go.”

“How many vessels altogether, Admiral?”

St. Valéry shook his head. “We have no way of knowing, Edward. It depends entirely upon who was in port when the orders arrived. There may have been a score of keels in each, or none at all. But only our fleet here will have transport vessels attached. The other elements, whatever they turn out to be, will be all galleys, but we have another task to see to before we sail for Finisterre, and I will explain that to you tomorrow. Go now and see to your preparations. We are finished here.”

“And what of my men, sir?” De Montrichard, who was now the Preceptor of La Rochelle and had been standing beside Sinclair, listening quietly, spoke up as de Berenger left.

The admiral glanced at Sinclair. “The Master’s orders were specific. You are to remain in the Commandery and surrender when requested, offering no resistance even under the direst provocation. You must not resist arrest. The consequences could be immeasurable.”

De Montrichard nodded, his face inscrutable. “I shall instruct my men, sir.”

“Do so, but wait you just a moment. Sir William, I have need of your advice. When Master de Molay wrote his instructions, he was most specific.”

“Yes.” The rising inflection in Sinclair’s response turned the agreement into a question.

“But yet he was unsure of the truth of what he was preparing for, is that not so?”

“It is.”

“Had he been here with us tonight, sharing our discussion, think you he might have been convinced the warning was true?”

“I have no doubt of it. Why do you ask?”

“Because I am concerned about this need for our garrison to offer no resistance. How many men have you under arms, Sir Richard?”

“A hundred and fifty-four, Admiral, including the medical staff.”

“Five score and more…It seems to me, Sir William, that there could be much temptation to resist, among so many men.”

“There could be, were the men not Templars. What are you really saying, Admiral?”

“Why, that we might eliminate the temptation and thereby guarantee obedience to the Master’s wishes. A hundred and four absent men could offer no resistance…”

Sinclair blew out his breath through pursed lips. “You have room for them?”

“I will make room.”

Sinclair nodded. “So mote it be. Do it,” he said. “We’ll leave de Nogaret an empty shell.”

“Thank you, my friend.” St. Valéry was smiling now. “Sir Richard, remove all the guards and lock and bar the gates, then assemble your command with whatever gear they can carry on their backs, but no more than that. Start boarding them immediately.”

The preceptor saluted crisply and marched away with a spring in his step and a new set to his shoulders.

“And now, Will, my friend,” the admiral said, “it remains only for me to protect my own priceless treasure here, which I almost forgot. But that big black bottle is very heavy and I find myself growing weak. Will you help me to lighten it before we go outside?”

A short time later, now thoroughly fortified with a third measure of the wondrous liquor of the Benedictine monks, they emerged from the building together and walked down to the wharves, where everything was awash in the flickering light of hundreds of pitch-soaked torches, more than Will could ever remember seeing in any one place. The flares, beacon-like in their intensity, were mounted in baskets atop high, solidly footed wooden poles, and laid out in lanes and alleys, clearly defining the routes from warehouses and stockpiles to the gangplanks of the galleys lining the wharfsides. Will whistled softly in surprise.

“Where did all these torches come from?”

The admiral glanced at him, then looked back at the wharves. “From storage. We sometimes have no choice over when to load or unload a vessel, so we keep the torches ready at all times for night work. There’s a good source of pitch not far from here, an open pit by Touchemarin, the nearest village along the southeastern road. We bring it in by the wagonload, in barrels, and store it in a giant vat that has been here longer than I have, so we never run low on fuel.”

“I’m impressed. I’ve never seen anything like this.” He turned his back to the activities on the waterside and looked from left to right, gazing at the buildings that extended to either side beyond the Commandery itself, stretching in dark ranks as far as he could see. The only lights to be seen among the massed shapes were those in the Commandery, which at this time of night was unsurprising. “Who owns the buildings on each side of you?”

“We do. They are all Temple establishments, the entire length of the quay on this side of the harbor. They are run by lay and associate brethren: merchants, traders, chandlers, and the like. Of the Temple, but hardly what you and I think of as Templars.”

Sinclair nodded knowingly. In his mind, as in the minds of the entire military brotherhood, the word Templars applied only to themselves, the fighting monks of the Order. All the other so-called Templars, and there were thousands of them throughout Christendom, were supernumeraries, laymen functionaries of all kinds conscripted from all walks of life as associate brothers, their prime purpose being the daily administration and maintenance of the sprawling commercial empire of the Order’s nonmilitary activities. Like most of his fraternity, Sir William viewed them with ambivalence verging, at times, upon detestation. He could acknowledge, however grudgingly, that they were necessary, sometimes even essential, but he harbored a deep resentment of their claims to be bona fide Templars, believing that their all too frequent abuse of the name, not to mention the privileges associated with it, were the central cause of the Order’s fall from popularity and esteem in the eyes of the world. A greedy and unscrupulous merchant or banker would forever be disdained, but when such malignity was exercised in the name of the Order, then the Order itself inevitably suffered, and the arrogance and malfeasance of the miscreant were perceived, ipso facto, as being condoned by the Temple.

It was a conundrum that Sinclair and others like him had debated for decades now and had declared to be unsolvable, and now he dismissed it again, knowing there was nothing he could do. “I wonder what will happen to them tomorrow.” He did not expect an answer and turned away to look again at the activity surrounding them. The entire wharf was swarming with movement, all of it disciplined and well ordered, with every man moving purposefully and almost silently, concentrating upon the task at hand. Files of men formed long chains, passing sacks of grain, fodder, and other provisions from shoulder to shoulder to be piled at the edge of the wharf, where lading gangs transferred them into nets to be hoisted aboard ship. Other groups went in single file, carrying goods that were too awkward, fragile, heavy, or precious to be passed easily from hand to hand. Still others manned the hoists that lined the wharves, transferring cargo from the dockside to work crews aboard the ships, who removed the goods from the cargo nets and passed them belowdecks to be stowed. And among them all moved horse-drawn wagons, carrying items that were simply too large to be taken to stowage by any other means. As he watched the constant coming and going, Sinclair was unaware that St. Valéry was watching him, and when the admiral saw the hint of a smile tugging at the younger man’s mouth, he spoke up.

“You are smiling, Sir William…Do you find this sight enjoyable?”

“What? Enjoyable? God, no, at least not in the sense you appear to mean, my lord. I find no amusement in it at all.” The slight smile lingered on his face. “But there is always enjoyment in watching disciplined men performing well…My smile came out of gratitude that our toilers here are real Templars and not Temple brethren. Were they not, I should shudder to think of the chaos that would be reflected here tonight. I thought to walk among them now, to let them know their work is well thought of. Will you join me?”

FEELING THE LIFT OF THE KEEL beneath his feet as the galley backed away from the quay under oars towards its anchorage, William Sinclair lodged his long sword in a corner where it would not fall, then shrugged off his mantle and hung it from a peg before he allowed himself to fall face down on the narrow bunk that would be his sole resting place for the next few weeks or months, and the last thing he remembered was a vision of Jessica Randolph’s eyes flashing with anger, and the words The Order of the Temple was destroyed by eight black balls.





A QUEST OF FAITH (#ulink_d5728878-a6ad-53b2-ba4f-dc17cc239d1f)

1


"Why are we even waiting here? We know they’re going to come.”

Will Sinclair glanced sideways to where the speaker, Vice-Admiral Sir Edward de Berenger, stood gripping the rail of the galley’s narrow stern deck, his knuckles white with the pressure of the grip he was exerting as he stared wide eyed into the thin mist that veiled the nearby wharf.

“Knowing a thing and witnessing the truth of it are two different matters, Edward,” he replied. “Were we not to see this with our own eyes before we sail away, we could never be sure it had happened as we expected.”

He turned his head to where Admiral St. Valéry’s galley rode beside them. It was a larger version of their own, indeed, the largest in the fleet; its oars, forty two-man sweeps ranged in double banks of ten on each side, were like theirs, unshipped, the long blades resting in the waters that lapped against the hull. He could not see St. Valéry himself because the naval commander was surrounded by a knot of other figures on the high stern deck, but he could see that all of them were staring as fixedly towards the fort as was de Berenger.

“And so we wait,” he added. “I like it no more than—” He stood straighter. “There they are.”

Sinclair knew that every watching eye aboard the two ships had seen what he had seen. Figures moved among the mists ashore, running men, spreading everywhere, and now he could hear the shouts, echoing strangely in the emptiness. The running figures came closer, becoming more easily discernible in the drifting, dissipating fog, until they reached the edge of the wharf, where they came to a halt, lining the edge, their voices rising louder.

“I think they are dismayed,” Will murmured, watching the growing throng.

Behind the two galleys that held the admiral and the vice-admiral, the normally crowded harbor of La Rochelle lay empty, save for a cluster of twelve vessels that lay close together near the southern breakwater, bound to each other by stout ropes. Every other vessel that had been anchored there the night before had withdrawn beyond the harbor entrance, where they were now waiting in deep water to see what morning would bring, and it had brought William de Nogaret, as expected. Now Sinclair turned his head in time to see the naval baucent, the white skull and crossed thighbones on a field of black, rise fluttering to the top of the admiral’s mast in a prearranged signal. Even the soldiery thronging the wharf fell into silence as they watched the flag’s slow ascent, wondering what it signified, but as the silence stretched and grew, nothing appeared to happen. The admiral’s galley remained motionless.

An excited shout broke the silence as someone on shore saw what Will Sinclair had already turned to watch, and the clamor spread as the far right side of the crowd lining the wharf eddied and began to run towards the southern breakwater, but they were already too late. The fires on the cluster of moored ships, fueled with oil and carefully prepared, were exploding in fury, spreading with a rapidity that was awe inspiring, and from the sides of the doomed craft men were scrambling down into the boats that waited below.

“Pick them up,” Will said quietly, and de Berenger began to issue orders to bring the galley under way and intercept the approaching boats.

On the breakwater the foremost runners had already halted, their arms upraised to cover their faces from the blasting heat of the burning vessels. These twelve ships, all of them cargo carriers, had been the oldest and least seaworthy of the entire fleet, and rather than leaving them behind intact, St. Valéry had decided to burn them where they lay, denying them to King Philip and his henchman in one highly visible act of defiance. As the deck moved beneath his feet in response to the first pull on the right-hand bank of oars, Sinclair saw a different stir of movement ashore, at the point closest to him, and now he fastened his gaze on the figure of one man who stood out from all the others surrounding him, polished armor and a bright red cloak marking him clearly as someone of importance.

“Is that de Nogaret? Would he come here himself?” He answered his own question, aware that de Berenger was not listening. “Aye, he would, the diseased mongrel. He would want to take La Rochelle in person. Now I regret mooring beyond crossbow range. I could shoot him down from here.”

A banging against the hull announced the arrival of the boats bearing the arsonists, and as soon as they were all safely aboard, de Berenger issued the orders to bring the galley about and head to sea. As the galley’s prow swung around, Sinclair moved against it, revolving slowly until he was gazing out over the stern, his eyes never leaving the distant figure he knew was de Nogaret. Between them, a rain of crossbow bolts was falling uselessly into the waters of the harbor, and he had the pleasure of seeing the King’s minister strike out at someone standing beside him and then spin away, vanishing into the crowd, plainly headed into the empty Commandery.

Will turned his back on the scene then, filled with a turmoil of anger and fighting to empty his mind and heart of what was done. He had no time for useless imprecations, for he must now think to the future, to what must happen next and in the time to come. Ahead of him, framed by the entrance to the harbor, the admiral’s massive galley was slicing through the last of the calm waters, its sweeping oars throwing liquid diamonds into the rays of the sun that was now rising astern of them, above the walls and towers of La Rochelle, as the sleek, swift craft bore its double cargo of treasure and escapees away from the menace of the King of France. And on the stern, gazing back to the land, he could see the cloaked and hooded figure of the woman, the Baroness St. Valéry.




2


Six hours later, they were at anchor again, this time within the tiny harbor of a nameless fishing village, four leagues south along the coast from their starting point. The village had no name and few inhabitants, but it had a stout and solid stone quay, and ample flat ground at the base of the cliffs that towered above it to accommodate a host even larger than the small army that had descended upon the hamlet with this morning’s earliest light.

Will Sinclair stood with his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back against the galley’s low stern rail, watching the activity taking place all about him and learning much about the way naval matters differed from army activities. Both involved logistics in the use, feeding, and transportation of armed men, but Will knew he could never have begun to achieve the smoothness and ease of transference between land and sea that he was seeing here. Nor could his brother, he knew. He had caught sight of Kenneth on the wharf earlier, but had soon lost him again and was unsurprised, knowing that his brother, younger than himself by three years, was clever enough to stand away without interfering, and to let the seamen do what they did best.

St. Valéry and de Berenger had planned some of the details of this afternoon’s activities the previous night, before leaving La Rochelle, but their efforts had been limited by the fact that neither of them knew the village they would visit and both knew they would be constrained by the size and limitations of an unfamiliar wharf. Sinclair could have told them, for he it was who had chosen the place, remembered from a visit years earlier, but he had had duties of his own that night, and they had not thought to seek him out. In the event, the wharf was very small, accommodating only two vessels at a time, but the moorage was secure and the wharf had hoists and pulleys for lifting fishing boats into and out of the water, and now de Berenger was ashore, coordinating the activities there.

Will was watching a pair of horses being lowered, suspended in slings, into the waist of one of the cargo ships. He was growing more and more impressed, both by the handling abilities of the lading and receiving crews and by the swift ease with which the ships alongside the wharf were being rotated, one pair of keels waiting to warp into position as soon as the newly laden pair pulled out. These ships, the Order’s trading vessels, were very different in both appearance and function from the admiral’s galleys. Built with an eye to maximum storage capacity and solid seaworthiness, they were two-masted for the most part, although three of them had triple masts. They were uniformly broad in the beam and belly and rode low in the water when laden, so that they appeared bulky and ungainly when compared to the naval vessels that accompanied and guarded them. Watching them as they took on cargo, however, Sinclair acknowledged to himself that they possessed a beauty of their own, and he found himself admiring the skill with which their seasoned crews, Temple associates to a man, maneuvered them into and away from the small quay.

The crews of the Temple galleys were equally skilled, he knew, but to different effect and with far greater discipline. The transport ships were manned by professional mariners, employed by or belonging to the Temple; the galleys were manned by fighting seamen, sergeants of the Order whose natural tastes led them to seafaring duties rather than land-based. All of the latter lived, sailed, and fought under military and monastic discipline, their lives governed by a maritime version of the Order’s Rule, so that they prayed and performed monastic chores each day, although the off-watch crew were permitted to sleep after their labors and husband their strength at night. Their primary duty, above and beyond all else, was to protect the Order’s enormous trading fleet.

Sinclair looked down into the waist of the galley on which he stood, his eyes scanning the ranks of oarsmen at their benches, the nearest of them a good twelve feet below the stern deck. This craft was noticeably smaller than the admiral’s, with eighteen oars to a side where St. Valéry’s had twenty, but the oars were the same on all galleys, long, heavy, yet graceful sweeps that could propel the vessels over the water at astonishing speeds, even without the massive square sail.

He heard his name being shouted and looked over the rail to where a long, narrow boat rowed by eight oarsmen was taking up position directly beneath him. From its stern seats, Admiral St. Valéry was gazing up at him, and when he caught Sinclair’s eye he waved towards the village and shouted, “Join me ashore. I’m going to speak with de Berenger.”

Once again, Will was made aware of the difference between moving on water as opposed to land. His galley—de Berenger’s—was moored less than a tenth of a mile from the landward end of the wharf, perhaps two hundred paces on land, a distance that Will would have covered in a matter of minutes, even had he had to saddle his horse beforehand. On this occasion, however, he had to call for a boat and a crew of rowers, and then transfer himself from the galley to the boat, with the extreme caution of a landsman distrustful of the behavior of water and the vessels that bobbed about on it, and be rowed over to the end of the wharf. By the time he eventually caught up with St. Valéry, three-quarters of an hour had elapsed.

His brother Kenneth was waiting to greet him as Will climbed from the boat to the top of the breakwater, and threw his arms around him, squeezing him in a great bear hug. As Will prized himself away, grinning, he ran his fingertips over Kenneth’s chain-mail hauberk.

“Well met, Brother. I’ll presume, from the absence o’ tears and wailing, that everything went as it was supposed to. The goods are safe?”

“Safe and sound, Will. They’re all here.”

“You make that sound as though there was more than you bargained for.”

“There was! It filled five four-wheeled wagons and a cart. There was far more there than we thought there would be, but not too much to transport. There were four main chests, of course, the big ones—we loaded those onto two wagons, as planned—but then there was a fine collection of gold and silver I didn’t expect, in boxes—bars and coinage of both—and seven whole chests of jewels, two of them small, the other five almost as large as the main treasure chests. They’re closed wi’ straps for the most part, so a few of them were easy to open and I took a look inside, just to see what we were lugging. They’re stuffed wi’ studded chalices and crucifixes and church vessels, that kind of thing. Clearly the Master didn’t want them falling into de Nogaret’s hands. We had to turn the country upside down to find more wagons to carry them.”

“You—you did not wreak havoc in taking them, I hope?”

“D’you take me for a fool, Brother? I sent out pairs of men in every direction, with silver coin, to find me anything that they could buy within a day and to buy no more than one wagon and team at any place…And before you think to ask, none of them wore anything that might identify them to strange eyes as Templars.”

“Hmm.” Sinclair absorbed that for a moment, then nodded decisively. “Excellent. You have done well, Kenneth. We’ll get everything aboard quickly and see that all is safely stowed. In the meantime, promise me you’ll take that armor off before you try to board a ship, Brother, and have your men do the same. You’ll notice this dagger is the heaviest thing I’m wearing. I’ve almost gone swimming several times, simply climbing in and out of boats. You fall in wearing any of that gear and you’ll sink like a stone. Where are your men, by the way?”

Kenneth pointed a thumb back over his shoulder, and Will climbed up onto a stony outcrop and peered over the top of all the surrounding activity to see the hundred knights and sergeants drawn up on foot, in orderly ranks at the base of the high cliff. The sergeants formed a solid, disciplined bank of brown and black shapes, and the forty knights, most of them wearing their red-crossed white cloth surcoats over chain mail, were grouped to their left. One glance was all he required to see that the men were waiting patiently, and he jumped down again.

“They look good. Their horses are being loaded now. I’ll have de Berenger, the vice-admiral, send you instructions as to where and when your men should board—and here he is, the very man.”

Sir Edward de Berenger had approached, unnoticed until that moment, and Sinclair introduced him to Kenneth, then asked where the admiral had gone. De Berenger smiled and waved towards a single large tent, a hundred yards from where they stood, and as William glanced towards it he noticed a knot of people he identified by their dress as villagers, standing huddled off to one side, well clear of the activities on the beach. He indicated them with a nod.

“What about the village folk there? Did you have any problems with them?”

“Nah!” Kenneth shook his head. “They were terrified when we came down on them from the cliffs, but once they saw that we meant them no harm but were interested only in their wharf, they threw up their hands and left us to it. The head man is a fellow called Pierre. He calmed them down. I told him to keep them well out of our way and gave him a purse of silver for their trouble. I did it publicly, too, so he won’t be able to keep it for himself. None of them has said a word since then. Oh, I told him, too, that if anyone comes questioning them, to hold nothing back, but tell about everything they saw. It won’t make any difference to us by then.”

“Hmm.” His brother twisted his mouth wryly. “If anyone comes looking for us here, it won’t matter what these people say. Their lives will be forfeit. I’m sure they know that, too.” He turned to de Berenger. “Well, Sir Edward, we should join the admiral, since he called us here in person. Kenneth, you should rejoin your men.”

Kenneth nodded to both of them and turned away as de Berenger raised a finger to Sinclair.

“I cannot join you yet. I have another matter of some urgency—a problem with one of the hoists—and it will not wait. Present my apologies to Sir Charles, if you will, and I will come to you presently.”

Sinclair was chagrined, as he headed for the admiral’s tent, to see the Baroness St. Valéry already there, sitting on the pebbled foreshore beside her good-brother, and his heart seemed to sink into the pit of his stomach. He found himself wondering if she intended to participate in every discussion that was to take place, and the thought set him immediately on edge. He saw St. Valéry take note of his arrival only to turn away, distracted by someone who had approached him with tidings of some kind.

St. Valéry rose to his feet and said something to the Baroness, flipped a hand in salute to the still-approaching Sinclair, and followed the messenger, disappearing quickly among the throng of bodies behind him. Less than half a hundred paces now separated Sinclair from where the Baroness sat gazing out at the shipping in the small harbor, and as he struggled to walk quickly over the yielding mass of the pebbled beach that seemed to drag at the soles of his boots, he lowered his eyes to watch his feet, thus avoiding looking at her. Despite his exhaustion, or perhaps because of it, he had not been able to sleep aboard ship the previous night and had spent a long time thinking about the woman, once he had finally accepted that he was unable not to think about her.

Lady Jessica Randolph unsettled him deeply, and lying on his rocking bunk in the hours before dawn, he had understood that for him, she was the embodiment of something utterly beyond his experience, the essence of everything he had willingly abandoned upon joining the Brotherhood of the Temple and undertaking his solemn vows of monkhood. As monk, soldier, and Crusader, his had been a life of purely masculine concerns: combat, training, and campaigning in times of war; garrison duties, unrelenting discipline, and the incessant prayer schedule of the Templars’ Rule in times of peace. Even in recent years, while undergoing intensive training for his future role as a member of the Governing Council of the Order, he had been held separate from the affairs of the world outside the brotherhood, his time dedicated to the staggeringly complex task of learning the esoteric secrets shared only by the privileged elite of the Temple’s highest initiates, that knowledge referred to—although not often and never publicly—as the Higher Mysteries of the Ancient Order of Sion. That task had consumed him, and as his comprehension of its immensity grew, it had even frightened him at times, forcing him to review the entire sum of knowledge and beliefs that he had acquired in a lifetime of total ignorance of the Mysteries’ existence.

And then had come this woman to distract him with the sound of her voice, the sight of her body, the smell of her presence, and the awareness of her femininity.

When no more than twenty paces separated them, she saw him coming, and her face cleared, losing the slight air of preoccupation it had worn and taking on an expression of…what? Disinterest? No, Sinclair corrected himself. Plain emptiness was what it was. As though he were beneath her notice. Well, he thought, that would earn her no displeasure from him. If she wanted to behave as she thought a man behaved, then so be it; she would be treated as a man could expect to be treated…a lesser man, of course. An underling. Sinclair felt himself grinding his teeth and made a conscious effort to relax.

She looked up at him as he arrived beside her and he nodded stiffly, in a tacit, perfunctory greeting.

“Good day, Sir William.” Her voice, while not welcoming, conveyed no hint of displeasure. “Sir Charles will join us directly. Please sit down.”

It may have been the “us” that angered him, her assumption that she would share whatever he might have to say to St. Valéry, or vice versa, or it may have been the cool air of impenetrable self-possession with which she invited him to sit and plainly expected him to obey, but whatever the reason, he felt the ire flare up in him, outrage and humiliation vying with each other to undo him equally—for he knew beyond doubt, even then, that he would be in the wrong no matter what he said or did, and so he stood there mute for long moments, unable either to move or to speak. Fortunately for him, the woman misinterpreted his inaction and looked up at him with a shade more warmth in her gaze.

“Please, sit, if you will. Charles saw you coming but was called away before he could greet you. Something to do with the loading of livestock. I must admit to being surprised at the number of your brother’s company here. I had expected a score or so of men and horses, but there must be more than a hundred of each. Please, sit you down here. My ladies have gone looking for firewood, to take the chill off the afternoon air, but they should soon be back, and we’ll be warmer once the fire is lit.”

Bemused by her easy openness and lack of apparent guile, Sinclair found himself moving to comply with her wishes, even though he had no slightest idea of what to say to her. But she simply kept talking as he lowered himself to perch on a boulder across from her, and he found himself listening and preparing to answer in spite of himself.

“I confess, were it not for my ladies, I should freeze and die of exposure, for I have no notion of how to light a fire in the open air, do you? Are you adept with flint and steel? I suppose you must be, being a Temple Knight. I am told there is nothing practical that you and your fellows cannot do.”

“No, that’s a nonsense,” he heard himself say, and nearly winced at his own brusqueness. “I have a tinder box, wi’ flint and steel, but a’ God’s name, Lady, I cannot remember when I last used it, if I ever did. Tam does all that, and I am grateful to him for it. He starts our fires and keeps them alight, and he keeps me fed, for else I would most likely starve. I have little attention for such things.”

Well, at least you are capable of speaking like a reasonably normal person. From what I’ve seen and learned of you until now, that is a very important development in your status vis-à-vis women—

Sinclair was already rising to his feet again. “Here come your women now, madam. I’ll leave you with them.” Sinclair nodded towards the only two other women on the beach, who were bearing armloads of logs and followed by a group of sergeants carrying more.

Jessica stood up, too, as the armloads of logs clattered to the pebbles, one after the other, and called to Sinclair as he was on the point of walking away.

“Wait, Sir William, if you will. I will walk with you until the fire is lit.”

Dismayed, Will stood hesitantly as she approached him and managed not to flinch as she reached out and laid one hand on his forearm.

“There,” she said, “and you have my thanks. These pebbles are grossly difficult and dangerous to walk upon.”

He made no response, but held his bent arm stiffly and began to walk with exaggerated slowness, clearly braced to prevent her from falling. She fought back the smile that threatened to break out upon her face and made herself walk beside him slowly and with great decorum, visualizing what his shocked reaction might be were she to break into anything resembling a dance while walking with her hand upon his arm. And such was her temptation to break into giggles that she had to raise her free hand to her mouth and pretend to cough. She stopped, obliging him to stop, too, and wait for her as she made an elaborate show of examining the fishing hamlet and the cliffs behind it.

“What a perfect place for the task you have in hand, Sir William. This spot must be completely hidden here beneath the cliffs from anyone above, and I vow it could never be seen from a passing ship, were the people aboard unaware of its existence. How did you ever come to find it?”

Sinclair followed her gaze to where the beetling cliffs loomed over the tiny settlement. “By chance, Lady,” he said, avoiding looking at her. “Purely by chance, a score and more years ago.”

“What kind of chance might have brought you here? This is not a friendly coastline.”

“Wind and weather brought me. I was on a ship that foundered when a winter squall blew us onto a shoal to the south of here. Tam and I were among the very few to survive, him in a boat of sorts with three other lads, and me clinging to a spar with another man who was dead when the current cast us ashore in this inlet. Tam came ashore a mile or so farther north and thought me dead, too, as I did him, but we found each other by chance the following day.”

“And this village was here then?”

He glanced at her sidelong, as though surprised by the naivety of the question. “Aye, it was. It is a natural haven. There have been fisher folk living here since the land was created, I am sure.”

“And you remembered it.”

“Aye, I did. I always try to remember the good and the bad. It is folly not to remember both ends of the range of things. Most of the ruck is forgettable…unimportant…but the knowledge of a safe haven, or of a dangerous killing ground, can be priceless at times.”

She had been watching him with her head tilted to one side, and now she began to walk again, her hand still resting on his arm. “I confess, Sir William, the concept of killing grounds is one I seldom entertain, but I understand what you are saying and I agree with the principle behind it.”

She said nothing more for a short time, continuing to walk with lowered eyes, leaving him to grapple with the idea that a mere woman had expressed an understanding of a principle. He wanted to pursue that thought, but had no slightest notion of how to go about it, and so he waited instead, hoping she would say more on the topic. But she continued in silence, and then, just as he was deciding that she might say no more, she continued as though there had been no lapse in what she was saying.

“It will be amusing, think you not”—and here she paused to dart a smile at him—“to see how your views might change from now on, given the safe havens and dangerous grounds of your new life henceforth.”

“My new life?” His voice hardened instantly as he sensed her threatening to intrude where she had no right to go. “I have no new life, Lady, nor will I.”

“But I—” Jessie was flustered by the sudden hostility in his voice and spoke without really thinking. “I was but referring to the events of this morning…the King’s obvious enmity and de Nogaret’s duplicity. That has changed everythi—”

“Nothing has changed, Baroness.” His voice was harsh, peremptory. “There has been a misunderstanding of some kind, some form of miscommunication, but it will be soon resolved, let me assure you. The Temple Order is the strongest of its kind anywhere. It is far greater than any one man. And it is incapable of being seriously disrupted by the greedy scheming of lesser men, be they kings and kings’ ministers or no. So there will be no lasting changes made to my life.”

She was staring wide eyed at him before he had come close to finishing, the color already flaring up in her cheeks, and she swept in to the attack.

“Misunderstandings? Soon to be resolved? Were you not in the room last night when I spoke on that very topic? Did you not hear a single word I said? Or did you simply dismiss me for being a woman and decide that my opinions are worthless and unfounded?”

The two stood glaring at each other as Jessie waited for his response, but when it came it was not in the form of words. His face simply froze into a baleful mask of disapproval and he swung away, rigid with outraged dignity, leaving her standing alone on the strand as her good-brother the admiral approached, his face clearly betraying astonishment at what he was seeing.

“In God’s name, what happened, Sister? What did you to offend Sir William so? I have never seen him so angry. What did you say to him to make him charge away like that?”

She did not even glance at him, her eyes fixed on Sinclair as he vanished among the bustle of people on the beach.

She swung to face her questioner. “As God may judge me, I said nothing to cause offense to any reasonable man. But your obdurate Sir William shows few signs of being reasonable in dealing with anyone he cannot dominate and bully. The offense, and the anger that accompanies it, arise from sources other than from me. Search you inside Sir William Sinclair for the root of it, for I will have no part of him or his anger. He is naught but a great truculent, ill-mannered oaf.” And having delivered herself of that opinion, she swept away in turn, leaving the highly perplexed admiral to gaze after her, shaking his head several times, before he turned to move quickly in pursuit of Sinclair.




3


Will Sinclair was standing at the edge of the quay when St. Valéry caught up to him, watching the loading activity in the tiny harbor, his lips pursed and his brow furrowed in deep thought as he tossed a smooth pebble listlessly from hand to hand.

“Sir William. I require some of your time, in order to discuss several matters of import. May we return to my tent on the beach?”

Sinclair nodded wordlessly.

“Excellent.” St. Valéry hesitated, then continued. “Look, Sir William, I know not what transpired between you and my good-sister back there, but I know it angered you, and I cannot afford to have you angry at this point. So empty your mind of what displeases you, if you can, and let us talk, you and I, of the priorities facing us in this endeavor. Can you do that?”

“Of course I can, Sir Charles. It vexes me that you should even have to ask. Lead on, if you will. You have all my attention.”

“Excellent, for we have much to discuss, first among all the disposition of the treasure brought by your brother, of which there is far more than we at first supposed. The two largest and most seaworthy vessels we possess are our two main command galleys, my own and de Berenger’s, which is substantially smaller but newer, and I find myself disliking the thought of entrusting the treasure to any other ship, even though the larger cargo vessels have more space in them. I firmly believe that we would be foolish to stow the chests anywhere else but where we can keep watch on them—not because I distrust our men but purely because I distrust the weather. The winter storms could set in now at any time and our fleet could be scattered to the ends of the ocean, dependent upon the whims and ferocity of the winds. And so I propose splitting the main treasure between your vessel—de Berenger’s—and mine. You already have the Lady Jessica’s gold aboard your ship, and your own personal responsibility entails the protection of the Templar Treasure. I will therefore have the four main chests containing your charge loaded aboard your ship as well. I myself will take the lesser treasure aboard mine. What think you?”

Sinclair agreed, relieved to know that he would not be parted from the main Treasure, the primary responsibility settled upon him by Master de Molay. For the next half hour the two commanders walked together up and down the beach, observing the work in progress as they went over the details of their plans, such as they were, for the coming few days.

As soon as the treasure was safely aboard ship, they would put to sea again, sailing south, between the mainland and the island called the Isle of Oleron, passing the wide entrance to the Gironde inlet on their port side to follow the French coastline south along the Bay of Biscay until they reached the westward-jutting Iberian peninsula. From there they would make their way west along the Iberian coast of the bay until they reached the headland of Corunna, where they would turn south again for several days to collect whatever elements of the Templar fleet might have gathered off Cape Finisterre. They had no means of divining how many vessels might have escaped from other French ports ahead of the seizures and sailed to await a rendezvous, or how punctual those might be, but once there, the La Rochelle contingent would wait on station, safely offshore, for seven days, to ensure that every vessel that had been en route to join them, prior to Friday the thirteenth, had arrived. Thereafter, the assembly would sail as one fleet wherever William Sinclair, as senior representative of the Order of the Temple, ordered them.

At last St. Valéry appeared to have run out of things to discuss. They were approaching the wharf again, and the piles of material on the beach by the quay had dwindled greatly.

“It looks as though they have almost finished,” Will said, nodding towards the wharfside activity. The four great chests of the main Treasure still sat on the wharf together with the remaining contents of Kenneth’s wagons, but the wagons themselves had been dismantled and stowed, Kenneth’s men had been shipped aboard a number of vessels, and the majority of their horses, along with their saddlery and weapons, had already been slung aboard the ships assigned to them.

St. Valéry barely glanced up before he asked, “Are you completely set on sailing to Scotland, Sir William?”

Sinclair looked at him in surprise. “Set upon it? Aye, I suppose I am…But it comes to me that you are not. Have you something else in mind? If you have, spit it out and we will talk about it. Shall I send for de Berenger?”

“No! No, that will not be necessary…What is in my mind is…well, it is something that has been there for a long time now…Something more concerned with what we are and where we should be rather than with who we are and where we ought to go…if you see what I mean.”

“No, Sir Charles, I do not.” He was smiling slightly, shaking his head. “And to tell truth, that marks the first time I have ever heard you be less than clearly explicit, so it makes me most curious.” He glanced quickly around to see if anyone was nearby, but they were out of earshot of the closest group of workers. “Walk with me again, then, so we may keep from being overheard, for I have the feeling that you have no wish to say what’s in your mind to anyone but me. Not even to Vice-Admiral de Berenger. Come then, as friend, not admiral, and tell me what is in your mind.”

He moved away, and St. Valéry fell into step beside him, his head lowered. Sinclair walked in silence, remembering his own difficulties with the tidings he had had to bring to La Rochelle the previous day, and therefore content to wait until the right words came to the older man. Finally, St. Valéry uttered a snort and squared his shoulders.

“Very well then, Sir William, but before I begin, may I ask what befell between you and my good-sister? You were notably out of countenance. That was plain to see.”

“Aye, I was, and I think I may have been wrong.” He nibbled on his stubbly upper lip. “She asked me what I intended to do with my new life, now that the Order has been betrayed.”

“And that angered you?”

“Aye, it did, for it made me contemplate, for a moment but against my will, a world in which our Order would have ceased to exist. And that is close to inconceivable. The Temple, under the guidance of our ancient Order of Sion, has become the most powerful fraternity in the world. So differences will be straightened out and compromises will be made, in one fashion or another. But above all, our Order will continue. It was the sudden thought of my life being changed, without my having any opportunity to challenge such an outcome, that made me angry. I was ill prepared for that idea and I had no intention of discussing it with your good-sister. There was no more to it than that. As I said, I was probably wrong to react as I did.”

“Aye, well, Sir William, the right and wrong of it I cannot judge, but I am as one with you in the judgment that, above all else and despite what men may do to thwart it, our ancient Order will continue. The outward form of it may change beyond our credence, may even disappear completely from the ken of man and revert to what it was before Hugh de Payens and his fellows ever went to Outremer in search of what they found. But the Order of Sion will survive as long as any of us, sworn to its propagation, retains the ability to pass on its tenets to another generation. For at its deepest root, our Order is an idea, Sir William, a system of belief, and ideas are immortal and indestructible…”

St. Valéry’s voice died away into silence, but Sinclair could tell he had not yet finished talking, and sure enough he began again after a space of heartbeats.

“It is precisely that train of thought that has stirred this other matter in my mind.” He took Sinclair’s arm suddenly and turned sharply left to walk inland, in order to avoid another gang of seamen piling weapons into nets for hoisting. “It seems to me that the fundamental idea underlying our Order might benefit in future from some practical demonstration of the truth underlying our lore.”

Sinclair frowned. “What do you mean, a practical demonstration? That has already taken place, nigh on two hundred years ago, when the Order was reborn in the bowels of the temple tunnels and the truth of its lore was proved beyond dispute. What could be more practical than that? At that point we changed our name from the Order of Rebirth in Sion to the simple Order of Sion. We had achieved rebirth, then and there. The Order of the Temple came into existence only after that.”

“I know that, Sir William, as well as you do, but the ordinary brethren of today’s Temple, those who have no knowledge of our ancient Order, do not. And lacking that knowledge, that proof, they stand to be bereft of hope and subject to despair because of these upheavals in France.”

“So?”

“So I refuse to accept the notion that the Order of the Temple should simply be allowed to die.”

“And why should it not?” Sinclair’s rejoinder came without the slightest hesitation. “It is our Order that is important here, Sir Charles, the Order of Sion, not the Order of the Temple. Since the fall of Acre and the loss of Outremer more than a decade ago, the Order of the Temple appears to have lost the regard of the people who once revered it. That loss is real, but the lesser loss, the loss of Acre, cannot account for it. The loss of Acre was tragic, but it was honorable. The Temple’s knights and sergeants there were wiped out with the fall of the city, leaving no survivors. They did their duty alongside the other defenders of the faith in Outremer, and they performed their task and died as martyrs, against insuperable odds. So it is unjust to lay the Temple’s fall from grace upon the shoulders of its dead. The Temple of Solomon has earned its own disfavor down the years, and in full measure, beginning from the day the Order lowered its standards and decreed that monkhood was not the sole prerequisite for membership. That is when the rot first set in—the very day the Temple first permitted laymen and merchants to join its ranks and granted them the privilege of calling themselves Templars. Since then, through the behavior of its associate brethren, the Temple that the ordinary people see from day to day has clutched its arrogance and privilege about itself and gone out of its way to alienate everyone who deals with it.”

He stopped short and pursed his lips, almost defiant in the way he gazed at St. Valéry, as if challenging him. “Come now, Sir Charles, let us set surface loyalties aside, we two, and admit that the Temple has always had boors, strutters, and pigheaded fools among its brethren from the very outset. But those were fighting knights, and even their worst excesses were held close among the brethren. That is not the kind of behavior that I am condemning here. The Order of the Temple of Solomon today bears no resemblance to the brotherhood it once was, save for those few of us who serve its military arm. It has become a tradesmen’s guild, full of braggarts, cheats, bombasts, and unsavory creatures, none of whom pay taxes, and all of whom, exulting in their privilege and status, have embodied all the arrogance, pride, folly, and weaknesses to which man is heir.

“And yet within the Temple structure itself, carefully concealed, are our brethren, the Brotherhood of Sion, forming the living sinews that coordinate the muscles of the corpus and keep the body functioning. Remove those brethren, and the lore they live to perpetuate, and the Temple itself will fall and pass into history to no one’s great regret, while the Brotherhood of the Order of Sion will continue.”

St. Valéry stood frowning, pinching at the hair on his chin, then nodded. “Aye, you have the right of it. Reluctant though I find myself to admit that it is true, I will not dispute you. The Order of the Temple is corrupt, and if it falls or is transformed in any way, our brotherhood will survive. But at what cost, Sir William? We will be forced to live and work in secrecy again, constrained to be clandestine in all things, to the detriment of our Order’s designs. That alone, I believe, must give us pause. The Temple brotherhood, and the very fabric of the Temple itself, provide us with a mantle of invisibility. Existing within the outer shell, we are unnoticed and anonymous. I believe we must do all in our power to maintain that mantle, and in order to do so, we need to give the rank and file of the Templar brethren something to believe in, something from their own lore that will encourage them to endure in the face of these present troubles.”

A cold gust of wind swept in across the beach, buffeting them, and St. Valéry glanced up at the rack of scudding cloud that had begun to gather as they made landfall and now darkened the sky. “Squalls,” he said, pulling his light cloak more securely around him. “Let’s hope they blow over quickly. If the weather worsens, we could be caught in here, unable to beat out to sea.” He looked back to where Sinclair was adjusting his own clothing against the sudden wind.

“The Temple has no lore of its own, Admiral,” the Scots knight said, as though St. Valéry had made no mention of the weather. “It is too new to have developed lore.”

“True, I know that.” St. Valéry was eyeing the cloud banks again. “I doubt this will turn to much, but if need be, we can use our oars to tow the transports out into deep water. But as I said, if it becomes too bad, we may have to bide here awhile.”

“Too close to La Rochelle for my liking,” was Sinclair’s response. “Barely thirty miles by road from there to here. De Nogaret’s men could catch us sitting here helpless.”

“They could, if they knew where to look, but they don’t. There’s cause for gratitude in that thought, my friend.” St. Valéry looked at the sky once more, then turned to look about him at the activity in the tiny harbor. “But things appear to be going smoothly, and the tide will not begin to ebb for several hours. The laden vessels are already standing out to safety, well clear of land and in the lee of Oleron Isle, and there are very few remaining. We should be well enough. The Treasure is all shipped, and most of the livestock. All that remains is materiel that we could leave behind, if pushed.”

He dismissed the weather with a wave of his hand. “About this lore, or the lack of it…There is one piece, one fragment of the ancient lore of Sion, that escaped somehow and was long since adopted by the Temple.”

“The Merica matter.”

“Aye, precisely. No one has ever discovered the source of the betrayal, or how the information was divulged, but it was the only instance, ever, of such a thing occurring. Personally, I began some years ago to suspect that Hugh de Payens himself may have released it deliberately, early on in the Jerusalem growth of the Order of the Temple, believing it to be harmless, yet valuable as an earnest of a need for secrecy within the new-established Order. A seed, perhaps, from which to grow a tradition. Do you think that fanciful?”

Sinclair jutted his jaw. “No, not at all. It makes perfect sense now that you mention it. The Merica rumor never had much substance to it, and had been unimportant to our objectives. It was regarded as trivial by everyone who knew of it. Its disclosure was certainly not the kind of thing that could ever threaten our Order. So yes, I think that Hugh de Payens might have borrowed it, in a time of need.”

“Merica is no rumor, Sir William. It is an accepted and ratified segment of our ancient teachings and beliefs.”

“Yes, I know the substance of it, Admiral: that there exists, beyond the Western Sea, a fabled land of plenty, vast and endless, watched over by a brilliant evening star that the people who live there call Merica. I have even studied what there is to know of it, though that is very limited. But no matter what any of us might wish to believe, it remains no more than a fable, rooted, as you say, in our lore. We may speculate on it, but we have no proof that it exists, or that it ever was.”

“I agree, but that is what I was thinking about…”

“Sir Charles, you are not making sense.”

“On the contrary, Sir William, I believe I am. How many vessels would you say we have in our fleet?”

Another gust of wind drove icy drops of rain against their faces, and Sinclair raised a hand to wipe his cheek, surprised to feel the coldness of the skin against his fingers. “You know that better than I, Admiral. It is your fleet. I have made no attempt to count them, but the number twenty is in my mind.”

St. Valéry dipped his head. “That is a fair estimate. We have seven naval galleys and fourteen cargo vessels—twenty-one in all. In addition, by this time next week, dependent upon what we may find off Finisterre, we could have half as many ships again.”

“But the newcomers would not be cargo carriers.”

“No, that is unlikely. If any vessels reach the rendezvous at all, they will be naval galleys, simply by virtue of the word sent out to the ports.”

“How many fighting men do you have at your disposal?” Sir William asked.

“At my disposal, as opposed to yours?”

“Aye, seamen and landsmen.”

“Hmm…Landsmen, not counting your brother’s contingent, one hundred fifty-four from the garrison at La Rochelle, of whom thirty and six are serving lay brothers and therefore noncombatant…” St. Valéry made a grimace while he calculated in his head. “One hundred and eighteen fighting men of all ranks, therefore, under de Montrichard. Seamen? The crews of the cargo ships, about four hundred men in total, are not fighters. The galley crews are all fighting men, and they range in size from forty oars to twenty. Two men to an oar, with a relief crew of one to two extra men per oar on each craft…That could total seven hundred men, but it is a misleading tally because the number of relief oarsmen varies widely from galley to galley, no matter how hard we try to sustain them.” He shrugged. “But there you have it. A large force, on the face of it. It could be formidable.”

“Aye, it could. And it will be. So whence comes all this talk of Merica, and what has it to do with this fleet?”

St. Valéry stopped walking and turned to him. “Would you need that many ships in Scotland, a foreign land? Seven to perhaps twenty galleys and a fleet of cargo vessels? For if you do not, I should like to take a few of the ships, manned only by men who wish to go with me, and sail in search of this fabled place.”

“Merica?”

St. Valéry showed no reaction to the incredulity in Sinclair’s voice, and the two men stood eyeing each other.

“This is not tomfoolery,” Sinclair said at last, his voice without inflection. “You mean what you say.”

The admiral shrugged very slightly. “I do not deal in tomfoolery. I never have; a lifelong habit. I have always been careful to say what I mean…and in consequence, to mean what I say.”

Another silence ensued, this one shorter, until Sinclair spoke again. “You are aware, I presume, of how absurd that sounds. You are proposing to sail off with a portion of our fleet, for vast distances and through uncharted waters, in the hope of finding a place no man has sought in more than a millennium—a place that may never even have existed. And you will ask for volunteers to go with you, into almost certain death.”

St. Valéry shrugged again. “Essentially, yes. But I would not call it insane.”

“Of course you would not—it’s your idea,” Sinclair said with a grin. “You know, of course, that the name of the place where we will rendezvous, Finisterre, means the end of the world, the end of land?”

St. Valéry smiled. “I do. But I suspect that name was given the place by men who had never found land beyond that point…because they had never sailed far enough westward. The ancients knew nothing of navigation beyond sight of land.” The admiral cocked his head, gauging his companion’s concern. “Look you,” he continued. “Hear me out, if only as a man. Listen to what I have to say, and then think about it before you come to any decision. We have ten days at least, and probably more, before we will have to decide. And then, if you decide against my request, I shall obey your wishes, as I am bound by oath. It will be reluctantly, but I will obey…”

“Go on.”

“Think first on what I said about the need for some sign for the men involved in whatever events are happening in France today. If things are truly as bad as they appear to be, and all the brethren of senior status have been taken and imprisoned, then those rank-and-file members who have survived the initial purge, or attack, or whatever it may turn out to be, will feel abandoned and lost, like a rudderless ship in a high sea…And if that is the case, then matters will only grow worse.”

Sinclair frowned as he thought about that, then shook his head. “I can’t accept that, Admiral—that things will grow worse. I have to believe that whatever has happened to our brethren in France will be temporary, no matter how traumatic. I believe Master de Molay himself believed that when last I spoke to him, and logic itself demands that it must be so, simply because of our size, if nothing else—”

“The Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is bigger,” St. Valéry interrupted, sardonically, leaving the younger man blinking. “Surely you would not dispute that?”

“Well, no, not in terms of numbers. There is no denying that strength, but—”

“But we must suspect the active participation of the Church in what has happened to our Order, Sir William. Philip the Fair, for all his arrogance, would never dare to move against us as he has without the Pope’s permission. Such an action would require papal sanction, since we of the knighthood are monks. And need I remind you that Pope Clement is generally accepted to be Philip’s puppet, indebted to Capet for his position?”

Sinclair’s features had settled into a deep scowl. “Why did you not mention this last night?”

“Because I have thought of it only since then, though I have thought of little else since it occurred to me. Besides, there was no time last night. Too much had to be done in too little time. But today, having failed to win an hour of sleep because my thoughts kept me awake, I find myself having grave and well-considered doubts about the future of our Order in France. There may be compromises and accommodations, as you say, but I fear our Temple will never again enjoy the influence it had in France even one week ago. It is outdated, and in recent years has incurred great resentment, perceived as waxing fat and paying no taxes, if for no other reason. When Acre fortress fell and the Latin Kingdom of Outremer was lost, the Temple lost its raison d’être…and there are no few in France and elsewhere who lay the blame for that loss at the Temple’s door, unjust and insupportable though that charge may be. And thus I fear our place in France itself is lost. King Philip is a hard and callous man, and his ambitions know no bounds, other than those imposed by lack of funds. He will not return one silver mark of what his lawyers seize from us.”

The frown slowly faded from Sinclair’s face, to be replaced by an expression of thoughtfulness. “A rudderless ship, you said. But if you are correct, there will be no ship…no Order. How, then, could matters grow worse?”

St. Valéry waved a hand as though dismissing the obvious. “Well, let us suppose for a moment that Philip and de Nogaret are successful, and they wrest control of the Order’s wealth and assets from our hands—those assets that are left within the realm of France, I mean. That will bring instant and enormous benefits to their treasury—freedom from debts, and real funds with which to operate…my greatest reason for doubting that this matter will be settled to our satisfaction. But if that does occur and goes unchallenged, condoned by Holy Church, think you the other Christian monarchs will hang back from behaving similarly against the Temple in their own lands? I doubt it.”

The Scots knight turned his back to the chill rain that had begun to slant inland. “I agree with you on that, at least. The same thought had already occurred to me earlier. And yet…you describe a bleak prospect, my lord Admiral. Unwilling as I may be to concede to it entirely, however, I fear you may be right. But again, what has this to do with your Merica?”

“Everything, William, and nothing. I believe the other kings of Christendom will flock like ravens to a carcass once Philip has shown the way. And I choose not to live in such a world. I am an old man, all at once and unexpectedly, coming to the end of my usefulness precisely at a time when I have most need to be capable of great things, and that awareness galls me. I know the time has come to hand my duties and my admiral’s rank and badge of office to a younger man, and I know, too, that de Berenger will be an excellent successor—so be it there is something left to which he can succeed.” He paused, then shook his head. “I would languish and die in this Scotland of yours, my friend. It is your home, and Lady Jessica’s, but it is far from mine. And besides, you are a landsman, bred to horsemanship. I am a seaman, trained in navigation, and I have been a mariner my entire life. It comes to me that I would rather die at sea, in a worthwhile quest for something I believe in, than wither away in a strange, cold land among folk with whom I cannot even converse.

“Be that as it may, you have ships aplenty here for your needs and mine, and who is to say this Scottish king of yours will not see more than a score of strange vessels as a threat? I—” The admiral cocked his head. “Someone is calling you.” He glanced around and then pointed. “Over there, on the quay.”

Sinclair saw a man waving at him. “Your ears are better than mine, Sir Charles. It’s Tam, and that cannot be good. He would not interrupt me here without cause.”

“Then go to him. But first, let me leave you with this in mind: I may sail off and die hundreds of miles from land of any kind, and I will be content, as I have said. And the men who come with me will have made the choice to do so of their own free will. But think, Sir William…what if the lore of Merica should prove as true as that of Jerusalem and the Treasure that lay hidden there? What if I were to find the place? And what then were I to return to you bearing proofs of what I found? Would that not serve to rally all our brethren, of Sion and the Temple both?” He spread his hands, palms upward. “It is no more strange than digging for the ruins of a Temple no one knew was there. Is it?”

Sinclair raised a hand to Tam to indicate that he should wait a little. “No, it is not, Admiral, when you say it like that. So be it. I will think on this between now and our arrival off Cape Finisterre. But now, if you will permit me, I must see what Tam requires of me.”

Charles St. Valéry watched him walk away, then scratched idly at his beard with the tip of one finger. He was surprised when his young superior stopped and turned back.

“Tam seems to want you to come with me,” Sir William called. “If his tidings are important they will probably affect you, too.”

St. Valéry began to walk again, digging his heavy soles into the yielding pebbles with renewed purpose.




4


"What is it, Tam?”

“I’m not sure.” The sergeant wasted no time on formalities, nodding in greeting to St. Valéry and then addressing him directly. “One of your captains just arrived, Admiral. One of the two you turned back this morning. He asked me to deliver his respects and to ask you to board his galley to speak with him.”

St. Valéry and Sinclair exchanged questioning glances, and then St. Valéry turned his eyes towards the harbor entrance, where a sleek galley floated at anchor, closer than any other of its kind but concealed from where they had stood by the bulk of the ship at the quay.

“It’s Parmaison. But where is de Lisle? And why would he not come to me directly?”

“There’s urgency involved. Great urgency,” Sinclair said. “Look at the oars. He’s ready to put out to sea again immediately, once he has spoken with you.”

“Hmm. Find us a boat, Sergeant.”

“I have one ready, Admiral, at the end of the pier.”

After quitting La Rochelle that morning, St. Valéry, with Sinclair’s concurrence, had sent two of his swiftest galleys to return to the roads approaching the harbor and to remain there for the remainder of that day, keeping watch to see what might develop. It had been an afterthought, no more than a precautionary measure, for they had been under way for more than two hours before the thought occurred to either man, and although they considered it highly unlikely that anything untoward might actually take place, since they had burned the only ships remaining in the harbor, they had agreed that it might be a good idea to keep a watchful eye on the fort and the headlands flanking it. But now one of the delegated vessels had caught up to them, far ahead of schedule.

The captain of the returned galley, Sir Geoffrey Parmaison, watched them pull alongside from the narrow forecastle, then helped the two senior officers aboard in person before leading them to a small folding table and three chairs he had set up beneath an awning on the upper foredeck. He dismissed the watchman at the prow, and then all three men sat down.

“Tell us, Sir Geoffrey,” St. Valéry began without preamble.

Parmaison nodded and then spoke tersely. “We returned to La Rochelle as ordered, Admiral, and arrived in sight of it just in time to see three of our own galleys entering the harbor. We saw them, I say, but we were too far away to attract their attention and could do nothing to stop them sailing into La Rochelle.”

“Who were they? Do you know?”

“Aye, Admiral. De Lisle was closer to them than I was, and swears he recognized one of the galleys as being Antoine de l’Armentière’s.”

“De l’Armentière? He is supposed to be in Cyprus.”

“That’s what I thought, sir, but de Lisle is cousin to him, and he swears it was Antoine’s galley that he saw leading the flotilla. Apparently it differs from any other.”

“Aye, it does. It is Moorish, a prize of war—a pirate vessel, captured off Gibraltar some years ago. De Lisle was sure of this?”

“As sure as he could be from a distance of miles, but whoever it was, he took three Temple galleys into La Rochelle and stayed there.”

“Hmm. Where is Captain de Lisle now?”

“On station, Admiral, waiting for whatever might happen. He sent me back to bring you the word.”

“And you saw nothing more than you have described?”

“Nothing, sir. They went in, and they did not come out.”

“Very well. Thank you, Captain Parmaison. Return to your station, rejoin Captain de Lisle, and bid him remain where he is until he has something more to report.” He held up one hand to stay the man and turned to Sinclair. “Do you have anything to add, Sir William?”

“No, Admiral, because I think you and I are considering the same eventuality. Were either of us in de Nogaret’s shoes in this, we would impound all three vessels, imprison the commanders and their crews, then take the galleys out to sea again, crewed by our own men, to pursue this fleet. Is that what you are thinking?”

“Aye, it is. Captain Parmaison, you can see for yourself that we have no time to waste. Rejoin de Lisle as quickly as you may and bid him wait, well out of reach, to see if those galleys emerge from La Rochelle again. If they do, at the first sign of them, you are to make all speed to return and let us know. Understood?” Parmaison nodded, and St. Valéry rose to his feet. “Then may God be with you and grant you all speed. Wind and oars, Sir Geoffrey, wind and oars. Sir William, we must inform Admiral de Berenger of this at once.”

They could hear Parmaison shouting orders to his crew before they reached the entry port where Tam and their boat waited for them, and before they arrived back at the wharf his galley had already veered away from its anchorage.




5


Vice-Admiral de Berenger’s administrative and organizational skills were beyond dispute; his crews had every piece of Sir Kenneth Sinclair’s convoy—wagons, livestock, and cargo—sorted, dismantled where necessary, and stowed aboard ship in ample time to sail upon the evening tide, leaving the tiny village looking abandoned behind them. Sinclair, who had not really expected that they would complete everything in time to catch the tide, made a point of seeking out the vice-admiral before returning to his galley, which had already shipped the Templar Treasure, and congratulated him on the speed and efficiency of the entire operation. De Berenger, still preoccupied with the final details of dismantling their lading gear and leaving the small wharf clear of debris, thanked him with a slightly distracted smile and told him he would see him aboard within the hour. Sir William left him to it, returning to where Tam Sinclair awaited him patiently in a boat at the end of the wharf. As soon as he was safely aboard, Tam gave the order to the four oarsmen to take them back to the galley, about a hundred yards away.

It was only as they crossed the water that Sinclair realized that he had not seen the Baroness leave the beach, and that he had not thought of her in several hours, and he grunted to himself in satisfaction. Intense concentration on other things had obviously shut her out of his awareness for some time, and he resolved to remember that technique and apply it to her in future. He could see Admiral St. Valéry’s galley already disappearing hull down on the horizon, and the few ships left in the small inlet were all in the final stages of preparing to leave the land again. Sinclair’s galley, de Berenger’s own command, would be the last to go, and Will found himself hoping that the villagers they were leaving behind would waste no time in erasing all sign that they had ever been visited this day.

By the time he boarded the galley, the last members of de Berenger’s party were already climbing into two boats tied to the wharf. The surface of the pier at their back had been swept clean, not a single piece of debris remaining that might be linked to their visit, and after seeing the boats’ oars bite into the water, Will turned away and went in search of his cramped quarters in the forecastle. There he cast off his outer clothing and dropped onto his narrow bunk, remaining there as the ship rocked to and fro before finally putting out to sea. At some point, because there was no urgency for him in anything that was happening, he nodded off to sleep, aware, just before he lost consciousness, that in his mind’s eye he was staring at Lady Jessica Randolph’s face and that she was meeting his gaze, her eyes wide but expressionless, noncommittal, masking whatever she was thinking.

Seven days later, out of sight of land and clinging to a straining rigging rope in the waist of the ship in a howling storm, he was thinking of the woman again and straining to catch sight of the admiral’s galley on the port side, where he had last seen it days before, but he could see nothing. Whatever might be out there, it was hidden from his sight by swooping waves, wind-whipped spume, and horizontally driven rain that stung exposed skin like needles of ice. Twice since leaving the fishing village, and both times on the first day, he had seen her muffled figure looking out over the galley’s rail, once from the stern and once from the prow, but since the weather had begun to worsen on their second day at sea, he had seen no sign of her and had not expected to.

The Bay of Biscay was renowned for the ferocity of its storms, and most especially so at this time of year, with the inexorable approach of winter. Sinclair was well aware of that, just as he knew that the vessel in which he was riding had been designed to survive such storms, and that they would be safe as long as they held far enough out to sea to preclude any possibility of their being blown onto the rocks along the shoreline. His intellect knew that; his heart and his brain knew it; but there was some other part of his being that remained staunchly unconvinced. That part of him had been telling him for days now that he had no business being here on a heaving ship in the middle of nowhere, confronting a successive chain of storms and howling gales; that he should be safe ashore some place, on solid ground, with a strong horse under him and his feet firmly planted in the stirrups.

As he thought about that yet again, he heard his name being shouted, and clutching his anchoring rope, he turned to see Tam Sinclair within arm’s reach. He let go of the rope with one hand and reached out, suddenly conscious of the weight of his sodden mantle, to grasp Tam’s wrist and pull him to where he, too, could grasp the rigging and turn his hunched back to the gale.

“De Berenger sent me to get you,” Tam shouted into Sinclair’s ear through a cupped hand. “He’s in his cabin.”

Sinclair felt his heart sink into his boots as he heard the summons. He was up here on the galley’s central deck for one reason: he had survived his first attacks of seasickness several days earlier, although he could still hardly credit the violent misery he had endured, but even so, the minor degree of tolerance he had since developed for the lurching, pitching, and yawing movements of the ship could not survive in the fetid atmosphere, the darkness, and the chaotic, unpredictable motion belowdecks. The galley’s crew appeared to think nothing of it, and knew the layout of the ship so well that they could find their way about down there in total darkness, but Will Sinclair knew that was a skill he would never possess, and the mere thought of remaining aboard for long enough to develop it appalled him. Now, knowing that he had no alternative but to go aft and belowdecks, he turned and looked back towards the high stern of the ship, where he could see a pair of helmsmen straining against the weight of the tiller, struggling to keep the ship headed directly into the wind and the incessant line of combers bearing down on them from the northwest. Below, in the waist of the vessel, the oarsmen sat huddled and miserable on their benches, waiting patiently, their oars shipped and secured vertically, ready to be deployed at the shout of an order.

“What’s happening, d’you know?”

Tam shook his head. “He came up on deck and sent me to fetch you. Something’s up, but I’ve no more idea than you.”

“Well, let’s find out. I’ll be glad to get out of this.”

“Aye, and so will I. Off this whoreson box and back on dry land. Sooner the better.”

Together, choosing each step with great care, they fought their way back to the stern, where Tam crouched down out of the wind, in the shelter of the ship’s side, while Sir William approached one of three doors in the wall below the stern deck where the helmsmen stood. He knocked, and without waiting for a response, swung the door open and leaned inside. De Berenger was sitting on one side of his sleeping cabin, facing the ship’s wall, in front of a small tabletop that was hinged to the vessel’s timbers so that it could be folded away when it was not in use. He had been writing, for his fingers were stained with ink.

“You sent for me, Sir Edward?”

“I did, Sir William. Come inside, if you will, and close the door.”

Sinclair did as he was bidden, relieved to see that at least there was light in here. Three fat candles hung in heavy sconces, intricately suspended, although he could not quite see how, from a device that hung from the beams of the overhead deck, and although the shadows they cast swung and swooped disconcertingly, their light was nonetheless extremely welcome, projecting an illusion of warmth.

“Sit on the bunk if you wish, or on the stool.” De Berenger glanced at him sympathetically, noting the haggard lines around his eyes and mouth. “How are you feeling, all things considered? Will you last, think you?” There was the merest hint of smile around his eyes.

Sinclair perched himself carefully on the three-legged stool with his spread feet firmly planted on the decking, his back to the door, and one hand clutching an iron bracket that was anchored in the ship’s timbers. “Aye, I’ll last. I know that now, after five days of this. But I warn you, I’m like to vomit without warning. I can barely manage to control myself on deck, in the fresh air, but I cannot stay confined for any length of time without being able to see the horizon.”

De Berenger’s little smile widened to a grin. “Aye, that’s common with seasickness. But don’t worry about vomiting in here. I don’t imagine you have much in you to spew up, after five days. And there’s no shortage of seawater with which to wash it out.” He pointed a thumb towards the papers spilling from the open leather wallet on the table beside him. “I wanted to talk to you about these. Haven’t had much time since they came aboard, and only started reading them this forenoon…But they are thought provoking, and the admiral has obviously taken great pains over what he had to say.” He paused briefly. “They came to me, of course, from admiral to vice-admiral, one shipmaster to another. But you hold higher rank within our Order than either of us ever could, and thus I know that what’s contained in there concerns you primarily. The admiral has suggested that there will be grave decisions to consider, and he suggests, too, what they might entail…I read what he had to say with great interest, but I found myself glad the decisions are not mine to make.”

Sinclair nodded, glancing sideways at the open wallet and its contents. He had watched the wallet come aboard, on the first day of the bad weather, during a brief lull between the passing of one storm and the onset of the next, when St. Valéry’s galley had approached close enough through treacherous waters to shoot a crossbow bolt safely into their ship’s side, close by the entry port. It had taken several attempts, but a bolt had eventually thumped home. A length of fishing line had been tied to it, and attached to the far end of that had been a thicker cord, securing a pitch-covered basket, like a tiny boat, that held a waterproofed package of heavily waxed cloth containing the wallet of dispatches. He had watched the recovery process with interest, coming close to forgetting his own discomfort as he admired the monkeylike dexterity of the seamen who had carried it out, and he had presumed that whatever was involved in the hazardous delivery, it had to be a purely naval matter, since they had been far from land for days by then and nothing had occurred during that time that might involve him in his capacity as a member of the Order’s Council.

Now he looked back at de Berenger, raising one eyebrow. “You wish me to read them?”

“Aye, Sir William. I do. But I suspect you might find the task impossible, given your seasickness. You would have to sit here, head down, and concentrate on reading while everything around you seems to move. And so, if I may make a suggestion?”

“Of course. What is it?”

De Berenger indicated the table again with a wave of his hand. “I have already read everything here, and have been thinking of it for the past few hours. I can tell you what is involved, and outline the admiral’s suggestions. Then, afterwards, if you so wish, you may read anything you choose more carefully, without having to wade through the entire wallet.”

“Excellent suggestion. Do that. Give me the gist of it.”

The vice-admiral picked up a substantial pile of papers and held them up in one hand. “Much of what’s here, naturally enough, is straightforward naval records work—copies of bills of lading, cargo lists, disciplinary reports, that kind of thing. None of that interests us in this instance.” He squared the edges of the papers and aligned them carefully against the bulkhead before picking up a second, much smaller pile that had been set apart. “This is what concerns us. These papers deal with the two main areas that the admiral is concerned about. The first of those is the matter of the three galleys that sailed into La Rochelle after we left. What happened to them, and where are they now?”

“Do we know any of that? I have heard nothing since the admiral delegated those two other galleys to keep an eye on them.”

“Admiral St. Valéry detached two more vessels to hang back and position themselves separately between us and Parmaison and de Lisle. That was five days ago, before the storms came down on us.”

“Separately. You mean separate from each other, or separate from de Lisle’s ships?”

“Both. The second pair, commanded by André du Bois and Charles Vitrier, were to station themselves within view of each other but far enough away from the first two to be able to pass the word to us quickly if they saw any signs of trouble.”

“And?”

“We don’t know. The weather has been too bad for us to know what’s going on out there.”

“But. I can hear a ‘but’ in your tone.”

“Yes, you can. The admiral has been proceeding in the belief that the three galleys have been seized and will come after us.”

“That was our first assumption, and until we find out more, it will remain valid. So what does Admiral St. Valéry propose?”

A tiny frown ticked between the other man’s brows. “That is where his logic evades me…or confuses me…and it is why I decided to talk to you.” He hesitated, then plunged on. “Has Admiral St. Valéry spoken to you of what he would like to do once we are clear of Cape Finisterre and outward bound?”

Sinclair cocked an eyebrow. “Aye. He has some idea of sailing off to the west, across the great sea, in search of something he believes is there.”

“The Merica legend.”

“Ah…He has spoken of it to you, has he?”

“No, not spoken of it exactly.” De Berenger looked troubled, as though he might be betraying a confidence. “He mentioned it, last time we spoke together in private. Hinted that he might like to go in search of it when he resigns as admiral. Said he had dreamed of finding it for years and that there’s nothing to stop him now, if he can find a crew of volunteers…”

Sinclair grunted. “He said much of the same to me. Asked me to consider giving him leave to go. He has no wish to travel with us to Scotland. He made that clear…What think you of the idea?”

De Berenger’s blink revealed his confusion before he asked, “What idea? Merica, or going to Scotland?”

“Merica.”

A play of expressions crossed de Berenger’s face until he shrugged. “Truthfully, I don’t know what to think of it, because the Order never really told us what to think of it, did it? On so many things the teachings are specific: this is what we know, that is a lie promulgated by Rome, that is true, this is foolish superstition. We always knew where we stood in the matter of most of the Order’s lore, and if we misunderstood or disagreed with any part of it, we could ask questions and debate the answers. But this Merica legend…no guidance was ever offered on it.”

Sinclair drew a deep breath and held it, steeling himself against a surge of nausea. When it abated, he continued. “There was none to offer. Nothing is known of it, even within our own Order of Sion, let alone within the Temple. The only thing we know is that the legend exists, and that it is based upon a few obscure references within the earliest records. I asked my sponsors and my mentors about it, each in turn, but none of them had paid it any attention, dismissing it for what it appeared to be—a simple legend, not worth wondering about. Later, though, when I was dispatched to Carcassonne to study, one of my tutors told me to seek out a Brother Anselm while I was there. He was the oldest living member of the Order at that time, and a wellspring of information on the more obscure aspects of the lore. He died only last year.”

He stopped and tilted his head to one side, as though listening, and his anchoring grip on the iron wall bracket eased slightly. “Am I imagining things, or has the pitching lessened?”

De Berenger nodded. “The storm may have blown itself out, or we may be in another lull between onsets. So what did you get from this Brother Anselm?”

“He offered me a different way of thinking about, and looking at, such things, a different approach to obscure lore.” He stopped, listening. “I believe the wind is dying, too. Would you object to stepping outside with me, and continuing our talk out there? Forgive me, but I find the confines of this cabin every bit as stifling as the holds belowdecks.”

De Berenger sprang to his feet, perfectly at ease with the ship’s motion. “Of course, Sir William. Forgive me. I had not realized how much discomfort you were in.” He threw open the cabin door, then stepped aside as Sinclair lurched past him and groped his way to the rail, where he stood with his feet apart and his head thrown back, sucking in great gulps of cold sea air. It really did appear as though the storm had passed, for the wind had dropped and was no longer howling and whipping spume from the wave tops, and the waves themselves had lost their ragged crests. The seas were still huge, propelling the craft in great, swooping surges, but they were noticeably less violent, the sides of the rolling waves now long and smooth, streaked with trailing remnants of the spume that had filled the air such a short time before. De Berenger busied himself looking at the cloud wrack and gauging the extent of the weather change while he waited for his superior to collect himself, and after a short time Sinclair turned back to him, clearly in command of himself again.

“There, I feel better now, much better. I appreciate your concern, Sir Edward, for both my stomach and my well-being…Now, what was I saying before my head started to spin?”

“Brother Anselm, how he offered you a different way of looking at things.”

“Aye, he did…” Sinclair thought for a moment longer, then resumed. “He made it very clear to me that I should never ignore anything simply because I cannot understand it immediately. That sounds obvious, but the truth is that most of us do exactly the opposite most of the time. Anselm had found, as had everyone else who cared to look, that there is nothing in our few references to support the Merica legend. But he had gone one step further than anyone else. He had gone looking for the source of our sources, if you see what I mean.”

De Berenger frowned. “No, I don’t. That sounds impossible. A source is a source. There’s nothing beyond that.”

“Hmm.” William Sinclair looked out at the surging seas, and spoke out towards where he was looking. “That is almost exactly what I said to him, and I remember how he smiled at me before correcting the error in my logic.” He looked at de Berenger and ducked his head slightly, almost apologetically. “I was speaking of our sources, he pointed out—the sources from which the forefathers in our Order originally developed our lore. And that little word, our, has influenced the Order’s perceptions down through the ages. And speaking of perceptions, incidentally, were you surprised when I slipped you the fist grip that night in La Rochelle?”

“Aye, I was,” de Berenger said. “It has been some time since last I met a senior Templar who was also one of our brotherhood.”

“Are you saying you saw me as more of a Temple Boar than a member of the brotherhood?” Sinclair grinned and held up a hand, waving away the chagrin that had immediately shown on de Berenger’s face. “Forget it, man, I was but jesting in order to make a point about the ways in which what we see, or think we see, can influence what we think thereafter. For that is exactly what has happened, Brother Anselm assured me, on this matter of the Merica legend.”

De Berenger inclined his head, clearly waiting to hear more, and Sinclair continued. “Secrecy, we all know, has been paramount in all we have done since the very beginnings of our Order, more than a millennium ago. But those few of us who think of such things today tend to think that the secrecy was originally based upon the need to hide our Jewish identity from the threat of Rome’s vengeance.” He gave the lie to his own words with a tiny jerk of the head. “Not so. Rome was never a threat to us since the earliest days of our settlement in southern Gaul, when we concealed our true roots and blended into the local structure, eventually becoming Christian. No, our need for secrecy was far more than that, and far older. The priesthood of ancient Judea, we know from our own records, was a secret, closed society long before Rome began to stir beyond its seven hills. Its roots went all the way back to Egypt at the dawn of time, in the era of the early Pharaohs, when the Israelites were enslaved for hundreds of years until Moses led them out in search of the Promised Land.

“I know you know all this, so forgive me if I seem to preach, but what comes next is the important part: our earliest forefathers brought their knowledge out of Egypt with them, and much of that knowledge was deeply rooted, after so many generations, in the religion of Egypt, with its worship of Isis and Osiris. That lore they took to Jerusalem, where Solomon built his Temple, and the priests were the sacred guardians of its secrets. They—our early forefathers—had their own lore, just as we have ours, but their sources were Egyptian, unutterably ancient.”

Sinclair stopped to watch a young seaman, carrying a bucket, make his way down the ladder from the steering platform above their heads, and when the youth had passed and vanished from view, he continued. “What Anselm enabled me to see then—and I would never have thought of it had he not directed me—was that our more recent forefathers, the fugitive priests from the sack of Jerusalem, had been unable to bring all of that with them. They had escaped with only what they could carry, and had concealed the rest, hoping to return for it later. We found it eventually, when Hugh de Payens and his friends unearthed it, but twelve hundred years had passed by then, and throughout that time, our Order had formed itself around the lore salvaged from Palestine…Naturally, being human and dedicated to their eventual return to their true home, the earliest brethren gave the greater part of their attentions to those parts of the lore that offered most towards that end. And other, seemingly lesser parts they neglected and allowed to fall into disuse, so that their origins were forgotten and all that remained was the original mention of such things. And most prominent and mystifying among those was—and it remains so to this day—the element that we know as the legend of Merica.”

Listening to Sinclair, Sir Edward de Berenger had moved to lean against the ship’s side, where he remained now, staring wordlessly at his young superior.

Sinclair smiled at him. “Do you find that hard to credit?”

The vice-admiral shook his head. “Not at all. I believe it makes perfect sense. What you see in my face as doubt is mere amazement, born of my own disbelief that no one, myself included, has ever thought of this before.”

“Why should you have—you or anyone else? It is an obscure legend, forgotten by everyone except a few. It was by merest accident that I found out about the ancient Egyptian roots. Had Brother Anselm not been who he was—and had he not been in Carcassonne when I went there—I would never have been able to envision such antiquity.” He straightened his shoulders and turned towards the sea again, spreading his arms and leaning his hands on the galley’s rail as he gazed towards the southwest, where a rift had occurred among the clouds and a single brilliant shaft of light shone down clear edged, illuminating one patch of water.

“Look at that. A single ray of sunshine changing the world as we see it. What petty, ineffectual things we are, we men. We vaunt our prowess and our power, thinking to alter the world, building empires and Orders, only to watch them scattered and destroyed by things we can never hope to control…Three days ago, we had a fleet at our command—nigh on thirty ships. A month before that, we had an enterprise, a mighty Order, that we thought inviolable, invincible. And what do we have now?” He scanned the seas around them. “I count three ships. And none of them, I think, is Admiral St. Valéry’s.” He grimaced wryly at de Berenger. “I have a fear, in my heart, Edward, that we may be lost out here, helplessly witnessing the ending of an era. The ending of the world we have known.”





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