Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

“I know.” Kenneth’s grin grew broader. “That’s why you do it. You always have, even when we were boys, and I never mentioned it because sometimes it saved me from a beating … You think Tam will be able to get the wagon out of sight without anyone asking questions?”

“Of course, so be it he does it openly. Folk will assume it contains all our gear, and it does. The chests are well covered and tied down. No one will look beneath the wraps, and we’ll move them out into hiding tomorrow.”

“If you say so, Brother … you’re the man in charge.” He stood up in his stirrups and peered ahead to where the path curved, following the riverbank. “We’re almost there and I feel like a boy again. I’m going to ride ahead and let them know we’re coming. I wonder if Peggy will be here. Father’s going to have a fit. I’ll have some people ready to take your horses.”

He kicked his horse to a gallop, and Will smiled as he watched him disappear around the bend in the track ahead, at the same time regretting that he could not take his brother and his father fully into his confidence. His father knew little of the Temple Order, other than that he had two sons who served it, and neither he nor Kenneth had any inkling of the existence of the other, far more ancient Order of Sion.

He grunted and turned in his saddle to make sure that the column behind him was in good order, since they would come into sight of his father’s house within moments. Everything was as it should be, but he gave the hand signal to tighten up the column anyway, then went back to thinking about the reason for his whistling. One of their two ships from the Mediterranean had arrived the morning they left, having left its sister ship behind while it sped home to Arran bearing a large wallet of written reports for Will from the headquarters of the Order of Sion in Aix-en-Provence. Will had spent many hours immersed in those documents on the voyage from Arran and at every opportunity since then, and the information they contained had been more than disquieting, even while he had been anticipating nothing good.

Jacques de Molay and several of his closest advisers, all members of the Governing Council, were being held under close arrest in Paris and subjected to questioning by the functionaries of the Inquisition, and there was a terse report in one of the missives, gained through a Sion brother at the King’s court in Paris, that Master de Molay stood condemned, having allegedly admitted to several of the cardinal charges and confessed himself guilty. Will cringed each time he thought of that, because he could only guess at what kinds of atrocities and iniquitous tortures must have been inflicted upon the Master of the Temple to reduce him to the condition in which he would confess to such baseless charges.

In a commentary attached to the report, Seigneur Antoine de St. Omer, the seneschal of the Order of Sion and a direct descendant of Godfrey St. Omer, one of the seven founders of the Temple, had offered solace of his own, remarking that the man had not yet been born who could withstand the torments of the Holy Inquisition, undergoing tortures that encompassed being burned with live coals, stretched on the rack until one’s joints separated, having one’s bones deliberately smashed and left unset, being lowered into vats of water to the point of drowning and then being revived and resubmerged, and having one’s extremities crushed and mangled by the application of screws, all of these torments varying endlessly from day to day. These were the instruments of the Inquisitors … the Christian God’s own tools in the war against heresy. Will had vomited on first reading the litany, and his mind had never been free of morbid fascination since that time, for if a giant of a man like de Molay could be broken by such means, what chance had any other poor, accused soul of finding mercy or salvation?

He saw the roofline of his father’s house above the trees that surrounded the knoll on which it was built, and shook his head clear of the images that had been thronging in on him. He could hear voices raised in tumult ahead of him and he raised a fist above his head and kicked his horse to a canter.

TWO

“What do you intend to do now?”

Sir Alexander Sinclair of Roslin had sat silent for more than an hour while his two sons told him their tale of the recent events in France and Arran, and now he spoke to Will. It was late at night, and he had led them directly from the great hall of his house after the communal supper into the bedchamber he had shared with their mother since before their births. It was a vast room with comfortable chairs and a huge stone fireplace, and the massive fire burning in the hearth had sunk into embers since their arrival.

Will let the question go unanswered while he gazed at his father for a while, taking stock of the changes he could see in the man. At sixty-eight, Sir Alexander was still a large man, still broad of shoulder and erect in posture, but he had aged greatly, his beard gray-white and his thick, long hair silvered into a halo about his head. His wife had died ten years before, of a sudden sickness that had taken her from her husband before he’d had time to adjust to the possibility that she might die, and the loss had devastated him, leaching much of the bulk and muscle from his giant frame. His mind, however, was unimpaired, and his blue eyes were as bright as Will remembered them.

Will shook his head. “I cannot say, Father.”

“Why? Because you know not, or will not? There are few of your Order left in the land, apart from your own soldiery, very few … Sir Alan Moray for one, Sir Robert Randolph, a score or so others. Their observances of your rituals and monkish ceremonials might have been neglected, for we have been at war these past ten years and more, and most of the Temple clergy returned to England years ago. But they will rally to you if you summon them, for they have no idea about this morass of treachery in France, and I dare say they might welcome some solid leadership after so long without it. So which is it, Son, cannot or will not?”

“Cannot, because at this moment I simply do not know. But the need to know consumes me, every waking moment.”

“Aye, well that, at least, is as it should be. The rest will come to you. Having heard what you told me, I am not surprised you’re undecided. Betrayed on every side, by every superior who should support you, you need to think things through, and from a viewpoint that you might never have contemplated ere this all came to pass … I know little of the Temple, but if I can help you in any way, you’ve but to ask. You know that.”

“I do, and I thank you for it. But there is—”

“What happened to the Treasure?” his father interrupted. “I hope it was well hidden, for the thought of Philip Capet laying his hands on it offends me. Did he find it?”

Will glanced at his brother, who was wide eyed and slack jawed with shock, and had to smile in spite of himself. “That is what I was about to say, Father,” he said. “The Treasure was well hidden, and Philip’s dogs did not find it.” He nodded towards his brother. “Kenneth reached it first, deep in the forest of Fontainebleau, and brought it safely out. It’s sitting in your barn right now.”

Now it was his father’s face that went wide with shock.

“The Treasure is here ? The Temple Treasure, in Roslin? That seems beyond credence. Most men doubt that it even exists nowadays.”

“It exists very solidly, Father, believe me. I’ll show it to you tomorrow, but only the chests, I fear. I’ve never seen them open. Their contents is the most closely held secret of our Order, valuable beyond price. Only the Grand Master is permitted to know what they are. His two closest deputies have access to the keys to the chests, but even they are not permitted to look until one of them becomes Master himself.”