Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

Which leads to the main purpose of this letter: to inform you of affairs being planned. A delegation of powerful Frenchmen has been here. We have no knowledge of how they were able to trace His Grace’s whereabouts—a close-held secret—but they arrived in secrecy and departed again directly for France. The substance of their visit was to bruit the notion of an alliance between His Grace and France himself, Philip Capet, with the end of mounting a fresh crusade against the Moors in Spain. His Grace received them courteously, accompanied by only a few of his closest advisers. He told them that he would consider the matter, and that it appealed to him, but that his own realm is yet insufficiently strong to permit his soon departure from its shores. And then, as soon as they were gone, he sent for me and in a private audience told me what had transpired, after which he asked me to write this to you on his behalf, and in your native tongue, learned by me from my late husband’s family, explaining his thoughts to you while reassuring you that you and yours need have no immediate concerns, since it is unlikely that this matter will progress further for several years.

From the viewpoint of diplomacy, this development has great political value—an open acknowledgment of His Grace’s kingship by the most powerful King in Christendom. It has equal, future value as a weapon against those who would see His Grace’s excommunication made permanent, since the joint leader of such a crusade could scarcely be condemned by Holy Church. But it also emphasizes the delicacy of your situation and his own in the face of your status as fugitives from France and Philip’s displeasure, for if that knowledge were to become widespread, it would endanger the proposed alliance. Therefore His Grace requests your increased concern in compliance with his wishes in the matter of disguising the identities of your people on the island—an assurance I have already tendered with confidence on your behalf. He has no doubts that you will honor his wishes, but merely wished to draw attention to their increased importance in the face of this approach from France.

I have great respect and liking for this man. I met him, as you might already know, soon after leaving your island, led to do so by Sir James himself, and His Grace honored me at that time by requesting that I accept the guardianship of his young niece, Marjorie, the illegitimate daughter of his beloved brother Nigel, dead at the hands of the English torturers. The child is one of the few remaining female relatives left free in his whole family, and he believes she might remain safe with me, since I am but new-come from France and few know much about me. Accordingly, she has now become my niece, adopted by me in France and brought here in my train, and when we leave here, she will come with me to my family’s home in the valley of the River Nith, near Dumfries town.

Thus I am well, and greatly honored on a number of counts, and my task here in the north is almost done, this letter being almost the last of my self-imposed duties. Sir James is here with His Grace for several days and has promised me that he will deliver this to you when next he travels near your place of refuge. I promise you that upon my return to my home in Nithsdale, a mere day’s travel from where you are, I will make no further effort to distract you from your humorless and all-consuming duties. But I hope that you might some day think of me, despite all your stern disapproval and imposed restrictions, as your friend,

Jessica Randolph de St. Valéry

FIVE

Will folded the letter up carefully and went to have his bath. From the first words of the letter, he had lost awareness that it had been written by a woman, his entire attention given to the content rather than the sender. The news of the French King’s approach to Bruce troubled him only briefly, the generosity of his nature accepting the importance of the gesture to the King of Scots. And he decided that it could do no harm to reinforce his instructions on their need for anonymity on Arran. He owed that much to Bruce, he knew, for any failure by the Arran Templars to achieve complete invisibility in the eyes of the idly curious could cause the King of Scots unnecessary and embarrassing discomfiture.

Then, his decision made, he dressed in fresh, dry clothing and summoned his senior officers into conference. There he outlined what he had been told and asked each of them to think of any difficulties that they might have overlooked in putting his earlier instructions into practice. Did they believe they had they been entirely successful, he asked, in hiding any and all signs that might identify their men as monks of the Order?

There was, he was told, only the matter of the mutinous monk, Martelet, who was still imprisoned, with a full month more of solitary confinement ahead of him. The man, Will was told, was still recalcitrant, refusing to acknowledge that he had done anything wrong.

As soon as the meeting was concluded, Will went down to the cells and confronted Martelet, who looked as he might be expected to look after a month of being confined in a tiny cell, deprived of any means of cleansing himself. Will dismissed the sergeant on guard duty, then crossed the floor in two paces to stand in front of the bars, gazing at the prisoner, who glowered back at him without speaking. Will stared at the man for a long time, watching his eyes and seeing no signs of yielding there—no hint of indecision or regret.

“You look unhappy, and you have served only half your sentence. I will take care to avoid seeing you as you approach the next month’s end.” He waited then, but Martelet made no sign of having heard a word.

“You are a fool, you know. There is no one here to overhear us, and I am telling you, man to man, that you are a fool. You are also a mutinous, arrogant ingrate and a disgrace to our Order.”

That won him a response, as Martelet straightened up and almost spat at him. “You would not dare speak thus were there no bars between us!”

“Twice a fool now. It was I who put you in here, you may recall. I bested you out in the yard when you were armored, with a bare sword in your hand. I have no need to dare anything. You, on the other hand, must dare to change your attitude. I was not present when you were sentenced to be held here, nor had I any voice in what transpired. That decision was made by your peers, the brethren you insulted by your arrogant attitude. But hear my voice in this: you cannot win in this case. You swore three oaths on entering this Order, and the greatest of the three was obedience—obedience to your superiors, and to the Rule that dictates the behavior of each of us. Your breach of that vow brought you here, to this. And your continuing rebellion can have but one sure end, for it will not be tolerated by your brothers—it cannot be, for the good of all. Thus, if you persist in this folly, you will end up being immured, like other disobedient souls before you. Think you to find any satisfaction in being walled up alive and left to die of thirst, and all for foolish pride?”

He waited, expecting some response, but all he saw was a momentary flicker, perhaps doubt or fear, behind the other’s angry eyes.

“Wake up, Brother Martelet, and use the wits God gave you. We are not so many here that we can afford to lose a brother so needlessly, and absolution is not yet beyond your reach. Look at me now. No crossed surcoat, no mail, no forked beard, and no tonsure. But I am still the man I was a month ago and have been all my life. And I am Master here … Master in Scotland, as you yourself heard proclaimed. Beyond those doors at my back, your brethren are no different than they were, save that they, too, are dressed and armed and bearded as I am, their tonsures vanished. This was not done upon a whim. You heard the reasons announced before your trial and they are sound and solid, necessary to our continuing welfare. And still you choose to be obdurate, which makes me call you fool for your pride and stubbornness.”