Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

He stopped, for the space of a heartbeat, then continued. “Think on this. Promise me that you will never again lift your hand in violence against your brothers of the Order, agree to trim your beard and join your brethren again as an equal, and I will release you in good faith as soon as you summon me and say you will obey and observe the Rule again. But I warn you, Martelet, cross me in this and you will surely die thereafter, bricked up within a wall at the behest of your brethren. Summon me if you decide to be sensible.” And with that he spun on his heel and stalked out, signaling the waiting guard to resume his duties.

Two days later, on a bright but cold afternoon, the summons came, brought to him by Tam, young Henry following at his heels like a watchful puppy. “Martelet’s asking for you. Will ye go?”

Will set his sword and whetstone against the wall by the step where he had been sitting and stood up. “A bath, Tam, good and hot, as quick as you may.”

“A bath? You had a bath three days ago!”

“Not for me, man, for Martelet. He’s filthy and foul and hoaching with fleas and lice. Set out fresh clothing for him, too—I have plenty and to spare—then take the ones he will strip off away and burn them, fleas and all. Be quick now. Henry, you help him.”

Mere moments later, Will was facing Martelet again though the bars of his cage. The prisoner’s face was calm now, showing no trace of the anger or bitterness that had marred it before. Will nodded to him. “Have you decided?”

When Martelet spoke, his voice was as calm as his expression. “I have. I confess I have been arrogant, perhaps slightly mad, and my behavior inexcusable.”

“Not inexcusable. It is pardoned.”

“My thanks then. I would like you to know that I will not forswear myself in this. I will obey henceforth.”

“So mote it be. Guard! Release the prisoner. I’ll wait outside, in the fresh air.” That last was to Martelet, who merely nodded and waited for the guard to open the door to his cage and unlock his chains.

Several minutes later, he stood cringing in the bright afternoon light, holding both hands up to shield his eyes against the unaccustomed glare. Will gave him time to adjust to the brightness, then led him to his own quarters, where Tam and young Henry already had the wooden tub half full of steaming water.

“Drop your clothing over there in the corner, then cleanse yourself in the bath. Be thorough. Use the soap. Everywhere. It is medicinal and will kill the vermin in your hair, both head and body. And have no fear, the water will not sap your strength or lay you open to the Devil’s wiles. There are fresh clothes on the chair there and those boots should fit you … and you’ll find trimming shears on that table by the wall. Tam will help you with the trimming, if you need him. When you are cleaned and ready, my squire here will bring you to me. I shall be in the preceptor’s quarters, with the preceptor himself, Admiral de Berenger, and Bishop Formadieu attending me. You will address your contrition to them, and they will absolve you of the remainder of your punishment, for you stand lawfully convicted and sentenced according to the Rule, and in seeking clemency you must now convince them, the senior brethren of our community, that your remorse and contrition is real and heartfelt. Farewell then. We will await you.”

Within the hour, the thing was done. Martelet, scrubbed and trimmed and combed and freshly dressed in a simple tunic and leggings, looked like an entirely different person from the man they had all come to deplore in recent months, and the tribunal of senior brethren sat emotionlessly as he recanted his former behavior and asked humbly for reinstatement. The tribunal had few questions for him, contenting themselves with reminding him that he lived under oath and now upon their sufferance.

Will was glad to see that de Montrichard, too, had undergone some kind of quiet transformation in the recent past. Gone was the diffidence and the air of indecisiveness that had marked the man and caused Will great concern since their departure from La Rochelle; the knight who stood here now was every inch the Temple preceptor, crisp, decisive, and authoritative, speaking from the full stature of his office. He reminded Martelet that he would undergo close scrutiny for the month to follow, and that, should his behavior be found wanting, he would return to the cell from which he had been released, to serve out twice the length of his full sentence. He warned him sternly to adhere strictly to the Order’s Rule henceforth, and then dismissed the case.

Martelet stood hesitantly for several moments, clearly not quite believing that he had been pardoned and set free, and then he bowed deeply and thanked the tribunal for their clemency, before turning away and marching smartly from their presence. Only then did Will permit himself to relax, subsiding back into his chair and breathing a deep sigh. He would have been reluctant to cause the man’s death, but he would have had no option had Martelet chosen to remain obdurate.

He barely noticed when the others began to stand up and move away, and by the time he did, his mind, freed from his concern over Martelet, had already moved on to other, less harrowing things, among them the impending arrival of the ship from the Mediterranean coast of France; the upcoming change of roster for the troops soon due to return from riding with the King on the mainland; the incongruous possibility of releasing his men from their oath of chastity—a thought that recurred to him from time to time nowadays but bore no real onus of consideration; and the troublesome matter of whether to respond to the letter from the Randolph woman. She had gone to considerable trouble to put his mind at ease on the matter of the King’s illness, and he felt both grateful that she had and guilty for the pleasure he had taken from it. But then he reminded himself that she had been ordered to do so, for all intents and purposes, by the Bruce himself. His decision not to respond was made as he grasped the wooden fists at the ends of his chair’s arms and levered himself up to follow the others to the refectory, only to find that Richard de Montrichard had stopped to wait for him in the doorway.

“May I ask a question?” he asked, as though seriously awaiting a deliberated answer.

“Of course. What is it?”

The preceptor stepped aside to allow Will to pass, then fell into step beside him. “Idle curiosity, you might think, but it is not. How long do you believe it will take us, north and south, to implement all you designed for us before you went away last month? I can judge my own people’s progress, but you are the only one with an entire overview, and so I thought to ask you outright. My estimate would be four months from now.”

Will looked at him. “For all of it, Lochranza included? No, Sir Richard, I fear you are being optimistic. The best I could guess at, to see this island settled to our satisfaction, would be half a year from now—high summer—and perhaps even longer. We have much to do, and it cannot all be done at once. We have buildings and barracks, bothies and byres to build.” He smiled at the preceptor’s blank-faced reaction to the Scots words, and kept on speaking. “And they have to be built well—roofed and snug against the weather all the year round. We’ll build them out of peat sod, so they’ll be solid, but we’ll have to dig the sod in the first place. We have to prepare beach sites, too, where our galleys and ships can be hauled ashore and their fouled bottoms scraped clean of barnacles and shellfish. That will take some work. There are sufficient suitable sites around, but no one has ever had a need to shape them to such purposes, so we will have to start from the very beginnings on that project. The logging you are familiar with, but that will not last six months. De Pairaud’s master sawyer tells him we will have used up all the suitable trees within half that time, so after that, we will simply be sawing and stacking the remaining logs. And atop all of that, we have our community obligations and holy days, and our ongoing training to be dealt with, including the revolving roster of the troop accommodations between here and Scotland. No, my friend, trust me—we will be fortunate indeed if we are finished here within six months.”