Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

Quite simply, as he had long since admitted to himself, much of his failure to describe what he had seen in the chests was based upon fear: his very real fear of betraying the secret by committing anything to writing. Unwritten, the secret was safe in his mind. Written down, it would pose a constant danger of discovery. He knew the contents of the chests were familiar to the highest members of the ancient brotherhood, for it was they, or their forebears from two hundred years before, who had commissioned Hugh de Payens and his small fraternity to find the Treasure, described in minute detail in the Order’s ancient lore. He knew, too, that certain portions of the Treasure had been taken back to France for study, to Aix itself, to furbish truth of their ancient records, but he had no idea at all of why the brotherhood had wished to send the Treasure to safety beyond France.

Certainly it made sense that it should be kept away from King Philip and de Nogaret, but neither one of those depraved souls had the slightest scintilla of suspicion that there was such an entity as the Order of Sion, and no senior member of the Order of Sion had any overt connection with the Order of the Temple, for obvious and necessary reasons. No man could reveal under torture what he did not know, and even if any of the lesser brethren, who served both Temple and Sion, were to reveal something under duress, the secrecy and intricacy of the Order’s structure was such that nothing could be proved or would be found. The major certainty of Sion’s security lay in the fact that the Inquisitors could not possibly conceive of another, far more ancient, secret, and non-Christian structure underlying the Order of the Temple, their sole target. They could not possibly ask questions about something whose existence they did not even suspect.

That knowledge was a more than sufficient reason for Will Sinclair to have grave doubts about committing anything to writing.

Dear God , he thought. How can I write anything of this?

He was interrupted, his pen still undipped, by footsteps in the hall outside, and then came a quiet knock. The door swung open, and young Ewan Sinclair leaned into the room, his hand on the door handle.

“Your pardon, Sir William. My father says can you come at once. There’s a galley coming in, from the north. It’s the admiral.”

“What brings him back so soon? Wait you then, and walk with me.”

He put his pen down by the inkwell and replaced the sheet of parchment, trying not to think about what the new arrival might bring with it. He glanced from side to side of his table desk, making sure that he had left nothing of importance for idle eyes to scan, then stepped away and turned to where Ewan stood waiting. They crossed the empty hall together to the outer door, Will glancing down and sideways to eye the slight limp with which the younger man favored his right leg.

“How is the leg? Does it still bother you as much?”

“No, sir, it’s mending nicely. Brother Anthony seems pleased with it, although he warns me, every time he sees me limping, that I shouldna be so soft on mysel’. The harder I use it, he says, the stronger it will mend.” He grinned, a cheerful, infectious grimace. “Mind you, I fancy it easier to tell others how to act when you’re not the one bearing the pain.”

Will grinned back and resisted the urge to slow his pace. Young Ewan had been warring on the mainland with King Robert, part of the last rotation of fighting men on that duty, and towards the end of his threemonth tour, while riding with the King’s brother, Sir Edward, in Galloway, he had taken a wicked slashing wound above his right knee from a heavy broadsword wielded by a MacDowal warrior. Luckily for him, he had been well tended immediately after the skirmish by one of their own men, a veteran physician who had spent years in Spain tending to wounds sustained by Templar knights in the wars against the Moors.

“What of your father? Does he have ought to say of your progress?”

Again the young man grinned, but this time he answered in his native tongue, so that Will had to listen closely to understand the fast-flowing rattle of his clipped words. “You know my father, Uncle Will. He glowered like an angry bear when I came back and he first set eyes on me … but that was to mask his concern.

He wasna frowning at me. But that was the extent o’ what he’d say. Since then he hasna mentioned anything about it … Hasna even asked me what happened.”

“What did happen?”

“I don’t know … I canna remember. I mean, it was a tulzie … and there were people everywhere, screamin’ and shoutin’ and fightin’ wi’ one another. There was a lot o’ spillin’ blood, I mind, but to tell ye the truth, I didna know who was who, because they a’ looked the same. There was no way o’ tellin’ Bruce men from MacDowals. So I was sittin’ there on my horse, gowpin’ around and ready to swing at anyone who came at me, but I didna dare swing at anybody else, for fear o’ hitting one o’ our own men. And then I felt this big dunt on my leg, and when I looked down, there was a big sword hangin’ out o’ it. Nobody holdin’ the sword, I mind. Nothing holdin’ it at all, in fact, except the edges o’ the gouge it had made in my leg.” He shrugged. “I must ha’e fell off my horse, for I didna mind anythin’ after that.”

“Passed out. I’m not surprised. Did you kill anyone over there in Scotland?”

“No, Uncle Will, I didna.”

Will looked at him sideways. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

“No, sir. But I will, one o’ these days.”

“Don’t wish it on yourself, lad. It’s not as thrilling as it’s made out to be. Aha, that was quick. De Berenger is wasting no time, so something must have happened.”

The admiral’s huge galley was still approaching the wharf below the hall, but a boat had already been launched from it and was pulling quickly to the shoreline, its thwarts crammed with people, some of them wearing brightly colored clothes that marked them as strangers to Arran. Will recognized Tam Sinclair among the small crowd of men lining the waterside, waiting to pull it up onto the beach, and although he could recognize none of the newcomers from this distance, he felt an urgency that compelled him to rush down the long flights of steps to meet them.

Less than halfway down, however, he hesitated, slowing to a stop in stunned disbelief as he recognized one and then another of the newcomers. The first ashore, being aided onto the firm shingle by Tam himself, was a stooped, elderly man with a shock of silvery white hair. He looked up as Tam released his arm, saw Will on the steps above him, and waved.

“Stay here,” Will said to Ewan, and walked quickly down the remaining steps to the steep pathway that led down to the beach, his mind in a whirl.

Etienne Dutoit, Baron of St. Julien in the province of Aix-en-Provence, was one of the senior and most influential members of the Order of Sion, but he had also been Will’s sponsor on the occasion of Will’s Raising to the brotherhood, and the second man being helped ashore behind him had been Will’s co-sponsor, Simon de Montferrat, seigneur of the distinguished clan that claimed precedence among the federation of ancient bloodlines known as the Friendly Families, whose ancestors had fled Jerusalem before the destruction of the city by the Romans. These two were lineal descendants of the founding fathers of their Order, and the significance of their presence on Arran was so overwhelming that Will was scarcely able to think about what it portended.

He reached them moments later and fell to one knee in front of Etienne Dutoit, but the old man refused his obeisance and seized him by the shoulders, pulling him upright in a flurry of expostulations meant to convey that Will had no need or reason to kneel. Instead, the Baron embraced him closely, murmuring greetings in his ear, then pushed him towards his companion, and de Montferrat greeted Will the same way. Behind them stood two tall, richly dressed young men whose fine weapons and breadth of shoulder pronounced them knights, and whose unmistakable vigilance proclaimed them bodyguards.