Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

Will stepped back from de Montferrat’s embrace and looked from one to the other of his former mentors, shaking his head in bewilderment. But then he remembered who and where he was, and spread his arms, smiling at both of them. “My friends and brothers, you are welcome here … how much, I have no words to express. But how came you here? And why? And aboard a galley from the north? You have much to tell me, it seems, But here is no place for it. Come you up to the hall, where we may be at ease. You will find it a far cry from the comfort of your homes in Provence, but it has comfortable chairs and a sound roof to keep out wind and rain.” He looked now at the two straight-faced young knights. “You gentlemen are welcome, too, since I presume the safety of my guests here is your prime concern.” He held out his hand to each of them. “I am William Sinclair.”

The two knights bowed formally and named themselves, and then Will turned to lead them up to the hall, calling up to Ewan Sinclair, who had remained on the steps above, to run ahead and order food and drink to be prepared for their visitors. Will glanced back at his guests. “You will have baggage, I presume?”

“It’s all here in the boat, Sir William,” Tam Sinclair told him. “I have it in hand. I’ll see it safely up as soon as it’s unloaded.”

“Aye. My thanks, Tam. Take them to the rooms over the hall.” Again he hesitated, glancing at each of the newcomers in turn. None of these men were Templars, but everyone in the press surrounding them on the beach was, and Will knew speculation would be lively afterwards with wonderings of who these people were and why they had come here from France. And so he decided to limit the imaginings of his men from the outset.

“Brethren,” he cried, seeing how every eye present turned towards him. “These knights are very dear to me, friends and mentors of long standing. I cannot say exactly why they come here today, for I do not yet know, but I suspect they bring us tidings of the welfare of our Order in France.” He looked questioningly at Dutoit and de Montferrat, and when both men inclined their heads gravely in acknowledgment, he turned back to his men. “Therefore we will have information we may trust, and as soon as I know of what it consists, I will pass it on to you. Now you may return to your interrupted tasks.”

As the small procession began to climb the stairs, with Will leading, flanked by the two elders, the Baron St. Julien answered the first of Will’s questions, speaking in the same measured tones that Will remembered from years before, his vibrant baritone unchanged by the years that had elapsed since then.

“We sought you first in the north, at Lochranza, only to find you had already returned here. Admiral de Berenger received us—he had just returned himself, he told us—and seeing our chagrin at having missed you, he brought us south in his galley, much faster than our own ship would have. He will join us as soon as he has put his ship to order.”

Will said nothing. De Berenger, too, belonged to the Brotherhood of Sion, and he would be as interested as Will in whatever urgency it was that had brought these two so far from home. But the steps ahead of them were steep for two elderly men, and so he asked no more questions, concentrating instead on assisting his guests to climb the long flights of stairs that had been made for use by men much younger than they were. Time enough for questions and answers once they had refreshed themselves and regained their wind.

FOUR

Aresinous knot exploded loudly in the iron grate, and the burning logs collapsed upon themselves, sending a storm of sparks whirling up to be sucked into the chimney, but ignored by the small group of men who sat ranged around the hearth, staring silently into the roiling flames, each engrossed in his own thoughts. Outside in the cooling night the air was yet warm from the late-August sun, but within the hall the temperature reminded its occupants that they were in Scotland, where the sun’s warmth seldom penetrated walls of stone and timber.

Etienne Dutoit, Baron de St. Julien, rose to his feet and picked up a heavy iron poker from the grate, then used it to break down the burning logs further, stirring them into an inferno before moving to select several logs from the pile in the big iron fuel basket and throw them onto the pyre. He pulled them this way and that with the poker until he was satisfied that they would burn properly. That done, he set the poker down again in its place and turned to face the men now watching him.

“You live in a cold country, my friends,” he said.

Edward de Berenger grunted and sat up straighter. “It’s not so much cold, Baron, as it is damp. Cold you can live with, and you can dress to fight it. But the dampness here is an internal thing … it chills your bones in summer as well as winter. The only way to combat that is from within, with solid, hot food in your belly.”

Dutoit smiled. “Aye, well, none can deny we have had our fill of that tonight. Your cooks are remarkably good.” He drew himself up to his full height, his back to the fire as he looked at the group facing him in an arc, his eyes shifting from face to face. His traveling companion de Montferrat sat on his far right, combing his fingers idly through his sparse gray beard, and next to him sat Bishop Formadieu, the senior Bishop of the island community. On Formadieu’s right sat Admiral de Berenger, and beside him was de Montrichard, the preceptor. Sir Reynald de Pairaud, the acting preceptor of Lochranza, who had accompanied Will to Brodick for the coming chapter meeting, sat next to the preceptor. Will himself made up the last of the gathering, seated next to Dutoit’s empty chair on the right end of the arc.

“And so to our affairs, the reasons for our presence,” the Baron began. “Neither Sir Simon here nor I myself have any overt association with your Order, so we and our affairs have been largely unaffected by the upheavals in our homeland these past long months. Unaffected, I say, but not unmoved, and I was happy when my dear friend Sir William thought fit to send to me with a request for assistance in gathering information on the status of the continuing investigation into your Order.” He held up a hand, palm outwards, to forestall a protest that did not emerge, and when he heard nothing but silence he quirked an eyebrow and nodded briefly.

“So be it … A request to gather information on the status of the investigation. I will not insult you by offering any opinion on whether or no that investigation is justifiable. I will say only that I myself, along with Sir Simon and many other men of probity and sound mind in France, deplore the actions of our self-righteous King and the creatures with whom he surrounds himself to carry out his bidding. That truth, allied with my long-standing fondness and admiration for Sir William Sinclair and the Order he represents, made it a pleasure rather than a burden to gather all the information available to me and to my friends throughout the land.”

He turned slightly to look at Will. “I discovered, though, and Sir Simon agreed with me, that although your questions were exhaustive, Sir William, the answers to them were even more demanding, and the upshot of that, after several wasted weeks of trying to write down an adequate summation of what we had learned, with all the conflicting elements of rumor and conjecture accompanying it, was that we decided the only way to present the information was in person, where we can listen to your reservations and respond to them.” He looked around again. “So, before I begin, does anyone wish to ask me anything? Or does anyone wish to challenge my right, as a non-Templar, to speak to you on this?”

Bishop Formadieu cleared his throat. “On the contrary, Baron Dutoit. What you have to tell us will add clarity, both to what we know and what we fear, for you will deal with it through the eyes of a dispassionate observer. I cannot think of any reason why my brethren should object to that.” He looked left and right at his brethren. “Does anyone disagree?”