Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

“Sin over you … Aye, why not? I am a man, after all, and you are … yourself. The mere contemplation of you stirs temptation, and the sins of the mind are as potent and destructive, we are told, as sins of the flesh.”

His admission stunned her, leaving her speechless.

“You once called yourself my friend, in the first letter I received from you. And I am honored by your friendship, undeserved as it was at first. But I was a Temple knight at that time, living within and dedicated to a brotherhood I thought to be immutable and sacrosanct—that is the second time I have used that word within this hour, though I have come to see it nowadays as undeserving of the breath most men require to utter it.

“Still, that was what I believed when you and I first met, and I believed it deeply and sincerely. The knights of the Temple, as all the world once knew, were forbidden to consort with women, even their mothers and sisters, for they were monks, sworn to the cloister albeit they might seldom live there. And so I was outraged—” He snorted, a smothered laugh of scorn, shaking his head at his own remembered folly. “I was outraged and offended at having your company thrust upon me, no matter your peril or your family connection to Admiral de St. Valéry, so I decided to safeguard my own convictions by avoiding and ignoring you as much as possible. I never thought of it as cowardice—not at that time, although I see it as such now—but I soon discovered the impossibility of what I was attempting to achieve.”

“Ignoring and avoiding me?” Jessie was smiling gently, and he returned her smile wryly.

“Aye. You are not easy to ignore, and the way things transpired, you were equally difficult to avoid. But I fear I treated you ill, for all that you were guiltless in being who you were.”

“And what changed that? May I ask?”

“Time. Time and the aspirations of godless men of God … And that latter led to my decision, as Master of the Temple in Scotland, to release those of my men who wished it so from the constraints of the oath of chastity.”

Jessie sat gazing at him for a long time before she said, “That is … that is an astonishing leap. I have never heard the like.”

“There has never been the like since the foundation of our Order. But it was necessary.”

“To what, Will? I am trying to understand what you are saying, but I do not even know where to begin. What brought this to your mind? It cannot have been a swift decision.”

“No, it was not. Nor was it reached without much searching of my soul and my conscience. But it was the right decision, and events of the past few weeks have proved it so. Jessie … your husband’s brother, Admiral de St. Valéry, is dead.”

“I know that. I have known for years. Dear Charles. I hoped, for a year or so, that he might return from wherever he sailed off to, but when that year became two, then three, it became obvious that he had perished somewhere—” She stopped short, her forehead wrinkling. “But how can you know that with such certainty as I heard in your voice now? You do know it beyond doubt, do you not?” He nodded, and she stared at him in perplexity. “The only way would be—”

“If some other man whose word could not be doubted brought home the news.” He hesitated, frowning slightly, then made up his mind and spoke more forcefully. “Jessie, I spoke earlier of trusting you. Now I will trust you further, with a secret known to very few … a secret that could be very dangerous were it to be uncovered. Do you remember why the admiral left?”

“Of course. He went in search of some legendary land beyond the Western Sea, some place called …” She frowned.

“Its name matters not,” Will said quietly. “But the place is there. The admiral found it. And he died there last year. Most of his people remain there now, living among the native inhabitants, but some sailed back in search of men to join them. Their ship arrived in Arran less than three weeks ago.”

“It came back …” She heard the dull incomprehension in her own voice, but the notion he had put into her head defied sane, logical thought. She cleared her throat, suddenly tentative. “This land … it is unknown to Christendom?” She watched him nod his head. “Where is it, then?”

“Where it was said to be, beyond the Western Sea.”

She shook her head, trying to comprehend the possibility of such a thing. “Is it large, this land?”

“According to what I have been told, it is enormous. It could be an entire new world, as big as Christendom.”

“But that is … That would be … That is why you say the secret of it is so dangerous. Who knows of this?”

“I know. You know. The crew who returned know. And my community in Arran knows. No one else.”

“And thus you believe your secret safe? Your community is large.”

“Aye, but it is secretive, too. We are all Templars, bound to secrecy and silence and obedience—and to our own survival. Were word of what we know to spread, Christendom, with all its persecution and its follies, would flock to the new shore.”

“And would deprive you of the hope of finding a new life in this new land.”

“You have the truth of it. A sanctuary unknown to any soul in Christendom save us, who have great need of it.”

“The oath of chastity. That is why you did it … to have your brethren breed sons.”

“Sons and daughters, yes.”

“Because monks, such monks as yours, can have no women and thus must perish and their Order vanish from the world.”

“That has been happening, everywhere but here. There is no Temple left in France, and now the other kings of Christendom are playing Philip’s game, exactly as Master de Molay feared they would. Our community in Arran appears to be the last Templar outpost remaining. That is why I released the brethren from the oath. I set them free to wed and to have families, upon their oath that they would bring those families back to live on Arran.”

“But is that not …” Jessica could say no more, still grappling with the idea, and they sat in silence for a while. When Jessie spoke again, a half smile tugged at her mouth. “And you, Will Sinclair, have you renounced your oath?”

He looked directly at her and his face was as unreadable as the tone of voice in which he answered. “No, I have not. I am too … too set in my lifetime’s ways.” His right cheek quirked in what might have been the start of a smile. “Not that it would bother me in the least to do so, for those reasons I have named. But I have another oath to plague me in the eyes of other men, and it is far more troublesome than my chastity.”

“And what is that?”

“Obedience. When I joined the Temple I swore an oath of obedience to the Pope, and through him to Holy Church. But to whom should I be obedient now? The Pope, and with him Holy Church, have disowned and demeaned our Order, for no other purpose than their own gain, and at the urgings of a greedy despot who now calls himself Philip of France. What an arrogant nonsense! What is this France he speaks of? It is a tiny territory in the north of what was Gaul. But in his delusion he sees it as something vast, and he seeks to authenticate his mad ideas by laying claim to Flanders, Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Poitou, Burgundy, and Aquitaine. And with his vaunting claims of vastness he has suborned a pope and warped the will of Holy Church to his twisted ambitions. Now”—he held up one hand, as if to emphasize what would come next—“an oath, the priests will tell you, is an oath. Thus, in obedience, I should submit myself and all my brethren to the mercies of the Inquisition …

“Jessie, I swear to you upon my love of life that I will gladly burn in Hell for what they deem my sinful pride before I will submit to such obscenities as those people are now to me. Thus I stand damned by my own pride and obstinacy, alone with my own honor. A loss of chastity would cause me not a moment of concern, were I but interested.”