Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

“Aye, thanks be to God, it appears he is.”

“I have something I wish to show you. Can you take the time? It will be no more than a few minutes.” He bowed again, and she set down her basket, heaving it out with her hip and letting it drop heavily to the ground before she turned to the others. “Go on without me and make a start. I will come soon.”

She beckoned to Will with one crooked finger, and he followed her to a long, low, thick-walled stone building that looked and smelled like what it was, a cattle shed. As he stepped inside, he had to duck his head to avoid the low lintel, but he found plenty of room to stand erect beyond the doorway. The stalls were empty, the kine long since turned out into the fields, and the narrow central waste gutter had been recently mucked out. On either side of the scoured channel, the flagstone floor had also been swept clean and covered with fresh straw, and in the far right corner of the byre, raised above the floor itself, he saw a sturdy wooden platform, piled to the rafters with well-made bales of hay. The door at the byre’s far end stood open, allowing the brilliant late-July sunlight to glare in, casting the side stalls into darkness. Will blinked his eyes until they adjusted to the shimmering, mote-filled light and darkness, then looked sideways at Jessie.

“You brought me to show me this?” There was a smile in his tone. “It is a byre, a cowshed. We have them in Anjou, too.”

“Come.” She did not even react to his jibe but led the way towards the hay bales piled in the corner, and he followed dutifully, hoisting himself up easily onto the wooden platform. She pointed to the bales. “Can you move those? Not all of them. The middle ones. There’s a fork there.”

Curious, but saying nothing, he picked up the heavy hay fork and dug it into the top bale. “Where will I put it?”

“Pile them on the floor. We’ll put them back afterwards.”

He worked hard and silently for several minutes, then saw what they were searching for. Buried beneath the bales was a long, narrow wooden chest that he recognized immediately.

“Pull it out, but be careful. It took four of us to push it in there.”

Will squatted carefully and grasped the thick rope handle on one end of the chest with both hands. He took a few deep breaths, then lifted steadily, pushing upwards with his thighs and keeping his spine straight as he took the weight of the thing. He raised the front edge from the floor and dragged it towards him, and it scraped loudly as it came, resisting him every inch of the way until he was able to lower it to the floor again.

He straightened slowly, breathing heavily and wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “That, madam,” he drawled, “is heavy. I don’t even have to ask what it contains … Part of the treasure that you brought King Robert?”

“Yes, but my part. I thought to keep it safe, against sudden need. The King has all the rest. Open it.”

“I do not need to. It holds bags of gold coins. The weight makes that obvious.”

“How many bags, think you?”

He looked down at the box, prodding it with his boot. It was a hand’s span wide, approximately nine inches, and he gauged the sides to be a half-inch thick apiece, reducing the interior width to eight inches. In height, it was half as much again, and its length was double that. He stood scratching his chin, trying to picture the size and bulk of the stuffed bags it would contain. Finally he nodded. “Four bags, each half a foot across … Four heavy bags.”

“Open it, then. Here is the key.”

The oiled padlock opened easily, but as he raised the lid Will sucked in his breath sharply and crouched motionless, awestruck.

“You see? You were wrong by four.”

“Great God! No wonder the thing is so heavy.”

There were no bags in the chest. Instead, it was packed solid with layers of cloth-covered tubes, each carefully wrapped and sealed at both ends with a wafer of wax. One tube on the top had been sliced along its length with a sharp blade, and the dull gleam of gold showed through the cut. Will squatted beside it, holding the lid open and trying to estimate the chest’s contents.

“Gold bezants,” Jessie whispered, leaning close to look down with him. “Fifty bezants in each roll, fifteen rolls in each layer, and five layers deep. I didn’t count them, but I have the accounting rendered in writing by the Jew Yeshua Bar Simeon of Béziers. He was an honest man, and scrupulous. Etienne could not have found a better or more trustworthy associate. And to think no one knew anything of their affairs, their being so prosperous …”

Will was still staring down into the chest. “I heard those numbers, but what do they amount to? It’s too much for my simple knowledge.”

“Three thousand seven hundred and fifty bezants.”

“Three thou … Great God in Heaven … Worth what? Five Scots silver marks to one, at least.”

“Closer to ten and perhaps more.”

“And there were five more chests like this. Those you gave to the King. And five of silver.”

“True, but those five were not all packed like this one and they were not all gold. Some were mixed with silver.”

He had turned to stare at her. “Why did you keep this one? This particular one, I mean?”

She raised her hands, a gesture almost of helplessness. “Because it was Bar Simeon’s. His own, unconnected to his venture with Etienne. He had no family, and knowing he was dying, he tidied his affairs and left this single chest to Etienne, in whom he had great trust. I have the letter that he sent with it, contained among the documents Sir Charles passed on to me.

Thus, I suppose it seemed more personal, somehow—the old man’s dying gift to poor Etienne, who was already dead … And so I kept it. I thought that, given ten parts of the treasure, the King would not begrudge me the eleventh, and if it weighed more than the others, that was happenstance … I had no knowledge at that time of what it contained. That I discovered only later, when I had read all the documents. Besides, I had no thought then of what to do with it, other than to hold it in reserve against another day of need … the King’s, I mean. Money in hand has a way of being spent out of hand. I thought there might come a time when an extra fund might be welcome.”

“Welcome?” He shook his head in wonder. “Jessie, this single chest could ransom a kingdom. It contains more wealth than all the specie I brought out of our commandery in La Rochelle … far more.”

She grinned, a quick flash of strong white teeth. “Perhaps so. It might indeed, if you say so, ransom a kingdom. But with the King himself in England, raising ransom from the English towns and abbeys, this kingdom should have no need of it. Whereas I do.”

He blinked. “You do? What need is that?” He grinned back at her, lowering one knee to the floor to ease his crouched position. “Do you intend to purchase a kingdom for yourself, then? Be a queen?”

“No, not a kingdom. We have enough of kingdoms here in Christendom. But mayhap I could buy a ship like those you spoke of yesterday, from Genoa. Or even two of them, depending on the cost.”

“You could buy a fleet with this small chest … but from Genoa? What would you do with a Genoese ship?”

She grinned again, a glint of purest mischief in her eyes. “I might do as my dead husband did and go a-trading. Or I could even sail in search of some new land beyond the Western Sea.” She saw the sudden consternation in his eyes, the quick stiffening of his posture, and laughed loud. “Oh, Will, Will Sinclair, you can be thick in the head sometimes and easy to predict. I meant the ship for you … or the fleet, if it can be had.”