Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

Will was twisted sideways in his chair, gaping at Moray, and now he laughed. “Davie, that is an inspiration! That is what we’ll do. Of course it is.” He turned back to Lamberton. “May we do that, my lord? Will you write your letter for me to carry in person?”

“Of course I will. I’ll do it now, as soon as we adjourn here. You will have it in the morning. And now, I believe, we are done here, with much to do in consequence.”

WILL SINCLAIR RETURNED to his hostelry to sleep and to warn his men to be ready to ride come daylight, when they would return to Nithsdale, to check on young Henry and take him back to Arran if he was yet well enough, and to tell Jessie Randolph of what had been resolved in the matter of buying his ships. And for the first time, he found himself looking forward to seeing her again.

That gave him pause, and his own awareness of the pleasure he was feeling was even slightly startling. He lay on his back for a long time. What was it that had changed? he asked himself. And the answer came immediately that it was the woman herself who had precipitated everything, by her very being and by her matter-of-fact assumption that he would be willing to take her with him to the new land. No thought of hazards or the risks of sailing into an unknown ocean, but merely the straightforward acceptance of the truth of things: that he would go, and that he would take her with him. That conversation in the byre, so startling at the time, had worked a spell on him thereafter, for he had never stopped thinking about it—even, he now admitted to himself, when he had been unaware of thinking of it.

Lying there in the darkness with no thought of sleep in his mind, he found himself smiling at the bald effrontery of her demand, until it came to him that there had been no effrontery involved. Now he acknowledged to himself, somewhat ruefully, that the “effrontery” had been but one more manifestation of the straightforward and uncompromising lack of guile that had fascinated him since first meeting this woman in La Rochelle years earlier.

He remembered, too, the guilt that had racked him then over his own simple awareness of womanliness—her beauty, he now acknowledged. He remembered inhaling the warm, disturbing scent of the subtle perfume she had worn that night, a wafting, heady aroma filled with the suggestions of body warmth and formless feminine intimacies, and he remembered gazing at, and trying not to focus upon, the way her clothes moved against her limbs and body. But only now could he admit to himself that the task of ignoring her presence had been akin to that of the legendary Danish King Cnut who had commanded the incoming tide to reverse itself and flow away at his royal behest.

But then, lying alone in the dark, the reason underlying the change in him broke over him like one of those same incoming waves, and the stark truth of it was so incontrovertible that it left him amazed that he should have failed to see it before, when it had been as plainly evident as an unsheathed sword in the hand of an angry man. The guilt that had left him hagridden from the outset with this woman had been false, ill founded. His guilt had all been Christian. But he had never been a Christian, he now realized, and he found himself wanting to laugh and whoop out loud. Though his outward affiliation was to the Order of the Temple, his more profound allegiance was sworn to the Order of Sion. And the Order of Sion, founded mere decades after the deaths of Jesus and his brother James, was not, and had never been, a Christian order. It was Jewish at its roots, and its ancient rituals and lore, its teachings and its beliefs, were those of the Jewish sect to which both Jesus and his brother had belonged, the sect known sometimes as the Nazarene but known to all the Brotherhood of the Order of Sion as the Essenes, the Seekers of the Way to the knowledge and presence of God, the Way so often spoken of, but never explained, in the Christian gospels.

Will grunted suddenly and sat upright, blinking wide eyed into the blackness surrounding him, his mind whirling. He had sworn only two great oaths upon joining the Order of Sion: to own no goods in person but to share all things in common with his brethren, and to lead a life of obedience to his superiors within the Order. Those vows had essentially been the same as the Christian monastic oaths of poverty and obedience. The third monastic vow, the oath of chastity, he had sworn only on joining the Order of the Temple monk knights, and it had cost him not a thought at the time, for asceticism and celibacy had been entrenched in him by choice and dedication—regardless of the fact that the Order of Sion placed no expectation of chastity or celibacy upon its brotherhood.

He felt as if someone had lifted the weight of the earth from his shoulders. He was free to acknowledge, and to pursue, his attraction to Jessie Randolph—perhaps not without his customary awkwardness and difficulty, born of a lifetime of avoidance, but certainly without guilt. He knew now there was no impediment, moral or otherwise, to bar him from accepting the proposal she had made to him.

A COLLOQUY IN NITHSDALE

ONE

They rode back along the River Nith a few days later, and Will felt surprisingly carefree, considering all that he had to do in the weeks that lay ahead. The journey south from St. Andrews, far more leisurely and a full day longer than their outgoing drive, had been uneventful, which was no great surprise; five mounted, armored men, with the air of confidence these five projected, could expect to go unchallenged on the open road. Now, under a sunny, late-July afternoon sky with birds singing all around them, they rode easily along the riverbank, through grass as high as their horses’ fetlocks, talking idly and glancing from time to time at the western edge of the great Forest of Ettrick that began on the other bank and stretched from there for scores of miles. The trees they could see from where they rode on the river’s west bank were small, mainly alder and hawthorn and elm saplings, for the forest was still expanding and the mighty forest giants, most of them oak and elm, lay farther to the east. They followed a tight right-hand bend in the river, and the grass-covered hillside on their right rose abruptly, thrusting out a rocky fist directly ahead of them that pinched the steeply rising path into little more than a goat track, forcing them to ride in single file. Will rode at the head, alone and deep in his own thoughts, with Tam Sinclair and the two sergeants following him, and Mungo MacDowal bringing up the rear.

Minutes later, close to the summit of the path, Will twisted in his saddle to look back the way they had come. He remembered it well, because it was here, less than two miles from their starting point, as they reached the beginning of the long descent on their outward journey, that the first heavy drops of rain had fallen from the clouds that had blown in that morning. From then on, it had stormed incessantly, so that they had ridden drenched and chilled for four miserable days, their clothing sodden from the wind-driven rain, their armor and mail and even the padded tunics beneath them chafing miserably wherever their edges touched bare skin. It had been a form of Purgatory, and they had fallen asleep each night, numb, exhausted, and close to freezing, wherever they could find a spot that offered the slightest shelter.

Now, approaching the summit of the rise and aware that their destination was close, Will felt a tiny shiver of pleasure and kicked his horse to a canter, uncaring whether the men behind followed him or not. Beyond the crest of the hillside the land rose up again ahead of him, starting with a gentle dip before resuming its upward climb, though nothing like as steeply as before, for another mile towards a second crest, from which he knew he would be able to see the Randolph house of Nithsdale. He was careful not to allow himself to think of Jessie specifically, for the thought of what he would say to her made his chest flutter in panic, but the feelings of anticipation did not abate and he made no effort to rein in his horse, permitting it to start down into the dip immediately.