Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

She had been in Lochranza for nigh on a year and a half—the time had flown by almost without her awareness—and as chatelaine of the castle she had become accustomed to the always-busy harbor beneath the walls, with its constant procession of ships and galleys coming and going, but she had never seen anything like what was happening now. The narrow strip of land between the wharves and the castle itself was thick with men, all of them scurrying about like ants, but she knew that what she was seeing was nothing; beyond her sight, behind the curve of the walls to each side, the yards and buildings of the castle enclosure were even more crowded, and the mob of men spilled out beyond the postern gate to fill up the meadow at the rear.

She half smiled as the word mob came to her, for although the men below bore no resemblance to the kind of soldiers she had known most of her life in mainland Scotland, France, and England, to call them a mob was wrong. Although there was no uniformity of any kind among the Gaels, and none of the imposed restraints of chivalry, each man among them was a warrior, selfequipped and self-reliant, present upon his own decision to support his chief, and should the wishes of his own chief concur with the wishes of any other, each would decide for himself whether or not to continue to extend that support. She knew they were no mob, no mere disorderly rabble. She had heard enough from many sources to know that these fiercely independent men, so apparently undisciplined, were savage and unrelenting fighters who could tear down conventional military formations and overwhelm fortifications with ease, imposing their own form of discipline upon themselves when the need arose. Islesmen and Highlanders all, they lived by their own standards, beholden to no man.

Beneath her, two floors removed, their leaders were meeting with King Robert’s representatives, Sir Robert Keith, the Marshal of Scotland, and Sir James Douglas, looking far older and more grim than he had when Jessie had first met him, a mere five years earlier. Two prominent members of the Scottish clergy completed the royal delegation: William Sinclair, the Bishop of Dunkeld and uncle to her own Will, and the formidable Bishop David Moray, dressed as always in the mail hauberk and steel cuirass of a fighting soldier and looking not one whit like a lord of Holy Church. Meeting with these four were Angus Og MacDonald, now the self-styled Prince of the Isles; Fergus MacNeil, the Lord of Barra; MacGregor of Glenorchy, chief of Clan Alpine; and a pair of taciturn chieftains from the islands of Lewis and Uist whose names she did not know, although she suspected that they were kinsmen to the MacNeil. They had been in discussions for three days now, taking over the main hall on the second floor of the castle and ousting its chatelaine for the duration, so that she spent most of her time now either in her own chambers with her women, including young Marjorie, or here on the battlements, overlooking the activities in the harbor below whenever the unpredictable spring weather permitted it.

Jessie, swathed now in a richly furred mantle of soft sealskin, was untroubled by the loss of her domain, content to let the visitors have the run of it. She understood the urgency of this gathering and so she simply left them to get on with their affairs, confident that the faithful Hector and his staff from Nithsdale would keep them well supplied with food and drink. She had other, more weighty matters to think about.

Will, her Will, whom she now gloried in calling her man, was deeply involved in convening another, completely different gathering at Brodick Castle. There, too, she knew, would be a great gathering of ships in the nearby bay of Lamlash, in the lee of the Holy Isle, Eilean Molaise, because in four days’ time the last formal chapter of the assembled knights and sergeants of the Temple Order within the realm of Scotland was due to assemble there, and the brethren would already be arriving, openly or secretly, from all over King Robert’s domain. And when it was concluded, the Arran community of Templars would disperse, some of them on the quest to the new land, others to serve King Robert as volunteers, based in a number of communal centers that had been set up on the mainland within the previous few months. These centers were few, but they were in place, widely distributed throughout the realm, and would be referred to henceforth as lodges; none would ever be called preceptory or commandery, but they would serve as rallying points and places of refuge for those who wished to retain their fraternal identities, and they would be tacitly acknowledged by the King’s authority. The men based there, indistinguishable by now from ordinary men, would continue to function as Templars, but in a profound secrecy beyond anything they had known or needed in the past. They would observe their rituals and rites, nurturing and passing on the secrets and symbols of their once great Order to other, younger men in days to come.

Of course, the King’s royal leave for the Scots Templars to attend the chapter gathering had not been given without conditions, and Will had discussed those conditions with Jessie, seeking her advice. The King knew of the resources Will had nurtured on Arran, and he was more than aware of the wealth of horseflesh, particularly the heavy horses, under Will’s command. In all of Bruce’s Scotland there were fewer than forty destriers, the enormous war horses that made the chivalry of England and France so powerful, and the worth of each one was incalculable. The small cavalry force that Scotland could field, seldom more than five hundred strong, was all light horse: scouts and skirmishers and mounted men-at-arms and bowmen, suitable enough for diversionary tactics and for nuisance raiding but utterly ineffectual against the fearsome, overwhelming bulk of massed English chivalry. Thus it was natural that King Robert coveted the Temple destriers, and knowing the King’s needs and the dangers facing his realm, Will had had no difficulty in agreeing to provide them. After all, as he had said to Jessie, they could not take the beasts to Merica. They had more than seventy of the huge animals on Arran now, and they would have difficulty transporting them even across the narrow channel to the mainland, for the ships that brought them here from France had all long since been reconfigured for other cargo.

Jessie had agreed with everything that Will was saying, advising him to make an immediate start on reconfiguring the ships’ holds yet again to accommodate heavy livestock. But then she had asked him about the knights’ armor. King Robert would assign the destriers to his knights, she pointed out, but would those knights have armor sufficiently heavy and strong for the tasks they had to face aboard their new and massive mounts? Very few of them would, she suggested, since Scots knights, less wealthy than their English counterparts, had traditionally been unable to afford, or even to find, such enormous mounts, and consequently had no use for such bulky, reinforced armor. Their need had always been for lighter, stronger armor, mail that was more supple and less restrictive than the solid, unyielding plate worn by the English chivalry. Besides, she added, had he thought about how many of his own Templars would wish to volunteer their services as chivalry to Scotland?

That took Will aback, for he had not thought of it at all. His overriding concern in recent months had been the composition of the group that would set out across the sea for the new land, ensuring that only the best, most versatile and resilient of his people would be included. De Berenger had crossed safely to Genoa late in the previous July, avoiding the English blockade of the North Sea coast, and had been able to buy two newly built ships, both commissioned and partly paid for by the Temple before its dissolution, along with two similar vessels that were unfinished when he arrived, their construction suspended in the absence of a purchaser. All four, he had reported back, were suitable for their expedition and in fact better than he had hoped to find. He had promised to have the four new ships back in Arran by mid-June, and all Will’s efforts had been geared towards being ready to set out at that time.