Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

She was still standing there, gazing sightlessly out to sea and hugging herself beneath her sealskin mantle, when she felt his hands close over her upper arms. She knew them instantly and whirled about, throwing himself into his embrace and kissing him wildly, feeling him stiffen at first at her unexpected ardor, and then enfold her, pulling her tightly against him as he returned her kiss.

Finally, after a time she thought was all too short, he broke from the embrace and turned her in his arms so that she leaned back into him, but in the turning, she had time to see the lines in his face and the deeply troubled look in his eyes, and she felt her heart fill up with apprehension, knowing that he should not be here.

“So, they are gone,” he whispered into her ear, holding her steadily as he looked out at the last of the departing ships. “They reached an agreement?”

The question was rhetorical, but she answered it anyway. “Aye, they are gone. Sir James told me the men of the West will stand with the King when the time comes.”

“I had no doubt they would. They have no option.”

His voice was quiet, a mere murmur, but she twisted out of his grasp. “What is it, Will? Why are you here?”

His eyes examined the whole of her face, and then he shrugged and grunted softly, smiling sadly. “I am here to see you, Jess … to look at you and feel you in my arms, soft and warm against me … and to talk with you … to share some tidings.”

“Ill tidings.”

He hesitated, his eyes narrowing, then nodded.

“Aye. As ill as might be.”

“Come then, for this is no place to be sharing them.”

She took his hand and led him from the roof, retaining her grip as she led him down the narrow, winding staircase to their bedchamber on the floor below. Young Marjorie was there, sitting before the fire with Marie and Janette, and all three of them glanced up in surprise as Jessie entered, still leading Will. She told them to leave, to go and help Hector and his staff in cleaning and readying the great hall below, and to stay away until she called for them again, and when they were gone, she turned again to Will, reaching up to touch his face, fingering the stubble on his cheek. “I want you, here and now, in that bed, but you have more need to talk than to make love. I can see it in your eyes.”

She swung away, waving to the chair to the right of the large fireplace. “Sit then, and tell me, and when you have told me once, no matter how bad it may be, you can tell it to me again, in bed. I will listen closely both times, I promise you. And then I will tell you what I think.”

He moved to sit obediently and she settled herself opposite him, her eyes on his, waiting until he had settled. “Now, tell me.”

He nodded, complacently enough, but then sat silent, and she could see that his eyes were unfocused, his thoughts far away as he searched for words. She waited, and after a while he blinked as though awakening and dropped one hand to finger the hilt of the dagger at his waist.

“I have just received news from France,” he said, his voice lifeless. “Jacques de Molay is dead, after seven years in jail. By now he would have been seventy-two, perhaps seventy-three. An old, done man, destroyed by seven years of abominations and abuse. They had sent cardinals to try him and his three remaining companions yet again, but he rejected their authority. He would speak only to Pope Clement, he said, and in person, in accordance with the oath he had sworn so long before. But Clement was in Avignon, at odds with Philip once again, and he would not go to Paris. And so, de Molay rescinded his confession once again. It had been drawn from him by torture, he proclaimed, and he now abjured it, denouncing Philip Capet for the greedy thief he is …” He blew out a long, shuddering breath.

“Capet was in Paris, and he reacted swiftly. They burned the old man at the stake that very night, on an island in the middle of the Seine, by the church of Notre Dame. The date was the eighteenth of March. My old friend Antoine St. Omer was there among the hundreds that witnessed it. He said our Grand Master died well, cursing both Pope and King from the smoke and flames and calling upon God to witness that he and all his Order were innocent of the charges brought against them.”

Jessie stood up and crossed to him, cradling his head against her breasts, and she said nothing. He sat with his face against her for several moments more, then pushed her gently away.

“So there we have it, Jess. The final betrayal of a grand old man and all he stood for, by the Pope he served faithfully and the King he would not serve.

“He did not die alone, though. The Preceptor of Normandy, Geoffrey of Charney, burned with him, close by. Nor did he die unheard, and the last call that he uttered was a summons to both Pope and King to meet him before God’s throne within the year. St. Omer spoke of that, and he would not lie in such a thing.”

“Oh, my dear Will, I am so sorry.” He looked at her and twisted his mouth wryly, inclining his head in acknowledgment, and she asked, “How was the news received among the brethren in Brodick?”

“No one yet knows. These are ill tidings, my love, and their timing could not have been less opportune. And so I decided to hold them close until the time is right to divulge them … although God Himself knows that time will never be.”

“I see … So, what will happen now?”

He expelled his breath slowly, wearily. “Now, Jess? Now I have to tell the brethren assembled at Brodick. Now I am Grand Master in fact, God help me, with nothing to be Master of. And now I must appoint a Master in Scotland, to guide the brethren who remain behind after we are gone. Does all of that sound as futile to you as it does to me?”

“Shush now. Come you.”

She took his hand and led him to the bed.

AFTERWARDS, WHILE HE LAY SLEEPING by her side, she thought about what he might do, and arrived at a decision. It was a grave decision, and she refused to consider it at first, but she knew she had no choice but to accept it, though it might be the death of her.

She sat up and turned sideways to wake him up, and he looked sheepish as he realized that he had rolled off her onto his back, and there fallen straight to sleep, but she merely smiled at him and ran a barely touching fingertip down the line of soft hair that ran from his chest to his navel. Then she slapped his flat belly and told him to get up and dress.

When he was clothed again and sitting by the fire, she curled up in the chair across from him.

“Tell me now, what of the English? Have you heard anything new?”

“Aye, new and ever growing since Edward sent out his orders, calling eight earls and eighty-seven barons to assemble at Berwick with all their strength. The tenth of June was the assembly date he named, but more than two and a half thousand mounted knights, heavily armored and armed, were already there by March. And each of them brought two or three mounted men-at-arms to back him. By March, Jess, with two months in hand! The English crows are hungry for Scots flesh …

“That same month, word came from Lamberton, in a letter smuggled from where he is held in England, that Edward has increased his levy. He has called for an additional fifteen thousand infantry from the north and Midlands, and three thousand archers from Wales, and he has requisitioned more than two hundred heavy carts and wagons for his supply train. As I was leaving for Brodick four days ago, Douglas himself told me the latest numbers indicate that there are more than twenty thousand men at Berwick, all of them well equipped and slavering with thoughts of victory and plunder.”

“Twenty thousand ?”

“Aye, lass, that’s what I said. Twenty thousand. And in all of Bruce’s Scotland, even were he to raise every able-bodied man in the realm, there are less than half of that number, mayhap even less than a quarter of it, to withstand them.”