Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

Both of them stared into the sinking fire until Jessie asked, “Would you like to hear my advice?”

He almost smiled. “You would advise me even in this? Aye, I would. You have not failed me yet.”

“Nor will I now, for I love you more than life itself, and because of that I will tell you what is in my mind.” She looked down to where the fingers of her hand were pleating the fabric of her gown. “I thought about this long and hard, Will, and I believe I know what you should do—must do. So listen to me carefully, my love, and pay close attention, for I might change my mind later and try to tell you I was wrong. But right now, I know I am right.”

TWO

The Great Hall at Brodick, the Chapter House as it was now known among the brethren, was full, with men packed shoulder to shoulder even on the alternating black and white squares of the ceremonial square painted in the center of the floor. Only two open aisles, edged by ropes and forming a cross, permitted access to the four rostra that held the chairs at the four cardinal points of the compass. The Eastern dais was the largest of these, holding the Master’s Chair, and it formed the front of the assembly, the focus of all men’s eyes.

The closed rites of the knightly brethren were complete, conducted according to the Rule, in the darkness of the night, and now with the coming of daylight, the sergeants had joined the knights for the less formal portion of the ceremonies. There was a profound, almost palpable air of solemnity about the occasion, for everyone knew that this would be the last such gathering—the last plenary assembly of the surviving members of the Order of the Temple in Arran, perhaps the last anywhere. Any gathering would hereafter be clandestine, private, of necessity—and that awareness lent an aching piquancy to the rumbling sound of the massed voices chanting the canons of the Rule.

Will stood high above the assembly, looking down from a curtained window in the carved wooden screen that concealed the suite of rooms at his back and waiting for the last of the canons to reach its end. He had planned this event carefully, bearing in mind everything that Jessie had said to him, and he was still astonished at the degree of insight she had shown into events about which she could have known nothing. She had divined the mood of this assembly, if not the content of it, and had considered aspects of this day that might never have occurred to him at all.

The chant reached the point he had been waiting for—he had heard it sung a thousand times and more over the years—and he turned and nodded to the men lined up on his right, then watched as they turned in unison and began to move in procession towards the door at the top of the wide stairs that led down along the east wall to the ceremonial floor. All four were dressed in bright white woolen robes over which each wore the emblems—the jewels—of his individual office. As they reached the door, each one in turn knocked loudly, and when the door was opened by the inner guard, the man who had knocked leaned forward and gave the password in a voice that only the guard could hear, then passed through, closing the door behind him.

Will watched them go, feeling love and admiration for each of them swelling in his breast. Richard de Montrichard, preceptor here since their arrival, went first. His was the Chair in the North, and none of the gathering below would dispute his right to hold it. De Montrichard had been a fine preceptor, and Will felt a familiar stirring of discomfort as he recalled his own doubts about the man’s suitability when they first landed here. De Montrichard had blossomed at his post and had commanded from the outset with a sure and steady hand.

After him, the senior galley captain, de l’Armentière, knocked and was passed through. On the floor, he would occupy the Southern Chair, deputizing for Admiral de Berenger, who had not yet returned from Genoa. And behind him, bound for the Western Chair, the two remaining men sought entry in their turn. The first was Bishop Formadieu, the senior bishop of the Arran community and the rightful holder of the Western Chair. But Formadieu had recused himself from the Chair more than a year earlier, claiming to be unfit to represent the brotherhood because of his failure to influence the Church’s decision to do what it had done to the Order. No one in the community had wanted him to give up the Chair, and no one believed that any portion of the fault was his, but the old man had been adamant, and Will had reluctantly acceded to his wishes, with the single but absolute proviso that Formadieu remain on the Western dais, behind, and at the shoulder of, the man selected to replace him. Of course, the selection of that successor had been Will’s, and he had chosen to appoint Sir Reynald de Pairaud, now an old and wizened man, in recognition of the veteran knight’s staunch but unexpected enthusiasm for what they had been able to achieve since landing on the island.

The sound of the door closing behind de Pairaud brought Will back to an awareness that it was now his turn to request entry to the proceedings below. He glanced down at himself and at the black leather bag in the crook of his arm, checking that all was as it should be, then walked forward and knocked on the door, which opened immediately. He whispered the password into the doorkeeper’s ear, then stepped across the threshold to where the other four, already in order of precedence, waited for him on the narrow landing at the top of the steep wooden stairs. Below them, the last, sustained note of the deep chant faded to silence just as Will murmured to the whiterobed brethren to start down. He himself was dressed from head to foot in black, in the cowled robe of a mendicant friar, save that the robe was of rich and heavy wool, unrelieved by any decoration and belted with a thickly plaited girdle of black-dyed, glossy linen fiber. He waited until the others began to move down the stairs, then hitched his leather bag higher and followed them, aware now of the silent faces that stared up at him and the expectant stillness that awaited his arrival.

He paused at the bottom of the last flight, then stepped directly to the Master’s Chair on the Eastern dais, one pace to his left. His four companions waited for him to take his place, then moved on to the junction of the cruciform aisles, where de l’Armentière turned left and De Montrichard right, to the South and North respectively, leaving De Pairaud and Bishop Formadieu to make their way together to the dais in the West. When all four were in place, Will stood looking out at the assembled brethren, sensing the silence growing even deeper, as though everyone in the crowd was holding his breath.

He made himself count slowly to ten, dragging out the stillness, then lowered his bag to the table in front of him and unbuckled it before raising his head again and starting to speak, pitching his voice carefully so that it resonated in the crowded hall, and articulating his words slowly and clearly.

“Brethren, we are here together to mark a momentous occasion, one that none of us could ever have imagined when we left La Rochelle seven years ago. Since then, we have built a life for ourselves here on this little island, and we have struggled diligently to live by the Rule of our Order and to preserve our ways and our responsibilities against the day that every one of us once believed must surely come … that day when we would be redeemed and would return to France, our names and that of our Order restored to honor, the spurious charges against us finally expunged. We have lived here in hope and in brotherhood, and within the past year, we have been joined and strengthened by our Scots brethren from the mainland.

“But within those same seven years, our hopes for justice and an honorable reinstatement of our Order have been crushed, dwindling steadily in the face of everincreasing tidings of grief and disaster, treachery and malice emanating from France and from its King.” He stopped there, giving his listeners time to accept what he was saying, and as soon as he saw heads beginning to nod in agreement, he resumed in the same voice.