Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

EPILOGUE

ONE

Stirling Castle sat solidly on its great stone crag, dominating the wide flatlands below, where the River Forth wound in great serpentine loops through the far-flung, treacherous bogs known as the Carse of Stirling. On a clear, moonlit night, the sentries on their high walkways might have been able, if they chose to look, to discern the black clump of the distant Tor Wood, knowing that beside and beyond it lay the stillchurned ground along the Bannock Burn, and, if their imaginations stirred at all, they might have recalled the chaos and the slaughter that had occurred there mere months earlier, when King Robert had wreaked havoc on the overwhelming numbers of the invading English.

They had thought of it before, and talked of it in great detail—every man in Scotland had—rejoicing but unable to believe the miracle that had happened there on the banks of the Bannock on that Midsummer Day, when it seemed that the massed schiltroms of Scots spears would be incapable of halting the surging, implacable English advance; when King Robert himself, attacked and challenged to single combat between the armies, had come close to death, saving himself only by his own dauntless skills and the unerring sweep of a mighty thrust of the battle-axe that had been his only weapon.

And they had recalled the sudden, unforeseen appearance of a fresh Scots army, led from the west by heavy chivalry, an irresistible charge of heavily armored Temple knights—more Templars than had ever been seen in Scotland—that had tipped the balance of the day and thrown the densely packed masses of the English, chivalry and common soldiery, into fleeing, destructive panic, trampling and hampering themselves and their own, killing one another in their desperate attempt to find safety and solid footing in the slippery, murderous bogs between the Bannock Burn and the banks of Forth. They foundered there in the killing muck, drowning and dying in their thousands in the panic-stricken crush and leaving the Bruce and his men victorious …

But that had been in midsummer, months earlier, when the amazing victory was bright and fresh in the mind of every Scot and it seemed the golden light of joy would never fade. On this night, though, there was no hope of such a thing. Men had the reality of freezing winter to keep them mindless of such thoughts tonight. The cloud mass was so low that it boiled over and between the battlements as a swirling, icy, roiling fog, impervious to the wind and rain that lashed through it to flail at the castle’s palisaded walls. The miserable sentries stood hunched in whatever shelter they could find on their walkways along the sheer drop of the giant crag’s side, each man measuring the slow passage of time remaining until his relief, when he could shed his sodden cloak and escape from the brutality that howled across the flat and open miles from the Firth of Forth and the too-close, cold North Sea.

Within the stone walls of the central keep, however, no one knew or cared about the weather outside. The interior of Stirling Castle that late-autumn night was warmer and brighter, the atmosphere more joyous and carefree, than it had ever been in the memory of anyone who was there. Torches flared all along the interior walls, illuminating every entry, passageway, and stairwell, and within the enormous rooms on the main floor, the darkness was banished by massed banks of blazing candles, augmenting the flaming cressets on the walls and the giant fires that blazed in every fireplace. People thronged everywhere, all of them dressed in their finest clothes, with scarcely a piece of armor to be seen, and music swelled up from every direction, some of it fierce and warlike, some of it bright and brilliant, and all of it melding and blending distractingly in those places where differing sounds overlapped.

One such place was the wide flagstoned passageway that led from a suite of smaller anterooms to the massive, iron-studded oak doors of the King’s Hall, the castle’s largest and most ornately finished room. Will Sinclair had gone to collect Jessie from one of the anterooms set aside for ladies’ use, and most particularly for those ladies’ women and children, nursemaids and suckling infants. There had been a harpist playing there, soothing the babies’ cries with gentle music, but as Will and Jessie moved away, bound now for the King’s Hall, the sounds of the harp were quickly drowned in the skirl of wild, Gaelic music spilling from the narrow gap between the slightly open doors of the great chamber.

The two of them were alone in the passageway, walking easily, Will with one protective and possessive hand on Jessie’s waist, when the great doors ahead of them swung open and the wailing music suddenly crashed through the widening space, engulfing the approaching pair. Will stopped abruptly, his eyes widening in surprise, and without thinking, he grasped Jessie’s arm gently above the elbow and drew her aside to stand beside him with her back to the wall, watching what was happening.

A solid block of garishly colorful Gaels now filled the open doorway, five wide and occupying the entire space behind the towering figure of the saffron-and-scarlet-clad man in front, and all of them were blowing mightily on the wild bagpipes that were so much of their ancient, traditional way of life. Will could not see how dense the files of clansmen were behind the first rank, but he could see roiling smoke above and behind their heads from the fireplaces in the great hall at their back, and had the impression of masses of people swirling behind them, laughing and shouting in enjoyment and encouragement.

The man in the lead began to pace on the spot, raising his right knee high and beating time with one foot to set the tempo as the tune they were playing changed into another. Six times he brought his foot down on the floor, and then he began to march forward, his cheeks bulging with the effort of keeping his air bag full, frowning in concentration as his fingers flickered over the holes in the long pipe that produced the notes of the melody. As he passed in front of Will and Jessie, Will was astounded to hear that every man behind him was playing the same tune, keeping and sustaining the tempo perfectly. As they marched past him in a solemn phalanx, Will counted twenty men in the block behind the tall leader, and as the last rank passed him he turned to watch them go, aware that behind him the crowd was now spilling through the doorway, shouting and cheering and whistling.

When the sound of the pipes died away, Jessie smiled up at him.

“I never was able to make the French believe that the sound the pipes make is music,” she said. “Who were those men? They have obviously practiced playing together like that. My guardsmen in France could never do that.”

He grinned at her, lowering his voice to where only she could hear him. “Your guardsmen in France had other things to occupy them, my love. But you’re right, nonetheless. I didn’t know that could be done. Twenty men, all playing together and keeping the tune. I never thought to hear the like. But then, I’ve been told the Romans used the same kind of pipes, though smaller. Apparently they used them to keep their men inspired on long marches, so they must have known how to play in unison like that, now that I think about it.” He straightened up and scanned the crowd around him, few of whom were known to him. “Anyway, they were all MacDonalds. The big fellow at their head was Calum MacDonald of Skye, and he’s Angus Og’s shadow, so that means Angus himself must be inside with the King.” He reached down and took her hand in his, placing it on his arm. “So then, wife, shall we go in?”

Lady Jessica Sinclair saw no trace in her new husband of the grim and forbidding Templar knight she had encountered on that now distant day in La Rochelle. The William Sinclair who walked beside her now was another man altogether, tall and imposing as ever, but clad in a tunic and tight-fitting hose of the latest French style, in pale blue velvet from her own stores and made by her own hands. The yoke and padded shoulders made his width immense, and the tunic glittered, front and back, with silver studs, sewn onto lozenges of satin that was the mere hint of a shade darker than the tunic itself, while from his shoulders, sweeping down his back, was a magnificent cloak of light blue shimmering silk that she had bought years earlier from a merchant who had traveled widely in Asia and brought back the most wonderful fabrics she had ever seen. She knew that she matched Will in splendor, because she was still wearing the dress in which she had been wed earlier that day, a deep-bosomed gown of dark blue, its cuffs and bodice edged with French lace identical to the delicate lace that formed the now-raised veil on her high headdress.