Jack Whyte: Order in Chaos

The levity in Will’s attitude was banished immediately, replaced by a frown. “Your pardon, Sire. I had no knowledge of that. I had already warned Lady Jessica on several occasions not to foster the girl’s hopes. The two are close, more like mother and daughter than anything else, but I thought I had made it clear to Jess that the young woman is a Princess of the realm, with duties as such. I shall take it up with her again when I retire.”

“You will do no such thing. I will not be the cause of strife between you two on your wedding night, so it is my strongly expressed wish that you will make no mention of it to your wife. Am I clear on that?”

“Aye, Sire.”

“Good.” The King looked about him and bent a little closer, then spoke in a lowered voice. “In the normal way of things, your thinking would be perfectly correct. But the times are not normal nowadays. Few things are as they were ten years ago. The child is not really a Princess of Scotland. She is the illegitimate daughter of my favorite brother, Nigel, dear to me, as was her father, but somewhat troubling, under present circumstances, in her presence here.”

Will’s face must have revealed his puzzlement, for the monarch leaned even closer and explained. “Scotland already has a Princess Marjory, Will—my own daughter—and she is beset wi’ troubles enough to set the mind of a grown man reeling, let alone a slip of a girl. They held her in a convent for six years, shut away from all kindness and society, from the time when she was barely old enough to know what I had done. They punished her—an innocent—for being my daughter, and it breaks my heart to see how close they came to destroying her mind. She barely speaks—not a single word to me since she came home. But Elizabeth believes she will recover her wits, with time and patience and the forbearance of us all. Lamberton, on the other hand, while he agrees with the Queen, is strongly of the mind that the presence of another Marjory Bruce, of the same age but of a completely different temperament, light-hearted, laughing, and popular, might possibly—and I say only possibly—affect my daughter’s recovery. Do you take my meaning?”

“Yes, Your Grace, I do …”

“Then tell me this. Do you know why I can speak thus to you?”

“Thus?” Will shook his head, his eyes widening as his failure to comprehend increased. “No, Sire.”

“It is because you are the only man I know who wants nothing from me … not advancement, or reward or advantage, or patronage or favor. And atop all that, you never speak to me of politics or state affairs or my damned kingly duties. You want nothing from me, Sir William Sinclair, and that makes you unique in my eyes, and singularly trustworthy.”

He sat back in his chair. “A new land, you seek. An unknown life in an unknown place. And you will take your wife with you. That is admirable, Will … and brave, to boot.” He paused for the space of a few heartbeats. “You spoke earlier of your squire returning as a man. Will he return?”

Will nodded, wondering where this was leading. “Most certainly, Your Grace. We will send back envoys, and recruiters to swell our numbers from time to time if all goes as we wish.”

“And you truly have no fears for your wife over there?”

The smile returned to Will’s face. “No more than I would have for her here, Sire. Unknown shores may be dangerous places, but so may well-known ones. My Jess has lived in some truly perilous times and circumstances and has known her share of dangers. The life we will find where we are going might not be an easy one, but it will be a different and exciting one, and she and I will look out for each other there as well as anywhere, come what may. So be it we are together, that is all we could wish for.”

“Tell me then, were you to take my niece with you, could you undertake to send her back someday?”

Will looked away into the fire, intensely aware of the monarch’s eyes on him. They sat alone, surrounded by others, in what felt like an island of silence among the buzz of conversation around them. The question so simply posed had layers of complexity that swarmed and grew as he thought about it. Finally he grunted.

“That question has no simple answer, Your Grace.”

“Forget my grace, then, and answer as my friend. Yes or no?”

“I know we would be happy to take her with us, Jess even more so than I, but no, I could not promise you to bring her back. In the first place, she is no longer a child, and by the time we settle there, long before we could dream of coming back, she will be a woman, with a woman’s mind and will. I could say yes, and undertake to send her back someday, but by the time that day arrives, she might not wish to come. And we will be in a strange new world, with none of the rules and settled ways that govern people here.”

“But you would take her, and care for her as your own daughter.”

“Of course I would, and gladly. But that is all I can say with certainty. She might fall ill or—”

“Grow to be a woman. Aye. And when she does, what then? Will you have eligible men for her to wed, to suit her station?”

Will grinned again, in spite of the serious tenor of the conversation. “There may be no ‘station’ there, in the sense you mean, Sire. She will be as my own daughter, and thus will share whatever privilege we know, but more than that I cannot say. As for eligible men, there will be those. Jessie says young Henry would gladly lay down his life for the lass, as things stand now. It is but puppy love, all wide eyed and awe struck, but he will soon reach manhood, too, knighted by your own hand. And I could recommend the lad. He has everything required to make a fine and noble, honorable knight.”

The King sat for a moment, pinching his lower lip between finger and thumb as he mulled Will’s words, but then he nodded. “So be it, then. You have my trust, my confidence, and my friendship. I will tell young Marjorie she may go with you, and I will, if you are willing, give her guardianship to you and Lady Jessica.” His voice rose slightly in volume then. “You were about to tell me how you arranged the timing of your charge at the Bannock Burn. Tell me now, and tell me why you smiled when I asked you that.”

Slightly disconcerted at the abrupt change of topic, Will quickly sensed that someone was now standing close behind him. He glanced up to see that his uncle, Bishop Sinclair of Dunkeld, had joined them and was now inclining his head graciously as King Robert waved him to sit.

Will shrugged, deciding to be blunt. “I smiled at your choice of words, Sire. The timing of our arrival was perfect, as you say, but it was purely accidental—no strategic brilliance of mine at all, I fear.”

The King’s eyebrow rose again, and he glanced quizzically at Dunkeld. “Is that a fact? Tell me about the accidental part of it then, if you will.”

Will shrugged again, aware that all the others were now listening. “We should have been there sooner … were delayed … and thus came later than we had thought to.”

“What delayed you?”

“The English. We met a corps of them along the way, a body of infantry, perhaps six hundred, commanded by mounted knights. We breasted a hill and there they were, below us on the hillside.”

“Had you no scouts out ahead of you?”

“We did, Sire, but they had seen nothing. The English were in a deep defile—a steep-sided gully—when our scouts rode that way, and were thus invisible to anyone not right above them.”

“And so you fought, and evidently won. You had words with your scouts afterwards, I hope?”

“No, Sire, they were both killed in the fight that followed. We lost five men, and two of them were the scouts in question. But we destroyed the enemy infantry and harried the survivors, scattering them until they could not have regrouped.”