Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

I still have my clothes, and there’s no pain anywhere.

“My lady?” Another knock, louder this time. Jessie drew a deep breath and tried to keep her voice steady.

“I am here. What is it?”

“Admiral St. Valéry requests that you join him downstairs. Immediately, my lady, if it pleases you.”

Charles! Of course, I’m in the commandery at La Rochelle.

The knowledge washed over her instantly, banishing all her terror, and she pushed herself upright, swinging her feet over the edge of the cot to the stone floor and thrilling to the shocking coldness of the surface against her soles. So great was her relief from fear that she felt like throwing open the door and kissing the man outside. She was in La Rochelle! Safe!

She felt herself grinning as she imagined the look on the face of the fellow outside if she had thrown open the door and kissed him. He must be a monk. He might have dropped dead at her feet. She tried to swallow her euphoria and to keep her voice calm as she answered, “My thanks. Tell the admiral I shall be there directly.”

“I shall, my lady.” There was a line of light at the bottom of the unseen door, and as the man turned to leave it was blotted out.

“Wait! Please, wait. Stay where you are.” She hurried to the door, watching the line of brightening light for guidance and fumbling for the handle. When she found it she stopped, ran her hands rapidly over her bodice and shook out her skirts, making sure she was decently covered before pulling open the heavy door.

The man outside was young, his tonsured scalp gleaming even in the dimness of the torch-lit passageway. He wore the brown surcoat of a Templar sergeant, and he stood peering at her, clutching a fat wax candle in a sconce. As he saw her, his eyes widened, and she realized her hair must be in disarray. The poor fellow probably saw few women in his life and here he was confronted by one with her hair in what must have seemed like scandalously intimate disrepair. She held out her hand to him.

“Forgive me if I startled you, Brother, but will you leave me that light? There is no light in my chamber and I must make myself presentable before I meet with my brother.”

The earnest young man stepped forward, holding out his candle. “Of course, my lady. Is one light enough? I can bring more if you have need of them.”

“God bless you, Brother. Yes, if it please you. One can never have too much of light. Bring as many as you can, and you will have earned great gratitude.”

The young man bobbed his head and hurried away, and Jessie went back into her chamber, looking about her now that she could see. The room was tiny, containing nothing more than the narrow cot on which she had slept, a wooden crucifix on the wall beneath a tiny slit of a window, and a prie-dieu directly beneath it. She moved to the cot and bent to press her fingers into it. It did not yield, and the pillow at its head was a shaped block of wood covered with sailcloth.

God! I thought I was in a dungeon, but it is a monk’s cell. Of course it is. But there is little difference between the two. Yet I was glad enough of it when I arrived, I remember. These men have no comforts as we ordinary mortals know such things. Their lives consist of prayer and more prayer, hardship and privation and sacrifice. And fighting, from time to time. Oh, dear God, what must I look like? And no mirrors in this place. Not even a table. Where is my bag?

She found it where she had dropped it behind the cot, and soon she was rummaging deep within it, aided only slightly by the single candle’s light. She found the small leather satchel that was her most important possession and pulled it out, then loosened the drawstring and tipped the contents onto the top of the narrow bed: hairbrush, combs, a folded chamois square containing hairnets, another, bulkier, containing small solid articles that knocked against one another, and a soft square of woolen cloth that held a hand-sized rectangular mirror of smoothly polished silver. She used the mirror first, polishing it gently with its cloth before holding it up to examine her face and hair by the light of the candle in her other hand, and her mouth twisted as she saw what several days without her maid could do to her. But then she set the mirror and the candle down on the bed’s hard surface and set to work to repair the ravages she had counted so swiftly.

She reached into her piled hair with both hands, finding and removing the pins placed there to hold her thick locks in check, and then, when her questing fingers told her there were no more to be found, she bent her head and shook out her heavy tresses, combing them with her fingers and fluffing them, searching for knots and tangles. She found none that were not swiftly manageable and she immediately took up her hairbrush, drawing it in long, smooth sweeps to straighten her hair from her crown to her waist, holding individual hanks in one hand while she tugged the bristles through the rebellious end clumps, grinding her teeth impatiently and attacking remorselessly whenever she encountered a stubborn knot.

She had eradicated all the tangles and was brushing smoothly by the time the young monk knocked again. She opened the door quickly and beckoned for him to enter, aware of the automatic way his eyes fastened on her unbound hair. He was carrying an armload of short, fat candles in the crook of his elbow and a freshly lit one in his free hand. He stepped inside the chamber door and stopped, his eyes roaming around the tiny room, looking for someplace to deposit his burden. Jessie waved an arm to indicate the space in which they stood.

“There is no room for anything in here. Is there by chance a larger room nearby? One with a table?”

The young guard blinked at her, his eyes vacant in thought, and then he nodded. “Brother Preceptor’s cell is larger, my lady, and it has a table. And a chair.”

She waited, but he said no more, so she prompted him. “And is it nearby? Do you think I might use it for a short time?”

He frowned slightly, clearly not knowing what to make of her request, and so she prodded him again.

“I will not take long. And you did say my good-brother asked that I join him quickly, did you not?”

“Aye, my lady.”

“Well then, the quicker I can make myself presentable, the quicker I can meet him. Where is the Brother Preceptor’s cell?”

“This way, my lady.” He stepped out into the passageway and waited while she bundled up the contents of her little satchel and replaced them to take with her. When she was ready, he led her along the passageway to the left, where he stopped outside a door that stood ajar. “This is it, my lady.”

She held her candle high, peering around the preceptor’s cell. It was just as Spartan as the one she had left, and barely larger, no more than one third again as long, but it had two small tables ranged against the end wall, opposite the foot of the narrow bed. One of them was only large enough to hold the wash bowl and tall ewer that stood on it, but the other was larger, with an elaborate little ink horn and a matching horn cup containing several goose quills placed neatly on one side, and a plain wooden chair set in front of it.

“Perfect,” Jessie said, crossing quickly to the table with the wash bowl. “Oh, it’s empty.” She turned back to the monk, who had set down his own candle and was carefully placing the six fresh ones he had brought side by side, upright, on the table’s surface. “Would it be possible for you to find me some water, Brother, and a towel? I would dearly love to wash my face.”

The man was evidently growing accustomed to her requests, for he simply nodded this time and reached over to pick up the ewer. He hesitated.

“I will have to go to the kitchens for the water, my lady. Would you like me to have it heated for you?”