Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

“Please, sit, if you will. Charles saw you coming but was called away before he could greet you. Something to do with the loading of livestock. I must admit to being surprised at the number of your brother’s company here. I had expected a score or so of men and horses, but there must be more than a hundred of each. Please, sit you down here. My ladies have gone looking for firewood, to take the chill off the afternoon air, but they should soon be back, and we’ll be warmer once the fire is lit.”

Bemused by her easy openness and lack of apparent guile, Sinclair found himself moving to comply with her wishes, even though he had no slightest idea of what to say to her. But she simply kept talking as he lowered himself to perch on a boulder across from her, and he found himself listening and preparing to answer in spite of himself.

“I confess, were it not for my ladies, I should freeze and die of exposure, for I have no notion of how to light a fire in the open air, do you? Are you adept with flint and steel? I suppose you must be, being a Temple Knight. I am told there is nothing practical that you and your fellows cannot do.”

“No, that’s a nonsense,” he heard himself say, and nearly winced at his own brusqueness. “I have a tinder box, wi’ flint and steel, but a’ God’s name, Lady, I cannot remember when I last used it, if I ever did. Tam does all that, and I am grateful to him for it. He starts our fires and keeps them alight, and he keeps me fed, for else I would most likely starve. I have little attention for such things.”

Well, at least you are capable of speaking like a reasonably normal person. From what I’ve seen and learned of you until now, that is a very important development in your status vis-à-vis women—

Sinclair was already rising to his feet again. “Here come your women now, madam. I’ll leave you with them.” Sinclair nodded towards the only two other women on the beach, who were bearing armloads of logs and followed by a group of sergeants carrying more.

Jessica stood up, too, as the armloads of logs clattered to the pebbles, one after the other, and called to Sinclair as he was on the point of walking away.

“Wait, Sir William, if you will. I will walk with you until the fire is lit.”

Dismayed, Will stood hesitantly as she approached him and managed not to flinch as she reached out and laid one hand on his forearm.

“There,” she said, “and you have my thanks. These pebbles are grossly difficult and dangerous to walk upon.”

He made no response, but held his bent arm stiffly and began to walk with exaggerated slowness, clearly braced to prevent her from falling. She fought back the smile that threatened to break out upon her face and made herself walk beside him slowly and with great decorum, visualizing what his shocked reaction might be were she to break into anything resembling a dance while walking with her hand upon his arm. And such was her temptation to break into giggles that she had to raise her free hand to her mouth and pretend to cough. She stopped, obliging him to stop, too, and wait for her as she made an elaborate show of examining the fishing hamlet and the cliffs behind it.

“What a perfect place for the task you have in hand, Sir William. This spot must be completely hidden here beneath the cliffs from anyone above, and I vow it could never be seen from a passing ship, were the people aboard unaware of its existence. How did you ever come to find it?”

Sinclair followed her gaze to where the beetling cliffs loomed over the tiny settlement. “By chance, Lady,” he said, avoiding looking at her. “Purely by chance, a score and more years ago.”

“What kind of chance might have brought you here? This is not a friendly coastline.”

“Wind and weather brought me. I was on a ship that foundered when a winter squall blew us onto a shoal to the south of here. Tam and I were among the very few to survive, him in a boat of sorts with three other lads, and me clinging to a spar with another man who was dead when the current cast us ashore in this inlet. Tam came ashore a mile or so farther north and thought me dead, too, as I did him, but we found each other by chance the following day.”

“And this village was here then?”

He glanced at her sidelong, as though surprised by the naivety of the question. “Aye, it was. It is a natural haven. There have been fisher folk living here since the land was created, I am sure.”

“And you remembered it.”

“Aye, I did. I always try to remember the good and the bad. It is folly not to remember both ends of the range of things. Most of the ruck is forgettable … unimportant … but the knowledge of a safe haven, or of a dangerous killing ground, can be priceless at times.”

She had been watching him with her head tilted to one side, and now she began to walk again, her hand still resting on his arm. “I confess, Sir William, the concept of killing grounds is one I seldom entertain, but I understand what you are saying and I agree with the principle behind it.”

She said nothing more for a short time, continuing to walk with lowered eyes, leaving him to grapple with the idea that a mere woman had expressed an understanding of a principle. He wanted to pursue that thought, but had no slightest notion of how to go about it, and so he waited instead, hoping she would say more on the topic. But she continued in silence, and then, just as he was deciding that she might say no more, she continued as though there had been no lapse in what she was saying.

“It will be amusing, think you not”—and here she paused to dart a smile at him—“to see how your views might change from now on, given the safe havens and dangerous grounds of your new life henceforth.”

“My new life?” His voice hardened instantly as he sensed her threatening to intrude where she had no right to go. “I have no new life, Lady, nor will I.”

“But I—” Jessie was flustered by the sudden hostility in his voice and spoke without really thinking. “I was but referring to the events of this morning … the King’s obvious enmity and de Nogaret’s duplicity. That has changed everythi—”

“Nothing has changed, Baroness.” His voice was harsh, peremptory. “There has been a misunderstanding of some kind, some form of miscommunication, but it will be soon resolved, let me assure you. The Temple Order is the strongest of its kind anywhere. It is far greater than any one man. And it is incapable of being seriously disrupted by the greedy scheming of lesser men, be they kings and kings’ ministers or no. So there will be no lasting changes made to my life.”

She was staring wide eyed at him before he had come close to finishing, the color already flaring up in her cheeks, and she swept in to the attack.

“Misunderstandings? Soon to be resolved? Were you not in the room last night when I spoke on that very topic? Did you not hear a single word I said? Or did you simply dismiss me for being a woman and decide that my opinions are worthless and unfounded?”

The two stood glaring at each other as Jessie waited for his response, but when it came it was not in the form of words. His face simply froze into a baleful mask of disapproval and he swung away, rigid with outraged dignity, leaving her standing alone on the strand as her good-brother the admiral approached, his face clearly betraying astonishment at what he was seeing.

“In God’s name, what happened, Sister? What did you to offend Sir William so? I have never seen him so angry. What did you say to him to make him charge away like that?”

She did not even glance at him, her eyes fixed on Sinclair as he vanished among the bustle of people on the beach.

She swung to face her questioner. “As God may judge me, I said nothing to cause offense to any reasonable man. But your obdurate Sir William shows few signs of being reasonable in dealing with anyone he cannot dominate and bully. The offense, and the anger that accompanies it, arise from sources other than from me. Search you inside Sir William Sinclair for the root of it, for I will have no part of him or his anger. He is naught but a great truculent, ill-mannered oaf.” And having delivered herself of that opinion, she swept away in turn, leaving the highly perplexed admiral to gaze after her, shaking his head several times, before he turned to move quickly in pursuit of Sinclair.