Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

Both women were prostrate from seasickness, as were most of the other people aboard the galley, and they had been so since the sudden onset of the storm five days earlier. Jessie, astonished by her ability to tolerate the violent motions of both ship and sea, had nursed both of them throughout the ordeal, patiently ministering to their every need, aware that both of them would have been horrified even to imagine her doing so. But they had been too sick to know anything of that, and Jessie was too grateful to have been spared the torments that devastated them to waste time thinking about the reversal of their roles.

She had no notion of why or how she should have been able to survive the storms unscathed and with a solid, unshakable calm, but she knew that she was one of very few in the ship’s entire complement to have done so. Even her good-brother the admiral, a veteran of decades at sea, had succumbed early to the fury of the incessant squalls and the constantly raging seas, as had his shipmaster and officers, all of them rendered incapable of running the ship, or even of maintaining a semblance of order and discipline aboard, since the ship could not be run under such conditions. The oars, save for the massive steering oar that formed a rudder, had not touched water since the first storm broke, and the men who crewed them had been largely useless for anything else, so that the responsibility of temporary command had been taken over by the sergeant called Tescar, who had commanded the guard at the Commandery of La Rochelle the night Jessie arrived there.

Tescar had never been to sea at all, whereas Jessie had made several voyages, all of them short and blessed with fair weather, and like Jessie, he was unable to understand why he should be able to withstand the fury of the elements when experienced seamen of all ranks had fallen victim all about him. But, being Tescar and accustomed to making the best of things wherever he found himself, he had contrived to keep himself, Jessie, and everyone else alive, foraging for food and drink among the ship’s supplies and finding ample amounts of both. Thus fortified, the two of them, along with fewer than a score of other men in like condition, had been able to tend, at least fundamentally, to the sick throughout the vessel. Not all of those sick were completely immobilized—many of them continued to function at some degree of normalcy and varying levels of impairment—but all were debilitated beyond dispute, so that it had become commonplace to see them stand vacant eyed and wavering at times, as though waiting for someone to shout an order at them, to tell them what to do next.

Now Jessie found herself looking at one such fellow, noting the way he braced himself against the swell as he trudged forward, blank eyed and whey faced, towards the galley’s prow. This was the fourth time she had seen the man, idly aware of him moving from stem to stern and back, and although she had no idea what he was about, she knew he was not without purpose. This time, however, she took more notice of him, aware suddenly that he walked now without clutching at ropes for support, and as she noticed that, she observed, too, that the ship’s crashing, tumultuous momentum had eased, albeit but slightly, and that the vessel’s forward swoop was now more of a glide than a staggering lurch. A gleam of light attracted her eye, and she looked up to see a ray of sunlight glaring in the near distance, clear edged and brilliant, through a break in the cloud cover. It vanished almost as soon as she saw it, but another broke through the wrack not far beyond, followed by another farther off, and she felt her spirits surge for the first time in days, elated by the possibility of an end to the incessant parade of gales and storms that had battered them for so long.

She bent forward and drew a supple leather satchel from between the two sleeping women. She opened it slowly and withdrew a folded blanket that she shook out and tested against her face for dryness before she swirled it up, over her head and across her shoulders. Then, moving carefully lest she disturb her charges, she lowered herself with great care to sit between them, leaning her back into the angle of the bulkhead and tugging gently at the material of the blanket until it covered her completely. Moments later, she was asleep, head tilted back, her lips smiling at some errant thought that had come to her as she sank into slumber.

TWO

She was dreaming that someone was calling her name from a vast distance when she opened her eyes to find Brother Thomas the sacristan standing over her, his pale, widely set eyes staring at her disapprovingly. She blinked in disbelief, attempting to raise her hands to rub at her eyes, but her arms were hampered by the folds of the blanket wrapped about her, and before she could free them she had become fully aware of her surroundings again, remembering that she was sitting between Marie and Janette in the angle of the forward bulwark. Both women were still soundly asleep, and she pressed one finger emphatically to her lips, frowning fiercely in warning to the sacristan to be quiet lest he awaken them.

The man recoiled slightly at her gesture, his face showing a faint repugnance, but she paid him no more attention as she set about raising herself to her feet, with great care for her decorum under his disdainful sneer. He had no regard for her, she knew that; it had been clear from their first encounter that he resented her presence among the brotherhood he regarded as being sacrosanct. She took no real offense from that, for she knew it was not personal; she knew, in fairness, that his reaction would have been no different to any other woman. Her own disapproval of him, however, had been equally spontaneous and obdurate. Sensing his antipathy and intolerance from the way he watched her even before she met him, she had dismissed him from the outset as a vermin-ridden, sanctimonious nonentity with the rankly sour, feral odor of a wild goat, and had refused to recognize his existence thereafter.

Unfortunately for both of them, it transpired that they could neither ignore nor avoid each other, for upon the death of his former master the preceptor, Brother Thomas’s duties and loyalty had been transferred, in accordance with his years of rank and seniority within the La Rochelle commandery, to assuring the welfare of Admiral St. Valéry, the next in rank to the former preceptor, and he was being as assiduous in his new duties as he had been in his old ones.

That meant that in the narrow confines of the admiral’s galley, he was never beyond sight or hearing of his primary charge, and since he considered Jessie, like all women, to be the Devil’s own device for the temptation of all decent men, he had refused her entry to the admiral’s tiny cabin since Charles first fell sick. Jessie railed inwardly at the sacristan’s smug presumption, but she took care to hide her anger, since there was nothing she could do to gainsay him at that point, and she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing that he had managed to upset her.

Satisfied now that her dress was in order, she turned back to face the fellow. “What do you want?”

Brother Thomas flushed slightly. “Brother Admiral would like to speak with you.”

“Brother Admiral, eh?” Jessie eyed the sacristan squarely, making no attempt to mask her dislike. “I wonder whether, in his heart of hearts, Sir Charles enjoys such a degree of familial intimacy? My late, dear husband used to say that we may choose our friends, but our relatives are an imposition at birth.” She paused, watching him closely, and had the pleasure of seeing his face flush even more sullenly as the insult sank home, but she gave him no time to retaliate, stepping past him and starting out towards the admiral’s quarters at the galley’s stern. “I have time now. I will attend him.”