Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

“If it exists, I believe I will find it. And I believe it exists.” He hesitated. “Of course, I have no idea how long it will take, so we will have to carry provisions for the entire crew for … probably two to three months.”

“Is that possible?”

“Barely, but yes. It would be easier with two ships, though. I asked originally for several vessels, but I see now that three might be too many, simply from the viewpoint of finding crews.”

Jessica sat up straight and blew her breath out sharply. “Then you must ask Sir William for two ships, and be prepared to man them both with only one full crew. Would that be enough for your needs?”

St. Valéry grinned. “Aye, it would, easily. But why are you so suddenly convinced Sinclair will let me go?”

“Because it makes sense. You can rid him of the threat of being followed to Scotland. And besides, if you succeed, and find this place—”

“And manage to return—”

She shot him a glance that was almost a frown.

“Oh, if you find it you will come back to brag of it, I have no doubt. And when you do that, you will have provided Sir William Sinclair and all his Order with a place of refuge that, should such a thing ever be required, would be unassailable … a place that no one knows, beyond the end of the world. You must speak to him as soon as possible, and with more conviction than you have ever used in your life.”

The admiral inclined his head, his beard masking his smile again. “So mote it be,” he murmured. “I will do so, rely upon it. But it occurs to me that my task will be much simpler—convincing him to permit me, I mean—if you appear to have no knowledge of my proposal and no interest in supporting me.”

She stared at him. “You mean you want me to pretend I know nothing of this.”

“I do. Sir William distrusts women—all women—instinctively. It is part of his training and he has not yet learned to cope with other … accommodations.”

Her face hardened and then she nodded. “That is true. I deplore it and I think him foolish and pigheaded in that, but I will say nothing and keep my distance while you plead with him.”

“Thank you, dear sister. I am in your debt.”

FOUR

To the considerable amazement of both plotters, Sir William Sinclair raised no insuperable objections to the admiral’s proposal when he had listened to it in its entirety, but then, although he said nothing at the time to St. Valéry, he had been mulling over the admiral’s idea for several days by then and could see nothing objectionable or unworthy in it. He accepted that a churchman might argue, on the grounds of morality, that Sir Charles might be seeking and risking suicide in such a venture, but Will Sinclair was a realist and had decided that the Order owed Sir Charles, after a lifetime of faithful and outstanding service, an opportunity to spend his final days in dedication to a quest he believed to be important.

But it was not until St. Valéry mentioned the notion expressed by his good-sister the Baroness, that success would provide a new haven in a new land to the survivors of the Order should it ever be needed, that Sinclair became convinced of the soundness of the admiral’s idea. The idea of hoodwinking the pursuing galleys and leading them out into the ocean appealed to him, too, for he was concerned about keeping the whereabouts of the fleet concealed from de Nogaret and his grasping master, but that faded to insignificance beside the potential outlined by the admiral. Charles St. Valéry was no man’s fool, and Sinclair trusted the older man’s instinct and judgment as he would his own. If St. Valéry believed this place called Merica was out there within reach, then it was a conviction arrived at only after much thought and grave deliberation over the pros and contras of what he was considering, and it was simply not in the admiral’s nature to lead any man dependent upon him into certain death. That truth, more than any other, led to Will’s conclusion that he should grant permission to St. Valéry’s request. Once that was decided, plans to implement the venture were quickly drawn up.

The weather had been perfect for sailing since the abatement of the storms, and the fleet sailed smoothly and swiftly along the northern coastline of Navarre towards Cape Corunna, where it would round the headland within the following two days and sail south by west again thereafter to Cape Finisterre. The fleet had reassembled on the second day after the last of the storms, with not a single vessel lost, an outcome that Brother Thomas the sacristan attributed to a miracle but which the admiral attributed to the skills of his captains and the seaworthiness of his ships.

Sir William kept the admiral and his men hard at work on the details of what had to be done if St. Valéry’s scheme were to have a hope of working. The following morning, a fifth galley was sent back to contact the four that already screened the fleet from the pursuing galleys from La Rochelle. Its captain’s orders were to gather information on the current situation vis-à-vis the pursuit craft; to discover the distance and sailing time separating the suspect galleys from the main fleet; and to return with that information as quickly as possible, but not before instructing the senior officer of the four screening galleys, Sir Charles de Lisle, to abandon his strategy of keeping distant and to determine the true status of the three galleys from La Rochelle, be they friend or foe. As soon as he knew beyond doubt, he was to send word immediately to Admiral St. Valéry.

In the meantime, taking advantage of the fine weather, St. Valéry sent out messages by boat asking any man who had intimate or special knowledge of the coastal waters between the two capes of Corunna and Finisterre to report to him in person. Three men responded, rowing from other ships to join him on his galley, where he awaited them on the small foredeck with Vice-Admiral de Berenger, Will Sinclair, and Captain de Narremat, the admiral’s shipmaster, in attendance. Two of the newcomers were sergeants, both veteran mariners, and the third a knight who had been born and raised on that harsh coastline. The admiral instructed them to decide upon a sheltered spot, if there were such a place along that ocean-battered littoral, where he could safely send at least some of his fleet ashore for a day.

There was one such place, they told him: a natural harbor that lay approximately forty miles south of Cape Corunna. It was close to where the knight had grown up and it was uninhabited, because the cliffs surrounding it were high and dangerous, undercut by thousands of years of relentless attacks by breaking waves so that they now loomed outwards above the beach, threatening any vessel foolhardy enough to linger in the bay below. All three men agreed that the bay was large and spacious and would easily accommodate the entire fleet in safety and secrecy for as long as they wished to remain there, but acknowledged that it could also be unpredictably dangerous because of falling rocks. The knight, whose name was Escobar, was confident that their pursuers, if they were really French and employed by de Nogaret, would be unlikely to know of the bay’s existence, since the only use he knew it served, and in this he was backed by one of the two mariners, was for the beaching of the occasional ship in order to scrape the barnacles from its hull.

St. Valéry looked at Sinclair, who nodded. “It sounds as though it might suit our purposes, but you are the seaman, so what think you? How long will you require to do what must be done?”

St. Valéry glanced at de Berenger, whose face showed nothing of his thoughts. “A few hours to transfer the remaining treasure from my hold to whichever vessel you select to take it, and then to transfer as many provisions as we might need from other ships. Half a day at most.”