Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

“A word, if it please you,” the Bishop said, and beckoned him to come with them.

They crossed the crowded yard and mounted the wooden stairs to the hall, picking their way through the press of craning bodies that jammed the steps. Inside, the building was deserted, and Bruce led the way quickly across the rush-strewn floor and up the stairs to the room they had been in the night before. As he climbed the steps, Will was surprised to realize that for a period of hours he had managed to escape the tension and uncertainty that had kept him awake for most of the night. It had all returned now, filling his breast, and he had not yet spoken a word since being summoned. The Bishop pulled the door shut behind them.

The room was dim, lit only by thin November daylight from the small windows high in the gable wall, and the King was already seating himself next to the long dead fire in the iron grate. He waved Will to a seat across from him, and as the Temple knight obeyed, Moray lowered himself carefully into the chair next to Bruce. The King looked at Will and scratched his chin.

“Davie here has been praying all morning,” he said.

“ Thinking and praying,” the Bishop amended. “And I have some suggestions to propose … some provisos.”

There came a deep-throated roar from outside and Bruce glanced up at the windows. “Angus Og is giving them something to react to,” he said quietly. “A great believer in spectacle, is Angus. But,” he drew himself upright in his chair, his entire demeanor changing, “we will have an hour before he approaches the beach, so we can talk—” He broke off, his eyebrows rising slightly, then asked, “What is it?”

Will flapped a hand to indicate that what he had to say was unimportant. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but it occurred to me that when your guest arrives, he might address you as King Bruce openly, in front of all … and I know you are here secretly. That is all.”

The King nodded. “Well said, but Angus will not come ashore. He will merely send a boat for Davie, Boyd, de Hay, and me. He and I talked of this but days ago and he knows I am plain Boyd of Annandale here. Now, let’s listen to what my lord Bishop has to say. Davie?”

The Bishop sat back and leveled his bright, hazel eyes at Will. “Fine,” he said, speaking in clearly enunciated Scots. Fine. I’ll not bore you with what you already know, Sir William, but get right to the heart of things. We have … difficulties … possible and serious discomfiture and embarrassment for King Robert and his entire realm should your presence here become public knowledge—and with the arrival of the fleet you expect tomorrow, that knowledge can scarcely be avoided. But on the other hand, there could be—there are —equally potent benefits available to both Crown and realm through your presence here, not the least of those being the treasure you carry in your hold for the King’s purse. But there is also the matter of your galleys to consider, the goodwill and advantages those offer us. And forbye, there is the real, appreciable worth of the trained, disciplined, mounted, and fully equipped manpower you have promised in King Robert’s support should you be permitted to remain here. Those things are known, and in many respects, they counterbalance each the other, pro and contra.

“The difficulty lies in finding the means—some practical and valid method—whereby we, the Church in Scotland, as much as the King’s military and civil advisers, could justifiably grant the sanctuary you seek, while keeping the dangers entailed from overwhelming everything. The losses we would court in doing so are not to be made light of. They involve the excommunication and eternal damnation of an entire people on the one hand, and the loss of a powerful ally on the other. And even the threatened loss of that ally’s neutrality is to be feared, since the absence of neutrality entails his espousal of England’s cause in the wars we face.”

He cleared his throat, glancing away towards a distant corner. “I prayed long and hard last night, searching for some guidance, some oracle, I suppose, to tell me what Archbishop Lamberton and Bishop Wishart would wish to say, were either of them able to be here. But of course they cannot be here, and I must act in their stead, for my sins. And so I tossed and turned much of the night, and thought … thought about the idea, no more than a flashing notion, that had come to me last night. We talked briefly of beards.”

“I remember.”

“You told us that the full, forked beards were an affectation. That was the word you used.”

“Aye. It is an affectation. It began in the Holy Lands, during the wars there. All men went bearded there, Muslim and Christian alike. And at some point, no one knows when now, the knights of the Temple began to wear their beards forked, to differentiate themselves from others.”

“How do you know that? You sound certain of it.”

Will frowned, wondering where this was leading. Bruce was saying nothing, plucking at the tuft of beard beneath his nether lip and studying the Bishop through narrowed eyes.

“I am certain of it. It was referred to in—” Will caught himself. “In some documents I read … while preparing for advancement within the Order. It was of no importance, but it stuck in my memory for some reason.” He shrugged. “My mind works like that sometimes, retaining things of which I have no need. Why do you ask? Is it important?”

“I think so. How does one man look at another and know he belongs to the Temple?”

Will’s frown deepened, reflecting his growing bewilderment. “Several different ways. By the clothes he wears, and the insignia he bears—the cross pattée, the various marks of rank.”

“And the beard?”

“Aye, certainly, if the wearer is a knight, but not so the sergeants. The knights all wear forked beards, highly distinctive, as you pointed out, but the sergeants simply go bearded … and tonsured, of course.”

“Of course,” the Bishop agreed, nodding. “They all wear the tonsure of the Church’s most privileged Order.” He paused for barely a heartbeat, then continued on a different tack. “You said your first task would be to remind your people of who they are and what they represent, no?”

Thoroughly perplexed now, Will glanced at the King, seeking some guidance. But the monarch’s steelgray eyes stared back at him levelly, offering nothing in the way of enlightenment, and so he looked again at Moray, only to find the same level, noncommittal gaze. He flapped a hand impatiently and nodded. “I did say that, yes. And I meant it.”

“I know you did, because you named your reasons and your fears: that their morale might have been threatened by the events in France, because after weeks cooped up at sea they might be feeling mutinous, angry, and resentful and thus prone to unpredictable behavior. Am I correct or have I missed something?”

“No, Bishop, you were listening well.” Something like a small, hard-edged grin flickered at the corner of Will’s mouth. “You may have overstated the case slightly, but the gist of what I said is there.”

“You said you must remind them of their vows and make them aware of the obligations they undertook in joining the Order. Those would be poverty, chastity, and obedience.” Moray smiled now. “Poverty, it seems to me, has never been a difficulty for your brethren, would you not agree? And chastity becomes a way of life in a religious Order, free of the fleshly temptations that beset the ruck of men. But obedience is another matter altogether, and in this instance of what occurred in France, the deterrent to obedience, the fear of punishment, has been removed by the incarceration of the Order’s leaders and commanders. That, I believe, must be your first priority: to re-establish the concept of obedience, and your own authority, before all else. How will you do that, should the need arise?” He extended his hand, fingers spread, inviting a response.