Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

De Berenger nodded, and Will continued his instructions to Kenneth. “I’ll want your men in a perimeter around a space that’s large enough to hold all our people in an orderly assembly, with room enough to stand comfortably but not to encourage movement or commingling. Define the area yourself, then mark it, sides and rear. Leave the beach end open. Post twenty of your four score sergeants on each of three sides—rear, right, and left. The score remaining, plus your score of knights, will serve as ushers. I will permit no one else to go ashore until you have marked the bounds and posted your men, but waste no time. Mass will begin as close to noon as may be. Have your people marshal the others as they come ashore.” He told his brother how he wanted the men arranged in front of the altar.

“What then?”

“Then we will celebrate our first Mass as an assembled community in weeks, and I will address the brethren.”

Kenneth was looking down at the massive medallion on his brother’s chest, smiling again. “I’ve never seen one of those before, though I know what it is. But aren’t you supposed to wear it over your mantle?”

“I am, and I will, and after today you may never see it again. Now, away with you and do what I’ve told you. Some of the admiral’s lads will hoist you back up to your ship, and as soon as you get there your every minute will be precious.”

Ropes and grappling hooks were being cast loose even before Kenneth was hauled back aboard his ship, and the forward oarsmen of the right banks were straining to push the galley’s bow around and away from the other vessel, a widening gap spreading between the two craft. Normally, Will would have been watching the operations avidly, for he was endlessly fascinated by the skills of the Temple’s seamen, but on this occasion he had neither time nor interest and was already scanning his lists again, allocating a degree of importance to each item and deciding upon how to proceed.

He eventually became aware of the sound of the oars pulling in unison again and looked up briefly to find himself already among the fleet, ships and galleys ranged in disciplined lines on both sides of him. The sound of ropes squealing through a pulley attracted his eye, and he watched the admiral’s rigidly framed standard, the naval baucent with its skull and crossed bones on a black field, being hauled to the top of the mast. Its sighting was a signal to all ships’ captains to assemble, and it had clearly been awaited, for within minutes boats were pulling towards the galley from all directions.

By the time all the captains were assembled, the stern deck was crammed with men, and de Berenger swung himself up onto the deck’s rail to address them, bracing himself easily against the rigging. He waited until he had all their attention and then launched into a crisp series of succinct orders, consulting Will’s list from time to time and missing nothing. He named each captain and listed his individual requirements from each one: personnel and equipment to be unloaded and shipped ashore, and the precise order, ship by ship, in which the business was to proceed. He named several senior officers from each of his galleys, none of them present there, to be delegated by their captains as quartermasters for the disembarkation, to handle the logistics of the landward exodus, and he emphasized that only a minimal crew should remain aboard each vessel when the landing was complete. When he was finished, he asked for questions and was grimly pleased when none materialized. He dismissed them all to return to their ships, then made his way, accompanied by Will, to his own cabin.

As Will followed him he saw several boatloads of Sir Kenneth’s men already close to the beach, while above their heads, clearly visible on the hillside leading down towards the plateau, the contingent of cooks and workmen was struggling with the weight of the laden carts they had brought with them from Douglas’s place at Brodick.

THREE

Noon came and went without the Mass being celebrated, but arrangements were well enough in hand by then that Will was content simply to wait in the concealment and privacy of his massive pavilion, paying close attention to the proceedings by looking through small observation slits in the pavilion’s walls.

The lay brothers from the preceptory of La Rochelle had been the second party to land, following Sir Kenneth Sinclair’s group, and had been working hard since they arrived. They had begun by setting up two large pavilions behind the central square, one facing the beach on the right of the altar, for use by the bishops who would conduct the ceremonies, and the other on the left, where Will now stood, for Sir William Sinclair himself as senior officer of the Order in attendance. That done, they had then erected the altar on the knoll above the beach and were still fussing around it so that now its gold and silver vessels and candlesticks stood out against the snowy white cloths and napery and the surrounding natural colors of the grassy bench above the beach, while above and behind the altar the looming shape of the tocsin, suspended from a tripod of ships’ spars, added an air of even greater solemnity for the participants.

The tocsin was a symbol of the Temple that was almost as old as the Order itself, a great bronze bell taken in battle against the Seljuk Turks almost two centuries earlier and used ever since to summon the brotherhood to assemble. Its last use in battle had been at the siege of Acre, more than two decades earlier, when it had roused the rapidly dwindling garrison of the doomed fortress to face the relentless attacks of the Muslim hordes each day. It had been shipped out of the fortress to safety along with the Temple Treasure mere days before the final collapse of the stronghold and the loss of the Templars’ last presence in the Holy Lands. It had lain concealed and almost forgotten since then, until it came to light in the activities surrounding the removal of the Temple Treasure from the forest of Fontainebleau before the events of October thirteenth. Now it sat high above the waters of a Scottish island, ready again to stir the hearts of the Temple brethren.

Sixty of Kenneth’s people, knights and sergeants, now lined three sides of the venue; the remaining forty were meeting the incoming brethren as they came ashore and directing them to their assigned positions around the altar. The ships and galleys had almost finished disgorging their personnel now and the assembly was close to being complete. Knights from the various ships stood shoulder to shoulder in four ranks, facing the altar with their backs to the sea, and behind them were ranged the remaining members of the garrison of La Rochelle. On the left side, ranked laterally behind the cordon of Sir Kenneth’s men and facing inward, stood the crews of the fleet’s trading vessels, the nonmilitary mariners, while opposite them on the other side of the central space, the crews of the naval galleys stood easily, waiting for whatever might develop. The lay brethren of the former garrison of La Rochelle were formed up in a black-robed block to the right of and slightly behind the altar on the knoll.

“They’re coming, Will.”

Will grunted in acknowledgment, the opening chord of plainsong from the lay brothers almost drowning out Tam’s comment and rendering it unnecessary. It signaled the departure of the last longboat from the fleet, with a full cargo of robed churchmen, and the chanting would continue until the three green-robed Templar bishops, Bishop Formadieu of La Rochelle senior among them, had disembarked and made their way in procession, accompanied by their cadre of canons, deacons, and subdeacons, to the altar.

He turned away and stood in silence for a spell, his chin sunk on his breast as he reviewed what he would say to the assembly when his turn came. The Mass would take precedence, as it must, and the churchmen would, as always, have the ordering of the rites, but when it came time to address the urgencies and realities of what faced the displaced community beyond this tent as a whole, Will knew that his would be the words most closely heeded, and his the voice that would be either obeyed or ignored. He pursed his lips, absently rehearsing what he would say, and his fingers toyed idly with the heavy pendant hanging at his breast, supported by the massive chain of silver links. He had laid aside his white knight’s mantle for this rigidly formal occasion and now stood vested in the stark regalia of the Governing Council of his Order: black chain-mail armor surmounted and covered by a formal garment of incalculable value, an elaborately embroidered heraldic surcoat known as a tabard. It was fashioned of multiple hand-worked, coruscating layers of black upon black—beadwork and shell work of contrasting hues and textures; beadwork upon shaved sable fleece and blackened silver wire—its dark magnificence illumined by a single equal-armed cross pattée appliquéd in tiny white seashells upon the left breast, and by the heavy silver chain about Will’s neck and shoulders, with its thumb-thick lozenge of red and white enameled metal. A massive shield hung from his left arm, black with a blazoned cross pattée in white at its center, and his long two-handed sword hung at his side from the blackbuckled, polished leather belt slung across his chest.