Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

One of the galleys they had lent to Angus Og MacDonald visited Brodick on the second day of their preparations, in the course of a normal patrol of their own waters, and Will took advantage of the opportunity to quiz the MacDonald’s captain on the safest route to follow in crossing from Arran en route to Edinburgh. The captain, a wiry-bearded, bushy-eyebrowed veteran with a face weathered to a mass of leathery wrinkles born of years at sea, spoke both Scots and Gaelic and even had a smattering of French at his command.

“You will go by the dear green place,” he said, his soft, island-bred accent softening the harshness of the Scots in which he responded. “Straight north from here, up the Firth and then veering to the northeast along Clyde vale as far as you may go before the shallows cut you off. From there, it is journey of four or five days to Edinburgh on a sturdy horse. Where did you say you are going?”

“A place called Roslin. My father’s home.”

“Aye … I have never heard of the place.”

“Why should you have? It is small and lies far inland. But you yourself named a place I have never heard of. What was it, the dear green place? Where is that?”

“Och!” The captain threw back his head and laughed in genuine pleasure. “I forgot you are not from these parts. It is the place founded by the great saint Kentigern, hundreds of years ago—the mainlanders call him Saint Mungo, but he is Kentigern to us of the Isles, and his church town there at the top of the Firth is Glasgow, which is a Gaelic name, o’ two words, glas and gow, meaning dear an’ green.”

“I see. And are Englishmen garrisoned there?”

“I do not know, for I avoid the place. But there might be. It’s a strong place, wi’ a cathedral, so they’ll think it important. Anyway, take no chances. Keep you to the north bank of the Clyde and stay well clear of the town. It’s well wooded all along the vale o’ the river, and there’s few folk about nowadays. Just keep guards out ahead o’ you and ye should be fine. Edinburgh will lie about ninety miles to the east o’ you. The place you’re looking for, I canna help you wi’.”

Will thanked the man and left him to his work while he himself went in search of Mungo MacDowal, to whom he repeated the captain’s words. Mungo nodded. He knew the route, he said, having traveled it several times as a boy, with his father.

The next day, an hour before sunset, the watch atop Brodick Hall reported sails approaching from the south, and as dusk thickened around them Will was on the beach, awaiting the arrival of the pair of ships returning from the Channel ports of France, but apart from a brief and discouraging indication of the state of affairs there, he had to wait until late in the evening, after the communal prayers and meal, to hear the full extent of their discoveries. Immediately after dinner, he removed himself from the assembly and led the two captains to his quarters.

Trebec, a laughing, amiable man when not on duty, hailed from the Breton port of Brest, and so he had covered the ports to the south of Brest, down as far as the Spanish border, since there was less chance of his being recognized there and remembered as a Temple captain. The younger man, a swarthy native of Navarre in northern Spain, whose name was Ramon Ortega, had visited the northern ports, from la Rochelle itself, where he was unknown, north to Brest and on through Cherbourg as far as Dieppe, calling in to all of them and sending trusted men to find out what they could.

Neither man smiled as he made his report, and Will paced the floor as he listened to them, too tightly wound to be seated. True to the predictions of the original warning to de Molay, it appeared that every senior officer of the Order had been arrested on the appointed day in October and thrown into prison to await interrogation by the Holy Inquisition, the grimfaced Dominicans who called themselves the Hounds of God and whose implacable zealotry for the absolute sanctity of Christian dogma had spread terror and dread among ordinary Christians for the past hundred years, keeping them in abject subjugation through the fear of death by fire and torture. Both captains could attest to the involvement of the Inquisitors from numerous observations. The length and breadth of the coast of France, the tavern talk was all about the imprisonment of the Templars, and rife with speculation as to what was happening to them behind the forbidding walls of the King’s prisons.

Will listened in mounting anger and frustration to the reports, his frown deepening until he could stand no more of it and whipped up one hand, cutting both men into silence.

“That’s all well and good,” he growled, “and plainly there’s no lack of it. But where’s the sense of it? Where’s the meat of the matter? It’s one thing to execute a coup like that, but it’s another altogether to maintain it in the absence of hard truth. What are our people charged with? What’s the nature of the crimes of which they stand accused? You have told me nothing of that.”

Both men fidgeted, and neither one would meet his eye.

“Come then, speak out. You must have heard something of the accusations and I can but presume it deals in heresy of some kind. So what is it? What are we accused of? Apostasy? Usury? Both of those I could see, preposterous though they be, but usury in itself could not justify the extent of this malice. What else is there?”

Trebec looked at Ortega, who met his eyes and shrugged as though helpless, and the older man drew in a great breath and straightened his back and shoulders, turning to look Will straight in the eye. “There’s more than that, Sir William. Much, much more.”

“Then tell me, Captain Trebec. I am not a diviner.”

The mariner’s face was bleak, his voice flat. “Black arts and Devil worship. Crimes against God and Holy Church. Pederasty. Blasphemous rites and ceremonies involving obscene kisses and acts, man upon man, as part of Temple rites and initiations. Oaths against God, witnessing the Devil’s supremacy … The Temple Council and the knights stand accused of worshipping an idol, a mummified head called Baphomet, a creature of Satan, given to them to adore in token of his mastery and carefully kept and treasured in the Order’s secret vaults. All that, and many other things I have no wish to mention.” He looked down at the table. “Mutilation and abominable sins perpetrated against women … cannibalistic rites involving the sacrifice of infant children and the eating of their flesh.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “It seems, Sir William, that there is no sin, cardinal or mortal, and no crime conceivable, with which the Temple has not been charged. And the Holy Inquisitors are busy even now, torturing confessions out of broken men through the entire land of France.”

Will Sinclair stood as though thunderstruck, the blood draining from his face, and then he groped sightlessly for a chair and collapsed into it, shaking his head in mute denial of what he was being told. Neither of the captains spoke another word, merely staring at him wide eyed as they waited for him to gather his scattered wits.

“God damn them all,” he said at last, his voice barely audible. “This is infamy beyond the ken of ordinary men. God damn them to the deepest, darkest pits of nether Hell. God curse their evil, petty, miserable, money-grasping souls … Grasping King and weakling Pope and mindless, brutal minions—sound, solid, praying Christians every one …” He fell silent again, his frown growing even darker, and the silence stretched until he sat up straight again, grunting in anger and disgust. “So be it, then. I’ll think on that and decide what we must do. But even so, we still do not know all there is to know. Two ships are still to come back, from the Mediterranean coasts, though I doubt their tidings will be any brighter. Tell me, did you drop St. Thomas and Umfraville off without incident?”