Order in Chaos

FROM DEATH INTO DEATH

ONE

It seemed to Jessie Randolph that all the world was coming to Arran that first week of May in the year of our Lord 1314. The northwestern harbor of Lochranza was crowded with so many galleys that the unthinkable had occurred and the harbor had been closed, incapable of accommodating a single vessel more. Four of the eight remaining Temple galleys were moored there, but they were invisible among the others, visiting craft from the isles and sea lochs to the north, many of which had borne the MacDonald blazon of the new Lordship of the Isles on their sails as they approached the anchorage beneath the cliff. There were more than MacDonald vessels down there, though; she had seen the emblems of Campbells, MacRuaries, and MacNeils as well, along with several others unknown to her that Will told her had come from the isles far to the north. They had filled the harbor, which had never seemed small before, occupying every foot of the wharves that lined the water, and in places so many of them were lashed together side by side that they appeared to form a series of floating bridges across the waters directly below where Jessie stood looking down from the castle walls.

She had been in Lochranza for nigh on a year and a half—the time had flown by almost without her awareness—and as chatelaine of the castle she had become accustomed to the always-busy harbor beneath the walls, with its constant procession of ships and galleys coming and going, but she had never seen anything like what was happening now. The narrow strip of land between the wharves and the castle itself was thick with men, all of them scurrying about like ants, but she knew that what she was seeing was nothing; beyond her sight, behind the curve of the walls to each side, the yards and buildings of the castle enclosure were even more crowded, and the mob of men spilled out beyond the postern gate to fill up the meadow at the rear.

She half smiled as the word mob came to her, for although the men below bore no resemblance to the kind of soldiers she had known most of her life in mainland Scotland, France, and England, to call them a mob was wrong. Although there was no uniformity of any kind among the Gaels, and none of the imposed restraints of chivalry, each man among them was a warrior, selfequipped and self-reliant, present upon his own decision to support his chief, and should the wishes of his own chief concur with the wishes of any other, each would decide for himself whether or not to continue to extend that support. She knew they were no mob, no mere disorderly rabble. She had heard enough from many sources to know that these fiercely independent men, so apparently undisciplined, were savage and unrelenting fighters who could tear down conventional military formations and overwhelm fortifications with ease, imposing their own form of discipline upon themselves when the need arose. Islesmen and Highlanders all, they lived by their own standards, beholden to no man.

Beneath her, two floors removed, their leaders were meeting with King Robert’s representatives, Sir Robert Keith, the Marshal of Scotland, and Sir James Douglas, looking far older and more grim than he had when Jessie had first met him, a mere five years earlier. Two prominent members of the Scottish clergy completed the royal delegation: William Sinclair, the Bishop of Dunkeld and uncle to her own Will, and the formidable Bishop David Moray, dressed as always in the mail hauberk and steel cuirass of a fighting soldier and looking not one whit like a lord of Holy Church. Meeting with these four were Angus Og MacDonald, now the self-styled Prince of the Isles; Fergus MacNeil, the Lord of Barra; MacGregor of Glenorchy, chief of Clan Alpine; and a pair of taciturn chieftains from the islands of Lewis and Uist whose names she did not know, although she suspected that they were kinsmen to the MacNeil. They had been in discussions for three days now, taking over the main hall on the second floor of the castle and ousting its chatelaine for the duration, so that she spent most of her time now either in her own chambers with her women, including young Marjorie, or here on the battlements, overlooking the activities in the harbor below whenever the unpredictable spring weather permitted it.

Jessie, swathed now in a richly furred mantle of soft sealskin, was untroubled by the loss of her domain, content to let the visitors have the run of it. She understood the urgency of this gathering and so she simply left them to get on with their affairs, confident that the faithful Hector and his staff from Nithsdale would keep them well supplied with food and drink. She had other, more weighty matters to think about.

Will, her Will, whom she now gloried in calling her man, was deeply involved in convening another, completely different gathering at Brodick Castle. There, too, she knew, would be a great gathering of ships in the nearby bay of Lamlash, in the lee of the Holy Isle, Eilean Molaise, because in four days’ time the last formal chapter of the assembled knights and sergeants of the Temple Order within the realm of Scotland was due to assemble there, and the brethren would already be arriving, openly or secretly, from all over King Robert’s domain. And when it was concluded, the Arran community of Templars would disperse, some of them on the quest to the new land, others to serve King Robert as volunteers, based in a number of communal centers that had been set up on the mainland within the previous few months. These centers were few, but they were in place, widely distributed throughout the realm, and would be referred to henceforth as lodges; none would ever be called preceptory or commandery, but they would serve as rallying points and places of refuge for those who wished to retain their fraternal identities, and they would be tacitly acknowledged by the King’s authority. The men based there, indistinguishable by now from ordinary men, would continue to function as Templars, but in a profound secrecy beyond anything they had known or needed in the past. They would observe their rituals and rites, nurturing and passing on the secrets and symbols of their once great Order to other, younger men in days to come.

Of course, the King’s royal leave for the Scots Templars to attend the chapter gathering had not been given without conditions, and Will had discussed those conditions with Jessie, seeking her advice. The King knew of the resources Will had nurtured on Arran, and he was more than aware of the wealth of horseflesh, particularly the heavy horses, under Will’s command. In all of Bruce’s Scotland there were fewer than forty destriers, the enormous war horses that made the chivalry of England and France so powerful, and the worth of each one was incalculable. The small cavalry force that Scotland could field, seldom more than five hundred strong, was all light horse: scouts and skirmishers and mounted men-at-arms and bowmen, suitable enough for diversionary tactics and for nuisance raiding but utterly ineffectual against the fearsome, overwhelming bulk of massed English chivalry. Thus it was natural that King Robert coveted the Temple destriers, and knowing the King’s needs and the dangers facing his realm, Will had had no difficulty in agreeing to provide them. After all, as he had said to Jessie, they could not take the beasts to Merica. They had more than seventy of the huge animals on Arran now, and they would have difficulty transporting them even across the narrow channel to the mainland, for the ships that brought them here from France had all long since been reconfigured for other cargo.

Jessie had agreed with everything that Will was saying, advising him to make an immediate start on reconfiguring the ships’ holds yet again to accommodate heavy livestock. But then she had asked him about the knights’ armor. King Robert would assign the destriers to his knights, she pointed out, but would those knights have armor sufficiently heavy and strong for the tasks they had to face aboard their new and massive mounts? Very few of them would, she suggested, since Scots knights, less wealthy than their English counterparts, had traditionally been unable to afford, or even to find, such enormous mounts, and consequently had no use for such bulky, reinforced armor. Their need had always been for lighter, stronger armor, mail that was more supple and less restrictive than the solid, unyielding plate worn by the English chivalry. Besides, she added, had he thought about how many of his own Templars would wish to volunteer their services as chivalry to Scotland?

That took Will aback, for he had not thought of it at all. His overriding concern in recent months had been the composition of the group that would set out across the sea for the new land, ensuring that only the best, most versatile and resilient of his people would be included. De Berenger had crossed safely to Genoa late in the previous July, avoiding the English blockade of the North Sea coast, and had been able to buy two newly built ships, both commissioned and partly paid for by the Temple before its dissolution, along with two similar vessels that were unfinished when he arrived, their construction suspended in the absence of a purchaser. All four, he had reported back, were suitable for their expedition and in fact better than he had hoped to find. He had promised to have the four new ships back in Arran by mid-June, and all Will’s efforts had been geared towards being ready to set out at that time.

Thus, in the hubbub of all the ongoing activities, Will had made a fundamental error in his calculations. For more than five years now, revolving shifts of armed and mounted men from their Arran community had been fighting with the Bruce armies, and Will had taken it for granted that they would continue to do so after their relocation to the mainland. But those riders—knights and sergeants alike—had all used smaller, lighter horses and mail armor, easier to transport across water. He had not considered the great destriers, or the fact that many of his men, the French knights most assuredly, would wish to rearm themselves with their own huge war horses and plate armor once that became possible. Now he had to plan to present King Robert not only with horses but with the armored knights to ride those horses. Chagrined initially at having overlooked such an apparently obvious development, he had nevertheless soon found the grace and humor to acknowledge, once again, his new-won spouse’s value as an adviser. He had immediately issued orders to have all the Templars’ heavy armor and weaponry brought out from storage and refurbished for use in the coming English invasion.

And so, as soon as the chapter meeting was adjourned, the business of transferring the horses, armor, and weapons to Scotland would begin, for they had no time to waste. She herself would have been in Brodick now, organizing the score and a half of women who would sail with the expedition to the new land, had Will not asked her to remain behind in Lochranza to act as chatelaine and hostess to the gathering there. That was a waste of her time, in Jessie’s opinion—though she kept her silence—since she had contributed nothing but her presence, and that had been largely ignored, as she had known it would be.

A sudden upsurge in the noise from below attracted her attention. The apparently aimless seething of the crowd down there had altered since she had last looked, and now men were moving purposefully, pouring aboard the galleys, spilling from one to the other as they sought their own berths.

A discreet cough came from behind her, and she turned to find Hector standing at the turret door, holding it open for Sir James Douglas, who was stooped in the entryway, smiling at her.

“Sir James! Is something wrong? Do you need anything? I—”

Douglas doffed his feathered cap and bowed low in the gesture she had come to associate with him, but the smile remained in place on his dark-skinned, strangely attractive face. “No, Baroness, nothing is wrong. We are done our work and I need nothing … except time—a few more months between now and the coming week, if you could arrange that?”

She laughed back at him. “Would that I could, Sir James. But are you leaving?”

“Aye, on the rising tide, ’gin we can board and clear the sea wall in time. It is gey tight down there.” He stepped to her side and they stood together for a moment, watching the still-increasing activity below. “MacNeil, at the back there, will go first,” Douglas told her, “and that will clear the harbor mouth. As soon as they have room to dip their oars, the others will follow. I would venture, though it seems impossible, looking at that, that your harbor will be empty again within the hour from now. These caterans know their business.”

He looked at her again and stepped back a pace, inclining his head. “I have come to thank you, Baroness, from all of us who have gathered here these past few days, depriving you of house and home. Your hospitality and forbearance have been much appreciated, and we have achieved all that we hoped for. The Islesmen of the West will stand with His Grace when England comes chapping at our door, and those tidings will do much to soothe our noble Robert’s cares. But I must now travel hard and fast to tell him, for he is on his way to Stirling to assemble our host, such as it may be. And so, ’gin you will grant me leave to go thus rudely, I must away forthwith. The others are waiting for me.”

“Go then, and Godspeed, Sir James. Carry my blessings and good wishes to the King, and tell him I will keep his niece safe for him.”

“I will. Adieu, then, Madame la Baronne.” He bowed again, sweeping the ground with his bonnet’s plume, and then he was gone, the sound of his booted feet dwindling rapidly down the narrow spiral staircase.

Jessie stood staring at the spot where he had vanished, her eyes narrowed in thought. She had been less than truthful with the King in the matter of his niece, for she had said nothing of taking the girl with her beyond the seas, and even now she was unsure what she would do when the time came to decide. It would all depend upon what happened in the weeks and months ahead; if she decided that Marjorie’s life would be safer in the new land, then she would take the child without a moment’s hesitation.

That Scotland would be invaded was a certainty. Edward Bruce had ensured that when he made his foolish truce with the English governor of Stirling the previous summer. England’s King had used the ensuing year to settle his own internal wars with his barons and whip them into a frenzy of greed and offended chivalric honor, playing upon their lust for Scottish lands and wealth. The sole question remaining was the exact timing and strength of the incursion, and even that was finite. Midsummer Day, the date of settlement of the Stirling truce, was June twenty-fourth. England had until that date, now six weeks distant, to relieve Stirling or lose Scotland.

Edward of England had begun summoning his earls and barons months earlier, just before Christmas. Word had soon reached Bruce’s ears, generating the urgency that had brought about this gathering of Scots and Gaels here in Lochranza, forging alliance between King Robert and the reluctant, independent Islesmen and Highlanders, for if King Robert’s Scotland fell to the English, so, too, would the Western Isles and the Highlands.

A chorus of horns and shouts from below brought Jessie’s attention back to the present, and she looked over the battlements to see, to her astonishment, that the harbor was indeed emptying rapidly, the sea beyond the entrance dotted with departing galleys, all of them using wind and oars to reach their various destinations as soon as possible. Another roar of approval reached her, and she looked straight down, recognizing Douglas and his three companions as they and their attendants moved quickly to board their own vessel, the massive galley lent to the King of Scots by his Arran Templars.

How long she stood gazing down at the King’s galley as it was warped away from its berth and headed out to sea she could not have said afterwards, for her mind was filled with worries of another sort as she wondered what her own man would now do. He had told her that he would remain on Arran to complete his work; that the affairs of Scotland were Scotland’s own; that he had made and would continue to make his contribution to King Robert’s cause with men, horses, and weaponry; but that his overriding responsibility was to his own people and their journey to the new land. She had believed him at the time, but that had been a full month earlier, and now she was not so sure. Sir William Sinclair was not the kind of man who could turn his back upon his friends in time of need, and Robert Bruce and his closest supporters had become Will’s friends. Knowing that, she knew too, in her heart of hearts, that as the threat of invasion drew nearer, her man must be undergoing torment from his divided loyalties.

He would do the right thing. She had no doubt of that. But the unease over what that might be, the decision he might finally make, had kept her awake every night since he had left for Brodick. She had waited far too long for him to come to her, and now that he had, she could barely tolerate the thought that she might lose him in the squalor of some muddy battlefield, slaughtered in the mire because his sense of honor and his conscience would not permit him to stand back and look to his own affairs.

She was still standing there, gazing sightlessly out to sea and hugging herself beneath her sealskin mantle, when she felt his hands close over her upper arms. She knew them instantly and whirled about, throwing himself into his embrace and kissing him wildly, feeling him stiffen at first at her unexpected ardor, and then enfold her, pulling her tightly against him as he returned her kiss.

Finally, after a time she thought was all too short, he broke from the embrace and turned her in his arms so that she leaned back into him, but in the turning, she had time to see the lines in his face and the deeply troubled look in his eyes, and she felt her heart fill up with apprehension, knowing that he should not be here.

“So, they are gone,” he whispered into her ear, holding her steadily as he looked out at the last of the departing ships. “They reached an agreement?”

The question was rhetorical, but she answered it anyway. “Aye, they are gone. Sir James told me the men of the West will stand with the King when the time comes.”

“I had no doubt they would. They have no option.”

His voice was quiet, a mere murmur, but she twisted out of his grasp. “What is it, Will? Why are you here?”

His eyes examined the whole of her face, and then he shrugged and grunted softly, smiling sadly. “I am here to see you, Jess … to look at you and feel you in my arms, soft and warm against me … and to talk with you … to share some tidings.”

“Ill tidings.”

He hesitated, his eyes narrowing, then nodded.

“Aye. As ill as might be.”

“Come then, for this is no place to be sharing them.”

She took his hand and led him from the roof, retaining her grip as she led him down the narrow, winding staircase to their bedchamber on the floor below. Young Marjorie was there, sitting before the fire with Marie and Janette, and all three of them glanced up in surprise as Jessie entered, still leading Will. She told them to leave, to go and help Hector and his staff in cleaning and readying the great hall below, and to stay away until she called for them again, and when they were gone, she turned again to Will, reaching up to touch his face, fingering the stubble on his cheek. “I want you, here and now, in that bed, but you have more need to talk than to make love. I can see it in your eyes.”

She swung away, waving to the chair to the right of the large fireplace. “Sit then, and tell me, and when you have told me once, no matter how bad it may be, you can tell it to me again, in bed. I will listen closely both times, I promise you. And then I will tell you what I think.”

He moved to sit obediently and she settled herself opposite him, her eyes on his, waiting until he had settled. “Now, tell me.”

He nodded, complacently enough, but then sat silent, and she could see that his eyes were unfocused, his thoughts far away as he searched for words. She waited, and after a while he blinked as though awakening and dropped one hand to finger the hilt of the dagger at his waist.

“I have just received news from France,” he said, his voice lifeless. “Jacques de Molay is dead, after seven years in jail. By now he would have been seventy-two, perhaps seventy-three. An old, done man, destroyed by seven years of abominations and abuse. They had sent cardinals to try him and his three remaining companions yet again, but he rejected their authority. He would speak only to Pope Clement, he said, and in person, in accordance with the oath he had sworn so long before. But Clement was in Avignon, at odds with Philip once again, and he would not go to Paris. And so, de Molay rescinded his confession once again. It had been drawn from him by torture, he proclaimed, and he now abjured it, denouncing Philip Capet for the greedy thief he is …” He blew out a long, shuddering breath.

“Capet was in Paris, and he reacted swiftly. They burned the old man at the stake that very night, on an island in the middle of the Seine, by the church of Notre Dame. The date was the eighteenth of March. My old friend Antoine St. Omer was there among the hundreds that witnessed it. He said our Grand Master died well, cursing both Pope and King from the smoke and flames and calling upon God to witness that he and all his Order were innocent of the charges brought against them.”

Jessie stood up and crossed to him, cradling his head against her breasts, and she said nothing. He sat with his face against her for several moments more, then pushed her gently away.

“So there we have it, Jess. The final betrayal of a grand old man and all he stood for, by the Pope he served faithfully and the King he would not serve.

“He did not die alone, though. The Preceptor of Normandy, Geoffrey of Charney, burned with him, close by. Nor did he die unheard, and the last call that he uttered was a summons to both Pope and King to meet him before God’s throne within the year. St. Omer spoke of that, and he would not lie in such a thing.”

“Oh, my dear Will, I am so sorry.” He looked at her and twisted his mouth wryly, inclining his head in acknowledgment, and she asked, “How was the news received among the brethren in Brodick?”

“No one yet knows. These are ill tidings, my love, and their timing could not have been less opportune. And so I decided to hold them close until the time is right to divulge them … although God Himself knows that time will never be.”

“I see … So, what will happen now?”

He expelled his breath slowly, wearily. “Now, Jess? Now I have to tell the brethren assembled at Brodick. Now I am Grand Master in fact, God help me, with nothing to be Master of. And now I must appoint a Master in Scotland, to guide the brethren who remain behind after we are gone. Does all of that sound as futile to you as it does to me?”

“Shush now. Come you.”

She took his hand and led him to the bed.

AFTERWARDS, WHILE HE LAY SLEEPING by her side, she thought about what he might do, and arrived at a decision. It was a grave decision, and she refused to consider it at first, but she knew she had no choice but to accept it, though it might be the death of her.

She sat up and turned sideways to wake him up, and he looked sheepish as he realized that he had rolled off her onto his back, and there fallen straight to sleep, but she merely smiled at him and ran a barely touching fingertip down the line of soft hair that ran from his chest to his navel. Then she slapped his flat belly and told him to get up and dress.

When he was clothed again and sitting by the fire, she curled up in the chair across from him.

“Tell me now, what of the English? Have you heard anything new?”

“Aye, new and ever growing since Edward sent out his orders, calling eight earls and eighty-seven barons to assemble at Berwick with all their strength. The tenth of June was the assembly date he named, but more than two and a half thousand mounted knights, heavily armored and armed, were already there by March. And each of them brought two or three mounted men-at-arms to back him. By March, Jess, with two months in hand! The English crows are hungry for Scots flesh …

“That same month, word came from Lamberton, in a letter smuggled from where he is held in England, that Edward has increased his levy. He has called for an additional fifteen thousand infantry from the north and Midlands, and three thousand archers from Wales, and he has requisitioned more than two hundred heavy carts and wagons for his supply train. As I was leaving for Brodick four days ago, Douglas himself told me the latest numbers indicate that there are more than twenty thousand men at Berwick, all of them well equipped and slavering with thoughts of victory and plunder.”

“Twenty thousand?”

“Aye, lass, that’s what I said. Twenty thousand. And in all of Bruce’s Scotland, even were he to raise every able-bodied man in the realm, there are less than half of that number, mayhap even less than a quarter of it, to withstand them.”

Both of them stared into the sinking fire until Jessie asked, “Would you like to hear my advice?”

He almost smiled. “You would advise me even in this? Aye, I would. You have not failed me yet.”

“Nor will I now, for I love you more than life itself, and because of that I will tell you what is in my mind.” She looked down to where the fingers of her hand were pleating the fabric of her gown. “I thought about this long and hard, Will, and I believe I know what you should do—must do. So listen to me carefully, my love, and pay close attention, for I might change my mind later and try to tell you I was wrong. But right now, I know I am right.”

TWO

The Great Hall at Brodick, the Chapter House as it was now known among the brethren, was full, with men packed shoulder to shoulder even on the alternating black and white squares of the ceremonial square painted in the center of the floor. Only two open aisles, edged by ropes and forming a cross, permitted access to the four rostra that held the chairs at the four cardinal points of the compass. The Eastern dais was the largest of these, holding the Master’s Chair, and it formed the front of the assembly, the focus of all men’s eyes.

The closed rites of the knightly brethren were complete, conducted according to the Rule, in the darkness of the night, and now with the coming of daylight, the sergeants had joined the knights for the less formal portion of the ceremonies. There was a profound, almost palpable air of solemnity about the occasion, for everyone knew that this would be the last such gathering—the last plenary assembly of the surviving members of the Order of the Temple in Arran, perhaps the last anywhere. Any gathering would hereafter be clandestine, private, of necessity—and that awareness lent an aching piquancy to the rumbling sound of the massed voices chanting the canons of the Rule.

Will stood high above the assembly, looking down from a curtained window in the carved wooden screen that concealed the suite of rooms at his back and waiting for the last of the canons to reach its end. He had planned this event carefully, bearing in mind everything that Jessie had said to him, and he was still astonished at the degree of insight she had shown into events about which she could have known nothing. She had divined the mood of this assembly, if not the content of it, and had considered aspects of this day that might never have occurred to him at all.

The chant reached the point he had been waiting for—he had heard it sung a thousand times and more over the years—and he turned and nodded to the men lined up on his right, then watched as they turned in unison and began to move in procession towards the door at the top of the wide stairs that led down along the east wall to the ceremonial floor. All four were dressed in bright white woolen robes over which each wore the emblems—the jewels—of his individual office. As they reached the door, each one in turn knocked loudly, and when the door was opened by the inner guard, the man who had knocked leaned forward and gave the password in a voice that only the guard could hear, then passed through, closing the door behind him.

Will watched them go, feeling love and admiration for each of them swelling in his breast. Richard de Montrichard, preceptor here since their arrival, went first. His was the Chair in the North, and none of the gathering below would dispute his right to hold it. De Montrichard had been a fine preceptor, and Will felt a familiar stirring of discomfort as he recalled his own doubts about the man’s suitability when they first landed here. De Montrichard had blossomed at his post and had commanded from the outset with a sure and steady hand.

After him, the senior galley captain, de l’Armentière, knocked and was passed through. On the floor, he would occupy the Southern Chair, deputizing for Admiral de Berenger, who had not yet returned from Genoa. And behind him, bound for the Western Chair, the two remaining men sought entry in their turn. The first was Bishop Formadieu, the senior bishop of the Arran community and the rightful holder of the Western Chair. But Formadieu had recused himself from the Chair more than a year earlier, claiming to be unfit to represent the brotherhood because of his failure to influence the Church’s decision to do what it had done to the Order. No one in the community had wanted him to give up the Chair, and no one believed that any portion of the fault was his, but the old man had been adamant, and Will had reluctantly acceded to his wishes, with the single but absolute proviso that Formadieu remain on the Western dais, behind, and at the shoulder of, the man selected to replace him. Of course, the selection of that successor had been Will’s, and he had chosen to appoint Sir Reynald de Pairaud, now an old and wizened man, in recognition of the veteran knight’s staunch but unexpected enthusiasm for what they had been able to achieve since landing on the island.

The sound of the door closing behind de Pairaud brought Will back to an awareness that it was now his turn to request entry to the proceedings below. He glanced down at himself and at the black leather bag in the crook of his arm, checking that all was as it should be, then walked forward and knocked on the door, which opened immediately. He whispered the password into the doorkeeper’s ear, then stepped across the threshold to where the other four, already in order of precedence, waited for him on the narrow landing at the top of the steep wooden stairs. Below them, the last, sustained note of the deep chant faded to silence just as Will murmured to the whiterobed brethren to start down. He himself was dressed from head to foot in black, in the cowled robe of a mendicant friar, save that the robe was of rich and heavy wool, unrelieved by any decoration and belted with a thickly plaited girdle of black-dyed, glossy linen fiber. He waited until the others began to move down the stairs, then hitched his leather bag higher and followed them, aware now of the silent faces that stared up at him and the expectant stillness that awaited his arrival.

He paused at the bottom of the last flight, then stepped directly to the Master’s Chair on the Eastern dais, one pace to his left. His four companions waited for him to take his place, then moved on to the junction of the cruciform aisles, where de l’Armentière turned left and De Montrichard right, to the South and North respectively, leaving De Pairaud and Bishop Formadieu to make their way together to the dais in the West. When all four were in place, Will stood looking out at the assembled brethren, sensing the silence growing even deeper, as though everyone in the crowd was holding his breath.

He made himself count slowly to ten, dragging out the stillness, then lowered his bag to the table in front of him and unbuckled it before raising his head again and starting to speak, pitching his voice carefully so that it resonated in the crowded hall, and articulating his words slowly and clearly.

“Brethren, we are here together to mark a momentous occasion, one that none of us could ever have imagined when we left La Rochelle seven years ago. Since then, we have built a life for ourselves here on this little island, and we have struggled diligently to live by the Rule of our Order and to preserve our ways and our responsibilities against the day that every one of us once believed must surely come … that day when we would be redeemed and would return to France, our names and that of our Order restored to honor, the spurious charges against us finally expunged. We have lived here in hope and in brotherhood, and within the past year, we have been joined and strengthened by our Scots brethren from the mainland.

“But within those same seven years, our hopes for justice and an honorable reinstatement of our Order have been crushed, dwindling steadily in the face of everincreasing tidings of grief and disaster, treachery and malice emanating from France and from its King.” He stopped there, giving his listeners time to accept what he was saying, and as soon as he saw heads beginning to nod in agreement, he resumed in the same voice.

“And so we have made changes—dire changes, indeed, but necessary in a swiftly changing world.” He drew a deep, audible breath. “Now I have learned of one more such, one last, appalling change that has made exiles of us all, forever …” The silence in the room was absolute, and he looked about him before he spoke again, making eye contact with as many of the assembled men as he could, and seeing the same tension of uncertainty and dread in every face.

“On the eighteenth day of March this year, the year of our Lord 1314, our beloved Master, Sir Jacques de Molay, was burned alive in Paris. The murder—for it was nothing less—was performed as a public spectacle by the direct order of Philip Capet. An obscene atrocity was treated as a festivity.”

It was as though a silent gale had blown into the hall, its force rocking the packed crowd visibly, but before they could begin to react further, Will launched into the tale as he had heard it from St. Omer, omitting nothing and ending with the challenge—amounting to a curse—that de Molay had issued from the flames, summoning both King and Pope to join him before the throne of God Himself within the year. Then, when he had finished, he raised a hand into the profound silence.

“So there you have it. Our noble Order has ceased to exist beyond this realm of Scotland. It is finished, dead with the death of its noble Master and the simultaneous deaths of honor, justice, and nobility in our sad land. And with the passing of our Master, by his own written command, I am now become Grand Master of what remains.” His eyes swept the crowd. “Master of what remains.

“And what is that? What does remain, what can remain, after such infamy and gross injustice?” What remains, brethren, is here with us now, within this Chapter Hall. It is our enduring spirit, our honor and our ideals, our clear understanding, unsullied by venality or envy, of our duties as knights and men, and our responsibility to ourselves and those who stand with us. We hold those tenets safe within us, untarnished and undiminished by the betrayals of Church and state and the horrors unleashed upon our innocent brothers by the Holy Inquisition.

“In the eyes of the world, then, our Order is dead, but we know, all of us, that that is not true. As long as one of us remains alive to nurture its memory and serve its purposes, our Order will continue to exist, and that becomes my greatest responsibility as Master now: to protect and nourish what remains. We must change, adapt, reform ourselves completely. We have changed, greatly but not yet sufficiently. And now we are about to conceal ourselves completely from the eyes and ken of ordinary men. We will become as ghosts and phantoms. But we will continue to observe our rites and ceremonies, to maintain our beliefs and to coexist in amity, as brothers, equal in the all-seeing eye of God. Henceforth, we will pursue our goals and dreams in utter secrecy, our existence veiled and hidden, our true identities unknown. This is my oath to you: we will survive and thrive, though hidden from the eyes of others, and the day will come when this Order will arise again, from out of this realm of Scotland, to honor the memory of the last, true Grand Master of the Temple, who died on the island in the Seine last March. And thus I think it would be fitting, as our last act in this, our last gathering, were we to sing ‘Dies Irae’—Days of Wrath—to mark the passing of a great and noble man.”

Across from Will, on the Western dais, Bishop Formadieu stepped forward and began to sing the first line of the solemn, sonorous chant of the requiem hymn, and by the end of his first phrase he had been joined by the massed voices of the assembly, singing with a fervor and solemnity that Will could not remember ever having heard. He stood listening intently, feeling no urge to join in although the hairs stirred on his neck as the waves of sound swelled and washed over him. He had always preferred listening to music rather than marring it with his own tuneless contribution, and now he pictured the dead man as he had last seen him, grave, dignified, and deeply troubled by the seemingly preposterous warnings he had received. Remembering the Master’s reluctant decision to act upon those warnings, Will now realized how appropriate the words of this dirge were to that memory: Day of wrath! O day of mourning! See fulfilled the prophets’ warning, Heaven and earth in ashes burning!

As the hymn ended, Will pulled the bag towards him. He laid both hands on it.

“This would not have been a day of celebration, even without these evil tidings, but it must not—will not—end in despair. Few of you, I suspect, ever laid eyes on Master de Molay, for he lived most of his life far from France, beyond the seas, working without pause for the good of our Order. But I know there is not a man among you who is unaware of the reverence, even the awe, with which he was regarded by all who knew him. He was a knight without peer, and it was, alas, his destiny to die in office, the last of an unbroken line of twenty-three Grand Masters of our Order, beginning with Hugh de Payens in 1118.

“Twenty-three men, Brethren, and one hundred and ninety-six years of rectitude and devotion to duty, all of it destroyed by one greedy, venal king. Philip Capet, known as le Bel—the Fair. Such fairness brings to mind the whited sepulcher of scripture … But no more of him. He is not worthy of your time or of your thoughts. Think instead of Jacques de Molay for the remainder of this day, as you work at your appointed tasks.

“Before we stand adjourned, however, I have a few things—personal things—I want to say to you as Master here. I will not keep you long, for most of our work is done in preparation for this day.” He looked around at their watching faces as he spoke, noticing, not for the first time, that few among them could be described as young looking.

“When we leave here today, we will begin the final stages of our preparations to quit this place for good. Horses, armor, weapons, and provisions, along with most of your personal possessions—those of you who have any—are all in place on the beaches by the wharf below, and the ships are waiting to take them on board. You all know what to do and you know we have no time to waste. I want to add a reminder, if you will.

“When we came here, we were exiles, homeless fugitives who still could not believe what had happened to our ordered world. We were confused and disbelieving, not knowing what to think and waiting, blind and deaf, for news to reach us telling us it had all been a mistake and that we must return home. But that word never came, and the world we had known fell into ruin.

“Yet we sat safe here, on this island, sheltered from the chaos by the goodwill of one man, Robert of Scotland, and his friends. Of course, we were able to support him in return, from our own strength, limited though that was. And when we leave here today, most of you will continue to support him from your new homes in the lodges we have founded in Scotland, and your strength will hearten him in his time of need, as his understanding and goodwill heartened us in ours.” He tapped his clenched right fist into the palm of his other hand. “But now the King of Scots faces the greatest challenge of his reign. England is set to destroy him utterly, and all who stand with him. I know you are all aware of that. It is not new. England has been determined to destroy the Scots for years now, yet the Scots remain unbroken. I know, too, that you are all aware of the new invasion now being prepared. I wonder, however, if you know the true extent of what is afoot this time.

“Edward of Caernarvon has assembled more than two and a half thousand heavy chivalry at Berwick. Two thousand and five hundred armored knights, each of them backed by mounted men-at-arms. He has raised four thousand longbows and fifteen thousand infantry troops. He has a supply train of hundreds of wagons, all of them poised and ready to move north at his word. And he has a fleet of ships already sailing up the coast towards the River Forth, where they will wait, with fresh provisions and supplies, until his armies reach them.

“Twenty thousand men, at modest count, poised to strike into Scotland. And King Robert will confront them close to Stirling, the narrowest point of their invasion route and perhaps the only spot where they might be stopped. The odds against the Bruce’s army, including those of you who choose to stand with him, will be at least four to one, and perhaps greater.”

He drew the black bag towards him, raising the flap with one hand while he reached inside with the other, and he drew out the great blazing jewel of red and white enameled metal depicting an all-seeing eye atop a pyramid that marked his rank as a member of the Governing Council of the Temple. He held it up for them to see, suspended from its heavy chain of silver links.

“I set this aside last night, in chapter, for the last time, laying down my role and rank as Knight Commander of the Temple Council. I will not wear it again because for now the Council has ceased to exist and I see no reason to replace it, since we are so few. And so I speak to you now as plain Sir William Sinclair, one of you—no more and no less. I have done my duty as prescribed, with the help of my own counselors, and all the arrangements are in place for our dispersal as a community, everything as planned, and for the good of all.

“But now I find that, as a man, I am far from happy and farther from content. I am, in fact, sick at heart. We have changed ourselves outwardly, disguising who we were. We have accepted what has been done to us, in silence and without open protest. We have been meek, and turned the other cheek, accepting undeserved shame and degradation from the hands of those we once were proud to serve. Well, I have had my fill of that!

“Pride is a sin, they tell us. But those very speakers, in their arrogance and pride and greed, have stripped us of everything that made us men and dutiful monks. So if pride be a sin, I am prepared to die in sin, rather than live in shame.”

As he stooped to his bag again, he heard a growl of discussion arising among his listeners, shockingly loud in this chamber where silence was an inviolable rule, but he ignored it, pulling out a folded square of cloth, which he shook out and held up to their eyes.

“I doubt any of you will recognize this thing, so I will tell you what it is.” He held it higher then, above his head, stretching it between both hands to show it clearly: a broad band of black forming the top half, against the lower half of purest white. “This was the first baucent to grace our banners, before we adopted the cross pattée. This was the Temple’s standard in our earliest days. It represented the choices and the changes we had made in embracing the brotherhood of our Order: the black of former ignorance replaced by the white of enlightenment. This banner symbolizes everything we were and marks the progress that we made in assuming the responsibilities of brotherhood: from darkness to light, from ignorance to awareness, from despair to hope, from ignominy to honor. A simple standard, but containing more than we ourselves could ever voice.”

He lowered his arms and stood a moment gazing at the banner, then raised it again, spreading it wide once more.

“I had this from the hand of Master de Molay himself, the last of its kind from the last of his kind. He gave it to me when we two last met, seven years ago, and bade me take good care of it and bear it with me everywhere. Look at it well, for you may never see it again. I am taking it to Stirling, to raise it in the cause of Robert Bruce. And I will go there as a Templar, fully armed and armored in my true colors—the white of knowledge and the black cross pattée of my Order’s glory. I have had enough of hiding and dissembling! Enough of skulking with a lowered head! This King in Scotland intends to make one last, defiant stand, and I am going to stand with him, in defiance of Pope and Church and Kings of France!”

The roar of approval had begun before he finished speaking, drowning out his raised voice, and he waited, motionless, his arms still high, until it had subsided.

“Will you come with me?”

This time the noise was pandemonium and the crowd began to sway as men turned from side to side to pummel each other, roaring with enthusiasm. He stood smiling, waiting, and eventually they stilled themselves again, staring at him hungrily.

“So mote it be, then. But hear me! No red crosses, for this is no crusade.” He lowered his arms, folding the baucent again with measured care, then draping it lengthwise over his left shoulder. “We will ride as Templars, knights and sergeants, in black and white, and for the last time. As who and what we are, in pride, and in defiance of all who have disowned and betrayed us. Knights to wear their white mantles, with black armor. Sergeants will wear black surcoats, with the white cross pattée. All shields, the same—white cross on black. And the same for horses’ trappings. The two stone buildings at the rear of this house contain all of those, and there is paint, both black and white, to use as required.” He eyed them now, seeing them straining like hounds at leash.

As he answered the few questions, Will was aware that the formal gathering had changed into an extended council of war, the planning of a campaign. He dealt rapidly with the timing of the matter—it was already the third week of May, the testing date of Midsummer Day mere weeks away. But everything had altered. Instead of riding piecemeal to support the Bruce as mounted individuals, they would now move as a powerful, unified force of heavy chivalry reinforced with disciplined light cavalry. Of the four weeks between now and Midsummer Day, therefore, two would be spent in renewed training on Arran, regaining their former battle skills as a single, cohesive entity. At the start of the second week of June, they would transport their various units, under the command of de l’Armentière as vice-admiral, from Arran to the mainland. Their two-day sailing route would take them up the estuary of Clyde to Dumbarton, where they would disembark and strike overland, eastward across the thirty miles to Stirling while avoiding being seen by any English forces that might be in that area. Two days at sea and four days on the march over the rough terrain between Dumbarton and Stirling: sufficient time to put them within easy reach of King Robert well before the English arrived.

He held up his hands.

“So, Brothers, it is decided, and so mote it be. We will ride as Templars once again, one final time in honor of our Order’s ancient glory, and we will make our presence seen and known, in support of the one man, the single King, who has treated us with honor and compassion, Robert Bruce, the King of this Scots realm. And if we die in what we are to do, what matters that? Our Order is already dead, and so we will but ride from death, into death. Go, then, and make yourselves ready.”

He had spoken in French, and as he fell silent one single voice, its owner unseen among the throng, took up what he had said, repeating it in measured cadence, “From death, into death,” and as he shouted it others joined him, until all the men assembled there were shouting it. “From death, into death!”

“Go, then!” Will turned and crossed to the stairs against the rear wall without looking back, and as he went he heard the sounds of moving feet as the assembly broke up, the shouted chant finally dying to silence. He had no notion that he had just witnessed, indeed initiated, the birth of a legend that would be retold down the years, the tale of how a company of unknown knights, like a deus ex machina from some improbable Greek tragedy, had swept down, in the moment of Scotland’s greatest need, to turn the tide of King Robert Bruce’s greatest battle from defeat into a glorious victory. Instead, as he climbed the stairs to the gallery above, he was thinking about wearing his armor once again, and about sending Tam Sinclair to bring Jessie to him from Lochranza.