Order in Chaos

A QUEST OF FAITH

ONE

“Why are we even waiting here? We know they’re going to come.”

Will Sinclair glanced sideways to where the speaker, Vice-Admiral Sir Edward de Berenger, stood gripping the rail of the galley’s narrow stern deck, his knuckles white with the pressure of the grip he was exerting as he stared wide eyed into the thin mist that veiled the nearby wharf.

“Knowing a thing and witnessing the truth of it are two different matters, Edward,” he replied. “Were we not to see this with our own eyes before we sail away, we could never be sure it had happened as we expected.”

He turned his head to where Admiral St. Valéry’s galley rode beside them. It was a larger version of their own, indeed, the largest in the fleet; its oars, forty two-man sweeps ranged in double banks of ten on each side, were like theirs, unshipped, the long blades resting in the waters that lapped against the hull. He could not see St. Valéry himself because the naval commander was surrounded by a knot of other figures on the high stern deck, but he could see that all of them were staring as fixedly towards the fort as was de Berenger.

“And so we wait,” he added. “I like it no more than—” He stood straighter. “There they are.”

Sinclair knew that every watching eye aboard the two ships had seen what he had seen. Figures moved among the mists ashore, running men, spreading everywhere, and now he could hear the shouts, echoing strangely in the emptiness. The running figures came closer, becoming more easily discernible in the drifting, dissipating fog, until they reached the edge of the wharf, where they came to a halt, lining the edge, their voices rising louder.

“I think they are dismayed,” Will murmured, watching the growing throng.

Behind the two galleys that held the admiral and the vice-admiral, the normally crowded harbor of La Rochelle lay empty, save for a cluster of twelve vessels that lay close together near the southern breakwater, bound to each other by stout ropes. Every other vessel that had been anchored there the night before had withdrawn beyond the harbor entrance, where they were now waiting in deep water to see what morning would bring, and it had brought William de Nogaret, as expected. Now Sinclair turned his head in time to see the naval baucent, the white skull and crossed thighbones on a field of black, rise fluttering to the top of the admiral’s mast in a prearranged signal. Even the soldiery thronging the wharf fell into silence as they watched the flag’s slow ascent, wondering what it signified, but as the silence stretched and grew, nothing appeared to happen. The admiral’s galley remained motionless.

An excited shout broke the silence as someone on shore saw what Will Sinclair had already turned to watch, and the clamor spread as the far right side of the crowd lining the wharf eddied and began to run towards the southern breakwater, but they were already too late. The fires on the cluster of moored ships, fueled with oil and carefully prepared, were exploding in fury, spreading with a rapidity that was awe inspiring, and from the sides of the doomed craft men were scrambling down into the boats that waited below.

“Pick them up,” Will said quietly, and de Berenger began to issue orders to bring the galley under way and intercept the approaching boats.

On the breakwater the foremost runners had already halted, their arms upraised to cover their faces from the blasting heat of the burning vessels. These twelve ships, all of them cargo carriers, had been the oldest and least seaworthy of the entire fleet, and rather than leaving them behind intact, St. Valéry had decided to burn them where they lay, denying them to King Philip and his henchman in one highly visible act of defiance. As the deck moved beneath his feet in response to the first pull on the right-hand bank of oars, Sinclair saw a different stir of movement ashore, at the point closest to him, and now he fastened his gaze on the figure of one man who stood out from all the others surrounding him, polished armor and a bright red cloak marking him clearly as someone of importance.

“Is that de Nogaret? Would he come here himself?” He answered his own question, aware that de Berenger was not listening. “Aye, he would, the diseased mongrel. He would want to take La Rochelle in person. Now I regret mooring beyond crossbow range. I could shoot him down from here.”

A banging against the hull announced the arrival of the boats bearing the arsonists, and as soon as they were all safely aboard, de Berenger issued the orders to bring the galley about and head to sea. As the galley’s prow swung around, Sinclair moved against it, revolving slowly until he was gazing out over the stern, his eyes never leaving the distant figure he knew was de Nogaret. Between them, a rain of crossbow bolts was falling uselessly into the waters of the harbor, and he had the pleasure of seeing the King’s minister strike out at someone standing beside him and then spin away, vanishing into the crowd, plainly headed into the empty Commandery.

Will turned his back on the scene then, filled with a turmoil of anger and fighting to empty his mind and heart of what was done. He had no time for useless imprecations, for he must now think to the future, to what must happen next and in the time to come. Ahead of him, framed by the entrance to the harbor, the admiral’s massive galley was slicing through the last of the calm waters, its sweeping oars throwing liquid diamonds into the rays of the sun that was now rising astern of them, above the walls and towers of La Rochelle, as the sleek, swift craft bore its double cargo of treasure and escapees away from the menace of the King of France. And on the stern, gazing back to the land, he could see the cloaked and hooded figure of the woman, the Baroness St. Valéry.

TWO

Six hours later, they were at anchor again, this time within the tiny harbor of a nameless fishing village, four leagues south along the coast from their starting point. The village had no name and few inhabitants, but it had a stout and solid stone quay, and ample flat ground at the base of the cliffs that towered above it to accommodate a host even larger than the small army that had descended upon the hamlet with this morning’s earliest light.

Will Sinclair stood with his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back against the galley’s low stern rail, watching the activity taking place all about him and learning much about the way naval matters differed from army activities. Both involved logistics in the use, feeding, and transportation of armed men, but Will knew he could never have begun to achieve the smoothness and ease of transference between land and sea that he was seeing here. Nor could his brother, he knew. He had caught sight of Kenneth on the wharf earlier, but had soon lost him again and was unsurprised, knowing that his brother, younger than himself by three years, was clever enough to stand away without interfering, and to let the seamen do what they did best.

St. Valéry and de Berenger had planned some of the details of this afternoon’s activities the previous night, before leaving La Rochelle, but their efforts had been limited by the fact that neither of them knew the village they would visit and both knew they would be constrained by the size and limitations of an unfamiliar wharf. Sinclair could have told them, for he it was who had chosen the place, remembered from a visit years earlier, but he had had duties of his own that night, and they had not thought to seek him out. In the event, the wharf was very small, accommodating only two vessels at a time, but the moorage was secure and the wharf had hoists and pulleys for lifting fishing boats into and out of the water, and now de Berenger was ashore, coordinating the activities there.

Will was watching a pair of horses being lowered, suspended in slings, into the waist of one of the cargo ships. He was growing more and more impressed, both by the handling abilities of the lading and receiving crews and by the swift ease with which the ships alongside the wharf were being rotated, one pair of keels waiting to warp into position as soon as the newly laden pair pulled out. These ships, the Order’s trading vessels, were very different in both appearance and function from the admiral’s galleys. Built with an eye to maximum storage capacity and solid seaworthiness, they were two-masted for the most part, although three of them had triple masts. They were uniformly broad in the beam and belly and rode low in the water when laden, so that they appeared bulky and ungainly when compared to the naval vessels that accompanied and guarded them. Watching them as they took on cargo, however, Sinclair acknowledged to himself that they possessed a beauty of their own, and he found himself admiring the skill with which their seasoned crews, Temple associates to a man, maneuvered them into and away from the small quay.

The crews of the Temple galleys were equally skilled, he knew, but to different effect and with far greater discipline. The transport ships were manned by professional mariners, employed by or belonging to the Temple; the galleys were manned by fighting seamen, sergeants of the Order whose natural tastes led them to seafaring duties rather than land-based. All of the latter lived, sailed, and fought under military and monastic discipline, their lives governed by a maritime version of the Order’s Rule, so that they prayed and performed monastic chores each day, although the off-watch crew were permitted to sleep after their labors and husband their strength at night. Their primary duty, above and beyond all else, was to protect the Order’s enormous trading fleet.

Sinclair looked down into the waist of the galley on which he stood, his eyes scanning the ranks of oarsmen at their benches, the nearest of them a good twelve feet below the stern deck. This craft was noticeably smaller than the admiral’s, with eighteen oars to a side where St. Valéry’s had twenty, but the oars were the same on all galleys, long, heavy, yet graceful sweeps that could propel the vessels over the water at astonishing speeds, even without the massive square sail.

He heard his name being shouted and looked over the rail to where a long, narrow boat rowed by eight oarsmen was taking up position directly beneath him. From its stern seats, Admiral St. Valéry was gazing up at him, and when he caught Sinclair’s eye he waved towards the village and shouted, “Join me ashore. I’m going to speak with de Berenger.”

Once again, Will was made aware of the difference between moving on water as opposed to land. His galley—de Berenger’s—was moored less than a tenth of a mile from the landward end of the wharf, perhaps two hundred paces on land, a distance that Will would have covered in a matter of minutes, even had he had to saddle his horse beforehand. On this occasion, however, he had to call for a boat and a crew of rowers, and then transfer himself from the galley to the boat, with the extreme caution of a landsman distrustful of the behavior of water and the vessels that bobbed about on it, and be rowed over to the end of the wharf. By the time he eventually caught up with St. Valéry, three-quarters of an hour had elapsed.

His brother Kenneth was waiting to greet him as Will climbed from the boat to the top of the breakwater, and threw his arms around him, squeezing him in a great bear hug. As Will prized himself away, grinning, he ran his fingertips over Kenneth’s chain-mail hauberk.

“Well met, Brother. I’ll presume, from the absence o’ tears and wailing, that everything went as it was supposed to. The goods are safe?”

“Safe and sound, Will. They’re all here.”

“You make that sound as though there was more than you bargained for.”

“There was! It filled five four-wheeled wagons and a cart. There was far more there than we thought there would be, but not too much to transport. There were four main chests, of course, the big ones—we loaded those onto two wagons, as planned—but then there was a fine collection of gold and silver I didn’t expect, in boxes—bars and coinage of both—and seven whole chests of jewels, two of them small, the other five almost as large as the main treasure chests. They’re closed wi’ straps for the most part, so a few of them were easy to open and I took a look inside, just to see what we were lugging. They’re stuffed wi’ studded chalices and crucifixes and church vessels, that kind of thing. Clearly the Master didn’t want them falling into de Nogaret’s hands. We had to turn the country upside down to find more wagons to carry them.”

“You—you did not wreak havoc in taking them, I hope?”

“D’you take me for a fool, Brother? I sent out pairs of men in every direction, with silver coin, to find me anything that they could buy within a day and to buy no more than one wagon and team at any place … And before you think to ask, none of them wore anything that might identify them to strange eyes as Templars.”

“Hmm.” Sinclair absorbed that for a moment, then nodded decisively. “Excellent. You have done well, Kenneth. We’ll get everything aboard quickly and see that all is safely stowed. In the meantime, promise me you’ll take that armor off before you try to board a ship, Brother, and have your men do the same. You’ll notice this dagger is the heaviest thing I’m wearing. I’ve almost gone swimming several times, simply climbing in and out of boats. You fall in wearing any of that gear and you’ll sink like a stone. Where are your men, by the way?”

Kenneth pointed a thumb back over his shoulder, and Will climbed up onto a stony outcrop and peered over the top of all the surrounding activity to see the hundred knights and sergeants drawn up on foot, in orderly ranks at the base of the high cliff. The sergeants formed a solid, disciplined bank of brown and black shapes, and the forty knights, most of them wearing their red-crossed white cloth surcoats over chain mail, were grouped to their left. One glance was all he required to see that the men were waiting patiently, and he jumped down again.

“They look good. Their horses are being loaded now. I’ll have de Berenger, the vice-admiral, send you instructions as to where and when your men should board—and here he is, the very man.”

Sir Edward de Berenger had approached, unnoticed until that moment, and Sinclair introduced him to Kenneth, then asked where the admiral had gone. De Berenger smiled and waved towards a single large tent, a hundred yards from where they stood, and as William glanced towards it he noticed a knot of people he identified by their dress as villagers, standing huddled off to one side, well clear of the activities on the beach. He indicated them with a nod.

“What about the village folk there? Did you have any problems with them?”

“Nah!” Kenneth shook his head. “They were terrified when we came down on them from the cliffs, but once they saw that we meant them no harm but were interested only in their wharf, they threw up their hands and left us to it. The head man is a fellow called Pierre. He calmed them down. I told him to keep them well out of our way and gave him a purse of silver for their trouble. I did it publicly, too, so he won’t be able to keep it for himself. None of them has said a word since then. Oh, I told him, too, that if anyone comes questioning them, to hold nothing back, but tell about everything they saw. It won’t make any difference to us by then.”

“Hmm.” His brother twisted his mouth wryly. “If anyone comes looking for us here, it won’t matter what these people say. Their lives will be forfeit. I’m sure they know that, too.” He turned to de Berenger. “Well, Sir Edward, we should join the admiral, since he called us here in person. Kenneth, you should rejoin your men.”

Kenneth nodded to both of them and turned away as de Berenger raised a finger to Sinclair.

“I cannot join you yet. I have another matter of some urgency—a problem with one of the hoists—and it will not wait. Present my apologies to Sir Charles, if you will, and I will come to you presently.”

Sinclair was chagrined, as he headed for the admiral’s tent, to see the Baroness St. Valéry already there, sitting on the pebbled foreshore beside her good-brother, and his heart seemed to sink into the pit of his stomach. He found himself wondering if she intended to participate in every discussion that was to take place, and the thought set him immediately on edge. He saw St. Valéry take note of his arrival only to turn away, distracted by someone who had approached him with tidings of some kind.

St. Valéry rose to his feet and said something to the Baroness, flipped a hand in salute to the still-approaching Sinclair, and followed the messenger, disappearing quickly among the throng of bodies behind him. Less than half a hundred paces now separated Sinclair from where the Baroness sat gazing out at the shipping in the small harbor, and as he struggled to walk quickly over the yielding mass of the pebbled beach that seemed to drag at the soles of his boots, he lowered his eyes to watch his feet, thus avoiding looking at her. Despite his exhaustion, or perhaps because of it, he had not been able to sleep aboard ship the previous night and had spent a long time thinking about the woman, once he had finally accepted that he was unable not to think about her.

Lady Jessica Randolph unsettled him deeply, and lying on his rocking bunk in the hours before dawn, he had understood that for him, she was the embodiment of something utterly beyond his experience, the essence of everything he had willingly abandoned upon joining the Brotherhood of the Temple and undertaking his solemn vows of monkhood. As monk, soldier, and Crusader, his had been a life of purely masculine concerns: combat, training, and campaigning in times of war; garrison duties, unrelenting discipline, and the incessant prayer schedule of the Templars’ Rule in times of peace. Even in recent years, while undergoing intensive training for his future role as a member of the Governing Council of the Order, he had been held separate from the affairs of the world outside the brotherhood, his time dedicated to the staggeringly complex task of learning the esoteric secrets shared only by the privileged elite of the Temple’s highest initiates, that knowledge referred to—although not often and never publicly—as the Higher Mysteries of the Ancient Order of Sion. That task had consumed him, and as his comprehension of its immensity grew, it had even frightened him at times, forcing him to review the entire sum of knowledge and beliefs that he had acquired in a lifetime of total ignorance of the Mysteries’ existence.

And then had come this woman to distract him with the sound of her voice, the sight of her body, the smell of her presence, and the awareness of her femininity.

When no more than twenty paces separated them, she saw him coming, and her face cleared, losing the slight air of preoccupation it had worn and taking on an expression of … what? Disinterest? No, Sinclair corrected himself. Plain emptiness was what it was. As though he were beneath her notice. Well, he thought, that would earn her no displeasure from him. If she wanted to behave as she thought a man behaved, then so be it; she would be treated as a man could expect to be treated … a lesser man, of course. An underling. Sinclair felt himself grinding his teeth and made a conscious effort to relax.

She looked up at him as he arrived beside her and he nodded stiffly, in a tacit, perfunctory greeting.

“Good day, Sir William.” Her voice, while not welcoming, conveyed no hint of displeasure. “Sir Charles will join us directly. Please sit down.”

It may have been the “us” that angered him, her assumption that she would share whatever he might have to say to St. Valéry, or vice versa, or it may have been the cool air of impenetrable self-possession with which she invited him to sit and plainly expected him to obey, but whatever the reason, he felt the ire flare up in him, outrage and humiliation vying with each other to undo him equally—for he knew beyond doubt, even then, that he would be in the wrong no matter what he said or did, and so he stood there mute for long moments, unable either to move or to speak. Fortunately for him, the woman misinterpreted his inaction and looked up at him with a shade more warmth in her gaze.

“Please, sit, if you will. Charles saw you coming but was called away before he could greet you. Something to do with the loading of livestock. I must admit to being surprised at the number of your brother’s company here. I had expected a score or so of men and horses, but there must be more than a hundred of each. Please, sit you down here. My ladies have gone looking for firewood, to take the chill off the afternoon air, but they should soon be back, and we’ll be warmer once the fire is lit.”

Bemused by her easy openness and lack of apparent guile, Sinclair found himself moving to comply with her wishes, even though he had no slightest idea of what to say to her. But she simply kept talking as he lowered himself to perch on a boulder across from her, and he found himself listening and preparing to answer in spite of himself.

“I confess, were it not for my ladies, I should freeze and die of exposure, for I have no notion of how to light a fire in the open air, do you? Are you adept with flint and steel? I suppose you must be, being a Temple Knight. I am told there is nothing practical that you and your fellows cannot do.”

“No, that’s a nonsense,” he heard himself say, and nearly winced at his own brusqueness. “I have a tinder box, wi’ flint and steel, but a’ God’s name, Lady, I cannot remember when I last used it, if I ever did. Tam does all that, and I am grateful to him for it. He starts our fires and keeps them alight, and he keeps me fed, for else I would most likely starve. I have little attention for such things.”

Well, at least you are capable of speaking like a reasonably normal person. From what I’ve seen and learned of you until now, that is a very important development in your status vis-à-vis women—

Sinclair was already rising to his feet again. “Here come your women now, madam. I’ll leave you with them.” Sinclair nodded towards the only two other women on the beach, who were bearing armloads of logs and followed by a group of sergeants carrying more.

Jessica stood up, too, as the armloads of logs clattered to the pebbles, one after the other, and called to Sinclair as he was on the point of walking away.

“Wait, Sir William, if you will. I will walk with you until the fire is lit.”

Dismayed, Will stood hesitantly as she approached him and managed not to flinch as she reached out and laid one hand on his forearm.

“There,” she said, “and you have my thanks. These pebbles are grossly difficult and dangerous to walk upon.”

He made no response, but held his bent arm stiffly and began to walk with exaggerated slowness, clearly braced to prevent her from falling. She fought back the smile that threatened to break out upon her face and made herself walk beside him slowly and with great decorum, visualizing what his shocked reaction might be were she to break into anything resembling a dance while walking with her hand upon his arm. And such was her temptation to break into giggles that she had to raise her free hand to her mouth and pretend to cough. She stopped, obliging him to stop, too, and wait for her as she made an elaborate show of examining the fishing hamlet and the cliffs behind it.

“What a perfect place for the task you have in hand, Sir William. This spot must be completely hidden here beneath the cliffs from anyone above, and I vow it could never be seen from a passing ship, were the people aboard unaware of its existence. How did you ever come to find it?”

Sinclair followed her gaze to where the beetling cliffs loomed over the tiny settlement. “By chance, Lady,” he said, avoiding looking at her. “Purely by chance, a score and more years ago.”

“What kind of chance might have brought you here? This is not a friendly coastline.”

“Wind and weather brought me. I was on a ship that foundered when a winter squall blew us onto a shoal to the south of here. Tam and I were among the very few to survive, him in a boat of sorts with three other lads, and me clinging to a spar with another man who was dead when the current cast us ashore in this inlet. Tam came ashore a mile or so farther north and thought me dead, too, as I did him, but we found each other by chance the following day.”

“And this village was here then?”

He glanced at her sidelong, as though surprised by the naivety of the question. “Aye, it was. It is a natural haven. There have been fisher folk living here since the land was created, I am sure.”

“And you remembered it.”

“Aye, I did. I always try to remember the good and the bad. It is folly not to remember both ends of the range of things. Most of the ruck is forgettable … unimportant … but the knowledge of a safe haven, or of a dangerous killing ground, can be priceless at times.”

She had been watching him with her head tilted to one side, and now she began to walk again, her hand still resting on his arm. “I confess, Sir William, the concept of killing grounds is one I seldom entertain, but I understand what you are saying and I agree with the principle behind it.”

She said nothing more for a short time, continuing to walk with lowered eyes, leaving him to grapple with the idea that a mere woman had expressed an understanding of a principle. He wanted to pursue that thought, but had no slightest notion of how to go about it, and so he waited instead, hoping she would say more on the topic. But she continued in silence, and then, just as he was deciding that she might say no more, she continued as though there had been no lapse in what she was saying.

“It will be amusing, think you not”—and here she paused to dart a smile at him—“to see how your views might change from now on, given the safe havens and dangerous grounds of your new life henceforth.”

“My new life?” His voice hardened instantly as he sensed her threatening to intrude where she had no right to go. “I have no new life, Lady, nor will I.”

“But I—” Jessie was flustered by the sudden hostility in his voice and spoke without really thinking. “I was but referring to the events of this morning … the King’s obvious enmity and de Nogaret’s duplicity. That has changed everythi—”

“Nothing has changed, Baroness.” His voice was harsh, peremptory. “There has been a misunderstanding of some kind, some form of miscommunication, but it will be soon resolved, let me assure you. The Temple Order is the strongest of its kind anywhere. It is far greater than any one man. And it is incapable of being seriously disrupted by the greedy scheming of lesser men, be they kings and kings’ ministers or no. So there will be no lasting changes made to my life.”

She was staring wide eyed at him before he had come close to finishing, the color already flaring up in her cheeks, and she swept in to the attack.

“Misunderstandings? Soon to be resolved? Were you not in the room last night when I spoke on that very topic? Did you not hear a single word I said? Or did you simply dismiss me for being a woman and decide that my opinions are worthless and unfounded?”

The two stood glaring at each other as Jessie waited for his response, but when it came it was not in the form of words. His face simply froze into a baleful mask of disapproval and he swung away, rigid with outraged dignity, leaving her standing alone on the strand as her good-brother the admiral approached, his face clearly betraying astonishment at what he was seeing.

“In God’s name, what happened, Sister? What did you to offend Sir William so? I have never seen him so angry. What did you say to him to make him charge away like that?”

She did not even glance at him, her eyes fixed on Sinclair as he vanished among the bustle of people on the beach.

She swung to face her questioner. “As God may judge me, I said nothing to cause offense to any reasonable man. But your obdurate Sir William shows few signs of being reasonable in dealing with anyone he cannot dominate and bully. The offense, and the anger that accompanies it, arise from sources other than from me. Search you inside Sir William Sinclair for the root of it, for I will have no part of him or his anger. He is naught but a great truculent, ill-mannered oaf.” And having delivered herself of that opinion, she swept away in turn, leaving the highly perplexed admiral to gaze after her, shaking his head several times, before he turned to move quickly in pursuit of Sinclair.

THREE

Will Sinclair was standing at the edge of the quay when St. Valéry caught up to him, watching the loading activity in the tiny harbor, his lips pursed and his brow furrowed in deep thought as he tossed a smooth pebble listlessly from hand to hand.

“Sir William. I require some of your time, in order to discuss several matters of import. May we return to my tent on the beach?”

Sinclair nodded wordlessly.

“Excellent.” St. Valéry hesitated, then continued. “Look, Sir William, I know not what transpired between you and my good-sister back there, but I know it angered you, and I cannot afford to have you angry at this point. So empty your mind of what displeases you, if you can, and let us talk, you and I, of the priorities facing us in this endeavor. Can you do that?”

“Of course I can, Sir Charles. It vexes me that you should even have to ask. Lead on, if you will. You have all my attention.”

“Excellent, for we have much to discuss, first among all the disposition of the treasure brought by your brother, of which there is far more than we at first supposed. The two largest and most seaworthy vessels we possess are our two main command galleys, my own and de Berenger’s, which is substantially smaller but newer, and I find myself disliking the thought of entrusting the treasure to any other ship, even though the larger cargo vessels have more space in them. I firmly believe that we would be foolish to stow the chests anywhere else but where we can keep watch on them—not because I distrust our men but purely because I distrust the weather. The winter storms could set in now at any time and our fleet could be scattered to the ends of the ocean, dependent upon the whims and ferocity of the winds. And so I propose splitting the main treasure between your vessel—de Berenger’s—and mine. You already have the Lady Jessica’s gold aboard your ship, and your own personal responsibility entails the protection of the Templar Treasure. I will therefore have the four main chests containing your charge loaded aboard your ship as well. I myself will take the lesser treasure aboard mine. What think you?”

Sinclair agreed, relieved to know that he would not be parted from the main Treasure, the primary responsibility settled upon him by Master de Molay. For the next half hour the two commanders walked together up and down the beach, observing the work in progress as they went over the details of their plans, such as they were, for the coming few days.

As soon as the treasure was safely aboard ship, they would put to sea again, sailing south, between the mainland and the island called the Isle of Oleron, passing the wide entrance to the Gironde inlet on their port side to follow the French coastline south along the Bay of Biscay until they reached the westward-jutting Iberian peninsula. From there they would make their way west along the Iberian coast of the bay until they reached the headland of Corunna, where they would turn south again for several days to collect whatever elements of the Templar fleet might have gathered off Cape Finisterre. They had no means of divining how many vessels might have escaped from other French ports ahead of the seizures and sailed to await a rendezvous, or how punctual those might be, but once there, the La Rochelle contingent would wait on station, safely offshore, for seven days, to ensure that every vessel that had been en route to join them, prior to Friday the thirteenth, had arrived. Thereafter, the assembly would sail as one fleet wherever William Sinclair, as senior representative of the Order of the Temple, ordered them.

At last St. Valéry appeared to have run out of things to discuss. They were approaching the wharf again, and the piles of material on the beach by the quay had dwindled greatly.

“It looks as though they have almost finished,” Will said, nodding towards the wharfside activity. The four great chests of the main Treasure still sat on the wharf together with the remaining contents of Kenneth’s wagons, but the wagons themselves had been dismantled and stowed, Kenneth’s men had been shipped aboard a number of vessels, and the majority of their horses, along with their saddlery and weapons, had already been slung aboard the ships assigned to them.

St. Valéry barely glanced up before he asked, “Are you completely set on sailing to Scotland, Sir William?”

Sinclair looked at him in surprise. “Set upon it? Aye, I suppose I am … But it comes to me that you are not. Have you something else in mind? If you have, spit it out and we will talk about it. Shall I send for de Berenger?”

“No! No, that will not be necessary … What is in my mind is … well, it is something that has been there for a long time now … Something more concerned with what we are and where we should be rather than with who we are and where we ought to go … if you see what I mean.”

“No, Sir Charles, I do not.” He was smiling slightly, shaking his head. “And to tell truth, that marks the first time I have ever heard you be less than clearly explicit, so it makes me most curious.” He glanced quickly around to see if anyone was nearby, but they were out of earshot of the closest group of workers. “Walk with me again, then, so we may keep from being overheard, for I have the feeling that you have no wish to say what’s in your mind to anyone but me. Not even to Vice-Admiral de Berenger. Come then, as friend, not admiral, and tell me what is in your mind.”

He moved away, and St. Valéry fell into step beside him, his head lowered. Sinclair walked in silence, remembering his own difficulties with the tidings he had had to bring to La Rochelle the previous day, and therefore content to wait until the right words came to the older man. Finally, St. Valéry uttered a snort and squared his shoulders.

“Very well then, Sir William, but before I begin, may I ask what befell between you and my good-sister? You were notably out of countenance. That was plain to see.”

“Aye, I was, and I think I may have been wrong.” He nibbled on his stubbly upper lip. “She asked me what I intended to do with my new life, now that the Order has been betrayed.”

“And that angered you?”

“Aye, it did, for it made me contemplate, for a moment but against my will, a world in which our Order would have ceased to exist. And that is close to inconceivable. The Temple, under the guidance of our ancient Order of Sion, has become the most powerful fraternity in the world. So differences will be straightened out and compromises will be made, in one fashion or another. But above all, our Order will continue. It was the sudden thought of my life being changed, without my having any opportunity to challenge such an outcome, that made me angry. I was ill prepared for that idea and I had no intention of discussing it with your good-sister. There was no more to it than that. As I said, I was probably wrong to react as I did.”

“Aye, well, Sir William, the right and wrong of it I cannot judge, but I am as one with you in the judgment that, above all else and despite what men may do to thwart it, our ancient Order will continue. The outward form of it may change beyond our credence, may even disappear completely from the ken of man and revert to what it was before Hugh de Payens and his fellows ever went to Outremer in search of what they found. But the Order of Sion will survive as long as any of us, sworn to its propagation, retains the ability to pass on its tenets to another generation. For at its deepest root, our Order is an idea, Sir William, a system of belief, and ideas are immortal and indestructible …”

St. Valéry’s voice died away into silence, but Sinclair could tell he had not yet finished talking, and sure enough he began again after a space of heartbeats.

“It is precisely that train of thought that has stirred this other matter in my mind.” He took Sinclair’s arm suddenly and turned sharply left to walk inland, in order to avoid another gang of seamen piling weapons into nets for hoisting. “It seems to me that the fundamental idea underlying our Order might benefit in future from some practical demonstration of the truth underlying our lore.”

Sinclair frowned. “What do you mean, a practical demonstration? That has already taken place, nigh on two hundred years ago, when the Order was reborn in the bowels of the temple tunnels and the truth of its lore was proved beyond dispute. What could be more practical than that? At that point we changed our name from the Order of Rebirth in Sion to the simple Order of Sion. We had achieved rebirth, then and there. The Order of the Temple came into existence only after that.”

“I know that, Sir William, as well as you do, but the ordinary brethren of today’s Temple, those who have no knowledge of our ancient Order, do not. And lacking that knowledge, that proof, they stand to be bereft of hope and subject to despair because of these upheavals in France.”

“So?”

“So I refuse to accept the notion that the Order of the Temple should simply be allowed to die.”

“And why should it not?” Sinclair’s rejoinder came without the slightest hesitation. “It is our Order that is important here, Sir Charles, the Order of Sion, not the Order of the Temple. Since the fall of Acre and the loss of Outremer more than a decade ago, the Order of the Temple appears to have lost the regard of the people who once revered it. That loss is real, but the lesser loss, the loss of Acre, cannot account for it. The loss of Acre was tragic, but it was honorable. The Temple’s knights and sergeants there were wiped out with the fall of the city, leaving no survivors. They did their duty alongside the other defenders of the faith in Outremer, and they performed their task and died as martyrs, against insuperable odds. So it is unjust to lay the Temple’s fall from grace upon the shoulders of its dead. The Temple of Solomon has earned its own disfavor down the years, and in full measure, beginning from the day the Order lowered its standards and decreed that monkhood was not the sole prerequisite for membership. That is when the rot first set in—the very day the Temple first permitted laymen and merchants to join its ranks and granted them the privilege of calling themselves Templars. Since then, through the behavior of its associate brethren, the Temple that the ordinary people see from day to day has clutched its arrogance and privilege about itself and gone out of its way to alienate everyone who deals with it.”

He stopped short and pursed his lips, almost defiant in the way he gazed at St. Valéry, as if challenging him. “Come now, Sir Charles, let us set surface loyalties aside, we two, and admit that the Temple has always had boors, strutters, and pigheaded fools among its brethren from the very outset. But those were fighting knights, and even their worst excesses were held close among the brethren. That is not the kind of behavior that I am condemning here. The Order of the Temple of Solomon today bears no resemblance to the brotherhood it once was, save for those few of us who serve its military arm. It has become a tradesmen’s guild, full of braggarts, cheats, bombasts, and unsavory creatures, none of whom pay taxes, and all of whom, exulting in their privilege and status, have embodied all the arrogance, pride, folly, and weaknesses to which man is heir.

“And yet within the Temple structure itself, carefully concealed, are our brethren, the Brotherhood of Sion, forming the living sinews that coordinate the muscles of the corpus and keep the body functioning. Remove those brethren, and the lore they live to perpetuate, and the Temple itself will fall and pass into history to no one’s great regret, while the Brotherhood of the Order of Sion will continue.”

St. Valéry stood frowning, pinching at the hair on his chin, then nodded. “Aye, you have the right of it. Reluctant though I find myself to admit that it is true, I will not dispute you. The Order of the Temple is corrupt, and if it falls or is transformed in any way, our brotherhood will survive. But at what cost, Sir William? We will be forced to live and work in secrecy again, constrained to be clandestine in all things, to the detriment of our Order’s designs. That alone, I believe, must give us pause. The Temple brotherhood, and the very fabric of the Temple itself, provide us with a mantle of invisibility. Existing within the outer shell, we are unnoticed and anonymous. I believe we must do all in our power to maintain that mantle, and in order to do so, we need to give the rank and file of the Templar brethren something to believe in, something from their own lore that will encourage them to endure in the face of these present troubles.”

A cold gust of wind swept in across the beach, buffeting them, and St. Valéry glanced up at the rack of scudding cloud that had begun to gather as they made landfall and now darkened the sky. “Squalls,” he said, pulling his light cloak more securely around him. “Let’s hope they blow over quickly. If the weather worsens, we could be caught in here, unable to beat out to sea.” He looked back to where Sinclair was adjusting his own clothing against the sudden wind.

“The Temple has no lore of its own, Admiral,” the Scots knight said, as though St. Valéry had made no mention of the weather. “It is too new to have developed lore.”

“True, I know that.” St. Valéry was eyeing the cloud banks again. “I doubt this will turn to much, but if need be, we can use our oars to tow the transports out into deep water. But as I said, if it becomes too bad, we may have to bide here awhile.”

“Too close to La Rochelle for my liking,” was Sinclair’s response. “Barely thirty miles by road from there to here. De Nogaret’s men could catch us sitting here helpless.”

“They could, if they knew where to look, but they don’t. There’s cause for gratitude in that thought, my friend.” St. Valéry looked at the sky once more, then turned to look about him at the activity in the tiny harbor. “But things appear to be going smoothly, and the tide will not begin to ebb for several hours. The laden vessels are already standing out to safety, well clear of land and in the lee of Oleron Isle, and there are very few remaining. We should be well enough. The Treasure is all shipped, and most of the livestock. All that remains is materiel that we could leave behind, if pushed.”

He dismissed the weather with a wave of his hand. “About this lore, or the lack of it … There is one piece, one fragment of the ancient lore of Sion, that escaped somehow and was long since adopted by the Temple.”

“The Merica matter.”

“Aye, precisely. No one has ever discovered the source of the betrayal, or how the information was divulged, but it was the only instance, ever, of such a thing occurring. Personally, I began some years ago to suspect that Hugh de Payens himself may have released it deliberately, early on in the Jerusalem growth of the Order of the Temple, believing it to be harmless, yet valuable as an earnest of a need for secrecy within the new-established Order. A seed, perhaps, from which to grow a tradition. Do you think that fanciful?”

Sinclair jutted his jaw. “No, not at all. It makes perfect sense now that you mention it. The Merica rumor never had much substance to it, and had been unimportant to our objectives. It was regarded as trivial by everyone who knew of it. Its disclosure was certainly not the kind of thing that could ever threaten our Order. So yes, I think that Hugh de Payens might have borrowed it, in a time of need.”

“Merica is no rumor, Sir William. It is an accepted and ratified segment of our ancient teachings and beliefs.”

“Yes, I know the substance of it, Admiral: that there exists, beyond the Western Sea, a fabled land of plenty, vast and endless, watched over by a brilliant evening star that the people who live there call Merica. I have even studied what there is to know of it, though that is very limited. But no matter what any of us might wish to believe, it remains no more than a fable, rooted, as you say, in our lore. We may speculate on it, but we have no proof that it exists, or that it ever was.”

“I agree, but that is what I was thinking about …”

“Sir Charles, you are not making sense.”

“On the contrary, Sir William, I believe I am. How many vessels would you say we have in our fleet?”

Another gust of wind drove icy drops of rain against their faces, and Sinclair raised a hand to wipe his cheek, surprised to feel the coldness of the skin against his fingers. “You know that better than I, Admiral. It is your fleet. I have made no attempt to count them, but the number twenty is in my mind.”

St. Valéry dipped his head. “That is a fair estimate. We have seven naval galleys and fourteen cargo vessels—twenty-one in all. In addition, by this time next week, dependent upon what we may find off Finisterre, we could have half as many ships again.”

“But the newcomers would not be cargo carriers.”

“No, that is unlikely. If any vessels reach the rendezvous at all, they will be naval galleys, simply by virtue of the word sent out to the ports.”

“How many fighting men do you have at your disposal?” Sir William asked.

“At my disposal, as opposed to yours?”

“Aye, seamen and landsmen.”

“Hmm … Landsmen, not counting your brother’s contingent, one hundred fifty-four from the garrison at La Rochelle, of whom thirty and six are serving lay brothers and therefore noncombatant …” St. Valéry made a grimace while he calculated in his head. “One hundred and eighteen fighting men of all ranks, therefore, under de Montrichard. Seamen? The crews of the cargo ships, about four hundred men in total, are not fighters. The galley crews are all fighting men, and they range in size from forty oars to twenty. Two men to an oar, with a relief crew of one to two extra men per oar on each craft … That could total seven hundred men, but it is a misleading tally because the number of relief oarsmen varies widely from galley to galley, no matter how hard we try to sustain them.” He shrugged. “But there you have it. A large force, on the face of it. It could be formidable.”

“Aye, it could. And it will be. So whence comes all this talk of Merica, and what has it to do with this fleet?”

St. Valéry stopped walking and turned to him. “Would you need that many ships in Scotland, a foreign land? Seven to perhaps twenty galleys and a fleet of cargo vessels? For if you do not, I should like to take a few of the ships, manned only by men who wish to go with me, and sail in search of this fabled place.”

“Merica?”

St. Valéry showed no reaction to the incredulity in Sinclair’s voice, and the two men stood eyeing each other.

“This is not tomfoolery,” Sinclair said at last, his voice without inflection. “You mean what you say.”

The admiral shrugged very slightly. “I do not deal in tomfoolery. I never have; a lifelong habit. I have always been careful to say what I mean … and in consequence, to mean what I say.”

Another silence ensued, this one shorter, until Sinclair spoke again. “You are aware, I presume, of how absurd that sounds. You are proposing to sail off with a portion of our fleet, for vast distances and through uncharted waters, in the hope of finding a place no man has sought in more than a millennium—a place that may never even have existed. And you will ask for volunteers to go with you, into almost certain death.”

St. Valéry shrugged again. “Essentially, yes. But I would not call it insane.”

“Of course you would not—it’s your idea,” Sinclair said with a grin. “You know, of course, that the name of the place where we will rendezvous, Finisterre, means the end of the world, the end of land?”

St. Valéry smiled. “I do. But I suspect that name was given the place by men who had never found land beyond that point … because they had never sailed far enough westward. The ancients knew nothing of navigation beyond sight of land.” The admiral cocked his head, gauging his companion’s concern. “Look you,” he continued. “Hear me out, if only as a man. Listen to what I have to say, and then think about it before you come to any decision. We have ten days at least, and probably more, before we will have to decide. And then, if you decide against my request, I shall obey your wishes, as I am bound by oath. It will be reluctantly, but I will obey …”

“Go on.”

“Think first on what I said about the need for some sign for the men involved in whatever events are happening in France today. If things are truly as bad as they appear to be, and all the brethren of senior status have been taken and imprisoned, then those rank-and-file members who have survived the initial purge, or attack, or whatever it may turn out to be, will feel abandoned and lost, like a rudderless ship in a high sea … And if that is the case, then matters will only grow worse.”

Sinclair frowned as he thought about that, then shook his head. “I can’t accept that, Admiral—that things will grow worse. I have to believe that whatever has happened to our brethren in France will be temporary, no matter how traumatic. I believe Master de Molay himself believed that when last I spoke to him, and logic itself demands that it must be so, simply because of our size, if nothing else—”

“The Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is bigger,” St. Valéry interrupted, sardonically, leaving the younger man blinking. “Surely you would not dispute that?”

“Well, no, not in terms of numbers. There is no denying that strength, but—”

“But we must suspect the active participation of the Church in what has happened to our Order, Sir William. Philip the Fair, for all his arrogance, would never dare to move against us as he has without the Pope’s permission. Such an action would require papal sanction, since we of the knighthood are monks. And need I remind you that Pope Clement is generally accepted to be Philip’s puppet, indebted to Capet for his position?”

Sinclair’s features had settled into a deep scowl. “Why did you not mention this last night?”

“Because I have thought of it only since then, though I have thought of little else since it occurred to me. Besides, there was no time last night. Too much had to be done in too little time. But today, having failed to win an hour of sleep because my thoughts kept me awake, I find myself having grave and well-considered doubts about the future of our Order in France. There may be compromises and accommodations, as you say, but I fear our Temple will never again enjoy the influence it had in France even one week ago. It is outdated, and in recent years has incurred great resentment, perceived as waxing fat and paying no taxes, if for no other reason. When Acre fortress fell and the Latin Kingdom of Outremer was lost, the Temple lost its raison d’être … and there are no few in France and elsewhere who lay the blame for that loss at the Temple’s door, unjust and insupportable though that charge may be. And thus I fear our place in France itself is lost. King Philip is a hard and callous man, and his ambitions know no bounds, other than those imposed by lack of funds. He will not return one silver mark of what his lawyers seize from us.”

The frown slowly faded from Sinclair’s face, to be replaced by an expression of thoughtfulness. “A rudderless ship, you said. But if you are correct, there will be no ship … no Order. How, then, could matters grow worse?”

St. Valéry waved a hand as though dismissing the obvious. “Well, let us suppose for a moment that Philip and de Nogaret are successful, and they wrest control of the Order’s wealth and assets from our hands—those assets that are left within the realm of France, I mean. That will bring instant and enormous benefits to their treasury—freedom from debts, and real funds with which to operate … my greatest reason for doubting that this matter will be settled to our satisfaction. But if that does occur and goes unchallenged, condoned by Holy Church, think you the other Christian monarchs will hang back from behaving similarly against the Temple in their own lands? I doubt it.”

The Scots knight turned his back to the chill rain that had begun to slant inland. “I agree with you on that, at least. The same thought had already occurred to me earlier. And yet … you describe a bleak prospect, my lord Admiral. Unwilling as I may be to concede to it entirely, however, I fear you may be right. But again, what has this to do with your Merica?”

“Everything, William, and nothing. I believe the other kings of Christendom will flock like ravens to a carcass once Philip has shown the way. And I choose not to live in such a world. I am an old man, all at once and unexpectedly, coming to the end of my usefulness precisely at a time when I have most need to be capable of great things, and that awareness galls me. I know the time has come to hand my duties and my admiral’s rank and badge of office to a younger man, and I know, too, that de Berenger will be an excellent successor—so be it there is something left to which he can succeed.” He paused, then shook his head. “I would languish and die in this Scotland of yours, my friend. It is your home, and Lady Jessica’s, but it is far from mine. And besides, you are a landsman, bred to horsemanship. I am a seaman, trained in navigation, and I have been a mariner my entire life. It comes to me that I would rather die at sea, in a worthwhile quest for something I believe in, than wither away in a strange, cold land among folk with whom I cannot even converse.

“Be that as it may, you have ships aplenty here for your needs and mine, and who is to say this Scottish king of yours will not see more than a score of strange vessels as a threat? I—” The admiral cocked his head. “Someone is calling you.” He glanced around and then pointed. “Over there, on the quay.”

Sinclair saw a man waving at him. “Your ears are better than mine, Sir Charles. It’s Tam, and that cannot be good. He would not interrupt me here without cause.”

“Then go to him. But first, let me leave you with this in mind: I may sail off and die hundreds of miles from land of any kind, and I will be content, as I have said. And the men who come with me will have made the choice to do so of their own free will. But think, Sir William … what if the lore of Merica should prove as true as that of Jerusalem and the Treasure that lay hidden there? What if I were to find the place? And what then were I to return to you bearing proofs of what I found? Would that not serve to rally all our brethren, of Sion and the Temple both?” He spread his hands, palms upward. “It is no more strange than digging for the ruins of a Temple no one knew was there. Is it?”

Sinclair raised a hand to Tam to indicate that he should wait a little. “No, it is not, Admiral, when you say it like that. So be it. I will think on this between now and our arrival off Cape Finisterre. But now, if you will permit me, I must see what Tam requires of me.”

Charles St. Valéry watched him walk away, then scratched idly at his beard with the tip of one finger. He was surprised when his young superior stopped and turned back.

“Tam seems to want you to come with me,” Sir William called. “If his tidings are important they will probably affect you, too.”

St. Valéry began to walk again, digging his heavy soles into the yielding pebbles with renewed purpose.

FOUR

“What is it, Tam?”

“I’m not sure.” The sergeant wasted no time on formalities, nodding in greeting to St. Valéry and then addressing him directly. “One of your captains just arrived, Admiral. One of the two you turned back this morning. He asked me to deliver his respects and to ask you to board his galley to speak with him.”

St. Valéry and Sinclair exchanged questioning glances, and then St. Valéry turned his eyes towards the harbor entrance, where a sleek galley floated at anchor, closer than any other of its kind but concealed from where they had stood by the bulk of the ship at the quay.

“It’s Parmaison. But where is de Lisle? And why would he not come to me directly?”

“There’s urgency involved. Great urgency,” Sinclair said. “Look at the oars. He’s ready to put out to sea again immediately, once he has spoken with you.”

“Hmm. Find us a boat, Sergeant.”

“I have one ready, Admiral, at the end of the pier.” After quitting La Rochelle that morning, St. Valéry, with Sinclair’s concurrence, had sent two of his swiftest galleys to return to the roads approaching the harbor and to remain there for the remainder of that day, keeping watch to see what might develop. It had been an afterthought, no more than a precautionary measure, for they had been under way for more than two hours before the thought occurred to either man, and although they considered it highly unlikely that anything untoward might actually take place, since they had burned the only ships remaining in the harbor, they had agreed that it might be a good idea to keep a watchful eye on the fort and the headlands flanking it. But now one of the delegated vessels had caught up to them, far ahead of schedule.

The captain of the returned galley, Sir Geoffrey Parmaison, watched them pull alongside from the narrow forecastle, then helped the two senior officers aboard in person before leading them to a small folding table and three chairs he had set up beneath an awning on the upper foredeck. He dismissed the watchman at the prow, and then all three men sat down.

“Tell us, Sir Geoffrey,” St. Valéry began without preamble.

Parmaison nodded and then spoke tersely. “We returned to La Rochelle as ordered, Admiral, and arrived in sight of it just in time to see three of our own galleys entering the harbor. We saw them, I say, but we were too far away to attract their attention and could do nothing to stop them sailing into La Rochelle.”

“Who were they? Do you know?”

“Aye, Admiral. De Lisle was closer to them than I was, and swears he recognized one of the galleys as being Antoine de l’Armentière’s.”

“De l’Armentière? He is supposed to be in Cyprus.”

“That’s what I thought, sir, but de Lisle is cousin to him, and he swears it was Antoine’s galley that he saw leading the flotilla. Apparently it differs from any other.”

“Aye, it does. It is Moorish, a prize of war—a pirate vessel, captured off Gibraltar some years ago. De Lisle was sure of this?”

“As sure as he could be from a distance of miles, but whoever it was, he took three Temple galleys into La Rochelle and stayed there.”

“Hmm. Where is Captain de Lisle now?”

“On station, Admiral, waiting for whatever might happen. He sent me back to bring you the word.”

“And you saw nothing more than you have described?”

“Nothing, sir. They went in, and they did not come out.”

“Very well. Thank you, Captain Parmaison. Return to your station, rejoin Captain de Lisle, and bid him remain where he is until he has something more to report.” He held up one hand to stay the man and turned to Sinclair. “Do you have anything to add, Sir William?”

“No, Admiral, because I think you and I are considering the same eventuality. Were either of us in de Nogaret’s shoes in this, we would impound all three vessels, imprison the commanders and their crews, then take the galleys out to sea again, crewed by our own men, to pursue this fleet. Is that what you are thinking?”

“Aye, it is. Captain Parmaison, you can see for yourself that we have no time to waste. Rejoin de Lisle as quickly as you may and bid him wait, well out of reach, to see if those galleys emerge from La Rochelle again. If they do, at the first sign of them, you are to make all speed to return and let us know. Understood?” Parmaison nodded, and St. Valéry rose to his feet. “Then may God be with you and grant you all speed. Wind and oars, Sir Geoffrey, wind and oars. Sir William, we must inform Admiral de Berenger of this at once.”

They could hear Parmaison shouting orders to his crew before they reached the entry port where Tam and their boat waited for them, and before they arrived back at the wharf his galley had already veered away from its anchorage.

FIVE

Vice-Admiral de Berenger’s administrative and organizational skills were beyond dispute; his crews had every piece of Sir Kenneth Sinclair’s convoy—wagons, livestock, and cargo—sorted, dismantled where necessary, and stowed aboard ship in ample time to sail upon the evening tide, leaving the tiny village looking abandoned behind them. Sinclair, who had not really expected that they would complete everything in time to catch the tide, made a point of seeking out the vice-admiral before returning to his galley, which had already shipped the Templar Treasure, and congratulated him on the speed and efficiency of the entire operation. De Berenger, still preoccupied with the final details of dismantling their lading gear and leaving the small wharf clear of debris, thanked him with a slightly distracted smile and told him he would see him aboard within the hour. Sir William left him to it, returning to where Tam Sinclair awaited him patiently in a boat at the end of the wharf. As soon as he was safely aboard, Tam gave the order to the four oarsmen to take them back to the galley, about a hundred yards away.

It was only as they crossed the water that Sinclair zrealized that he had not seen the Baroness leave the beach, and that he had not thought of her in several hours, and he grunted to himself in satisfaction. Intense concentration on other things had obviously shut her out of his awareness for some time, and he resolved to remember that technique and apply it to her in future. He could see Admiral St. Valéry’s galley already disappearing hull down on the horizon, and the few ships left in the small inlet were all in the final stages of preparing to leave the land again. Sinclair’s galley, de Berenger’s own command, would be the last to go, and Will found himself hoping that the villagers they were leaving behind would waste no time in erasing all sign that they had ever been visited this day.

By the time he boarded the galley, the last members of de Berenger’s party were already climbing into two boats tied to the wharf. The surface of the pier at their back had been swept clean, not a single piece of debris remaining that might be linked to their visit, and after seeing the boats’ oars bite into the water, Will turned away and went in search of his cramped quarters in the forecastle. There he cast off his outer clothing and dropped onto his narrow bunk, remaining there as the ship rocked to and fro before finally putting out to sea. At some point, because there was no urgency for him in anything that was happening, he nodded off to sleep, aware, just before he lost consciousness, that in his mind’s eye he was staring at Lady Jessica Randolph’s face and that she was meeting his gaze, her eyes wide but expressionless, noncommittal, masking whatever she was thinking.

Seven days later, out of sight of land and clinging to a straining rigging rope in the waist of the ship in a howling storm, he was thinking of the woman again and straining to catch sight of the admiral’s galley on the port side, where he had last seen it days before, but he could see nothing. Whatever might be out there, it was hidden from his sight by swooping waves, wind-whipped spume, and horizontally driven rain that stung exposed skin like needles of ice. Twice since leaving the fishing village, and both times on the first day, he had seen her muffled figure looking out over the galley’s rail, once from the stern and once from the prow, but since the weather had begun to worsen on their second day at sea, he had seen no sign of her and had not expected to.

The Bay of Biscay was renowned for the ferocity of its storms, and most especially so at this time of year, with the inexorable approach of winter. Sinclair was well aware of that, just as he knew that the vessel in which he was riding had been designed to survive such storms, and that they would be safe as long as they held far enough out to sea to preclude any possibility of their being blown onto the rocks along the shoreline. His intellect knew that; his heart and his brain knew it; but there was some other part of his being that remained staunchly unconvinced. That part of him had been telling him for days now that he had no business being here on a heaving ship in the middle of nowhere, confronting a successive chain of storms and howling gales; that he should be safe ashore some place, on solid ground, with a strong horse under him and his feet firmly planted in the stirrups.

As he thought about that yet again, he heard his name being shouted, and clutching his anchoring rope, he turned to see Tam Sinclair within arm’s reach. He let go of the rope with one hand and reached out, suddenly conscious of the weight of his sodden mantle, to grasp Tam’s wrist and pull him to where he, too, could grasp the rigging and turn his hunched back to the gale.

“De Berenger sent me to get you,” Tam shouted into Sinclair’s ear through a cupped hand. “He’s in his cabin.”

Sinclair felt his heart sink into his boots as he heard the summons. He was up here on the galley’s central deck for one reason: he had survived his first attacks of seasickness several days earlier, although he could still hardly credit the violent misery he had endured, but even so, the minor degree of tolerance he had since developed for the lurching, pitching, and yawing movements of the ship could not survive in the fetid atmosphere, the darkness, and the chaotic, unpredictable motion belowdecks. The galley’s crew appeared to think nothing of it, and knew the layout of the ship so well that they could find their way about down there in total darkness, but Will Sinclair knew that was a skill he would never possess, and the mere thought of remaining aboard for long enough to develop it appalled him. Now, knowing that he had no alternative but to go aft and belowdecks, he turned and looked back towards the high stern of the ship, where he could see a pair of helmsmen straining against the weight of the tiller, struggling to keep the ship headed directly into the wind and the incessant line of combers bearing down on them from the northwest. Below, in the waist of the vessel, the oarsmen sat huddled and miserable on their benches, waiting patiently, their oars shipped and secured vertically, ready to be deployed at the shout of an order.

“What’s happening, d’you know?”

Tam shook his head. “He came up on deck and sent me to fetch you. Something’s up, but I’ve no more idea than you.”

“Well, let’s find out. I’ll be glad to get out of this.”

“Aye, and so will I. Off this whoreson box and back on dry land. Sooner the better.”

Together, choosing each step with great care, they fought their way back to the stern, where Tam crouched down out of the wind, in the shelter of the ship’s side, while Sir William approached one of three doors in the wall below the stern deck where the helmsmen stood. He knocked, and without waiting for a response, swung the door open and leaned inside. De Berenger was sitting on one side of his sleeping cabin, facing the ship’s wall, in front of a small tabletop that was hinged to the vessel’s timbers so that it could be folded away when it was not in use. He had been writing, for his fingers were stained with ink.

“You sent for me, Sir Edward?”

“I did, Sir William. Come inside, if you will, and close the door.”

Sinclair did as he was bidden, relieved to see that at least there was light in here. Three fat candles hung in heavy sconces, intricately suspended, although he could not quite see how, from a device that hung from the beams of the overhead deck, and although the shadows they cast swung and swooped disconcertingly, their light was nonetheless extremely welcome, projecting an illusion of warmth.

“Sit on the bunk if you wish, or on the stool.” De Berenger glanced at him sympathetically, noting the haggard lines around his eyes and mouth. “How are you feeling, all things considered? Will you last, think you?” There was the merest hint of smile around his eyes.

Sinclair perched himself carefully on the three-legged stool with his spread feet firmly planted on the decking, his back to the door, and one hand clutching an iron bracket that was anchored in the ship’s timbers. “Aye, I’ll last. I know that now, after five days of this. But I warn you, I’m like to vomit without warning. I can barely manage to control myself on deck, in the fresh air, but I cannot stay confined for any length of time without being able to see the horizon.”

De Berenger’s little smile widened to a grin. “Aye, that’s common with seasickness. But don’t worry about vomiting in here. I don’t imagine you have much in you to spew up, after five days. And there’s no shortage of seawater with which to wash it out.” He pointed a thumb towards the papers spilling from the open leather wallet on the table beside him. “I wanted to talk to you about these. Haven’t had much time since they came aboard, and only started reading them this forenoon … But they are thought provoking, and the admiral has obviously taken great pains over what he had to say.” He paused briefly. “They came to me, of course, from admiral to vice-admiral, one shipmaster to another. But you hold higher rank within our Order than either of us ever could, and thus I know that what’s contained in there concerns you primarily. The admiral has suggested that there will be grave decisions to consider, and he suggests, too, what they might entail … I read what he had to say with great interest, but I found myself glad the decisions are not mine to make.”

Sinclair nodded, glancing sideways at the open wallet and its contents. He had watched the wallet come aboard, on the first day of the bad weather, during a brief lull between the passing of one storm and the onset of the next, when St. Valéry’s galley had approached close enough through treacherous waters to shoot a crossbow bolt safely into their ship’s side, close by the entry port. It had taken several attempts, but a bolt had eventually thumped home. A length of fishing line had been tied to it, and attached to the far end of that had been a thicker cord, securing a pitchcovered basket, like a tiny boat, that held a waterproofed package of heavily waxed cloth containing the wallet of dispatches. He had watched the recovery process with interest, coming close to forgetting his own discomfort as he admired the monkeylike dexterity of the seamen who had carried it out, and he had presumed that whatever was involved in the hazardous delivery, it had to be a purely naval matter, since they had been far from land for days by then and nothing had occurred during that time that might involve him in his capacity as a member of the Order’s Council.

Now he looked back at de Berenger, raising one eyebrow. “You wish me to read them?”

“Aye, Sir William. I do. But I suspect you might find the task impossible, given your seasickness. You would have to sit here, head down, and concentrate on reading while everything around you seems to move. And so, if I may make a suggestion?”

“Of course. What is it?”

De Berenger indicated the table again with a wave of his hand. “I have already read everything here, and have been thinking of it for the past few hours. I can tell you what is involved, and outline the admiral’s suggestions. Then, afterwards, if you so wish, you may read anything you choose more carefully, without having to wade through the entire wallet.”

“Excellent suggestion. Do that. Give me the gist of it.” The vice-admiral picked up a substantial pile of papers and held them up in one hand. “Much of what’s here, naturally enough, is straightforward naval records work—copies of bills of lading, cargo lists, disciplinary reports, that kind of thing. None of that interests us in this instance.” He squared the edges of the papers and aligned them carefully against the bulkhead before picking up a second, much smaller pile that had been set apart. “This is what concerns us. These papers deal with the two main areas that the admiral is concerned about. The first of those is the matter of the three galleys that sailed into La Rochelle after we left. What happened to them, and where are they now?”

“Do we know any of that? I have heard nothing since the admiral delegated those two other galleys to keep an eye on them.”

“Admiral St. Valéry detached two more vessels to hang back and position themselves separately between us and Parmaison and de Lisle. That was five days ago, before the storms came down on us.”

“Separately. You mean separate from each other, or separate from de Lisle’s ships?”

“Both. The second pair, commanded by André du Bois and Charles Vitrier, were to station themselves within view of each other but far enough away from the first two to be able to pass the word to us quickly if they saw any signs of trouble.”

“And?”

“We don’t know. The weather has been too bad for us to know what’s going on out there.”

“But. I can hear a ‘but’ in your tone.”

“Yes, you can. The admiral has been proceeding in the belief that the three galleys have been seized and will come after us.”

“That was our first assumption, and until we find out more, it will remain valid. So what does Admiral St. Valéry propose?”

A tiny frown ticked between the other man’s brows. “That is where his logic evades me … or confuses me … and it is why I decided to talk to you.” He hesitated, then plunged on. “Has Admiral St. Valéry spoken to you of what he would like to do once we are clear of Cape Finisterre and outward bound?”

Sinclair cocked an eyebrow. “Aye. He has some idea of sailing off to the west, across the great sea, in search of something he believes is there.”

“The Merica legend.”

“Ah … He has spoken of it to you, has he?”

“No, not spoken of it exactly.” De Berenger looked troubled, as though he might be betraying a confidence. “He mentioned it, last time we spoke together in private. Hinted that he might like to go in search of it when he resigns as admiral. Said he had dreamed of finding it for years and that there’s nothing to stop him now, if he can find a crew of volunteers …”

Sinclair grunted. “He said much of the same to me. Asked me to consider giving him leave to go. He has no wish to travel with us to Scotland. He made that clear … What think you of the idea?”

De Berenger’s blink revealed his confusion before he asked, “What idea? Merica, or going to Scotland?”

“Merica.”

A play of expressions crossed de Berenger’s face until he shrugged. “Truthfully, I don’t know what to think of it, because the Order never really told us what to think of it, did it? On so many things the teachings are specific: this is what we know, that is a lie promulgated by Rome, that is true, this is foolish superstition. We always knew where we stood in the matter of most of the Order’s lore, and if we misunderstood or disagreed with any part of it, we could ask questions and debate the answers. But this Merica legend … no guidance was ever offered on it.”

Sinclair drew a deep breath and held it, steeling himself against a surge of nausea. When it abated, he continued. “There was none to offer. Nothing is known of it, even within our own Order of Sion, let alone within the Temple. The only thing we know is that the legend exists, and that it is based upon a few obscure references within the earliest records. I asked my sponsors and my mentors about it, each in turn, but none of them had paid it any attention, dismissing it for what it appeared to be—a simple legend, not worth wondering about. Later, though, when I was dispatched to Carcassonne to study, one of my tutors told me to seek out a Brother Anselm while I was there. He was the oldest living member of the Order at that time, and a wellspring of information on the more obscure aspects of the lore. He died only last year.”

He stopped and tilted his head to one side, as though listening, and his anchoring grip on the iron wall bracket eased slightly. “Am I imagining things, or has the pitching lessened?”

De Berenger nodded. “The storm may have blown itself out, or we may be in another lull between onsets. So what did you get from this Brother Anselm?”

“He offered me a different way of thinking about, and looking at, such things, a different approach to obscure lore.” He stopped, listening. “I believe the wind is dying, too. Would you object to stepping outside with me, and continuing our talk out there? Forgive me, but I find the confines of this cabin every bit as stifling as the holds belowdecks.”

De Berenger sprang to his feet, perfectly at ease with the ship’s motion. “Of course, Sir William. Forgive me. I had not realized how much discomfort you were in.” He threw open the cabin door, then stepped aside as Sinclair lurched past him and groped his way to the rail, where he stood with his feet apart and his head thrown back, sucking in great gulps of cold sea air. It really did appear as though the storm had passed, for the wind had dropped and was no longer howling and whipping spume from the wave tops, and the waves themselves had lost their ragged crests. The seas were still huge, propelling the craft in great, swooping surges, but they were noticeably less violent, the sides of the rolling waves now long and smooth, streaked with trailing remnants of the spume that had filled the air such a short time before. De Berenger busied himself looking at the cloud wrack and gauging the extent of the weather change while he waited for his superior to collect himself, and after a short time Sinclair turned back to him, clearly in command of himself again.

“There, I feel better now, much better. I appreciate your concern, Sir Edward, for both my stomach and my well-being … Now, what was I saying before my head started to spin?”

“Brother Anselm, how he offered you a different way of looking at things.”

“Aye, he did …” Sinclair thought for a moment longer, then resumed. “He made it very clear to me that I should never ignore anything simply because I cannot understand it immediately. That sounds obvious, but the truth is that most of us do exactly the opposite most of the time. Anselm had found, as had everyone else who cared to look, that there is nothing in our few references to support the Merica legend. But he had gone one step further than anyone else. He had gone looking for the source of our sources, if you see what I mean.”

De Berenger frowned. “No, I don’t. That sounds impossible. A source is a source. There’s nothing beyond that.”

“Hmm.” William Sinclair looked out at the surging seas, and spoke out towards where he was looking. “That is almost exactly what I said to him, and I remember how he smiled at me before correcting the error in my logic.” He looked at de Berenger and ducked his head slightly, almost apologetically. “I was speaking of our sources, he pointed out—the sources from which the forefathers in our Order originally developed our lore. And that little word, our, has influenced the Order’s perceptions down through the ages. And speaking of perceptions, incidentally, were you surprised when I slipped you the fist grip that night in La Rochelle?”

“Aye, I was,” de Berenger said. “It has been some time since last I met a senior Templar who was also one of our brotherhood.”

“Are you saying you saw me as more of a Temple Boar than a member of the brotherhood?” Sinclair grinned and held up a hand, waving away the chagrin that had immediately shown on de Berenger’s face. “Forget it, man, I was but jesting in order to make a point about the ways in which what we see, or think we see, can influence what we think thereafter. For that is exactly what has happened, Brother Anselm assured me, on this matter of the Merica legend.”

De Berenger inclined his head, clearly waiting to hear more, and Sinclair continued. “Secrecy, we all know, has been paramount in all we have done since the very beginnings of our Order, more than a millennium ago. But those few of us who think of such things today tend to think that the secrecy was originally based upon the need to hide our Jewish identity from the threat of Rome’s vengeance.” He gave the lie to his own words with a tiny jerk of the head. “Not so. Rome was never a threat to us since the earliest days of our settlement in southern Gaul, when we concealed our true roots and blended into the local structure, eventually becoming Christian. No, our need for secrecy was far more than that, and far older. The priesthood of ancient Judea, we know from our own records, was a secret, closed society long before Rome began to stir beyond its seven hills. Its roots went all the way back to Egypt at the dawn of time, in the era of the early Pharaohs, when the Israelites were enslaved for hundreds of years until Moses led them out in search of the Promised Land.

“I know you know all this, so forgive me if I seem to preach, but what comes next is the important part: our earliest forefathers brought their knowledge out of Egypt with them, and much of that knowledge was deeply rooted, after so many generations, in the religion of Egypt, with its worship of Isis and Osiris. That lore they took to Jerusalem, where Solomon built his Temple, and the priests were the sacred guardians of its secrets. They—our early forefathers—had their own lore, just as we have ours, but their sources were Egyptian, unutterably ancient.”

Sinclair stopped to watch a young seaman, carrying a bucket, make his way down the ladder from the steering platform above their heads, and when the youth had passed and vanished from view, he continued. “What Anselm enabled me to see then—and I would never have thought of it had he not directed me—was that our more recent forefathers, the fugitive priests from the sack of Jerusalem, had been unable to bring all of that with them. They had escaped with only what they could carry, and had concealed the rest, hoping to return for it later. We found it eventually, when Hugh de Payens and his friends unearthed it, but twelve hundred years had passed by then, and throughout that time, our Order had formed itself around the lore salvaged from Palestine … Naturally, being human and dedicated to their eventual return to their true home, the earliest brethren gave the greater part of their attentions to those parts of the lore that offered most towards that end. And other, seemingly lesser parts they neglected and allowed to fall into disuse, so that their origins were forgotten and all that remained was the original mention of such things. And most prominent and mystifying among those was—and it remains so to this day—the element that we know as the legend of Merica.”

Listening to Sinclair, Sir Edward de Berenger had moved to lean against the ship’s side, where he remained now, staring wordlessly at his young superior.

Sinclair smiled at him. “Do you find that hard to credit?”

The vice-admiral shook his head. “Not at all. I believe it makes perfect sense. What you see in my face as doubt is mere amazement, born of my own disbelief that no one, myself included, has ever thought of this before.”

“Why should you have—you or anyone else? It is an obscure legend, forgotten by everyone except a few. It was by merest accident that I found out about the ancient Egyptian roots. Had Brother Anselm not been who he was—and had he not been in Carcassonne when I went there—I would never have been able to envision such antiquity.” He straightened his shoulders and turned towards the sea again, spreading his arms and leaning his hands on the galley’s rail as he gazed towards the southwest, where a rift had occurred among the clouds and a single brilliant shaft of light shone down clear edged, illuminating one patch of water.

“Look at that. A single ray of sunshine changing the world as we see it. What petty, ineffectual things we are, we men. We vaunt our prowess and our power, thinking to alter the world, building empires and Orders, only to watch them scattered and destroyed by things we can never hope to control … Three days ago, we had a fleet at our command—nigh on thirty ships. A month before that, we had an enterprise, a mighty Order, that we thought inviolable, invincible. And what do we have now?” He scanned the seas around them. “I count three ships. And none of them, I think, is Admiral St. Valéry’s.” He grimaced wryly at de Berenger. “I have a fear, in my heart, Edward, that we may be lost out here, helplessly witnessing the ending of an era. The ending of the world we have known.”

“Not so, Sir William, in God’s holy name. Our ships will reassemble when the winds die down, I promise you.”

“Aye, I’m sure they will. But will our fortunes do the same? Philip Capet and his creature de Nogaret have wrought great things within these past few days, evil things, to be sure, from where we stand, but they have achieved them nonetheless. And I cannot foresee them giving up what they have won. They hold La Rochelle, our Order’s chief stronghold, the center of our worldwide naval power, and I fear that we—this fleet—are all that is left of the Order of the Temple within France. I say I fear it, but I mean I believe it in my heart, for by the time de Nogaret took La Rochelle, the Temple in Paris had already fallen, all its adherents taken into the King’s custody.”

De Berenger had nothing to say to that, and Sinclair continued. “Until the very moment when we broke into that room in the Commandery and found the assassins waiting for the admiral, I had regarded the truth of what was happening as unthinkable, a monstrous misunderstanding. But it was the truth that was monstrous … and our wide-eyed disbelief that was unthinkable. France has become a dungeon, an oubliette, not merely for the bodies of our brethren but for the ideals and the principles that we stood for. I believe that. And because I do, I find myself considering giving Admiral St. Valéry my permission to sail upon the quest he thinks to undertake.”

The vice-admiral stirred, shifting from foot to foot, his face settling into a frown of puzzlement. The silence between the two men was broken only by the sounds of the ship and the surging waters.

“Well, what think you?” Sinclair said. “Your face is black with your thoughts, so spit them out. Talk to me.”

Tam, who had been huddled in a corner beneath the deck rail, was no longer where he had been, and Sinclair assumed he had gone belowdecks again. He closed his eyes, concentrating upon the freshness of the air blowing against his face.

De Berenger shook his head. “I know not what to say, Sir William. At first glance, the idea seems like folly … and yet, having listened to what you said about the legend, I find myself unsure that it is, after all. But there has been no record, anywhere or at any time, of any living person—other than our own brethren who have heard of the legend—having heard tell of such a place, such a land, and the Western Sea is limitless. To permit Sir Charles to sail off thus would be to send him to his death.”

Will Sinclair grinned, beginning to enjoy himself for the first time in days, now that the wind had died and the sea was less turbulent. “The sea can not be limitless, Edward. Think of what that would involve. There must be some kind of rim to it, somewhere, else the ocean waters would pour off into the Abyss and the seas themselves would run dry. That is logical, is it not … even though it be incredible?”

His companion only blinked at him, and Sinclair laughed out loud. “Do not despair, Sir Edward, I have not said I will let the admiral go, for what you argue is self-evidently true. It would be tantamount to sending him off to die.” He sobered as quickly as he had broken into mirth. “And yet, I feel it would be a kindness to indulge St. Valéry in this, when he most needs indulgence. In the space of a few days, without warning of any kind, he has lost everything he holds most dear—his oldest friend and companion foully murdered, his command usurped and rendered useless, and the instrument to which he dedicated his entire life snuffed out and perhaps destroyed by forces against which he is impotent. Now, without superiors to guide him, he faces a life he must perceive as futile, exiled in a foreign land about which he knows nothing. What can he have to look forward to in such circumstances, an admiral with no purpose? He has these ships, and whatever vessels may join us off Finisterre, but what ends will that serve? He has nowhere to go.”

“With respect, Sir William, that is not really so. The admiral would be welcome in any other country. We have Temples and commanderies throughout Christendom and across the world. It is in France alone that we are beset.” Sinclair looked at him levelly. “True, at this moment. But how long, think you, before other kings follow Philip Capet’s example? Capet has his tame pope on his side, which means his blessing will extend to all who wish to move against our Order and seize its wealth for themselves. Any king, Edward, and with one exception that I know of, they are all that greedy. Robert Bruce alone, the King of Scots, stands excommunicate, and more because of that than for any other reason, he is the sole man—the sole king—whom I might be prepared to judge as trustworthy in this matter, for I am told the Scots Templars number strongly among his staunchest supporters. You mark my words, my friend. It will happen, and it will happen quickly. And when it does, we, all of us, the admiral included, will have no place where we can go in safety, other than the dubious sanctuary we may find in Scotland.”

“You paint a grim picture, Sir William.”

“No grimmer than it truly is, Edward.” Sinclair looked around him again, noting that the patch of blue sky had widened greatly. “It really looks as though the weather might be clearing. If we meet up with the admiral again, I will talk to him at more length on this subject. Mayhap he will convince me to let him go off on his quest, but his arguments will need to be more solid than they are at this point.”