by Jack Whyte
She stopped again, and turned to face Tam. “You have heard me voice my opinions on honor and bravery to the others. They are manly virtues, and therefore to a woman’s eyes they are useless and futile. Find me a woman who wants to be married to a dead hero and I will show you a woman who is unhappily wed. Dead men provide no comfort or love in a harsh winter or any other time.” She paused. “Mind you, I find there are living men who offer little more, and it strikes me that your Will Sinclair is one of them … I can only pray his manners will improve when we are aboard ship. It is a long passage to Scotland, and I would not enjoy spending all of the time with a great boor.”
The tone of her voice had changed, losing its quick and urgent intimacy, and Tam responded to the difference, becoming more formal. “You’ll be on different ships, my lady. You will be wi’ the admiral, and unless I miss my guess, Will’s place will be wi’ the vice-admiral, Maister de Berenger.”
Jessica Randolph nodded. “Aye, that makes sense. The galleys are war ships, as Charles said, not fitted for comfort or for idle passengers, so you are probably right, we will be aboard separate vessels, you and I. Now take me to my women, Tam, if you would. I’ve kept them waiting long enough.”
“We’re nearly there, my lady. Come away.”
FOUR
After Jessie Randolph and Tam had left the room, William Sinclair sat still for a few moments, watching the door that had closed behind them, and then he turned to Edward de Berenger.
“Forgive me, Admiral,” he said. “I had to cozen you earlier about the naval exercise tomorrow, but I had no choice at the time. Sir Charles had not yet read his instructions from the Grand Master.”
De Berenger nodded, affably enough, and turned to St. Valéry. “What about the other elements of the fleet, Admiral? Is there hope for them?”
“Yes, some hope. Master de Molay dispatched word to our Commanderies in Brest and Le Havre, bidding them take all available galleys and set sail last night, on the same exercise you thought you were to join. The fleet commander in Marseille received similar orders a week ago, to set sail with his galleys immediately and make his way down through the Straits of Gibraltar and then north to Cape Finisterre in northern Spain. We will all come together there, and sail wherever we must go.”
“How many vessels altogether, Admiral?”
St. Valéry shook his head. “We have no way of knowing, Edward. It depends entirely upon who was in port when the orders arrived. There may have been a score of keels in each, or none at all. But only our fleet here will have transport vessels attached. The other elements, whatever they turn out to be, will be all galleys, but we have another task to see to before we sail for Finisterre, and I will explain that to you tomorrow. Go now and see to your preparations. We are finished here.”
“And what of my men, sir?” De Montrichard, who was now the Preceptor of La Rochelle and had been standing beside Sinclair, listening quietly, spoke up as de Berenger left.
The admiral glanced at Sinclair. “The Master’s orders were specific. You are to remain in the Commandery and surrender when requested, offering no resistance even under the direst provocation. You must not resist arrest. The consequences could be immeasurable.”
De Montrichard nodded, his face inscrutable. “I shall instruct my men, sir.”
“Do so, but wait you just a moment. Sir William, I have need of your advice. When Master de Molay wrote his instructions, he was most specific.”
“Yes.” The rising inflection in Sinclair’s response turned the agreement into a question.
“But yet he was unsure of the truth of what he was preparing for, is that not so?”
“It is.”
“Had he been here with us tonight, sharing our discussion, think you he might have been convinced the warning was true?”
“I have no doubt of it. Why do you ask?” “Because I am concerned about this need for our garrison to offer no resistance. How many men have you under arms, Sir Richard?”
“A hundred and fifty-four, Admiral, including the medical staff.”
“Five score and more … It seems to me, Sir William, that there could be much temptation to resist, among so many men.”
“There could be, were the men not Templars. What are you really saying, Admiral?”
“Why, that we might eliminate the temptation and thereby guarantee obedience to the Master’s wishes. A hundred and four absent men could offer no resistance …”
Sinclair blew out his breath through pursed lips. “You have room for them?”
“I will make room.”
Sinclair nodded. “So mote it be. Do it,” he said.
“We’ll leave de Nogaret an empty shell.”
“Thank you, my friend.” St. Valéry was smiling now. “Sir Richard, remove all the guards and lock and bar the gates, then assemble your command with whatever gear they can carry on their backs, but no more than that. Start boarding them immediately.”
The preceptor saluted crisply and marched away with a spring in his step and a new set to his shoulders.
“And now, Will, my friend,” the admiral said, “it remains only for me to protect my own priceless treasure here, which I almost forgot. But that big black bottle is very heavy and I find myself growing weak. Will you help me to lighten it before we go outside?”
A short time later, now thoroughly fortified with a third measure of the wondrous liquor of the Benedictine monks, they emerged from the building together and walked down to the wharves, where everything was awash in the flickering light of hundreds of pitch-soaked torches, more than Will could ever remember seeing in any one place. The flares, beaconlike in their intensity, were mounted in baskets atop high, solidly footed wooden poles, and laid out in lanes and alleys, clearly defining the routes from warehouses and stockpiles to the gangplanks of the galleys lining the wharfsides. Will whistled softly in surprise.
“Where did all these torches come from?”
The admiral glanced at him, then looked back at the wharves. “From storage. We sometimes have no choice over when to load or unload a vessel, so we keep the torches ready at all times for night work. There’s a good source of pitch not far from here, an open pit by Touchemarin, the nearest village along the southeastern road. We bring it in by the wagonload, in barrels, and store it in a giant vat that has been here longer than I have, so we never run low on fuel.”
“I’m impressed. I’ve never seen anything like this.” He turned his back to the activities on the waterside and looked from left to right, gazing at the buildings that extended to either side beyond the Commandery itself, stretching in dark ranks as far as he could see. The only lights to be seen among the massed shapes were those in the Commandery, which at this time of night was unsurprising. “Who owns the buildings on each side of you?”
“We do. They are all Temple establishments, the entire length of the quay on this side of the harbor. They are run by lay and associate brethren: merchants, traders, chandlers, and the like. Of the Temple, but hardly what you and I think of as Templars.”
Sinclair nodded knowingly. In his mind, as in the minds of the entire military brotherhood, the word Templars applied only to themselves, the fighting monks of the Order. All the other so-called Templars, and there were thousands of them throughout Christendom, were supernumeraries, laymen functionaries of all kinds conscripted from all walks of life as associate brothers, their prime purpose being the daily administration and maintenance of the sprawling commercial empire of the Order’s nonmilitary activities. Like most of his fraternity, Sir William viewed them with ambivalence verging, at times, upon detestation. He could acknowledge, however grudgingly, that they were necessary, sometimes even essential, but he harbored a deep resentment of their claims to be bona fide Templars, believing that their all too frequent abuse of the name, not to mention the privileges associated with it, were the central cause of the Order’s fall from popularity and esteem in the eyes of the world. A greedy and unscrupulous merchant or banker would fo
rever be disdained, but when such malignity was exercised in the name of the Order, then the Order itself inevitably suffered, and the arrogance and malfeasance of the miscreant were perceived, ipso facto, as being condoned by the Temple.
It was a conundrum that Sinclair and others like him had debated for decades now and had declared to be unsolvable, and now he dismissed it again, knowing there was nothing he could do. “I wonder what will happen to them tomorrow.” He did not expect an answer and turned away to look again at the activity surrounding them. The entire wharf was swarming with movement, all of it disciplined and well ordered, with every man moving purposefully and almost silently, concentrating upon the task at hand. Files of men formed long chains, passing sacks of grain, fodder, and other provisions from shoulder to shoulder to be piled at the edge of the wharf, where lading gangs transferred them into nets to be hoisted aboard ship. Other groups went in single file, carrying goods that were too awkward, fragile, heavy, or precious to be passed easily from hand to hand. Still others manned the hoists that lined the wharves, transferring cargo from the dockside to work crews aboard the ships, who removed the goods from the cargo nets and passed them belowdecks to be stowed. And among them all moved horse-drawn wagons, carrying items that were simply too large to be taken to stowage by any other means. As he watched the constant coming and going, Sinclair was unaware that St. Valéry was watching him, and when the admiral saw the hint of a smile tugging at the younger man’s mouth, he spoke up.
“You are smiling, Sir William … Do you find this sight enjoyable?”
“What? Enjoyable? God, no, at least not in the sense you appear to mean, my lord. I find no amusement in it at all.” The slight smile lingered on his face. “But there is always enjoyment in watching disciplined men performing well … My smile came out of gratitude that our toilers here are real Templars and not Temple brethren. Were they not, I should shudder to think of the chaos that would be reflected here tonight. I thought to walk among them now, to let them know their work is well thought of. Will you join me?”
FEELING THE LIFT OF THE KEEL beneath his feet as the galley backed away from the quay under oars towards its anchorage, William Sinclair lodged his long sword in a corner where it would not fall, then shrugged off his mantle and hung it from a peg before he allowed himself to fall face down on the narrow bunk that would be his sole resting place for the next few weeks or months, and the last thing he remembered was a vision of Jessica Randolph’s eyes flashing with anger, and the words The Order of the Temple was destroyed by eight black balls.
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, h
e 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.