by Jack Whyte
Will had then reconvened the chapter the following day, wearing his full Master’s regalia and formally entreating the blessing of the Old Testament God upon their new course of action and behavior. And the exodus had begun the very next day, with the newly enfranchised brethren having renewed their vow of obedience and undertaken, without exception, to bring new wives back to Arran when they found them. Of the fifty-seven newly released brethren, however, a full thirty had been members of the new rotation of riders to the mainland and King Robert’s service, which meant that they either would have to await the end of their tour before seeking a wife, or would spend the tour looking around them at available prospects.
The two delegates from Aix-en-Provence had left to return to their homes soon after that, both of them well pleased with the way things had turned out, and both promising to send young, married men from the Order of Sion as soon as it could be arranged. These newcomers, it had been agreed, would come as Temple sympathizers, their intentions to support and assist the Arran brethren of the outlawed Temple. Will’s thinking on that matter had not yet extended to how he would welcome the newcomers or to what use he might put them, but he was unperturbed by the prospect. When the time came, he knew, there would be positions available for them to fill.
He turned back to look at the unopened letter on the tabletop, recognizing that there was no logical reason for his reluctance to open it. It had been delivered openly and innocently, and so he knew it would contain nothing inflammatory or outrageous. The woman had written to him before, and in this letter she would probably continue as she had begun, with personal information on the King’s affairs that she had been able to glean through her special, trusted status. He had no fear of any of that; all the fear he felt was for his own reaction to his renewed awareness of Jessie Randolph’s existence. The memory of her—even worse, imaginings of her—had disturbed his sleep on too many occasions, and it was only recently that he had been able to forget about her for weeks on end. Now here she was again, chapping at his door, as his Scots friends would say.
He sighed, then sniffed hard, his mind made up, and strode back to the table, where he seated himself and snapped the seal on the missive with a flick of his thumbnail. The pages of the letter, neatly folded and pressed, were folded tightly inside the enveloping cover, and he saw at a glance that the letter, like the previous one, was written in the tongue of his boyhood, Angevin.
Sir William
You may already be better informed of what I am about to tell you than I myself am, but having spoken with SJD as he passed through Nithsdale on a recent journey, and learning that he had intended to visit you but had been unable to do so because of the restrictions of his campaign in Galloway, it has occurred to me that you might not yet be aware of what is happening in the north.
The truce that has been in force with the MacDougalls of Lorn and Argyll is now at an end, and it is obvious that the recalcitrant Lame John, Lord of Lorn, has been using the time of truce to strengthen his position and his forces in order to intensify his efforts to overthrow His Grace Robert. Aware of that, the King has marched north with his army to invade Lorn’s lands from the rear, through a natural gateway called the Pass of Brander, and SJD and his command are now on their way to join the royal forces. You may be unaware of those developments, but the outcome of the venture will greatly influence your situation on your island for better or for worse. I pray that it will be the former.
By now your plans for consolidating yourselves upon the island must be well in hand, if not absolutely complete. I trust that you and yours have prospered in that regard. I myself continue to enjoy being an honorary aunt, although “mother” might be the better word for this relationship, all-embracing as it is. Be that as it may, I am finding great pleasure in it and the child is a delight, with a very quick ear for languages. She is already speaking French as though she has never known another tongue, after less than a year of practice.
I hope you will not think too unkindly of me for thrusting myself into your awareness yet again, but I think of you often and was born, my father used to tell me, with far more curiosity than was good for me. Peggy is well, and aging beautifully. You would be proud, could you but see her. And she wears your trinket constantly, her pride in her elder brother a self-evident truth.
The young man who bears this letter to you is a cousin—far younger than he appears to be—so I beg you to ignore his pleadings to remain with you, and to send him home again. He will have plenty of time to go to war once he comes of age for it.
Your friend,
Jessie Randolph
The foray into Argyll and Lorn had been a great success, with Douglas playing a major role in the capture of the supposedly impregnable pass, all of which Will had already learned from de Berenger, whose source was more recent than Jessie Randolph’s was when she wrote her letter. But Will was obliged to admit to himself that had her letter arrived by any other means than de Berenger’s galley, he would have been grateful and highly pleased to have received it. It was not the Baroness’s fault that time and events had overtaken her tidings. Her concern for his welfare—and for that of his men, he added hastily—was genuine, and he had no desire to dispute it. And that, in turn, made him feel guilty for having no intention of acknowledging her letter. To the best of his knowledge he had never, ever written a letter to a woman, and he had no desire to begin now. He had not even written to his sister Peggy in response to the letters she had sent to him, and she was a sibling. The prospect of even attempting to write to Jessica Randolph made him quail. He would not even know where to begin, or how to proceed from there. Better, then, he decided, to continue as he had begun, unresponsive to the woman’s blandishments and therefore reasonably safe from ever saying anything he might regret.
He read the letter through again, then folded it carefully and placed it in the small locked chest of sandalwood on his table, atop the woman’s first letter, where he knew it would be safe.
THE ROAD TO LEGEND
THE RETURN
ONE
Will Sinclair was about his own business on that magnificent June morning in the year of our Lord 1312, and it was business he wished to share with no one. His life as a monastic was generally without privacy, and his activities as Master and commander of the Temple on Arran exacerbated that condition. There was always someone needing to speak to him, seeking his approval or his advice, and any time he was out in plain sight he would end up in the center of a throng. Only in prayer and meditation could he find solitude, and seldom even then, since most of the Templars’ daily prayers and the rites surrounding them were communal. Today, however, Will had elected to be alone, for what he considered to be good and sufficient purpose.
He had been told the previous evening, by one of the old mariners off a trading vessel anchored in the bay at Lochranza, that the next day promised to be the finest of the year thus far, and on the spur of the moment, Will had decided to do something that he had been thinking about for more than a month. He sought out Richard de Montrichard, the island’s preceptor, and informed him that he was leaving then and there, alone, and would return within two days, on the last day of June. De Montrichard merely nodded, showing neither surprise nor curiosity, but Will knew that even if the preceptor saw nothing strange in the disappearance of the Master without the smallest escort, others would, and so he added, purely for the later benefit of those others, that he had much on his mind and needed time to be alone and to think without distraction. He then went and told Tam Sinclair that he would be sleeping under the sky for the next two nights, and asked him to keep his squire, young Henry, busy while he was away. He had expected an argument from Tam, but his kinsman had just shrugged and wished him joy of his privacy.
Will then packed one saddlebag carefully with all he thought he might need, threw a thick rolled blanket over one shoulder, then made a quick call upon the commissary for food to keep him going for two days. A good, sturdy mountain horse selected from the stables
completed his preparations, and he disappeared into the hills just as the sun was beginning to set.
A strong wind came up before he was two miles from Lochranza, but he slept soundly that night on a bed of bracken in a deep, sheltered hollow by a mountain tarn while a howling gale shrieked and whistled above his head without harming him, wrapped warmly as he was in a thick woolen blanket and covered by piled bracken ferns. The wind subsided while he slept, and he was up and about long before dawn began to brighten the sky. He ate a breakfast of cold meat and oatmeal cake in the dark and struck camp before sunrise, heading south and east under the flanks of the great Fells that towered on his right, until he found the coast again. He reached his destination by mid-morning, when the sun was already hot on his face.
Will stood with his back to the sea, peering up at the slopes of the high mountains, searching for signs of human life but not expecting to see any. This was one of the most remote stretches of coastline on Arran, seldom visited because it had high cliffs and no shelving beaches in front, and massive, impassable mountains at its back. It was approachable only from the way he had come, and he had found the place by accident, two years earlier, while following a gut-shot stag.
He took his horse’s bridle and led the broad-hoofed beast down towards the cliff, where they descended into a narrow defile cut by a fast-flowing stream and vanished from view. Down there, however, was the jewel of this place. Fifteen paces beneath the lip of the cliff, invisible from every direction but the sea straight ahead and forming one side of the gully housing the cataract, a wide finger of rock jutted out into the sea, its upper surface coated with turf and bracken ferns. Once there, Will unsaddled his horse and left it to graze freely. Then, carrying his saddlebags and four lengths of alder sapling that he had cut from a grove a mile away to the north, he walked to the farthest point of the rocky finger and gazed down into the sea, less than ten paces beneath him.
The day was perfectly calm, and the sea reflected that, only the gentlest appearance and disappearance of isolated underwater rocks revealing that there was a five- or six-foot swell down there, its presence the only sign that a gale had been howling here mere hours before. The water was so clear and still-looking now, despite the swell, that he could see the occasional large fish glide by. He turned and gazed up again at the cliff top above. Nothing stirred up there; he was alone.
He stepped away from the edge of the rock and shrugged his long-sword belt up and over his head, dropping it and the weapon it bore onto the grass, to be followed by the waist belt holding his scrip and his sheathed dagger. He wore no mail or armor of any kind this day, for those things were never needed on the island. The people of the mainland and Kintyre might not know exactly who the strangers were who had recently occupied Arran, but they knew that they were numerous, they were womanless, and they were warriors, and so they kept their distance and left the islanders in peace.
Moving rapidly now, Will collected the four lengths of alder sapling and tied them together with strips of leather to form a four-foot-high tripod, after which he tied the fourth length across two of the legs. That done, he pulled off the plain brown summer surcoat he wore and folded it loosely before dropping it on top of his discarded weapons. Then he undid yet another narrow belt and removed his knee-length fold-over tunic of rough wool, baring his upper body and spreading his arms wide to embrace the freedom of the air against his skin. Moments later he dropped to his rump and pulled off his heavy riding boots, then eased his loose woolen breeches down until he could kick them off his feet, leaving himself clad only in a single undergarment.
He reached over, bending sideways, and pulled the saddlebags towards him, and from them he withdrew two objects, the first of them a heavy cake of rough, strong-smelling soap from the chapter’s laundry, and the other a white, carefully rolled and bound packet that he untied and flapped open. It was a plain rectangular sheet of bleached lambskin, more than twice as broad as it was long. Soft and supple, the inner side was scrubbed brilliantly white and clean, the outer still bearing the fleece, shaven to a depth of less than one quarter of an inch. A long thong of the same white leather was threaded loosely through the first few of a row of punched holes on one end, and the other end was similarly punched. Leaving the thing lying fleece side down on the short grass, Will rolled and swung himself up until he was kneeling. He reached down to his side and tugged at the knotted thong that held a soiled but otherwise identical lambskin wrapping tightly in place about his waist, from hips to just above mid-thigh. It took him some time to undo the bindings, pulling them loose from the eyelets through which they were threaded, and when the garment fell away he swept it up and walked naked to the edge of the promontory to look down at the fast-flowing stream hurtling down its deep gully to the sea. Sighting carefully, he lobbed the garment, and then the cake of soap, down to the one spot on the far bank of the narrow flume where there was sufficient space to do so, and then he turned and walked swiftly to the point of the promontory.
The decision to come to this spot had been precipitated by a recent encounter with Richard de Montrichard’s squire, Gareth. Will and de Montrichard had been reviewing the duty roster for the upcoming rotation of troops for King Robert when de Montrichard’s squire had come in, bearing a message for his master, and as the burly youth passed close by him Will had had to close his eyes and hold his breath against the sour, fecal stench emanating from him. He was practically immune to the smells of the people he lived among, some of whom gave off a rank and even feral odor, but even among a community of unwashed bodies, this young man stank. Will had forced himself to sit still and breathe only when he had to until the doors had closed behind the young man, and then he’d sucked in a deep breath.
“Sweet Jesus, Richard, that boy of yours stinks like an open latrine. A festering corpse would smell more wholesome. When did he last bathe, do you know?”
De Montrichard looked mystified. “I don’t know. At Easter, I suppose, with the rest of us. Three months ago? Should I have him bathe again?”
On the point of uttering an explosive “Yes!” Will shrugged and waved a hand mildly to dismiss the topic. He had already decided upon a course of action regarding the Gareth lad.
As soon as his business with the preceptor was concluded, Will sent word to the training yard to have his own squire, his nephew Henry Sinclair, report to him in his private quarters. He then went to one of the six small chests that lined the rear wall of the room that served him as a cell, pulled out a bar of rough soap, and wrapped it in one of his own towels. When the boy arrived he beckoned young Henry to approach, then bent towards him to sniff, searchingly, and his nose wrinkled.
“When did you last bathe?”
“Two weeks ago, Uncle.” The boy did not even blink at the question, having long since grown inured to his uncle’s strange regard for, and insistence upon, bodily cleanliness. Bathing was not a requirement of the Rule, so they did not bathe. Regarded as being effete and conducive to carnality, it was officially frowned upon.
“Then I have a task for you. It is high time you went for a swim.”
Young Henry smiled, a little uncertainly. He was one of only half a score of the two score squires in the community who could swim, and he loved nothing better than to do so on the very infrequent occasions when his duties granted him the freedom to enjoy it.
Will lobbed the towel and soap towards him and the boy caught it.
“You will take your friends with you—those who swim—and enjoy the afternoon in freedom. But there is a condition. You will take Preceptor de Montrichard’s squire, Gareth, as well. He needs a bath, and it is your task to assist him in taking one. That thing you are holding is a bar of soap. You know how to use it. You will use it on Gareth, and to good effect. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Uncle. Very clear. But—?”
“I’m not suggesting you throw Gareth from the cliff, you understand? He does not swim and might drown there. But you can drag him in from the beach and scrub
him clean there. Now, let’s away.”
Will allowed himself a small chuckle now as he imagined the scene he had set in motion, Gareth forced to overcome what was clearly a lifelong aversion to soap and water. Anticipating the pleasure of the same experience, he paused briefly, studying the water below him, and then dived out and down.
The sea was fairly warm, he knew, at the end of June, but the initial shock of plunging into it was enough to drive every vestige of breath from his lungs, and as he fought his way to the surface he found himself thinking how fortunate he was to have no fear of swimming, or of water. Most people did, he knew. They found it an alien and terrifying reality, a threat of death over which they had no control. Will had learned to swim as a small boy, taught by one of his father’s men, who had been a fisherman all his life and had learned to swim and to love doing so. Will had been an eager pupil, and though he had had little opportunity to swim since the age of eighteen—he could count the separate occasions on his fingers—he had never forgotten the exhilarating freedom of swimming in deep, clear water.
He swam for what he believed to be a quarter of an hour, feeling at once guilty and liberated, diving down to the sea bottom and then returning to the surface time after time. He could see, down there, the kelp and tangle anchored to the rocks, and the limpets and other shellfish that abounded there, but the salt water stung his eyes and blurred his vision, and when the sensation became uncomfortable he remained on the surface, floating on his back and gazing at the promontory above him, occasionally kicking strongly to counteract the tidal drift that pulled him southward along the coast. He became acutely aware of his genitals, of their freedom in his unaccustomed nakedness. And that awareness made him aware of his reason for being there, so that he struck out strongly towards the shore and dog-paddled his way into the tiny estuary of the freshet that bounded down from the hillside above.