by Jack Whyte
His eyes widened. “I hadna thought to. That will be no place for clerics. Even then, all our surviving clerics stand excommunicate, like the rest of us. But then again … a few good men, sound of wind and limb and trusted by the brethren. Aye, we’ll take a few who once were priests.”
“Good. Then one of them can marry us.”
“Marry us? I—” He stared at her, then drew his hand down his face, pressing hard as though smoothing out the wrinkles.
She watched him tensely as he turned his face away from her, his eyes screwed shut, his wide shoulders stiffening as though in outrage. But then his shoulders slumped and he turned back to her.
“I was on the point of telling you I am a monk,” he said calmly, “but that’s another nonsense. I am not a monk, not now. They stole that from me when they took my life and spat on it. Now I am a man—no more, no less.”
“You are a knight. No one can take that from you.”
“True, lass, and I am well aware of it. But I remain a man. And a man, after all is said and done, with little to offer anyone, God knows. But as for being goodman, husband …” He sucked in a great breath. “Would you … Are you truly offering to wed me … be my wife?”
He saw the flush rise in her face before she answered. “Wife, helpmeet, companion, concubine—whatever God sends us. Aye, Will Sinclair, and gladly.” She held up one hand and grinned. “Even adviser, should the need for such arrive in your new land, and should you require a woman’s common sense.”
A solemn stillness settled as they sat back in their two chairs, gazing at each other in the glow of the embers that had flared and crackled such a short time before.
“Adviser …” Will smiled more easily than she could ever recall. “Now there is a new idea. A woman advising a Templar knight, and through him a Templar community. Changes, indeed!”
“But only should you see such a need arise, in a new world.”
“Of course … But let me test you, as both woman and adviser. Give me some advice.”
“Now? On what?”
“You said tonight I have learned to listen. Well, I am listening now, and I have sufficient respect for you that I have no doubt you hold opinions on some things that I should do. Therefore I am asking you, sincerely, for your advice.”
Again they sat quiet, eyeing each other.
The man has just spoken to me openly of marriage. I would be a fool to risk that gain by saying something he might gauge as foolish for any of a score of reasons. And what could I tell him, anyway?
He was waiting patiently, and she noted that as another significant change in him. But when he raised a questioning eyebrow she spoke, surprising herself.
“The matter of Genoa. You intend to go, but do you need to?”
He pulled back his head and drew in his chin, and she was distracted for a moment by the columnar strength of his neck, and by the time she looked at his eyes he was already frowning.
“Do I need to go? Of course I do. I have business there, purchases to make.”
“I know the purchases have to be made, but must you be the one to make them? Could not Sir Edward make them on his own? The Archbishop’s letter of introduction could as easily be made for him as for you, could it not?”
“Aye, it could, but—”
“Tell me this, then. In the buying of these ships, however many there may be, will you make the decisions on design, size, and construction, or will you seek Sir Edward’s advice?”
“I would seek his advice, of course.”
“Of course you would, so let me ask you this. Would you trust this man with your life?”
“De Berenger? Wholeheartedly. I already have, with all our lives, your own included. He is my admiral.”
“The guardian, keeper, shepherd, and captain of your fleet. Then why would you not entrust him with the mission to Genoa? You have overmuch to occupy you at home on Arran, and ships are Edward’s life. He knows seagoing vessels and all their requirements the way you know and love the things you do that make you what you are—leading your squadrons of horse, training your men, administering your community, planning campaigns. And by your own admission, this journey to Genoa will take months, perhaps even half a year, depending on the weather. What will you do if Edward of England invades before you can finish what you hope to achieve on Arran?”
She fell silent, and he slouched sideways in his chair, one elbow on the arm in a position she had long since come to recognize as signaling consideration of a problem, his thumb hooked beneath his chin and the knuckle of his first finger pressed against his upper lip. His eyes were steadfast, drilling into her. She began to count silently, gazing back at him and schooling her face to be as unreadable as his own, but she lost her count in the second hundred, distracted by some random thought, and still he stared at her. She had never realized how big he was. He had always seemed enormous, bulked and bound in heavy metal that provided its own size, but now that he was unharnessed and wearing her late husband’s clothes, she could see the depth and breadth of chest, the width of shoulders, and the thick column of his neck, with an errant wisp of hair curling at the neck of his shirt. She kept her eyes unwaveringly on his upper body, daring not to look at his thighs.
“I should have started listening to you years ago, Jess.”
A rush of gooseflesh made her shudder when he used that name, and she felt her heart bound.
“You’re right,” he continued, more to himself than to her, she supposed. “It is foolish for me even to think about going to Genoa when de Berenger can do everything by himself. He has no need of me. My place is in Arran. No doubt of that. I must get back there, quickly. De Berenger knows what we need better than I do. And he may know better than either you or me the value of your hoard of gold.” He looked straight at her now. “And that’s another thing. That chest is too awkward for easy concealment. It’s too conspicuous and far too heavy. It would draw other people’s interest the way a rose draws bees, and that’s the last thing we need. So tomorrow we will split the gold into smaller parts, easier to carry, easier to hide. Do you have leather bags?”
“Small ones, suitable for coins? No …” She shook her head, then brightened. “But we have three old leather tents, in one of the sheds. We used to use them to cover the threshing floor, and they are old and moldy, but they are sound enough to be cut up into pieces, to make strong drawstring bags. I can set someone to that task tomorrow.”
“Someone you trust, and have them do it where no one can see. Be careful, Jessie. A sudden flurry of making leather bags—small leather bags—will draw attention, for there’s naught you can do with such things but use them for holding coin.”
“Hector will do it.”
“You trust him that far?”
“And further. How do you think the chest ended up where it is? Hector helped me move it and conceal it there.”
“Good. So be it.” He stood up suddenly and began to pace the room, rubbing his hands together, then stopped and stood with his back to the fire, facing her. “About this marriage thing. Your mind is set?”
“Completely.”
“Hmm.” His lips quirked. “And if I were to ask you for advice on that, which I do not, you would advise me to proceed with it?”
She smiled. “I would.”
“Aye, well, I will think on it, although I think you mad. But I will think on it. I have a condition, though, to be agreed to here and now. The boy cannot travel yet. We are agreed on that. But he was the sole reason for my returning here this day, to pick him up and take him back. How much longer, think you, before he can return to Arran?”
“A month at least, three at the most.”
“Three is too long, too long and too dangerous. I will send for you in two months’ time, in the third week of September—you, the boy, and your two women, and whomever else you wish to bring with you.”
“What about Marjorie?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Your ward is the King’s niece, Jessie.”
“But she is illegitimate.”
“Legitimate or no’, her name is Bruce and she was sired by Robert’s favorite brother. You canna simply whisk her off without the King’s permission. That would be abduction. And a king’s niece has no will of her own in such matters. She belongs to the kingdom, a chattel to be married off, if need be, for the good of the realm. That is beyond my ability or yours to influence.”
Jessie wasted no time in protest. She knew he was right, and merely nodded. “Then I must seek out the King himself, between now and then, and obtain his blessing.”
“To take the child away, perhaps to die, in some unknown land? He will never agree to such a thing.”
“Perhaps not. But I must try.”
“Fine. But you’ll be ready to embark for Arran by September?”
“I will be ready, and more ready still to embark for Merica. Send out your traders to buy cloth.”
“Cloth? What kind of cloth?”
“Any kind, and as much as they can buy. There will be no clothiers in Merica, but all who go there will need covering against the weather.”
He stood blinking at her. “I will see to it. Is there anything else you can think of?”
“No, but I might as time goes by. Wait! Spinning wheels and looms. How many women will go with us?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then you had best find out and let me know as soon as you can. We will need to plan for them, and if I know the numbers, I can be ready to start organizing them by the time I come to Arran.”
“You are very sure I’ll wed you, woman.” His smile was small but ungrudging. “But I have not yet agreed.”
She gazed at him and met him smile for smile. “You will. Now, when will you leave here?”
He shrugged. “The day after tomorrow. One of our galleys will be waiting off the Galloway coast. I have no time to waste.”
“Then you had better get some sleep, for we have talked the day and half the night away. Go you upstairs, then, and get you to bed. I’ll put out these candles and bank the fire before I go to mine.”
“Aye …” He stood for a moment, nibbling at his upper lip. “This has been a strange and wondrous day, Jessie, filled with things I could not have imagined when I left here last week to ride to Arbroath. We have achieved much, between the two of us … Are you sure we are in agreement on it all?”
She stepped quickly towards him and lifted up her hand, laying her palm along his cheek, touching him openly for the first time, and he raised his own to hold it there, cradling it. “I am sure, Will, even if you are not.”
He swayed towards her, his lips slightly parted, and she knew what would happen if he kissed her here, so she drew a deep, swift breath and patted him firmly on the cheek.
“Now go to bed,” she told him softly. “You have much to do tomorrow.”
FOUR
He came awake slowly and with great reluctance, loath to quit the voluptuous enjoyment of the dream that had been enfolding him and the dream woman whose mouth had covered his own, drawing the soul from him with an agonizing pleasure. But when he opened his eyes at last and found the mouth still there, still kissing him, and raised a hand to touch bare, warm skin, he started awake, jerking upright, and would have shouted had not a hand clamped firmly over his mouth and a voice hissed sharply in his ear, “Shush, Will, shush! Be still. You’ll wake the house and betray us both.”
He froze, half raised on his elbows, blinking wildly in the pitch darkness and aware of the other body leaning over him on the narrow cot, and his skin rose up in superstitious terror, until he heard her giggle and felt her breath against his ear.
“It’s me, it’s me, and I didna mean to startle you. I only came to kiss you goodnight. Hutch you over and let me in.”
Still befuddled, but beginning now to grasp something of what was happening, he pushed himself higher up. “Jessie? What is it? Is something wrong?”
She giggled again, quietly and close to his ear, bringing him out in renewed gooseflesh. “Of course there’s something wrong, you great, dense lump. It’s freezing cold and your bed’s already warm. Lift up the clothes and let me in. Move! Move over!”
He did as he was bidden, shifting his weight onto one elbow and raising the covers, and he felt the smooth, warm rush of her climbing in beside him and then hugging him close, pulling him to her soft nakedness as her fingers twined in the hair at his nape and pulled his face down to her own. And for a long time after that, he lived in a maelstrom of taste and touch and smells the like of which he had never known, until he froze again, finding himself somehow leaning on straight arms and aware of the forked shape of her beneath him, her fingers clutching him.
“Do you not want me, Will Sinclair? Come, man, and be my husband.”
The fingers tugged at him, insistent, guiding, and Will closed his eyes and sighed, shuddering, and entered his new world.
FROM DEATH INTO DEATH
ONE
It seemed to Jessie Randolph that all the world was coming to Arran that first week of May in the year of our Lord 1314. The northwestern harbor of Lochranza was crowded with so many galleys that the unthinkable had occurred and the harbor had been closed, incapable of accommodating a single vessel more. Four of the eight remaining Temple galleys were moored there, but they were invisible among the others, visiting craft from the isles and sea lochs to the north, many of which had borne the MacDonald blazon of the new Lordship of the Isles on their sails as they approached the anchorage beneath the cliff. There were more than MacDonald vessels down there, though; she had seen the emblems of Campbells, MacRuaries, and MacNeils as well, along with several others unknown to her that Will told her had come from the isles far to the north. They had filled the harbor, which had never seemed small before, occupying every foot of the wharves that lined the water, and in places so many of them were lashed together side by side that they appeared to form a series of floating bridges across the waters directly below where Jessie stood looking down from the castle walls.
She had been in Lochranza for nigh on a year and a half—the time had flown by almost without her awareness—and as chatelaine of the castle she had become accustomed to the always-busy harbor beneath the walls, with its constant procession of ships and galleys coming and going, but she had never seen anything like what was happening now. The narrow strip of land between the wharves and the castle itself was thick with men, all of them scurrying about like ants, but she knew that what she was seeing was nothing; beyond her sight, behind the curve of the walls to each side, the yards and buildings of the castle enclosure were even more crowded, and the mob of men spilled out beyond the postern gate to fill up the meadow at the rear.
She half smiled as the word mob came to her, for although the men below bore no resemblance to the kind of soldiers she had known most of her life in mainland Scotland, France, and England, to call them a mob was wrong. Although there was no uniformity of any kind among the Gaels, and none of the imposed restraints of chivalry, each man among them was a warrior, selfequipped and self-reliant, present upon his own decision to support his chief, and should the wishes of his own chief concur with the wishes of any other, each would decide for himself whether or not to continue to extend that support. She knew they were no mob, no mere disorderly rabble. She had heard enough from many sources to know that these fiercely independent men, so apparently undisciplined, were savage and unrelenting fighters who could tear down conventional military formations and overwhelm fortifications with ease, imposing their own form of discipline upon themselves when the need arose. Islesmen and Highlanders all, they lived by their own standards, beholden to no man.
Beneath her, two floors removed, their leaders were meeting with King Robert’s representatives, Sir Robert Keith, the Marshal of Scotland, and Sir James Douglas, looking far older and more grim than he had when Jessie had first met him, a mere five years earlier. Two prominent members of the Scottish clergy completed the royal delegation: William Sinclai
r, the Bishop of Dunkeld and uncle to her own Will, and the formidable Bishop David Moray, dressed as always in the mail hauberk and steel cuirass of a fighting soldier and looking not one whit like a lord of Holy Church. Meeting with these four were Angus Og MacDonald, now the self-styled Prince of the Isles; Fergus MacNeil, the Lord of Barra; MacGregor of Glenorchy, chief of Clan Alpine; and a pair of taciturn chieftains from the islands of Lewis and Uist whose names she did not know, although she suspected that they were kinsmen to the MacNeil. They had been in discussions for three days now, taking over the main hall on the second floor of the castle and ousting its chatelaine for the duration, so that she spent most of her time now either in her own chambers with her women, including young Marjorie, or here on the battlements, overlooking the activities in the harbor below whenever the unpredictable spring weather permitted it.
Jessie, swathed now in a richly furred mantle of soft sealskin, was untroubled by the loss of her domain, content to let the visitors have the run of it. She understood the urgency of this gathering and so she simply left them to get on with their affairs, confident that the faithful Hector and his staff from Nithsdale would keep them well supplied with food and drink. She had other, more weighty matters to think about.
Will, her Will, whom she now gloried in calling her man, was deeply involved in convening another, completely different gathering at Brodick Castle. There, too, she knew, would be a great gathering of ships in the nearby bay of Lamlash, in the lee of the Holy Isle, Eilean Molaise, because in four days’ time the last formal chapter of the assembled knights and sergeants of the Temple Order within the realm of Scotland was due to assemble there, and the brethren would already be arriving, openly or secretly, from all over King Robert’s domain. And when it was concluded, the Arran community of Templars would disperse, some of them on the quest to the new land, others to serve King Robert as volunteers, based in a number of communal centers that had been set up on the mainland within the previous few months. These centers were few, but they were in place, widely distributed throughout the realm, and would be referred to henceforth as lodges; none would ever be called preceptory or commandery, but they would serve as rallying points and places of refuge for those who wished to retain their fraternal identities, and they would be tacitly acknowledged by the King’s authority. The men based there, indistinguishable by now from ordinary men, would continue to function as Templars, but in a profound secrecy beyond anything they had known or needed in the past. They would observe their rituals and rites, nurturing and passing on the secrets and symbols of their once great Order to other, younger men in days to come.