But just as I noticed him, he raised his head slowly and looked at me. Not, I mean, as one does when being addressed from a pulpit-I was delivering the eulogy, after all-but… and how can I describe this? He raised his eyes and fixed me with a most extraordinary stare. Although he was at the back of the chapel and I at the front, his gaze penetrated straight to my very soul and filled me with such sadness that I was instantly overcome and was forced to break off my prepared speech. I fear I muttered something incomprehensible in conclusion and sat down as a great crushing wave of grief washed over me.
Afterwards, when I had collected myself somewhat, I looked for Pemberton at the reception, but he failed to appear. Six months later we met again. Caitlin had taken the sprog-we now had a delightful little cherub named Annie to amuse and amaze us-to her aunt's house for a summer visit. I could not get away from the office to go with them, so stayed home, fending for myself. I was sitting in the smoking room at the club, reading the paper, and waiting for the dinner gong, when I became aware that someone was watching me. Glancing up, I saw Pemberton sitting across from me, and looking very much the way he had looked the day I'd seen him at the funeral.
'Are you alone this evening?' he asked, politely, but without preamble.
'Mr Pemberton,' I said, 'what a pleasant surprise. I did not hear you sit down. Yes, I am dining alone this evening-wife off to the country for a fortnight. I'm sick of my own cooking, so thought I might pop round to see if the Old Stag still provides a decent haunch of an evening.'
'Oh, excellent as ever, I assure you,' he replied. 'In fact, I would be most gratified if you would join me for dinner. I have been wanting to talk to you for some time.'
'How very kind of you. I would be delighted, sir.'
The gong sounded at that moment, and the tall gentleman stood. 'I asked to have a table waiting. I hope you don't mind if we go right in. We have much to talk about, I think.'
Talk we did, to be sure. We spoke briefly of poor Angus' untimely death, as I expected we would, and he said, 'I was very touched by your tribute to Alisdair at his funeral. I know his parents were very grateful for your friendship with him,' he paused, and added, 'as was I.'
Conversation then passed to other things. Our discussion ranged the length and breadth of the British Empire, I think: Egypt, the Sudan, India, Hong Kong, and a few dozen other countries I can't remember. He seemed to know about, or have interests in, all these places, and spoke not as a casual observer, but as one with an intimate familiarity.
Much of what he said that night I found incredible. Indeed, I went home thinking I had passed the evening with a madman. Harmless, perhaps, but mad as a hatter. Definitely.
In the weeks and months that followed, however, I found myself returning time and again to something he had told me-a peculiar phrase he'd used, or startling observation he'd made-and little by little it began to make sense. Curiosity took hold of me, and I found myself wondering what else he knew.
I determined to see him again. As I did not know any other way to get in touch with him, I left a note at the Old Stag, thinking that if he came to the club more regularly than I, the porter could give it to him next time he popped in. Sure enough, within a fortnight I received a reply. It came on gold-trimmed, cream-coloured stationery, very expensive, and said, simply: 'Delighted to see you again. Would dinner on the sixteenth suit? Best regards, Pemberton.'
Taking this to mean that we would meet at the club, I turned up on the night just before eight, and settled into my customary chair. By eight-thirty, I was beginning to think I'd missed the boat, when he came striding in. Looking neither left nor right, he marched to where I was sitting and shook me by the hand, apologized for being late, and pulled me with him into the dining room where, as before, he had a table waiting.
Our talk that night was no less wide-ranging than previously, but this time I listened most intently to all he said, and tried very hard to remember any detail he might mention about himself. At the end of the evening, I had learned very much about maritime exploration in Polynesia, and Renaissance philosophy in France, but almost nothing about my host. As we made our farewells, he took me by the hand and looked straight into my eyes, and said, 'I wonder if you would care to make the acquaintance of two of my closest friends.'
This took me off guard, and I must have hesitated, for he said, 'I see I've made you uncomfortable. Forgive me. It was only a thought.'
'No, no,' I protested, 'I would be honoured to meet your friends, Mr Pemberton. Truly, I -'
'Pembers, please. I feel we know each other well enough, don't you, Gordon?'
'Of course,' I agreed; and it seemed he had taken me into his confidence – an intimacy I was certain he did not bestow lightly.
'Splendid,' he said. We arranged a time for our next meeting, and bade one another good evening.
In the cab on the way home that night, I thought about what had taken place over dinner. Nothing of import, certainly. In fact, I felt distinctly let down. I suppose I had been expecting something extraordinary, and had to settle for the merely ordinary instead. Nor did our eventual dinner with his two friends seem remarkable in any way. They were agreeable enough gentlemen: one a short, well-upholstered Welshman named Evans, and the other a slender, grey-haired chap of French extraction by the name of De Cardou. Both were slightly 'olde worlde' in a pleasant sort of way, and, like our host, refined and voluble, eager and able to talk about anything and everything, yet never giving away the tiniest detail of their personal lives.
I, on the other hand, despite my best efforts, seemed utterly incapable of holding back anything. The ease with which they pulled out of me the minutia of my existence-from my boyhood days to the workaday office routine-was astonishing. The end result was that they learned a very great deal about me, and I almost nothing about any of them. Nevertheless, we seemed to have passed some unseen gate that night, for from then on I was the recipient of Pemberton's cordial attention. That is to say, I found myself increasingly in the orbit of his affairs.
There was, it seemed, no one he did not know, and whose good opinion he had not secured by some kindly act. The net result of this closer acquaintance was that my personal fortunes increased rapidly, if discreetly. Owing to a downturn in the wool trade at the time of my father's passing a few years earlier, I had inherited the unenviable position of satisfying several outstanding bills of credit. While I had been dutifully, if doggedly, paying off the creditors little by little, within a year of that watershed meeting, the previously limited horizons of my position had expanded dramatically. Promotions and advancements came my way with remarkable rapidity, and with commensurate financial reward. Caitlin and I at last began to entertain some hope that we might yet attain to some small standard of luxury in which we might have the leisure to travel.
About this time, too, I began increasingly to have the feeling that I was being watched. Do not take from this that the feeling was disagreeable or malign in any way. Indeed, I hasten to assure you that it was not – much the reverse, in fact. I felt protected, as if unseen angels stood guard around myself, Caitlin and the children, ever ready to aid and defend us.
Nor was I mistaken. But it was not until many years later that I was to learn the fearful cost of this security paid out on my behalf.
In the following months and years, the curious friendship between Pemberton and myself was to develop in unforeseen ways as I gradually discovered him to be the hidden architect of my continued good fortune. At length, and quite by accident, I learned my secret benefactor was a widower long alone in the world. Thenceforth, I seized every opportunity to repay his philanthropy by including him in the small celebrations of our family life.
In short, Pemberton became an unseen presence in our household. Upon the birth of our second child, Alexander, I asked him to stand as godparent. He accepted with great enthusiasm, and turned up at the christening with a case of port for the lad's coming of age, and a silver spoon engraved with his name and a family crest. 'It
is the Murray crest,' he pointed out when Caitlin asked.
'Murray crest? You didn't tell me you were aristocratic, darling,' she replied light-heartedly.
'Believe me, I had no idea,' I answered.
Whereupon Pemberton became very serious. 'Obscure it may be,' he said. 'Yet, the Murray is one of the most ancient and honourable clans in the bloody history of our contentious race.' To the infant Alexander, nestled in Caitlin's arms, he said, 'You can be proud of your heritage, lad.' Then, as if searching back through the mists of time, he placed his hand on the babe's forehead, and said, 'May the holy light illumine your journey, and may your feet never stray from the true path.'
A curious benediction, you may think, but no more so than many of the things people are apt to say on such occasions, and offered with such sincerity that we did not remark on it at the time. As I came to know him better, and spent more time in his company, I found that he was often given to spouting strange little prophecies.
It would happen like this: a comment in passing, or an item in the evening newspaper, would catch his attention and he would offer a pithy forecast of the outcome-if it was in doubt-or the likely result of certain actions being carried forward into the future. In time, I came to heed his predictions and warnings for the simple reason that they most often came to pass exactly as he said they would. I do not mean to make him sound like a carnival fortuneteller reading the future; it was nothing so crude as that. In fact, prophecy is my word; he merely called them 'projections', meaning that he guessed.
Yet, his guesses, if not inspired, were at least the product of an exhaustive knowledge and a wide-ranging, not to say boundless, intelligence. Concealed behind his proper, elegant, but self-effacing demeanour was an intellect of considerable acumen and power. The more I came to know him, the more I respected and trusted him. Although the details of his past life and even his day-to-day existence were shadowy at best -1 never learned where he grew up, for example, where he went to school, or how he had come by the considerable wealth he apparently possessed-the sterling quality of his character was abundantly clear.
In all his dealings, I never found him less than kind and considerate. He was not only unfailingly honest, but deferential, patient, generous, and fair. If he showed himself a shrewd and ruthless judge of worldly events and the failings of men, yet never a cruel or derisive word passed his lips. His capacity for understanding and forgiving his fellow creatures was, I truly believe, well nigh infinite.
Do not imagine this mildness concealed cowardice; it did not. There was nothing of the craven's wish to avoid unpleasantness or conflict, much less fear, in his conduct. His convictions were often at odds with the prevailing attitude of the day, yet he held to them without vacillation. If this put him in contention with the mass of society, so be it. I never saw him waver. Pemberton, as I came to know and trust him, was that rarest of human beings: a good man.
That is why, on the evening when he asked me to join the Brothers of the Temple, I agreed without hesitation.
This singular event took place, as so often happened, in the lounge at the Old Stag. He had, as was his custom, treated me to a delicious meal, and we were lingering over our whisky and cigars when he said, 'Gordon, my friend, I have a proposition for your consideration.'
'I would be pleased to give it my fullest attention,' I declared expansively. When I saw that he was quite serious, I added, 'Feel free to ask me anything.'
'I have known you for some years now, and I like to think that in that time you have come to know me a little also. Indeed, I like to think that our association has not been without its modest rewards,’ I swiftly assured him that our friendship was of great importance to me. He smiled, and said, 'Then please, for the sake of our friendship, I will ask you to keep what I shall say in the strictest confidence. Will you do that?'
'Said and done.' I leaned forward eagerly. Never had I known him to be so clandestine.
'As you may have surmised, I have many involvements and interests with which I occupy my time. But there is one I would like to recommend to you. Knowing you as I do, I think you would find it very stimulating.' He glanced at me to see whether I wished him to proceed.
'Do go on. I'm listening.'
'The situation I describe is a strictly private organization, and very exclusive.'
He had become so serious, I sought to lighten the mood somewhat. 'A secret society? Pemberton, you do surprise me.'
'A society, definitely,' he said. 'Secret? Let us just say that, living in uncertain times as we do, we cannot be overly careful about those to whom we extend our invitations.'
'Forgive me, Pemberton, but are we talking about the Masonic Order?'
'Freemasons?' He looked genuinely shocked. At once his customary decorum gave way, and I caught a rare glimpse of the real man. 'Don't be absurd! We have nothing to do with that mumbo jumbo-nothing at all, thank God. As far as I'm concerned the Masons are a miserable tribe of sad little men muttering gibberish and flouncing around in the dark in their mothers' aprons. They are, quite frankly, priests of a long-dead religion venerating all the wrong bones.'
'I see.'
'No, our organization is quite far removed from that sort of thing. While we guard our traditions no less jealously than our masonic comrades, our roots lie in different soil, so to speak. It is known by its initiates as the Benevolent Order, and is wholly given to good works of various kinds. I have been a member for close to forty years, and we are always looking for men of integrity who could benefit from an association of this type.' He paused and smiled. 'It would be my very great honour to sponsor you for membership.'
'It would be my very great pleasure to accept,' I told him.
'Good,' he said, well satisfied with my enthusiastic response.
'Good. I will make the necessary arrangements, and you will hear from me shortly.'
A few weeks later, I was inducted into the order, and began to discover a side of society that had heretofore escaped my notice completely. Among the membership of Temple XX-which is what our local meeting hall was called-I was surprised to find several acquaintances, men I knew from my professional life, and two men who were members of the congregation of my church. Consequently, I felt very much at home from the beginning, and found it a convivial, if not utterly inspiring, group.
True to Pemberton's word, the Benevolent Order occupied itself with good works: gifts of books to libraries, wheeled chairs for the crippled, medicine for the invalided, shoes for the indigent, orphanages, and what not. Necessary stuff, and very much welcomed by the recipients, but a tad sleepy all the same. When not organizing deliveries of books or medicine, we were instructed by well-meaning lecturers in the lore of the order, history, and social issues.
My first impression was that the Benevolent Order of the Brothers of Solomon's Temple-to give it its official name -apparently derived much of its impetus and rationale from Freemasonry. We wore white monks' robes with strange insignia, and advanced through various degrees of initiation the stations of which were indicated by the colours of our belts and cowls. We had secret passwords for recognition, and were made to memorize patterns and liturgies of legendary ritual which we observed from time to time.
Despite Pemberton's protest to the contrary, I imagined that the Brothers of the Temple had been founded, at least partly, in response to the Masonic movement, perhaps even by disaffected former members of that better-known secret society. It was not until I had been a member for several years that I even began to suspect there might be something more to the Order than a bunch of cater-cousin freemasons running around in bedsheets, calling one another Brother Novitiate, Brother Warden, or Brother Preceptor.
The existence of the Brotherhood took me by surprise, I confess. But then, I suppose I had been lulled by the innocuous nature of the larger charitable organization. Certainly, the notion of a second order hidden behind the first was nothing new, but in all the time I had been a member of the Benevolent Order, I had never been given
any reason to think that all I saw, was not all there was.
However, once I learned of the Brotherhood's existence, the object of the Benevolent Order became abundantly, and astonishingly, clear: it was to be the sorting shed, the clearing house, if you will, for its older, more clandestine associate. In other words, the Benevolent Order, while enjoying its own stodgy purposes, had actually been formed to serve the Brotherhood, and not the other way around.
I also discovered, to my compounded amazement, that only those fortunate enough to be elected to its number were vouchsafed knowledge of the Brotherhood. Thus, within a fortnight of receiving this manifold revelation, I found myself kneeling on the floor of a crypt at midnight on All Hallows Eve, repeating sacred vows, and kissing the blade of a sword-after which I exchanged my monk's robe and cowl for a black cape lined with crimson satin. I was also given a talisman: a blackened finger bone from the hand of one of the founders of our secret order, a Scottish lord who, rather than betray the Brotherhood, had been burned at the stake.
TWENTY-THREE
Ragna smoothed her hands over the gentle swell of her stomach. She had been able to hide the growing fullness for a time, but no longer. Soon the other women around her would notice what she had already told Tailtiu, her handmaid-not that she could have hidden anything from that bright-eyed magpie of a girl. She knew almost before Ragna herself was certain.
'If you tell anyone, Tailtiu,' Ragna warned her, 'I will not hesitate to cut out your tongue so you will never be able to tell another secret to anyone for the rest of your life.'
The threat did not distress the servingmaid in the least. 'What will you use? The knife you gave to our Murdo?'
'He is not our Murdo,' Ragna replied crisply. 'How did you know about the knife?'
'It is no longer in your keep-chest,' Tailtiu answered cheerfully. 'It is gone and so is Master Murdo. I cannot think he would steal it, so it must be you has given it to him. And he has given a child to you.'
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