by Jack Whyte
“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 sober
ed 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.”
POISONED
ONE
Several miles from where the two knights were discoursing and scanning the horizon, Jessie Randolph had been among the first of the fleet’s passengers to notice the storm dying down, although she paid it little heed for some time, her attention fully taken up with more urgent matters. Now she finished what she was doing and straightened up over the sleeping form of her serving woman Marie, using the back of her wrist to push her hair out of her eyes as she dug with the fingers of her other hand into the small of her back, probing at the nagging pain caused by stooping for too long over both of the women whose sole duty supposedly consisted of looking after her. That thought made her smile, for all her tiredness, and she looked down again at the two faithful souls who lay there, drained and sleeping by her feet, their bedding open to the air but protected overhead and on the sides by a number of tightly stretched and skillfully bound leather screens. The beds themselves, though no more than piles of skins and blankets, were set in the angle of the stern bulkhead, barely enough space separating them to allow her to step between them.
Both women were prostrate from seasickness, as were most of the other people aboard the galley, and they had been so since the sudden onset of the storm five days earlier. Jessie, astonished by her ability to tolerate the violent motions of both ship and sea, had nursed both of them throughout the ordeal, patiently ministering to their every need, aware that both of them would have been horrified even to imagine her doing so. But they had been too sick to know anything of that, and Jessie was too grateful to have been spared the torments that devastated them to waste time thinking about the reversal of their roles.
She had no notion of why or how she should have been able to survive the storms unscathed and with a solid, unshakable calm, but she knew that she was one of very few in the ship’s entire complement to have done so. Even her good-brother the admiral, a veteran of decades at sea, had succumbed early to the fury of the incessant squalls and the constantly raging seas, as had his shipmaster and officers, all of them rendered incapable of running the ship, or even of maintaining a semblance of order and discipline aboard, since the ship could not be run under such conditions. The oars, save for the massive steering oar that formed a rudder, had not touched water since the first storm broke, and the men who crewed them had been largely useless for anything else, so that the responsibility of temporary command had been taken over by the sergeant called Tescar, who had commanded the guard at the Commandery of La Rochelle the night Jessie arrived there.
Tescar had never been to sea at all, whereas Jessie had made several voyages, all of them short and blessed with fair weather, and like Jessie, he was unable to understand why he should be able to withstand the fury of the elements when experienced seamen of all ranks had fallen victim all about him. But, being Tescar and accustomed to making the best of things wherever he found himself, he had contrived to keep himself, Jessie, and everyone else alive, foraging for food and drink among the ship’s supplies and finding ample amounts of both. Thus fortified, the two of them, along with fewer than a score of other men in like condition, had been able to tend, at least fundamentally, to the sick throughout the vessel. Not all of those sick were completely immobilized—many of them continued to function at some degree of normalcy and varying levels of impairment—but all were debilitated beyond dispute, so that it had become commonplace to see them stand vacant eyed and wavering at times, as though waiting for someone to shout an order at them, to tell them what to do next.
Now Jessie found herself looking at one such fellow, noting the way he braced himself against the swell as he trudged forward, blank eyed and whey faced, towards the galley’s prow. This was the fourth time she had seen the man, idly aware of him moving from stem to stern and back, and although she had no idea what he was about, she knew he was not without purpose. This time, however, she took more notice of him, aware suddenly that he walked now without clutching at ropes for support, and as she noticed that, she observed, too, that the ship’s crashing, tumultuous momentum had eased, albeit but slightly, and that the vessel’s forward swoop was now more of a glide than a staggering lurch. A gleam of light attracted her eye, and she looked up to see a ray of sunlight glaring in the near distance, clear edged and brilliant, through a break in the cloud cover. It vanished almost as soon as she saw it, but another broke through the wrack not far beyond, followed by another farther off, and she felt her spirits surge for the first time in days, elated by the possibility of an end to the incessant parade of gales and storms that had battered them for so long.
She bent forward and drew a supple leather satchel from between the two sleeping women. She opened it slowly and withdrew a folded blanket that she shook out and tested against her face for dryness before she swirled it up, over her head and across her shoulders. Then, moving carefully lest she disturb her charges, she lowered herself with great care to sit between them, leaning her back into the angle of the bulkhead and tugging gently at the material of the blanket until it covered her completely. Moments later, she was asleep, head tilted back, her lips smiling at some errant thought that had come to her as she sank into slumber.
TWO
She was dreaming that someone was calling her name from a vast distance when she opened her eyes to find Brother Thomas the sacristan standing over her, his pale, widely set eyes staring at her disapprovingly. She blinked in disbelief, attempting to raise her hands to rub at her eyes, but her arms were hampered by the folds of the blanket wrapped about her, and before she could free them she had become fully aware of her surroundings again, remembering that she was sitting between Marie and Janette in the angle of the forward bulwark. Both women were still soundly asleep, and she pressed one finger emphatically to her lips, frowning fiercely in warning to the sacristan to
be quiet lest he awaken them.
The man recoiled slightly at her gesture, his face showing a faint repugnance, but she paid him no more attention as she set about raising herself to her feet, with great care for her decorum under his disdainful sneer. He had no regard for her, she knew that; it had been clear from their first encounter that he resented her presence among the brotherhood he regarded as being sacrosanct. She took no real offense from that, for she knew it was not personal; she knew, in fairness, that his reaction would have been no different to any other woman. Her own disapproval of him, however, had been equally spontaneous and obdurate. Sensing his antipathy and intolerance from the way he watched her even before she met him, she had dismissed him from the outset as a vermin-ridden, sanctimonious nonentity with the rankly sour, feral odor of a wild goat, and had refused to recognize his existence thereafter.
Unfortunately for both of them, it transpired that they could neither ignore nor avoid each other, for upon the death of his former master the preceptor, Brother Thomas’s duties and loyalty had been transferred, in accordance with his years of rank and seniority within the La Rochelle commandery, to assuring the welfare of Admiral St. Valéry, the next in rank to the former preceptor, and he was being as assiduous in his new duties as he had been in his old ones.
That meant that in the narrow confines of the admiral’s galley, he was never beyond sight or hearing of his primary charge, and since he considered Jessie, like all women, to be the Devil’s own device for the temptation of all decent men, he had refused her entry to the admiral’s tiny cabin since Charles first fell sick. Jessie railed inwardly at the sacristan’s smug presumption, but she took care to hide her anger, since there was nothing she could do to gainsay him at that point, and she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing that he had managed to upset her.