Order in Chaos

by Jack Whyte

  Now he found himself having to reassess all his thinking on the matter, for he had seen in de Montrichard more life, and more initiative, and more willingness to become involved in things than he had seen in the previous two and a half months. He resolved to take advantage of the signs, and to test the matter further in the hope that the preceptor might be consigning the safe haven of his earlier life to a previous existence. If that were the case, no one would be happier, more relieved, or more eager to reinstate de Montrichard to his former status than Will Sinclair himself.

  He was interrupted in his reverie by the sound of approaching footsteps as Tam returned, carrying a ring of heavy keys. He held them up for Will to see. “I thought it might be just as well to keep these under close guard, if what I saw here was what I think it was.” He tucked the large metal ring securely down behind his belt, leaving the keys themselves to dangle at his waist, and Will smiled wearily, amused and touched, as always, by his kinsman’s concern for him.

  “And what was it you thought you saw?”

  Tam grunted eloquently and lapsed into the dialect he and Will had spoken as boys. “Well, for one thing, I saw you girnin’ like a madman, mair angry than I’ve seen you in many a month. You had that ‘dinna dare look at me or I’ll cut your heart out’ glower that ye sometimes get on your face. And then there was that Martley fellow, still wi’ a long beard. That tell’t me he wasna about to take your word for anythin’ and that wee bit o’ defiance was his way o’ showin’ it, even though he didna ha’e the guts to dae it openly, where you could see it. He needs to be taken down a peg or two, that yin.”

  Will started to respond, but then waited when he saw that Tam was not yet done.

  “Forbye,” the other continued, “I didna like the way his cronies there were lookin’ at him for support, even though he’d nane to gi’e them. I didna like that at all … They’re whiners, every whey-faced one o’ them, no’ a real set o’ balls among them, and he’s recruited them to whatever he’s up to … So I thought, if there’s any more o’ their ilk about, I’d save them from bein’ tempted to let him out. And so I kept the keys. Now, will ye be convenin’ a chapter meeting? An’ if so, where and when?”

  “What made you think I might?”

  Will’s question produced an almost exasperated look. “Because it’s owerdue. Tomorrow’s the Epiphany feast, so there will need to be a full Mass wi’ all the rites an’ ceremonies, the bishops dressed up in their finery. So it seemed as good a time as any, and better than most, wi’ all the work ye have everybody slavin’ on. Besides, it seems to me ye’ve forgotten Master de Molay’s wallet …”

  Will frowned. “No, I have not, I’ve merely been preoccupied. But what about the wallet?”

  “The date on it, Will. It’s to be opened tomorrow, on the sixth o’ January.”

  “I know that, Tam. Did you really think I might have forgotten something so important?”

  “No … but ye’ve had other things to occupy ye. What’s to be done about it?”

  The question nettled Will, for it was one he had been struggling with, on and off, for weeks. What, indeed, was to be done about it? The Grand Master’s missive would have to be opened and read on the date named, he knew; he had no choice on that aspect of things. But the ramifications of reading it and the speculations arising from that had been keeping him awake in recent weeks. The possibility of the letter’s containing anything good was less than slight. It had been written months before, predating the events with which it must now deal, and those events had been more appalling, more sweeping, and far more destructive than de Molay could possibly have envisioned. Within the intervening months, on the other hand, Will had managed to establish an equilibrium among his charges, focusing tightly on the creation of a new community and their shared need to create order out of the chaos into which they had been thrown. His greatest fear now, barely admitted even to himself, was that Master de Molay’s words might undo all that Will had worked so hard to achieve here. He had had nightmares about opening the letter to find orders instructing him to return to La Rochelle with his companions and their ships; orders written in complete ignorance that such a move would be suicidal after four months of persecution and banishment.

  He realized that Tam was waiting for a response, and nodded brusquely. “Aye, well, I’ll read it tomorrow, and all we can do is hope that what it contains has not been rendered senseless by what’s happened since it was written. I had already decided on that, while you were locking up the prisoners. Their case is too urgent to be set aside, Tam. It needs to be dealt with as soon as may be. So I have called a chapter meeting for the day after tomorrow. Depending upon what the wallet contains by way of instructions, it might make my task less difficult.”

  Tam shrugged. “Aye, or more so. Ye never ken, wi’ superiors … If ye unnerstand what I’m sayin’.”

  Will ignored the comment and the mischievous grin that went with it, and answered seriously. “Well, so be it, if that’s what comes. So, now I need you horsed and on your way to Brodick with these tidings. Will you take Mungo with you? No? Then get yourself some food and oats from the commissary and be ready to leave within the hour. By then I’ll have written dispatches for Kenneth and Bishop Formadieu, and they’ll be waiting for you to collect on your way out.”

  Will walked quickly back to his quarters, aware that the hour he had claimed for writing his dispatches would be barely long enough to accommodate all he required of it.

  On the day of the Baroness’s departure—Will had scarcely thought of her since, and when she did happen into his thoughts, he could manage a tiny smile at her memory before turning determinedly to other things—he had addressed a plenary gathering of his men and expressed his wishes concerning their conduct from that day on. He made no attempt to underplay his concerns, and clearly described the threat that they now represented to the monarch through their very presence in his realm. The brethren listened in silence, heeding everything he had to say, and no one made any demur when he issued commands that, henceforth, all forked and therefore recognizably Templar beards should be cut severely, all heraldic symbols and devices bearing Temple associations were to be painted out or otherwise concealed, and their distinctive armor was to be stored away. They faced no danger of pitched battle here in the safety of their island refuge, he pointed out, and therefore plain armor—mailed shirts and leggings, with hammered leather guards—would be more than ample henceforth. Horses were not to be ridden in disciplined formations, and were to be stabled in small groups of eight or fewer, far enough apart from their neighbors to offer no curious stranger an opportunity to assess their type or overall numbers.

  He had then split his entire force, leaving his brother Kenneth in command of his own one-hundred-strong contingent of knights and sergeants, to occupy the great English hall at Brodick, assisted by the veteran knight Reynald de Pairaud as adjutant and by Sir Edward de Berenger as naval adviser whenever he was in residence. Brodick would become the de facto headquarters of the Temple force on Arran, and as such would become the home of Bishop Formadieu and his chancel of clerics and lay brethren. Their task would be to establish the community that would nourish the Brotherhood of the Order. The neighboring bay of Lamlash would serve as anchorage for the trading vessels of their little fleet, and the majority of their horseflesh, mainly the lighter breeds, would be scattered throughout the rolling moorland inland from Brodick.

  The remainder of the land-based fighting men, approximately a hundred plus one score, would be relocated to the northwest coast of the island, to Lochranza, the castle formerly owned by the disgraced chieftain of Menteith. The castle there sat high above a secure and easily defensible harbor that would serve as the home base of the galley fleet, and its garrison would be the former garrison of La Rochelle. More than half of the heavy horseflesh would be taken up there, too, and kept in the steep-sided, amply grassed mountain valleys surrounding the castle, as secure as they could possibly be from prying eyes.


  There had been other details, and not all of them had been well received by the brethren. There had been muttering and disgruntlement among the ranks in the days that followed, but apart from keep an ear cocked for real trouble, in which he was unobtrusively assisted by Tam and Mungo, Will had ignored the grumblings, content to let time and habit erode the resistance to his changes. Clearly, though, he had missed at least one pocket of willful resistance, and that was what he intended to stamp out.

  Finding writing materials at his work table, he quickly wrote out his instructions to Kenneth regarding victualing and accommodations for the arriving garrison from Lochranza. They would be arriving after a twenty-mile march and would be hungry and weary, perhaps more so than usual, he warned his brother, because Will intended to push them harder on this occasion than he normally would, testing their endurance for the first time since their landing, and using the opportunity to remind them of the discipline they might have been tempted to neglect.

  The second missive he penned was to Bishop Formadieu, ordering immediate preparations for a chapter gathering to be held the day after Epiphany. The gathering of the knights would take place in darkness, as always, and under guard, shut off from outside eyes and ears. It would begin before Vespers and would last until all the business of the chapter was concluded. Although it was uncommon for chapter meetings to extend beyond the break of day, it was not unknown, and certainly on this occasion Will was concerned over the amount that had to be accomplished in this one session, even without the additional drama of a trial for disobedience, conspiracy, mutiny, and assault upon a superior. He took greater pains with his instructions to the Bishop than he had with those to his brother, despite knowing that the cleric needed no instruction in the details of what was required in chapter, because he wished to be as precise as he could be, and he had no desire to have the clerical contingent of the chapter overreach itself in seeking to gain too much influence over the flow of things. Will had had enough of that nonsense, although he knew it would never stop as long as there remained a priest who aspired to wear a miter someday. But the ambition of bishops, prelates, and clerics in general he could handle with ease. Because he had no fear of any of their threats, they were powerless to browbeat or manipulate him. The law of the Order stated that, in chapter, all men’s voices were equal; the newest knight among them could raise his voice in argument with the most august Archbishop, and that was the equality that Will wanted to safeguard most.

  From that viewpoint, he wanted the trial of Martelet and his associates out of the way first. Then, once they had been removed, he wanted to read the parchments from the Grand Master, in the hope that the contents would provide instruction for their group at this most difficult time. After that, once all the judgments were ratified and the instructions from the Master had been admitted to the records of the chapter, there would come a plenary assembly of all the members of the Order, irrespective of rank, at which the instructions of the Master and the wishes of the chapter would be made known.

  By the time he had finished that second letter, signing and sealing both documents, Tam was already there, waiting to take possession of the dispatches. He left immediately, buckling them carefully into the scrip that hung from his belt as he went. Will sat for a moment, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands, then rose to his feet and went to talk to Bishop Bruno, the senior cleric in Lochranza, and then to review the final details of the preparations being made by de Montrichard’s officers for the gathering of troops and livestock for the following day’s journey.

  TWO

  Ever since joining the Order at the age of eighteen, one of Will’s greatest pleasures had been listening to the plainsong chants of the assembled brotherhood in chapter. The heavy resonance of massed adult male voices singing within the confines of a vaulted church filled with the aroma of precious incense and illuminated only by candles and tapers in the dark hours before the dawn provided him with an experience that was as close to mystical as anything he had ever known. The amalgam of song, echoes, incense, and flickering light encouraged him to believe, although infrequently, that God was up there somewhere, looking down on such activities with benign approval.

  At Brodick Hall, however, there was no vaulted ceiling over their heads. The chapter was convened in the large southern antechamber, and armed men guarded the doors against intrusion. The music was as deep and resonant as ever, but the high-ceilinged room dwarfed the proceedings and muted the effect. Now, as the last notes of the antiphon died away into silence, the assembled knights began to shuffle their feet and clear their throats, but before anyone could speak, Sir Reynald de Pairaud rose to his feet and stood in plain view, one hand upraised in the traditional plea to be given leave to speak in chapter. The old man, whom Will had fully expected to oppose him on the changes he wished to make, had in fact been surprisingly supportive and, according to his brother, had been performing admirably as Kenneth’s adjutant in the month since Will’s departure for the north.

  Will, as the sole representative of the Governing Council, was the senior member in chapter, superseding the preceptor, de Montrichard, who would normally occupy the Chair in the East. And so Will sat alone on the dais on the east side of the darkened chamber, with the preceptor on the Northern dais to his right and Vice-Admiral de Narremat, representing the naval presence in the absence of Sir Edward de Berenger, on the South, to his left. Bishop Formadieu, the green-robed senior prelate of the Order, sat facing Will at the far end of the floor, on the Western dais, and behind him sat the clerical members of the secretariat who would record every word of the proceedings. The brotherhood of the chapter at large sat ranged on chairs on the northern and southern sides of the squared floor.

  It fell to Will, as Master-in-Chapter, to recognize the speakers and to decide whether they should be allowed to speak when they wished. He glanced around the chapter chamber, taking note of where the accused mutineer, Martelet, stood to his left with his co-accused, in chains and under guard. Will could not see the man’s face, but the length of his beard, defiantly pulled into a forked split with bare fingers, underlined his obduracy. Will turned his gaze back upon de Pairaud.

  “Brother Reynald, Brother Preceptor has informed me that you wish to address the brethren.”

  “I do, Brother William.” De Pairaud turned deliberately to look at Martelet, then turned to face Will again. “It concerns the matter of the letter from our beloved Master de Molay that is to be read here today, Brother. I raised the point with Brother Preceptor when it first occurred to me, and he was most insistent that I bring it your attention here in chapter, deferring to your senior rank.” He cleared his throat. “The sequence of events for our deliberations in chapter has traditionally been to deal with disciplinary matters before moving on to the business of the community at large.” He hesitated, glancing down at his hands, and then looked back at Will again. “It has occurred to me—and I emphasize that what I am about to suggest is no more than that, a suggestion—that it might be of value, in this present instance, to read the letter from the Master now, in the presence of the accused miscreants.” The stillness in the large room was absolute, with every pair of eyes fixed upon the aging knight, who now scratched his beard delicately before continuing.

  “We have had no guidance of any kind from our superiors within the Order since leaving France, and it seems clear to me that we stand in grave need of such guidance. I know that the letter in question does not truly fit that need, since it was written prior to the events that led to our leaving France. But it is, at least, a message from our Master, and one can only presume that it was written in the light of the dilemma in which Master de Molay found himself at the time of writing.” Again he stopped, as though waiting to be interrupted, but no one sought to question him or challenge what he was saying, and eventually he shrugged his shoulders. “I merely feel, in my heart, that the accused here, all eight of them, should be permitted to hear whatever the Master might have said to us before they go
on trial. It might be that the advice and guidance therein, intended for all of us, could have some effect on them and their behavior. That is all I wished to say.”

  Will had known what the veteran knight was going to say, for he had discussed it with de Montrichard the previous night, and now he merely inclined his head in agreement towards de Pairaud before rising to his feet and moving to stand behind his ceremonial chair.

  “So mote it be. In recognition of Sir Reynald’s eloquence and plea, the prisoners will be permitted this privilege on this unique occasion. And unique it is, for it will never be repeated.” He picked up the heavy leather wallet that had been lying on the small table beside his chair.