by Jack Whyte
St. Clair spread his hands and made a moue. “Settled, apparently. Richard has promised to wed her.”
“God’s nose!” Eusebius straightened up in shock, but managed to keep his voice down to an impassioned level that maintained their privacy. “After all the shouting and the dancing that has gone on all these years, he’s going to marry her? Well, by God’s kneecaps I find that difficult to credit, but I will take your word for it … although I would wager he will never touch her anyway, wife or no.”
“Why would you say that? He has a son, you know.”
“He’s reputed to have one, you mean. No one that I have ever heard of has seen the brat, and you’d think if it were true he’d take the little bugger everywhere with him, just to let the soldiers know he’s as potent in bed as he is in battle.”
St. Clair could only dip his head to that, unable to respond yea or nay, and soon afterwards the trumpet sounded curfew and the two men made their way to their tents.
The next two days were nothing but marching, eating, sleeping, and starting all over again. At the end of one long march through heavy, rain-soaked woodlands, St. Clair was gratefully clutching at a large pannikin of hot venison stew from one of the commissary stations and making his way towards the fire his new comrades had built against the dampness of the evening air, when he heard his name being shouted. It was his friend de Tremelay, with a loaf of bread beneath his arm and a skin of wine dangling from his shoulder. The two ate together, sharing what they had, and André’s new companions were courteous enough to seek their cots soon after they had eaten, leaving them alone so that they could talk for the short time that remained before curfew. They had exchanged their daily trivia, speaking in generalities, and after a momentary silence, de Tremelay asked, “So, how are you finding the hardships of belonging to the Temple?”
“Barely noticeable to this point, for which I humbly offer thanks. Most of the nonsense attached to harassing newcomers seems to be set aside while we’re on the march. No time for playing silly games. And I’ve found one fellow I like, another postulant. Good sense of humor and an intellect. His name is Eusebius.”
“That’s a bonus, at least. Be thankful for it. Will the fleet be there when we arrive, think you?”
St. Clair had been thinking about Lyon, where they were scheduled to arrive two days later, and it took him a moment to realize what de Tremelay was talking about. “You mean in Marseille? Why would it not be?”
De Tremelay flicked a piece of wood he had been holding, sending it tumbling end over end into the fire. “I can think of several reasons. Were they crows, they could fly from England to Marseille in two days. But they are ships, so they have to take the long way around, all the way down along the west coast, through the Bay of Biscay, with the roughest seas in all of Christendom, down past Portugal and east from there, around Moorish Iberia, then north again along the eastern coast. One bad storm could sink half of them and scatter the others like leaves on a pond. Or they might run afoul of the Moors’ galleys, along the Iberian coastline or even in the narrows of northern Africa. The Moorish fleet can’t match our ships for strength, but their galleys are fast and lethal and they could cause severe damage to our plans.”
“No, I think not.” André shook his head. “This is June already and the worst of the spring gales is long blown out. The Bay of Biscay should be calm by this time. At least, that is what de Sablé told me. Besides, he will be in command of the fleet himself and it’s a fighting fleet. His ships—the ten biggest, best, and fastest vessels ever built in England—are warships, pure and simple, newly built and designed for exactly the kind of sailing he’ll be called upon to do in coming to Marseille from London. I don’t doubt they will be there waiting for us.”
“Well, I’m sure you are perfectly correct in that.” De Tremelay’s voice was little more than a rumble, and it dripped now with sarcasm. “And they’ll see us comfortably laden, too, no doubt. We’ll each have a comfortable little hole somewhere within the ship, where we can crouch in utter misery among our dying, stinking equals and puke our entrails up all the way from Marseille to wherever we land in Outremer. Where will we land, do you know?”
“If we can land safely, it will be at Tyre, on the coast of Outremer. That’s the only port left open to us— Saladin and his hordes control all the others. But first we have to make the voyage, from Marseille between Corsica and Sardinia to Sicily, and then from Sicily to Cyprus, and thence to Tyre.”
“Is that a long trip?”
“No. We’ll be at the mercy of wind and tides the whole time, but according to Robert, all going well, we should be no more than a month at sea.”
“Sweet Jesus, that’s a long time to be sick. Have you ever been seasick?”
St. Clair shook his head. “I never have, although I understand it is not pleasant. Have you?”
“Aye, several times. It is the strangest thing, for when you’re falling sick at first, with your insides falling into themselves and curdling with every swoop and swing, you think you are going to die and you’re afraid. But later, when you’re in the midst of it and really sick, you realize that Hell could be no worse than what you’re going through—”
“And your greatest fear becomes the fear that you might not die!” St. Clair finished the sentence for him.
De Tremelay scoffed and looked St. Clair straight in the eye. “They say women can’t remember the pains of childbirth after they are done. Believe me, my friend, that is not the way with seasickness. I will never, ever forget what that is like and I have no wish ever to experience it again, although I know I will on this voyage. That should be enough to guarantee me a place in Paradise, think you not? To plunge voluntarily through Hell in order to redeem the Holy Land … I’m going to bed. We’ll be in Lyon the day after tomorrow. Did your father happen to mention how long we will remain there?”
“Yes. He said if we stop at all, it will be overnight, no more. We’re not supposed to stop there, but he is convinced that it will only be practical that we should, and that the timing of our arrival and departure will have to be arranged in advance, as we draw nearer the town. The army will split there, probably the morning after we arrive, and Philip’s force will head east while we strike south along the Rhone to Avignon and Aix, and then to Marseille. By the time we reach Lyon, we postulants should number a score, perhaps more. I know there’s another party of knights on the way to join us from the commandery at Pommiers, a few miles northeast of Lyon, and they’re supposed to bring at least six more postulants. Our induction in Lyon will be a private Temple ritual, with no effect upon anything to do with the army. I assume it will be carried out while we are in the city, during one of the prayers of the night office.”
“You are probably right, but it will be a secret, so how would I know? Enjoy it, anyway. Once you’ve taken the plunge, you’ll see precious little of me and our other brethren for a while. The Temple will keep you too busy to have time to dwell upon our needs, at least until you take your initial vows.” He stood up to leave, then hesitated.
“What?”
“You said something I didn’t understand, when you were talking about reaching Lyon. Something about the planning required to arrive there on time … What did that mean?”
St. Clair grinned and stretched like a cat, then leaned towards the fire again, one elbow braced on a knee. “Think about it, Bernard. Tomorrow, instead of riding blindly and feeling sorry for yourself, look about you as we march and think about it. Have you ever seen anything like this? You have been working for and with de Sablé, organizing Richard’s fleet, but this is even bigger. Massively bigger. You can’t tell from a casual glance, because it’s not as visible as a fleet with all its masts—here you can only see what’s close around you—but we are surrounded by, and part of, more than a hundred thousand men, plus all their horses, wagons, equipment, and accoutrements. Seriously, think hard: what is the largest group you have ever traveled with, prior to this?”
De Tremelay
’s brow creased in thought. “A hundred men,” he said eventually. “I rode down into Navarre with my liege lord when I was younger, about eight years ago, and there were a hundred and nine of us, not counting camp followers.”
“And how many of those were there, think you?”
He shrugged. “Grooms, servants, cooks, smiths … Who knows? Twenty, perhaps? Perhaps a few more than that.”
“So your party of a hundred was closer to seven score, one hundred and forty. Do you remember whether you had any difficulty finding camping places on that journey?”
“Aye, we did, every day. I remember well, because I had to scout for them and I hated it. I had to ride out every day, all day, miles in front of the main party, looking for good camping spots. Sometimes I’d have to ride all day to find one.”
St. Clair stood up and looked about him at the sleeping camp. “This camp of ours is huge, isn’t it? More than a thousand Templars—far more, as you say, if you count the servants and handlers. Must be close to three hundred more, counting them.
“And we are but one camp. There must be at least another hundred camps like ours out there—two hundred, if each of them be only half our size. Do you really wonder why planning every aspect of our route of march is important? When we began to march yesterday, we did not all march straight ahead. Most of us marched diagonally to one side or the other, until we formed a moving front two miles wide. Tomorrow, we will do the same again, spreading our front farther until we are four miles in width.”
“Why will we do that?”
“Because if we do not do that, my friend, our hooves and wheels and marching feet will destroy all the land we march through on our two-mile front. There is no road in all this land strong enough or wide enough to bear our weight, and the fields might take years to recover from our passing as it is. When we encounter forests, and we already have, our passage through them will leave them blasted. One hundred thousand men, and then their horses and wagons. It is a miracle that we can move at all on such a scale, but when we reach Lyon, it will probably take at least a full day to march the columns into place from all sides, and then they’ll have to camp in the fields surrounding the city. It is a frightening undertaking. The mere thought of it has tired me out, so now it is my turn to bid you a good night.” He stood up just as the curfew sounded throughout the camp, and nodded in farewell to his friend. “Sleep well, and try not to wonder where we are going to find enough supplies to feed us on the way.”
“Damn you, St. Clair, I will be awake all night now.”
André grinned as he turned away. “Well, if you are, keep good watch.”
SEVEN
André St. Clair did not doubt for a moment that his life had changed radically with the formal conclusion of the induction ceremony in Lyon, for after it no single element of his daily life remained as it had been before. The rigid schedule of the Order’s regimen, based upon the ancient Rule of Saint Benedict, with variations and extensions added by Saint Bernard for the Rule of the Temple, stipulated an unvarying rotation of formal prayers and scriptural readings that occupied most of the monks’ time both day and night, and that was merely the most obvious of the changes affecting him and his fellow novices. But there were no intervals in the work periods between these prayer sessions in which a novice might snatch a moment for himself. It was as though the entire Rule by which they now lived had been designed to deprive the arrivals, collectively, of any memories or comforts that they might have retained from earlier, more familial times.
André watched the ceremony unfold with a feeling akin to amused incredulity, for he recognized elements of the proceedings that echoed, and sometimes came close to aping, passages and fragments of the ritual he had undergone years earlier on his Raising to the Order of Sion. But although this occasion resonated with pomp and solemnity, he experienced none of the sense of revelation that had overwhelmed him throughout the other. It was, he thought, as though the ceremony had been cobbled together by a group of men groping selfconsciously for ways to impart a sense of occasion to an otherwise sterile event. There were prayers and incantations aplenty, intoned by Templar priests and dignitaries among clouds of incense, and there were formalized, secretive rituals carried out in near-darkness, lit only by one or two candles, but it was glaringly obvious to St. Clair that there was no substance to the reality and no meat in the broth of the concoction. The induction ceremony was a spectacle designed to awe and intimidate those who participated in it, and most particularly the inductees. By the time they had undergone all the variations of the ritual involved, they were benumbed with visions of the greatness of the commitment they had made, and convinced that they were doomed to live thenceforth in perpetual meditative silence and would never again have time for frivolous personal pursuits.
In the few furtive moments when they did manage to scratch out whispered conversations among themselves, the former postulants tried to pretend that things were not as awful as they seemed, and that every monk within the Order suffered the same hardships, but they could see that was not true. The novitiate was a period of deliberately engineered trial and tribulation, intended to cull each intake of recruits remorselessly, to winnow out those who were unfit for the monastic life that lay ahead of them.
Well warned of that in advance, André was resolved not to be discouraged, determined to bite down on his dissatisfaction and struggle through, single-mindedly, to the end of this purgatorial process. He told himself that he was prepared for anything the Order’s martinets might throw at him, and he set himself to obeying every command and instruction instantly and meticulously, no matter how demeaning or dehumanizing the tasks set him might seem. And in what little spare time he had, greatly assisted by his ability to read, he learned huge sections of the Temple Rule, hundreds of paragraphs with numbers and subsections, by rote. Even so, he grew incredulous each time it occurred to him—and it did so daily—that the rules under which they were all struggling had been greatly relaxed in order to accommodate the rigors of life on the march.
It had taken them five days to win free of Lyon when all was said and done. The bridge over the Rhone there had collapsed on the first of those days, buckling under the weight of men and wagons crossing it, killing more than a hundred men. Richard had been forced to spend the next three days collecting boats and skiffs from miles away, up and down the river, to ferry the remainder of his troops across to the south bank. Thereafter, fortunate if they could travel twelve miles in a single day, the sixty thousand men of Richard’s corps had made their way steadily south for eight more days, marching on a three-mile-wide front until they reached the town of Avignon and swung down towards Aix, another day’s march distant. And as they progressed, to everyone’s astonishment, they continued to attract recruits.
On that eighth night, however, to the wide-eyed astonishment of those of his peers who witnessed the event, André St. Clair was summarily arrested and taken into custody by a squad of sergeant brothers acting under the orders of the Master of Novices. With no explanation, or even an opportunity to collect any of his meager possessions, he was confronted, his wrists and arms were shackled at his back, and he was marched away.
He spent the next few hours under close guard, locked in a mobile jail, one of the four that traveled with large bodies of Templar soldiers. It was a windowless, wagon-mounted, solidly built box of heavy wood, ventilated only by an iron-barred slit. No one informed him why he had been taken, or of what he stood accused, and he felt hopelessness and dismay like balls of lead in the pit of his stomach because, after less than two weeks as a Temple novice, he knew that he had no voice and no identity, no authority with which to challenge this injustice.
Then, in the middle watches of the night, after vigil and long before matins, when the darkness was still absolute, he was taken before a tribunal of senior knights assembled by torchlight in the Marshal’s tent. There he was arraigned by Brother Justin, the Master of Novices. He read out St. Clair’s full name—just his name—f
rom a scroll of parchment that bore several ornate and official-looking waxen seals before raising his head and looking André up and down in silence. André stood erect, his head held high, sick with tension. He could smell the unwashed odor of Justin’s notorious sanctity from where he stood, four paces from the man, who stood slouched and scowling, his bottom lip sagging pendulously and his potbelly bulging against the stained fabric of his surcoat.
“You stand accused of perfidy, André St. Clair, accused of crimes so grievous as to annul all claims you might have held to entitlement for membership in this great Order.” He lowered his head, perusing the scroll again before he proceeded. “And yet … there would appear to be some doubt … some minor doubt … concerning the details of the charges.” He lowered the scroll abruptly, releasing it to close upon itself before he began to twist it into a tighter roll. “You are to be taken under guard to Aix, to the Temple House of the Commandery there, to answer the charges against you, in the faint hope of demonstrating that they are false and that you have been maligned and remain, in truth, faithful to the depositions you have made in joining this Order. May God assist you. Take him away.”
