by Jack Whyte
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 Sinclair, 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.
Of course, the King’s royal leave for the Scots Templars to attend the chapter gathering had not been given without conditions, and Will had discussed those conditions with Jessie, seeking her advice. The King knew of the resources Will had nurtured on Arran, and he was more than aware of the wealth of horseflesh, particularly the heavy horses, under Will’s command. In all of Bruce’s Scotland there were fewer than forty destriers, the enormous war horses that made the chivalry of England and France so powerful, and the worth of each one was incalculable. The small cavalry force that Scotland could field, seldom more than five hundred strong, was all light horse: scouts and skirmishers and mounted men-at-arms and bowmen, suitable enough for diversionary tactics and for nuisance raiding but utterly ineffectual against the fearsome, overwhelming bulk of massed English chivalry. Thus it was natural that King Robert coveted the Temple destriers, and knowing the King’s needs and the dangers facing his realm, Will had had no difficulty in agreeing to provide them. After all, as he had said to Jessie, they could not take the beasts to Merica. They had more than seventy of the huge animals on Arran now, and they would have difficulty transporting them even across the narrow channel to the mainland, for the ships that brought them here from France had all long since been reconfigured for other cargo.
Jessie had agreed with everything that Will was saying, advising him to make an immediate start on reconfiguring the ships’ holds yet again to accommodate heavy livestock. But then she had asked him about the knights’ armor. King Robert would assign the destriers to his knights, she pointed out, but would those knights have armor sufficiently heavy and strong for the tasks they had to face aboard their new and massive mounts? Very few of them would, she suggested, since Scots knights, less wealthy than their English counterparts, had traditionally been unable to afford, or even to find, such enormous mounts, and consequently had no use for such bulky, reinforced armor. Their need had always been for lighter, stronger armor, mail that was more supple and less restrictive than the solid, unyielding plate worn by the English chivalry. Besides, she added, had he thought about how many of his own Templars would wish to volunteer their services as chivalry to Scotland?
That took Will aback, for he had not thought of it at all. His overriding concern in recent months had been the composition of the group that would set out across the sea for the new land, ensuring that only the best, most versatile and resilient of his people would be included. De Berenger had crossed safely to Genoa late in the previous July, avoiding the English blockade of the North Sea coast, and had been able to buy two newly built ships, both commissioned and partly paid for by the Temple before its dissolution, along with two similar vessels that were unfinished when he arrived, their construction suspended in the absence of a purchaser. All four, he had reported back, were suitable for their expedition and in fact better than he had hoped to find. He had promised to have the four new ships back in Arran by mid-June, and all Will’s efforts had been geared towards being ready to set out at that time.
Thus, in the hubbub of all the ongoing activities, Will had made a fundamental error in his calculations. For more than five years now, revolving shifts of armed and mounted men from their Arran community had been fighting with the Bruce armies, and Will had taken it for granted that they would continue to do so after their relocation to the mainland. But those riders—knights and sergeants alike—had all used smaller, lighter horses and mail armor, easier to transport across water. He had not considered the great destriers, or the fact that many of his men, the French knights most assuredly, would wish to rearm themselves with their own huge war horses and plate armor once that became possible. Now he had to plan to present King Robert not only with horses but with the armored knights to ride those horses. Chagrined initially at having overlooked such an apparently obvious development, he had nevertheless soon found the grace and humor to acknowledge, once again, his new-won spouse’s value as an adviser. He had immediately issued orders to have all the Templars’ heavy armor and weaponry brought out from storage and refurbished for use in the coming English invasion.
And so, as soon as the chapter meeting was adjourned, the business of transferring the horses, armor, and weapons to Scotland would begin, for they had no time to waste. She herself would have been in Brodick now, organizing the score and a half of women who would sail with the expedition to the new land, had Will not asked her to remain behind in Lochranza to act as chatelaine and hostess to the gathering there. That was a waste of her time, in Jessie’s opinion—though she kept her silence—since she had contributed nothing but her presence, and that had been largely ignored, as she had known it would be.
A sudden upsurge in the noise from below attracted her attention. The apparently aimless seething of the crowd down there had altered since she had last looked, and now men were moving purposefully, pouring aboard the galleys, spilling from one to the other as they sought their own berths.
A discreet cough came from behind her, and she turned to find Hector standing at the turret door, holding it open f
or Sir James Douglas, who was stooped in the entryway, smiling at her.
“Sir James! Is something wrong? Do you need anything? I—”
Douglas doffed his feathered cap and bowed low in the gesture she had come to associate with him, but the smile remained in place on his dark-skinned, strangely attractive face. “No, Baroness, nothing is wrong. We are done our work and I need nothing … except time—a few more months between now and the coming week, if you could arrange that?”
She laughed back at him. “Would that I could, Sir James. But are you leaving?”
“Aye, on the rising tide, ’gin we can board and clear the sea wall in time. It is gey tight down there.” He stepped to her side and they stood together for a moment, watching the still-increasing activity below. “MacNeil, at the back there, will go first,” Douglas told her, “and that will clear the harbor mouth. As soon as they have room to dip their oars, the others will follow. I would venture, though it seems impossible, looking at that, that your harbor will be empty again within the hour from now. These caterans know their business.”
He looked at her again and stepped back a pace, inclining his head. “I have come to thank you, Baroness, from all of us who have gathered here these past few days, depriving you of house and home. Your hospitality and forbearance have been much appreciated, and we have achieved all that we hoped for. The Islesmen of the West will stand with His Grace when England comes chapping at our door, and those tidings will do much to soothe our noble Robert’s cares. But I must now travel hard and fast to tell him, for he is on his way to Stirling to assemble our host, such as it may be. And so, ’gin you will grant me leave to go thus rudely, I must away forthwith. The others are waiting for me.”
“Go then, and Godspeed, Sir James. Carry my blessings and good wishes to the King, and tell him I will keep his niece safe for him.”
“I will. Adieu, then, Madame la Baronne.” He bowed again, sweeping the ground with his bonnet’s plume, and then he was gone, the sound of his booted feet dwindling rapidly down the narrow spiral staircase.
Jessie stood staring at the spot where he had vanished, her eyes narrowed in thought. She had been less than truthful with the King in the matter of his niece, for she had said nothing of taking the girl with her beyond the seas, and even now she was unsure what she would do when the time came to decide. It would all depend upon what happened in the weeks and months ahead; if she decided that Marjorie’s life would be safer in the new land, then she would take the child without a moment’s hesitation.
That Scotland would be invaded was a certainty. Edward Bruce had ensured that when he made his foolish truce with the English governor of Stirling the previous summer. England’s King had used the ensuing year to settle his own internal wars with his barons and whip them into a frenzy of greed and offended chivalric honor, playing upon their lust for Scottish lands and wealth. The sole question remaining was the exact timing and strength of the incursion, and even that was finite. Midsummer Day, the date of settlement of the Stirling truce, was June twenty-fourth. England had until that date, now six weeks distant, to relieve Stirling or lose Scotland.
Edward of England had begun summoning his earls and barons months earlier, just before Christmas. Word had soon reached Bruce’s ears, generating the urgency that had brought about this gathering of Scots and Gaels here in Lochranza, forging alliance between King Robert and the reluctant, independent Islesmen and Highlanders, for if King Robert’s Scotland fell to the English, so, too, would the Western Isles and the Highlands.
A chorus of horns and shouts from below brought Jessie’s attention back to the present, and she looked over the battlements to see, to her astonishment, that the harbor was indeed emptying rapidly, the sea beyond the entrance dotted with departing galleys, all of them using wind and oars to reach their various destinations as soon as possible. Another roar of approval reached her, and she looked straight down, recognizing Douglas and his three companions as they and their attendants moved quickly to board their own vessel, the massive galley lent to the King of Scots by his Arran Templars.
How long she stood gazing down at the King’s galley as it was warped away from its berth and headed out to sea she could not have said afterwards, for her mind was filled with worries of another sort as she wondered what her own man would now do. He had told her that he would remain on Arran to complete his work; that the affairs of Scotland were Scotland’s own; that he had made and would continue to make his contribution to King Robert’s cause with men, horses, and weaponry; but that his overriding responsibility was to his own people and their journey to the new land. She had believed him at the time, but that had been a full month earlier, and now she was not so sure. Sir William Sinclair was not the kind of man who could turn his back upon his friends in time of need, and Robert Bruce and his closest supporters had become Will’s friends. Knowing that, she knew too, in her heart of hearts, that as the threat of invasion drew nearer, her man must be undergoing torment from his divided loyalties.
He would do the right thing. She had no doubt of that. But the unease over what that might be, the decision he might finally make, had kept her awake every night since he had left for Brodick. She had waited far too long for him to come to her, and now that he had, she could barely tolerate the thought that she might lose him in the squalor of some muddy battlefield, slaughtered in the mire because his sense of honor and his conscience would not permit him to stand back and look to his own affairs.
She was still standing there, gazing sightlessly out to sea and hugging herself beneath her sealskin mantle, when she felt his hands close over her upper arms. She knew them instantly and whirled about, throwing himself into his embrace and kissing him wildly, feeling him stiffen at first at her unexpected ardor, and then enfold her, pulling her tightly against him as he returned her kiss.
Finally, after a time she thought was all too short, he broke from the embrace and turned her in his arms so that she leaned back into him, but in the turning, she had time to see the lines in his face and the deeply troubled look in his eyes, and she felt her heart fill up with apprehension, knowing that he should not be here.
“So, they are gone,” he whispered into her ear, holding her steadily as he looked out at the last of the departing ships. “They reached an agreement?”
The question was rhetorical, but she answered it anyway. “Aye, they are gone. Sir James told me the men of the West will stand with the King when the time comes.”
“I had no doubt they would. They have no option.”
His voice was quiet, a mere murmur, but she twisted out of his grasp. “What is it, Will? Why are you here?”
His eyes examined the whole of her face, and then he shrugged and grunted softly, smiling sadly. “I am here to see you, Jess … to look at you and feel you in my arms, soft and warm against me … and to talk with you … to share some tidings.”
“Ill tidings.”
He hesitated, his eyes narrowing, then nodded.
“Aye. As ill as might be.”
“Come then, for this is no place to be sharing them.”
She took his hand and led him from the roof, retaining her grip as she led him down the narrow, winding staircase to their bedchamber on the floor below. Young Marjorie was there, sitting before the fire with Marie and Janette, and all three of them glanced up in surprise as Jessie entered, still leading Will. She told them to leave, to go and help Hector and his staff in cleaning and readying the great hall below, and to stay away until she called for them again, and when they were gone, she turned again to Will, reaching up to touch his face, fingering the stubble on his cheek. “I want you, here and now, in that bed, but you have more need to talk than to make love. I can see it in your eyes.”
She swung away, waving to the chair to the right of the large fireplace. “Sit then, and tell me, and when you have told me once, no matter how bad it may be, you can tell it to me again, in bed. I will listen closely both times, I promise you. And then I will tell
you what I think.”
He moved to sit obediently and she settled herself opposite him, her eyes on his, waiting until he had settled. “Now, tell me.”
He nodded, complacently enough, but then sat silent, and she could see that his eyes were unfocused, his thoughts far away as he searched for words. She waited, and after a while he blinked as though awakening and dropped one hand to finger the hilt of the dagger at his waist.
“I have just received news from France,” he said, his voice lifeless. “Jacques de Molay is dead, after seven years in jail. By now he would have been seventy-two, perhaps seventy-three. An old, done man, destroyed by seven years of abominations and abuse. They had sent cardinals to try him and his three remaining companions yet again, but he rejected their authority. He would speak only to Pope Clement, he said, and in person, in accordance with the oath he had sworn so long before. But Clement was in Avignon, at odds with Philip once again, and he would not go to Paris. And so, de Molay rescinded his confession once again. It had been drawn from him by torture, he proclaimed, and he now abjured it, denouncing Philip Capet for the greedy thief he is …” He blew out a long, shuddering breath.
