upon him by Master de Molay. For the next half hour the two commanders walked together up and down the beach, observing the work in progress as they went over the details of their plans, such as they were, for the coming few days.
As soon as the treasure was safely aboard ship, they would put to sea again, sailing south, between the mainland and the island called the Isle of Oleron, passing the wide entrance to the Gironde inlet on their port side to follow the French coastline south along the Bay of Biscay until they reached the westward-jutting Iberian peninsula. From there they would make their way west along the Iberian coast of the bay until they reached the headland of Corunna, where they would turn south again for several days to collect whatever elements of the Templar fleet might have gathered off Cape Finisterre. They had no means of divining how many vessels might have escaped from other French ports ahead of the seizures and sailed to await a rendezvous, or how punctual those might be, but once there, the La Rochelle contingent would wait on station, safely offshore, for seven days, to ensure that every vessel that had been en route to join them, prior to Friday the thirteenth, had arrived. Thereafter, the assembly would sail as one fleet wherever William Sinclair, as senior representative of the Order of the Temple, ordered them.
At last St. Valéry appeared to have run out of things to discuss. They were approaching the wharf again, and the piles of material on the beach by the quay had dwindled greatly.
“It looks as though they have almost finished,” Will said, nodding towards the wharfside activity. The four great chests of the main Treasure still sat on the wharf together with the remaining contents of Kenneth’s wagons, but the wagons themselves had been dismantled and stowed, Kenneth’s men had been shipped aboard a number of vessels, and the majority of their horses, along with their saddlery and weapons, had already been slung aboard the ships assigned to them.
St. Valéry barely glanced up before he asked, “Are you completely set on sailing to Scotland, Sir William?”
Sinclair looked at him in surprise. “Set upon it? Aye, I suppose I am…But it comes to me that you are not. Have you something else in mind? If you have, spit it out and we will talk about it. Shall I send for de Berenger?”
“No! No, that will not be necessary…What is in my mind is…well, it is something that has been there for a long time now…Something more concerned with what we are and where we should be rather than with who we are and where we ought to go…if you see what I mean.”
“No, Sir Charles, I do not.” He was smiling slightly, shaking his head. “And to tell truth, that marks the first time I have ever heard you be less than clearly explicit, so it makes me most curious.” He glanced quickly around to see if anyone was nearby, but they were out of earshot of the closest group of workers. “Walk with me again, then, so we may keep from being overheard, for I have the feeling that you have no wish to say what’s in your mind to anyone but me. Not even to Vice-Admiral de Berenger. Come then, as friend, not admiral, and tell me what is in your mind.”
He moved away, and St. Valéry fell into step beside him, his head lowered. Sinclair walked in silence, remembering his own difficulties with the tidings he had had to bring to La Rochelle the previous day, and therefore content to wait until the right words came to the older man. Finally, St. Valéry uttered a snort and squared his shoulders.
“Very well then, Sir William, but before I begin, may I ask what befell between you and my good-sister? You were notably out of countenance. That was plain to see.”
“Aye, I was, and I think I may have been wrong.” He nibbled on his stubbly upper lip. “She asked me what I intended to do with my new life, now that the Order has been betrayed.”
“And that angered you?”
“Aye, it did, for it made me contemplate, for a moment but against my will, a world in which our Order would have ceased to exist. And that is close to inconceivable. The Temple, under the guidance of our ancient Order of Sion, has become the most powerful fraternity in the world. So differences will be straightened out and compromises will be made, in one fashion or another. But above all, our Order will continue. It was the sudden thought of my life being changed, without my having any opportunity to challenge such an outcome, that made me angry. I was ill prepared for that idea and I had no intention of discussing it with your good-sister. There was no more to it than that. As I said, I was probably wrong to react as I did.”
“Aye, well, Sir William, the right and wrong of it I cannot judge, but I am as one with you in the judgment that, above all else and despite what men may do to thwart it, our ancient Order will continue. The outward form of it may change beyond our credence, may even disappear completely from the ken of man and revert to what it was before Hugh de Payens and his fellows ever went to Outremer in search of what they found. But the Order of Sion will survive as long as any of us, sworn to its propagation, retains the ability to pass on its tenets to another generation. For at its deepest root, our Order is an idea, Sir William, a system of belief, and ideas are immortal and indestructible…”
St. Valéry’s voice died away into silence, but Sinclair could tell he had not yet finished talking, and sure enough he began again after a space of heartbeats.
“It is precisely that train of thought that has stirred this other matter in my mind.” He took Sinclair’s arm suddenly and turned sharply left to walk inland, in order to avoid another gang of seamen piling weapons into nets for hoisting. “It seems to me that the fundamental idea underlying our Order might benefit in future from some practical demonstration of the truth underlying our lore.”
Sinclair frowned. “What do you mean, a practical demonstration? That has already taken place, nigh on two hundred years ago, when the Order was reborn in the bowels of the temple tunnels and the truth of its lore was proved beyond dispute. What could be more practical than that? At that point we changed our name from the Order of Rebirth in Sion to the simple Order of Sion. We had achieved rebirth, then and there. The Order of the Temple came into existence only after that.”
“I know that, Sir William, as well as you do, but the ordinary brethren of today’s Temple, those who have no knowledge of our ancient Order, do not. And lacking that knowledge, that proof, they stand to be bereft of hope and subject to despair because of these upheavals in France.”
“So?”
“So I refuse to accept the notion that the Order of the Temple should simply be allowed to die.”
“And why should it not?” Sinclair’s rejoinder came without the slightest hesitation. “It is our Order that is important here, Sir Charles, the Order of Sion, not the Order of the Temple. Since the fall of Acre and the loss of Outremer more than a decade ago, the Order of the Temple appears to have lost the regard of the people who once revered it. That loss is real, but the lesser loss, the loss of Acre, cannot account for it. The loss of Acre was tragic, but it was honorable. The Temple’s knights and sergeants there were wiped out with the fall of the city, leaving no survivors. They did their duty alongside the other defenders of the faith in Outremer, and they performed their task and died as martyrs, against insuperable odds. So it is unjust to lay the Temple’s fall from grace upon the shoulders of its dead. The Temple of Solomon has earned its own disfavor down the years, and in full measure, beginning from the day the Order lowered its standards and decreed that monkhood was not the sole prerequisite for membership. That is when the rot first set in—the very day the Temple first permitted laymen and merchants to join its ranks and granted them the privilege of calling themselves Templars. Since then, through the behavior of its associate brethren, the Temple that the ordinary people see from day to day has clutched its arrogance and privilege about itself and gone out of its way to alienate everyone who deals with it.”
He stopped short and pursed his lips, almost defiant in the way he gazed at St. Valéry, as if challenging him. “Come now, Sir Charles, let us set surface loyalties aside, we two, and admit that the Temple has always had boors, strutters, and pigheaded fools among its brethren from the very outset. But those were fighting knights, and even their worst excesses were held close among the brethren. That is not the kind of behavior that I am condemning here. The Order of the Temple of Solomon today