“You’re very quiet, Thomas. Why?”
Tam raised his head and looked at him, one black eyebrow lifted high, then turned away and stooped to throw three large logs onto the fire, pushing them firmly into place with the sole of his boot until he was satisfied that the new fuel would catch quickly. He stood straight again, wiping the dust from his hands with an edge of his surcoat, and turned at last to Will.
“Are you still fretting about me and that woman this afternoon?”
Will sat straighter in his chair and stared wide eyed at his sergeant cousin, who leaned against the mantel, looking down at him.
“Fretting, about you and a woman? I hope I need have no such concerns, Thomas.”
“No, well, you needn’t, but that’s about the tenth time you’ve called me Thomas this night, and that usually means you’re no’ pleased wi’ me. And when you say things the way you did just then, all proper and prim, that means the same thing. But I misspoke. I didna mean about me and the woman, the way you took it. I meant about me helpin’ the woman.”
“I know what you meant, and I have been thinking about it. What you did was wrong.”
Tam whipped his head down and away quickly, as though he might spit into the fire, but then, equally quickly, he swung back to face his cousin, and his voice was tight with aggravation. “How was it wrong, in God’s name? I told ye before, I only helped a fellow Scot escape from a man we despise. That she was a woman’s neither here nor there. She needed help, Will, and I was there to provide it, and all’s well. Had it been a man, you would ha’e thought nothing of it.”
“Not so. It might have put our mission at risk either way, Tam.”
“Och, Will, that’s rubbish and you know it. You’re bein’ pigheaded for the sheer pleasure o’ it. Our mission was ne’er in danger. Had it been you there, faced with her plight and her plea, and no’ me, you would ha’e done the same thing. You know you would.”
“No, I would not. I would have walked away from her.”
“You would ha—? You would ha’e walked away? Why, in the name o’ God? Because she was a woman? Sweet Jesus, Will, what if it had been your mother or one of your sisters? Would you not want someone to offer her help?”
“It was not my mother, Tam. Nor was it any of my sisters.”
“Well she was somebody’s mother or sister, or both.”
“Not so. She was a single, unescorted woman, traveling alone. An occasion of sin, waiting to avail itself of opportunity.”
“Och, for the love o’ Christ!” The disgust in Tam Sinclair’s voice was rich and undisguised. “How long have we known each other, Will Sinclair?”
Will raised an eyebrow. “Thirty years?”
“Aye, and more than that, and I swear you’ve become two people in those years.”
The knight tilted his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I know you don’t, and that’s the shame o’ it. The lad I knew back then would ne’er ha’e spewed such canting, canonical rubbish. But since you came back from Outremer and began to grow involved in the Inner Circle, you’ve changed, my lad, and little for the better.”
Will stiffened. “That is insolent.”
Tam folded his arms over his chest. “Oh, is that a fact? After thirty years I’ve grown insolent, have I? Thirty years of encouragement from you to speak up and say what’s in my mind, to tell ye the truth where others might not want to, to be comfortable in being your equal when there’s just the two o’ us around, and all at once I’m insolent?”
Will’s ears had reddened and he sagged back into his chair. “You’re right,” he said. “That was unworthy. Forgive me.”
“Happily. But what’s eating at you, Will? This isna like you.”
Will tensed and then sat forward, tightening his grip on his sword’s cross-guard and narrowing his eyes as he stared right into the heart of the fire. “I don’t know, Tam. I just don’t know. It’s this thing tonight, I suppose—the malice of it, the sheer evil. A King’s minister—his chief lawyer—arranging murders. It’s insanity, unthinkable. And yet it happened…And I’ve been wondering about God’s will this past half hour. Was it God’s will, think you, that we should be in that part of Paris that day, at that particular time when de Nogaret and this scum Godwinson were emerging from the residence? Had we not been there and seen them, him with his white-streaked red beard, I would never have reacted when Tescar told us about his arrival, and St. Valéry would now be dead, too.”
“Ach, you would have reacted anyway, as soon as you heard that shite about his coming from Paris wi’ word from de Molay. You knew that was a fleering lie as soon as you heard it, and you would have behaved the same way, even if you hadn’t seen the whoreson in Paris and recognized the description. No God’s will there.”
“Well then, was it His will that this creature should succeed and take the life of Arnold de Thierry? There was a man who never offended God in all his life.”
“Whoa there now.” Tam threw up his hands as though conceding defeat. “You’re getting into things too deep for my poor head. I canna tell you anything about that, and neither can you. You’ll just drive yourself daft. Master de Thierry died an ill death, I’ll grant ye, but he died at his post and on duty, and that means he died on God’s business, so he’ll be wi’ all the others now, enjoying his reward.”
“All what others?”
“What others?” Tam sat blinking at him. “The other thousands like him who died blameless doin’ their duty. Ye surely dinna think he’s the first man ever to die the way he did? What about your ain family? Sinclairs ha’e been involved wi’ the Temple since the start o’ it. We canna say how many o’ them ha’e died uselessly in the service o’ God and His Church, but they died nonetheless. Three o’ your ancestors at once, and no’ so long ago—blood uncles and cousins—French and Scots, St. Clair and Sinclair, the three o’ them in Outremer at the same time, under that whoreson Richard Lionheart, fightin’ God’s ain Holy War against the Saracen Saladin and his Muslims…D’ye think God in His wisdom had decreed their deaths for standin’ wi’ the Plantagenet, a man weel-kent for his depravity an’ foul habits?” Tam shook his head. “It’s no’ left to the likes o’ us to judge God’s reasons, Will. God knows we ha’e enough o’ our ain faults to live wi’…”
“Have I really changed that much, Tam? Am I really the prig you described, spouting cant and nonsense?”
“Aye, you can be, sometimes, a wee bit.” Tam grinned suddenly, his whole face lighting up. “But not often, thanks be to God.”
Will stared into the fire again, and just as Tam began to think he would say nothing more, he spoke.
“I have been thinking about that woman, Tam.”
“Aye, well, she was a fine-looking woman. There’s nothing wrong wi’ that.”
“But there is!” Will whipped his head around to look in his sergeant’s eyes. “I am bound by oath to avoid women.”
“Ach, come away, Will, that’s not true, and the young Will St. Clair I knew, knew that as well.”
“It is true. I undertook a vow of chastity.”
“Aye, you did, that’s right. A vow of chastity. You swore not to fornicate, with either women or men. Fine and well—a vow’s a vow and I’ve taken a few mysel’. But tell me this, is fornication wi’ a man more evil than fornicating wi’ a woman?”
Will looked shocked. “Lust between men is unnatural, the foulest of