bad for us to know what’s going on out there.”
“But. I can hear a ‘but’ in your tone.”
“Yes, you can. The admiral has been proceeding in the belief that the three galleys have been seized and will come after us.”
“That was our first assumption, and until we find out more, it will remain valid. So what does Admiral St. Valéry propose?”
A tiny frown ticked between the other man’s brows. “That is where his logic evades me…or confuses me…and it is why I decided to talk to you.” He hesitated, then plunged on. “Has Admiral St. Valéry spoken to you of what he would like to do once we are clear of Cape Finisterre and outward bound?”
Sinclair cocked an eyebrow. “Aye. He has some idea of sailing off to the west, across the great sea, in search of something he believes is there.”
“The Merica legend.”
“Ah…He has spoken of it to you, has he?”
“No, not spoken of it exactly.” De Berenger looked troubled, as though he might be betraying a confidence. “He mentioned it, last time we spoke together in private. Hinted that he might like to go in search of it when he resigns as admiral. Said he had dreamed of finding it for years and that there’s nothing to stop him now, if he can find a crew of volunteers…”
Sinclair grunted. “He said much of the same to me. Asked me to consider giving him leave to go. He has no wish to travel with us to Scotland. He made that clear…What think you of the idea?”
De Berenger’s blink revealed his confusion before he asked, “What idea? Merica, or going to Scotland?”
“Merica.”
A play of expressions crossed de Berenger’s face until he shrugged. “Truthfully, I don’t know what to think of it, because the Order never really told us what to think of it, did it? On so many things the teachings are specific: this is what we know, that is a lie promulgated by Rome, that is true, this is foolish superstition. We always knew where we stood in the matter of most of the Order’s lore, and if we misunderstood or disagreed with any part of it, we could ask questions and debate the answers. But this Merica legend…no guidance was ever offered on it.”
Sinclair drew a deep breath and held it, steeling himself against a surge of nausea. When it abated, he continued. “There was none to offer. Nothing is known of it, even within our own Order of Sion, let alone within the Temple. The only thing we know is that the legend exists, and that it is based upon a few obscure references within the earliest records. I asked my sponsors and my mentors about it, each in turn, but none of them had paid it any attention, dismissing it for what it appeared to be—a simple legend, not worth wondering about. Later, though, when I was dispatched to Carcassonne to study, one of my tutors told me to seek out a Brother Anselm while I was there. He was the oldest living member of the Order at that time, and a wellspring of information on the more obscure aspects of the lore. He died only last year.”
He stopped and tilted his head to one side, as though listening, and his anchoring grip on the iron wall bracket eased slightly. “Am I imagining things, or has the pitching lessened?”
De Berenger nodded. “The storm may have blown itself out, or we may be in another lull between onsets. So what did you get from this Brother Anselm?”
“He offered me a different way of thinking about, and looking at, such things, a different approach to obscure lore.” He stopped, listening. “I believe the wind is dying, too. Would you object to stepping outside with me, and continuing our talk out there? Forgive me, but I find the confines of this cabin every bit as stifling as the holds belowdecks.”
De Berenger sprang to his feet, perfectly at ease with the ship’s motion. “Of course, Sir William. Forgive me. I had not realized how much discomfort you were in.” He threw open the cabin door, then stepped aside as Sinclair lurched past him and groped his way to the rail, where he stood with his feet apart and his head thrown back, sucking in great gulps of cold sea air. It really did appear as though the storm had passed, for the wind had dropped and was no longer howling and whipping spume from the wave tops, and the waves themselves had lost their ragged crests. The seas were still huge, propelling the craft in great, swooping surges, but they were noticeably less violent, the sides of the rolling waves now long and smooth, streaked with trailing remnants of the spume that had filled the air such a short time before. De Berenger busied himself looking at the cloud wrack and gauging the extent of the weather change while he waited for his superior to collect himself, and after a short time Sinclair turned back to him, clearly in command of himself again.
“There, I feel better now, much better. I appreciate your concern, Sir Edward, for both my stomach and my well-being…Now, what was I saying before my head started to spin?”
“Brother Anselm, how he offered you a different way of looking at things.”
“Aye, he did…” Sinclair thought for a moment longer, then resumed. “He made it very clear to me that I should never ignore anything simply because I cannot understand it immediately. That sounds obvious, but the truth is that most of us do exactly the opposite most of the time. Anselm had found, as had everyone else who cared to look, that there is nothing in our few references to support the Merica legend. But he had gone one step further than anyone else. He had gone looking for the source of our sources, if you see what I mean.”
De Berenger frowned. “No, I don’t. That sounds impossible. A source is a source. There’s nothing beyond that.”
“Hmm.” William Sinclair looked out at the surging seas, and spoke out towards where he was looking. “That is almost exactly what I said to him, and I remember how he smiled at me before correcting the error in my logic.” He looked at de Berenger and ducked his head slightly, almost apologetically. “I was speaking of our sources, he pointed out—the sources from which the forefathers in our Order originally developed our lore. And that little word, our, has influenced the Order’s perceptions down through the ages. And speaking of perceptions, incidentally, were you surprised when I slipped you the fist grip that night in La Rochelle?”
“Aye, I was,” de Berenger said. “It has been some time since last I met a senior Templar who was also one of our brotherhood.”
“Are you saying you saw me as more of a Temple Boar than a member of the brotherhood?” Sinclair grinned and held up a hand, waving away the chagrin that had immediately shown on de Berenger’s face. “Forget it, man, I was but jesting in order to make a point about the ways in which what we see, or think we see, can influence what we think thereafter. For that is exactly what has happened, Brother Anselm assured me, on this matter of the Merica legend.”
De Berenger inclined his head, clearly waiting to hear more, and Sinclair continued. “Secrecy, we all know, has been paramount in all we have done since the very beginnings of our Order, more than a millennium ago. But those few of us who think of such things today tend to think that the secrecy was originally based upon the need to hide our Jewish identity from the threat of Rome’s vengeance.” He gave the lie to his own words with a tiny jerk of the head. “Not so. Rome was never a threat to us since the earliest days of our settlement in southern Gaul, when we concealed our true roots and blended into the local structure, eventually becoming Christian. No, our need for secrecy was far more than that, and far older. The priesthood of ancient Judea, we know from our own records, was a secret, closed society long before Rome began to stir beyond its seven hills. Its roots went all the way back to Egypt at the dawn of time, in the era of the early Pharaohs, when the Israelites were enslaved for hundreds of years until Moses led them out in search of the Promised Land.
“I know you know all this, so forgive me if I seem to preach, but what comes next is the important part: our earliest forefathers brought their knowledge out of Egypt with them, and much of that knowledge was deeply rooted, after so many generations, in the religion of Egypt, with its worship of Isis and Osiris. That lore they took to Jerusalem, where Solomon built his Temple, and the priests were the sacred guardians of its