Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar (41 page)

B
aybars sat, subdued and silent, watching the men moving about the throne room. The governors lounged on cushions, or shifted from group to group, pausing to take fruit cordials from the trays held aloft by the servants. Above the sounds of laughter and conversation drifted the musicians’ plaintive melodies. Girls in floating gowns danced in the center of the hall, bodies writhing. Men, mesmerized, watched their spiraling forms. The dancers suddenly scattered as a hunched figure in tattered gray robes darted into their midst. Some of the younger officers laughed as Khadir, mimicking the girls’ high-pitched screams, chased them around the pillars. The remnants of the evening’s feast lay scattered across the boards: crumbs of honey cakes; slabs of kid congealed in their own grease; woody stumps of asparagus; sugared almonds.

Nearby, Omar was talking with Kalawun and several other governors. Baybars caught his eye and beckoned.

Omar left the group and ascended the steps to the throne. “My lord?”

“Let us dispense with the festivities.”

“Wait a little longer?” suggested Omar. “Let the men have their…”

“Now, Omar.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The governors and commanders of the regiments fell silent as one of the servants rang a golden bell, signaling the start of the meeting. The musicians ceased their playing and the dancing girls flitted from the hall. All eyes turned to Baybars, who rose from the throne. “I hope you enjoyed the feast.” His words were answered with a polite smattering of applause. “We shall have many more in the coming year.” There was more applause. “For we shall have even greater victories to celebrate than those we have gained so far.” He nodded to Kalawun. “I have spoken with some of you over the past weeks, regarding the next stages of our campaign. I have since decided upon our main objective.” He paused, scanning their expectant faces. “We will take the city of Antioch.”

There were a few murmurs of surprise, more of concern.

“My Lord Sultan,” said one of the governors, an ambitious man and always one of the first to speak. “This would require a massive assault. Antioch is the most fortified city in Syria.”

“The sheer extent of those fortifications,” replied Baybars, “also makes it one of the hardest to defend. I have studied the plans we have of the city. I believe that a small force could take it in less than a week. Three regiments at most.”

“When do you propose this attack should be executed, my lord?” said another of the governors.

“The harvests are in. The troops could leave, fully supplied, by the end of the week. Khadir’s predictions for that time are favorable.”

A few of the governors glanced dubiously at the soothsayer, who was sitting under a table gnawing on a bone.

Baybars, seeing their unresponsive expressions, grew annoyed. “Did I not promise you victories?”

“And none of us doubts your ability to provide them, my Lord Sultan,” said Kalawun, his voice rising above the murmurs. “But many of the men have only just returned from Cilicia. Perhaps, for the rest of the winter, it would be better to concentrate on smaller military strongholds, before tackling a target such as Antioch?”

Baybars, shooting Kalawun a dark look, seated himself in his throne and raked the rest of the company with his stare. Most of them chose not to meet his gaze. “You do not see what I am proposing?” His voice was hard. “Then let me explain. If we capture Antioch it isn’t just a city the Christians will lose: It is their whole principality.” He fell silent for a moment, letting them digest his words. “Without Antioch, the few scattered settlements and fortresses the Franks have left in the region would become islands in a sea ruled by us. I doubt they would even fight.”

“It is true,” agreed one of the generals, after a pause. “It would be a massive blow to the Franks. The Principality of Antioch was the first state they established in our territory.”

“And,” said another, “it’s their richest city, after Acre anyway.”

“It is also a holy city,” Baybars reminded them. “With Edessa gone, and if we take Antioch, the Franks will rule only two states: the County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and, of those, few of their former towns and strongholds remain in their hands. In time, we will drive them back into the seas they came from.”

Some of the governors had been stirred by the mention of plunder, but there was still not the enthusiasm Baybars wanted. By the end of the council, however, he had accepted their grudging agreement and had picked out three commanders to lead the attack. After the meeting was over, he left the throne room, avoiding his secretaries, who had various things for him to sign, and Omar, who tried to catch his eye.

Donning a dark robe and turban, Baybars headed out of the citadel by a small side exit and walked down into the city, feeling the tension uncoiling like springs in his body the farther he went. The air was balmy. After a time, he came to a dusty street lined with rows of mud-brick houses. At the end of this street was a whitewashed house, larger and grander than the others. There was lantern light coming through the windows and a child’s laughter. Baybars turned aside at the entrance and walked around the back of the house, an indistinct figure striding through the shadows. Behind the house was an old barn that had crumbled into disrepair, no one having claimed ownership of, or responsibility for it. Half the roof was missing and fallen timbers littered the ground inside. Baybars often wondered why no one had used it for fuel. Every time he came here he half expected to find it gone. He plucked a hibiscus flower from the bush that grew beside the entrance and stepped inside the place that no one, not his wives, governors, Omar or Kalawun, knew about. In the darkness, he knelt and put the flower to his lips, drawing in its bright scent, remembering how it had smelled in her hair. The light from the stars and from the house beyond filtered into the gloom, illuminating the floor at Baybars’s knees. It was strewn with the pink husks of dead hibiscus flowers.

W
ill watched the spider enlarge the web it had built inside a crack in the stone. Every once in a while, a cold breeze would flow in through the window, causing the spider to quiver on its line. Each time the wind came, it would scuttle back up its thread and creep into the safety of the crack before darting out and starting again. Will found the spider’s industrious activity absorbing. Up, down, round and round. It seemed so simple. Unlike the half-started letter on the window ledge beside him.

Writing the first few lines of the letter to his mother, Will had been numb and it had been easy. But as he’d continued, images of his parents had started to form in his mind. Memories so seemingly insignificant that he had forgotten about them had welled to the surface and brimmed over, flooding him. Most were before Mary died. One had been especially clear: an image of his mother sitting on the edge of the table in the estate’s kitchen, her lips pressed together. She had been in the garden picking herbs for dinner when she had stood on a wasp. His father had sat down on a stool and had taken her small white foot gently in his hands. Will, sitting at the table, had watched his father, eyes narrowed in concentration, remove the sting. James had then closed his mouth over the tiny puncture to draw out any poison that might have remained. When he had finished, Isabel had wrapped her arms around his neck, her springy red hair tumbling over his shoulder. “What would I do without you?” Will had heard her murmur.

That memory had been abruptly replaced by an image of his father’s severed head, stuck on a pike, eyes plucked out by birds, mouth filled with maggots. And the quill had snapped in Will’s hand. He hadn’t bothered to fetch another and the letter had lain there unfinished, fluttering now and then in the breeze.

After running from the yard, Will had gone straight to the empty dormitory, where he had sat on the window ledge, knees squeezed to his chest, taking huge gulps of air. Some time later, he had left the ledge to fetch a quill and parchment from the chest by his pallet, before taking up his seat once more, the same place he’d sat six years ago on the day of Owein’s funeral.

The spider slipped down its thread and began to spool out another line. Will touched his throat. For an hour or so, he had been plagued by a subtle yet persistent burning sensation whenever he swallowed. He leaned his head on the stone and gazed out of the window. The clouds that had rolled in over the afternoon had turned the sky white, streaked with wide bands of gray. Will could hear the distant cries of gulls down near the river flats. They would be circling the fishermen bringing in the nets and eel traps. Every day he heard them. But now, the familiar sound was heavy with new significance. Will pressed his hands to his eyes.

He was sitting on warm rocks beside his father, legs dangling above the water is father had the line submerged and would tug it every so often to re-check the weight. Sunlight, reflected by the water, played on the undersides of the rocks and glinted in James’s eyes. Beside them was a bucket filled with three silver-skinned fish. The gulls that wheeled above them would cry and swoop closer every so often, their shadows passing across the rocks.

James’s cheeks were sun-browned and there was a graze of yellow sand just above his beard. Will wanted to brush it away, but didn’t want to disturb his father, who was watching the line placidly with a faraway smile.

“We should build a boat,” James said after a while.

“A boat?”

James looked out over the wide green loch, that smile still playing about his lips. “Do you think, William, that the fish would be bigger the deeper we were?”

Will thought hard, then nodded.

“With another baby on the way, we’ll want bigger fish, won’t we?”

“Mother’s going to have a baby?”

“A girl, she thinks.”

“What will you call her?” asked Will, trying to sound nonchalant, but feeling his bliss tainted by the news. Another sister? Three was more than enough.

“Ysenda.” James studied Will for a moment. “You would have to help me, William. I don’t think I could build it alone.”

“Of course, father!” Will sat up straight, his disappointment replaced by a weighty sense of responsibility. He frowned in contemplation. How he would build it, he wasn’t yet sure, but he did know that it would be the best boat his father had ever seen.

After Mary died, Will had been back to the loch only once before he had left Scotland. The boat was where he had left it, on the high ground above the waterline. He had never made the oars, or waterproofed it with oakum. Grass had begun to sprout up through the cracks in the boards. Will had thought about pushing it out into the loch on that final visit, but even then he’d hoped he would return with his father to sail it. His mother had been nearing the end of her pregnancy and he was certain, however much his father hated him, that they would still need to find those bigger fish.

When he had thought of the boat in later years it was as a rotted carcass for weeds and hermit crabs, but he wondered, now, whether someone might have found and saved it. He knew, from the few letters he had received from his mother, that his older sisters, Alycie and Ede, had left the nunnery some years ago to live with their husbands in Edinburgh, where they had had families of their own. But perhaps Ysenda, who would be eight now, might one day go back to the estate where she was born and find the boat. She might not be able to sail it, but Will fancied she could use it as a place to play and think of the brother and father she never knew.

Will took his hands from his eyes, hearing the sound of hooves in the yard outside the stables. Other than that and the faint cries of the gulls everything was still and silent. Most of the knights, priests and sergeants were in the chapel where they had been called following the news of Safed. They had spent the early part of the afternoon in mourning.

Soon, the silence would end. Soon, the call to arms would sound.

Will didn’t look around when the door opened. He heard someone shuffle across the room toward him. When he did glance around, he saw Everard’s bloodshot eyes peering down at him, then the inviting numbness closed in around him again and he looked away.

“I’ve been looking for you, sergeant.”

Will didn’t say anything.

“How long were you planning on hiding in here for?”

“I have to finish my letter.”

Everard frowned. His eyes fell on the parchment. “This?” he asked, picking it up. He read, eyes squinting in the gloom. “This can wait,” he said quietly, putting it down. “There are matters we must discuss.”

“I have to write to my mother, sir, and tell her that her husband and the father of her children is dead.”

“Your mother and sisters will be taken care of by the Temple,” said Everard brusquely. “They will not want for anything. I promise you.” He sighed when Will didn’t respond. “I understand that you are upset.”

“Understand?” Will looked round. “You understand? Then perhaps you can explain it to me, to my mother. Perhaps
you
should write and tell her why he died. You sent him there, after all.”

“That is unfair,” said Everard shortly. “James didn’t die while in service to the Anima Templi. He died in service to the Temple, doing something he would not have chosen to do.” His expression softened. “When your father went to the Holy Land, he did so of his own free will. He went because he believed, because he wanted to make a difference in this life. A different world, he told me once, for the sake of his children. For you, William.”

Will glanced at him, but remained silent.

“I need to hear what happened at the Hospitallers’ preceptory,” said Everard quietly, but insistently.

“Nicolas has gone to La Rochelle with three of his brothers,” Will said eventually. “A stable boy said they were talking about Acre and the Grand Master.”

“Acre?” said Everard worriedly. “So Hugues de Revel is behind this?”

“De Revel?” said Will listlessly.

“The Grand Master of the Hospital. I’ve not met him, but I knew his predecessor, Guillaume de Châteauneuf—the man who was in charge of their Order when Armand laid siege to their stronghold.” Everard rubbed at his chin. “I expect Nicolas plans to take the book straight to him. If the Grand Master believes it evidence enough of the Anima Templi’s existence and, as Nicolas so wrongly surmises, corruption, he will no doubt involve the pope in Rome.” He inhaled sharply. “We cannot let them leave these shores with it. We ride for La Rochelle at dawn.”

Will looked at him. “We?”

“I cannot do this alone.”

“And I cannot do this at all,” responded Will, swinging his legs over the ledge and jumping down to face the priest. “Even had I strength to, I could not. I’m just a sergeant. I have no authority over any knight, whether from the Temple, the Hospital, the Teutonics, or the king’s own army!”

“Well, that is about to change,” said Everard after a pause. “I spoke to the Visitor and he has agreed to your inception.”

“What?”

“He felt it fitting, to have lost the father that we should gain the son. A symbol,” muttered Everard, “that we shall prevail and not be cowed by our enemy. The Visitor wants to do it soon, before the council he has called to discuss what shall be done. I’m afraid your inception will take place in amongst all the warmongering, but that cannot be helped.”

“Is this some kind of jest? You have chosen the worst day possible to do this!”

Everard’s scarred face mellowed. “Grief is one of the purest emotions we are capable of. In experiencing true sorrow all the…” He waved his hand impatiently, searching for a word. “All the
noise
inside us falls away. In that silence we find ourselves. Those are the moments that shape us. So, on the contrary, I believe today is the best day to do this.”

Will rested his palms on the window ledge and hung his head. “I’m no longer sure I want to be a knight.”

“I thought it was your father’s wish?” said Everard in a tone of suggestive inquiry.

“My father is dead.”

“Then does everything he did and wished for in life cease to have meaning? Does what he believed in, what he worked and bled to achieve become unimportant?” Everard shook his head. “James Campbell began something. It is up to us to finish it. Only if we ignore that does his life, his
death
become meaningless.”

Will raised his head and stared out of the window, his tears cold on his cheeks. The world outside was flat and gray. For years, he had been running toward one place: a place at his father’s side. Now that place had ceased to exist, where would he go? However aware he was of the dangers facing fighting men in Outremer, it had never entered his head that he might not see his father again. “I have no purpose,” he whispered, not realizing that he was speaking out loud.

“You have purpose to me.” Everard reached out and placed his disfigured hand on Will’s shoulder. “Great purpose.”

Two iron braziers filled with charcoals had burned in the chapter house throughout the morning, taking the bite out of the November chill. But no one had thought to replace them for the ceremony and they had mostly turned to ash. Heavy tapestries covered the windows, blocking out the gray afternoon.

Will’s skin prickled as he removed his black tunic and handed it to the cleric who was waiting beside him. He took off his boots, then unfastened his belt and sword. As he pulled his undershirt over his head, he became acutely aware of the large company of men seated behind him. The vaulted chamber was dimly lit, but he felt they could all clearly see the thin, white lines that crisscrossed his back where Everard had once whipped him. Will looked to Everard standing on the dais, but the stooped, gaunt-faced man arranging the holy vessels on the tabernacle showed none of the sour asperity he had on that day six years ago. Behind Everard, in a throne-like seat made out of pale white stone, sat the Visitor. He looked fatigued. There were two other knights on the dais.

As Will handed the cleric his shirt and stood in the empty space between the seated knights and the raised altar, clad in nothing but his hose and illuminated in a tiny pool of torchlight, he felt more alone than he ever had in his life.

When the cleric moved off with his old garments, Will looked around, seeking a friendly face in the crowd. He saw Robert. The knight, who was sitting beside Hugues in one of the front benches, caught his eye and smiled. Will turned back to the altar feeling his sense of isolation dissipate fractionally as Everard lit the incense in the censer and called for silence. The low murmur of conversation coming from the company, which seemed impatient to begin the war council, died away. Everard, wreathed in smoke, prompted Will to kneel. He did so, aware that he hadn’t learned, as other initiates would have during the nightlong vigil, what he was supposed to say, or do. There was no time to worry about it now though, as the Visitor had risen and was addressing him.

“You have spent time in vigil, that you might reflect upon the sacred office that has been offered to you.” The Visitor’s deep voice filled the chamber. “William Campbell, son of James, do you now wish to accept the mantle, knowing that in doing so you shall cast away your worldly duties and become a true and humble servant of Almighty God?”

“I do,” answered Will.

And so his vows began.

Will spoke when he was supposed to, prompted by Everard on occasion and remembering, with surprising clarity, the words of the postulant he had seen initiated when he and Simon had been hidden in the grain store at New Temple. He said he believed in the Catholic faith and that he had been conceived in legitimate wedlock. He denied offering anyone a gift so that he might join, or having any debt, or belonging to any other Order. And, although his throat was starting to burn and his chest felt as tight as a drum, he confirmed that he was fit in body.