"Identify yourself," he started to order-and broke off as the newcomer shook back his hood, merely chuckling, and a familiar pair of blue eyes gazed back at him.
"Arnault!" he blurted.
"It"s good to see you, too, Aubrey," Arnault responded with a smile. "Is Torquil anywhere around?"
"Yes, but-" Aubrey was peering past Arnault, where more men were dismounting, men he had only seen previously with beards, and wearing Templar white. Two of them he knew well: Mingo MacDonald and Douglas Lumsden, youngsters like himself. The face of the third was vaguely familiar, but he could not recall the man"s name.
"You"ve brought reinforcements," he noted lamely-then added, "Come, I"ll take you to Brother Torquil."
"The last time I saw the king," Arnault said, as Aubrey gestured toward the back of a cloaked ?gure sitting by a ?re, "he said I"d ?nd him wherever the ?ghting was."
Torquil stiffened slightly, then turned and set aside a half-eaten bowl of porridge, grinning as he got to his feet.
"Well, it"s about time!"
The two thumped one another on the back as they brie?y embraced. Both had gone grayer in the two years since their last meeting, and new lines etched both their faces.
"Arnault, it"s good to see you. How have you fared?" he asked quietly, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
Arnault heaved a weary sigh, but did his best to summon up a smile.
"A good deal better than many. But before we say more about that, I must ?rst ask you how it is with the king. Rumors in the Lowlands have put him at death"s door from a winter illness."
"Thankfully, those rumors are weeks out-of-date," Torquil responded with a grin. "Today he celebrated his recovery by personally leading a highly successful foray against the Earl of Buchan."
Arnault"s expression brightened. "Ah, then that explains the stragglers we saw, coming here, and the atmosphere of high spirits about the camp. I"ve brought a few reinforcements," he added, at Torquil"s look of inquiry at his use of we. "Only three-but as you know, three Templars are worth any thirty ordinary men." They both grinned. "If the king"s receiving visitors, I"d better pay my respects."
"I"d join you," Aubrey interjected, reluctantly hanging back, "but I"m due on watch. You won"t mind repeating yourself later, will you?"
"I promise to catch you up on all the news," Arnault replied, clapping the younger man on the shoulder.
"Meanwhile, you might talk to the others. The two young ones don"t know a great deal, but Grigor was in Paris with me for a while."
"Grigor was in Paris?" Torquil repeated, somewhat incredulously. "His French is terrible!"
"Aye, he hardly speaks it at all," Aubrey chimed in.
"He speaks it better now than he did," Arnault replied with a wink in Aubrey"s direction. "I made him practice. Now, get you gone, cousin. Torquil and I must speak to the king."
Aubrey snorted and took his leave with a wave that was almost a salute. On their way to the royal tent, Torquil furnished Arnault with a concise account of their progress since Bruce"s landing at Carrick.
"Our campaign had been gaining steady momentum when he fell ill at Christmas," Torquil concluded.
"He"s been a long time recovering, but fortunately, his enemies haven"t been able to take advantage of his weakness-and now that he"s convalescent, I don"t foresee them regaining the initiative. As we saw today, the mere sight of him, sick or well, has become a weapon he can use against his foes."
"Then perhaps there"s still hope," Arnault murmured, too softly for Torquil to overhear.
They found Bruce sitting by his camp?re, dictating a letter to one of his clerks.
"Pardon the interruption, Sire," Torquil said as Bruce looked up, "but here"s an unexpected guest seeking an audience."
"Brother Arnault!" The king did not rise, but his elation was patently genuine. "Praise G.o.d, you"ve returned to us in a happy hour! Only yesterday, you would have found me moping in my bed. Today you see us celebrating a triumph."
"So Torquil has been telling me," Arnault replied. "I understand that you sent Comyn of Buchan packing, with his men"s tails between their legs. My congratulations."
"G.o.d grant we may have more such victories," Bruce said. "Will you take some refreshment after your journey?"
"Perhaps later, Sire-if you don"t mind. Torquil and I have a great deal of catching up to do-and the sooner, the better."
"So be it, then. Of the little I have here at this camp, whatever you need is at your disposal. Later, you and I will talk."
"Yes, Sire. And thank you."
Once the two Templars had retired to a sheltered knoll, safely out of earshot of the rest of the company, Torquil was able to stop pretending he hadn"t noticed the anxiety Arnault had been at pains to conceal since his arrival.
"So, how bad is it?" he said, trying to read the other"s expression in the moonlight. "Is it true that Jauffre was captured?"
Drooping visibly, Arnault sank down on a rock, nodding.
"Torquil, I would give my right arm to deny it, but I can"t. My one consolation is that his capture probably bought Christoph"s escape-and the safety of the Shroud." Arnault brie?y glanced away. "So far, Christoph and Bertrand are the only ones besides myself to show up at Balantrodoch."
"Dear G.o.d." Torquil sank down blindly beside Arnault. "Do you think the rest were taken, too?"
"It"s too soon to know. If the others had the same kinds of problems I had, they might just be delayed."
He shook his head. "Anyway, we need to meet with Christoph and Bertrand and decide what to do.
They"ve gone to Dunkeld, to be near the Stone. Bishop Crambeth has given them sanctuary. I think we ought to bring Aubrey as well."
Torquil blinked. "You do recall that he isn"t yet a full member of le Cercle?"
"I think he"s going to have to become one, and rather sooner than any of us thought. We no longer have the luxury of long apprenticeships."
"I suppose not," Torquil murmured, stunned. "I-don"t think Bruce is going to want to let us go, though."
"He must," Arnault replied. "And I have brought him three other Templars to replace us. And gold. Of course, they can"t replace all that we do-but they can certainly help to keep his physical person safe. That will have to do, for now."
Torquil let out an audible sigh. "You"re going to have to tell him at least a little of why we"re leaving."
"I intend to tell him everything. He already knows a great deal of it," Arnault added, at Torquil"s look of shock. "In times as benighted as these, it serves no purpose to keep one another in the dark."
True to his word, he held nothing back when it came time to take Bruce into their con?dence. Following Arnault"s terse recital, the king was silent for a long moment, head bowed in thought.
"You are free to go, of course," he ?nally said, "though I would rather give up a hundred of my best men than lose either of you-or young Aubrey, for that matter. But I have seen enough in your company not to doubt what you have told me-and to take heart from the fact that what you do is for this land as well as your Order."
"We have long known that the needs of the two are intertwined," Arnault pointed out.
"I will accept your word for it," Bruce said with a smile. "I don"t pretend to understand even half of what you"ve told me. But I will always be grateful for the help you have rendered in bringing me this far along the road. Accordingly, if there is anything I can do in return, you know you have only to name it."
"Then, simply carry on as you have done," Arnault replied. "For now, that is the best any man could ask.
For our part, we will do what we must do, to prepare the way for our part in your ?nal goal."
Bruce gave a wan smile. "The doing will be harder than the asking, I have no doubt. But my own objectives will remain unchanged: to set Scotland free from foreign domination. Only then will we be at liberty to establish a government where justice and respect for individual liberties will be the rule of law."
"If we succeed," said Torquil, "Scotland will become the envy and model of other nations for generations to come."
Bruce summoned a crooked smile. "Then, it seems we each have our own separate wars to ?ght, at least for a while-our edi?ces to build, our statutes to forge. But if- G.o.d willing-we are both victorious, the legacy we hand on to future generations will be something wondrous, indeed!"
"Amen to that!" Arnault said.
Aubrey confessed himself somewhat surprised to learn that he was being included in the foray to Dunkeld.
"I"d expected to stay behind with Grigor and the others," he said. "Shouldn"t someone stay, who is known to the king? Besides, you don"t need a junior knight like me along."
"Aubrey," Torquil said mildly, "in case you hadn"t noticed-and apparently, you hadn"t-you"re no longer a junior knight."
"But, the king-"
"Your recognition of the need for his safety is part of the reason you"re no longer a junior knight," Arnault pointed out. "But he"ll be safe enough until we"ve ?nished at Dunkeld. After yesterday, the English won"t be back right away. In the meantime, are you going to make me invoke your vow of obedience?"
"No, of course not. It"s just that-well, I wasn"t expecting-"
"This is about the Inner Order, Aubrey," Torquil said quietly. "We"ll talk about it more along the way."
"Oh," was all Aubrey said.
Arnault spent most of the next day conferring with Bruce and then brie?ng the three Templars who would remain with the king. He, Torquil, and Aubrey left the following morning, lightly provisioned and mounted on st.u.r.dy Highland ponies.
They expected that the journey to Dunkeld might take as long as a fortnight, but a run of good weather enabled them to shave several days off that estimate. Only at the end did the weather worsen, so that they emerged from a thickening mist as they rode at last through the gates to the abbey yard adjoining Dunkeld Cathedral. It was just dusk on the Eve of Saint John.
"We"re here to see Bishop Crambeth," Arnault told the young novices who came to take their ponies, since he saw no immediate sign of any of their Templar colleagues.
"Yes, m"lord," one of the novices replied, nervously eyeing the three travel-worn men in ?ghting harness.
"What name shall I give His Grace?"
"Arnault de Saint Clair. He knows me."
"Yes, m"lord."
The three of them withdrew into the shelter of a roof overhang to wait as the ponies were led away and the one novice disappeared into a slype pa.s.sageway. They had seen no sign of any English presence as they approached Dunkeld, so they probably were safe enough within its precincts. Because of King Edward"s withdrawal down to London, and the inept.i.tude of the governor he had left to oversee matters in Scotland, the English presence north of the Border had become largely con?ned to the areas surrounding the four Lowland castles of Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling. Many Lowland lords had taken advantage of that fact, including Dunkeld"s bishop, Matthew Crambeth.
Crambeth had been less actively militant in his support of Bruce than men like Lamberton and Wishart and Scone"s Abbot Henry, all of whom now languished in captivity in the south of England, but this more outwardly neutral stance had enabled Crambeth to retain his episcopal seat-and, in secret, to continue providing a safe hiding place for the Stone of Destiny. Here, as well, he had gathered around himself a body of like-minded clerics, quietly committed to fostering the independence of the Scottish Church.
It was to Crambeth that Arnault had told Luc to send the other surviving members of le Cercle as they checked in; and it was Crambeth himself who came out to meet them, simply dressed in the plain black habit worn by the cathedral"s regular canons. He had been present on that night they had wed Bruce to the Stone of Destiny, between the king"s two public crownings, and he had been the Stone"s faithful guardian in the two years since.
"Brother Arnault, thank G.o.d you"ve arrived," he murmured, drawing the three newcomers to him with a shepherding motion. "And Brother Torquil." He nodded to Aubrey as well, though he did not know him.
"Come inside, all of you. You won"t attract such notice. I"ve already had the others summoned. The news bodes ill for your Order. Very ill, indeed. I"ll tell you more when we"re safely inside."
Arnault and Torquil exchanged wary glances as they pa.s.sed into the cloister yard and along the east range, but they followed the bishop without question, Aubrey trailing them wide-eyed.
"I fear that several of the particular brothers you were expecting may have been arrested in France,"
Crambeth murmured as they walked. "It"s known that a Brother Oliver was taken, and your Brother Gaspar is likewise missing. I quite liked him."
"Dear G.o.d." Torquil whispered.
But Arnault signed him to silence until Crambeth had led them on through the abbey church and into his own house, where Christoph and Luc were closeted with the two Templar priests, Bertrand and Anselmo, poring over a map. Luc was now clean-shaven like the priests, all four of them now garbed, like Crambeth, in plain black robes.
Beyond them, one more Templar sat slumped on a bench set against the wall: a white-faced Flannan Fraser, stripped down to a ragged arming tunic, having his arm tended by two white-robed Columban brothers.
"He"s ?ne," said the taller one with ?axen hair, with a rea.s.suring glance at Arnault. "It was only a dislocation."
Relieved-for the pair were Brothers Ninian and Fionn, from Iona-Arnault turned his attention to the more urgent question of the news Crambeth had mentioned.
"Christoph, what"s happened?" he demanded, as soon as the bishop had closed the door behind them.
"Are Gaspar and Oliver truly taken?"
Christoph slowly laid aside a pair of calipers.
"Oliver was, about a week after the arrests began," he said quietly. "They"re holding him with the Grand Master and several other senior of?cers of the Paris Temple. We don"t yet know about Gaspar, but it doesn"t look good."
"Could he simply have been delayed?" Arnault asked.
"The rest of us scattered from the Paris Temple, right after you"d left," Anselmo said. "That"s the last anyone has seen of him."
At a light rap on the door behind him, Crambeth turned to admit Armand Breville, Hugues de Curzon, and Hamish Kerr, the latter a fairly recent Scottish initiate of le Cercle. The three apparently had been here for some little while, because all were clean-shaven like the others, and robed in black.
"That"s everyone who has shown up thus far," Christoph said, waving the three newcomers into the room.
"Brother Aubrey, stay by the door, if you would, so that His Grace can join us here. Gentlemen."
He gestured toward the benches and chairs around the table, taking charge, and Arnault dutifully sank down between Torquil and Brother Fionn as the others took places. At Torquil"s gesture, Aubrey pulled a three-legged stool over beside the door and hunkered down on that.
Flannan remained on the bench against the wall, with his arm now in a sling, apparently in no little discomfort, for Brother Ninian stayed seated beside him. At Arnault"s glance of question, Brother Fionn murmured, "He arrived a few hours ago. His shoulder had been dislocated for weeks. Putting it back was not easy-or pleasant. But he"ll be all right."
Arnault grimaced in sympathy, but at least Flannan had won free. Gaspar, however.
He glanced at Christoph, reluctant to ask what he knew he must.
"If Gaspar has been taken," he said, when everyone had settled, "I"m obliged to ask which of the Treasures he was carrying."