"I can only a.s.sume," said Ninian, "that this will be made clear at the appropriate time, as have other things. I suggest that the Feast of Saint Andrew would be the most auspicious time to carry out this task."
"That"s less than a month away," Torquil said. "And it"s a long way to Loch Ness."
"Aye, the ?rst snows already lie on the hills," Arnault said, looking at Ninian in question. "But you obviously have something in mind, or you wouldn"t have suggested so near a date."
Ninian summoned a faint smile. "I have had several months to prepare, my friends," he said, "and Brother Flannan was most helpful. Two of your Templar galleys will be at Dundee by the time we can transport the Stone south."
His listeners only nodded, by now well accustomed not to question anything that had to do with the abilities or information sources of the Columban brethren.
The next day, they began the slow process of bringing the Stone out of its hiding place in the crypt below the cathedral and transporting it down from Dunkeld by wagon, by way of Scone, Perth, and the River Tay. True to Ninian"s promise, the galleys were waiting for them, one for transporting the Stone and one to provide an armed escort. All of the remaining Templars of le Cercle still in Scotland were part of the escort party-Aubrey, Flannan, Hamish Kerr, and Breville, along with Arnault and Torquil-and even Luc, who had come over from Argyll, where the rest of their brethren had retired after Bannokburn.
"It"s good to see you, old friend," Arnault told him, as they clasped hands on making the rendezvous at Dundee. "You and I are the only ones left who were present at that council on Cyprus. It"s only ?tting that we both should witness the ful?llment of that prophecy."
The Templars crewing the galleys were all known to Arnault and Torquil, and asked no questions. Ninian and Brother Seoirse, a young monk from Iona, joined them, their Columban robes most welcome among men so long denied the right to wear the white habit of their own order.
"We expect fair winds, with you along!" Torquil said aside to Ninian, grinning, as they sailed out of the Firth of Tay and headed north.
And fair winds they had, day after day. Skirting the coast past Arbroath and Aberdeen, then along the sandy sh.o.r.eline to round the points at Peterhead and Kinnaird, the galleys made good time. It was the end of the third week in November as they pa.s.sed Burghead, where, after the slaying of Red John Comyn, Arnault had led a band of Templars in rooting out what they believed to be the last vestiges of the Comyn family"s links with Scotland"s pagan past. Glancing at Flannan Fraser, standing farther along the rail, Arnault wondered if he, too, was remembering that day, and perhaps re?ecting on developments since then.
The wind shifted as they entered the Moray Firth, coming directly from where they wished to go, so they were obliged to drop sail and resort to oars. The weather worsened as the wind rose, and even the prayers of their Columban brothers were to no avail, though Ninian had a thoughtful expression on his face as he came away from the bow of the ship.
They continued up the ?rth, rowing against the wind and hidden by the rain and the mist. Three days before Saint Andrew"s Day, they pulled into a hidden inlet, where they took an extra turning of the tides to transfer all unnecessary supplies and extraneous crew to the escort vessel, which would not attempt the transit into Loch Ness. There they also winched the Stone up onto the deck, covering it with a heavy blanket of tartan wool. Arnault sat beside it, occasionally reaching out to touch it, for all the long day it took them to row out of the bay and proceed up the ?rth, with the coasts drawing in on either hand.
They slipped past Inverness that night, under cover of sleet and hail. Dawn found them at the mouth of the narrow sea estuary that connected the ?rth and the loch, with the Feast of Saint Andrew but two days away. During the night, the temperature had plummeted below freezing, and a rime of ice clung to the rocks insh.o.r.e and all across a raft of seaweed clogging the mouth of the stream. Ice likewise adorned all the ship"s rigging.
"Are you sure the channel is navigable?" Arnault asked the captain of the transport galley.
"No, not at all sure," came the response. "But Brother Ninian tells me that Saint Columba will take care of it. Meanwhile, the best time to try it is at the high tide."
They waited until nearly noon to attempt a transit, more than an hour before the expected high tide.
Timbers creaking in protest, the galley nosed her way cautiously into the mouth of the stream, with a crewman sounding the depth from the bow and oarsmen occasionally fending them off from obstacles.
The channel was close, the depth variable. Now and again the ship"s keel sc.r.a.ped along a sandbar. They had been at it most of the day when the galley softly grated to a standstill.
"It"s too shallow, and there"s ice clogging the channel ahead," the captain informed Arnault, before hurrying forward to investigate.
Going with him to peer ahead from the bow, Arnault saw that the previous night"s intense cold had constricted the brackish waters of the stream to an ice-bound trickle midstream.
"Can we cut through with axes?" he asked.
"We could try," the captain agreed, "but this late in the day, we wouldn"t get very far. The tide"s turned, and the temperature will drop again with nightfall."
"What can we do?" Torquil whispered to Arnault, as the captain directed men overboard to try with the axes anyway.
Arnault slowly shook his head. "I don"t know what will happen if we miss the appointed time."
He asked the Stone, laying his hands upon it and offering up his plea for guidance, but none was forthcoming. He knew the Stone was still alive, but he could get no response from it. Nor could any of the others who tried, either Templar or Columban brother.
The short winter day drew to an early close, and they could do nothing more. Again the night was bitterly cold and crystalline clear, the sky bejeweled with stars. Bringing an extra blanket from below, Arnault bedded down beside the Stone, pillowing his head upon it as Jacob had done, worrying and listening to the creak of the ship"s timbers as she squatted aground. Eventually weariness got the better of worry or listening, and he dozed off.
But his sleep was ?tful, and after a while he became dimly aware of a far-off rushing sound, like the roar of the sea heard through a seash.e.l.l. The roaring became mingled with other noises-a strange, deep-throated chorus of hoots and groans that sent a faint tingle up his spine, though it was not the tingle of fear. Puzzled, his dream-self stood up to investigate.
Gone were the wintry stars. The galley lay softly swathed in a blanket of silvery fog, though far at its bow he could sense a white-robed form standing with arms outstretched into the milk-white blankness.
Beyond, he sensed huge primordial shapes swimming just at the edge of vision, long serpentine necks cresting and dipping as the creatures converged on the galley in a herd, calling out to one another with eerie, moaning cries.
A broad, glistening back broke the fog off the galley"s port ?ank; a second creature surfaced to starboard. A series of heavy b.u.mps from below caused the deck to lurch and shudder, and Arnault clutched at the railing as the ship suddenly lifted beneath him-though he could not seem to move farther, or to summon up enough will even to try.
But the ship moved. Borne up on the creatures" backs, teetering and swaying, the vessel slowly began to edge forward. Other long-necked beasts ?anked the ship on either hand, propelling themselves with supple sweeps of their long tails. The rolling surge of their movement was hypnotic, soothing, and carried Arnault back into heavy sleep.
He woke to the cries of excited voices, and rolled free of his blanket to scramble to his feet, hand reaching for his sword. To his astonishment, the galley was ?oating free on a broad sweep of open water that stretched mirror-silver into predawn mist. Torquil was standing at the railing nearby, and glanced back at him in wonder.
"I have a feeling you won"t be at all surprised," he said, "but I do believe we"ve found our way into Loch Ness! The captain says that some freakish turn of the tide must have moved the jam of seaweed and ice and carried us through."
Remembering his curiously vivid dream, Arnault only smiled faintly.
"Stranger things are possible, I suppose."
They rowed southward down the loch while the daylight lasted. Arnault stayed with the Stone, one hand resting lightly upon it as if in rea.s.surance-whether to it or himself, he could not have said. All the day long, Ninian stood gazing ahead in the bow of the ship like the apparition of the night before, though Arnault sensed it had not been Ninian then, but the saint the Columban brother served.
Toward dusk, they at last caught sight of the slighted towers and walls of ruined Urquhart Castle, emerging from the shadowed sh.o.r.eline to their right. The water before it was still as a mirror, its bottomless depths re?ecting the castle ruins and the snow-covered peaks to the north and east. Behind them, the V of their gentle wake followed like a trail of glory, embellished with the rhythmic ripple the oars made. Gazing out across the water, Arnault could almost imagine that he stood on the brink of some strange rift in the fabric of the material world, where sprites and faeries and other creatures, far stranger, could pa.s.s freely back and forth into the realm of spirit. He wondered again what had carried the ship into the loch, and whether it-or they-still followed in the depths below.
Just before sunset, they put the bulk of the crew ash.o.r.e at Urquhart, retaining only half a dozen to man the oars-Templars, all, the captain among them. From the ship"s stores, preserved against this hour, Torquil brought out two white Templar mantles, which he and Arnault donned after girding on their swords-G.o.d"s monks of war once more, ready to do Him service, for the glory of His name. A chill haze was settling above the water as the crew remaining on land gave the galley a push to send it on its way from sh.o.r.e, as winter shadows edged across the loch and the short day began slipping into twilight.
"Not long now," Ninian murmured to Arnault, gazing out across the black mirror of the water.
Clumsily, those remaining bent to the oars, less than a dozen of them, propelling the big galley slowly into the center of the loch. They reached the appointed position just as the sun was dipping behind the hills. A deep blue twilight rolled across the landscape and the surface of the loch as the rowers shipped their oars to let the craft glide to a halt.
As Arnault and Torquil began winching the Stone high enough to clear the rail, and let it balance there, the crew came from below to line up along the opposite rail-except for the captain, who went to the mast with a bundle of something under his arm and ran up a sea version of Beaucant: a long, swallow-tailed pennon of black and white, horizontally divided, that lifted brie?y on a faint breath of air and then was still.
In the silence, it seemed that all creation held its breath, waiting. Quietly Arnault and Torquil stood to either side of the Stone, hands upon it as they waited for the rising of the moon. Ninian stood between them, behind the Stone, gazing out at the lunar glow building beyond the mountain peaks to the east.
Presently, a shimmer of silvery brightness broke behind the eastern horizon as the disk of the rising moon began to emerge. In that ?rst ?ush of moonlight, Ninian raised his hands in invocation from their Celtic heritage.
"In name of the Holy Spirit of Grace, In name of the Father of the City of peace, In name of Jesus Who took death off us, In name of the Three Who shield us in every need, Be thou welcome, thou bright white moon of the seasons."
In the silence that followed these words, Arnault took the Shard from inside his tunic, clasping it between his hands, point downward, and raising it above the Stone as he likewise lifted his eyes and his heart.
"In the beginning was the Word," he murmured, "and the Word was with G.o.d, and the Word was G.o.d."
He drewa deep breath and let it out.
"Lord, may Your Holy Word ever be our foundation, and Christ Himself our chief cornerstone." He slowly brought the Shard down so that its point rested against the center of the Stone.
"Non n.o.bis, Domine, non n.o.bis, sed nomine Tua da gloriam," he said boldly-and was not surprised when the Stone yielded before the Shard of the Law like ice melting under the sun"s warmth, or a bride welcoming her beloved.
When he lifted his hands, he could see no sign of the Shard, but when he laid his hands on the Stone again, he could feel the puissance of their union as a quickening that ?lled his heart with gladness.
He let Torquil help him steady the Stone as they lifted it enough to swing out over the side. His voice rang true and clear as he spoke from the heart.
"Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain," he said, quoting from the Psalms. He could feel the cosmic connection as he lifted his face to the glow that would be the rising moon, as a focus for the prayer he now offered.
"Glorious Chief of chiefs, and captain of my soul-By Your command, the great Solomon raised up the First Temple to be a sign of faith and wisdom. Though physical Temples have come and gone, their ideal has endured down through the ages.
"Now, in accordance with that mandate You gave to Hugues de Payens, our founder, we pledge to raise Your Temple yet again, not by human hands but by faith, and we here lay down the cornerstone of what will become, by Your grace, the foundation for a new Temple, stretching between Heaven and earth.
May its walls be an abiding bastion of Light, and its chambers a treasury of wisdom for the ages. And may this Stone of Destiny, which was Jacob"s Pillow- the seat of Scotland"s Sovereignty-no longer be that alone, but Scotland"s anchorstone, as well, and the anchorstone of Your Temple."
He gave a nod to Torquil, who drew his sword, then turned his face again toward the approaching moonlight.
"Thus saith the Lord," he declared, again quoting from scripture. "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. and the waters shall over?ow the hiding place."
In that instant, the moon broke free of the line of hills, burnishing the surface of the loch to a silvery sheen.
Arnault could feel the Stone throbbing beneath his hand, and he backed away and gave a nod to Torquil, who saluted the Stone with his sword, and murmured, "Non n.o.bis, Domine!"-and slashed the cable.
The strands parted, and the Stone of Destiny plunged toward the water below, breaking the surface in a hollow plunk and an explosion of silver droplets. Just a glimpse they had of the cut end of the cable ?uttering after it as it sank into the darkness, accompanied by a trail of tiny bubbles and a brief phosph.o.r.escence in the water-and then a brief ?urry of coiled tails and sinuous necks that followed it into the unplumbed depths below.
Speechless, Arnault turned his startled glance to Torquil"s, intending to ask what he had seen, but in that instant he became aware that a profound hush had arisen behind the sound of the Stone entering the water, as if time itself held its breath. Torquil looked equally awestruck, as did the crewmen who had just witnessed the Stone"s departure, standing motionless at the opposite rail. Ninian was still gazing at the ripples spreading from where the Stone had disappeared, not so much with awe as expectancy.
An expectancy apparently well justi?ed, for suddenly a diamond-mote of white light erupted from the water amid an explosion of bubbles and a shimmer of silvery bells. More lights whizzed skyward, leaping and sporting like shooting stars. Ribbons and streamers of light followed, soaring toward the moon in radiant arcs.
Soon the whole surface of the loch was dancing with light, as far as the eye could see. Great beams and ribs of light took shape as they watched, enraptured, soaring skyward to shape a luminous edi?ce of columns and architraves, arches and b.u.t.tresses, shining against the night sky-a whole divine geometry expressed in angelic form, dazzling and joyful.
As his gaze yearned upward toward the Temple"s soaring vault, Arnault caught a shining, exalted glimpse of a wondrous city of adamant and pearl, encompa.s.sed by concentric bands of crystal. A fragrance like roses suffused his senses, and a great melodic paean of joy rang out across the heavens-caught only in echo, by mortal ears, but Arnault knew it for the music of the spheres.
A moment only it lingered, leaving but the whisper of roses on the still night air-that and a memory that no one present would ever forget. Yet even as the vision faded before their dazzled eyes, those privileged to have witnessed it-and to have made it possible-knew that the foundation for a new Temple had, indeed, been laid on this, the Feast of Saint Andrew, and that a new Temple would, indeed, arise to bridge the span between Heaven and earth.
Historical Afterword THIS TALE IS FAR MORE CONJECTURAL THAN OUR PREVIOUS book about the Knights Templar, but the historical underpinnings are mostly accurate as to the timeline, the various historical events and persons, and the general case against the Templars. We have tried to avoid taking too many liberties with historical personages.
Guillaume de Nogaret was a natural for our villain, and didn"t require a great deal of embroidery to make him really despicable. And it seemed like a good idea to extend the notion regarding demons that he invented to discredit Pope Boniface VIII, and to make this his vice as well.
Of the historical Templars mentioned, in most cases little is known of them save their names and, sometimes, their of?ces, though we have a bit of information about Jacques de Molay. The princ.i.p.al of?cers of the Temple in Paris fall into this category-and also Oliver de Penne: the only other Templar to be named by name as having his judgment reserved solely to the pope himself, along with de Molay, Geoffrey de Charney, Hugues Paraud, and Geoffrey de Gonneville. We ?nd no other mention of Oliver in historical doc.u.ments, and nothing is known of his ultimate fate, but he must have been a man of some importance, to have been so named-so he was a likely candidate for membership in le Cercle-which is conjectural, of course; but it could have existed.
Hardly a month after the burning of de Molay and de Charney, on April 20, 1314, Pope Clement V died of a sudden onslaught of dysentery.
King Philip IV of France died on the Eve of Saint Andrew"s Day, November 29, 1314, perhaps while the Stone of Destiny was being carried into Loch Ness to ?nd its ?nal resting place.
When Louis XVI died by the guillotine in 1793, the last of his line, a man is said to have leaped onto the platform and dipped his hand in the dead king"s blood, ?icked it out over the crowd, and cried, "Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged."
-Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris, Ireland and Scotland, 2001
About the Authors
KATHERINE KURTZ is the author of the internationally bestselling Deryni books and other historical fantasies. Katherine Kurtz lives in Ireland.
DEBORAH TURNER HARRIS is the author of the Mages of Garillon trilogy, and coauthor with Katherine Kurtz of the Adept series, including The Templar Treasure. Deborah Turner Harris lives in Scotland.
The End