The alien noises drew nearer, recognizable now, had anyone been there to hear, as the metallic jingle of harness, accompanied by the solid thump of heavy hooves on damp, soft ground. Then came a stirring among the branches at the forest’s edge, and three mounted men emerged, swathed from head to knees in heavy riding cloaks of greenish-brown heavily waxed wool. They paused there, barely out of the trees, and all three scanned the meadow beneath until, on an agreed signal, one of them stood up in his stirrups, put two fingers in his mouth, twisted around, and blew a loud, short whistle back into the trees. His companions kicked their horses forward to make room for the file of men and horses that followed them out of the forest.

When they were all assembled, Will Sinclair called for their attention.

“Well, Brethren,” he began. “Welcome to Roslin. The sunshine might be less brilliant than you were accustomed to in France, and the air much cooler, but the place has much to recommend it. It was, for many years, the childhood home shared by myself and my brother Kenneth here, and I cannot tell you how pleasing it is to me to see the place. My father’s hall lies less than a mile from here, on a rocky knoll by the side of the river there. You cannot see it yet, but I assure you it is there and that you will all be welcome, with a sound roof over your heads tonight, warm bedding, and good, hot food. A pleasant change from the fare and lodgings we have known these past nine days. I brought you through the woods because I knew the way, and knew that, were there English soldiery in the area, the likelihood is that they would be encamped in this meadow, for it is the only place within miles that is suitable for such a thing.”

He looked about him, then continued. “And it is as I hoped, serene and calm. But I must caution all of you to bear in mind, from this moment forth, that we are on a mission of secrecy and you must guard your tongues. No one will question you here, for the people are but simple country folk. This valley and these hills are their entire world, and they know nothing of the world beyond a day’s journey from their homes. But they are human, and therefore curious, so they might ask you questions. Answer them simply if they do, and say nothing that might prompt them to ask further. We are warriors, on a mission to King Robert. But we are not monks here. There will be no communal prayers and no services. Do you understand me, all of you?” He looked from man to man, waiting for each one to nod, then nodded himself. “So mote it be, then.”

He turned to Tam Sinclair. “Tam, take eight men with you and ride back to the byre where we hid the wagon, then bring it around by the road to the main house. We’ll be waiting for you. The rest of you, come with us.”

The group split into two parties again, Tam Sinclair leading Mungo and seven other sergeants back into the forest while Will and his party of eleven knights, including Kenneth, formed up in pairs and rode down through the meadow, turning at the banks of the swollen little river, which was less than fifteen paces wide, the water tumbling noisily along its narrow, rocky bed. Kenneth and Will rode at the head of the small column, Will whistling tunelessly to himself while Kenneth looked around him, absorbing the familiar details of the countryside as they drew nearer to their home. When they were about halfway there, at a bend in the river that they both recalled from their boyhood, Kenneth glanced behind him to make sure they could not be overheard, and said in a conversational tone, “You can’t discuss those two letters you received from France the morning we left, eh? That’s a pity.”

Will looked at him, surprised. “Why do you say that?”

Hiss brother shrugged, grinning. “Because you’re morose. The only time you ever whistle to yourself like that is when you’re angry and perplexed, thinking on a difficult problem. And you’ve been doing it since we left Arran, so it has to be because of those letters, because you were fine before they arrived. What are you going to tell Father?”

“You mean about the situation in France? I’ll tell him everything.”

“Everything you can, you mean. Will you mention the Treasure?”

“Aye, but to him alone. Father will keep his mouth shut, but I have doubts about anyone else. Treasure is treasure, and the one we have here is legendary. It would be impossible to stop people from talking about it. Besides, without Father knowing what we’re about, we would have great difficulties doing what we have to do. Don’t forget, we have to open up the entrance to the cavern and then seal it afterwards. I would hate to try to do that on his land without his knowing. In fact, I don’t think we could do it without raising his suspicions, and then his questions could be awkward . . . So I whistle when I’m upset, do I? I wasn’t aware of that.”

“I know.” Kenneth’s grin grew broader. “That’s why you do it. You always have, even when we were boys, and I never mentioned it because sometimes it saved me from a beating . . . You think Tam will be able to get the wagon out of sight without anyone asking questions?”

“Of course, so be it he does it openly. Folk will assume it contains all our gear, and it does. The chests are well covered and tied down. No one will look beneath the wraps, and we’ll move them out into hiding tomorrow.”

“If you say so, Brother . . . you’re the man in charge.” He stood up in his stirrups and peered ahead to where the path curved, following the riverbank. “We’re almost there and I feel like a boy again. I’m going to ride ahead and let them know we’re coming. I wonder if Peggy will be here. Father’s going to have a fit. I’ll have some people ready to take your horses.”

He kicked his horse to a gallop, and Will smiled as he watched him disappear around the bend in the track ahead, at the same time regretting that he could not take his brother and his father fully into his confidence. His father knew little of the Temple Order, other than that he had two sons who served it, and neither he nor Kenneth had any inkling of the existence of the other, far more ancient Order of Sion.

He grunted and turned in his saddle to make sure that the column behind him was in good order, since they would come into sight of his father’s house within moments. Everything was as it should be, but he gave the hand signal to tighten up the column anyway, then went back to thinking about the reason for his whistling. One of their two ships from the Mediterranean had arrived the morning they left, having left its sister ship behind while it sped home to Arran bearing a large wallet of written reports for Will from the headquarters of the Order of Sion in Aix-en-Provence. Will had spent many hours immersed in those documents on the voyage from Arran and at every opportunity since then, and the information they contained had been more than disquieting, even while he had been anticipating nothing good.

Jacques de Molay and several of his closest advisers, all members of the Governing Council, were being held under close arrest in Paris and subjected to questioning by the functionaries of the Inquisition, and there was a terse report in one of the missives, gained through a Sion brother at the King’s court in Paris, that Master de Molay stood condemned, having allegedly admitted to several of the cardinal charges and confessed himself guilty. Will cringed each time he thought of that, because he could only guess at what kinds of atrocities and iniquitous tortures must have been inflicted upon the Master of the Temple to reduce him to the condition in which he would confess to such baseless charges.

In a commentary attached to the report, Seigneur Antoine de St. Omer, the seneschal of the Order of Sion and a direct descendant of Godfrey St. Omer, one of the seven founders of the Temple, had offered solace of his own, remarking that the man had not yet been born who could withstand the torments of the Holy Inquisition, undergoing tortures that encompassed being burned with live coals, stretched on the rack until one’s joints separated, having one’s bones deliberately smashed and left unset, being lowered into vats of water to the point of drowning and then being revived and resubmerged, and having one’s extremities crushed and mangled by the application of screws, all of these torments varying endlessly from day to day. These were the instruments of the Inquisitors . . . the Christian God’s own tools in the war against heresy. Will had vomited on first reading the litany, and his mind had never been free of morbid fascination since that time, for if a giant of a man like de Molay could be broken by such means, what chance had any other poor, accused soul of finding mercy or salvation?

He saw the roofline of his father’s house above the trees that surrounded the knoll on which it was built, and shook his head clear of the images that had been thronging in on him. He could hear voices raised in tumult ahead of him and he raised a fist above his head and kicked his horse to a canter.

Sir Alexander Sinclair of Roslin had sat silent for more than an hour while his two sons told him their tale of the recent events in France and Arran, and now he spoke to Will. It was late at night, and he had led them directly from the great hall of his house after the communal supper into the bedchamber he had shared with their mother since before their births. It was a vast room with comfortable chairs and a huge stone fireplace, and the massive fire burning in the hearth had sunk into embers since their arrival.

Will let the question go unanswered while he gazed at his father for a while, taking stock of the changes he could see in the man. At sixty-eight, Sir Alexander was still a large man, still broad of shoulder and erect in posture, but he had aged greatly, his beard gray-white and his thick, long hair silvered into a halo about his head. His wife had died ten years before, of a sudden sickness that had taken her from her husband before he’d had time to adjust to the possibility that she might die, and the loss had devastated him, leaching much of the bulk and muscle from his giant frame. His mind, however, was unimpaired, and his blue eyes were as bright as Will remembered them.

Will shook his head. “I cannot say, Father.”

“Why? Because you know not, or will not? There are few of your Order left in the land, apart from your own soldiery, very few . . . Sir Alan Moray for one, Sir Robert Randolph, a score or so others. Their observances of your rituals and monkish ceremonials might have been neglected, for we have been at war these past ten years and more, and most of the Temple clergy returned to England years ago. But they will rally to you if you summon them, for they have no idea about this morass of treachery in France, and I dare say they might welcome some solid leadership after so long without it. So which is it, Son, cannot or will not?”

“Cannot, because at this moment I simply do not know. But the need to know consumes me, every waking moment.”

“Aye, well that, at least, is as it should be. The rest will come to you. Having heard what you told me, I am not surprised you’re undecided. Betrayed on every side, by every superior who should support you, you need to think things through, and from a viewpoint that you might never have contemplated ere this all came to pass . . . I know little of the Temple, but if I can help you in any way, you’ve but to ask. You know that.”

“I do, and I thank you for it. But there is—”

“What happened to the Treasure?” his father interrupted. “I hope it was well hidden, for the thought of Philip Capet laying his hands on it offends me. Did he find it?”

Will glanced at his brother, who was wide eyed and slack jawed with shock, and had to smile in spite of himself. “That is what I was about to say, Father,” he said. “The Treasure was well hidden, and Philip’s dogs did not find it.” He nodded towards his brother. “Kenneth reached it first, deep in the forest of Fontainebleau, and brought it safely out. It’s sitting in your barn right now.”

Now it was his father’s face that went wide with shock.

“The Treasure is here? The Temple Treasure, in Roslin? That seems beyond credence. Most men doubt that it even exists nowadays.”

“It exists very solidly, Father, believe me. I’ll show it to you tomorrow, but only the chests, I fear. I’ve never seen them open. Their contents is the most closely held secret of our Order, valuable beyond price. Only the Grand Master is permitted to know what they are. His two closest deputies have access to the keys to the chests, but even they are not permitted to look until one of them becomes Master himself.”

“And you’ve left these chests out in the barn?”

Will laughed. “Why not? They’ll come to no harm. They’ve lain untended in a cave in France for ten years, and since then they’ve been safely stowed in the holds of several ships. They can survive a night in a barn, until we decide on someplace safe to hide them for a while.”

Sir Alexander had now had sufficient time to absorb the shock and his expression turned pensive. “What are your plans for it? Plainly you seek to hide it, but why bring it here in the first place?”

“Because here, with your consent, is where we intend to conceal it.” Ignoring his father’s raised eyebrow, Will quickly told him about the cavern he and his brothers had discovered as boys, and the old man chuckled, his eyes sparkling.

“I know it well,” he said. “I played in it with my own friends and brothers as a lad. It’s big enough to lose a substantial treasure inside it. But how large are these chests? You’ll never get them in if they’re too big.” His father paused, a peculiar expression on his face, and Will knew his own face must be reflecting his surprise, for Sir Alexander laughed again. “You didn’t know I knew about the place,” he said. “William, that cave has been there since the beginning of time, long before the first Sinclairs arrived in Roslin. You held the knowledge of it secret, thinking it yours alone—but so did we, my brothers and I, in our own time. And it would surprise me to learn that there was ever a generation of Sinclair boys who did not think the same.”

The old man chuckled again, but quietly this time, as though at himself. “We all delude ourselves in youth,” he continued finally. “It is the same with babymaking and the joys of doing it . . . each of us, each pair of young lovers, believes they have discovered the secret of the ages, now revealed to them alone, the wonder of it. Ah, well. That is the miracle of youth and learning . . .”

Will sat blinking, not knowing what to say next in the face of this unprecedented glimpse of his august sire’s humanity and fallibility, and his mind filled with the sudden knowledge that, no matter how old he grew or how highly placed he became, his father would always have the ability to put him in his place and make him feel like a child again. The feeling grew into the first stirrings of panic, and he coughed and tried to pull himself together, to return to the business at hand.

“Aye . . . of course . . . But that is why we require your permission, Father, and your aid. Many of the men I brought with me are highly skilled masons, while two are architects. It will be a simple task to enlarge the entrance, then seal it up again with stonework once the Treasure is inside. There, it will be more than safe, since none but you in all Scotland will know its location . . . That is true, is it not? You will be the only one who knows of it?”

The elder Sinclair smiled. “The only one I can think of . . . but there were many who knew of it when I was a lad. Today, though, if anyone went back to look for it after your men had finished their work, they wouldna fret about no’ finding it . . . But you have not explained why you need my aid. It sounds to me as though you don’t.”

“Oh yes we do, Father. We need you to make sure that none of your folk come looking out of idle curiosity, seeking to find out what we are doing out there in the woods.”

“Aye. That is easily done. No one will come near you—I can see to that, if nothing else. Now, as soon as day breaks, have some of your men bring the chests in here. They can sit over in that corner, and no one will as much as look at them. Is there anything else you need from me?”

“No, Father, nothing more.”

“Good, then tell me about this King of ours. What was your reading of the man? Kenneth, what did you think of him?”

“I never met him, Father. Will was the one who met and talked with him.”

Will shrugged. “I found him . . . regal . . . and in his dealings with me he was straightforward, noble, magnanimous, and unassuming. I liked him greatly.” Sir Alexander made a harrumphing sound, and Will glanced keenly at him. “You sound unimpressed, Father. Do you disagree with my judgment?” His voice was quiet, showing only curiosity and no offense.

“No, no, lad. I believe you well enough, but until hearing you saying it, I would have been inclined to doubt such things. I knew him as a young man, and I was unimpressed by his bearing or his behavior. In those days he was a strutting lordling, a favorite of the Plantagenet, with not a thought in his mind beyond clothing, hunting, gambling, and women . . . He did not appear to me to be of the stuff from which strong kings are made. My father had supported his grandfather, old Robert Bruce, the Competitor as he was known then, and so I was—with the rest of our family—known as a Bruce man. But this one’s father, Robert Bruce the Elder, was a dour and unlikable man, and even his son shunned his company, preferring to spend his time with the Plantagenet crowd. And the father didn’t seem to mind, probably thinking that, wastrel or not, the boy had the ear and the patronage of the English King . . . for what that was worth.

“But from all I hear, and what you’ve told me from your own experience, it would appear the lordling has grown up well—from Earl of Carrick to King of Scots—and is well thought of, too, by those who know him nowadays. You trust him, then?”

“Aye, Father. I do. He had no need to be generous to us, supplicants for his aid when he was ill beset himself. He was engaging and possessed of a great and unassuming dignity . . . Regal, I said, and regal I meant. Robert of Scotland is a king in more than name.”

“Then I will take your word for it and think no more ill of him. Speaking of which, I hear that he has fallen ill himself and his brother Edward—a hothead, that one—has him under guard near Inverurie. It is mere rumor—I have no proof of the right or wrong of it. You know how people talk, knowing nothing but pretending they know all there is to know.” Sir Alexander rose to his feet and crossed to the fireplace, where he picked up a long, narrow log and used it to rake the embers into activity before placing it among the glowing coals and adding several more. He stood there for long moments with his back to his sons, staring into the rekindled flames, then spoke without turning around.

“How will you protect your fleeing brood? And for how long?”

Will had been thinking about the Bruce’s illness, concerned by the news of it, and now he was aware that he had lost the thread. He looked over at his brother, puzzled, but Kenneth was looking back at him the same way.

“I don’t follow you, Father. What do you mean?”

The old man turned to face them, glancing from one to the other before addressing Will directly. “You are made Master in Scotland, you say . . . Master of what?”

“Of the Temple Order, I told—”

“I know what you told me, William, but now I am asking you to think on what is involved in that. If your worst fears are realized—as it seems they are bound to be—then the Temple is finished throughout Christendom. The head is already gone, and the rest of the goose will run around flapping its wings for a short time, and then fall dead.” He held up a hand to stifle protest, though neither of his sons had responded.

“In all of Christendom, then, your command here—your little outpost of two hundred souls—will be the sole repository of your Order’s history and traditions. Your charge, William, as Master—and yours, Kenneth, as his brother—is to cherish and protect it: knights and sergeants, history and traditions, readiness and manpower. But how long can you sustain it? Where will you find recruits if the Order is abolished? Every man you lose from this time on will be irreplaceable. You cannot even breed sons to fill your ranks, even had you the time, because your people are all monks. Has that occurred to you?”

Will sat staring at his father. “No, Father. It had not. But you are right, and the thought chills me.” He sat still again for a moment longer, meeting his father’s eye, then added, “I have the feeling you have more to say on that . . .”

“I have an idea, a thought, nothing more. But it might offend you. How strong is your authority as Master?”

Will blinked, puzzled by the question. “Here in Scotland, it is all-powerful.”

“But subject to overruling by the Council, is that not so?”

“It is.”

“What if the Council never rules again, on anything? By your own admission, that could happen.”

“Aye, it could, but may God forbid it. And yet, if that should turn out to be the case, I already have my duty defined for me, in writing, and by Master de Molay’s own hand. I will become Grand Master over all . . . which may be my own two hundred and no more.”

“Then release them from their vows.”

“What? Relea—I can’t do that, Father. The mere thought is ludicrous. I do not possess that kind of authority. Besides—”

“Who does possess it, then, the Pope?”

“Well, yes.”

“The same Pope who set the Inquisition to torture a false confession out of your Grand Master in order to appease the greed of your venal King? That Pope? Is that the one you mean? The Pope who rewards centuries of outstanding service and loyalty to his cause with treachery and vicious lies ? The Pope whose craven, pusillanimous nature turns him into an insult against all he is supposed to represent, because he lacks the backbone to confront a king and refute a grievous wrong, and demonstrates his unfitness by turning his back on God Himself?

“Backbone, William—that’s what you need in this case, and if you will but think on it, I believe you will see the truth of it. Absolve your people of their vow of chastity. Obedience and the other one they may keep. But give them at least the chance to marry and breed children to your cause.”

“That’s madness, Father. These men are monks, of long service. They could never adjust to such a change, would see it as sin, as a consignment to damnation.”

Sir Alexander dipped his head. “Aye, some of them might . . . the older ones. But others would not. Their entire world is changed, and will probably remain that way. They will be personae non gratae within the Church, and they may even stand excommunicate, as fugitive members of a banned order. By releasing them from their vows, you would be offering them at least a chance to live as men in this new world in which they find themselves. Should even one score of them go on to breed sons, you would have young minds into which to implant your lore and teachings . . .”

Will sat silent, his mind reeling, seeing only the unconscionable arrogance and hubris of his father’s suggestion and completely unequipped to deal with it, coming as it had from his father, the most honorable, righteous, and upstanding man he had ever known outside of the Order of Sion. Kenneth said nothing, refusing to look at either one of them, and for his part, Sir Alexander, too, said no more, merely waiting for his son to collect his obviously scattered wits. Finally Sir Alexander rescued him.

“Another matter altogether: do you have a squire?”

Will blinked. “A squire? No. I had one until several months ago, but he was knighted last July and I have been traveling since then. Why do you ask?”

“Because you have a nephew, your brother Andrew’s son, Henry, who recently lost his master, after having lost his father, too. Andrew arranged the placement just before he died, but the knight, Sir Gilles de Mar, a worthy man, was sore wounded in the fight at Methven—he fought for Bruce—and he never recovered his health. He died of his injuries two months ago, and so young Henry’s training has been interrupted. He needs a new master. Will you take him?”

“I would, and gladly, but how can I, Father, under the circumstances?”

“Circumstances change. But suitability does not. And I have no doubt your brother here will agree with me when I say that, as Master of your Order in this land, you would be perfect for the lad. He is fourteen and he needs discipline and tolerance, but more than that he needs a good example—integrity, strength and fortitude, and judicious moderation in all things. I can think of no better exemplar than yourself. Such attributes are few and far between nowadays.”

And so after very little more discussion it was agreed that Will would become responsible for his young nephew, Henry Sinclair. But even as he said he would, Will found himself wondering about his dead elder brother, Andrew, whom he could remember only as a boy, six years his senior.

“What happened to Andrew, Father?”

“He died . . . ingloriously for a knight so full of virtue and promise.” Sir Alexander grimaced ruefully. “Ingloriously, but very humanly. He died of a congestion, three years ago, after a mishap on a winter hunt, while he was separated from his companions. His horse stumbled in a storm-swollen spate and threw him into the rocks in the streambed. By the time his men found him, he had been lying there for hours, half in and half out of the water. They brought him home, but he never woke up. He simply grew weaker and sicker until he could no longer breathe. It was God’s will, the priests told me, but I would have seen all of them in Hell to have my son returned to me.”

“And what of the lad’s mother?”

“She died long since, when he was but a babe. Young Henry never knew her.” The old man straightened abruptly. “So, God’s will or not, Andrew was gone, but his son remained, and now he will resume his training in good hands. He will make you a fine squire and will be a worthy knight when his time comes.”

The talk from that time on was desultory, and soon Sir Alexander declared himself tired, and all three men went in search of sleep, although Will, at least, would lie awake for more than an hour, thinking about his father’s astonishing and unsettling suggestion. And thinking about it, about what it might mean were he to do such a thing, he acknowledged that he could do it with impunity, were he so inclined, and were matters in France so bad that the very survival of the Temple knights fell into question. And then as he drifted into sleep he found himself thinking about Jessie Randolph, seeing her smiling at him as though through a distant haze, and too far by then from real awareness even to know that his body was reacting pleasurably to his vague imaginings, and that a succubus was even then coiled on his belly, waiting to drain him later while he slept.

The desk was ancient, acquired by one of his ancestors in the distant past—family legend had it that the piece had once belonged to a Roman governor of Britain, who had left it behind when the Legions left, more than seven hundred years earlier—and it had sat here in this room, huge and immovable, since the house itself was built more than a hundred years before. Its intricately carved oak was blackened and patinaed with unimaginable age. Compared to the objects now concealed behind it, however, the desk was of recent manufacture, and that thought, coming out of nowhere, brought Will out in a rush of gooseflesh and made him focus his attention on the chest again.

Its brass bindings seemed to blaze, throwing reflected sunlight in his face, and he was conscious of the weight of the key to it, hanging from a chain about his neck. It was a slim key, but solid iron, and no one but he knew that the chest it was meant to open contained more keys, one for each of the three large containers that held the bulk of the Temple Treasure, now ranged along the wall at the rear of the desk, and two more for the padlocks on the fourth, smaller and very different from the others. He straightened up and looked at them again, craning his neck to see over the plane of the desk’s surface, highly aware that his would be among the few eyes to look at them before they disappeared into obscurity again, for they were to be reburied the next day, far from sight, in the domed cavern beneath the lands of Roslin. He sighed again, then grimaced and tapped a fingernail against his teeth. The chests were his responsibility now, and for the past half hour he had been sitting staring at them, fighting a growing urge to open them up and look at their contents.

He knew he had the right, for the keys were in his trust, but had he the will? Despite knowing, or perhaps because of knowing, what was in them, he found himself afraid of violating their sanctity, of transgressing upon their sacred antiquity. But it was his responsibility, as he had told himself yet again, mere minutes earlier, to make sure that they were undisturbed; that their contents were intact; that they were, in fact, there at all. His was the name that would be attached to them from tomorrow onwards, from the moment of their concealment in their new hiding place, and his was the honor that would be impugned were they to be opened at a later date and found to contain nothing but rubble, their original treasures stolen.

He cursed, and rose to his feet, crossing directly to the door at his back. Outside, at the top of the stairs, Tam Sinclair turned towards him as the door swung wide.

“Are you done?”

“No, not even started. All’s well?”

Tam shrugged. “Well enough. What’s keeping you?”

“Nothing . . . Nerves . . . Right, I’ll do it now. If anyone approaches, any one at all, sing out, then stall them here for long enough for me to close the locks.”

Tam’s eyebrows twitched. “Who would come up here in daylight? Your father’s out and away and there’s nobody else in the house except the two o’ us. Just do what ye have to do, and let’s away.”

“Fine. I will.” He stepped back into the bedchamber and pulled the door closed behind him, then went immediately to open the brass-bound chest. He removed the keys it held and hefted them in one hand, surprised at the solid weight of them and at the difficulty of grasping all of them at once. Then he looked at the one chest that was different from all the others, the Prime Chest, as he thought of it. He laid the keys on the desktop, then selected the proper pair from the pile, one for each of the two padlocks, before moving towards the Prime Chest. It was the only one of the chests that had iron rings mounted on its sides, for ease of carrying, and a pair of long, thick poles lay on the floor behind it. The poles were threaded through the rings whenever the chest was to be moved, but Will knew, too, because he had been told, that they would fit a second set of rings fixed to the sides of the device inside the chest.

The thought of what that device could be unnerved him slightly, and even as he reached out to grasp the first padlock the hackles rose on his neck and he had to stop. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was suddenly dry and he had to work his tongue before he could open it. He licked his lips and took a firmer grip on himself, then inserted the key, only to find that he had chosen the wrong padlock. Moments later the second lock opened with an oiled click and he reached for the key to the first. The metal hinges of the hasps grated gently as he raised them, and he paused again, drawing a great breath before pulling upwards, gently at first but then much harder than he had anticipated, to lift the heavy, lead-lined lid.

The contents of the chest were covered by a voluminous quilted blanket that he lifted out easily with both hands, dropping it on the floor by his feet as he gazed, open mouthed, at the astonishing object that now lay revealed. It fitted the interior closely, filling almost the entire space, and its ends and corners were wrapped and padded against abrasion by the sides of the chest. The golden glow it emitted seemed to radiate outwards, spilling over the edges of the container, although he knew that was no more than an illusion caused by the brightness of the shaft of sunlight striking the metal-coated surface of the artifact. From the way his skin reacted, though, causing him to shiver and stirring the short hairs at his nape, he had no doubt in his mind that he was looking down at the most compelling object in creation, the single most precious relic on earth: the gold-sheathed coffer made to contain the Covenant between God and His chosen people; the Ark of the Covenant from the Holy of Holies in the Temple of King Solomon.

He lost awareness of how long he had stood there, gazing down at the thing, his senses awash in its beauty, but at one point he found himself reaching out to touch it, his hand coming within inches of the beaten gold surface of the lid before his fingers closed spastically and he jerked his elbow back, holding his forearm out unnaturally in front of him. According to the legends of this thing and the lore of his own Order of Sion, only priests were permitted to touch it. Anyone else who did so died violently, and the ancient scriptures cited examples of such transgressions. He released a shuddering breath and lowered his arm, pushing his hand behind his back, where it might no longer be tempted. And then he allowed himself to look more closely at the two towering golden figures that surmounted the lid of the Ark. They were angels, he knew, Seraphim, but there was little angelic or serene about them. The figures were filled with menace and exuded vigilance and tension, the upper tips of their spread wings almost touching one another as the angels leaned forward, appearing to hover over the lid of the Ark, sheltering the sacred area between them from which the voice of God Himself was said to have spoken to the priests.

Graven images, he thought, and was surprised by the vehemence with which the anomaly thrust its way into his consciousness. The Jews abhorred graven images, believing them idolatrous, and yet here, atop the very repository made to store the stone tablets bearing God’s own Law, was an absolute and categorical defiance of their first commandment, for these two images were graven in pure gold. And Aaron’s Rod was in there, too, if the ancient lore were true: the sacred rod that turned into a serpent and devoured the serpents set upon it by Pharaoh’s priests and sorcerers. Will found himself frowning, for he had always imagined that Aaron’s Rod would be at least as long as its bearer’s height, but the Ark itself was less than four feet in length and just over half that much in width, and thus, if the Rod was really in there, it must be far less imposing in appearance than his imaginings had led him to believe. But then he had a sudden memory of the heavy rod of state the King of France had carried on the only occasion when Will had seen him; it had been a two-inch-thick, intricately carved baton of ebony wood, ornate and solid and imposing, the embodiment of regal authority. The image in his mind of Capet’s Rod, as he thought of it, satisfied him, and he immediately stopped wondering about the size of Aaron’s Rod. But still he stood gazing at the golden box, one detached segment of his mind yet playing with the need to reach out and touch the thing with his bare hands.

He shuddered and wrenched his awestruck mind away from the appalling thought as a vision of his own end burst into his mind and he saw and felt himself stricken and overwhelmed by flames of heavenly immolation, and before he even knew what he was going to do, the lid of the great wooden chest slammed shut beneath his hands and he threw his full weight on it, pushing it down, his head hanging and his open mouth working as he struggled to catch his breath. Moving awkwardly, he forced himself to turn away from the Prime Chest and contemplate the other three, finding enormous difficulty in focusing on them and fighting to shut the image of the Ark and its brooding Seraphim out of his mind.

He failed. He filled his lungs with air, turned away from the chests, and began to walk rigidly towards the corner nearest him, looking straight ahead until he reached it, and then he squared the room, marching to each of its corners before turning right and making his way directly along the wall to the next. Three times he made the circuit before stopping again where he had begun, and now he found himself able to look at the remaining chests with something approaching equanimity. He knew what was contained in these three, because he had been told two decades before, when his studies had first touched upon them, but he had been told again, more recently, what they contained, and this latter time, as a senior member of the upper hierarchy of the Order of Sion, he had learned more than he knew before, because now the safety and welfare of the chests had become his personal responsibility.

He went back to his father’s desk and collected the remaining keys that lay there, unlocking each of the chests in turn until they all yawned open side by side, their contents on display. Each of them, solidly made from dense, heavy wood and reinforced with iron strapping, was packed to capacity with uniform rows of earthen jars in a double layer, eight above and eight below, all of them made from the same thick, reddish clay, indistinguishable one from another. The tops had been covered with stretched, wet leather centuries before, the coverings then tightly bound in place with wet thongs of rawhide that, when dried, formed an airtight seal as hard as iron.

Will felt no desire to touch these items, and no curiosity about their contents.

Will was intensely aware that the threat these records posed to the very existence of the Catholic Church could not be underestimated. Their existence was unsuspected, but were they ever to be found by Rome, they would be destroyed immediately, their threat expunged by fire, along with the lives of everyone who knew of their existence. Will knew the truth of that from his own training within the Order of Sion, because the Church’s entire edifice was built upon a misunderstanding.

Among their ancient secrets, brought with them from their days of slavery in Egypt and firmly rooted in the age-old rites that had dominated their worship for the centuries of their enslavement, the priests of the Israelites had preserved a ritual involving a symbolic death and resurrection—a rebirth into Enlightenment and the search for Communion with God Himself—that had been passed down through the millennia and now existed as the central ceremony of the Order of Sion. Will himself had undergone the ritual, when being Raised to brotherhood in the ancient fraternity, a ceremony that had roots stretching back into the earliest days of Egypt and the worship of Osiris, the God of Light, and his wife-sister, Isis.

Paul, the Order of Sion believed, had caught wind of this ceremonial—or of the reported fact that Jesus had “died” and been “reborn” decades earlier, before Paul’s own time—but being a Gentile and therefore by definition an outsider, he knew nothing of the true Way of the Essenes and thus had been incapable of understanding the truth of what he had discovered. The result was that he had transposed the ritual “death” in the Raising rite into the actual death of the man Jesus, believing that he had truly risen from the grave as a divine being. And upon that misunderstanding had been born the Catholic Church.

“Will! Are ye done in there?”

Will came out of his reverie with a start. “Aye, I’m coming.” He moved quickly now to close and lock the chests again, raising the lid of the Prime Chest and replacing the quilted blanket before closing it firmly and slipping the twin padlocks through the hasps. When he was done, he replaced the keys in their chest and locked that one too, lifted it onto one of the large chests, then hung the key around his neck and thrust it down into his tunic. He slapped the dust from his hands and looked around the room, checking that everything was as it should be, and then he walked quickly to the door and rejoined Tam outside.

Will was relieved to discover that nothing untoward had occurred during their absence, and that the new program of allocated work had progressed well, the newly structured organization apparently functioning smoothly. The brethren were already almost indistinguishable from the ordinary folk he and his men had encountered on the journey to and from Roslin. Their clothing was drab and sturdy, their beards had all been cropped to be unremarkable, and their scalps were overgrown by new-sprouting hair.

The secondary chapter had been set up at Lochranza mere days after Will’s departure, with the senior Temple bishop there, Bruno of Arles, functioning as temporary chaplain and Sir Reynald de Pairaud installed as acting preceptor. This development pleased Will immensely, because the veteran knight, for all his prickliness and his Temple Boar mentality, was utterly reliable when it came to his duty and responsibilities. On his first visit to Lochranza, four days after his return from the mainland, Will was open and sincere with his praises for the work that de Pairaud had already achieved in his new stewardship.

As a castle, with towering mountains in the distance at it back, Lochranza was well established, built upon a high crag overlooking the bay beneath, and very easily defensible, but its principal feature was inside: a great, strongly built hall that was both draft free and well lit, two elements that rendered it more hospitable than nine out of any ten other castles Will could think of. De Pairaud had already taken advantage of that, setting skilled carpenters to partitioning the huge hall one third of the way along its length, leaving ample room for all the necessary daily functions that the garrison required. The partitioned third had been turned into a Temple Chapter House, complete with a single, fortified door; the required celebrants’ Chairs, mounted on rostra in the east, west, north, and south; and a squared central floor laid out in alternating foot-square blocks of black- and white-painted boards thickly covered with multiple layers of clear, hard-set varnish. Here, in quarters far more elaborate and sumptuous than those used by their brethren in Brodick, the knights of Lochranza would convene in the hours of darkness to hold their chapter meetings and conduct the rites and ceremonies of their Order.

Beyond the walls, a smithy had been set up in one of the castle outbuildings, and most of the heavy livestock, the knights’ big warhorses, had been brought from Brodick and divided into small herds of seven to ten animals, each of them tended by a small team of men and allotted its own grazing territory among the lush valley bottoms that penetrated the highlands and mountain ridges soaring behind the castle. The fisher folk who had lived in the village by the harbor had vanished with the approach of the strange Southrons, as they called the newcomers, and it was generally assumed that they had fled to the high hillsides out of fear, caused more by the treasonous conduct of their former chief, Menteith, than by fear of the newcomers per se. De Pairaud believed they would return eventually, as soon as they had convinced themselves that they were being neither hunted nor persecuted, but in the meantime, several of the sergeants had moved into the small stone huts left vacant at the sea’s edge and were making themselves valuable to the community by fishing every day, bringing in a constant and varying supply of fresh fish for the castle tables.

Farther out, de Pairaud explained, on the high moors behind the castle and sloping towards the island’s western shores, other small teams of men were amassing and drying mountains of peat that would be carefully dried and stocked for the following winter’s needs, while yet others were busy felling the remaining trees of the island’s only extensive woodland, pillaged beyond salvation by the English garrison that had built the hall at Brodick. A team of men from both chapters had refurbished the old sawpits used by the English soldiery, and sawyers were now hard at work, cutting the green logs into planks, boards, and beams for their construction needs in both Brodick and Lochranza. Those, too, would have to be stacked and dried before they could be used, but Will no longer believed that his party’s stay on Arran would be a brief one, and even if it were, the exercise of cutting and stockpiling both the fuel and the green lumber served a worthwhile purpose in keeping the men busy and preoccupied against boredom.

He ended his visit to Lochranza by setting out on a long, southwestward sweep of the high moors on his way back to Brodick, visiting the various work-sites and greeting the men involved in person, inspecting their efforts and expressing his satisfaction and encouragement to each group he met. But he found himself fretting more and more about the King’s rumored illness, for if Bruce were to be removed from power, he and his men would be in great peril on this island, perhaps even unable—and this thought chilled him—to reclaim their galleys from the MacDonalds. That final thought weighed heavily on him from the moment it occurred to him, and he arrived back at Brodick Hall on a blustery day of wind and chill rain, his mood matching the weather perfectly, bleak and comfortless.

His worst fears were put at rest immediately. Sir James Douglas had called in to Brodick while Will was at Lochranza and had left word that the Bruce was well, and had withdrawn with his brother and all his army to Strathbogie on the Deveron River near Aberdeen, where the local lord was a staunch supporter and where the King was recovering his strength and preparing for a spring campaign against the English forces in the area.

Douglas had left a packet of dispatches for Will, in care of Sir Richard de Montrichard, and Will collected it and took it with him to read while Tam Sinclair supervised the preparation of a hot bath—a weakness, in the eyes of many, that Will had developed in his years of traveling among the Moors in Spain. Whenever he grew chilled or was drenched by cold rainwater, Will would insist on bathing in hot water, and Tam had long since grown inured to the strange behavior. Tam had not accompanied him to Lochranza, opting instead to remain in Brodick to undertake the interrupted training and education of Will’s nephew Henry, who, as squire now to a military monk, would need to know far more than was required of the squire of a common knight, and Will had been content to leave them both behind.

Will cut the leather binding on the packet and withdrew two documents. One was a folded note on a scrap of parchment from Douglas himself, written in a bold, looping hand, with the tidings of the Bruce’s sickness and mentioning that the King, now much improved, was greatly pleased with the loyalty and dedication of the “Arran” men who rode with him. It ended with a simple, flourished signature, plain “Douglas.”

The second missive was entirely different, carefully folded into a neat oblong and sealed at the rear with a waxen stamp that Will had never seen before. His name was written in a small, neat hand in the upper right front corner. Curious, he broke the seal and opened up the letter, aware of the rich and supple texture of the three sheets of fine parchment between his fingers. He turned first to the last page, his eye going directly to the name at the bottom, and the breath caught in his throat as he saw the simple signature of Jessica Randolph de St. Valéry. For long moments he could do nothing, his pulse pounding and his thoughts churning, seeking vainly for reasons why this woman, of all people, should write to him. But eventually, accepting the folly of such feckless thoughts, and acknowledging his own unreasonable excitement with chagrin, he turned back to the first page and began to read the delicately formed Angevin script, whispering the words aloud to himself in the accents of his own boyhood, in the time before the more ubiquitous French overwhelmed his native tongue.

Then, his decision made, he dressed in fresh, dry clothing and summoned his senior officers into conference. There he outlined what he had been told and asked each of them to think of any difficulties that they might have overlooked in putting his earlier instructions into practice. Did they believe they had been entirely successful, he asked, in hiding any and all signs that might identify their men as monks of the Order?

There was, he was told, only the matter of the mutinous monk, Martelet, who was still imprisoned, with a full month more of solitary confinement ahead of him. The man, Will was told, was still recalcitrant, refusing to acknowledge that he had done anything wrong.

As soon as the meeting was concluded, Will went down to the cells and confronted Martelet, who looked as he might be expected to look after a month of being confined in a tiny cell, deprived of any means of cleansing himself. Will dismissed the sergeant on guard duty, then crossed the floor in two paces to stand in front of the bars, gazing at the prisoner, who glowered back at him without speaking. Will stared at the man for a long time, watching his eyes and seeing no signs of yielding there—no hint of indecision or regret.

“You look unhappy, and you have served only half your sentence. I will take care to avoid seeing you as you approach the next month’s end.” He waited then, but Martelet made no sign of having heard a word.

“You are a fool, you know. There is no one here to overhear us, and I am telling you, man to man, that you are a fool. You are also a mutinous, arrogant ingrate and a disgrace to our Order.”

That won him a response, as Martelet straightened up and almost spat at him. “You would not dare speak thus were there no bars between us!”

“Twice a fool now. It was I who put you in here, you may recall. I bested you out in the yard when you were armored, with a bare sword in your hand. I have no need to dare anything. You, on the other hand, must dare to change your attitude. I was not present when you were sentenced to be held here, nor had I any voice in what transpired. That decision was made by your peers, the brethren you insulted by your arrogant attitude. But hear my voice in this: you cannot win in this case. You swore three oaths on entering this order, and the greatest of the three was obedience—obedience to your superiors, and to the Rule that dictates the behavior of each of us. Your breach of that vow brought you here, to this. And your continuing rebellion can have but one sure end, for it will not be tolerated by your brothers—it cannot be, for the good of all. Thus, if you persist in this folly, you will end up being immured, like other disobedient souls before you. Think you to find any satisfaction in being walled up alive and left to die of thirst, and all for foolish pride?”

He waited, expecting some response, but all he saw was a momentary flicker, perhaps doubt or fear, behind the other’s angry eyes.

“Wake up, Brother Martelet, and use the wits God gave you. We are not so many here that we can afford to lose a brother so needlessly, and absolution is not yet beyond your reach. Look at me now. No crossed surcoat, no mail, no forked beard, and no tonsure. But I am still the man I was a month ago and have been all my life. And I am Master here . . . Master in Scotland, as you yourself heard proclaimed. Beyond those doors at my back, your brethren are no different than they were, save that they, too, are dressed and armed and bearded as I am, their tonsures vanished. This was not done upon a whim. You heard the reasons announced before your trial and they are sound and solid, necessary to our continuing welfare. And still you choose to be obdurate, which makes me call you fool for your pride and stubbornness.”

He stopped, for the space of a heartbeat, then continued. “Think on this.

Two days later, on a bright but cold afternoon, the summons came, brought to him by Tam, young Henry following at his heels like a watchful puppy. “Martelet’s asking for you. Will ye go?”

Will set his sword and whetstone against the wall by the step where he had been sitting and stood up. “A bath, Tam, good and hot, as quick as you may.”

“A bath? You had a bath three days ago!”

“Not for me, man, for Martelet. He’s filthy and foul and hoaching with fleas and lice. Set out fresh clothing for him, too—I have plenty and to spare—then take the ones he will strip off away and burn them, fleas and all. Be quick now. Henry, you help him.”

Mere moments later, Will was facing Martelet again though the bars of his cage. The prisoner’s face was calm now, showing no trace of the anger or bitterness that had marred it before. Will nodded to him. “Have you decided?”

When Martelet spoke, his voice was as calm as his expression. “I have. I confess I have been arrogant, perhaps slightly mad, and my behavior inexcusable.”

“Not inexcusable. It is pardoned.”

“My thanks then. I would like you to know that I will not forswear myself in this. I will obey henceforth.

“So mote it be. Guard! Release the prisoner. I’ll wait outside, in the fresh air.” That last was to Martelet, who merely nodded and waited for the guard to open the door to his cage and unlock his chains.

Several minutes later, he stood cringing in the bright afternoon light, holding both hands up to shield his eyes against the unaccustomed glare. Will gave him time to adjust to the brightness, then led him to his own quarters, where Tam and young Henry already had the wooden tub half full of steaming water.

“Drop your clothing over there in the corner, then cleanse yourself in the bath. Be thorough. Use the soap. Everywhere. It is medicinal and will kill the vermin in your hair, both head and body. And have no fear, the water will not sap your strength or lay you open to the Devil’s wiles. There are fresh clothes on the chair there and those boots should fit you . . . and you’ll find trimming shears on that table by the wall. Tam will help you with the trimming, if you need him. When you are cleaned and ready, my squire here will bring you to me. I shall be in the preceptor’s quarters, with the preceptor himself, Admiral de Berenger, and Bishop Formadieu attending me. You will address your contrition to them, and they will absolve you of the remainder of your punishment, for you stand lawfully convicted and sentenced according to the Rule, and in seeking clemency you must now convince them, the senior brethren of our community, that your remorse and contrition is real and heartfelt. Farewell then. We will await you.”

Within the hour, the thing was done. Martelet, scrubbed and trimmed and combed and freshly dressed in a simple tunic and leggings, looked like an entirely different person from the man they had all come to deplore in recent months, and the tribunal of senior brethren sat emotionlessly as he recanted his former behavior and asked humbly for reinstatement. The tribunal had few questions for him, contenting themselves with reminding him that he lived under oath and now upon their sufferance.

Will was glad to see that de Montrichard, too, had undergone some kind of quiet transformation in the recent past. Gone was the diffidence and the air of indecisiveness that had marked the man and caused Will great concern since their departure from La Rochelle; the knight who stood here now was every inch the Temple preceptor, crisp, decisive, and authoritative, speaking from the full stature of his office. He reminded Martelet that he would undergo close scrutiny for the month to follow, and that, should his behavior be found wanting, he would return to the cell from which he had been released, to serve out twice the length of his full sentence. He warned him sternly to adhere strictly to the Order’s Rule henceforth, and then dismissed the case.

Martelet stood hesitantly for several moments, clearly not quite believing that he had been pardoned and set free, and then he bowed deeply and thanked the tribunal for their clemency, before turning away and marching smartly from their presence. Only then did Will permit himself to relax, subsiding back into his chair and breathing a deep sigh. He would have been reluctant to cause the man’s death, but he would have had no option had Martelet chosen to remain obdurate.

He barely noticed when the others began to stand up and move away, and by the time he did, his mind, freed from his concern over Martelet, had already moved on to other, less harrowing things, among them the impending arrival of the ship from the Mediterranean coast of France; the upcoming change of roster for the troops soon due to return from riding with the King on the mainland; the incongruous possibility of releasing his men from their oath of chastity—a thought that recurred to him from time to time nowadays but bore no real onus of consideration; and the troublesome matter of whether to respond to the letter from the Randolph woman. She had gone to considerable trouble to put his mind at ease on the matter of the King’s illness, and he felt both grateful that she had and guilty for the pleasure he had taken from it. But then he reminded himself that she had been ordered to do so, for all intents and purposes, by the Bruce himself. His decision not to respond was made as he grasped the wooden fists at the ends of his chair’s arms and levered himself up to follow the others to the refectory, only to find that Richard de Montrichard had stopped to wait for him in the doorway.

“May I ask a question?” he asked, as though seriously awaiting a deliberated answer.

“Of course. What is it?”

The preceptor stepped aside to allow Will to pass, then fell into step beside him. “Idle curiosity, you might think, but it is not. How long do you believe it will take us, north and south, to implement all you designed for us before you went away last month? I can judge my own people’s progress, but you are the only one with entire overview, and so I thought to ask you outright. My estimate would be four months from now.”

Will looked at him. “For all of it, Lochranza included? No, Sir Richard, I fear you are being optimistic. The best I could guess at, to see this island settled to our satisfaction, would be half a year from now—high summer—and perhaps even longer. We have much to do, and it cannot all be done at once. We have buildings and barracks, bothies and byres to build.” He smiled at the preceptor’s blank-faced reaction to the Scots words, and kept on speaking. “And they have to be built well—roofed and snug against the weather all the year round. We’ll build them out of peat sod, so they’ll be solid, but we’ll have to dig the sod in the first place. We have to prepare beach sites, too, where our galleys and ships can be hauled ashore and their fouled bottoms scraped clean of barnacles and shellfish. That will take some work. There are sufficient suitable sites around, but no one has ever had a need to shape them to such purposes, so we will have to start from the very beginnings on that project. The logging you are familiar with, but that will not last six months. De Pairaud’s master sawyer tells him we will have used up all the suitable trees within half that time, so after that, we will simply be sawing and stacking the remaining logs. And atop all of that, we have our community obligations and holy days, and our ongoing training to be dealt with, including the revolving roster of the troop accommodations between here and Scotland. No, my friend, trust me—we will be fortunate indeed if we are finished here within six months.”

They had arrived at the doors to the refectory and went inside to find themselves late, one of the brothers already reading the day’s lesson to the silent assembly as the two most senior members of the community made their way in silence to their places.