He dismissed the weather with a wave of his hand. “About this lore, or the lack of it … There is one piece, one fragment of the ancient lore of Sion, that escaped somehow and was long since adopted by the Temple.”
“The Merica matter.”
“Aye, precisely. No one has ever discovered the source of the betrayal, or how the information was divulged, but it was the only instance, ever, of such a thing occurring. Personally, I began some years ago to suspect that Hugh de Payens himself may have released it deliberately, early on in the Jerusalem growth of the Order of the Temple, believing it to be harmless, yet valuable as an earnest of a need for secrecy within the new-established Order. A seed, perhaps, from which to grow a tradition. Do you think that fanciful?”
Sinclair jutted his jaw. “No, not at all. It makes perfect sense now that you mention it. The Merica rumor never had much substance to it, and had been unimportant to our objectives. It was regarded as trivial by everyone who knew of it. Its disclosure was certainly not the kind of thing that could ever threaten our Order. So yes, I think that Hugh de Payens might have borrowed it, in a time of need.”
“Merica is no rumor, Sir William. It is an accepted and ratified segment of our ancient teachings and beliefs.”
“Yes, I know the substance of it, Admiraclass="underline" that there exists, beyond the Western Sea, a fabled land of plenty, vast and endless, watched over by a brilliant evening star that the people who live there call Merica. I have even studied what there is to know of it, though that is very limited. But no matter what any of us might wish to believe, it remains no more than a fable, rooted, as you say, in our lore. We may speculate on it, but we have no proof that it exists, or that it ever was.”
“I agree, but that is what I was thinking about …”
“Sir Charles, you are not making sense.”
“On the contrary, Sir William, I believe I am. How many vessels would you say we have in our fleet?”
Another gust of wind drove icy drops of rain against their faces, and Sinclair raised a hand to wipe his cheek, surprised to feel the coldness of the skin against his fingers. “You know that better than I, Admiral. It is your fleet. I have made no attempt to count them, but the number twenty is in my mind.”
St. Valéry dipped his head. “That is a fair estimate. We have seven naval galleys and fourteen cargo vessels—twenty-one in all. In addition, by this time next week, dependent upon what we may find off Finisterre, we could have half as many ships again.”
“But the newcomers would not be cargo carriers.”
“No, that is unlikely. If any vessels reach the rendezvous at all, they will be naval galleys, simply by virtue of the word sent out to the ports.”
“How many fighting men do you have at your disposal?” Sir William asked.
“At my disposal, as opposed to yours?”
“Aye, seamen and landsmen.”
“Hmm … Landsmen, not counting your brother’s contingent, one hundred fifty-four from the garrison at La Rochelle, of whom thirty and six are serving lay brothers and therefore noncombatant …” St. Valéry made a grimace while he calculated in his head. “One hundred and eighteen fighting men of all ranks, therefore, under de Montrichard. Seamen? The crews of the cargo ships, about four hundred men in total, are not fighters. The galley crews are all fighting men, and they range in size from forty oars to twenty. Two men to an oar, with a relief crew of one to two extra men per oar on each craft … That could total seven hundred men, but it is a misleading tally because the number of relief oarsmen varies widely from galley to galley, no matter how hard we try to sustain them.” He shrugged. “But there you have it. A large force, on the face of it. It could be formidable.”
“Aye, it could. And it will be. So whence comes all this talk of Merica, and what has it to do with this fleet?”
St. Valéry stopped walking and turned to him. “Would you need that many ships in Scotland, a foreign land? Seven to perhaps twenty galleys and a fleet of cargo vessels? For if you do not, I should like to take a few of the ships, manned only by men who wish to go with me, and sail in search of this fabled place.”
“Merica?”
St. Valéry showed no reaction to the incredulity in Sinclair’s voice, and the two men stood eyeing each other.
“This is not tomfoolery,” Sinclair said at last, his voice without inflection. “You mean what you say.”
The admiral shrugged very slightly. “I do not deal in tomfoolery. I never have; a lifelong habit. I have always been careful to say what I mean … and in consequence, to mean what I say.”
Another silence ensued, this one shorter, until Sinclair spoke again. “You are aware, I presume, of how absurd that sounds. You are proposing to sail off with a portion of our fleet, for vast distances and through uncharted waters, in the hope of finding a place no man has sought in more than a millennium—a place that may never even have existed. And you will ask for volunteers to go with you, into almost certain death.”
St. Valéry shrugged again. “Essentially, yes. But I would not call it insane.”
“Of course you would not—it’s your idea,” Sinclair said with a grin. “You know, of course, that the name of the place where we will rendezvous, Finisterre, means the end of the world, the end of land?”
St. Valéry smiled. “I do. But I suspect that name was given the place by men who had never found land beyond that point … because they had never sailed far enough westward. The ancients knew nothing of navigation beyond sight of land.” The admiral cocked his head, gauging his companion’s concern. “Look you,” he continued. “Hear me out, if only as a man. Listen to what I have to say, and then think about it before you come to any decision. We have ten days at least, and probably more, before we will have to decide. And then, if you decide against my request, I shall obey your wishes, as I am bound by oath. It will be reluctantly, but I will obey …”
“Go on.”
“Think first on what I said about the need for some sign for the men involved in whatever events are happening in France today. If things are truly as bad as they appear to be, and all the brethren of senior status have been taken and imprisoned, then those rank-and-file members who have survived the initial purge, or attack, or whatever it may turn out to be, will feel abandoned and lost, like a rudderless ship in a high sea … And if that is the case, then matters will only grow worse.”
Sinclair frowned as he thought about that, then shook his head. “I can’t accept that, Admiral—that things will grow worse. I have to believe that whatever has happened to our brethren in France will be temporary, no matter how traumatic. I believe Master de Molay himself believed that when last I spoke to him, and logic itself demands that it must be so, simply because of our size, if nothing else—”
“The Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is bigger,” St. Valéry interrupted, sardonically, leaving the younger man blinking. “Surely you would not dispute that?”
“Well, no, not in terms of numbers. There is no denying that strength, but—”
“But we must suspect the active participation of the Church in what has happened to our Order, Sir William. Philip the Fair, for all his arrogance, would never dare to move against us as he has without the Pope’s permission. Such an action would require papal sanction, since we of the knighthood are monks. And need I remind you that Pope Clement is generally accepted to be Philip’s puppet, indebted to Capet for his position?”