“And so he assumed the obvious: that the letter still existed and that Bar Simeon had passed it for safekeeping to another of his race.”
“A Jew, you mean. Wait you now, wait just a minute.” Sinclair sat frowning, his thoughts tumbling over each other. “When did all this occur?”
“More than a year ago and probably closer to two.”
“Before the purge.”
“Immediately before it. The plans for that event must have been well in hand already, for it was a massive operation.”
“Aye, it was, and there is not a single Jew left alive in France today to denounce it, even if anyone would listen. It was seen as right and fitting that the confiscated Jewish money—the riches of the Christ-killers—should enrich the French treasury.”
“You sound as if you disagree with that.”
“I do. Are you surprised, knowing the roots of our own ancient brotherhood in Sion? I have no truck with anti-Jewish hatred. I find it despicable and demeaning, involving willful denial of the fact that Jesus himself was Jew.”
“True, he was.” St. Valéry sat down again and retrieved his tumbler from beside his chair. “But none of the Jews in France—apart from Yeshua Bar Simeon, of course—had anything to do with Etienne’s money. Only we, the Temple, knew anything of that…” He sipped at his drink. “Has it occurred to you that we might arguably be considered usurers?”
Sinclair eyed the admiral askance. “No, because we are no such thing. We levy a small fee to cover the costs of doing what we do, safeguarding and transferring funds, but that is far from usury.”
“Aye, that is what we claim, but is it true? So much of us is little known, even among ourselves, that I fear much truth might have been lost since first the Temple was conceived in Outremer. Can you, for example, cite me the true meaning of the Order’s first medallion, the one with two knights mounted on a single horse?”
“Sigillum Militum Christi? It merely represents the fact that in the Order’s earliest days the knights were so impoverished that two men would often have to share one horse.”
St. Valéry’s lips twisted with disdain. “Again, that is what is said. I choose to doubt it. Think about it, Sir William. The original nine members of Hugh de Payens’s cadre were all members of the Order of Sion—the Order of Rebirth in Sion, as it was then known. After their discovery in the Temple ruins, their numbers swelled and the Temple was born, full of Christian fire and zealotry and underpinned with bigotry and bloodthirsty passion. It pleases me to believe that the first symbol they adopted—the two-man medallion—was an irony, developed, I tend to think, by de Payens himself, the founder of the Temple Order. To me, it depicts the fundamental duality of the transformed organization—not two men on one horse, but two men within each of the founding knights, the first of them the knight of the Temple Mount, the other the far more ancient Brother of Sion. That may be nonsense, born of my own solitude and too much thought, but I take comfort from it.”
His listener nodded slowly. “That would never have occurred to me,” he said eventually, his voice filled with admiration. “Not if I lived to be a hundred years old. But having heard it from your mouth, I believe it might be true.” He smiled, then stooped to pick up his own tumbler, draining it and savoring its fiery potency for long moments, and when he spoke again his voice was lower than it had been. “We never really learn much of anything, do we? Most of us cannot wait to forget all that we know. But what were we talking about before that?”
“About the Jewish purge, how well it succeeded.”
“Ah yes.” He hefted the empty glass in his cupped hand. “Those Benedictine monks must deal in magic. I have never had the likes of this before…my head is swimming.” He waved his hand, dismissing that topic. “And that was nigh on two years ago. What happened to the Baroness at that time?”
“Her people saved her.”
“What people, and how?”
“She and Etienne traveled at all times with a bodyguard of Scots, assigned to them by Lord Thomas Randolph himself. They were as loyal as wolfhounds, and as savage. Etienne took half of them with him when he went to Paris. They were with him when he was arrested and were cut down by the King’s Guard when they tried to intervene. But they trusted no one and had posted a rear guard outside the gates to keep watch. The watchers saw what happened and returned directly to Le Havre, where they commandeered a ship and took their lady off to safety. To her home in Scotland, though, not in England. As I say, they trusted no one, and Edward of England had been waging his war against the Scots for years, so the Baroness’s bodyguard chose to return her to her home and not to risk the goodwill of the English. I knew nothing of any of this at the time.
“Eventually, the letter I had sent to Etienne was forwarded to the Temple in Edinburgh from the Temple in London, but by then a good six months had elapsed. And then, completely unexpectedly, Lady Jessica sailed into La Rochelle, just over a month ago, to reclaim the treasure we held in trust for her, as my brother’s widow.”
“It must be a deal of money.” Sinclair’s tone was ironic, but St. Valéry nodded.
“It is. Six large chests of gold, in bars and coin, and five more of silver, bars and coin. Sufficient to ransom a king…or to support one in a time of desperate need…
“The Lady Jessica is quite open about her intentions. She intends to give the gold to Robert Bruce, your King of Scots. That is her absolute right, of course, but it entailed another problem that I had not foreseen. I required a password to release the money properly, and only Etienne could have known what that might have been. And so I sent another letter to Theodoric de Champagne in Marseille, explaining my dilemma and requesting the word from him, since he had the only duplicate. He sent it without commentary or demur, having been instrumental in launching this entire adventure, but in the interim the Lady Jessica decided that while waiting, she would visit my mother in Tours. My brother’s widow is a strong-willed woman and was convinced there would be no danger entailed, provided she went alone with only the smallest escort for protection.”
“And?”
“She was denounced and betrayed. A steward in my mother’s household was in the pay of de Nogaret. He sent off a messenger to Paris, but then was foolish and arrogant enough to demand that the Lady Jessica stay where she was when she prepared to leave. My youngest brother, Gilbert, killed the man and fled, leaving a trail and allowing Lady Jessica to make her escape.” St. Valéry paused, then continued in a level voice. “We have not heard from Gilbert since he disappeared, but we hope he is still alive. In the meantime, the Lady Jessica has been hunted all over France, and had it not been for your kinsman Tam Sinclair and his assistance today, she would have been captured trying to enter La Rochelle. The three men you saw killed were with her. She had hired them to smuggle her into the city, but they panicked when the guards began to check their handcart a second time, for they knew they were discovered.”
“So now you wish me to escort this lady back to Scotland.”
St. Valéry looked straight at Sinclair. “I do, but not alone. I will be coming with you, bear in mind. And with her you will accompany and safeguard the treasure for the King of Scots. It is my good-sister’s, and it is of incalculable value, and if it remains here, de Nogaret will seize it and he will have won a sizable victory even should he fail in all else.” He hesitated. “It is already loaded aboard my galley, along with a lesser treasure of our own.”
“A lesser treasure? May I ask what that is?”
“Aye, there is nothing secret about it. It is our own reserve of specie, gold and silver