Order In Chaos

The Corporal of the Guard’s single shout, ordering the fleeing men to halt, went unheeded, and almost before the word had left his lips the first crossbow bolt struck the cobblestones with a clanging impact that stunned the crowd into instant silence. Shot from high above the gates, and too hastily loosed, the steel projectile caromed off the worn cobblestone and was deflected upwards, hammering its point through the wooden water barrel from which Tam Sinclair was drinking, shattering the staves and drenching the man in a deluge of cold water that soaked his breeches and splashed loudly on the cobbles at his feet.

Cursing, Tam dropped down onto the wet stones, landing on all fours and rolling sideways to safety under the wagon’s bed as the air filled with the bowel-loosening hiss and sickening thud of crossbow bolts. His other apprentice, Hamish, jumped from the wagon bed and dived behind the protection of a wheel hub, fighting off others who sought the same shelter.

None of the three fleeing men survived for long. The first was brought down by three bolts, all of which hit him at the same time, in the shoulder, the neck, and the right knee. He went flying and whirling like a touring mummer, blood arcing high above him from a jagged rip in his neck and raining back down and around him as he fell sprawling less than ten paces from where he had begun his flight. The second stopped running, almost in mid-stride, teetering for balance with windmilling arms, and turned back to face the city gates, raising his hands high above his head in surrender. For the space of a single heartbeat he stood there, and then a crossbow bolt smashed through his sternum, the meaty impact driving him backwards, his feet clear off the ground, to land hard on his backside before his lifeless body toppled over onto its side.

The third man fell face down at the feet of a tall, stooped-over monk, one outstretched hand clutching in its death throes at the mendicant’s sandal beneath the tattered, ankle-high hem of his ragged black robe. The monk stopped moving as soon as he was touched, and stood still as though carved from wood, gazing down in stupefaction at the bloodied metal bolts that had snatched the life so brutally from the running man. No one paid any attention to his shock, however; all their own fascinated interest was focused upon the dead man at his feet. The monk himself barely registered upon their consciousness, merely another of the faceless, wandering thousands of his like who could be found begging for sustenance the length and breadth of Christendom.

So profound was the silence that had fallen in the wake of the shattering violence that the sound of a creaking iron hinge was clear from some distance away as a door swung open, and then came the measured tread of heavily booted feet as someone in authority paced forward from the entrance to the tower on the left of the city gates.

And still no one stirred in the crowded approach to the gates. Travelers and guards alike seemed petrified by the swiftness with which death had come to this pleasant, early evening.

“Have you all lost your wits?”

The voice was harsh, gravelly, and at the sound of it the spell was broken. People began to move again and voices sprang up, halting at first, unsure of how to begin talking about what had happened here. The guards stirred themselves into motion, too, and several made their way towards the three lifeless bodies.

Tam Sinclair had already crawled out from his hiding place and was preparing to mount to his high seat, one foot raised to the front wheel’s hub and his hand resting gently on the footboard of the driver’s bench, when he heard a hiss from behind him.

“Please, I heard you talking to the young man. You are from Scotland.”

Sinclair froze, then turned slowly, keeping his face expressionless. The woman was standing by the tail gate of his wagon, white-knuckled hands grasping the thick strap of a bulky cloth bag suspended from her shoulder. Her shape was muffled in a long garment of dull green wool that was wrapped completely around her, one corner covering her head like a hood, exposing only her mouth and chin. She looked young, but not girlish, Tam thought, judging from the few inches of her face that he could see. The skin on her face was fair and free of obvious dirt. He eyed her again, his gaze traveling slowly and deliberately but with no hint of lechery, from her face down to her feet.

“I am of Scotland. What of it?”

“I am, too. And I need help. I need it greatly. I can reward you.”

This woman was no peasant. Her whisper had been replaced by a quiet, low-pitched voice. Her diction was clear and precise, and her words, despite the tremor in her voice, possessed the confidence born of high breeding. Tam pursed his lips, looking about him instinctively, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention; all eyes were directed towards the drama in the nearby open space. He sensed, though he knew not how, that this woman was involved in what had happened here, and he was favorably impressed by her demeanor, in spite of his wariness. She was tight wound with fear, he could see, and yet she had sufficient presence of mind to appear outwardly calm to a casual observer. His response was quiet but courteous.

“What trouble are you in, Lady? What would you have of me, a simple carter?”

“I need to get inside the gates. They are…People are looking for me, and they mean me ill.”

Sinclair watched her carefully, his eyes fixed on the wide-lipped mouth that was all he could really see of her. “Is that a fact?” he asked then, his Scots brogue suddenly broad and heavy in the rhetorical question. “And who are these people that harry and frighten well-born women?”

She bit her lip, and he could see her debating whether to say more, but then she drew herself up even straighter. “The King’s men. The men of William de Nogaret.”

Still Sinclair studied her, his face betraying nothing of his thoughts although her words had startled him. William de Nogaret, chief lawyer to King Philip IV, was the most feared and hated man in all of France, and the woman’s admission, clearly born of a desperate decision to trust Tam solely on the grounds of their common birthplace, invited him instantly either to betray her or to become complicit with her in something, and complicity in anything involving the frustration of the King’s principal henchman surely led to torture and death. He remained motionless for a moment longer, his thoughts racing, and then his face creased beneath his short, neatly trimmed beard into what might have been the beginnings of a smile.

“You’re running from de Nogaret? Sweet Jesus, lass, you could not have named a better reason to be seeking aid. Stay where you are. You are hidden there. I need to see what’s going on ahead of us.”

Something, some of the tension, seeped visibly out of the woman, and she drew back slightly, concealing herself behind the rear of the wagon. Sinclair began to haul himself up onto the hub of the front wheel. He was still apprehensive and curious about the woman, but felt somehow that he was doing the right thing. He paused with one foot on the hub to look over the heads of the crowd and across the open space to where the monk still stood over the dead man, hunched as though petrified, and after a moment Sinclair gave a small snort and swung himself up and onto his seat.

There, settled on his bench above the crowd, he gathered the reins of his team in his hand, reached for the whip by his feet, and gave a piercing whistle. His two lanky but strong-looking apprentices came running to his summons, swinging themselves lithely up into the vehicle. The one called Ewan took a seat on the bench beside Tam, and the other settled himself comfortably again among the covered shapes of the cargo in the wagon bed. But, whip in hand, Tam Sinclair made no move to start his animals. He had nowhere to go. The crowd was jostling and shuffling, milling at the edges of the space surrounding the slain men, but it was not going forward. The guards were still intent upon discovering whatever it was that had set the trouble afoot, and none of them had thought to marshal the waiting traffic.

The three dead men had apparently been pulling a handcart with them, and from the garbled commentary of the people around him, Tam gathered that it was when the guards, their suspicions aroused for some reason, had set out to search the cart and then attempted to seize one of the men that the trio broke and ran. Now, watching a handful of guards swarming over the high-piled contents of the handcart, Tam wondered idly what could have been in there that was worth dying for. He would never find out, because even as his curiosity stirred, the Corporal of the Guard ordered the cart to be taken into the guardhouse and searched there. Tam eyed the guards as they hauled it out of sight, then shifted his gaze to the swaggering figure of the harsh-voiced knight who had emerged from the tower and was now stalking about the open space where lay the three dead men.

He was not a tall man, this knight, but his burnished half armor, worn over a suit of mail and topped by a domed metal helmet, enhanced his stature in the late-afternoon light, and the scapular-like King’s livery he wore, a narrow-fronted, dingy white surcoat edged with royal blue, the embroidered fleur-de-lis emblem of the royal house of Capet centered on the chest, added to the air of authority that set him apart from everyone else within sight.

Gazing stolidly from his perch high on the driver’s bench, Tam Sinclair was not impressed by what he saw in the knight. He himself had been a soldier too long, had traveled too far and seen too many men in situations of dire, life-threatening peril, to be influenced by a mere show of outward finery. External trappings, he had learned long years before, too often had little bearing on the substance of what they adorned. The man he was looking at was a King’s knight, but in the driver’s eyes that in itself was no indicator of manhood or worth. People called the King of France Philip the Fair, because he was pleasant, almost flawless, to behold, but beauty, Tam knew as well as anyone, went only skin deep. No one who knew anything real about the puissant monarch would ever have considered referring to him as Philip the Just, or even the Compassionate. Philip Capet, the fourth of that name and grandson of the sainted King Louis IX, had shown himself, time and again, to be inhumanly self-centered, a cold and ambitious tyrant. And in Tam Sinclair’s eyes too many of the knights and familiars with whom the King surrounded himself were cut from the same cloth. This particular example of the breed had drawn his long sword slowly and ostentatiously and walked now with the bared blade bouncing gently against his right shoulder as he made his way towards the tall monk who stood isolated on the edge of the crowd, still stooped over the man who had died clutching his foot.

“Ewan.” Tam spoke without raising his voice, his eyes focused on the knight’s movements. “There is a woman at the back of the cart. Go you and help her climb up here while everyone is watching the King’s captain there. But do it easily, as though she is one of us, and on the far side, where you won’t be as easily noticed. Hamish, sit you up here with me and pay no attention to Ewan or the woman.” Ewan jumped down from the wagon, and as Hamish moved up to take his place on the bench, Tam tipped his head, drawing the younger man’s attention to the tableau on his left. “I think yon monk’s in trouble, judging by the scowl on that other fellow’s face.” Hamish leaned forward to see, and watched closely.

As the knight drew closer, the monk knelt slowly and stretched out a hand to lay his palm on the dead man’s skull, after which he remained motionless, his head bent, obviously praying for the soul of the departed. The knight kept walking until he was within two paces of the kneeling monk, and then he spoke again in his harsh, unpleasant voice. “That one is deep in Hell, priest, so you can stop praying for him.”

The monk gave no sign of having heard, and the knight frowned, unused to being ignored. He jerked his right hand, flipping the long sword down from his shoulder, and extended his arm until the tip of his blade caught the point of the monk’s peaked cowl and pushed it back, exposing the scalp beneath the hood, the crown shaved bald in the square tonsure of the Dominican Order, the sides covered by thick, short-cropped, iron gray hair. As the knight’s arm extended farther, the monk’s chin was pushed up and tilted back by the pull of his cowl, showing him to be clean-shaven and pallid. The knight bent forward until their faces were level, and his voice was no quieter or gentler than it had been before, ringing harshly in the absolute hush that had fallen at his first words.

“Listen to me, priest, when I speak to you, and answer when I bid you. Do you hear?” He drew back until he was once more standing erect, his sword point resting on the ground. “I know you.” The monk shook his head, mute, and the knight lifted his voice louder. “Don’t lie to me, priest! I never forget a face and I know you. I’ve seen you somewhere, before now. Where was it? Speak up.”

The monk shook his head. “No, sir knight,” he brayed. His voice was surprisingly shrill for such a tall man. Shrill enough that Tam Sinclair, who had turned to see how young Ewan was faring with the task he had set him, shifted quickly in his seat to watch the interplay between the knight and the monk.

“You are mistaken,” said the monk. “I am new come here and have never been in this part of the world before. My home is in the north, far from here, in Alsace, in the monastery of the blessed Saint Dominic, so unless you have been there recently you could not know me. And besides”—his eyes, blazing in the late-afternoon light, were a pale but lustrous blue that held more than a hint of fanaticism—“I would not forget a man such as you.”

The knight frowned, hesitated, then swung the sword blade back up to rest on his shoulder again, his face registering distaste. “Aye, enough. Nor would I forget a voice such as yours. What is your purpose here in La Rochelle?”

“God’s business, master knight. I bear messages for the Prior of the monastery of Saint Dominic within the gates.”

The knight was already waving the annoying Dominican away, his altered demeanor indicating his reluctance to interfere with anything that concerned the Order of Saint Dominic, the Pope’s holy, hungry, and ever zealous Inquisitors. “Aye, well, move on and finish your task. You know where the monastery is?”

“Yes, sir knight, I have instructions written here on how to proceed within the gates. Let me show you.”

But as he began to reach into his robe the knight stepped back from him and waved him away again. “Go on with you. I don’t need to see. Go on, go on, away with you.”

“Thank you, sir knight.” The tall monk bowed his head obse-quiously and moved away towards the city gates, and his passage seemed to be the signal for a general admission. The crowd surged forward in an orderly manner as Ewan and the mysterious woman climbed in over the right side of the wagon, and the guards casually scanned the passing throng. Sinclair noticed, however, that they were questioning every woman who passed by, while allowing the men to pass unchallenged. He straightened up in his seat and kneaded his kidneys with his free hand.

“Lads,” he said, speaking the Scots Gaelic in a normal, conversational voice, “you are now promoted to the nobility. For the next wee while, you will be my sons. Ewan, when you speak to any of these buffoons, make your Scotch voice thicken your French, as though you were more foreign than you are. Hamish, you speak only the Gaelic this day, no French at all. You are new arrived here in France with your mother, to join me and your brother, and have not had time to learn their tongue or their ways. Now shift into the back and let your mother sit here.” He turned casually and spoke to the woman behind them. “Mary, come here and sit by me. Throw back the hood from your face, unless you fear being recognized.”

She pulled back the hood wordlessly, revealing a handsome, finely chiseled face with wide, startlingly bright, blue-gray eyes and long, well-combed dark hair. Sinclair nodded in approval as she took her place beside him, and he jogged the reins and set the wagon rolling slowly forward. “Now hold on tight and be careful. For the time being, you are my wife, Mary Sinclair, mother of my sons here, Ewan and Hamish. You are comely enough to make me both proud of you and protective of your virtue. And you speak no French. If any question you, and they will, look to me for answers and then speak in Scots. And try to sound like a household servant, not like the lady you are. They are looking for a lady, are they not?”

The woman met his gaze squarely and nodded.

“Hmm. Then try you not to give them one, or we’ll all hang. Come around the end of the bench there, but mind your step. Hamish, help her, and then stand behind her, at her shoulder. The two of you have the same eyes, thanks be to God, so be not shy about flashing them, both of you.”

Sinclair reined in his team. “Right, then. Here we go. Here comes the popinjay who thinks himself a knight. Just be at ease, all of you, and let me do the talking.” He brought the wagon to a halt just short of where the guards stood waiting.

The knight arrived just as the Corporal of the Guard stepped forward to challenge Tam, and he stood watching, making no attempt to interfere as the guardsman questioned Tam.

“Your name?”

“Tam Sinclair,” Tam responded truculently. He pronounced it the Scots way, Singclir, rather than the French San-Clerr.

“What are you?” This with a ferocious frown in response to the alien name and its terse iteration.

Sinclair responded in fluent gutter French that was thick with Scots intonations. “What d’you mean, what am I? I am a Scot, from Scotland. And I am also a carter, as you can see.”

The frown grew deeper. “I meant, what are you doing here, fellow, in France?”

Sinclair scratched gently at his jaw with the end of one finger and stared down at the guard for long moments before he shrugged his shoulders and spoke slowly and patiently, with great clarity, as though to a backward child. “I don’t know where you’ve spent your life, Corporal, but where I live, everyone knows that when it comes to the nobility, there’s no difference between Scotland and France, or anywhere else. Money and power know no boundaries. There is an alliance in force between the two realms, and it is ancient.

“What am I doing here? I’m doing the same thing in France that hundreds of Frenchmen are doing in Scotland. I’m doing my master’s bidding, attending to his affairs. The St. Clair family holds lands and enterprises in both countries, and I am one of their factors. I go wherever I am sent. I do whatever I am told. Today I drive a cart.”