Requiem: The Fall of the Templars (23 page)

“How can you be sure we aren’t in danger?” Ysenda bowed her head to disguise her words, although the sounds of twigs cracking under the footfalls of the men were loud enough to cover her whisper. Alice and Margaret were in front of her and David was walking at Will’s side. Margaret kept looking around at them, but Alice was staring straight ahead as she walked, all pretense of her injury ended. She hadn’t said a word since the men entered their camp, having discovered it when David came racing out of the trees after Will and Margaret.

“If they intended to rob us they would have taken our supplies and left us.”

Will didn’t add “for dead.” “And if they meant to harm us they would have done so by now. From what I overheard when they were gathering up our gear they are taking us to their camp.”

128 robyn

young

“Camp?”

“They are part of the resistance, I think.”

Ysenda stared at him. “You knew they would be here.”

“Tom told me the rebels had set up a base in the forest, yes.”

“That’s why you brought us here? To join them!”

“Quiet,” warned the spear holder.

Ysenda’s cheeks were livid. As the man looked away, she hissed the words through her teeth. “You’ve led my children,
your nieces
, into a den of thieves and cutthroats, all with prices on their heads, because you want to continue your fight!” She put her hands on Margaret and Alice’s shoulders.

“Your children will be safer here than anywhere,” Will murmured. “If we had stayed in the open, sooner or later we would have been found. You’ve heard the same rumors I have, of how the English soldiery treat those who defy them, let alone anyone who kills one of their officials. Chivalry isn’t worth as much this side of the border. I could not even say your daughters would be safe from their punishments.”

But Ysenda didn’t want to hear it. She quickened her pace, pushing Alice and Margaret in front of her. “David,” she snapped, her stare commanding him to follow.

David shook his head.

“Keep moving,” ordered one of the men, forcing Ysenda to face forward, leaving David walking at Will’s side.

Almost an hour later, as the golden light dappling the ground began to fade and the snatches of sky above them turned dusky purple, they began to hear distant sounds of civilization. The burly man gave three sharp whistles.

Hearing an answering sound, Will noticed indistinct figures half-hidden in bushes and behind trees. He caught glimpses of bows and the glint of knives and guessed that if the man hadn’t signaled they wouldn’t have made it much farther. Ahead, the low hum of many voices was punctuated by calls and laughter, the
thock
of an axe blade, the barking of dogs and whinnies of horses.

Through the trees, they saw people moving, smelled woodsmoke and food.

Ysenda gathered her daughters closer as their captors led them into the midst of a huge camp that stretched off between the pines.

Men clad in many different styles of dress, bearing all manner of weapons, stood about in groups by fire pits, or sat on logs eating from wooden bowls.

Some tended animals: pigs, sheep, goats and cattle, penned in corrals. Others lounged on the mossy ground beneath cloth canopies strung between trees.

More permanent structures, fashioned from bound branches and twigs and the fall of the templars

129

covered with turf, were visible farther in. There were even a few tents. Many eyes followed Will and his family as they were led through the fringes of the camp, heading deeper in. One man whistled lewdly at Margaret, raising a laugh from his companions. Margaret lowered her head and Ysenda threw a barbed look over her shoulder at Will. Her look changed when a young woman ducked out from a shelter, clouted the whistler on the arm and nodded apolo-getically to her. Ysenda frowned curiously after the woman as they continued on, making for a circle of tents in the center of a clearing. Glancing back, Will realized some of their captors had melted away.

As they approached the tents, the burly man called out and a boy scrabbled out of one of them. The archers handed the boy the reins of the horses, then moved off as the burly man pushed his way into a large green and white striped tent, leaving Will and the others guarded by the two Highlanders. Their escort reappeared a few moments later with a short, stocky man. He looked to be no more than thirty, although his hair, cut brutally close to his head, was already dusted white. His brown, weathered face was almost as scarred as his comrade’s and he wore a leather gambeson, and had a keen-looking dirk strapped to his belt. His gaze moved uninterestedly over Ysenda and the girls, lingered briefl y on David, then came to rest on Will.

“They had this on them, Gray,” said the burly man, handing over the pouch he had taken when he searched their packs. It was the pouch Will had cut from the tax collector’s belt and was bulging with coin, Duncan’s money having been added to it before they fled the estate.

The man called Gray hefted it appreciatively. “A good weight.”

“That’s my father’s,” said David, taking a step forward.

The burly man lifted his club and Ysenda made a sharp sound at her son.

“Your father should tell you to mind your mouth,” said Gray, his gaze moving back to Will.

David scowled. “He’s my uncle.”

“What brings such an unlikely company into the wilds of Selkirk, with bags stuffed with gold, two horses and a knight’s armor? These are dangerous times to be moving abroad without protection.” Gray glanced at his companion with a crooked grin. “Never know who you might run into, eh, Adam?”

“We have protection,” retorted David, before Will could answer.

“Who?” Gray laughed as David’s eyes darted toward Will. “Him? Looks like he’s three winters short of a graveyard. Of course, it’s hard to tell under all that beard. Lost your razor, old man?”

“We mean no trouble here,” said Will, placing a warning hand on David’s 130 robyn

young

shoulder. He could feel the tension coiled in his nephew’s body. “We were forced to seek shelter in the forest after an altercation with an English tax collector.”

“Must have been some altercation to bring you in here with your women.”

“The collector was killed, along with his men.”

The man smiled, but caution showed in his eyes. “By you?”

When Will inclined his head, Adam gave a snort. “And what army?”

“He doesn’t need one,” said David roughly. “He’s a Templar.”

Gray’s smile vanished. He stared at Will, then motioned to his comrade.

“Guard them.” Turning, he strode into the gloom.

“I’m sorry,” murmured David in response to Will’s black expression. He lifted his shoulders stubbornly. “But they would have found out.”

They waited in silence for what seemed like a long time, but was probably only minutes, until out of the trees came two figures. One was Gray, his expression now wary. The other was one of the largest men Will had ever seen.

Not only was the man of exceptional height, but he was also broad; his arms and legs roped with muscle, his neck thick, his head square and rather brutish. Despite his great size, however, he had an agile stride and moved with an almost languid confidence. He wore a plain, dark blue tunic, under which Will picked out the bulk of armor, and his brown hair hung loose, curling with sweat around his temples. He looked to be in his mid-twenties.

“I think it’s him,” David said under his breath at Will’s side, eyes wide with a mixture of respect and apprehension.

The giant came to a halt before them. He appraised Will for an uncomfortable length of time before speaking. “What is your name?”

“Campbell?” questioned the stocky man, when Will answered. “From where?”

“Quiet, Gray,” said the giant.

“My grandfather left his family’s lands in Argyll a long time ago,” replied Will. “And I left Scotland as a boy.”

“Gray tells me you’re a Templar.” The giant glanced at Ysenda, who was hugging Alice to her and biting her lip. “Where is your mantle?”

Will didn’t want to tell this stranger anything about himself. He felt weary, hungry and mistrustful, but he had little choice. Besides, wasn’t this what he had come here for? Ysenda was right: he had wanted to meet these men.

Slowly, he began to speak, telling them of his service in the Holy Land as a Templar commander, his return to the West and his desertion. It was odd, the fall of the templars

131

talking to these outlaws of such things, here in the depths of the forest with dusk gathering around them. Now and then, the giant would interrupt and his probing questions reminded Will of the examination during his inception twenty-seven years earlier. This was an altogether cruder, more simplistic interrogation, but the outlaws took it as seriously as if they were knights of an order, checking his worthiness for admission. By the time he had spoken of his part in the siege of Edinburgh and the death of Duncan, the shadows were solid around them and the fl ickering points of light from torches hovered like fi reflies between the trees.

“Why did you come here?”

The giant’s voice hadn’t changed in its gruffness, but Will noticed something new in the young man’s eyes: a spark of recognition, or understanding perhaps.

“I cannot shelter you.” The man spread a large hand at the camp. “Everyone works here. Even those who do not fight have tasks.”

“Does this force not continue to grow, as more men join the resistance?

You must welcome them, surely?”

“I welcome able soldiers,” said the giant, nodding at David. He looked to Ysenda and the girls. “But I cannot carry deadweight.” There was nothing malicious in his tone, only frankness. All the same, Ysenda looked wrathful.

Whether that was because he had just recruited her son or abandoned her daughters Will wasn’t sure. “My sister and nieces aren’t without skills. They are well educated. They can cook and sew, read and write.”

The giant didn’t answer.

Gray spoke up in the silence. “We could use a few more to help with the food. Adam’s wife would burn snow if she were cooking it.”

The burly man gave him a bored look.

After another lengthy pause, the giant nodded. “Very well. But you’ll pull your weight. All of you,” he added, with a meaningful glance at Alice, who hid her face in Ysenda’s shoulder. “Gray, show them somewhere they can sleep.

Not you,” he said to Will. “You can help me with something first. Come.” He strode off in the opposite direction, ducking his head under the lower branches of the trees.

Giving David an assured nod, Will followed, noticing that Adam fell into step behind him.

“When Gray told me you were a Templar, I thought you might have come for him. We have one from your order here,” the giant explained.

132 robyn

young

Will halted. “Then it would be best I do not meet him. As I told you, I’m a deserter.”

“He is a captive, not a guest. We were planning to ransom him, but I’d like to know how much he would fetch.” The giant plucked a torch from the ground and headed for an area away from the main encampment.

They passed a few men, who stood to attention at their approach, adding to Will’s speculation that David might be right: the giant, who hadn’t yet offered his name, might well be William Wallace, the leader of the Scottish resistance. Up ahead, Will saw a cage of wooden stakes, built around several trees.

Inside, visible as the pool of yellow light from the torch spilled toward them, were about a dozen figures, some slumped on the ground, others sitting with their backs against the trees, to which Will saw they had been roped.

One of them tried to stand, but the tether around his leg was too short and he could only get to his knees. “I demand to speak to your leader! Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Shut your hole, English dog,” growled Adam, coming up behind Will.

“Wake him,” said the giant, motioning to a figure curled on the ground a little way from the others.

One of the men guarding the cage went over and poked his spear through the stakes at the prone form. As the spear prodded him, the figure jerked upright with a shout.

Will caught a flash of red on a black tunic, saw terrified brown eyes under a thatch of hair, a face smudged with dirt and an unkempt bushy beard. He started forward. “Simon?”

“You know him?” demanded the giant, at once alert.

Will looked around, feeling Adam close in behind him, brandishing his club.

“Are you here to rescue him? Are there more of you?”

“No.” Will glanced at Simon, who was on his knees, staring at him in amazement. He turned back to the man he thought was Wallace. “I haven’t seen him since I left Paris, eighteen months ago. You have my word.”

Wallace scrutinized him, his eyes glittering in the torchlight, then nodded to Adam, who lowered the club.

“Where did you find him?” Will found he couldn’t bring himself to look at Simon, who was calling to him, his voice hoarse with relief.

“A scouting party picked him up a few months back. He refused to tell us what he was doing on his own in the wild and so we took him for a spy. Fortu-the fall of the templars

133

nately, my men had the foresight to bring him blinded into our camp for questioning. We may have got nothing but screams for our efforts, but it will mean we can still exchange him for gold without compromising our position.

I was going to ask you how much you thought a sergeant would be worth to them, but as you know him you can tell me if he is favored in the order.”

“He is a groom. Not a spy.”

“What would a groom from Paris be doing here?”

Now Will did look at Simon, his face hard. “I expect he was looking for me.”

Simon was too far to hear what they were saying, but he strained forward as Will turned to him. “Will! Tell them to release me!” The other prisoners were stirring now, some adding their pleas to Simon’s.

“I can vouch for him,” Will told Wallace. “He’ll cause you no trouble.”

“He’s English,” growled Adam, “he can cause nothing else.”

Wallace said nothing.

“You have the money I brought, along with my brother-in-law’s horse and armor,” continued Will. “That’s worth ten sergeants at least.”