Part 21 (1/2)

”But-what has this to do with John Balliol? Stripped of his kings.h.i.+p, a prisoner of England, what threat is he to anyone?”

”That is what I propose to discover,” Jay said. ”I find myself increasingly curious about the Stone of Destiny-alleged to be the source of the mystical power which maintains the Scottish kingdom. On my advice, King Edward went to great trouble to secure it and have it brought south to London. And yet, despite losing so vital a national treasure, the Scots refuse to be put in their place. Worse, they find themselves a leader who has brought them a victory we could not have thought possible a few days ago!

”We then must ask ourselves,” he concluded, ”is Balliol's proximity to the Stone allowing him to draw upon its influence? Does he, even from here in England, exercise a kingly power which enables his champion to wage war against us in Scotland?”

”That hardly seems possible,” John said, blinking at the map.

”What is possible is limited only by the breadth of a man's vision,” Jay declared. ”And I set no bounds upon myself in such matters. Be sure that the struggle in which we are engaged is no mere rivalry of crowns. It concerns the very soul of our Order.”

”You're referring to the renegades, Saint Clair and Lennox?” John hazarded.

”Them, and all their impious a.s.sociates,” Jay agreed. ”I am convinced that some faction within our Order is pursuing secret purposes of its own, which bode no good for England or the Temple.”

His mouth twisted bitterly as he fingered the hilt of his sword.

”Many of those who served in the East have forsaken their true calling,” he muttered. ”They have returned from Outremer with their speech strangely accented, their minds twisted by exotic and heretical philosophies. But that is not the worst of it. Having surrendered to these seductions, they now are striving to subvert their Western brothers. Their objective is to impose their newly learned foreign ways over those of us who have remained faithful to our vows, praying for the victory of Christ's kingdom in those far-off lands while they idled in decadent luxury and dabbled in knowledge forbidden to any true Christian.”

The de Sautres nodded their agreement without interrupting their superior.

”They have made a pact with the enemies of Christ,” Jay continued in an impa.s.sioned tone, ”abandoning His Holy Land in exchange for gold and the black secrets of the a.s.sa.s.sins and the Magi. How else could Christian knights be driven off by infidels, unless they had betrayed G.o.d's holy trust for their own worldly gain? As part of this obscene bargain, they have agreed to remove themselves as far as possible from the scene of our former conquests, to give their new allies the ultimate a.s.surance of victory. And what land in all of Christendom,” he finished grimly, ”is as remote from Jerusalem as the land of the Scots?-a country still infested with pagan superst.i.tion and dubious forms of wors.h.i.+p.”

”I still fail to see what Saint Clair and Lennox hope to achieve by aiding these Scottish rebels,” John de Sautre said.

Jay's blue eyes were hard. ”They see in the struggle for the Scottish throne an opportunity to gain ascendancy for themselves and found a new, unholy order-one dedicated not to the poverty and obedience of true Christian brothers, but to the vices that once were the mark of their G.o.dless enemies.

”Make no mistake: If they establish their authority here- as they clearly mean to do-it will be an end to us.

We shall be copying petty accounts and guarding lonely watchtowers while they lord it over us with their fabled wealth and their sorcerous arts.”

Robert de Sautre gazed at their superior with an admiration bordering on awe. ”I would never have foreseen this, my lord. I doubt that any man but you could have conceived the enormity of their ambition or the blackness of their crimes.”

”Are you with me then,” Jay retorted, brus.h.i.+ng the flattery aside, ”or will you surrender meekly to these vipers which are bent on sucking on the heart of Christendom?”

”We are with you, my lord,” John de Sautre affirmed grimly.

”Even to the death,” Robert added with an inappropriate grin.

It was after nightfall when Brian de Jay and the two de Sautre brothers dismounted outside the main door of Westminster Abbey, Robert de Sautre cradling a narrow ivory casket under the shelter of his white mantle. The presence of soldiers at the main doors struck Jay as unusual-he could not recall such security at the abbey before the Stone's arrival in London-but he guessed that King Edward was merely being cautious regarding the safety of his prize.

Turning an indifferent eye to the splendor of the great church King Henry III had erected here, and followed closely by his two white-clad escorts, the Master of the Temple strode purposefully up to the serjeant of the watch and handed him a folded order, watched him come unconsciously to attention as he examined the seal. The doc.u.ment was a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury, granting permission for the Templars to have a special Ma.s.s offered in the abbey for King Edward's victory and safe return from France. Jay always derived satisfaction from exercising his ecclesiastical influence; and in this instance, he took added pleasure from the deception involved. Tonight's foray was explained as an inspection of the physical layout of the part of the abbey church intended for use.

The three Templars were admitted and found the interior adequately lit for their purposes. Vespers and Compline were already over, and the monks would not return to the church until much later, for the office of Nocturn. Jay dismissed the guard who had admitted them, and had John de Sautre ensure that the door be secured behind them.

The martial impact of their footfalls echoed in the vaulted nave, where stone pillars loomed on either hand like so many frowning sentries, as Jay led his subordinates through the choir and the sanctuary to the old chapel of Edward the Confessor, the present king's avowed patron, current resting place of the Scottish Stone of Destiny. By King Edward's order, a fair bronze chair was being fas.h.i.+oned to house the Stone, but for the present it rested simple and unadorned in its place. Certainly of a proper size to have been Jacob's pillow, as the Scottish legends claimed, it looked surprisingly ordinary; but the Master of the Temple had learned enough of the mystic ways to know that such impressions were often deliberately deceptive.

Jay took the casket from Robert de Sautre and signed for him to remain at the entrance of the chapel, pa.s.sing the casket to John as they moved into the presence of the Stone. As Jay went to bring a candle from one of the side altars, John de Sautre cast his gaze over the Stone of Destiny itself-a rather unremarkable-looking thing, he thought. As he did so, he was seized by the impression that there was someone standing at his shoulder.

A quick glance around revealed no one else present. He swallowed his uneasiness, knowing that to give voice to such an irrational notion would only invite the scorn of his superior.

Oblivious to his subordinate's discomfort, Jay came back to examine the Stone at close quarters. Other than a faint cruciform indentation, there were no additional markings suggestive of its sacred nature; and when he set his bare hand upon it and closed his eyes in meditation, it gave off no emanations of inner force.

Momentarily turning his back on the Stone, he took the ivory casket from John de Sautre and set it on the floor beside the Stone, crouching down to unlock it. Inside were several items he had prepared in advance for this night's work, but what he removed first was a pair of wooden sticks, half the length of his forearm and inscribed with Pictish runes. After much time spent sifting records in the libraries at Balantrodoch and here in London, and numerous consultations with sources outside the Order, he had at last been able to determine some of the purposes for which these spell sticks of Briochan might be used.

For one thing, they possessed an affinity for supernatural energies that could be utilized by a sympathetic spirit-and Jay was sympathetic to anything that promised to advance his own ambitions.

Clasping a stick in either hand, he returned to the Stone. Motioning John de Sautre to stay well back, he stretched out his arms over the Stone's upper surface and murmured an invocation in a voice too low for the other two men to hear. Repeating the invocation, he pa.s.sed the sticks slowly back and forth, searching intently for some trace of mystical potency, however faint. He had been given to understand that the sticks would twitch downward if the object being so dowsed possessed any mystical potency.

But though he repeated the exercise three times, he obtained no response to suggest that any residue remained of whatever energies had once been invested in the Stone.

Scowling, Jay set the sticks momentarily aside while he pulled from his scrip the pouch that contained John Balliol's hair and nail clippings. Carefully placing the pouch in the middle of the Stone, he reclaimed the sticks and began once again to sweep them above the surface of the Stone. His voice rose and fell in a guttural chant, summoning Briochan's guidance. But still the Stone remained stubbornly unresponsive.

With an exasperated hiss, Jay abandoned his efforts. Letting the rune-staves fall beside the pouch, he turned on his heel and began to pace the floor with angry strides. His subordinates kept out of his way, neither one daring to speak for fear of drawing his ire. After a moment, he came to an abrupt halt, his blue eyes feverishly bright.

”Nothing!” he whispered, flinging up a hand. ”There is not so much as a trace of power that should have awakened when I exposed the Stone to the tokens of Balliol's presence! And yet we know that for centuries it has been the mystical key to Scotland's sovereignty. There must be something missing, something we have overlooked.”

It was Robert de Sautre who first took the chance of making a suggestion, drifting closer from his guard post by the chapel door.

”Might this not indicate,” he said tentatively, ”that either Balliol is no true king-or that this is not the genuine Stone?”

”Either that,” John added in, ”or both are false.”

Jay cast his gaze over both men, considering, then slowly nodded.

”Such speculations are hardly likely to impress the king when he returns,” he said coldly. ”I fail to see how Balliol could be a false king, but if the king's men somehow managed to bring back a false Stone, we had better have some idea how to rectify the situation. We need more information,” he continued, almost to himself. ”And I do not think we can afford to be overly fastidious as to how we go about obtaining it.”

Robert de Sautre blenched slightly. ”What do you mean?”

Jay's tight smile bore altogether too much similarity to a grimace. In his heart he was not entirely easy about what he had in mind to attempt, but his ambition drove him on like a gale filling the sails of a rudderless s.h.i.+p, carrying it into uncharted waters that, for all their danger, might hold treasures worth any hazard.

For years, he had harbored increasingly definite suspicions regarding the existence of some esoteric cadre within the Order, who had access to mystical knowledge that conferred power. His attempts to seek them out had been singularly unsuccessful-perhaps because he was too cautious, knowing full well how interest in such subjects would be regarded as heretical, if it came to official notice. But gradually, he had found others outside the Order who were willing to accept him into their ranks, to teach him, and he was determined to be revenged on those who had rejected him. He was now certain that Saint Clair and the upstart Lennox were among their number.

Whatever it was that Saint Clair and his confederates were seeking, it seemed clearly bound up with the aims of the rebel Scots. It followed that whatever would do damage to one would also injure the other-and achieving such damage might well be possible by working through the Stone, which was said to embody mystical significance to the Scottish cause. Jay had long ago decided that no risk was too great to make himself master of its secrets, even if it meant dabbling in pagan sorceries.

Returning to the open casket, he reached along one side to finger out a flat-folded packet of parchment, the center overlap and turned-up ends sealed with wax. He opened this to remove what appeared to be a smaller, thicker piece of parchment inscribed with the triangular, horned shape of a bull's face. A musty, coppery smell came from it as Jay laid it on the Stone.

”You did well to send me that,” Jay said, rummaging again in the casket. ”Not only does it give us the symbol under which the Comyns' pagan sorcery operates, but the blood residual in the flayed skin will provide us with the admittedly unwilling blood offering of one of their co-religionists and the dark G.o.ds they serve. And this”-he removed a fragment of bone from the casket-”is from the forefinger of Briochan's left hand-he who served those G.o.ds a thousand years ago.”

So saying, he set the bone atop the parchment token and handed flint and steel and a small charcoal brazier to John de Sautre, directing him to set it alight while he again delved into the casket. The lighted brazier was set on the floor before the Stone, after which Jay laid a twist of parchment on the glowing coals and ordered John de Sautre to withdraw beside the chapel door with his brother, whence neither was to move or to speak. There was an edge to his voice that drove his two a.s.sociates to obey him without question.

Curls of bitter incense rose to form a cloud of circling smoke as Jay gathered up the rune-staves and the finger bone of Briochan and resumed his original position. Like a priest standing over an altar, he once again elevated his arms, the rune-staves in his right hand, the bone fragment in his left, and began a Latin chant: the nearest embodiment of the ancient lore that he had been able to piece together from his contacts in London's mystical subculture.

Vestiges of ancient Celtic wisdom, Mithraic rituals introduced by the Romans, and other strands of magical tradition had been reinvigorated by an influx of cabalism and esoteric Sufi beliefs brought from the Holy Land by returning crusaders. Such information was carefully guarded, but Jay had discovered that a man with sufficient influence and wealth could unlock the hidden doors of the occult societies and gain access to much of their forbidden knowledge.

Now he armed himself with this knowledge as another man might don hauberk and s.h.i.+eld to protect himself against a legion of enemies, and thus fortified, chanted his invocation with the fervor of a true initiate, oblivious to the uneasiness of his two fellow Templars.

”Per deam terrae sub pedibus et stellarum caelestium, per taurum magnum qui dexteram bellatoris firmat, iubeo te hanc sanguinem imbibere et secreta saxi sancti revelare.”