Chapter One #2
“I simply mean that everything in the world comes together in this space,” he said, indicating the river as it ran into the sea.
“The water, the sky, the earth, and the air. A place like this gave birth to men, to the world we live in. It’s where Time and God collide. I feel reverence here, I suppose.”
“Ye should,” Kaladin said. “God is here, for certain.”
Rodion looked at him. “What do you mean?”
Kaladin cocked a dark eyebrow. “The most infamous abbey in Scotland is nearby,” he said. “Ye should also feel fear as well as reverence.”
“Fear for what?”
“Na Ban-Teamplairean.”
It took Rodion a moment to realize what he was saying because he wasn’t as good with Gaelic as others were. He was literate and educated, but he’d never taken to the Gaelic language. In fact, it was Mateo who spoke first.
“The Templar nuns,” he muttered. “Bloody Christ, are those abominations around here?”
All eyes turned to the enormous knight with dark hair and pale eyes.
His grandfather, Patrick de Wolfe, had possessed legendary height.
There were few men taller in England, if not the entire world, than Patrick had been.
Mateo was a twin, son of Patrick’s eldest son, Markus, and he’d lived a rather solitary life.
He’d been married, once, but he’d lost her in childbirth about twenty years earlier and had never remarried.
He was a bit of an enigma because he kept to himself for the most part, a quiet man who was highly intelligent.
That meant that when the man spoke in that deep, raspy voice, men listened.
Like now.
He always sounded ominous.
“Aye, they’re around here,” Kaladin said, pointing off to the east. “St. Margaret’s of Loch Doom is that way, over that rise.”
Mateo’s gaze moved in that direction. “I hope we do not run into any of them.”
“They keep tae themselves,” Kaladin said. “I dunna think they go beyond their walls, seeking trouble.”
“I’ve heard stories about them,” Titan said. “They were founded by a woman whose husband had been killed in battle. Legend says she prayed for forty days and forty nights before St. Margaret appeared to her and told her to start a fighting order of widows in her name.”
“And she had forty widows right away, one for each day she prayed,” Mateo finished.
“I know because I’ve heard the legend, too.
We all have. True or not, that was over two hundred years ago, and now all they have are a group of nuns who have been known to fight battles when their sanctuary is threatened.
They have a foundling home there, you know. They protect those children rabidly.”
“I heard they never let the children leave,” Kaladin said. “At least, they never let the girl children leave. They throw the lads tae the wolves when they come of age, but they keep the girls.”
“Then they must have a lot of girls,” Titan said.
“My father said he saw the Douglas summon them for a border skirmish against Carlisle Castle, and he said the nuns fought like men. They were more effective, too, because a knight is sworn to protect not only the church, but women in general. Their appearance caused a great deal of confusion because no one wanted to engage them.”
“It probably caused some deaths, I would imagine,” Mateo said.
Titan glanced at him. “You disapprove of a fighting woman?”
Mateo shook his head. “They have their place,” he said. “I was married to a woman who took up arms, and she was fearsome. I have great admiration for a woman who can fight.”
“Then why disapprove of the nuns?”
Mateo frowned. “Because they are nuns,” he said. “They are women of God. It seems to me that if they can be summoned by a clan to fight for their cause, then they are not fighting for God. They are fighting for men. There is something inherently self-serving about that.”
Titan didn’t have an argument for him. He couldn’t disagree that nuns, by virtue of their holy vows, probably shouldn’t take up arms, and most especially not fight other men’s battles.
He was about to say so when they heard a shout from Rodion, who was still riding on the crest overlooking the river.
When everyone turned to look at him, he pointed toward the water.
“There!” he shouted. “There is something there!”
He spurred his horse toward the river and they lost sight of him. That brought Titan and Mateo charging after him with Estevan and Kaladin bringing up the rear, all of them thundering over the rise only to see a dirty, rocky belt that ran alongside the river as it dumped into the firth.
But there was indeed something on that sand.
A body.
Rodion was the first one on the scene. He dismounted his horse swiftly and went to the body, bending over it but not touching it.
He was a man with a knowledge of healing, so he knew what to look for.
As he was visually inspecting it, as it was lying face down, Titan and Mateo arrived.
They hit the ground running, so to speak, moving swiftly to the body and kicking up sand as they went.
Titan reached down and yanked on an arm, pulling the figure onto its back.
It was a woman.
Her face and hair were covered with dirt and filth. Rodion knelt beside her, feeling on her wrist for a pulse to see if she was even alive. She certainly didn’t look like it, pasty and gray like the dirt surrounding her.
“She’s alive,” he muttered. Then he lifted his head and looked around, up and down the riverbank. “Is she alone? Does anyone see wreckage of any kind?”
That had the knights looking around, heads bobbing. “Nay,” Estevan said. “No wreckage that I can see. Kal, ride down the bank, toward the sea. There may be something down there, sunken so we canna see it.”
Kaladin was already heading in the direction his brother had indicated.
He and his cream-colored stallion raced down the riverbank.
As he headed south, Estevan brushed some of the dirt away from the woman’s face and nose, making sure it wasn’t impeding her breathing.
She was wet, but he didn’t have anything to cover her with.
In silence, they waited until Kaladin returned, which was nearly a half-hour.
The could see him thundering back in their direction.
“There’s some wreckage down that way,” Kaladin shouted as he came near, reining the horse to a rough stop as the animal kicked up clods of dirt in its haste. “The tide has gone out, but I could see a small boat that has been badly damaged. It must be hers.”
Estevan nodded, returning his attention to the woman at his feet. Titan and Mateo were gazing down at her, also, watching Rodion assess her condition. It didn’t take long for him to figure it out.
“The woman is near death,” he said grimly. “She will not survive if we do not find someone to tend her.”
“A physic?” Estevan said, turning his attention northward. “Dumfries would have the nearest physic, but we are an hour or more away.”
“What about the nuns?” Mateo asked.
Everyone looked at him. “They are a fighting order,” Estevan pointed out. “They dunna heal.”
But Mateo shook his head. “If they are a fighting order, then they must also have knowledge of healing,” he said. “I am certain they would not let a male physic touch them should they be wounded, so it stands to reason that if they fight, they heal.”
His logic was sound. As Estevan sighed heavily, trying to determine what to do, Rodion spoke.
“How far is the abbey?” he asked.
Estevan gestured toward the east. “Not far,” he said. “A mile or two at most.”
“Then we should put this woman on their doorstep and continue on our way,” Rodion said. “We cannot simply leave her to die. Let us take her and be done with it.”
It seemed the reasonable course of action, but unfortunately, no one seemed particularly eager to make the first step.
No one wanted to go near the Templar nuns, their fierce legend perhaps larger than the actual truth.
Sometimes things like that happened, when stories told from man to man took on a life of their own with each successive telling.
They’d just finished speaking about the mysterious nuns of the order of St. Margaret of Loch Doom and now they were facing the very real possibility of actually having contact with them.
A far different destination than the gambling den.
“Matty, collect the woman,” Rodion said when no one else seemed willing to move. “We must get moving. We’ll take her to the nuns and then continue on to The Butcher’s.”
“Mayhap taking pity on the lady will erase the sin of gambling,” Kaladin muttered. “Mayhap it is penitence for what we’re about tae do.”
Mateo heaved the sandy, wet, limp woman over his shoulder. “Then let us get about it,” he said. “I do not need another stain against my immortal soul. If this will eliminate one, then I am keen to do it.”
That seemed to make the decision for everyone.
They found a ready cause for absolution for their future gambling sins right in front of them, so no one questioned it.
They began to run for their horses as Estevan helped Mateo get the woman onto his horse.
When she was finally secure and Mateo mounted, the five men made haste for the lair of the Templar nuns.
And for one of them, a distinct date with destiny.