Chapter One
In mid-September of 1290, under clear skies and with a
brisk following breeze, a stout Norse-built cog set sail from the
Norwegian port of Bergen, carrying to her wedding with England the
seven-year-old Margaret Queen of Scots, known as the Maid of Norway.
The marriage had been arranged, in part, through the offices of the
bearded, white-cloaked man standing at the taffrail of the Maid's ship.
Frère Arnault de Saint Clair, Knight of the Temple of Jerusalem,
had been among a number of outside negotiators whose assistance had
facilitated the Treaty of Birgham; for the Temple's reputation for
impartial arbitration was recognized universally, and the fortunes both
of Scotland and of England were of great interest to all of Europe.
A singular array of qualifications commended Frère Arnault to his
present assignment. Though a veteran of nearly twenty years' service as
a Knight Templar, much of it in and around the Holy Land, he had been
based for most of the past decade at the Order's Paris Temple, where he
was regularly entrusted with sensitive financial and diplomatic missions
on behalf of the Visitor of France, who was second only to the Grand
Master, an ... read full excerpt from The Temple and the Stone ebook
