Knights of the Black and White

by Jack Whyte

  SIX

  The seven Brothers of the Order of Rebirth spent much of the following day, from early morning to mid-afternoon, revising and rehearsing the rituals governing the celebration that would take place later, but they began by sealing off one of the windowless main rooms in the central part of the caravanserai, and placing guards outside it, front and rear, while the others did what they could to transform the chamber into an approximation of the standard ritual lodge of the Order of Rebirth. They opened up the chest of regalia sent by Count Hugh and removed its contents, which, they discovered, included several large rectangular sheets of heavy cloth in both black and white, and by arranging those in appropriate places, they succeeded in transforming the large room to resemble, as closely as possible, the austere temples of their own Gatherings at home. They lacked the tessellated floor of alternating tiles, but everything else in the darkened chamber was as it should be, either stark black or blazing white. When the arrangements were complete, they locked the doors, then dispersed to their own quarters to prepare for the afternoon’s ritual.

  The long-awaited ceremony went smoothly, with de Payens officiating and each of the other knights playing a key role, and by the time it was over, they were all aware of a feeling of substantial achievement.

  Unwilling to lose the feelings of enjoyment they had shared, the knights dined together again in the hostelry that night, in the now-stripped room that they had used earlier as their temple, and afterwards, sitting around the table, they talked idly about a number of things, including the way pilgrims to the Holy Places continued to suffer from unchecked banditry on the roads. That led them into speculation about the true reasons underlying King Baldwin’s apparently indefensible and self-serving behavior on that matter, and eventually they graduated to the ever-present subject of the venality of the Church, or at least of its clerical representatives. When they had all had an opportunity to vent their spleen and their indignation began to flag naturally, de Payens decided that the time was right to introduce the most important topic he wanted to discuss with them: the strange instructions brought to him from the Council of Rebirth in Amiens by Gaspard de Fermond. Claiming their attention then, he repeated the instructions from the Council verbatim, offering no commentary of his own, but merely asking his fellow knights for their opinions.

  He had no qualms about having any of them speak forthrightly and openly that night. The room in which they were gathered had only two entrances, one of which led in from the kitchens, and both were well guarded against intruders or eavesdroppers, notwithstanding the fact that de Payens knew Ibrahim would permit no one to come near his guests. Arlo stood guard outside the main door, and Jubal stood outside the entrance from the kitchens.

  The initial response of the five newcomers on hearing the orders from France was angry disbelief, for they immediately saw the impossibility of what they had been ordered to do, as had de Payens and St. Omer before them. De Payens sat quietly and listened to all they had to say, studiously avoiding showing judgment or opinion. At the end of it all, however, only one real opinion had been voiced, albeit in five different versions: the command from home was a tomfoolery that could not be carried out without betraying the all-important secret of the Order’s existence. The matter of the hidden treasure was barely worthy of mention next to the reality that every man there accepted unquestioningly: to proceed as they had been instructed would invite, and even guarantee, official scrutiny from Church and state, and would set their ancient Order’s anonymity at hazard.

  When the flow of righteous anger began to abate and de Payens held up his hand, everyone fell silent and six pairs of eyes turned to him. He looked from one to the other in turn and then nodded his head as if acknowledging to himself that he had done the right thing, and began to speak slowly, almost haltingly, his gaze moving from face to face and eye to eye.

  “I have a plan, my friends, to which I would have you listen. It is an idea that came to me only last night, and I confess to all of you, freely, that when it first occurred to me, I thought it was sheer madness. But I lay awake for hours, considering all the pros and contras that my sanity could throw up. I slept for no more than a short time, I know, because I feel now as if I have not closed my eyes at all since last night. But I woke up at dawn believing that this outrageous and insane-sounding strategy I had dreamed up might actually work. And the more I thought about it today—it was in my mind throughout our temple ceremonies—the more convinced I became that it is not only possible but feasible, and it offers us the possibility of becoming invisible in full view of all the world.”

  He sat back in his chair, waiting for a reaction with his arms crossed on his chest. It was plain from their faces that every one of them was waiting to hear this plan he was talking about, and he found himself enjoying the ability to keep them waiting and wondering. Suppressing the smile he felt welling up inside, he sniffed instead and took a pull from the goblet that one of them had placed in front of him while he was speaking. The strong red wine made his lips pucker. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “There are two people at the top of the pecking order here in Jerusalem, and in many ways they are rivals, so I imagine they resent and probably dislike each other. They are the King, Baldwin II, and Warmund of Picquigny, the Patriarch Archbishop of Jerusalem. Two powerful men, each secure in his own primacy, within his own environment—the state and the Church. They live in tolerable harmony, because they have no choice, and they are mutually dependent, working together on most things.

  “There is one matter, however, on which they are greatly at odds, and that is this banditry that so outraged our young companion from Caesarea yesterday.” Hugh had already told the story of the young knight’s unwillingness to believe that what he had seen on his brief journey was an accurate reflection of the way things were in Jerusalem, and they had already discussed the notorious reluctance of the Kings, both Baldwin I and his successor and namesake, to commit any of their meager resources of men and weaponry to fight against what they and their ministers, at least, saw as a minor nuisance. “This Baldwin is only newly crowned,” he continued, “but he has adopted the stance taken by his predecessor on this issue, so the Patriarch Archbishop obtained no relief on the death of the old King. Those two had been arguing with each other about this for years, and now that the new King is in power, Church and monarchy are no closer to arriving at an arrangement than they ever were.”

  None of his listeners moved, their entire awareness tightly focused on what he was telling them, even although he had said nothing that was unknown to them. They knew, however, perhaps from his intensity alone, that they were about to hear something new, perhaps something of momentous import.

  “Every year, now that the Holy Land is perceived to be safe and free from the Seljuk Turks,” de Payens continued, “more and more pilgrims come flocking to visit the Holy Places, and they all fall within the jurisdiction and responsibility of the Patriarch Archbishop. And because of that, the Archbishop is forever beseeching the King to do something to protect these pilgrims, who are surely the most stupid, sheepish breed of willing victims ever to have lived.

  “They come, for the most part, bearing no weapons other than the wooden staff that seems to be their badge of identity and office. Few of them even carry knives, and fewer than one in a thousand ever carries a sword or an axe, or even a bow. They come convinced that, simply by making their pilgrimage, they will evade all their earthly guilt and win absolution and eternal salvation. They come trusting blindly that God and His holy angels will protect them, and they take no precautions whatsoever for their own safety, make no effort to protect themselves. They come like sheep to the slaughter, and these swarming bandits delight in greeting them. Most of them come this way from Joppa, and they walk the thirty miles from there to Jerusalem along a route that takes them close to the town of Ascalon, which is, as you all know, a nest of vipers—a city that exists purely for its denizens to prey on defenseless Christian
pilgrims. Every year there are more pilgrims, and because pilgrims are such easy victims, every year there are more brigands—bigger bands of them appearing all the time, some of them forming veritable armies, and all of them becoming increasingly daring in their depredations, because they know no one is going to come hunting them, looking for vengeance and retribution.”

  He looked again from man to man. “I listened to the very same argument being made by the Hospital knights one night near Jericho. The situation here has become so scandalous that people are now beginning to expect, in all sincerity, that the Knights of the Hospital will ride out to do something about it. And that, my friends, is both ludicrous and frightening, because the Knights of the Hospital, as all of you know, are knights in name alone. They are monks. They have always been monks, monastics of the Order of Saint Benedict, bound by their sacred vows to a life of piety and sacrifice. Those men cannot fight. They don’t know how, in the first place, and they are expressly forbidden by their Order to do so.”

  “Why won’t the King do anything?”

  The questioner was Gondemare, and de Payens looked at him, frowning in mild perplexity, then shrugged almost imperceptibly. “We have just been through that, and you know the answer as well as I do. He says he can’t, says he has neither the men nor the resources. And I believe him. His armies are stretched thin, patrolling the borders and garrisoning the major fortresses and castles, and their prime responsibility is to keep the kingdom safe from the threat of invasion. The truth of it is plain to see, for anyone who cares to look without bias. Baldwin has to defend the borders and the welfare of the Kingdom of Jerusalem as a whole. He cannot afford to weaken his defenses simply to defend the roads against wandering bands of ragamuffin brigands. And yet, to have his city prosper, he can neither logically nor practically permit the current situation to continue. To maintain his city, Baldwin must find some way to protect his roads, and their travelers, from this brigandage.”

  “Then nothing is likely to be done.” This was Archibald St. Agnan, his voice sounding plaintive, and de Payens turned to look directly at him.

  “That is correct, nothing … for the time being, at least. There is simply nothing in place—no suitable armed force—that would serve the required purpose without disrupting other things, perhaps fatally, so until such an entity comes along, nothing will be done.”

  “And the pilgrims will keep on dying.”

  “Aye. I fear so.”

  Payn Montdidier spoke up. “What’s this plan you spoke of, Hugh? You said you had a plan to enable us to excavate the temple, did you not?”

  “I did.”

  “And does it have any bearing on this matter of the pilgrims?”

  “It might. It could.”

  “How so? Come on, man, tell us how we can do the impossible, on two counts.”

  Hugh scratched the back of his neck. “I’m not sure we can, but didn’t you enjoy chasing those brigands yesterday? I know I did, and I would do it again right now, if I could. But do you realize … have you even thought about what we did?” He saw the blankness on their faces. “We outfaced them. We frightened them off, and had there been twice as many of them as there were, it would have made no difference. What we did was so unexpected that they had no means of counter-acting it, and so they turned tail and ran. That may have been the first time in years that anyone—anyone in Jerusalem—has shown any fight or willingness to strike back at these animals. But we did it. We drove them off, and that sowed the first seeds of what is now in my mind. The rest of it grew from there.”

  “Come on then, Hugh, tell us what it is! Or will you keep us here all night, wondering?”

  De Payens made a moue and dipped his head to one side. “That is it. I thought we could provide the group for the pilgrim task, or at least the beginnings of a group.”

  St. Agnan came back at him immediately. “You’re dreaming, Hugh. Even were that a thing we wanted to do, Cherbourg would never give me leave to quit his service for such a purpose—to go charging off into the desert to protect unwashed, unimportant pilgrim nobodies while he himself has real work for me to do. I’ll wager none of your lords would, either. Why should they? We are honor bound to do our duty to our liege lords obediently and patiently, and our allegiance is lifelong.”

  “I have thought about that,” de Payens responded quietly. “And I think about it still. How long have you been in service to the lord of Cherbourg?”

  “Since before the Pope launched the first war, so that’s twenty years.”

  “And don’t you think you have served him sufficiently?”

  “Who, the Pope, or Charles of Cherbourg? And sufficiently for what? You are sounding strange, Hugh.”

  “No, with respect, I disagree, Archibald. On the contrary, I am tired, I am weary, and I have been given a set of instructions that seem unachievable, so I am looking for alternatives. I have been thinking of retiring.”

  St. Agnan glowered at him. “What does that mean, retiring? You mean withdrawing your services from Count Hugh? You can’t do that. None of us can. We are bound for life by our knightly vows.”

  “Which may be superseded by higher, more solemn vows.” That earned a stunned, uncomprehending silence that lasted until Montdidier spoke up.

  “More solemn vows? You mean … as in clerical, priestly vows?”

  “Aye, although I was thinking more of monastic vows than priestly ones. I thought I might become a monk.” He looked around at their gaping faces and broke into a broad grin. “I told you it seemed insane to me at first, did I not? Well, now it might seem insane to you for a while, but bear with me and listen. I don’t yet understand all the ins and outs of what I might be proposing here, but there is something inside me telling me I’m thinking along the right lines. Listen, now.”

  He stood up from the table and began to pace, letting the thoughts spill from his lips as they occurred to him, and using his hands in broad gestures to emphasize his points, ticking them off on his fingertips as he made them.

  “Two men, remember—a King and a Patriarch Archbishop. Both have the same concerns—an urgent, pressing need to restore order, to safeguard the roads, and to protect the pilgrims traveling in ever-increasing numbers to this holiest of lands—and neither one can solve them. The King will not—cannot—strategically give up a single knight to serve in this regard, and the Archbishop, as a cleric, has no fighting men of his own that he can use to relieve his own embarrassment.

  “Now, in addition to this nuisance, there is another element, added but recently to the cauldron but already raising difficulties of its own. The King and the Archbishop both want to encourage settlement here in the kingdom, for reasons obvious to anyone who sees the need for economic growth.”

  He stopped, and waited until they were all looking at him again before he continued, in a changed voice. “Look, I know none of this interests any of you. It is the kind of petty, bothersome detail we prefer to leave to those who find pleasure in such things, providing they leave us free, in turn, to live our lives and follow the dictates of our knightly code and our conscience. But hear me out in this, for it concerns all of us, and in several different ways, so we have to pay attention to it now. We must, this once, if never again.

  “The Kingdom of Jerusalem, both Church and state, needs to encourage settlers if it is to grow and thrive. It needs farmers and merchants—citizens—not merely soldiers but people who produce the food and materiel that people like us need in order to survive.

  “But those settlers, peaceable farmers in the main, will not come here until they know they can come in safety. They will not bring their families, their wives and children, into a dangerous, untamed land. Anyone who would seriously expect them to do that is living in a fool’s paradise. And yet, even knowing that, the King will do nothing, claiming his hands are tied.” He paused, his gaze moving from man to man.

  “Now, bearing all that in mind, suppose for a moment that I were to go to Archbishop Warmund de Picquigny, say
ing that I myself, along with several of my oldest companions, all veterans, all greatly honored Warriors of the Cross, have grown tired of fighting and campaigning, sickened by the continuing savagery and slaughter we have seen and known, and that we have decided accordingly that we would like to withdraw ourselves from active military service, do penance for our sins, and embrace the monastic life.

  “Among the seven of us, only two have left wives and children in Christendom, and neither one of those expects, or is expected, to return. Furthermore, all of us, without exception, have come to love this country more than the one that gave us birth, because this Outremer has nurtured and inspired us for two decades now, and so we can think of nothing better or more desirable than to withdraw from worldly things by swearing binding monastic vows and living out the remainder of our lives here in this Holy Land that has become our spiritual home, in prayer, peace, and solitude. How would he respond, think you?”

  “He’d have you locked up for a madman,” St. Agnan growled. “You’re a knight, a soldier. You’re not fit to be a monk. That’s as clear as a white patch on a black cat.”