by Jack Whyte
Only Stephen St. Clair was left with anything to wonder about, and his curiosity was something he could share with no one else, much as he might wish to. It had been he who found the bishop’s body, and he who found the neatly penned letter, written in Latin, that, if it did not explain or expunge the crime, at least clarified the corrupt reasons underlying it. Everyone had accepted what was there, seeing it as self-evident after the fact. St. Clair was the only one who gave any significance to the penmanship of the letter—an elegant, delicate, and vaguely, indeterminately feminine script—or to the container in which the condemnatory letter had been wrapped for protection, a soft and supple envelope of bright yellow leather, with a tiny crescent moon stitched carefully into one corner, but he wisely chose to keep his own counsel.
EPILOGUE
“Go with God, Brothers, and may He guide your every footstep henceforth.”
With those words, Godfrey of St. Omer bade farewell to the three departing delegates who would, within the year, represent the Order of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ to the Church and the establishment in France and the rest of Christendom. St. Omer was now assuming command of the remaining two thirds of the fraternity of Knights of the Temple Mount, all of whom sat their horses silently at his back, their faces studiedly expressionless as they watched their three friends and comrades salute them one last time and then turn their mounts to ride away downhill, accompanied by their escort of five sergeants, towards the lengthy cavalcade that was already wending its way down to the city gates.
Their personal farewells had all been made long since, and now the homeward-bound contingent would join the procession of the royal newlyweds for the first stage of their journey, northward to Bohemond’s principality of Antioch and the port of Alexandria, where the three knight monks would take ship for Cyprus, on the first seagoing leg of their long journey home to France.
Watching the three of them ride away—de Payens, de Montbard, and Gondemare—St. Clair was aware that he was smiling, if only with one side of his mouth, because of a random thought that had come to him moments earlier, reminding him of Princess Alice and her alluring ways. He would feel much more comfortable here in Jerusalem now, he knew, than he would have riding along the route to Antioch with the constant presence of the princess in his awareness. It mattered nothing to him that Alice seemed radiantly happy and obsessed with her magnificently attractive new husband; the simple nearness of her would have disturbed and aroused his own memories intolerably, and he was honest enough with himself now to admit that. He no longer felt sinful or guilty over what had happened between him and her, and his sleep had been untroubled by thoughts of her for months, but he was still young enough, and male enough, to be curious and vulnerable. Better by far, then, that the faithful Gondemare should ride with her, in ignorance and innocence.
As soon as the departing knights had disappeared from view, St. Omer turned to St. Clair. “Have a safe patrol, Brother Stephen,” he said, raising one hand in salute. St. Clair nodded in response and pulled his mount around, his eyes seeking and finding his co-commander, Montdidier, and their senior brother sergeant, who was, on this occasion, St. Clair’s own man, Arlo. He raised a hand to Arlo and nodded, and the sergeant immediately spurred his horse away downhill, shouting the orders that would bring the already assembled patrol to attention and set them moving.
“One more time, then,” Montdidier murmured, reining his mount to where he could ride knee to knee with St. Clair. “Shoulder to shoulder against the Infidel, swords bared, for the glory of God and the safety of the pilgrim. I confess to you, Stephen, I would far rather be riding towards Anjou than to Jericho.”
“Ah, but think of how much better off you will be in ten days’ time, when you are safely back here in Jerusalem, abed in comfort and scratching idly at your lice, while those poor wanderers are being tossed on stormy seas, wretched and seasick, spewing until their entrails protrude from their heaving gullets. Much better to be here, my friend.”
Montdidier grunted. “Perhaps,” he said, “but we are not yet through the gates on our outward journey. We may have much to distract us yet, before we win home. If we win home … St. Agnan was saying something last night to de Payens, at supper, about increased bandit activity between here and Jericho. More and more hostiles gathering all the time and creating chaos, he says, although I don’t know where he finds his information. I know even less how he processes it, once he has received it. Give Archibald one fact, it seems to me, and he will build a gospel from it.”
St. Clair wanted to respond to that with some observations of his own, but he did not have the opportunity, because they had reached the city’s eastern gate—chosen on this occasion to avoid the press caused by the royal departure through the southern gate—and his attention was taken up with passing his men through without incident, after which, as soon as they were on the road outside the city, both he and Montdidier had their hands full for a while, organizing their units. It was only long afterwards, when all their scouts were out scanning the terrain ahead of them and the patrol had settled down into the routine it would pursue for the remainder of their ten-day patrol, that he had time and opportunity to return to what Montdidier had said. At first he debated with himself over whether it might be better to say nothing, since he had no wish to upset his friend as he himself had been. In the end, however, he decided to share what he knew.
“I had a fascinating talk with Brother Hugh last night.”
“I’m surprised he would have time to talk, with all the preparations for today’s departure. What was he talking about, and what was so fascinating about it?”
“About this whole affair … the treasure, the records, his return to France, and the effect that what he has to say will have on the Church. Have you thought much about that?”
Montdidier twisted lazily in his saddle and grinned his slow grin. “Thought about that … you mean about the Church? Me? Please, I pray you, Brother, I have other matters to engage me, and no time to fret over what our worthy religious brethren—outside our own Order, I mean—might be doing with their own holy orders. I would rather keep my blades sharpened for fighting Allah’s minions than save my wits for debating with God’s benighted brethren of the cloth.”
St. Clair nodded, unsurprised. “No more had I, until I asked an idle question of de Payens.”
Montdidier cocked his head. “And?”
“And received more than I had bargained for. In the space of moments, our estimable Brother Hugh offered me a glimpse of the depths of my own ignorance. I have been thinking about it ever since.”
Montdidier was no longer smiling. Something in St. Clair’s demeanor had alerted him that here was something more serious than he would have suspected, and his own bearing changed, his back now straight, his head held high. “That sounds grave, my friend. Tell me about it.”
St. Clair glanced over to where his companion sat watching him. “I asked him how long he thought it would take for our discovery to take effect, for the changes we had set in motion to take effect and become apparent. At first he said nothing, simply throwing me what I thought at the time to be a droll look. But then he pulled me away with him to where the two of us could talk alone, he said, without being overheard. We talked for a long time then. Well, he talked, mainly, and I listened. And I was … shocked, I suppose would be the most accurate word, by what he had to say.”
“Stephen, you are making me impatient. What did the man say?”
“That nothing is going to change. Nothing is going to happen.”
Montdidier tucked in his chin, his eyes narrowing to slits. “But that is patently ridiculous. Things have to change now. We have proof that they need to be changed, that the reality of the Church’s foundation is questionable, even that it is based upon lies. How then can de Payens say nothing will change?”
“He said that the established Church will not bend the knee to what we have discovered. They will ignore it if they can, and if they cannot ig
nore it they will deny it, using the entire weight of their history and worldly authority to reinforce their stance, and anyone who makes it too difficult for that denial to be maintained will be dealt with.”
“What do you mean, ‘will be dealt with’?”
“What do you suppose I mean, Payn? Do you think I am trying now, having come so far, to be obscure? Think about it for a while. We have a Church that considers itself universal, and for the last what—eight hundred years?—for the last eight hundred years, since the days of Constantine the Great, it has been solidly based in Rome, its well-fed, worldly princes blithely ignoring the beginnings they abandoned so quickly under the flattering, seductive spell of imperial bribery—those beginnings that were founded in poverty and proudly proclaimed that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it was for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
“This discovery of ours, de Payens pointed out, were it to be made public, would result immediately in the senior hierarchy of the entire Church having to admit the error of their ways, and being forced to relinquish all their wealth, their privilege, and the luxuries they now enjoy. That would be the very least that would happen. The knowledge, revealed, would destroy the Church.”
“Well, I hardly think it would go that far …”
“Oh, really? You don’t think people would be angry to discover that they’ve spent their lives in poverty when they needn’t have? That they’ve starved in their hundreds of thousands, giving most of what they own to the Church, not for the glory of God, or because God asked for it, but for the welfare and benefit of lazy clerics, simply because the priests think that is the way it should be? You think people might not be inclined to rebel and spill blood, seeing the proof that the Church has been exploiting them and their families for hundreds of years?
“Those hierarchical clerics I mentioned, popes and patriarchs and the like, are all men, my friend—not a God or a saint among them. And being men, they will go to any lengths they feel are necessary to protect them and their livelihood. To any lengths …
“Should we all vanish from the world tomorrow, we Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, it would not be the first time in history that such a thing has happened. Archbishops and cardinals take great pride in representing God. They have His ear and they are zealous and jealous in preserving their right to pronounce His opinions and His judgments.”
“So they might wipe us all out. Is that what you are saying?”
“Aye, of course it is. Like flies.”
There was a long pause while they rode in silence, the only sounds being made by their horses’ hooves and the occasional creak of saddle leather, and then Montdidier asked, “So what did de Payens end up saying, really?”
“That we have allies and assets. That we are not without power of our own. That our own roots go back further and deeper than those of the Christian Church. That we have access to, and possession of, the documented truth of what we claim, while no one else has. That we have the ability and the intellect to keep our sources—and our treasure—securely hidden. And that we are not stupid enough to put ourselves at risk by wandering into peril, starry eyed and naïve.
“He said we will win, eventually, but not in any way that I, or you, might ever think of. And at the last, he bade me be patient and prepare myself, and all the rest of you, for great and sweeping changes to our world, changes, he said, that would be incomprehensible and unimaginable were he even to attempt to point them out to us now. They have not yet begun to occur, he said, but once they do begin, they will be unstoppable, and we, the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ and the Temple of Solomon, will have the power to change the entire world.”
Montdidier sat with his head to one side, eyeing St. Clair askance for several minutes before he grunted and said, “All nine of us? That, if you will forgive me for saying so, sounds like the ravings of a madman. And while we are on the topic of madness, tell me, if you will, Stephen, how we all became soldiers of Christ in the first place, when there is not a Christian among us?”
“Protection.” St. Clair did not even hesitate. “Protection, pure and simple. Who would suspect sedition among the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ? The name allowed us to go about our lives without hindrance while we were seeking the treasure. As for the madness in what de Payens said, I thought the same at first, and then I questioned him more closely. He really does see great changes ahead for us. Recruits, for one thing. He sees us attracting hundreds of them, from all the lands of Christendom.”
“From Christendom … You mean Christian recruits? How can that be? I know the Order of Rebirth has been reborn, but it will continue to be a secret society, will it not? How then can we admit Christian knights?”
“Easily, Crusty. That was the first thing I asked de Payens when he mentioned recruitment, and he had already thought the matter through. Our ancient Order will continue to exist within the new order here in Jerusalem, whether we be called the Order of the Temple Knights or something else. The name we call the new order is not important, but its activities will be, and the activities of the Order of Rebirth will continue to be exercised, concealed among its activities. It will take thought, and much organization, but Hugh and St. Omer think it can be achieved. Hugh believes the Church will be brought to recognize our Order, and that will be the making of us.
“He has great faith in Bernard of Clairvaux, de Montbard’s young nephew who is abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux. He is confident that, with the backing of Clairvaux, allied with our own Order’s Grand Council and all the temporal power that can be brought to bear there by the Angevin Counts, Fulk of Anjou, Hugh of Champagne, and others like them, our Friendly Families will be able to prevail upon the Pope to accept not only the existence and import of our discoveries but also our sincere reassurances that nothing sudden will be forced upon the Church in the near future, until the Church Fathers themselves have had a sufficiency of time to study these matters and decide upon their validity. And in the meantime, he believes, we, and our works here in the Holy Land, will receive the full benison of papal recognition and favor, in return for our cooperation and silence.”
“And you believe that.” It was not a question.
St. Clair looked at his companion and nodded his head slowly. “I do. It took me some time to accept everything I had been told, but I now believe de Payens is right. In finding what we have found, we may have changed the known world and improved the life of every man, alive and to come, from what it has been to this point. For a thousand years there has been nothing, no dissenting voice, to gainsay the Church, or to threaten it with the loss of its worldly influence. Now we have the power to play that role, and in that way we may have made people’s lives better—theirs, and our own. That is worth believing, I think.”
Montdidier grinned and removed his flat-capped helmet, thrust the mailed cowl back off his head, then shook his head to loosen his matted hair and scrubbed it with one hand before replacing everything. That done, he drew his long sword and stood up in his stirrups.
“Tonight, friend Stephen, we will drink a cup of wine to that. To the betterment of people’s lives throughout the world. But it will still require armies of people with these—” he swung his sword around his head—“to see to their safety. So we will drink a second cup to ourselves, and to our friends and brethren, the monk knights of the temple, Poor Fellows that they are.”
FINIS
