Knights of the Black and White

FOUR

“There’s a damsel in the marketplace asking about you.”

De Payens lowered the blade he had been polishing until it rested on his knee, and raised his head slowly to look at Arlo from beneath the border of the cloth that shielded his head from the blazing sun. “Do we know him?”

“No. How could we? He’s a damsel, I told you.”

“Did you tell him where to find me?”

“What am I, a fool? If he’s to find you, he’ll do it on his own. I know how to earn your thanks, and it’s damn hard work. And it’s never through telling people how to find you. All I ever get from that is the rough edge of your tongue …”

Even as Arlo spoke, however, de Payens could see the stranger approaching behind him, from the gates of the caravanserai, closely followed by a servant leading a mule with a wooden chest strapped to its back, and he lost awareness of Arlo’s mutterings as he took stock of the newcomer, the damsel, as Arlo had called him.

It took no great amount of brain power to understand where the name damsel came from, or what it stood for. The newcomer was tall and pinkly pale in the way of all newcomers to Outremer, people who had not yet had time to adjust to the searing glare of the desert sun and the parching blast of the hot winds that blew the sand like living rasps against exposed skin. They were instantly recognizable, their clothing too new and too unsuitable for the climate here, their colors all too bright and vibrant, their chain mail and armor still rusted and damp between the links with the moistures of Christendom and the sea passage they had just endured. It would take months in the dry desert air before their mail took on the burnished, sand-scoured look that would brand its wearer as a veteran.

Damsels were everything that the name suggested: virgins among carnivores; innocents among satyrs; pallid equestrian neophytes still untried against the fiercest horse-borne warriors in the world. The jest in Outremer was that the damsel’s pallor came of the anticipated fear of seeing his first Turkish janissary in full charge.

This one was a perfect example of the breed, with that unmistakable freshness of the new arrival. His clothing still bore the brightness of non-desert climes, and his bright, eager eyes betrayed that he had yet to see a hostile Mussulman, let alone fight one. He came striding right up to Hugh’s fire and addressed him directly. “I seek Sir Hugh de Payens and was told I would find him here. Do you know where he might be?”

“You’ve found him.” Hugh, who was sitting on a rock close by his cooking fire, set down his long-bladed sword, its point towards the fire, and drew himself up, aware of the surprise on the new man’s face and of the reason underlying it, for Hugh was dressed as no Christian knight. He was unarmored and wore the long, loose-fitting garments of the local desert nomads, and now he stood up, throwing the ends of his burnoose back to hang behind his shoulders.

“I am Hugh de Payens. Who are you?”

The man took three steps forward and dropped to one knee beside the fire, reaching for Hugh’s hand and seizing it before the surprised knight could snatch it away. “Your pardon, Sir Hugh, for my tardiness in reaching you, but I have been searching for you ever since landing at Joppa more than a month ago.” He looked up at Hugh, who was still too astonished to take back his hand. “My name is Gaspard de Fermond. You are a hard man to find, my lord.”

“I’m not your lord, man. I am a simple knight in fee to Count Hugh of Champagne and you should have had no difficulty in finding me. I live openly here, among the other knights.”

The newcomer flushed, but nodded his head, acknowledging that, and still refusing to relinquish the hand that de Payens was trying to withdraw. “I know that now, my lord, but when I came here at first, enquiring after you, someone sent me to Jericho, swearing you were there.”

“I told you, I am not your lord.” De Payens tilted his head to one side, looking at the man through narrowed eyes. “Now, why have you been searching for me? Who sent you to find me?”

“Pardon me, my lord, but you are my lord, in truth. Your late father knighted me with his own hand and gave me property within his barony, so you are my liege lord. As for who sent me, that I think you must know, if you but reflect on who knows you are here.” As he said these words, the damsel’s hand moved in Hugh’s, pressing on the knuckle and then moving in an unmistakable manner. Given how the man had kept hold of his hand, however, Hugh was prepared for something of the kind, and allowed no reaction to show on his face. He merely returned the proper response of recognition and finally took his hand away, beckoning with it to where another stone sat close to his.

“Sit down, Fermond,” he said, “and accept a word of advice. Never ignore the opportunity to collect a suitable fireside stone for your encampment. There are surprisingly few of them lying around in this land, and Frankish knights do not take kindly to sitting on the ground. Stones of the proper size are prized for sitting on. If you spend any time at all here, you will come to know how true that is. Now sit, and tell me what you have for me.” Hugh pointed with his thumb. “This is Arlo, also from Payens. He has been with me since we were boys together and is both my friend and my good right hand.”

When the two men had exchanged greetings, Hugh continued. “When did you last eat and drink? We have a skin of wine, sour but safe to drink, some bread from yesterday, and some goat cheese. Arlo, will you bring them?” He watched Arlo depart and then turned back to de Fermond. “Arlo is trustworthy, but he is not of the Order. What do you have for me?”

“First, the proof that I am who I say I am. I attended your Raising.”

Hugh was astounded, but he had been schooling himself for years to allow his face to betray nothing of what he was thinking, and so he sat motionless although his thoughts were racing. He had absolutely no recollection of this man. Neither his face nor his name were familiar, and there was nothing at all about the fellow that rang the slightest chime of memory. Besides, he would have sworn that de Fermond must be at least three years his junior, and yet if the man had attended the Raising in Payens, then he must be at least a year older than Hugh.

Within minutes, however, de Fermond had proved that he spoke the truth, for not only did he recall the occasion clearly, he knew who else had been there and what they had spoken about afterwards at the celebration, and he even recalled an amusing story Hugh’s grandfather had told about the night his son, Hugh’s father the Baron, had been raised to the same honor. Hugh listened with enjoyment, and when his guest was finished, he nodded.

“You obviously are who you say you are, so if you will, tell me what you have to tell me.”

De Fermond cleared his throat and looked about him. “Is there a spot nearby, perhaps, in which to walk and think, perhaps to talk, without being overheard?”

Hugh looked at him in surprise. “In a caravanserai? Of course there is, providing you wish to have your throat cut. There is no such ‘safe’ place in any hostelry that I know of in all Outremer, save for this one.” He grinned widely. “You are fortunate, because this hostelry is unique. Its owner is an honest man with eight big, strapping sons, which is why I stay here every time I travel from Jerusalem. There is a stream nearby, flowing from the oasis into the desert for a way before it sinks beneath the sand. We can walk there. But here comes Arlo. We will eat first, and then we will walk and talk.”

Once they had eaten, they made their way out of the caravanserai to find the stream, and now they were walking along a path, lined with tall grasses, that followed its banks. When de Fermond was confident of their privacy, he spoke directly, asking Hugh, “Have you heard about the death of Sir Godfrey St. Omer?”

“Godfrey St. Omer is dead?”

“Aye, my lord. He was taken and killed by pirates, five years ago, on his way here from France.”

“He will be most displeased to hear that, because he was in fine health ten days ago, when last I spoke with him.”

De Payens smiled at the other man’s open-mouthed stupefaction. “Godfrey was captured, my friend, taken at sea and sold into slavery, but he was not killed. I sent word of his survival home to France six months ago, but you must have passed it on your way. He spent four years as a galley slave and then was miraculously able to escape with his life almost a year ago, thanks be to God. He made his way to Jericho and sent word to me, and I brought him back to Jerusalem, where he is now returned to full health. He told me that he was carrying missives for me from the Council when he was taken. They were lost with the ship on which he sailed.”

De Fermond closed his gaping mouth and nodded soberly. “Thanks be to God indeed, that he survived. We had heard nothing from him since he left, and we had scarce expected to, but the Council was beginning to grow anxious over having heard nothing from you since then, after several years. And then came word that Sir Godfrey’s ship had been taken by corsairs, with the loss of all hands. Soon after that I was dispatched, one of four in all, to find you … Have you heard from any of the others?”

“No, you are the first to reach me, and I confess I am now very curious as to what this is all about.”

“It is very simple, my lord. I have been sent by the Seneschal and the Governing Council of the Order to remind you of your responsibilities to your brethren at home in France.”

“My responsibilities. I see … Now tell me, if you will, who is Seneschal of the Order nowadays, and what are these responsibilities of which you speak so blithely?”

De Fermond blinked slowly, unsure whether he was being twitted. “The Count is Seneschal today—Count Hugh. He was appointed on his return to France last year, soon after the death of Jean Toussaint, Seigneur of Amiens. Did you not know that?”

“No more than you knew of the safe return of Godfrey St. Omer. How could I know it, man? Our Order is a closed society, Fermond, and secretive above all else. That means that word of such things travels slowly and seldom makes a noise. Count Hugh will be an excellent Seneschal. He has the temperament, and his governance will benefit everyone, including the Order itself. Speaking of which, tell me more about these responsibilities you spoke of. What are they and how do they affect me?”

The other man gaped again. “Your responsibilities,” he repeated, waving one hand indeterminately. “To the Order … its history and all its teachings.”

De Payens stopped walking and pretended to adjust the drape of his flowing robe as he made sure that no one was close by. “You are making noises, de Fermond, but not much sense. How can I be responsible for the Order and all its teachings?”

“Not responsible for, my lord … I meant responsible to … as we all are.” He cleared his throat and his tone became markedly more solemn as he delivered a memorized message. “For hundreds of years—and these are the Count’s own words to me, to be passed on to you—everything our Order has done has been aimed towards the fulfillment of the situation—the circumstances—that now exist in Outremer, in the Kingdom, and in the City, of Jerusalem. The Seneschal saw the evidence of this unfolding while he himself was here before, a Councillor but not yet Seneschal, but he had been sent at that time to observe and take notes, and had no authority to do anything on his own initiative. His orders were to return home to report all that he had seen and learned to his fellows on the Council. But he left you behind deliberately, in situ, even although he had not been permitted to tell you anything of what he had been about in his brief visit—for he was here but for a few months, is that not so?”

“Aye, less than a year.”

“Well, he has sent you a gift. You may have noticed that I came accompanied by a man leading a mule.”

“Aye, I saw that.”

“The chest is for you, from the Seneschal in person.

It is locked and sealed, and you are to check most solemnly upon opening it to see that it has not been tampered with or opened.”

“What’s in it, regalia?”

De Fermond blinked in surprise. “Aye. How could you know that?”

De Payens smiled. “Nothing magical involved. The last time that the Count and I were together, we talked about that. The Count himself had owned all the devices of the Order, but they had been lost in a surprise raid on the caravan that was bringing them to Jerusalem from Joppa, years ago. And of course, we had no way of replacing them, without sending someone to France to bring back a new set.”

De Fermond inclined his head gravely. “Well, Sir Hugh, now that the insignia and regalia of the Order are restored to you and the other brethren here in Outremer, it is my solemn duty to instruct you thus: the Seneschal charges you, Sir Hugh de Payens, to think back upon the mysteries of which you learned in preparation for your entry into the brotherhood, and to look about you now, in the conduct of your duties in the Holy Land, for ways and means of bringing those mysteries to a culmination.”

Hugh stopped walking. He crossed his left arm over his chest and rested his right elbow against the back of his hand, flicking his front teeth with his thumbnail. “Bringing those mysteries to a culmination,” he said after a while, speaking as though to himself. “As I said before, noises, but no sense. Do you know what that means, Fermond, what you have just said? Because I certainly don’t.”

Fermond responded with a question of his own. “Have you heard of Count Fulk of Anjou?”

“Is there a Frank anywhere who has not? Anjou is filled with Count Fulks. I have met both Fulk III and Fulk IV, father and son. Which one are you talking about?”

“Neither, my lord. Both of those are dead. The Count in power now is Count Fulk V. He is a senior officer of our Order.”

“Of course he is, as were his ancestors.”

“Aye, well, I have been instructed to tell you that Count Fulk will be coming out to Outremer, within the coming year, if all goes well, to take charge of the Order’s activities here and to control and coordinate your efforts in your primary task.”

“By whom were you instructed?”

“By the Council.”

“I see … And the Count is to control and coordinate my efforts in what primary task?”

Fermond hawked and cleared his throat, then began walking again, keeping his voice low as a veiled woman approached them, carrying a long-necked water jug on her head with ease and grace.

“Not your personal efforts, my lord—the efforts of the brethren in the Holy Land. You are instructed to gather and organize all of the brethren you can find in Outremer, to re-establish the customs and rituals of the Order, and to devise some means of undertaking an excavation of the ruins of King Solomon’s Temple, to rediscover the treasures and the artifacts that our Lore tells us lie buried there.”

Hugh walked in silence for several more steps, his head bowed, but then he began to laugh, snorting at first in disbelief, and then throwing his head back to guffaw, his booming voice frightening the birds from the nearest date palms. Fermond looked askance at him, but kept walking and said nothing until Hugh’s mirth had died away. When he drew breath to speak, however, Sir Hugh cut him off with a swiftly upraised palm.

“Hold! Say nothing for the moment, if you will. Give me time to think about what I must now say to you. You have had months to consider what you would say to me, and you have said it. I have had mere minutes to absorb it, and now I must think.” He walked slowly and resolutely, his head still lowered, watching the puffs of powdery dust stirred up from the pathway by his sandaled feet. Finally he snorted again and reached out to lay a heavy hand on his companion’s shoulder, bringing him to a halt and turning him around so that they could look each other in the eye.

“Upon your honor now, Fermond, did these instructions of yours originate with Count Hugh, or did they come to you from the Governing Council?”

De Fermond looked mystified, but then he shrugged, as if to ask if it made any difference. De Payens waited.

“From the Council. They had already been under preparation before the death of Monseigneur Toussaint. Count Hugh merely passed them along as one of his first duties as Seneschal. But it was he who sent the insignia.”

“Aye, that is what I thought. Now look here. I want to be practical, Fermond, to deal only with the realities of what you are suggesting, but I cannot. I have never heard anything as asinine as what you have just proposed. That I am to—what was it?—to devise some means of undertaking an excavation of the ruins of King Solomon’s Temple? Is that not what you said?”

Gaspard de Fermond cleared his throat again and nodded sheepishly. He had no idea what he had said that was asinine, but it was evident that de Payens thought him a fool. De Payens, however, was now nodding his head emphatically.

“Aye, well,” he said. “There would be no grave difficulty there, on the face of it, other than gathering the brethren in one place for any length of time. We all have different lords, you see, Fermond—you know that—different masters, and they are scattered throughout the kingdom and the counties, spread out over all the Holy Lands, in fact. All of those various lords make differing demands of their men, in duty and attendance, and since few of them are of our Order in the first place, that alone makes what you are proposing very difficult, since you are suggesting that we gather the brethren together in a working group and keep them in Jerusalem—perhaps for months on end—without offering an explanation to anyone. An explanation that might be widely demanded, of who we are and why we are assembled here in such numbers, and in such a way, and for such a long time, for Jerusalem is not like any city in Christendom.

“The people who issued these instructions you bring us have no idea of what Jerusalem truly is. This is a city being reborn as we speak. We sacked it in our first campaign, and you may think you know what that means, but let me assure you that you do not. We destroyed the city, and we destroyed its people, wading knee deep in blood on the day the city fell to us. We killed everyone who lived there … everyone we could find, that is, for a few, a very small few escaped. Then, for the next ten years, the city lay abandoned, a stinking charnel house. Only a scattering of people lived there, until a few years ago, when King Baldwin realized that this was the center of his kingdom and it was not even strong enough to close its gates to brigands.

“Since then things have changed. The city is being repopulated, and that was not a simple thing to achieve. It is isolated, close to no other fortified bastion, and it has no port to serve it, other than Joppa, thirty miles distant. Baldwin began by bringing in Syrian Christians from the lands across the Jordan, offering them land and houses for their families, and somehow he found men to rebuild and extend the city’s northern walls. But he had to feed them, too, and Jerusalem has never been rich in farmland. So he abolished all taxes on food being brought into the city, and at the same time imposed heavy taxes on all food going out. He made it possible, in other words, for a stable citizenry to live here again.

“That does nothing, however, to change the fundamental fact that Jerusalem is landlocked and poor. It has no reason for existence other than as a religious center, to receive the pilgrims who flock to it to visit the Holy Places. And therefore it offers no means of concealing the kind of activities demanded by these instructions you have brought.

“But leave that, for now, and think about this. Were we able to gather all our brethren together by some miracle, we could simply start to dig. No difficulty there. The ruins of the temple are clearly evident, unconcealed and plain to see, and abandoned these thousand years and more. It is never used for anything, other than being the base on which the famed al-Aqsa Mosque was built by the Muslims. Have you seen the mosque yet?”

De Fermond shook his head. “No, my lord. As I said, I am but newly arrived. I visited the city but briefly, then went down to Jericho, looking for you.”

“Ah, well, in that case you might have seen it, but you would not have known it for what it was. In fact, however, it is no longer a mosque. It is now the official residence of the newly crowned King of Jerusalem, Baldwin le Bourcq, the second King Baldwin to hold that rank. And thus, the King’s palace sits atop the ruins of the temple far beneath.

“But then, you see, to make matters more difficult, that temple is really Herod’s temple, even while everyone assumes it to be Solomon’s. Not so. It isn’t Solomon’s at all. The ruined temple visible here was built by Herod a thousand years ago, and it was completed just in time to be destroyed when the Romans finally grew sick and tired of Hebrew rebellions and unrest and decided to kill all the Jews and destroy the troublesome Province of Judea once and for all. I have been told the temple that is there now was never used for proper worship, that it was destroyed before it could be completed. I have also heard that it was built atop the site of Solomon’s Temple, but we have no means of proving or disproving it today.”

He eyed de Fermond again, one eyebrow slightly raised and a mocking little smile on his lips. “Even so, had we the proof that Solomon’s Temple is really there, there would be no great difficulty entailed in excavating it. We would simply apply for permission to King Baldwin—he is the King of Jerusalem and, as such, he owns the city and the temple. I have no doubt that permission would be swiftly granted. Most particularly so when we inform him of the treasure for which we are searching.”

“But—”

“Ah yes, the ‘but.’ But we can tell no one about the treasure, can we? It must be secret, sacrosanct, as are our operations. So we must excavate the temple in secrecy, somehow accommodating the fact that it sits atop a hill within the city, and we must do that while maintaining the secrecy of the very existence of our own brotherhood and Order, all of this in full view of a surrounding city full of people, and without raising any suspicions or curiosity, even among our own knightly but uninitiated comrades, as to what we are about.”

He allowed what he had said to reverberate with his listener, then continued. “Tell me, my friend, without compromising your loyalty to the Seneschal, or to the Councillors who compiled these orders and imposed upon him to send them—for I cannot believe Count Hugh would be the originator of such stupidity—have you any ideas about how we might approach this task you have defined for us? If you have, upon my oath, I will bare my head and bow to you, and I will resist the temptation to tell you to go home to the idiots who sent you here and bid them to come and see for themselves what they are so stupidly and arrogantly demanding.”

De Fermond stood without speaking, his cheeks flaring with color, and de Payens grasped his upper arm. “Understand me, my friend, I know you are not to blame in this. You are merely the messenger. But tomorrow night we will be back in Jerusalem, and the day after that, I will take you and show you the Temple Mount. You will see instantly, the moment you set eyes on it, that the men who sent you here with these demands have never seen or imagined the reality of what they would have us face.”

The flush on Fermond’s face had given way to a pallid waxiness. “Are you saying, Sir Hugh, that you will not obey the commands of the Council?”

“Not at all. I am saying that it does not seem possible that anyone, including the Seneschal and the Councillors themselves, could achieve the task set for me and my brethren here in Jerusalem. But your instructions were that I am to attempt to devise a means whereby I can achieve the objective you have described, is that not so? I can promise you I will obey that order faithfully. I will examine everything that I can imagine, in seeking a way to obey the Seneschal. I have no idea how long it will take, but if Count Fulk of Anjou comes here within the year, I will have something to show him—even though it be only the outlines of the plans I have considered and rejected. How long will you remain with us?”

Fermond shook his head. “I cannot remain at all, other than to deliver certain messages that are my charge. Immediately after that, I am bound for Cyprus, to meet with several of our brotherhood there.”

“Then I will wish you well on your journey, for these are ill times for travelers, and I suspect you will not be journeying among a great company.”

“No, but if God is with us, I will survive to deliver my tidings.”