Knights of the Black and White

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, saying 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.”

A few of the men smiled at that, although uncertainly, and de Payens looked from face to face among them, awaiting their responses. Montdidier coughed and shuffled his feet, then coughed again.

“Ridiculous as your story sounds, Hugh, he might be tempted to permit it … save that it would be of no use to him.”

Hugh glanced at St. Omer, raising one eyebrow quizzically, then looked back at Montdidier. “Explain that, Payn.”

“Well, the only reason I can think of for him to listen to your tale at all is that we, you and your friends, are all veteran knights. He could use our skills and experience. But then, if we became monks, as you suggest, our fighting skills would be lost and useless to him. Monks are forbidden to fight, even verbally, among themselves, although they do that all the time. But to fight with weapons, as we do? That’s anathema.”

“That’s right, Crusty. Anathema. That is exactly correct. Were he to accept us as monks, all our prowess, our training, our disciplines, and our skills would be useless to him. We would be no more useful to him than are the Hospital knights.”

“But the Hospital knights are very useful, Hugh.” St. Omer’s objection was immediate. “In their own way, doing what they do best, they are invaluable.”

De Payens smiled. “Aye, that’s right, too, Goff. They are, are they not? You know that better than any of us. And the Archbishop knows it, too. He also knows that the foolish people of Jerusalem are expecting the monks of the Hospital to fight like knights.”

Godfrey sat blinking for a few moments, then asked, “What are you saying, Hugh?” His voice was quiet enough to make everyone else sit forward, watching his mouth. “You sound as though you might be talking sense, but everything you say comes out as a riddle.”

De Payens shrugged. “Not if you marshal your thoughts from a different direction. Warmund de Picquigny, the Patriarch Archbishop of Jerusalem, has all the power here in Outremer that the Pope possesses back in Christendom. He can make kings, counts, dukes, and knights, and he can make and unmake bishops. It follows, therefore, that he can make monks.”

“Well of course he can. No one is disputing that.”

“Imagine warrior monks, Godfrey. Fighting monks. Veteran fighting monks who would answer to Warmund de Picquigny alone, as their ecclesiastical superior. Think you that thought might intrigue him?”

This time the silence was profound, reflecting the unthinkable tenor of what de Payens had suggested, and he allowed it to hover palpably above all of them before he continued. “Think about it seriously, lads, and forget about all the rules that would tell you a thousand times why this could never be. The times today are different, demanding different measures, different directions, and different solutions to different problems. So imagine, if you will, fighting monks, religious warriors bound by vows, answerable only to the Patriarch. Not to the King, and not to feudal lords. Were we such monks, we could then dedicate ourselves to patrolling the roads and protecting the pilgrims, ridding both Warmund and King Baldwin of their greatest headache. And being bound by the vow of poverty, we would not require to be paid—merely supported through the charity and alms of the Church.”

“Fighting monks?” Archibald St. Agnan’s scornful tone expressed all their skepticism. “Fighting monks? That is ridiculous, Hugh. Who ever heard of such a thing? It’s as logical as copulating virgins.”

This time no single man smiled in response to St. Agnan’s rough humor, and de Payens nodded. “That is true, Archibald, but you are a knight, so you should know better than any cleric that logic has little place in the middle of a fight—and make no mistake, a fight is what we are discussing here. We are about to become engaged, like it or not, in a fight for our ancient Order’s very survival, and to win it, we will have to fight the battles of the Christian Church, protecting its pilgrims, certainly—and I see nothing wrong with that—but upholding and appearing to endorse its hegemony, and defending the existence of this Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, even though that entails a breakdown of sense and logic.”

He fell silent for a count of five heartbeats, then said, “Listen now, all of you, and hear what I am saying. No one has ever heard of fighting monks because there has never been such a thing. But that idea will stop being ridiculous as soon as the first order of fighting monks is created to confront circumstances extraordinary enough to warrant such a thing. Warmund de Picquigny has the power and the authority to do that, and I believe the circumstances in force here are extraordinary enough to warrant that.”

“But why would we even think about doing such a thing, Sir Hugh?” This was Gondemare again, and de Payens smiled at him.

“It would provide us with the means of obeying our orders from the Seneschal.”

“What?” St. Agnan’s tone was skeptical. “You mean about excavating the temple? We all agreed that’s impossible. How can it be less so now?”

De Payens was ready for him, his answer spilling out almost before the question was complete.

“Because we are considering becoming penniless warrior monks, my friend. Once we become that we will have horses, but we will lack the wherewithal to provide feed and shelter for them—and for ourselves, be it said. And so, as partial payment for our services, we will ask leave of the King and the Archbishop to install ourselves and our mounts in the old stables above the temple ruins.

“Warmund de Picquigny will not object to that, I promise you, having gained our military skills for his own ends. Nor will the King object to having a reliable force of knights quartered in his own grounds. And once we are installed in the stables, we can begin to dig, in safety and in privacy. That should solve our most immediate problems for a while, at least.”

“Hugh, you have the mind of a Pope,” St. Omer growled. “That is brilliant, my friend.”

“Aye, you might well be right,” St. Agnan said, “but do we have to become monks? I know but little of how monks are made, but I mislike the idea of taking monkish vows. How much of that would we have to endure, were we to go ahead with this?”

“Three, Archibald, no more. Poverty, chastity, and obedience.”

“Swear me to chastity? Never!”

De Payens winked at St. Omer. “Come, now, St. Agnan, and be truthful,” he challenged the big knight. “When did you last have an unchaste thought of anything other than a pretty goat? How old are you now? Forty? Older? And you have been here in the desert for half your life. You smell like a rancid goat, as do we all, and no self-respecting woman would come near you, even were self-respecting women of our own kind to be found here. Truly, I ask you, what matters chastity to you?”

St. Agnan grunted and grinned, not even slightly offended. “Aye, fair enough, I might grant you that one. But what about the others? Obedience? And poverty, in God’s name?”

“You already live by those two, my friend. And in God’s name, too. That’s what the ritual we observed here today is all about. You undertook both of the vows you are questioning now, with only very minor differences, when you were Raised to the Order. You swore to obey the superiors set over you by God, and you swore to hold all things in common with your brethren in the Order, is that not correct?” He waited for St. Agnan’s nod, then smiled. “Aye, I’m glad you remember. You swore vows of obedience then, Archibald, and, for all intents and purposes, of poverty.”

No one appeared to have anything to add after that, and de Payens looked around at them, catching each man’s eye in turn until he was sure they were all waiting for what he would say next, and then a very small smile played along his lips. “Look, my friends,” he began, “I can see that you all have doubts about this, and I admit to you freely that until mere hours ago, I shared most of them. But lying awake last night, I thought about many things, and only now do I see that all of those things centered upon this dilemma we face, so let me share them with you.

“You all know of my self-imposed exile, these past years, shutting myself off from everyone.” He hesitated, thinking for a moment, then continued slowly, as though examining each word before he spoke it. “That mood, that frame of mind, was born of disappointment … and of something close to despair—despair for my fellow man, and for myself and my beliefs and my defaced ideals, because everywhere I looked, I seemed to see men wading through blood, befouled by the kind of filth I was taught to detest as a boy. Our Christian brethren, as all of you know, make much of their faith and the power of it. They call it a supernatural gift of God, and priests speak of losing faith as one of the greatest disasters that can befall a man, causing the loss of his very soul. And they say the greatest sin against faith is despair, because it denies the existence of hope.

“Well, my friends, I was in despair for all those years, a despair caused by what I had been watching in my fellow man all my life, and by the ease with which the behavior that inspired my despair can be forgiven, and is forgiven, by the Church, leaving men mysteriously cleansed, absolved of guilt, and free and able to go out and commit the same atrocities again and again and again. There is no sin, we are all taught, that cannot be forgiven merely by confessing it to a priest.”

He straightened his back and closed his hands over his face, squeezing his eyes shut as he said, “But most priests are just as venal and corrupt as the very men they forgive, citing God’s clemency.”

He lowered his hands, blinking to clear his eyes. “Most of them are, I said. Not all of them. There may well be some out there who are completely sincere in their beliefs, but I have never met one in person. That is the truth, and it appalls me. I was brought up, as were all of you, among knights and warriors, and I learned the laws of chivalry when I could barely walk. I also learned the laws of God and of the Church at the same time, but I had not grown beyond mid-boyhood before I also learned that few people beyond my family’s circle paid any attention at all to God’s laws. Most of them—lords, knights, and soldiers—heeded only those laws that had the power to punish and hurt them in this world. The other world they left wholly to the priests. And the priests, the clerics, gave all of their time towards the care of themselves. They spoke of the goodwill of others, but only insofar as it enriched them in real terms: money, power, and status.

“And then, after several years of increasing discouragement through all of that, I was initiated into this Order of Rebirth and discovered that the love of God, and my faith in God, can thrive outside the framework of the Church. That transformed my whole life, for it taught me to see and appreciate, for the very first time in my life, that every single thing that people do in life is influenced and dictated by the Church, and that the Church today is run by venal, grasping, corrupt, and self-aggrandizing men. Oh, we are expected to believe the Church fathers are all God-chosen and God-blessed, and we are encouraged and expected to entrust our priests with the care of our immortal souls, but who tells us such things? They do, of course. The priests tell us what to do and what to think, in everything to do with God—and in everything else, if the truth be told. They proclaim God’s infinite mercy and they claim that they embody God’s voice in this world … and they make it perfectly clear that if we disobey them, or if we choose not to believe them, they have the power to punish us, to condemn and even damn us to eternal perdition.”

He looked again from man to man, all of them rapt by what he was saying. “They damn people, brothers, to eternal perdition. Think about that again, for a moment, for it is something we tend to shy away from. Priests consign ordinary people maliciously to the everlasting fires of Hell and they do it simply because they can, because they possess and enjoy the power and the willfulness to rule men’s lives and dispossess their souls. And while they are doing it, they preach about God’s eternal and bottomless mercy. And who is to gainsay them, believing that they have the ear of God?”

His voice took on an edge that had not been there before. “Our Order taught us that we may change all that. Do you not recall the excitement of discovering that? Of knowing that we might someday change the entire world into a better place? The Church, as we know it today, was built by men, not by God, and not by his supposedly man-born son, Jesus. Jesus was man-born, certainly, but what is believed to be his Church was usurped, then shaped and fashioned long after his death, by Paul the gentile and by his Roman associates and advisers. But our Order, the Order of Rebirth in Sion, held out to us the hope of changing all of that someday, not by killing all the ungodly and unworthy priests but by bringing the truth, the real truth of what happened a millennium ago, here in Jerusalem, to light.

“I had forgotten that, my friends. I had lost sight of it among all the carnage and the filth of what has happened here since first we came. I had lost sight of it because no word was reaching us, I believed, from the Order itself. But I was wrong, and now that word has come, strange as it may seem in our ears, and I have come to see and to know now what I believe. I have no faith in men for their own sake, but I believe that God has brought us here, every man of us, for a purpose. And I believe that purpose is what brought this plan into my mind last night, while I lay abed.

“We are being asked—or ordered, if you wish—to find, to rediscover, the truth of our Order’s Lore. And when we have found it, we will make a start on righting all the wrongs that the real loss of faith—the manipulation and distortion of the real teachings of Jesus and his Jewish brethren—has visited upon this world. And we will change it. And when it is changed, although our names will be long forgotten, people will remember and talk about what we achieved.” He stopped, and the silence held until he asked them, “So, what say you? What do you want to do?”

“We shave our heads and dig,” came St. Agnan’s voice from among the circle of nodding heads.

THAT NIGHT, when he finally made his way to bed, Hugh failed to fall asleep and soon rolled on to his back, aware that he was facing another restless night. Normally he would fall asleep as soon as he lay down and would wake up refreshed, no matter how long or short his rest might have been. He could even nap, if the need arose, standing on his feet or propped in his saddle. Invariably, a failure to drop off instantly meant that something was troubling him, but this time he was unaware of anything that might be niggling at him and so, after a period of tossing and turning, he threw back his coverings and swung his legs out of bed, deciding to take a walk in the cool night air. He shrugged into the long, flowing Arab robe that, like most of his companions, he wore for comfort and convenience when he was not armored, then slipped one arm through the loop of his sword belt and settled it across his shoulder before making his way to the main doors leading to the courtyard. There he yawned and scratched his head, shivering slightly in the chill of the desert night.

“Why aren’t you asleep?”

Hugh spun around and saw Payn Montdidier sitting on a bench against the wall behind him on his right, lit by the full moon and the flickering flames of a burning cresset.

“Crusty! You startled me … But I’ll return your question: why aren’t you asleep?”

“I should be. But I’m going in now, because I’m chilled to the bone. I’ve been sitting here thinking.”

“About what?”

“Margaret … and my son, Charles, and Helen, my daughter. Helen will be eight years old tomorrow and I had forgotten, until tonight, when you mentioned that only two of us have families, back in Christendom …”

Hugh was appalled by his own thoughtlessness. Until Montdidier spoke, he had not considered what effect his earlier statement might have had on the two men in question, Montdidier and Gondemare. Now the pain in his friend’s voice was too obvious to miss.

“Payn,” he said, “forgive me. I had no—”

“I know that, Hugh. You simply spoke the truth, and you said nothing that came to me as a surprise. The die was cast on that affair long years ago, to everyone’s consent, Margaret’s as well as mine. But you caught me unprepared when you brought the matter up so suddenly …” His voice faded, and he stared into nothingness before he resumed. “Remembering my daughter’s birthday … it made me think about the pattern of our lives—of all our lives—and how it has changed so completely from what we anticipated when we were young and bright-eyed and full of great ideas.” He smiled, looking down at his feet, then shook his head and looked up at Hugh, his smile still in place.

“D’you remember how horrified we were when we found out that they knew about us? We thought they had discovered all about the Order. That was the most disastrous thing we could imagine at the time. May God help us!”

Hugh smiled, too. “Well, it was quite dramatic, I recall.”

“Now it seems laughable.”

Hugh cocked his head, intrigued by something in his friend’s tone. “Laughable? How so? I never thought to laugh. The women have made a tremendous sacrifice, without so much as the comfort of knowing what that sacrifice is for. And they stood back and allowed us to do what we needed to do. They could have wept and screamed. They chose not to, and they prepared themselves for lives without their men. God bless them, I say.”

“Aye, as you say, God bless them …” Montdidier stood up and moved towards the door, then hesitated and reached out to grasp Hugh’s shoulder. “It has just occurred to me that I do not even know if Margaret is still alive. She could be dead by now.”

Hugh looked his friend in the eye and nodded. “Aye, she could be, but if so, it could only have been in the past year. I think we would have heard word of her passing by now, were it otherwise. She is probably as alive and hale as you are, living happily in Payens.”

Montdidier stood for a few more moments without moving, then nodded his head. “Aye, you’re probably right. I hope you are. Now I’m going to bed, and you should, too, at least to rest, if not to sleep.”

Hugh pulled his robe about him before turning to walk back inside the hostel with his friend.