Knights of the Black and White

TWO

The twin entrances to the stables that had been bequeathed by the King to house the Patriarch Archbishop’s new peacemakers were barely discernible as entrances to anything, unless you knew what you were looking for, St. Omer thought as they came into view, but even so, they looked strangely deserted, the only visible signs of life being the slow milling of the small herd of horses in the railed paddock close to the ancient southern wall. As he drew closer, however, his eyes adjusting to the glare reflected from the blank stone walls, he made out the shape of a single man, sitting on a leather-backed chair by the larger of the two vaguely rectangular openings. With his chair tilted back against the wall, the fellow looked as though he might be sound asleep, but he was wearing one of the same unremarkable brown fustian tunics that St. Omer’s companions wore, and they all knew he was on guard duty, set there to ensure that no one who did not belong there would set foot in or even near the stables.

Even close up, the stable entrances looked nothing like doorways. They were merely holes knocked out of the walls that had been built across the wide front of an ancient cavern at the southwest corner of the Temple Mount to create a storage space of some kind. They were neither regular nor similar to each other, and looking idly at them, an observer would see only two gaping black spaces, ragged edged and unworthy of notice, because above them, dwarfing them into insignificance, soared the great landscaped mound topped by the former al-Aqsa Mosque, the site of the Dome of the Rock, one of the three greatest shrines of Islam, along with Mecca and Medina. Since the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, the magnificent al-Aqsa had been desecrated and profaned, converted into a royal palace to house the Christian kings of Jerusalem, and it was now the home of King Baldwin and his wife, Morfia.

The guard opened his eyes and stood up, yawning and stretching, as St. Omer and his party approached, and then he ambled across and opened the barred gate to the paddock, holding it wide until all the new arrivals had ridden in and dismounted. St. Omer and Gondemare unsaddled their own mounts, but before they could begin to brush them down, they were approached by the guard, who informed them that there was a Gathering in progress among the knights and that they were expected to join their brethren as soon as they returned. As the two knights glanced at each other, the man Jubal took St. Omer’s reins from his hands.

“I’ll see to the horses,” he said. “You two had better join the others. Don’t forget to tell them you met the Queen.”

St. Omer straightened up, scanning the other man’s face for humor, but Jubal’s expression was unreadable.

“Thank you, Jubal, I will not forget,” St. Omer said, and nodded to Gondemare to accompany him into the stables.

Both entrances gave onto the same broad common space, but a little way inside, the remnants of a second wall, a weather barrier built of mud bricks and showing evidence that it had once contained two sets of wide wooden doors, stretched laterally, and from its midpoint another, at right angles to the first, divided the enormous area into two sections. The ceiling was high, perhaps the height of two tall men, and carved out of the rock itself, but it sank lower, in a gradual arch, as it extended to right and left. The whole interior smelled of hay and horses, and the space on the right of the dividing wall contained individual stalls that were now being rebuilt after being unused for many decades, while the section on the left had already been partitioned into simple living accommodations, with truckle cots, a few rudimentary tables and chairs, and several other crude pieces of furniture.

At the very rear of this living section, farthest from the entrance, a high, solid old wooden partition with a single narrow door divided the room again, laterally this time, and provided space for the monks to meet and pray in private. Another solitary guard stood in front of that door, this one a knight with no visible escutcheon, dressed in a simple white surcoat over a full suit of mail. He drew himself upright as soon as St. Omer and Gondemare stepped through the main entrance and stood watching them until they stopped directly in front of him, at which time he asked them, in a formal, stilted voice, the reason for their being there. Each man in turn then stepped forward and whispered something into the guard’s ear, after which he nodded and relaxed visibly.

“I’m always afraid someone’s going to forget the watchword,” he murmured, keeping his voice low. “It’s been too long without regular Gatherings. Good to see you fellows safely back. Did you have any fun?”

St. Omer took off the belt supporting his sheathed sword and laid it on the ground at the other man’s feet. “Aye, we did, at the last minute. Broke an attack earlier today, less than five miles from here. Big group, too.” Beside him, Gondemare was straightening up from laying his weapons down beside St. Omer’s. He nodded towards the closed door. “What’s happening in there?”

The guard, Geoffrey Bissot, shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but whatever it is, it was important enough to call for a full council meeting. I’ll find out what’s happening eventually, but a new man arrived today, so I know it has something to do with that. André de Montbard. D’you know him?”

Gondemare shook his head, but St. Omer said, “Aye, I know him … at least, I used to. Haven’t heard of him in years, not since I was a tad. Where did he come from, do you know?”

“Straight out from France, by the look of him. A damsel. Arrived today, in the middle of the afternoon, and Sir Hugh sent out word immediately for everyone to gather. They only started a short time ago, not even half an hour, so they’ll still be in the ritual. Hold on, I’ll announce you.”

He unsheathed his dagger and turned to pound its hilt on the door, and when it opened in response to his summons, he saluted the inner guard, then stepped inside and announced the newcomers by name, Sir Gondemare of Arles and Sir Godfrey St. Omer. No mention of their monkish titles. Both men then entered the candlelit space, and Bissot closed the door behind them and returned to his guard duty.

In spite of the glow from many lamps and candles, it took St. Omer a few moments before he could see clearly enough to identify the various people gathered in the shadowed depths in front of him, but eventually he saw Hugh de Payens standing in the eastern corner of the long, narrow, rectangular room, dressed in the black-and-white regalia of their Order of Rebirth in Sion, and he bowed deeply towards him and offering the traditional greeting of the latecomer to the Gathering. Beside him, Gondemare did the same, repeating the greeting word for word. De Payens inclined his head formally in acceptance of their saluta-tions, and as he did so, the man on his right, whom St. Omer now recognized as a much-aged version of the André de Montbard he remembered from his boyhood, inclined his head, too, in welcome. De Payens then held up his hand in a signal to the two newcomers to remain where they were, and launched into the closing prayers of the Gathering ceremony. Everyone waited in silence, heads bowed, until the closing exhortation, “So mote it be,” which they repeated, and then they relaxed and began to make themselves comfortable, sitting on whatever they could find, some on crudely made three- and four-legged stools, others on logs and soot-stained fireside boulders. De Payens himself seated André de Montbard on the single wooden chair they owned, then turned to address his fellows.

“Our visitor brings word from home, brethren, and so I think he should speak first, since none of us knows what that word may be.” He turned to Montbard. “Sir André, will you address us?”

De Montbard twisted in his chair and looked around the room until he had met the eye of each of the six men surrounding him, and when he had done so, he rubbed the ridge of his long nose between finger and thumb.

“Well,” he began. “I have no great amount of things that are new to tell you, but yet I have much to say, and much to learn from you, so let me begin by offering the blessings and good wishes of Count Hugh of Champagne, Seneschal of our Order, and also those of the Governing Council. My primary mission is to inform you that Count Fulk of Anjou, who was supposed to visit you within the year, will not be able to come. The Count has pressing concerns that will keep him close to home this year, but he hopes to have all of them resolved in ample time to enable him to come next year.”

He looked about him again, then waved a hand to indicate the room in which they sat. “I must say now that this astounds me. All of it astounds me—what you have achieved, what you have done, the brief time, slightly more than a year, within which you have been able to do it. And still I do not know what you have really done … What have you done, in truth?”

De Payens barked a deep laugh. “We’ve become monks, complete with shaven heads.”

“Aye, I see that. But yet you are not, are you? You have not really taken up the cloth.”

“No, not really. We remain novices. We have not yet finalized our vows. But we are in training, committed and dedicated to undertake those vows, in all solemnity, when the time is right.”

“But why, in God’s name? Why did you think it necessary to do that?”

“Because God’s name was the only thing we could imagine that would afford us even a minor chance of carrying out the impossibly wrong-headed instructions we last received from France. As monks, quartered here in situ, we have at least an opportunity to try.”

“Well, certainly the orders you received were foolish and impractical,” de Montbard replied. “That is a large part of my reason for being here, sent out to modify those instructions after examining the facts of your situation. You should understand that Count Hugh knew nothing of what had been demanded of you. The instructions you received through Gaspard de Fermond were issued and dispatched without the Count ever having set eyes on them. None of the Councillors responsible for issuing the commands had ever visited Jerusalem, as you must have guessed. Now please, if you will, tell me the entire tale of how you came to be here, ordained as monks and living in these … stables.”

Half an hour later, he knew everything there was to know about the brotherhood’s activities in Jerusalem within the previous year, and when de Payens finally fell silent, de Montbard sat without speaking for a while, shaking his head in admiration and wonder, before he began to ask questions.

“So, you said the Patriarch anticipated thorny problems in convincing the King to grant this petition of yours, but he obviously overcame them. What did he do?”

Godfrey St. Omer grunted, then spoke up in the clear, dry tones that bespoke his keen intellect and education. “He did the simplest thing possible. He told the King precisely what we were hoping to do. But he did it in such a way that Baldwin immediately saw the advantages to himself in what was being proposed. As King and Commander in Chief of the Army of Jerusalem, threatened with invasion from all sides, he had always refused to deplete his defensive forces in any way—but we were not, strictly speaking, in his army, you see. We had liege lords of our own to whom we owed our primary fealty, while they in turn owed theirs to him. Therefore, being the King, he could assert his authority over them by removing us from their governance legitimately, in the name of Mother Church, while making sure at the same time that his own reputation would profit from his taking an action—a salu-tary, revolutionary action—that everyone would clearly see as a solid step towards the destruction of the brigands who were glutting on the pilgrims and travelers.” St. Omer waved a beckoning finger to de Payens, who took over smoothly.

“Baldwin is no fool, and we appreciated that going in, and presented our case with that clearly in mind. He appreciated at first glance that we would cost him nothing, and that he had nothing to lose by allowing us to do what we wished to do. At worst, he decided, we would be ineffectual, but we would still provide a visible military presence on the roads that he could point to as proof that he had made an effort. At best, on the other hand, and still at no cost to him, we might achieve at least a lessening of the pressures on the road system and the pilgrims. And so he gave us his royal leave to bind ourselves to the Church, as warrior monks—monastics—our primary fealty transferred to Archbishop Warmund and our mere existence enhancing his own reputation as a sagacious king and leader.”

“Warrior monks … I am amazed that the Pope would permit such a thing.”

“Out here, brother, Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, is Pope, in all but name, and his needs over-rode all other considerations.”

“And there are how many, seven of you?”

“Aye, seven.”

“And will be eight.” De Montbard looked around, acknowledging each of them. “I would be honored to join you, if you will have me. Count Hugh has given me his leave to do so, and to remain here in Outremer as one of you if I so wish. Providing, as I have said, that you will have me …”

Hugh de Payens smiled. “Why would we not? You are already one of us, bound by the same vows—save that you will need now to swear a vow of chastity, in addition. Will that deter you?”

De Montbard grinned back at him. “At my age? Not in the slightest. My wife died six years ago, and even before that, the fires had cooled. No, a vow of chastity will neither vex nor perplex me. But … But you have others here, among your number, who are neither knights nor brethren of our Order. I saw six of them, at least, when I arrived this morning, all of them dressed alike, in plain brown tunics and chain mail. Who are those men, and what function do they serve?”

De Payens turned to St. Omer. “Godfrey, would you like to answer that? It was your idea to conscript them in the first place.”

“Aye.” St. Omer rose to his feet and nodded towards Montbard. “Good day to you, Master de Montbard. You will not remember me, but I recall you clearly from my boyhood, when you used to come visiting my father, Henri St. Omer of Picardy.”

De Montbard nodded graciously. “I remember your father very well, Master St. Omer, although I fear I have no memory of you.”

“Nor should you. I was but a boy when last I set eyes on you, and you were already a knight of renown.” He stopped speaking for a moment, then waved a hand and began again. “Those men you ask about are the main reason for our being able to do what we do. We call them sergeants, and although they be neither knights nor brethren of the Order, we trust them completely because there is not a single unknown quantity among them. They came out here with us, for the most part, when first we set out to fight the Turks, and they have been with us ever since, as servants, comrades, body-guards, and companions in arms. Their loyalty and good faith towards us and ours is beyond question.

“When we committed to the monkish life, we were obliged to relinquish our former identities and all the heraldic trappings that went with them, and as part of that, we were also required to release all our dependents and followers, for we had renounced the world. Unfortunately, however—and this was something we had failed to consider beforehand—these faithful men had nowhere to go when we did that, and no means of going there, for they were indeed, dependents, relying on us to provide them with everything they required, in return for their strength, support, and loyalty. To our chagrin, we discovered that we had not set them free at all. What we had done was to imprison them without resources, in an alien world from which they could not reasonably hope to escape. And so they refused to be dismissed. They argued, convincingly, that they had been protecting us and underpinning us for many years, and that our taking vows as monks had little bearing on the truth that we would continue to need that support and underpinning, since we did not intend to give up fighting. We were continuing to be knights, as well as becoming monks, and that meant that they ought to be able to continue to serve us in our knightly capacity, if not the monkish one. It was a very persuasive argument, most particularly so when we considered that, if the seven of us were to patrol the roads alone—and it seemed at that time that we might have no other choice—none of us would be able to do any work on our excavations. Hugh?”

De Payens continued. “We spoke to the Patriarch about involving these men as sergeant volunteers and installing them as lay brethren, bound by our prayer schedule and the Rule we would follow, but free of binding vows.” He shrugged his wide shoulders self-deprecatingly. “Each of us had at least two such people, a few of us had more, and many of those had people of their own—friends and family, brothers in arms, and veterans who had lost their own knights to sickness or battle. So now we are seven knights—eight, once you join us—and twenty-three sergeants.”

“They all look uniform. Where did you find the funds to dress them all the same way?”

“The uniforms were a gift from the Patriarch Archbishop, probably as a gesture to make his contribution to the kingdom’s welfare more readily identifiable. We accepted his largesse gratefully, without questioning his motives.”

“And what about your vows of poverty?”

“An astute question. We have arrived at a compromise on that, after discussion with the Patriarch. He requires us to maintain ourselves as a fighting force, but, like the King, he has no wish to be responsible for equipping us. He says his diocese cannot afford such ongoing expenditures. Godfrey here took careful note of that and reminded us later of exactly what the Patriarch had said, with the result that we fastened upon his own expression—‘ongoing expenditures’—and pointed out to him that we ourselves are not without means. In the normal course of things, we would contribute all our possessions to Mother Church upon taking our vows, in return for her complete support. We suggested to the Archbishop, therefore, that we might modify the standard vow of poverty to accommodate our—and his—special requirements here in Jerusalem. Each of us, as monks, would undertake personal poverty henceforth, on oath, but instead of donating all our wealth and possessions to the Church, we would undertake instead to hold all things in common with our brethren, for the good of our fraternity and its endeavors.”

De Montbard’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “But that is our vow—the same vow we all swore on joining the Order of Rebirth: to hold all things in common, for the common good.”

“Of course it is.” De Payens’s grin lit up his entire face. “But we said nothing about that to the Patriarch, and he was happy to accept our suggestion, since it relieved him of any future need to worry about supplying us with armor, equipment, weaponry, saddlery, or horses. And so we are reasonably well equipped, and capable of providing for our own day-to-day needs, so be it they are modest.”

De Montbard was shaking his head. “You are amazing, all of you … And all of you ride out on these patrols?”

“Aye, for the time being.” De Payens stood up and stretched his arms widely, grunting with the pleasure of it. “The time will come, we hope, when only the youngest of us, and no more than two or three at any time, will ride out, accompanied by sergeants. That will work well for us.”

“Aye,” St. Agnan agreed, “it will, because nobody knows or cares which knights ride out, or how often, or where they go, so be it the roads are kept safe. So a few of us will spend most of our time patrolling, while the others spend most of theirs excavating.”

“But can you trust these sergeants that far?” De Montbard addressed himself to de Payens. “You have told me you do, and I can see you believe what you are saying, but still, I have to express my strong doubt, since these men are outsiders and know nothing of our Order or its secrets. How will you keep the excavations secret from them? I cannot see that being possible over any extended length of time.”

De Payens shrugged, his face untroubled. “We do not yet know, but we will keep them secret. We have no intention of allowing anyone not of the brotherhood to suspect, or even imagine, that there are things happening here of which they have no knowledge. That would be sheerest stupidity. So it may mean that the brother sergeants will eventually have quarters separate from ours. That would raise no concerns, since it has ever been thus, we being knights and they being commoners. Now that we are to be monks bound by solemn vows, while they remain lay brethren, the same division will apply. Separate lives and separate quarters. And separate activities—carried out, in our case, in secret.”

“What will you call yourselves—ourselves?”

“What d’you mean?”

“You need a name, Hugh, you and your brethren. If you are to become monks, you are going to need a name suitable to who you are and what you do. The Patriarch’s Patrol is hardly a proper name for a fraternity of monks.”

“What is wrong with it?” Gondemare said. “It describes us well, I think.”

“It lacks dignity. You—we—need something more fitting. Something that reflects our purpose.”

“What about Knights of the Temple Mount?” Montdidier was normally silent in conference and now he bridled when everyone turned to look at him. “Well that’s what everyone seems to be calling us nowadays,” he said defensively.

“Is that true?” De Montbard looked around at the others, and when he saw the nods of assent he grimaced and turned back to Payn, shaking his head. “It is a … straightforward name, I suppose, and one can see how it might become popular, but …” He grimaced again. “It seems to me that the best thing we can hope for is that that particular name will simply fade away. It places too much emphasis on both who we are and where we are. Knights of the Temple Mount … It could attract undesirable attention to our endeavors. I think we had best forget that one. Does anyone else have a suggestion?”

“The Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ.” It was Hugh de Payens who spoke this time, and his words attracted every eye in the chamber. The silence afterwards was profound as each man thought about what he had just heard.

“Where did that come from?” de Montbard asked.

“I don’t know. The words simply came into my mind.”

“It is perfect. What say you others?”

Only Montdidier disagreed. “I think it is hypocritical,” he said.

Hugh stared at him. “Hypocritical? How can you say that, Payn?”

“Easily, Hugh, because it is. It’s hypocritical of us to use the name of Jesus, and particularly the full name, Jesus Christ, believing what we all believe … And the hypocrisy of the Church is what appalls us most.”

De Payens sighed, sharp and loud. “Crusty, we have been through this a hundred times. We all agree on the importance of the task facing us. We also agree and believe that the Christian Church is an invalid creation. We all agree, further, that only by pretending to conform to the Church’s dictates and expectations can we have any expectation of completing our task. And we have proceeded to this point upon those agreements.

This new name conforms to everything we have agreed to do: it will enable us to go about our work without being harried by anyone, and it will lend us, tacitly, an air of probity and trustworthiness. I say we should keep the name. All those who agree, raise your hands.”

The vote was six to one, and Montdidier threw up his hands in resignation, muttering that he would withdraw his objection. The name sat well with all the others, every man present repeating it to himself at least once, and when they were finished, they all looked at de Payens.

“So mote it be,” he said. “From this day forth, we will call ourselves the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, and let us pray that through it we may live up to the responsibility placed upon us.”

“Amen, so mote it be,” came the chorus.

“In the meantime, however, we have other, pressing responsibilities,” de Montbard said. “That is why we are here. When do you think you will begin to dig?”

The question evoked a wry grin from de Payens, who rose to his feet and walked towards the middle of the long, narrow chamber. “Come and see this,” he said, beckoning with a crooked finger, and de Montbard rose and followed him obediently to where a hole had been dug in the floor. It was a wide but shallow hole, barely three fingers deep, and its bottom had been brushed clean of dirt and dust, showing the exposed bedrock.

“That is what we are sitting on,” de Payens said, crouching to sweep his hand across the bare stone. “It is exactly like the stone vaults over our heads. This is not called the Temple Mount without reason. It is a mountain. But if there is a ruined temple down there beneath our feet, as our Order’s Lore would have us believe, then it must have been dug at great cost, and there is no mention of such a thing anywhere in the scriptures.” He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands. “Until we can discover more about our search—where to set about it, for example—I fear there is little we can do. None of us would have great objections to tunneling through solid rock, if that is what is truly required, but until we know the direction in which to dig our tunnel, it would be sheerest folly to begin.”

André de Montbard was frowning down into the shallow depression in front of him, his arms crossed on his chest as he nibbled his lower lip between his teeth, but then he turned on his heel and looked all about him, gazing at the walls as though he could see through them. Finally he turned to de Payens, nodding as though he had arrived at a decision.

“I may have the solution to that. I bring you documents from the Seneschal, and one is a map, copied with great care from the Order’s archives. It purports to be a map of the layout of Solomon’s Temple, and of the labyrinth of tunnels surrounding it.” He held up a hand quickly, to forestall any interruption. “It purports, I say. It is a faithful copy of an ancient document, but its age is all that can be warranted. It has belonged to the Order for a millennium, according to our records, but it was ancient long before that and its accuracy has never been tested, as far as we know. I do, however, have it here with me. It is in the long, wooden travel case among my belongings in the other room, and if you have anything similar—a plan or map of the city as it is today—we should be able to compare the two.”

“Indeed we should.” De Payens was already clicking his fingers for attention. “Montdidier, and Gondemare, bring Sir André’s wooden case in here, if you would.”

A short time later, all of them were crowded around the table, looking at the chart that had been spread out and anchored with small rocks at all four corners, and for a long time no one spoke, as they all tried to make some sense of what they were looking at, attempting vainly, for the most part, to superimpose the lines of the drawing in front of them upon the landscape surrounding them.

In the end it was Archibald St. Agnan who reached out an index finger to touch the map. “There,” he growled. “Isn’t that where we are now? Look, you can see the line of the wall, there, and it runs along the dip here, where the wavy lines are. That’s where we are now, in the stables.”

“There are no stables marked here, St. Agnan.”

St. Agnan did not even look up to see who had spoken. “No, of course not. The King’s palace isn’t shown, either, even as the al-Aqsa Mosque that it once was. This entire place was the temple when this map was drawn. These stables were walled into the cavern later, here in the precincts, after the new temple was destroyed and probably after the mosque was built, and that was more than six hundred years after the destruction of that same new temple. When was the original temple destroyed, and how long ago might this map have been drawn, Hugh?”

De Payens shrugged and looked at André de Montbard, who made a wry face and said, “The original? I can only guess … two thousand years? It must have been at least that long ago. Titus destroyed Herod’s temple forty years after the death of Christ, and that was a thousand and two hundred years ago. This map is of Solomon’s Temple, which was built many hundreds of years before that.”

“Well, in the name of all we aspire to, I hope you are wrong, St. Agnan.” De Payens’s voice was heavy, prompting more than one pair of eyes to glance his way.

“How so? I have to be right, according to what is here in front of us. And if I am …” St. Agnan hesitated, frowning, then stabbed a finger at the same point. “If I am, we are standing right there, at this moment.”

“I accept that,” de Payens said. “But if you are correct, and we are standing there, we are … permit me …” He bent forward and placed his thumb on the point St. Agnan had selected, then stretched his hand to lay the point of his middle finger in the center of what was indicated on the drawing as being the main body of the temple. He held it there, his entire hand stretched widely, and stared at the distance involved, pursing his lips in thought before he continued. “I would say we are at least three score of long paces—strides might even be a better word in fact—three score of strides removed from the outer wall of the temple proper, where we wish to be. And that makes no consideration for our being above ground, while our target is deep below ground.”

“Well, what of that?” St. Agnan sounded genuinely perplexed. “We knew from the outset we would have to excavate. That was explicit in our instructions.”

No one else said anything, but it was evident from the faces of several of the others, from the way their eyes shifted uncomfortably from St. Agnan to de Payens, that some of them agreed with St. Agnan. Only St. Omer, Montdidier, and de Montbard kept their faces blank, and it was St. Omer who spoke next.

“What Hugh is saying, Archibald, is that the King’s palace is directly at our backs, so that the only direction in which we can dig our tunnel is straight down, and then sideways, until we can turn again and strike towards the temple foundations. And the space between us and our target is filled by the Temple Mount. Filled completely by it. If we are to dig a passage underground from here to where we wish to be, it will have to be through solid bedrock, all the way. That will take years, and we have no tools, nor are we engineers.”

St. Agnan’s ears flushed red as the truth of St. Omer’s words sank home to him, but André de Montbard stood staring down at the drawing, tapping one finger thought-fully against the spot the big knight had indicated.

“St. Agnan might be wrong,” he mused. “We may be misreading what is here, but even so, there’s no doubting that we are standing on a rock. We need to find out more about this place. We need to know where to dig, and how to proceed. So where will we find more information on that kind of thing?”

There was silence for a time until St. Omer spoke up again, making a wry face. “You are not going to like this, André, but the answer to that question lies within our own archives, at home, where someone clearly should have done more searching than they did before sending you out here. Our Order has more accurate information about Jerusalem and its temple in its archives than any other source anywhere. What happened here in these very precincts is our history, after all, and our ancestors took their records with them when they left, holding them safe against theft, pollution, and destruction. No one—no person, no organization, no entity anywhere—possesses better or more accurate information on this topic than our Order does.” He looked about him at his friends and companions. “I should not need to remind anyone here of that, since that is why we are here, after all, and faced with this task.”

“But we are here and the information we require is back there,” de Payens murmured. “We can retrieve it, but that will take time, perhaps too much time. So what are we to do in the meantime? De Montbard, have you any thoughts on that?”

“Aye, I have,” the other answered. “Two things. The first is to examine all the other documents I brought with me. I have not even looked at them, for Count Hugh told me to deliver them to you privily, and in person, but I know there is no shortage of material. The only thing I actually saw was this chart, because the Count himself was proud of its workmanship and showed it to me before I left—you saw that it is enclosed with several other drawings in its own container. For all I know, the remainder of those documents might contain all the information that we need, because the Count was fully aware of what had been asked of you and what you would be obliged to do about it.” He half turned and indicated the case that he had opened to find the drawing they had been studying. Its lid gaped open, revealing a thick leather wallet underlying the long cylinder that had contained the drawing of the temple and several other, smaller charts. “I suspect now that every sheet of parchment, every document and every drawing in that wallet will have a direct bearing on what we are discussing.”

De Payens, who had been gazing at the package like everyone else, nodded. “You may be right. We’ll go through them all carefully, as soon as we have finished here. But you said there were two things we could do. What’s the other one?”

“Verify or disprove St. Agnan’s suspicions about the layout of the map, because if he is correct, the treasure we are looking for could lie beneath the foundations of the palace itself … under the mosque.” He ignored de Payens’s sharp intake of breath and carried on, muttering in a low voice as though speaking to himself. “If that be the case, our task could be less time consuming. Not less arduous—we would still be tunneling through stone—but we might have less far to travel. Still requiring years of work, perhaps, but fewer of them …” He looked up, his voice reverting to its normal tone. “We need to find another, more recent map of the city and locate the temple site on that. Then we can compare the two and find out exactly what we have in this drawing. Where would we find such a thing?”

“I doubt that there is one.” Every eye in the place turned to look at Payn Montdidier, who had not spoken since withdrawing his objection to their new name. He smiled, nervously, and held up his hands. “If there is,” he continued, “then there are but two places it could be, and neither of those is desirable from our viewpoint: either the King might have one in his palace, or the Patriarch Archbishop might have one in his residence. No one else would ever have a need for such a thing, and were we even to ask about it, we would probably fall under suspicion of plotting something before the request was fully uttered. But if you want me to, I’ll ask some questions next time I go to the Archbishop’s residence. I have befriended one of the senior clerics there, and if I give it enough thought beforehand, I might be able to find a way of asking him a question like that casually, as though in passing, without arousing his suspicions.”

“Good, Crusty. Do that,” de Payens said, then turned to Godfrey St. Omer. “How went your patrol, Godfrey? Anything of interest to report?”

St. Omer stood up to deliver his report formally, but he spoke his opening words for effect. “Aye, Master de Payens. We saved the life of the King’s wife today, Queen Morfia, and she thanked us most warmly.” Having ensured that every man there hung on his every word, he went on to describe the patrol in meticulous detail, omitting nothing.

It had become customary for each patrol leader to report in person to the brethren upon his return to the stables on the Mount, and to answer any questions that anyone might want to ask, because in the earliest days following their formation, when their patrol activities were new and unanticipated by the brigand bands, every sortie had been different and worth studying, and everyone had been highly aware that a lesson learned from one patrol might be of vital importance to a later one. As time passed, however, and brigands grew less and less aggressive in the face of what had rapidly become certain pursuit and punishment, only those patrols that yielded something extraordinary ever occasioned close questioning. The name of Queen Morfia caused a stir on first mention, but once it became clear that nothing serious had happened to her in the course of the attack, the knights quickly lost interest in her. Everyone was acutely aware that the most important business of the day concerned the documents that André de Montbard had brought to them from overseas.

The meeting was adjourned as soon as St. Omer completed his report, the documents were laid out for study, and before the shadows of that afternoon had lengthened into evening, de Payens, St. Omer, and de Montbard, the only three of the brethren who could read with any kind of ease or fluency, had discovered that they had no need of finding a contemporary map of Jerusalem. Almost all of the information they needed was provided, in some form, in the documents from the Seneschal. Hugh of Champagne, in a letter to de Payens written in his own hand, explained how he understood exactly the difficulties that Hugh and his companions would face in carrying out the task assigned to them, and how he had gone to great lengths to supply them with painstakingly accurate copies of every document he could find that had a bearing on the temple in Jerusalem and the site of the treasure for which they were to search. These copies, he reminded de Payens, were themselves made from copies of copies, for the originals were of such great antiquity that they were preserved and protected with great care, hermetically sealed against air and dampness lest they rot or fade or be otherwise corrupted. The copies, however, were as perfect as the expertise of his best clerics could make them, and each had been closely scrutinized to ensure that it matched its original in every detail. He had enclosed two copies of each item, one in the original script in which the information had been set down, and another in the common Latin into which the documents had all been translated after their arrival in ancient Gaul, a full millennium earlier.

By the end of the following few days, the three knights had catalogued and cross-referenced every single item of information in the Count’s dispatches, and they had established, beyond dispute, that their target lay, at least partially, beneath the foundations of the al-Aqsa Mosque. A minimum distance of sixty paces separated them, they estimated, from their objective in the bowels of the ancient temple, and much of that distance involved bedrock. The lower levels of the Temple Mount itself, they had learned from their reading, were riddled with networks and mazes of tunnels dug over the millennia, but all access to those tunnels appeared to have been confined to the inner precincts of the temple. Only people inside the temple had been able to enter the tunnels, and the temple had been destroyed, its subterranean interior demolished and filled in a thousand years earlier by the Jewish priests themselves, in order to defeat and frustrate Titus’s rapacious legions. The new diggers knew that while it was at least conceivable that they might intersect an ancient tunnel in the course of their excavations, and be faced thereafter with merely clearing out the debris that had accumulated since the tunnels were last used, the odds against such an occurrence were incalculable.

Hugh de Payens put the entire situation into words for the other knights at their next official Gathering, while the sergeant brothers were in the city, celebrating a local feast day.

“The situation with the temple—our distance from it—is as we suspected. We are a long way removed from where we wish to be. But there are other, additional considerations that, together with everything else, will make all our lives more interesting in future. We have been poring over the information sent us by the Seneschal, and we can tell you several things with absolute certainty, based upon what we have discovered in the documents he has supplied.

“Prime among those is that the treasure we are looking for is there. We have no doubt of that, and we are confident that we know exactly where it is.

“Unfortunately, the task of finding it, or more accurately, the task of reaching it in the first place, threatens to be a labor worthy of Hercules. The rock beneath the temple foundations is honeycombed with passages and tunnels, but there are no known entrances to any of them and we have no way of reaching them by what anyone would think of as normal means. You all know we cannot simply go outside and start digging beside the palace walls, and so we have to dig straight down, through the solid stone of the mountain, from here in our own quarters, these stables.” He paused to allow his listeners to absorb that, then added, “We estimate that we will have to dig as far as thirty paces—one hundred feet—straight down, then angle straight inward from there, beneath the foundations of the palace behind us, which we believe are also the foundations of the earliest temple, Solomon’s Temple … perhaps an additional fifty to sixty feet. It will take years, but with luck and strong security, we can do it.”

“What d’you mean, security?” Sir Geoffrey Bissot’s voice was a low rumble of sound, and de Payens looked at him and smiled.

“Protection, brother. We will have safeguards to ensure that no one from outside will ever come close enough to suspect that we are digging tunnels.”

“How will you do that, especially in the beginning? Digging through hard rock with chisels and steel mauls makes a deal of noise. And who do you mean when you say no one from outside? Mean you from outside our commune here, or from outside our Order? Because if that last is what you mean, then I agree with Brother de Montbard—our own sergeants will probably be the undoing of all our plans. These are not stupid men, Hugh, and if you think you can gull them into being unaware for years of what we are about, you are deceiving yourself gravely.”

“Suicidally so, in fact,” de Payens concurred, nodding his head. “But that is not what I am saying at all. We could not disguise the fact that we are digging in the rock, not from our own men. But we could suggest a feasible purpose for our digging, without telling them everything about what we are doing. Say, for example, that we are digging out a subterranean monastery—cells from the living rock—as a penitential exercise to God’s glory. We will have excellent reasons for our excavations, I promise you, reasons sound enough to be accepted instantly by our sergeant brethren. But when I spoke of people from outside, I meant exactly that—people from outside our little commune here in these stables. We are an order of monks, or we will be in the fullness of time, and that means we will have removed ourselves from the world. And so the world will have no cause, and no encouragement, to impose itself upon us or our affairs. No one will bother us, and no one will intrude upon our privacy and solitude. As for the noise of steel on steel at the outset, that will be transitory. It will continue for as long as the work continues, but it will fade beyond hearing as the shaft sinks deeper below the level of the floors.”

“How wide will this tunnel be and who will do the digging?”

“All of us will dig, and the vertical tunnel will be as narrow as we can make it. Wide enough for one man to swing a hammer and another to kneel and support the chisel bit, and for one or both to ply a shovel in reasonable comfort, but not for much more. We will need driving bars—chisels, Jubal the sergeant calls them—and tongs to hold them with, and heavy hammers, as well as pickaxes and shovels and several other kinds of tools. Once we dig down far enough, we will need hoists and pulleys to raise the debris from the pit floor. But all of that will present itself later, when there is need to know such things.”

De Payens stopped then, aware of the silence of his listeners, and looked from man to man, meeting the eye of each in turn before he continued. “We will probably work, initially at least, in shifts of two, for whatever length of time may prove to be acceptable. That is something else that we will learn only from experience. And eventually, as we develop a routine and the shaft sinks deeper, we will need others working at the top, to raise and clear the debris. But, God willing, the work will continue day and night without pause, and throughout the passage of time, we will maintain our schedule of patrols, policing the roads. Patrols will continue without respite, and will be conducted by ten-man squads of sergeants, each accompanied by at least one knight, but sometimes, for effect, by two or more. Thus, the surface work will continue while the subterranean work is being carried out.”

Bissot nodded sagely, fingering his beard. “It sounds … complex.”

“It is, and it will be, but not impossibly so, Brother.” De Payens straightened up, his gaze taking in the entire assembly. “This is all very new, of course, and everything appears to have come together very quickly, but we have achieved much in these past few days. Our planning is going well, and within the month the real work will begin. In the meantime, our patrols are effective, and it will not hurt our cause to have been instrumental in saving the life of Queen Morfia. Let us pray that our good fortune will continue, Brethren. So mote it be.”