Knights of the Black and White

ONE

“T he man appears to be indefatigable.” The speaker was the Patriarch Archbishop of Jerusalem, and Hugh de Payens half smiled in response, his eyes on the spectacle being enacted in front of them.

“He appears to be,” he agreed. “But you, of all men, should know that one should never trust appearances. He will grow as tired as any other man, but the difference you are seeing is that he is far younger than the others, with all the added strength and stamina of youth. Ha! Look at that. He moves like a cat. I wish I had four more like him.”

They were watching a contest, a training fight involving five swordsmen, grouped four against one, and the single man, the youngest of them, was making all four of his opponents look foolish and ineffectual. He held a large, two-handed sword with a long, tapering blade that made his adversaries’ weapons look puny, and he was wielding it with brilliant mastery, transforming it into a whirling, impenetrable curtain of shimmering movement. Two of his opponents had converged on him simultaneously, one of them catching his blade with his own, while the other seized the advantage and leapt forward to close with him, but even as he did so, the younger man spun nimbly and sprang away, his outstretched foot finding the top of a low wall that had been at his back. For a moment he hung there, his knees bent as he sought balance, and then he leapt away again, doubling the distance between himself and the others before any of them could react to his first move, and when his feet touched the ground again he laughed and grounded the point of his sword, signaling a rest, which his winded opponents were happy to share.

“Well done, Stephen,” de Payens shouted as the group relaxed and tried to catch their breath, and the Patriarch turned to him, smiling.

“I can see why you are so impressed, but why should you not have four more like him? And why only four? Why not a score like him?”

De Payens laughed aloud. “Why not? I should have a score like him, as you say, but I never will, because the lad is a phenomenon. He is … he surpasses credulity. I still have difficulty believing he is here and one of us. I mean it, my lord Archbishop, every word of it. Very few young men of his age, perhaps no more than one in five or even ten thousand, possess those fighting skills this one uses so effortlessly. But not one in a thousand of those few, young as they are, and puissant, filled with the rising sap and immortality of youth, could ever be tempted to give up the pleasures facing them in order to take up the cloth and live their lives as monks.”

“Aye, I grant you that. The world and the flesh have great attraction for young men. But where, then, did this one spring from? You brought me out here to see him, but you have not even told me his name, or anything about him.”

“I inherited him, I suppose.” A half smile played about de Payens’s lips as he watched the young knight’s performance, and he spoke to the Patriarch without looking at him. “His grandfather was my godfather, old Sir Stephen St. Clair. The Sir Stephen St. Clair, who invaded England with the Normans in 1066 and later became the trusted friend and close companion of William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy and King of England. You must have heard of him, surely?”

He looked over at the Patriarch, who was shaking his head politely.

“You’ve never heard of him at all? Sir Stephen St. Clair? That is astonishing. He was reputed to be the man who killed King Harold during the invasion of 1066. St. Clair always denied it, but King William himself claimed to have seen it happen, and swore he won his crown because of it.”

“So how does that lead to his grandson’s being here in Outremer, and looking to become a monk?”

“Young Stephen’s father and I were friends when we were young, not close, but close enough to think highly of each other, despite his being five years my senior. Anyway, Robert married young, to a first cousin of mine, and she bore him the one son, young Stephen, then died soon after, of a virulent pox that killed her and all seven of her women. They were living in the northeast of England then, in one of King William’s territorial castles, built to subjugate the local Saxons and keep them obedient to the King’s new laws. It was hostile territory and they had no allies within riding distance, so that, in the absence of women, the boy was nurtured and reared by the monks and churchmen his father had brought with him to preach the gospel to the local Saxons. Everyone liked the lad, but his upbringing among monks, as you would expect, made an indelible impression on him. He also turned out to be a spectacular fighter—two sides of a single coin—encouraged and trained by his father’s master-at-arms and his cronies, once they began to discern just how gifted the boy was.

“His father Robert’s life was a full one, his duties leaving him no time to search for, let alone find, another wife, or even to pay much attention to his son’s upbringing. By the time the lad had grown to manhood, he was invincible in the arena and in the lists, but every moment that he spent away from his military training was passed in prayer. His father thought that was unnatural—most fathers would, I suppose. But then there came a twist that worked to my advantage. You may remember that Count Fulk of Anjou came out here to visit us two years ago?” The Patriarch nodded. “Well, when he returned to Anjou, he found Count Hugh of Champagne there, in residence and awaiting Fulk’s return. The St. Clairs were there, too, father and son, visiting the family holdings in the region, and at dinner one night, the two Counts talked about our newly formed brotherhood, apparently with great enthusiasm. Sufficiently so, it transpired, to excite young Stephen’s father. Robert recognized me by name, although we two had not met in more than a score of years, and it seemed to him that what we are doing here in the Holy Land would be attractive to his son, and young Stephen agreed. A short time later, young Stephen met with Count Hugh, who recruited him immediately, and the lad was on a ship, outward bound for Cyprus on his way here, not too very long after that. He is very young, but it seems he is perfectly suited to—”

The Patriarch waited for the space of two heartbeats and then asked, “Perfectly suited to what?” But de Payens was watching something else, and flicked a hand at him sideways, warning him to be quiet.

The Patriarch drew himself erect, blinking in mild indignation. “What? What is wrong? Why did you stop me?” Even as he asked the question, however, he saw the answer for himself. A magnificently dressed officer, flanked by three lesser luminaries, had approached unseen from behind them and had now passed them, treading carefully on the rock-strewn, uneven ground, to where the five former fighters stood talking. The light blue surcoats adorned with gold acorns identified the newcomers clearly as royal guardsmen, and the five knights, who were also uniformly garbed, although in plain brown surcoats with no heraldic devices of any kind, became aware of them just as the guardsmen were about to reach them. All five swordsmen turned to face the guards, their faces wary and their posture radiating challenge, and the guards halted smartly about two paces short of them. Payens and the Patriarch were too far away to distinguish what was being said, but the sound of the captain’s voice, speaking to the youngest knight, came to them clearly.

De Payens turned completely around to look behind him and saw an enclosed carriage, drawn by a pair of horses and surrounded by a strong escort of guards. The windows of the carriage were curtained and closed.

“Royal coach,” he said quietly, drawing de Picquigny’s attention. “Enclosed. Could it be the Queen?”

The Patriarch was looking back now, too, and he shook his head. “No, not the Queen, not today. Her Grace is indisposed. Has been for several days. There is a sickness going around, and she came down with it some days ago. Nothing too serious, but sufficient to keep her in her rooms. And it’s not the King, either, for if it were, he would be over here, talking to us. No, it must be one of the daughters. That carriage is large enough to hold all four, but I doubt that any of them would ever consent to spend time in the others’ company.” He glanced over to his left, where the young knight and his companions were now walking quietly with the captain, flanked subtly by the other three guards. Four of them had sheathed their swords, but the youngest, St. Clair, still carried his in his hand, its long, gleaming blade slanting backward to rest casually against his shoulder as he walked towards the enclosed carriage.

“Alice,” Warmund de Picquigny said, a strange note of resignation in his voice. “It must be Alice. She is the only one bold enough to flout propriety so blatantly. Your knight may be in danger, de Payens.”

“From the princess?” De Payens laughed. “She is but a chip of a thing, not one tenth his size.”

“I did not mean physical danger. I meant in danger of sin. He is in mortal jeopardy and we had best walk over there and do what we can to save his soul. I have no doubt the princess will be … delighted to see me here.”

De Payens could hear the sarcasm dripping from the Patriarch’s words, but he had no notion of what underlay that, and he quickly decided it might be best to hold his tongue until he was called upon to speak. He matched his pace to the Patriarch’s as de Picquigny set out for the carriage.

FROM THE DIMNESS of the interior, Alice saw the two men walking towards her, but they were far away and she paid them no heed after the first glance, dismissing them as elderly and therefore unworthy of interest for the time being. All her attention was tightly focused upon the young man approaching her, an earnest-looking young fellow with eyes that even from a distance were brilliantly blue, and a slight frown creasing the wide expanse of his forehead.

He stopped as he drew near her coach, and thrust his long broadsword into the ground at his feet, unaware that she was watching him through a tiny gap between the leather curtains. Then, using both hands, he loosened the drawstring beneath his chin and pried the close-fitting hood of his mailed tunic away from his skin, before thrusting it back off his head to hang at his back, freeing surprisingly long, golden hair and shaking it out like a dog before scrubbing at it with his fingertips, loosening the sweaty tresses to hang around his ears. That done, he combed the long, damp curls roughly with spread fingers, pushing them back behind his ears, and retrieved his sword, clamping it firmly beneath one arm before striding directly to her carriage.

Alice withdrew hurriedly from the curtains, pressing herself back into the rear corner of the vehicle as she heard one of the soldiers outside preparing to open the door, and then in the flood of bright light, the stranger appeared, his shoulders blocking the doorway, and bent forward to stare into the interior.

“My lady, you wished to speak with me?” His eyes moved over her without seeing her, and she did not respond, knowing that he was temporarily sun blinded and that she was free to look at him as closely as she wished for the few moments before his eyes adjusted to the change in light.

Now, seizing the opportunity while she could, she applied herself to examining his perfection: impossibly blue eyes beneath brows of pale gold and fringed with thick lashes; a mouth formed for kissing, its full, wide lips impeccably arched, its teeth perfectly shaped and brilliantly white; and long, golden, silky hair, falling now in curls about his strong, wide neck as he leaned forward, still unable to see her clearly in the gloom of the carriage. Most knights wore long, full beards, but kept their heads close-shorn for reasons of comfort and hygiene, because they wore their tight-fitting chain-mail hoods most of the time. This man did exactly the opposite, shaving his chin and wearing his hair long. Through vanity? She wondered briefly about that, then thrust the thought aside. If he was vain, that would work to her advantage, because he would be easy to flatter, but for now it meant nothing.

That she had noticed him at all in passing was the sheerest accident, for she had been on her way home from the house of a friend, in a foul frame of mind because her friend had inconvenienced her by falling ill, like most of the other people she knew, and had thereby condemned Alice to a long and boring afternoon of unplanned solitude. As a result, Alice had been riding through the streets in self-imposed isolation, sulking by herself in the darkness of her carriage, the leather curtains tightly laced against the blindingly intrusive sunlight. She had heard the clanging of weapons and a series of high-pitched, laughing shouts as she passed a group of idling soldiery. She had no idea why she should have noticed that particular noise, for she had already passed a number of similar groups along the route. Jerusalem was a frontier state, constantly beset by enemies from outside its borders, and her father maintained a large army in a constant state of readiness for war, which meant that among the most familiar sounds in the city were the clash of weapons and the jeering shouts and laughter of men for whom life was an unending sequence of training sessions, practice fights, and unruly brawls.

Something in the noise generated by this particular group of ruffians, however, had attracted her annoyance, and she had snapped back the curtains and bent forward, fully prepared to vent her anger on them in some way, but even as she opened her mouth to call to her guards, she had seen the man now standing in front of her, and had lost awareness of everything else. Even from a distance, featureless and concealed from head to foot in a heavy hauberk of chain mail, he had struck her as being very different from the common herd. It may have been the way he moved, for that in itself was highly distinctive, but from the moment Alice had first glimpsed him, seemingly flying through the air like a leaping, steel-clad leopard, she had eyes for nothing else.

That first impression, of effortless, soaring grace, had been branded into her memory, and she knew she would not soon forget it. All knights were immensely strong. That was such a commonplace that people had lost awareness of it, for when men fought and trained to fight as long and as intensely as knights did, swinging and wielding long, heavy, clumsy weapons for hours and hours on end, each and every day that came along, they developed gigantic muscles. What they seldom developed, however, was lightness of motion, graceful-ness, and agility. Bound by the sheer mass of muscle on their bodies, knights on foot tended to move slowly and inexorably, hunched forward in a crouched, bow-legged stance that lent itself to the style of fighting they knew best, armed confrontation, nose to nose and blade to blade until the best man walked away victorious.

This one was a different breed. Alice had seen him first as a blurred shape, moving very quickly, but almost immediately her eyes and mind had adjusted to what she was seeing and she took note of the four crouching figures who were turning in unison, too late, to pursue the opponent who had launched himself at them and over them, using a low wall as a springboard to propel himself upward and over their heads in a whirling somersault. He landed behind them on flexed legs, then spun nimbly and smacked the nearest of the four across the backside with the flat of his blade before turning yet again and leaping upward, seizing a strut hanging from a nearby roof and hoisting himself up, one handed, onto a window ledge, where he turned, laughing, and waved to his companions, then vanished into the interior of the building.

Alice had called to her driver to halt the carriage, and as the young fighter emerged from the building she ordered the captain of her guards, who was not unfamiliar with the princess’s whims, to summon him. And now, gazing at the face of the man she had summoned, Alice was very glad of the impulse that had driven her to look outside.

The fellow blinked hard and scrubbed at his eyes, then blinked again, several times, keeping his eyes as wide as he could hold them.

“May I know your name?” Alice asked him, speaking softly, as though afraid of frightening him away.

“My name? It is Stephen, my lady … Stephen St. Clair, of York and Anjou.”

“Well met, then, Sir Stephen. And do you know who I am?”

The young knight shook his head.

“I am Alice le Bourcq.”

He nodded, but it was plain that the name meant nothing to him, and she frowned. “Are you new here? Why have I never seen you before?”

“I know not, my lady. I am not new here, but neither have I been here for a long time. I came nigh on three months ago, to join the brothers of the Patriarch’s Patrol.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “The brothers! Are you a monk?”

“I hope to be one soon, my lady. I am a novice at present, a student of the Rule.”

“Rule? What rule is that?”

“The Rule of Benedict, my lady. The way of life followed by monastic brethren, designed by Saint Benedict himself.”

“Ah! Of course.” Watching him closely, Alice could see quite clearly that, beautiful though he might be, he was something of a simpleton, lacking imagination and even the rudiments of a sense of humor. A puff of dust wafted into the carriage from behind him, its motes shimmering in the slanting rays of light that surrounded his bulk, and she coughed delicately into the scrap of linen she clutched in one hand.

“Please come inside and close the door, if you will. I have some questions for you, and would prefer to ask them without inhaling dust each time I open my mouth.”

“Questions, my lady? What kind of questions could you have for me? You do not know me at all.”

He really was delightful, standing there wide eyed with innocent surprise, and Alice’s mouth quirked in the beginnings of an ironic little smile. “That can be quickly remedied, believe me,” she murmured, making him bend farther forward to hear what she was saying. “But I know of your brothers. They once saved my mother’s life, and although that was several years ago, she still feels grateful to them and has much to do with them. But I would like to know, among other things, where you learned to fly through the air the way you do, wearing a full coat of chain mail and mailed leggings. So come, if you will, and tell me. Come, sit across from me and close the door against the dust and the bright light.”

St. Clair’s frown deepened, but then he nodded. He removed the broadsword from beneath his arm and reached into the carriage to prop it securely against the seat on his right before he grasped the pillars of the doorway in both hands to hoist himself inside. Before he could do so, however, a deep voice called out his name from behind him, and Alice saw his eyes widen in surprise as he stepped back, turning to face whoever had spoken. Furious that anyone should dare to interfere or interrupt her, Alice pushed herself forward quickly and thrust her head angrily through the doorway, only to find herself face to face with Archbishop Warmund de Picquigny.

“Princess Alice,” he cried, in a voice greatly different from the one that had spoken St. Clair’s name. “What a delightful and unexpected pleasure to encounter you here, so far from your home. May I be permitted to ask what brings you out here, and might I be of any assistance?”

He had stepped forward to the edge of her door, and now he kicked down the small mounting steps with one foot while he reached out a hand to support her as the princess, with no choice but to comply, stepped carefully down from the carriage, keeping her eyes downcast as she placed her small feet with great care. She had seen the young knight’s jaw drop open when he heard de Picquigny address her by her title, and she was incensed, knowing that he would now be overwhelmed by her rank and station and would conse-quently be, in all probability, more difficult to seduce. She wanted to spit at the foolish old busybody, but forced herself to smile sweetly.

“Thank you, my lord Patriarch, but I have no need of assistance. I merely stopped to ask Sir Stephen how he was enjoying his stay among the brethren of your Patrol.”

“Ah, my Patrol … Forgive me, Princess, but it occurs to me only now that you may not remember my companion here, although I know you have met him. May I present Brother Hugh de Payens, the founding member of the brotherhood to which Brother Stephen belongs? You first met Brother Hugh on the day after your mother’s rescue from the Saracen brigands, several years ago.” As Alice raised her head to look at de Payens, the Archbishop reached inside her carriage and retrieved St. Clair’s long sword.

Alice had turned the full warmth of her smile on de Payens, who raised a mailed fist to his breast in salute, his mouth twisting slightly into the beginnings of a smile in return. “I remember the occasion very well, Brother Hugh, young as I was,” she said, demurely. “I had just mentioned the incident to Sir Stephen. Is that not so, Sir Stephen?”

“It is plain Brother Stephen, my lady.” St. Clair’s golden skin now bore a deep red flush, probably caused, Alice reflected, by his awareness of how blatantly she was lying and involving him.

“Brother Stephen.” She nodded. “Of course, you have renounced the world. I had forgotten.”

“Not quite true, Princess,” the Patriarch murmured, holding out St. Clair’s sword to the young man, who took it, blushing fiercely. “Brother Stephen is but a novice today, but in a short time he will take his full vows, undertaking to renounce the world, and more. He will, in fact, renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh in favor of dedicating his life to God. A wonderful destiny for any man.”

Alice managed to retain her smile, although she would wonder for months afterwards how she had been able to conceal the rage seething in her at the old hypocrite’s barely veiled insolence. But his disapproval mattered not a whit to her because, powerful as he was, with his Patriarchal Archbishopric and his direct access to her father’s ear, he had nothing concrete of which he could accuse her. Forewarned of his suspicions about her sexual conduct years earlier, she had taken great pains to make sure that he would have nothing, ever, to report to her father. She had been very careful and even, latterly, very abstemious. She knew, too, that he had suspicions about her behavior in several other areas wherein their paths occasionally crossed. She resented his suspicions, irrespective of the validity underlying them, but she accepted, too, that there was nothing she could do about them. Not yet, while she was still a powerless princess. Once she was Queen—and she had every intention of achieving that status—matters would be vastly different. Then she would be able to put the old catamite in his place, and with him everyone else who shared his opinions of her.

But for now, faced with a situation in which she could not win, Alice accepted the inevitable and bowed to it. She inclined her head graciously to the senior monk, de Payens, and then to the young one, St. Clair, demurely wishing them both well, and then she turned a smile of purest love and admiration on the Patriarch himself, thanking him for his concern and assuring him that she would pass along his kind regards to her ailing mother. That done, she turned back to her carriage and mounted the steps nimbly, her outstretched hand supported again by the Patriarch Archbishop.

As soon as she was safely inside, de Picquigny stepped back and raised a hand to the watching driver, waving him forward. The horses leaned into the traces, the carriage lurched and then rolled forward, and Stephen St. Clair stood at attention, watching the retreating vehicle as though he could see directly through its walls to the young woman inside. He had never seen anyone so beautiful in his entire life, and he had a picture of her in his mind, bending towards him, one hand bunching a long gold chain that hung about her neck, allowing the heavy gold to slip slowly, link by link, down into the other hand she held cupped beneath it. He knew it was dangerous to allow himself to think of her beauty, and that he should pray for strength to resist temptation, but as he heard the disapproving tone of his superior’s voice recalling him to his duties, he knew too, beyond doubt, that her smiling face would be the last thing he would see in his mind before he fell asleep that night.