Knights of the Black and White

TWO

The Patriarch Archbishop of Jerusalem stood musing by an open window, his right elbow supported on his left fist as he leaned against a wall, stroking his nose with the tip of one finger and gazing out absently into the courtyard by his chambers. Behind him, in the Archbishop’s private chapel, Hugh de Payens’s youngest knight knelt alone in front of the altar, awaiting the Archbishop’s return. The Patriarch, however, had no intention of returning before he had taken the time to decipher everything the young man had told him, and already he was faced with a mystery that he suspected might be insoluble. He knew beyond a doubt that young St. Clair was not possessed by devils. Bewitched, perhaps—and that thought, as it came to him out of nowhere, elicited a grim little twitch of one side of the Archbishop’s mouth.

Although he was saddened by all St. Clair had told him, he was unsurprised, because it merely confirmed what he had suspected since the day of the young monk’s unexpected return. He had asked one particular question of his supplicant, a question about color, prompted by something St. Clair had said, and the response had confirmed his suspicions and made clear to him some, but not all, of the many frustrating elements of this situation. Warmund de Picquigny now knew who had abducted St. Clair, but he was utterly mystified as to what might have prompted the abduction.

From the hazy details of the young man’s ill-remembered dreams, and a specific color he had uncertainly recalled in response to the Patriarch’s probing question, the Archbishop had clearly identified the royal palace, the former al-Aqsa Mosque, as the place in which St. Clair had been held captive, and with that he had known that there was only one possible abductor: the King’s wayward and hard-headed daughter, Princess Alice. That was the source of Warmund’s present perplexity, for although he held absolutely no illusions about what kind of person the King’s daughter was, the Archbishop could see no sense of any kind in what he had just learned, unless the entire abduction and confinement had been dictated by sheer, unrequited lust. He could clearly remember the occasion on which he had rescued the unworldly young monk from Alice’s clutches, and he had seen how angry she was with him at the time for his interference. Even so, he could barely give credence to the idea that Alice would go to such lengths simply to have her way with a complete innocent.

Alice le Bourcq, he knew beyond dispute, was a voluptuary and a hedonist, never having known the restraints of life in Christendom. Born and raised in the East as a child spoiled by doting servants and an indulgent father, she had been accustomed early to the luxuries and the exotic pleasures she enjoyed so shamelessly. It made no sense, therefore, in any slightest, conceivable degree, that accustomed since infancy to all the pleasures and perfumed delights of the bathing habits of the Arabs and Turks among whom she lived, she would stoop to abduct a foul-smelling, dirt-encrusted, ascetic, and penniless monk knight, heroic and laudable though that monk may be in his military aspects. And it made even less sense that she would do so in secrecy, and then go to such extreme lengths as must have been necessary in order to ensure his safe return to his brethren, after having tortured him for the final weeks of his captivity. That, in de Picquigny’s estimation, was the final, imponderable facet of this puzzle. The Patriarch heaved a deep, heartfelt sigh and straightened up from his slouch.

Brother Stephen, de Picquigny could tell, was completely under Alice’s sexual thrall. The color—violet—that the knight had mentioned in connection with his dreams of fornication existed only in one place in all the Kingdom of Jerusalem, to the Patriarch’s certain knowledge: within the bedroom of the Princess Alice. De Picquigny had no slightest doubt of that because it was he who had been instrumental in importing the pigment from Italy, on behalf of the King, for the princess’s fourteenth birthday. It had been extraordinarily difficult to find and outrageously expensive to purchase, and they had imported only sufficient for the princess’s needs.

De Picquigny also knew, from his spies, that the princess frequently used opiates and narcotics to enhance her physical pleasures, and he knew, too, from personal experience, how stunningly effective opiates could be. He had been thrown from a horse, years earlier, and suffered a massive and complex fracture of his left thigh bone, in which the splintered end of the bone had been driven through the flesh of his leg and had then refused to heal, leaving him in constant pain and in danger of death, should the wound turn gangrenous. The physicians had been powerless to do anything for him, and in desperation his staff had engaged the services of the famed Muslim physician Ibn Az-Zahir, of Aleppo. The Syrian physician had immediately ordered the application of opiates, and the dementing pain had abated within moments, to Warmund’s shocked but formidably grateful disbelief.

Warmund’s priestly colleagues, forgetting their former helplessness, had at once started muttering jealously about sorcery and witchcraft, but he quickly silenced them. He had known about opiates for years, he told them, from information gleaned from his wide-ranging reading. He knew that the Roman legionary surgeons and physicians had used opiates for hundreds of years, and he had read many examples of how their painkilling powers had verged upon the magical. What he had not been able to imagine, until he experienced them for himself, was just how magically analgesic the opiates would prove to be. Under their influence he had lost all awareness, and all memory, of the pain from which they protected him.

But he had become addicted to them, too, and being weaned away from them once his wounds had healed was one of the most harrowing experiences he had ever known. Seeing the intense and debilitating sickness that the young knight monk had suffered in the days following his return, Warmund had recognized the symptoms of withdrawal that he himself had endured years earlier. He had said nothing to anyone, merely intimating that he would pray for the young knight and that the man would regain his senses within a short time.

Now there was no doubt in the Archbishop’s mind that Stephen St. Clair had been abducted by the princess, for reasons known only to herself, and that he had been heavily drugged for the duration of his captivity.

The question bedeviling the Patriarch Archbishop at the moment was, what to do next? He could see no benefit at all in telling the young knight, or his fellow monks, what he now knew, because he knew St. Clair, hothead that he sometimes was, would be likely to go storming off in search of the princess, demanding an explanation, and that would lead to nothing but grief. Besides, if he were to inform the young man, or anyone else for that matter, that he had been abducted by the princess, he would virtually guarantee the loss of all hope of discovering what underlay the abduction.

Pushing himself away from the window, the Archbishop moved to sit at the long work table against the eastern wall, where he sat drumming his fingers on the tabletop for a long time before he rose again and went to the chapel where St. Clair awaited him.

“These dreams, my son,” he said as he entered. “I have been thinking about them and about what you have gone through. You say you recall some of them clearly after awakening. Do you recall them with pleasure?”

The younger man had sprung to his feet as the Archbishop entered, and now his eyes went wide with consternation. “No, my lord Patriarch, I—”

“Do you anticipate them with pleasure before going to bed, or falling asleep?”

“No, my lo—”

“And do you compose your mind to accept the dreams before you fall asleep?”

“No—”

“I thought not, and I am glad of it. But I had to ask.”

St. Clair’s mouth hung slightly open and his brow was furrowed in incomprehension. Warmund beckoned with one hand.

“Come with me, if you will.”

He led the other man out of the chapel and into the room with the table, where he pulled out a chair for St. Clair, bidding him sit, and perched himself on one corner of the table.

“You may have forgotten this,” he said, “but the primary constituent of a mortal sin—the single element without which there can be no sin—is intent. Intent to sin. And intent to sin entails two things: the clear recognition that a given course of action will result in the commission of a mortal sin, and a decision, after that, to go ahead and sin deliberately, despite that certain knowledge. Do you understand?”

St. Clair shook his head, and Warmund sighed and spoke more slowly, enunciating each point clearly and emphasizing each one with a raised finger.

“I am telling you, as Patriarch Archbishop of Jerusalem, that I detect no sin in you, Brother Stephen. You have done nothing to incur guilt. These events are beyond your control. They are inflicted upon you without your volition, and therefore you are innocent of intent, and innocent of sin.

“I believe that much of the pain you are feeling is caused by your belief that you are sinning in these matters, so hear me clearly now in this, my son: you are not. Believe that, and it is my sincere belief that these dreams will pass from your awareness. Not at first, you must understand, and not quickly, but slowly and surely they will fade. Pray to God for sustenance and guidance, and place yourself in His hands. He will not abandon you. Now go in peace and remember me to Brother Hugh.”