Knights of the Black and White

THREE

Hugh was more aware of impressions than of anything else during the time that followed his being summoned into the Chamber. He had no idea who the messenger who came to fetch him was, for the man was robed in black from head to toe, every vestige of individuality that might have identified him concealed from view. The passageway through which he led Hugh towards the Chamber was equally black and featureless, with not a single glimmer of light to relieve the darkness, so that Hugh, clutching the man’s elbow and following him closely and with extreme caution, wondered how the fellow could possibly find his way without bumping into anything. He would discover later that there had been nothing to bump into, that there had been no passageway at all and that the serpentine, disorienting twists and turns they had taken had simply followed lines laid out on the wide floor of a single, black-painted anteroom. His guide had simply kept one hand on a black silken cord that led him unerringly towards his destination, the larger Chamber beyond.

Hugh knew they had reached the end of the passageway when they stepped through an unseen doorway into another place, for the silence there, though equally profound, had a different feel to it, a quality of spacious airiness. His guide stopped walking abruptly, and Hugh, following closely behind, walked right into him, striking him with his shoulder and almost unbalancing both of them. As he pulled himself to attention, holding his breath in his eagerness to hear anything that might be there for the noticing, a tiny gleam of light sprang into view far above them and grew steadily brighter and larger until it cast the faintest nimbus of light into the darkness that filled the Chamber. Hugh did not move his head to look about him, for he had done so on both of his earlier visits to this place and had been rewarded with pain for his temerity as his guide on each occasion had pierced his side with a goad of some kind, drawing blood both times. Now he merely strained to see and hear anything he could.

There were people here, he knew. He could sense them sitting or standing nearby, and that, too, he was familiar with from his previous visits, but this time it felt as though there were far more people out there than there had been on the first two occasions. Deprived of all sensory evidence, he had no true way of gauging how many people surrounded him. His mind was merely registering impressions, he knew, and those impressions must be influenced by his own knowledge of the numbers of people assembled for the Gathering.

He gritted his teeth, flexed his fingers, and forced himself to breathe deeply, seeking calm within himself and determined to allow the current of whatever events were scheduled here to carry him where he needed to go. It was, he thought at one point, the most difficult task he had ever assumed, for every aspect of his education and training demanded the exact opposite of what he was doing, and yet his father and grandfather had both been insistent that he needed to be passive now, and must simply let himself go along with whatever developed, ignoring the disciplines of his training and the fact that he had been taught to question everything he was told, and to fight against every effort made by anyone to manipulate him or to force him to do anything against his own good judgment. Float, he told himself now, float!

Someone approached him and stood close enough for Hugh to smell the heavy but not unpleasant sweetness of his breath, and began to chant in a language that Hugh had never heard before. It was a long incantation, and whatever it signified, as it progressed it seemed to Hugh that the air in the Chamber grew steadily brighter, so that he was soon able to see the shape of the man in front of him, and the dim outlines of others, many others, on the edges of the blackness around him. He saw, too, that his black-clad guide had vanished soundlessly from his side, no doubt at the moment when the cantor had stepped forward and claimed Hugh’s attention.

At the conclusion of the opening chant, matters began to move more quickly, and Hugh was able to recognize, with more and more frequency, elements of what he had been learning for months. Throughout, he was conducted and led about by a succession of robed and hooded figures, to be positioned in various spots and then catechized by people whose differing, highly stylized modes of dress—defined in the darkness by shape and by bulk rather than detail—led him to believe they must be officers of the brotherhood. And still, continuously but infinitely slowly, the light in the Chamber continued to grow brighter. The single light source remained unaltered, a sole speck of brightness high above the assembly, but Hugh soon came to believe that it was being lowered, in infinitesimal increments, as the rites progressed, for he could increasingly see the outlines and shapes of individual people in the rows of seats surrounding the open floor of the Chamber, and although it was still far too dark to discern any of their features, he could clearly see the shadowy outlines of the alternating black and white squares in the floor.

Then, at the conclusion of a response that was one of the longest he had had to learn, he was forced to his knees by two men who held his wrists and pressed down on his shoulders. Kneeling thus, uncomfortably aware that he could not have resisted had he wished to, he was required to swear the most horrifying and baleful oath he could ever have imagined, calling down torture, dismemberment, death, and disgrace on himself and his loved ones should he ever recant and betray the secrets he was about to learn. He swore the oath, as required, and was allowed to rise to his feet again, surrounded by a number of men who laid hands on him and steered him gently towards what he could only believe to be a far corner of the Chamber. There he was turned again, and positioned with his chin raised towards the single source of light above, noticing that it was now framed between two high pillars that appeared to form a doorway or portal, and a new voice, stronger and more sonorous than any other he had heard, spoke in a language unknown to him.

He was aware of bodies pressing closer to him, and then there was a sudden scurry of movement in the surrounding darkness and several things happened at once, the worst and most unexpected of them bringing his heart leaping into his throat in terror. Some unknown man standing ahead of him suddenly broke away from the group and bent quickly, as though to snatch something up from the ground, then came rushing directly towards Hugh, raising a heavy club over his head and swinging it at Hugh’s. As that happened the light went out, and Hugh felt himself being grasped from behind, hard and tightly, by many hands that held him rigid as they jerked him back and away from the murderous blow, pulling him down and lowering him helplessly, hard, towards the floor as the blow landed obliquely on his temple, hitting with a muffled thump rather than a bone-splintering crash. Stunned and disoriented, unable to move against the iron clutch of so many unseen hands, his heart pounding with breath-stopping fear, Hugh felt himself being lowered farther than he would have thought possible without meeting the floor, and then being pulled and tugged, turned one way and then another with no possibility of resisting, and for a disbelieving moment, he felt as though they were wrapping him in something.

So quickly that the speed of it unnerved him more than ever, all the gripping hands left him, all sounds and movement stopped, and the silence became absolute again. Terrified beyond anything he had ever known, Hugh lay motionless, holding his breath, his eyes clenched tightly shut as he tried to gauge what had happened to him. He knew he ought to be dead, for he had seen the size of the club his assailant had swung at him, and he had felt the impact of the blow, but no pain. And now there was nothing: no pain, no feeling at all, no sound, no light, nothing except the pounding of his own heart, reverberating in his chest and thudding in his ears. Could a dead man yet hear such things, or were they merely memories of life? Where was he now, if not in some anteroom of Heaven or Hell, awaiting the arrival of a judge?

Slowly, fearfully, he opened his eyes to see nothing but utter, stygian blackness, as deep and dark as the lack of light had been behind his tightly clenched eyelids. The dark, the silence, the profound stillness surrounding him, and the lack of pain or feelings combined to convince him that he really was dead, and as he allowed his mind to begin exploring that possibility, there came a tiny, metallic sound, and light exploded into the darkness as someone opened the closed door of a burning lamp.

Hugh went rigid with fear again, his heart leaping in his chest as he saw the person holding the lamp insert a taper through its open door, and then other tapers were extended towards the flame of the first, so that the room filled rapidly with light. Hugh moved to roll over and sit up, but found that he could not move, and then a hand was pressed gently over his mouth from above, bidding him to lie still. Moments later, he found himself staring directly up at a ring of faces that were looking down at him from high above. He was flat on his back. Then the robed and hooded man standing at his feet gave a signal, and the others knelt quickly and reached down towards him, and once again Hugh felt their hands grasp him and lift him, exerting rigid control over him, so that his heels remained on the ground while the rest of him was swung upright, as stiff as a wooden board on a hinged end, until he was standing erect. The hands left him then, withdrawn in pairs, he thought, until he was standing free, staring at the hooded man now facing him, and knowing, from the man’s immense height and size, exactly who he was.

Sir Stephen St. Clair reached up and pulled off his black hood, his face crinkled in a wide smile. “What are you wearing?” he asked Hugh. Surprised by the mundane question, Hugh looked down, then blinked in confusion, never having seen this garment before. “I don’t know, my lord,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders and discovering that he was tightly bound in a strange white robe, unable to move his arms.

“It is the cerement.” St. Clair’s face was grave again. “You know what that is?”

Hugh glanced down again. “Aye, my lord. It is the shroud worn to the grave by a dead man.”

“It is. And do you know why you are wearing it?”

“No, my lord.”

“Turn around, then, and see where you have been.”

Hands seized Hugh’s arms and turned him slowly, bracing him as he reared back. Directly at his feet lay an open shallow grave containing a bleached human skull with a pair of thigh bones crossed beneath it. Hugh stood there stunned, gazing down into the pit. It was real, and he had lain in it. No wonder, he thought, that it seemed he had been lowered a long way.

“You died and were laid down,” St. Clair said, “and then the light returned and you were raised up again to life. You are reborn, newborn, a different person, one of our ancient brotherhood. Your previous life now lies behind you, forsaken, finished, and abandoned, and you have been reborn into Enlightenment to serve the search for truth and restitution of that which was in our beginnings. Welcome therefore, Brother Hugh, to our fraternity, the Order of Rebirth in Sion. Now that you have been Raised to be one of us, you will have the opportunity to learn all that there is to know about our ancient and sacred trust, and the first step in that progression is to enrobe you in the vestments of the initiate.”

“So mote it be!” Every man present spoke the words, their voices blending into a muffled thunder, and Hugh experienced, for the first time, the ancient blessing and ritual approval of the Brotherhood of the Order of Rebirth.

St. Clair motioned with his hand, and four white-clad men came forward to surround Hugh. They stripped him quickly of the shroud in which he had been wrapped, and of the coarse, jute tunic he had worn beneath it, and then they dressed him in a girdle made from the fleece of a lamb, over which they draped rich vestments of snowy white, and when they stepped away from him again, he saw that everyone else present had set aside the black cloaks they had worn earlier and were dressed in the same kind of brilliantly white garment that he wore. Some among them yet wore black, but only as adornments to their white garb, and Hugh quickly guessed that the black ornamentation signified rank of some kind, for all of them were different. The entire Chamber was now revealed in all its magnificence, and every element of it, ceiling, walls, furnishings, and floor, was either black or white or a combination of both.

Now St. Clair stepped forward with extended arms and embraced his white-clad godson, then stepped aside as Hugh’s father and grandfather came next to welcome their family’s latest member to the brotherhood. They were followed in turn by every other person there, and as Hugh accepted the acknowledgments of all of them, being enfolded in each one’s arms in a welcoming gesture of brotherhood and recognizing some of them with great astonishment, he was thinking of what had happened, and of how many of the mysteries that had confounded him until tonight had suddenly become clear, and even as that thought occurred to him, he understood more and more as pieces continued to click into place within his mind.

Much later, when the last of the evening’s rites had been concluded and the crowd had begun to disperse, Hugh found himself sitting in a brightly lit anteroom to the main chamber, sharing a jug of wine with his father, his two grandfathers, and his godfather, and at one point, when the conversation had reached a natural pause, Sir Stephen St. Clair set down his cup and crossed his arms over his broad chest, pushing himself back so that his chair rocked on its rear legs. Hugh waited, but St. Clair held his peace.

“Forgive me, my lord, but I think you wish to ask me something?”

St. Clair shook his head. “No, I want to tell you something, so listen carefully. We are brothers now, you and I, by virtue of tonight’s proceedings, so we will have no more ‘my lord’ from you, especially here in the Chamber. If ever you feel a paralyzing need to be formal, you may call me Sir Stephen, but in the normal way of things, Stephen will suffice, as between natural brothers. You did well tonight, but we all knew you would. And last night, you may recall, I gave you leave to ask me any question that you wished. Now that you have been Raised, might you have another question in you?”

“Aye, I have, about the Order of Rebirth in Sion. The rebirth of what, or whom? Or does the name simply refer to the Raising ceremony? And where, or what, is Sion?”

“Aha!” St. Clair raised his feet, allowing his chair to drop onto all four legs again, and held out his hand to the Baron. Baron Hugo laughed ruefully, reached into the scrip at his belt, and threw his friend a purse of coins. The knight snatched it from the air with the speed of a pouncing cat and turned back to Hugh, grinning widely and holding the heavy purse in his extended palm. “I made this wager with your father yesterday, that you would ask me exactly what you did, with only one question available to you.” He tossed the purse into the air and caught it again, then dropped it into his own scrip. “As for the answers to your question, you are now in a position to learn them for yourself, for they must be learned, earned, and won, just as your Raising was.

“Sion is the Hebrew name for the Holy Land, a place of safety, or sanctuary. That is common knowledge to anyone who thinks to ask. I cannot tell you more than that, however, nor can any other of our brethren, until you have earned the right to hear it. Even our most learned members have earned their right to know each secret. And you will earn those rights, one by one, as each of us here has learned them. That is how we function, and how we progress through the levels of our Order’s knowledge: we study, and we learn the rituals—perfectly, word by word—from our brethren, the most revered of whom have spent their lives acquiring that knowledge, experience, and wisdom. We are carefully tested on our learning, and when we are ready, each of us at his own pace and according to his own wishes, we progress to the next level of awareness. Some progress further than others do, dependent upon intellect, abilities, and interests. There is no yardstick of judgment applied to the achievement of learning from this point onward; there is only the assessment of understanding and knowledge.” A half-formed quirk at the corner of St. Clair’s mouth hinted at the beginnings of a smile. “I can promise you, however, that you will enjoy earning those rights. The answers you find will excite you … and the knowledge you will gain will astound you. I think, too, that once begun, you will learn quickly. And now we should rejoin the others upstairs.”

“Wait, please, before we do. What happens next, here in Payens?”

“What happens next?” St. Clair glanced over at his friend Baron Hugo. “Well, as to you, I know not, but while we are here, your father and I will be seeing to other things, like marriages, for example. I have an unwed daughter and four sons, one of whom, at least, should marry soon, into a Friendly House. And your father has two daughters and two sons of marriageable age, one of whom is you. But I can see from your face that you had no thought of that in your mind. Speak up, lad, what are you thinking about?”

“The new Pope.”

“The new Pope! Now yon’s a dull topic. What about him? And why would a young knight from Anjou be thinking about a new Pope?”

Hugh shrugged his broad shoulders, but no trace of a smile touched his face. “Because he is new, and all men—all knights at least—should be thinking about him. I am told he has pledged himself to put an end to what he calls ‘the problem of warring and contentious knights.’”

St. Clair was frowning now, looking from Hugh to Baron Hugo. “What’s this? The Pope said that? I have heard nothing of this. What problem is he talking about?”

Baron Hugo answered him. “The same one that plagued us in our youth, Stephen, save that it’s worse than ever. The problem of outlets for youthful energy. You would not be as aware of it in England today as we are here, because you have lived in a constant state of rebellion and insurrection, with continuous military activity over there for the past two decades, keeping your damned Saxons in their place. But the problem is real everywhere else throughout Christendom. And of course, although no one will ever admit it, its main cause, just as much now as it was in our day, is the Church itself, the damnable, officious zealotry of the priests. In England, surrounded by hostile Saxons, you have more than enough to keep your knights occupied and safely out of mischief, but over here knights are forbidden by law—which means of course forbidden by the Church, which makes the law—to fight among themselves in time of peace, or to brawl, or to break the civil amity in any way. And when they do—as they always do, being young and full of life and swarming everywhere one looks—the damn priests frown and punish them, fining them heavily, and sometimes even imprisoning them under pain of excommunication.”

The Baron drew a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. “Anyway, it is unhealthy and it has been going on for far too long and growing ever worse. But these last two decades, under Gregory as Pope, have been appalling. We are at the point of total anarchy and the entire situation is now untenable. The rule of law as we know it is being challenged and thwarted everywhere by the priests. That is how almost every knight at this Gathering would describe what is happening, and they would be echoed by their fellows everywhere in Christendom. But what is truly happening, the reality underlying the entire situation, is much more worrisome.”

St. Clair had been listening closely, his eyebrows rising higher as the Baron went on, and now he flicked a hand in irritation. “I see where you are going, Hugo, but you are wrong. Gregory was an ambitious Pope, granted, but only for the spiritual dominion of the Church. His enthusiasm was for reform within the Church. And God knows it was needed.”

“It is still needed, and Gregory is dead.”

St. Clair paid no attention to the interruption. “But Gregory had no interest in governing the world. He was an autocrat—all popes are—but he was no would-be dictator. In his view of things, Rome should rule the world spiritually, through religion, but only after it had cleansed its own house of the stink and filth of corruption. And even then political government would always be the function of kings and ministers. He was not a comfortable man to be around, the Seventh Gregory—and particularly so for errant priests and bishops—but his dreams were all of God’s glory, not his own.”

The Baron shrugged. “That may be true, but few of the characters surrounding him possessed his gifts or his vision, and only his strength held them under control. And now he has been dead for three years, and the man who took his place was a spineless nonentity who let the zealots run wild, doing what they wished. The upshot of three years of that is what we have in force today. The churchmen strut everywhere like peacocks, challenging the status quo everywhere and trying to wrest all power from the temporal lords in every land of Christendom.”

He paused as though deliberating whether to continue, and then added, for St. Clair’s benefit, “That, by the way, is what they have begun calling folk like you and me, were you aware of that? We are now designated ‘temporal lords,’ lords for the time being. Some clever little cleric in Rome doubtless came up with that piece of sophistry, undermining our ancient authority. They on the other hand, being anointed clerics and therefore God’s personal representatives, are to be viewed as permanent and immutable.” His voice became heavy with disgust. “It is a thing that has been building up for years now. I have discussed it with my lord the Count of Champagne, and with Count Fulk of Anjou, and several of the others, and there seems to be nothing we can do about it, other than resist in silence and refuse to suffer their damned arrogance.”

The Baron glanced again from man to man, bringing all of them into what he was saying. “There is nothing of God in this, and I know you all know that. The breed of priests with whom we have to deal here care nothing for the things of God, save when it pleases them to wield His name as a weapon on their own behalf. They are all of this world, and hungry for the power and pleasures it contains. They buy their offices and live in fornication and they must stink in the nostrils of God.

“Gregory tried to stop all that, to reverse the trends, and he did well, for a while. But he was but one man, his reign too brief, and now they are back in power. This new Pope, Urban, is an unknown quantity. He may or may not align himself with the zealots. If he does, however, and if they win—if we permit them to win—then the whole world will be governed by priests and clerics, and men like us might as well lie down and die.”

“But they won’t win. They can’t.” St. Clair’s voice was heavy with anger. “They are but priests, when all is said. That is iniquitous.”

“Not so, Stephen. They believe otherwise. It is inevitable, in their eyes. It is the will of God, they say, and who is to contradict them, since only priests may speak with God to discover His wishes? But it is iniquitous. I will not disagree with you on that. And it is iniquity bred of greed and hypocrisy and the stench of corruption. But even if it comes to pass, it will require a long time to accomplish such an end.

“Urban was elected only recently, in March this year. He is very young and apparently full of ideals, according to the reports I have heard. He has sworn to put an end to all the nonsense—the publicly seen nonsense at the very least—and to resolve the matter of the knights and their uncontrolled violence. How he might do that without abolishing either the knighthood or the priesthood is a mystery to me, and to everyone else who even starts to think about it, but he has undertaken to do it.”

Hugh had been listening avidly, thrilled to be a participant in a discussion of such depth, and now, emboldened by the fact that everyone plainly recognized his right to be there, he spoke up, surprising himself with the firmness of his own tone. “Well, he is the Pope. He could always start a war somewhere, in his own holy name. That would be nothing new, and it would give the knights something new to think about. They would all flock to a new war, and kill themselves off in admirable numbers. Of course, that would do nothing about the problem of the priests.” Hugh was being facetious, but the Baron took him seriously.

“And where would he start this new war, boy? That’s not a foolish idea, but it’s impossible. There’s no place to do it. This problem has infected all of Christendom. Everywhere. There’s nowhere you can go to get away from it. There are only two kinds of men in our world—fighters and clerics, knights and priests. You do see that, do you not?”

Hugh nodded. “Aye, Father, I see it. Our world is, as you say, half-filled with knights, and in the eyes of those who fill the other half—the priests—they are become a plague.” He looked to Sir Stephen St. Clair, who had been listening quietly, but had just reared upright in his chair, and now sat rigid, his eyes gazing off into some far distant place. After a few moments, he sat back again, beginning to scratch at his chin reflectively with one finger.

“You know, lad, you have just led me to a startling thought,” he said. “You and your father, both. Christendom, the world, is full of knights, you said, and in the eyes of the Church they are become a plague. But not all the world is Christendom, and Christendom is sadly less than all the world … and the Bible itself teems with plagues …” His voice trailed away and he fell silent for a while. “I must think more on this, consult with people, and then, perhaps, I may talk to this new Pope. Perhaps. But not today. I have no wish to mix with clerics, and no need to go to Rome or Avignon, so let us talk now of other things. Have you heard about this new siege engine the Normans have developed, this trebuchet? I think that’s what they are calling it. No, none of you? That surprises me. I have yet to see one of them myself, but by all accounts it is a fearsome device, capable of throwing a stone the size of a heavy man farther than anything else ever has.”