Knights of the Black and White

ONE

Hugh de Payens stopped moving for a moment and used the back of a gauntlet-clad hand to wipe away the annoying bead of sweat that hung from the peak of his eyebrow. His eyes were already smarting from the steady trickle of sweat that ran down his temples from the mailed cowl covering his head, and inside his heavy, metal-backed gloves, his hands were hot and slick. The skin of his chest and back seemed afire, hotter than he could ever remember, and he could feel one stream of perspiration running down the center of his chest and another trickling in the groove of his spine and pooling at the top of his buttocks. He cursed silently and blinked his eyes rapidly, knowing he was beaten, but refusing to admit that he was too old to be fighting this hard in the full sunlight of mid-afternoon.

Across from him, having grounded the tip of his long sword, Stephen St. Clair had also stopped moving, patiently waiting for his superior to collect himself and start advancing again. The two men had been exercising together for almost an hour, in full armor, with swords and heavy shields, but de Payens noted, to his chagrin, that St. Clair seemed scarcely aware of the heat or of the length of time they had been pounding at each other. Ah, God, to be young again, he thought, and impulsively threw away his shield, grasping the hilt of his sword with both hands and springing directly towards his younger opponent, hoping to take him by surprise and win a momentary advantage.

St. Clair saw him coming and raised his shield high above his head to block the great two-handed chop that de Payens aimed at him, but even as he did so, he dropped to one knee and lunged forward, sweeping his blade around in a silver arc to bring the flat of it crashing against the older man’s knee with sufficient force to bring de Payens down, then pushing himself back and up, in a mighty heave, to regain his feet. He was on his toes again as quickly as his opponent fell, and stepped forward to press the point of his sword against the other man’s mail-covered neck.

“Yield,” he said.

De Payens lay glaring up at him for long moments, and then nodded. “Aye, and gladly. Help me up.”

Moments later, they had both thrown down their weapons and heavy gauntlets and removed their mailed cowls and were scrubbing their fingers in their sweat-matted hair, the shaven squares of their tonsured scalps gleaming white in the sunlight. When they had set their pates a-tingling, they subsided, side by side, against a horse-sized boulder and sat staring up the hill to the entrance to their stables. Where once the paired entrances had been gaping holes in the lower wall topping the hill, demanding the eyes’ attention, their obviousness had now been lessened by a nearby cluster of blockhouses and barracks, built over a period of several years to accommodate the lay brothers known as the Sergeants of the Order. There were sergeants everywhere de Payens looked now, all of them involved in matters of their own, and none paid any attention to the two knights sitting in the full glare of the sun. There was no shade where they sat, staring up the hill, but it was still too soon, the distance too great, for de Payens to contemplate climbing all the way up there to the coolness of the darkened stables. He would do it, eventually, but not until his breathing had slowed down and the fiery, prickling heat had lessened on his skin.

Neither man made any attempt to speak, and within moments de Payens became aware that his companion was nodding off, his chin sinking low on his chest, as though he were too tired to hold up his head. Frowning, de Payens was on the point of reaching out to prod St. Clair when the younger man started and snapped his head up, looking about him wide eyed.

“I need to speak with you, Master Hugh,” he said, “if you will grant me the time. It is a matter of grave urgency, and I have been intending to approach you now for a long time, but I have always found some reason conveniently to hand for not doing so.”

De Payens narrowed his lips, wondering what could be coming, but he was not really surprised. He had been aware for some time that all was not well with the youngest of his brethren, and St. Clair’s use of the term “Master” spoke volumes, for although Hugh was the bona fide Master of their fraternity, appointed to that status by the Seneschal of the Order of Rebirth in Sion, the title was seldom spoken aloud within their brotherhood.

The young knight sniffed and wiped away another bead of sweat with a curled finger.

“Then we should go up to the stables,” de Payens suggested. “It’s cooler up there and we will be able to talk in comfort and in privacy. Besides, we’re being disgracefully slothful sitting here in the sun. God may smite us both with sunstroke. Come on, then, up with you, and let’s away.”

Once on their feet again they gathered up their weapons and gear, then made their way up the hill into the shadows of the cavern that housed the stables, pausing just inside the entrance until their eyes adjusted to the darkness. The cavern had undergone great changes since the knight monks had first moved in, almost eight years earlier. Where there had once been two roughly equal divisions under the arching stone roof, there now appeared to be only one, on the right of the entrance, and it was divided into neat rows of well-made stalls for horses, with a sturdy platform hayloft above the stalls that was reached by stairs made from thick, solid planking—no small achievement in an environment where wood of any kind was hard to come by, and where finished lumber was a precious and sought-after commodity.

It was the area on the left of the entrance, however, that had seen the greatest changes. What had been a vast, empty space in the beginning was now a maze of roofless rooms, all of them open to the soaring stone vault above them and all solidly built, with thick, strong walls made from stone fragments mixed with mortar. Most of these rooms were used for storage, although some provided sleeping quarters for the nine brothers—Spartan and bare and without creature comforts, in the tradition of monkish cells. There was also a spacious chapel there, and a refectory, although the kitchens, for obvious reasons, were housed outside the cavern, in a stone building constructed specifically to hold them. At the rear of the place, close by the chapel, was another, more spacious room, equipped with tables and chairs and shelving, that served as a scriptorium and records-keeping center for the Master and his clerics. The rear wall was blank, save for a single door that was covered in heavy curtains of thick, felted wool that served to muffle any errant sound that might emerge from behind it. This was the sole entrance to the excavations that had been going on here now, without pause, for eight years, and those excavations were the source of the plentiful supply of stone chips and fragments that had been used to build the walls inside the cavern and to construct the sergeants’ barracks buildings on the sloping ground outside.

The two men went directly to the records room where most of the clerical affairs of the small community—and of the Order of Rebirth—were carried out. There was no one there at this time of the day, and de Payens waved the younger man towards a chair, while he himself opened a cupboard and brought out a large jug of water and two cups, and poured for each of them. They sat and drank attentively for a while, concentrating on the enjoyment of their refreshment as de Payens downed two full cups and St. Clair emptied his third. Then, relaxing visibly, de Payens stretched and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his flattened palms against his armored belly.

“Very well then, Brother, speak. You have my full attention.”

St. Clair sat thinking for a time, then raised his head. “I am beset by demons.”

“You are beset …” De Payens’s voice died away almost completely. He had expected nothing close to what he had heard. “Demons?”

“Devils … a devil.”

“A devil. I see … What kind of devil, do you know?”

“Aye. A succubus.”

“Ah! A succubus … That is … That is a very common devil. A female devil.”

“Aye, I know. Too well do I know that. I am possessed.”

“Well, Stephen, I do not think I would go so far as to say that.” De Payens knew this conversation was beyond his experience, but he knew, too, that he could not avoid it, and so he tried to lessen the importance of the issue by being placatory. “We are all of us, as men, and celibates, troubled by the succubus from time to time.”

“I know that, Master de Payens. It has always been thus, and I have been as aware of it as everyone else is, from the age at which I first became a man. But that seemed normal, somehow, something that happened once a month, or sometimes twice, and was forgotten almost as it happened. This curse that plagues me now is different.”

“Different … How so?”

“In every way. Before this began, I would have dreams on certain nights, dreams vaguely remembered and formless, unknowable save that they left evidence of having happened. Spilt seed.” He shrugged, managing to convey both awkwardness and embarrassment in one movement. “But all of that has changed … Now this is a nightly occurrence. Every night. And I have dreams that I remember, sometimes very clearly, with places I can almost recognize although I know I have never been in any of them … and sensations so intense that I can feel the reality of them. Every night, Master Hugh. Prayer has no effect on it, nor does tiredness, and yet I struggle every night against falling asleep. But then I do sleep, and I dream. And I am close to despair.”

There was a long silence during which de Payens sat gazing at the younger knight, seeing his obvious and genuine misery, and in the course of it another of their number, Archibald St. Agnan, came to the door and hovered on the threshold, looking from one to the other of them and clearly realizing that there was something going on between them that was not for his ears. He raised an eyebrow at de Payens, who shook his head gently and sent him on his way with a wave of the hand. De Payens turned back to St. Clair.

“You said ‘before this began.’ Do you remember when it began? Is there a specific date or event in your mind associated with its onset?”

St. Clair sighed. “No, nothing that clear. But it began after my … illness.”

“You mean your abduction.”

“Aye, abduction, illness. Whatever we call it. But it was after that that this began to happen to me.”

“But that was nigh on eight months ago. When did these dreams begin?”

“I don’t know, Master Hugh, but I think now it was perhaps three or even four months after my return. I was aware of … certain things, certain inconsistencies in my body’s functions. As time passed by, I grew more and more aware of them, because the incidence increased, from once or twice a month to three or four times, and then to once a week, and twice a week. Now, as I have said, it is nightly and I have no control over myself. I am possessed.”

De Payens rose to his feet and began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind his back, his chin sunk on his chest, and St. Clair sat staring straight ahead as the older man moved from side to side. Finally de Payens stopped and stood facing him. “I cannot help you with this, Brother Stephen. It is beyond my capabilities and my experience. But I do not believe you are possessed, and so I want you to go and talk with the Patriarch, Archbishop Warmund. Tell him all you have told me. He will know far better than I how to help you. I am a mere knight, like you, a warrior, not a priest, and therefore I have no knowledge of possessions and such things.”

St. Clair’s face fell. “Aye, Master Hugh, but the Archbishop is a Christian. Have I need of Christian prayers now, think you, after so long without?”

“You have need of prayers, Brother, and of the understanding and assistance of a good and noble man who can intercede for you with his God, who is the same as your own. Our ancient Order has never quarreled with that kinship. Our concerns stem only from the misdirection that Christians have received from other men, over more than a millennium, concerning the allegations that the man called Jesus was the son of God Himself. That alone is the basis of our difference. Unfortunately, however, we suspect with good reason that it would quickly prove to be a lethal difference were it to come to light, and so our brotherhood has learned to live with the inevitable hypocrisies involved in being non-Christian yet living and behaving as Christians in a Christian world. It seems invidious and yet it is no more than simple self-preservation.”

He paused, mulling over his next thoughts, and finally added, “There is far more to it than that, of course, although few of us in the brotherhood ever appear to think about it. I am referring to our own strictest rule: one family member, at most, from each generation.” He looked St. Clair directly in the eye. “I have lost many hours of sleep over that, from year to year, since joining the Order, and I still have not yet come to terms with it. Every man of our brotherhood has kinsmen, brothers, cousins, and friends among the Families—and I am not even referring to wives and female relatives—who do not belong to the Order and therefore live as Christians, never suspecting what we know to be true. And we live among them and they have no knowledge of who we truly are.

“Does that difference make us better men than they are? Does it disqualify them from being admirable, or make them lesser in any way? No, it does not. We know, through the Order, that they have been duped. But that is not a weakness, for the entire world, Christendom itself, grew out of that duplicity. And so, for the sake of our own sanity, we must accept that despite all the atrocities and abuses, the corruption and the disgraceful behavior that we see perpetrated around us in the name of Jesus Christ, this world is none the less peopled, by and large, with men of genuine goodwill, admirable men, governed by conscience and their own sense of propriety and the fitness of things.”

He squinted at St. Clair from beneath furrowed brows, then nodded decisively. “Such a man is Warmund de Picquigny. I have no slightest doubt of that. The error of his beliefs is unimportant in this matter, compared to the strength of his convictions and his personal integrity, and I am equally sure of that. And as your Master, I tell you that you may believe the same with absolute certainty. Do you have any doubts of that?”

“No, Master Hugh.”

“Excellent. Then I will go now, today, to talk to him and ensure that he will see you as soon as may be. In the interim, I will ask you to spend the remainder of this day in prayer, and wait for me to summon you. Now go, and be at peace. Archbishop Warmund will give you peace of mind, and if he feels you are indeed possessed, he will exorcise whatever demon dwells within you. Go now.”