Knights of the Black and White

THREE

“Brother Hugh, Brother Stephen is back.” Payn de Montdidier hesitated, seeing the incomprehension in his superior’s eyes, then added, “Brother Stephen. You asked me to let you know when he returned, from his meeting with the Patriarch.”

“The Patriarch?” Hugh de Payens continued to look befuddled, but then, as he pronounced the words, his face cleared. “Ah, Brother Stephen, yes, of course. Have him come to me at once, if you will, Brother Payn.” As the other swung away in obedience, de Payens returned to the document over which he had been poring, his pointing fingertip once again tracing the lines on the ancient chart.

That morning, shortly after Stephen St. Clair’s departure for the Patriarch’s palace, the word they had all been anticipating for years had finally arrived. But it had not come from Anjou. It had come from the ground beneath their feet, where against all odds, the two brothers working the early-morning shift in the tunnels had broken through into an older tunnel that ran above and slightly to the left of the one in which they had been working. The breakthrough had been accidental, signaled only by a sudden rift in the roof of the tunnel. The roof of that tunnel had, for years, been solid stone, yet now there was a hole, through which a stream of debris and dust was falling. As soon as the initial fall had abated, the monks had gone forward, with great care, to investigate, and it became immediately obvious that they had encountered something beyond their experience.

Hugh had no doubt that they had found one of the very tunnels shown on the map he was now scrutinizing, one of a series of charts carefully copied from the ancient original in the Order’s archives. The tunnels it depicted were of unimaginable antiquity, dug deep beneath the Temple Mount itself, in the days following the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt.

By sheer coincidence, Hugh himself had been the first person Gondemare and Geoffrey Bissot had seen when they came bursting from the tunnel entrance full of the news of their discovery and as stunned as he was by the unimaginable magnitude of what their find signified. He had none the less retained sufficient presence of mind to rein in their enthusiasm quickly, before their exuberance could endanger any of the secrecy the brothers had worked so hard to maintain. The two monks had been abashed and slightly chastened by his warnings to be cautious, but their eagerness had been irrepressible, and so he had sent them back to work temporarily, until he could have the opportunity to assemble the brethren for the announcement of their tidings.

He had not yet had time to do that. He had not yet had time even to settle the turmoil in his own breast, for this discovery was the first sign they had encountered, in eight years of solid, grindingly brutal labor, that there might, in truth, be substance to the legendary lore they were pursuing, and a solid core of facts underlying all their hopes and endeavors. His first act, after sending the monks back to work in the tunnel, had been to retrieve the old map from the case in which it was stored and to check it against the direction in which they had been digging for the previous five months. They had sunk their primary shaft vertically for eighty-six feet, by Montbard’s calculations, and then, relying on the most careful mathematical analysis of which they were capable—and two of the brethren were highly capable in that field—they had established a sound method of directional digging, striking northeastward at a depth they had gauged likely to lead them to intercept another tunnel. None of them, Hugh was secretly convinced, had expected anything to come of it, for everyone knew that the odds against such an intersection were great enough to defy calculation. It was nothing short of madness to think that they could dig vertically, then horizontally, and actually find another excavation dug thousands of years before.

Yet that was exactly what they had done.

A noise from behind him made him turn quickly enough to surprise St. Clair, who had just entered. The younger monk drew himself up and bowed his head slightly. “You sent for me, Brother Hugh.”

“I did, Stephen, I did. How went your interview with the Patriarch?”

St. Clair nodded, his face somber. “Well enough, I think. He does not believe me possessed.”

“I knew that. I told you so myself, did I not? What did he say to you?”

“Not much. He listened closely while I told him everything you had bidden me tell him, and then he made me tell the whole tale again, interrupting me this time with many questions, some of them very strange and seemingly lacking in logic.”

“Such as what?”

St. Clair huffed a deep, sharp sigh. “The colors in my dreams held great interest for him, although I had scarce been aware of any colors.”

“Colors?”

“Aye, he was insistent that I think of those, and as I did, they came back to me … strange colors I could scarce describe … yellows and purples and reds. Then, when I had finally remembered them, he lost interest in them, it seemed to me. Finally he told me to put my faith in God, who would not abandon me, and he said he believes that much of my torment comes from my own belief that I have sinned sorely. He attempted to convince me that I could not have sinned, since I had no intent to sin. But I’ve seen too many knights standing over butchered bodies that they had not meant to kill in the beginning to believe in that. A killing is a killing. A sin is a sin.”

“I see. Did he say no more?”

“Only that I should pray, and that the torment, whatever is causing it, will recede eventually.”

“So he believes you should return to your patrol duties?”

The look that St. Clair shot back at him was filled with cynicism. “Did you expect otherwise, Master Hugh? I draw four patrols to every other brother’s one. Of course he would want me to return to my patrol duties, but he did not say so.”

De Payens grunted, deep in his chest, and bit back the impulse to chastise the younger monk for his angry tone, reminding himself that St. Clair had been under great strain recently. Instead, he walked away, scratching with one finger at a sudden itch in his ear. “I don’t think I want you to return to patrol duties. Not yet, not for a while.” He turned back and waved an open hand towards the table and the chairs beside it. “Sit you down.”

As St. Clair moved slowly to obey, de Payens continued. “I believe it might not be in your best interests at this time to be too much out there in the world you have so recently sworn to forsake, and so I intend to keep you walled in here for a time, away from the world of ordinary men. I have work for those young muscles of yours—work that your elder brethren will be glad to see you undertake.” A wide, kindly smile took any sting from his words, and he sat down on the other side of the table.

“We have had great news this day, Stephen, news that justifies everything we have been doing since we came here. Gondemare and Bissot broke into a tunnel this morning. I have not seen it yet, and none of the others know it has even happened—I’ll be telling them all as soon as you and I are finished here. It is, of course, an ancient excavation, and it appears to have been filled in deliberately. Gondemare and Bissot both agree on that. The passageway is filled with rubble. That means it is likely to be one of the tunnels sealed and filled in by Titus’s legionaries after the capture of Jerusalem. That was a thousand years and more ago, Stephen, eleven hundred and fifty years, in fact. Think of that. It defies comprehension.” He sat quietly for a time, trying in his own mind to grasp that time span.

“The work will be easier from now on, but it will still be arduous. We will no longer be piercing solid rock with every hammer blow, but we will now be faced with removing far more detritus, far more quickly than we have been required to in the past. You wish to ask me something?”

“What about—? How will we know where we are down there? I remember hearing you say once, long ago, that there are scores, perhaps hundreds, of passages down there.”

“Mathematics.” De Payens smiled. “Our first task will be to find an intersection with another tunnel. Our tunnel has done its work, and from now on it will function only as an adit to the workings. Once we find that new intersection, we will be able to work out where we are on this map. It may take us a long time, perhaps even more years, but at least we know now that we are within reach of our goal, and that the goal is real. So, will you be content to work beneath the ground for a while, away from the sunlight?”

St. Clair nodded, his face devoid of expression. “I will, Master Hugh.”