Knights of the Black and White

FOUR

St. Clair stood alone in an anteroom, staring vacantly at an enormous tapestry covering one entire wall that depicted a deer hunt in some wooded valley in Christendom. His stomach rumbled uncomfortably and sent hot bile spurting up to burn the back of his throat. He had no idea how long he had been waiting since Bishop Odo had ushered him into this room and closed the door behind him while he went in search of Princess Alice. Since then, he knew only that he had examined every detail of the tapestry—the only object in the room other than a few ungainly pieces of furniture—deciding almost immediately that the composition of the piece was ill conceived and poorly executed, and although he looked at it still, it no longer occupied any portion of his awareness.

He was also acutely conscious, for the first time that he could ever recall, of not being clean, and that was a consideration that troubled him greatly, because cleanliness was not something that a man of his kind concerned himself about. In truth, cleanliness, in the sense of washing oneself in order to render oneself odorless and inoffensive to others, was regarded by some as a weakness almost akin to effeminacy and by others as being sinfully effete and hedonistic. St. Clair had not washed since the day by the water hole in the Syrian desert where Hassan the Shi’a had found him, and on that occasion he had done so only because Hassan refused to lend him any of his clothing until he washed the encrusted filth from his body, which had been fouled with refuse and excrement during his captivity. Even so, he thought now, that had been mere weeks before, and as a monk he was required to wash no more than two or three times in any year.

His discomfort, he knew, was caused by his knowledge of the Princess Alice and her habits. Alice loved to bathe, he remembered, and had always done so, from the days of her earliest childhood. She had been raised by servants in her parents’ household in Edessa, and as servants will with small children, they had spoiled her outrageously, lavishing love on the child and making sure she had the best of everything that life could provide. They were of mixed races, these servants, from a host of differing tribes and nationalities, but all of them were Muslim, and they had imbued in the child a love of cleanliness, encouraging her to use the magnificent baths in her father’s city that had been built by the Romans many centuries earlier and used by the Arabs ever since. In consequence of that, Alice had grown to womanhood as a sweet-smelling rose among foul-smelling men, and St. Clair knew, because he clearly remembered now how and when she had confided in him, that she refused to have unwashed people about her. Even her guardsmen were clean and fresh smelling, although they did stop short of being perfumed.

His thoughts were interrupted when the doors at his back swung open and Bishop Odo re-entered, accompanied by the princess herself, who stopped dramatically on the threshold and gazed imperiously and questioningly at St. Clair, her chin held high, one eyebrow slightly raised, her expression unreadable. She was wearing a shimmering robe of the most beautiful fabric St. Clair had ever seen, so flimsy and diaphanous that it appeared to be made of mist. It was of palest purple—he had seen the precise color before, somewhere, in a flower, he thought, but could not remember where or when—and beneath it she wore another garment altogether, this one of denser material in a glorious pink. She paused there only for a brief moment, but to St. Clair it seemed to be an age, for not a single word of greeting suggested itself to him and he felt his face and neck begin to redden.

“Upon my life, it is the celebrated Brother Sir Stephen, in the flesh! I confess I am flattered and delighted both, even if incredulous. When my lord Bishop here told me you had come a-visiting, I thought he must surely be mistaken, for it is said that only the shy desert fox is more elusive and more hard to spot than this noble knight monk … albeit I am told that the fox is not quite as adept at vanishing from view, run as he might.”

There was no trace of humor on her face or in her eyes, but St. Clair knew she was twitting him, referring to the time they had met in the marketplace, and he felt his face flush crimson. “Well, Brother Stephen, have you no greeting for me? No surly grunt to warn me of my place?”

St. Clair cleared his throat, and as he did so he had a vision from years before, when he had witnessed the first meeting of one of his cousins and the woman who would become his wife. “I rejoice to meet you again, my lady,” he said smoothly, recalling his cousin’s words. “Your presence brightens even the sunlit morning.” There, he thought, even as the princess’s eyes widened in surprise, that was easy. “Bishop Odo told me that you wish to speak with me, and so I came at once.”

She blinked at him, once only. “Yes, I can see you did, and I am grateful. Come, if you will, accompany me.” She turned and led the way back towards the chamber she used as a reception room, walking quickly, straight backed and square shouldered, while Odo and St. Clair followed her. A single armed guard at the entrance opened the door and stood at attention beside it until they should pass through, but on the point of entering, Alice stopped and looked at Odo.

“My thanks to you, my lord of Fontainebleau, you have been of great service, as you always are, but I am sure you have other matters to attend to and so I will not keep you. You may return to your affairs. Brother Stephen and I have much to discuss.”

The bishop nodded, stone faced, but the knotted muscles in his jaw betrayed tightly clenched teeth, and St. Clair sensed that Odo was seething with anger, having no doubt expected to sit in on the conversation between him and the princess, and he half smiled, enjoying the realization that Bishop Odo of Fontainebleau was not one of the princess’s favorite people.

As Odo stalked away, his heels thumping angrily, Alice crooked a finger at St. Clair, and she swept through the door and into the beautifully appointed rooms beyond. He swallowed nervously and entered close behind her, his nostrils filled with her perfume, then moved to the chair she indicated, where he remained standing, waiting for her to seat herself. She smiled at him and sat down, and he lowered himself carefully onto the chair, noting thankfully that a substantial space now separated them and that he could no longer smell the scent she was wearing. And that reminded him, inevitably, of his own odorous condition, for he realized that Alice had seated herself far enough away to avoid the unwashed smell of him.

They sat without speaking for a count of perhaps ten heartbeats, each of them looking at the other, and then the princess cleared her throat gently.

“I was being truthful when I said how surprised I am to see you here, Brother Stephen. I would not have believed you would come here.”

What does that mean? he thought. Does she mean voluntarily, and if she does, does that mean she expects me to remember having been here before?

Alice continued in the same tone. “It has been my impression that you and your brethren prefer to keep yourselves and your concerns close held among yourselves.”

He knew he had to say something, so he attempted to look as though he had no notion of what she meant as he replied, “Well, my lady, we are monks, bound by our sacred vows to abjure the world and the things of the world.”

“You mean the people of the world, do you not, sir knight? Your vows I will accept—for the moment at least—because they are common knowledge, but the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ are a different breed of monks, are they not? Monks who fight and kill are scarcely like other monks. That, to me, is a profound distinction.”

She would accept his vows, for the moment? He had no idea what she meant, but he nodded, surprised that the tension fluttering in his breast had largely died away. “That is true, my lady. We are different, and dedicated to a new purpose—a purpose that has never existed prior to this time and place.”

“And a laudable purpose, no?”

He shrugged, sensing a trap somewhere. “In the eyes of the Patriarch Archbishop and your father the King, that would appear to be the case.”

“Aye, laudable indeed. To fight and kill men in the name of God, and beneath His own banner, in clear, but somehow suddenly justifiable, defiance of the clarity of His commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

St. Clair gave a brief jerk of the head. “Your point is clear, my lady, and barbed. But the men against whom we fight—the Muslim infidels—despise our God and would drive His presence from this land.”

“Not so, Brother Stephen. That is not true. In fact it is specious. No devout Muslim despises our God, for He is the same God to whom they pray. They call Him Allah, whereas we call him God—le bon Dieu—the Good God. But He is the same deity. He is the sole deity.” Alice’s face had grown pinched with disapproval, and St. Clair found himself watching her closely, seeing how her eyes narrowed with a passionate belief in what she was saying, and he felt a stirring of admiration for her intensity, in the light of the journey he had just undertaken with Hassan the Shi’a and the conversations they had shared in the course of it. But she had not yet finished. “The hatred and the killing, all of it, Brother Stephen, from the first moment our most Christian armies descended upon this land under the leadership of Geoffroi de Bouillon and with the blessing of the Pope in Rome, has been carried out in the name of God, but for the convenience and enrichment of the men who believe themselves entitled to interpret God’s holy will. And my father ranks highly among them.”

The unexpectedness of this denunciation, and the ferocity with which it was delivered, rendered St. Clair speechless, for he had been witness, no matter how unwillingly or unwittingly, to a statement that would be deemed worthy of death had anyone in power overheard it. Moreover, it was a statement with which he agreed in every sense, and in his enthusiasm he came close to saying so. He opened his mouth to speak, but discovered in doing so that there was nothing he could dare to say, and so he closed it again, quickly, his mind reeling with the revelation that had just occurred to him.

He had spent months now believing that this woman was a spoiled, malevolent, self-centered child with no thought in her mind except debauchery and sensual pleasures, but in the space of moments she had shown him another, entirely unsuspected facet of her nature: a fiery passion allied with a withering contempt for the powerful men of her acquaintance. He was convinced, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, that he was out of his depths in this confrontation, if, in fact, it was a confrontation. He shook his head, as if trying to clear the clutter of his thoughts, then made a valiant attempt to redirect the conversation, which had become far too dangerous for comfort.

“I cannot find it in my heart to disagree with you, my lady, but the sin is not all one-sided. The men against whom my brethren and I fight are not devout Muslims. They are godless and they are murderous, bandits and marauders and more than deserving of the justice meted out to them when we find them. Were they Christian Franks, guilty of the same transgressions, we would treat them no differently.

“But I suspect that has nothing to do with why you sent for me, although I may be wrong. Was it this you wished to speak with me about? If so—”

Alice smiled again. “No, Brother Stephen, it was not, so you may set your mind at rest, even on this matter of my treasonous speech. I am a dutiful daughter and I love my father dearly, as a just and indulgent parent. It is only with his kingship that I struggle—his manhood, masculinity, male pride, call it what you will. I think of it as that element in his nature that prevents him from seeing the world through a woman’s eyes. And since you are a monk, self-sacrificingly severed from such worldly things, and devoted single-mindedly to the pleasure and the glory of doing God’s real will, I may not include you in my general condemnation of men.”

St. Clair blinked. “You condemn all men, my lady?”

“Most men, Brother Stephen, and most particularly the majority of those men with whom I have to spend much of my life. The more powerful a man becomes, I find, the less pleasurable is his company, and those men involved in acquiring power, like our admirable Bishop of Fontainebleau, are totally intolerable. I abhor men who are grasping for power, because all of them crush lesser men beneath their lusts.” She saw the expression on his face and continued. “Yet I know too, believe me, that lesser men, ordinary men, can be just as swinish and as evil as their so-called betters, so do not misconstrue what I am saying. All that I mean is that our system of feudal tenure exists solely for the benefit of those men who hold power. That means, Brother Stephen, that it exists to the detriment of everyone, for even those on the pinnacles of power are all too often destroyed by being atop the pinnacle. I would change that, if I could, but I cannot. I am a mere woman, and women are more powerless than serfs in this world of men. What is it? You look as though you have something you would like to add.”

“No, my lady. Nothing at all.”

“Very well, then, let us begin to begin, you and I.” She raised her hands and clapped sharply, and an old man entered through the doors at the far end of the room and came to her. “Ishtar,” she said, her eyes still on St. Clair, “this is Brother Stephen, of the brotherhood from the stables on the Temple Mount, but he is here this day as Sir Stephen St. Clair, in order to assist me. Conduct him to the baths, if you will. Sir Stephen?”

Her right eyebrow had risen high on her forehead, whether in challenge or in curiosity St. Clair had no idea, but he permitted nothing to show on his face as he debated with himself. He had gone through all this in his mind before even entering these rooms, knowing that she would, in all probability, insist upon his bathing, and he was well aware of the dangers to his chastity—a chastity already compromised to the point of risibility—that were involved therein. She would not approach him while he was unwashed, rank and offensive to her nostrils, but once he had emerged from the hot water baths, all steamed and scrubbed and perfumed, he would face another reception altogether. She would not scruple to approach him then, and he had but little confidence in his own ability, or even in his willingness, to withstand the blandishments she might bestow upon him. And this time, if he succumbed to her, there would be no matter of intent to debate.

Having bathed within the previous month, and therefore being less rank than usual, he thought he might stand upon his vows and refuse her invitation, and he had earlier surmised that he would probably be able to win the confrontation that would undoubtedly follow, depending upon how badly she needed and wanted his cooperation and whatever information she thought she could obtain from him. Against that, he now had to weigh the astonishing attitude Alice le Bourcq had so newly revealed to him. If he refused now to bathe at her request, he would incur her hostility and forfeit the amiable, forthright, and unprecedented reception she had accorded him so far.

And there came the crux of the matter, because he could imagine nothing more important—to himself and to his brothers in the Order of Rebirth—than to discover as much as he could about what she knew and what she hoped to discover. It made sense, then, that he should accede to her wishes in this matter of bathing and use the goodwill generated by that to extract whatever information he could amiably, rather than hope to glean it in an adversarial encounter.

He stood up without speaking, and her head tilted backward, holding his gaze, that single eyebrow still raised—in what, he wondered, reflecting that if it were anticipation, he was incapable of guessing what prompted it.

“I remember, my lady.” He had not meant to say that. The words had sprung to his tongue and spilled out before he even knew he had formed them, and now he saw her eyes widen in surprise, mingled with something else—confusion, he thought, or perhaps consternation. When she spoke, however, there was no sign of any such thing in her voice.

“What do you remember, Brother Stephen?”

He smiled slightly, amazed at the ease with which his response came to him, and dipped his head. “What I had heard. Not that you dislike men, but that you dislike the stink of unwashed men.”

She continued to stare at him for a moment, her eyes narrow, then nodded. “You heard correctly, Brother. Go you now with Ishtar. And Ishtar, send Esther to me, if you will.” She looked back at St. Clair. “I shall be here when you are ready.”

St. Clair followed the old eunuch through the maze of passageways and courtyards within the walls of what had been the great al-Aqsa Mosque, looking about him as he went for anything that he might recognize. He saw nothing that was even vaguely familiar, however, which confirmed his own belief that he must have been barely conscious—or perhaps more accurately, barely aware of his surroundings—when he was confined here previously. The bathing rooms were completely unfamiliar, too, and that surprised him greatly, for among the most persistent memories he had were those of long, pleasant hours spent in the warmth and luxury of the baths.

“I do not remember this place.” He spoke the thought aloud, merely to express his confusion, if only to himself.

“And why should you? You have never been here.”

St. Clair, barely aware of the eunuch’s presence, had not expected a response, and so it took him a moment to realize that Ishtar was unsurprised to hear him hint, even as vaguely as he had, that he was aware of having been here before. He looked keenly at the old man. “Are there, then, other baths here?”

“Hah!” It was more of a bark than a laugh, but St. Clair could see that the old fellow was amused. “I imagine so. There are six more, all separate.”

“Then which one did I use?”

Ishtar gazed back at him, blank eyed. “Today, ferenghi, you use this one. Achmed, whom I will send to you, will be your masseur. I will wait for you outside and take you back when you are ready.” He bowed and moved away without another word.

Less than an hour later, bathed and pummeled, oiled and scented, and dressed in fresh clothing, St. Clair re-entered the princess’s audience room and found her deeply involved with several of her women in some project that involved countless lengths of bright fabrics and materials, strewn over every available surface in a riotous explosion of vibrant colors. She saw him enter behind Ishtar and dismissed the women immediately, sending them scurrying away, burdened with armloads of fabrics, and she stood up to welcome him back. He nodded politely but made no attempt at conversation, knowing that she knew she had won in the matter of the bathing, and that the conducting of this interview was hers to dictate. She waved him to a couch and sat beside him, facing him far more closely than she had before, so that the smell of her perfume filled his nostrils, tightened his chest, and set his blood stirring again.

“There, now I can approach you, at least.” She paused, awaiting a reaction that he successfully suppressed, and then she smiled. “Bravo! I expected you to move away when I said that, but you barely flinched. And yet I suspect you may be even more skittish and nervous around women nowadays than you were before, Brother Stephen, now that you are a monk in fact. Am I correct?”

He pursed his lips, wondering what was coming next, but nodded. “Aye, my lady, you are correct. I am.”

“And yet you were a knight for many years before you ever thought to turn monk. Surely you knew no lack of women in those years?”

That was a statement, he decided, not a question, and so he merely shrugged his shoulders.

“Well?”

It had been a question after all, and the princess wished him to answer it. He thought for a while, then said, “My mother died when I was but a babe and I had no sisters or female relatives, my lady. I was brought up in an unusual household, in England, a country where the people still hate us as the Norman invaders who conquered them no more than fifty years ago. It was a household lacking in women, yet one in which antique values and standards were espoused and nurtured, even revered. My upbringing was built around those values and was supervised throughout my boyhood by a group of wise, devout, and learned men.” He paused for a while before continuing. “They taught me many things for which I have been grateful for many years, but none among them, alas, was an adept in the knowledge of women, so my learning there was severely limited.”

Again he stopped, a tiny frown on his face, deep in thought now and unaware that the princess was watching him closely.

“Fortunately for me, I had the natural aptitudes of a soldier, in addition to being scholarly, and so I was knighted early. And then, being very, very young, I rushed out into the world, eager to fight for all the things that I had been taught to believe in and to revere. And that, I fear, was the end of my youth. I quickly discovered that I had little in common with my fellow knights, and even less with the women who surrounded them.

“That first year of knighthood outside of my home was a time of revelations, none of them pleasant. I quickly learned the difference between the world of ideas and ideals in which I had been raised, and the real world of bestial brutality within which most men live.

“I discovered that my fellow knights were not as I had envisioned them. They were barely civilized and lacked even the rudiments of what I had been taught was Christian conduct. I saw the undeniable reality of godlessness everywhere: hypocrisy, cynicism, venality, simony, and unbridled carnality even among priests and clerics. I could not approve, but neither could I disapprove too loudly, for I would not have lasted a month once the word of my disapproval was out. And so I held my peace and sought to live my own life for myself. I lived in solitary misery, by choice. I made no friends, and I knew no women. My sole companions were my own servitors. I fought much and volunteered for every task at every opportunity until I was sorely wounded and sent home to die. But even there, I went my own way. And soon after that, I came here, and I met you for the first time.”

He saw the princess staring at him in amazement and he was unsurprised, because he was equally amazed at himself. He had had no thought, before he began speaking, to say any of what had come spouting from his mouth, but then had found himself matching her candor with his own.

Alice looked down at her hands. “Aye, Sir Stephen, I remember that first meeting. And now we may be meeting for the last time.”

“How so, my lady?” He felt a surge of alarm, his mind connecting what she had just said with the reason underlying his presence here—the information she had uncovered.

“I will soon be leaving Jerusalem,” she said. “I am to be wed to Prince Bohemond of Antioch, who is on his way here now from Italy to claim his throne and to succeed his father.”

His first thought was that this might be a reprieve from the threat of being seduced, but he realized the true significance of what she had said immediately after that. He cleared his throat. “Then I am glad for you, my lady. How soon is the prince expected?”

She shook her head. “No one can tell me. It depends upon too many things other than winds and weather, which are of course the most important of all. He could be here in a week, or a month, or half a year. Only one thing do I know with certainty: when he arrives, we shall be wed. That is why there was so much cloth fabric in evidence here when you came in. My women are working at all hours to prepare my new clothing. What are you people doing in the stables?”

He opened his mouth and closed it again, taken aback by the swift change of subject.

“I have received reports that you and your fellow monks are involved in something within your stables, something nefarious, it seems, and although the reports vary, I am satisfied that I know what is going on.”

Her words hung in the air, and St. Clair could hear his heart thudding in his chest. She was watching him closely, scanning his face for some hint of what he was thinking, and he schooled himself to show nothing as he tilted his head slightly to one side. “I beg your pardon, my lady, but I do not … What do you believe is going on, as you say?”

“Digging. You and your brethren are digging in the earth, in the foundations there, in search of some treasure buried there long ages ago.”

“Wha—? What would make you even suspect such a thing, my lady?” He felt himself almost breathless.

“Information! I told you, I have heard reports that something is going on.”

“Aye, and I have no wish to contradict you, but you also said that those reports conflicted with each other, did you not, and that you had therefore drawn your own conclusions on what they said?”

“I did. What are you saying?”

He spread his hands far apart. “Simply that I would like to hear these conclusions at which you have arrived. May I ask that of you?”

“I spoke of treasure, Brother Stephen. I now believe that you and your brotherhood have somehow acquired secret information—ancient knowledge of some kind—and are using it to lead you towards some great discovery.”

St. Clair froze. His mouth went dry, his tongue cleaving to his palate as the words thundered in his head. All his convictions about the integrity of his brethren turned to ashy powder in his mouth, so that he barely heard Alice as she continued.

“I can only interpret that to mean that you are all apostate, ignoring and defying the sacred vows you undertook so recently, in the hope of unearthing riches that rightfully belong to others.” She stopped, eyeing him and pursing her lips. “This is the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Brother Stephen. Everything herein, above and below the ground, belongs to my father the King. Whatever treasure you seek belongs to him, no matter where or when you find it, and no matter whether or no he knew of it before you found it. But I suspect that means nothing to you, does it? When you and your associates uncover these riches, this treasure that you seek, you intend to abscond with it, abandoning all your duties and responsibilities.”

St. Clair could barely think, his mind was reeling so. They had a traitor among their tiny number. Who could it be? In a daze, he began to summon up the faces of his brother knights, gazing at each of them in his mind, trying to see some weakness, some hint of treachery.

“Answer me! Is that not what you intend?”

He blinked and focused his eyes on the princess’s angry face. “Forgive me, my lady, but what is it that you think we intend to do?”

“You are going to steal the treasure and make off with it. But I will not allow it.”

“Make off with it? Make off with it? With what, my lady? We are monks, not brigands.”

“Hah! Then I give you back your own words of moments ago, sir, when you were condemning the atrocities committed by priests and clerics. Am I to imagine, in the light of what I now know, that monks are different?”

“But we are, my lady! Do you not recall? A new order, different from any other.” Despite the angry edge to his voice, St. Clair was growing confused, because the sole denunciation he was hearing here centered upon the theft of treasure, of portable wealth. There was nothing of secret societies or underhanded plotting or treachery; nothing that bore directly upon the Order of Rebirth, or of which he truly needed to be afraid. Nothing, in fact, that threw any light at all upon the extent of the woman’s knowledge of what was truly going on in the stables. He rose to his feet, but kept his tone moderate.

“Tell me, if you will, my lady, what you propose to do with this information and what you need from me in regard to it.”

“I intend to denounce your activities to my father. And also to the Patriarch Archbishop, since it was to him that your brethren swore their original false loyalty.”

“Denounce us? Do you really believe that we are hatching treachery?”

“How else am I to believe?” She sat straight backed, glaring at him accusingly. “Your conduct has left me no other choice, and my own conscience permits me no other course of action. Ever since I became convinced of what you were doing, I have been unable to sleep, fearful of being the direct cause of the deaths of nine monks who have shown themselves to be heroic in some ways.”

She was lying, he knew, protesting her helplessness too much. There was no doubt of it in his mind. The woman who had so shamelessly abducted him was not the kind of woman who would suddenly be overcome by a crisis of conscience such as she was claiming now. He changed tack.

“Only nine of us, my lady? What of the sergeant brothers?”

“No, not them.” Her denial was emphatic. “The sergeants are innocent of all complicity in this. I know that beyond question, for I have become sure—as sure as I now am of the perfidy of the nine knights—that the lesser brothers know nothing at all of what has been going on beneath their feet. The guilt in this lies squarely with you knights, all of you nobly born and therefore able, by birth and knightly training, to distinguish right and wrong even before you took your sacred vows.” She stopped for a moment, frowning at him. “How could you do such a thing, after the events and the realizations of your earlier life, those things you spoke so bitterly about such a short time ago?”

He resisted the urge to challenge her with his own knowledge of her former conduct, but he turned away from her instead and looked about the silent, sunlit room, nodding as though considering what she had said, and then he sighed and sat down again, looking directly at her.

“Tell me then, my lady, if I may ask so boldly. How did all this—what did you call it? this nefarious activity come to your notice?”

He knew from the way she blinked at him that she had not expected the question, but she rallied quickly. “At first?”

“Yes, from the earliest moment.”

“I know not. Not precisely. I have been told it all grew out of perfectly innocent observations from some of the local merchants who supplied the temple garrison … and supplied fodder and equipment to your stables. They were the first to notice that there was one area into which they were never permitted to wander.”

“We are a closed community, my lady. No one who is not of our order is permitted to pass beyond our outer precincts.”

“I know nothing of that, never having been there, but that is what I was told, on sound authority. It was observed that there is a locked and guarded doorway that no one other than the knight monks themselves is ever permitted to pass through.”

“That is true. Such a door exists. It is the entrance to our living quarters and our chapel. None may enter there save our brethren.”

“Ah. Well, it was noticed, and the matter was brought to my attention soon afterwards. I was reluctant to believe anything of what I heard at first, and so, mindful of my duty to my father, I sent people of my own to observe what they could and report back to me.”

“I see. And what did they report to you?”

“That they had seen … things that were inexplicable.

And thus I decided to approach my father the King and advise him that something … something untoward was happening.”

“So this discovery was recent?”

“Recent enough. That is why you are here.”

“And why am I here, my lady? Why would you summon me? If, as you suspect, there is something clandestine going on in the stables, then I must be one of the perpetrators. Why would you bring me here instead of denouncing me immediately to the King and to the Patriarch?” St. Clair was watching her closely, attempting to read her eyes, and he was amused, despite all his apprehension, to realize that he was, beyond belief, enjoying himself. Somehow, in realizing that he was clearly not to be seduced on this occasion, he had been able to rally resources he had not known he possessed, and had begun to feel that the situation might not be as bleak as he had feared. Seeing a flicker of uncertainty in her expression, he pressed on.

“Tell me what it is you want to know. What kind of treasure are you so convinced we seek? I promise you, I have heard nothing of hidden hoards of gold, but I will answer your questions openly and truthfully, as well as I may.”

She hesitated, and he held his breath, knowing that this would be the moment of no return. Her first question would be as instructive as it was probing. Finally, he saw a stiffening of her lips and braced himself.

“You are digging—there, in the stables. The noises have been heard, and you are using the chips of stone you unearth to build walls inside the cavern. What treasure are you searching for?”

His heart leapt exultantly and he wanted to spring to his feet and shout with relief. What treasure are you searching for? The question liberated him as suddenly as if she had cut a taut rope. What treasure are you searching for? No mention of the Order of Rebirth, no nuanced phrase leading deeper into where he could not go. The simplicity of the question spoke of greed—greed and curiosity—nothing more, nothing less. It also meant, and far more significantly, that no brother had betrayed his trust, and that the princess had nothing more than suspicions on which to base her claims. He felt a surge of liberation so enormous that he had to brace himself to permit no slightest hint of it to show on his face or in his eyes. Instead, he pretended to frown, as though befuddled, and then he allowed his face to clear, and surrendered to the urge to laugh aloud, venting his pleasure and incredulity.

“Treasure, my lady,” he said through his laughter, making no attempt to disguise his feelings now. “We seek the treasure that all men of God are sworn to seek—the treasure of His enlightenment, through service and through prayer.”

“Do you dare to mock me, sir, here in my own house? Explain yourself and this unseemly mirth.”

St. Clair threw up his hands. “Lady, forgive my laughter, I beg of you. It is born of relief, not mockery, for now I see what you have been fretting over. My brothers and I have been laboring underground, as you suspect, and have been doing so for years, but what we do has nothing of the illicit or seditious in its nature. We have had the blessing of your father the King on our labors since the outset. But—but you spoke of the foundations of the stables. The stables have no foundations, my lady. They sit upon the solid rock of the Temple Mount, and that is what we have been digging. And you will quickly see, if you but stop to think of it, that there can be no treasure hidden within solid rock. May I explain?”

“I think it would be wise.” The chill in her voice reminded him of icy alpine winters in his native land. He cleared his throat and made a show of collecting his thoughts.

“We are a new order, as you know, my lady, and bound by vows to poverty in our way of life, and new as we are, and zealous, we have imposed new disciplines and penances upon ourselves in all we do.”

“Continue.”

“The stables—our quarters—are adequate to our needs, for the time being, but some of our brethren initially thought they were too comfortable, with their natural profusion of straw and the warmth generated by our horses. Comfort and luxury are both conducive to sloth and indolence, and injurious to discipline and asceticism. Would you not agree?”

The princess glanced around her luxurious chamber, and if not quite mollified, her voice was less frigid when she spoke next. “I might, were I that way inclined. Go on.”

“Well, several of our brotherhood decided among themselves, long before I came here, that it would be right and fitting were they to dedicate themselves to creating a truly monastic dwelling in the living rock beneath their feet, each man carving out his own cell in time, and offering the hard work and discipline of doing so to God, in recognition of His greatness and bounty. And that is the digging that has been brought to your attention. Brother Hugh sought and received permission from your father before the work began, and King Baldwin was gracious enough to accord his blessing on the work.”

The princess was now wide eyed. “But—Then why all the secrecy?”

“There is no secrecy, my lady. At least, there was never meant to be. But my brothers live in close-mouthed discipline, praying often but seldom speaking among themselves, let alone communing socially with people outside their own small circle. And so I suppose the silence simply grew, over the years, and became ingrained. But there is neither mystery nor nefarious behavior involved. I confess, you had me profoundly disturbed there for a time, wondering if I myself had been blind to something. I shall give thanks tonight, before I sleep, that I was mistaken—and, if I may dare to say so, that you were, too.”

The princess slumped suddenly and settled back against the rear of her couch, staring at him through slitted eyes, and her new posture reminded him again, for the first time since this strange conversation began, of the ripeness of her body beneath her garments. He gritted his teeth slightly and stared off into the distance beyond her shoulder, grimly refusing to allow his eyes to rest on her form.

For her part, Alice was mulling over all that St. Clair had said, and in spite of herself and all her wishes to the contrary, she found herself believing him. His mention of her father’s blessing on their digging—a detail that would be too easy to verify—had convinced her more than any other thing the knight had said. That, plus the self-evident truth of his statement about the stables being built upon solid rock. She had known that from the outset, having seen the outcrops of it among the rubble of the temple ruins, but she had chosen to disregard it in her eagerness to set her hands upon a treasure of her own. Now, looking at the knight monk, she decided that if she were asked to wager on which was more feasible—the monks digging out living quarters for themselves from the solid rock or, alternatively, the monks hewing through solid rock in search of some unknown treasure, she would know enough to place her money on the former. That fool Odo really was a fool, she mused, and she would find some way to make him painfully aware that she knew he was.

In the meantime, however, she saw the way the strange monk knight opposite her was trying not to look at her, and she sighed and rose to her feet, admitting to herself that she had caused him enough grief for one day. And besides, she thought, she herself had to be about her affairs, selecting the fabrics for her wedding gown.

She smiled pleasantly at St. Clair, thanked him courteously for his explanations, and clapped her hands to summon Ishtar, who escorted Brother Stephen to the palace gates and saw him safely on his way back to the stables below, one arm clutching a bundle that contained the clothes he had worn when he arrived at the palace.