Knights of the Black and White (10 page)

“Here is the truth, gentlemen, and whether you like it or not, you cannot change it: very few of our confrater-nity are wed to stupid women, and fewer yet are married to women who do not spring from the Friendly Families.

And the Friendly Families, according to the Lore of our ancient Order of Rebirth, have been holding regular Gatherings for more than fifty generations. Fifty
generations
, my young friends, not merely fifty
years
. Can any of you truly believe that, in all that time, our women, our wives and mothers, sisters and cousins, have been unaware 80

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that their men are involved in something to which they are not privy? They know all about the secrecy surrounding what we do, and about the dedication and effort brought into being around the time of the Gatherings.

They see, even if they do not acknowledge, the changes being wrought in their sons’ lives and activities as they approach the age of eighteen. Any man who believes that a son’s activities can be completely hidden from his mother is a fool. The most important knowledge they possess, however, is that whatever is involved, it is a thing for men, ancient beyond antiquity, in which women have no place and no involvement. They know that, and they accept it. Some accept it more easily and readily than others, and there are always the occasional few who, in their youth, seek to discover more than they are permitted to know. Those, fortunately, are very few, and eventually they are all discouraged by our total silence. Then they resign themselves to the realities of life.

“But never be tempted to believe they know nothing.

That would be the worst kind of folly. They
know
. And we know they know, even if we never mention it among ourselves. But their knowledge is as close held as is our own. They never speak of it among themselves, to any great extent. They know, somehow, that it concerns an ancient trust of some description, and they are content, and even proud, that their men, their families, are strong enough and true enough to have earned that trust and to be worthy of it. And thus, in their silent knowledge, our strength grows the greater. Your young wives will learn Beginnings

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that truth now, just as you are learning it, and you will see––no more will be said of any of it.”

The Baron looked around at his three young listeners, and then smiled. “I would ask if you have any questions, but I know that it is still too soon for questions. What you all require now is time to think about what you have been told. Go, then, and think.”

“I HAVE A QUESTION.” Godfrey sat up straight as he made his announcement. It was the same day, and the sinking sun was throwing elongated shadows across the grass in the meadow where the three of them had been lounging under a tree, their backs propped against a sloping, mossy bank for the previous hour and more, thinking deeply and saying little.

Hugh tilted his head and looked up at Godfrey from beneath an arched eyebrow. “For my father? I have no idea where he might be by now.”

“No, not for your father; for you, because you’re the one who has been studying all the Lore.” Godfrey was frowning, no trace of his usual levity present in his gaze.

“Ask away, then. I’m still a tyro but I’ll answer if I can.”

“What do you really think about all we’ve learned?”

Hugh remained motionless for several moments, his eyes closed, and then he pushed himself up and around so he could see Godfrey clearly. “What kind of a question is that? Are you asking me for my opinion of all we have 82

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learned since we were born? If that’s what you mean, then let’s fetch our practice swords and go to it right here. Better a healthy sweat than wasting an afternoon wondering about nonsense.”

“No, that’s not what I meant at all … I’m not sure what I meant, Hugh, but it’s important. What …” Godfrey’s face twisted in a frustrated grimace. “I know what I want to ask you, but I don’t know how to put it into words properly. Let me think about it for a moment.”

“Think for as long as you wish. I’ll wait.” Hugh lay back and closed his eyes again. Payn had not stirred.

Some time later, Godfrey tried again, “I wonder about what you believe.”

Hugh did not even open his eyes. “How could that interest you in any way? Why should it? What I believe is in my own mind.”

“Oh, come on, Hugh, don’t be tiresome. I’m asking for your advice because I don’t know what
I
believe.”

That opened Hugh’s eyes. “How can you not know that? That may be the silliest thing I have ever heard you say, Goff.”

“It’s not silly at all. You know me, Hugh. I am obedient to my elders and superiors in all things. And I believe whatever I’m told to believe—always have, since our first days in Brother Anselm’s classroom, when we were all tads. After all, there was no option, was there? The Church tells us we have to believe what we are told. The priests tell us we’re not clever enough to understand anything about God and His teachings without their help.

They are God’s interpreters, and only they are qualified Beginnings

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to explain His mysteries, His words, and His wishes to us. It was always that way, and I always believed them.

Until very recently …”

He sat staring into the distance for a while before he continued. “Now I don’t know what to believe … and I don’t know
why
I don’t know. When I joined the brotherhood and was Raised and learned about the Order’s origins, and about our ancestors being Jews and our Friendly Families springing from the priesthood of the Essenes, I had no difficulty with what I was learning, new and different as it was. Somehow, I managed to keep the two information sources separate. One was ancient history and the other was life today. I am amazed now, I admit, by how long I was able to keep doing that. But in the past few months I have lost my way. Everything is confusing now—the Church’s teachings and the Order’s, and how they fit and how they don’t—and it has all been swarming in my mind so that now I don’t know
what
I should believe. I have two sources of information, each appearing to be equally credible, each claiming supremacy, and each asserting itself as the One, True Way. And yet neither one of them makes complete sense.”

He fell silent for a moment, and then added, in a strangely flat, emotionless voice, “Help me, Hugh.”

Hugh opened his eyes and shifted his head slightly, looking up at his friend, but before he could say anything, Payn, whose eyes were still closed against the sun’s brightness, added, “Yes, help him, Hugh, for the love of God, because then you’ll help me, too. If Godfrey is as 84

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confused as he claims, I can but think him fortunate, since I myself am not confused by it at all … I am utterly blind and deathly ignorant on exactly the same matters.”

Hugh looked in amazement at Payn, who opened his eyes and spread his hands in a silent shrug.

“What should surprise you about that?” Payn said.

“You know me well, my friend, better than any other. I am a knight, and that is all I wish to be. I am a warrior by birth, a fighter—a brawling, ignorant lout—and happy to be one. I have no time, and no wish, to fill my life with the kind of mystic, smoke-shrouded things that excite you … all this mummery about the secrets and mysteries within the Order. To us it’s all babble and bluster and we don’t understand a word of it.”

“Crusty’s right, Hugh.” Godfrey was nodding solemnly. “We don’t know what to believe, but we both believe that
you
know what’s right, and if you tell us what that is, we’ll believe you.”

Hugh had abandoned any pretense of laziness soon after Godfrey launched into this astonishing plea, and now he sat straight-backed and pale-faced, gazing at his two friends from wide, unblinking eyes. He made to speak, but although his mouth opened and his lips moved, nothing emerged. He pushed himself to his feet.

Godfrey glanced worriedly at Payn and then spoke up again.

“Hugh, we’re not asking you to sin, or to betray anything. This is very straightforward. Among the three of us, you are the one who knows most about this kind of matter. All we’re asking you to do is tell us what you Beginnings

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think, what you believe, based upon what you’ve learned since you joined the Order. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Hugh’s voice sounded different to his own ears, husky and throaty. “That’s
all
? You’re asking me to be your priest, your spiritual guide, to direct you towards salvation. I can’t do that, Goff. I don’t know where salvation lies, even for myself.”

“That’s not true, Hugh.” Payn’s voice was urgent.

“All we are asking you to do is talk to us, about what you
think
might be true. We believe the people we know within the Order, and we believe what they tell us. But we cannot understand any of it once we move outside the ritual rooms. The Order is a secret world, Hugh. Out here, in the
real
world, among people who are not of the Order, we don’t know who to trust … who to believe.”

Hugh de Payens stood there in the meadow, his back to the sinking sun, and looked at his two friends through new eyes, seeing the doubt, confusion, and misery in their faces.

“I have to walk,” he said. “I can’t think, standing here. Walk with me, and we’ll see what comes into my mind.”

Some time later, on the edge of a fast-flowing brook, he stopped and stood, his friends beside him, gazing down into the still waters by the bankside, searching for trout. “You asked me what I believe, but what I heard you asking me to do was to tell you the truth. That’s why I was angry at first … because I don’t know what the truth is. Everything I believe might be completely wrong.”

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He turned away from the water then, and looked at each of his friends in turn. “So,” he continued, “I am going to tell you what I believe. But I absolutely do not want either one of you to think, under any circumstances, that I’m convinced that what I tell you is the
truth
. Do you understand that? I am
not
telling you the truth, because as God is my witness, I do not know what the truth is, or even where it resides.”

He waited until each of his friends had nodded in agreement, and then he walked away from them without looking back, allowing his next words to trail back over his shoulder.

“I believe in Jesus,” he began. “I believe he lived and was crucified. But I do not believe he was the physical son of God, not now. I believe he was crucified for his political activities against the Romans and their allies—

Herod and his clan. I believe he was a fighter in the cause of a free and unified Jewish nation, free of foreign occupation, and free to worship their own God in their own way. I also believe, because our Order has convinced me by
showing
me evidence—and not simply
telling
me about it and
ordering
me to believe—that Jesus was a member of the priestly sect known as the Essenes, whom some called Nazoreans, and that they formed a community that they called the Jerusalem Community, a brotherhood of what we would call monks today—a community of dedicated souls living in isolation and in voluntary poverty, practicing chastity and self-denial and striving to make themselves worthy in the eyes of their God, who was a stern and vengeful God with whom they Beginnings

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held a covenant, an understanding that they would live their lives in strict commitment to His expectations …

Do you want to ask me any questions about any of that?”

He walked on in silence, waiting, and when nothing came from behind him, he began again. “I believe that Jesus was crucified and died. And after his death, his brother James, whom men called James the Just, continued to head their commune until his death. James was murdered on the steps of the Temple, and his death—far more so than the death of his brother Jesus—caused insurrection and rebellion, leading directly to the last Jewish war against Rome, when Titus destroyed the Jewish nation and those few who survived the destruction were scattered to the ends of the earth.”

He stopped suddenly and turned on his heel to look back at them. “That is what I believe, and none of it should surprise you, for you have heard it all before, from your sponsors and tutors in the Order. We have evidence, within our Order, for all of it, but it might not all be true.

Or it might be totally false, its interpretation lost over the centuries since our families first came here, after their flight from Jerusalem. In my own heart and mind, however, I believe it. But now comes the hard part. And it’s the part, I know, that causes all the grief you feel over this.”

He started walking again, more slowly this time, and his companions walked on either side of him, their heads bent.

“All our families, all of them who do not belong to the Brotherhood of the Order, are Christians, and that is 88

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what makes this all so difficult, because I also believe that the Christian Church, as it exists today, is built upon a myth created by the man called Paul. Paul was a gentile, we all know that, but nobody really knows today what a gentile was. Do you know, Goff ?” Godfrey wrinkled his nose and shook his head, and Hugh smiled. “Well, a gentile was anyone who was not a Jew, and to the Jews, that was all that mattered. I believe that Paul was a friend of Rome, which is a spy in the pay of the Empire, and I believe that he was an opportunist of the first magnitude. He never knew Jesus—although he knew the brother, James, and James knew
Paul
and disliked and distrusted him.

“I believe, absolutely, that Paul somehow heard mention of the Raising ceremony practiced by the Essenes of the Community. He could never have witnessed it, for the Essenes’ rites were practiced in secret and Paul was twice an outsider—a gentile and uninitiated—but I believe most certainly he heard of it, and he misunderstood everything he heard, except the most important part—the outline of the premise involved. He took the idea of resurrection that had been practiced in secret for centuries by learned men, and from it, and around his gross misunderstanding of it, he built an edifice that now rules the world in which we all live. He even invented a name for it after a time. He called it Christianity, based upon the Greek name he eventually dreamed up for the man Jesus—the
Christus
.