Knights of the Black and White (73 page)

“No, perhaps not …” St. Clair cocked his head sideways, peering beyond the Ark. “Is that—?” He bent forward, squinting into the darkness behind the golden chest. “There’s another curtain there, behind the Ark, a black drape. There may be other treasures back there.”

He heard de Montbard sniff. “I doubt that, Stephen.

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was the veil that separated the two chambers of the Tabernacle. If so, that drape at the back is probably only symbolic, covering the wall and nothing else.” He reached out and prodded St. Clair, to add emphasis to what he was saying. “Besides, what would they want to hide back there? What could be more valuable than the Ark of the Covenant?

St. Clair turned to him in surprise. “Nothing, if you believe in the God of the ancient Jews. But that is not to say there is nothing else of any value here. I’m going to take a look. There’s room enough for me to slip by the end of the Ark without touching it.”

He waited for an answer from de Montbard, and when none came he turned his head again. “What think you?”

De Montbard shook his head, his lips pursed doubt-fully. “I don’t know, Stephen. How close must a man approach a lightning bolt before being burned by it? Even were I a doubter, I do not think I would have the bravery, or the foolishness, to shrug by within a hand’s breadth of what might be the living God. But apparently you would.”

“Hmm.” St. Clair did not move, but stood in silence for some time before saying, “Well, since you put it like that, I doubt that I would, in fact. Perhaps I will wait until we hear what Master Hugh has to say. And so we had better go upstairs and tell the others about what we’ve found. Don’t you think so?”

Montbard nodded, smiling. “Aye, I think so. They might, after all, wish to see something of it at least, since 708

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they’ve been digging like moles for eight years and more in the mere hope of finding it. Let us go up, then, and find out.”

The hours that followed were a far cry from anything that had been known before, as all nine of the brethren crowded down into the Hall to look at what had been found beneath the altar, and no two men among them had exactly the same reaction to seeing the stark, black and white beauty of the chamber behind the first curtain, and the glory of the fabled Ark of the Covenant within its own curtained niche at the rear of the chamber. Several men wept openly; Geoffrey Bissot dropped to his knees at the foot of the entry stairs, facing the open end wall, and stayed there for three hours without moving, apparently lost in prayer; Godfrey St. Omer chose to kneel within the chamber that housed the Ark, and stayed there for two hours, joined from time to time by others of the brotherhood. All of them moved about in silence, and few of them spoke among themselves. None of them, it seemed, could fully come to terms with the truth that, after all their years of hard labor, scratching and scrabbling at the solid rock of the Temple Mount, they had actually found the treasure they had come to find, and had discovered it to be greater than their wildest imaginings could have made it.

Only Hugh de Payens seemed aloof from the general reaction. He was present the whole time, but he said not a word to anyone, and St. Clair watched him from a distance, with steadily growing concern, as he stood apart from the others, taking note of everything that was done Complicities

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and said but making no attempt to take an active part in any of the activities. Eventually, when the senior knight walked away into the surrounding darkness of the great Hall, St. Clair followed him, maintaining a wide distance but watching anxiously lest his superior fall over or grow ill.

No such thing occurred, however, and de Payens merely seated himself beyond the lights from the altar and continued to watch in silence until, one after another, the knights hoisted themselves up in the basket and retreated to their sleeping quarters far above. Only then, when the last of them had gone, did Hugh de Payens rise to his feet and walk forward into the still-guttering light of the few torches that remained. At the top of the stairs descending into the chamber beneath the altar, he stopped.

“Stephen,” he called out. “Come down with me, into the crypt.” He went down then, and St. Clair followed behind him, to find him waiting on the open threshold of the black and white chamber. The two of them stood side by side for a time, staring into the shadowy depths, and then de Payens knelt down and placed his hands on two of the marble floor tiles, one of them black, the other white.

“Here it is, Stephen,” he said, looking down at his hands. “All of my life, in this one room. Black and white.

The colors of our Order, darkness and light, death and life, ignorance and enlightenment, not merely underfoot, on the floor, but all about us, in everything we do.” He rose smoothly to his feet and stood with his hands on his 710

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hips, then moved forward slowly, pivoting as he went so that his body revolved in a circle.

“You can have no idea how much I have waited for this day, my friend, waiting for it to come, yet not ever knowing even if it would or could. From the moment I found the Order of Rebirth, I dedicated my life to it and to its teachings, hoping against hope that I had not made a foolish choice and a bad decision. For there is nothing, really—no, there
was
nothing, really, to tell us what was true and what was not. Now there is. We have found the proof, and God has blessed us with the knowledge. But before, we had nothing to distinguish us from Christians, gravely misled and believing blindly in hope, and faith, and love. I have believed in what the Order taught, but there have been times when I was close to despair …

close to believing we were wrong. Today has changed all that, and that truth has overwhelmed me these past few hours, so that I dared not trust myself to speak, or even to look too closely at my friends. Where is the Ark?”

St. Clair was surprised by the question. “Have you not seen it? It is back there, behind you, behind the curtain there.”

“Come, then, with me.”

They reached the closed curtain and de Payens opened it slowly, then stood there mute, staring at the ornate splendor of the golden chest for long moments before he sank slowly to his knees. He reached out a hand, tentatively, and then held it there, less than a hand’s breadth from one of the carrying rings on the side of the chest, as though he would lean forward and touch Complicities

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the container, but then he sighed and lowered his hand, and when he turned to look at St. Clair, the younger knight was unsurprised to see tears flowing down his cheeks. He felt a lump in his own throat in response and tried to look away, but found he was incapable of moving. Hugh de Payens blinked, unashamed of his tears, and then swallowed and spoke.

“I am not fit … no man is fit to lay hands upon the residence of God, the God of Moses and of Abraham, of Jesus and Mohammed. And I have no doubt that this Ark was, and is, that residence. And here it sits, in front of us, solid and real. The world has changed today, Stephen St. Clair, and so has everyone in it. I am grown old suddenly—not that I will die soon, or withdraw from life, but I am come of age, and so, my friend, are you. I must return to Christendom soon, I fear, to deal with all of this, but I will leave you and your brethren here with Brother Godfrey, who will govern in my place, and you will all live different lives from this day forth, thanks to what we have uncovered here today. Ah! See how the Lord of Hosts bids us to sleep.” Around them, the three remaining torches had begun to flicker and burn out.

“Quickly now, Stephen, take the last fresh one there and light it while you can. It will show us the way to our cots, for tomorrow there is much to do.”

TEN

On the morning when Princess Alice of Jerusalem was to be wed to Prince Bohemond of Antioch, two men, both up and abroad long before dawn, viewed the occasion differently from the mass of their fellows: Brother Stephen St. Clair of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ was oblivious to the event and its grandeur, having far more on his mind than any mere wedding or state occasion could usurp, whereas Bishop Odo of Fontainebleau, who would be in attendance at the wedding ceremony, had other plans to occupy himself during the grand reception and banquet celebrations that would follow the marriage ceremony.

His intent was to take full advantage of the kind of opportunity that seldom came his way. Neither man gave a thought to the existence of the other, each of them intent on his own affairs.

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The wedding itself was sumptuous, the most splendid affair seen in the Holy Land since King Baldwin had assumed the throne. Alice was not his firstborn daughter, and as such she would not inherit his throne; everyone knew that honor would pass to her elder sister, Melisende. And Melisende had been betrothed for years already and would marry, in the fullness of time, but Alice was the first daughter Baldwin had bestowed in marriage, and young Bohemond, the heir to the Principality of Antioch, was preeminently suitable. The Patriarch Archbishop officiated, and the sonorous chant of the massed monks throughout the solemn nuptial Mass moved many of the congregation close to tears. Throughout the entire ceremony, King Baldwin sat proudly beside his beautiful and exotic Armenian wife, Morfia, his head held high.

His kingdom was secure, for the time being, and it was commonly understood that this dashing new son-in-law would be a strong and vigilant ally in maintaining the northern outposts of his kingdom against the Turks, who posed a constant threat to him in the east.

The Seljuk Turks had been in decline as a fighting force ever since the fall of Jerusalem, almost two full decades earlier, but they were still an ever-present men-ace. And a recent report had described what might be a new, non-Turkish threat, from Syria.
Saracen
was an unfamiliar word—a generic name for the infidels from that distant part of the world. Now, however, spies were telling the King that a new Muslim horde, calling themselves Saracens, was stirring beyond his borders, in the enormous wastes of Syria, where yet another manifestation of 714

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the seething cauldron of political forces that comprised Islam was taking shape.

An outbreak of coughing followed quickly on fresh, thick clouds of incense billowing up from the censers surrounding the bridal couple at the main altar. The King rose to his feet with the other celebrants and joined the Te Deum chant of rejoicing for the newly wed couple.

A SHORT TIME LATER, having made his formal and pre-arranged obeisances to monarch and patriarch, Bishop Odo of Fontainebleau stood apart from the throng, watching the royal party depart the church for the grand banquet that would be served in the main hall of the royal palace, and he frowned at the unexpected and un-welcome sight of the spy, Gregorio, approaching him, keeping to the side and out of the way of the departing guests, and looking meaningfully and urgently at the bishop. The fellow came right up to him and stopped, waiting to be acknowledged, and Odo made no attempt to hide his displeasure.

“Are you mad? How dare you approach me openly? I told you never to come near me unless I sent for you.”

As usual, the little spy showed no sign of being discomfited by the bishop’s displeasure. He merely made a moue and dipped his head to one side, accompanying that with a tiny, disparaging shrug of his shoulders.

“You also told me that I should come to you directly as soon as I had proof that the monks in the temple stables were guilty of anything.”

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Odo straightened up. “You have proof ?”

The spy shrugged again. “As good as. They are talking about a treasure they have found, beneath the temple.”

“Beneath the—beneath the
temple
? Are you sure of this?”

“As sure as I can be. One of their sergeants, whom I pay well to listen, overheard two of them talking about it. They have found gold, and jewels, and a trove of documents.”

Odo turned away, leaving the little man staring at his back, but he was thinking furiously. He had an assignation this afternoon, long in the planning and carefully arranged, with his young Muslim mistress, Arouna, the daughter of Sheikh Fakhr Ad-Kamil, and he had no wish to forgo it. All her male relatives were here in the palace today, attending the wedding, and this had presented him with a golden opportunity to enjoy an afternoon of lust with the girl without the usual haunting fear of being discovered and killed out of hand, and so he had made arrangements to absent himself from the celebrations, claiming that he had work to do on the Patriarch’s behalf and that, besides, he was on the last day of a self-imposed penitential fourteen-day fast.

This new development, inconvenient as it was, was completely unforeseen, but the possibility it presented for enriching himself was unprecedented, and timely beyond belief. A treasure in gold and jewels for the taking … Alice was besotted with her new husband and had been preparing to leave with him for Antioch since before Bohemond’s arrival, and Odo knew, beyond doubt, that she had no thought in her head nowadays about the 716

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pestilential knight monks and their underground activities. Now if this story of Gregorio’s was true to any extent, Odo might have an opportunity to profit beyond his wildest dreams, since no record of any treasure, far less the extent of it, existed. If he could lay his plans quickly enough now, and with sufficient care, he could take action as soon as Alice had safely left Jerusalem, presenting himself in a heroic light to the King, and at the same time sequestering a substantial portion of this treasure for his own, exclusive use.

All that need be done, he was thinking, given that this new information was true, was to summon the knight monks to a meeting with the Patriarch, there to denounce them and have them all taken into custody, while Gregorio conducted a quick search of their excavations before the King had time to organize a search of his own. Gregorio, Odo knew, was devious enough to manage that adroitly, in return for a substantial portion of whatever he was able to extract from the treasure in advance of the King’s exploration. How large that portion should be would be nego-tiable, but Odo was prepared to part with half the total, provided that Gregorio, who was a puny little man, should survive to claim it. He turned back quickly to find the spy looking up at him, waiting patiently. They were alone, everyone having vanished into the palace proper.