by Jack Whyte
Paul, St. Clair now believed, had been much more a self-serving cynic than he had been a saint. He had had the acumen, and an opportunistic instinct, that had enabled him to recognize a magnificent concept when it confronted him. And so he had usurped it, cleansed it of everything that non-Jews might find offensive, and then built it inexorably into a self-perpetuating organism, such a potent force for revolution and reformation, but ultimately for gathering revenues, that centuries later the emperor Constantine—Paul’s equal, at least, in self-serving opportunism—had been inspired to adapt it to his own benefit.
By the time of that transformation by Constantine, however, three hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, the families that nurtured the Order of Rebirth had lived in the south of ancient Gaul for more than fifteen generations, on the land where they had settled after their arrival there, and no one, including themselves, would ever have suspected that their ancestral origins lay far from where they now lived in prosperity. The Friendly Families, as they called themselves, had blended seamlessly into their adopted society and had become friendly clans, for while the thirty original families were still there, their numbers had expanded enormously, and while all were aware that the bonds that held them in such close amity were ancient and even sacred in some arcane and unknowable way, few of them ever wondered over the why of such a thing. Their relationship to all the other Friendly Families was a given, a fact of life that had existed before the parents of their grandparents were born and would continue to exist long after they themselves and their own grandchildren were gone. They took their interrelationship, and their undoubted Christianity, for granted.
Only in the deepest recesses of their families’ most close-held secrets, guarded jealously and conscientiously by perhaps one single member of each family in each generation, was the truth about their origins enshrined and passed down through the generations in compliance with a sacred duty. And it was a truth that none of their relatives would have believed.
Their ancestors, the founders of the Friendly Families, had all been priests of the Jerusalem Assembly, adherents of the original Ecclesia of Jesus and James the Just. The death of Jesus, at the hands of the Romans, had been taken in stride by the people of Jerusalem and of Judea, but when his brother James was brutally murdered in turn, beaten to death with a fuller’s club by unknown assassins, the resultant outcry had precipitated the final Jewish uprising against the Herodians and Rome, and had brought Vespasian and his son Titus, with their remorseless armies, to wipe out the Jewish troublemakers once and for all time.
Towards the end of the siege of Jerusalem, when the destruction of their city and its temple was seen to be inevitable, the priests of the Assembly had hidden their most sacred artifacts, records, and relics deep beneath the ground, securely beyond the reach of the rapacious Romans. Only then, when they were sure they had done all that they could do to safeguard what they could not carry with them, did they join the thousands of people fleeing Judea. They made their way through the Mediterranean lands, traveling for many years as a large and seemingly loose but none the less tight-knit and self-sufficient group, until they reached the south of Iberia, and from there they struck northward into southern Gaul, settling eventually throughout the area known as the Languedoc. And there they remained, consolidating their possessions, their knowledge, and their most sacred traditions, finally entrusting the guardianship of their most precious secrets to a secret guild that they formed from the most trustworthy men among their families.
St. Clair found it bitterly ironic that he, who had been raised, to a great extent, by monks and warriors, and had dreamed himself of being a Christian monk in his ancestral province of Anjou, should now be numbered among the nine most anomalous beings in the annals of the Christian Church: the warrior monks of the Order of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ. He found it even more ludicrous, however, that he should have been the one to become so obsessed by the history of Christianity that he was now close to having the ability, if not to destroy it, to cast genuine doubts at least upon the authenticity of its central tenets.
COMMITMENT
ONE
Brother Stephen came awake blustering in panic, his head ringing with what might have been the echo of a strangled cry, and found that he was sitting bolt upright, shoulders hunched defensively, hands outstretched as though to fend off a blow. It took a few seconds longer for him to realize that he could not see a thing, that his mouth was dry from fright, that his heart was thudding hard, almost painfully, and that he was holding his breath. He swallowed hard and lowered his arms cautiously, then scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of both hands and peered around at the darkness surrounding him. It was black as pitch, but his rump recognized the hard slats of his own cot, and as his heartbeat slowed towards normal, he began to hear the familiar nighttime sounds made by his companions sleeping nearby, grunts and murmurs and the occasional snore. He was not, as he had feared at first, back in that hellish dream room in which he had been chained hand and foot to a bed of narrow plank boards.
Shuddering with relief, he strained to hear anything unusual. Something had awakened him, he knew, and it must have been something threatening, to have startled him out of a deep sleep the way it had. But he could hear nothing out of the ordinary, and after a while he eased himself off the cot, straightening to his full height without a sound and reaching out surely in the blackness to where his sheathed sword hung from the armor tree against the wall, by the prie-dieu in the corner. He eased the blade silently from its sheath, laid the empty scabbard on the cot, then moved quietly to the doorless entrance to his cell, where he stood still again, listening intently, his bare blade held at the ready.
Within moments, he had identified the breathing of each of his sleeping companions and had almost assured himself that there was no one else breathing there in the darkness of the communal space in front of him, dimly lit as it was by a solitary, long-burning candle. What, then, had wakened him? Judging from the overall stillness surrounding him, St. Clair estimated that it was deep in the middle of the night, and he knew that, had he and his brethren really belonged to a Christian order of monks, they would all be up and in chapel at this time, reciting the psalms and prayers of the Night Order of Saint Benedict. As it was, having worked long and brutal hours all day long in the tunnels, as they did every day, his brothers were sleeping deeply, fortifying their bodies against the day ahead.
Bissot, whose cell lay opposite where Stephen stood, was always the noisiest sleeper among them, and now he erupted in an explosive, spluttering snore and turned heavily on his cot, breaking wind loudly. One of his neighbors—it sounded like Rossal—cursed him drowsily from a neighboring cell, less than half awake but aware of the sudden disturbance, and St. Clair permitted himself a quiet smile.
All was well, he finally decided, and he had merely been startled awake by a bad dream. But even in accepting that, he wondered what kind of dream could have awakened him so violently. In the past, his worst experiences had been caused by those nocturnal episodes of overwhelming sexuality that he had come to abhor deeply, but those had all been more disgusting and morally repugnant than truly frightening. He had awakened terrified this time, his heart pounding in fear and distress.
He returned to his cell and found a candle that he took and lit from the single flame burning in the common area outside. He sheathed his sword and returned it to its peg on the armor tree in his cell, then lay down on his cot again, hands behind his head, fingers interlaced as he gazed up at the ceiling and wondered what he had been dreaming about.
The flickering image of a face flashed against the back of his eyelids, frightening him so badly that he hunched forward again in a reflexive, cowering gesture, whipping his elbows down towards his navel, as though to protect his ribs. What was he thinking of? he asked himself frantically, screaming the question out into the silence of his mind. But even as he asked, the face that had frightened him came back to him, unmistakable and intransige
nt in its arrogant beauty, yet with a vulnerable softness to the pouting curve of the lips edging the imperious mouth. Whimpering aloud in disbelief, he squirmed sideways to sit on the edge of his cot and lowered his feet to the floor, squeezing his eyes tightly shut and clasping his hands despairingly over his head to block his ears.
He would not, could not, allow himself to believe that this was anything other than a visitation from the Devil himself. And yet, even as he told himself that, he saw images that were intensely, achingly familiar: the blue jewel now hanging from the string about his neck had in his dream been suspended from a golden chain, a chain that he had held in his hand as he dangled the suspended bauble to nestle between the breasts of the woman who lay beside him in the sumptuous bed on wrinkled, silken sheets, the woman whose warm, naked thigh was draped over his hip, holding him captive. The woman whose smiling face brought him surging to his feet again, to stand swaying in panic.
There was no possibility of error, and he made no attempt to delude himself or excuse himself. The woman in his dream was Alice, the Princess Royal of Jerusalem, King Baldwin’s second daughter, and he knew, suddenly and crushingly, that he had lain and rutted with her. The heavy, yielding weight of her breasts in his hands was as real as the solid, unmistakably remembered weight of her thigh. He could even recall the musky perfume she wore, and the sensation of probing the tip of his tongue into the deep well of her navel, the tautly sculpted smoothness of her warm belly against his face.
In less time than it takes to tell, he was fully dressed and armored, pulling his linen surcoat over his head and fastening his heavy sword belt over it before cramming his flat-topped steel helmet beneath his arm and snatching up his three-balled flail in a gloved right hand. He strode almost noiselessly through the common area beyond his cell, his booted feet making only the slightest of swishing sounds in the thick straw on the floor, and the single guard on duty in the stables merely huffed once in his sleep and then settled his shoulder more comfortably against the wall. No one expected anyone to attempt to steal anything from the monks of the temple stables.
St. Clair bridled and saddled his horse expertly, barely making a sound, and led it slowly to the exit, making no attempt to mount until he was safely outside beneath the stars. Once there, he stopped to place his helm firmly on his head, then hung his flail from its saddle hook and transferred his short, heavy battle-axe from the belt at his waist to a corresponding hook on the other side of his saddle. That done, he dropped the reins and went quickly back into the stables, where he took a spear and a shield from the racks inside the door, then returned directly to mount his horse. He spurred the animal hard, down towards the scattering of buildings that separated him from the South Gate, where he roused the guards, told them who he was and that he was on a mission for the Patriarch, and passed quickly through the portal before the heavy gates were fully open.
He gave no thought to what his brethren might think of his disappearance, because in his own mind he knew he was unlikely to see any of them again. They had mourned him as dead once already, and in his despair he now doubted that they would care to do so again, and he reflected grimly how much better it would have been for everyone had he been dead in truth at that time. He had no idea where he was going. He knew only that it would be far from where anyone would know him by his name or his face, and if that meant he had to ride away and die in Syria, fighting alone against a Saracen horde, then he would be content to do so, in the hope that his death might atone for the heinous nature of his sins. He had lain with the King’s daughter, fornicating with her like a rutting beast, and the memories of it were now swarming in him, shaming him to the depths of his soul.
Only once, and then very briefly, did he stop in his headlong flight from Jerusalem, and that was when the thought occurred to him that one part, at least, of what he had experienced in his dream was an impossibility. He reined in his mount and sat still, staring towards the lightening eastern horizon. The blue bauble that he wore around his neck had been buried deep underground throughout the time of his abduction. He had not found it until months after his return, which meant that his “memory” of what he did with it was false and that he had, in fact, been dreaming. He felt his heart leap in his chest as he realized and accepted that; felt his chest expanding with hope that was like a great intake of fresh breath as the possibilities of error rang through his mind like the jangling clamor of the spring-mounted bell above the door of the cook’s room in his mother’s kitchen.
No sooner had he thanked God for the impossibility of the blue bauble’s presence, however, than he began to think about the chain from which it had hung suspended: a thick, heavy, snake-like chain of solid, hand-wrought links of buttery yellow gold, supple and slippery smooth, strong and beautifully made, and far and away the single most valuable item he had ever held in his hands. And he had held it in his hands, many times. He had cupped one hand often to enjoy the feeling of the solid links pile up in his palm as he lowered the chain into it from above, his upheld hand clearly limned against the pale purple perfection of the walls of the princess’s bedchamber. And he had placed the chain around Alice’s neck, too, on several occasions, and then carefully inserted his own head into its loop, so that the two of them, he and she, had been bound close together by it, unclothed breasts touching, naked and raging with riotous lust.
He had broken his vow of chastity. Now his entire body felt leaden as he kicked his horse gently forward again, prodding it to a walk. Warmund of Picquigny had told him he was free of sin so long as he had remained free of intent to sin. St. Clair had believed him and had, in fact, begun to mend. The nightly visits from the succubus had waned noticeably in recent weeks, and Stephen had been feeling better about himself, about his life and his duties. Now, however, he was again at an impasse. Had there been volition involved in his fornications with the princess?
His own painfully restored memory of what had occurred made it seem scarcely possible that he had not willingly engaged in the activities he was now recalling more and more clearly with every passing moment. Pleasure, certainly, he knew had been there; pleasure had been there in indescribable amounts, as had voluptuous abandon and wanton excesses. He was crushingly aware of all of those things. But there was still one small, stubborn voice in his mind that insisted upon asking him over and over again if his volition had been involved. Had he participated in the debauchery willingly and knowingly? Parts of him had, certainly, he knew beyond dispute, for he recalled the deliberate and sensual way he had insinuated his head into the chain binding the two of them together, but still the voice persisted: had his bodily responses been dictated, or regulated, by his conscious will? This was a question more suited for clerics than for soldiers, Stephen knew, yet even as he mentally threw up his hands at his inability to answer the question with any confidence, he knew too that both the question and its answer, infuriatingly vague as they were, were of crucial importance.
And then, after a long period of agonized self-doubt, his mind began to present him with things he could consider sanely, snippets of memory, and long, real gaps in his memory, the awareness of periods of time, both long and short, when he had absolutely no memories of anything. And then, eventually, it brought memories of very strange behaviors: of staring at Alice, seeing her as though poorly reflected in an untrue mirror, watching her closely, convinced that her body, so strangely shimmering and flowing, was about to dissolve into nothingness, and feeling his head spin while the chamber revolved around him and he laughed like a man demented … There had been times, he came to accept then, when he had not been in control of himself at all, and that mystified him, for throughout his life, he had always kept himself under strict and tight control.
Thus there was something unwholesome, or at least mystifying, about the period of his abduction. There was no connection, for example, and no transition between his memories of the sexual lust he enjoyed in the purple bedchamber and the torture he had undergone in the place where they had ch
ained him to a bed. And he had no knowledge of how he had arrived in either place, or of how he had escaped, other than the vaguest memory of the unknown, half-seen woman who had pulled him along behind her with a strong grip on his injured wrist, apparently leading him to freedom and then leaving him there alone.
And then, just as he was beginning to believe that there might be a glimmer of light in the darkness that surrounded him on all sides, he became aware of the blue jewel that hung from the string around his neck. He had reached up almost unconsciously to take it between his finger and thumb, in a movement that had become habitual over the past few weeks, and with that simple action unleashed an entirely new set of revelations and self-recrimination. He had retained—and he immediately corrected himself ruthlessly, emphasizing the truth—he had kept, secreted and in fact stolen the bauble, uncaring of its true value, whether it be jewel or worthless glass, on a purely personal whim, and in his determination to keep hold of it simply because he wanted to keep it, he had broken another of his vows, the one that was not quite a vow of poverty but rather a promise to hold all things in common with his brethren and to keep nothing for himself.