by Jack Whyte
“You can speak! That is the most I have heard you say since I first met you, Brother Stephen. Were you aware of that?”
He looked troubled. “I am now. And I am Brother Stephen. I should not be here.”
“Oh, please, please stay and share some food with me. See, here it comes now.”
The young knight stood uncertainly, but in response to Alice’s waving hand, he finally sank slowly into one of the three chairs Suleiman provided for his clients, and thereafter, for the space of almost an hour, the princess applied herself conscientiously to putting him at his ease and undermining his defenses against her femininity. She fed him honey cakes that her servants had brought especially for her, made with crushed almonds and heavily impregnated with the opiate known as hashish, of which she had an ample and regular supply, delivered by sources about which her father would have been gravely concerned had he known of them.
What Alice had no way of knowing about that day, however, was the extreme fragility of St. Clair’s self-confidence, brought about by the simple fact that he had become obsessed with everything about her and knew very well that his attraction to her was unconscionable. He had always been shy and awkward around her, hesitant and tongue-tied and unsure of himself since their first meeting, and Alice had quickly come to accept that as normal in him, adding to his charm—the bashful boy in the giant body of a hero. But because she had never seen any other aspect of his character, she was unable to imagine how he might behave when she was not there to influence him and his conduct, and she was, of course, incapable of seeing beyond the exterior he presented to her. There was nothing in his demeanor to indicate to her that he spent much of his life nowadays dreaming of her, awake and asleep, and there was even less evidence that he was racked by guilt because of that, and so Alice moved ahead confidently, unaware of how close her prey was to despair. In her efforts to put him at his ease, she deliberately avoided any attempts to be seductive or alluring, opting instead to treat him as she believed a sister might, and trying to be completely natural in all she did around him. It was a difficult thing for her to do, verging in fact on the impossible.
St. Clair, looking at her as she moved with such apparent lack of artifice, saw far more than she was showing him: in his imagination he saw the way her clothing clung to her beneath the heavy fabric of her shapeless outer garment, shaping the hills and hollows of her form; he saw the way she subsided into her chair, lounging back into it, and in his mind her breasts were thrust into prominence and her rounded thighs, so clearly parted beneath the flimsy stuff of her clothing, became the most all-consuming sight in the universe, and he writhed mentally, believing that his lust for her was an abomination and a crime against a spotless, innocent young woman.
Had Alice even suspected any of what was in his mind, she would have been exultant, and would have shown her feelings far more aggressively, but instead she continued as she had begun, behaving as though there was no such thing as sexuality in her nature, avoiding any of the overtly seductive gestures and smiles that were so much a part of her normal behavior. Believing herself modestly shielded by the weight and thickness of her brocade robe, she fed the fires of the young knight’s overheated imagination with a series of uninhibited body movements, of which she was genuinely unaware, that aroused him beyond his power to prevent a sudden crisis. He leapt to his feet, his face pale as death, and fled her presence.
Afterwards, when she had time to think about it calmly, Alice had still been unable to understand what had triggered his astonishing behavior. Her fury had scarcely abated in the time that had since passed. No man, no one, had ever insulted her so grievously, and Alice was determined to have vengeance.
That he was a monk and bound by a vow of chastity meant nothing to her, because she had had many lovers with the same commitment, all of them more highly placed than he, and their vows had never kept them from her bed. Alice believed herself too desirable to be resisted over anything as insubstantial as a simple vow. And thus she went searching for other, more pragmatic reasons for the monk’s behavior, beginning with the assumption that he already had a lover who must, by definition, be highly placed and well known, since there were so few Christian women in Jerusalem. Not even Alice would have believed that a devout Christian monk, and most particularly a rigidly humorless one, would have a sexual relationship with a Muslim woman. She had had him spied on and followed before, keeping track of his movements between patrols, but that had been only during daylight hours, since at that time she had had no suspicions that he might be conducting an amatory liaison with anyone. Now she set her spies to watching him night and day.
A full month later, having received the third of the regular ten-day reports of her chief spy in this matter, she was forced to accept, with great reluctance, that Brother Stephen was not involved with any woman, Christian or Muslim. Her people had made sure that he went nowhere without their being in close attendance. They had noted every person he spoke to and every purchase that he made in the markets. Two of them had even followed him into the desert when he went out on patrol, and they had seen nothing that aroused their suspicions in any way.
That acknowledgment left Alice then with the notion that he might be homosexual; it might have been sexual revulsion that drove him to run away from her. She had trouble visualizing that, let alone understanding it, but the possibility at least soothed her bruised sensibilities.
Once again, however, after a month of watching and listening, her spies could provide her with nothing to substantiate her suspicions. His brother monks were St. Clair’s only close companions, and he was by far the youngest of them all. They all disappeared inside the stables every night, to sleep, and they were up and about, praying at the oddest hours of the day and night, their entire routine dictated by the Rule of Saint Benedict that they followed. But there was nothing anyone could see, even with the best will in the world, that suggested that any of the monks indulged in sexual activities of any kind.
Alice remained angry and unforgiving, even after two clear months, but she was still infuriatingly incapable of putting the young monk knight out of her mind or her lustful fantasies, imagining on several occasions, when entertaining an ineffectual or unsatisfying lover, that it was Stephen St. Clair straining above her, ravishing her brutally.
FOUR
“Come!”
Bishop Odo de Fontainebleau, formerly the Bishop of Edessa and now Secretary Amanuensis to Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, did not even look up in response to the knocking on his door, but he recognized the footsteps that entered the room following his summons, and sat back in his chair, setting aside his quill pen and rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, then yawning hugely and clasping his hands behind his head. In front of him stood a slight, nondescript little man with too-small eyes and a long, pointed nose, one hand clutching the strap of a leather bag that hung from his shoulder. The fellow’s face was expressionless, his manner unassuming, and his dress drab to the point of being unworthy of notice. Had there been one other person in the room to compete with him for attention, the little man would have faded into quasi invisibility.
Odo eyed the fellow for long moments before dropping his hands from behind his head and crossing his arms over his chest. “Speak to me, then. What have you discovered?”
The responding headshake was barely noticeable. “Of what you sent me for, nothing. There’s nothing there to find. The princess’s spies are everywhere, never less than six of them at any time, and they change over every four hours, but they’re all wasting their time and probably being well paid to do it. You set me to watching them, to discover what they were finding out. The answer, my lord Bishop, is that they are finding nothing, but far more astonishing than even that, although it is unsurprising, if you take my meaning, they have no idea what they are looking for. They are set to watch the monk knight—the young one, the fighter—and so they do that, but they don’t know why. I spoke with six of them in three days. They all said the same thing:
they had seen nothing, found nothing.”
“So this has all been a waste of my time and money, in addition to Alice’s losses? Is that what you are telling me?”
“No, not at all, my lord. I said I found nothing of what you sent me to find.”
“You found something else instead.”
“Perhaps. I think I did, but you might disagree.
Anyway, I discovered something interesting.”
“Something interesting, but not what you were sent to discover. I see. And am I going to have to pay you extra to tell me about it? Spit it out, man.”
His visitor was not at all put out by the bishop’s nastiness. He reached into his bag and produced a grubby-looking kerchief, which he used to wipe his nose, and then he replaced it carefully in the bag, sniffing daintily.
“There’s something going on in the stables.”
The bishop’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Of course there is something going on in the stables! There’s an entire fraternity of monks living in them, with horses.”
“Nah, more than that. There’s something strange going on.”
“Strange … I see. Are these monks running a bordello in there?”
“They might be. They might even be fornicating with the horses. You couldn’t tell by me. I couldn’t get close enough to see what was going on, although I got closer than anyone else could. They’re a peculiar lot, those fellows. Only the actual monks live in the stables. The ones they call sergeants live in barracks built right in front of the entrance to the stables. And the two don’t mix much. The sergeants and the monks, I mean. Mind you, they’re all monks, it seems to me, and from what I know, all monks are equal. These ones aren’t.”
“You know next to nothing, and most of what you think you know is wrong. They are knights and sergeants, for one thing—noblemen and commoners—and then as monks, they are brothers and lay brothers. Two excellent reasons for segregation. Now tell me, if it pleases you, exactly what you suspect is going on in there.”
“I told you I don’t know, but it’s something strange. It looked to me as though there’s a door in there that no one who is not one of the nine knights ever gets to enter. And I heard noises coming from there, too, as though they were chiseling into stone.”
“Chiseling into stone. Are you aware that those stables are built right on top of—and in places carved right out of—the Temple Mount? So let us imagine, for a moment, that these knights are desirous of improving their living space. Their only means of doing that might be to enlarge the premises by digging into the rock. Would you agree with that?”
“Aye, perhaps, but—”
“I know, I know. But you suspect that something strange is going on in there. Tell me, then, what it is. This door, for example, the one that no one but the knights is ever allowed to enter, where is it?”
“It’s inside … in the darkest part of their living quarters, away at the back.”
“Where the knights live, you mean?”
“Aye. The place is split into two areas, one for the horses and the other for the monks.”
“And the sergeants, you say they live outside?”
“Aye. Some of them work inside the stables, but they don’t live in there. They’ve built a barracks building close against the wall.”
“So the only people who live inside the stables are the knights. Why, then, is it strange that only the knights use one particular door, or any other door, if they are the only people in there? Has it occurred to you it might be their latrine?”
“It’s not, my lord Bishop. The latrines are over on the other side. The place is a stable, and the sergeants are coming and going, in and out, all the time. But there is always a knight close by that door. He’s not obviously on guard duty there, but the truth remains that every time one of the sergeants goes within a certain distance of that door, someone comes out of nowhere and turns him away. Always with great charm and goodwill, but always, without fail. Who would set guards on a latrine? I’ve been watching for weeks now, and I’ve seen it happen nigh on a score of times. And in the same time, I have never seen one sergeant go in through that door.”
“And so you grew suspicious, based upon that, or is there more, something you have not told me?”
The little man shook his head. “No, there’s no more.”
“I see. Well, you may not care to hear this, but I have no interest in your suspicions, Gregorio, and I do not pay you to be suspicious. I myself can generate all the suspicions I require, about anything and everyone, including you. What I require of you, my small func-tionary, in due return for the stipend I pay you, is tangible fact, backed with proof. Do you understand me?”
The little man nodded, and the bishop grunted in response, then bent forward and picked up his pen again. “Go, then, and don’t come back until you can do so without wasting my time.”
Odo was immersed in his work again before Gregorio even turned away, but as soon as the door closed behind the spy, the bishop threw his pen down on the tabletop and rose to his feet. He stalked to the arched window, from which he could look down into one of the lesser courtyards of the King’s palace, where a marble fountain splashed pleasantly, surrounded by dense growths of palmettos. He was angry, and he was jealous, and while anger was not a new experience for him, jealousy certainly was, and Odo was having trouble coping with it.
He had no illusions about what he was feeling. He liked to think that it was all the fault of Princess Alice, and had he had anyone to whom he could demonstrate that, he could have laid out details, chapter and verse, of every incident and every occasion that she had used to ensnare him. But of course, it was not something that he could discuss with anyone, and besides, he knew the real truth. It was not Alice’s fault at all. She had not forced him to lie with her, not on the first occasion, and not at any other time. He was the one who had allowed himself to become besotted with her, despite his knowing that whenever and wherever she so chose, the princess would spread her legs for anyone who caught her eye. She appeared to be insatiable, she was beautiful, and she was breathtakingly young—eighteen to Odo’s forty-two. And therein lay the roots of his jealousy. He was no longer young enough to keep Alice satisfied. He never had been, from the outset, almost four years earlier.
He had known from the start of his involvement with her, too, exactly why she had blessed him with her favors. He had been her confessor for years, and as she grew older he had found himself growing thrilled, and erotically charged, by her increasingly lurid confessions as she began to experiment with herself physically and with her sexuality in general. She related in great detail, and over the course of several months, the attraction she was feeling to one of the younger men in her father’s court, and the fantasies she indulged in regarding the fellow. And from there, warming to her task as she progressed, she regaled her confessor with the most intimate and lurid details of her seduction of the hapless man. Of course, once he himself had succumbed to her charms, Odo had discovered that Alice had taken great and perverse delight in the entire exercise, knowing exactly what effect she was having upon the man behind the confessional’s screen, and lingering over every sala-cious element of her adventures. By the time she was ready to seduce him, then, she had already laid all the foundations for his downfall.
And of course, there was a quid pro quo. Alice did nothing, gave nothing, without a quid pro quo. In return for the privilege of enjoying her magnificent young body, Odo provided the princess with information, confidential and extremely sensitive information on everything that took place within the King’s Council Chamber. That Alice had been merely fourteen years old when the arrangement was set into place was insignificant. In her soul and in her mind, Alice le Bourcq, reared as the spoiled favorite of a father pre-eminent among men of power and influence, had never really been a child. Old beyond her years, she was already a woman of great subtlety, possessing the kind of mind that exulted in intrigue, and her own ambitions had been molded and set while her friends and
siblings were still playing as children.
Odo had known that, and had known that she would attempt to suborn him for her own designs, and to a great extent he had resented that she should, but when it had come time to weigh his scruples against his lusts, to measure the value of his principles against the yielding pressure of her soft, bare thigh in the palm of his hand, his decision made nonsense of all the high-minded ideals of which he had been so proud.
His current distemper arose from the discovery, made almost two months earlier by one of his many spies, that Alice had become fascinated by the young knight monk, St. Clair. The spy in question was a menial female servant who was close enough to Alice most of the time to have become invisible, her constant presence taken for granted, and so her evidence was trustworthy. She it was who had overheard the instructions Alice gave to her majordomo, a eunuch by the name of Ishtar, to set up a watch on Brother Stephen, as he called himself, and keep her informed about who his lovers were and what he did with them.
Of course they had found no lovers, and no evidence of St. Clair’s doing anything amiss, but that had only inspired Alice to dig deeper, and despite his knowing that St. Clair was innocent of any wrongdoing, as he saw her obsession with this knight monk growing, Odo himself had set his spies to watching hers, hoping to find something that he could use to discredit the monk and make him persona non grata to everyone, including Alice. Now, staring down into the courtyard and thinking about what Gregorio had said—his conviction that something “strange” was going on in the stables—Odo recognized the first faint glimmerings of an idea that he could use against Alice, to stir her up, at least, and make her aware again of him and of his desire for her. As the outlines of a plan began to form in his mind, he made his way back to his worktable, whistling tunelessly under his breath, a sure sign to all who knew him that the bishop was deep in thought.