by Jack Whyte
“Whence came its name, do you know?”
Odo shrugged. “It was named because the Hebrew temple built by Herod stood on top of it.”
“On top of it, beside it, and around it. The temple was large, Odo, larger than you would expect in looking at what remains of it. And its precincts were extensive. I know, because Warmund told me himself. He is greatly interested in the history of Jerusalem, and of the temple in particular. Do you know when it was destroyed?”
“I know it was a long time ago.”
“It was. The city, its temple, and most of its citizens were destroyed by the Roman general Titus more than a millennium ago, and those who survived scattered to the four winds. Think of that, Odo, a thousand years and more. The city was rebuilt, but not by Jews, for there were virtually none of those left alive in all Judea, and without Jewish worshippers, the temple could never be rebuilt. Its ruins have lain abandoned ever since, unused for one good and solid reason: the Romans destroyed the place, and Roman destruction was nothing if not thorough.”
“Is that significant?”
“Of course it is significant, as significant as the fact that you believe these knight monks are digging in the Temple Mount. Why would anyone want to waste time digging through a mountain to find the rubble of a building that was destroyed a thousand years ago? What could they possibly be looking for?”
“Buried treasure?”
“After a thousand years? What kind of treasure could be there and how would they have found out about it?”
Odo’s eyes brightened. “They have a map. They must have.”
“A map of what, and from where, and drawn by whom?” Her voice was heavy with skepticism, but she was still deep in thought, merely musing aloud. “Warmund told me that the temple of Herod was newly built at the time of Jesus, completed only a short time before its destruction. And we know that the Romans would have hunted down and confiscated anything of value that remained in or around the temple, because that is what they always did. But Warmund also told me that, according to what he has been told, Herod’s temple was supposedly built on the site of a smaller, far more ancient temple, the original temple of Solomon.”
“You mean King Solomon, the Lawgiver?”
“Do you know of any other Solomon who built temple?”
Odo sat silent, ignoring her sarcasm until she spoke again.
“But what I cannot understand is this: if those people are in fact digging, as you suggest, then why would they dig there, in the old stables, and directly into rock?”
“Because they can.” To Odo it was self-evident, and he crossed his arms on his chest, plucking at his lower lip as he continued. “Consider it. They can dig there in secrecy, whereas were they to dig anywhere else, people would take note and start asking questions. The stables are theirs, given them by the King’s own dispensation. So even though the work is far more difficult and arduous, there is little mystery behind the reason for their digging there: secrecy, security, and convenience, despite the inconvenience.”
“No. I do not doubt your reasoning, as far as it goes, but there must be more to the truth than that. The treasure must lie close by. They would hardly start digging in the stables, despite all you have said, if their goal lay a mile away.”
“That is logical.”
“Therefore they must have found something that tells them there is a genuine and worthwhile reason for searching there … a buried treasure of some kind. They must have found something. And bear in mind, they are monks, new monks, Odo, filled with enthusiasm and sworn to poverty, so we might reasonably expect them to be immune to the temptations of greed. Whatever it may be that they have chanced upon, therefore, it clearly has sufficient value to induce them to abandon their newly undertaken vows.” She held up a hand to silence the bishop, although he had made no effort to speak. “And so you now, noble and dutiful creature that you are, would take this information to my father, as is your duty. And my father will then investigate your report and discover the truth of it, and whatever is uncovered will be taken immediately into the royal treasury for the good of the realm. And who knows, depending upon the value of what is found, you might even receive a small reward for your loyalty.”
“You sound as though you do not believe that would be a good thing.”
“Oh no, not at all. It would be an excellent thing, for my father. A source of wealth, perhaps of uncountable wealth, the existence of which he had never suspected. And he would not have to share it with a soul, because he is the King and the treasure was found in his realm. It would become his … entirely his.”
“It would.” Odo pursed his lips and nodded slowly before permitting himself a half smile. “And you would rather it became entirely yours?”
Alice fluttered her eyes at him, a dimple forming in her cheek. “Of course I would. Would you not wish the same, were you me? And of course, I would be far more generous towards you than my father ever would. I would have to be, would I not, since you would know my secret?”
“We are speaking of treason here, my lady, of crimes meriting execution.”
“Nonsense, my dear lord Bishop. We are speaking of dreams, fantasies, and rich imaginings, no more than that. Mere formless notions, lacking the slightest reality.”
“At this time …”
“That is correct.”
“So how might you proceed, my lady, should these notions come to have foundation?”
“I have no idea, but when the time comes, I will know. There are only nine of these knight monks, these Poor Fellow Soldiers of the Christ, and they keep their activities secret even from their own lesser brethren, so it should not be difficult to find some means to interrupt them when the time is right.” She grinned. “I am sure we will be able to find some way of compensating the poor fellows, even for treasonous activities. So, my dear, are you prepared to work with me in this?”
The bishop’s hesitation was deliberate. “It is dangerous. Should the King find out about it …” Then he began to nod his head, very slowly at first, then more emphatically. “But yes. Yes, I am with you.”
“Excellent, Odo.” Alice’s voice had dwindled into a contented, soft-throated purr. “Now come over here to me and let us see if we can find some way, between the two of us, to seal our pact.”
SIX
When Odo finally departed that afternoon, Alice lay down again on her divan, fanning herself languidly and thinking long and carefully. Odo had been in her quarters for close to three hours, a scandalous length of time for any man to be closeted alone with a woman, young or otherwise, but that concerned Alice not at all. Her personal staff were all fully aware that their discretion in such matters was the key to their continuing enjoyment of a life of great privilege. None of them, she knew, would dare to breathe a word of what she did with her private, personal life, on peril of their own lives.
Despite what she had said to Odo, Alice really had no idea of how to uncover the secret of the knight monks. She knew Hugh de Payens only slightly, but even that was enough to make it clear to her that she would be wasting her time to try bending him to her will and wishes. For one thing, the man was too unyielding, and too set in his warrior ways even to consider a dalliance with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. His closest associate, Godfrey St. Omer, was cut from the same cloth, likable enough but impermeable when it came to resisting blandishment. Alice had met men of their ilk before, and she found them, without exception, to be humorless and intractable, the only male animals in the world whom she could not sway to her will.
That left her with only one remaining source of information, Stephen St. Clair, and she felt sufficiently uncomfortable about her chances of success with him that she found herself unable to consider him objectively. He was the only young man in all her experience who had successfully resisted a full frontal assault from her, and she had no confidence at all that she could change anything on another meeting, because it seemed to her that she had used all her cunning, and all of i
t uselessly, in their last, ill-fated encounter. For months afterwards, she had been furious that he should run away from her, as a frightened peasant might flee the plague, and yet she had made no effort to punish him. She told herself that her reasons for that were humane, because he was a monk and therefore unworldly and socially inept, but she knew that she had left him unmolested purely for her own protection. No one knew anything about her and him, and she was afraid that should she pursue the matter, someone might learn the truth of what had happened, and she would become a laughingstock.
Out of sheer necessity, she had eventually convinced herself that the young monk knight’s behavior that day had been a personal thing, born of his own inner conflicts and containing nothing insulting to her. His terrified pallor and his abject flight from her presence might have been born purely out of his religious conviction, although—and this was something she had come to consider only long after the event—it might equally have been born of simple nausea, engendered by the hashish that had been liberally mixed into the honeyed cakes they had eaten that afternoon. After years of using the drug, she herself was immune to the nausea it sometimes caused, but to a neophyte like St. Clair, it could have devastating results.
Be that as it may, however, Alice found little to look forward to in the prospect of facing the monk knight again, and yet she knew she would have to were she to have any hope of discovering anything about what they were up to, there in their holy stables. She knew she could not simply go riding in there, not even as Alice, Princess Royal of Jerusalem. The temple stables were now genuinely regarded as holy ground, given to the knight monks by her own father, and since dedicated to their use by the Patriarch Archbishop himself. As a woman, Alice had no right to enter there. She had known that for months, but she knew, too, that no man who was not of their brotherhood was allowed to enter there either. Only the knights of the Order of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ were admitted, and they were very few.
An idea, unsought and unbidden, flickered at the edge of her consciousness. She picked up a tiny set of three brass bells and rang it, and within moments Ishtar, the head of her household staff, came in response.
“Princess?”
Alice looked at him, frowning in thought. “Did you tell me yesterday that Hassan the horse trader is back?”
“I did, Princess. He rode into the market with a new herd—a very small herd, I noticed—while I was there, just after dawn.”
“Did you notice anything spectacular in his small herd?”
“Aye, my lady, I did. Two things, in fact. He has a pair of white ponies that look to be litter twins. From the little I saw, they appeared to be flawless.”
Alice nodded, her upper lip caught between her teeth. Ishtar had been born and raised among horses, and she valued his opinions, since horses were the single thing in her life that she found she could trust and love without reservation. “Summon him, as soon as you can. Have him come directly to me. I will await him here.”
Ishtar bowed deeply and hurried away to do her bidding, and Alice moved to stand by a window, hugging herself, elbows in hands, as she stared out into the late-afternoon light, seeing nothing except the images in her mind.
SEVEN
Hassan the horse trader was far more than he appeared to be, and Alice had known him now for five years, ever since her thirteenth birthday, in Edessa, when he had delivered her birthday gift from her father, a pure black Arab filly that Alice had immediately named Midnight. From that time on, for nigh on three years, Alice had visited the merchant’s premises and spent time with him and his horses every time he returned to Edessa, and when she moved with her family to live in Jerusalem as Princess Royal, her patronage of his establishment there continued seamlessly. Since first she met Hassan, she had bought seven magnificent horses from him, but she had also come to rely upon him for much more than horses.
A new aspect of their relationship had come into existence after two years of developing familiarity between the pair of them, and it had nothing to do with sex or sexuality. Hassan was not an old man, but he was an austere one, with strongly held convictions of what was and was not permissible within society—society including, in his eyes, both the Muslim and the Christian communities. He was confident of his status with his God, and the name of Allah was never far from his lips, and Alice had learned that his convictions burned with the intensity of a zealot’s.
In the autumn of Alice’s sixteenth year, still several months short of her sixteenth birthday, one of her closest friends had been violated and cruelly beaten within the city’s confines. The girl, whose name was Farrah, was Muslim, of an age with Alice, and the only daughter of an itinerant Arabian merchant. Alice had befriended her years earlier, as a child in Edessa, when Farrah’s father settled there, and he had since set up a thriving enterprise in the city, a trading hub serviced by suppliers from around the world who brought him everything from spices to fabrics and from perfumes to exotic jewelry. Farrah had been waylaid in daylight, on her way homeward from a friend’s house, and had been left lying in an alley near her father’s place of business. She was found that same evening, but no one had seen or heard anything of what had happened to her, and no one seemed to have any idea of who might have done such a dreadful thing. The only possible means of identifying the miscreant had been provided by an earring, found in Farrah’s clenched fist. It was of gold, and it bore traces of blood, indicating that she had ripped it from her assailant’s earlobe.
Alice had let her fury be known, offering a substantial reward for any information leading to the capture of the rapist, but nothing had come of it until she visited Hassan’s encampment almost a month later, when he next returned to Edessa. There, while sitting in his tent, discussing the points of a particularly fine horse, he had offered her a small box, removing the lid to show her a carefully folded scrap of velvet cloth. Alice had reached for it, to unfold the cloth, but Hassan stopped her, waving a finger in warning, then tipped the box upside down so that its contents fell to the tabletop. It took Alice several moments to recognize what lay there as two severed human ears, one of them with a lobe that was still torn and scabbed over, while the other bore a solid-gold earring.
Her initial shock had been followed by a surge of nausea that she fought down stubbornly, already aware of the exultation that was swiftly replacing everything else within her. There, on the tabletop in front of her, lay her vengeance and her vindication for seeking it when everyone she knew, it seemed, had been urging her to forget the episode. Gritting her teeth, she had forced herself to lean forward and pick up the ear that held the ring. It felt like nothing she had ever handled before, hard and cold and lacking in any kind of texture that would suggest it had ever been human or warm and alive. When she opened her fingers and let it fall to the tabletop again, the ring made a heavy, clacking sound. She sat back and looked at Hassan.
“Where is he? Where are you holding the rest of him?” She forced herself to look and sound moved, asking the question flatly, without emphasis, in the flawless Arabic she preferred to her father’s native language.
A tiny tic that might have been the beginnings of a stillborn smile flickered at one side of Hassan’s mouth, but he shook his head and no trace of humor materialized. “I am not. The man is dead, killed while being taken. That was some time ago.” He wiggled a thumb to indicate the ears. “These were brought to me yesterday, packed in salt.”
Careful to keep her face expressionless, Alice nodded her head once. “I will have the reward sent to you this afternoon.”
“There is no need. I seek no reward. I have no need of money.”
“Perhaps not, but the man who brought this about probably does.”
Hassan’s headshake was small but decisive. “He has been paid already. I rewarded him when he delivered the evidence.”
“I see. You mean he did this for you, not for me or my reward.” It was a statement, not a question, and when the Muslim inclined his head in agreement, Alice sat
up straighter. “Then why did you order this? What do you want from me?”
Now Hassan smiled. “I want nothing from you, Princess Alice … nothing.” When he saw that she was about to speak again, he resumed smoothly. “You are an entirely remarkable young woman for your years, Princess Alice, and I anticipate that you are destined to generate great change in these lands, for both Muslim and Christian. In the course of time, I feel convinced, you will replace your able father as ruler here, for there is nothing anywhere to forbid the ruler of any of your Frankish lands from being a woman. And I believe you will be a finer, stronger ruler even than he.”
“I will be. You may rely on that.” Her voice had been deadly serious, and her listener gave no sign of doubting her as she continued. “But how, or why, should that have any significance to you, a Muslim and a trader in horse flesh?”
“Because I am far more than either one of those.” Alice’s brows had drawn together in a frown, but Hassan was grinning broadly. “To do what I must truly do in Allah’s holy name, I am required to be a student of humanity. Thus, when I see you frown and your eyes flash the way they did a moment ago, I have great hope for the future, because you are not afraid to do what you perceive needs to be done.” His finger flicked idly towards the ears on the tabletop. “You have no fear of speaking the truth, no fear of demanding and taking what you want and what you believe to be right. That makes you unique among the others who surround you, most of whom would rather suffer shame and swallow insults than speak up and utter truths that might later come back to cause them discomfort. Within a society where compromise and corruption are commonplace, you represent, even at your very young age, a cleansing breeze. A fresh wind, in fact.”
Hassan’s face was sober now, no vestige of levity or humor to be seen in it. “You will find, as you pass through life, that there will be people who will offend you, grieve you, inconvenience you, and infuriate you. Some of them will thwart you, undermine you and your reputation, work to confound your best efforts and designs, and generally make nuisances of themselves. Many of those you will be able to deal with on your own terms. I have no doubt that you have already mastered the means of keeping most of such people firmly in their places. But there will always be a few, Princess, who will prove to be intolerable, their enmity a constant source of aggravation and frustration.” He indicated the severed ears again. “The owner of those adornments will never be seen again. He has vanished from the earth and from the awareness of men.”