Knights of the Black and White (12 page)

He has been touring in the south and west since early last month, and he has just left Avignon, on his way north to Lyon, and thence into Burgundy. But while he was in Le Puy, en route to Avignon, he issued a decree that he will convene another great ecclesiastical council, like the one he held in March in Piacenza, in Italy. This one will be held in the Massif Central, in Clermont, and it will start in mid-November. Every churchman and every noble-man in all the lands and duchies has been summoned to attend, and apparently great things are to take place in Beginnings

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the course of the assembly. What those great things may be, no one knows, but Count Hugh has charged me with organizing whatever will have to be done within his County of Champagne, and I, in turn, am deputizing you three to assist me. And I warn you, it will not be an easy task. There is much to be done, and alarmingly little time in which to see to it. Fortunately most of the harvest is already in, but the county is far from being ready to do anything quickly. And for that reason, we leave tomorrow, solely because it is already too late to leave today. Now, go and do what you have left to do, because I intend to be on the road by daybreak.”

The six weeks that followed were indeed, as the Baron had promised, filled to capacity with every kind of exigency that could be imagined and many that could not, but by the time they came to leave for Clermont, everything that needed to be done had been accomplished, and the Count’s party, more splendidly equipped and ac-coutered than any other that could be remembered by even the oldest resident of Champagne, set out with all due pomp and panoply to ride to join the Pope’s convocation. Count Hugh’s great friend Raymond, the Count of Toulouse, had added his own glittering entourage to the gathering, and the outgoing cavalcade was highly impressive. Once again, the triumvirate of Payens was in attendance, and finally relieved of the stresses under which they had been laboring for the previous six weeks, all three were in fine fettle and ready, they thought, to intercept and neutralize any theological missile the assembled priests might launch at them.

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Speculation over the reason for the gathering had been rampant since the news of it broke, for at the previous council, in Italy, Urban had publicly declared an alliance between the western Church, represented by his own See of Rome, and the eastern Church, represented by the Byzantine emperor, Alexius Comnenus. Now people wondered what other momentous events were to occur in Clermont, and when the council began, they were not kept long in the dark. For the first nine days, the three hundred clerics in attendance debated a number of issues and made momentous decisions. Simony—the greatest bane of the Church at that time—was outlawed and declared anathema, involving as it did the buying and selling of priestly office or the exchange of spiritual favors and influence for monetary gain. Clerical marriage was also declared anathema, and to top everything off, King Philip I of France was excommunicated for his adulterous marriage to Count Fulk’s wife.

On the very last day of the council, when the crowds hoping to see and hear the Pope had become too immense for the cathedral and its grounds, the gathering was moved to a field called the Champet, outside the church of Notre Dame du Port on the eastern edge of the city. It was the only open space large enough to accommodate all of those in attendance, and it was there, when everyone had reassembled, that Pope Urban unveiled his true purpose for convening the assembly. With the unerring instinct of a born performer, he did it spectacularly, creating chaos and fomenting a religious revo-

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lution with a single impassioned oration, unexpected and unprecedented, that inflamed everyone who heard it.

The Pope spoke with great eloquence, making it clear from the outset that he was speaking not only to the people assembled there but to all the Christian kingdoms of the West, and despite his initial skepticism, Hugh soon found himself caught up by the pontiff’s passion as he talked about the terrible difficulties facing their Christian brethren in the East, struggling under the brutal repression of the Seljuk Turks. At one point, almost reeling from a vivid description of an atrocity he could visualize, he reached out and grasped Montdidier by the arm.

“They defile and desecrate our altars,” Urban was saying, his voice ringing through the stunned silence of his listeners, reaching the culmination of a litany of horrors.

“They circumcise Christians and pour the blood of the circumcised into the fonts. They will take a Christian—any Christian—and cut open his belly, then tie his intestines to a stake and force him to run, goaded with spears, until he pulls out his own entrails and falls dead.” The Pope gazed out over the horrified crowd, watching the effect of his announcement. “I have heard many such reports, delivered to me from too many sources, and believe me when I say these are not isolated incidents. Throughout the East, from Jerusalem to Byzantium, these things are happening daily.”

Again he paused, his eyes moving constantly, and then he said, “Let me remind you of the words of our beloved Savior, Jesus Christ. ‘Whoever should abandon in my name his house or his brothers, his father or his mother, 102

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his wife or his children or his lands, will receive them again a hundredfold and will come to eternal life.’” The silence was absolute, because people were unable to believe what they had just heard from the lips of the Pope himself. But Urban was not yet done. He gazed around him and raised both arms wide. “Heed the words of God, my children, and you knights and men of prowess, hear the cries of your brethren in the eastern lands, dying beneath the heel of the ungodly. Think not about your petty quarrels here at home, among your friends, but turn your eyes towards true Glory … the Holy City of Jerusalem itself cries out for deliverance! Take the road to the Holy Sepulcher as soldiers of God, and tear God’s land from these abominable people!”

The silence lasted for perhaps another five heartbeats, just long enough for Godfrey St. Omer to turn, open mouthed, and look into Hugh’s eyes. And then erupted a great, tumultuous shout of “God wills it! God wills it!”

Afterwards, no one could say how it began or who had started it, but the words, and the sentiment, exploded like a wind-driven fire in long, dry grass, almost as though the crowd had rehearsed it in advance and had been waiting for that moment to proclaim it. The Count and his entourage were as stunned as everyone else by the unexpectedness of what was happening, but Hugh was even more astounded by the reaction of Count Hugh himself.

It was plain that the Pope had planned his address carefully and with an eye to recruiting knights for the new war he had called for, because there were priests at Beginnings

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the front of the crowd, close to the Pope’s dais, who were well supplied with stocks of plain white cloth crosses, evidently prepared against the surge of expected volunteers. Hugh noticed them immediately, and his cynicism about anything the Church inspired ticked in recognition. It was equally clear, however, that no one, including the Pope himself, had anticipated the furious response that his speech and its emotional appeal provoked. Everyone, it appeared, every individual member of the multitude there—knights and commoners, young and old and women and children—wanted to volunteer and rush off to attack and dismember the infidel Turks.

“Well,” Godfrey said loudly, “that was worthy of a raised eyebrow, don’t you think? Il Papa is an accomplished orator.”

“What did you expect, Goff ?” Payn had to shout to make himself heard. “Think you he got to be Pope by being deaf and mute?”

“No, I don’t, but he had me thinking, for a moment there, that I should rush away and fight the Turks like a good Christian knight anxious to please his bishop and earn a blessing or two. What did you think, Hugh?”

Before Hugh could respond, the Count’s right-hand man, Pepin, interrupted. “His Grace requires your presence, gentlemen.”

They followed Pepin through the cordon of guards surrounding the Count’s party and found the Count himself among a group of his senior advisers, frowning and plucking at his lower lip. Although all of his advisers were looking at him, none of them were speaking, even among 104

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themselves. Pepin went directly to him and whispered in his ear, and the Count crooked a finger at the newcomers, then walked towards the high peak of the tent where his personal standard hung limp in the windless air. No one else moved to accompany them, and the Count opened the tent flap himself, holding it there while the three younger knights filed past him into the interior.

“Well,” he said, as soon as he had followed them inside, “what did you think of that?” He waited half a heartbeat, then added, “Any one of you may speak, for I know you’re all capable. Did the Pope stir your manly juices?”

“He was … persuasive, my lord,” Godfrey murmured.

“And? Were
you
persuaded, St. Omer? Were any of you?”

“Not entirely, my lord.” This was Payn.

The Count raised one eyebrow slightly. “Why not?”

Payn shrugged, not yet ready to respond, and Hugh spoke up.

“I believe it’s a matter of learning, my lord. Our studies have shown us that anything related to, or instigated by, the Church exists for the benefit of the Church and its clerics only. That is why my friends and I hesitated in the first place.”

“A matter of learning, you say. Have you learned nothing, then, about our Order?”

“My lord? I fear—”

“Aye, you fear you don’t understand. I fear the same, that you do not understand. Now here is what I require you to do. I want you and your friends here to make your Beginnings

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way directly to the bishops surrounding the Pope’s dais and there volunteer for the Pope’s new war. Each of you will take one of the white cloth crosses they are passing out and sew it onto your surcoat immediately, this night, so that tomorrow you will be plainly seen and recognized as one of the Pope’s Holy Warriors.”

Hugh was astounded, and he could see his friends were, too, but the Count held up his hand to silence all of them. “Think! Think of the full name of our Order.

Think now of what the Pope is suggesting. Think next of how long our Order has been planning a return to its place of origin. And think about where the Pope’s war will lead. Now, do you not think a trip to Jerusalem might prove to be worthwhile for a member of our brotherhood?”

And thus it was that Hugh de Payens and his two friends were among the very first knights in Christendom to take the cloth cross from the hands of Pope Urban himself.

Hugh sewed the cross onto his surcoat that very day, aware of, but steadfastly refusing to consider, the ironies involved in their ancient and secretive Order’s instant commitment to the new Christian cause. It was sufficient for him, and his friends, to know that Count Hugh had excellent reasons underlying the swift decision he had taken, and Hugh believed that he would be informed of those reasons when, and not before, the time was right.

And so, being the man he was, he threw himself into his new duties and permitted himself to be swept up into the frenzy of the moment, so that, like almost everyone else 106

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in Clermont on that occasion, he began his personal odyssey to the Holy Land in a state of fevered commitment verging on ecstasy, screaming the instantly coined catchphrase “Deus le veult!” with everyone else.

“Deus le veult!”
God wills it!
It was a phrase Hugh de Payens would grow first to distrust, then to detest.

SEVEN

The hysteria unleashed on that final day of the Council of Clermont took everyone by surprise, including Pope Urban himself. He had been working hard for months, meticulously preparing what he would say to the assembly, and he had spent weeks struggling to find the very best way of couching his emotion-laden appeal so that it would be as close to irresistible as he could possibly make it to the hardheaded people for whom he intended it. Urban had hoped to spark enthusiasm for a real war, in a glorious cause, among the bored and fractious young Frankish knights and their aristocratic leaders, knowing that if he could win the commitment and involvement of the Franks, then all the other knights and lords of Christendom would run to join them. That had been Urban’s sole objective, and in launching his initiative at the council in 107

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Clermont, he could have had no idea of what would happen.

The mood of the people, comprising equal parts of hopelessness, disillusionment, and despair, allied with the appalling conditions of poverty and moral deprivation under which they lived and their need for something tangible and visible in which they could believe, combined on that Tuesday afternoon, the twenty-eighth of November, 1095, to create the perfect tinder for the spark of Urban’s impassioned appeal. The result was instant chaos, an incredible and utterly spontaneous explosion of raw emotion and popular enthusiasm that embraced every person present, irrespective of sex or social station, and then spilled outward to infect everyone who heard about it but had not been there to witness it. What happened was inconceivable and unprecedented, and within hours of the start of it, cool clerical heads were summoned to begin assessing how the groundswell should be handled and controlled, for it was plain, even from the outset, that something extraordinary had been set in motion. Special committees were established by the Pope and his clerics to accommodate the incredible outpouring of popular emotion and enthusiasm for the Pope’s Holy War, and many things began to fall inexorably into place. The Pope’s original call to arms was modified to ensure that the campaign to free the Holy Lands would be carefully coordinated to begin nine full months later, in August 1096, once the harvest was safely gathered in and stored.

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the legions of the Pope’s clerical functionaries, the Governing Council of the Order of Rebirth had carefully analyzed the opportunity presented to them so unexpectedly by Pope Urban, and had begun to lay extensive plans to cover every contingency imaginable in ensuring that they would, in fact, achieve a return to the Holy Land. The Pope’s campaign might fail; the armies, marching overland for the most part, might never reach the sacred places––or if they did, they might fail to oust the Muslim infidels, who had occupied the Holy City for more than four hundred years. But the Order’s first priority was to ensure that if the Pope’s armies were successful, and if Jerusalem were freed, the Order of Rebirth would have men and resources
in situ
, ready to do what must be done.