Knights of the Black and White (33 page)

They came out here with us, for the most part, when first we set out to fight the Turks, and they have been with us ever since, as servants, comrades, bodyguards, and companions in arms. Their loyalty and good faith towards us and ours is beyond question.

“When we committed to the monkish life, we were obliged to relinquish our former identities and all the heraldic trappings that went with them, and as part of that, we were also required to release all our dependents and followers, for we had renounced the world. Unfortunately, however—and this was something we had failed to consider beforehand—these faithful men had nowhere to go when we did that and no means of going there, for they were indeed dependents, relying on us to provide them with everything they required in return for their strength, support, and loyalty. To our chagrin, we discovered that we had not set them free at all. What we had done was to imprison them without resources, in an alien world from which they could not reasonably hope to escape. And so they refused to be dismissed. They argued, convincingly, that they had been protecting us and underpinning us for many years, and that our taking vows as Monks of the Mount

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monks had little bearing on the truth that we would continue to need that support and underpinning, since we did not intend to give up fighting. We were continuing to be knights, as well as becoming monks, and that meant that they ought to be able to continue to serve us in our knightly capacity, if not the monkish one. It was a very persuasive argument, most particularly so when we considered that if the seven of us were to patrol the roads alone—and it seemed at that time that we might have no other choice—none of us would be able to do any work on our excavations. Hugh?”

De Payens continued. “We spoke to the Patriarch about involving these men as sergeant volunteers and installing them as lay brethren, bound by our prayer schedule and the Rule we would follow, but free of binding vows.” He shrugged his wide shoulders self-deprecatingly. “Each of us had at least two such people, a few of us had more, and many of those had people of their own—friends and family, brothers in arms, and veterans who had lost their own knights to sickness or battle. So now we are seven knights—eight, once you join us—and twenty-three sergeants.”

“They all look uniform. Where did you find the funds to dress them all the same way?”

“The uniforms were a gift from the Patriarch Archbishop, probably as a gesture to make his contribution to the kingdom’s welfare more readily identifiable. We accepted his largesse gratefully, without questioning his motives.”

“And what about your vows of poverty?”

“An astute question. We have arrived at a compromise 310

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on that, after discussion with the Patriarch. He requires us to maintain ourselves as a fighting force, but, like the King, he has no wish to be responsible for equipping us.

He says his diocese cannot afford such ongoing expenditures. Godfrey here took careful note of that and reminded us later of exactly what the Patriarch had said, with the result that we fastened upon his own expression—

‘
ongoing
expenditures’—and pointed out to him that we ourselves are not without means. In the normal course of things, we would contribute all our possessions to Mother Church upon taking our vows, in return for her complete support. We suggested to the Archbishop, therefore, that we might modify the standard vow of poverty to accommodate our—and his—special requirements here in Jerusalem. Each of us, as monks, would undertake personal poverty henceforth, on oath, but instead of donating all our wealth and possessions to the Church, we would undertake instead to hold all things in common with our brethren, for the good of our fraternity and its endeavors.”

De Montbard’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “But that is
our
vow—the same vow we all swore on joining the Order of Rebirth: to hold all things in common, for the common good.”

“Of course it is.” De Payens’s grin lit up his entire face. “But we said nothing about that to the Patriarch, and he was happy to accept our suggestion, since it relieved him of any future need to worry about supplying us with armor, equipment, weaponry, saddlery, or horses.

And so we are reasonably well equipped, and capable of Monks of the Mount

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providing for our own day-to-day needs, so be it they are modest.”

De Montbard was shaking his head. “You are amazing, all of you … And all of you ride out on these patrols?”

“Aye, for the time being.” De Payens stood up and stretched his arms widely, grunting with the pleasure of it.

“The time will come, we hope, when only the youngest of us, and no more than two or three at any time, will ride out, accompanied by sergeants. That will work well for us.”

“Aye,” St. Agnan agreed, “it will, because nobody knows or cares which knights ride out, or how often, or where they go, so be it the roads are kept safe. So a few of us will spend most of our time patrolling, while the others spend most of theirs excavating.”

“But can you trust these sergeants that far?”

De Montbard addressed himself to de Payens. “You have told me you do, and I can see you believe what you are saying, but still, I have to express my strong doubt, since these men are outsiders and know nothing of our Order or its secrets. How will you keep the excavations secret from them? I cannot see that being possible over any extended length of time.”

De Payens shrugged, his face untroubled. “We do not yet know, but we
will
keep them secret. We have no intention of allowing anyone not of the brotherhood to suspect, or even imagine, that there are things happening here of which they have no knowledge. That would be sheerest stupidity. So it may mean that the brother sergeants will 312

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eventually have quarters separate from ours. That would raise no concerns, since it has ever been thus, we being knights and they being commoners. Now that we are to be monks bound by solemn vows, while they remain lay brethren, the same division will apply. Separate lives and separate quarters. And separate activities—carried out, in our case, in secret.”

“What will you call yourselves—ourselves?”

“What d’you mean?”

“You need a name, Hugh, you and your brethren. If you are to become monks, you are going to need a name suitable to who you are and what you do. The Patriarch’s Patrol is hardly a proper name for a fraternity of monks.”

“What is wrong with it?” Gondemare said. “It describes us well, I think.”

“It lacks dignity. You—we—need something more fitting. Something that reflects our purpose.”

“What about Knights of the Temple Mount?” Montdidier was normally silent in conference and now he bridled when everyone turned to look at him. “Well that’s what everyone seems to be calling us nowadays,” he said defensively.

“Is that true?” De Montbard looked around at the others, and when he saw the nods of assent, he grimaced and turned back to Payn, shaking his head. “It is a … straightforward name, I suppose, and one can see how it might become popular, but …” He grimaced again. “It seems to me that the best thing we can hope for is that that particular name will simply fade away. It places too much emphasis on both who we are and where we are.
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of the Monks of the Mount

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Temple Mount
… It could attract undesirable attention to our endeavors. I think we had best forget that one. Does anyone else have a suggestion?”

“The Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ.” It was Hugh de Payens who spoke this time, and his words attracted every eye in the chamber. The silence afterwards was profound as each man thought about what he had just heard.

“Where did that come from?” de Montbard asked.

“I don’t know. The words simply came into my mind.”

“It is perfect. What say you others?”

Only Montdidier disagreed. “I think it is hypocritical,” he said.

Hugh stared at him. “Hypocritical? How can you say that, Payn?”

“Easily, Hugh, because it is. It’s hypocritical of us to use the name of Jesus, and particularly the full name, Jesus Christ, believing what we all believe … And the hypocrisy of the Church is what appalls us most.”

De Payens sighed, sharp and loud. “Crusty, we have been through this a hundred times. We all agree on the importance of the task facing us. We also agree and believe that the Christian Church is an invalid creation. We all agree, further, that only by pretending to conform to the Church’s dictates and expectations can we have any expectation of completing our task. And we have proceeded to this point upon those agreements. This new name conforms to everything we have agreed to do: it will enable us to go about our work without being harried 314

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by anyone, and it will lend us, tacitly, an air of probity and trustworthiness. I say we should keep the name. All those who agree, raise your hands.”

The vote was six to one, and Montdidier threw up his hands in resignation, muttering that he would withdraw his objection. The name sat well with all the others, every man present repeating it to himself at least once, and when they were finished, they all looked at de Payens.

“So mote it be,” he said. “From this day forth, we will call ourselves the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, and let us pray that through it we may live up to the responsibility placed upon us.”

“Amen, so mote it be,” came the chorus.

“In the meantime, however, we have other, pressing responsibilities,” de Montbard said. “That is why we are here. When do you think you will begin to dig?”

The question evoked a wry grin from de Payens, who rose to his feet and walked towards the middle of the long, narrow chamber. “Come and see this,” he said, beckoning with a crooked finger, and de Montbard rose and followed him obediently to where a hole had been dug in the floor. It was a wide but shallow hole, barely three fingers deep, and its bottom had been brushed clean of dirt and dust, showing the exposed bedrock.

“That is what we are sitting on,” de Payens said, crouching to sweep his hand across the bare stone. “It is exactly like the stone vaults over our heads. This is not called the Temple Mount without reason. It
is
a mountain. But if there is a ruined temple down there beneath Monks of the Mount

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our feet, as our Order’s Lore would have us believe, then it must have been dug at great cost, and there is no mention of such a thing anywhere in the scriptures.” He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands. “Until we can discover more about our search—where to set about it, for example—I fear there is little we can do. None of us would have great objections to tunneling through solid rock, if that is what is truly required, but until we know the direction in which to dig our tunnel, it would be sheerest folly to begin.”

André de Montbard was frowning down into the shallow depression in front of him, his arms crossed on his chest as he nibbled his lower lip between his teeth, but then he turned on his heel and looked all about him, gazing at the walls as though he could see through them. Finally he turned to de Payens, nodding as though he had arrived at a decision.

“I may have the solution to that. I bring you documents from the Seneschal, and one is a map, copied with great care from the Order’s archives. It purports to be a map of the layout of Solomon’s Temple, and of the labyrinth of tunnels surrounding it.” He held up a hand quickly, to forestall any interruption. “It
purports
, I say.

It is a faithful copy of an ancient document, but its age is all that can be warranted. It has belonged to the Order for a millennium, according to our records, but it was ancient long before that and its accuracy has never been tested, as far as we know. I do, however, have it here with me. It is in the long, wooden travel case 316

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among my belongings in the other room, and if you have anything similar—a plan or map of the city as it is today—we should be able to compare the two.”

“Indeed we should.” De Payens was already clicking his fingers for attention. “Montdidier and Gondemare, bring Sir André’s wooden case in here, if you would.”

A short time later, all of them were crowded around the table, looking at the chart that had been spread out and anchored with small rocks at all four corners, and for a long time no one spoke, as they all tried to make some sense of what they were looking at, attempting vainly, for the most part, to superimpose the lines of the drawing in front of them upon the landscape surrounding them.

In the end it was Archibald St. Agnan who reached out an index finger to touch the map. “There,” he growled. “Isn’t that where we are now? Look, you can see the line of the wall, there, and it runs along the dip here, where the wavy lines are. That’s where we are now, in the stables.”

“There are no stables marked here, St. Agnan.”

St. Agnan did not even look up to see who had spoken.

“No, of course not. The King’s palace isn’t shown, either, even as the al-Aqsa Mosque that it once was. This entire place was the temple when this map was drawn. These stables were walled into the cavern later, here in the precincts, after the
new
temple was destroyed and probably after the mosque was built, and that was more than six hundred years after the destruction of that same new temple. When was the original temple destroyed, and how long ago might this map have been drawn, Hugh?”

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De Payens shrugged and looked at André de Montbard, who made a wry face and said, “The original? I can only guess … two thousand years? It must have been at least that long ago. Titus destroyed Herod’s temple forty years after the death of Christ, and that was a thousand and two hundred years ago. This map is of
Solomon’s
Temple, which was built many hundreds of years before that.”

“Well, in the name of all we aspire to, I hope you are wrong, St. Agnan.” De Payens’s voice was heavy, prompting more than one pair of eyes to glance his way.

“How so? I have to be right, according to what is here in front of us. And if I am …” St. Agnan hesitated, frowning, then stabbed a finger at the same point. “If I am, we are standing right
there
, at this moment.”