Knights of the Black and White (60 page)

“By whom?”

“Why, by me, of course.” Her laugh was a tinkling cas-cade of sounds. “She and I have become great friends.”

“Then what …?” He swallowed again. “Wherein lies the risk you spoke of ?”

Alice’s smile faded. “Her name is Arouna. She is Muslim, of good family. Her father, Fakhr Ad-Kamil, is a sheikh, placid and law abiding at this time but noted for his ferocity in times not so long past. Should he ever discover you in this, or have even the most fleeting suspicion that you may have looked sideways at his daughter, he will cause you to die a lingering, agonizing death.”

She shrugged. “Against that, you have to weigh Arouna—young, bright, beautiful, passionate, depraved … She has no wish to be who she is, would far rather live among the Franks and enjoy their ways, but she knows that she will Complicities

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soon be called upon, like me, to wed her father’s choice.

She will then enter the seraglio of some hawk-beaked old warrior and her life of pleasure will be over. In the meantime, she has her father under her thumb and subject to her every wish, and he permits her, as my special friend, to spend most of her time with me, living here in the palace, a situation she intends to keep unchanged for as long as ever she may.”

“So how long would I have her?”

“A year, perhaps two, then things will change. But what more could you desire? A secret mistress, young and dangerous, with a lust for love—indeed a love for lust—that will fulfill your every wish and fantasy. Would you like to meet her?”

“Aye. When?”

“Soon. I will make the arrangements. But are you completely sure you wish to do this?”

“Of course I am.”

“Even despite the risk that her father, who is a barbarous old villain, will slit your scrotum and cook your testicles before your eyes, then eat them while his men flay you alive? Will you risk all that, simply for the pleasure of having young, tight flesh to pleasure you?”

“Aye, all of it. You know I will.”

“Good.” Alice stood up and clapped her hands to summon Ishtar, then lay one hand lightly on Odo’s arm.

“I will call for you as soon as I know anything. In the meantime, be you prepared to question the knight monk Brother Stephen when he returns. Ah, Ishtar. His lordship the Bishop is leaving now.”

TWO

By the time Stephen St. Clair arrived in sight of the walls of Jerusalem again, he had changed greatly, in some ways, from the man he had been when Hassan rescued him from the nomads, because he and the Shi’a had ridden and lived together for several hundreds of miles by then, and the major part of their time together had been spent in talking, once they had begun to grow accustomed to each other. He had learned, much to his surprise, since it went directly against much of what he had been taught, that the Muslims, in their adherence to the religion of Islam, considered both Christians and Jews to be close to equal to themselves, and as fellow worshippers of the One God, referred to them as People of the Book. It was unimportant that each of the three peoples had a different name for the Book; what mattered was that each
had
a Book, 582

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witnessing their involvement with the One God. That idea, that Jews, Christians, and Muslims were interrelated through their God, novel as it was, was nonetheless logical to a member of the Order of Rebirth in Sion, no matter how close to anathema it might appear to a devout Christian.

He had discovered, too, not only that a Saracen warrior could be an ideal companion in the desert but that he might also possess many of the attributes that St. Clair had found so signally lacking in his own knightly Christian counterparts, such things as dignity, nobility, honor, and an inbred, natural sense of decorum. In fact, he had become convinced, purely from watching the behavior and listening to the opinions of the man called Hassan, that those very attributes must be considered commonplace among the warriors of Allah and His Prophet.

They had even talked about religion during their long journey, although St. Clair had presented himself as nothing more than an ordinary Christian knight, and Hassan had taken pains to clarify for St. Clair the differences between the Shi’a Muslims and their more numerous Sunni counterparts, and to explore the schism between the two Islamic factions. St. Clair had found the explanations interesting, but he had nonetheless found himself being largely unimpressed by any of it, and because he had wondered why that should be, and had then thought about it afterwards, he knew that his lack of interest had sprung from the perception that Islam’s leading figure was a mere man, the Prophet Mohammed, whereas Christianity had the Christ himself, the living Son of God, at its peak. That realization 584

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had dumbfounded him because it was illogical and, he now honestly believed, blatantly superstitious. The logical part of his mind knew and accepted from his own studies that Jesus, the man of Galilee, had been no more than what that term implied: a human but extraordinary man set apart by Destiny and, at most, a prophet, just as was Mohammed, the man of Mecca, six hundred years later.

The main thing he had discovered, however, was that this enigmatic, black-clad warrior with the exotic chain-mail armor, who ought, by every criterion known to St. Clair, to have been an enemy, had, in the space of a few days’ companionship, become closer to being a real friend than anyone else St. Clair had met since first leaving home as a knight years before. He was unprepared, therefore, when they came in sight of the distant towers of Jerusalem, for Hassan to stop, release him from his obligation not to attempt to escape, and send him on his way alone, while he himself vanished back into the desert behind them. When St. Clair had tried to argue against him, Hassan merely smiled and indicated himself with a downward sweep of his hand.
Look at me,
the gesture said plainly.
I am a desert warrior, a Saracen. I
would not survive the day were I to ride into the city
.

St. Clair could not gainsay the truth of that, knowing that he himself was incapable of providing Hassan with any kind of protection or any guarantee of safety or immunity from attack by the first person to set eyes on him. Had he himself encountered Hassan mere days earlier, and seen the man dressed as he was, an obvious representative of every threat that existed to the Frankish Complicities

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kingdom, he would have drawn his own blade and attacked him instantly. And so the two men exchanged farewells and parted, Hassan to return to the desert and St. Clair to seek out his brethren on the Temple Mount, in all humility and penitence.

He was aware, because he had discussed the matter at great length with the infidel Hassan one night, beside a fire of dried camel dung, that he had come perilously close to losing his soul to the demon of Despair, whose depredations were every bit as lethal to devout Muslims as they were to Frankish Christians. Now, knowing how close he had come to losing everything he valued, St.

Clair was prepared to return and confess and acknowledge all his weaknesses. His sole remaining regret, he realized as he rode towards the city’s walls, was the loss of his new friend, and he would have been astonished to know that he had passed many times, and would continue to pass in future, within mere paces of Hassan’s permanent encampment in the city, because even had he come face to face with Hassan the humble horse trader, it would never have crossed his mind that he might be looking at Hassan the aristocratic Shi’a warrior.

His reappearance at the stables created nowhere near as much of a furor as his first one had. His brethren were glad to see him, and they made no secret of it, but he was extremely conscious from the moment of his return that a gulf had opened up between him and them. It was obvious that they were all curious about what had happened to him and where he had been, but it was equally clear that none of them knew what to say to him or how to 586

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treat him. Not a single person commented upon his lack of weapons, and he found that ludicrous, because if there was one major truth governing all their lives in Outremer, it was that no one could expect to live for any length of time unarmed in the desert. He was amused, at first, but quickly grew awkward himself, and within little more than an hour he was speaking to no one, and nursing his injured feelings in resentful silence.

Later that evening, he was summoned to meet with the two senior brethren, Godfrey St. Omer and Hugh de Payens, and when he entered the main recording room at the rear of the stables, he found them waiting for him, their faces studiously devoid of expression. The interview that followed was an awkward and one-sided one, until the moment when St. Clair realized that his own formless shame was driving him to behave with a stubborn pride and arrogance that was utterly beyond justification.

The two men who were questioning him had nothing but his own best interests at heart. There was no question in his mind concerning that. They were not disapproving churchmen, looking to condemn him for moral dereliction, nor were they fathers confessor demanding penitence. They were knights and soldiers, plainspoken and straightforward in their dealings with all men, and they were his sworn brothers in the Order of Rebirth, genuinely concerned for his physical and mental welfare and entirely confident that, as a man of honor, bound by their common code, any moral dilemma in which he found himself involved would be solved to the best of his own abilities and without detriment to them or their Order.

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St. Omer had started to ask him another question, assuming that the previous one would go unanswered as had all the others, when St. Clair held up a hand to stop him, and then launched into a detailed explanation of everything that had happened to him in the recent past, beginning with his discovery of the blue stone and omitting only the identity of the woman whom he had recognized in his dreams, and who had precipitated the entire chain of events. Apart from that, he held nothing back and made no attempt to conceal the fact that he believed himself guilty of having broken all three of his vows, and that he had ridden out in search of death, hoping to expiate his sins in suffering some form of martyrdom. He described how he had been taken captive and then rescued and delivered by Hassan the Shi’a.

From the moment St. Clair began to speak, St. Omer, who had known nothing of the dreaming or of St. Clair’s struggles with the succubus, sat listening open mouthed and wide eyed with astonishment. Not so de Payens. Sir Hugh sat without speaking, too, as rapt as was his colleague, but for different reasons. He had been unsurprised by the young knight’s revelations about his broken vows, for he had suspected something of the kind, something connected to the woman in the younger man’s dreams and to St. Clair’s long and unusual confinement in the tunnels of the Temple Mount, for he knew that, among all of them, Stephen St. Clair had been the one most accustomed to the freedom of patrolling and spending the major part of his time beneath the open skies.

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intriguing, because from the moment St. Clair mentioned that an unnamed “friend” had apparently sent the Shi’a searching for him, de Payens had been seeing Princess Alice’s face in the forefront of his mind, remembering what she had said to him when they met, about setting a Muslim friend to find St. Clair. He had heard rumors that Alice had friends and allies among the desert nomads, but he could not quite bring himself to believe that the princess’s contacts could be sufficiently extensive to enable her, young as she was, to reach out into the wilds of the desert sands and command the attention and obedience of a man like this warrior Hassan, who was formidable by any standards. But St. Clair’s evidence indicated clearly that
someone
had done precisely that, and Hugh could think of no one else whom it might be. He said nothing to St. Clair of what he suspected, however, and contented himself with asking the knight if he had any idea of who this mysterious “friend” might be, accepting without comment the headshake he received in response.

When the younger knight’s story was complete, the two older brothers sat mulling over all that he had told them, and finally it was de Payens who spoke up.

“Well, Brother Stephen, you have obviously been close to despair, and equally obviously, you have survived it and passed by it. That is good. On the matter of your conscience and your self-doubt over the sins you think you have committed, I can say nothing, save to express my own belief that you appear, to me, to have broken none of your vows irrevocably. As I see it, having listened to you describe what occurred, I can discern fleeting weaknesses, Complicities

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perhaps a lapse in judgment, but nothing of willful rebellion or disobedience. Of course that is not my province, and so I am unqualified to judge. My suggestion, however, would be that you return and visit Patriarch Warmund. He is the man who can advise you best on what you ought to be doing about all that is troubling you. I have to be close by his place tomorrow, so I will visit him and ask if you might talk with him again, and when.”

“The Patriarch is not here, Hugh.” St. Omer’s voice was low. “He left for Antioch yesterday, and will be gone for a month, do you not recall? We saw him off together.”

Hugh de Payens raised his eyes to the heavens and clasped his hands prayerfully in front of him. “One more instance, Lord God, of the tyranny of advancing age. Too many things on my mind these days.” He turned back to St. Clair. “So, that will have to wait, Brother Stephen. As soon as the Patriarch Archbishop returns, I will make the arrangement for you to meet with him, and in the meantime the weeks will pass quickly. I promise, you will not be bored.” He glanced at St. Omer. “For the time being, if the matter of the jewel continues to trouble you, and it evidently does, then that is easily resolved. Give it into the custody of Brother Godfrey here, and we will say no more about it. That done, relieve your mind of any guilt concerning it and rest yourself here, among your brothers. You have been long away. Tell them where you have been, and of the adventures you have had, for although they may not ask, they would love to know. Now go in peace and fret no more until the month has passed and you have spoken to Warmund de Picquigny.”