Knights of the Black and White (9 page)

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same duties and responsibilities to oblige St. Clair, willing or no, to send Margaret back to Champagne without him. She arrived in the Barony of Payens in the early autumn of 1091, accompanied by a respectable retinue and bearing a heavy letter from her father to his old friend Baron Hugo, who was gracious enough to conceal any sense of misgiving he might have felt at the lady’s unexpected reappearance, and to welcome her into his home and family. Then, once his wife and his ecstatic daughter had ushered her ladyship off to show her where she would be living and to distribute the people in her entourage among their own servants, the Baron sat down to read the letter from his friend. It was written on six sheets of heavy sheepskin vellum, carefully cured and scraped and softened with great care, then drafted with great precision, so that Hugo knew it had been dictated to one of Sir Stephen’s scribes.

York

This Fifth Day of June, Anno Domini 1091

To Hugo, Baron of Payens in the County of Champagne:

Greetings, my friend.

This missive, when it reaches you, will be accompanied by my greatest and most precious earthly possession, my daughter Margaret, and the mere fact of her
presence there with you while I remain here in England will assure you that I am not making this approach to you lightly. Were I not deeply afraid for her
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safety now, I would never voluntarily part from her,
nor would I impose upon you the task with which you
are now faced: that of caring for another man’s child.

Margaret is no longer a child, however, and that is
another contributing factor to this decision of mine.

Since the death of my wife, as you are aware, Margaret has been the light of my life, and she has been
saintly in her tolerance and acceptance of the discomforts and indignities to which my life, and my way of
living it, have subjected her. A castle such as mine is
no fit place for a young woman, as you are well
aware. It is functional, Spartan, and unlovely, its
walls made of earth, fronted by sharpened tree
trunks, and its buildings primitive, drafty, and mud-filled, containing no amenities for a young, well-born woman. It is a fortress, making no claim to
being a home, and I have finally come to see that, in
merely keeping my daughter here, I am condemning
her, if not to death, then at least to misery and
squalor. We—William’s Normans—have now been
here in England for two decades and a half, and in
this region of York for sixteen years, and the local
Saxons are no less rebellious and savage now than
they were when first we came. I should have sent my
daughter far away from here years ago, but in my
own weakness and self-centered folly, I have been
afraid to part with her, for she provides my only
reminder of beauty in this rain-drenched, sodden,
chilly land.

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Now, however, we are at war again, facing yet another invasion from the north, and since I cannot
guarantee her safety, I have no other choice but to send
her to you, knowing that she could be in no safer hands.

Malcolm Canmohr, the King of Scotland, has
come back to vanquish us—his third attempt in
twenty years—and King William has decided yet
again that I should be the one to throw the fellow out.

I did it before, nine years ago, and we thought to have
done with it then, but now the Conqueror is dead,
and Canmohr—the name means Great Chief, I am
told—seems to believe the new king will be easier to
oust than his father was. Foolish man. His wife,
revered by her people as some kind of saint, shares my
daughter’s name, but she is first cousin to Egbert, the
Saxon heir to the former English throne, and thus she
is unsaintly enough to provoke her husband into
squandering huge numbers of men in trying to win
back his kingdom, not merely once, but thrice. And so
I must march in three days’ time.

My army is assembling as I write, and will consist
of every available man I can conscript, and one effect
of that will be that I must leave my own castle defenses to the care of a tiny skeleton crew who will keep
the gates closed until I return. Faced with the inevitability of that, and with the real possibility that I
might not return at all from this campaign, I have
made arrangements to ship my precious Margaret
into your care. She and a small party will leave
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tomorrow. The man in charge of her party, appointed
personally by myself, is called Giscard, and he and his
two sons, Michel and Rombaud, are entrusted with
sufficient gold, in three sound chests, to dower the girl
suitably for any match you might arrange for her in
future times.

I have no knowledge of when, or whether, you
might hear from me again, my friend, but neither
have I any doubt that my beloved daughter, in your
hands and under your supervision, could be better
served under any circumstances. Watch over her for
me, and I hope to see you both again soon.

St. Clair

For the next three years, no word came out of England concerning St. Clair. No one even knew if the Scots invasion had been successful in the north. The Normans in the south of the country were still in power. That was common knowledge, but nothing was known for sure about anything else, because William Rufus willed it so and no one dared provoke his anger. Unknowing then whether his old friend was dead or alive, Baron Hugo had assumed full parental responsibility for the young woman by the end of her first full year of residence with him, and treated her exactly as he treated his own daughters, even going so far as to arrange her marriage to young Payn Montdidier in the autumn of 1092 as an eminently suitable match, advantageous to all parties, and one that he knew her father himself would approve.

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The bridal couple were nowhere near as visibly in love as Louise de Payens and St. Omer had been, but they enjoyed and admired each other, and everyone agreed that that was the required basis for a lasting and successful marriage.

FIVE

For a time after that, life was idyllic for the three young men of the triumvirate. The two who were married lived in utter contentment, their wives the closest of friends, and Hugh, the unwed third, was more than satisfied to be able to work as hard as he wished on his studies of the Order of Rebirth without the distractions his now-preoccupied friends would normally have caused him.

The idyll came to an end on a day in May 1093, when Godfrey and Payn came to Hugh’s quarters together, looking decidedly ill at ease. Hugh saw at first glance that something was seriously wrong, and he immediately set aside the book he had been studying and stood up.

“What has happened? What’s wrong?”

Godfrey and Payn looked at each other—guiltily, was 74

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Hugh’s first thought—and neither one appeared to have any wish to answer him.

Godfrey sank onto a bench against the wall by the window. “They know,” he said.

“Who knows, and what?”

Payn cleared his throat. “The girls, Margaret and Louise. They know about the Order.”

“They
what
?”

“They know about it,” Godfrey muttered. “They’ve been talking about it, discussing and comparing their ideas, and they came right out and asked us about it, about what we do at the Gatherings.”

“In God’s name …” Hugh was barely able to speak, so profound was his shock. “What have you two done?

How could you forget your oaths like that? Were they not awful enough, the dreadful penalties you undertook to suffer for betraying them?”

“We have done
nothing
, Hugh. We forgot nothing and we have said nothing. Neither one of us has as much as breathed a single word to anyone outside our Lodge.

Believe me, we have asked each other everything there is to ask since we learned of this, and neither one of us has as much as whispered a word of anything to do with the Order.”

“Yet your wives know of it.” He waited, seeing only misery in their faces. “When
did
you discover this? How long ago did they ask you about it?”

“Today,” Godfrey said, meeting Hugh’s eye directly.

“This afternoon, no more than an hour ago. We came to you immediately.”

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“And what exactly did they ask you?”

Payn looked bewildered. “I … I don’t know … I can’t remember. I felt such horror when I realized what they were saying that I was struck dumb. All I can remember thinking is,
They know. How could they know?
”

“I felt the same way.” Godfrey was shaking his head, gazing into nowhere and frowning. “I didn’t think about anything else once I had recognized what Louise was saying … and I don’t really remember now exactly what she
did
say.”

“Then let’s approach this from another side. What did you tell them in the first place?”

“Tell them? Have you not heard a word we said? We didn’t tell them
anything
, Hugh. I certainly didn’t, and I believe Payn when he says he didn’t. But that’s not important—even although it is. What we need to know is what we should do now.”

His head still reeling, Hugh looked from one to the other of them, his lips pursed. “Well, at least that’s easy to answer. We go to my father and ask him what’s to be done. He will know, and he’ll know what to do about the two of you, too. But we had better go now … Did it occur to either one of you to warn your wives to say no more of this, to anyone?”

“Of course it did,” Godfrey snapped. “We were appalled, but we were not rendered completely witless.

They won’t talk of it to anyone else because we commanded them to say no more and they know how angry we are.”

“Very well then, now let’s make my father angry, too.

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Fortunately he is here. I saw him less than an hour ago, just about the time your wives were questioning you.

Come on, then, let’s go and find him.”

Baron Hugo was in the smithy when they found him, supervising the shoeing of his favorite saddle horse. The beast was in its prime, but it had fallen on a treacherous slope the previous month, injuring its front right fetlock, and had been under the farriers’ care ever since. It had been judged able only that morning to return to its full roster of duties, and when Hugh and his friends arrived, they saw immediately that the Baron’s attention was all for the horse and its new set of shoes, and he could barely conceal his impatience at their interruption, so that when he stumped off to a corner where they could speak with him in private, they followed him with unconcealed apprehension.

He listened to the first part of what his son had to say and then held up a hand, demanding silence. He looked at each of the three young knights in turn, then beckoned them to follow as he led them across the cobbled courtyard to his own chambers, where he dismissed the majordomo and his cleaning staff, then closed the doors securely behind them before waving to the three younger men to be seated. When they were all sitting, looking distinctly uncomfortable, the Baron cleared his throat and hooked a stool with his foot, dragging it closer to where he could sit on it, looking down at them.

“So,” he said, after a silence that seemed endless to the three, “if I am correct in my understanding of what you have told me, your wives asked you about what you 78

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do at the Gatherings, but you do not recollect exactly what it was that they asked you?” The Baron’s demeanor was remarkably calm, Hugh thought, for a man who had just discovered betrayal among his own family, and he admired his father’s control even as he tried to gauge the fury that must be simmering and bubbling beneath that calm exterior. From the corner of his eye he saw his two friends nodding their heads.

“And you are both convinced that they are aware of, or that they at least suspect, the existence of our Order.

You also believe absolutely that neither one of you said anything to either of them, at any time, that might have been intemperate, or ill considered, careless, or indiscreet?” Again both men shook their heads. “Well, then,”

Hugo continued, “if neither one of you said anything you should not have said—and I believe you when you say you did not—how, then, could your wives have come by whatever information they have? Can you tell me?”

He swung to look at his son. “Can you?”

“No, Father.”

The Baron grunted. “Then I will tell you,” he growled.

“Because I know where their information probably sprang from. Your mother probably told them.”

Hugh was aware that his jaw had dropped and he was sitting gaping, and he closed his mouth as his father said,

“Think about it now, all of you, and think with your minds this time, not with your guts. Think about it logically and reasonably, and then accept what your intelligence tells you it means. The truth is there, right under your noses, and you are going to have to accept it and Beginnings

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learn to live with it. I had to come to terms with it when I was your age. All of us have to, at one time or another, and for some men it is very difficult.” He looked from face to face, but none of his listeners stirred. They sat stunned, and he spoke into the silence, aware that they would hear him now as never before.

“Our way of life teaches us to believe that women are less than we are in most things. They exist to bear our sons and to make our lives more comfortable and more pleasant. Is that not true? Of course it is, if you are a man.

Women, however, tend to see things differently, through eyes and from strange viewpoints that men can never know. They believe they are more clever and more humane than men are, and from their point of view, they may have reason on their side to a great extent. They are certainly clever, in their own obscure ways, and they have little patience with our ways. They think of us, without exaggeration, as children who never grow up and never mature, despite the grayness in our beards and the wrinkles on our faces.