Jack Whyte - Knights of the Black and White

Once they were alone in his chambers, Odo began to strip off his ceremonial vestments. “Who is this sergeant that you have in your pay?”

The little man sniffed. “Giacomo Versace is his name. He is one of my best. I inserted him into the ranks of the sergeant brothers long ago, when we first started looking for evidence against the monks. He has been one of them for a long time now, and he is trusted. It was he who found the one called Brother Stephen—the St. Clair knight—after his abduction.”

“And is he trustworthy?”

“I trust him, but I sense that might be no great recommendation to you. But if you mean can we believe what he says, then yes, we can. I told you, the monks trust him, and he is one of those fortunate people, in my profession, who possess the fine art of becoming invisible when they wish to remain unseen. He is among the knight monks constantly, always working, always unobtrusive, and always listening. The two monks he heard conversing about the treasure are the two called St. Agnan and Gondemare. Versace was in the stables, by sheer good fortune, sitting quietly among the fodder bales when they came in, and they thought they were alone. He heard them talking of chests of gold and silver coins, and cases of jewels, buried for a thousand years in the tunnels beneath the mount, in the very bowels of the temple. They were hoping that they might be able to use them to buy armor and weapons, and horses. Versace listened carefully, then remained where he was, in hiding, until long after they had gone. He had waited for more than a year for that moment and had no wish to jeopardize his safety by being too impatient. Then, once safely out of there, he came directly to me.”

“Did you reward him?”

“Aye, with what I had at hand. That was not much, but it would buy him a jug of wine. I had no concerns about that, either, for I know the man well. He is more closemouthed than I am. But I told him, too, that I would reward him more amply later.”

“I will want you to point him out to me later … He has no knowledge, I presume, that you are in my employ?”

“Why should he? He works for me and I see him well rewarded. That is all he cares about.”

“Excellent. Now, the two monks involved, what did you say their names are?”

“Archibald St. Agnan and Gondemare. He only has the one name.”

“Write those down for me. There is a pen and an inkwell there on the table.” The spy wrote down the two names while Odo finished pulling on his outer robe, a plain, brown garment that was entirely nondescript and would permit him to walk the city streets without being recognized and without drawing attention to himself. He took the piece of paper, read the names one more time, then folded it and placed it on the tabletop, covering it with the inkstand.

“Now, I want you to go back and talk to your man Versace again. Question him closely this time, and find out precisely what he overheard, every detail, every word, with particular reference to these tunnels beneath the temple. How do they gain access to the tunnels? That is most important, but be careful not to alert this fellow to how important it is. I would not normally presume to instruct you in your own profession, but pretend to be idly curious for more detail and find out everything there is to know.”

“Well, we know how they gain access, do we not? Through the tunnel, or the shaft, that they were excavating years ago.”

Odo sniffed. “That may be so. They said they were digging out a monastery in the rock, but I would wager they dug far deeper and farther than anyone could ever suspect. That will remain to be seen. In the meantime, however, I want to be sure we have gained every little piece of knowledge that your man Versace possesses. Come back to me in three days’ time, and I will give you final instructions. In the meantime I can promise you this: if all goes well here, you and I will share a large portion of this treasure equally. I will invite the brothers to a gathering, and then I will denounce them while they are with the Patriarch and have them arrested. You, in the meantime, will enter their tunnels and locate the treasure, and once you have done so, you will immediately take our portion, as much as you can comfortably handle, and set it aside where it will not be discovered. I will then accompany the King’s Guard on a search of the tunnels, and we will find what remains of the treasure and present it to the King, who will be more than happy with our work. Then, when everything has settled down and the treasure has been removed by the King’s men, you and I will divide what remains equally. Are we in agreement?”

The little man eyed him carefully, one eyebrow raised high, almost in mockery. “Aye, my lord Bishop, we are indeed.”

“So be it. Make you sure, then, that you drain your man Versace of everything he knows. Now go, and come back in three days.”

Odo watched the little man leave and then stood deep in thought for several minutes before taking a light, drab traveling cloak from the cabinet where he kept his episcopal robes. He threw it about his shoulders and made his way out of the building, relieved, in spite of all his planning, to encounter no one between his chambers and the main entrance. Once on the street, he looked in both directions, then quickly made his way across the main thoroughfare and into one of the numerous alleys between the surrounding buildings.

He walked quickly after that, keeping his face covered with the cowl of his cloak to ensure that he would not be recognized if he was seen by anyone he knew, and his confidence grew as he passed out of the precincts of the royal residence into the city proper, where he knew he would blend in with the crowds in the streets as he made his way towards the small house that the Princess Alice le Bourcq had taken for him, through some discreet and faceless intermediary. It stood on the outskirts of the city, close by the eastern wall but far enough from any of the main gates to afford him a measure of anonymity, even although he was obviously a Frank. There were enough ferenghi living in Jerusalem by that time for their presence to be accepted without rancor by the populace, and many of them were soldiers who, for one reason or another, mainly involving women and access to women, managed to maintain a private roof over their heads in addition to their formal barracks housing. The danger of his being recognized by any of those, he knew, was minuscule, especially when he was wearing shabby street clothing.

He was impatient to reach his destination and the fleshly delights that awaited him there, because thanks to the chaos that had descended upon Jerusalem with the arrival of the Prince of Antioch nigh on a month earlier, it had now been twelve days since he had last seen Arouna, the beautiful and depraved child mistress who had besotted him. He still could not quite bring himself to believe, after almost four months of delight that outstripped anything he had ever known with the exquisite Princess Alice, that Alice had thought sufficiently highly of him to have endowed him with such a reward in the first place, and had then gone out of her way to provide him with safe accommodations in which to conduct his secretive and highly perilous liaison with the young Arab girl. He knew, and in moments of tranquility could even acknowledge to himself, that he had much to thank the princess for, including this current opportunity to lay hands upon an unsuspected treasure. Had it not been for Alice, he would never have given a thought to the temple monks and their subterranean activities. He knew, too, despite what his vanity might prompt him to believe about his masculine attractiveness, that Alice could easily have simply dismissed him out of hand when she was done with him, denying him her favors and defying him to do anything about it. That she had not done so, and had in fact gone to great extremes to ensure that his pleasures and his lusts were amply provided for, in compensation for his loss of her personal attentions, had become more and more flattering with the passage of time and his growing fascination with Arouna, the astonishing replacement she had provided.