Jack Whyte - Knights of the Black and White

There was one more member of their group—one might have called him the fourth in the triumvirate, if such a thing were not logically impossible. As Sir Hugh de Payens, Hugh had an associate called Arlo, who was nominally and by birth a servant, but the two had been together for so long that Hugh simply accepted Arlo as a constant presence in his life, sharing most of his thoughts and activities first as a childhood friend and companion, then later as a classmate in learning to read and write, and later still, as both boys grew towards manhood, as his assistant, squire, bodyguard, and companion-at-arms.

The two of them were even closer to each other in age than Hugh was to Godfrey and Payn, and Arlo’s father, Manon de Payens, had served Baron Hugo all his life. His eldest son, Arlo, had been born within three months and two hundred paces of young Hugh, and from the day of his birth it had been understood that Arlo, who also called himself de Payens because of his birth within the barony, would serve the future Sir Hugh as his father had served Baron Hugo. Since then the two had been inseparable as boys and as men, sharing from the very outset of their lives that unique relationship, based upon total trust and mutual loyalty, that sometimes springs up between master and retainer. They had grown to know each other so well that frequently they had no need even to speak to each other, so close were they to thinking as one.

The Order of Rebirth was the sole topic proscribed among the four, never mentioned by any of the others in Arlo’s hearing, and that had been an unforeseen development, starting at the moment of Hugh’s first encounter with the Order. It was the only aspect of his new status that he did not enjoy wholeheartedly, since it meant that, after eighteen years of sharing every aspect of his life openly and fully with Arlo, he now found himself constrained to keep secrets from him. That he could understand and even justify the need for such secrecy did nothing at all to lessen his regret, but he had no other option than to accept that Arlo was not, and could never be, a member of the Order.

His dilemma resolved itself in a way that he could never have anticipated. He had been convinced that Arlo suspected nothing of what was going on, but there came a day when, for one reason after another, Hugh had had to shut Arlo out not merely once but three times in a single afternoon, and he grew angry at himself for not being able to do so less obviously, for it was clear that Arlo knew something untoward was going on. That night, however, in the period after dinner and before lights out, Arlo himself brought the matter up, in his own blunt, straightforward manner. It was a cool evening and they were outside, sitting alone by a well-established fire close to the stables, sharpening blades, Arlo with Hugh’s sword and Hugh himself with a long, pointed dagger.

“Had a busy afternoon, today, didn’t you?” Arlo spoke without raising his head from what he was doing. “You were scuttling around like a mouse in a miller’s storehouse, frowning and biting your tongue all day.”

Hugh stiffened as he wondered what was coming next.

“Days like that come and go, for all of us.” Arlo straightened his back and laid the hilt of the sword against his knee before turning to look at Hugh.

“You’re grumpy and you’re upset. I can see that … Everyone can see it. But you’ve been getting worse, that way at least, ever since you attended that big Gathering a few months ago.” He held out the sword and squinted at the blade, looking for rust spots. “D’you know why I didn’t attend that Gathering?” He glanced back just in time to see Hugh blink in astonishment at hearing such a question even asked. “’Course you do. I wasn’t invited, that’s why. And was glad to have it that way … or I would have been glad, if I’d thought about it. It just isn’t my place to attend such things. I wouldn’t feel right, sitting there gawping among all you knights in all your fine clothes. Just the same way as you wouldn’t feel right sitting around the kitchens with the scullions and the rest of us, eating the food we sometimes eat.”

Hugh was frowning at him. “I am not sure I understand what you’re saying, Arlo.”

“Why not? It’s plain enough.” Arlo expelled a breath. “You and I are friends, Hugh, but before anything else, we’re also master and servant—you the Baron’s son, and me the Baron’s servant’s son. I never lose sight of that, but sometimes you do, and you shouldn’t. Not ever. So now you’re a man and you have new things to think about, things to which I can’t be privy. I can sometimes see you fretting over it, like today. Well, you shouldn’t, because I don’t fret over it and I don’t want to know whatever it is that keeps you so agitated. It’s not my place to know about such things, and that pleases me.” He looked Hugh straight in the eye. “I’m quite happy doing the things I have to do. I have enough of them to keep me occupied, I know how to do them all, and I can do them in my sleep if I have to. D’you hear what I’m saying to you?”

“Aye.” Hugh had begun to smile. “You are telling me to mind my own affairs and keep them to myself, and to leave you to yours. I hear you.”

“Good, because you’re going to cut a finger off there if you don’t start looking to what you’re about.”

WHEN THE TIME FINALLY CAME for Godfrey to marry Hugh’s sister, Louise—Godfrey was almost twenty-one years old by that time, and tardy in taking up his spousal duties—the event had been so long awaited, its inevitability accepted, that it barely occasioned comment from Hugh and Payn; Louise had always been more of a friend than a sister to Hugh, and her relationship to Payn had been remarkably similar, in that they, too, were like brother and sister, so both men knew well that Godfrey’s marriage to her would make little difference to the closeness they shared with him.

What no one expected, however, was that Payn, around the same time, would wed the Lady Margaret St. Clair. The two had met when Margaret accompanied her father on his visit to Champagne from England to attend Hugh’s Raising, and although Payn had been far more enamored of Margaret than she of him, it became evident, much later, that he had none the less impressed her very favorably. So much so, as Hugh and his friends later discovered, that the Lady Margaret had done everything in her power, from the moment she returned home to England, to persuade her father to return with her to the civilized world of Champagne once again.

Sir Stephen, whose wife had died many years earlier, was utterly defenseless against both the wiles and the wishes of his only daughter, and had been so since the day of her birth, but he was unable to indulge her in this instance because of his duties and responsibilities to the King of England, William Rufus, son of William I, the Conqueror. But circumstances soon conspired with those 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.