Jack Whyte - Knights of the Black and White

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 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.

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 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. 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 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.”

“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?”