Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar (55 page)

“Y
ou failed.”

Will glanced around. Everard was standing on the battlements behind him. The priest’s face was sweaty with the climb, his breathing labored. “I know,” said Will, turning back to the view. The plains beyond the city walls were golden in the evening. They stretched east toward Galilee where the land rose to meet the sky and became obscured by distance. He had never seen beyond those veiled hills, though they were often in his thoughts.

“Baybars is alive and well,” added Everard.

“I said I know.”

“Although,” the priest continued, “one of his officers was killed in the attempt. A good friend of his, so I was told. The sultan has sent troops against the Assassins.” He came to the parapet and blew out his papery cheeks. “I do not envy them. His wrath will be severe.”

“It was their choice to accept the contract.”

“But it was you who approached them with the deal.”

“I know you’ll never forgive me for this, Everard,” said Will, facing the priest, “but someone had to do something. Your aim for peace is all very laudable, but if the other side won’t adhere to it, it is mere wishful thinking.”

“
My
aim?” said Everard sharply. “How you set yourself apart! As a member of the Brethren, you are part of a whole. Yes, we all have different ideas and opinions, but in the end when we speak we do so as one. Your recent behavior has been that of a vigilante.” His rasping voice hardened further. “Did you not listen to a word I said about de Ridefort and Armand? This is exactly the kind of action the Soul of the Temple was set up to prevent!”

“You cannot possibly compare me to them.”

“No? They used the power of the Anima Templi for their own ends, for their own personal gain. What were you doing when you signed your private deal with the Assassins and handed over our gold? Who were you serving?”

“Us,” replied Will, defiant, “the Temple, Christendom.”

Everard jabbed a finger at him. “Kill the man and make a martyr, that’s what I told you on the night you returned the book to me. Best for us? For Christendom? Do not delude yourself! You were doing it for yourself. Retribution for your dead father, wasn’t it?” The priest paused, his breathing ragged. He coughed deeply and hawked a plug of mucus over the side of the parapet. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you my own plans, William,” he said, still angry, but quieter now, fatigued by the outburst. “But then perhaps I am also to blame for not coming to you when I saw you were growing disillusioned with the slowness of our work.”

Will was surprised by the priest’s suggestion of personal culpability. “What plans?”

Everard sniffed and looked over at the orchards where sweet lemons were thick on the branches. “It is quite beautiful this time of year, isn’t it?” When Will didn’t respond, Everard turned to him. “For some time now, I have been in contact with the man your father was in talks with when he was here; a man amenable, unlike Baybars, to negotiation.”

“My father’s contact in the Mamluk army?”

“Yes.”

Will waited for the priest to continue. After a pause, he did.

“Your father’s contact was Amir Kalawun.”

“Kalawun?” said Will, shocked. “But he is Baybars’s main lieutenant? He led the invasion of Cilicia, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Armenians. How could he possibly be working for us?”

“At his heart, Kalawun is a man of peace. He wants what is best for his people and understands that war does not always provide that. Early on, he realized that Baybars would become a man of power. Initially, he maneuvered himself into Baybars’s trust to advance his own position. But in time he came to realize that the sultan was acting out of a personal hatred of us; a hatred that Kalawun saw could damage their own people as much as it could ours. He has no great love of the Franks, but he is sympathetic to the aims of the Anima Templi and knows his people could benefit as much as we could from continuing trade between our nations. Your father made a great impression on him, from what I have been told. In order to retain his position of influence within Baybars’s circle Kalawun had to continue to follow the orders he was given, even if those orders had begun to run contrary to his personal beliefs. As a man of peace he couldn’t have remained in this position, he had to prove himself as a man of war to do that. Peace sometimes has to be bought with blood.”

“But if this is true, what can Kalawun possibly do against Baybars? He might be in a position of power, but he isn’t sultan. How can he change anything?”

“Slowly,” responded Everard. “That is how it must be done. Kalawun will not move directly against Baybars, but already he is making provisions for a greater hold over the throne on Baybars’s death. Baybars’s heir, Baraka Khan, has recently become his son-in-law and Kalawun is seeking to influence the boy. If your plan had succeeded and Baybars had been murdered on the orders of a Frank, the Mamluks would have struck back at us with everything they had. It would have been another Hattin. In the weak position we are in, we would have most likely lost the little we have left to the fury of the Muslims and any chance at friendship, or peace. This way takes longer, but in the end it is the safer route and the one where less blood may be spilled in the future. If Baybars dies naturally, in battle or of old age, and if Kalawun can exert enough influence over his son, the next sultan could become an ally of ours. Imagine, William, what we can accomplish if we use our tongues, rather than our swords.”

Will stared at the priest. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? If I’d known what you were doing, I wouldn’t have…I didn’t know.” He shook his head, his shoulders slumping. “I didn’t want to know.”

“I’ve seen you up here before, staring into that distance.” Everard gestured to the plains. “You’ll find nothing out there, you once told me, but death and hatred. Is that what you are seeing?”

“I see nothing,” murmured Will. “What I’m looking for isn’t there.”

“Your father,” said Everard, nodding. “I’m not so blind I can’t see that. You look to Safed like a Muslim looks to Mecca. You have to let him go. This grief will eat you up inside.”

“I miss him, Everard,” said Will hoarsely. “I miss him so much.”

Everard said nothing, as Will put his head in his hands. After a moment, he reached out and gently grasped Will’s shoulders. “Look at me, William. I cannot give you your father back, no one can. But I can tell you that he did not die in vain. Because of what he achieved with Kalawun, we may yet see peace among the peoples of this world.”

“I never had the chance to tell him I was sorry.”

“I do not know what happened between you and your father. But I do know that he loved you. I only met him once, but that, more than anything else, was apparent. He didn’t come here to leave you, he came here to do something that very few men on this sorry earth have ever had the heart, or the courage to do. He didn’t come here for himself, for money, power or God. He came here because he believed in a better world; a world he wanted to help make reality and, for that, I praise him. As should you.”

“He never forgave me.”

“Have you considered that the only person you need forgiveness from is yourself? However you wronged your father, whatever you feel your sins are, even if he had absolved you, would you have truly been free of them?” Everard shook his head. “I am a priest, William. I can absolve a man in the eyes of God, but if he will not forgive himself he will live with his sins for the rest of his life, even if God, in the next one, will pardon him.”

“I don’t know how to forgive myself. I don’t know how to change. My friends, the men I speak to, they all know what they want. They fit in here. Simon is happy working in the stables. Robert might act the fool, but, ultimately, he is content to follow the rules and get on with it like everyone else. Even Garin seems more at peace in his cell than he ever was before. You were right in what you once said, about my becoming a knight for my father. I spent so many years waiting for him to see me in the mantle that when he died I realized I had never known what I wanted for myself. Then there was Elwen, but…When I look to tomorrow, Everard, I see nothing.”

“You do not need to know what is in tomorrow to live in today,” responded Everard briskly, “and you don’t have to see the future in order to walk toward it.”

“But what do I have today?”

“A chance to change the future.” Everard paused. “I cannot tell you how to forgive yourself, or to lay your guilt to rest. But I can offer you something to work toward. I didn’t just come up here to berate you. I came to offer you a choice. There is a meeting of the Brethren. We are welcoming our new Guardian.”

“Guardian? You found one?”

“Yes, at long last. You can come with me now and join us for the meeting, or I can release you from your bond.”

“From the Brethren you mean?”

“And from the Temple if you wish.” Everard shrugged. “I know you only helped me to retrieve the Book of the Grail because you wanted to become a knight and, as you’ve just admitted, you only wanted to become a knight for your father.”

“I didn’t help you just for that, Everard.”

Everard brushed his words aside with a wave of his hand. “And I don’t blame you for wanting to escape your apprenticeship. I know I played a great part in your frustrations. But it is long past time that you chose something for yourself. Preferably,” he added dryly, “something that won’t get us all killed. In the Book of the Grail, the knights guide Perceval through his quest, but in the end he alone must decide the final course of action that will bring about a reconciliation of the three faiths, or shatter the peace forever. He chooses reconciliation.” Everard’s lip curled. “But not before he makes a few mistakes. I leave it up to you, William. Work with us for the future, or find your path along some other road. But either way, walk forward.”

Will looked east toward the hills. Whilst they had been talking, the sun had set and the first star had appeared, far off and bright in the northern sky. The breeze was warm and smelled of olives, salt, hay and leather. Below, in the compound, he heard men calling to one another and the whinnying of horses. Fainter, from the city, he heard cattle in the marketplace, a bell clanging, a child’s laughter. All around him life continued. Its patterns were familiar, reassuring.

Everard was right; his father’s reasons for coming here were selfless. But he had known that already, back in Paris on the day Louis had agreed to take the Cross. Since then, that clarity and the purity of the love he had felt toward his father had been obscured by bitterness and by revenge. His own reasons for coming here had been ultimately selfish and by following them he had almost destroyed what his father had worked to achieve. But he had a chance to make it right. He
wanted
to make it right. He didn’t want more men to die, more sons to lose their fathers. His desire for vengeance, for blood, for war, had been the product of his own guilt and he had shunned the Anima Templi’s ideals, not because he didn’t believe, but because he hadn’t wanted to believe, hadn’t wanted to give up that chance for retribution. But the path to absolution, he knew, did not follow such a course. It lay in helping Everard and the Anima Templi achieve what had been his father’s wish, a wish, he now realized, looking out over the tranquil city, that was also his own.

“I want to stay.”

“Then we have work to do,” said Everard, not seeming at all surprised by his answer. “Come.”

Will let Everard lead him from the battlements. The moment of clarity had dissipated by the time he reached the courtyard, but the knowledge remained, like a pearl trapped in the core of his being, formed out of the sand and the grit. This was where he belonged. As he walked beside the priest, Will felt a renewed sense of purpose stir him. He had to live. That was all. He just had to live.

The Brethren rarely held a full council and then always in different places so as not to arouse attention from anyone in the preceptory. Today, they were holding it in the Seneschal’s quarters. Everard had managed to elect four new members, but as one of the original members had died last year they were still only six. They were all gathered by the time Will and Everard arrived.

The Seneschal, a powerfully built, prematurely bald man with a hot temper, opened the door. He inclined his head respectfully to Everard and glared at Will. When Everard had informed the Brethren of Will’s contract with the Assassins, the Seneschal had pressed for his immediate imprisonment. He was obviously not pleased that the two-month suspension, which he had called sentimental leniency, had ended.

Seated on stools around the sparse chamber were three other figures. There was a young Templar priest from the Kingdom of Portugal whom Everard had handpicked after noticing the youth’s keen study of the similarities between the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. A fresh-faced knight, born and bred in Acre’s diverse community, and an older knight who, like the Seneschal and Everard, remembered the days of Armand de Périgord.

There was, Will realized as he entered the chamber, one other figure in the room; a tall, dark-haired man dressed in a black cloak that was edged with rabbit fur. He was standing by the hearth, studying a map of the world on the wall, with Jerusalem at its center.

“William,” said Everard. “I would like you to meet the new Guardian of the Anima Templi. A man, who, I am certain, will bring as much value to our circle as his great-uncle before him. My liege,” he called, heading over to the hearth. “This is the young man I told you about.”

The figure turned. It was Prince Edward, son of King Henry III and heir to the throne of England.

Will recovered himself quickly enough to manage a bow. “My lord.”

Edward held out his hand. “It is an honor.”

Will shook the prince’s hand. Edward’s grip was strong, confident. “It is my honor to meet you again, my lord.”

“Again? I do not remember having met you before.”

“It was eleven years ago, at New Temple. You came with his majesty, King Henry, to a meeting with Humbert de Pairaud. I was bearing the shield of my master, Owein ap Gwyn.”