Hugh looked in amazement at Payn, who opened his eyes and spread his hands in a silent shrug.
What should surprise you about that? Payn said. You know me well, my friend, better than any other. I am a knight, and that is all I wish to be. I am a warrior by birth, a fightera brawling, ignorant loutand happy to be one. I have no time, and no wish, to fill my life with the kind of mystic, smoke-shrouded things that excite you all this mummery about the secrets and mysteries within the Order. To us its all babble and bluster and we dont understand a word of it.
Crustys right, Hugh. Godfrey was nodding solemnly. We dont know what to believe, but we both believe that you know whats right, and if you tell us what that is, well believe you.
Hugh had abandoned any pretense of laziness soon after Godfrey launched into this astonishing plea, and now he sat straight-backed and pale-faced, gazing at his two friends from wide, unblinking eyes. He made to speak, but although his mouth opened and his lips moved, nothing emerged. He pushed himself to his feet. Godfrey glanced worriedly at Payn and then spoke up again.
Hugh, were not asking you to sin, or to betray anything. This is very straightforward. Among the three of us, you are the one who knows most about this kind of matter. All were asking you to do is tell us what you think, what you believe, based upon what youve learned since you joined the Order. Thats all.
Thats all? Hughs voice sounded different to his own ears, husky and throaty. Thats all? Youre asking me to be your priest, your spiritual guide, to direct you towards salvation. I cant do that, Goff. I dont know where salvation lies, even for myself.
Thats not true, Hugh. Payns voice was urgent. All we are asking you to do is talk to us, about what you think might be true. We believe the people we know within the Order, and we believe what they tell us. But we cannot understand any of it, once we move outside the ritual rooms. The Order is a secret world, Hugh. Out here, in the real world, among people who are not of the Order, we dont know who to trust who to believe.
Hugh de Payens stood there in the meadow, his back to the sinking sun, and looked at his two friends through new eyes, seeing the doubt, confusion, and misery in their faces.
I have to walk, he said. I cant think, standing here. Walk with me, and well see what comes into my mind.
Some time later, on the edge of a fast-flowing brook, he stopped and stood, his friends beside him, gazing down into the still waters by the bankside, searching for trout. You asked me what I believe, but what I heard you asking me to do was to tell you the truth. Thats why I was angry at first because I dont know what the truth is. Everything I believe might be completely wrong.
He turned away from the water then, and looked at each of his friends in turn. So, he continued, I am going to tell you what I believe. But I absolutely do not want either one of you to think, under any circumstances, that Im convinced that what I tell you is the truth. Do you understand that? I am not telling you the truth, because as God is my witness, I do not know what the truth is, or even where it resides.
I have to walk, he said. I cant think, standing here. Walk with me, and well see what comes into my mind.
Some time later, on the edge of a fast-flowing brook, he stopped and stood, his friends beside him, gazing down into the still waters by the bankside, searching for trout. You asked me what I believe, but what I heard you asking me to do was to tell you the truth. Thats why I was angry at first because I dont know what the truth is. Everything I believe might be completely wrong.
He turned away from the water then, and looked at each of his friends in turn. So, he continued, I am going to tell you what I believe. But I absolutely do not want either one of you to think, under any circumstances, that Im convinced that what I tell you is the truth. Do you understand that? I am not telling you the truth, because as God is my witness, I do not know what the truth is, or even where it resides.
He waited until each of his friends had nodded in agreement, and then he walked away from them without looking back, allowing his next words to trail back over his shoulder.
I believe in Jesus, he began. I believe he lived and was crucified. But I do not believe he was the physical son of God, not now. I believe he was crucified for his political activities against the Romans and their alliesHerod and his clan. I believe he was a fighter in the cause of a free and unified Jewish nation, free of foreign occupation, and free to worship their own God in their own way. I also believe, because our Order has convinced me by showing me evidenceand not simply telling me about it and ordering me to believethat Jesus was a member of the priestly sect known as the Essenes, whom some called Nazoreans, and that they formed a community that they called the Jerusalem Community, a brotherhood of what we would call monks todaya community of dedicated souls living in isolation and in voluntary poverty, practicing chastity and self-denial and striving to make themselves worthy in the eyes of their God, who was a stern and vengeful God with whom they held a covenant, an understanding that they would live their lives in strict commitment to His expectations Do you want to ask me any questions about any of that?
He walked on in silence, waiting, and when nothing came from behind him, he began again. I believe that Jesus was crucified and died. And after his death, his brother James, whom men called James the Just, continued to head their commune until his death. James was murdered on the steps of the Temple, and his deathfar more so than the death of his brother Jesuscaused insurrection and rebellion, leading directly to the last Jewish war against Rome, when Titus destroyed the Jewish nation and those few who survived the destruction were scattered to the ends of the earth.
He stopped suddenly and turned on his heel to look back at them. That is what I believe, and none of it should surprise you, for you have heard it all before, from your sponsors and tutors in the Order. We have evidence, within our Order, for all of it, but it might not all be true. Or it might be totally false, its interpretation lost over the centuries since our families first came here, after their flight from Jerusalem. In my own heart and mind, however, I believe it. But now comes the hard part. And its the part, I know, that causes all the grief you feel over this.
He started walking again, more slowly this time, and his companions walked on either side of him, their heads bent.
All our families, all of them who do not belong to the Brotherhood of the Order, are Christians, and that is what makes this all so difficult, because I also believe that the Christian Church, as it exists today, is built upon a myth created by the man called Paul. Paul was a gentile, we all know that, but nobody really knows today what a gentile was. Do you know, Goff? Godfrey wrinkled his nose and shook his head, and Hugh smiled. Well, a gentile was anyone who was not a Jew, and to the Jews, that was all that mattered. I believe that Paul was a friend of Rome, which is a spy, in the pay of the Empire, and I believe that he was an opportunist of the first magnitude. He never knew Jesusalthough he knew the brother, James, and James knew Paul, and disliked and distrusted him.
I believe, absolutely, that Paul somehow heard mention of the Raising ceremony practiced by the Essenes of the Community. He could never have witnessed it, for the Essenes rites were practiced in secret and Paul was twice an outsidera gentile and uninitiatedbut I believe most certainly he heard of it, and he misunderstood everything he heard, except the most important partthe outline of the premise involved. He took the idea of resurrection that had been practiced in secret for centuries by learned men, and from it, and around his gross misunderstanding of it, he built an edifice that now rules the world in which we all live. He even invented a name for it after a time. He called it Christianity, based upon the Greek name he eventually dreamed up for the man Jesusthe Christus.
Then, once he perceived the success of his message and could see where he might go with it, he stripped it, his fundamental idea, of everything Jewish that might be offensive to the Romans, and he constructed his new religion with great skill to appeal to Roman tastes, traditions, and superstitions, incorporating most of the favorite myths of Rome, and of Greece, and of Egypt, and all their gods.
He took the story of the virgin birth, for one thing, from several sources. Mithras, the Roman soldiers god, for example, was born in a stable, delivered of a virgin. And Horus, the god-son of Isis and Osiris, was born of a virgin, too, and destined to die to expiate the sins of mankind. Paul named Jesus the Son of God in that tradition, and cited his resurrection as the sign of his divinity. Paul the saint made Jesus the Christ an immortal. But the most blatantly untrue thing he did was to deny Jamess existence as Jesus brother by denying his existence and transferring the power of the founding bishop to Peter the Rock.
Tell us about this Mithras, Godfrey said. Ive never heard of him.
Hugh smiled. Not surprising. He was a very powerful god in his day, the Lord of Light, worshipped by most of the soldiery of the Empire as the Soldiers God, but he was soon absorbed completely into Christianity and disappeared. Even the Cross that Christians revere today was histhe white, four-armed cross of Mithras, and it was an ancient symbol even before Mithras. It certainly was not the Cross that Jesus died on.
What are you saying? Payn sounded scandalized. Are you telling us you dont believe Jesus was crucified?
No, Crusty, I am not. Jesus was crucified. There is no doubt in my mind of that. But he was crucified on the only kind of cross the Romans used, which was a simple T shape, with no upright above the crossbar.
Once again he looked from Godfreys face to Payns. Now thatall that Ive said about Mithrasis true. That evidence exists, and although it has been hidden from casual sight by the Church, they cannot destroy it, much as they might like to. It is historical fact backed by incontrovertible and indestructible evidence.
He looked squarely at each of his friends in turn, then twisted his lips into a grimace before continuing, his tone and demeanor more serious than at any time since this had begun.