Well, Godfrey said loudly, that was worthy of a raised eyebrow, dont you think? Il Papa is an accomplished orator.
What did you expect, Goff? Payn had to shout to make himself heard. Think you he got to be Pope by being deaf and mute?
No, I dont, but he had me thinking, for a moment there, that I should rush away and fight the Turks like a good Christian knight anxious to please his bishop and earn a blessing or two. What did you think, Hugh?
Before Hugh could respond, the Counts right-hand man, Pepin, interrupted. His Grace requires your presence, gentlemen.
They followed Pepin through the cordon of guards surrounding the Counts party and found the Count himself among a group of his senior advisers, frowning and plucking at his lower lip. Although all of his advisers were looking at him, none of them were speaking, even among themselves. Pepin went directly to him and whispered in his ear, and the Count crooked a finger at the newcomers, then walked towards the high peak of the tent where his personal standard hung limp in the windless air. No one else moved to accompany them, and the Count opened the tent flap himself, holding it there while the three younger knights filed past him into the interior.
Well, he said, as soon as he had followed them inside, what did you think of that? He waited half a heartbeat, then added, Any one of you may speak, for I know youre all capable. Did the Pope stir your manly juices?
He was persuasive, my lord, Godfrey murmured.
And? Were you persuaded, St. Omer? Were any of you?
Not entirely, my lord. This was Payn.
The Count raised one eyebrow slightly. Why not?
Payn shrugged, not yet ready to respond, and Hugh spoke up.
I believe its a matter of learning, my lord. Our studies have shown us that anything related to, or instigated by, the Church exists for the benefit of the Church and its clerics only. That is why my friends and I hesitated in the first place.
A matter of learning, you say. Have you learned nothing, then, about our Order?
My lord? I fear
Aye, you fear you dont understand. I fear the same, that you do not understand. Now here is what I require you to do. I want you and your friends here to make your way directly to the bishops surrounding the Popes dais and there volunteer for the Popes new war. Each of you will take one of the white cloth crosses they are passing out and sew it onto your surcoat, immediately, this night, so that tomorrow you will be plainly seen and recognized as one of the Popes Holy Warriors.
Hugh was astounded, and he could see his friends were, too, but the Count held up his hand to silence all of them. Think! Think of the full name of our Order. Think now of what the Pope is suggesting. Think next of how long our Order has been planning a return to its place of origin. And think about where the Popes war will lead. Now, do you not think a trip to Jerusalem might prove to be worthwhile for a member of our brotherhood?
And thus it was that Hugh de Payens and his two friends were among the very first knights in Christendom to take the cloth cross from the hands of Pope Urban himself.
Hugh sewed the cross onto his surcoat that very day, aware of, but steadfastly refusing to consider, the ironies involved in their ancient and secretive Orders instant commitment to the new Christian cause. It was sufficient for him, and his friends, to know that Count Hugh had excellent reasons underlying the swift decision he had taken, and Hugh believed that he would be informed of those reasons when, and not before, the time was right. And so, being the man he was, he threw himself into his new duties and permitted himself to be swept up into the frenzy of the moment, so that, like almost everyone else in Clermont on that occasion, he began his personal odyssey to the Holy Land in a state of fevered commitment verging on ecstasy, screaming the instantly coined catchphrase Deus le veult! with everyone else.
Deus le veult! God wills it! It was a phrase Hugh de Payens would grow first to distrust, then to detest.
SEVEN
The hysteria unleashed on that final day of the Council of Clermont took everyone by surprise, including Pope Urban himself. He had been working hard for months, meticulously preparing what he would say to the assembly, and he had spent weeks struggling to find the very best way of couching his emotion-laden appeal so that it would be as close to irresistible as he could possibly make it to the hard-headed people for whom he intended it. Urban had hoped to spark enthusiasm for a real war, in a glorious cause, among the bored and fractious young Frankish knights and their aristocratic leaders, knowing that if he could win the commitment and involvement of the Franks, then all the other knights and lords of Christendom would run to join them. That had been Urbans sole objective, and in launching his initiative at the council in Clermont, he could have had no idea of what would happen.
The mood of the people, comprising equal parts of hopelessness, disillusionment, and despair, allied with the appalling conditions of poverty and moral deprivation under which they lived and their need for something tangible and visible in which they could believe, combined on that Tuesday afternoon, the twenty-eighth of November, 1095, to create the perfect tinder for the spark of Urbans impassioned appeal. The result was instant chaos, an incredible and utterly spontaneous explosion of raw emotion and popular enthusiasm that embraced every person present, irrespective of sex or social station, and then spilled outward to infect everyone who heard about it but had not been there to witness it. What happened was inconceivable and unprecedented, and within hours of the start of it, cool clerical heads were summoned to begin assessing how the groundswell should be handled and controlled, for it was plain, even from the outset, that something extraordinary had been set in motion. Special committees were established by the Pope and his clerics to accommodate the incredible outpouring of popular emotion and enthusiasm for the Popes Holy War, and many things began to fall inexorably into place. The Popes original call to arms was modified to ensure that the campaign to free the Holy Lands would be carefully coordinated to begin nine full months later, in August 1096, once the harvest was safely gathered in and stored.
While all of that feverish activity was going on among the legions of the Popes clerical functionaries, the Governing Council of the Order of Rebirth had carefully analyzed the opportunity presented to them so unexpectedly by Pope Urban, and had begun to lay extensive plans to cover every contingency imaginable in ensuring that they would, in fact, achieve a return to the Holy Land. The Popes campaign might fail; the armies, marching overland for the most part, might never reach the sacred places; or if they did, they might fail to oust the Muslim infidels, who had occupied the Holy City for more than four hundred years. But the Orders first priority was to ensure that if the Popes armies were successful, and if Jerusalem were freed, the Order of Rebirth would have men and resources in situ, ready to do what must be done.
Count Hugh knew from the outset that he himself could not ride out to the Popes war that year, simply because of the pressure of his own duties in Champagne, where he had not only recently married but also launched an ambitious program of improvements to his county, and so he instructed Sir Hugh de Payens and his fellow brethren in the Order, along with all the other, ordinary men from his County of Champagne who wished to ride to the Popes Holy War, to prepare for their time away from home, commanding them to attend to their various responsibilities, to set their houses in order and arrange their marital and domestic affairs with care before leaving.
Then, at the appointed time, in October 1096, he dispatched a battle-ready expeditionary force to join the army commanded by Raymond, the veteran Count of Toulouse and Count Hughs own sponsor and superior in the Order of Rebirth. Hugh de Payens and his two friends, the latter having acquired reluctant but dutiful permission from their wives, were proud to ride with Count Raymond, and Arlo rode with them, claiming that right as Hughs lifelong personal attendant and bodyguard. All three of the triumvirate were happy that he had done so, for as Arlo himself remarked, had he not elected to go with them, the three of them alone would have been easy prey for the vultures within the army. Besides which, none of them had the slightest knowledge of how to cook and they would doubtless have starved to death in the midst of plenty.
From Toulouse, they marched southeastward to the Dalmatian coast and the port of Dyrrachium, where they took ship across the Adriatic Sea and then marched through Thessalonica towards Constantinople. They arrived in April 1097, as one of the four great armies from Christendom that arrived in the Byzantine capital that year, to be welcomed warmly by the Emperor Alexius, whose territories and possessions had been ravaged by the Turks in recent years and who was now ecstatic over his fortunate friendship with Pope Urban.
After remaining in Constantinople for only a short space of time, they were ushered across the Hellespont by Alexiuss people into Turkey, where the four armies assembled into one great force, and Hugh and his two friends found themselves highly impressed to be part of a remarkably well-ordered army of forty-three hundred knights and thirty thousand infantry that struck out on foot shortly thereafter to cross Turkey and strike at the Muslim principalities of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel itself.
Everything went according to plan. They captured Nicea and Edessa, then won a great battle at Dorylaeum, and after that they marched across the brutalizing Anatolian desert to besiege the enormous city of Antioch.
That episode provided an object lesson in humility for all of them, and the three friends took note of how their expectations had been proved to be ludicrous. They had all heard of Antioch, a fabulous city in the mystical East, and they approached it expecting to find a biblical land flowing with milk and honey. Instead they found an overcrowded entrapment, a cesspool of filth and starvation that had been in the grip of brutal famine for years, and where inhuman conditions were made unbearable by chronic foul weather. From his first glimpse of the city, Hugh had known that the Frankish army could not hope to encircle it. It covered three square miles and was protected by high, thick walls, fortified by four hundred and fifty towers. Behind the city proper, but still within its walls, rose Mount Silpius, crowned with a citadel a thousand feet above the plains where Hugh and his fellows sat. Almost six thousand men and knights died of hunger during the eight months they spent outside Antiochs walls.
Six thousand men Six thousand The awe in Montdidiers voice reflected the stunned expressions on the faces of the others who sat beside him, staring into the fire they had built against the chill of the desert night. The fuel was smashed furniture, looted from an abandoned house in the city, and now they sat in front of it as if unwilling to look at one another, their minds occupied with the tidings they had just heard. Montdidier spoke again, looking this time at St. Omer, who had brought the word to them.