Sure enough, the place was shrouded in darkness, the only light being a dim glow from a single hanging lamp that seemed to be a great distance away from where he stood, although he suspected that was probably an illusion. Hugh stopped on the threshold, blinking his eyes and willing them to adjust quickly to the available light, and as they did so, he began to discern vague shapes and patterns in the surrounding darkness, the easiest of which to see was the pattern of the black and white squares of the tessellated floor. Most of what he could see, however, remained an indistinct collection of draped and shrouded shapes, one of which, close by where he stood, might have been a heavy, ornate chair.
“Stay you here now and don’t move around, lest you blunder into things and knock something over. There is much in this room of great value, and your future brethren would not be pleased were anything to be broken through your clumsiness. I have some things to see to, and will return as soon as I am done. But I am not going anywhere. I will be here all the time and you will hear me moving about. You may not be able to see me, or what I am doing, but then you should not even be here, so nothing is lost … unless, as I say, you knock something over, in which case we will both find ourselves in dire circumstances.”
A short time later, the knight returned and led Hugh by the hand across a broad floor until they came to a row of seats, where he told Hugh to sit down, and then proceeded to catechize him on the questions and answers Hugh had been rehearsing with his father and grandfather for months. Hugh felt strange, sitting there in the darkness and responding by rote to the arcane questions being thrown at him. Many of them—questions and answers both—he did not understand at all, reciting his answers verbatim as he had been taught them and trusting blindly that their meaning would be revealed to him in due course, as his mentors had promised they would. Now, however, sitting in the darkness and going through his exercises with the massive knight who was to be his sponsor, he felt stranger than he ever had before, excited and apprehensive at the same time, and acutely aware of who and what he was at that moment, because he knew that, as the result of some mysterious process, he would never again be the same man after the events of the following night.
He became aware then that St. Clair had said nothing since he answered the last question, apparently having no more to ask, and the knight confirmed that by clearing his throat softly and quietly saying, “I’m impressed, lad. I don’t think I have ever heard a student answer better. I’ve heard many as good, but none better. I can see why your father is pleased with you. If you perform like that tomorrow night, you will have no difficulty with any part of the ceremonies. Now, ask me a question, anything you like.”
“About the Gathering, you mean?”
“About anything you like, I said.”
“Well, my lord, there is one thing. What … what does a Raising mean? What is it?”
“Ha! I should have known you’d ask me the only question I can’t answer. I can’t tell you, boy. Not that. But come midnight tomorrow, you’ll know anyway, and you’ll know, too, why I could not tell you tonight. Now ask me something else.”
“Well, sir, now that the other brethren know me as a student, some of them have been warning me that the Raising is dangerous, that there are great risks built into it. But I suspect that’s only their way of cozening me, and I don’t want to waste my question by asking about that …”
“Then ask me something you do want to ask about.”
Hugh nibbled at his upper lip, and then blurted, “Why me, my lord? Why not my brother?”
“Ah, so you know about that. I was wondering if you did.” The dimly outlined shape across from Hugh stirred in its seat. “Who told you about it?”
“My father, and my grandfather, too. They warned me not to speak of it to William, because he knows nothing of the reality of the Gatherings and does not belong to the brotherhood. I asked them what brotherhood they were talking about, since William is my brother, but they would tell me nothing more. They said I would understand everything after my own Raising, and that until then they could say no more. But they warned me that if I were to speak a word of this to William I would forfeit my own chance of belonging. I am not sure I want to belong to any brotherhood—and I care not what it does or what it means to others—if it requires me to deny my own brother.”
St. Clair exhaled loudly. “There’s no denial involved, Hugh, but I understand what you mean. I was in your shoes myself once, facing the exact same circumstances and for exactly the same reasons. My elder brother was passed over, just as William was.”
“But for what reason?” There was anguish in the young man’s voice. “There’s nothing wrong with my brother. William is not a bad man, he is simply … young.”
“Aye, young. That he is. And weak, too, whether you care to admit that or not.” The voice coming from the darkness was heavy now, speaking slowly and clearly. “He is your elder by two years, Hugh, and you are already years senior to him in rank and prowess. How long can a boy continue to be a boy before becoming a man? Your William, like my own brother Richard before him, is still attempting, successfully it seems, to avoid achieving manhood. And manhood is what this is mainly about, Hugh.”
“Aye, perhaps it is, but William will one day be Baron de Payens.”
“And you will not. Do you resent that?”
Hugh blinked, surprised that he should be asked.
“No, of course not. I have never thought to be Baron. It simply seems to me that if he is judged fit to be the Baron of Payens, he should be deemed good enough to join this brotherhood of yours.”
“Not at all.” St. Clair’s voice was flat. “There is no judgment involved in his being your father’s heir. That is sheer chance. As firstborn, he is blessed among your father’s sons, but he is not necessarily best among them. Should William prove to be a weak baron, or a foolish or even a tyrannical one, any damage that he does may be undone by his successor. On the other hand, should he prove to be a weak member of our brotherhood, the damage he could do might well destroy it.
“The event for which you are training now—your Raising—will grant you entry into the ranks of an amazing comradeship, Hugh, a fraternity dedicated to great ideals and the protection of dire secrets. Its roots are ancient and its history is shrouded in the earliest beginnings of antiquity, and you know nothing about it. Can you guess why you know nothing?”
Hugh shook his head, realizing as he did so that St. Clair probably could not see him. “No.”
“Because it is secret, lad, and it has been that way since its beginnings. Secrecy is essential to its continued existence, and so we who guard its secrets must be constantly vigilant, particularly among ourselves. I tell you this now only because, having listened to you at your work, I know you will pass tomorrow’s test with no difficulty, and that means you will be admitted to our fraternity tomorrow anyway. No one—no one, Hugh—who is loose-lipped can ever be admitted to our brotherhood. The danger of his drinking or whoring and then talking indiscreetly is too great. Your brother William drinks too much, and when he drinks even a little, he talks too much. He is a splendid fellow, a good companion with whom to share a flask of wine or a meal and a fit of laughter over amusing and trivial things, but he is weak willed, intemperate, quarrelsome at times, and always too talkative and indiscreet, and thus he was deemed unworthy of belonging.”
“He was deemed? By whom? Who would be arrogant enough to deem the son of Baron Hugo de Payens unworthy?”
St. Clair sighed. “Your own tutors, lad. His father, the Baron de Payens himself, and his grandfather, the lord Baldwin of Montdidier. One person per family, Hugh, that’s all that is permitted. One son from each generation of each of the families involved may be initiated into the mysteries, and the selection has nothing to do with the laws of primogeniture. The first boy born into a family will inherit, if he lives. That is the law. But the boy chosen from among his siblings to be of our brotherhood is chosen by merit, not by any accident of birth, timing or prec
edence, and therefore all the sons of all the families are watched closely by all the elders. There is no room for error or for carelessness.”
He held up an open palm to forestall Hugh before he could interrupt. “I know what you are going to say—how can they judge such things? Well, eighteen is the youngest age at which a new member may join, and by then he has been closely watched and judged for suitability for years. Thus, if a family has seven sons, born even two years apart, and none of them shows distinctive and definitive qualifications for membership, the elders may simply defer making a choice among the seven until sufficient time has passed to form a judgment on the youngest one. The oldest boy will be fourteen when the seventh is born. By the time the youngest is eighteen, the eldest will still be only thirty-two years old, should the final choice revert upon him. But even then, if the elders are unable to decide, they may simply invite no one from that generation to join. Ours is a secret fraternity, so no one who is not of the brotherhood would know what had been done, and therefore no one would be slighted or offended. It would not be the first time that had ever happened. There are sufficient families to generate an intake for every generation, and a passed-over generation may easily provide worthy members the next time around.”
“But—” Hugh bit off his response before it could emerge.
“But what? What were you going to say?”
“What would happen if the elders judged two or more members of the same generation of a family to be worthy of admission?”
Hugh could hear the smile in St. Clair’s voice as the knight responded, “Then the family involved would have produced a fine crop of sons. It happens often, Hugh, far more so than you might think, but nevertheless, only one from each family is admitted in a generation. Therefore, as you can see, the matter of the final choice is one of delicacy and fine judgment, involving great debate and deliberation.”
“Who are these elders, then?”
St. Clair stretched and stood up, the smile still evident in his voice, even though Hugh could not see his face. “They change from year to year, depending on who dies and who survives, and that, my young friend, must be your tenth and last question, since I permitted you only one.”
“One more then, my lord, a brief one, if it please you. How long is it since you were Raised, and has it truly made a difference to your life?”
Hugh sensed the knight’s shape grow still in the darkness, and when the deep voice spoke again it was quieter than it had been before. “I was eighteen, the age you are now, and that was a long time ago … twenty-three years and more. As for whether it made a difference to my life, I must say that it has. Not because it generated any major change that I could identify with certainty, but because of all I have learned since, simply through belonging. I can tell you honestly that I believe myself to be a better man because of what the brotherhood has taught me, but more than that I cannot say until you yourself have been admitted to the fraternity.” A sound from somewhere in the surrounding darkness made the knight look around him. “Come now, our brethren here are growing impatient to be gone, for they have been working down here all day, preparing for tomorrow’s ceremonies. Besides, it must be close to dinnertime.”
Together the two men retraced their steps until they passed through the last pair of doors and found themselves in the pit again, at the bottom of the wooden stairs. The torches in the sconces along the wall were beginning to gutter audibly and would soon burn themselves out, but everyone down here on this hidden level would have departed before then, and the stairs would have been removed and the stair-well disguised by the false flooring above. Neither man said another word until they reached the upper floor where they had met, and as Hugh collected his sword from Sir Stephen’s waiting guard, the knight inclined his head graciously to his godson, bidding him farewell.
Before they could part, however, they were interrupted by the sound of young female voices calling their names, and Lady Louise de Payens, Hugh’s younger sister, came gliding towards them with her best and dearest friend, Lady Margaret St. Clair, Sir Stephen’s fifteen-year-old daughter, who had arrived with him from England the previous day. Extending a hand to each of the girls, Sir Stephen greeted them with an enthusiasm that might have surprised more than a few of the men who looked up to him as a paragon of stern military virtue. Before the girls could tug him away with them in the direction of the guest quarters, he pulled them to a standstill, gripping their wrists tightly, one in each hand, and using the pressure of his fingers to bid them silently wait until he had finished his dealings with Louise’s brother.
“I will see you at the appointed time tomorrow, godson. On the other matter, the one you did not want to waste a question on before, look at it through the eyes of the tutors with whom you have been working, and ask yourself if they would endanger you in any way. The lads are teasing you, as you suspected. It’s all a part of learning to belong, and of earning your place. You’ll survive.” He swung away to face the girls. “And now, young ladies, I am yours to command.” The girls called goodbye to Hugh, then led Sir Stephen away, each of them holding one of his hands now, and neither of the two men had noticed the glance that passed between the girls as they listened to what the knight had said to Hugh.
TWO
By the following afternoon, with less than an hour remaining between him and the test he must undergo, Hugh de Payens was beginning to doubt that he knew anything at all, more than half convinced that he must be suffering some kind of dementia, since his mind seemed to him to be no longer the one he had grown up with. Faced with what seemed like an inter-minable wait before he was hauled in to face his inquisitors, he had attempted to distract himself by reviewing the answers to the questions he would be asked, but to his horror he was unable to recall a single word of what he had fought so hard, and for so long, to learn. Not only was he unable to remember any of the responses, he was unable even to recall the basic catechism of questions that his father and grandfather had been hurling at him for months. Frustrated and suddenly close to panic, he imagined he could feel his entire skull, immense and empty, vaulted and grotesquely domed between his ears, too large and hollow, like an empty, echoing cavern. He wanted to weep, and a small voice inside him was telling him insistently to run away, but he did neither. He simply sat where he was, staring straight ahead and trying to empty his mind of everything that occupied it, as he waited to be summoned to the Gathering.
He became aware that he was no longer alone and raised his eyes to see Payn Montdidier, one of his closest friends and a cousin on his mother’s side, smiling down at him, his amber eyes gentle and filled with humor. “Ready?” he asked, and Hugh stood up, blinking in mild disbelief.
“Crusty! I didn’t expect to see you here! You can have no idea how glad it makes me, my friend—a familiar face. I have been dying here, by inches, of anticipation, mixed with terror.”
Montdidier laughed. “I’ve come to know that mixture well since yesterday, so perhaps we may help each other.”
Hugh frowned. “I don’t follow. What d’you mean, since yesterday?”
“Anticipation and terror. It hit me for the first time yesterday, when I saw your sister’s new friend. Who is she?”
Hugh’s eyes went wide with surprise. “You mean Margaret? Louise’s friend from England?”
“From England?”
“Aye, the tall, dark-haired girl.”
“Wearing a bright yellow gown?”
“She was wearing yellow when I saw her yesterday, with her father and Louise. Is that the lady you mean?” He saw Montdidier’s wide-eyed nod, and grinned. “She’s the Lady Margaret St. Clair, daughter of my godfather, Sir Stephen. What nonsense are you spouting about anticipation and terror?”
Montdidier’s face had fallen at the mention of St. Clair’s name, and now he shook his head. “Anticipation of meeting her, and terror that she might ignore me … And if she’s the daughter of Sir William St. Clair, she will ignore me, most undoubtedly.”
&n
bsp; For the first time in days, Hugh had completely forgotten about the ordeal that lay ahead of him, captivated by the look on his friend’s face and the emotions that were there to be read by anyone who cared to look. He was about to laugh, then realized that his friend might take his wonderment as ridicule and be hurt. “Crusty, are you smitten? And after seeing the lady only once? I have known Margaret for years. She is no beauty, but—”
“She has beauty enow for me, Hugh. Those eyebrows, that forehead, and that long neck. I have to meet her.”
Now Hugh laughed aloud. “Well, that’s easily arranged. You shall meet her tomorrow, and I will not permit her to ignore you … not that she would be tempted for a moment to do such a thing. And I won’t even tell Louise that you asked me to present you to her.” Then his face grew somber again. “But in the meantime, there’s tonight. Will I live through that?”
Montdidier grinned his old grin again. “By God, if my meeting Lady Margaret St. Clair depends upon that, then I’ll fight to the death for you myself. But we are expected, and I have kept you standing here talking into tardiness. Shall we go?”
Hugh nodded, swallowed hard, and followed his friend. Payn Montdidier was known as Crusty to all his friends for two very fine reasons: Crusty was a word applied to bread, and the local word for bread, pai-yin, sounded very much like Payn, which, in its turn, was almost exactly similar in sound to Hugh’s last name, de Payens. That similarity of sound had often led to much confusion before some wag started calling the young man Crusty several years earlier. The name had been amusing, and had stuck, and the confusion had been annulled.