Knights of the Black and White Book One. Jack Whyte

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       THREE

      Hugh and Arlo were back in their own quarters in Jerusalem within five days, having left St. Omer safely installed in the ancient hospice in the monastery of Saint John the Baptist, close by the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where the Hospitallers would keep him under close watch and nurse him back to full health. Despite his weakened condition, however, and much to Hugh’s surprise, St. Omer had been strong enough on the journey to tell them the story of his misadventure with the followers of Mohammed and his stay among them, chained to an oar on a corsair’s galley.

      They had covered less than half the twenty-mile distance that first day, constrained by the need to travel slowly for the comfort of the sick and injured men in the six wagons, but they were a strong, well-armed party, and no one had any worries about braving the dangers of the night ahead as they set up camp along the road. Hugh and Arlo had lifted St. Omer’s stretcher down from the wagon bed and placed him near their cooking fire, and after their meal, fortified with a draft of wine from the full skin Arlo had brought with him, St. Omer had begun to talk.

      “I want to ask you something,” he said, his voice whispery and fragile. “When you first went home to Payens, after the first campaign, did you find it utterly different?”

      “Different?” Hugh thought about that for a few moments, looking over to where Arlo sat watching them. “Aye, now that I come to think of it, I did. What makes you ask that?”

      St. Omer nodded, barely moving his head, and muttered, “Because I did, too, but I thought I might be the only one. None of the others seemed to feel that way.”

      Hugh sat musing for a moment longer, then frowned. “I don’t think it was home that had changed, Goff, not really. It was me …”

      “Me too.” St. Omer drew several deep breaths, then began again, speaking clearly but very quietly. “I had nothing in common with any of … any of my old friends who had not been out there with us. And I couldn’t talk to any of them about what it had been like, at Antioch or any of the other places. They all wanted to know … but I couldn’t tell them. I didn’t want to talk about it, because … because I knew they couldn’t imagine … the reality of it. And besides, all they wanted to hear was what they thought they knew already. The priests had told them everything they needed to know about the glorious Holy War, and anything I tried to say, at the start of things, anything that seemed to … to contradict the priests shocked and frightened them. They did not really want to hear what I … what I had to say, Hugh.”

      Hugh had been nodding his head from time to time as he listened, and now he reached out and gripped St. Omer by the wrist. “I learned the same things, just as quickly as you did, but by then you had gone home to Picardy and I was stuck in Payens.”

      “I had to go, as soon as I got home. I had no choice, as you know. Louise was sick and I had … I had been away from her too long … She died eight years ago, in ’08. Did you know that?”

      “No, my friend, but I suspected it, for I have not heard from her since then, and she was a great writer of letters. I knew that only death or grave infirmity could stop her from writing to me. Where is she buried? Did you take her home to Champagne?”

      St. Omer’s headshake was barely discernible. “No. She rests in the garden of our home in Picardy … She loved it there. Did you hear … Have you heard of your father?”

      “No. What of him? Is he dead, too?”

      “Aye … soon after you set sail to return here. He had … he had no will to live without your mother …”