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Knights of the Black and White Excerpt
At the conclusion of the opening chant,
matters began to move more quickly, and Hugh
was able to recognize, with more and more
frequency, elements of what he had been
learning for months. Throughout, he was
conducted and led about by a succession of
robed and hooded figures, to be positioned
in various spots and then catechized by
people whose differing, highly stylized
modes of dress—defined in the darkness by
shape and by bulk rather than detail—led him
to believe they must be officers of the
brotherhood. And still, continuously but
infinitely slowly, the light in the Chamber
continued to grow brighter. The single light
source remained unaltered, a sole speck of
brightness high above the assembly, but Hugh
soon came to believe that it was being
lowered, in infinitesimal increments, as the
rites progressed, for he could increasingly
see the outlines and shapes of individual
people in the rows of seats surrounding the
open floor of the Chamber, and although it
was still far too dark to discern any of
their features, he could clearly see the
shadowy outlines of the alternating black
and white squares in the floor.
Then, at the conclusion of a response that
was one of the longest he had had to learn,
he was forced to his knees by two men who
held his wrists and pressed down on his
shoulders. Kneeling thus, uncomfortably
aware that he could not have resisted had he
wished to, he was required to swear the most
horrifying and baleful oath he could ever
have imagined, calling down torture,
dismemberment, death, and disgrace on
himself and his loved ones should he ever
recant and betray the secrets he was about
to learn. He swore the oath, as required,
and was allowed to rise to his feet again,
surrounded by a number of men who laid hands
on him and steered him gently towards what
he could only believe to be a far corner of
the Chamber. There he was turned again, and
positioned with his chin raised towards the
single source of light above, noticing that
it was now framed between two high pillars
that appeared to form a doorway or portal,
and a new voice, stronger and more sonorous
than any other he had heard, spoke in a
language unknown to him. |
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He was aware of bodies pressing closer to
him, and then there was a sudden scurry of
movement in the surrounding darkness and
several things happened at once, the worst
and most unexpected of them bringing his
heart leaping into his throat in terror.
Some unknown man standing ahead of him
suddenly broke away from the group and bent
quickly, as though to snatch something up
from the ground, then came rushing directly
towards Hugh, raising a heavy club over his
head and swinging it at Hugh’s. As that
happened the light went out, and Hugh felt
himself being grasped from behind, hard and
tightly, by many hands that held him rigid
as they jerked him back and away from the
murderous blow, pulling him down and
lowering him helplessly, hard, towards the
floor as the blow landed obliquely on his
temple, hitting with a muffled thump rather
than a bone-splintering crash. Stunned and
disoriented, unable to move against the iron
clutch of so many unseen hands, his heart
pounding with breath-stopping fear, Hugh
felt himself being lowered farther than he
would have thought possible without meeting
the floor, and then being pulled and tugged,
turned one way and then another with no
possibility of resisting, and for a
disbelieving moment, he felt as though they
were wrapping him in something.
So quickly that the speed of it unnerved him
more than ever, all the gripping hands left
him, all sounds and movement stopped, and
the silence became absolute again. Terrified
beyond anything he had ever known, Hugh lay
motionless, holding his breath, his eyes
clenched tightly shut as he tried to gauge
what had happened to him. He knew he ought
to be dead, for he had seen the size of the
club his assailant had swung at him, and he
had felt the impact of the blow, but no
pain. And now there was nothing: no pain, no
feeling at all, no sound, no light, nothing
except the pounding of his own heart,
reverberating in his chest and thudding in
his ears. Could a dead man yet hear such
things, or were they merely memories of
life? Where was he now, if not in some
anteroom of Heaven or Hell, awaiting the
arrival of a judge?
Slowly, fearfully, he opened his eyes to see
nothing but utter, stygian blackness, as
deep and dark as the lack of light had been
behind his tightly clenched eyelids. The
dark, the silence, the profound stillness
surrounding him, and the lack of pain or
feelings combined to convince him that he
really was dead, and as he allowed his mind
to begin exploring that possibility, there
came a tiny, metallic sound and light
exploded into the darkness as someone opened
the closed door of a burning lamp.
Hugh went rigid with fear again, his heart
leaping in his chest as he saw the person
holding the lamp insert a taper through its
open door, and then other tapers were
extended towards the flame of the first, so
that the room filled rapidly with light.
Hugh moved to roll over and sit up, but
found that he could not move, and then a
hand was pressed gently over his mouth from
above, bidding him to lie still. Moments
later, he found himself staring directly up
at a ring of faces that were looking down at
him from high above. He was flat on his
back. Then the robed and hooded man standing
at his feet gave a signal, and the others
knelt quickly and reached down towards him,
and once again Hugh felt their hands grasp
him and lift him, exerting rigid control
over him, so that his heels remained on the
ground while the rest of him was swung
upright, as stiff as a wooden board on a
hinged end, until he was standing erect. The
hands left him then, withdrawn in pairs, he
thought, until he was standing free, staring
at the hooded man now facing him, and
knowing, from the man’s immense height and
size, exactly who he was.
Sir Stephen St. Clair reached up and pulled
off his black hood, his face crinkled in a
wide smile. “What are you wearing?” he asked
Hugh. Surprised by the mundane question,
Hugh looked down, then blinked in confusion,
never having seen this garment before. “I
don’t know, my lord,” he answered, shrugging
his shoulders and discovering that he was
tightly bound in the strange, white robe,
unable to move his arms.
“It is the cerement.” St. Clair’s face was
grave again. “You know what that is?”
Hugh glanced down again. “Aye, my lord. It
is the shroud worn to the grave by a dead
man.”
“It is. And do you know why you are wearing
it?”
“No, my lord.”
“Turn around, then, and see where you have
been.”
Hands seized Hugh’s arms and turned him
slowly, bracing him as he reared back.
Directly at his feet lay an open shallow
grave containing a bleached human skull with
a pair of thigh bones crossed beneath it.
Hugh stood there stunned, gazing down into
the pit. It was real, and he had lain in it.
No wonder, he thought, that it seemed he had
been lowered a long way.
“You died and were laid down,” St. Clair
said, “and then the light returned and you
were raised up again to life. You are
reborn, newborn, a different person, one of
our ancient brotherhood. Your previous life
now lies behind you, forsaken, finished, and
abandoned, and you have been reborn into
Enlightenment to serve the search for truth
and restitution of that which was in our
beginnings. Welcome therefore, Brother Hugh,
to our fraternity, the Order of Rebirth in
Sion. Now that you have been Raised to be
one of us, you will have the opportunity to
learn all that there is to know about our
ancient and sacred trust, and the first step
in that progression is to enrobe you in the
vestments of the initiate.”
“So mote it be!” Every man present spoke the
words, their voices blending into a muffled
thunder, and Hugh experienced, for the first
time, the ancient blessing and ritual
approval of the Brotherhood of the Order of
Rebirth.
St. Clair motioned with his hand, and four
white-clad men came forward to surround
Hugh. They stripped him quickly of the
shroud in which he had been wrapped, and of
the coarse, jute tunic he had worn beneath
it, and then they dressed him in a girdle
made from the fleece of a lamb, over which
they draped rich vestments of snowy white,
and when they stepped away from him again,
he saw that everyone else present had set
aside the black cloaks they had worn earlier
and were dressed in the same kind of
brilliantly white garment that he wore. Some
among them yet wore black, but only as
adornments to their white garb, and Hugh
quickly guessed that the black ornamentation
signified rank of some kind, for all of them
were different. The entire Chamber was now
revealed in all its magnificence, and every
element of it, ceiling, walls, furnishings,
and floor, was either black or white or a
combination of both.
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