It was evident to all that the six-year-old prince regent was in ill health. The king’s stratagem of making the boy the successor to the throne was therefore mostly intended as a maneuver to prevent Guy de Lusignan from seizing power.

It was now in God’s hands as to which of the two would die first, the twenty-four-year-old King Baldwin or his six-year-old namesake.

Father Louis had been forced to wait for several months before a suitable occasion arose when the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Arnoldo de Torroja, and Jerusalem’s Master Arn de Gothia could meet with him in Jerusalem at the same time. They were most often out traveling, the Grand Master because he had to make all the difficult decisions within the order from Christian Armenia in the north to Gaza in the south, and Arn de Gothia because as commander-in-chief he constantly had to visit the various fortresses of the order.

But Father Louis wanted to find a time when he could meet with them both, and in a situation of relative peace and quiet. The nature of his mission was such that it would weigh very heavily upon the shoulders of a single man, and two heads were always better than one. It could not be helped that his secret would be betrayed when he presented the matter; then it would be revealed that he was not some old monk on a pilgrimage but actually the Holy Father’s special envoy and informant.

He thought that Arn de Gothia may have already realized the truth, since the hospitality lavished on Father Louis in Jerusalem was far beyond what was normal. Father Louis had been allowed to take lodgings in the Templar quarter instead of resorting to the nearby Cistercian cloister on the Mount of Olives; so he was literally living in the heart of power, as every secret informant would prefer.

If Arn de Gothia had understood the real nature of Father Louis’s mission in the holy city, then it was no wonder that he extended the utmost hospitality. But Father Louis was unsure of how much Arn actually knew, for the strange knight seemed to have become quite attached to him. He often sought out Father Louis to have long conversations on both ecclesiastical and secular topics, much as he would have sought out his old confessor, Father Henri, in the faraway cloister in Western Götaland whose name Father Louis had forgotten.

Out of old habit Arnoldo de Torroja and Arn de Gothia now sat down with their guest out in the arcade in the twilight after completorium. They began to joke about the city’s mixture of holy and less holy odors and sounds, so that the tone of the conversation was at first indecorously merry and not appropriate to what Father Louis wished to discuss.

Yet when he saw the two high Templars sitting next to each other he was also deeply moved. Outwardly they were very different from each other: one tall with dark eyes and black hair and beard, mercurial in his temperament, jocular and witty like a man at any of the greatest courts in the world. The other was blond with an almost white beard and pale blue eyes, his figure almost slight in contrast to the stocky de Torroja, his demeanor thoughtful and many of his comments brusquely gruff. So they were like the symbol of the immiscible: the fiery south and the cold north, yet both equally devoted to the cause, possessing no personal property, with no other reasons for waging war than to defend Christianity and God’s Grave. Saint Bernard must be laughing in Heaven upon seeing these two together, thought Father Louis. It would be impossible to get any closer than this in the material world to Bernard’s dream of the new knighthood that would sacrifice everything for God.

Then there was the side of the matter that Father Louis had the hardest time understanding. Both these men were experienced in courtly and spiritual matters. If their beards were shaved and their warlike white mantle with the red cross was replaced with a monk’s white habit, they would be able to sit quite naturally in any arcade in any cloister together with Father Henri.

Yet there was something inexplicable that set them apart. These men were among the best warriors in the world. They were fearsome on the battlefield; everyone who understood military questions could testify to that. And yet they presented these kindly looks, these cautious smiles, and this quiet speech. That, precisely that, was probably the clearest manifestation of blessed Saint Bernard’s vision.

In order to put a stop to the lighthearted tone of the conversation in which they were engaged, Father Louis fell silent and said a short prayer with his head bowed. The other two instantly took the hint and unconsciously settled in to listen. Both knights fell silent.

Now was the time for Father Louis to speak.

He began by telling them the truth, that he was the special envoy of the Holy Father. He explained that all the Cistercians who had come and gone since the first monk he had brought with him, Pietro de Siena, had all traveled to Rome, taking letters directly to the Holy Father.

Both of his listeners remained stone-faced as he spoke; it was impossible to tell whether they had already guessed the secret or whether it was unexpected news to them.

Naturally letters came back in reply from the Holy Father and his chancellery in Rome. And a particularly unpleasant matter had now come to light. The patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius, had a man in his service named Pleidion who was apparently a runaway servant from the heretical church in Constantinople. Exactly what sort of work this Pleidion did for Heraclius was not entirely possible to ascertain; he seemed to take care of a multitude of tasks, especially in connection with the unmentionable nightly activities that often took place at the patriarch’s palace.

Only now did Father Louis’s account cause both listeners to raise their eyebrows in mild surprise, whether it was because of the news itself about Pleidion or because Father Louis had managed to learn what this less than reputable individual was up to.

Father Louis now came to the unpleasant part. Archbishop William of Tyrus had been poisoned to death when he was in Rome, just before he was to have an audience with the Holy Father. It had long been known that this death was murder; the evidence found in the dead man’s room as well as the color of his face when he was discovered had told its tale all too well.

But now they knew who had visited him during the hour before he died. It was none other than Pleidion. That also explained the mysterious disappearance of all the documents that Archbishop William had brought with him to present at his audience with the Pope.

As far as the Holy See was concerned, there was no longer any doubt about the truth of this matter. Heraclius’s minion Pleidion had been given the assignment to murder Archbishop William of Tyrus.

Some research had been done into the background of this Heraclius. He was born in Auvergne around 1130 to a family of meager means; he had served as a singer in the village church, but otherwise had not been consecrated as either a priest or a monk, which might explain why the man couldn’t speak Latin. He had come with the mobs of adventurers to the Holy Land but preferred to use lies and deceit rather than to fight to gain favor. Father Louis did not have all the details about Heraclius’s path to power, but he had basically acquired influence through the many lovers he had bedded. The most important one, of course, was the king’s mother, Agnes de Courtenay. But her predecessor, Pasque de Riveri, the woman called “Madame la Patriarchesse,” had surely meant a great deal for the man’s ascent to the second highest ecclesiastical office in the world.

Summa summarum.The patriarch of Jerusalem was a deceiver and a poisoner.

There Father Louis concluded his account without mentioning anything about the Holy Father’s decision in the matter.