Jack Whyte - Knights of the Black and White (A Templar Novel)

Praise for

KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK AND WHITE

Shine[s] light on one of the most mysterious and secretive aspects of medieval history: the Knights Templar... an exciting and entertaining story... Whytes writing is taut and gripping.

The Vancouver Sun

Readers... will be very excited to jump into this.

Whyte, a master at painting pictures on an epic-sized canvas, pulls the reader into the story with his usual deft combination of historical drama and old-fashioned adventure. One warning, though: when you put this one down, you may immediately begin salivating for volume two.

Fans... have a whole new realm of history to explore.

In [Whytes] new novel, Knights of the Black andWhite,... [he] takes us to eleventh-century France and from there on the Crusade path to the Middle East.

The plot ingredients include secret societies, covert cloak-and-dagger operations, and the clash of swords.

Victoria Times Colonist

A terrific theme... the Knights Templar crowd will enjoy [ Knights of the Black and White].

Midwest Book Review

Visit the Templar Trilogy website atwww.templartrilogy.com

Also by Jack Whyte

THE CAMULOD CHRONICLES

THE SKYSTONE

THE SINGING SWORD

THE EAGLES BROOD

THE SAXON SHORE

THE FORT AT RIVERS BEND

THE SORCERER: METAMORPHOSIS

UTHER

THE LANCE THROWER

THE EAGLE

JACK WHYTE

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business es

tablishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK AND WHITE

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author Copyright 2006 by Jack Whyte.

First published in Canada by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2006.

Cover design by Steven Ferlauto.

Photo of Sword Howard Sokol/Index Stock.

Photo of Shield Design Pics Inc./Index Stock.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form with

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For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 1-4295-3611-X

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... fresh fields and pastures new...

To my wife, Beverley, as always,

and to the other two women in my life,Jeanne and Holly

It has served us well, this myth of Christ.

Pope Benedict VI

No other problem of our time is rooted so deeply in the past.

Report of the Royal Palestine

Commission of Inquiry, 1937

It is difficult to distinguish fact from legend... I have found no consensus on what is fact; it depends on the viewpoint. Interestingly enough, legendwhich is by definition distortedgives a far more acceptable view of events. Everyone agrees on legend, but nobody agrees on facts.

Michael Coney, The Celestial Steam Locomotive AUTHORS NOTE

No other organization in history has captured the attention and curiosity of modern readers as completely and intriguingly as the medieval order of monks known as the Knights Templar. The beginnings of that popular fascination sprang from the 1982 publication of Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. I know that my own interest in the Order of the Temple was kindled by reading that book, because although I had always been fascinated by the mystery and mysticism surrounding the Templars, it was only after reading Holy Blood, HolyGrail that I thought, There has to be a truly great storyhidden in there somewhere, if a guy could just strip awayall the layers of obfuscation and find a way to really look atwho these people were and what made them tick. I had always believed that the Knights Templar were real, very xi

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Authors Note

human people, despite the fact that, back when I was a boy, the only pictures we had of them were stylized stone figures carved on medieval tombs, and the only reports we ever read of them told us they were a villainous and evil breed, condemned and excommunicated by the Church as heretics and apostates.

The grasping Norman knights in Ivanhoe were all Templars, as were the lowering, black-visaged villains in several other tales I read in boyhood, and one seldom heard, or read, anything good about the Knights Templar. They were always evil, threatening stereotypes. And yet a quiet, logic-bound area of my awareness recognized other, seldom listed and infrequently mentioned aspects of Templar history: they existed as an order for less than two hundred years, and for most of that time they were the legitimate standing army of the Catholic Church; they invented and perfected the first sophisticated, credit-and-gold-bullionbased international banking system; and they financed all the kings and kingdoms of Christendom. They also amassed the largest and most impressive portfolio of real estate holdings known to history, and to protect their enormous trading fleet, they developed the largest navy in the world. Their black and white naval ensign, a white skull and crossbones on a black field, struck the fear of God into pirates everywhere.

Most impressive of all, however, to a storyteller, was the awareness that their meteoric career effectively came to an end in a single day, on Friday the thirteenth of Authors Note

xiii

October 1307, a date, to paraphrase Franklin Roosevelt, that will live forever, if not in infamy, then at least in mystery. And so were born in my mind the elements of my tale of the Templars: The Beginnings, designed and brought about, history tells us, by nine penniless mentwo of whose names we do not even know todaywho spent years digging in the bowels of Jerusalem and unearthed a treasure that made them the most powerful and influential force on earth for two centuries; The Middle, when a corps of monks, all of them wearing the equal-armed cross of the Order of the Temple, formed a standing army in the Holy Land and fought to the death, hopelessly outnumbered by the swarming legions of Saladins Saracens, in a vain attempt to preserve an impossible dream; and The End, when the order was over-thrown in a single day by the sinister lieutenant of a grasping, ambitious king, and only a few escaped to fos-ter and nurture a legend and a tradition of hope and regeneration.