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detrimental to our cause and we cannot allow ourselves to be thankful that his gaze has fallen upon another race. Peace, brothers, is our aim, between all nations, all people.” He fixed them with his blunt stare. “Remember that.”
    “Brother Everard is right,” said Velasco, the Portuguese priest, a nervous little man who had a habit of raising his eyebrows whenever he spoke, as if continuously startled by the words coming out of his mouth. “And it’s not just the Muslims we must focus our attention on. If the peace we have helped to create is to continue, our own forces must also be enlightened.”
    Will found himself frowning at the use of that word. It made him uncomfortable. He believed completely in the Anima Templi’s aims, but the more idealistic concepts or, at least, the language of them, still sat uneasily in him, like a heavy meal he hadn’t finished digesting.
    Perhaps it was because for most of his life he had been taught to hate the very people he now formed alliances, even friendships, with. Saracens and Jews were enemies of God, to be reviled and fought, so the Church and the order had taught him. He no longer adhered to that doctrine, nor did he have any interest in reclaiming Jerusalem, or in fighting the so-called infidel. He had experienced the full horror of a battlefield and witnessed the undignified, senseless deaths of soldiers from both sides; had lost his father in one such conflict. He knew these were not routes to a better life. But so did many Westerners who had settled in Outremer, the land beyond the sea. In Acre, in the midst of such diversity where so many races lived and worked together, peace was not simply an ideal; it was a necessity. Sometimes, Will felt the world around them was moving so congruously with their own that they should just stand up and shout about it. Sometimes he hated the secrecy of it all. But he knew this was how the Brethren survived. The world might seem to be moving in the same direction, but delve a little deeper and the old hatreds and hostilities could be felt, like riptides below the surface, even in Acre; the city of sin, as the pope in Rome had declared it. The Anima Templi’s secrecy was its shield, protecting it from these conflicting forces.
    Will was drawn from his thoughts as he noticed Everard watching him. The priest’s expression was inscrutable. Will looked away, discomforted by the intensity of Everard’s stare, feeling that the priest was reading his mind.
    “Half that battle has been won for us,” one of the younger knights was saying in response to Velasco’s comments. “Until the Church accepts there is a need to reform and addresses the corruption that riddles its entire structure, it will find it a hard task to persuade the leaders of the West, let alone the people, that Crusade is a worthy route to absolution. For too long now, it has contrived these wars for its own purposes. Its motives have become transparent. Citizens of the West have no desire to make the treacherous journey here, risking life and limb, only to fall upon their swords, now it has been revealed that those who entice them to do so do it not for the glory of God, but for their own pockets.”
    One of the older knights, an Englishman called Thomas, shook his head in disagreement at the younger man’s impassioned speech. “There are many Christians in the West who would gladly wrench Jerusalem from the Muslims given the chance. They still believe Muslims and Jews are blasphemers and worshippers of false gods, whose presence pollutes the Holy City. They still believe that they and only they follow the true path. Do not be so assured that the desire to Crusade is dead. It isn’t.”
    “But at the Council of Lyons,” countered the young knight, “no great Western kings came forward at the pope’s call to take the Cross. Few even attended.”
    “At present, the West’s leaders are too embroiled in their own struggles to commit to a Crusade,” responded