Page 283 - A Knight of the White Cross

over to the cook, he went to the private apartments, as Khadja had
requested him to do. Here she and her daughters asked him innumerable

questions as to his country and its customs, and then about Rhodes and the
Order to which he belonged. Their surprise was great when they heard that

the knights were bound to celibacy.

"But why should they not marry if they like? Why should they not have

wives, children, and homes like other people?" Khadja asked.

"It is that they may devote their whole lives to their work. Their home is the
convent at Rhodes, or at one of the commanderies scattered over Europe,
where they take charge of the estates of the Order."

"But why should they not marry then, Gervaise? At Rhodes there might be

danger for women and children, but when they return to Europe to take
charge of the estates, surely they would do their duty no worse for having
wives?"

Gervaise smiled.

"I did not make the rules of the Order, lady, but I have thought myself that
although, so long as they are doing military work at the convent, it is well

that they should not marry, yet there is no good reason why, when
established in commanderies at home, they should not, like other knights

and nobles, marry if it so pleases them."

In the evening the merchant returned from his stores, which were situated

down by the port. Soon after he came in he sent for Gervaise. "There is a
question I had intended to ask you last night," he said, "but it escaped me.

More than two months since there sailed from this port and others many
vessels -- not the ships of the State, but corsairs. In all, more than twenty
ships started, with the intention of making a great raid upon the coast of

Italy. No word has since been received of them, and their friends here are
becoming very uneasy, the more so as we hear that neither at Tunis nor

Algiers has any news been received. Have you heard at Rhodes of a
Moorish fleet having been ravaging the coast of Italy?"