Standard of Honor

by Jack Whyte

  “He is the King, Father. His behavior sets an example everywhere, for all his people. And in England, many of those people are Jews.”

  “Ho, now!” His father held up his hand, “Rein yourself in, there. Many would argue strongly against that. You will find people aplenty ready to tell you loudly that Jews are Jews, no more and no less, irrespective of where they are. They live within the confines of their own strange religion and lead their secretive lives to their own ends, shunning the company of non-Jews but thriving through usurious commerce with Christian folk and neither owing nor offering allegiance to anyone or anything Christian. By those precepts, the Jews of England will remain forever Jews and will never be English, as their counterparts here will never be Angevin or Aquitainian or even French.”

  André had been staring at his father, narrow eyed, while Sir Henry spoke, and now he nodded. “You could, you might argue that … but would you, Father? Do you believe it?”

  Sir Henry flicked the question aside with a one-handed gesture. “That is neither here nor there, although in fact I do not believe it and have not for years. What we are dealing with here is you and your beliefs, since those appear to clash with your King’s. So let us deal with that.”

  André looked away from his father’s gaze as he raised his cup and drank off almost half its contents. “Deal with that, you say. But I seem to be incapable of dealing with it sanely, at least for the time being.”

  It was Henry’s turn now to turn aside and stare into the flames, collecting his thoughts before presenting them to his son’s judgment, but presently he rubbed the back of one finger gently against the end of his nose. “Have I ever told you about Karel?”

  “Karel the Dalmatian, the Magyar. Your boyhood tutor.” André smiled. “Aye, you have, many times, but I have not heard you mention his name in years, not since I was a tadpole. I remember you saying often that there was far more to Karel than he ever chose to let people see.”

  “Most people looked at him and saw the Outlander: the strange-looking fellow with bushy hair and narrow eyes and the thick-tongued way of speaking. They never thought to try to look beyond that front that he maintained. And that was all it was: a pretense, a mask held up in front of the real Karel to protect him from the attentions of those he considered fools.”

  André tilted his head sideways, an expression of gentle amusement playing about his eyes. “I gather, then, he thought most people fools?”

  “He did. And by his lights, he was correct, for Karel equated foolishness with frivolity, and most people prefer being frivolous to being serious all the time.

  “He was a lawyer, you know, long before he ever thought to turn soldier. His family was wealthy and powerful in their own land, and some bishop there took note of the boy, recognizing his abilities even in childhood, and sent him off to Rome to be educated at the papal court. He had a mind for legal matters, it transpired, and he quickly made a name for himself, winning advancement to great heights, by his own admission years afterwards, at a very early age—” He broke off, hesitating, but still smiling that same whimsical smile. “I suspect now, although it is mere suspicion, unsupported by any evidence, that he may have been a priest or even a bishop by the time he was done, and I would not be surprised to learn he ranked even higher than both. But in any event, something went very badly wrong. Something he learned or experienced in Rome repulsed him, and his disgust was terminal. He walked away, left Rome and all it had meant to him, and cloaked himself in absolute obscurity, in the last place anyone would ever think to look for a cleric and a lawyer … or a bishop, for that matter. He took up arms as a mercenary.

  “That was in 1133, in Germany. He entered into a contract to fight for a German nobleman, Conrad of Hohenstaufen, the man who later became King Conrad III. Karel served with Conrad’s armies for twelve years, then left for reasons of which I know nothing. He had entered Conrad’s service as a fugitive lawyer, and he emerged twelve years later as a highly regarded military officer, and that is when he came into my life. My father had met him years earlier, somewhere in Germany, and they had become friends—God alone knows how or why. Anyway, when he left his position with the German King, he came looking for my father and took a contract with him, as a mercenary, tasked to train the St. Clair men-at-arms in modern weapons craft. He did it very well, too, and when his contract expired, he stayed on in my father’s employ, charged with the primary task of educating me, albeit as a soldier, not as a cleric or a student. And for the next ten years, in his own unique and inimitable way, that is precisely what he did.”

  André was leaning forward in his seat, listening closely. “He educated you, you mean, or he taught you to fight?”

  His father shrugged with one shoulder. “Both, and at the same time, for there is no difference. Karel created no divisions in what he did. He saw no differences between learning how to fight and learning how to write. The tools we use for each might appear to be different, he used to say, but all of them are controlled by our minds, and it is our application of what our mind tells us that makes each of us different, makes one man better than the mass of his fellows, makes one in each group stand out head and shoulders above all others, no matter what the pursuit that they are following may be.”

  André was wide eyed. “Your Karel sounds to me to have been a wondrous character.”

  “I doubt I could have had a finer mentor or a better instructor. And you would have liked him, had you ever met him. But he died before you were born.”

  “You have never told me any of this before.” There was a plaintive note to André’s voice.

  “When you were a boy, you had tutors of your own and Karel was already dead. Why should I have wished to bore you with tales of a dead man? I fed you snippets of his wisdom from time to time, little things that I thought might amuse you.” Sir Henry paused again, his gaze unfocused, then went on. “You have to understand that no one ever questioned Karel’s teachings, or asked me what I was learning in my classes. No one cared, I see now, because my father could neither read nor write, but he could see me training in the arms yard every day and could tell at a glance that I was thriving and acquitting myself well. That was enough for him. My mother, on the other hand, was already sick of the palsy that would kill her by the time I was fourteen, so she had neither the strength nor the will to check into my learning. And there was no one else to care. But fortunately, I was never happier than when I was seated at Karel’s feet, learning of wonders. And as I grew older, he spoke to me more and more openly about what he believed, and about how he saw a man’s responsibilities—any man’s responsibilities—as laid out for him by God. He understood and talked about many aspects of God and godliness—righteousness and piety, things that the ruck of men, including most of the priests I knew, could never have imagined, let alone learned. And he had very strict beliefs and stern opinions concerning God and men and their relationship each to the other.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Of a pestilence, one that seemed to be everywhere that year. His death left a great hole in my life that would not be filled until I met and wed your mother. But I remember clearly that, on the very last occasion when I saw him well, we spoke of this very matter of Jews and how they are so hated everywhere.”

  “Truly, Father?” André sounded slightly skeptical. “That was a very long time ago, and your memory might be playing tricks with you. I know mine does with me from time to time.”

  His father eyed him sideways, one eyebrow rising in amusement. “Think you so? Well, it might be as you say, were I as old as you appear to think I am. But in this instance I know there is nothing faulty about my memory, because that last conversation became a very special one for me. I recalled it time and again, remembering every word of it because it was the last time we had ever spoken.

  “Karel had never been able to come to terms with that widespread hatred of Jews, because it seemed to him to be at odds with everything he had come to believe as a boy. He had aske
d me why I thought the Jews were always blamed for everything that befell the Savior.” Henry smiled softly to himself. “And before I could come up with a single reason, he went on to point out that if we agree and believe that Jesus was born into our world to give up his life in expiation for our earthly sins, then we also ought to believe, logically, that everything that happened surrounding those events was part of the divine plan, and that, God being by His very nature omniscient, every eventuality of that planning had been foreseen and accounted for. Why then, he asked me again that last afternoon, were the Jews alone vilified for behaving as they did? Their God and ours were one and the same. Had He forsaken them to nurture us? Or were we to believe the Jews the only sinners among mankind, guilty by themselves, beyond all doubt, of creating the need for the Savior’s sacrifice? If that were so, was it only afterwards that all the other races, including the arrogant Romans, were turned into sinners, contaminated by the behavior of the Jews?”

  Sir Henry shook his head now, as if bemused. “I must have been twelve years old, and I remember that even at that young age I was able to see through the stupidity underlying those questions. I remember mentally digging in my heels, too, and telling Karel what I thought, and then being astonished when he agreed with me.

  “‘Of course it is nonsense,’ he said, and he gave my head a push, the way he did when he was pleased with me. ‘It is an insult to any person with the ability to think logically from one step to another. If the Jews had ever been the only sinners in the world, there would never have been any reason for Christianity to exist. The Jews believed they were already the chosen people, so all that would have been needed was for a Jewish Messiah to come down to earth and do whatever Jewish law demanded need be done. But that is not what happened. The message spread from Israel to all the countries of the world, which then became the Christian world. No one argues with that, do they? So tell me, young Henry St. Clair, what do you think is the real reason underlying all the nonsense about the Jews?’”

  “Did you have an answer for him?”

  Sir Henry raised an eyebrow. “Would you have offered one, had you been as old as you are today?”

  André smiled and dipped his head, appearing to acknowledge his father’s point, although what he was actually thinking was that he could, indeed, have answered the question at great length and to Karel’s complete satisfaction. Instead, he merely nodded and asked, “So what did he say then?”

  “I have never forgotten what he said. He said it was the priests—Karel was fond of blaming most things on the priests and on the Church in general—who promulgated the anti-Jewish filth to suit their own wishes at some time or another in the earliest days of the Church, some dire occasion when they needed to find a scapegoat to take people’s attention away from whatever they themselves were up to. Karel believed that firmly. The Jews had proved to be an easy target, he said, and the Church took note and marked it, so the guilt by association was never let go.”

  A silence elapsed before André casually asked, “How do you feel about that, Father—the scapegoat explanation? Do you subscribe to the idea?”

  Sir Henry had slipped down gradually in his seat since their conversation began and was stretched almost full length, his legs crossed at the ankles in front of the fire, his chin sunk on his breastbone. Now he sniffed and pulled himself up again before reaching for his cup on the floor.

  “I think I always have subscribed to it.” He sipped his wine and grimaced. “Blech! My wine’s hot … too close to the fire.” He stood up and reached for André’s cup. “Give me that. The ewer should still be cold. One more before bed, eh?”

  When he returned with replenished cups, André had thrown fresh logs on the fire and was watching the flames curl up around them. He accepted his fresh drink without looking up, and Henry sat back down and continued speaking as if there had been no interruption.

  “I don’t doubt that the Jews have been made into scapegoats, but I can’t tell you why or when it happened. I can tell you, on the other hand, that it was not always that way. The Jews of Judea were always a contentious people, fighting among themselves long before Jesus came into the world, and they were always harshly, arrogantly intolerant of anyone who did not share their faith or revere their grim, implacable God. It is a matter of record that the Romans detested them for all the trouble and upheavals they caused. The Roman province of Judea was a tiny place, after all, in terms of the overall empire, but it fomented disruptions, civil, religious, and military, far beyond what should have been the scope of its capacities, and when its contumacious people finally rebelled to the extent of declaring war upon the Romans, the imperial authorities deemed the situation in Judea to be intolerable and destroyed the entire nest of them.

  “They sent in the legions, who tore down the city of Jerusalem itself and stamped out resistance, as only the Romans could, wherever they found any signs of it. They laid siege to the mountain fortresses the Jewish insurgents held and destroyed them all, one by one, taking as much time, as many years, as that required. And since the religion of the people lay at the center of all their discontent, they destroyed the focus of that religion: they tore down the temple and put its priests to the sword. They were inexorable and utterly merciless because that was the Roman way. They killed or enslaved as many of the populace as they could capture, and generally made the province of Judea uninhabitable, so that the Jews could never trouble Rome again. But—” He sat up straighter, digging the tip of a little finger into one ear, then examining it critically before wiping his finger on his leg.

  “But all of that was retribution for the sin of rebellion against Rome. It was punishment justly earned in Roman eyes. It contained nothing of the kind of mindless hatred that Christians show towards the Jews today.”

  He sipped at his wine and rolled it around his tongue, savoring it for a while before adding, “The Jews gave us their One God, André. People tend to forget that. The God we worship came to us directly from the hands of the Jews. We should be grateful to them for that, for giving us our God. But no, we choose to shun them, when we are not abusing and persecuting them.

  “Karel told me once that he had known several families of Jews throughout his travels, and he believed that they were ordinary people just like Christians, save that they believed differently about how their God expected them to behave. After all, Jesus was a Jew. No getting around that, Karel used to say. So where did the breakdown occur? When did the breakaway happen? When did it become perfectly acceptable for Jesus to have been a Jew all his life and for all eternity, for His Father to have been the God of Israel, and for Christian people to dream and speak of returning to Sion—which is Jerusalem—and to speak glowingly and lovingly of biblical Israel, yet hate all Jews? Where, he would ask—and he would ask anyone and everyone who showed the slightest interest in what he had to say—where was the logic in that?”

  He glanced at his son, as though in the hope of hearing an answer, but when it was clear that none was forthcoming he went on, raising both hands almost apologetically and spreading his fingers wide to indicate that these thoughts were Karel’s and not necessarily his own.

  “Well, his own answer to that unanswerable question was that the logic was priestly—‘sacerdotal’ was the word he used—and because of that, it was invisible and incomprehensible to ordinary men, since it lay in the repository of most of the other logic of priests everywhere: deep in the lightless tunnels of their rectums.” Sir Henry laughed aloud. “I used to love it when he said things like that. I was always afraid that some band of scandalized bishops might come leaping out of hiding and condemn the two of us for heinous and unforgivable behavior.

  “He used to say—and he was insistent—that priests were seldom clever and even less often intelligent, but that most of them were cunning and all of them selfserving. The majority of priests, he held, those mediocrities who were destined never to be bishops or prelates or princes of the Church, owed their positions to being born as younger sons
to parents who could not support them, which meant that, as young men, they had all faced the same limited choice: become a knight, or take the Church’s cloth. For all of them, and probably for a wide range of reasons, the thought of a military life with all its brutal hardships had been abhorrent, and so they had opted for the easier way, a life lacking in general hardship and supported by the contributions of others. They entered the priesthood.”

  Henry sat up, gulped the wine remaining in his cup, then rose to his feet and crossed smoothly to the table, where he set the goblet down.

  “And that, my son, is all that I can tell you about my peculiar beliefs regarding the treatment of Jews,” he said, turning his head to glance over to where André sat watching him. “Has anything I have said been of assistance to you in your dilemma over Richard’s behavior?”

  “I have no dilemma, Father. I have a revulsion.”

  Something that might have been a tic of annoyance flickered between Sir Henry’s brows. “That’s a strong word,” he said.

  “And I don’t use it lightly,” André replied. “This is not simply anti-Jewish sentiment on Richard’s part, Father. I am talking about mindless and inhuman cruelty, inflicted for the sheer pleasure of doing so and observing the results.”