Standard of Honor

by Jack Whyte

  “You mean blocking the shot? I could not. I didn’t do that, Father, not intentionally. It was an accident … happenstance. I moved, trying to shout a warning and wave Richard down, but I was too slow … far, far too slow. How is the King?”

  Sir Henry cocked his head, wrinkling his eyes as he deliberated with himself over what his son had said, and then he murmured, “His Grace is in perfect health, and all the world believes he owes that health to the brilliance of your defense of his royal body in the face of attack.”

  André shook his head slightly, rolling it gently from side to side on the pillow. “Not so. He owes it to Fortuna, the Roman goddess of chance, for it was sheer good fortune that I was there and moved when I did. I didn’t see the bolt coming. It was loosed from within thirty paces, too fast to see, and I barely saw the man who fired it … What happened to him, was he caught and killed?”

  “Caught, but not killed. He was an idiot and he acted alone, thinking he would be rewarded for it by Tancred. Baldwin captured him and Richard pardoned him, gave him five silver pieces, ostensibly in gratitude for his poor aim, and let him go. Richard came out of the affair well in everyone’s eyes, Sicilians as well as our own, by forgiving the fellow and making light of his attempt. But look you …”

  André waited, and when his father said no more he prompted him. “Look you what, Father? What were you going to say?”

  Sir Henry shrugged. “I—I was going to say something that seemed to make no sense, but I think it needs to be said anyway. You are convinced—” He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Yes, you are convinced that your saving the King’s life was an accident. I can see that. But I disagree. You could not have done what you did had you not been prepared to do it, poised to do something. You did what you did because you were ready to do it, to react to whatever came. I believe that just as strongly as you believe your own explanation, but what is even more important is that Richard believes it, and so does everyone else. If you get up from the bed now and declare that the entire thing was an accident and your actions were completely without merit, you will do yourself a great disservice, my son.”

  “How? It seems to me to be the honorable thing to do … to speak the truth.”

  “Honorable, perhaps, but foolish in this instance. Think about where we are and what lies ahead of you.” Those words struck home, although not in any way Sir Henry could have understood. “Look at the people who surround you, André, in this endeavor of ours. Do you see much there of honor? Of nobility and integrity? I think not. Not in the way you and I were taught to think of those attributes.” He shook his head in frustration. “Look, I speak here as your father who loves you, and I have nothing but your good in mind, even if I seem to be saying things. André, none of us can afford to neglect or to give up any advantage offered to us. Each of us is a single soul among an army too vast to count, marching against another army that some say outnumbers us as the grains of sand in the desert outnumber the stones …

  “You have an opportunity to improve yourself here, perhaps an opportunity to outlive your fellows and survive this coming war with honor—although that is, as ever, in the hands of God. You saved the King’s life! It matters not that you believe it to have been an accident. That you were there at all was an accident. That Richard was standing where he was at that precise moment was an accident. And it was an accident that the Sicilian bowman recognized the man walking through the marketplace as the King of England. But the fact remains that when the fellow’s missile reached for the lion heart of England’s King, it struck and pierced your sword blade, punching a hole clear through the metal of your blade. Had your blade not been there in place, that bolt would have sundered Richard’s heart and ripped on through his spine. That. Is. The truth! And that truth can work to your advantage. Known as the King’s Rescuer, you will walk apart from other men. The word of your speed and skill will run ahead of you and warn lesser men to treat you with respect. But only if you keep your counsel to yourself about what you say you believe happened. No one will give a rotten fig for a common knight who had a momentary flash of good fortune then threw it away.”

  “Aye, Father, I hear you …” André’s tone was sufficient to interrupt his father’s warnings, and Sir Henry fell silent, eyeing his son and waiting for him to speak. André lay thinking about what in fact lay ahead of him in Outremer, and how his task there might be simplified were men to think of him in the way his father had described.

  “Very well, then, so be it. You have convinced me and I am persuaded. I will speak no more of accidents.” He paused, then grinned. “So what will happen now? Paragon or not, I am yet the meanest creature in the world: a novice brother in the Order of the Temple.”

  His father smiled. “Aye, mayhap, but that will not last for long. Your hardships will be easier to bear after this, I believe.”

  Flat on his back, André raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Think you so? I fancy Brother Justin, the Master of Novices, might be unimpressed by my new-won fame … Will we stay here long in Sicily, think you?”

  “Well, yesterday I would have wagered that we would not stay here long. Richard has thoroughly cowed Tancred and his rabble now, and I’m sure the thought of a long sojourn in Messina, with Philip crying and whining at every imagined slight, holds no allure for him. But all of that changed this morning, with the arrival of enormous tidings. Barbarossa is dead, his army scattered. The entire world has been cast off balance. I doubt now that we will leave here before spring.”

  For several moments André could not speak. Frederic Barbarossa, who had held the title of Holy Roman Emperor for more than three decades, was a leviathan among men, aged in years now but hardly less fit and battle ready than he had been when he first claimed his empire, thirty-five years earlier. At the age of sixty-odd, he had retained sufficient power and influence to recruit an army more than two hundred thousand strong and to lead it in person, overland by way of Constantinople, to Outremer. He was a legend by any standard, truly a name with which to conjure.

  “Barbarossa is dead? How? What happened? Are you saying Saladin defeated him?”

  His father shook his head. “No, not at all. Barbarossa never reached the Holy Land. He drowned, apparently, somewhere near Byzantium, crossing a mountain river, they say. Fell off his horse, fully armored, into icy water. The armor held him down and he was dead by the time they pulled him out. He was an old man, you know. They are saying it was the shock that killed him … the icy water …”

  “Sweet Jesus!”

  Sir Henry’s voice was firmer now. “We had word this morning, on a ship out of Cyprus. The vessel was crammed with Barbarossa’s people—high-ranking ones, barons and counts, lords and knights, all of them making their way homeward. Apparently the army began to break apart the moment the old man died. No one strong enough or politically acceptable enough to the others to rally the forces and keep them together. Within a week of the event—his death—his army had all but disappeared. More than two hundred thousand of them, there were, and they scattered to the winds, blown into nothingness.”

  “What about his son, the Swabian fellow, Frederick? What happened to him? He would not simply have abandoned his father’s body and fled. There must be more to the tale than you are telling me.”

  Sir Henry shrugged. “No one seems to know anything with certainty. No one even knows if any of the army marched on towards Outremer, but no one seems willing to believe they did.”

  “Hmph. No one on that ship is willing to say otherwise. If Frederick of Swabia or any of the other leaders march on to Palestine, the ones aboard this ship, and all the others like them who ran for home, are going to look like cowards, don’t you think?”

  Neither man spoke for a space then, each of them thinking through the significance of these tidings, until André said, “This alters everything.”

  “How so, everything?”

  “Well, not everything … But it certainly alters the political urgencies that have been causing Richard and
Philip and the Pope so much concern. With Barbarossa dead, the Eastern Orthodox threat to papal rule in Jerusalem is greatly eased, which will translate directly into breathing space for us and for our armies.”

  “I don’t follow you. It won’t change anything in Outremer. Conrad of Montferrat will still be at King Guy’s throat, trying to take his place.”

  “Aye, but his zeal will be considerably diminished when he hears of the death of his imperial cousin. As long as he retained the threat of Barbarossa’s power to back his movements, he strutted finely. Lacking it, I think he might be more amenable to compromise than he has been. I think it certain, however, that once the word arrives in Palestine that Barbarossa is dead and his army scattered, Guy and his followers will be encouraged enough to maintain their positions and wait for Richard’s arrival, however long that takes. And therefore I can see no flaw in your thinking. We will probably stay here for the winter and sail again come spring. That will breed an entirely new set of complications, but there is nothing you or I or anyone we know can do to alter any of that, so we may as well accept it.”

  Sir Henry rose. “I had best be gone. I have taken too much time lately for my own concerns. And the King will probably want to talk with me, once he has absorbed these tidings. If he does decide we are to stay here until the spring, I’ll have to set about building winter quarters for the whole damned army. Sweet Jesus, that is going to be a painful exercise, in this godforsaken place … You stay abed and set your mind to wellness. Farewell, I will see you again tomorrow.”

  IT TOOK TEN FULL DAYS for the injuries to André’s hand and wrist to heal sufficiently for him to clench his fist, and even then his fingers were still too tender and the bones of his hand too sore to permit him to exert any real strength in the clench. His forearm, elbow, and shoulder were completely restored by that time, their color almost returned to normal, but his hand was still a fearsome sight, a mass of multicolored bruises.

  On the fifteenth day after sustaining his injuries, he finally swung his feet off the bed, set them squarely on the floor, then pushed himself upright with the assistance of a stout stick in his left hand. He stood for a moment, weaving gently until he mastered his balance again, then took a deep breath and stepped away from the bed. That, at least, was what he attempted, but his feet did not move and he fell straight forward like a log, and had to be helped back onto his cot.

  Three days later André was walking easily, but it was to be another week before his hand grew strong enough for him to hold a sword again with any kind of authority, and only then was he judged fit to be discharged from Lucien’s care and to return to the company of his fellow novices, whose training had been proceeding throughout his absence. On the morning of the day he was discharged, Richard himself thrust open the door to the room where André sat breaking his fast with two other knights, and leaned in.

  “Here,” he called to André, “you will need this.” He brought up his arm in an underhand sweep, tossing a long, sheathed sword to where André was rising to his feet. André caught the weapon and held it at arm’s length, seeing that it was wrapped in a thick but supple sword belt. He turned back towards the door, but Richard had already gone, leaving the door to swing shut at his back. André looked from one of his breakfast companions to the other and saw that both were gazing at him owlishly from beneath raised eyebrows. He shrugged and grinned, a little shamefacedly.

  “I lost my other one,” he said, and then he unwrapped the belt from around the sheathed weapon and drew out the blade. It was magnificent, a King’s gift, and he brought it to his eyes to admire the rippling light that played along the fold patterns of the glorious blade. It was neither elaborate nor ostentatious in its finery but simply superb in every detail, and even the heavy leather of its sheath was worked and subtly embossed, its interior of sheepskin shaved until it was no more than the suggestion of a nap. He remembered the sword he had owned before, a useful, unpretentious weapon that had given him honorable service for years, and he knew that this one was worth a hundred times as much as that had been. This was a sword fit for a king, given him by a King. He had not the slightest compunction in accepting it, for he knew that he would put it to good use in the times that lay ahead.

  Returned to duty, he soon lost himself in the urgency of making up the ground he had lost to the other novices, and his injured hand hardened rapidly under the daily discipline of battle training. His days were filled once again, but far more so than ever before, with the monastic rituals and daily prayers of the Temple Rule, and when he was not praying, he was completely preoccupied with training, sharpening his fighting skills and rebuilding the strength of his sword arm. The days, weeks, and months passed by without his really being aware of their going and, more importantly, without any real awareness on his part of the world beyond the walls of the Temple Commandery. He knew of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany at the time of their occurrences, but solely because of the liturgical impact they had upon the daily discipline of the novices. And then he lost awareness of time again until the beginning of Lent, in early March of 1191, when the normal activities of the novices were suspended in order to accommodate a three-day period of increased prayer and fasting, called a retreat. During this time the novices were expected to do nothing more than pray and meditate in penitential silence, standing or kneeling at all times, save for the few hours when they were permitted to sleep.

  On the morning they were dismissed from their retreat, directly after matins and long before the first false dawn began to lighten the sky, André was summoned by Brother Justin.

  With an absolutely clear conscience, aware that he had done nothing wrong, André presented himself immediately before the Master of Novices, suspecting and hoping that this might have something to do with the Order of Sion. Brother Justin appeared as ill tempered and intolerant as ever, but he said nothing disparaging, merely nodding to André and informing him without preamble that he had been instructed to send him at once to Sir Robert de Sablé, whose quarters were inside the city of Messina.

  André, struck by a sudden thought, looked down at the filthy surcoat he had been wearing for months. “Should I go as I am, Brother, dressed like this?”

  Justin frowned. “Aye, you should, of course you should. How else would you go? Sir Robert knows you’re a Temple novice and you have nothing to hide. Were you to go out differently, and be recognized, it could lead to the kind of questions we don’t want people asking. But take a horse from the stables. De Sablé may have other work for you. Here.” He held out his hand, bearing a small scroll that he had been holding all along. “Give this to the stable master and he’ll give you a decent mount. And if anyone asks you where you are going or what you are about, tell them you are on an errand from me to your father. That’s what is in the scroll. Now be off with you, and whatever Sir Robert may require of you, be careful.”

  IT WAS CLOSE TO NOON that morning when Sir Henry St. Clair was finally able to return to his quarters, duty free for the time being, and he was surprised and pleased to find his son in his day room waiting for him, perched on the wooden bench that ran along the wall where Tomas, Sir Henry’s loyal assistant, sat permanently on guard against those who would waste the time of the Master-at-Arms. It had been several weeks since father and son had last spoken to each other, but Sir Henry wasted no time in leading André into his private chamber and closing the door firmly behind him.

  “What’s wrong, Father? You look concerned.”

  “I am. Why are you here? I am happy to see you, of course, but I know you must be here for some specific reason, some reason grave enough to justify your being granted leave to come a-visiting at this stage of your training.”

  André’s eyebrows shot up. “How would you know about that? The details of our training are supposed to be secret.”

  “Aye, like so many other things. Sit down.” As André moved to obey, taking one of the two chairs by the single large work table in the room, Sir Henry continued, “I have
many friends, my son, as befits an aging man, and some of them are Knights of the Temple. As it happened, I shared a pot of ale with one after dinner a few days ago and we talked of many things, one of which was the training of this latest batch of Temple novices. He knew, of course, that you are one of those and he was merely attempting to console me for not being able to see you.” He eyed his son closely. “So come on, spit it out. Why are you here?”

  “Jews, Father.” André spoke the word bluntly, deliberately, watching to see what effect it might have on his father, but whatever reaction he might have anticipated, he received nothing. Sir Henry merely blinked, then sat down across the table.

  “What about them?”

  “That is why I am here.”

  “You make no sense, son.”

  “No, Father, I fear I do, to my own ears at least. Do you recall the last time that we spoke of Jews and of the King’s regard for them?” He did not wait for his father’s response. “I have come here directly from Sir Robert de Sablé, and at his urging. He sent for me this morning and had me released from my duties for the day, purely so that he could pass along to you, through me, his grave concern for your safety.”

  When André paused, Sir Henry spoke out. “Well, while I am duly grateful for Sir Robert’s concern for my safety and well-being, I believe that what I do and how I behave has nothing at all to do with him and should be beneath his attention. Be so good as to pass that information along to him, with my gratitude, of course.”

  “No, Father, with respect, I will do no such thing. You are being obtuse. Sir Robert has no interest in chiding you for misbehavior. He fears for your welfare, because he sincerely believes it to be in the interests of the armies and the venture upon which we are engaged. He could have sent a warning to you by other means, but he chose to communicate through me for a variety of reasons, the very least of which is that he and I are friends. But the issues that concern him in this are far greater than any personal friendship.”