Standard of Honor

by Jack Whyte

  ANDRÉ ST. CLAIR RODE into the final phase of his life as a Temple knight with absolutely no anticipation of what lay ahead of him when he stepped into the stirrup and swung his leg across his horse’s back, but as he would hear a thousand times in the life that lay ahead of him, it is not given to man to know the details of his destiny, and what is written may only be known when it has come to pass. What had been written for him before that afternoon had already come to pass, but he had not yet been informed of it. That task, the passing on of information and knowledge, had been given into the custody of his friend and cousin Alexander Sinclair.

  It was close to the fourth hour of the afternoon by the time they left the camp behind them and struck out into the open waste of the desert. Six weeks had passed since the fall of Acre, and Saladin and his forces had withdrawn long since, southward towards Jerusalem and the cities along the coast, which meant that much of the danger of travel in the vicinity of Acre had been removed. Nevertheless, they rode in silence for the first few miles, each of them scanning the horizon from time to time simply to be sure that they were not being observed or followed. Then, after perhaps two hours of riding, and just as the sinking sun was approaching the last third of its daily journey down the arching sky, they breasted the highest of the dunes they had been traversing and saw, on the horizon ahead of them, the broken, serrated edge that marked the beginning of the field of boulders that surrounded their destination.

  “You know,” St. Clair said, breaking the silence that had held between them since they set out, “my mind has been returning to this place ever since the first time I saw it, because it reminded me of something, and I have just remembered what it is.”

  Alec twisted sideways in the saddle to look at him quizzically. “This place reminded you of something? You mean here among these dunes, or the rocks ahead of us?”

  “Pardon me, I meant the boulders there. The field of stones.”

  “Aye, that’s what I thought you might mean. Well, that surprises me, because I have never seen anything to resemble it before, and I have been around for ten years longer than you have. What could it possibly remind you of?”

  “Another place … a field of stones.”

  “Tell me about it, this place. Where is it?”

  “In France, to the south of Paris, just east of the main road to Orléans. It is a place called Fontainebleau, and I cannot remember how I came there, but I found myself there one day in a magnificent forest that stretched around me for leagues in all directions, and there in the midst of it, just as here, I found a field of giant stones like these, smooth and rounded boulders of a size to stagger the mind. Boulders everywhere, dwarfing puny humanity and towering all around in silence, merely there, to strike awe into the beholder …”

  “Just like this field here.”

  “Aye, but nothing like it, for the field of stones in France stands in the forest, so that everywhere, as far as the eye can see, the stones compete with trees, merely to be seen, though winning in most instances. There are no pathways there, no simple means of moving among or between the stones, save perhaps the occasional game trail, worn over hundreds of years by passing deer. And yet, among the deepest, largest, thickest groves of trees, there are glades to be found, and in one of those glades stands a cave … a cavern very much like your cave here, in that it has been formed from clusters of great stones, piled one atop the other and eroded by weather and the local climes for thousands upon thousands of years. It is deep and dry, completely sheltered from the wind and rain. Very similar to your place here, yet utterly different.”

  Sinclair remained quiet for a spell after this outflow, then reined in his horse and looked thoughtfully at André. “We have established that Sharif Al-Qalanisi was your tutor in the Arabic tongue, as he was mine. But tell me, what else did he teach you? Did he lead you into the ways of philosophical thought?”

  “Aye, he did. Do you have a reason for asking that, or was it merely a fortunate guess?”

  “No guess, Cousin. This instance you have described is exactly the kind of mirror-image likeness that would have fascinated Al-Qalanisi. Now what, think you, would he have asked of you, knowing that you have seen the parallel and recognized the paradox?”

  “I am not sure I have recognized any paradox, Cousin.”

  “Nonsense, of course you have. Two fields of stones, identical each to the other in their content, yet set worlds apart in their appearance, the one in arid desert and the other in a forest of white-barked trees and pale green leaves, the one denying the very appearance of life in an eternity of lifeless sand, the other celebrating the driving thrust of life teeming around and between singular lumps and globules of stone like spores of moss among heaped piles of gravel. And between the two of these, you are the sole link. There is a message concealed there, somewhere. What think you Sharif Al-Qalanisi might have made of such a puzzle?”

  St. Clair looked sideways at his cousin, tipping his head to one side. “I have no idea. Let me think about it for a while, and if I can respond to it at all, I will.”

  Sinclair made no response, and for the next while they plodded steadfastly and silently towards the looming line of boulders that marked the edge of the field of stones, but on the very edge of the area, before they could draw close enough to enter it, André St. Clair drew rein, and his cousin reined in beside him.

  “I have had an astonishing thought,” the younger cousin said, “one that might never have occurred to me had we not come here today, and had you not provoked me into thinking about matters I would never otherwise consider. Two fields of stones as you say, Cousin. Each radically different from the other, and yet each the same. The one, from my young manhood, from my youth, holds memories and echoes that resonate inside me, loudly enough to be painful. It appears rich and green, lush and full of promise. The other, an alien place that holds no images for me, no memories, no echoes, is a place of grays and dull, hard browns. Sere and lifeless, it is full of inert, obdurate stones and shriveled, dried-out remnants of what might, at one time, have been dreams worth the pursuing.

  “On the one hand, my boyhood. In a green and pleasant land, bestrewed with promises and lushness. Plants grow everywhere I look, but all the plants are trees, with pallid, sickly leaves. No flowers, no edibles, and only trees … with roots all gnarled and dry, twisted and set in their growth, and surrounding, choking, covering nothing but stones, boulders that defy all pressures in their endurance.

  “And on the other hand, my manhood, in a harsh and arid desert place, where boulders stand in profusion, as in France, but unobscured by growth, their surfaces wind-scoured and polished by the blowing sand. No flowers, no edibles, and not one twisted tree attempting to confine one standing stone within its roots.

  “Two seeming truths, apparently similar. But only one is genuine.”

  A long silence elapsed before Alec Sinclair asked his question. “Which one?”

  André St. Clair turned his head slightly to look him in the eye. “You tell me, Cousin, for I have no idea.”

  And both men laughed and kicked their horses into motion, riding in companionable silence once again. When next one of them broke the silence, it was again Alec Sinclair who spoke.

  “We still have to decide what we intend to do next. Richard is planning to march south within the week, along the old coast road, to engage Saladin and take Jerusalem, defeating the Saracens once and for all. He has already made the dispositions for the line of battle— Templars in the vanguard with the Turcopoles in support, then Richard’s native levies, his Bretons, Angevins, and Poitevins. The Normans and the English will come next, guarding the battle standard, and the French will form the rearguard, with the Hospitallers and the local Outremer forces supporting them. You and I have to decide upon a course of action for ourselves before that all begins.”

  “You’re making no sense, Cousin. The Templars will form the vanguard, so that is where we will be.”

  They rode in silence again for a spell u
ntil Alec exploded, “Damnation, there’s no other way to tell you this. It won’t come out without being spat! When I was in Cyprus I made a journey to Famagusta, to visit your father’s grave, as I promised you I would. I found it without difficulty and prayed there for his soul to rest in peace, but when I returned to Limassol I heard a tale that I could not believe, and so I set out to investigate. There is a Jew there called Aaron bar Melel. Do you know of him?”

  “No, I know no Jew of that or any other name, certainly not in Limassol. Should I?”

  “Yes, you should. I was given his name by an associate— an agent of Rashid al-Din who has lived in Limassol for years, as a spy. He asked me about my own name and how it differed from the name St. Clair, with which he was familiar. When I explained that the former Master-at-Arms had been my uncle, the man became very excited and told me his version of the story of what happened to your father. When I refused to believe what he said, he told me how to find this man Aaron, and I went looking for him the very next day. He was not difficult to find … Do you remember telling me about the purge being carried out against the Jews a few days before you left Limassol?”

  “Aye, I remember. It cost me a last visit with my father.”

  “Aye. Well, this Aaron was one of the Jews being sought, along with his entire family, his wife, son, and daughter. I met his wife and saw his daughter. She is beautiful. His son is dead, killed during the purge. He was fourteen years old. But Aaron, his wife, Leah, and his daughter were rescued and concealed by a Frankish knight. The Jew named him, calling him Sir Henry St. Clair, Master-at-Arms to England. He rescued them before the troubles broke, according to Aaron, but I have no idea, because Aaron himself did not know, how your father found out about all that was about to happen in advance. Nor do I know what happened to the boy—but Sir Henry had them smuggled out of Limassol, to a fishing village farther along the coast where they remained until they heard that Richard had set out again to come here. At that point, they returned home to Limassol, to mourn their son and rebuild their lives.

  “But someone informed upon your father directly to Richard at the time of the family’s disappearance. Henry must have been seen doing what he did, or he was betrayed by one of the people he employed. Whoever reported it to Richard sank the blade in deep, then twisted it. It was done with absolute malice, and at a carefully chosen time, probably when he was drunk— Richard, I mean. He would have been furious to hear about your father’s betrayal. Your father had already left for Famagusta by that time, and so Richard’s bullyboys were sent up there to deal with him, with instructions to make whatever they did look like a random attack by guerrillas. And everyone believed that that is what befell your father and his two companions that night. But the killers talked about it in their cups when they returned to Limassol, and my Shi’ite associate overheard them. They were in his tavern at the time. An innkeeper soon learns to keep his mouth tight shut, and he knew of Sir Henry St. Clair only from hearsay—the man was King Richard’s Master-at-Arms, after all—and so he said nothing to anyone until the matter of my name came up, at which point he told me what he knew.”

  He stopped there and waited for André to respond in some manner, but the younger man merely rode ahead like a man asleep in the saddle, his body adjusting naturally to the horse’s gait. Having seen that his eyes were open, Sinclair assumed that he was listening, and continued. “I asked around, but I could not find out anything about the men that Suleiman described. That’s my associate, Suleiman. I wasn’t going to name him, but there is no harm done. Of course, they had all sailed away with Richard, so they had already been out here in Outremer for weeks by the time I landed in Cyprus.” He spread his hands in a shrug. “Which means that there is no reasonable way for us to find out who they were. Their faces could be any among the hundred or so oafish lumps that hang about Richard constantly, waiting for instructions.”

  He looked away again. “I couldn’t even find out if Richard sent them off deliberately or if they took it upon themselves to carry out his ill-stated wishes, the way his father’s bullies did for Thomas à Becket in England. That would not be unlikely, for that incident appears to be one of Richard’s favorite recollections of his father. He talks about it frequently, whenever he wishes to point out that it is inadvisable to cross a man of his background, so the murderers might well have acted on their own, in expectation of his pleasure and gratitude. But whether the one is true or the other, there’s no doubt now that Richard knows both what he did and what he is guilty of. That’s why you have heard no word from him since his arrival here. I doubt that he could look you in the eye.”

  That comment brought a response from St. Clair, spoken calmly, in matter-of-fact tones. “Oh, he could look me in the eye, Alec. Have no doubt of that. Richard Plantagenet could look me in the eye and smile at me and make me feel right welcome while my father’s blood dripped from his hands. His self-love is so monstrous that he can now convince himself he is incapable of doing wrong.

  “I truly loved this man, once, you know … almost as dearly as I loved my father. He knighted me and I admired him greatly, seeing him as a paladin. But then, in tiny increments, one instance at a time, I began to see him as he truly is. All of the love and admiration, all the respect, all of the loyalty and duty that I had felt so privileged to owe him willingly for so many years began to turn to vinegar and ashes in my mouth, and my soul grew increasingly sick as more and more evidence of his perfidy and his unending selfishness became clear. And it all culminated with the obscenity of his destruction of the Saracen prisoners.

  “After that, and what I suffered over it, even this information that he murdered my father, his most loyal servant, cannot move me to great passion. I believe it, but it does not surprise me in the slightest degree, and I think that were I to examine my own heart, I might even find that I suspected it—although I know I did not.” André turned his eyes directly on his cousin. “I have mourned my father, and I have come to accept that he was murdered. To find out now that he was murdered by a spiteful, ungrateful friend makes little difference. Murder is murder.”

  St. Clair fell silent, and Alec Sinclair made no attempt to interrupt him, for he could see that there was more to come. And eventually André almost smiled as he said, “But I can understand now what you were attempting to say when you were muttering about our having to make up our minds as to what we must do next. Have you any ideas?”

  “Aye, I have several. Go ahead. I’ll follow you.” They had reached the central area of the stone field, close by the pinnacle that marked the cavern’s roof, and now St. Clair nudged his horse to the left, taking the half-hidden pathway to the sink hole that led down to the hidden entrance. Alec followed him, speaking to the back of his head as they moved forward.

  “The first and most obvious option open to us, to both of us, is simply to disappear into the desert and live with our Shi’a allies. That should present no great difficulty on any front, since we have the Grand Master himself to assist us. He need simply claim a requirement for our services, as clandestine operatives, to be conducted beyond the perimeters of our regular encampments. And he would not even be required to lie, since he could never be asked about the Order that claims our loyalty along with his own. He would simply leave others to assume, which they surely would, that our duties lie in the service of the Temple. No one would ever think to doubt his judgment, for we both speak flawless and fluent Arabic and have the capability of mixing with Saracens without being seen for what we truly are.”

  “Aye, but were we to do that, we would be forced to live among Sinan’s people. I do not think I could live that way, Alec. Can you imagine spending an entire lifetime with Rashid al-Din, with that scowling, hostile, humorless glare of his fixed upon your every move, and with the constant knowledge that even when you are not within his sight, he has a hundred or a dozen spies reporting to him on everything you say and do? No, pardon me, Cousin, but that suggestion leaves me lacking in enthusiasm. What else have you
in mind?”

  They had reached the sink hole, but neither man had made a move to dismount while they were talking of the Hashshashin. Now André stepped down from the saddle and Alec joined him, holding his horse’s head by the halter.

  “Well,” Sinclair said, “we could desert and simply head into the desert to the south in search of my old friend and former captor, Ibn al-Farouch.”

  André turned to face him, one eyebrow raised in scorn. “Now there is a wonderful idea, brim-full of merit. I am surprised you were able to dream that one up so quickly, after the failure of your last notion. You are suggesting that we should surrender ourselves as prisoners and risk being slaughtered out of hand in swift reprisal for what we did to their brethren? That is simply a breathtaking idea.”

  “I am serious. And we would be in no danger. As emir, my friend Ibn has the power to protect us and give us sanctuary among his people. You would enjoy that, I think. He has a daughter, Fatama, who will be approaching fifteen years of age by now, and she is exquisite. You and she would like each other, I believe.”

  “Alec, I have taken vows, remember?”

  “You could practice the same asceticism among the Saracens, Cousin, if that is what you wish. The emir has a brother who is very close to him, by name Yusuf, and Yusuf al-Farouch is a devout and learned man, yet also a man blessed with great wit and humor and compassion. He is a mullah, but a mullah unlike any other you might meet. You would enjoy him, too. So what say you, shall we seek out al-Farouch?”

  St. Clair was staring at him wide eyed. “You are playing the fool here, are you not? Tell me, Alec, that you are jesting.”

  Alec Sinclair shrugged. “So I am jesting. I thought it might do you no harm to smile and indulge yourself in pleasant thoughts for a few moments. A fool can be a wondrously diverting person … I also thought you might be less concerned than you were before with all this talk of vows and penalties and guilt and consequences were you able to laugh for a moment or two. It seems to me you have lost sight of the small fact that neither you nor I is Christian. And that is not a good fact to lose sight of, Cousin. You are starting to sound like a priest-ridden, guilt-tormented sinner, when what you really are is a privileged and enlightened Brother of the Order of Sion. Enough of guilt, Cuz. It is a meaningless concept.”