by Jack Whyte
“I was not thinking anything of guilt, Alec. I was far more concerned with honor, and the way it vanishes out here like moisture on a flat stone lying in the sun.”
“Ah, honor! Now there’s a gold coin often gilded by people seeking to improve it. Tell me about honor, André. Tell me about how much of it you and I have seen practiced here and observed here, and—Here, look at this.” Alec fumbled in his scrip and brought out a gold coin, holding it up to where André could see it and then flipping it up, end over end, to catch it in one clenched fist. “This is a golden bezant, stamped by the Sultan’s coiner. I’ll wager it that you cannot name me, here and now, a score of honest, truly honorable men among the army within which we march. There must be far more than a score of them among so many, but you must name me twenty such good men—men known to you in person. Starting now. And mind your feet while you are thinking of them.” He turned and began to wend his way down the path that hugged the sides of the sink hole, and André followed him, deep in thought as he led his horse carefully behind him.
“Your coin is safe,” he said when they were safely at the bottom. “I have thought hard, and I have named seven men—eight if I include Robert de Sablé, and why should I not? So, I can name eight, all of them known to me, and three of those are sergeant brothers of the Temple, honest and honorable but lacking in power or status. That shames me.”
“That shames you? It is no fault of yours. Your honor is your own, as is the honor of each of the men you named. That’s the wondrous thing about honor, Cousin. It lives within us and it sets its own standards for each of us, and each of us is constrained to live within its limits. Oh, you will hear me talk about the honor of the Temple, or the honor of their corps, or of the Order, but that is sheerest nonsense being put into words. Things cannot have honor. Only men have honor, and each man bears the burden of his own. And all of it comes down to conscience and to choices in the time of direst trial, to the point when each man must draw his own line in the sand and stand behind it. Your standard may not be the same as mine, Cousin, but in the world wherein no man may lie unto himself or God, your honor is your own, it is your self, your soul, as mine is mine.”
André St. Clair sucked in a long, deep breath. “Very well then,” he said. “What is your next proposal?”
“I propose that we enter the cavern and deliver our greetings to Ibrahim. He must be waiting for us. Apart from that, I have no more proposals.”
“I have, but only one.”
“And what is that?”
“That we return to Acre and march southward with the army to Jerusalem. It is the most sensible thing to do, it seems to me, and while we are doing so, we will make time and opportunity to discuss our dilemma with Brother Justin, who has other tasks, now that his novices are all admitted to the Order as brothers. And, of course, with Master de Sablé. I meant to ask you this earlier, but have you any knowledge of how many of our brotherhood are here in Outremer, besides ourselves?”
“No, but there must be more of us.”
“There are. Considerably more. I would guess at least two score, but little is done in the way of convocations, as far as I can see. We hold no Gatherings in Outremer, and that strikes me as being wrong, for pressure of other affairs should not affect the ongoing welfare of the brotherhood at large. So I will suggest to the Grand Master that he bend his mind to forming some kind of special chapter within the Temple’s ranks, and to ensuring that its meetings be kept secret from the common fellowship. Would that please you? It should be easily achievable, and it would give us something upon which to focus for the remainder of this campaign, keeping our time and our minds focused on our true duties, free of the distractions of lesser things. What do you think of that idea?”
Alec Sinclair nodded his head once and then again, emphatically. “I like it. We return to Acre, talk to the Grand Master, march to Jerusalem with Richard’s army, but reconstitute ourselves in the brotherhood along the route. That is an excellent idea. I knew you could think, Cousin, but now you have proved it. Now let us bid a good day to the formidable Ibrahim and take receipt of his dispatches.”
Ibrahim, however, was not there. He had been there, and had waited for them for some time, but then, on a flat rock in the center of the cave where Alec could not fail to see it, he had left a letter written on a sheet of parchment, secured beneath one corner of a cage that held a pigeon. A leather tube of documents lay atop the cage. In his letter, he had explained that he had been there for an entire day and could wait no longer. The documents, he explained, were for the Frank fidai, or leader, the name used by the Hashshashin to denote the senior local representative of the Order of Sion, currently Robert de Sablé. Upon collecting the documents, Alec was asked to insert a bead into the tiny cylinder on the pigeon’s leg and then to release the bird to fly home. André watched closely as Alec retrieved a tiny bright red bead from the lining of his scrip and dropped it into the tiny metal tube attached to the bird’s leg.
“The red beads are used by and for me alone. I have a bag of them and always carry a few loose in my scrip. Ibrahim will know as soon as he sees this that I picked up his message safely and that all is well.” He released the pigeon as soon as they left the cavern, and watched it fly until it vanished from sight, and then he turned to his cousin. “Now to Acre, and tomorrow, if God so wills it, we will strike south for Jerusalem, with Richard, and, with the blessing of Robert de Sablé, build our brotherhood to strength again in Outremer along the way. Lead on, Cousin.”
ELEVEN
André St. Clair had cause to recall his cousin’s observations concerning chastity and asceticism the following day, for before the army struck camp and marched out to the south, he found himself almost face to face with Richard’s sister Joanna Plantagenet. The massive army had been astir since long hours before dawn, when the bells and trumpets of the King’s Heralds had rousted everyone from their beds to begin preparing for what would be a long and wearisome day, Sunday, the twenty-fourth day of August 1191, the Feast Day of Saint Bartholomew. The prayers of matins had been set aside that day, because of the preparations for departure, but before dawn, notwithstanding that, the priests and bishops were everywhere celebrating Holy Mass, and the sound of chanted prayers reverberated on all sides, spilling over on each other from place to place and generating a sound that was like the buzz of an enormous beehive.
André, carrying his steel helm, and with his mailed hood unlaced to bare his head, had been making his way from crowd to crowd of worshippers, searching for Alec, and managing to look devout and intent as he deftly avoided stopping anywhere, but as he emerged into one area that had a higher concentration of torchlight than any other, it registered upon his awareness that the smell of incense was thicker here, the light stronger and the clothing of the celebrants, including no fewer than three officiating bishops, was of a much richer quality than anything he had seen before. He saw a concentration of clean and brilliant red-crossed white surcoats on his left and recognized Sir Robert de Sablé among them, unmistakable in his magnificent Grand Master’s mantle of thick white woven wool with the plain black, equal-armed cross on front and rear. Alec Sinclair stood beside the Grand Master, and André began to swerve towards them, but he stopped abruptly when he saw the King standing on de Sablé’s other side, and on Richard’s left, the two Queens, Berengaria and Joanna Plantagenet, with their women clustered behind them.
Because of the angle from which he had begun to approach them, no one in the royal grouping had seen him moving, but something in the way he froze caught Joanna’s attention, and she turned her head and looked right at him. André did not even have time to lower his head, and so he merely lowered his eyes, hoping that, from where she was, he would blend into the mass of faces behind him. He kept his eyes cast down for a count of five, highly conscious of how slowly time was passing, then looked up again to find her staring at him still, a slight frown marring the smoothness of her forehead. Willing himself then not to move a muscle or
react in any way, knowing that if he did he would tighten her focus on him, he lowered his eyes again slowly and counted once again to five and then to ten, reciting to himself a litany of reasons why she should not be expected to recognize him: she had never seen him in the full Templar uniform, and when she had seen him, he had been clean shaven and his hair had been long and unkempt, befitting an unranked novice, whereas now his head was cropped short and he wore a heavy growth of beard. By his estimation, she was unlikely to remember him, but yet she plainly had recognized something about him, even if she had not placed him absolutely. He raised his eyes again, slowly, and felt a great surge of relief to see that she was no longer frowning at him, although she was still frowning, her eyes moving now over the other faces around him. He watched her then, willing her to look away, and soon she did, turning back towards the altar at the front. He decided he had best move away to stand in a different place on the fringe of the crowd, resolving to wait until later before speaking to Alec.
He did not leave immediately, however. Confident now that he had not been recognized and that Joanna would not be able to pick him out among the crowd again, he eased himself up onto a nearby stone and looked his fill upon the two Queens, neither one of whom, it seemed to him, had suffered even slightly from the privations of living in a military encampment. Berengaria in particular looked superb; queenly and self-possessed, radiant and manifestly content, she showed no slightest indication that she might be the wife of a man whose complete disinterest in women was a matter for jest and public commentary. Looking at her now, and noting the hectic flush upon her cheeks, André fancied that he saw her glance sideways towards a fine-looking young guardsman who stood vigilantly by her side, approximately one step ahead of her, and he looked more closely at the man, noting the stalwart, upright stance, the held head high, and the defiant ardor with which his bearing proclaimed his devotion to his duty as the Queen’s Guard.
Amused, but not at all surprised, André moved his eyes to where Joanna stood, as prominent as though she were alone, although surrounded by a crowd. Joanna Plantagenet, he thought, not for the first time, was a remarkable and attractive woman. It was plain to see that she, too, was not lacking in physical affection or attention, although try as he would, he could gain no inkling of who, if anyone, among the crowd might be the recipient of her favors. He found it surprisingly easy to smile at his own wonderings and to accept and then dismiss the fact that he might have enjoyed those charms. With one last, lingering look at the slim, upright figure, with its thrusting breasts and closely draped waist and hips, he tilted himself wryly towards asceticism, if not outright chastity, and decided to make his way back to his own marshaling area.
With his thoughts thus busy on carnal matters, André had almost forgotten about another gaze that he wished to avoid, and before he stepped down from the stone he was perched on, he felt, more than saw, the King’s eyes fixed upon him. He would never know whether the iciness in Richard’s baleful stare was an expression of regal rancor or of his own consciousness of having crossed and disappointed the King—something his father had warned him never to do—in the matter of Berengaria. Aware of some safety in the physical distance between them, André held the King’s gaze for a long moment, feeling courageous as he did so, yet simultaneously conscious of a deep dread, spawned by a nagging doubt about his responsibility to the man who was once his hero, in spite of everything he knew about him now.
It was Richard who looked away first, leaving André to rejoin his comrades with a sickening sense of having been irrevocably cast out, for better or for worse.
As soon as the Masses were concluded, camp-breaking stepped up to a frenzy as thousands of tents were laid out and uniformly folded before being loaded on the baggage train. The great siege engines had been dismantled and mounted on their transport platforms weeks earlier, after the surrender of the city, and armies of sappers and engineers had been busy for the previous few days manhandling them into position for the march to the south. They had then moved forward with them the day before, so that they were already several miles ahead of the army that would follow. There was much coming and going of traffic between the marshaling points and the Acre harbor, too, as barges pulled in to the piers to be heavily laden with foodstuffs and weaponry in preparation for the journey down the coastline, paralleling the army’s line of advance along the ancient coast road built by the Roman legions before the time of the Caesars.
But eventually everything was laden, the troops were drawn up in their formations, the last of the encampments were dismantled and the latrines filled in, and to a great, brazen rally of trumpets, the first ranks of the advancing host wheeled into place and struck out along the road to Jerusalem.
TWO DAYS LATER, after a slow and uneventful march in which they covered less than ten miles, marching in the cool of the morning and avoiding the sun in the afternoon, André St. Clair finally met with his cousin. He had decided to stay well away from Alec on the march and to leave it to his cousin to seek him out when he had time, for there was an ever-present danger of encountering Richard in the area surrounding the Templars’ tent and de Sablé’s own pavilion, and André had no wish to court the possibility of a casual encounter with his former liege. He was unsure of how he might react on meeting his father’s killer face to face, be he king or no. And so it was Alec who found him, sitting alone on the ground close by his tent and free, for the time being, from the presence of any of his squadron, his closest neighbors almost twenty feet away, a significant degree of privacy in the middle of an army that numbered tens of thousands.
“I brought wine,” Alec said in lieu of greeting, lobbing a full skin into André’s hastily outstretched hands and then looking around him in surprise. “Where’s your squadron? Did you lose them?”
“No, but I lost patience with them. They’re out there somewhere, drilling. I told my first sergeant, Le Sanglier, to have them set up butts and practice with their crossbows until dinnertime. It’s been nigh on two weeks since last they practiced, and it seems like twice that long since I last had a moment to myself without their voices deafening me. Why is it, think you, that soldiers seem incapable of speaking quietly? Anyway, thank you for this. I won’t even ask where you stole it from, but will drink straight to your good health.” He unstoppered the wineskin and held it up to his mouth, then drank deeply before offering it back to Alec.
“Well,” he continued eventually, “we are alone, so tell me, for my ears only, since you are the man with the inside information. Where are we going and what is our intent?”
“Arsuf is where we’re headed. Have you ever heard of it?”
“No. Had you, before someone told you we were going there?”
“Yes, but solely because I went there once. It’s an ancient port, about sixty-five miles south of Acre. And I said ancient, not merely old. The Greeks who built the place called it Apollonia. It’s a walled town, too, not very large but easily defensible, with a sandstone fortress, now in ruins, on the landward side. It’s one of the places Saladin’s people captured after Hattin. Now Richard intends to take it back and use it as a base for his attack on Jaffa, another, larger port six miles to the south of Arsuf. Once he has those ports as safe harbors for his supply barges, he can then swing inland for the fifty-mile drive on Jerusalem.”
“Hmm. And where is Saladin’s army? Instinct tells me they may be protecting Jerusalem, but we are nowhere near there yet, so why would they bother, at this stage?”
“They are here. As you say, Jerusalem is in no danger at this point. Saladin is above us, up in those hills ahead and almost within view, watching our progress until he gauges that the time is right for an attack.”
“What hills are those? With one sole exception, they do not appear to be too high.”
“Nor are they. The high one is Mount Carmel.”
“Now that is a name I have heard. Mount Carmel … Is it close to where we are going?”
“Aye, it’s right beside our destin
ation.”
“And you think Saladin will attack us from up there, from above?”
“Absolutely, but he won’t wait until we reach Carmel. As soon as we penetrate the foothills, where the road rises and falls from crest to crest, he’ll hit us with everything he has, but on a broad plane of attack— small groups of hardened attackers, plunging down out of the hills independently of each other, along the entire extended length of our line of march, hitting whatever they can hit, wherever they find it. They will swoop in, create as much damage and havoc as they can, then pull back out and flee before we can rally anything like a counterthrust.”
“And is there nothing we can do to stop them?”
“Aye, we can turn tail and march back to Acre, but even so there will be no guarantee that they will not chase us. So we may just as well press forward.”
“Faster, I hope, than we have been moving to this point?”
“No.” Alec shook his head and almost smiled. “I find myself admiring Richard at times like this … as a general, I mean, a strategist. I think he is inspired in this. He is restrained, cool headed, judicious, and clearly thinking far ahead. His policy of advancing slowly and in comfort is unimpeachable. March in the cool morning hours, rest in the long, hot afternoons, and thus remain unruffled and adaptable, untaxed by the heat and capable of responding quickly and strongly to anything the enemy might throw at us. If he continues to use tactics like these, he will have the edge on Saladin. Four miles a day, I know, seems deathly slow to men like us, accustomed as we are to riding everywhere, but you know as well as I do that an army’s progress is tied to the speed of its slowest units, and in our case, the slowest units are our siege engines. We will be fortunate, I think, if we can maintain four miles a day with those. Were it not for the fact that this road was Roman-built and has been more or less maintained, our speed might well be cut in half. And yet we can’t simply walk off and leave these devices behind us, lying at the side of the road, not without opening ourselves to the threat of having them used against us at some future date. So, we will keep forging forward and resisting the temptation to charge the enemy.”