Standard of Honor

by Jack Whyte

  André lowered the unconscious knight to a flat piece of ground as gently as he could and then used his dagger to cut savagely through the straps and laces that held the riven armor in place. Grateful that his kinsman could feel nothing, he manhandled him remorselessly, turning him back and forth as he tore at the chain mail, clothing, lining, and bindings until he could see bare skin and the sluggish welling of blood from the wound in Alec’s chest. Whatever had pierced the armor had been massive and sharp, and André guessed it had been a hard-swung battle-axe, for it had driven clean through both cuirass and chain-mail shirt, hammering individual links and pieces of metal into the gash it had made in Sinclair’s chest. André prayed that the wound was not lethal, but he suspected that several of his cousin’s ribs had been smashed, and he had no means of guessing at the extent of the damage Alec had sustained beneath that.

  When he felt that he could do no more, he rose to his feet and peered back to the northward, looking for the distinctive black-and-white uniform of the Hospitallers, but none of them had yet come into sight, and so he knelt back down beside his cousin to find him conscious again. As soon as he came close enough, Alec grasped him by the forearm. His fingertips dug deep.

  “Sweet Jesus, that hurt, Cousin. Did I pass out? I must have … Was I right? Was Ibn beneath me?”

  André St. Clair shook his head. “I don’t know, Alec. I haven’t had time to look. You were lying atop someone, a Saracen, but how would I know who he is?”

  “An amulet, hanging from his neck on a silver chain. Heavy silver … Amulet is green … the Prophet’s favorite color … Is there an amulet? Look and see.”

  André moved away and looked at the man who had been lying beneath Sinclair, but he had to reach out and search before he could find anything about the man’s neck. A few moments was all it took, however, and he was kneeling by Sinclair again.

  “Aye,” he muttered. “A carved amulet of pale green stone, with a chain of heavy silver links.”

  “Jade, Cousin, it’s called jade … Is he alive?”

  “No, Cousin, he is not. I checked most carefully and I could find no pulse. Your friend is dead. What happened here?”

  For a moment Alec Sinclair looked as though he might actually laugh, but then his breath caught in his throat and he grunted, clearly incapable of breathing as he struggled against the pain of his wounds. André felt the strength in his grip tighten then relax, still firm, but no longer panicked. “I saw him here, when we burst out. Could scarcely believe it.” He paused, breathing hard, and André waited, making no attempt to rush him. “There he was, on foot and right in front of me, bleeding from the forehead so that he had to wipe the blood from his eyes with the back of his wrist. His horse, Wind Spirit, was dead beside him …” Another pause, filled with laborious breathing, and then, “He had a bare half dozen of his bodyguard still left around him, and as I saw him, one of our knights charged in to kill him, but he was careless and one of the bodyguards got him with a flung scimitar that took his head right off … And then I saw two or three more of our knights close in to finish Ibn. He wore nothing to mark him as an emir, but there was something about his bearing, as there always was, that set him ap—” The coughing spell broke unexpectedly, and for the next brief while André held Sinclair as his entire body convulsed in pain, racked with the ravages of coughing through a mouth suddenly filled with thick blood. Finally, when the fit subsided, André pressed him back onto the ground.

  “Wait here, Alec. There are Hospitallers close by. I am going to find one and bring him back here.” But when he tried to leave, he discovered that Alec had retained a firm grip on his wrist and would not let him go. Alec spat out a mouthful of blood and spoke again, his voice still strong but rattling in his throat.

  “Don’t fret about the Hospitallers, Cousin. They can do me no good. I’m finished. Now listen. Listen to me … Will you listen to me?” André nodded, mute, and Sinclair continued. “You may hear people talk about me … about what I did … and they will probably make it sound shameful … And perhaps it was. I simply don’t know any more. I certainly did not set out to do it … didn’t know I would, or could, do such a thing. But there I was, and there was Ibn al-Farouch, about to be struck down … I don’t know what came over me, but suddenly he was down and on his knees, his sword gone, and I jumped down and was standing over him, seeking to defend him, I suppose … perhaps to take him prisoner … I know that was in my mind, that I could repay him for his kindnesses to me …

  “But no one wanted to take prisoners. Everyone was mad for blood. I tried to beat them back, our own knights, to claim him as my prisoner, but then one of our fellows struck at me, and suddenly I was fighting for my own life, against my own people. Two of them came at once, one with an axe, and he struck me, hard. The second one I finished with my sword. And then you came … You say Ibn is dead?”

  “Aye, Alec, he is.”

  “Bring me his amulet, will you?”

  When he had it in his hand, he looked at it and grunted, wincing with pain, then held it out to André, who took it and weighed it wordlessly. “Do something for me, Cousin,” Alec said in a hoarse whisper. “When all of this is over, will you find some way to send this back to Ibn’s brother?” He caught his breath again, sharply, on an indrawn hiss. “Sweet Jesus, that hurts. But thank God, not too much … His name is Yusuf. Yusuf al-Farouch … he lives in a village near Nazareth.” He stopped and held his breath for a long time before continuing. “The same Nazareth our Christian brethren tell us Jesus came from … It has an oasis … and they grow fine … fine dates there.”

  “I know. I remember you telling me so. The brother is a mullah, is he not?” He was looking at the amulet, and Alec did not answer immediately. “Alec? Yusuf is a …” But Alec’s eyes were fixed and open, staring back at him unseeing.

  “Brother? Are you well? May I assist you?” It seemed mere moments later, but as André looked up to see the black-robed Hospitaller standing over him, he knew that time had passed without his noting it. He glanced once again at Alec Sinclair, whose expression was unchanged, and then reached out one hand to the Hospitaller. “You can help me up, if you would. I fear I may have frozen here, for I have lost track of time.” When he was on his feet again, he nodded his thanks to the Hospitaller and then indicated the still form on the ground. “This man was my kinsman and also my closest friend. He was my cousin, the son of my father’s eldest brother. And I would like to bury him apart, I think. Perhaps down by the sea there, where his spirit might look out across the waters towards his home. Have you a shovel I might use?”

  IT HAD TAKEN TWO JOURNEYS and several hours of backbreaking work to complete his self-appointed task, but now André St. Clair stood leaning on a longhandled shovel on a patch of firm sand several steps above the high-water mark that had been eroded over the years by the incoming Mediterranean tides. Before him at his feet lay a wide, deep grave, laboriously dug and wide enough to accommodate two bodies, side by side, and behind him lay the bodies of Sir Alexander Sinclair and his friend the Emir Ibn al-Farouch. He turned to where the bodies lay, then grasped Alec Sinclair beneath the shoulders and dragged him to lie along one side of the grave. Then he pulled al-Farouch to lie on the other. When they were both in place, he stood up and spoke to both of them, explaining how he would have enjoyed being able to treat them with more dignity, but that neither his honor nor their own would be besmirched by the means with which he, as a single man alone, was constrained to lay them down. He then bade them farewell in the name of the God they shared, albeit under different names, and when he had done so he went from side to side, rolling first Sinclair and then al-Farouch into the open grave. That done, it was the work of less than an hour to fill the grave again, tamping and tramping down the surface, then brushing it and scattering stones over it to conceal, as well as he was able, the fact that it was a grave and newly dug.

  Finally, when his work was complete and the sun was close to setting, he sat down cross-legged a
t the foot of the grave and reached out to gather up the yellow piece of cloth that had been lying on the sand, pulling it towards him. It was the five-crescent pennant that had attracted his attention earlier that afternoon, and on it lay three objects. The first was the jade amulet that he had promised to send to the mullah Yusuf al-Farouch. The second was the magnificent dagger given to Alec Sinclair by Ibn al-Farouch, and the third was the emir’s own dagger, which André had taken from its place at the small of Ibn’s back, knowing he would find it there because Alec had told him, months earlier. Now, holding one of the sheathed daggers in each hand, he leaned forward and spoke conversationally, as though the two dead men at his feet could hear him perfectly well.

  “Someone once read me a lesson from the Testament that said, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ I always liked the thought of that, but now I wonder if the love could be any greater because the friend in question was an enemy. Be that as it may, my lord Sinclair, it is what you have done and your honor will not suffer by it. Nor will yours, Amir al-Farouch, from being loved in such a manner. And as you have said to me so often, Cousin, honor is all we have. It is the only attribute that keeps us separate from the beasts, and most especially from the beasts who masquerade as men … But who will set the standard by which we govern honor when the men like you, the truly honorable men, are all gone? Another question that you posed and answered both. But is it one that you discussed with the emir? I wonder about that. For of course, the answer is immutable. We set our own standards, each of us, and each of us must cleave to his own distinctions.

  “I never met you, Amir al-Farouch, but I wish I had. My cousin told me much about you and he painted you as a man of strictest honor. That makes you close to being unique, on either side of the gulf that divides your kind and ours. You are Muslim, Saracen, Arab, worshipper of the one, true God, whom you call Allah. This is your home, and Jerusalem is the Holy City of your Prophet, Muhammad, who ascended into Heaven from the Rock. Believing that, you believed, too, that you were privileged to fight in its defense, and you did so with great and unflagging honor. Your friend there, lying beside you, worships the same God, the One, the True, whom we call simply God. But his ancestors came, as did my own, from the self-same Holy City of Jerusalem. They were not Christian, but Jewish, and they called their God Jehovah, and His home, His temple, stood in Jerusalem, below where the Dome of the Rock now stands. And both of you have died in war, fighting against each other for possession of this sacred place. And for what? For honor? Whose honor? Certainly not God’s or Allah’s or Jehovah’s, for the very thought of that is blasphemy. God has no need of man, and honor is a human attribute. For whose honor, then, are these wars waged? And how can there be honor in slaughtering people for possession of a sacred place?

  “I can answer that for both of you. There is no honor in this war. There is no honor among kings and princes, popes and patriarchs, caliphs and viziers or whatever else you wish to name as titles. All of those are men, and all of them are venal, greedy, gross, and driven by base lusts for power. Ours is the task of fighting for their lusts, and like poor fools, we do it gladly, time and time again, answering the call to duty and lining up to die unnoticed by the very people who sent us out there.

  “Well, my friends, I have buried you together, as you died together, and now I will leave you together. I received a warning yesterday, Cousin, to watch my back. I meant to talk to you about it last night, but you sent me to Arsuf. Then I would have told you of it tonight, but you died on me. So I will tell you now, and let you think more on honor.

  “It seems that I was recognized some days ago by one of the men who killed my father. I was in close proximity to him and to his friends and he assumed, wrongly, that I was snooping for evidence against them. The man who told me was a man I had never seen, but it was clear he had difficulties of his own with these people, whoever they are. He would not give me names, but only said I should beware of ‘Richard’s bullyboys’ as he called them, and watch my back because they were intent on killing me, to keep me quiet.

  “In essence, Cousin, that does not inspire me to return to fight and die, killing good men like the emir here, either for Richard’s personal ambitions or at Richard’s instigation, so I know not where I’ll go next, but I will undertake to see that the mullah Yusuf receives the emir’s amulet. And so adieu, to both of you. I leave you wrapped there in your honor … I will weep for you, Cousin Alec, and will rejoice at having known you. But not yet. Not yet. It is much too soon for that. But I will weep, for you, and for my father, and for all the fond fools dying all around us. God give them rest. Farewell.”

  Sir André St. Clair wrapped the two daggers and the emir’s amulet in the yellow folds of al-Farouch’s banner and stood up, stuffing the bundle inside his surcoat and then pulling his mantle about him against the evening chill as he went to where his horse and pack mule stood placidly grazing together. Lights were glimmering among the trees, where the Hospitallers had been working all afternoon to set up facilities to treat the wounded, and there was no shortage of people moving about, talking easily to each other now that the worst of the crisis was over and the cruelest excesses of the day had been set aside. He gathered up both sets of reins, for horse and mule, and led the animals slowly up the sloping rise to the old Roman road, where he mounted the Arab mare and turned northward, leading the mule.

  “You are facing north, Brother. Arsuf lies south of here.”

  André turned and looked at the man who had spoken to him from the darkness beneath a neighboring tree. He was dressed in black from head to foot, and André smiled at him. “Are you a knight?”

  “No, Brother, I am but a simple monk of the Hospital. I fight to keep men alive.”

  “And may you thrive and prosper at your craft, Brother. I am headed north, back towards Acre.”

  “Back to Acre? Will you not fight at Jerusalem?”

  “No, Brother, I will not fight at Jerusalem, nor for Jerusalem. I am done with fighting. I intend to ride in search of a field of stones, in which to meditate and commune with my God. After that, when He and I have come to know each other better, who knows? I might even go and live among the Infidel. It can’t be any more perilous than living where I do, among God’s faithful zealots …” He broke off and smiled at the expression on the tall monk’s face, which he could now see clearly in the light of the rising moon. St. Clair took pity on him. “Forgive me, Brother,” he said. “It has been a long day and I have far to travel in the coming years. Farewell, and God bless you.”

  Without another word he set spurs to his horse and trotted away, the mule in tow, and the monk stood staring after him, watching the tall, white-clad figure with the blood-red cross on its shoulders until he lost sight of it among the trees that lined the road.

  FINIS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In 2005, just as I was really getting into the nitty-gritty of researching this story, I received two books as gifts from really good friends: Sharan Newman sent me a French publication called Les sites Templiers de France— Templar Sites in France—by Jean-Luc Aubarbier and Michel Binet, published by Éditions Ouest-France, and Diana Gabaldon sent me a jewel of a book called Arab Historians of the Crusades by Francesco Gabrieli, the 1993 Barnes & Noble edition of the classic 1957 Italian compilation of Arab commentaries and insights into the Crusades “from the other side.” Both books proved to be invaluable to me in the time that followed, allowing me to visualize connections and nuances that might never otherwise have occurred to me, and so I wish to express my gratitude to both donors.

  It is truly astonishing how many books, articles, papers, and treatises there are out there on the Knights Templar, and a major part of deciding which materials to use for reference is the difficulty of being able to tell, at a glance, which are historically accurate, which are trustworthy, and which are purely speculative. Sometimes the distinctions are obvious, but I found myself traveling, on several occasio
ns, in directions that I had never anticipated. Of course, as a writer of fiction, such tangential wanderings can be part and parcel of the voyage, and in this story of mine, I have borrowed from a few of them. By and large, however, I decided to rely upon respectability, and so restricted my later reading to works of generally accepted provenance. I thought, too, about including a bibliography here, then decided that it was much simpler to mention the half dozen wonderful books that I used most, mainly in keeping my story straight. They are:

  The Knights Templar, Stephen Howarth, 1982, republished in 1993 by Barnes & Noble

  Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour, Barbara Tuchman, New York University Press, 1956, republished in 1984 by Ballantine Books

  The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple, Malcolm Barber, Cambridge University Press, 1994

  The Templars, Piers Paul Read, Phoenix Press, 2001

  Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade, James Reston Jr., Anchor Books, 2001

  The Templars: Knights of God, Edward Burman, Destiny Books, 1986

  Once again, and as always, I am acutely aware of the debt of gratitude I owe to the Penguin Group production team. They are consistently dependable and reliable—not always exactly the same thing—and even when they are cracking the whip across my dilatory shoulders, they manage to do it subtly enough and with sufficient finesse and panache that my pain is lessened somehow by my admiration of the pink tissue paper they use to cover the metal barbs … And among the Penguins, associated with them, are two paragons: Catherine Marjoribanks, my story editor, and Shaun Oakey, my astounding copy editor … amazing people, both of them. To all, my thanks.