Standard of Honour

The Duke stopped, almost in mid-stride, and looked André straight in the eye. “And later?”

The flush spread farther, suffusing André’s temples. “And later it became impossible to speak of her.”

“I see, and I can hazard why. She is from Lusigny, and yet you met her in Poitiers and visited her there later. Why was that?”

“She lived in Poitiers then, with her parents. But fifteen months ago…she was wed, by her father’s wishes.”

“Aha! For most men that would spell finis.”

André nodded. “True, my liege, it would. But hers was a loveless marriage from the first, with a man almost three times her age who lived in Lusigny. It was her father’s wish, not hers, and she was an obedient daughter.”

“But plainly not an obedient spouse. You continued seeing her.”

“I did, my liege, although we met far less often then.”

“And how came she to be here in Poitou at the time of her…misfortune? Need I remind you that, married or not, the lady is now dead and beyond the reach of clacking tongues, whereas you are very much alive and stand in need of her? Speak out, then.”

A swift, uneasy glance at his father preceded the younger St. Clair’s response, but then he raised his chin and looked directly at the Duke. “I received word from her, nigh on three months ago, that her husband would soon be traveling southeastward from Lusigny to spend a month visiting an aged, ailing brother in Clermont, and she had a plan, set in place months before, that would permit the two of us to meet. And so I arranged for an escort to conduct her on a prearranged visit to a distant cousin of hers, a recently bereaved widow who lives close by here, on the outskirts of our lands.”

He glanced again at his father, whose face betrayed nothing of his thoughts. “It was complex in some ways, yet in others exceedingly simple, for no one knew her here, and her cousin knew nothing of me, or of the relationship between us.” Again he gave the tiniest of shrugs, almost imperceptible. “It was straightforward and it worked well. The widowed cousin made her farewells to Eloise on the morning of the day she was killed, believing her safely on her way home to Lusigny, escorted by her husband’s men-at-arms. But the men were in my pay, hired through a friend in Poitiers, and they brought her to the spot where she and I were to meet for the last time, for we had decided that to continue this charade was purest folly, tolerable to neither one of us. They settled her comfortably there to wait for me, and then they departed as ordered, to await my later summons…I can only presume that when they heard no more from me, they eventually returned to Poitiers. They had been well paid, and in advance, and they knew our meeting was a tryst, so they would have—must have—assumed the lady had decided to remain here with me.”

He paused, frowning in recollection. “Be that as it may, the priests found her before I arrived, and you know the rest, my liege, save for this: when Eloise failed to return home to Lusigny, no one could have begun to imagine where to look for her, because she had told her own household attendants that she was traveling north and west, towards Angers, to visit yet another cousin, whose husband had sent an escort to accompany her. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that no one has come seeking her here.”

“Hmm…” Richard crossed the floor and stood behind his chair, grasping the knobs on its high back. “Explain, if you will, why you did not tell your father you knew this woman? It would have saved everyone a great amount of grief and frustration.”

André’s face had flushed bright red before Richard finished speaking, and he nodded, miserably. “I know now how foolish and misguided that was, but I only saw it today. It had not occurred to me before. I was distraught when I reached home that day and at the time it seemed the right thing to do…to protect her name and reputation.”

“And where were you the following morning, when the Baron’s men came to arrest you?”

André St. Clair’s eyebrows rose as if in disbelief that anyone could ask him such a thing. “I was at the Devil’s Pit searching for her body. I had not slept all night and could not believe that two bodies could vanish without trace. I found the tracks my father’s man had reported, and followed them to edge of the pit. Then I attempted to climb down into the hole, but it proved impossible. Within twenty paces down from the only point of access on the rim, I reached a spot where I could descend no farther without falling to my own death, and when I attempted to turn back I almost despaired of climbing out again. It took me more than an hour to make my way back up and even then I would not have succeeded without help at the end from Jonquard, whom my father had sent to find me and to warn me to stay far from home. He found me and pulled me out.”

Duke Richard moved around his chair and sat down again, silent after that, staring at the younger knight, then turned to Sir Robert de Sablé.

“Robert? What think you?”

De Sablé inhaled deeply, and Henry, noticing the flattening of his nostrils, the frowning brows, and the implacable set of the man’s mouth, braced himself for the condemnation he felt sure must follow. But de Sablé turned his eyes instead to where the Duke sat watching him. Unfazed by Richard’s gaze, he shook his head slightly and raised one hand in a plea for patience and time to make his decision, while André, who had most to lose or gain from what would be said next, stood still, looking at no one.

Having watched the young knight as he was telling his tale, de Sablé now believed the man implicitly, and he was making a great effort to contain his own sense of outrage. No one would ever accuse Robert de Sablé of being naïve, and he had been fully aware all his life of the rampant corruption among the clergy at all levels of the Church’s hierarchy. But his knowledge and his critical acumen had been sharpened through a more radical circumstance than any that influenced the vast majority of his fellow men. Robert de Sablé was a member of the secret Brotherhood of Sion. He had been admitted into the Order on his eighteenth birthday, and since then he had learned much, and studied more, about the Order’s teachings, and the accuracy of its lore and its archival sources regarding the errors and misguided policies of the Catholic Church over the preceding thousand years. The corruption within the Church was worldly and cynical, certainly, and it cried out for correction. But murder and rape such as were involved here was beyond his experience and insulted his credulity. He drew himself upright.

“My lord Duke,” he said, his frustration evident in his tone, “I know not what to say, other than that I am convinced we have heard the truth spoken here. But admitting that, I must admit, too, my own relief that the burden of responsibility is yours and not mine. You are Duke of Aquitaine, and this matter rests squarely within your jurisdiction, but I fear I can offer nothing of guidance in how you must proceed henceforth.”

Richard rose to his feet again and resumed his pacing, his palms grinding together relentlessly, his eyes shining with a zeal that Henry recognized with both pleasure and misgiving.

In the course of the years he had spent shaping, training, and grooming the boy, he had learned to read Richard Plantagenet like a book, and now he found himself observing the Duke dispassionately, guessing, before Richard even opened his mouth, at what he would say. When swift, unprecedented judgments and decisions were required, Richard had proved, time and again with overwhelming consistency, that no man in Christendom, even his own formidable father, could match him in ruthless and precise decisiveness. Richard was brilliant, cynical, mercurial, overwhelmingly ambitious, relentlessly manipulative, and every inch the warrior Duke, and his proposal, whatever form it might take, would, Henry knew, be simple, clean, straightforward, and drastic. He clasped his hands together in his lap and crossed his ankles, knowing from the Duke’s expression that a decision would quickly be forthcoming. Even so, the swiftness of Richard’s response surprised him, demonstrating clearly to the older man that, once again, his former protégé had made up his mind beforehand and that his consultation of de Sablé had been no more than a formal courtesy.

“So be it,” Richard said. “I concur. It is my task and my responsibility alone, as Duke of Aquitaine, to make the decision on what is to be done in this matter. When we ride out of here today, Robert, we will go together to visit this vindictive fool of a baron, de la Fourrière, and if he escapes my wrath with his barony intact I will be more astonished than he. I have more than enough pressing problems to occupy my time without having to step aside from all of them to kick the arrogant arses of my petty vassals. And speaking of arrogance, before we even set out, I’ll send a captain and four men to arrest the unsaintly Abbot of Sainte Mère…what was his name? Thomas?” This was flung at Henry, who merely nodded. “Well, he will lose his every doubt, just like his doubting namesake the Apostle, when he finds himself being frog-marched in chains to confront me.”

De Sablé spread his hands. “And then, my liege?”

“And then they will both find themselves dealing with me in fourfold jeopardy, judging them as Count of Poitou, in which domain they hold their power, and then as Count of Anjou, as Duke of Aquitaine, and atop all of those as the future King of England, sired by a father who long since demonstrated his impatience with troublesome barons and meddlesome priests. By my decree, they will agree immediately to quash and annul this ridiculous charge of murder—and the laughable but despicable implication of pederasty against Sir André.” He laced his fingers together. “The contumacious and murderous priests involved will be arrested, tried, and hanged. And should either one of their erstwhile patrons, Baron or Abbott, prove reluctant to proceed with that immediately, I will deal with them and their murderous brood as my father, the old lion, dealt with Becket. So help me God!” The Duke’s voice was chillingly absolute in its sincerity.

“You may stand down, Sir André,” he continued, not bothering to look at the young knight. “You are absolved and this matter is concluded, save for the final details.”

Even before Richard turned to look at him, Henry’s mind had skipped ahead to the quid pro quo that must come next. Richard Plantagenet did nothing without a quid pro quo being involved, and this one had been self-evident from the outset.

“My liege,” he murmured, the rising inflection of his voice turning the appellation into a question.

“Aye, Henry, as you say, your liege.” The King’s mouth broke into a sardonic little grin. “I came here looking for you, but I will now require both of you to entrain with me in the coming venture in Outremer, for only thus will all threats against your son’s life be annulled. André cannot safely remain in France once I be gone. Surely you see that, and you, too, André?” Both men nodded, and Richard smiled. “Then let us be resolved on it. We go to war together, for as powerful as I may be when I am here, I tend to create powerful foes, and these churchly knaves would find a way to arraign you again and kill you quietly as soon as they believed my back was turned.

“So! Henry, you will be my Master-at-Arms. And you, Sir André, will join the Temple.”

“The Temple, my liege?” André eyes widened. “How may that be? I am no monk, nor fitted to be one.”

Richard barked a short, humorless laugh. “Perhaps not now—you have made that amply clear—but such things can be arranged, and you may warm to the thought. But monk or no, you are nonetheless a knight, raised to that estate by my own hand, and you are a St. Clair, of the bloodline that produced one of the nine Founders of the Temple Order. And God surely knows the Order has need of you and will welcome you to ride beneath its black-and-white standard.”

He glanced then from son to father. “Hear me now, and hear what I say. Two years ago—no,’ twas even less than that by half a year—two hundred and thirty knights of the Temple were lost in a single day at a place called Hattin—that was the battle I told you of last night, Henry. But more than a hundred of those were executed as prisoners, after the fighting, on Saladin’s own orders. Think upon that, my friends. This fellow calls himself Sultan, the exalted ruler, but that atrocity alone demands the dog’s death. Two hundred and thirty Temple Knights lost in a single day, and nigh on half of them murdered out of hand when the fighting was all over. And then, hard on the heels of that, he slaughtered hundreds more after he took Jerusalem the following month. And his stated reason for that butchery? That the Temple Knights are the most dangerous men on earth.” His eyes moved from father to son. “Well, they may have been the most dangerous men on earth before Hattin, but he has now ensured that they will be even more perilous to him and his in time to come.”

He ground his palms together again. “But irrespective of its origins, the reality of this slaughter has left us facing a truth with which we have to contend, my friends: The Templars have been worse than decimated, for they have lost five men in ten, not merely one. They may be the most powerful and celebrated warriors on earth, the standing army in the defense of Christianity in Outremer, but not even they can endure losses on such a scale as has been seen these past two years. It has been accepted since the days of Julius Caesar that no military force can continue to function effectively once its strength has been reduced by more than one third of its complement.”

He stopped again, giving those words time to sink home to his listeners before he continued. “There have never been more than one thousand Templars at any single time in the entire area of the Holy Lands. That is not something that is widely known, for most people today think the Temple is ubiquitous and indomitable. But their recent losses have amounted to more than five hundred, leaving a mere fragment of their former force in place. So the Order is hungry for qualified recruits.” He looked directly at André. “They seek young knights, debt free, without worldly responsibilities, and sound of mind and body. Think you that description might apply to you, my young friend?”

André shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “It might, my liege, were it not for the shadow hanging above my head.”

“That shadow has been banished. Forget it ever existed.”

“I wish I could, my liege. But even were I to succeed in forgetting it, it will still be kept alive and reported on by others, perhaps even in Outremer, and the Temple is notably rigid and unyielding in its scrutiny of recruits. I have heard it said, if you will forgive me for being thus blunt, that not even kings or dukes have the power to impose their will upon the Order.”

Henry St. Clair stiffened on hearing his son’s words, fully expecting that they would infuriate Richard, but to his astonishment, the Duke merely smiled.

“True, that is absolutely true, so my influence would normally be little use to you in gaining entry. But look again, if you will, at my friend Sir Robert de Sablé here, and believe me when I tell you that there is more to him than meets the eye. In certain things, Robert has influence that I could never gain. He is, for one thing, one of the finest mariners in all of Christendom, albeit he holds that to have but little import in his life nowadays.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at de Sablé, and the knight nodded in return, apparently submitting to some unspoken request. Richard grinned broadly and turned back to the others, drawing the long-bladed dagger from his belt and flipping it into the air, end over end, to catch it easily as it came down. Twice more he did it, and the others watched him, wondering what was to come next.

“I can tell you both a certain secret known to very few at this time. Sir Robert, like you, André, is not a member of the Temple.” He spun suddenly and threw the dagger towards one of the wooden pillars that supported the high roof above them, and it crossed the space as a whirling blur, to hammer itself home point-first into the densely grained timber. In the silence that followed, Richard ambled over and worked the blade free, examining the point critically before he sheathed the weapon again.

“But Sir Robert has been invited, by the Governing Council of the Templars, to join the Order, and not merely as a serving knight but as the newly designated Master of the Temple, to replace the man Gerard de Ridefort, the current Master who has recently been reported missing yet again, believed captured in battle and very probably dead.”

He grinned again with satisfaction in seeing the jaws of both St. Clairs sag open and their heads swivel slowly to gaze at de Sablé. When he considered they had had sufficient time to gape and be impressed, Richard continued. “Let me repeat that: Sir Robert has been invited by the Governing Council of the Order of the Temple to join its ranks. Never has such an invitation been issued before now. It is unprecedented because the Temple has always been jealous—and zealous—about those to whom it permits entry to its ranks. But it has an even deeper meaning here, and now especially for you, Sir André, because it makes it possible—and even likely, given that Sir Robert professes himself convinced of your innocence—that you could be admitted to the Order, as a novice without formal vows, prior to our leaving France. Thus both of you could travel together in my train until we reach the Holy Land, each of you preparing for the task that lies ahead, so that when we arrive you, André, would enter the Order of the Temple as a serving knight and you, Henry, would assume your own duties on my behalf.”

Henry St. Clair bowed his head deeply.

“Excellent,” the Duke said. “Now, let us be about our business. First this pious, sanctimonious Abbot Thomas. He may not have much fear of God in him, but by God’s holy throat he will discover such a fear of me this day as will make him howl with penitence. André, go and find Godwin, the captain of my guard. He is an Englishman, enormous, but he speaks our tongue. You won’t mistake him. Bid him take four men and ride to the Abbey of Sainte Mère, to arrest the Abbot Thomas and to bring him to me in chains at the castle of la Fourrière. In chains, mind you, and afoot. He is to make the Abbot walk! I want this holy lout to suffer pains and fears the like of which the sanctimonious hypocrite has never imagined before this day. And send one of your own men with them, to show them the way from here to there. Go. No, wait.” He clicked his fingers. “While you are there, tell Pierre, Godwin’s corporal, to prepare our horses and bring them to the entrance within the half hour. You have all that?”

André nodded, murmured “My liege,” and left the room. Sir Henry watched him go, admiring his son’s upright posture and still mildly surprised at the ease of his own acquiescence to what had been wrought here. He had known almost from the outset of Richard’s visit exactly what must result for himself from the Plantagenet’s wishes, and resentment and bitter frustration had been bubbling within him, tightly suppressed, since first he heard Richard’s demands the night before. But now, as if by magic, all traces of resentment had left him, replaced by a grudging sense of admiration for this man who controlled all of their lives.

Despite his thoroughgoing awareness that Richard Plantagenet was being even more manipulative than usual, Henry had reasons of his own, besides the obvious, for accepting the Duke’s will now, for there was no question in his mind that without Richard’s ducal and regal support, his son André could have no life to speak of here in France. To avoid eventual arraignment and execution—or even assassination—after Richard’s departure—and with him, Henry’s—his son’s sole option would have been to join the assembling armies anonymously and without escutcheon, as a free lance. Now, however, thanks to Richard’s self-interest—for Henry did not believe for an instant that the Duke he knew so well was moved by any altruistic love of justice—both he and his son had been accorded an acceptable alternative. That his own involvement in the Holy Land campaign was a sine qua non of the entire proposal was an element no longer worthy of consideration to the veteran knight, for its validity worked now to the advantage of both of them, liege lord and vassal. In accepting Richard’s proposal, Sir Henry had made a virtue out of necessity, seizing the opportunity to keep his son alive and share his future. Now, all things considered, no more than a small, niggling sense of foreboding remained in him, unable to be dislodged, and Henry knew he would have to accept that and live with it, because its cause was deeply rooted in the dark side of the complicated and unpredictable man.

He became aware that Richard was watching him closely, and he drew himself up to his full height, self-consciously sucking in his belly.

“We are going to have to toughen you up, Henry. You’ve gone soft.”