Standard of Honor

by Jack Whyte

  Eventually Richard lost all patience. “God’s balls, do you take me for a fool, sir?” he roared, after one sneering answer to a straightforward question. “D’you think to laugh at me? Well, by the joyousness of Jesus you’ll find that I mislike being laughed at by prancing fops.” He snapped his fingers at the guard captain in attendance. “Take this man belowground and find out the answers to the questions I have been asking him. See if red-hot iron will loosen his tongue more quickly than civil questions can.”

  Dorville did not last long before he changed his attitude. One encounter with a heated poker laid against his shoulder was all it took to dispel his hauteur, and the mere threat of facial disfigurement with the same poker loosened his tongue completely. To his credit it could be said, as Richard himself pointed out to André later, that he believed he had been successful in his activities and that his efforts could not be undone, and so, sensibly enough, he saw no tangible benefits in suffering disfigurement or mutilation after the fact. Accordingly, once he had gathered himself together and succeeded in pulling the tattered shreds of his dignity about him, he was completely open about what he had done, even evincing pride in his accomplishment.

  He had gone to Isaac under cover of darkness, he now confessed, and told him that Richard had played him false and intended to return that night while the Emperor’s followers were sleeping and arrest them all before clapping Isaac into chains. In doing so, he had played deliberately upon Isaac’s well-known terror of being chained up, knowing that the Emperor would hear only the word chains and would lose sight of everything else in his scramble to escape.

  Dorville claimed to have acted purely upon his own initiative. His sole intent was to assist his master, King Philip Augustus, to achieve his own designs in Outremer with Conrad of Montferrat. By involving Richard in an ongoing and time-consuming fight here on Cyprus and thereby postponing the departure of the English fleet, Dorville had thought to provide additional time to advance Philip’s purposes. He had acted without accomplices, he said, and he was emphatic about King Philip’s having no knowledge of what he had planned.

  Richard listened to all of this with one hand propping up his chin, his elbow resting on the arm of his chair, and when Dorville finished speaking he remained there, thinking about what the French knight had told him. Finally he straightened up and looked at the prisoner from beneath lowered brows, his chin now on his breast.

  “So,” he growled at last, his voice pitched ominously low, “you have repaid my hospitality with double dealings on behalf of your own master … and you have thrown me into a war I did not seek. So be it, then. You will spend this war in the chains you used to frighten Comnenus. A double set of chains, I think, as a reward for your courtesy and a symbol of my gratitude.” He lifted his chin, narrowing his eyes as he watched Dorville’s reaction. “You believe I am making sport of you, do you not, with this talk of gratitude? I am not. Were I not grateful, you would be on your way to your execution right now. As it is, I have decided to be lenient and permit you to live a while longer.” His face broke into a tiny smile. “You have given me a perfect reason to impound the Jew’s stallion. He’s far too unsightly to own such a magnificent creature, and I have been lusting after it since first I saw it.”

  “My lord?” One of the men standing close to Richard spoke up, and his voice was high and querulous.

  Richard glanced at him. “What is it, Malbecque?”

  “My lord, Isaac Comnenus is not a Jew. He is Byzantine.”

  Richard’s face began to redden angrily. “Not a Jew? Isaac is not a Jew? Are you mad, my lord Malbecque? Of course he is a Jew. Have you ever met an Isaac who was not? Shame on you for even suggesting such a thing. Of course he is a Jew. I knew that the first time I set eyes upon him. He has Jew written all over him, from the hooked nose to the curly, wiry hair. But that is neither here nor there. He was a usurper when he came here, seizing the throne, and now I am taking it from him. The land is fertile and will feed our armies well. And the taxes Isaac formerly collected will go to assist our great endeavor, while the island itself will be a perfect launching base for our incursions into Outremer.

  “There is the source of my gratitude and mercy, Master Dorville, for you have dropped all these riches into my hands when I could not lawfully have achieved them by any other means. So dwell upon that in your imprisonment. Think upon all you have provided for me and my armies, enabling us to thwart and confound your master more completely than before.” He snapped his fingers. “Take him away and keep him far from my sight. And remember, manacles and leg irons, two sets of each. Go.”

  As the prisoner and his escort marched out, Richard called for a council of war with all his advisers and dispatched Sir Henry, as Master-at-Arms, to send runners to summon them to attend upon him immediately. He then turned to talk with some of the other notables around him, and André took the opportunity to slip away quietly. Richard appeared to be deep in conversation with one of the senior English barons, and André brought himself to attention, bowed deeply towards the monarch, and spun on his heel to march out. He took less than three steps before stopping abruptly as Richard called his name.

  “My lord?”

  Richard came right up to him and laid one hand on his shoulder, then leaned forward to whisper confidentially, “I heard that it is likely to rain heavily tomorrow morning. One of my huntsmen says so and I have seldom known him to be wrong in such things. You had best take a wagon and tents with you.”

  “My lord?” André could hardly believe what he had heard. “Are you saying I should proceed with the hunting expedition, after this, when we are in a state of war?”

  “Of course I am. What else would you have me do? I doubt we will be fighting pitched battles tomorrow morning in the woods where you’ll be hunting. Isaac has no army, let me remind you, and my guess is that he’ll run for Nicosia, although he might go due east and hope to find some of his ships in Famagusta. I’ll dispatch a squadron of galleys there in the morning and they’ll be waiting for him if he arrives. Either way, he will pose no risk to you or to your charges … Which reminds me that I hold his daughter here, as hostage, at Isaac’s own insistence. I shall have to think about what to do with her …” He thought about it for the space of four of five heartbeats, than dismissed it with an impatient flick.

  “No matter. In the meantime, be sure you take tents with you and a wagon to carry them, along with anything else you might need, including extra men, servants, in the event you have to spend more time out there than anticipated. If it does rain heavily, and the women become soaked, they could make your life more than simply miserable. Dry them off, keep them warm, make them comfortable, feed them well …” The pause that came then seemed ominously long, but then he added, “And keep them out there for as long as you can.”

  André’s stomach lurched, for he could smell trouble coming towards him as the King continued. “You will earn my gratitude for every additional hour you can win me. Oh, and I have discussed it with the Deputy Master, de Troyes. He understands my situation here, and since you are not yet sworn a brother of the Order, he has acceded to my wishes in this matter, so you may go in good conscience. Here comes your father again, so I will release you now. He and I have much to discuss before the others arrive, and this could end up being a long session. Think yourself well out of it. Fare thee well.” He clapped André on the shoulder and sent him on his way, and father and son exchanged smiles and greetings in passing.

  Moments later, André was alone again and growing ever more despondent as he attempted to analyze the welter of misgivings that was plaguing him, the first and most troubling of them stemming directly from the conflicting loyalties of his obligations to the King and to the Order of Sion. He had no difficulty at all concerning the Order of the Temple, for membership in that organization was merely a protective coat he would wear to make it easier for him to do what he must do on behalf of the Order of Sion. But he yet felt guilty over Richard, his liege lord, who co
uld be permitted to suspect nothing, ever, about André’s true loyalties.

  And then, he reflected, there was the matter of the King’s women, which, he had begun to think in recent days, filled him up inside with hollow, reverberating emptiness and stirrings of temptation and anticipation. He felt no real guilt over that, but somehow he believed that he ought to, because he found both women attractive, in their different ways, and something inside him was warning him sibilantly about violations of trust.

  And yet whose trust would he be violating if, in fact, he went any farther in pursuit of the urgings, to this point mainly formless and unfocused, that had recently been swimming lazily at the deepest reaches of his mind? Were he to indulge his attraction to the Princess, now Queen, Berengaria, whose trust would he betray? Surely not Richard’s. He doubted that King Richard would care much, if at all. And would his admiration be a betrayal of trust to Berengaria, rebuffed and barely tolerated by an unnatural husband, and sneered at by the rest of the world? He had heard before he met her that she was less than beautiful, and he was prepared to admit, upon recollection, that when first he saw her he had thought that judgment accurate. But then, with astonishing speed, he had become aware of certain things about her—her smile, and the smoothness of her skin, and the absolute absence of flaws in her face—and he could not recall when she had changed within his mind to being beautiful, although it had all taken place in a matter of hours, not even days.

  The same held true for Queen Joanna. He could find no betrayal of trust in the thought of holding her willingly within the circle of his arm, clothed or unclothed. This woman was a widow and a Queen, perhaps a little past her prime at thirty, he would have said days earlier, from what he understood of women, but certainly not yet old, and accountable to no man for her actions.

  He suddenly realized he had become aroused by what he was allowing himself to think, and he straightened his back and squared his shoulders, shaking his head from side to side as though to repel his thoughts the way a dog will shake water from its coat. He was to be a Templar knight, and no matter how little import he might place on that distinction, there were considerations to be taken into account that he could not ignore. His honor was involved. If he were to become a Templar, then he would be required to take the vows. Two of these were variants of vows he had already taken when he joined the Order of Sion: the vow of total obedience to his Master and superiors, and the vow to hold no worldly goods in person, but to share all in common with his brethren in the Order. Only the third vow would be completely new to him, but that, a vow of chastity, was the one that caused him most concern. Left to his own choices, he would never have considered taking such a vow. But if he were forced to take the vow, then he would live by it, and that thought rendered his idle speculation over the King’s ladies unthinkable. Then, striving determinedly to empty his mind of all such thoughts, he struck out towards the harbor and his billet aboard ship.

  SIX

  The morning dawned gray and heavy with solid clouds that filled the sky from horizon to horizon, but the two Queens were at the stables by the appointed hour, escorted only by a single huntsman apiece, and as Richard had promised, both were dressed appropriately for the day ahead and practically indistinguishable from the men surrounding them. They behaved as the men did, too, at that hour of the morning, moving in silence and without expression, guarding themselves against intrusion until they had fully banished the fuzziness of sleep and adjusted to the coming of the new day.

  André watched them sourly as they moved about, each checking her own saddle gear and neither one making eye contact with him, and in spite of himself he found himself grudgingly admiring their absorption in their tasks and the competence with which they checked buckles and bindings, saddlery and stirrup leathers. Even Berengaria’s unmistakably feminine lushness was invisible this morning, banished with all the normal trappings of femininity and flirtation, the frills and flounces, veils and draped gowns that they wore when they were being mere women. This morning both were unmistakably aristocrats, their fathers’ daughters, imperious and self-confident, born to the hunt and entirely comfortable in heavily shod, knee-high boots, leather breeches and tunics, and plain, dull riding cloaks of thick, waxed wool that covered them completely. Each carried a quiver of arrows, with a short, heavy hunting bow slung crosswise over her cloaked shoulders, and was accompanied by a huntsman whose job it was to carry her spears and extra weapons, but neither woman appeared to be paying a whit of attention to the silent attendants.

  The four-wheeled wagon that André had requisitioned the night before, on the King’s instructions, stood in the roadway outside the stables, harnessed to a pair of sturdy workhorses. Covered by an arched canopy of finely tanned leather stretched tautly over hoops set into the wagon’s sides, its bed was piled with tightly rolled tents made from leather and heavy, layered cloth, and with bulky bundles that André had not yet examined, although he presumed that many of them were the extra blankets he had ordered. There were several chests in the wagon, too, and although he knew nothing of what those might contain, he guessed they might hold personal possessions of the women, brought along in case of need. The wagon was manned by three of Joanna’s household staff, the senior of them her steward of many years, a lugubrious Sicilian known only as Ianni, and André somehow felt that it would have been Ianni who thought to bring along the chests. A second, larger wagon, this one with a team of four horses, stood beside it and was manned by a crew of butchers under the supervision of a senior cook. This vehicle and its crew would deal with whatever the hunt produced, cleaning, skinning, and butchering the meat, and even cooking some of it should the need arise to feed the assembly.

  The hunting party would ride initially only as far as the entrance to the stretch of forest that was fenced and reserved for Isaac’s personal use, a distance of something less than three miles. Beyond that point they might either ride or walk, depending upon conditions and the prey available for hunting, which could range from small game like hares and roe deer to larger deer, wild boar, and even bear. André walked to where Sylvester, the master huntsman, stood alone making his final preparatory assessments, running his eyes over the entire party, one at a time and missing no single detail of the checklist that he carried engraved upon his memory after many years of supervising parties like this one.

  “Ready?” André asked, and the huntsman nodded, feeling no need to speak. André nodded back. “So be it. Let’s move them out. Will it rain heavily, think you?”

  Sylvester started walking towards the wide stable doorway, and André went with him, thinking that the man’s reputation for being taciturn was well deserved, but when they reached the open doorway Sylvester braced one hand against the wall on one side and leaned forward, looking up at the lead-gray skies.

  “Trouble with clouds like this,” he said in a low voice, “is that you can’t always tell what they’re going to do. It’s solid cover, so there’s not much chance of the sun breaking through … not before noon, at least. But it’s high, too, so there’s no danger of getting rained on within the hour, either. It will all depend on what the wind gods do. If they decide to blow the right way, we could hunt all afternoon in sunshine. If they blow the other way, we could all drown trying to reach home again.” He glanced at André. “Your guess is as good as mine. But it’s your hunt.”

  André grunted, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure no one had come up behind them to listen to what they were saying. “Well, there was never any option of not going. The King was adamant about wanting the ladies out from beneath his feet today, so let’s get them started.”

  “Master St. Clair, do you intend to cancel our outing today?” The voice was Joanna’s and it rang out clearly from the depths of the stables, cool and imperious. André turned smoothly, forcing himself to smile widely as he did so.

  “No, my lady, I was merely checking the weather with Master Sylvester. We are all ready, and the weather is in God’s hands as it should be,
so mount up, if you please, and let’s be about it.” Moments later they clattered out onto the cobbled surface of the road leading to the city gates, the main party of Joanna, Berengaria, and their two huntsmen, accompanied by André and Sylvester. Behind them, and present more for the sake of protocol and appearances than for any need of protection, rode their military escort, a twelve-man squad of armored pikemen led by a sergeant and a standard-bearer carrying Richard’s personal lion rampant banner. And following those, bringing up the rear, came the two wagons with their attendant crews of butchers and laborers. André’s eyes darted about incessantly, searching for signs of military activity as they moved along from the stables towards the gates, but although he saw soldiers busying themselves here and there, he sensed none of the anticipation that would indicate large-scale preparations for war or even for battle, and he quickly decided that if any major developments were in the offing, they would not take place until later in the day. He stopped watching for alarums and turned his attention to the business in hand.

  By mid-morning the hunt was well under way, and André had been impressed by the hunting prowess of both women. While stalking the woods mere minutes after starting the hunt and gliding slowly and silently through the misty, dew-wet stillness of a coppice of trees, Joanna had suddenly frozen, waving her companions to silence with a flick of her wrist. André, crouched behind her on her right, had turned his head gently to look at Sylvester, who had frozen in mid-step and was now looking at him, the expression on his face showing clearly that he had no idea what Joanna had sensed or found. But almost in that same instant, and in utter silence, a magnificent stag had surged to its feet from the low clump of bushes in which it had been browsing and stood listening, its head cocked towards the north, away from the hunters, and its body poised for flight. They were slightly behind and to one side of the animal, fewer than forty paces separating it from Joanna in the lead. André began to hear the beat of his own heart as he fought to keep still, and then he felt a tickle in his nostril, the earliest beginnings of an urge to sneeze.