Standard of Honor

SIX

André St. Clair had much on his mind when he left his father that night, and without any conscious awareness of seeking height, he soon found himself answering the challenge of the guardsman on the battlements at the top of the highest tower of the keep of Castle Baudelaire. He met the challenge, identified himself, then went to lean against the side of one of the embrasures, gazing out into the enveloping blackness. Were he to lean forward, he knew, the dying campfires of Richard’s army would be visible below, a river of embers stretching away on both sides, edging the winding path of the river Loire. In front of him, however, in the distant west, there was nothing visible at all, which meant that either the night was moonless or the cloud cover was absolute, and he glanced up, unsurprised to see the heavy blankness of a starless sky. He sighed and turned his back on the emptiness, lodging his buttocks against the sill of the embrasure and crossing his arms on his chest, then allowed his thoughts to drift.

The following morning he would set out with Richard and all his army for the Burgundian town of Vézelay, where, according to tradition, the bones of Saint Mary Magdalene had been enshrined twelve hundred years earlier. It lay a three-day march to the west from Baudelaire and had been the officially approved assembly point for the armies of western Christendom ever since the sainted Abbott Bernard of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux had dispatched the Soldiers of Christ from there on the first campaign to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslim Seljuk Turks, ninety-five years earlier in 1095. Now, this month of June in the year 1190, all the puissant forces of Frankish Christendom would gather there, to be blessed and freshly rededicated to their purpose by Holy Mother Church, after which the entire assembly would travel southward to Lyon on the river Rhone. From Lyon, the French King and his followers would make their way across the Alps of Savoie to Torino and thence south to Genoa, where Philip had hired the entire Genoese fleet to transport his army eastward. Richard’s forces would march directly south from Lyon through his own ducal territories, following the Rhone to Marseille, where his English fleet would be awaiting them under the command of his admiral, Sir Robert de Sablé. The embarkation would work smoothly, André knew, for it had the benefit of long and careful planning with an eye to every conceivable contingency.

Despite the impression he had given to his father earlier, he really had little difficulty, moral or otherwise, with the thought of accompanying Richard to war in person. The André St. Clair who had emerged from hiding a year earlier, under threat of death from the trio of venal priests, might have balked at doing so, but he was a different person from the man who sat now at the top of Castle Baudelaire, considering his options. That younger man, more naïve and perhaps more selfabsorbed than André St. Clair was today, might have been sufficiently foolish and intolerant to endanger himself by showing his disapproval of the King’s behavior, but much had changed in the intervening year to blunt the point of young André’s impetuosity.

His initial encounter with Robert de Sablé, triggering fraternal recognition between them, had quickly brought about a complete renewal of André’s commitment to the Order of Sion after a lengthy period in which isolation and responsibility for running the family estate had caused a drifting from the brotherhood. De Sablé had brought an end to all that. André was now constantly moving between one place and another, ostensibly on business related to de Sablé’s task of readying the fleet but in reality serving as a courier between de Sablé and the other members of the Governing Council of the Order, whose members were scattered widely across the provinces of what had once been Roman Gaul. For a thousand years, beginning in the Pyrenees and the Languedoc, then extending outward into Aquitaine, Poitou, and Burgundy and as far west and north as Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy, the ancient confederation of clans who called themselves the Friendly Families had spread throughout the land, taking their influence and the ancient, secret brotherhood of their Order with them. Now, working with a few other members of the brotherhood as a full-time liaison between the outlying members of the Governing Council—which was how he had come to meet his friend and brother Bernard de Tremelay—André no longer had any doubt about his future admission to the ranks of the Temple. That was already a fait accompli, guaranteed by the goodwill of the Council of the Order of Rebirth, that small group of powerful men who had, since its beginnings, dictated the fortunes and directions of the Order of the Temple, even while the vast majority of Templars were completely ignorant of their existence.

The origins of the Templars, a mere seventy-two years earlier, in 1118, were already legendary. Every boy old enough to thrill to tales of adventure and great exploits knew how the veteran warrior Hugh de Payens had gathered about him a tiny band of knights, nine of them including himself, and dedicated them to defend and champion Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land against the swarming hordes of Arab bandits who for years had lain in wait for them at every turn in the roads. Calling themselves the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ, de Payens and his men had undertaken monastic oaths of poverty, chastity, and obedience and had quartered themselves in some abandoned stables on the Temple Mount within the city of Jerusalem and from there, in the face of incalculable and seemingly impossible odds, they had won spectacular successes against the marauding bandits, making the roads of the Kingdom of Jerusalem relatively safe to travel for the first time since the capture of Jerusalem in 1099.

Thereafter, within less than a score of years from the date of their founding, championed by Bernard of Clairvaux, who had written a rule for their new order, their successes and their heroic prowess had become so renowned that their recruitment numbers had swollen almost beyond counting. They had become widely recognized and revered throughout Christendom, first as the Knights of the Temple Mount of Jerusalem, then as the Knights Templar, and eventually quite simply as the Order of the Temple, although their official name remained the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. There were other military orders in the world today, most notably the Knights of the Hospital and the Emperor Barbarossa’s recently formed Teutonic Knights, but the Temple Knights had been the first of their kind, the first monk knights, and their glory would never fade.

That was the legend. The truth was as sparse as legendary truths must always be. The reality, a secret known only to the initiates of the Order of Sion, was that de Payens and his eight original companions had all been Brothers of the Order of Sion, and they had been sent deliberately to Jerusalem to unearth a treasure. As described in the lore of the ancient Order, this treasure had been laid down there eleven hundred years earlier, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and its people by the Roman General Titus, son of the Emperor Vespasian. Estimates of the slaughter carried out there varied, but few doubted that upward of six hundred thousand Jews had died, and many sources, most of them Roman records, claimed twice that many had perished. Whichever was correct, the Jews had ceased to function as a race in their own homeland since that time.

Notwithstanding that, according to the lore that had directed de Payens and his companions in their search, a large number of the Jewish priestly caste—inheritors of the original Jerusalem Assembly, the communal church supervised during their lifetimes by Jesus and his brother James the Just—had foreseen the tragedy and escaped the destruction and the bloodbath that followed, first burying the bulk of what they could not carry with them, the written records of their community, beyond the reach of even the rapacious Romans.

Safely out of the doomed city, these people, sometimes called Essenes, had then made their way overland, traveling in large but loose-knit groups for mutual safety. South and west they walked, to the Nile Delta, Cairo and Alexandria, and then westward for years across the immensity of Africa, always keeping within sight of the great Central Sea on their right, until they reached the Narrows and managed to cross out of Africa and into Iberia. From Iberia, long before it became Spain, they made their way northward on foot again, crossing the Pyrenees eventually and arriving in Gaul, where they settled in the region now known as the Languedoc.

Highly aware of who they were and what they represented, they were determined to return one day to their homeland, to claim their inheritance and unearth the treasure they had buried there. Rome had decreed their deaths, and thus their safety and their very survival depended upon their ability to conceal their true identity from others. And so they worked at doing precisely that, blending and mixing seamlessly into the primitive and unstable society that was Roman Gaul, less than a hundred years after Julius Caesar’s conquest of the region. They were not to know that more than a millennium would pass before their return, but they planned carefully and methodically nonetheless.

Originally more than thirty families strong, from the start of their new lives in Gaul they called themselves the Friendly Families. They established a communal integrity that fitted easily within the tribal units of the Gallic world and would persist while centuries elapsed and each of the original families expanded to become a wide-branching clan. Their assimilation was so successful that within four generations only a select few of them—and absolutely no outsiders—knew that their families had ever been Jewish.

They adopted the new religion of Christianity with everyone else when it arose, but among themselves they formed a secret brotherhood they called the Order of Rebirth in Sion, the Rebirth anticipating their own renewed embrace of their ancient religion and their traditional way of life once safely returned to their home in Jerusalem. The elders of the Families decided that they themselves, the patriarchs, would be the only members of their clans to safeguard the knowledge of their Jewishness, practicing their rites and ceremonies secretly, away from the eyes and knowledge even of their own loved ones, purely as a matter of protection.

As the years passed, without incident or alarum, and the longed-for return was still deferred, they decided upon recruitment to ensure the safety of their sacred knowledge. One male member, and only one, of each ensuing generation of each of the original families would be considered eligible for promotion to membership in their brotherhood, and his suitability would be judged by the membership at large, with the criteria for admission clearly defined. The male offspring of any woman who wed outside the Families were ineligible for membership, and since none but the Brotherhood of the Order knew anything about it, no one ever suffered by that.

Apart from the requirement of direct male descent from Friendly Families blood, honor and integrity, intelligence and righteousness, single-minded purpose, and the ability to maintain close-mouthed secrecy at all times and under all conditions were the sine qua non elements of eligibility. Within a very short time, as the original Families grew larger, there was never any shortage of eligible candidates, so that in the event that no single member of a given generation of one family was thought fit for membership, then none would be chosen and the eligibility would pass to the next generation, with no slur of any kind against the family.

The system was set into place with great care and great planning, and from the outset it worked magnificently. Because of the need to ensure the very highest standards of behavior and performance in each candidate, the scrutinizing and evaluation process was slow, painstaking, and continuous. No one could be admitted before reaching the age of eighteen years, but entry was often awarded long after that age, since each son born into a generation had to be given his opportunity to be evaluated. No candidate ever understood anything about what was happening to him during the early stages leading to his initiation; he understood only that he was being prepared for something momentous, that it was secret, serious, and solemn, and that the people preparing him, his mentors and sponsors in the work, were the people in his life for whom he held the highest regard. Only after his initiation, when he was Raised to full membership of the Brotherhood of the Order, would his early training begin to make any sense to him, and only then would he realize that he, perhaps the only living member of the brotherhood in his entire family, was the only one who knew the brotherhood existed. That was often the most difficult element of initiation for a new member to understand: that he was cut off forever, in a very basic and fundamental sense, from the remainder of his family, knowing a truth about himself and about their origins that he was forbidden to share; forever unable to discuss with them, or even to acknowledge, an area of his life that would continue to grow greater and more important to him while they remained unaware of its existence and oblivious to its significance.

André St. Clair had been troubled by that only infrequently for several years now, but this evening it had come home to him to sting like a serpent’s venom, enhanced by the irony of his father’s ignorance of what they were really discussing. Sir Henry St. Clair, the noble Angevin, was intensely proud of his heritage and his family’s ancient and honorable lineage, and he meant every word of what he said when he claimed to have no prejudice against Jews, and his son had not the slightest doubt of that. But notwithstanding Sir Henry’s integrity and his genuine goodwill, André also knew that his father would be insulted and outraged were anyone to attempt to make him believe that Jewish blood ran in his veins and that his ancestors had been Judean priests. Furthermore, it would be inconceivable to him, utterly incomprehensible, that his own son should adhere to those beliefs and in accordance with them should dedicate his life to ensuring that the ancient teachings they involved would come to pass in today’s world. That reality would be forever alien to the old man, and André had no choice but to grit his teeth and come to terms with it, for there was nothing he could do to change a whit of it.

The disgusting business of the tooth pulling was real enough, but it was a relatively minor piece of knavery, and André had used it deliberately to shock his father into seeing how serious were his concerns. But the real villainy, André knew, lay in the less ostensibly brutal but far more widespread and lethal persecutions of the Jews throughout the length and breadth of England in the previous half year. It had begun on the day of Richard’s coronation, the third of September in the previous year, 1189, at his notably, some said scandalously, masculine coronation dinner. The Bachelors’ Feast, it had been called, and no woman of any rank, including the King’s mother, had been invited. Towards the end of the proceedings, when everyone was far gone in drink, a delegation of Jewish merchants had come to offer gifts and good wishes to the new monarch. But they had been stopped at the entrance to the King’s Hall, their gifts confiscated, and then they were stripped and beaten before being thrown out into the streets, where they were pursued by a mob who followed them right into the Jewish quarter of London and there set about burning the houses of the Jews who lived there.

No one made any attempt to stop the mob until the fire began to spread to the neighboring Christian district. On the day that followed, Richard publicly ignored the atrocity, other than ordering the death by hanging of several men who had been instrumental in the burning of Christian-owned properties. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who was present at the time, said no single word in defense of the hapless Jews, content merely to comment that if they chose not to be followers of Christ, then they must be prepared to be treated as followers of the Devil.

With such examples of mercy and forbearance for guidance from their King and their Archbishop, it surprised few observers that the citizenry of England’s great cities indulged in orgies of anti-Jewishness in the months that followed, their hunger for the blood of the “Christ killers” bolstering their hysterical determination to wrest back the Holy City from the godless Saracens. André had been on the way to visit the King’s Quartermasters of the city of York when the last great outrage occurred there in the days leading up to Easter, a mere month before his return to Anjou. It was all over by noon on the day he arrived at York, but everyone was still talking about it.

He learned that a vengeful mob had collected and then chased a crowd of nearly five hundred terrified Jews—men, women, and children—into the fortified Tower of York, which they then surrounded, screaming for the Jews to come out and face their “punishment.” In the expectation of certain torture and appalling slaughter, the Jewish elders decided to be merciful to themselves. All five hundred committed suicide.

André knew in his heart that similar atrocities had occurred in his own homeland from time to time, but the scope, the regularity, and the bloodthirstiness of the uprisings in England had soured him forever against that country, and the tacit approval of its newly crowned King had effectively killed any enthusiasm and willing support he might have shown for joining in Richard’s military adventures. Only his greater duty, his fraternal obligations to the Order of Sion, prevented him from divorcing himself completely from the company and service of the English King, and even so, knowing the importance of what he had to do on the Order’s behalf, the younger St. Clair was finding that overcoming his repugnance and maintaining a veneer of enthusiasm was far from easy.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of movement close by, and he turned to look across at the guard on duty on the other side of the tower platform, who had been joined in his corner by another man. Their voices reached him as no more than a murmur, but as he looked, André saw the newcomer start to move in his direction, silhouetted against the glare of the sentry’s fire basket. He straightened up and rose to his feet just in time to recognize his friend and companion from Orléans, Bernard of Tremelay, who greeted him with raised eyebrows.

“St. Clair? I thought you would have been fast asleep by now, after all the riding we have done these past few days.”

“Then clearly you think me weaker than you are. Why aren’t you abed by now?”

“I was, but I could not sleep. Too many matters on my mind, I suppose. Tomorrow will come quickly enough, but I thought to defer it a while by staying awake. So, what were you thinking about up here all alone?”

André waved in farewell to the watching guard, then followed de Tremelay down the narrow steps to the causeway beneath the battlements, holding his response until he was beneath the line of the guard’s sight.

“That membership in our brotherhood sometimes comes at great cost.”

They had begun descending the next flight, but de Tremelay stopped and turned to look up at André behind him. “Your father again?” André nodded. “Well, it’s true, Brother. It does. But when you find yourself fretting over that, remember this: just when you think that cost has grown unbearable, it can grow worse. And it will, without fail. Trust me, despair is the only road left open to us.” And then he barked a great, guffawing laugh and swung back to his descent.

“Bernard, in honesty, has anyone ever told you what a turd you truly are?”

“Aye, a few.” This time de Tremelay did not pause and the words drifted back over his shoulder. “But when you’re a turd, people walk around you, rather than risk treading on you. Trust me on that, too.” He laughed again as they reached the bottom of the stairs, then grasped a handful of André’s surcoat and pulled him gently but firmly back into the shadows at the side of the stairs, where they could be neither seen nor heard.

“Bear this in mind from now on, lad,” he said in a low voice that held no trace of humor, “and don’t ever forget. In a few days, when we reach Vézelay, you will be accepted into the outer ranks of the Order of the Temple formally, as a postulant. After that, if you keep your nose clean and look to your assignments, you will become a novice, and eventually, all things being equal, you’ll end up a full-blown knight of the Temple, privy to all its secrets and its so-called sacred lore. You believe it’s difficult now, keeping secrets from your noble father? Well, that difficulty will seem like nothing within a matter of mere days.

“Wait until you enter the temple and are shut off among people whose every thought is alien to all that you know and believe. Wait until you find yourself floundering among the pig-headed ignorance and unquestioning stupidity you’ll find within the ranks you are about to join, where the knights all firmly believe they are God’s chosen and the world’s elite—and many of their sergeants think the same way—and you will not be able to breathe a single word about the truth you know: that their sacred and secretive Order was invented by the brotherhood to which you belong, to safeguard that Order’s sacred secrets.

“Your entire existence in their ranks will be a lie, and you will have the salt of that rubbed into your awareness every time they wake you in the middle of the night to pray in a ritual that holds no truth for you. You will know better, but you will have no other option than to comply and to observe their false rites, and you will never be able to say a word in protest or complaint. Now that, I suggest to you, might cause you some real difficulty. And that, unlike the minor business with your father, represents the real cost of belonging to our brotherhood.

“Fortunately, of course, your isolation will not last forever. As soon as you have passed all the tests and met all the qualifications for achieving full membership, the strictures surrounding you will be relaxed and members of our own brotherhood within the Temple ranks will see to it that you are assigned to duties in which you can be used to best advantage.”

He grinned again, squeezing St. Clair’s shoulders in his hands. “But I promise you, albeit I have never been inside a Temple gathering, your next few months are destined to be sheer misery.”

“Aye,” André sighed. “I have been warned about all that already. But I want to thank you for the obvious delight you have taken in reminding me of what lies ahead.”

“It does lie ahead of you, André, but by the time we reach Outremer, it should be over and you’ll be back in the world of living men. Now get you to bed and sleep well, then rise and greet tomorrow’s day bright eyed. They say it’s going to rain, so it will be a long, wet pilgrimage to Vézelay, and we’ll endure great misery before we find comfort again.”

THE MORNING SUN ROSE DAZZLINGLY above the snowy peaks of the Alps in the eastern distance, illuminating the great banner of the Order of the Temple that stood proudly alone, reflecting the blinding rays back from the crest of a hill that overlooked the fields surrounding the town of Vézelay. The banner did not flap in the light breeze, as did some others in the throng below the hill; it hung rigid, weighted along its bottom, from a bar at the top of an enormously high pole, allowing its equal-armed, eight-pointed red cross to stand out stark, challenging, and unmistakable against the pure white of its field, proclaiming the Order’s pre-eminence. Beneath it stood its formal guard of ten armored, white-clad knights, and around them, covering the entire hilltop and neatly laid out in regular, rectangular patterns, lay the campsite of the Order’s personnel: knights and sergeants of the Temple, the majority of them new and untested, recruited only recently to fill the Order’s depleted ranks after the tragic losses sustained in Outremer.

More than a thousand fighting men were drawn up in formation there, on the downward slope of the hill in front of their foremost line of tents, and fewer than one hundred of those had ever been involved in a real battle. The knights among them, fewer than six to every score, wore plain white surcoats, emblazoned not with the black cross of the Temple but with the brilliant red, long-bodied cross of their mission to regain the Holy Land. The remaining men, the Sergeants of the Order, wore the same red crosses over surcoats of plain brown, save for a scattering of senior sergeants who wore distinctive black surcoats signifying their rank.

Below and in front of the Templars, the remainder of the armies of Christendom seethed and eddied like fields of grain in a high wind, save that no field of grain, even when rich with wildflowers, could ever show such a profusion of colors. They completely filled up the fields that stretched away towards the little town of Vézelay, which was hidden in the distance by a forest of tents and pavilions. To the right of the watching Templars, the ranks of Richard Plantagenet’s followers stood banked, block after solid block of them, horse and foot, interspersed with formations of the King’s crossbowmen and archers, who were easily distinguishable by their drab colors and their lack of formal armor. Within that host, the individual colors of the various divisions could be discerned in places among the surrounding welter: the wine-red standards of Burgundy stood firmly alongside the dark, rich blue of Aquitaine, and the greens and gold of Anjou and Maine were visible behind those, as was the black and crimson of Poitou, along with the blue-and-white stripes, pale greens, and yellows and reds of Brittany and Normandy and, of course, the golden lions of St. George’s England on their crimson field, flapping above all the others on a gigantic silken banner and supported by no less a churchman than Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, who had personally levied three thousand Welshmen, mainly archers, to join Richard’s host.

Opposite this panoply, ranged on the Templars’ left, were the forces of Philip Augustus and his allies. As befitted the dignity of a French King, Philip’s own royal standard, the golden fleurs-de-lis on a sky-blue field of the House of Capet, appeared to be at least as large as that of his English ally, and behind it were clustered the colors of his own major allies and vassals, comprising the flower of the nobility of Christendom. The brilliant colors of Stephen, Count of Sancerre, were prominent there, as Richard had foretold they would be, more than a year earlier. So were those of Count Philip of Flanders, and Henry the Count of Champagne, nephew to both kings, accompanied by an entire cavalcade of lesser French nobility. The German Louis, Margrave of Thuringia, had lent his stature to the French King’s use, as had a huge number of knights from Denmark, Hungary, and Flanders. And there were bishops everywhere among the throng on both sides, many of them clustered in prayer in a vast gathering between the two armies, but many, many more among the armies themselves, armored over and beneath their vestments and accoutered for war, hungry for the blood of any Saracen foolish enough to come within their reach.

André St. Clair sat gazing down at the spectacle from a knoll at the front edge of the Templar formation, several horse lengths ahead of the leading rank, with his immediate superior, Brother Justin, the Master of Novices, on his left side. Justin was a scowling, grim-faced veteran who stank like rancid goat cheese. St. Clair was two horse lengths away from him, but the acrid smell of the older man threatened to take his breath away every time he inhaled. Brother Justin was flanked on his own left in turn by their expeditionary force’s taciturn commander, Etienne de Troyes, whose austerity and utter lack of tolerance for public spectacles like this were legendary. De Troyes was what his brethren in the Order of Sion called a Temple Boar—un sanglier Templier. He did not belong to the Order of Rebirth and had, in consequence, no knowledge or suspicion of the Order’s existence.

One of the most highly ranked Templars in all the Frankish territories of what had been Gaul, de Troyes, like so many others of his ilk, was utterly intolerant of everyone and everything that was not a part of his world, and within that narrowly circumscribed world there was but one entity of any significance: the Order of the Temple. Anything that interfered with his intense dedication to the Temple and its priorities was not to be tolerated. On this occasion, however, much as he disliked the restraint, Sir Etienne could not disdainfully dismiss the goings-on below and absent himself. He was the Master of the Temple in Poitou, which made him the senior officer of the Order present in Vézelay that day, and he had thus a responsibility to observe all that happened. The Temple neither owed nor accorded fealty or allegiance to any temporal king or lord. Its loyalty and fealty lay wholly with the Pope in Rome, and its representatives were here this day as the Pope’s personal emissaries, although they would fight with both of the Kings below against the common Saracen enemy.

Brother Justin had designated St. Clair a courier that morning, against the need for someone to carry dispatches to, or gather information from, anyone in the armies below. The designation was extraordinary, everyone knew that, since St. Clair was a mere postulant to the Order, admitted a mere two days earlier, but Justin was taking blatant advantage, and to no one’s surprise, of André’s filial relationship with the Master-at-Arms below. At their backs, bound by the discipline of the Order’s training, the Templar ranks were utterly silent, the only sounds they made emanating from the restless movement of horses that had been standing still for too long. By contrast, the noise from the army massed ahead of them was chaotic, a low rumbling of a hundred thousand voices overscored by louder, sometimes strident shouts of command, unintelligible from this distance, and the constant braying of trumpets and horns. André’s horse stamped and whinnied, sidling closer to Brother Justin’s mount and fighting against the rein when André, almost revolted by the man’s stench, tried to bring it back.

“Where is your father? I can’t see him.”

Ignoring the frowning presence of their field commander on his left side, Brother Justin had spoken brusquely from the corner of his mouth, without moving his head, and in response, unaware of what might be permitted him in this situation, André leaned forward in his saddle and turned his head very slightly to his right, to peer down the slope to where the standard of St. George waved over a churning mass of brightly clad bodies, human and equine, that made nonsense of any attempt to discern order.

“He’s there somewhere, Brother Justin. He will be in the thick of it, among the throng. Has to be. He organized this whole thing on King Richard’s side— protocol, procedure, order of precedence, everything— so he must be in there somewhere.”

As St. Clair spoke, Etienne de Troyes uttered a disgusted curse. His patience with the distant proceedings was exhausted. Sawing savagely on the bit, he swung his horse around and sank his spurs into its flanks, spurring it up the hill, his entire body radiating the intensity of his displeasure. Brother Justin watched him go from the corner of his eye before he breathed out and spoke again, in what passed for his normal voice.

“The Marshal is plainly not pleased with what’s going on down there. Nor should we be, I think. We can see everything there is to see, except those things we want to see—and that includes action—but do we understand any of what’s going on? The only thing I can recognize with any certainty is that huge, unholy cluster of bejeweled bishops in the middle yonder, between the two armies, waiting to play their part in this mummery. If even half of those prating, pathetic whoresons are allowed to pray at us, we’ll all die of old age before we ever get off this hill.”

St. Clair was astonished to hear such words from the mouth of the Master of Novices, but he had the good sense to betray no reaction. Despite that, however, he felt a need to say something, and so he cleared his throat. “Little fear of that, Brother Justin. Richard Plantagenet is in charge down there. He has no more affection for high priests than his father had. Those bishops will all pray, but they will pray together when the time for prayer arrives.”

The Master of Novices grunted but made no other response, evidently having remembered that he was speaking to the merest nonentity. But then he added, unexpectedly, “Aye, they will, like as not. The Archbishop of Lyon will lead them—and the Abbot of Vézelay will assist.”

They were interrupted by the clattering of hooves as one of the senior knights, whose name André did not yet know, rode forward and reined in on Brother Justin’s left, speaking to him as though St. Clair did not exist.

“What’s happening down there? De Troyes is angrier than a wet cat.”

“I know he is, but nothing’s happening. He simply can’t stand the waste of time. It would make a saint angry. There’s a hundred thousand men down there, and they’re all due to leave this day, but they are up to their armpits in bishops, panting to pray again.”

The other knight hawked and spat. “These past three days have been a bishop’s dream—one endless, sweaty Mass with panoply and chanted prayers and roiling clouds of incense. But enough’s enough. Now it is time to pack up all the tents, load all the wagons, marshal the armies, and strike out on the road.”

He turned his head, his eyes taking in St. Clair but dismissing him instantly as of no import, and nodded to the Master of Novices. “You mark my words. We’ll either be off this hill and on the road by noon today, or Richard Plantagenet will stand excommunicate.” His voice sank to a cynical growl. “And with Holy Mother Church relying on him to lead this entire campaign, exterminate Saladin and his Saracens, and win the Holy City back for Rome, excommunication would appear to be unlikely.”

“De Chateauroux!” The voice cracked from the heights behind them like the sound of shattering rock, and the knight beside Brother Justin straightened up with a jerk. “Shit! Keep an eye out. See if you can detect any movement between the camps. Anything at all! Here, Brother Marshal!” De Chateauroux shouted an acknowledgment and pulled his mount into a dramatic, rearing turn, setting his spurs to it before its front hooves reached the ground, plainly having no wish to draw the displeasure of de Troyes.

From the corner of his eye, André saw Brother Justin turn to watch the other man leave, then swing back towards him. “You stay here,” he snarled, “and if you see anything change down there, any movement of any kind by a large group, send for me at once.”

André heard him clatter off in pursuit of de Chateauroux, but made no effort to watch him. He already felt conspicuous sitting where he was, a mere postulant, not even a novice, yet clearly being accorded preferential treatment. He had noticed no signs of resentment from any of his fellows, but he was shrewd enough to anticipate that it might be there somewhere, hidden beneath a veil of seeming indifference, and he had no wish to make matters worse by appearing to gawk or to preen.

A short time later, during which nothing of any moment had happened below, Brother Justin came back.

“You, St. Clair. Marshal de Troyes wants to go down there, in his official capacity as Marshal, to spur the sluggards along. You are to ride down and find your father the Master-at-Arms and inform him that the Marshal of the Temple wishes to confer privately with the two monarchs. Do you think you can manage that?” When André did not react to the sarcasm, he went on, “You see that boulder over there?”

“Aye, Brother Justin.” The boulder was too enormous not to see, a singular, inexplicable stone of gigantic size, dwarfing the mounted knights who sat in its shadow.

“You will ride down there and find your father, but you will go escorted, as a formal courier from the Marshal, riding under a baucent pennant.” He turned in his saddle, stuck two fingers in his mouth, and whistled loudly, attracting the startled attention of a young knight behind him who clutched a long lance bearing the triangular baucent banner of his squadron. “Come over here, you,” he shouted, and waited, arm outstretched, until the young standard-bearer obediently came to join him. Different from the great banner, the lesser baucent was the battle standard of the Temple—a plain, black, equal-armed cross on a white field—and the right to carry it was a great honor that was hotly contested among the rank-and-file brothers of each squadron formation. Brother Justin nodded an abrupt acknowledgment of the man’s courtesy, then waved a thumb towards St. Clair without removing his gaze from the standard-bearer.

“I need you for extra duty, Brother. You will ride down to the valley below, escorting this courier who, although he is but a postulant, has well-hidden virtues. You will stay with him until he concludes his business with the Master-at-Arms of King Richard’s army, then return here with him. I will inform your squadron commander of where you are and what you are about.” He turned now to André. “As for you, as soon as you have completed your task and know where the Kings choose to meet with the Marshal, you will climb to the top of the boulder down there and signal us with this baucent. For the English camp, hold the pennant in your right hand, for the French, the left hand. If they choose to meet between the armies, close by the bishops, raise it above your head with both arms. I’ll have the sharpest eyes here on watch for you and you’ll stand out with your virgin’s shroud.” He was referring to the still-new, brilliantly white postulant’s robe that St. Clair was wearing. André nodded wordlessly. “You send the signal yourself, you understand? The standard-bearer’s red cross might well be lost to sight among all the other crosses down there.” He looked again at the standard-bearer. “You understand that? You are to give him your baucent and let him use it to send the signal. That’s important. Is it clear?”

“Aye, sir. I am to give him the baucent for the signal. But will I take it back again?” Brother Justin pulled back his head as though he had been slapped. “Aye, of course you will. It is a baucent, in God’s name, not a walking staff.” He hesitated, then sniffed loudly and spoke again to André. “As soon as you send us the signal, the Marshal and his party will make their way down to the appointed place while you make your way back up here and report to me. Clear? Then go, and waste no time. Marshal de Troyes will be awaiting your word and fretting.”

St. Clair nodded and followed his escort as the standard-bearer hitched his shield higher, tightened the reins in his left hand, raised his lance in salute to the standard, and spurred his horse forward and down the hill.

IT WAS TWO HOURS LATER by the time St. Clair returned, and the first thing he noticed when he reached the crest of the hill was that they had broken camp in his absence; all the tents were dismantled and stowed for travel. He saluted the Master of Novices, who dismissed him immediately with a contemptuous flick of one hand. Nothing loath, André moved gratefully to join the fifteen hopefuls with whom he would share his life for the foreseeable future, both as postulant and novice brother. There were no prospective sergeant brothers among them; all were of the knightly class and were already either knighted or advanced in their training, ranking at least as squires. Their formal induction as novices, they had been told, would take place in the cathedral in Lyon, and until they reached there they would continue to wear the shapeless garment known as the virgin’s shroud. But until they were formally accepted as novices they would continue to act, and to be treated, as servants of the Order. This was in keeping with the way of the Temple, and none of the postulants was dissatisfied with their lot. Lyon lay but a five-day march southeast of Vézelay, and thus within the week they would be launched as knights of the Temple.

They ranged in age from a gangly, knock-kneed stripling of about sixteen to a serious-looking, darkskinned man of about André’s own age, with whom St. Clair had shared his entry ceremony two days earlier, but with whom he had not spoken since. Now, as André approached silently to sit alongside him, the fellow spoke quietly out of the corner of his mouth, taking care not to move his head or attract any attention to himself.

“What was all that about? A postulant riding with a baucent escort? Who are you?”

“Name’s St. Clair. André.”

“Ah! I know who you are now. They sent you on an errand to your father.”

André frowned, wondering what had prompted the tone of that comment. It had sounded like bitterness, perhaps cynicism. He answered evenly nonetheless. “They did. Do you disapprove of that?”

“It’s no affair of mine. I was simply curious. Don’t be offended by my lack of manners. I’m a Frank.”

St. Clair risked a quick sideways glance at the man, more than half convinced he had heard a smile in the fellow’s voice, but there was nothing to be seen. “Who are you?”

“They call me Eusebius, after the holy man. My mother was devout. I’m from Aix. Provence.”

“Ah! That explains the outlandish speech. Well met, then. I’m from Poitou.”

He saw the slightest inclination of the other man’s head, and then they both fell silent and sat rigid as a sergeant rode by, frowning as his eyes passed from man to man. When he had gone, Eusebius cocked an eyebrow and glanced down to where a leather bag was cinched to André’s belt. “What’s in the bag?” he asked quietly. “You didn’t have it when you rode down the hill.”

“Observant.” André smiled to himself, intrigued. The stranger was astute, articulate, intelligent, and might even be likable. “Dried figs, compliments of Tristan Malbec, King Richard’s sutler.” Tristan Wry Nose, as he was known, was senior quartermaster of Richard’s armies, but long before that he had been senior steward and quartermaster to Eleanor of Aquitaine for years, until she was imprisoned in England, and then he had become Richard’s.

The man called Eusebius smiled too. “It sounds as though you know the sutler passing well.”

“Well enough to ask no quarter of him. I have known him since before I learned to walk, and as a friend of my mother and father, he has been feeding me sweetmeats and dainties since before that. He warned me not to eat these all at once, because it might be years before I see another one. I’ll give you one later, if you like.”

Eusebius stared straight ahead, but nodded. “My thanks for that. I will enjoy it. I have not eaten a fig in years. So what is happening down there now? And where is the Marshal?”

The man fell silent again as the sergeant, who had finished his inspection, swung around and began to make his way back towards them, glancing from man to man and clearly hoping to find someone who would give him a reason to play the tyrant. Neophytes as they were, however, none of them was sufficiently naïve to give him the slightest opportunity to be displeased, and when he was less than halfway along the formation someone called him and interrupted his scrutiny of the ranks. From the way he rode off rapidly in answer to the summons, it was clear to all of them that he was just as glad to be quit of them as they were of him. But still, apart from a very minor stirring in the ranks, none of the postulants moved, and only St. Clair spoke, still soft voiced and for Eusebius’s ears alone.

“Everything’s over down there now,” he said, as though he had been speaking all along, “thanks to our humorless Marshal de Troyes. From the moment of his first greeting to the Kings, it took less than an hour to organize the closing service, short and solemn, with only one brief Te Deum sung before the final blessing. And then the trumpets started blowing the assembly. Now, even though we be too far back in the ranks here to see it, the armies are moving out—and we are yet more than an hour shy of noon. I think that is remarkable.”

“Hmm.” Eusebius glanced at St. Clair and then returned his gaze to where it ought to be. “What I find remarkable is that I have no least idea of what you are talking about. What is remarkable about the fact that the armies are moving?”

“Because for the last two days it has been looking more and more unlikely that they ever would. The Kings, Philip and Richard, were at odds, unable to agree to anything. Two days of incessant parley had produced nothing in the way of concord. But according to my father, much was achieved last night, on the surface at least. The Kings called a privy council that went on until near midnight, under heavy guard, with Richard swearing that the army would strike out for Lyon today, no matter what, and that no one would sleep until the entire agenda drawn up by the bishops had been dealt with. And so it was.”

The blast of a bugle brought them to attention, and junior sergeants began to move up and down the lines, straightening the formations and preparing everyone to evacuate the hilltop. For a while there was no more talk, with everyone’s attention concentrated upon the task of an orderly withdrawal. It was not until their squadron was riding down along the hillside, still far above the immense spectacle of the armies eddying in the valley below them, that the two men were able to resume their conversation, and again it was Eusebius who initiated the discussion, having looked around to ensure no officers were watching them or listening.

“So, this meeting last night. What did it achieve?”

“Agreement,” André responded, keeping his voice low, although the noise of the column’s movement, with the clatter of hooves, the clanking rattle of armor and weapons, and the creaking of saddle leather, would have made eavesdropping impossible. “A formal treaty of friendship and mutual amity and trust, all signed and sealed and witnessed by an army of priests. A solemn cessation of hostilities. England, including all of Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine, along with the remaining territories belonging to the House of Plantagenet, to be at peace with France and its allies henceforth, abjuring all conflict while England and France remain jointly engaged in the service of the Lord God. In the event that either monarch be killed before the war is ended, the other will assume command of his armies and redouble their efforts on behalf of Christ and Holy Church. Should either monarch break that pledge, he will stand excommunicate and the united bishops of both realms will attest to the justice of the punishment.”

“You there! You, with your lips moving! I hope you are praying, insect, but even if you are, do it in silence. I see your lips move one more time and you’ll be drawing extra latrine duties for the coming month. You hear me?”

“Aye, Brother Sergeant.” André kept his face blank. Neither man had seen the sergeant approach, but now that he had singled out André, the two became models of dutiful decorum. For the next four hours, until they reached the point where they would stop for the night, they behaved themselves, making no attempt to communicate. Between them, for all that, a comradeship was born and grew stronger throughout the remainder of that day.

After dinner that night—a chaotic event, it being the first time the field kitchens had made shift to feed a thousand men at once—the two men sat by a fire for the hour before curfew. It had been a long, tiring day, so they soon found themselves alone, the rest of their companions gone to sleep, and they returned to the topic they had been discussing earlier that day.

“So Philip and Richard both agreed to that arrangement you described?” Eusebius was impressed and made no secret of it, shaking his head in mock disbelief. “I would not have believed that had I heard it yesterday. I have been told those two have been squabbling like jealous, ill-tempered fishwives ever since they arrived here, yowling and circling each other like two long-clawed cats in heat—” He broke off, looking warily at St. Clair. “Does that offend you, to hear such things?”

André merely looked at him, straight faced. “Why should it offend me? Because I count myself a friend of Richard, or because you suspect me of unnatural tastes?”

Eusebius stared back at him, unsure of how to respond and unable to decipher the look on his face, and André allowed him to hover on the edge of apprehension for several heartbeats longer before he said, “In truth, I found the long-clawed-cats-in-heat image was an apt one. Very good. Now hear me, my friend. If we are to be friends, and it seems to me we could be, then we have to start trusting each other. I swear to you that no matter what you say to me, I will not run off and report you to the Master of Novices. Not for speaking what is in your mind. Are we as one on that?” He watched until Eusebius nodded. “Good, then carry on with what you were saying. You had them fighting like cats in heat.”

Eusebius sat blinking for several more moments, then nodded his head. “Excellent. So be it … Fighting bitterly is what I was saying, with that unmatchable venom of former lovers. The queenly side of Philip’s nature has been on hugely admired display, I’m told. Probably because his royal nose is out of joint.” He paused, and then grinned with relish. “Mind you, you can hardly blame him if you think about it at all. He has been the only king in all this land for ten years, and now his former lover has a king’s rank, too. That, plus a bigger army, a deeper treasury, a more appealing personality, and a stronger, well-earned reputation as a warrior, to boot. Not to mention that he owns a bigger fleet, even stronger than the Genoan navy that Philip has had to hire at great expense to ship his own army. And none of that is made any easier for him to bear by the fact that Richard is too cock-a-hoop and too flamboyant ever to consider sparing Philip’s dignity by toning down his own performances.” He shook his head again. “That must have been a stodgy bowl of oats for Philip Capet to choke down all at once. It must have really stuck in his throat. And yet you say he has swallowed all of it, his pride as well as his bitter gall, and come to terms? What about the matter of Alaïs?”

St. Clair spread his hands and made a moue. “Settled, apparently. Richard has promised to wed her.”

“God’s nose!” Eusebius straightened up in shock, but managed to keep his voice down to an impassioned level that maintained their privacy. “After all the shouting and the dancing that has gone on all these years, he’s going to marry her? Well, by God’s kneecaps I find that difficult to credit, but I will take your word for it … although I would wager he will never touch her anyway, wife or no.”

“Why would you say that? He has a son, you know.”

“He’s reputed to have one, you mean. No one that I have ever heard of has seen the brat, and you’d think if it were true he’d take the little bugger everywhere with him, just to let the soldiers know he’s as potent in bed as he is in battle.”

St. Clair could only dip his head to that, unable to respond yea or nay, and soon afterwards the trumpet sounded curfew and the two men made their way to their tents.

The next two days were nothing but marching, eating, sleeping, and starting all over again. At the end of one long march through heavy, rain-soaked woodlands, St. Clair was gratefully clutching at a large pannikin of hot venison stew from one of the commissary stations and making his way towards the fire his new comrades had built against the dampness of the evening air, when he heard his name being shouted. It was his friend de Tremelay, with a loaf of bread beneath his arm and a skin of wine dangling from his shoulder. The two ate together, sharing what they had, and André’s new companions were courteous enough to seek their cots soon after they had eaten, leaving them alone so that they could talk for the short time that remained before curfew. They had exchanged their daily trivia, speaking in generalities, and after a momentary silence, de Tremelay asked, “So, how are you finding the hardships of belonging to the Temple?”

“Barely noticeable to this point, for which I humbly offer thanks. Most of the nonsense attached to harassing newcomers seems to be set aside while we’re on the march. No time for playing silly games. And I’ve found one fellow I like, another postulant. Good sense of humor and an intellect. His name is Eusebius.”

“That’s a bonus, at least. Be thankful for it. Will the fleet be there when we arrive, think you?”

St. Clair had been thinking about Lyon, where they were scheduled to arrive two days later, and it took him a moment to realize what de Tremelay was talking about. “You mean in Marseille? Why would it not be?”

De Tremelay flicked a piece of wood he had been holding, sending it tumbling end over end into the fire. “I can think of several reasons. Were they crows, they could fly from England to Marseille in two days. But they are ships, so they have to take the long way around, all the way down along the west coast, through the Bay of Biscay, with the roughest seas in all of Christendom, down past Portugal and east from there, around Moorish Iberia, then north again along the eastern coast. One bad storm could sink half of them and scatter the others like leaves on a pond. Or they might run afoul of the Moors’ galleys, along the Iberian coastline or even in the narrows of northern Africa. The Moorish fleet can’t match our ships for strength, but their galleys are fast and lethal and they could cause severe damage to our plans.”

“No, I think not.” André shook his head. “This is June already and the worst of the spring gales is long blown out. The Bay of Biscay should be calm by this time. At least, that is what de Sablé told me. Besides, he will be in command of the fleet himself and it’s a fighting fleet. His ships—the ten biggest, best, and fastest vessels ever built in England—are warships, pure and simple, newly built and designed for exactly the kind of sailing he’ll be called upon to do in coming to Marseille from London. I don’t doubt they will be there waiting for us.”

“Well, I’m sure you are perfectly correct in that.” De Tremelay’s voice was little more than a rumble, and it dripped now with sarcasm. “And they’ll see us comfortably laden, too, no doubt. We’ll each have a comfortable little hole somewhere within the ship, where we can crouch in utter misery among our dying, stinking equals and puke our entrails up all the way from Marseille to wherever we land in Outremer. Where will we land, do you know?”

“If we can land safely, it will be at Tyre, on the coast of Outremer. That’s the only port left open to us— Saladin and his hordes control all the others. But first we have to make the voyage, from Marseille between Corsica and Sardinia to Sicily, and then from Sicily to Cyprus, and thence to Tyre.”

“Is that a long trip?”

“No. We’ll be at the mercy of wind and tides the whole time, but according to Robert, all going well, we should be no more than a month at sea.”

“Sweet Jesus, that’s a long time to be sick. Have you ever been seasick?”

St. Clair shook his head. “I never have, although I understand it is not pleasant. Have you?”

“Aye, several times. It is the strangest thing, for when you’re falling sick at first, with your insides falling into themselves and curdling with every swoop and swing, you think you are going to die and you’re afraid. But later, when you’re in the midst of it and really sick, you realize that Hell could be no worse than what you’re going through—”

“And your greatest fear becomes the fear that you might not die!” St. Clair finished the sentence for him.

De Tremelay scoffed and looked St. Clair straight in the eye. “They say women can’t remember the pains of childbirth after they are done. Believe me, my friend, that is not the way with seasickness. I will never, ever forget what that is like and I have no wish ever to experience it again, although I know I will on this voyage. That should be enough to guarantee me a place in Paradise, think you not? To plunge voluntarily through Hell in order to redeem the Holy Land … I’m going to bed. We’ll be in Lyon the day after tomorrow. Did your father happen to mention how long we will remain there?”

“Yes. He said if we stop at all, it will be overnight, no more. We’re not supposed to stop there, but he is convinced that it will only be practical that we should, and that the timing of our arrival and departure will have to be arranged in advance, as we draw nearer the town. The army will split there, probably the morning after we arrive, and Philip’s force will head east while we strike south along the Rhone to Avignon and Aix, and then to Marseille. By the time we reach Lyon, we postulants should number a score, perhaps more. I know there’s another party of knights on the way to join us from the commandery at Pommiers, a few miles northeast of Lyon, and they’re supposed to bring at least six more postulants. Our induction in Lyon will be a private Temple ritual, with no effect upon anything to do with the army. I assume it will be carried out while we are in the city, during one of the prayers of the night office.”

“You are probably right, but it will be a secret, so how would I know? Enjoy it, anyway. Once you’ve taken the plunge, you’ll see precious little of me and our other brethren for a while. The Temple will keep you too busy to have time to dwell upon our needs, at least until you take your initial vows.” He stood up to leave, then hesitated.

“What?”

“You said something I didn’t understand, when you were talking about reaching Lyon. Something about the planning required to arrive there on time … What did that mean?”

St. Clair grinned and stretched like a cat, then leaned towards the fire again, one elbow braced on a knee. “Think about it, Bernard. Tomorrow, instead of riding blindly and feeling sorry for yourself, look about you as we march and think about it. Have you ever seen anything like this? You have been working for and with de Sablé, organizing Richard’s fleet, but this is even bigger. Massively bigger. You can’t tell from a casual glance, because it’s not as visible as a fleet with all its masts—here you can only see what’s close around you—but we are surrounded by, and part of, more than a hundred thousand men, plus all their horses, wagons, equipment, and accoutrements. Seriously, think hard: what is the largest group you have ever traveled with, prior to this?”

De Tremelay’s brow creased in thought. “A hundred men,” he said eventually. “I rode down into Navarre with my liege lord when I was younger, about eight years ago, and there were a hundred and nine of us, not counting camp followers.”

“And how many of those were there, think you?”

He shrugged. “Grooms, servants, cooks, smiths … Who knows? Twenty, perhaps? Perhaps a few more than that.”

“So your party of a hundred was closer to seven score, one hundred and forty. Do you remember whether you had any difficulty finding camping places on that journey?”

“Aye, we did, every day. I remember well, because I had to scout for them and I hated it. I had to ride out every day, all day, miles in front of the main party, looking for good camping spots. Sometimes I’d have to ride all day to find one.”

St. Clair stood up and looked about him at the sleeping camp. “This camp of ours is huge, isn’t it? More than a thousand Templars—far more, as you say, if you count the servants and handlers. Must be close to three hundred more, counting them.

“And we are but one camp. There must be at least another hundred camps like ours out there—two hundred, if each of them be only half our size. Do you really wonder why planning every aspect of our route of march is important? When we began to march yesterday, we did not all march straight ahead. Most of us marched diagonally to one side or the other, until we formed a moving front two miles wide. Tomorrow, we will do the same again, spreading our front farther until we are four miles in width.”

“Why will we do that?”

“Because if we do not do that, my friend, our hooves and wheels and marching feet will destroy all the land we march through on our two-mile front. There is no road in all this land strong enough or wide enough to bear our weight, and the fields might take years to recover from our passing as it is. When we encounter forests, and we already have, our passage through them will leave them blasted. One hundred thousand men, and then their horses and wagons. It is a miracle that we can move at all on such a scale, but when we reach Lyon, it will probably take at least a full day to march the columns into place from all sides, and then they’ll have to camp in the fields surrounding the city. It is a frightening undertaking. The mere thought of it has tired me out, so now it is my turn to bid you a good night.” He stood up just as the curfew sounded throughout the camp, and nodded in farewell to his friend. “Sleep well, and try not to wonder where we are going to find enough supplies to feed us on the way.”

“Damn you, St. Clair, I will be awake all night now.”

André grinned as he turned away. “Well, if you are, keep good watch.”