Standard of Honor

EIGHT

Kreeee …

The distant, high-pitched scream drew André St. Clair’s eyes upward to where the hawk hung impossibly high above him, visible only as a floating speck against the flawless blue of the morning sky. Motionless then, his neck tilted sharply backward, André watched it drift silently on whatever currents were sustaining it up there, lifting and wafting it on a cushion of air pressed gently but firmly against the spread of its wings. As he watched, holding his breath, the black shape altered and then swooped down and around in a great arc, until the wings began to beat again, bearing the creature easily upward to its previous height.

“How big do you think that thing is?”

The voice came from behind him, and André shook his head. “Difficult to tell,” he answered. “There’s nothing up there to judge it by, not even another bird. It could have wings as wide as your arms’ span, seen from here, or it could be less than half that size and only half as far away as we think it is.”

“D’you think someone might be controlling it?”

“I doubt it.” St. Clair kept his eyes on the distant bird. “Most falconers will keep their birds hooded until they spot a quarry and release them only then, directly to the hunt. They are wild things and will return to the wild if they are given sufficient opportunity, no matter how well trained they may be. That’s why the falconers are so jealous of them. They do not enjoy seeing their precious killers flying around loose for any great length of time.”

“Speaking of time, it is nigh on noon and it looks as though we have been played for fools.”

St. Clair broke his gaze from the hawk and stood up in his stirrups, stretching his arms high over his head and counting aloud slowly to twenty. He then bent his elbows and held his arms horizontally, keeping his head steady as he twisted slowly from one side to the other several times, pulling each elbow as far back in its turn as possible, grunting gently with the exertion. That done, he rolled his head with greatly exaggerated extension, three times to the right and three more to the left, and only then did he gather up his reins and respond to the other man’s comment.

It was the thirtieth day of May in the year 1191, and he had been in Acre now for ten whole days, during which he had sent out inquiries about the whereabouts of his cousin, Sir Alexander Sinclair, explaining who he himself was and offering a substantial reward to anyone who could arrange a meeting between the two of them. He had had no qualms about doing so, and no fears that anyone might challenge his right to conduct himself as he saw fit. The letter he carried from Etienne de Troyes had explained succinctly to the Temple officers in command at the siege of Acre that St. Clair was in Outremer on a special mission for the Temple and must be accorded full cooperation and any assistance he requested. Now he half grinned and spoke over his shoulder.

“We have not been played for fools, Harry. I may have, but you have not. You are here at my invitation, to keep me company, and there is nothing foolish in that. Unless, of course, you feel foolish for accepting the invitation. Our host may have simply been delayed by something unexpected. That happens to us all, from time to time.” He was grinning as he swung his horse around to where he could see the man at his back, but Sir Harry Douglas was in no mood to return the grin. He sat frowning, disapproving of everything involved in this excursion, which he believed unauthorized, into needless danger.

Long before dawn that morning, telling no one about their departure or about where they were going, they had left their fellow knights encamped at the oasis they called Jappir, a mere hour’s ride from the siege lines around Acre. They had ridden inland from there and were now deep inside hostile territory, more than three leagues from where they had set out, and facing a landscape that Harry could never have imagined before he set eyes upon it that morning. They were surrounded by an ocean of rocks, a vast plain of smoothly rounded boulders of all shapes and sizes, some of them as large as houses, some as large as castles, and others, the pebbles of the scene, merely as large as hay wains or peasants’ huts. Any one of these could conceal an entire group of men, and Harry and André had not eyes enough between them to keep sufficient watch. It was all Harry could do to resist the temptation to keep his horse moving constantly so that he could scan the horizon without pause.

Harry kneed his horse forward and rode slowly around the cluster of massive stones that crowned the tiny hilltop, the highest point for miles. There appeared to be no more than six of them in the grouping, but they occupied the exact center of the small hilltop and were piled together as though gathered and set in place by a giant. They were also high enough to be visible from miles away, the tallest of them towering far over Harry’s head, a tapering, sand-sculpted monolith more than twice as high as he was on his horse’s back.

“Laugh if you want to, St. Clair,” he said quietly, his eyes probing the horizon, “but I don’t like one wee bit of this. I think you’re mad to be here, and I am even madder to have come with you. I enjoy your company and you can be a droll whoreson at times, but this, this is insanity. There could be legions of fleabags out there right now, watching us from behind every stone in sight, even taking aim at us, and we would never even see them before we died. Let’s move on, in God’s name. That way, even shut in on all sides, we can at least entertain the illusion that we might be able to run between the rocks and save ourselves.”

André St. Clair shook his head gently. “I have no doubt you may be right, my friend. And God in His Heaven knows that your abilities to maintain the sanctity and integrity of your own fragile and cowardly skin are legendary. But I believe, nonetheless, that it would be an error to leave so soon. The man we are here to meet might, as I said, have perfectly valid reasons for being late.”

“You call this late? He has slipped by several hours beyond late.”

“One hour, Harry, one hour at most. No more than that. We arrived early.”

“Well, I’m glad at least you didn’t name him Sinclair.”

André looked at him quickly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“This fellow, he could be anyone. Might even be a Muslim bandit, hoping to take you for ransom. We have no proof that he’s the man you seek.”

“No, we have not. Nor have we proof that he is not. So we will wait. And with the grace of God, we shall see.” He tugged at his reins and nudged his horse towards the edge of the hilltop, and Harry moved forward to join him, gazing out at the eerie sameness of the countless stones in this strange stretch of desert. St. Clair arched his back again, raising his bent elbows to shoulder height, then pressing them backward. “Master Douglas,” he said, “I intend to climb down from this saddle now, to stretch my legs and wait in comfort for a spell. You should do the same. But in the meantime, think of something different to talk about … something pleasant and positive.”

Douglas said nothing, but both knights swung down from their mounts and busied themselves in loosening their saddle girths to give their horses a brief respite.

“Did no one ever warn you people never to relax your guard?”

The voice came from directly behind them, so close that the speaker had had no need to shout, and both men spun around so quickly, fumbling for their weapons, that anyone watching might have laughed at their consternation. Harry Douglas was quicker to react than St. Clair. His sword cleared its sheath as he completed his pivot, and he had it half raised to attack before the significance of what he was seeing struck home to him. André had been less well balanced when he heard the stranger’s words, and he had to shuffle his feet quickly before he could begin to turn around, but his hand had barely closed about his sword hilt when he identified what he was seeing and straightened up immediately. He did not relinquish his grip on the hilt—the folly of such naïve behavior had been drilled into his skull years earlier—but he felt the tension bleed from him as quickly as it had sprung up as he swept his gaze from side to side, searching for others. There were none. The man facing them was alone.

“Who are you?” Harry asked the question before St. Clair could formulate it.

The stranger merely looked back at him. “Who should I be? Whom did you expect to find here, so far into the desert and at such a time of day? I am Alexander Sinclair.”

It was all he needed to say, and André felt his heart leap in his chest with relief, not because he had doubted who this was but because he had doubted his own ability to recognize his cousin after so many years. He might, he felt now, have recognized the face, changed though it was, but the voice, deep and resonantly alien in its Scots intonation, was unmistakable and unchanged. Before he could say a word, however, the stranger looked from Harry to him.

“You are young André, I can tell. I remember your eyes, and the wee crook in your nose. Had you no’ mentioned that in the message you sent me, I would never have answered you. I have but little truck wi’ people nowadays.”

André smiled, feeling euphoric, for he had heard little good of this man since arriving in Outremer, and he had begun to suspect that his cousin might, indeed, have turned away from everything he once knew. Now, however, within moments of setting eyes upon him again, he knew deep down in his heart that Alec Sinclair was no whit less than, or different from, the man he had always been. He was tall and lean, dark eyed, gaunt faced, and long legged, with broad, strong shoulders. His beard was iron gray and clipped short, and in conjunction with the edges of the close-fitting mailed hood he wore beneath his helmet, it emphasized the deeply graven lines of his face. He wore the full dress of a senior Templar knight, with the equal-armed black cross embroidered on his left breast, in the upper quadrant of the white surcoat bearing the long red cross on its front and rear. The chain mail of his hauberk and hood had the burnished look about them that André already knew to be the result of years spent in the desert dryness, being scrubbed and polished every day by blowing sand, and he carried a long-bladed sword, harnessed somehow to hang at his back, between his shoulders. In that single glance, he registered that Sinclair’s leggings were different, too, ankle length rather than calf length, and flared from the knee down so that they could be worn over heavy, thick-soled riding boots.

“Then I am glad I sent the message as I did,” he said in response, his wide smile still in place. “But it was nothing subtle. I merely thought you might remember the incident. Well met, Cousin. It’s been too long a time, too many years. And say hello to my friend of friends here, one of your fellow countrymen, Harry Douglas. Harry, this is my cousin, Sir Alexander Sinclair.” He extended his arm and Alec gripped it firmly, smiling with the astonishingly bright, warm eyes that André remembered well. But then André twisted his arm subtly and gripped his cousin’s hand in both his own, and beyond a momentary flicker of surprise, Alec betrayed no reaction, but returned the required counter grip of brotherhood. He then turned to Harry and shook with him, too, initiating the grip himself this time and receiving no reaction.

“Well met, Sir Harry Douglas,” he said. “Do you know what we are talking about, your friend here and I?” When Harry shook his head, Sinclair laughed, a single sound deep in his throat and swallowed before it could emerge completely. “That beak of his,” he said. “With the bend in it. ’Twas I did that for him, one summer afternoon when he was yet too young to do anything other than bleed. I turned quickly, to see what he was doing, and there he was, right at my back. The butt of the spear beneath my arm caught him from the side as I came around, and it mashed his nose across his face. It was a marked improvement, for even as a boy he was too comely, but I was tormented by guilt over it for at least an hour.” He paused dramatically. “Well, it felt like an hour. But in honesty it could have been less.” He stopped, then looked from one to the other of them, and his face grew sober.

“You will have heard, no doubt, about how changed I am since I returned from my captivity among the Infidel?”

He had spoken to both of them, but he was looking at André, and André returned the look openly, nodding. “Aye, we have heard some drolleries, but as you see, they did not deter us from coming to find you.”

“Aye, and had I known for certain it was you seeking me, I might not have brought you so far out into the desert for a meeting. But I have learned that very few men are worth trusting nowadays, and I was never the great truster of people in the first place. I thought, just from the way your message was worded, that you might be who you said you were, but I have heard nothing of you since last we met, more than twelve years ago. It was not inconceivable that you might have told the tale to someone, who then thought to use it as a lure to draw me out of hiding. And it was possible, too, that you were being used against me. But here you are in the flesh, a Knight of the Temple, and I can see you’re still the lad I knew and liked. How is your lady mother? I have never stopped being grateful to her for the way she took me in that year.”

“She died a few years ago, but she remembered you fondly. She would often talk of you, years after you had gone. But my father is well, and aged as he is, he is coming to Outremer with Richard, as his Master-at-Arms.” Before Alec could react, he asked, “Why would anyone seek to draw you out of hiding, Alec? Why are you in hiding, for that matter?”

“Och, that’s a long story and for another time and place. But it grieves me to hear about your mother. Is that why you have been at such pains to find me? Has it to do with … family affairs?”

“Yes.”

“Friendly, I presume?”

“Oh yes, very much so. I have much to tell you. But before I tell you anything, you have to tell me how you did that, how you were able to creep up on us so quietly.”

“Quietly? The two of you were making so much noise I could have ridden up behind you with an entire troop without your hearing me.”

“For a few moments, perhaps, we were making noise, but where were you before that? Where did you come from?”

Alec Sinclair smiled. “I was in hiding, watching you and listening. Close by, as you suspect, but you’ll pardon me if I don’t tell you exactly where. I will tell you, however, that the opportunity it afforded me to hide and observe is why I chose this spot.”

His cousin thought about that for a few moments, looking around him speculatively, and then he nodded. “Accepted. Were the secret mine, I would not reveal it, either.”

“And speaking of secrets,” Harry Douglas intervened, “I know that you two have things to discuss—confidential family matters that do not concern me—so I will leave you to talk. Now that you are here I am prepared to believe that there are no fleabags watching us and waiting to attack. I shall unsaddle our mounts and feed them some oats, and then I will walk about among the stones and try to find your horse, Sir Alexander, for I presume you did not walk all the way out here in full mail. Should I become lost, I will whistle loudly, so if you will keep one ear apiece cocked to the air, I’ll be obliged. And so, in which direction should I seek your horse?”

Sinclair raised an arm and in a slow and elaborate mime pointed directly north, and Harry nodded in acknowledgment and began to walk away, leading the two horses, until Sinclair stopped him again.

“I know you have been out here in the kingdom for a while, but I doubt you have been here before. Be careful walking among those stones. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you, and don’t stick your bare hands into open holes. This place is a paradise for vipers.”

Harry nodded. “My thanks for that. I promise you, I will keep my hands where I can see them at all times.”

“HE SEEMS LIKE A GOOD MAN,” Alec Sinclair said as Harry vanished behind a boulder, leading the two horses. “But then, he is a Scot, so I should not be surprised. Mind you, he does not sound like one.”

“He is a good man, in every sense,” André replied quietly, “and he is his own man, which is far more important and appears to be an unusual attribute out here. The Temple brothers, knights and sergeants both, walk somewhat in awe of him, and that makes Harry uncomfortable, so most of the time he avoids people altogether. He always was a quiet man, from what I’ve heard, but now he is one of the most celebrated knights in all of Outremer, and that does little to increase his comfort.”

Sir Alexander pointed to a pair of smallish stones, then reached back over his shoulder and drew the great sword from behind his back. “Can we not sit down while we talk? I have been standing for hours. You’ll pardon me, I hope, for drawing steel, but I canna sit with this thing in place.” He stepped to one side and carefully leaned the long-bladed weapon upright against a stone.

“That is an impressive weapon. I do not believe I have ever seen its like.”

“Then you have never been in Scotland. Twohanded broad-sword. They are common there.”

“That blade must be more than five feet long.”

“It’s certainly long enough to keep the pests away when you swing it around your head.”

André laughed and looked again at the impressive blade, gauging the width of it at a full hand’s breadth where it met the double cross-guard. “What were we talking about?”

“About your friend. You said he was uneasy. Why?” André crossed his arms on his chest. “Well, he is a monk, and some of those make a religion out of discomfort. But were I to guess seriously at a realistic reason, I would say he feels guilty for missing the disaster at Hattin. He was at the springs of La Safouri with the rest of the army a few days before the battle, but he was sent off with dispatches to the garrison at Ascalon the night before de Chatillon and his cronies talked King Guy into abandoning the oasis and marching directly for Tiberias. So most of his friends ended up dead.”

“And he feels guilty because he survived, you think? Then I shall have to talk to him. I was there that day, and believe me when I tell you that Harry has no need to berate himself for his good fortune in being somewhere else. So how came he to be in Acre?”

“Because he fought his way out of Ascalon, just before it fell, then spent the following months acquainting himself with the land of Palestine, sometimes on horseback, mostly afoot. The entire region was in chaos, for after Hattin, the Muslims were invincible and our side could barely field a force of cavalry. Every city in the Latin Kingdom went down, as you know, and it seems Harry was there at most of them, usually in the thickest of the fighting. He was wounded a few times but he came out alive every time, and men began to say he was indestructible. In a time when there were no senior officers anywhere, to plan or take command, men rallied to Harry, forcing him to be a leader despite his own unwillingness. And eventually, he led a tired and tattered little army back to Tyre.”

“How long ago was that, do you know?”

“No, but Harry can tell you. It must have been half a year after Hattin, at least.”

“Aye, at least. So he reached Tyre. They must have feted him when he arrived, after so long.”

“They tried, I’m told, for the men who had been with him sang his praises everywhere they went, and God Himself knows the Franks had need of heroes in those days … conquering heroes first, but failing those, defiant heroes. Especially in Tyre.”

Alec Sinclair nodded. Tyre remained the only Christian-held city in all the Holy Land, the only place that had not fallen to the Saracens, and in the weeks and months after Hattin it had filled to overflowing with the remnants of the Christian army. Conrad de Montferrat, the German Baron who had snatched the city from Saladin’s grasp a bare moment before it was lost forever, ruled it with iron discipline, even claiming sovereignty over the last of the Templars there, which in itself was a measure of how far the Temple’s star had plunged after Hattin.

“There were fewer than a hundred Templars— knights and sergeants both—in the city when Harry arrived, and he brought only three more with him among his followers. But Gerard de Ridefort was already there.”

“And not entirely pleased with the situation, I understand.”

“Apparently so.”

There was no need for either man to say any more on that matter. De Ridefort, notoriously choleric and intolerant at the best of times, had been reduced to seething impotence in Tyre, bitterly resenting his subordination to de Montferrat and the obligation that went with it to accept orders from the German and obey them meekly, upon pain of expulsion from the city with his knights. There had been no slightest doubt in the Master’s mind that Conrad would expel him and his congregation out of hand at the first sign of insubordination or opposition, and he had told his Templars that. He also made no secret of how much it nauseated him that he, as the embodiment of the Temple Order, could do nothing to resist or to change that situation, for he had lost his entire command structure, not to mention four-fifths of his entire command, during and after the battle at Hattin. He was reduced to watching and biding his time, powerless, grim faced and tooth grinding in his acknowledgment of that.

De Montferrat was a newcomer to the Latin Kingdom, a German whose primary loyalty was to the Holy Roman Empire, which meant to Constantinople and its Orthodox Christianity. By extension of that, and there was no great leap of understanding required to appreciate the subtleties involved, de Montferrat’s ideal military order was the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa’s Order of Teutonic Knights, which meant that other Orders, namely the Hospitallers and Templars, were inferior and less than ideal. In Conrad’s eyes, it was only right and proper that the Teutonic Knights should and would provide the future strength and protection of the Christian presence—Orthodox Christian being plainly understood—in the Latin Kingdom. And given sufficient time, he believed, the Latin Kingdom itself might well become the German or the Teutonic Kingdom. In the interim, he was determined that the graspingly ambitious and politically unacceptable papal Christianity, Roman Catholicism as it was now known, would be shut out from Jerusalem and forced to return to Rome, taking its knights and its Frankish adherents with it. And neither the Templars nor the Hospitallers, both inextricably linked to the Roman Catholic Church, would be permitted to operate in Outremer thereafter.

“Barbarossa’s death must have come as a shock to Conrad,” Sinclair mused, and his cousin nodded.

“Aye, and unwelcome.”

“Completely. Think about that from his viewpoint, if you can imagine it. There he is, sitting strongly in the throne he built himself, awaiting the arrival of his cousin the Emperor with an army of five hundred thousand men, sufficient strength to enable him to thumb his nose at everyone from Saladin to Richard Plantagenet and Philip of France. He must have felt omnipotent, invincible … And then in a clatter of hooves comes a worn-out rider with the word that his universe has fallen apart: his Emperor is dead, his mighty army scattered, and all his hopes and promises no more than smoke blowing in the wind.” Alec shook his head in wonder. “I know not how I might adjust to such a reversal, such a vast reversal. But then, I am not Conrad de Montferrat. And yet, for any man to go from heights to depths so quickly … And then, no sooner was he down than the next blow struck him: Saladin released de Lusignan. The confluence of timing is incredible.”

“Aye, it is—literally incredible. I doubt that was coincidence, Alec, no matter what so many people say. Saladin is no man’s fool. He released de Lusignan upon Guy’s sworn word that he would not again take up arms against Islam. Everyone knows that, and they laugh at him because of it, thinking him a fool not to know that no Christian need be bound by an oath given under duress to an infidel. But think about that for a moment, if you will. Saladin has been fighting us for years and has had many dealings with our highest-ranking officers and potentates. Do you really believe he is stupid enough to be unaware of the sneering contempt in which every Frank holds him and his? Bear in mind, this is the man who has welded the entire world of Islam, from Syria to Egypt, into one entity, melding and commingling two caliphates and fielding what is probably the largest army ever assembled by any one man in history—greater than Xerxes or Darius, perhaps even greater than Alexander. Do you not think it makes more sense to believe that this Sultan, seeing the danger to his supremacy that existed within Tyre in the person of de Montferrat, might think it advantageous to release King Guy, knowing beyond doubt that Guy would break his given word immediately and march on Tyre, there to claim his kingship and his other rights from Conrad?”

Alec Sinclair smiled, gazing out into distance. “Aye, it makes perfect sense, and I have never thought otherwise. It worked out perfectly, too, did it not? Guy and Conrad were at each other’s throats within days.”

“But not for many days. The wind changed and the smoke from the fire he lit blew back into Saladin’s face when Conrad threw Guy out of Tyre and Guy marched south to besiege Acre. He took the Templars with him, under de Ridefort, and that brings me to the end of Harry’s story.”

“The end of Harry’s story?” Sinclair crossed one ankle over his knee and grasped it in both hands, leaning backward. “How can that be? Harry is still with us.”

“True, but bear with me. De Ridefort, being the man he was, saw a large and immediate advantage to be gained in promoting Harry to high rank within the Temple. Harry was popular among the brethren and equally well known and liked among the army’s other elements, so de Ridefort thought to raise him to one of the key positions left vacant after the losses at Hattin. He told Harry what he had decided, and Harry declined, graciously but firmly. He wanted no part of such distinction, he said, and when de Ridefort refused to accept that, Harry, just as stubbornly, refused to be browbeaten into changing his mind. He was a monk, he told de Ridefort, and he had joined the Temple to be simply that, a monk, adhering to the Temple Rule and seeking salvation in a life of prayer and duty.”

“Harry won the argument, obviously.”

“Aye, he did. De Ridefort was beside himself, but there was nothing he could do. Faced with the simplicity of Harry’s stance, and with the full light of the public scrutiny he himself had initiated with never a thought that he might be rebuffed, he had no choice. So for perhaps the first time in his life as a Templar, he accepted what he could not change. But he let it be known in no uncertain terms that he considered Sir Harry Douglas to be in breach of his vow of obedience—”

“Which he was.”

“—perhaps, that is debatable—but also derelict in his concern for the welfare of the Order and fundamentally unworthy of the high regard accorded him by so many misguided people.”

“Harsh words, but that sounds like de Ridefort. He was a vindictive man.”

“Vindictive? Perhaps. I never knew him, but I have probably heard more about him than about any other man since I came here. There were many negatives attached to him—implacable, humorless, intolerant, irascible, intractable—but I believe now that all of these were a natural outgrowth of his extreme conviction. He was a giant among men and an inspiration as a leader, passionate, given to extremes, and his greatest passion was his loyalty to his religion, even above his loyalty to the Temple. He never suffered fools gladly, and he never tolerated any threat to what he truly believed to be God’s kingdom upon earth, but within those terms, Gerard de Ridefort’s integrity was boundless.”

Alexander Sinclair regarded his cousin calmly, his face empty of expression, then nodded slowly. “Aye … Well, as you said, you never knew him.” His tone was as bland as his facial expression, and André could only stand blinking at him, wondering if he had been rebuked, while Alec continued: “So how has the Master’s death changed your friend? He must be different, now that he is free from disapproval?”

“No, Harry is the same. He lived in isolation for months, within the Templar fraternity, for there were many who had snubbed him at the outset, afraid to do otherwise lest they attract de Ridefort’s displeasure, and then when de Ridefort was killed, that October, Harry discovered that he preferred to remain alone, content with his own company. He had seen who avoided him before, and had no wish to consort with them again simply because they were no longer afraid of de Ridefort. Then, somehow, when I arrived, he and I became friends, and we have been close friends ever since.”

“How long ago did you arrive?”

“Ten days ago.”

“Hmm. You know I heard about de Ridefort’s death at the time. I was still a prisoner then, but the tidings of the Temple Master’s death swept right across the Saracen world, and there were celebrations everywhere. I know he was executed, beheaded, but I never did discover how he was captured. He was long dead when I was released and I had other matters to concern me then.”

“Well, it was exactly as you might have expected him to be captured: in the thick of things.” André stood up and crossed to where Alec’s sword stood propped against a stone. “May I?” When Alec nodded, he took the sword in hand, holding the long, gleaming blade out in front of him and eyeing it as he spoke. “There was a fight that day, a savage one, but not big enough to be called a battle because it sprang up suddenly, outside the walls of Acre—a spontaneous clash, rather than a strategic confrontation. And strangely enough, it was the only fight of its kind that I have heard of in which Guy commanded brilliantly and distinguished himself.” He stepped to one side, swinging the long sword with him, slowly, hefting it for weight and balance. “Stranger still, Conrad was there that day, too, and the pair of them managed to cooperate effectively. It was October fourth, 1189, and I remember the date solely because it was the day Gerard de Ridefort died.” St. Clair smiled ruefully, then returned the blade to where it had been propped against the stone. “Beautiful weapon,” he said as he sat down again.

“Classically perfect de Ridefort behavior,” he continued, “a straight frontal charge against a superior—no, an overwhelming concentration of enemy cavalry. It was the third recorded time in his career as Master of the Temple that the man suspended all common sense, in the blind belief that God would protect him and his righ-teousness, and committed his forces suicidally against impossible odds. And as on the two previous occasions, the enemy merely split their formations and flowed around his charge, yielding nothing in the way of ground or advantage, content to stand off and shoot down the charging monks as they rode by, and then to smother the remainder with the sheer mass of their numbers. And de Ridefort survived again. He always did. And he was taken prisoner. But this time the Saracens executed him out of hand.”

“Sic transit gloria mundi.”

“Something like that. You didn’t like him, did you?” “De Ridefort?” Alec Sinclair pursed his mouth in distaste. “Didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, couldn’t tolerate him. He cost me too many good friends over the years, with his pig-headed, self-righteous stubbornness and bigotry. You may call it inspiration, but I called it bullying and obstinate idiocy. The man was the perfect Temple Boar. Not a thought in his head that did not have to do with the Temple, its glory, its dictates, its dogma, its needs, and when it might require him next to bathe. That is a very narrow path to walk through life.” He slapped both palms down on his thighs. “So you are here on Council business. When were you Raised, and where?”

“Like you, on my eighteenth birthday. And at a Gathering in Tours, in the house of one of the Council members.”

“And when did you decide to join the Temple?”

André waggled one hand from side to side. “I never did … not really. That decision was made for me, by King Richard.”

“The man himself, the Lionheart? I am impressed.”

“You need not be. He is my liege lord. And that, too, is a long story for another time. More important now, I have dispatches for you—a wealth of information and instructions, I believe. They are in my saddlebags, so I’ll give them to you when Harry comes back.”

“Do you have any idea what they concern?”

“Yes and no. They are from the Council. I was amply provided with dispatches when I arrived, some for the Commander of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, from his Temple superiors in France, but most of them for you. They all looked similar on the outside, so I had to be careful not to mingle them. Yours, however, were labeled in Arabic. I spent a long time receiving careful instruction in Arabic.”

“You speak Arabic?” The astonishment in Sinclair’s voice was worth all the time and trouble and effort André had expended, and he permitted himself a tiny smile.

“Barely. I understand it far better than I speak it, but I do speak a little … atrociously, I’ve been told. ”

“And you learned it over there?”

“I did, from a number of distinguished teachers, mostly in Poitiers, some in Marseille.”

Alec Sinclair immediately switched languages. “Tell me, then, about what you have learned.”

“Many things, in a broad range of subjects. The Koran, of course, first above all, the words of Allah and His Prophet, without which nothing in the Arab world makes sense. Then much about the diversity and complexity of Islamic society, and of the various elements within it. I can also speak with authority, and from either viewpoint, on the differences between the Shi’a and Sunni sects.”

“That is amazing.” Sinclair had been grinning as he listened, but now he said in a low, serious voice, “Cousin, I swear that that is probably the worst Arabic I have ever heard spoken, even by a Templar ferenghi.”

“So why were you sent to find me? You, I mean, and not someone else?”

“Because the members of the Council knew we are cousins and we know each other. And because no one had heard from you in a very long time and there was very real concern that you might be dead. My understanding is that you had been entrusted with some matter of grave importance to the brotherhood and had been engaged upon pursuing it for years, until the outbreak of the war and your disappearance. My task was to find you and to acquire the information you had collected, then return it to the Council.”

“If that was all that they required of you, you had no need to learn Arabic. What do you know about this information I was collecting?”

“Nothing, really. Nothing at all.”

Sinclair looked closely at him, then looked away.

“Then there is something lacking here … something that neither one of us knows. How large are these dispatches you have brought for me? Are they heavy? Bulky?”

“They are heavy, considering that they are merely written missives. And they are in two large wallets, both of them full.”

“Aha. And what were you to do with them in the event that I was dead?”

“Read them, and then try to complete your task.”

“But then you would have had to start from the beginning, from the very outset. And I had been working at it for years. Even speaking Arabic, you would have been able to do nothing.”

“Perhaps not, but I had—I have—a list of names, three names in all, of people with whom you are known to have associated in the past. I was to contact them and try to reconstruct your activities, hoping to find whatever reports you might have left behind … in concealment.”

“Hmm.” The single sound was dismissive, perhaps contemptuous, but Sinclair had made up his mind. “Well then, we had best collect these wallets of yours and be on our separate ways. It sounds as though I have much to read, and I believe the quicker I set myself to the task, the better it will be. Can you whistle for your friend? I will ride back with you as far as I can, but I will leave you before we draw near to the camps at Acre, for I have no wish to be seen. When I have read everything and understand what is required of me, I will send them back to you, for you to read. It seems appropriate that, if you are to run the risk of being killed with me, you should understand what we are attempting to do. I presume something is required from both of us in any case, although there is little to be gained from speculating as to what. But I will also send you instructions on where to meet me next time. It will not be as difficult or far away next time, I promise. Now call for Harry.” FOR A MILE OR TWO the men spoke of generalities until they fell into a comfortable silence, and for some time there was nothing to be heard but the clopping of hooves and the creaking of saddle leather, and St. Clair found himself thinking about the absence of metallic bridle sounds. None of the knights wore metal bridles. That was one of the first things he had noticed on arriving here. Sound traveled far in the desert air, and many a knight had died uselessly in the early days of conquest here because of a jingling bridle. He was brought back to awareness by the sound of his friend Douglas clearing his throat before starting to speak again.

“May I ask you a question, Sir Alexander? A question I have no right to ask?”

Alec looked drolly at Harry. “An impertinent question, you mean. You may ask, but it sounds portentous and formal, so I may choose not to answer it. Ask away.”

“One of the first things you said to us today, about not knowing whether to meet us or not, was … Well, you said a few things, in fact, that have been troubling me ever since, but you began by saying that few men are worth trusting nowadays, and that you thought André’s little tale about his nose might have been used as a lure to draw you out of hiding.”

“That is correct. So, what are you asking me?”

Harry threw up his hands in exasperation. “You are a monk, like me, like André here. We are all three Templars, and that means that, apart from our prowess against the enemy, we own little to cause concern or envy among our fellows, who are all as poor as we are, having taken the same vows. Were you saying that your fellow Templars wish you ill? And if not them, then who? Wait, wait …” He slowed himself down and began again. “What I am asking you, Master Sinclair, is why an honored knight like you, a veteran of years of service here, should be in so much fear of his own kind that he feels the need to live alone and in hiding. That is my question.”

“There is no short answer to that question, Harry,” he said eventually. “Yes, there are some among my fellow Templars who, if they do not wish me ill, certainly do not wish me well. But not everyone in this army is a poverty-sworn monk with no ambitions, and I have, whether or not you choose to believe it, excellent and defensible reasons for living alone and in hiding. It is not such a great departure from our chosen way of life, if you stop and consider it, Harry. I live alone, so I find I am free of temptations most of the time. I also live very simply, feeding myself upon what I can catch, barter, or infrequently grow, and I have ample time for prayer and contemplation of the vale of tears we live in. I live, in fact, not so much like a monk as an anchorite … or even an eremite.” He fell silent then, and let the younger knights mull over his words before continuing.

“Much of the trouble I have had in the recent past has sprung from my being held by the Saracens. You may have heard mention of that before, in fact I mentioned it myself, did I not?”

“Aye,” André said with a nod.

“Well, simply put, that is the source of my troubles.”

“Your captivity?” André said. “Forgive me, but I must be misunderstanding. How can the fact that you were a captive cause problems for you now? Did you convert to Islam?” He was half jesting, but contrived to look perturbed, nonetheless, and Alec smiled.

“No, I did not … not quite. But I did something almost as reprehensible. I enjoyed portions of my captivity.”

André glanced sideways at Harry, as if to make sure that he was hearing the same thing. “You enjoyed it? Captivity?”

“Portions of it.”

“Which portions would those have been?”

“The people, for one thing, the ordinary Saracen villagers, women and children and old men. Whenever we Franks think of them at all—and we seldom do because all our attention is taken up by the men, the warriors—we think of them as nomads, wanderers with no permanent homes. But not all of them are nomadic. The village in which I was held was prosperous, after its fashion, and the tribe had lived there since the days of the local emir’s grandfather, growing sufficient goats and crops in the normal way of things to keep themselves alive and provide a small surplus for trading. But their village was built over an underground water source and they had many date palms, and that was the source of their wealth and permanence. Once I grew accustomed to being there, unable to escape, I found myself growing to like them. I understood and spoke their language, although none of them knew that, but that helped me greatly towards understanding who they were and how they lived.

“I was a prisoner, and so naturally enough they put me to work, slave work for the most part, although it was little different from their own. Everybody in that village works in some fashion, for there is no room for unproductive bodies. They watched me closely at first, suspicious and hostile and probably afraid I might go mad and murder all of them some night while they slept and all their men were away at war. But as time passed and they observed that I worked well and was no threat to anyone, they began to show me small kindnesses—an extra bowl of broth, or an additional mouthful of bread or hummus. One of the old men, whom I had once voluntarily helped to carry a heavy load, carved me a wooden pillow of my own. And so when the time seemed right, I permitted myself to ‘learn’ their language, repeating selected words aloud and very cautiously, taking great pains to make them sound correct yet slightly alien.

“I felt quite guilty, I recall, for they were all delighted with my efforts, and particularly with the fact that I would even try to learn their tongue. But they were very supportive, and within the space of several months I was able to converse with them. I had to be careful, at first, not to betray myself by ‘learning’ too much, too quickly, but the discipline of that proved beneficial, and soon I could rattle on about most things, although I professed to know nothing at all of the Koran. I was a ferenghi, after all, a foreigner and a Christian. And then, eventually, I was released and returned here, to Acre. And that is when I first found trouble.”

It was Harry’s turn to ask a question. “How? Why? What did you do?”

“Nothing much. I have never been much of a talker, so I listened while others talked, and I disagreed with some of what I heard—with most of it, in fact—and I said so. And every word I said was repeated and twisted out of recognition and then thrown back to me as accusations. They said I had been traduced by the enemy, that I was a Saracen-lover, that I could no longer be trusted and should be placed in quarantine, isolated from decent Christians who might be influenced and suborned by my heretical beliefs.”

“Heretical? Was that word used?”

Sinclair grunted in disgust. “Of course it was used. But the fool who used it did not even know what it means. He knew only that he had heard it used impressively by some angry priest who was bent on frightening someone. Can you read, Harry? Can you write?”

Harry made a face. “Aye, I can write my name, and I can read it, too. But not much else.”

“Then you are better off than the next hundred of your fellows. André here can read and write, I know, because he could do both already when first I met him, and he was but ten years old. But André is unusual in that, for someone who is not a churchman. Most knights cannot read. Not one of them in any hundred may be literate.” He paused for only a moment, and when he continued, his voice took on an oratorical cadence, deliberately assumed, so that as he continued to speak, it grew in volume and articulation until he was declaiming, his voice ringing out over his horse’s pointed ears.

“Knights have no need to read, or to write. They have no time to waste on such things. They are educated only in warfare and fighting, and they will know nothing else for the duration of their lives. And yet being men, they are too stupid to recognize or accept the frightening vastness of their own ignorance, and so in hope of sounding wise and seeming clever, they quote and misquote their betters and, all too frequently and unfortunately, their benighted peers as well, filling the air with the belching emptiness of bellicose ignorance being misquoted by fools and ignoramuses. That is the grand total, the sum contribution to our existence, of most of the men who compose this army. And set above those, we are asked to believe, are their betters … the makers of military opinion and shapers of belief. But sadly, they, too, are knights for the most part, no better informed or educated than their underlings.” He stopped dramatically, then resumed in a much quieter, deadly serious voice.

“And then there come the clerics, last of all, but powerful beyond credence—the priests, the churchmen, the so-called men of God. More than all others combined, these, I believe, are the true malefactors of our time. Their ignorance is of another order. Malignant, oppressive, and tyrannical, they are consumed by their own self-importance and all too often just as tragically blind and bigoted as the most ignorant of their followers.”

Harry Douglas was looking at Sinclair with rounded, awe-stricken eyes, his mouth slightly open as though he was about to speak but could not move his jaw, which was for several moments exactly true. But then he found his tongue and managed to say, “You told them that? You said that to the priests?”

The beginnings of a grin tugged at the corner of Alec’s mouth. “No, I did no such thing. D’you think me daft? All I did was observe aloud that, having lived for years among the enemy, I had never seen any of them eat human flesh, fornicate unnaturally or with animals, or consort knowingly with devils in order to conjure magical defeats for Christian armies at their hands. I said that Saracens were, in many surprising and enlightening ways, remarkably similar to our own people at home, in loving their children and honoring their elders, attending to their civic duties, producing taxes for their governors, and voluntarily leaving their families behind and riding off to war when they were called upon. And having said so, I refused to change my opinions or my testimony.” He shrugged. “That was sufficient to outrage them and to have me cast from the society of my supposedly civilized cohorts. And so I left, almost three months ago.”

“Would you like to return now, with us?”

Another shrug. “No, I think not. I have been alone now for almost longer than I stayed in camp on my return, and I find I prefer it … Besides, I am not completely alone, not all the time. I have friends who visit me from time to time.” He glanced around. “Look, we are out. That always amazes me, the speed of the change.”

It was true, they had ridden abruptly out from the boulder field and were now in an open desert of sandy ground, thinly scattered with desiccated, long-dead shrubs among which the largest pebble visible was barely the size of a man’s thumb. Ahead of them now, perhaps a mile away, the sand began to slope upward into dunes, but at this point there was nothing beneath them but bare earth and sandy clay, and at their backs a straight line, almost a solid wall, of boulders, seemingly man-made in their appearance of regularity and the straightness of the line of demarcation. St. Clair suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable, highly aware of the openness surrounding them, and involuntarily he sat up straighter in his saddle, dropping his hand to the hilt of his sword and stretching one leg forward to touch the shield that hung from his saddle bow. Beside him, at precisely the same moment, Harry Douglas did the same thing, and Alec Sinclair smiled to himself and peered ahead, to where the distant dunes appeared as a low-lying cloud on the horizon, then flicked at his reins and brought his mount surging to a canter.

Behind him, Harry spurred his horse to catch up, and as he drew alongside, followed by André, he shouted, “Why do you dislike bishops and priests so much? I mean, I have no great opinion of them myself, but you really appear to detest them.”

Sinclair barely glanced at Harry as he shouted back, “You wrong me. I said nothing of bishops and priests. I said men of God. It’s far more complex than priests and bishops.”

Harry reined in without warning and sat frowning until the other two reined in their mounts and rode back to him. “What’s the difference?” he asked when they arrived.

Sinclair made no attempt to pull his mount around again, so that all three of them sat in a mounted triangle, their horses’ heads meeting in the middle.

“Have you ever seen an ants’ nest, Harry?” Sinclair asked him. “A broken one? It is a scene of chaos, with thousands of ants scurrying everywhere, trying to salvage and rescue all the things they feel to be important.”

“Aye. I know what you mean.”

“People are like ants. They are social creatures, and there are certain things they need, and certain things they will go to any lengths to achieve. And of all those things, one of the greatest in importance is a sense of order and design. That is part of the nature of man—an urge to have order and design. It applies in everything we do. And nowhere is that more true than in the worship of God. God may be all-knowing and allpowerful, but His affairs in this world are run and organized by men, and it has always been so. In the beginning was God, and when the first man grew aware of Him, the first priest stepped forward to interpret the One to the other. It may or may not be that the outstretched hand of the priest was incidental, but from that time forth, all priests have subsisted on the largesse of the common people.

“In the security of our homes in France and in England, we tend to think of men of God solely in terms of the Pope and his archbishops, his bishops and his priests. Few of us ever stop to think that in the East, in Constantinople, there is another Church, also Christian but different from that in Rome, yet organized and run by priests like those of Rome. Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian—the same God, in virtually all respects, but different in each realm, because the men of God who run the two Churches differ in their beliefs and in their interpretations of God’s will and wishes. Thus we have Christian friends and supposed allies worshipping one God and killing each other for the differences in what they each believe is truth, according to the men of God to whom they look for guidance. God is merciful, we are taught, but men of God need not be. Their task is to convert the world to their particular beliefs.”

He looked from one to the other of his listeners. “So much for Christianity and its supposed unity. But look, too, at Islam. Is it different? No, it is not, not in the sense I am talking about here, because it, too, is run by the men of God. They call themselves imams and mullahs and a range of other names, but they are priests and bishops in every way that we would recognize, in that they seek to control the minds and the lifelong behavior of their fellow men and they live off the goodwill and wealth of the common people. And even they, from the beginning, have fostered divergence in their struggling for power from the outset. No sooner was the Prophet Muhammad declared dead than his followers began to squabble over who would succeed him and control the power of Islam. And mark that word ‘control.’ It is remarkable how often you will find it cropping up, in dealings with the men of God.

“So today, within Islam, you have Shi’a and Sunni Muslims, each tearing at the other’s throat at every opportunity, and each convinced, because their men of God insist it must be so, that Allah is great, as is Muhammad His Prophet, but these others, be they Sunni or Shi’ite, have debased God’s wishes and become the enemy, to be damned and obliterated in God’s holy name. Shi’a Muslim and Sunni Muslim, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian. Bigotry and jealousy and fearful bloodshed entrenched in all four, and four bowed necks beneath the heels of the men of God.

“Would you like to hear more of what I believe, or have I said enough to provoke you, perhaps, into thinking for yourselves?” He looked again from face to face. “Enough? Excellent. We three may or may not meet again, but if we ever do, I would ask you to avoid directing my thoughts again towards the sweet men of God. Shall we ride on? We are yet far from journey’s end.”

THE FOLLOWING DAY, having found Alec Sinclair and completed the first part of his quest, André talked his new friend Harry Douglas into taking him on a tour of the siege works, which were enormous, far and beyond anything St. Clair had imagined. His focus during his first week in Outremer had been on finding his errant cousin, so that he had really not taken time to look about him and observe the conditions in force here. But now, he was awestricken by the scope of the activities.

Acre had been under siege now for two years, and the assault had long since lost all of its initial excitement and momentum, settling down into grinding routine and the extended periods of boredom common to all static forms of warfare, with only brief and terrifying clashes occurring occasionally between the two opposing forces. And the extent of the siege works was so vast that André had great difficulty in comprehending the complexity of the strategies involved on both sides. Acre itself, now held by a stubborn garrison of mixed Saracen warriors, was one of the oldest ports in Palestine. Built up to prosperity by the Phoenicians hundreds of years earlier, it had developed into a polyglot and extremely wealthy community, attracting merchants and trading fleets from all over the world, and before its capture by Saladin in 1187, it had been renowned as one of the most notorious fleshpots anywhere.

Under the rule of Muslim law, all of that changed. The fleshpots had vanished overnight, the Christian churches were stripped of their crosses and bells, and the mosques of the city were refurbished and reopened, but the conquering Saracen army turned its attention immediately to strengthening the city’s walls and defenses, and for four years now that work had been continuing.

Then, when the original Frankish army had arrived two years later, under the command of Guy de Lusignan, a new momentum had been established. The Christian fleet, composed mainly of Genoese and Pisan fighting ships that dwarfed the Arab dhows and galleys, immediately took command of the seas surrounding the city and established a naval blockade, and it was left to Guy and his small army to blockade the landward side of the city, an undertaking more easily described than achieved.

The city of Acre was vaguely triangular in layout and built on a hook-shaped promontory, its north–south axis tilted slightly to the northeast and southwest, so that the sea fronted it west and south, and it boasted both an inner and an outer harbor, the inner harbor defended by a massive chain that could be raised against incoming ships. On the landward side, the city was protected by a brace of high, parallel walls reinforced by barbicans and towers, the latter spaced closely enough to permit withering crossfire to be laid down against any attacker. These walls had been built by the Templars and the Hospitallers, whose presence in the city in the years before the battle at Hattin was ubiquitous. In the earliest days of the siege, the Frankish attackers came to appreciate how well those walls had been built and quickly learned the folly of attempting to engage the enemy by attacking them directly. Instead, they set up their siege engines and catapults and concentrated all their heaviest firepower on what was estimated to be the strongest but most vulnerable point in the walls, a right-angled corner in the northeastern salient controlled by a high tower known as the Accursed Tower. Settling in to the siege, however, they were acutely aware that their backs were vulnerable, their entire rear exposed to attack should the Sultan bring his armies to the relief of Acre.

It was at that point, Douglas explained to St. Clair, that the Trench was thought of, and for more than a year the Latins labored to build a wide, fortified ditch that stretched two miles inland from the sea and cut off the city from help from the landward side. Saladin’s army began to arrive piecemeal soon after that, but they were unable to challenge the Latin besiegers who sat safely inside their Trench, attacking Acre from the one side and defending themselves against attack by Saladin from the other. But Saladin set up a blockade of his own, on the landward side of the Trench, establishing a heavily manned presence along a three-mile line that effectively curtailed most of the Frankish efforts to bring in supplies. Only occasionally could they land supplies from the sea, because their ditch had a very narrow intersection with the beach, and the Saracen forces concentrated there were constantly on the alert for attempts to smuggle material ashore. Food and supplies did manage to filter through, from time to time, but never enough, and never often enough. In recent months, however, according to Harry Douglas, more and more reinforcements had begun pouring in from every land in Christendom to swell the ranks of the besiegers, and the Christians knew that the city garrison was starving and would not be able to hold out much longer.

On the twentieth day of April 1191, Philip Augustus of France landed in Acre and assumed the overall command of the siege from his nephew, Prince Henry of Champagne. He quickly established his French command post in front of the Accursed Tower and added his own siege machines to the heavy concentration of catapults, trebuchets, and mangonels already in place there, fortifying his own artillery pieces with redoubts made of iron and stone.

That day, having climbed to the highest point of the defensive earthworks on the Trench, facing Acre, André and Harry stood watching the French catapults lobbing horse-sized boulders remorselessly at the walls of the Accursed Tower—so called, Harry said, because legend had it that the thirty pieces of silver used to pay Judas Iscariot had been minted there. But something else caught St. Clair’s attention, a strange-looking device, a long cylinder of sorts, save that it had been cut in half and laid lengthwise on the ground, its far end snug against the wall of the tower that loomed over it.

“What’s that thing, over there?” he asked, pointing at it.

Harry squinted, not quite knowing what he was referring to at first, but then he made a harrumphing sound. “Oh, that. That’s what they call a cat.”

“A cat. It’s obviously a siege engine of some kind, but what does it do?”

“You don’t know what a cat is? Have you never seen one before? They’ve been around since the days of the Caesars, in one form or another.”

André shook his head. “I have heard of them, but I have never seen one. This is my first siege.”

“Well, it works like the old tortoise formations the Romans used to use to defend themselves against falling volleys of arrows. This thing is an armored half cylinder, mounted on wheels. You can see them along the bottom if you look closely enough. The top surface is smooth metal, strong enough to repel anything thrown or dropped down onto it, including Greek fire, the gelatinous mix of pitch and naphtha that clung and burned with a fury unmatched by anything else in nature. Inside, beneath the roof, teams of sappers move it into place, right up against the walls, and then they dig down and in, undermining the walls.”

“Does it work?”

Harry shrugged. “In theory, yes, and I’ve seen it work on several occasions in the past, but not here. These people have been digging away down there for months, since long before Philip arrived, and to this point they have been less than successful.”

“Hmm.” St. Clair turned away and looked to his right, to where the royal standard of France hung limply above Philip’s pavilion. Nothing moved there, and there were no signs that the King might be in residence, although the standard’s presence indicated that he was. “That reminds me,” he said. “Guy de Lusignan arrived in Cyprus a few days before I left. He had a substantial number of knights and nobles with him, but he was most unhappy with Philip.”

“I can imagine.”

“Can you? Then tell me why. Some of his knights told me that Philip had chosen to back Conrad against him in this matter of the kingship of Jerusalem. I know the word of that upset Richard and his supporters, but I had my hands full at that time—I was being inducted into the Order—and I did not have time or opportunity to explore what was going on. What do you know about it?”

“Not much. I was here throughout the affair, but being an intimate of none of the main players, I know little about what was involved, other than the common barrack-room chatter and the opinions of a couple of knights whom I respect.” Harry paused, considering something, and then resumed. “You know, I presume, that Guy’s claim to the throne was through his marriage to Sibylla? Aye, well, when Sibylla died, Guy’s kingship died with her. Oh, he’s been hanging on to it since for all that he is worth … which, come to think of it, is all he is worth. But the plain truth is that Guy can no longer really call himself King, because the next heir in the legal line is Sibylla’s sister Isabella, and she has been married for years to a husband whom she might already have named King, quite legally, had she been so inclined. Humphrey de Toron. Does the name mean anything?” St. Clair shook his head. “Well, he was stepson to Reynald de Chatillon.”

“Aha! Now there’s a name I recognize. The one Saladin beheaded? They called him the Templar Pirate?”

“That’s him. Saladin decapitated him in person, for just and long overdue cause. The man was a disgrace to everything the Temple is supposed to stand for.”

“So his stepson is to be King of Jerusalem?”

“God, no. Heaven forbid. The man is a bigger disgrace than Reynald ever was. He is a useless, cowardly poltroon already several times disgraced, and atop all that he is an outrageously public homosexual, which might be ignored in practically anyone else, but demands recognition in one who is married to a reigning queen.”

“Oh …” André decided to say nothing of what had sprung into his mind about another similarly married to a queen, and contented himself by asking, “And this man is married to Queen Isabella?”

“No, he was married to Queen Isabella, until very recently. Conrad of Montferrat took care of that. I know not how he achieved it, or how much it cost him—he must have had to dig deep into his purse—but he had the marriage annulled. Because it was a royal marriage, there must have been substantial and elaborate briberies involved—although one has to wonder where Conrad could have found a sufficiency of corrupt priests and bishops to achieve that kind of thing.” He waited to see if André would respond to his sarcasm, but St. Clair showed no reaction. “Whatever it cost, it was achieved quickly and effectively. Humphrey’s indiscretions and public misconduct were sufficiently notorious that it surprised no one when he was finally brought to account for them and his marriage was annulled. So Humphrey de Toron is no longer wed to the Queen of Jerusalem, and Conrad de Montferrat will be, as soon as it can be arranged.”

“Ah! And I presume Guy must have learned of this before he left in search of Richard?”

Douglas dipped his head. “That’s what drove him out. The word arrived soon after noon on the Friday, and Guy was gone from here, with all his followers, by dawn on Saturday. They struck for the coast and clearly they found a galley to transport them.”

“They found three, and they wasted no time in seeking Cyprus. And so, what is happening now with this impending marriage, do you know?”

“How would I know that? I’m a monk, André, a Templar like you. Potentates and kings do not consult me when making their decisions.”

“Well what do your cronies say? It is a juicy topic, made for speculation. Surely you must have heard something?”

“Nothing, save that it has not yet happened. The two lovers have been unable to coordinate their travels and their duties … and it seems both of them must be present for the wedding to take place.”

“No, that is not so. Not when the Church is involved. It could be done by proxy, were the officiating priests sufficiently powerful. And the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who would officiate in such a match, could make it so. Conrad is of the Eastern rite, I know. I presume the Queen, Isabella, would be, too.” He inhaled sharply. “I am going to have to find out more on this matter, for it sounds more urgent than I would have thought a month ago.” He looked about him again, then grasped his friend by the shoulder. “Thank you for this, Harry, for bringing me out here, but now I must return to camp. There are some people to whom I need to speak.” He did not mention that one of those was the senior Templar commander in the line, nor did he add that his current credentials were sufficiently impressive to ensure the commander’s cooperation, and anyway, Harry had already started walking back, content with the explanation he had been given.

A WEEK DRIFTED BY, during which André heard not a word from his cousin but was kept occupied by infrequent, minor skirmishes that kept him and his brethren patrolling various points along the walls of Acre. Then one morning, directly after matins, on his way to the camp refectory for a breakfast of water and chopped nuts and grain, someone clamped a hand on his right shoulder, and he spun around to find his cousin at his side. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sinclair cut him off with a gesture.

“You and I have to speak, now, and I have no wish to sit in the kind of company we are likely to find where you would go, so come with me and let’s find a horse for you. I have food enough for both of us, and the quicker we are gone from here the more pleased I shall be.”

André followed Alec wordlessly, aware that several of the men around them were casting unhappy looks at Sinclair, but even trying to avoid attention, walking with their eyes cast down, they were not able to escape unobtrusively. Someone raised his voice in a jeering catcall, announcing that there was a Saracen-lover among them, and within moments the two cousins were walking through a storm of verbal abuse. André reached reflexively for his sword hilt, but Sinclair seized his elbow, telling him to keep walking, look at no one, and say nothing. And that worked for a spell, until a burly bullock of a fellow deliberately walked in front of them and barged straight into Alec, leading with his shoulder. André had tensed as he saw what the other intended, but before he could do anything to intervene, Alec stiffarmed him from the side, knocking him off balance for a moment, and took the brunt of the other man’s shoulder charge upon his own shoulder, so well braced in anticipation that he barely rocked to the impact. He then sprang back and away, raising both hands in placation as though the collision had been his fault.

“Forgive me, Brother,” he said, both hands still upraised.

The other man blinked in amazement and then his face clouded in fury. “Don’t you ‘Brother’ me, you infidel turncoat,” he snarled, then crouched and shuffled forward, arms spread like a wrestler. The last thing he expected at that moment was the speed he encountered. Alec Sinclair’s hands shot forward and grasped the lout by the front of his surcoat, pulling him strongly forward and off balance to crash, nose first, into the flat steel brim of Sinclair’s helmet as Alec thrust his head forward. He then released the man, leaving him to rear up in agony, both hands to his ruined face, while he stepped quickly backward for a second time, raising his knee to his chest and pivoting slightly to kick out viciously, and driving his booted heel into the other man’s midriff, below the peak of his rib cage, making nonsense of the protective powers of the chain-mail hauberk the other wore.

André stood gaping at the swiftness of the punishment, but then he bethought himself and looked around defensively, only to see that everyone else appeared to be as shocked by the violence as he himself was. They were all Templars and all monks, and violence to a brother was unconscionable. Name calling was one thing, and apparently acceptable, but physical violence to a brother was a violation of the Temple Rule and endangered the immortal soul. And yet Sir Alexander Sinclair had been provoked and assaulted. Only when he was threatened with further assault had he reacted, and the fact that he had done so briefly, effectively, and with finality did not go unremarked.

No one offered to interfere this time as the two kinsmen walked away in the direction of the horse lines, and neither André nor Alec spoke a word to each other until they had retrieved Alec’s horse and one for André and had ridden obliquely into the dunes southeast of the siege works, remaining close enough to their own lines to give them a reasonable certainty that they would be safe from Saracen patrols, yet removing them completely from the threat of interruption by their own.

“Why do they all dislike you so much?”

For a moment, St. Clair thought his cousin was not going to answer him, but Alec was merely looking around, checking the lay of the land. “This will suffice,” he muttered, almost to himself, then set about laying out food and drink. He kicked a hole in the side of a sandbank, large enough to accommodate his hips and allow him to sit in comfort, his lower back supported by the rising bank, and as soon as André saw what he was about, he did the same. Alec then went to his saddlebags and took out a number of wrapped bundles before returning to lay a plain cloth out on the sand between their seats and piling it with surprisingly fresh-looking bread, some slices of cold meat that looked like goat or lamb, a twist of salt, a small jar of olives in spiced oil, and a flask of water.

“They dislike me because they are afraid,” he said eventually. “Afraid of what I might have done, of what I might have learned, of what I might know, or even of what I might not know. They know no shortage of things to be afraid of.”

“But they are monks, Alec, men of God.” That earned him a swift, sidelong glance filled with skepticism, and he flushed quickly, remembering their earlier discussion. “Well, you know what I mean. They should know better than to doubt a brother simply on hearsay.”

Alec looked at him in astonishment. “That is the first truly stupid thing I have heard you say since your arrival, Cousin. They should know better … How could they know better? They have no way of learning otherwise and no one is willing to teach them differently. These men are monks in name only, André. You know that. And they are far from being what I call men of God. And because of that, their observance of the monkish code is limited to attending prayers all day and night, and muttering endless Paternosters in between. Most of these men believe their entire salvation depends upon killing Muslims and saying one hundred and fifty Paters a day, yet none of them can count … How does a man who cannot count keep track of one hundred and fifty repetitions of a prayer? The truthful answer is that he does not, and so he simply never stops, preferring to say a few more prayers in sanctity than to run the risk of not saying enough and thereby sinning.

“These are simple, ignorant, unimaginative men, André. They believe what they are told to believe, they behave as they are told to behave, and they are all convinced, utterly and beyond hope of change, that no one among them is capable of engendering a single worthwhile thought. They believe that thoughts and opinions, along with planning and directives, emanate from above, from beyond their experience. And so they listen to what they are told, and they behave accordingly because none of them would ever dare to question anything that came down to them from on high. Thus, they have heard that I am intractable, that I hold opinions that run contrary to the Order’s view of things, and since they know that means I ought to be punished, yet can see that I have not been punished, they are confused. And confusion breeds fear and panic.”

“And so they abuse you, rather than remain silent and be thought to agree with you?”

“Something akin to that, yes.”

“So tell me, then, about Muslims. What is it you believe that so upsets everyone?”

Alec Sinclair nodded, then busied himself with eating, chewing his food thoroughly and making no attempt to say anything further until he was replete and had washed down his meal with water from the flask. André, who finished at the same time, leaned back in his sand chair and folded his hands over his belly.

“That was good. Thank you. So, are you going to tell me?”

“Of course I am. I believe that Muslims are people, just like us, with all the same needs, desires, duties, and obligations, albeit they differ in interpretation.”

“So you have said. But that belief hardly seems radical enough to cause the kind of concern I see on the faces of your brethren when they look at you.”

Sinclair nodded again. “Carry it, then, to the next step.”

“I don’t understand what you are saying. Carry what to which next step?”

“The belief I have. Take it beyond a casual thinking about the ordinary people, and think of it from the viewpoint I am about to suggest. It will make things easier for you to understand.

“I have been out here for more than a decade now … closer to two decades, in truth.” He reached up and removed his helm, then loosened the bindings that held his mailed hood tightly in place. He pushed it back and off his head, and scratched vigorously at his shorn scalp. That done, he squirmed, twisting his buttocks in the sand until they were more comfortable, then leaned back and clasped his hands behind his neck. “There! That’s much better. Now, back to history.

“I was of middle status in the brotherhood, just like you, which meant that I had learned enough of the Order’s lore, in certain specific areas, to enable me to go forth and build upon what I knew. Like you, I had learned the tongue of the Saracens before setting out, taught to me by men of great learning, Arabs all, who had much in common with our senior and most learned Councillors of the brotherhood. I could have gone to Outremer alone, right then, but that would have meant operating alone thenceforth, with no support, thousands of miles from home. Much simpler, the Council thought, for me to join the Order of the Temple, where we already had a well-established network of the brotherhood working in secrecy. And so I joined the Temple and came out here, and since then, until I was captured after Hattin, I went about my primary work … Does the name Masyaf mean anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

“Probably not, but that was where I was sent first by the brotherhood, after my arrival here in Outremer. I was attached to an intake of Templars assigned to garrison duty in the fortress at Safita, the one the Templars call Castel Blanc. It’s in Syria, north and east of Tyre. My instructions were to establish myself there, and then to contact Rashid al-Din Sinan, using an intermediary in the town of Masyaf.”

“Sinan? I know that name. Isn’t he—?”

“The Old Man of the Mountain. Aye, he is. The imam of the cult called the Assassins.”

“God’s eyebrows! Why would you be asked to contact him? To what end?”

“To several ends. There are certain matters in which the imam and our ancient Order share a common interest, not the least among those being what would appear to such as you and me as ancient and indecipherable mysteries. Rashid al-Din Sinan prides himself upon being something of a mystic and a clairvoyant, and he is an ascetic. He is also supposedly pious and demonstrably ruthless, and his reputation frightens even Saladin, who should twice have died at an Assassin’s hands long since and remains alive today only through the best of good fortune and blind chance. How Sinan and the brotherhood first came into contact with each other I know not, but the relationship is now more than forty years old.”

“And you were commanded to contact him …”

“Aye, I was. Jacques de Saint Germain, who had been the Council’s main liaison with the imam for more than twenty years, had died some time earlier, and I was his replacement. Sinan knew I would be coming, so I had no difficulty in finding him, especially through the Temple.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Then pin your ears back, lad, for there are clearly huge gaps in your knowledge. The Assassins are a terrifying group and they hold all of Outremer in a thrall of fear. But forty years ago, in seeking to expand their power and influence within a new territory, they overreached themselves and killed King Raymond II of Tripoli. In retaliation, the Templars were turned loose against them, operating from their bases at Castel Rouge and Castel Blanc, and they wrought havoc among the local populace until Sinan was forced to sue for truce. And ever since then the Assassins have been paying a heavy annual tribute to the Temple in return for the liberty to conduct their own affairs.”

“But they are Muslims … how can the Temple treat thus with the enemy?”

“Because they are not the enemy. Your interpretation is wrong. They are Shi’a. Ismaeli Shi’ites descended from Persian roots. They are the deadly enemies of Saladin and his Sunni followers, but any enmity they may feel for us is merely incidental. Rashid himself, the Old Man, was born in Basra, in Iraq, but he came into Syria as dai, or Imam of the Cult, only a short time before the killing of Raymond of Tripoli. That may have been one of his early moves to assert his dominance, but if it was, it was a costly error. Soon after that, he entered into a relationship with the Temple. The two organizations have much in common, when you sit down and think about it. Both are closed societies with arcane rites that they conduct in secrecy, far from the sight and hearing of ordinary men. Both are ascetic, too, in every sense of the word. And both are dedicated to death, in a manner of speaking—dedicated to high and vaunting ideals and prepared to die gladly in battle to achieve and protect them. Neither one has much difficulty in appreciating the objectives of the other.”

There was a silence then, and when André accepted that his cousin had no more to add, he prompted, “So this is why your brethren distrust you, this association with the Assassins?”

“No, by God’s wounds! None of them even knows about that. That liaison was a personal relationship, a clandestine thing that I did not particularly enjoy. It ended when I was taken prisoner by Saladin’s people. I have not spoken to the Old Man since—although now, as you will see when you read my orders, I will have to. In telling you of this, I was trying to give you some idea of how much I have learned of many things … and how little I truly know. The simple truth is that I made a friend among the Muslims when I was their captive, a close friend and perhaps the best I ever had. He was my captor, the man who took me, although the reality was nowhere near as simple and straightforward as that sounds. His name is Ibn al-Farouch, an emir in Saladin’s personal guard.” He smiled as he saw the astonishment spread over his cousin’s face. “It’s a long tale, but I think you might find it worth the hearing, if you have the time.”

André looked about him. “I seem to have no pressing engagements to detain me from listening.”

Thus, for the next hour and longer, André sat rapt while Alec Sinclair told him first the story of the Battle of Hattin and the loss of his friend, Sir Lachlan Moray, and then of his encounter with the injured Saracen and his subsequent capture by the search party who came looking for their missing leader, al-Farouch. And thereafter he listened eagerly as Sinclair described his life among the Saracens and his eventual and reluctantly acquired admiration and respect for his enemy and their ways.

“They have so much more than we do,” Alec concluded. “They have everything that we possess, but all of it, it seems to me, in greater measure, and they appear to appreciate it more than we do. Certes, they live in a harsh land, and most of them spend the major part of their lives living under tents instead of a solid roof. But even that permits them to remain largely clean. They pick up their tents and move to a fresh area whenever they so wish, whereas our peasants at home build a hovel in one squalid spot and there they stay for years, living in their own stink and sharing their abode with swine and cattle. And when the Prophet’s followers do aspire to build fine buildings, they construct them, it appears, out of light and air, with only gracious, swirling, weightless lines of stone and marble to hold them together. Completely unlike our dark, dank, and windowless piles of heavy granite stone.

“And they are clean, André. Saracens are clean in a way that we in Christendom can never comprehend. The words of the Prophet Muhammad lay upon them, as a burden, an obligation to purify themselves weekly at least, and before all religious festivals. They see no sin in cleanliness, whereas we, in our world, avoid it as we would the plague. Cleanliness, in our world of Christendom, is looked upon as some form of sinful depravity, as some Devil’s lure that will lead straight to fornication and the evils of the flesh. However, I am grown convinced since my return to freedom and the civilized company of my companion brothers that the rank, rancid stench of foul and filthy unlaved bodies and stinking, unwashed nether garments must militate strongly against any temptation to sin willfully with a bearer of such odors.”

He lapsed into silence then, and André sat mute for a time, thinking over what he had heard and what it meant. He then surprised himself by spouting words he had not known were in him, waiting to be said.

“I agree with you completely,” he said, earning himself a glance of mild surprise from his cousin. He shrugged. “I know it would earn me little in the way of praise were the truth known to our fellow Templars, but I am a bather myself, although I keep it secret nowadays. I grew into the habit of it while I was in southern Provence, studying with my Arabian tutors at a villa belonging to one of the senior Councillors of the Order of Sion. The tutors were Muslims, to a man, as I am sure yours were in your time, but since there is nothing Christian in the beliefs of our brotherhood, there was no ritual conflict to hamper them from pursuing their own ways and living their lives according to the Koran.”

He smiled, recalling something from the distant past. “The senior of them, a learned man I soon came to revere for his wisdom, took exception to the smell of me when I first arrived to take up my studies, and by the time he had called in his servants to search for and find the wild, dung-covered goat that had somehow found entry to his chambers, I had begun to sense that I might be smelling a little ripe. He went on to point out, with great patience, that since I was of the brotherhood and only nominally and of necessity a Christian, I could afford to behave in a civilized manner while I was on premises owned by the brotherhood, which meant that I was free to bathe without fear of reprisals, and consequently blessed thereafter to be able to absolve my friends of the need to pinch their noses and suffer my rank odor.”

Alec had been listening closely to this, one arm crossed over his breast and supporting his other elbow while he scratched the tip of his nose idly with the nail of his little finger. “This tutor. You say he was the eldest of the group? Might his name have been Sharif Al-Qalanisi? I know the chance is—”

“Yes! How could you—?”

“Because he was my teacher, too, in the same place, in Provence. The Villa Providence, home of Gilbert, the Master of St. Omer, great-nephew of Godfrey St. Omer, one of the nine Founders of the Temple. Al-Qalanisi must be nigh on seventy now, for he was over fifty when I knew him. How small, the world in which we walk, do you not agree? Pardon me for my enthusiasm, but you were describing an experience I once had, too, in minute detail. And did he then encourage you to bathe daily?”

“He did. And I did as he bade me, so that in the space of half a year, while learning Arabic, I had grown so accustomed to the pleasures of bathing that my return to Christian smelliness and filth was almost intolerable. I could not believe how everyone reeked. The stench of my companions took my breath away at times, and so I soon learned to avoid their company, and Sharif Al-Qalanisi, God bless him, had taught me a way to keep myself reasonably, or at least tolerably, clean. As you know, there are occasions when it is considered laudable and indeed obligatory for a Christian man to bathe—Easter springs to mind, as do the feast days of several major saints—so that all in all, a man may bathe as frequently as once every season, should he so desire. But that is only part of the struggle. Even if they washed their bodies, very few men will wash their clothing at the same time. It was that little truth, passed on to me by Sharif Al-Qalanisi, that enabled me to bathe as often as I was able to arrange it, so be it I kept a set of suitably rancid, sweat-stained clothing to wear around my fellow novices. But when I was alone, I would wear clothing that smelled as fresh and clean as hillside air on a cool morning.” He nodded emphatically. “The only sin a sane man might connect with cleanliness is the hypocrisy and ignorance that leads the Christians to deny its worth. Tell me, therefore, what else do they have that you consider superior?”

“Superior to what we have? Are you sure you want to hear that?”

“No, consider what we have been discussing … We are of the Brotherhood of Sion, an entity unto ourselves. I want to know what else the Saracens have that you consider superior to the Christian equivalent.”

“Ah, I see. There is a difference. So, let me see. Well, I could start with honor—the true kind, that has all the solidity and worth and value that is seldom found among the ranks of Christendom today. The Saracens have that in profusion, whereas among the Frankish ranks today, from kings to pikemen, honor is merely a sound mouthed by knaves to gull fools. Then there is integrity, closely linked to honor in that the one cannot exist without the other. Next might come fidelity, to ideals, to commitments, to agreements, and to good— truly good—intent. The military virtues I will not include, for they are simplistic rituals played out by mindless fools for the most part—bravery, courage, constancy, mercy, and compassion, though it seems obscene even to include those latter two by name. But all of those may be adhered to or abandoned in the heat of battle by men of either side, with no one being any the wiser. No, I think I will make suffice of honor, integrity, and fidelity. The Saracens possess all of those three in greater mass than do the Christian Franks.”

St. Clair nodded. “Tell me this, then, for it is puzzling me. You say that you only discovered these things, and reluctantly, while you were prisoner in the hands of the Saracens, yet you have been dealing with Islam and with the Muslim Sons of the Prophet ever since you arrived here. Why were you not aware of these things before? You must have had some inkling that it was so.”

“No, not so. My liaison with Islam prior to my being captured had nothing to do with the Saracens. I was dealing with the Assassins, and they are Shi’ite, originally from Persia. And not merely that, but I was dealing personally with Rashid al-Din Sinan himself, the Old Man of the Mountain, and he is not an endearing man to be near. The Assassins are single-minded and humorless, like all zealots, merciless and incapable of compassion. They are very much like their counterparts here, the Templars. In all the years in which I dealt with the Old Man and his minions, I handled them with care and expected truth in our contracts and justiciary precision in our dealings. I never doubted their fidelity to their leader and the agreements he made with us, but I never thought of them at all in terms of honor or integrity as I understood those things. They might have had their own versions of each, within themselves, but there was nothing there of either one that I could recognize. It was only when I fell among the Saracens and came to know Ibn al-Farouch that the scales of blindness began to loosen and fall from my eyes.”

“And so when you came back you defended them when you heard them maligned.”

“Whenever I heard them unjustly maligned I did, yes.”

“Hmm. No wonder, then, that people look askance at you. And you say you have had no dealings with the Assassins or their leader since you were captured four years ago?”

“None at all, no.”

“Do they even know you are yet alive?”

“They do now, for I have made it known to them, this past week. That’s why you have not heard from me. The dispatches you delivered made it clear that I need to renew my relationship with them, and so I set about that right away. But my prime contact had moved on two years earlier, and once I found out where he had gone— no easy task in itself—it took me three whole days of cajoling and explaining before he would even see me. He simply did not believe I was me. He was quite sure that I had died at Hattin, for they had acquired the names of all the Frankish knights who survived the fight and the ransoms that followed, and of course mine was not among them. I had to convince him that I had changed my name from Sir Alexander Sinclair of the Temple to plain Sir Lachlan Moray, knight of Scotland, when al-Farouch captured me, because Saladin was executing Templars and I saw little future in being known as one.”

“Is the Old Man still alive?”

“Oh yes. Alive and well, and as malignant as he ever was. I am to meet with him the day after tomorrow. He has been at al Kahf, the Eagle’s Nest, his favorite, unreachable stronghold in the northern mountains, but he is already on his way back and will be here, within riding distance of us, by tomorrow night.”

“What will you say to him? And is he still paying tribute to the Temple?”

Alec sat up straighter and stretched mightily. “I have no notion of what to say to him. He will tell me what he expects to hear. Rashid al-Din Sinan is not an easy man with whom to make idle conversation. Yes, he is still paying tribute to the Temple. But before I can tell you any more and still make sense—”

He half raised one hand, finger pointed, in a tacit order to be quiet and listen, and far off in the distance, rising clearly in the desert air, they heard what sounded like the noise of battle. Both men surged to their feet and set about shaking the sand from their clothing, looking around to where their horses waited quietly.

“Take the dispatches with you,” Sinclair said. “They are in my saddlebags. Read them tonight, then meet me here tomorrow at the same time. I’ll bring food again. But you will know what’s involved by then and you will be able to understand what I intend to do when I explain it to you. Now let’s see what all the shouting is about.”

The din grew noticeably louder as they approached the rear lines, and eventually they came to a place where they could see that the entire army was up and shouting, facing towards the northeast while armed riders ran up and down in every direction, cheering and screaming, all semblance of discipline abandoned.

“What is happening out there?” André shouted. “Can you see anything?”

Alec Sinclair was standing high in his stirrups, shielding his eyes with one hand as he peered towards the distant horizon, and he stood motionless for a long time before he settled back into his saddle. “Richard of England,” he said, turning to his cousin. “Finally he comes. I can see his great standard out in front of everything else.” The English host is out there, filling the horizon with an admirable blur for as far as the eye can see. A very large, broad blur. They’ve been a long time a-coming and there were more than a few here who said they never would arrive, but they are here now. They must have landed up the coast, at Tyre, and marched from there, then made camp early yesterday and set out on the last leg to here long before dawn, for the sun’s been up less than two hours. You told me they were more than a hundred thousand strong. Were you exaggerating?”

André bridled a little. “No, I was not. Why should I need to exaggerate? When you combine Philip’s French and allied levies—Burgundy, Flanders, and Brittany—with Richard’s English and Angevins, they total nigh on seven score thousand, according to my father. One hundred and forty thousand men, with weapons and munitions, horses and livestock, servants and camp followers in addition. The fleet required to carry them numbered more than two hundred and twenty large vessels and there was not an inch of space left available in any one of them.”

“Excellent. Then we should soon see things start to happen more quickly around here, once they are settled in and have had time to flex their muscles. The raptors will be lusting for blood. Acre will not stand long against them now, and once it falls, the legend of Saladin’s invincibility will be forever tarnished.”

Alec looked away again, back towards the fevered activity in the Trench, then stooped and pulled the dispatch wallets from his saddlebags. “Here, make sure you take time to read these tonight, no matter what madness happens here to celebrate this arrival. This reading is more important than anything else you could conceivably be called upon to do. Chew on it and digest it. We will talk about it in greater depth tomorrow, before I have to leave to meet Rashid al-Din. For now, I am instructed to talk with your friend Sir Robert de Sablé, if he is with the main host there, and it were best I did that alone. If I find him, I will deliver greetings to him from you, but we do not wish to attract unwelcome attention by seeking him out together. So fare ye well, for now, and meet me here in this same place tomorrow, even if it is allocated to some incoming group in the meantime. It should not be. Everything has been laid out already in the flat area southwest of the Trench, but you know how it is with armies. Some bright lad might decide to erect a general’s tent right on this spot between now and tomorrow at this time. We’ll meet here anyway, because no one will know us or care who we are, and we will move on elsewhere if we must.”

André waved and watched his cousin spur away towards the approaching blur, as he thought of it, then tucked his wallets into his saddlebags and turned his horse back towards the stables. He knew that planning had been under way for weeks and probably for months to accommodate the enormous influx of personnel and materiel that Richard’s arrival would precipitate, and that a veritable city of street grids had been prepared in the area to the southwest of where he now sat his horse, with encampments for the various contingents of infantry, cavalry, sappers, engineers, and assorted others that made up the vast army. This afternoon, he decided, he would watch the great arrival unfold, keeping well out of everyone’s way. In the evening he would read Alec’s dispatches, and the morrow would look after itself.

As he kicked his horse into motion he was wondering what was going through the minds of the garrison commanders in Acre as they watched the approaching dust clouds of Richard’s army blot out the sky.