Standard of Honor

TEN

Within days of their return to duty, the cousins were separated, with the knowledge that they were likely to remain so until the next pieces of the developing offensive against the enemy were well in hand.

The unfortunate part of that was that no one could say how long that might take. The two Kings, Richard and Philip, were both laid low with leonardia, which the soldiery called scurvy. Richard’s condition was far worse than the affliction visited upon Philip, and perhaps because he could see for once that he looked physically better and more attractive than his English rival, whose hair was falling out in clumps and whose teeth were rotting and visibly loosening, Philip fought off his own infection uncharacteristically and made frantic preparations to attack Acre with his own army and bring an end to the siege once and for all through his own unsupported efforts. The major portion of Richard’s fleet, no longer under the command of Sir Robert de Sablé, was still locked in Tyre, unable to sail because of the troublesome and dangerous winds known as the Arsuf, and stranded there with them was more than half of Richard’s army from Normandy. Philip wanted to press home his advantage and seize whatever glory he could in Acre while his rival was still sick and before these reinforcements could arrive from Tyre, and so he fought on alone, hammering relentlessly at the cornerstone of Acre’s defenses, the Accursed Tower, while Richard was rumored—the entire campaign in Outremer appeared to run on rumors—to be yet abed but negotiating fruitlessly with Saladin’s envoys over the terms of surrender for Acre.

However, according to a report that André passed on to Alec from Ibrahim towards the very end of June, Saladin was playing a game of his own and was consequently happy to buy time by whiling away days and weeks overseeing pointless comings and goings between envoys from both armies. The Sultan, it appeared, was daily awaiting the arrival of a fleet from Cairo and an army supposedly approaching overland from Baghdad, confident that the advent of either one would be sufficient to deflect and disarm Philip’s army and its attacks on the walls of Acre. Alec took that information directly to his superior, Sir Robert de Sablé, Grand Master Elect of the Order of the Temple, only to have it set aside as unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

That night, after dining with his cousin for the first time in more than a week, Alec passed those tidings back to André as they sat atop the defensive rampart above the Trench, staring out over the calm emptiness of the desert beyond.

They had been disappointed on their arrival, for they had brought their arbalests along in hopes of finding something to shoot at. But the ground across from them that had been thronged with Saracen horsemen mere hours before lay empty and desolate, and their crossbows lay unused in the sand at their feet.

Now, piqued by what his cousin had said, St. Clair turned to look at him sidelong. “It’s unimportant that we know what Saladin is thinking? That is insane.”

“No, not so. I reacted that way, too, at first, but Sir Robert told me they already had that information and had planned accordingly. In the meantime, he said, he has larger fish to fry.”

“Like what?”

“Cyprus.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“I’m not surprised … Richard wants to sell Cyprus to the Templars.”

“To sell—? What kind of folly is that? Cyprus is a place, an island. You can’t sell a place!”

“Of course you can, if it’s yours and if you can command a worthwhile price. And you may remember, Richard made Cyprus his when he deposed the idiot Comnenus and took control of his so-called empire. And now he has changed his mind. He no longer wants the place and so he is looking to sell it to a suitable purchaser … the Order of the Temple.”

“And why, in the name of anything resembling sanity, would he think the Templars might be even remotely interested in such a hare-brained idea?”

Alec Sinclair looked at his French cousin and raised his eyebrows high, rounding his eyes and pursing his lips comically. “Perhaps because he believes they are covetous of such a place. Perhaps because he has been a close friend of the new Grand Master for many years and he knows, because the Grand Master has told him, that the Order yearns for a stable, solid base of operations, far removed from interference by the kings and popes of Christendom and close enough to the Holy Land to serve as a launching area for future wars and campaigns. And perhaps because the coffers of his war chest are depleted and he knows the Order would be happy to pay a premium price for precisely such a place as he has to offer for sale … Think you any of those reasons might suffice?”

André shook his head in rueful wonder, as though surprised that he had allowed himself to be surprised. “And the negotiations are in hand as we speak?”

“No, they are complete. The agreement has been made, the sale concluded.”

“I see. Well, I suppose it makes some kind of sense. What was the price, can you say?”

“Aye, I can tell you. But you can’t tell anyone else. Agreed?” André nodded. “One hundred thousand gold pieces—Saracen bezants. Forty thousand initially, as a down payment, and annual payments of ten thousand for six years, once they have established their Rule there.”

André whistled softly. “Richard did well … Forty thousand gold bezants is an admirable return on an investment less than three months old and that cost him nothing in the first place. And how long will it take the Temple to establish their Rule there, as you say?”

“Not long, it seems. They are prepared to move without loss of time. I have orders to sail for the island at once, to scout out a potential headquarters and report back to de Sablé. I will leave the day after tomorrow.”

“Will you, by God? Where will you start? Will you visit Famagusta? If you do, I should like you to find my father’s grave and tend to it for me. Will you do that?”

“Come, Cuz, you don’t even need to ask that. Of course I will. And even if my travels don’t take me there, I’ll make the journey anyway, on my own. Rest assured of that. Now, what about you, what are you up to these days?”

André grinned. “Soldiering, what else? Ever since finding you, I’ve lost my special status. As long as I could claim to be the Official Seeker of Sir Alexander Sinclair, I was privileged to come and go as I pleased. Now that you’re found and safe, I’ve become an ordinary grunt again, albeit a knighted grunt … I am now a plain Templar knight-at-arms, responsible for a forty-man squadron of sergeant brothers from Anjou, which means I am now permitted to rise for prayers throughout the nighttime hours, in addition to which, as a squadron leader, I am at liberty to conduct daily patrols of the sector of enemy territory facing, and sometimes almost encircling, our southeastern salient. But I have no time to be bored. Saladin’s lads attack us every day, determined to breach the Trench, and sometimes it’s all we can do to hold them off.”

Sinclair cocked his head. “You said Saladin’s lads … do you think of them that way? Without malice?”

“Without malice? I suppose I do, if and when I think of them at all. I think of them as simply being there, like the sand flies and the scorpions, part of this landscape. I certainly don’t hate them as infidels or ravening, blood-drinking demon’s spawn. As far as I have seen for myself, along with what you have told me, they are people much like ourselves, save that they adhere to different beliefs. They are men, like us, with problems of their own and tribulations we would recognize and acknowledge could we but see them. What made you ask me that?”

Alec grunted and stood up. “I don’t know. Perhaps the hope of hearing you say what you said. Particularly the piece about not hating them. It’s too easy to hate out here, and too many people are doing it, on both sides.” He tightened the cinch about his waist and stretched up on his toes. “What’s the difference between Jesus and Muhammad, Cuz, can you tell me?”

St. Clair grinned again. “No, I can’t, but I have a feeling you are going to tell me.”

“No, not I, for I don’t know. That’s too deep a conundrum for me. But even though I be not Christian in the proper sense, I would still support Jesus, as a man, for the difference between those two, it seems to me, lies rooted in power and the way, as men, they sought it. Jesus did not. He never did. He simply lived his life as he saw fit, and it was men, thereafter, who shaped him into the deity he has become. But Muhammad? Muhammad dealt in power from the outset, seeking to control men’s minds and actions in the name of God. He might have been divinely and genuinely inspired by Allah, but that is beyond my ability to determine. All I can say, from my own viewpoint as an observer of men, is that I distrust mortal men who claim a personal relationship with God that requires them to tell others how to think and behave. And I find it enlightening that none of those men, be they sultans, emirs, caliphs, popes, cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, or bishops, ever appears to be impoverished. And damnation, I am still hungry. Can you credit that?”

“You can’t be. We ate but an hour ago. It’s the excitement of thinking about your coming trip to Cyprus that is making you feel hungry.”

“You might be right, Cousin, and mayhap you are, but I could eat something right now, nonetheless. Pick up your weapon there and let’s walk and stretch our legs.”

They had almost reached the point from which they had set out when Alec Sinclair stopped and handed his crossbow to André before digging his thumbs into his sides, below the edges of his cuirass, and arching his spine backward so that his shoulder blades came close to touching each other.

“Tomorrow will be the first day of July,” he said with a grunt when he had finished. “I expect it to be anything but a boring month and I expect that much will happen while I am away in Cyprus. I almost wish I were not going.”

“How long will you be gone, do you know?”

“No. It might take me a month to do what I have to do, so I’ll be gone that long, at least, and perhaps even longer. I have no need to rush and there is no call for haste. Better to do the preparatory work thoroughly and make the correct decisions the first time around than to botch the assignment and be made to watch someone else being sent to clean up your mess and rectify your errors, would you not agree?”

“No argument from me.”

Alec Sinclair looked up at the sky, then reached his hand out again for his arbalest, hefting it solidly and resting its shaft across his shoulder. “Look after yourself while I’m away, Cousin, and try not to get yourself killed. I’ll look for you as soon as I come back, and I have no wish to find you laid up with the Hospitallers. They are our rivals, you know, and they grow smug whenever any of us has to place himself in their care. God knows we are glad to have them with us, but they can be irritatingly supercilious at times. Fare ye well, Cousin.”

The two men embraced clumsily, bound in armor as they were, then went their separate ways, Sinclair returning to his quarters beside de Sablé’s pavilion and the Templars’ tent, and St. Clair to his own billet in the rows of tents that housed his squadron of sergeant brothers.

ON JULY THE EIGHTH, six days after Alec Sinclair’s departure for Cyprus, eight of André’s men were killed in a single encounter with a determined band of Saracen sappers. These men had evidently worked all night long, and without making a sound, to fill up a narrow section of the Trench with faggots—thick bundles of long stick-like bulrushes brought in from some great distance away, since there was no such growth to be found anywhere in the region surrounding Acre. They completed their task sometime before dawn, then lay in hiding on the ground beyond the Trench, concealed in plain view beneath their sand-colored cloaks, until after the guard had been changed just before daybreak. Then, when it was least expected, they attacked like djinns, leaping from concealment and charging afoot, in great numbers, to cross the narrow bridge they had built, while behind them their companions hurried to bring their horses over after them.

Their ruse almost succeeded, and their surprise would have been complete had it not been for two minor details that combined to confound them. One was that a young Turcopole, one of the lightly armored native levies trained to fight against the Saracen cavalry, had been unable to sleep, troubled by stomach cramps, and had gone walking in the predawn darkness, to stumble and fall to his knees at the very point where the newly built bridge of faggots reached his side of the Trench. Scarcely able to believe what he was seeing, he had raised the alarum immediately, attracting the attention of mounted Hospitallers who were passing on their way to an assigned patrol to the southward.

The Saracens attacked as soon as the Turcopole raised his alarum, but the Hospitallers were close enough to the bridge’s end to reach it ahead of them and prevent a complete penetration of the Frankish position. It was a close-run thing, nonetheless, and the incursion swelled quickly into a major melee, with heavy casualties on both sides. St. Clair and his forty-man squadron had been heading out to the northward at the same time as the Hospitallers were heading south, but they heard the rising tumult at their backs and swung around to engage the enemy in a thundering charge. Afterwards, St. Clair would remember thinking that he had counted more than a hundred of the enemy on his side of the Trench as he arrived, some of them mounted, many more on foot, and that among the men on foot, Saracen sharpshooters were adding their own close-range missiles to the clouds of arrows and crossbow bolts being launched against the Franks from the far side of the Trench.

He saw his First Sergeant go down within moments of their arrival, killed by a heavy bolt that punched cleanly through him, armor and all, and sent him flying, and before he could even begin to react to that, two more of his men went down right in front of him, thrown over their horses’ heads as the animals collapsed headlong. A hand reached up at him, thrusting a long, light lance, and he swept it away backhanded, then brought his long blade slashing down to cleave the thruster. Straight ahead, two mounted men converged on him, each of them swathed in the green robes of martyrdom, and because he could do nothing else he stood up in his stirrups, pulling his massive horse up onto its hind legs, its big, steel-shod hooves kicking lethally at the lighter animals approaching it. But even as the great beast reared, a man on foot ran in beneath its chest and stabbed it to the heart with a long spear, sending it toppling so that St. Clair barely avoided being crushed beneath it, kicking free of the stirrups and pushing himself nimbly backward, one hand thrusting against his heavy saddle as he vaulted like a man wearing nothing at all. But he was wearing more than ninety pounds of mail and armored plate, and when his heels struck the ground he fell backward, twisting violently sideways, and he barely managed to retain his grip on his sword hilt as the enormous weight of his dead horse crashed to earth beside him.

He rolled away desperately, knowing his two would-be killers were now looming over him, but only one of them pressed home an attack. André hacked desperately to parry a heavy, slashing blow that numbed his arm, then watched the glittering arc of the shining scimitar as it swung up again to finish him. But before the weapon could reach the top of its arc, there came a flashing blur and the thump of a crossbow bolt hitting meat, and the scimitar wielder vanished, smashed backward into the martyr’s death he had come seeking.

Panting, almost sobbing, St. Clair lay still, gazing upward and unable to move for a moment. Around him, he could hear the cacophony of battle, the moans and grunts, curses and harrowing screams that always accompanied the clash of weapons and other sounds of strife, but for the time being he lay alone, catching his breath and wondering if he would be able to move when the time came for him to make the attempt. He tensed, raised his head slightly and looked around, unable to see anything at all on his right side because of the bulk of the dead horse, but then he grunted and half rolled, struggling first to a sitting position and thence to his feet, where he stood swaying slightly, flexing his fingers on the hilt of his sword. A spiked Saracen mace lay on the ground by his feet, and he stooped and picked it up in his left hand, holding it loosely and hefting it until he had the feel of it, lithe and springy yet pleasingly heavy in the wickedly spiked head. He sensed movement to his right and swung to see two of Allah’s bearded Faithful come leaping towards him, dodging around obstacles as they raced to reach him, each trying to outdo the other. The sight filled him, surprisingly, with elation, and he drew a deep breath and felt himself grinning as he prepared to meet them.

The man on his right won the race, gripping his scimitar with both hands over his head and screaming Allah’s name in exultation as he brought his blade down on the infidel’s head, but André caught the blade on the upraised edge of his own, then clubbed him into oblivion with the mace in his left hand, before turning back and dropping to one knee to allow the second man to run directly against his extended sword and impale himself. As he felt the fellow’s weight come to bear against his point, he thrust himself upright again and leaned into the blow, twisting his blade fiercely and then jerking it back and free before the man’s flesh could close around it and imprison the steel.

He heard trumpets at his back and a rising thunder of hooves as more reinforcements arrived, shouting the names of Richard and Saint George, and suddenly the Saracens were in full flight, back across the makeshift bridge that had come close to breaching the Frankish lines. He looked back to the body of his warhorse, then ran as quickly as he could to snatch the arbalest and a quiver of bolts from the saddle horn where they had hung, but the crossbow had fallen beneath the animal and he could not budge it at all. By the time he straightened up again and headed towards the Trench, the fighting was all over. The last of the Saracens had retreated beyond the range of even the strongest arbalests, and someone at the front of the Hospitaller formation had already set the bridge ablaze with a bottle of Greek fire. Watching the roiling, viscous smoke and flames billowing from the Trench, St. Clair suddenly felt unutterably weary; the fear and exhilaration of battle were gone and in the aftermath, totally drained of energy and tension, he could happily have sunk down then and there to rest on the sand.

Instead, he set out to find his new secondin-command, whoever that might be now that his First Sergeant was dead. He found the man easily, the one nicknamed Le Sanglier, the Wild Boar, by his mates and who would have been naturally first in line for promotion in any case, and André set him to making a formal tally of the squadron’s strength. That was when he discovered they had sustained eight fatalities, fully twenty percent of their complement, and ten injuries and wounds, one of which was serious enough to threaten to raise their losses to nine dead.

He accepted the tally without comment, then went, grim faced, to select a new mount from among the five that had survived the loss of their riders. He hauled himself into the saddle, surprised to discover that he had a deep ache in his right side, and that he could see dark columns of smoke staining the sky far to the south of Acre, seemingly beyond the sea. He instructed the Boar to have the others assemble and be prepared to set out on the patrol to which they had been assigned that day, then swung his horse around and cantered rearward, to where a small group of English knights sat staring southward at the smoke on the horizon.

“What’s burning?” he asked as he rode up.

One of the knights nodded brusquely, recognizing him, and André remembered meeting him, too, in Richard’s tent. “It would appear to be Haifa.” The Englishman sounded completely uninterested, and shrugged. “Can’t think of anything else it might be. It’s on the far side of the bay, and there’s nothing else between us and it, unless Saladin is burning his entire fleet at sea.”

“Have we attacked Haifa?”

“God’s entrails, no, certainly not. We have enough to deal with here, trying to topple Acre.”

“Then who would burn Haifa? It could only be Saladin, but why would he destroy a town he holds secure?”

The English knight made a moue and shrugged disdainfully. “Who can say what goes on in the mind of a man like that? Perhaps he wants to keep it safe from us. Burning it down would certainly have that effect, would it not?”

St. Clair sat for a moment, absorbing that. “I think you are probably right, Deniston. Acre must be closer to collapse than we thought. Saladin must think we intend to move against Haifa the moment Acre falls. It is so close and it’s a port, with deep water and safe anchorages, unfouled by wrecks. That means he must know Acre is going to collapse very soon—today, perhaps, or tomorrow.”

“Oh, come now. How could he know that? We have the place sealed up tighter than a Cistercian nunnery. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out, including information … most particularly information. That’s what a siege is all about.”

St. Clair grinned. “Tell me, Lord Deniston, do you swim?”

“Swim? You mean in water?”

“Aye, like a fish. The Arabs do. There are swimmers coming out of and going into Acre every night that God sends. Believe me.”

“Believe yourself,” the English knight growled huffily, glancing at his companions to be sure they were witnessing his handling of this French idiot. “Never heard such nonsense. Swimming in and out, indeed. Hah!”

St. Clair could hardly admit that he had been assured that was so by a Shi’ite Assassin, so he merely shrugged, keeping his smile in place, and added, “Flying, too, in and out.”

“Flying? Flying?” Again the appeal to his witnesses. “The fellow’s mad.”

“Not people, Deniston, birds. Pigeons. They send pigeons back and forth, bearing messages. Devout Muslim pigeons, I’m assured, who fly directly from mosque to mosque, minaret to minaret.” He raised a warning finger. “Keep it in mind, and beware. Farewell.” He turned and spurred away before any of the English knights could think of anything to say.

He made his way directly to where the remnants of his squadron sat waiting for him.

The Boar saluted him as he drew close. “All present, sir. Twenty-two sergeants fit for duty. Ten more in the care of the Hospitallers, one of them like to die, three to be kept in care, six more expected to return to duty within the day, after treatment.”

André nodded in acknowledgment, his thoughts teeming. Reduced to barely half strength, his squadron was not, strictly speaking, capable of carrying out its patrol assignation for that day, for the rules were very clear concerning strength and numbers. All mounted expeditions must be in sufficient strength to discourage random attacks. A forty-man squadron was a deterrent to such attacks; a twenty-man force was not.

“We will return to quarters, Sergeant, and regroup. We are hard hit and too few in number now to ride out as we are without endangering our mounts. I’m sure you know by now that they are more valuable than we are. Every horse we lose damages our chances of victory. See to it, if you will, and send the squadron standard-bearer to accompany me. I will report to the field commandery and request replacements for the men we lost today. I shall need a list of the names of the dead, too, but not immediately, unless you have them ready. Do you?”

“In my head, sir, but not yet written down.”

“Aye, well, be sure I receive a copy of the list when it is done … before you go off duty for the day.” The Boar saluted, and André turned away, pointing his horse in the direction of the distant field commandery.

There was great noise and activity around the enormous Templars’ tent that housed the field commandery, with knights, not all of them Templars, scurrying in all directions. St. Clair knew that the scuffle that had engaged his own men, expensive and fiercely fought as it had been, had nonetheless been a minor squabble, incapable of generating this much activity. Whatever the cause, he was forced to wait in a line before he could talk to the senior Temple officer on duty. The man, a Poitevin called Angouleme, listened to his report and his request for more men, then wrote something down before looking up at André.

“Sufficient unto the day, Holy Scripture says. It sounds as though you and the Hospitallers performed well. It cost you dearly, but I have already heard that your people took down five for every one you lost. Nevertheless, half your force lost in one action is enough to justify a rest on a day such as this. Philip’s own fortunes are proving little better than yours this day. Go you and order your men to stand down for the time being, but keep them close, against a sudden need.

In the meantime, I’ll send another squadron to make your patrol.”

André saluted and turned to go, but then hesitated and turned back. “Pardon me, but did you say King Philip is in action as we speak?”

“Aye, against the Accursed Tower again. The engineers reported that it’s fully undermined and should collapse at any moment, and so he mounted another assault to keep the enemy occupied. But he’s taking heavy losses, I’m told. Next man, step forward.”

St. Clair left the tent and found his standard-bearer waiting for him, and he sent the fellow back to their lines to tell the Boar to stand the men down for the remainder of the day. That done, he rode out seeking a vantage point where he could watch the French assault against the Accursed Tower, only to find that the action had already been disengaged, even though—or perhaps because—a large section of the tower’s wall, some thirty feet wide, had collapsed into piles of rubble that were swarming with frantic defenders, looking for all the world, from where St. Clair sat watching, like a colony of ants whose nest had been severely damaged. He watched Philip returning to his pavilion, his progress visible even from more than a mile away, thanks to the prominence of his personal standard, with the royal lilies of France so unmistakably displayed.

Slightly disappointed to have missed the action, André sat high on his horse and let his gaze roam over the prospect in front of him until it came to rest on the pavilion of Richard of England, with its own unmistakable royal coat of arms. Richard was reportedly still sick, suffering from angry boils, falling hair, loose teeth, and rotting gums, yet supposedly deeply engaged, too, in the attempt to hammer out the terms of surrender for the garrison of Acre. André sniffed at that thought. The camp was awash with rumors and counter-rumors, but the most prominent among them was concerned with Richard and his attitude towards this surrender. Word had it that he was being adamant in refusing to discuss terms with the Saracens, merely laying down the law instead and demanding unconditional surrender, with the immediate return of all Frankish prisoners and the return of every possession, including not only the True Cross but all the towns and fortresses that had been seized from Christendom after Hattin.

If that were true—and knowing Richard, André was quite prepared to believe that it could be—then it was folly of the most extreme kind, since it left Saladin no room for retaining either status or dignity. Simply by acceding to such extreme demands, the Sultan would commit suicide, politically, religiously, and socially, and even St. Clair, newcomer though he was, could see the stupidity of asking him to do so. A man like Saladin would sooner die than live in dishonor such as Richard was thrusting upon him. He would never accept Richard’s conditions.

Even as he thought that, André St. Clair knew he was exactly correct, and that Richard Plantagenet knew exactly what he was about in this matter. Richard was the Warrior King, the Shining Light of Christendom; he was the Lionhearted Monarch, England’s Paladin and the Soldier of Salvation to Rome’s Church; he would never settle for a mealy-mouthed, negotiated peace. Richard’s personality demanded nothing less than total victory. He had bankrupted his new kingdom to pay for this war, and he intended to capture every shred of glory that might be available for the taking … and there would be little glory in accepting the chastened capitulation of a cowed infidel. Therefore the King was doing everything within his power to push the Sultan into committing all his strength to total war—a war Richard was convinced he could not lose.

So much, then, for honor and for Richard’s commitment to his charges, André thought bitterly, certain now that his analysis was accurate. Beside the flaring light of the King’s need for personal glory and acclaim, the rights, lives, and expectations of all his countrymen and subjects were expendable, and he had the power, on all sides, to do whatever he needed to do to achieve his ends. He would defy Saladin to the death of the last man on either side.

Another movement caught his eye, too far away to identify, but bright and unusual, a flash of feminine yellow against the high walls of the royal pavilion. Berengaria? Or might it be Joanna? He thought of both of them, seeing their eyes regarding him steadily in return, and he smiled to himself, albeit nervously, wondering what they had thought of his sudden and unexplained disappearance from Limassol.

Strange, he thought now, and not for the first time, that he had not heard a single word from anyone in Richard’s camp since that day onward. He had spoken to de Sablé, it was true, but only very briefly and of general things. De Sablé was far too preoccupied with his many duties to have time for idle chatter over whether or not his friend the King had been displeased with one of his lesser minions. It was true, too, that he himself had made no attempt to contact his liege lord since the King’s arrival in Outremer. Some might call that dereliction, but a small voice in the back of André’s mind whispered quietly and mutinously to him of loyalty and responsibilities. Sir Henry St. Clair had given up everything to come out of his honorable retirement and place himself anew at the service of his King in a strange land, struggling to learn new tasks and skills at an age when most of his contemporaries had already died of old age, and there was something lodged deep within André that insisted, with an unrelenting pressure, that the responsibility lay with Richard to acknowledge the loyal old man’s death to his son in person. Until that happened—and the truth surprised him because he had not articulated the thought before that moment—André knew he would make no effort to approach the King. As for the two women, wife and sister, he grimaced ruefully, half grin, half groan, thinking himself well out of that situation, despite another small voice that muttered mournfully in regretful undertones at the back of his awareness.

He grunted wordlessly, a sound born deep in his chest, then sucked in a deep breath and attempted to empty his mind of such thoughts, pulling hard on his reins and kneeing his horse around to return to his squadron, where, for the next few days, he worked to smother his own vague and confusing feelings of guilt over Richard and loyalty by driving and drilling his men hard and pitilessly.

But four days later, on the twelfth day of July, the city fell, and in the blink of an eye, it seemed, everything changed. The morale of the entire army took an upward leap, and suddenly everyone was enthusiastic again, eagerly seeking something concrete to do, so that they might be able to talk afterwards of what they had done at the fall of Acre.

André, wanting no part of any of that, found himself in the middle of it all regardless, relieved of his squadron-leader status and promoted to command a specially raised one-hundred-horse troop charged with keeping peace during the surrender. The day after the capitulation, he sat in attendance with his new comrades in arms as the defeated Arabs marched out of the city they had defended for so many months.

The crowd watching the evacuation was huge; every soldier in the Frankish armies who was not on duty that day turned out to watch the defeated enemy depart. But anyone expecting to see a ragtag, dispirited procession of shuffling miscreants was disappointed. The enemy emerged from the gates in a long column, walking with their heads high and their dignity wrapped around them so solidly that their mere appearance deprived the watching Franks of any wish to cheer or even jeer. Instead, they watched in profound silence, tinged with respect, and no man among them thought to offer insult to the departing enemy.

André St. Clair sat watching the exodus with something akin to pride glowing in his breast, for he knew that his cousin Alec would have been proud of the way these men accepted defeat and showed no regret or deference to their conquerors. When the last of them passed by, leaving none but hostages and prisoners behind for Richard’s use, the officer commanding André’s troop gave the prearranged signal, and the troop fell into place behind the Arab column in files of twenty-five mounted men, riding four abreast. They accompanied their charges as far as the boundaries of their siege lines, then left them to make their own way into the desert, to wherever they might go.

“DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA why we are out here, sitting in the sun like this as though we were all idiots?”

Sitting at the head of his own squadron, two horse lengths ahead of its front rank, André St. Clair heard the question clearly—it had come from the extended triple rank of knights ahead of him—but he made no attempt to answer it or even to think about what the answer might be. His attention was dedicated to a matter that troubled him more personally. Something, some kind of creature, was crawling across the skin of his ribs beneath his right arm, and the slow itch of it was practically unbearable. Louse or beetle, he knew not what it was and cared less. His entire attention was focused upon the impossibility of scratching it, catching it, or interfering with its progress in any way, for it was separated from his clawing fingers by several layers of stinking clothing, fustian padding, chain mail, and an armored cuirass. He had not bathed in five weeks, and his stench was overpowering even to himself. Five weeks of unending desert patrols had achieved that, five weeks of strictly rationed water and the infuriating tedium of chasing phantom formations that remained uncatchable, were but seldom seen, and which sometimes attacked at nightfall and daybreak, inflicting casualties and then vanishing into the vast expanse of dunes. The men at his back, his own Red Squadron, were as sick of this existence as he was.

After a silence that seemed long in retrospect, one voice, also from in front of him, replied to the rhetorical question. “Because we are idiots, Brother. That should not surprise you. It is our calling. You know that. This is why we took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience—purely so that we could sit out here in the desert sun, penniless, owning nothing, cooking in our own sweat, and obedient to the whims of some pitiless, demented whoreson whose task it is to dream up ways of testing our immortal souls. That’s why you are out here with the rest of us … you’re a Templar.”

“Silence!” André heard then. “I will not tolerate such talking in the ranks. Have you no shame? Remember who you are and where your duties lie. One more word like that from anyone and I will see the guilty man walled up for a few days, to contemplate the insults he is offering to God and to our sacred Order.”

The speaker was Etienne de Troyes, and no man hearing him doubted for a moment that the notoriously humorless Marshal would do as he threatened. The internal disciplines and punishment exercised by the Temple for the mental purity and salvation of its brethren were designed as impediments to sin, intended to be savage, as a disincentive to waywardness, and it was not unusual for a disobedient or fractious brother to be walled up, quite literally bricked into a confined and lightless place, for a week or longer, supplied with no more than a bowl of water while he contemplated how he might achieve acceptance, reinstatement, and salvation.

A silent stillness settled over the assembled knights again. A horse whickered and stamped, setting off a series of similar reactions from other mounts, all of which had been standing in one place for far too long. The animal directly ahead of St. Clair raised its tail, and he watched emotionlessly as it evacuated a pile of dung to steam briefly in the sun. He leaned forward slightly to look to his left, to where the black-robed ranks of the Hospitallers occupied the other end of the Frankish line, and he wondered if they knew any more than his own people did about why they were all here. He had led his men out before daybreak with nothing but the order to march—no destination, no objective, which in itself was highly unusual—and they had marched until they reached this desolate place, where they had halted and drawn up in their battle formations.

The Hospitallers held the left of the line, on the lower slopes of the hill called Tel Aiyadida, which marked the easternmost boundary of the Christian advance. The Templars, as usual, manned the right, and the two extremities were joined by the various contingents of the lay forces, forming a front more than half a mile in expanse. Ahead of the line, stretching away to the southeast, the road to Nazareth was virtually invisible in the noonday glare, and to the left of that, rising in the middle distance, was another hill, the Tel Keisan. There was no visible activity on the Tel Keisan, but it was enemy territory, securely held, the Templars knew, by Saladin’s teeming and apparently inexhaustible regiments of black-robed Bedouin from Africa.

A trumpet sounded from the rear and was soon followed by the sound of galloping hooves as a messenger arrived with word that King Richard was approaching from the direction of Acre, accompanied by a large body of troops, and everyone present—in excess of twelve hundred mounted men—turned in their saddles to see the Lionheart arrive, anticipating that the large body of troops referred to would be the infantry they had left behind in Acre.

It was, yet it was not. The infantry was there, in strength, but they were there as guards for the huge column of Saracen prisoners that walked in their midst, roped together hand and foot, rank and file, and winding down through the dunes like an enormous snake. Richard rode in front, at the head of the snake, and he was in full blossom, riding the magnificent golden stallion that he had taken, had in fact stolen, from Isaac Comnenus. He was dressed resplendently as usual, in his finest, gilt-chased armor, over which he wore crimson, gold, and royal purple garments. Behind him thronged his personal retinue, a score and a half of peacocks and popinjays of all descriptions, including as always a number of celebrated knights and warriors whose manhood none could question without risk to life and limb. They rode some fifty paces ahead of the main bulk of their vanguard, sufficiently far in front to keep them relatively free of road dust other than that which they stirred up themselves in passing. Then, next in order, came an entire phalanx of Royal Guards, marching twelve abreast and led by a squad of drummers who set a steady, not too strenuous pace. Behind those, heavily guarded on both sides of their column, came the prisoners, their ankles tethered so that they could walk in a shuffle but could not stretch out into a stride.

Watching them emerging into view, André felt something formless shift in his belly, and glanced quickly towards the flanks of Tel Keisan, not knowing what he expected to see there, yet aware that something, some presentiment, was making him feel queasy. But the hillsides where he looked appeared to be empty of life and his unease deepened, for he knew that the opposite was true. The enemy was there. They were simply remaining out of sight. He swung back to look at the approaching column, trying to assess how many prisoners there were. The front was ten men wide, with two guards on each side, making a fourteen-man front, and he counted ten regular ranks behind the first before the movement and the clouds of dust defeated him. A thick haze hung over everything, stirred up by the passage of so many shuffling feet, and the moving ranks reached back into the opacity of the rising cloud until they became impossible to see. St. Clair’s misgivings increased.

He turned his head and spoke to the knight sitting on his right, at the head of his own, Blue Squadron, a taciturn, humorless English knight whose real name André did not know because everyone referred to him, even in conversation with him, as Nose. There was good reason for the name, because whenever he was asked a question, even in French, he was most likely to respond, in English, “Who knows?” But in addition to that, his own nose was spectacularly misshapen, broken and bent beyond repair years before by a hard-swung club that should have brained him but missed.

“What is going on, Nose? And don’t say ‘who knows’? I’ve been on constant patrol these past five weeks and came in only last night, so I have no idea what’s been happening around here. Why have they brought these prisoners all the way out here? Richard clearly has a purpose in mind for them. Do you have any idea what it might be? Have you heard any rumors? Anything at all?”

Nose looked back at him, then dipped his head. “They’re the prisoners from Acre … nigh on three thousand of ’em, taken at the fall of the city and held against Saladin’s promise to free his prisoners—our men—and return the True Cross.” He shrugged, spreading his hands. “That must be what this is all about. I can’t think what else it might be. Saladin has been very quiet of late, making no great efforts to live up to his promises. But now he must be coming to meet us, to carry out the exchange of prisoners.”

“Then why is there no sign of him? Why are we here alone?”

Nose grunted, deep in his throat. “Who knows? You’d best ask Richard that. Kings and sultans have ways of their own, I’ve noticed. They don’t ask me for advice, and I don’t offer any.”

For the next half hour and more André sat and watched as the column wound down towards the center of the front line, and he took note of how even the veterans of the two monastic Orders joined in on the general chorus of acclaim and enthusiasm that greeted the advent of the English King. Richard was in fine form, showing no signs at all of his recent battle with scurvy and waving and smiling to everyone around him as he approached the line. When he arrived there, he drew his elaborate golden-hilted sword and brandished it above his head, and the line before him broke and opened up to allow him and his party to pass through. The sight of that caused a stir of anticipation among all the units making up the line of battle, for the prisoners, although still under heavy escort, were now theoretically beyond restraint and approaching the enemy lines, led by King Richard and drawing closer to freedom with every step they took. But nothing happened. The appearance of the column of prisoners evoked no visible response from the slopes of Tel Keisan, and André found himself wondering how far the captives would be permitted to go before they were stopped.

His unvoiced question was answered almost as soon as his mind asked it, for Richard, now approximately a hundred paces from where André sat watching, raised a hand above his head and made a circular signal before drawing off with his party to one side and making room for the phalanx of guards at his back to carry out what was clearly a set of orders drawn up earlier. The guards had stopped on a flat stretch of ground close to the midpoint between the two opposing hills, Tel Aiyadida and Tel Keisan, and now they split and wheeled, moving back and to both sides to flank the prisoners. As they did that, the other guards who had been marching on the captives’ flanks began to usher them into formal lines and blocks, herding and pushing and counting heads until the front rank numbered one hundred men and there were ten men in each file, making a thousand men in all, each separated from his closest companion by two paces front and rear and an equal distance on each side. The sun glared down malevolently and there was not a sign of shelter or relief anywhere, and the assembled army sat, or stood, and waited, sweating, taking care not to lay bare skin against their armor. And in places, across the extent of the Frankish lines, a man would sway and fall, undone by the torturous heat.

When the block of men was complete, it looked impressive, St. Clair thought, still wondering why Richard was going to so much trouble here, and to what end, for there were still almost twice as many men again in the original column. But no one moved and nothing was said until the sergeants began shuffling the next ranks of prisoners into place to build a second block, also of a thousand men. Someone behind St. Clair, one of his own squadron, started to mutter something, but André twisted around in his seat and snarled at the man to shut up, being careful not to look and actually see who it had been. No one else spoke after that, and the time dragged slowly by, the misery growing with every moment that passed. And André St. Clair became increasingly aware that no slightest sign of Saladin or any other Saracen presence was being shown opposite them.

Some time later, when the prisoners had all been arranged into block formations, a senior sergeant passed the word along to the King, who sat pouting for a moment after receiving it. Then he nodded and sat upright in his saddle. He raised his long, brilliantly colored sword high above his head and swept it in another circular signal. Immediately, a corps of drummers marched smartly forward and began to rattle out a series of staccato beats. As the rhythm swelled, quadruple columns of crossbowmen jogged forward from the rear and took up position behind the prisoners. André knew, because he had worked on the composition of formations with his father, that each column of crossbowmen contained two hundred men, and he felt his shoulders start to grow rigid as he sensed what might happen next, but even as he saw the first bolts plunge silently into the backs of the bound and helpless prisoners, he was unable to believe what he was seeing.

The prisoners went down in swathes, like corn before the reapers’ scythes. After the first few moments of suspense and uncertainty, the prisoners in the forward ranks realized what was happening behind them, and their fear and panic flared and spread like wildfire in a high wind, so that they broke and tried to run. But they could not run, because their legs were too close-shackled, so all they could do was stumble awkwardly and fall, screaming to Allah for succor.

To the left of the slaughter, sitting his horse with his entourage clustered behind him, Richard Plantagenet watched the massacre unfold, his face expressionless as though he were doing no more than watching a colony of bees being smoked into insensibility so that its honey could be harvested. Then, somewhere off to St. Clair’s right, facing the carnage, someone among the Templars began to bang his sword rhythmically against his shield, twice with the hilt end and then once with the flat of the blade, creating a three-beat cadence to accompany his own chant of “By the Cross, by the Cross, by the Cross …” The hammer-blow chant was picked up quickly by his neighbors to spread across the Templar ranks until it seemed everyone was shouting it, although not everyone was. André St. Clair’s was not the only face dulled by consternation and disbelief among the Templar ranks that day, but they were a small minority. When the chant finally swelled to become intelligible to the watching King, Richard held his sword up over his head again, this time by the blade, so that the golden hilt became a symbol of the Cross being extolled by the Christian ranks, and the chant grew ever louder as the last of the Muslim prisoners were killed.

When it was over and the last man was dead, Richard signaled again, and his crossbowmen regrouped and trotted at the double step back to their original stations. After that the entire army wheeled about and returned to Acre, leaving the landscape strewn with enough murdered men to sate every vulture for miles around. André St. Clair rode among them, looking neither left nor right and making no attempt to speak to anyone, appalled to the very depth of his soul not merely with the magnitude of the sin he had witnessed but with the fact that its perpetrator was the same man who, a few years earlier, had reacted memorably with horror and outrage to the tidings that Saladin had executed a hundred prisoners after the Saracen victory at Hattin. But as the unmistakable sounds of jubilation and celebration began to burgeon around him on all sides, André could not continue to ignore what was happening around him, and he turned to stare, dead-eyed, at the spectacle of sober, solemn knights reeling like drunken men in the euphoria of having killed so many infidels for the greater glory of God.

“TWO THOUSAND AND SEVEN HUNDRED MEN, Alec. That’s how many there were … Two thousand and seven hundred … More than that, truth be told … more than the seven hundred, but less than eight … Slaughtered like animals and left to bloat and rot in the desert sun.”

“Hmm.” Alec Sinclair kept his face free of expression and his voice toneless. “Well, once they’re slaughtered, there’s no place else out here to leave them, Cousin, during daylight hours at least. There’s naught but the desert sunlight in which to bloat and rot. Not that I am trying to make light of any part of what you say. It is simply that the sane mind refuses to accept atrocities like that … What did you do while it was happening?”

“Nothing. I did nothing. I was … I can’t say what I was, or what I was even thinking. I was numb, terrified, incredulous. But I am shamed to say I made no move to stop it.”

Sinclair twisted his face into the semblance of a wry grin. “D’ye say so, Cousin? You were afraid to step forward and denounce the King of England as a murdering butcher, simply because he was surrounded by a few thousand of his rabid army, who were murdering thousands of other men with great enthusiasm? Tut, man, that’s terrible.”

His unformed smile vanished and he turned his head to look all around the place where they were sitting, an empty fire pit within fifteen paces of André’s tent. The spot offered nothing of privacy, and a steady stream of knights and sergeants moved incessantly about it, coming and going on errands of all imaginable kinds. One man nodded to Alec in passing, recognizing him without evincing any untoward interest, and Alec returned the nod, muttering something unintelligible. He looked all around again, making sure they were not being particularly heeded, before he looked back at André, his face sober.

“It was the first thing I heard about when I stepped off the boat from Cyprus last night, and because the ship turned right around to return, the word will be in Cyprus the day after tomorrow. I heard the Bishop of Bayonne instruct the captain of the ship how to spread the glorious word on his return to Cyprus.”

“What did you hear, what did he say?”

“That Richard had achieved a great moral victory over Saladin by executing the hostages being held against the Sultan’s performance. That he had taught the infidel his proper place and chastised him sternly— and appropriately—for attempting to break his sworn agreement to return the True Cross. And I know that everyone else who heard the bishop speak of it believed it was a great victory and a much-needed moral lesson.”

“It was murder, Alec—murder on a scale I could not have imagined. Pure, premeditated murder, merciless and mortally sinful. If there is indeed a Hell of fire and brimstone as the Christians believe, then Richard Plantagenet purchased himself a special place in the depths of it yesterday, for nothing in the tenets of Christian belief, no matter how distorted by priestly logic, could ever justify what that man did. That same man who swore piously and publicly, in the name of their living, merciful Christ, to return God’s Holy Land to the people of the gentle Savior.”

Alec Sinclair nodded. “Your liege lord is not as noble a figure as he would have the world believe, is he?”

“No, he is not …”

“And now we have other important matters to discuss, but it must be elsewhere. There are far too many flapping ears hereabouts. Bring your arbalest and something to shoot at and we will find a place to practice our skills where no one can overhear us.”

A short time later and a half mile removed from the crowded confines of the encampment, St. Clair stuck a long spear into the ground, point first, at the foot of a dune. He had tied his sheathed dagger a head’s length from the top of the shaft to form a crossbar, and suspended an old horse blanket over that, to suggest the size and shape of a tall, thin man, an impression heightened by the addition of a rusted, cloven old helmet to the butt of the spear. When he was satisfied with its appearance and sure that it would be recognized as a simple target from a distance, he remounted and rode back with Alec until a good hundred and twenty paces lay between them and it, and there they dismounted and unsaddled their horses before slipping their nose bags, each with a handful of oats, over the animals’ heads. Only then, when the horses were looked after, did they unlimber their crossbows and walk towards the firing line Alec had dug into the sand with one heel.

Neither man had actually brought an arbalest with him, for the simple reason that the weapon was too powerful for such a casual exercise, since every bolt they fired from this close would vanish into the sand of the dune behind the target and be lost. Instead, they had brought smaller crossbows, less demanding in strength and power and more demanding in the skills they called for. Using these weapons, and from this distance, there was at least a possibility that the bolts they threw at the target would be recoverable. André fired the first shot, watching the flight of the missile critically, and when it fell short of the target he made a minor adjustment to his stance and tried again, grunting in satisfaction as he saw the quarrel hit this time and glance off the spear shaft.

His cousin acknowledged the shot, then took his own stance and did exactly the same thing, save that his second shaft glanced left off the target, rather than to the right as André’s had.

“Very well, then,” André said, holding his weapon tucked beneath one arm, “we’re established. We have each hit the target and there appears to be no one watching us. And even if there were, no one could come close enough to us to overhear us, so may we talk now?”

“We may.”

Sinclair turned, head down, and walked away to where his saddle lay on the side of a tiny hill of sand. He rested one booted foot on the cantle and propped the stirrup of the crossbow against his raised toes, crossing both his hands on the butt. André followed him quietly, merely watching and waiting, knowing that whatever his cousin might say next, it would not be inconsequential, nor would it be spontaneous.

“I sensed …” Alec stopped, obviously considering his words. “I sensed a reversal in you today, Cousin, something that was not there today as it had been before, or perhaps more accurately, something that was there as it had never been before.” André stood silent, waiting for the other to continue. He could tell that Alec was having difficulty with whatever he was trying to say, because his diction was far more precise, more painstaking than usual. His French was fluent and effortless, but the alienness of his Scots birth and background came through in the way he articulated his words and vowels, speaking them crisply and clearly, yet in a way that no native of Gaul ever would.

“I have been out here in Outremer, perhaps, for too many years,” Alec continued after a moment’s additional thought. “I have grown used to living alone like an anchorite, away from other men, Christian men, if you understand what I am trying to say, and to conducting my own devotions in the way I was taught. In consequence of that, I have obviously not been exposed to the kind of changes that everyone who came over the sea with you appears to accept as commonplace. Not the kind of changes that one may point to and identify clearly. I suppose, really, that I am referring more to moral differences, to changes in perception and acceptance.

“Now that I am aware of them, I can see that most of them must have occurred since I left Scotland, and certainly since I left Christendom to come out here. They are changes of attitude, and of perception, more than anything else, I believe—changes in the way men look at things and see things nowadays.” Again he stopped, shaking his head. “You plainly have no idea what I am ranting about here, and I can’t blame you.”

He sucked in and released a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Let me try another way. I am speaking here of the truths that you and I were taught by our brethren in the Order of Sion, when we were first Raised to the brotherhood—the truths that we were taught, unchanged since our forefathers fled Jerusalem twelve hundred years ago to escape the wrath of Rome and the false and Godless ‘Truth’ the Romans would impose upon them. And now here we are, you and I, more than a millennium later, back in our ancient homeland and still dealing with the wrath of Rome and the new, updated Roman version of truth. We swore oaths, all of us in the brotherhood, to do certain things, to observe certain conventions and to obey and sustain certain ancient laws that will enable us to carry out our duties and our tasks with honor at all times. And since the earliest days of our Order, those oaths and laws and promises have remained unchanged.

“But look now at our supposed exemplar, the Roman Church. Nothing is immutable therein, André. Nothing at all. Everything—every duty, every law, every obligation, every element of their credo—is negotiable and changeable, according to the will of whoever happens to be wielding the power at any given time. Look no further than the beginnings of this Order of the Temple, ninety years ago. Until then, for a thousand years, the mere idea of priests and monks killing other men had been anathema. But then—and granted, it was at our own brotherhood’s suggestion—the priests perceived a way to effect great change in that, to their great benefit, as always, and it was a simple matter of rearranging a few priorities and repositioning certain criteria to conform to the will of God, as expressed to and interpreted by His priests. Nothing in the Roman Church, it seems obvious to me, is absolute … Are you following me now?”

St. Clair nodded. “Aye, easily enough, but I have no idea where you are leading me.”

A tiny smile cracked the seriousness of Sinclair’s expression. “I have no idea, either, but I think it is time we both found somewhere new to go. Everything was brought into focus for me by the way you voiced your reaction to—your disgust over—the way Richard dealt with his Muslim prisoners.”

St. Clair barely reacted to that, limiting his response to a minuscule headshake and keeping his voice low and calm. “Disgust is too small a word for what I felt. Nothing that I could possibly say could even come close to expressing what I want to say. I have the knowledge inside me, and someday, I know, it will spill out, purging and absolving me. Or so I hope. But between you and me let there be no misunderstandings and no lies. Richard did not ‘deal with’ his Muslim prisoners. He slaughtered them out of hand, and their blood is still thick and wet out on the killing ground. He murdered them by the thousand, and for no other reasons than to vent his spleen and show Saladin that he was angry and impatient with the Sultan’s behavior.”

“He is your liege lord, Cousin.”

“No, Cousin, he is not. That status was forfeit, by his own design, when I became a Templar. You know that, because you had to forfeit your own liege in the same way. It was Richard’s own idea that I should join the Temple, and he knew when he made the suggestion that it would result in losing my services and my fealty. That has come to pass. Richard Plantagenet can make no more claims on me. But even there he was being duplicitous, seeking to sway my father into joining his Great Venture … and not because he needed him. Sir Henry St. Clair had no great, vaulting skills that Richard of England could not have found elsewhere. No, the simple truth is that Richard dreamed up, or was given, or otherwise conceived the thought that Sir Henry St. Clair should go with him to war, as a perfect foil against the ever-present threat of having his own father’s favorite factotum, William Marshall of England, thrust upon him as his Master-at-Arms. And once that thought was in his head, it became his will, and my father was powerless against it …”

Sinclair must have noticed the change in his expression. “What? What is it?”

St. Clair held up a hand to stem the questions. “It simply came to me that by the time Richard came with de Sablé to my father’s house on that occasion, to talk the old man into going with him, he had already decided on a path. Robert de Sablé was already destined then to be Grand Master of the Temple, and Richard knew it. And if truth be told, it might come out that Richard was the author, somehow, of that nomination. It would certainly not surprise me. But even so … If Richard knew that his friend Robert was to be the Grand Master, then he must have thought, too, being Richard, that he would be able to control the man, playing on his gratitude and his sense of obligation … and that would mean, in turn, that Richard must have thought the entire Temple would fall, more or less without volition, into his grasp. If so, he misread his man badly, for Robert de Sablé will play the dupe to no man, be he pope, king, or emperor. He has been Grand Master of the Temple for less than three months and already his independence is manifestly obvious. But he is also a member of our ancient brotherhood, loyal to the core and honest and trustworthy to a fault, and that is something Richard will never even begin to suspect. He will never know where his dear friend’s true loyalty is owed and paid. But that is of no help to us, here and now.”

He stood chewing on his lower lip for a few moments before lowering himself to sit on the saddle by his feet. “So,” he said then, looking up at Sinclair, “where do we go from here, you and I?”

Alec Sinclair laid his crossbow on the ground, then sat on his own saddle. “I have no idea, so I will be grateful for anything you might suggest.”

“Hmm … Well, speaking for myself, I have no wish to go anywhere near Richard or his armies. I might be content to hover on the outskirts of things for a while, but I doubt even that would satisfy me. What I really wish is that I were months and the breadth of seas removed from here, back in my home in Poitou, but that is plainly an impossibility. So in the meantime, I intend to immerse myself in my duties here, serving the Temple in whatever capacity is deemed to be suitable for me.”

“And what happens when we return to fighting? What will you do then?”

André looked up in surprise. “I shall fight. What else would I do?”

“You see no contradiction there?”

“In fighting? How should I? I am a knight-at-arms.

I’ve trained all my life to fight, as have you.”

“Aye, mayhap, Cousin, but I have had ten more years to weigh the verities than you have.”

“What verities? What is that supposed to mean?”

Alec Sinclair grunted, then grinned wryly. “I don’t know, Cousin. I don’t know what it was supposed to mean. It simply seemed strange to me that you could be so righteously angry over the slaughter of three thousand Muslims at one moment, and then at the very next be talking blithely about killing more of them. That, to me, is a contradiction.”

“No, Alec, it is not. Yesterday was an atrocity— murder, pure and simple, the victims bound with ropes and then shot down. What I am speaking of, on the other hand, is warfare, cleanly waged, hand to hand.”

“Infrequently, at best. More often from afar, with those things there.” Alec nodded towards the crossbows they had come out here to use, and André shrugged.

“Perhaps so, but each side has an opportunity to win and emerge alive, if not unscathed.”

“They still leave many people dead, to bloat and rot in the desert sun …”

St. Clair’s eyes narrowed. “You are mocking me. Why?”

“Not mocking you, Cousin, not at all. Merely questioning the truth of what you appear to believe, because I believe that, at root, you don’t believe it at all.”

St. Clair pointed a finger at his cousin’s face. “Even in your forested homeland, Cousin, that would be obscure and confusing.” He reached behind him and pulled his saddlebags to where he could drape them across one knee, and then he dug in one of them and pulled out a cloth-covered bundle that he began to unwrap. “Sand grouse,” he said. “Much like the grouse we have at home, save that they are even smaller. But I bribed a cook last night and purchased four of them for an outrageous price. Had I known you would be here today, I would have tried for eight. Here, have some. There’s even some salt in the twist of silk cloth there.”

They ate in contented silence for a while until Alec asked, “What think you of Philip of France? Will he recover from the disgrace of quitting the fight?”

André shook his head. “Philip will see no disgrace in what he did, and no one will question him. He rose from his sickbed and fought valiantly to bring down Acre at the Accursed Tower and was widely acclaimed for doing so, and within days of his final effort, Acre fell. Thereafter, he could state verifiably that his assault had been successful and his task completed. After that, he can argue, it was Richard who brought about all the troubles of the alliance, seizing the spoils of Acre, including captured lands, and refusing to share them with anyone, as though he alone was responsible for the two-year siege and the eventual fall of Acre. He offended not only Philip but even the Archduke of Austria, the lastsurviving and most puissant vassal of Barbarossa in the Holy Land. Not to mention that he alienated the entire nobility of Outremer, whose lands had been confiscated in the aftermath of Hattin and were now won back to be confiscated yet again by the upstart newcomer from England. Philip will argue that Richard’s arrogance and greed made the French Crown’s continuing presence here in Outremer untenable, particularly in the light of Philip’s extended and much-reported illness, with its attendant loss of hair and teeth. Bear in mind, he merely sailed away, almost alone. He did not simply pick up and flee. He left his army behind, to continue fighting under the Duke of Burgundy, and no one can complain about that choice of deputy … No, Philip will be treated as a hero by everyone who hears of his exploits without having to undergo the dubious pleasure of meeting or observing him.”

Sinclair nodded, looking pensive. “And the underlying truth? Why did he really leave, André? Your own opinion.”

“Greed, and politics. I believe he started planning his departure the day that Flanders was killed in front of Acre’s walls, at the beginning of June.”

“Flanders? Do you mean Jacques d’Avesnes, that Alsatian fellow? Was that his name?”

“No, d’Avesnes is a knight of Alsace, one of Flanders’ vassals, and he is very much alive. I meant the Count of Flanders himself, and I do not think I have ever heard his full name, or if I did I have forgotten it. He was an amazing man, from all reports, prodigiously strong, powerfully engaging, and unforgettable to all who met him.”

“What did he have to do with Philip, apart from being a neighbor and an ally?”

“Nothing, on the surface, but his unexpected death takes on enormous significance to Philip when you remember that he died without an heir. Flanders counted Artois and Vermandois among his holdings, and it is common knowledge where I come from that Philip has lusted after those territories—plus Flanders itself, with Alsace and the rest of Belgium to boot, all of them belonging to the Count—since he first mounted the French throne, nigh on a score of years ago. To have all those lands come open to dispute, and leaderless, while he was stuck out here must have galled him badly. That is why I believe he started making preparations to sail home the moment Flanders was killed … and those preparations included his heroic, widely witnessed, and much-lauded assault on the Accursed Tower. I believe he planned and carried out all of those things well enough to ensure that he will arrive home almost as quickly as the tidings of the Count’s unfortunate death, and the French Crown will move swiftly to secure the County of Flanders and maintain good order on France’s northern boundaries thereafter. Philip may not be the world’s greatest soldier, but he ranks highly among its most able administrators.”

“Speaking of which,” St. Clair added quietly, “I have not even asked you about your Cyprus duties. Those were administrative, were they not?”

“Aye, they were, after a fashion. I was to scout out and procure a suitable headquarters site for the people we will be sending in there to set up our operations on the island.”

“I presume, when you say ‘our’ you are talking about the Temple … or is the brotherhood involved in this?”

“No, not at all.” Sinclair’s denial was emphatic. “De Sablé and myself are the only two of the brotherhood involved at this stage, and I do not believe there are any plans to change that.”

“So you found a suitable place?”

“I did—in one of the Comnenus castles, naturally enough, close by Nicosia. A preliminary occupation party of twenty knights and a company of sergeant brothers left to sail there yesterday. We passed them at sea on our way in, but we did not see them. Just as well, perhaps.”

“Why so?”

“Because the bickering has already begun and I have no wish to be involved in any part of it. De Sablé doesn’t, either, but he has little choice in the matter. He is Grand Master and it was he who made the sale possible, through his friendship with Richard. But he has specific instructions from the Chapter House on what needs to be done. Not precisely what needs to be done, but sufficiently close to be causing confusion already.”

“I don’t follow. I thought the Grand Master had complete power within the Order. Are you now telling me that is untrue? How do you know that?”

“I know it because de Sablé told me when I spoke with him this morning, on my return. The senior brethren expressed grave concerns about these latest developments, and he agreed to be guided by their consensus in this single instance. The Order has never had a secure, self-contained base of its own before, and the brethren are anxious to make no mistakes at the outset of such a momentous advance into unknown waters, for the potential could be enormous—far greater than many people have ever considered.”

“How so?”

“Think about it, André. Think what is involved.” André shrugged, with one shoulder, as though to indicate his lack of interest. “I don’t have to think about it. You’ve already told me: a free, self-sufficient base of operations, close enough to Outremer to provide a solid, versatile launching point for future endeavors, and far enough removed from Christendom to be free of the prying and interference of snooping kings and priests. I can understand why that would be attractive to the Order. Anyone could.”

“Ah, but you are wrong. You see what I mean? You missed the import entirely.”

André frowned slightly, then dipped his head in submission. “Very well then, enlighten me. What, exactly, did I miss?”

“The scope of it, Cousin. You see, you and I, as mere men, think in man-sized terms. But the Order perceives a greater opportunity here—not merely to establish a base of operations but to set up an entirely independent state! An island country of their own, defensible and governable, ruled by and answerable to the Temple alone. That is their vision, and they intend to make their dream a reality.”

“By the living God! That is a grand scheme indeed, for the price of a hundred thousand gold bezants.”

“They only set down forty thousand, bear in mind. The rest is payable in time to come.”

“Aye, but still, that is … that is nigh on incomprehensible. And Robert de Sablé would rule it?”

“As Grand Master, aye, for as long as he holds the title. But I think Robert made a mistake at the outset, in agreeing to share any portion of his power as Grand Master, no matter how temporarily, even for such a grand scheme. I believe when he did that, he doomed the entire venture, because already too many mediocre men who should have no voice in such matters have differing opinions and are splitting into different camps. We now have factions, created almost overnight, with overt jealousies between them, and they are already squabbling over money. Besides—and I appear to be the only one aware of this—the Order itself has no respect for the Cypriots, with whom it must share the island. There is no thought of sharing. They are already talking about taxing them, brutally, and keeping them subservient to the wishes of the Order, but no one has said a single word about making any effort to befriend them or enlist their support or loyalty. And the place has only been in the Order’s possession for a matter of weeks, not even a month. I swear, it is a venture doomed to failure, mark what I say.” He stopped, noticing the set of André’s head, and then sat up and turned to look where he was looking.

“Someone coming, and not one of us.”

Alec Sinclair stood up, raising a hand to shield his eyes against the sun’s glare, and quickly located the shape of a man on a donkey, approaching along the crest of the dune on their left. He grunted and raised one hand high in the air. “It’s Omar,” he said. He lowered his hand, and the approaching figure, who was still far off but close enough for André to recognize him as the familiar old Palestinian who scraped a living as a water carrier, stopped and sat motionless for a count of ten, and then Alec raised his hand again, and the old man tugged at the donkey’s reins, turning it around, and set off back in the direction from which he had come.

“What was that about?” André asked.

“A summons. I am to meet Ibrahim tonight at our place of stones. He has something for me, probably a message to pass along to de Sablé. D’you want to come with me?”

“Do I? Of course I do. But I don’t understand what happened there. How did old Omar know where to find you, and how did he know you were you, from so far away?”

“There are not many places I could be, if you think about it. And he knew me by my clothes.”

“Be serious, you lying Scots heathen, and tell me the truth,” André exclaimed, for Alec Sinclair was dressed exactly as he himself was, identically to everyone else in the Templar community, in the white surcoat bearing the red cross of the fighting knights.

Sinclair grinned. “He knew me when I raised my hand in the air the first time. No one else would normally greet him that way. If they wanted him they would wave to him, or beckon him over. Then, when I lowered my hand, he counted to ten and I raised my arm again, confirming that I had understood his message, which is that Ibrahim will expect me tonight, or by noon tomorrow at the latest if I have difficulty tonight.”

“And how did you understand the message? Tell me that.”

His cousin made a moue, shrugging slightly. “The urgency is in the fact that Omar came out here to find me. Had it not been urgent, he would not have come but simply waited until we saw each other in the camp. The fact that he wore what he was wearing tells me that Ibrahim has something to pass on to me from his people. Omar has two kufiya head coverings, one black, the other white. When he comes to me wearing the black, it is simply to inform me I must meet with Ibrahim as soon as it becomes convenient. When he binds the black kufiya in place with a white band, it denotes some urgency and requires a more prompt response. The white kufiya, on the other hand, means that the meeting is urgent, and the black binding holding it in place told me Ibrahim has a message to pass on. It is really very simple. The code was developed years ago. I’m told it goes all the way back to the days of the first Templars, to Hugh de Payens.” He looked up at the sky, gauging the height of the sun.

“It’s nigh on mid-afternoon. We had better return to camp right now. I will have to meet with de Sablé briefly, to inform him that we are going and that he should expect a communication from Rashid al-Din. While I’m doing that, you can requisition fresh horses for us and have them saddled, and pick up some oats for the nose bags—enough for three days, in case we run into any difficulties. We’ll need three days’ rations, too, against the same possibility.”

“What about clothing? Will we wear armor or local dress?”

Alec Sinclair made the Islamic gesture of sala’am, touching breast and forehead in salutation. “One of the greatest advances made by the original forces who came here from Christendom long ago, before you and I were born, was the discovery that the people of these parts knew better than any newcomer ever could know what was best to wear in desert conditions. We will travel as locals and be undisturbed. When you are ready, bring everything to your tent and set up your squadron deputy to cover for you. I’ll meet you there. No point in flaunting our preparations under the noses of my fellow staff officers.” He glanced up at the sky again. “Let’s say, in one hour.”

André nodded. “Fine, but don’t forget, you have to tell me what you found in Cyprus.”

“You won’t forget it. How then could I? We’ll have plenty of time for that along the road.” They set spurs to their horses at the same moment and struck out for camp, not even bothering to collect their makeshift target.

ANDRÉ ST. CLAIR RODE into the final phase of his life as a Temple knight with absolutely no anticipation of what lay ahead of him when he stepped into the stirrup and swung his leg across his horse’s back, but as he would hear a thousand times in the life that lay ahead of him, it is not given to man to know the details of his destiny, and what is written may only be known when it has come to pass. What had been written for him before that afternoon had already come to pass, but he had not yet been informed of it. That task, the passing on of information and knowledge, had been given into the custody of his friend and cousin Alexander Sinclair.

It was close to the fourth hour of the afternoon by the time they left the camp behind them and struck out into the open waste of the desert. Six weeks had passed since the fall of Acre, and Saladin and his forces had withdrawn long since, southward towards Jerusalem and the cities along the coast, which meant that much of the danger of travel in the vicinity of Acre had been removed. Nevertheless, they rode in silence for the first few miles, each of them scanning the horizon from time to time simply to be sure that they were not being observed or followed. Then, after perhaps two hours of riding, and just as the sinking sun was approaching the last third of its daily journey down the arching sky, they breasted the highest of the dunes they had been traversing and saw, on the horizon ahead of them, the broken, serrated edge that marked the beginning of the field of boulders that surrounded their destination.

“You know,” St. Clair said, breaking the silence that had held between them since they set out, “my mind has been returning to this place ever since the first time I saw it, because it reminded me of something, and I have just remembered what it is.”

Alec twisted sideways in the saddle to look at him quizzically. “This place reminded you of something? You mean here among these dunes, or the rocks ahead of us?”

“Pardon me, I meant the boulders there. The field of stones.”

“Aye, that’s what I thought you might mean. Well, that surprises me, because I have never seen anything to resemble it before, and I have been around for ten years longer than you have. What could it possibly remind you of?”

“Another place … a field of stones.”

“Tell me about it, this place. Where is it?”

“In France, to the south of Paris, just east of the main road to Orléans. It is a place called Fontainebleau, and I cannot remember how I came there, but I found myself there one day in a magnificent forest that stretched around me for leagues in all directions, and there in the midst of it, just as here, I found a field of giant stones like these, smooth and rounded boulders of a size to stagger the mind. Boulders everywhere, dwarfing puny humanity and towering all around in silence, merely there, to strike awe into the beholder …”

“Just like this field here.”

“Aye, but nothing like it, for the field of stones in France stands in the forest, so that everywhere, as far as the eye can see, the stones compete with trees, merely to be seen, though winning in most instances. There are no pathways there, no simple means of moving among or between the stones, save perhaps the occasional game trail, worn over hundreds of years by passing deer. And yet, among the deepest, largest, thickest groves of trees, there are glades to be found, and in one of those glades stands a cave … a cavern very much like your cave here, in that it has been formed from clusters of great stones, piled one atop the other and eroded by weather and the local climes for thousands upon thousands of years. It is deep and dry, completely sheltered from the wind and rain. Very similar to your place here, yet utterly different.”

Sinclair remained quiet for a spell after this outflow, then reined in his horse and looked thoughtfully at André. “We have established that Sharif Al-Qalanisi was your tutor in the Arabic tongue, as he was mine. But tell me, what else did he teach you? Did he lead you into the ways of philosophical thought?”

“Aye, he did. Do you have a reason for asking that, or was it merely a fortunate guess?”

“No guess, Cousin. This instance you have described is exactly the kind of mirror-image likeness that would have fascinated Al-Qalanisi. Now what, think you, would he have asked of you, knowing that you have seen the parallel and recognized the paradox?”

“I am not sure I have recognized any paradox, Cousin.”

“Nonsense, of course you have. Two fields of stones, identical each to the other in their content, yet set worlds apart in their appearance, the one in arid desert and the other in a forest of white-barked trees and pale green leaves, the one denying the very appearance of life in an eternity of lifeless sand, the other celebrating the driving thrust of life teeming around and between singular lumps and globules of stone like spores of moss among heaped piles of gravel. And between the two of these, you are the sole link. There is a message concealed there, somewhere. What think you Sharif Al-Qalanisi might have made of such a puzzle?”

St. Clair looked sideways at his cousin, tipping his head to one side. “I have no idea. Let me think about it for a while, and if I can respond to it at all, I will.”

Sinclair made no response, and for the next while they plodded steadfastly and silently towards the looming line of boulders that marked the edge of the field of stones, but on the very edge of the area, before they could draw close enough to enter it, André St. Clair drew rein, and his cousin reined in beside him.

“I have had an astonishing thought,” the younger cousin said, “one that might never have occurred to me had we not come here today, and had you not provoked me into thinking about matters I would never otherwise consider. Two fields of stones as you say, Cousin. Each radically different from the other, and yet each the same. The one, from my young manhood, from my youth, holds memories and echoes that resonate inside me, loudly enough to be painful. It appears rich and green, lush and full of promise. The other, an alien place that holds no images for me, no memories, no echoes, is a place of grays and dull, hard browns. Sere and lifeless, it is full of inert, obdurate stones and shriveled, dried-out remnants of what might, at one time, have been dreams worth the pursuing.

“On the one hand, my boyhood. In a green and pleasant land, bestrewed with promises and lushness. Plants grow everywhere I look, but all the plants are trees, with pallid, sickly leaves. No flowers, no edibles, and only trees … with roots all gnarled and dry, twisted and set in their growth, and surrounding, choking, covering nothing but stones, boulders that defy all pressures in their endurance.

“And on the other hand, my manhood, in a harsh and arid desert place, where boulders stand in profusion, as in France, but unobscured by growth, their surfaces wind-scoured and polished by the blowing sand. No flowers, no edibles, and not one twisted tree attempting to confine one standing stone within its roots.

“Two seeming truths, apparently similar. But only one is genuine.”

A long silence elapsed before Alec Sinclair asked his question. “Which one?”

André St. Clair turned his head slightly to look him in the eye. “You tell me, Cousin, for I have no idea.”

And both men laughed and kicked their horses into motion, riding in companionable silence once again. When next one of them broke the silence, it was again Alec Sinclair who spoke.

“We still have to decide what we intend to do next. Richard is planning to march south within the week, along the old coast road, to engage Saladin and take Jerusalem, defeating the Saracens once and for all. He has already made the dispositions for the line of battle— Templars in the vanguard with the Turcopoles in support, then Richard’s native levies, his Bretons, Angevins, and Poitevins. The Normans and the English will come next, guarding the battle standard, and the French will form the rearguard, with the Hospitallers and the local Outremer forces supporting them. You and I have to decide upon a course of action for ourselves before that all begins.”

“You’re making no sense, Cousin. The Templars will form the vanguard, so that is where we will be.”

They rode in silence again for a spell until Alec exploded, “Damnation, there’s no other way to tell you this. It won’t come out without being spat! When I was in Cyprus I made a journey to Famagusta, to visit your father’s grave, as I promised you I would. I found it without difficulty and prayed there for his soul to rest in peace, but when I returned to Limassol I heard a tale that I could not believe, and so I set out to investigate. There is a Jew there called Aaron bar Melel. Do you know of him?”

“No, I know no Jew of that or any other name, certainly not in Limassol. Should I?”

“Yes, you should. I was given his name by an associate— an agent of Rashid al-Din who has lived in Limassol for years, as a spy. He asked me about my own name and how it differed from the name St. Clair, with which he was familiar. When I explained that the former Master-at-Arms had been my uncle, the man became very excited and told me his version of the story of what happened to your father. When I refused to believe what he said, he told me how to find this man Aaron, and I went looking for him the very next day. He was not difficult to find … Do you remember telling me about the purge being carried out against the Jews a few days before you left Limassol?”

“Aye, I remember. It cost me a last visit with my father.”

“Aye. Well, this Aaron was one of the Jews being sought, along with his entire family, his wife, son, and daughter. I met his wife and saw his daughter. She is beautiful. His son is dead, killed during the purge. He was fourteen years old. But Aaron, his wife, Leah, and his daughter were rescued and concealed by a Frankish knight. The Jew named him, calling him Sir Henry St. Clair, Master-at-Arms to England. He rescued them before the troubles broke, according to Aaron, but I have no idea, because Aaron himself did not know, how your father found out about all that was about to happen in advance. Nor do I know what happened to the boy—but Sir Henry had them smuggled out of Limassol, to a fishing village farther along the coast where they remained until they heard that Richard had set out again to come here. At that point, they returned home to Limassol, to mourn their son and rebuild their lives.

“But someone informed upon your father directly to Richard at the time of the family’s disappearance. Henry must have been seen doing what he did, or he was betrayed by one of the people he employed. Whoever reported it to Richard sank the blade in deep, then twisted it. It was done with absolute malice, and at a carefully chosen time, probably when he was drunk— Richard, I mean. He would have been furious to hear about your father’s betrayal. Your father had already left for Famagusta by that time, and so Richard’s bullyboys were sent up there to deal with him, with instructions to make whatever they did look like a random attack by guerrillas. And everyone believed that that is what befell your father and his two companions that night. But the killers talked about it in their cups when they returned to Limassol, and my Shi’ite associate overheard them. They were in his tavern at the time. An innkeeper soon learns to keep his mouth tight shut, and he knew of Sir Henry St. Clair only from hearsay—the man was King Richard’s Master-at-Arms, after all—and so he said nothing to anyone until the matter of my name came up, at which point he told me what he knew.”

He stopped there and waited for André to respond in some manner, but the younger man merely rode ahead like a man asleep in the saddle, his body adjusting naturally to the horse’s gait. Having seen that his eyes were open, Sinclair assumed that he was listening, and continued. “I asked around, but I could not find out anything about the men that Suleiman described. That’s my associate, Suleiman. I wasn’t going to name him, but there is no harm done. Of course, they had all sailed away with Richard, so they had already been out here in Outremer for weeks by the time I landed in Cyprus.” He spread his hands in a shrug. “Which means that there is no reasonable way for us to find out who they were. Their faces could be any among the hundred or so oafish lumps that hang about Richard constantly, waiting for instructions.”

He looked away again. “I couldn’t even find out if Richard sent them off deliberately or if they took it upon themselves to carry out his ill-stated wishes, the way his father’s bullies did for Thomas à Becket in England. That would not be unlikely, for that incident appears to be one of Richard’s favorite recollections of his father. He talks about it frequently, whenever he wishes to point out that it is inadvisable to cross a man of his background, so the murderers might well have acted on their own, in expectation of his pleasure and gratitude. But whether the one is true or the other, there’s no doubt now that Richard knows both what he did and what he is guilty of. That’s why you have heard no word from him since his arrival here. I doubt that he could look you in the eye.”

That comment brought a response from St. Clair, spoken calmly, in matter-of-fact tones. “Oh, he could look me in the eye, Alec. Have no doubt of that. Richard Plantagenet could look me in the eye and smile at me and make me feel right welcome while my father’s blood dripped from his hands. His self-love is so monstrous that he can now convince himself he is incapable of doing wrong.

“I truly loved this man, once, you know … almost as dearly as I loved my father. He knighted me and I admired him greatly, seeing him as a paladin. But then, in tiny increments, one instance at a time, I began to see him as he truly is. All of the love and admiration, all the respect, all of the loyalty and duty that I had felt so privileged to owe him willingly for so many years began to turn to vinegar and ashes in my mouth, and my soul grew increasingly sick as more and more evidence of his perfidy and his unending selfishness became clear. And it all culminated with the obscenity of his destruction of the Saracen prisoners.

“After that, and what I suffered over it, even this information that he murdered my father, his most loyal servant, cannot move me to great passion. I believe it, but it does not surprise me in the slightest degree, and I think that were I to examine my own heart, I might even find that I suspected it—although I know I did not.” André turned his eyes directly on his cousin. “I have mourned my father, and I have come to accept that he was murdered. To find out now that he was murdered by a spiteful, ungrateful friend makes little difference. Murder is murder.”

St. Clair fell silent, and Alec Sinclair made no attempt to interrupt him, for he could see that there was more to come. And eventually André almost smiled as he said, “But I can understand now what you were attempting to say when you were muttering about our having to make up our minds as to what we must do next. Have you any ideas?”

“Aye, I have several. Go ahead. I’ll follow you.” They had reached the central area of the stone field, close by the pinnacle that marked the cavern’s roof, and now St. Clair nudged his horse to the left, taking the half-hidden pathway to the sink hole that led down to the hidden entrance. Alec followed him, speaking to the back of his head as they moved forward.

“The first and most obvious option open to us, to both of us, is simply to disappear into the desert and live with our Shi’a allies. That should present no great difficulty on any front, since we have the Grand Master himself to assist us. He need simply claim a requirement for our services, as clandestine operatives, to be conducted beyond the perimeters of our regular encampments. And he would not even be required to lie, since he could never be asked about the Order that claims our loyalty along with his own. He would simply leave others to assume, which they surely would, that our duties lie in the service of the Temple. No one would ever think to doubt his judgment, for we both speak flawless and fluent Arabic and have the capability of mixing with Saracens without being seen for what we truly are.”

“Aye, but were we to do that, we would be forced to live among Sinan’s people. I do not think I could live that way, Alec. Can you imagine spending an entire lifetime with Rashid al-Din, with that scowling, hostile, humorless glare of his fixed upon your every move, and with the constant knowledge that even when you are not within his sight, he has a hundred or a dozen spies reporting to him on everything you say and do? No, pardon me, Cousin, but that suggestion leaves me lacking in enthusiasm. What else have you in mind?”

They had reached the sink hole, but neither man had made a move to dismount while they were talking of the Hashshashin. Now André stepped down from the saddle and Alec joined him, holding his horse’s head by the halter.

“Well,” Sinclair said, “we could desert and simply head into the desert to the south in search of my old friend and former captor, Ibn al-Farouch.”

André turned to face him, one eyebrow raised in scorn. “Now there is a wonderful idea, brim-full of merit. I am surprised you were able to dream that one up so quickly, after the failure of your last notion. You are suggesting that we should surrender ourselves as prisoners and risk being slaughtered out of hand in swift reprisal for what we did to their brethren? That is simply a breathtaking idea.”

“I am serious. And we would be in no danger. As emir, my friend Ibn has the power to protect us and give us sanctuary among his people. You would enjoy that, I think. He has a daughter, Fatama, who will be approaching fifteen years of age by now, and she is exquisite. You and she would like each other, I believe.”

“Alec, I have taken vows, remember?”

“You could practice the same asceticism among the Saracens, Cousin, if that is what you wish. The emir has a brother who is very close to him, by name Yusuf, and Yusuf al-Farouch is a devout and learned man, yet also a man blessed with great wit and humor and compassion. He is a mullah, but a mullah unlike any other you might meet. You would enjoy him, too. So what say you, shall we seek out al-Farouch?”

St. Clair was staring at him wide eyed. “You are playing the fool here, are you not? Tell me, Alec, that you are jesting.”

Alec Sinclair shrugged. “So I am jesting. I thought it might do you no harm to smile and indulge yourself in pleasant thoughts for a few moments. A fool can be a wondrously diverting person … I also thought you might be less concerned than you were before with all this talk of vows and penalties and guilt and consequences were you able to laugh for a moment or two. It seems to me you have lost sight of the small fact that neither you nor I is Christian. And that is not a good fact to lose sight of, Cousin. You are starting to sound like a priest-ridden, guilt-tormented sinner, when what you really are is a privileged and enlightened Brother of the Order of Sion. Enough of guilt, Cuz. It is a meaningless concept.”

“I was not thinking anything of guilt, Alec. I was far more concerned with honor, and the way it vanishes out here like moisture on a flat stone lying in the sun.”

“Ah, honor! Now there’s a gold coin often gilded by people seeking to improve it. Tell me about honor, André. Tell me about how much of it you and I have seen practiced here and observed here, and—Here, look at this.” Alec fumbled in his scrip and brought out a gold coin, holding it up to where André could see it and then flipping it up, end over end, to catch it in one clenched fist. “This is a golden bezant, stamped by the Sultan’s coiner. I’ll wager it that you cannot name me, here and now, a score of honest, truly honorable men among the army within which we march. There must be far more than a score of them among so many, but you must name me twenty such good men—men known to you in person. Starting now. And mind your feet while you are thinking of them.” He turned and began to wend his way down the path that hugged the sides of the sink hole, and André followed him, deep in thought as he led his horse carefully behind him.

“Your coin is safe,” he said when they were safely at the bottom. “I have thought hard, and I have named seven men—eight if I include Robert de Sablé, and why should I not? So, I can name eight, all of them known to me, and three of those are sergeant brothers of the Temple, honest and honorable but lacking in power or status. That shames me.”

“That shames you? It is no fault of yours. Your honor is your own, as is the honor of each of the men you named. That’s the wondrous thing about honor, Cousin. It lives within us and it sets its own standards for each of us, and each of us is constrained to live within its limits. Oh, you will hear me talk about the honor of the Temple, or the honor of their corps, or of the Order, but that is sheerest nonsense being put into words. Things cannot have honor. Only men have honor, and each man bears the burden of his own. And all of it comes down to conscience and to choices in the time of direst trial, to the point when each man must draw his own line in the sand and stand behind it. Your standard may not be the same as mine, Cousin, but in the world wherein no man may lie unto himself or God, your honor is your own, it is your self, your soul, as mine is mine.”

André St. Clair sucked in a long, deep breath. “Very well then,” he said. “What is your next proposal?”

“I propose that we enter the cavern and deliver our greetings to Ibrahim. He must be waiting for us. Apart from that, I have no more proposals.”

“I have, but only one.”

“And what is that?”

“That we return to Acre and march southward with the army to Jerusalem. It is the most sensible thing to do, it seems to me, and while we are doing so, we will make time and opportunity to discuss our dilemma with Brother Justin, who has other tasks, now that his novices are all admitted to the Order as brothers. And, of course, with Master de Sablé. I meant to ask you this earlier, but have you any knowledge of how many of our brotherhood are here in Outremer, besides ourselves?”

“No, but there must be more of us.”

“There are. Considerably more. I would guess at least two score, but little is done in the way of convocations, as far as I can see. We hold no Gatherings in Outremer, and that strikes me as being wrong, for pressure of other affairs should not affect the ongoing welfare of the brotherhood at large. So I will suggest to the Grand Master that he bend his mind to forming some kind of special chapter within the Temple’s ranks, and to ensuring that its meetings be kept secret from the common fellowship. Would that please you? It should be easily achievable, and it would give us something upon which to focus for the remainder of this campaign, keeping our time and our minds focused on our true duties, free of the distractions of lesser things. What do you think of that idea?”

Alec Sinclair nodded his head once and then again, emphatically. “I like it. We return to Acre, talk to the Grand Master, march to Jerusalem with Richard’s army, but reconstitute ourselves in the brotherhood along the route. That is an excellent idea. I knew you could think, Cousin, but now you have proved it. Now let us bid a good day to the formidable Ibrahim and take receipt of his dispatches.”

Ibrahim, however, was not there. He had been there, and had waited for them for some time, but then, on a flat rock in the center of the cave where Alec could not fail to see it, he had left a letter written on a sheet of parchment, secured beneath one corner of a cage that held a pigeon. A leather tube of documents lay atop the cage. In his letter, he had explained that he had been there for an entire day and could wait no longer. The documents, he explained, were for the Frank fidai, or leader, the name used by the Hashshashin to denote the senior local representative of the Order of Sion, currently Robert de Sablé. Upon collecting the documents, Alec was asked to insert a bead into the tiny cylinder on the pigeon’s leg and then to release the bird to fly home. André watched closely as Alec retrieved a tiny bright red bead from the lining of his scrip and dropped it into the tiny metal tube attached to the bird’s leg.

“The red beads are used by and for me alone. I have a bag of them and always carry a few loose in my scrip. Ibrahim will know as soon as he sees this that I picked up his message safely and that all is well.” He released the pigeon as soon as they left the cavern, and watched it fly until it vanished from sight, and then he turned to his cousin. “Now to Acre, and tomorrow, if God so wills it, we will strike south for Jerusalem, with Richard, and, with the blessing of Robert de Sablé, build our brotherhood to strength again in Outremer along the way. Lead on, Cousin.”