Standard of Honor

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In 2005, just as I was really getting into the nitty-gritty of researching this story, I received two books as gifts from really good friends: Sharan Newman sent me a French publication called Les sites Templiers de France— Templar Sites in France—by Jean-Luc Aubarbier and Michel Binet, published by Éditions Ouest-France, and Diana Gabaldon sent me a jewel of a book called Arab Historians of the Crusades by Francesco Gabrieli, the 1993 Barnes & Noble edition of the classic 1957 Italian compilation of Arab commentaries and insights into the Crusades “from the other side.” Both books proved to be invaluable to me in the time that followed, allowing me to visualize connections and nuances that might never otherwise have occurred to me, and so I wish to express my gratitude to both donors.

It is truly astonishing how many books, articles, papers, and treatises there are out there on the Knights Templar, and a major part of deciding which materials to use for reference is the difficulty of being able to tell, at a glance, which are historically accurate, which are trustworthy, and which are purely speculative. Sometimes the distinctions are obvious, but I found myself traveling, on several occasions, in directions that I had never anticipated. Of course, as a writer of fiction, such tangential wanderings can be part and parcel of the voyage, and in this story of mine, I have borrowed from a few of them. By and large, however, I decided to rely upon respectability, and so restricted my later reading to works of generally accepted provenance. I thought, too, about including a bibliography here, then decided that it was much simpler to mention the half dozen wonderful books that I used most, mainly in keeping my story straight. They are:

The Knights Templar, Stephen Howarth, 1982, republished in 1993 by Barnes & Noble

Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour, Barbara Tuchman, New York University Press, 1956, republished in 1984 by Ballantine Books

The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple, Malcolm Barber, Cambridge University Press, 1994

The Templars, Piers Paul Read, Phoenix Press, 2001

Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade, James Reston Jr., Anchor Books, 2001

The Templars: Knights of God, Edward Burman, Destiny Books, 1986

Once again, and as always, I am acutely aware of the debt of gratitude I owe to the Penguin Group production team. They are consistently dependable and reliable—not always exactly the same thing—and even when they are cracking the whip across my dilatory shoulders, they manage to do it subtly enough and with sufficient finesse and panache that my pain is lessened somehow by my admiration of the pink tissue paper they use to cover the metal barbs … And among the Penguins, associated with them, are two paragons: Catherine Marjoribanks, my story editor, and Shaun Oakey, my astounding copy editor … amazing people, both of them. To all, my thanks.