Standard of Honor (31 page)

It was Hawkeye's victory, and not a single person watching doubted it, and yet, in the instant of that
recognition, Hawkeye hesitated. It was barely for a moment, the merest flickering of an eye, but Henry saw it clearly and so did every other man there. For the briefest instant, the man called Hawkeye remembered the identity of the adversary he was about to defeat, and then he collected himself and leapt in for the kill. But he was already too late. In the instant that had elapsed by then, Richard, impossibly well conditioned to the doing of impossible things, had brought his knees up to his chest, rolling far back onto his shoulders and from there, with no break in his fluid movements, he had flipped forward again, kicking his powerful legs up, out, and down in a springing lunge while at the same time thrusting himself up straight-armed like a tumbling acrobat and powering his entire body back to a standing position. It was a prodigious feat of physical prowess, but he did not complete it, because before he could regain the point of balance, his rising body met Hawkeye's coming forward, arms upraised for the killing stroke. And instantaneously accepting the reversal, Richard gripped the armor at Hawkeye's neck with both hands, raised one foot, lodged it above the other man's groin, and threw himself backward and down again, pulling the yeoman with him and then launching him onward with a powerful thrust from his bent leg, propelling him high over his head to land heavily and roll face down, unmoving.

There was neither sound nor movement among the group surrounding the circle. The only noises came from Richard himself as he came to his feet, then pulled
himself up to his full height, swaying and looking down at Hawkeye's inert body. Finally he waved a hand towards his downed opponent.

“Well, by God's throat, have you all been stricken mute? Is he alive, or have I killed him?”

His words broke the spell that had held everyone, and in a moment people swarmed around the man on the ground. “He's breathing,” someone shouted. “He's alive! Here, be careful. Stand back and let him breathe.” And with that the noisy enthusiasm of the soldiers quickly returned to normal as they discussed the pros and contras and technical details of what they had seen.

High on his horse above all of them, Sir Henry St. Clair saw the unconscious man's fingers twitch and then clench into a fist, and then he watched Richard stride forward and pick up not only the quarterstaff he himself had been using but the one belonging to Hawkeye as well, before he returned to stand looking down at the other man, his expression unreadable.

When the man called Hawkeye opened his eyes, he found himself at the center of a ring of well-wishers, with Richard of England himself kneeling at his side. The King smiled at him and spoke, but Hawkeye's wits had not yet returned to him and he understood nothing of what the monarch said. Later, when he thought back on it, he knew that Richard had rewarded him with three gold bezants— more wealth than Hawkeye had ever held in his hand or would ever see again—but he remembered nothing of what had transpired. He knew only what his friends told
him about the incident, and he took satisfaction in knowing that he had given the Plantagenet a good fight and had actually knocked him off his feet, flat on his back, in a bona fide fall. That was what had earned him one of the bezants. The other two had been added purely for the quality of the fight he had provided, according to his friends. And even so, Richard had gone further, in an act of unheard-of magnanimity, and presented the other two fighters with a silver mark apiece, in token of his gratitude for their loyalty and fellowship, he said.

Sir Henry St. Clair was familiar with the entire ritual from many years earlier, and the vagaries of whatever might happen on any individual occasion had long since lost any power to impress him. He invariably experienced, however, an unwilling, even grudging admiration for the sheer effrontery of Richard's performances in ingratiating himself with his gullible followers. His blatant self-aggrandizement at such times never failed to take Henry's breath away, and the veteran knight shook his head every time at the willful blindness of people in allowing themselves to be so shamelessly and openly manipulated.

But even as that thought came to his mind, he looked beyond the unfocused aura of the King's presence and found himself being truly astonished by the expression on the face of his son, for there, where he would have expected to see tolerant amusement and even admiration for Richard's flagrant mummery, Henry saw instead a faint frown. It was barely there at all, recognizable only to a man who had spent a lifetime
fondly watching the face of his only son. What was the expression? Was it disdain, suspicion, disapproval, outright dislike? Henry decided that all of these applied.

He became aware then that he himself was frowning and must have looked troubled to anyone watching him, and so he quickly cleared his face of all expression. He casually swung his horse away, resisting the urge to look at his son again but determined to find out, at the first opportunity, what had so changed André's opinion of his champion and savior, the Plantagenet King who had, at last report, been his hero.

THE CHAMBER ALLOCATED
to Sir Henry St. Clair was comfortably appointed, as was only fitting for the quarters of the army's Master-at-Arms. It was reasonably snug and secure from drafts, its floor made of carefully matched flagstones and strewn with fresh rushes save in the area surrounding the fireplace. Its high, bare walls were hung with heavy tapestries, and its furnishings were well and solidly constructed, the heavy oaken bed raised well clear of the floor. When Sir Henry swung open the door from outside and held it for André to enter ahead of him, he found his steward, Ector, already there, supervising the replenishing of the blazing fire in the brazier by one servant while keeping an admonitory eye on the laying of a table with food and drink by two others. As soon as he saw his master enter, Ector clapped his hands sharply, signaling his minions to finish their tasks immediately and remove themselves. When the door had closed behind them, he bowed to Sir Henry.

“Will there be anything else, my lord?”

Sir Henry shook his head, waving the steward away.

“Go to bed, Ector. I'll have no more need of you this night.”

He watched the steward leave, then turned to where his son, having already removed his surcoat and sword belt and laid them across one end of the newly set table, was ignoring the food but sniffing appreciatively at the long-necked silver ewer containing his father's favorite wine. Half smiling at André's earnest preoccupation, Henry shrugged out of his own mantle and removed the belt that held his long sword, and hung them over a peg set high in the wall beside the door before he moved to sit in one of the two chairs flanking the fire.

“So tell me, then,” he asked without preamble, “what kind of falling out have you had with our liege lord, Richard? And do not even think about pretending you don't know what I'm talking about.”

This was the first time the two men had been alone together since Richard's joust with the yeomen hours earlier, so the words, and the criticism they implied, caused André St. Clair to pause in the act of pouring the wine into two of the pewter goblets Ector's men had left on the table. He turned to look warily at his father, one eyebrow quirking upward, then straightened up slowly, lowering the ewer's bulbous base and replacing it carefully on the table. Then, in a movement clearly designed to give him time to think, he flexed his shoulders backward with a slow, exaggerated rolling motion and brought his elbows in close to his sides, raising his
forearms in unison until his bent knuckles came together beneath his chin.

Sir Henry watched all of this intently, admiring the discipline that kept his son's face so innocently empty of expression even while he must be wondering what had prompted the question and how much his father knew or had guessed. Henry was content to wait until his son should choose to respond, and sure enough, after scrutinizing his father for a count of ten, André dipped his head slightly sideways in what might have been the beginnings of a nod and returned to pouring the wine. He replaced the stopper in the ewer, set the flask down, then carried both cups to where his father sat by the fireside watching him. He handed one over wordlessly, then took the other fireside chair and looked down into the blazing heart of the brazier between them.

“Having been to England now, with all its chills and shivers, I find it strange that one should need a fire at night here in the summertime in the middle of France.”

“Aye, but the here you are referring to is not the middle of France. It is the middle of an old stone castle in west Burgundy, dark and damp and drafty and far removed from sunlight, winter or summer. It is
always
cold in here. And you are avoiding my question.”

“No, Father, I am not.” André looked up at his father. “I simply have not found the words yet to reply to it correctly.”

“How so? Can it be that difficult? We two are the only ones here, so you run no risk of being denounced for sedition or disloyalty, no matter what you say. You are at
odds, in some way, with the King, that much I know simply from watching you. But Richard was pleasant with you when we met today, so whatever occurred between the two of you must have been minor. Otherwise you would probably be in prison in disgrace.”

“Aye, or even executed … True, Father. But bear in mind that you yourself warned me to keep my disapproval masked should I ever encounter anything to incur it.” He shrugged. “So I did. I encountered something … distasteful. Something I had not sought, nor thought to find.”

“Distasteful. No stronger than that?”

“No, not unless I dwell upon it, and I try not to do that, because when I do, my distaste increases to dislike.”

“Hmm. Tell me, then, about this distasteful episode.”

André's expression hardened. “It was no episode, Father. It was far more than that. I have found distastefulness to be a constant in the man. A trait … a flaw I cannot bring myself to countenance.”

Staring at his son now, and seeing the cold, stern disapproval on his face, Sir Henry felt stirrings of chill gooseflesh raising the hairs on the back of his neck as he imagined the tenebrous, threat-filled specter of Richard's notorious homosexuality looming behind André's head and gesturing obscenely.

“Do you hate Jews, Father?”

“What?” So abruptly different was the question from what he had expected that its incongruity threw Henry off balance. “Do I—? No, I do not hate Jews.” But then he hesitated, before blurting, “What concern is that of yours? Why would you ask me such a thing?”

“Forgive me. Most people do hate them, I find. They call them Christ killers.” He frowned, and when he spoke again his voice was quieter. “Richard … Richard does not like Jews.”

Somewhere deep inside him, Henry felt relief unfolding like a blossom. “I see. And that is what you find distasteful?” He nodded gravely, not expecting a response from André. “Well, it's hardly an unusual opinion, is it? But having said that, and taking your exalted opinion of the man into consideration, I suppose it is understandable that you might be disappointed, particularly if he makes no secret of his dislike. But Jew hating is something of a social pastime everywhere, not merely here in Anjou and Aquitaine but all throughout Christendom, sanctioned and often even fomented by the Church itself.” He paused, musing, then continued. “So I have to ask you this: do you find the pastime unequivocally distasteful everywhere you encounter it, or only in Richard's behavior?”

“He is the King, Father. His behavior sets an example everywhere, for all his people. And in England, many of those people are Jews.”

“Ho, now!” His father held up his hand, “Rein yourself in, there. Many would argue strongly against that. You will find people aplenty ready to tell you loudly that Jews are Jews, no more and no less, irrespective of where they are. They live within the confines of their own strange religion and lead their secretive lives to their own ends, shunning the company of non-Jews but thriving through usurious commerce with Christian folk and
neither owing nor offering allegiance to anyone or anything Christian. By those precepts, the Jews of England will remain forever Jews and will never be English, as their counterparts here will never be Angevin or Aquitainian or even French.”

André had been staring at his father, narrow eyed, while Sir Henry spoke, and now he nodded. “You could, you might argue that … but would you, Father? Do you believe it?”

Sir Henry flicked the question aside with a one-handed gesture. “That is neither here nor there, although in fact I do not believe it and have not for years. What we are dealing with here is you and your beliefs, since those appear to clash with your King's. So let us deal with that.”

André looked away from his father's gaze as he raised his cup and drank off almost half its contents. “Deal with that, you say. But I seem to be incapable of dealing with it sanely, at least for the time being.”

It was Henry's turn now to turn aside and stare into the flames, collecting his thoughts before presenting them to his son's judgment, but presently he rubbed the back of one finger gently against the end of his nose. “Have I ever told you about Karel?”

“Karel the Dalmatian, the Magyar. Your boyhood tutor.” André smiled. “Aye, you have, many times, but I have not heard you mention his name in years, not since I was a tadpole. I remember you saying often that there was far more to Karel than he ever chose to let people see.”

“Most people looked at him and saw the Outlander: the strange-looking fellow with bushy hair and narrow eyes and the thick-tongued way of speaking. They never thought to try to look beyond that front that he maintained. And that was all it was: a pretense, a mask held up in front of the real Karel to protect him from the attentions of those he considered fools.”