Standard of Honor (56 page)

The first thing that sank through to him from all that he was hearing was that Philip of France, on landing at Acre, had chosen to support Conrad of Montferrat over Guy de Lusignan in the matter of their conflicting claims to the crown of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. That really surprised André, for it had been made clear to him by his own brotherhood, months earlier, that Conrad was both cousin and vassal to Barbarossa, the so-called Holy Roman Emperor, and that both of them were adherents of the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity. Each had publicly avowed his dedication, years earlier, to
reinforcing the Orthodox Church within the Kingdom and the city of Jerusalem, twin affirmations that had been noted with alarm and then condemned by the Roman papacy and had resulted in the frenzied papal support that had fomented the current Frankish campaign to recapture the Holy City. But Philip himself was one of the two leaders of that campaign. Barbarossa was dead now and his army no longer a threat to Rome's ambitions, but if Philip of France was now siding openly with Conrad of Montferrat in opposing the legitimate claim of Guy de Lusignan to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, then the French King was thumbing his nose, deliberately, at the Pope … which meant, by direct association, that he was including Richard, his nominal partner and coequal, in that defiance. That, André knew, was a major error on Philip's part, for it would force Richard to make a choice, and a commitment, that was likely to benefit no one.

André had little personal sympathy for King Guy's plight, because de Lusignan was no man's idea of a heroic leader, especially when his record was compared with that of Richard. Guy had demonstrated time and again, with depressing repetitiveness, that his inconsistency was limitless and that he was incapable of holding, for any length of time, a position or an opinion that was purely his own and uninfluenced by anyone else's thinking. Despite that, however, and even though his own deplorable behavior had done nothing to strengthen his situation, Guy's claim to his crown was legitimate, albeit decidedly flimsy.

The undisputed claimant to the crown of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, or the Latin Kingdom as most men were now calling it, had been Guy's wife, Sibylla, the sister and sole surviving heir of King Baldwin IV, the Leper King. No one had disputed Sybilla's succession to the throne after the death of her brother's only male heir, a sickly nephew who had not survived childhood, but everyone had been outraged by her choice of a consort. She had chosen her current lover, Guy de Lusignan, to rule with her, and coerced the aged Patriarch of Jerusalem into crowning the fellow not merely as a Prince Consort to the Queen but as the legitimate King in his own right. Her barons, the entire nobility of her realm, were scandalized, for they regarded Guy as an interloper, an adventurer, and a shameless opportunist.

He had arrived in the kingdom sometime earlier, an unknown from France, supposedly well born but with a background that was murky and shaded by rumors, and had succeeded somehow, in spite of that, in ingratiating himself sufficiently with the local barons to persuade them to appoint him as regent in the young heir's minority. His regency had been less than spectacular, and on the sole occasion when he had to make a show of force against the Saracens, at a place called Tubania, he had all but run away from the confrontation. That buffoonery had cost him his regency, although the young heir had died soon afterwards, rendering the annulment moot, but it had also cost Guy all his credibility in the eyes of the barons of the kingdom.

André swallowed a last mouthful of food and wiped the grease from his lips with the back of one hand before drinking deeply and then turning to look at his nearest neighbor, a slight, clean-shaven man with a hooked nose and a hollowed-out face that seemed lacking in lips and teeth. The fellow also had almost excessively broad shoulders, and he had sat down quietly beside André only moments earlier and was now diligently attacking a thick slice of juicy pork. He paid no attention to anyone at first, but when André greeted him he looked across at him and grunted, then stuffed the meat in his mouth into one cheek. André had noticed that he had brought nothing with him to drink.

“Good pig,” the fellow said. “Did you have some?” He spoke narrowly, barely opening his mouth, so that his accent—André had no idea which region it sprang from—sounded tight and nasal, but his words were understandable at least, and André was pleased, for the odds of having found, at first try, someone with whom he could converse straightforwardly among this enormous force were greatly less than even. He swallowed a belch and nodded.

“No, I think what I ate was goat, but it was good. When was the day of rest declared? I missed hearing about it until I woke up and caught the smell of roasting meat, about an hour ago.”

His neighbor sniffed. “Last night at midnight,” he said.

“What about the people unloading the ships?”

“What about them? Somebody has to unload the ships. I worked all afternoon, yest'day, then had to go on watch last night. I saw you out there, too, with one of the Templar crews, didn't I? You one of them?”

André grunted. “Aye, a novice, lowest of the low. Not a Templar yet, but not a common nobody either, so I can't win at anything, anywhere.” He hoisted his empty flagon. “I'm going to get more beer. Can I bring you one?”

The man looked about him as though surprised to discover that he had none, and then made to get up. “I'll come with you.”

“No, then we'll lose our seats. Stay here and finish your meat.”

By the time he returned, his new companion had finished eating and was staring morosely into the fire in front of him. André handed him a flagon of beer and sat back down beside him.

“Interesting that King Guy should turn up here, all the way from where you'd expect him to be, when we're supposed to be on the way to help him. Don't you think?”

“Interesting?” The guardsman shrugged. “No. I mean … I suppose it is if you care. But who cares? Besides, we're not going over there to help him. We're going over to kick the Saracens out of God's country, aren't we? To take it back for the Church …” He shook his head. “Can't see much in favor of our helping him, when I think about it …
if
I thought about it … He's not much of a king at all, if you ask me. I mean, our
boy, Richard, now
there's
a king. Looks like one, dresses like one, and behaves like one. That's what a king's supposed to be … a fighter. A scrapper, d'you know what I mean? Someone who knows what's his and'll take your head off if you so much as look sideways at it. That's a king. These other characters … Well, I mean, look at Philip … Or don't. I'd rather not. Do you look at him and see a king right off? I think not. Oh, we all know he
is
one … and he talks like one and wears the fine clothes, but he's too prissy. He's too … I don't know what he is, what the word is, but he's too
something
for my liking. Something that he needs to be but isn't. Certes, he'll have you murdered in your bed or stabbed in a dark alley if you cross 'im, but he'll never stand up and damn you to your face before he rips your head off with his bare hands, like Richard will … And this King Guy's the same way, from what I've heard.”

“What have you heard? What's your name, by the way?”

“Nickon … Nich'las, really, but Nickon's what I get. What's yours?” André told him and he nodded. “Aye, well, André, from what I've been told, this Guy, this Jerusalem King, looks as though he should be good in a fight, but he doesn't often get to fight, if you know what I mean. Not too many people confident of his leadership … He's the one caught all the blame for the big battle at Hattin, where your lot and the Hospitallers got slaughtered and we all got kicked out of Jerusalem. They say he lost it all single-handedly, 'cause he didn't know his arse from his elbow and couldn't make up his
mind whether to stop and fight or run and hide … Anyway, one of the nobs he brought with him was talking to the King—our King—day before yest'day, and I was on duty, right there within reach of 'em. Anyway this fellow, some big baron from Jerusalem, he was saying that Guy was the one who set up the siege of Acre, two years ago, and he's been holding Saladin's crew tied up there ever since.”

He cocked his head, looking sideways at André. “He was captured and held prisoner by old Saladin himself, did you know that?” André shook his head, pursing his lips, and Nickon nodded solemnly. “Well, he was, for more than a year … Mind you, being a prisoner and a king probably isn't the same thing as being a prisoner and a plain old sweaty guardsman, because Saladin let him go after that, on condition that Guy promised not to fight against him again. So Guy promised, and he got out, and then he started raising an army right away … Well, a promise to a godless heathen's no promise at all, is it? 'Specially if it's made under … you know …”

“Duress.”

“Right. Anyway, it took him a while, but he finally raised an army and set siege to Acre …” Nickon tilted his head, eyeing André from an angle. “You've 'eard about Acre, haven't you? You know what it is?”

“Yes … and no. I remember hearing something vaguely, but it was a long time ago and I didn't pay much attention. I had no notion at the time that I'd ever be going there. Tell me about it. What's so important about Acre?”

“Well, it's a port, isn't it? One of the places that Saladin overran and swallowed up right after Hattin. The only place he didn't get, right at that time, was Tyre, another port, farther to the north, and he would've had that as well if it hadn't been for Conrad of Montferrat. I'd never heard of him before yest'day, but I've heard a lot about the whoreson since then, I'll tell you. He's a German, some kind of baron or high lord, one of Barbarossa's people, and he turned up in the Holy Land by accident—” He checked himself. “Well, not by accident, not really, but nobody there knew he was coming, and he sailed right into the harbor at Tyre with a fleet of ships full of knights and soldiers on the very day the people in charge was getting ready to surrender the city. Put an end to that, Conrad did, and right quickly, and the upshot was that Saladin withdrew … Nobody really knows why he withdrew, but he did, straight away. Turned around and marched away down south and captured Acre instead … And his army's still holding it, even though they've been under siege for two years now, and King Guy's the fellow who started the siege.”

André wrinkled his brow. “Wait, now … I understand all that, but what has it to do with Conrad and Guy being enemies?”

“Nothing, my old lad … and everything. I can see why you're still a novice. Conrad and Guy are two cats fighting over the same mouse … The mouse is the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and there's nothing happens in the Holy Land that isn't touched by it. Conrad sailed
into Tyre by accident and rescued it. Now he's Marquis of Tyre. Guy sailed into Jerusalem and tupped its Queen—though she wasn't the Queen then, not yet— and now he's the King of Jerusalem. Conrad is envious. The kingdom's bigger than a pissy little port and he wants it for himself. And according to what this nob was saying to the King yest'day, he might get it, one of these days … See, he's arguing—and there seems to be a lot of people over there who support him—he's saying that Guy was only king there because his wife, this Sibylla, was the rightful queen. Sibylla died last year … she's gone. Ergo, according to Conrad and those who'd like to see him on the throne, Guy no longer has a claim to the crown.”

“But Guy was crowned legally, was he not?”

The guardsman turned and looked at André from beneath raised eyebrows, lifting his arms in appeal. “I don't know. Somebody forgot to invite me to the coronation.”

“Aye, well, he was, by the old Patriarch Archbishop of Jerusalem.”

Nickon slowly pushed his lips out into a pout that was all the more impressive because he had no lips to speak of, his mouth little more than a horizontal slash. Nonetheless he managed to convey great skepticism, perhaps because of that, and as André began to ask him why, he lifted one hand and shook his head slowly from side to side.

“Ask yourself one question, lad … Do you really believe Montferrat and his cronies care for a moment
about what some doddering bishop might have done five years ago? There is a
kingdom
at stake here, lad. The actions of one bishop, patriarch or not, won't stand up for a single heartbeat against the urgency of that …” He paused, and then his face broke into a wrinkled grin. “And I can tell you that with certainty, because I heard the Jerusalem baron fellow say the same thing, word for word, to King Richard yest'day, after the King said what you did, about King Guy's coronation …

“See, they don't care about what's legal. All they care about is setting Conrad on the throne and throwing Guy out into the desert. Ever since Conrad first landed in Tyre and heard about what happened at Hattin, he's been working at undermining Guy and taking his place. He's never stopped, not for a moment … When Guy won free from Saladin and went to Tyre, the first thing he did was ask for the keys of the city from Conrad, because he was the King and this was all that remained of his kingdom. Of course, he didn't get them. Conrad accused him of uselessness and cowardice right then and there and told Guy that with the disgraceful defeat at Hattin, he had forfeited the right to call himself King. And then, shortly after that, he turned around and claimed the kingdom for himself and kicked Guy out of the city. He wasn't shy about claiming the crown like that. He'd already gone from nobody to Marquis of Tyre, so the step to kingship couldn't have looked like much of a challenge.

“After that, instead of going away—because the fact was he had nowhere to go—Guy simply stayed outside
of Tyre and worked at raising an army beyond the walls, and Conrad did nothing to discourage him … in fact he sent him men because he had more people inside the city than he could feed. Guy eventually gathered about seven hundred men, most of them Templars and many of them from inside Tyre, including the Master of the Temple, de Rid-something-or-other.”