Standard of Honor (66 page)

“How did he know I am going to Acre?”

“I had my man tell him, in explanation of why you wished to see him today.”

“So why are you angry about that?”

“Angry? I am not angry. I am merely frustrated not to be able to find some of the people I wanted to have present at your ceremony tonight. We can proceed with it, so be prepared an hour after dark, but there will be five, perhaps six people missing whom I wanted to be there. Ah well, we will talk afterwards. And tomorrow you will leave for Acre on a fast galley, one of the
Temple's best, bearing dispatches for the senior Temple officer there who is at this time, I believe, the Marshal himself, a knight of the Languedoc who shares your given name, André. He is André Lallières of Bordeaux. Do you know the name?”

“No, should I?”

“I thought you might. He is one of us, Raised on the same day I was, and his family is one of the originals. Be ready for tonight. You will be summoned by two knights.”

“What must I wear?”

“Exactly what you are wearing now. Your virgin's shroud. They'll take it from you and you will be dressed formally after the induction. Now go and leave me to do what I have to do between now and then.”

The rest of that day passed with a slowness that St. Clair could not believe, but pass it did, eventually, and he was waiting impatiently as soon as darkness fell over the city.

Eight hours later, at daybreak on the seventeenth of May, he stood on one of the wharves in the harbor, flanked by two knights whose finery was less new and striking than was his. He wore the full white surcoat and red cross, brilliantly new and unused, of a fully fledged Temple knight. It covered a suit of mail so new that it was as stiff as the equally new and heavy knee-high boots that encased his feet and legs. The mailed hood encasing his head felt strange and constrictive, but the helmet he wore over that felt solid and comfortable. His own sword, the gift from Richard, hung at his
waist, and behind him stood his personal attendant, a sergeant brother assigned to him that morning for the duration, whose primary duty was to keep both Sir André and his personal armor, equipment, and weaponry in prime condition and ready for battle at any time. André stretched himself and flexed his shoulders beneath the unaccustomed tightness of his mailed hauberk. He had not worn a full mailed suit since joining the novitiate, and as he watched the approach of the boat that had been sent for him, he wondered how long it would take him to grow used to it again.

The boat bumped against the wharf close by his feet, and André turned to his two companions and bade them farewell as his attendant passed the two chests that held their possessions into the boat, then climbed in after them. Brother Justin, unusually splendid in a fresh white surcoat and burnished mail, wished him God speed, and the other knight, Etienne de Troyes himself, hung a rigid leather cylinder containing dispatches around André's neck, then drew himself erect in a formal salute and wished the new knight every success with his mission in the Holy Land. The little boat was pushed off from the wharf and began to steer towards the galley that would carry André St. Clair and his dispatches into Outremer.

EIGHT

K
reeee …

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

“How big do you think that thing is?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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