Standard of Honor

Commander of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, from his Temple superiors in France, but most of them for you. They all looked similar on the outside, so I had to be careful not to mingle them. Yours, however, were labeled in Arabic. I spent a long time receiving careful instruction in Arabic.”

“You speak Arabic?” The astonishment in Sinclair’s voice was worth all the time and trouble and effort Andre had expended, and he permitted himself a tiny smile.

“Barely. I understand it far better than I speak it, but I do speak a little … atrociously, I’ve been told. ”

“And you learned it over there?”

“I did, from a number of distinguished teachers, mostly in Poitiers, some in Marseille.”

Alec Sinclair immediately switched languages. “Tell me, then, about what you have learned.”

“Many things, in a broad range of subjects. The Koran, of course, first above all, the words of Allah and His Prophet, without which nothing in the Arab world makes sense. Then much about the diversity and complexity of Islamic society, and of the various elements within it. I can also speak with authority, and from either viewpoint, on the differences between the Shi’a and Sunni sects.”

“That is amazing.” Sinclair had been grinning as he listened, but now he said in a low, serious voice, “Cousin, I swear that that is probably the worst Arabic I have ever heard spoken, even by a Templar ferenghi.”

“So why were you sent to find me? You, I mean, and not someone else?”

“Because the members of the Council knew we are cousins and we know each other. And because no one had heard from you in a very long time and there was very real concern that you might be dead. My understanding is that you had been entrusted with some matter of grave importance to the brotherhood and had been engaged upon pursuing it for years, until the outbreak of the war and your disappearance. My task was to find you and to acquire the information you had collected, then return it to the Council.”

“If that was all that they required of you, you had no need to learn Arabic. What do you know about this information I was collecting?”

“Nothing, really. Nothing at all.”

Sinclair looked closely at him, then looked away.

“Then there is something lacking here … something that neither one of us knows. How large are these dispatches you have brought for me? Are they heavy? Bulky?”

“They are heavy, considering that they are merely written missives. And they are in two large wallets, both of them full.”

“Aha. And what were you to do with them in the event that I was dead?”

“Read them, and then try to complete your task.”

“But then you would have had to start from the beginning, from the very outset. And I had been working at it for years. Even speaking Arabic, you would have been able to do nothing.”

“Perhaps not, but I had—I have—a list of names, three names in all, of people with whom you are known to have associated in the past. I was to contact them and try to reconstruct your activities, hoping to find whatever reports you might have left behind … in concealment.”

“Hmm.” The single sound was dismissive, perhaps contemptuous, but Sinclair had made up his mind. “Well then, we had best collect these wallets of yours and be on our separate ways. It sounds as though I have much to read, and I believe the quicker I set myself to the task, the better it will be. Can you whistle for your friend? I will ride back with you as far as I can, but I will leave you before we draw near to the camps at Acre, for I have no wish to be seen. When I have read everything and understand what is required of me, I will send them back to you, for you to read. It seems appropriate that, if you are to run the risk of being killed with me, you should understand what we are attempting to do. I presume something is required from both of us in any case, although there is little to be gained from speculating as to what. But I will also send you instructions on where to meet me next time. It will not be as difficult or far away next time, I promise. Now call for Harry.” FOR A MILE OR TWO the men spoke of generalities until they fell into a comfortable silence, and for some time there was nothing to be heard but the clopping of hooves and the creaking of saddle leather, and St. Clair found himself thinking about the absence of metallic bridle sounds. None of the knights wore metal bridles. That was one of the first things he had noticed on arriving here. Sound traveled far in the desert air, and many a knight had died uselessly in the early days of conquest here because of a jingling bridle. He was brought back to awareness by the sound of his friend Douglas clearing his throat before starting to speak again.

“May I ask you a question, Sir Alexander? A question I have no right to ask?”

Alec looked drolly at Harry. “An impertinent question, you mean. You may ask, but it sounds portentous and formal, so I may choose not to answer it. Ask away.”

“One of the first things you said to us today, about not knowing whether to meet us or not, was … Well, you said a few things, in fact, that have been troubling me ever since, but you began by saying that few men are worth trusting nowadays, and that you thought Andre’s little tale about his nose might have been used as a lure to draw you out of hiding.”

“That is correct. So, what are you asking me?”

Harry threw up his hands in exasperation. “You are a monk, like me, like Andre here. We are all three Templars, and that means that, apart from our prowess against the enemy, we own little to cause concern or envy among our fellows, who are all as poor as we are, having taken the same vows. Were you saying that your fellow Templars wish you ill? And if not them, then who? Wait, wait …” He slowed himself down and began again. “What I am asking you, Master Sinclair, is why an honored knight like you, a veteran of years of service here, should be in so much fear of his own kind that he feels the need to live alone and in hiding. That is my question.”

“There is no short answer to that question, Harry,” he said eventually. “Yes, there are some among my fellow Templars who, if they do not wish me ill, certainly do not wish me well. But not everyone in this army is a poverty-sworn monk with no ambitions, and I have, whether or not you choose to believe it, excellent and defensible reasons for living alone and in hiding. It is not such a great departure from our chosen way of life, if you stop and consider it, Harry. I live alone, so I find I am free of temptations most of the time. I also live very simply, feeding myself upon what I can catch, barter, or infrequently grow, and I have ample time for prayer and contemplation of the vale of tears we live in. I live, in fact, not so much like a monk as an anchorite … or even an eremite.” He fell silent then, and let the younger knights mull over his words before continuing.

“Much of the trouble I have had in the recent past has sprung from my being held by the Saracens. You may have heard mention of that before, in fact I mentioned it myself, did I not?”

“Aye,” Andre said with a nod.

“Well, simply put, that is the source of my troubles.”

“Your captivity?” Andre said. “Forgive me, but I must be misunderstanding. How can the fact that you were a captive cause problems for you now? Did you convert to Islam?” He was half jesting, but contrived to look perturbed, nonetheless, and Alec smiled.

“No, I did not … not quite. But I did something almost as reprehensible. I enjoyed portions of my captivity.”

Andre glanced sideways at Harry, as if to make sure that he was hearing the same thing. “You enjoyed it? Captivity?”

“Portions of it.”

“Which portions would those have been?”

“The people, for one thing, the ordinary Saracen villagers, women and children and old men. Whenever we Franks think of them at all—and we seldom do because all our attention is taken up by the men, the warriors—we think of them as nomads, wanderers with no permanent homes. But not all of them are nomadic. The village in which I was held was prosperous, after its fashion, and the tribe had lived there since the days of the local emir’s grandfather, growing sufficient goats and crops in the normal way of things to keep themselves alive and provide a small surplus for trading. But their village was built over an underground water source and they had many date palms, and that was the source of their wealth and permanence. Once I grew accustomed to being there, unable to escape, I found myself growing to like them. I understood and spoke their language, although none of them knew that, but that helped me greatly towards understanding who they were and how they lived.

“I was a prisoner, and so naturally enough they put me to work, slave work for the most part, although it was little different from their own. Everybody in that village works in some fashion, for there is no room for unproductive bodies. They watched me closely at first, suspicious and hostile and probably afraid I might go mad