“And on the other hand, my manhood, in a harsh and arid desert place, where boulders stand in profusion, as in France, but unobscured by growth, their surfaces wind-scoured and polished by the blowing sand. No flowers, no edibles, and not one twisted tree attempting to confine one standing stone within its roots.
“Two seeming truths, apparently similar. But only one is genuine.”
A long silence elapsed before Alec Sinclair asked his question. “Which one?”
Andre St. Clair turned his head slightly to look him in the eye. “You tell me, Cousin, for I have no idea.”
And both men laughed and kicked their horses into motion, riding in companionable silence once again. When next one of them broke the silence, it was again Alec Sinclair who spoke.
“We still have to decide what we intend to do next. Richard is planning to march south within the week, along the old coast road, to engage Saladin and take Jerusalem, defeating the Saracens once and for all. He has already made the dispositions for the line of battle— Templars in the vanguard with the Turcopoles in support, then Richard’s native levies, his Bretons, Angevins, and Poitevins. The Normans and the English will come next, guarding the battle standard, and the French will form the rearguard, with the Hospitallers and the local Outremer forces supporting them. You and I have to decide upon a course of action for ourselves before that all begins.”
“You’re making no sense, Cousin. The Templars will form the vanguard, so that is where we will be.”
They rode in silence again for a spell until Alec exploded, “Damnation, there’s no other way to tell you this. It won’t come out without being spat! When I was in Cyprus I made a journey to Famagusta, to visit your father’s grave, as I promised you I would. I found it without difficulty and prayed there for his soul to rest in peace, but when I returned to Limassol I heard a tale that I could not believe, and so I set out to investigate. There is a Jew there called Aaron bar Melel. Do you know of him?”
“No, I know no Jew of that or any other name, certainly not in Limassol. Should I?”
“Yes, you should. I was given his name by an associate— an agent of Rashid al-Din who has lived in Limassol for years, as a spy. He asked me about my own name and how it differed from the name St. Clair, with which he was familiar. When I explained that the former Master-at-Arms had been my uncle, the man became very excited and told me his version of the story of what happened to your father. When I refused to believe what he said, he told me how to find this man Aaron, and I went looking for him the very next day. He was not difficult to find … Do you remember telling me about the purge being carried out against the Jews a few days before you left Limassol?”
“Aye, I remember. It cost me a last visit with my father.”
“Aye. Well, this Aaron was one of the Jews being sought, along with his entire family, his wife, son, and daughter. I met his wife and saw his daughter. She is beautiful. His son is dead, killed during the purge. He was fourteen years old. But Aaron, his wife, Leah, and his daughter were rescued and concealed by a Frankish knight. The Jew named him, calling him Sir Henry St. Clair, Master-at-Arms to England. He rescued them before the troubles broke, according to Aaron, but I have no idea, because Aaron himself did not know, how your father found out about all that was about to happen in advance. Nor do I know what happened to the boy—but Sir Henry had them smuggled out of Limassol, to a fishing village farther along the coast where they remained until they heard that Richard had set out again to come here. At that point, they returned home to Limassol, to mourn their son and rebuild their lives.
“But someone informed upon your father directly to Richard at the time of the family’s disappearance. Henry must have been seen doing what he did, or he was betrayed by one of the people he employed. Whoever reported it to Richard sank the blade in deep, then twisted it. It was done with absolute malice, and at a carefully chosen time, probably when he was drunk— Richard, I mean. He would have been furious to hear about your father’s betrayal. Your father had already left for Famagusta by that time, and so Richard’s bullyboys were sent up there to deal with him, with instructions to make whatever they did look like a random attack by guerrillas. And everyone believed that that is what befell your father and his two companions that night. But the killers talked about it in their cups when they returned to Limassol, and my Shi’ite associate overheard them. They were in his tavern at the time. An innkeeper soon learns to keep his mouth tight shut, and he knew of Sir Henry St. Clair only from hearsay—the man was King Richard’s Master-at-Arms, after all—and so he said nothing to anyone until the matter of my name came up, at which point he told me what he knew.”
He stopped there and waited for Andre to respond in some manner, but the younger man merely rode ahead like a man asleep in the saddle, his body adjusting naturally to the horse’s gait. Having seen that his eyes were open, Sinclair assumed that he was listening, and continued. “I asked around, but I could not find out anything about the men that Suleiman described. That’s my associate, Suleiman. I wasn’t going to name him, but there is no harm done. Of course, they had all sailed away with Richard, so they had already been out here in Outremer for weeks by the time I landed in Cyprus.” He spread his hands in a shrug. “Which means that there is no reasonable way for us to find out who they were. Their faces could be any among the hundred or so oafish lumps that hang about Richard constantly, waiting for instructions.”
He looked away again. “I couldn’t even find out if Richard sent them off deliberately or if they took it upon themselves to carry out his ill-stated wishes, the way his father’s bullies did for Thomas a Becket in England. That would not be unlikely, for that incident appears to be one of Richard’s favorite recollections of his father. He talks about it frequently, whenever he wishes to point out that it is inadvisable to cross a man of his background, so the murderers might well have acted on their own, in expectation of his pleasure and gratitude. But whether the one is true or the other, there’s no doubt now that Richard knows both what he did and what he is guilty of. That’s why you have heard no word from him since his arrival here. I doubt that he could look you in the eye.”
That comment brought a response from St. Clair, spoken calmly, in matter-of-fact tones. “Oh, he could look me in the eye, Alec. Have no doubt of that. Richard Plantagenet could look me in the eye and smile at me and make me feel right welcome while my father’s blood dripped from his hands. His self-love is so monstrous that he can now convince himself he is incapable of doing wrong.
“I truly loved this man, once, you know … almost as dearly as I loved my father. He knighted me and I admired him greatly, seeing him as a paladin. But then, in tiny increments, one instance at a time, I began to see him as he truly is. All of the love and admiration, all the respect, all of the loyalty and duty that I had felt so privileged to owe him willingly for so many years began to turn to vinegar and ashes in my mouth, and my soul grew increasingly sick as more and more evidence of his perfidy and his unending selfishness became clear. And it all culminated with the obscenity of his destruction of the Saracen prisoners.
“After that, and what I suffered over it, even this information that he murdered my father, his most loyal servant, cannot move me to great passion. I believe it, but it does not surprise me in the slightest degree, and I think that were I to examine my own heart, I might even find that I suspected it—although I know I did not.” Andre turned his eyes directly on his cousin. “I have mourned my father, and I have come to accept that he was murdered. To find out now that he was murdered by a spiteful, ungrateful friend makes little difference. Murder is murder.”
St. Clair fell silent, and Alec Sinclair made no attempt to interrupt him, for he could see that there was more to come. And eventually Andre almost smiled as he said, “But I can understand now what you were attempting to say when you were muttering about our having to make up our minds as to what we must do next. Have you any ideas?”
“Aye, I have several. Go ahead. I’ll follow you.” They had reached the central area of the stone field, close by the pinnacle that marked the cavern’s roof, and now St. Clair nudged his horse to the left, taking the half- hidden pathway to the sink hole that led down to the hidden entrance. Alec followed him, speaking to the back of his head as they moved forward.
“The first and most obvious option open to us, to both of us, is simply to disappear into the desert and live with our Shi’a allies. That should present no great difficulty on any front, since we have the Grand Master himself to assist us. He need simply claim a requirement for our services, as clandestine operatives, to be conducted beyond the perimeters of our regular encampments. And he would not even be required to lie, since he could never be asked about the Order that claims our loyalty along with his own. He would simply leave others to assume, which they surely would, that our duties lie in the service of the Temple. No one would ever think to doubt his judgment, for we both speak flawless and fluent Arabic and have the capability of mixing with Saracens without being seen for what we truly are.”
“Aye, but were we to do that, we would be forced to live among Sinan’s people. I do not think I could live that way, Alec. Can you imagine spending an entire lifetime with Rashid al-Din, with that scowling, hostile,
