warhorses. Some of these had spent upward of a month at sea, and none was in any condition to be ridden, let alone ridden into battle, but long before dawn that morning the word circulated that Richard was in need of volunteers—two score of them—to ride with him before daybreak along the coast to Kolossi, five miles away, where Isaac and his men had supposedly ended up the previous evening.
As soon as he heard that being shouted to one of the guards on the prow from a night guard on the pier, Andre, who had been up on deck most of the night, restless and unable to sleep, went looking for his ship commander, claiming his right as one of Richard’s vassals to respond to the call for volunteers. But Tournedos, barely risen from his bunk to face the day, shook his head, disclaiming any ability, as a naval commander, to grant such a request from a knight. He sent him instead to ask permission from the senior Templar officer on board.
Andre had never spoken to the man in question, a renowned and popular knight called Don Antonio del’ Aquila, but he had seen him many times since boarding the ship. He found him now on the long stern deck, leaning against the rail near the sergeant brother guarding the helm, and talking in hushed tones with another dark-faced knight. They were clearly preoccupied, but the knight listened to St. Clair’s request, albeit impatiently, frowning at being interrupted, and never taking his eyes off the man to whom he had been speaking. But then he curtly refused his permission, dismissing Andre with the tone of his voice.
Astonished at the finality of the man’s response, Andre challenged the Templar’s right to refuse him. He stubbornly insisted that he had not yet taken the oath of obedience to the Order and could not, therefore, be bound to accept or obey any order that was not a direct command.
Del’ Aquila, who was known affectionately within the Templar community simply as Aquila, had been about to resume his interrupted conversation, reaching out to grasp his companion familiarly by the shoulder, but now he stopped and straightened slightly, raising an apologetic finger to the other man before turning back to face his challenger. The flickering light from a lamp on the bulkhead cast shadows on his face, and Andre expected to see anger stamped there. Instead, Aquila stood watching him calmly for long moments, showing no discernible emotions. He was a youngish man, in his fighting prime, and Andre estimated him to be thirtytwo or thirty-three. He had a thick reddish-brown beard, although it looked black in the shadowy predawn light, and he kept it close- cropped beneath the mailed hood of his hauberk. His white surcoat bore the longshanked red cross of the Temple Knights of Outremer front and rear, but in the frontal upper left quadrant of that cross, between his left breast and his shoulder, he also wore the equal-armed black cross with the flared ends, the cross-patte, that had been the original emblem of the Order before its investiture with the bold red cross signifying the Blood of Christ. Very few men wore both insignia, and all of those were knights who had distinguished themselves, and thereby the Order, in battle.
Aquila stood staring at St. Clair, eyes narrowed, teeth nibbling gently at his upper lip, and then he inhaled deeply and turned away towards the other man. “Forgive me, Signor Loranzo, but I must attend to … this. If you would wait for me in my quarters, I shall return as soon as I may.”
The other man bowed deeply and moved away, and Aquila crooked his index finger at Andre. “Come. Walk with me.”
As Andre fell into step beside him, the other man asked, “Why do you want to ride with Richard?”
“The Duke is my liege lor—”
“I know that, Master St. Clair, but why do you wish to ride with him?”
Andre blinked, mildly surprised that the other man should know his name, but he replied, “It is my duty, as his vassal.”
“No, your duty as his vassal is to obey his every command. He has issued no commands in this. His call was for volunteers. Now let me ask you again: why do you wish to ride with him?”
“To—” Andre checked himself, aware that he was looking for a lie to justify his wishes, then smiled in spite of himself and conceded defeat.
“To feel a horse between my legs again.”
“After so long at sea, you mean.” Aquila had not been looking at him and had not seen him smile.
“Aye.”
“Do you think you are alone in that?”
“No, not—”
“Quite.” They had turned and crossed in front of the disarmed tiller and were now pacing slowly along the right edge of the stern deck, aware of the watching eyes and the listening ears of the guard at the helm behind them, but now, at the farthest point from where the guard stood watching them, Aquila stopped, turning inward so that he and St. Clair were almost nose to nose, and as he did so he grasped Andre by the wrist and frowned, as though snarling angrily at him, and lowered his voice dramatically. “Do not move. Do not look away from my face. Listen to what I am saying to you. Listen, as we are being listened to! Let us suppose I granted you permission to ride off with your lord. You would ride for perhaps five miles, on a beast that might prove fit to handle such a distance after a month at sea. And you might encounter this Cypriot Emperor and his crew of fools, after which you might fight them. But you might equally end up on a less than fit horse, on questionable terrain, fighting against men whose skills, though ludicrous, have the potential to be lethal on occasion. Suppose that one of those inept warriors were fortunate enough to strike you down and kill you by accident.” He paused, allowing his words to hang between them, while his eyes never flinched from Andre’s.
“So there you are,” he continued, his voice little more than an intense whisper. “Sir Andre St. Clair, dead on an unknown scrap of land in the middle of nowhere, having achieved nothing, and all that you have gone through in this past year is set at naught, a waste of time and effort. And not merely your own time and effort but the efforts of all those people who have worked with you throughout that time in order to prepare you for the task that has been set for you in Outremer.” He stopped, watching confusion and then understanding bloom in Andre’s eyes, then cocked one eyebrow and nodded, confirming what he saw there.
“We had already decided,” he said, in a louder voice, “those of us in command here, long before this call King Richard has made for volunteers, that the affairs of the Temple must, as always, take precedence over those of a mere king. Our task, our dedicated duty, is to reach the Holy Land alive and to replenish the strength and the fighting blood that our sacred Order has lost in the battles of the past few years. Our reserves there have been severely depleted, our continuing existence endangered, so we cannot afford to lose, or even to risk, the life or welfare of one single man before we come face to face with Saladin and his swarming hordes. The fate of Christianity itself, in Christ’s own land, might depend upon each single man of us, or even upon a single one of us … And who can say who that one man might be?
“So, we remain aboard our ships, or within our own community should we land. We hold ourselves intact, and we avoid becoming caught up in such petty, prideful, unimportant squabbles as may kill good men to no useful purpose. Do you understand me?”
The only thing that Andre had truly understood until that point was that once again, and unexpectedly, he had encountered a fellow member of the Order of Sion who was aware of his secret purpose in visiting Outremer. He had also understood Aquila’s message beyond a doubt, and now he had not the slightest trouble in seeing the strength of the reasoning underlying the man’s refusal of his request, and the acknowledgment of that made him feel both foolish and selfish. The prattle about the fate of Christianity itself depending upon the Temple was no more than that—prattle designed for the ears of anyone who might be overhearing them. The true message Andre had received was that he was constantly being watched and guarded, even against himself, by his concerned brethren in Sion. He inhaled deeply, then raised his head and nodded.
“I do, Brother Aquila. I understand … completely. And I regret having brought myself to your attention on such a trivial matter. Forgive me.”
“No need, for no harm was done. But you remain on board from now on unless King Richard summons you directly.”
Andre found a smile and inclined his head. “I can improve even upon that for you, Senor del’ Aquila, for I have had this conversation with myself, in other circumstances. I will attend upon King Richard only if he summons me as my liege lord, the Duke of Aquitaine. Otherwise I shall remain here and take no foolish risks. I owe no fealty to the realm of England.”
Even as the two of them spoke, Richard and his party were already setting out to ride west towards the town of Kolossi, and hearing them go, for it was yet too dark to see them, Andre felt no slightest pang of regret at remaining behind. Aquila’s admonition had reminded him of the priorities that governed his life now, and he spent
