Standard of Honor

A seaman on the deck opened the gate in the ship’s side to admit him, and two deck officers turned casually, and insolently, Andre thought, to inspect him as he strode forward. One of them, the senior of the two, judging by the braid on his tunic, opened his mouth to say something, but Andre shot up an arm in front of him so that the heel of his hand almost smacked against the fellow’s nose.

“Stand at attention when you speak to a King’s messenger, you ill-mannered lout,” he snarled. “I represent Richard of England here, in person, and bear tidings from him to his betrothed and to his sister Joanna, Queen of Sicily. Would Richard himself be required to suffer your insolence and lack of regard on his arrival? Would he be forced to drag himself aboard your ship by hand?” He ignored the increasing pallor of the hapless officer’s skin and pressed himself relentlessly forward into the fellow’s face. “Rest assured that I shall inform him of the possibility when I return to him this afternoon. And don’t you ever again lose sight of the fact that this is not, and will never be, your ship. It is a King’s ship. King Richard’s ship.” He snapped his head sideways and jabbed a finger towards the second, younger officer. “You! Nitwit! Shut your drooling mouth and turn Sir Richard de Bruce out here this instant. Now!” He roared the last word, cutting short the man’s attempt to respond, and the fellow spun on his heel and scampered through a door in the stern wall. Andre stood staring after him, making no effort to relax his rigid features.

“Sir … Master Sai—”

“Be silent! You had your opportunity to speak as I approached the ship, and you chose to remain aloof and deliver silent insults instead of assistance or courtesy. Now you will learn how it feels to wear wet rags and heave upon an oar as a common seaman, so do what you can to prepare yourself.”

As the officer stood gaping in dismay the door behind him opened and Commodore de Bruce emerged, his glance moving curiously from one of them to the other so that Andre knew the junior officer had already told him what was happening.

“Master St. Clair,” he said, the beginnings of a frown puckering his brow, “I had not expected to see you again.”

“Clearly. And neither had your pet ape here. I want this man stripped of his rank and duties now, for laziness and disrespect, crass insolence to a King’s messenger, and lese majeste, insult to the King himself.” He raised a hand quickly, palm outward, to forestall de Bruce’s protest. “Do as I say, Master de Bruce. Do not attempt to sway me or to excuse the man’s conduct, I warn you. He is unfit to be an officer of any kind, even a ship’s officer, and were he mine to command I would have him flogged and forced to serve in the ranks. So see to it that my wishes in this are carried out. I shall expect to see it done by the time I leave here, which should be within the hour, and I intend to make full report of what has happened to King Richard in person.”

“I have no such authority aboard this ship, sir. The ship’s commander—”

“Are you not commodore of these dromons, then?” “Yes, I am, but—”

“No buts, Master de Bruce. Either you command or you do not. Which shall I tell King Richard?”

De Bruce’s shoulders slumped slightly. “Very well, then, I shall instruct the captain … But, Sir Andre, this man is senior lieutenant of this ship.”

“Was he, by God? How then are the mighty fallen. Now, if you will, send word to the ladies Berengaria and Joanna that I attend them here with urgent tidings from the King.”

De Bruce drew himself erect and bobbed his head. “Of course. At once.” He turned an icy glance upon the condemned officer. “You, sir, will wait in my quarters.”

As both men left, leaving only the junior officer on deck, extremely subdued and crestfallen, Andre turned his back and stared out over the distant bow of the ship, aware that the seaman who had held the gate for him was standing rigidly at attention, his eyes on Andre and his face absolutely without expression. I wonder what you thought of that, he asked himself, beginning to wonder if he might have been too hard on the lieutenant, making a point merely to emphasize and simultaneously purge his own anger. The thought barely lasted a moment, however, for he knew he had been right—he recalled the manner in which the fellow had sneered at his appearance the previous day, the first time Andre had come aboard the ship. There had been no real offense given or taken on that occasion, but the man’s attitude of disdainful intolerance had been noticeable and, Andre now realized, memorable. He put the fellow from his mind just as the door opened at his back and de Bruce re-emerged to tell him that the ladies would receive him at once.

ANDRE ST. CLAIR HAD WONDERED from the outset at the suddenness of the King’s determined resolve to be wed at once, and he had thought even then, listening to Richard talk of singing monks and massed candles and assembled bishops and archbishops, that the abruptness of it all was likely to be causing enormous inconvenience to everyone involved, from cooks to housekeepers and quartermasters, nearly all of whom must have been caught as flat-footed as he himself had been by the monarch’s impetuous and imperious decision. He was completely unprepared, however, for the storm of furious and impassioned disbelief and protest that his tidings precipitated among the women on the dromon. It broke over his head out of a clear blue sky and left him reeling, mouth agape, and beginning to perceive, yet unable to comprehend, the enormity of the crime he had been cajoled into perpetrating upon, and in the eyes of, Richard’s women. It mattered not that he was merely the messenger, guiltless of complicity or wrongdoing; someone had to bear the brunt of their collective outrage, and he was the closest and most qualified recipient for their ferocious indignation.

Afterwards he would realize, with gratitude, that the worst of it was brief lived, solely because the women had no time to waste on him once the gravity of their situation began to make itself felt. They were plunged into a frenzy of preparations, and he was quickly forgotten. St. Clair found himself standing in a whirlwind of panic- inspired noise, amid a seething blizzard of women’s clothing that seemed to fill the air entirely, and moments after that he had been ejected from the cabin.

Although vaguely dazed, he had acquired the knowledge that he needed most: there would be nine women in the attending group to be collected by de Sable’s barge. The Princess would bring her aged duena, who had been her nurse from infancy, and two younger ladies of Navarre; Joanna would be accompanied by her own senior companion and servant, Maria, and by three Sicilian women, two of them widowed and the other single, who had been her ladies-in-waiting when she was Queen in her own right.

He made his way towards the exit gate in the side of the ship, noticing only as he arrived there that the access ramp had been swung out and lowered into place, and the sight of it reminded him of the other matter he had set in motion. The same seaman was standing by the gate in the ship’s side, and Andre told him to alert his boat’s crew that he would be there soon. He then turned back to where the junior lieutenant stood watching him warily, poised on the balls of his feet.

“Call Sir Richard for me.”

“Yes, Sir Andre.” The response was as clipped as any one expected on a parade ground, and the lieutenant spun smartly away to deliver the summons. Sir Richard de Bruce emerged from his quarters moments later and came, stiff faced, straight to Andre, who nodded brusquely.

“The other fellow, what have you done with him?”

“I have confined him to his cabin, Sir Andre.”

“Not good enough. Strip him to his tunic, put him in chains, and hold him under guard, publicly, over there in that corner, to await the King’s verdict. It will do your self-satisfied fool no harm to see the world for a time through the eyes of those less fortunate than he is. He needs to be reminded that, as an undistinguished officer aboard one of the King’s ships, he ranks only slightly higher than the ruffians he commands and can ill afford to give offense to anyone, let alone anyone who might be in a position at some time to seek revenge on him. What is his name, by the way?”

“De Blois, Sir Andre.”

St. Clair’s eyebrows shot up, but then he smiled. “D’you say so? One of his kinsmen did his best to kill me a little while ago. He failed, of course, but I found him decidedly unpleasant to be around, and now I find it interesting that this fellow is another de Blois. Family traits, Sir Richard … Family traits.”

Andre left the commodore staring after him and went directly to the gate, which the seaman held open for him. His boat was waiting at the bottom of the ramp, and this time he jumped aboard easily and settled himself in the stern as the rowers swung away from the great ship. And there Andre learned another lesson about the strangenesses of the maritime fraternity. He asked his boat master, the helmsman, if he had any idea where they might begin to look for the Count of Coutreau, the Deputy Master of the Fleet, and the fellow looked all around the assembled ships, then pointed unhesitatingly to one of the newcomers.